Pirate tales from the law

by Arthur M. Harris

There was more than a good chance that the gang could have got away with this story. Nobody could have checked them up, and the incident in itself was not so utterly improbable; a circumstance like that might happen in those far-off seas.

The trouble for Quelch was that he carried informers with him all the time and brought them back with him to Boston. Pimer and Clifford and the one or two other loyal men were only waiting their time. And Quelch knew it.

Off the Bermudas, coming home, Quelch called for a journal Pimer was known to be keeping and tore from it five or six leaves containing a record of the various piracies from St. Augustine to Rio. Quelch probably calculated that fear for their own safety would keep all hands quiet when they reached Boston.

He was wrong. The Charles was not long docked after her far-flung cruise when Quelch and a number of the seamen were arrested and the ship appropriated. There can be little question that Pimer and Clifford or one of them hurried to the governor and informed.

The jig was up. Anthony Holding, the evil genius of the adventure, shrewdly packed up his portion of the plunder and fled without waiting for what he no doubt foresaw as inevitable and imminent, the approach of the officers of the law.

Not so with Quelch. No back-alley dodging for him. With all the circumstances of a business man in lawful enterprise he went to the shop of one of the leading jewelers of Boston and there melted down a quantity of Portuguese gold and silver coins. May have been fooling with the jeweler’s crucibles when the rough hand of the officer thumped his shoulder.

Captain Kidd was the last of the colonial pirates to be sent home to England for trial. After that the Government authorized such proceedings to be had in the colonies themselves, for the expense of dragging the accused and the witnesses across the Atlantic was too much. On June 13, 1704, Quelch and a group of his pirates were tried for murder and piracy at a “Court of Admiralty held at Boston, in her Majesty’s Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New England, in America.”

Mr. Attorney General of the province, assisted by eminent queen’s counselors, carried the prosecution; the defense was borne by the accused themselves with the help of a Mr. Menzies, a lawyer appointed by the court to assist them “in any matters of law.” It will be remembered that in those times a defendant in a criminal action was not allowed a lawyer for the purpose of ascertaining the facts of the case but merely to advise on matters of legal practice, whose only job in most cases was to assure the accused that what was being done to them was all according to law.

The indictment was on nine articles or counts, beginning with the death of Captain Plowman and ending with the taking of the Bastian ship off Rio. The death of Plowman was made the fact of the murder charge.

Pimer, Clifford and a fellow named Parrot turned queen’s evidence. The feeling of contempt which one seems to have for an informer can not be extended to these men; for their action here was quite consistent with their attitude from the beginning, which, as we have seen, had not been hidden even from the pirates. They never approved the deeds done or pretended they did. These are not your ordinary informers.