Pirate tales from the law

by Arthur M. Harris

Captain Green’s snuffbox tinkled along the floor. Sir Patrick Home of the prosecution glanced up gratefully at Sir John Home on the bench; the audience breathed a collective Ah! The judges rose and passed out; their gowns were more than dappled,—they now dripped with scarlet.

March 14, and the thing could be quickly finished. The assize, or jury, was impaneled, made up of fifteen members, whose verdict was sufficient, if found by a plurality of votes.

Mr. Fiscal first put on the stand Antonio Ferdinando, cook’s mate. He testified through an interpreter, one captain Yeaman. After asserting that he was twenty-four years of age, single, a Christian and the son of Christian parents, he claimed that he saw the Worcester attack the unnamed ship “upon the coast of Malabar”, practically as set out in the indictment, and that in the engagement he was wounded, in the arm, “which wound he now shows to the view of all.” Sensation in the courtroom! He said it was a running fight and lasted for three days, and occurred between Tellicherry and Calicut. During his testifying it was apparent that he was extremely sick, and from time to time he had to stop and stretch at length on counsel’s table until he could recover his strength to proceed.

Next up was Doctor May, who said he was twenty-six years old, and who, being white, enjoyed the presumption of being a Christian. He repeated the statements which he had given for the indictment. He said he heard the firing while he was at Callequilon. If Ferdinando truthfully told that the attack was at Calicut, the doctor must have had unusual powers of hearing, for that place and Callequilon are more than one hundred miles apart. This was a little too much for even this tragic farce, so towards the end the doctor brazenly switched his testimony and said that the firing happened while he was on the ship “going up the coast of Malabar.”

Antonio Francesco, the slave, was the third to come on. He had been chained to the forecastle floor during the firing, but was told by Ferdinando that the sloop was attacking a ship. He added the highly significant information that Ferdinando was only employed forty-eight hours before the Worcester left Anjango for Bengal and home! If that were so, he was not on the ship at the time Doctor May was at Callequilon, for that was long before the departure for Bengal.

But then, one could amuse one’s self indefinitely picking out this kind of discrepancy among the witnesses.

James Wilkie, Will Wood and the whole Seaton circle, of course, washed their faces and came trippingly to court to tell of the important utterances of George Haines, and to impinge their little personalities a moment upon the national retina.

Under the custom of that day counsel for the criminal defendant could not give his client much help on the facts, but Thoirs went as far as the law would allow him. He disputed the qualifications of the Antonios, claiming that they did not own ten pounds apiece, and therefore could not be heard to testify in a Scottish court. This was easy for the Fiscal. “Oh,” said he, “we calculate that each has wages coming to him from the cruise, which will total more than ten pounds.” And the court declared the witnesses qualified! If Sir David Cunningham knew of this ruling he must have been glad he quit.

Evening came on, yet the court sat through. The macers lit the candles, making little pools of yellow light in the mid-March murk of the old courtroom.

Green essayed a feeble cross-examination but could make little headway with a weapon which requires the finest skill of the most practiced hand, and which, clumsily used, will certainly cut the examiner’s own fingers. As to any affirmative defense, nothing could be advanced under an indictment of the kind laid against him, for what was there that he could specifically approach and rebut; all he could say was no. One thing he did advance and which carried no weight with the assize, but which is meaningful enough for us, and that was that there was indeed firing upon the coast of Malabar and by the Worcester’s guns, but it was nothing more than the five salutes to the ship Aureng-zeb.