On May 2, 1724, the Boston owned brigantine “Daniel,” John Hopkins in Command, was homeward bound in latitude 33° and near Bermuda, when a strange sail fired a gun and soon hoisted a black flag. The pirate ship was crowded with men and resistance was out of reason so Captain Hopkins ordered his boat lowered and went aboard the ship. After rifling the brigantine it was burned. Joseph Cole of Beverly, Mass., and Benjamin Wheeler of Boston, seamen on board the “Daniel,” were forced “notwithstanding their importunate Prayers & Tears to him to dismiss them.”[143] Spriggs swore to the master that “he designed to encrease his Company on the Banks of Newfoundland, and then would sail for the coast of New England in quest of Captain Solgard, who attack’d and took their Consort Charles Harris; Spriggs being then in Low’s sloop, very fairly run for it.”[144] Two days later Captain Hopkins and his men, including John Bovewe and Elias Tozer, were put aboard a Philadelphia sloop bound for Jamaica which in time they reached safely and in April of the following year they were in Boston again.
Instead of going to Newfoundland, as he had threatened, Spriggs stood to the windward of St. Christopher’s and on June 4, 1724, took a sloop, Nicholas Trot, master, belonging to St. Eustatia. The plunder of the vessel didn’t amount to much so the pirates thought they would amuse themselves by fastening a rope around the men’s bodies, one by one, and after hoisting them as high as the main- and foretops by letting go of the ropes the unfortunate wretches would fall tumbling to the deck with force enough to break skins and smash bones. After the men were well crippled by this usage Captain Trot was given his sloop and told to clear out. A week later, a Rhode Island ship bound for St. Christopher’s was taken. She was loaded with provisions and some horses, which the pirate crew soon mounted and rode about the deck, backwards and forwards, at full gallop, cursing and howling like demons, which soon made the animals so wild that they threw their riders and spoiled the sport. They then turned to the ship’s crew and whipped and cut them in a wicked manner, saying, that it was because boots and spurs had not been brought with the horses that they were not able to ride like gentlemen.
Captain Spriggs was seldom lacking in boldness and next he cruised off Port Royal in the island of Jamaica and made one or two minor captures. Two men-of-war at anchor in port were ordered out and the commander of one of them, Capt. James Wyndham of the “Diamond,” ordered a course set for the Bay of Honduras, thinking that Spriggs might return to his old haunts. This proved to be correct for when the man-of-war sailed into the Bay, Spriggs and his crew were there busily engaged in plundering ten or twelve vessels that had been loading logwood. The pirates were completely surprised and but feebly returned the fire of the man-of-war and soon considered it wiser to get out their sweeps and row into shoal water and so they at last escaped, there being but little wind. This took place the latter part of September, 1724. Spriggs at that time was in command of his ship, the “Batchelor’s Delight,” and had with him as consort, a sloop commanded by Captain Shipton. During the encounter they had six men killed and five or six wounded. Capt. John Cass, when he reached Newport, R. I., from the Bay of Honduras, the first of December following, brought an account of this affair and reported to his owners the information that “a Spanish half Galley with about 50 Men on board, and a Perriagoe with 26 Men, now in the Bay of Honduras, lye in obscure Places & Key’s to take vessels in their way there.”[145] All these dangers to New England shipping must have added greatly to the market value of logwood chips.
After escaping from the “Diamond” man-of-war, Spriggs sailed for the Bahama Channel and on the voyage ran very short of provisions. He took a sloop in the service of the South Sea Company, bound from Jamaica to Havana, with negro slaves, and later a ship bound for Newport, R. I., Capt. Richard Durffie, master. Spriggs proposed to put all the negroes on board Captain Durffie’s vessel but the captain urgently represented his want of sufficient provisions and the danger that they all would perish by starvation and at last Spriggs transferred to his ship only ten of the slaves and then let him go. Durffie put in to South Carolina for fresh supplies and while there Capt. Jeremiah Clarke of Newport, met him and brought home the news of his capture. Spriggs and Shipton continued on their course towards the Bahamas and off the western end of Cuba were so unfortunate as to again meet the “Diamond” man-of-war, still in pursuit of them. As the wind lay their only means of escape was to make for the Florida shore where Shipton’s sloop was run aground near the Cape and lost. This sloop was owned in Newport, R. I., and was in command of Jonathan Barney at the time she was taken by Spriggs. When the sloop went ashore she carried 12 guns and seventy or more men all of whom reached land safely only to fall into the hands of the Indians, except Shipton and ten or a dozen others who escaped in the ship’s canoe and finally reached Cuba.[146] It was said at the time that the Indians killed and ate sixteen of the pirates and that forty-nine were taken and carried to Havana; but why the “Diamond,” an English man-of-war, should carry English pirates to a Spanish port is not explained in any of the newspaper accounts of the affair. About two thousand pounds value in gold fell a prize to the “Diamond.”
PIRATES KILLING A CAPTURED MAN
From an old mezzotint in the possession of Capt. E. H. Pentecost, R.N.R.
FIGHT ON A PIRATE SHIP
From an old mezzotint in the possession of Capt. Ernest H. Pentecost, R.N.R.
Spriggs, by good seamanship, was able to make his escape and in some way afterwards picked up Shipton and the few men who escaped with him and made his way back to the Bay of Honduras where on Dec. 23, 1724, in company with Shipton, who at that time was in command of a perriagua with ten white men and three or four negroes, he descended on the logwood ships in the Bay and took sixteen vessels, one of which, commanded by Capt. Kelsey, he burned. The captain was given a long-boat and it being fair weather, he reached the uninhabited island of Bonaco safely, from which he and his crew afterwards were rescued by a passing sloop. Shipton took the ship “Mary and John,” of Boston, Thomas Glen, master, and after plundering her, carried away the master and put him on board a Boston sloop, Ebenezer Kent, master, which he had taken the same day, intending to sail for the rendezvous at the island of Roatan. The mate of the “John and Mary,” Matthew Perry, he left on board with his hands tied behind him and later ordered three of his pirates, together with two forced men, Nicholas Simons and Jonathan Barlow, all double armed, to take possession of the “John and Mary” and follow him to the rendezvous. Simons was to be the navigator and commander. But after Shipton had gone, Simons and Barlow untied Perry’s hands and proposed that together they attempt to kill the three pirates who had come on board with them and if successful, to make a course for some English port. The mate at once consented and Barlow gave him a pistol and he started for the steerage where one of the pirates was rummaging. Coming up behind him he snapped his pistol but unfortunately it missed fire. The pirate had four pistols in his belt and immediately drawing one he aimed it at Perry before he could reach the ladder. Strangely enough this pistol, too, missed fire. Simons was in the cabin at the time and hearing the snapping of the flints came rushing in crying, “In the name of God and His Majesty King George, let us go on with our design.” He shot dead the pirate who had attempted to kill the mate and told another of the pirates who was present, if he made any resistance he would kill him too. Meanwhile, Barlow and some of the ship’s company had killed the third pirate. They then cut their cable and made the best of their way to deep water and with no further adventures reached Newport, R. I., the last of January, 1725.[147] After their arrival, the circumstantial accounts of Simons and Barlow were published at length in the Boston newspapers.
Simons claimed that he was the humble instrument that brought about the disaster to the sloop commanded by Shipton, that was chased ashore on the Florida coast, and that while in Spriggs’ company he and Barlow had been treated “very barbarously; made to eat candles with the wick, and often threatened to take away their lives.”[148] Barlow also related that he had been forced by Low and afterwards served in Spriggs’ and Shipton’s companies. He said Low had abused him, had knocked out one of his teeth with a pistol and threatened to shoot down his throat, “whereupon Barlow fell and was taken up sick which held him three months.” He also repeated the story of the discarding of Low by his men and his having been sent away with two other pirates in a French sloop and nothing had been heard from him since.[149]