In 1802, there was published at Suffield, Conn., a pamphlet of twelve pages with the following title, viz:—
“Narrative of the Singular Sufferings of John Fillmore and others on board the noted Pirate Vessel Commanded by Captain Phillips”....
This pamphlet was reprinted at Johnstown in 1809 and at Aurora, N. Y. in 1837, and again, in the “Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society,” Volume X. It was written when John Fillmore was an old man and the testimony given at the trial of the pirates shows it to be inaccurate in some particulars. It preserves, however, biographical details which are probably correct.
Fillmore relates that his father was a sailor who was taken into Martinico by a French frigate where he was imprisoned and suffered many hardships so that when sent home in a French cartel he died on the voyage. Young Fillmore was apprenticed to a carpenter and across the road from where he lived was a tailor who had an apprentice named William White who afterwards went to sea. When young Fillmore met him again it was on board Phillips’ pirate vessel off the Newfoundland coast.
When seventeen years old Fillmore went to sea in the sloop “Dolphin,” Captain Haskell, and was taken by Phillips soon after reaching the fishing grounds. “Having heard of the cruelties committed by Phillips,” he refused to go on board his vessel until White came back with an order to bring him on board “dead or alive.” He states that while with Phillips he was assigned the helm for much of the time, and on one occasion when a fine merchant ship was sighted, Captain Phillips “walked the deck with his glass in his hand” and damned young Fillmore for not steering as well as he thought he should and at last struck him over the head with his broadsword, cutting his hat. The merchant was light and a better sailer and so got away.
When Fern, the carpenter, attempted to get away the second time, Phillips ran his sword through his body and then blew out his brains with a pistol. Phillips also killed a young friend of Fillmore’s in the same manner.
Fillmore represents that he played a very active part in the overthrow of the pirates, which he initiated the evening before by burning the soles of the feet of White and Archer, as they lay dead drunk below deck, so that they were unable to come on deck the next day. At the time of the attack the master was preparing to take an observation and “the quartermaster was in the cabin drawing out some leaden slugs for a musket.” Fillmore relates that he split open the head of the boatswain with a broadax, hit the captain on the head and stunned him and when the quartermaster, hearing the noise, came running out of the cabin with a hammer in his hand he “gave him a blow on the back of his head cutting his wig and neck almost off so that his head hung down before him.” As Archer was the quartermaster of the vessel and was supposed to be suffering with burned feet and unable to come on deck, Fillmore at this point seems to add embroidery to his narrative. He also states that three of the pirates were sent to England for trial and hanged there.
James Cheeseman returned to England where he was rewarded by the Government, says Fillmore, and enjoyed until his death the office of quartermaster in the dockyard at Portsmouth.
V
An “Act of Grace”
From time to time proclamations were published granting a gracious pardon to those guilty of acts of piracy who would surrender themselves to the authorities on or before a certain date. These offers of pardon were known as “Acts of Grace.” The proclamation made in 1717, which brought about the great surrender of pirates in the Bahamas, is here reprinted.