[16] New York Colonial Documents, Vol. IV, p. 1116.

[17] Babson, History of Gloucester, p. 138.

[18] Andros Tracts, Vol. III, p. 5.

[19] New York Colonial Documents, Vol. IV, p. 521.

CHAPTER II
Dixey Bull, the First Pirate in New England Waters and Some Others who Followed Him

The doubtful honor of having been the first pirate to plunder the small shipping of the New England colonists belongs to one Dixey Bull who was living in London in 1631 and who came over late that fall and for a short time was living at Boston. He probably was sent over by Sir Ferdinando Gorges and certainly was associated with him in a large grant of land lying east of Agamenticus, at York, on the coast of Maine. He came of a respectable family but was of an adventurous disposition and soon after reaching New England became a “trader for bever,” spending much of his time on the Maine coast bartering with the Indians and the scattered white settlers.

In June, 1632, he was trading in Penobscot Bay when a roving company of Frenchmen in a pinnace came upon him and seized his shallop and stock of “coats, ruggs, blanketts, bisketts, etc.” These Frenchmen had previously rifled the trading post on the Penobscot maintained by the Pilgrim Colony at Plymouth, where “many French complements they used, and Congees they made.”[20]

Having lost his slender stock of trading goods Bull seems to have become desperate and getting together a small company of wanderers, located here and there along the coast, he proposed a venture against the French. Governor Winthrop relates that Bull added to his own crew “fifteen more of the English who kept about the East,” and with these men he sailed along the coast in the late summer hoping to fall in with some Frenchmen and so retrieve his losses. But the French kept out of sight and badly in need of supplies he took and plundered two or three small vessels owned by colonial traders and from them forced four or five men to join his company.

The next venture was to sail into the harbor at Pemaquid and loot that trading station of goods to the value of over £500. He met with practically no resistance while the plundering was going on and the goods were safely got on board the shallop. But just as they were weighing anchor, a well-aimed musket shot from shore killed the second in command. This was the first blood that had been shed and as the entire company, so far as known, had had no previous piratical experience, the fatal outcome and the sight of human blood seems to have been somewhat of a shock. Capt. Anthony Dicks, a Salem skipper, fell into their hands not long after and some of them told him of what had happened at Pemaquid and expressed great fear and horror so “that they were afraid of the very Rattling of the Ropes.”[21]

Bull tried to persuade Captain Dicks to pilot them to Virginia which may have been an excellent refuge at that time for a New England pirate, for a contemporaneous Puritan writer describes the Virginia colony as “a nest of rogues, whores, dissolute and rooking persons.” The Salem skipper, however, refused to serve Bull and his company and so the voyage to Virginia was abandoned for the time and it was decided to continue attacks on other trading posts. The company then adopted a body of articles to govern their acts and among them a law against excessive drinking. “At such times as other ships use to have prayer, they would assemble upon the deck, and one sing a song, or speak a few senseless sentences, etc. They also sent a writing, directed to all the governors, signifying their intent not to do harm to any more of their countrymen, but to go to the southward, and to advise them not to send against them; for they were resolved to sink themselves rather than be taken: signed underneath, Fortune le garde, and no name to it.”[22]