Meanwhile, Captain Goffe was anchored near Portsmouth. On August 14th he wrote to the Governor:—“I shall obay your honors Comand in making Seasuer of Capt. Griffin and Capt. Dew If it lies in my power to meet with them ... one of them is now in site standing of and on between this place and the Isle of Sholes.... They sayle two foot to ower one.... Ower Bread and beare is all most Expended.” A few days later he asked to be recalled to Nantasket to provide necessary supplies, “the Docters chest Espeshely,”[30] and there the episode seems to have ended.
The ketch “Elinor,” William Shortrigs, master, came to anchor at Nantasket road, near the mouth of Boston harbor, early in the afternoon of Nov. 20, 1689. She was inward bound from the island of Nevis, loaded with sugar and indigo, and the wind failing and the flood tide being almost spent, the captain was obliged to anchor as most of his men were sick or disabled with the cold. Leaving the vessel in charge of James Thomas, he took his mate and one other man and started for Boston in the ship’s boat to get help to bring the vessel into harbor. Provisions also were running short. The next day his owner, Mr. Thomas Cooper, was unable to secure a permit to bring her up because there had been smallpox on board but on the 22d he told the captain that she might be brought up as far as the Castle, so four men were sent down the harbor. The next morning they returned and astonished the captain with the news that the ketch had disappeared from her anchorage. Mr. Cooper at once sent out a “hue and cry” according to law and hired a sloop to go in search of the missing ketch which was found two days later run ashore within Cape Cod hook.
About seven o’clock in the evening of the day on which Captain Shortrigs had started to row up to Boston, Thomas was between decks and had just called the boy to turn the glass and mind the pump, when he heard a noise on deck and going up to investigate found that four armed men and a boy had come aboard. One of the men at once gave Thomas a blow on the head with the butt of his musket and ordered him to keep quiet. Soon after he was forced under the half-deck and the scuttle was shut and a tarpaulin put over it. The leader of the party then came down into the cabin and asked how many were on board, finding four men, two boys and a woman, all sick save Thomas and one of the boys. The armed men then cut the cable, which was about half in, and two of them went aloft to cut the gaskets and loose the sails after which a course was taken for Cape Cod.
The next morning was Friday and early in the day they came to anchor at Cape Cod and shot a musket to call a shallop. The leader asked Thomas if he would go to England with them when they were revictualled and when he refused they threatened his life. When the shallop came out to them an agreement was made for a supply of provisions which were brought out the next morning, but only a small supply—a gallon of rum, some biscuits and some cheese. The shallop-men said the ketch must be brought in nearer shore. About midnight, at full sea, they loosed the cable and let it run out and not long after the ketch went ashore. At low water the armed party went off and soon disappeared.
Such was the homely tale of the appearance and disappearance of the ketch “Elinor.” The sequel was soon found in the new stone gaol in Boston where William Coward, Peleg Heath, Thomas Storey and Christopher Knight were to be seen confined and in irons. What became of the boy does not appear. Thomas Pound, Thomas Hawkins, Thomas Johnston and other more valorous pirates were also confined there at the same time. Justice moved swiftly that year and notwithstanding the claim made by Coward, the leader of the party that boarded the ketch, that his crime had been committed upon the high seas without the jurisdiction of the court, he was found guilty of piracy and sentenced to be hanged on January 27, 1690.[31] His companions also were found guilty and sentenced to death but afterwards reprieved and eventually allowed to go free.
The story of the capture of James Gillam, a notorious pirate in his time, is best told by the Earl of Bellomont, Governor of Massachusetts, in a letter written to the Council of Trade and Plantations on Nov. 29, 1699.
“I gave you an account, Oct. 24, of my taking Joseph Bradish and Tee Wetherley, and writ that I hoped in a little time to be able to send news of my taking James Gillam, the Pirate that killed Capt. Edgecomb, commander of the Mocha frigate for the East India Co., and that with his own hand while the Captain was asleep. Gillam is supposed to be the man that encouraged the ship’s company to turn pirates, and the ship has been ever since robbing in the Red Sea and Seas of India. If I may believe the reports of men lately come from Madagascar, she has taken above £2,000,000 sterling. I have been so lucky as to take James Gillam and he is now in irons in the gaol of this town, and at the same time we seized one Francis Dole, in whose house he was harboured, who proves to be one of Hore’s crew, one of Col. Fletcher’s pirates, commissioned by him from N. York. Dole is also committed to gaol. My taking of Gillam was so very accidental, one would believe there was a strange fatality in that man’s stars. On Saturday, 11th inst., late in the evening, I had a letter from Col. Sanford, Judge of the Admiralty Court in Rhode Island, giving me an account that Gillam had been there, but was come towards Boston a fortnight before, in order to ship himself for some of the Islands, Jamaica or Barbadoes; that he was troubled he knew it not sooner and was afraid his intelligence would come too late to me; that the messenger he sent knew the mare Gillam rode on to this town. I was in despair of finding the man because Col. Sandford writ to me that he was come to this town so long a time as a fortnight before that. However, I sent for an honest constable I had made use of in apprehending Kidd and his men, and sent him with Col. Sandford’s messenger to search all the inns in town for the mare, and at the first inn they went to they found her tied up in the yard. The people of the inn reported that the man that brought her thither had lighted off her about a quarter of an hour before, had then tied her, but went away without saying anything. I gave orders to the master of the inn that if anybody came to look after the mare, he should be sure to seize him, but nobody came for her. Next morning, which was Sunday, I summoned a Council, and we published a proclamation wherein I promised a reward of 200 [pieces of eight] for the seizing and securing Gillam, whereupon there was the strictest search made all that day and the next that was ever made in this part of the world, but we had missed of him, if I had not been informed of one Capt. Knot as an old pirate, and therefore likely to know where Gillam was concealed. I sent for Knot and examined him, promising him, if he would make an ingenious confession, I would not molest him. He seemed much disturbed, but would not confess anything to purpose. I then sent for his wife and examined her on oath apart from her husband, and she confessed that one who went by the name of James Kelly had lodged several nights in her house, but for some nights past he lodged, as she believed, in Charlestown, cross the river. I knew he went by the name of Kelly. Then I examined Capt. Knot again, telling him his wife had been more free and ingenious than him, which made him believe she had told all, and then he told me of Francis Dole in Charlestown, and that he believed Gillam would be found there. I sent half a dozen men immediately over the water, to Charlestown and Knot with ’em; they beset the house and searched it, but found not the man, Dole affirming he was not there, neither knew he any such man. Two of the men went through a field behind Dole’s house and passing through a second field they met a man in the dark (for it was 10 o’clock at night) whom they seized at all adventures, and it happened as oddly as luckily to be Gillam; he had been treating two young women some few miles off in the country and was returning at night to his landlord Dole’s house. I examined him, but he denied everything, even that he came with Kidd from Madagascar, or ever saw him in his life; but Capt. Davies who came thence with Kidd, and all Kidd’s men, are positive he is the man and that he went by his true name Gillam all the while he was on the voyage with ’em, and Mr. Campbell, Postmaster of this town, whom I sent to treat with Kidd, offers to swear this is the man he saw on board Kidd’s sloop under the name of James Gillam. He is the most inpudent, hardened villain I ever saw. That which led me to a search after this man was the information of William Cuthbert, which I sent your Lordships with my packet of July 26th, wherein he says that it was commonly reported that Gillam had killed Capt. Edgecomb with his own hands, that he had served the Mogul, turned Mohammedan and was circumcised. I had him searched by a surgeon and a Jew in this town: they have both declared on oath that he is circumcised. I recommend the perusal of the evidence I enclose as what will inform you of the strange countenance given to pirates by the Government and people of Rhode Island. In searching Capt. Knot’s house America belonging to the E. I. company. I should think an advertisement in the Gazette requiring some of those men to appear before one of the Secretaries of State to give their evidence would be proper.
“Your Lordships will meet with a pass among the other papers to Sion Arnold, one of the pirates brought from Madagascar by Shelley of N. York, signed by Governor Basse, which is a bold step in Basse after such positive orders as he received from Mr. Secretary Vernon, but I perceive plainly the meaning- of it, he took several pirates at Burlington in West Jerzey and a good store of money with them as ’tis said: and I dare say he would be glad they [?should] escape, for when they are gone who can witness what money he seized with ’em? I know the man so well that I verily believe that’s his plot. John Carr mentioned in some of the [?papers to] be in Rhode Island was one of Hore’s crew. There are abundance of other pirates in that island at this time, but they are out of my power. Mr. Brinley, Col. Sanford, and Capt. Coddington are honest men and of the best estates in the island, and because they are heartily weary of the maladministrations of that Government, and because I commissioned ’em, by virtue of H. M. Commission to me, to [make] enquiry into the irregularities of those people, they are become strangely odious to ’em and are often affronted by ’em; neither will they make ’em Justices of the Peace, so that when they would commit pirates to gaol, they are forced to go to the Governor, for his warrant, and very [comm]only the pirates get notice and avoid the warrant. Gardiner, the Dep. Collector, is accused to have been once a pirate, in one of the papers enclosed. I doubt he will forswear himself rather than part with Gillam’s gold which is in his hands. ’Tis impossible for me to transmit to the Lords of the Treasury these proofs against Gardiner, being so jaded with writing, but I could wish they were made acquainted with his character and would send over honest, in[tellige]nt men to be Collectors of Rhode Island, Connecticut and N. Hampshire, and that they [would] hasten Mr. Brenton hither to his post or send some other Collector in his room. I could wish Mr. Weaver were ordered to hasten to N. York. Captain Knot in one of his depositions accuses Gillam to have pirated four years together in the South Sea against the Spaniards. We have advice that Burk, an Irishman and pirate, that committed sea-robberies on the coast of Newfoundland, is drowned with all his ship’s company, except 7 or 8, somewhere to the southward, in the hurricane about the end of July or the beginning of Aug. last. ’Tis good news, he was very strong and said to have had a good ship with 140 men and 24 guns.”[32]
John Halsey was a Boston privateersman who heard of the good fortune of those who scoured the Red Sea and the Arabian coast and so abandoned cruising on the banks of Newfoundland and set a course for Madagascar. He was the son of James and Dinah Halsey and was born Mar. 1, 1670. As a boy he followed the sea and in time became master of small vessels trading with the Southern Colonies and the West Indies. In April, 1693, while master of the sloop “Adventure,” of Boston, he testified in court in relation to a seaman shipped by him the previous November on a voyage to Virginia. At that time he deposed that he was twenty-three years old.
While Joseph Dudley was governor, he was given the command of the brigantine “Charles,” and sent out with a privateering commission to cruise against French vessels on the fishing banks. From there he went to the Canaries where he took a Spanish “barcalonga” which he plundered and sunk. Having determined on a free life in the Indian Ocean he wooded and watered at one of the Cape Verdes and then stood away for the Cape of Good Hope and Madagascar.