Fanny Campbell, The Female Pirate Captain: A Tale of The Revolution

by Maturin M. Ballou

‘Well, well,’ said several anxious voices at once, ‘what then?’

‘Well, as I was saying, we boarded her starboard and larboard, and what do you think was the first thing that met our eyes? I’ll tell you. You see the waist was so deep that we could not see the deck until we got on board, and the quarter being raised but a little above the deck, that was hidden too. Well, as we jumped upon deck, there sat the helmsman at the wheel, stark and stiff, his eyes fixed on vacancy, but his hands still clasping the tiller. Down in the waist there sat a couple of seamen upon a coil of rope, hard as marble, and forward, just by the step of the foremast, crouched a dog as stiff as death. We went up to them, and handled them, but they were like blocks of marble, frozen to death.

‘Down in the captain’s cabin sat him whom the Luff said must have been the captain. He held a pen in his hand, and by his side stood a candlestick, the candle burnt out. He had apparently just commenced to make an entry in the log when overtaken by, and benumbed with the intense cold. The last date under his pen, and which he seemed to have made as the last act of his life, was just one year previous to that very one on which we boarded him!

The log said that the crew had exhausted their fire-wood on board, and that some parts of the vessel had been already cut up to supply them with fuel, which we could see fast enough, and that the cold was almost insufferable, and that at that time the ship was bound by the ice. We found some of the crew in their berths as stiff and hard as their companions on deck.

‘All told the fearful story that they had been overtaken by an extreme degree of cold, which from the various positions and attitudes in which they were found, hard and rigid, mast have been very sudden. Every thing on board that ship that had formerly been animate or inanimate, was struck with the chill, and was more like a rock than a piece of ice, so firm was everything bound up in frozen chains. It was a horrid sight, messmates, that ship. I’ve seen some hard things in my day, but the frozen crew on board that ship in the ice was the worst.’

Thus far Brace had told a true story, melancholy and strange as it may seem, and he had told it too with a degree of intelligence and in language that showed him to be a well-informed man for his station in life in those days. But then he could not let the matter rest here; he must add what they call at sea and among the crew a ‘clincher’ to his story, or else it would lack one important ingredient, and would be hardly considered complete by his messmates. So after taking a turn or two with his quid of tobacco, he continued his story.

‘Well, messmates, there wasn’t much aboard that we cared for, being as we were, so far from home; but I thought to myself that I should like to carry away the dog, just to show the ship’s company when we got back that what we had said was no gammon, but all true. So I asked the Luff if I might take away the dog to show the crew, and he gave me leave; so I shouldered him, and no light load was he either; he was a large, full-bred Newfoundland, but I carried him all the way to the ship myself, and when I got him on board he was a matter of no small curiosity, I can tell you, being a sort of sample of what we had found on board the stranger.

‘Well, I carried the dog down into our mess below to talk over the thing that night with the crew, and at last we turned in, after hearing a few yarns, and lay quiet enough till nearly midnight, when a low, trembling moan awoke me from sleep.

‘I started up, for it sounded most horribly, and I looked round; but finding the rest all asleep I thought I had dreamed it, and so laid down again, but hardly had I done so when it was repeated, and this time louder than before; I started up up again, but could not tell what had caused it, until by chance my eyes rested upon the carcass of the dog which lay just beside the big ship’s coppers where fire was constantly kept, and messmates, what do you think I saw? I’ll tell you. The Newfoundland critter was moving. I jumped up in less than no time, and damme if we didn’t have him thawed out so before daylight, that the captain sent down a middy to stop the noise below decks, the hungry scamp barked so loud.’

‘Look here, Brace,’ said one, ‘that’s palarver.’