He learnt his art as a pirate in the excellent school of the notorious Blackbeard.
In 1723 he was, for the time being, in honest employment in a Newfoundland fishing-boat, which was captured by Phillips and his crew. As Phillips was only a beginner at piracy, he was very glad to get the aid of such an old hand at the game as John Archer, whom he promptly appointed to the office of quartermaster in the pirate ship. This quick promotion caused some murmuring amongst Phillips's original crew, the carpenter, Fern, being particularly outspoken against it.
Archer ended his days on the gallows at Boston on June 2nd, 1724, and we read that he "dy'd very penitent, with the assistance of two grave Divines to attend him."
ARGALL.
Licensed and titled buccaneer.
Believed to have buried a rich treasure in the Isles of Shoals, off Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the seventeenth century.
ARMSTRONG.
Born in London. A deserter from the Royal Navy. One of Captain Roberts's crew taken by H.M.S. Swallow, from which ship he had previously deserted.
In an account of his execution on board H.M.S. Weymouth we read: "Being on board a Man of War there was no Body to press him to an Acknowledgement of the Crime he died for, nor of sorrowing in particular for it, which would have been exemplary, and made suitable Impressions on seamen; so that his last Hour was spent in lamenting and bewailing his Sins in general, exhorting the Spectators to an honest and good life, in which alone they could find Satisfaction."
This painful scene ended by the condemned singing with the spectators a few verses of the 140th Psalm: at the conclusion of which, at the firing of a gun, "he was tric'd up at the Fore Yard."