One of the crew of the schooner Panda that took and plundered the Salem brig Mexican. The crew of the Panda were captured by an English man-of-war and taken to Boston. De Soto was condemned to death, but eventually fully pardoned owing to his heroic conduct in rescuing the crew of an American vessel some time previously.
de SOTO, Captain Benito.
A Portuguese.
A most notorious pirate in and about 1830.
In 1827 he shipped at Buenos Ayres as mate in a slaver, named the Defenser de Pedro, and plotted to seize the ship off the African coast. The pirates took the cargo of slaves to the West Indies, where they sold them. De Soto plundered many vessels in the Caribbean Sea, then sailed to the South Atlantic, naming his ship the Black Joke. The fear of the Black Joke became so great amongst the East Indiamen homeward bound that they used to make up convoys at St. Helena before heading north.
In 1832 de Soto attacked the Morning Star, an East Indiaman, and took her, when he plundered the ship and murdered the captain. After taking several more ships, de Soto lost his own on the rocky coast of Spain, near Cadiz. His crew, although pretending to be honest shipwrecked sailors, were arrested, but de Soto managed to escape to Gibraltar. Here he was recognized by a soldier who had seen de Soto when he took the Morning Star, in which he had been a passenger. The pirate was arrested, and tried before Sir George Don, the Governor of Gibraltar, and sentenced to death. He was sent to Cadiz to be hanged with the rest of his crew. The gallows was erected at the water's edge, and de Soto, with his coffin, was conveyed there in a cart. He died bravely, arranging the noose around his own neck, stepping up into his coffin to do so; then, crying out, "Adios todos," he threw himself off the cart.
This man must not be confused with one Bernado de Soto, who was tried for piracy at Boston in 1834.
SOUND, Joseph.
Of the city of Westminster.
Hanged, at the age of 28, at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1723.