HAINS, Richard.
One of Captain Low's crew. When Low took a Portuguese ship at St. Michael's in the Azores in 1723, he, with unusual kindness, simply burnt the ship and let the crew go to shore in a boat. While the prisoners were getting out the boat, Richard Hains happened to be drinking punch out of a silver tankard at one of the open ports, and took the opportunity to drop into the boat among the Portuguese and lie down in the bottom, so as to escape with them. Suddenly remembering his silver tankard, he climbed back, seized the tankard, and hid again in the boat, somehow, by great good fortune, being unobserved by those on the ship, and so escaped almost certain death both for himself and the Portuguese sailors.
HALSEY, Captain John.
This famous South Sea pirate was born on March 1st, 1670, at Boston, and received a commission from the Governor of Massachusetts to cruise as a privateer on the Banks. No sooner was he out of sight of land than Halsey turned pirate. Taking a ship or two, he sailed to the Canary Islands, picking up a rich Spanish ship there. He next doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and paid a call on the "brethren" at Madagascar. He then sailed to the Red Sea, another happy hunting ground of the pirates, and met a big Dutch ship armed with sixty guns. Halsey astounded his men by announcing his sudden determination to attack only Moorish ships in the future. The indignant crew mutinied, threw Captain Halsey and his chief gunner in irons, and proceeded to attack the Dutchman. The mutinous pirates got the worst of the encounter, and released Halsey, who only just managed to get his ship away. Luck seems to have deserted Halsey for a while, for not a Moorish ship could he meet with, so much so that his scruples against taking Christian ships eased enough to permit him to bag a brace of English ships, the Essex and the Rising Eagle.
The captain of the former proved to be a very old and dear friend of Halsey's quartermaster, and to show a friendly feeling, Halsey allowed the captain to keep all his personal belongings. Nevertheless, they took a comfortable booty, comprising some fifty thousand pounds in English gold, out of the Essex, and another ten thousand out of the Rising Eagle.
The pirates, being strict business men, produced invoices and sold the two ships back to their legal owners for cash, and having settled this affair to everybody's satisfaction, Halsey and his consort returned to Madagascar. Here they were visited by the captain of a Scotch ship, the Neptune, which had come to trade liquor, probably rum, but possibly whisky, with the pirates. A sudden hurricane arose, destroying both the pirate ships and damaging the Neptune. Halsey, ever a man of resource, thereupon seized the Scotch ship, and, with even greater enterprise, at once attacked a ship, the Greyhound, which lay at anchor, which was loaded with stolen merchandise which the pirates had only just sold to the captain of the Greyhound, and for which they had been paid.
The end was now drawing near, for in 1716 Captain Halsey was taken ill of some tropical fever and died. He was a popular commander, respected, ever loved by his men, for he was a humane man, never killing his prisoners unless necessity compelled. A contemporary eyewitness of his funeral rites leaves the following account of his burial:
"With great solemnity, the prayers of the Church of England being read over him and his sword and pistols laid on his coffin, which was covered with a ship's Jack. As many minute guns were fired as he was old—viz., 46—and three English vollies and one French volley of small arms." The chronicler continues: "His grave was made in a garden of watermelons and fenced in to prevent his being rooted up by wild pigs."
This last a truly touching thought on the part of the bereaved.
HAMAN, Captain John.