Ye pirates who against God’s laws did fight,
Have all been taken which is very right.
Some of them were old and others young
And on the flats of Boston they were hung.
In 1724 two notorious sea-rovers, Nutt and Phillip, were cruising off Cape Ann within sight of Salem harbor’s mouth. They took a sloop commanded by one Andrew Harraden, and thereby caught a Tartar. Harraden and his sailors erupted from the hold into which they had been flung, killed Nutt and Phillip and their officers, tossed the rest of the rascals down below, and sailed into Boston Harbor, where their cargo of pirates speedily furnished another entertainment for the populace that trooped to the row of gibbets on the flats of the town. The old sea-chronicles of New England are filled with episodes of these misfortunes, encounters, and escapes until the marvel grows that the seamen of those quaint brigs, ketches, and scows could be persuaded to set out from port at all. The appalling risk became a habit, no doubt, just as the people of to-day dare to use the modern highway on which automobiles slay many more victims than ever the pirates made to walk the plank.
The experience of an unlucky master mariner in that era of the best-known and most successful pirates may serve to convey a realization of the gamble with fortune which overshadowed every trading voyage when the perils of the deep were so cruel and so manifold. And it is easy to comprehend why the bills of lading included this petition, “And so God send the good sloop to her desired port in safety. Amen.”
In the year of 1718 the Bird galley sailed from England in command of Captain Snelgrave to find a cargo of slaves on the coast of Sierra Leone. The galley, as sailors then used the term, was a small, square-rigged vessel not unlike a brig, although properly the name belonged to craft propelled by oars as well as sails; but seamen in all ages have had a confusing habit of mixing the various classifications of vessels. It was nothing against the character of Captain Snelgrave that he was bound out to the Gold Coast in the rum and nigger trade. The ship-chandlers of Liverpool made special displays in their windows of handcuffs, leg-shackles, iron collars, short and long chains, and furnaces and copper kettles designed for slave-ships. The English Missionary Society owned a plantation and worked it with slaves. In America the New England colonies took the lead in the slave-trade, and the enterprising lads of the coastwise ports sought berths in the forecastles of the African traders because of the chance of profit and promotion. It was not held to the discredit of John Paul Jones that he learned seamanship before the mast in the slaver King George before he hoisted the first naval ensign of the United States above the quarter-deck of an American man-of-war.
No sooner had the Bird galley dropped anchor in the river of Sierra Leone than three pirate ships came bowling in with a fair breeze. They had been operating together and had already captured ten English vessels. Captain Snelgrave eyed these unpleasant visitors with suspicion, but hoped they might be on the same errand as himself. At eight o’clock in the evening, however, he heard the measured thump of oars and descried the shadow of an approaching boat. The first mate was ordered to muster and arm twenty men on deck in readiness to repel boarders. The second mate hailed the boat and was answered; “The ship Two Friends of Barbadoes, Captain Elliott.” This failed to satisfy the master of the Bird galley, and he shouted to the boat to sheer off and keep clear.
A volley of musket-balls was the reply from the boat, and the first mate of the Bird was told to return the fire. His men stood idle, however, and it transpired that he cherished secret ambitions of being a pirate himself and had won over several of the crew. This was extremely embarrassing for Captain Snelgrave, who was compelled to witness the marauders scramble unresisted up the side of his vessel. The leader of the pirates was in a particularly nasty temper because the mate had been ordered to open fire, and he poked a pistol into the captain’s face and pulled trigger. As quick as he was courageous, the skipper knocked the weapon aside, and was promptly felled with the butt of it. Dodging along the deck, the pirate boatswain swung at him with a broadsword and missed his mark, the blade biting deep into the oaken rail.
There was a grain of spunk left in the crew of the Bird, and they rushed upon the evil boatswain before he could kill the captain. For this behavior they were mercilessly slashed with cutlasses, kicked and cursed, and then trussed in a row. With a touch of ferocious whimsicality the pirate chief declared that he would let Captain Snelgrave be tried by his own crew. If they had any complaints to make of him as a shipmaster, he would be swung to a yard, and they should haul the rope. He must have been a just and humane man, for not a sailor voiced a grudge, and the ruffians appeared to forget all about murder. After firing volleys to let their ships know that a prize had been captured, they turned with tremendous enthusiasm to the business of guzzling and feasting.