“Pep-p-er-r,” came the doleful response from the skipper on the quarter deck.
“You’re a liar, blast your eye, I smell coffee,” roared back the agitated owner through his trumpet.
The Captain had had his little joke, and he was effusively forgiven, for he had brought back a cargo that harvested a clean profit of one hundred thousand dollars when sold in Holland.
As soon as war was declared the owners of the America hastened the task of fitting her out as a privateer. Her upper deck was removed, and her sides filled in with stout oak timber between the planking and ceiling. Longer yards and royal masts gave her an immense spread of sail, and, square-rigged on her three masts she was a stately cloud of canvas when under full sail. Her guns were eighteen long nine-pounders, two six-pounders, two eighteen-pound carronades, and for small arms, forty muskets, four blunderbusses, fifty-five pistols, seventy-three cutlasses, ten top muskets, thirty-six tomahawks or boarding axes, and thirty-nine boarding pikes.
Her crew of one hundred and fifty men comprised a commander, three lieutenants, sailing master, three mates, surgeon, purser, captain of marines, gunner, gunner’s mate, carpenter, carpenter’s mate, steward, steward’s mate, seven prize masters, armorer, drummer, fifer, three quartermasters, and one hundred and twenty-two seamen. This was the organization of a man-of-war of her time, and discipline was maintained as smartly as in the navy. Flogging was the penalty for offenses among the seamen, as shown by the record of a court martial on one of her cruises. A seaman had stolen a pair of shoes from a marine, for which he was sentenced to a dozen lashes. A poet of the privateer’s gun deck described this event at some length, including these pithy lines:
“The Boatsw’n pipes all hands to muster,
No time for whining, plea or bluster,
The Judge announces the just sentence
And many stripes produce repentance;
“For the low cur, who’d meanly cozen