FOOTNOTES:
[44] The following letter was sent to Capt. Driver and signed by George H. Nobbs, Teacher, and three of his fellow-voyagers of the company of the Bounty:
“Pitcairns Island,
Sept. 3rd., 1830.
This is to certify that Captain Driver of the Brig Chas. Doggett of Salem carried sixty-five of the inhabitants of Pitcairn Island from Tahiti back to their native land during which passage Capt. Driver behaved with the greatest kindness and humanity becoming a man and a Christian, and as we can never remunerate him for the kindness we have received, we sincerely hope that through the blessing of the Almighty he will reap that reward which infallibly attends the Christian.”
[45] Joshua Derby and Enoch Knight, both of Salem. By a most extraordinary coincidence, this Enoch Knight’s brother, who was first officer of the ship Friendship of Salem, Captain Endicott, was killed in the same month of the same year by the natives of Qualah Battoo on the coast of Sumatra when the vessel was captured by Malay savages.
[46] The council-house and temple.
CHAPTER XXI
THE LAST PIRATES OF THE SPANISH MAIN
(1832)
In December of 1906 died Captain Thomas Fuller, the oldest shipmaster of Salem, in his ninety-fourth year. He was the survivor of an era on the sea that seems to belong with ancient history. Before 1830 he was a cabin boy in a brig of less than a hundred tons in the Cuban trade. At eighteen he was sailing to South America and Europe, and his shipmates, then in the prime of life, were veterans of the fighting privateers of the War of 1812. He lived well into the twentieth century to tell the tale of the last piracy of the Spanish Main, for he was one of the crew of the brig Mexican. Captured by a swarthy band of cut-throats in their “rakish, black schooner,” while on a voyage to Rio Janeiro, the Mexican carried the period of organized piracy down to the year 1832. Six of the pirates were hanged in Boston three years later, and their punishment finished for good and all, a peril to American shipping which had preyed along the coast for two full centuries.
The Mexican sailed from Salem on the 29th of August, 1832, commanded by Captain John G. Butman and owned by Joseph Peabody. She was a brig of two hundred and twenty-seven tons register, with a crew of thirteen men, including able seaman Thomas Fuller, nineteen years old. There was also on board as a seaman, John Battis of Salem, who before his death many years after, wrote down his memories of the voyage at the request of his son. His story is the most complete account of the famous piracy that has come down to us, and in part it runs as follows:
“I was at Peabody’s store house on the morning of the day of sailing and others of the crew came soon after. After waiting quite a while, it was suggested that we go after the cook, Ridgely, who then boarded with a Mrs. Ranson, a colored woman living on Becket street, so we set out to find him. He was at home but disinclined to go, as he wished to pass one more Sunday home. However, after some persuading he got ready, and we all started out of the gate together. A black hen was in the yard and as we came out the bird flew upon the fence, and flapping her wings, gave a loud crow. The cook was wild with terror, and insisted that something was going to happen; that such a sign meant harm, and he ran about in search of a stone to knock out the brains of the offending biped. The poor darkey did not succeed in his murderous design, but followed us grumbling.