The ships and sailors of old Salem

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

“They fastened the aft companionway leading down into the cabin, locking our officers below as well. From noises that came from overhead, we were convinced that the pirates had begun a work of destruction. All running rigging, including tiller ropes, was cut, sails slashed into ribbons, spars cut loose, ship’s instruments and all movable articles on which they could lay their hands were demolished, the yards were tumbled down and we could hear the main-boom swinging from side to side. They then, as appears by later developments, filled the caboose or cook’s galley, with combustibles, consisting of tar, tarred rope-yarn, oakum, etc., setting fire to the same, and lowered the dismantled mainsail so that it rested on top of the caboose.

“In this horrible suspense we waited for an hour or more when all became quiet save the wash of the sea against the brig. All this time the crew had been cooped up in the darkness of the forecastle, of course unable to speculate as to what would be the next move of the enemy, or how soon death would come to each and all of us.

“Finally at about three o’clock in the afternoon, Thomas Fuller came running forward and informed us that the pirates were leaving the ship. One after another of the crew made their way to the cabin and on peering out of the two small stern windows saw the pirates pulling for the schooner. Captain Butman was at this time standing on the cabin table, looking out from a small skylight, the one means of egress the pirates had neglected to fasten. We told him that from the odor of smoke, we believed they had fired the brig. He said he knew it and ordered us to remain quiet. He then stepped down from the table and for several moments knelt in prayer, after which he calmly told us to go forward and he would call us when he wanted us.

“We had not been in the forecastle long before he called us back, and directed that we get all buckets under deck and fill them with water from casks in the hold. On our return he again opened the skylight and drew himself up on deck. We then handed him a small bucket of water, and he crept along the rail in the direction of the caboose, keeping well under the rail in order to escape observation from the schooner. The fire was just breaking through the top of the caboose when he arrived in time to throw several handfuls of water on top so as to keep it under. This he continued to do for a long time, not daring to extinguish it immediately lest the pirates should notice the absence of smoke and know that their plan for our destruction had been frustrated.

“When the fire had been reduced to a reasonable degree of safety, he came and opened the aft companionway and let us all up. The schooner, being a fast sailer, was in the distance about hull down. The fire in the caboose was allowed to burn in a smouldering condition for perhaps a half-hour or more, keeping up a dense smoke. By this time the pirate schooner was well nigh out of sight, or nearly topsails under, to the eastward. On looking about us, we found the Mexican in a bad plight, all sails, halyards and running gear were cut, headsails dragging in the water, and on account of the tiller ropes being cut loose, the brig was rolling about in the trough of the sea. We at once set to work repairing damages as speedily as possible and before dark had bent new sails and repaired our running gear to a great extent.

“Fortunately through the shrewdness and foresight of Captain Butman, our most valuable ship instruments, compass, quadrant, sextant, etc., had escaped destruction. It seems that immediately on discovering the true character of the stranger, he had placed them in the steerage and covered them with a quantity of oakum. This the pirates somehow overlooked in their search, although they passed and repassed it continually during their visit.

“The brig was then put before the wind, steering north, and as by the intervention of Divine Providence, a strong wind came up, which before dark developed into a heavy squall with thunder and lightning, so we let the brig go before the fury of the wind, not taking in a stitch of canvas. We steered north until next morning, when the brig’s course was altered, and we stood due west, tacking off and on several courses for a day or two, when finally a homeward course was taken which was kept up until we reached Salem, October 12, 1832.”

Thus ends the narrative of able seaman, John Battis. If the valor of Captain Butman and his crew be questioned, in that they made no resistance, it must be remembered that they were under the guns of the pirate which could have sunk the Mexican at the slightest sign of trouble aboard the brig. And although the decks of the Mexican were not stained with the slaughter of her crew, it is certain that her captors expected to burn them alive. These nineteenth century pirates were not a gentle brood, even though they did not always make their victims walk a plank. In 1829, only three years before the capture of the Mexican, the brig New Priscilla of Salem was found apparently abandoned within a day’s sail of Havana. The boarding party from the ship that sighted her found a boy of Salem, a lad in his teens, spiked to the deck, an act of wanton torture committed after every other soul on board had been thrown overboard.

The capture of the pirates of the Mexican was an extraordinary manifestation of the long arm of Justice. A short time after the return of the brig to Salem, the ship Gleaner sailed for the African coast. Her commander, Captain Hunt happened to carry with him a copy of the Essex Register which under a date of October, 1832, contained the statement of Captain Butman in which he described in detail the model, rig and appearance of the pirate schooner. Captain Hunt perused the statement with lively interest and without doubt kept a weather eye out for a rakish black schooner with a white streak, as he laid his course to the southward. He touched at the island of St. Thomas and while at anchor in the harbor saw a topsail schooner come in from seaward. The stranger anchored nearby, and Captain Hunt sat on his quarterdeck with a copy of the Essex Register in his fist. The more he studied, first the journal and then the schooner, the stronger grew his suspicions that this was the sea robber which had gutted the Mexican. There was her “large main-top-mast, but with no yards or sail on it,” “her mainsail very square at the head, sails made with split cloth and all new,” and “the large gun on a pivot amidships,” the brass twelve-pounders gleaming from her side, and “about seventy men who appeared to be chiefly Spaniards and mulattos.”

Having digested these facts, Captain Hunt went ashore and confided in an old friend. These two invented an excuse for boarding the schooner, and there on the deck they spied two spars painted black which had been stolen from the Mexican. Captain Butman had told Captain Hunt about these black spars before they parted in Salem. The latter at once decided to slip his cable that night, take the Gleaner to sea and run down to the nearest station where he might find English war vessels. There was a leak somewhere, for just before dark, the suspicious schooner made sail and under a heavy press of canvas fled for the open sea. As she passed within hailing distance of the Gleaner a hoarse voice shouted in broken English that if he ventured to take his brig to sea that night, he and his crew would have their throats slitted before daylight.