[7] Historical Collections of the Essex Institute.
[8] Gosport Navy Yard, England.
CHAPTER III
SOME EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PIRATES
(1670-1725)
The pirates of the Spanish Main and the southern coasts of this country have enjoyed almost a monopoly of popular interest in fact and fiction. As early as 1632, however, the New England coast was plagued by pirates and the doughty merchant seamen of Salem and other ports were sallying forth to fight them for a hundred years on end.
In 1670 the General Court published in Boston, “by beat of drum,” a proclamation against a ship at the Isle of Shoals suspected of being a pirate, and three years later another official broadside was hurled against “piracy and mutiny.” The report of an expedition sent out from Boston in 1689, in the sloop Mary, against notorious pirates named Thomas Hawkins and Thomas Pound, has all the dramatic elements and properties of a tale of pure adventure. It relates that “being off of Wood’s Hole, we were informed there was a Pirate at Tarpolin Cove, and soon after we espyed a Sloop on head of us which we supposed to be the Sloop wherein sd. Pound and his Company were. We made what Sayle we could and soon came near up with her, spread our King’s Jack and fired a shot athwart her forefoot, upon which a red fflag was put out on the head of the sd. Sloop’s mast. Our Capn. ordered another shot to be fired athwart her forefoot, but they not striking, we came up with them. Our Capn. commanded us to fire at them which we accordingly did and called to them to strike to the King of England.
“Pound, standing on the Quarter deck with his naked Sword flourishing in his hand, said; ‘Come on Board you Doggs, I will strike you presently,’ or words to that purpose, his men standing by him upon the deck with guns in their hands, and he taking up his Gun, they discharged a Volley at us and we at them again, and so continued firing one at the other for some space of time.
“In which engagement our Capn. Samuel Pease was wounded in the Arme, in the side and in the thigh; but at length bringing them under our power, wee made Sayle towards Roade Island and on Saturday the fifth of sd. October gut our wounded men on shore and procured Surgeons to dress them. Our said Captaine lost much blood by his wounds and was brought very low, but on friday after, being the eleventh day of the said October, being brought on board the vessell intending to come away to Boston, was taken with bleeding afresh, so that we were forced to carry him on Shore again to Road Island, and was followed with bleeding at his Wounds, and fell into fitts, but remained alive until Saturday morning the twelfth of Octbr. aforesaid when he departed this Life.”
This admirably brief narrative shows that Thomas Pounds, strutting his quarter deck under his red “fflagg” and flourishing his naked sword and crying “Come on, you doggs,” was a proper figure of a seventeenth century pirate, and that poor Captain Pease of the sloop Mary was a gallant seaman who won his victory after being wounded unto death. Pirates received short shift and this crew was probably hanged in Boston as were scores of their fellows in that era.
Puritan wives and sweethearts waited months and years for missing ships which never again dropped anchor in the landlocked harbor of Salem, and perhaps if any tidings ever came it was no more than this:
“May 21 (1697)—The ketch Margaret of Salem, Captain Peter Henderson was chased ashore near Funshal, Madeira, by pirates and lost. Of what became of the officers and crew the account says nothing.”