JAMES WYATT
James Wyatt was born at Woodbury on the Exe in the year 1707. His father was a shoemaker, but James lost both him and his mother when he was very young. He had a brother and two sisters, and he was the youngest of the four. After the death of his parents his eldest sister took care of him, sent him to school, and when old enough to work got him employment on a farm, where he remained till he was fourteen years of age; but, not liking farm work, his sister apprenticed him to a woolcomber and dyer at Wembury. His master was a very honest, good-natured man, and taught him his business well, and this, as we shall see in the sequel, was of the highest advantage to him.
As soon as his time of apprenticeship was up he entered as gunner’s server on board the York man-of-war. In 1726 he went with Sir John Jennings to Lisbon and Gibraltar. Next he served on board the Experiment under Captain Radish; but his taste for the sea failed for a while, and he was lured by the superior attractions of a puppet-show to engage with the proprietor, named Churchill, and to play the trumpet at his performances. During four years he travelled with the show, then tiring of dancing dolls, reverted to woolcombing and dyeing at Trowbridge. But a travelling menagerie was too much for him, and he followed that as trumpeter for four years. In 1741, he left the wild beasts and entered as trumpeter on board the Revenge privateer, Captain Wemble, commander, who was going on a cruise against the Spaniards. The privateer fell in with a Spanish vessel from Malaga, and gave chase. She made all the sail she could, but in four or five hours the Revenge came up with her. “We fir’d five times at her. She had made everything ready to fight us, but seeing the number of our hands (which were one hundred in all, though three parts of them were boys) she at length brought to. We brought the captain and mate on board our ship, and put twelve men on board theirs, one of which was the master, and our captain gave him orders to carry her into Plymouth.” Of the prize-money Wyatt got forty shillings. The capture did not prove to be as richly laden as had been anticipated.
We need not follow his adventures in the privateer, though they are interesting enough, and give a lively picture of the audacity of these venturers, till we come to his capture. The Revenge was cruising about among the Canary Islands, when a Spanish vessel ran for Teneriffe from Palma, and was at once pursued. She sped for Gomera, but unable to weather the point came to anchor within half a cable’s length of the shore. She was a bark of sixty tons burthen, and as the Revenge drew more water and the captain feared sunken rocks, he ordered the yawl to be hoisted out and to be manned with eleven hands.
James Wyat Ætat. 40.
Reproduced from the frontispiece to “The Life and Surprizing
Adventures of James Wyatt, Written by Himself,” 1755
“We were three hours after we left the ship before we got within musket-shot of the bark. Our master ask’d us if we were all willing to board her. We answered, one and all, we were. We saw twelve men ashore, and made directly towards them. Our master said, ‘My boys, the bark’s our own, for these men belong’d to her, but have left her; let us give them one volley, and then board the bark.’ We had two brass blunderbusses, mounted on swivels, in the bow of the boat. Our master stepp’d forward to one of them himself, and order’d me to the other. We had no sooner discharged the blunderbusses, but two or three hundred men came from behind the rocks. We had been so long getting to the bark that the men belonging to her, unknown to us, had got out of her, gone up country, and brought these people to their assistance. Our blunderbusses being discharged, the men from behind the rocks kept up a constant fire at us; and, at the very first fire, our master received a ball just above his right eye, and another went almost through my right shoulder. We rowed directly to the bark. The lieutenant, myself, and four more leapt into her, and those that were in the boat handed in our arms. As soon as we were in the bark, the lieutenant order’d one of our men to take a pole-axe and cut the cable, saying she would drive off. I told him if the cable was cut she would certainly drive ashore, for she was then almost upon the breakers. He seem’d a little angry at what I said, though had my advice been followed, it had been better for us all; for, as soon as the cable was cut, she turn’d broadside to the sea, and in a few minutes after struck ashore against the rocks.