Humbly Sheweth
That your Petitioner entering into the Duke of Brandenburgs service and pay this 14 of April 1680 or thereaboute, on A ship of warr called Coure Prince belonging to the Said Duke, Cornelyus Reise Capt. and Comander,[3] and sayling then from Quinborough[4] to the West Indies and at St. Martins in the West Indies tooke the above mentioned ship Salamander, Loaden as above, And put in Marcellus Cock Comander of said Ship Salamander, and Paul Sherrot Leift. and Cloys Peterson Mate or Pylot of said ship, to Carry the Said Ship home to Quinborough to the said Duke, But the said Marcellus Cock, under pretence of want of Proviscions and Leakenes of said Ship, brought her into Piscatuqua and there stayed about 3 months whiling away the time, and Repayring the ship, And while there so cruelly beate twelve of the ships Company, at the Capston and otherwise, As made them weary of their Lives, that they could not stay but gott on shoar And left him, Loosing all their wages, except one, that the Capt. turned a shoare, as he said for a Rogue, But the Governor of Piscataqua made the master pay him his wages, And now after 16 monethes and a halfe soar service, ventering and hazarding their lives, After the Authoritie at Piscatuqua tooke notice of the said Capt. Cocks Long Stay, and Conceiveing he Intended to sell the said Ship and deceive the Duke, ordering him to pay the said Sherret and Peterson our wages,[5] fell to threatening us first by turning the Pilot out of the Cabbin from his mess; and then swearing he would Pistoll the Leiften't and him if they came on board.
The premises Considered wee humbly Intreat your honours to make such due order And provision that the Duke be not Deceived of his the sayd prize and that wee may have our full wages so dearly yearned and be freed as wee are and have been, from his the said Cocks Tiranicall service; And yo'r Petition'rs shall forever pray etc.
Paul Sharrett.
Claes pietersen.
This libell I Rec'd this 2d of August, 1681.
Edw'd Rawson, Secret.
[1] Suffolk Court Files, no. 2031, paper 1. The story of the Salamander is curiously interwoven with the early history of the Prussian navy, on which something has been said in [note 1] to [document 43]. The facts may be made out by a comparison of documents [48] and [49] with data found in R. Schück, Brandenburg-Preussens Kolonial-Politik (Leipzig, 1889), I. 113-118, and in a monograph on "Brandenburg-Preussen auf der Westküste von Afrika, 1681 bis 1721", in Heft 6 of the Kriegsgeschichtliche Einzelschriften of the German General Staff (Berlin, 1885), pp. 102-105. In the First Brandenburg-Prussian fleet that ever sailed out of the Baltic (August, 1680), one of the six frigates was the Churprintz (Kurprinz, Electoral Prince), 32 guns, Capt. Cornelius Reers, and there was a fire-ship, the Salamander, 2 guns, Capt. Marsilius (or Marcellus) Cock; the captains were probably all Dutch. The chief exploit of the squadron was to capture, in time of peace, a ship of the Spanish royal navy, which thus became the first of the elector's ships actually owned by him. Then Reers and a squadron of four frigates and the Salamander sailed to the West Indies, and spent the winter of 1680-1681 in cruising against Spanish shipping, though with little success. If Samuel Button's story is true ([document 48]), it would seem that the original Salamander must have been lost, and the William and Anne substituted in its place and renamed. The squadron got back to Prussia in May, 1681.
[2] Lieutenant.
[3] Cornelius Reers, vice-commander of the squadron mentioned in [note 1], appears later as governor of Arguin on the west coast of Africa, 1685-1690. Schück, I. 347, 350.
[4] So the English then called Königsberg, capital of the duchy of Prussia.