GregF

April 18 -- On this day in 1724, a small band of pirate captives staged one of the bloodiest and most celebrated uprisings in the history of Atlantic piracy. The captives had been taken by a crew under the command of John Phillips, who had been cruising with a relatively small crew since August 1723. One of the captives was a young New England fisherman named John Fillmore (who, in time, would become the great grandfather of U.S. president Millard Fillmore). By the middle of April 1724, Phillips' crew was making its way north of Boston heading for Canada. The pirates had just captured a sloop under the command of Andrew Harradine, of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and had moved over to the sloop and kept Harradine as another captive. The pirates were in an especially raucous mood as they sailed north. They had captured as many as eighteen vessels in less than three weeks’ time and had brought on board a huge supply of food and drink. The crew spent most of April 17 celebrating their success, eating and drinking late into the night. Sometime that evening, Phillips, the captain, gave two orders: for the carpenter (also a captive) to bring his tools up onto the deck so he could start work on some repairs early the next morning, and for the crew to make sure they took an observation of the sun at noon the next day to determine their position at sea. This gave the captives the opportunity they needed to form a plan. Later that night, the pirates finally passed out. Some went to sleep in Phillips’ cabin near the back of the sloop and two others -- the quartermaster John Rose Archer and a pirate named William White -- lay down in the cook’s area near the fireplace on deck. The two of them must have been drunk beyond comprehension because after they’d been asleep for a while, Fillmore was able to sneak up to Archer and White with a hot stick from the fire and burn the soles of their bare feet so badly that they would not be able to walk on the deck the next day. When morning broke on April 18, the captives woke up and began their work, but there was no sign of the pirates, who remained fast asleep. Finally, close to noon, Phillips and several other men stumbled out of the cabin. With barely a glance between Cheesman and Fillmore, the captives saw their chance. Most of the crew was now on deck. Phillips went back into his cabin to mold some lead slugs. The sails were full and the ship was moving through the water at a good rate, with one of the captives at the helm. Fillmore and Harradine were standing on the deck with several of the other pirates. The carpenter, Edward Cheesman, had intentionally left a broad axe resting on the deck after finishing his work that morning, and Fillmore stood casually spinning the broad axe with his foot. In an instant the men attacked. First Cheesman grabbed the pirate standing next to him and threw him overboard. Fillmore bent over and picked up the broad axe at his feet and bore down on another of the pirates who was busy cleaning his gun, striking him over the head and killing him. Alarmed by the shouts and commotion on deck, Phillips came out of his cabin to see what was going on. The captive who was manning the tiller, a Native American named Isaac Lassen, jumped at Phillips and grabbed his arm while Harradine struck him over the head with an adze. Finally, two French captives jumped a fourth pirate, killed him, and threw him overboard. In less than two minutes’ time, four of the most active pirates on the crew, including Phillips, had been killed. The remaining pirates were now far outnumbered and immediately surrendered. The captives took control of the ship and headed back to Boston. Two of the surviving pirates were tried and hanged there a few weeks later. (For more, see gregflemming.com)

March 28, 1726 -- On this day, The Boston Gazette reported the execution of one of the last surviving members of the Edward Low / Francis Spriggs crew, Philip Lyne. When Spriggs captured the sloop Susannah in 1725 he put his quartermaster, Philip Lyne, in command of the vessel. By early 1725, Lyne was capturing ships independently, although he and Spriggs may have followed the same course up the Atlantic coast of the American colonies during the first part of the year. Like Low and Spriggs, Lyne built his small crew by enticing recruits or forcing captives from the ships he overtook as he sailed north. By May, Lyne had about a dozen men aboard, both crew members and captives. Off the coast of Florida, Lyne captured a sloop on its way back to Virginia, forcing two more men and taking about half of the ship’s cargo of rum and sugar. Sometime before November 1725, Lyne’s ship was captured in a bloody battle with two sloops and brought back to the Dutch island of Curacao at the bottom of the Caribbean, just north of South America. Many of the pirates had been wounded during the capture and their injuries had barely been treated or bandaged. They were a dismal group as they were marched to their trial and, according to bystanders, they “were very offensive and stunk as they went along.” Lyne was the most gruesome of the pack. He’d taken a blast head-on. One of his eyes was shot out and his nose hung down on his face. Lyne and four other pirates were convicted and hanged at Curacao.

Fascinating entry!

On March 22, 1724, exactly one week after Captain Richard Hawkins had set sail from the coast of Belize with a load of logwood, the men aboard his ship spotted two vessels bearing down on them. One was a large, three-hundred-ton galley with three tall masts and several dozen men aboard. The other was a sloop. Hawkins immediately sensed that the men standing aboard the deck of the galley were pirates, ready to attack at the ship’s twelve guns. And as he would soon learn, the man shouting orders from the deck was the quartermaster who had recently deserted Edward Low and was now a new pirate captain in his own right, Francis Spriggs. Spriggs’ crew came alongside Hawkins’ ship and boarded it. The pirates ruthlessly ripped Hawkins' ship apart, taking cable, rigging, several sails, and the ship’s boat, then destroying everything else. "Every thing that pleased them not they threw overboard," Hawkins later wrote. "All my compasses, instruments, books, escritoire, binnacle, and in short, every individual thing they destroyed; broke all my windows, knocked down the cabin, seized all my small arms and ammunition, and then delivered me my ship in despicable condition." After several days, Hawkins and a number of other captives were released, although they were retaken by Spriggs' crew a little more than 24 hours later because the pirates did not recognize his ship and thought it was a new capture. Hawkins was eventually released again on the island of Roatan where he and several other captives were able to secure passage back home aboard other vessels.

Just saw an online exhibit (Smithsonian) with some nice photos of pirate tools, weapons, relics. Piracy in the Atlantic World -- http://amhistory.si.edu/onthewater/exhibition/1_5.html.

Thank you! I hope you enjoy it. Greg

On March 10, 1723 (the day after Philip Ashton ran away from the pirates on Roatan--see previous post), four sloops from New England were anchored just off the shore of what now forms the mainland of Belize. The sloops were filling their holds with huge stacks of the prized Central American trees known as logwood and would soon set sail back to New England. Suddenly the men working on the sloops spotted a frightening sight: an approaching Spanish ship. The New England sloops anchored in the shallow bay as they were being loaded with logwood were an easy target for the Spanish vessel, which had ten large guns and close to sixty men aboard. The Spanish ship quickly captured three of the sloops, all from Newport, Rhode Island. The fourth, from Boston and under the command of a man named Edward Loyd, stole away as quickly as it could. Loyd’s crew cut their cables and set sail immediately. The Spanish ship followed Loyd for a short time but couldn't catch up and eventually returned to the other captured sloops. But barely three or four hours later that same day, the pirate crews of Edward Low and Francis Spriggs sailed into the bay. Low’s former partner, George Lowther, was with them. With three vessels and more than one hundred men, most of them either manning heavy guns or armed on deck with muskets and pistols, Low's men outnumbered the Spanish crew and immediately captured the ship, as well as the three New England sloops. The pirates’ capture quickly turned into a horrifically bloody massacre. Low’s crew killed as many as fifty of the Spanish seamen, butchering some of the men and hacking their bodies into pieces, according to the report from one sea captain who witnessed the attack. Seven of the Spanish sailors survived when they jumped overboard and frantically swam ashore.

My favorite day in pirate history: On March 9, 1723, the pirate crew of Edward Low was anchored in two sloops and a schooner near several cays in Port Royal harbor, at the eastern end of the island of Roatan, Honduras. The pirates had been there for about a week and were preparing to head out for the coast of Belize (where, on March 10, Low would unleash one of the bloodiest massacres of his career). On March 9, seven men from Low's crew took a boat ashore to Roatan to fill their casks with fresh drinking water. As they made their way towards shore, they were spotted by Philip Ashton, a young fisherman from Masschusetts who had been captured by Low's crew off the coast of Nova Scotia nine months earlier. From the deck of another of Low's vessels, Ashton pleaded with Low's cooper to take him ashore and, when the pirates agreed, Ashton jumped in the boat. Once on Roatan, Ashton wandered off -- at first pretending to casually stroll along the beach looking for coconuts, then suddenly dashing into the thick woods and hiding. After Ashton escaped from Low's crew that day, he would spend close to two years living alone as a castaway on the uninhabited island. (For more on Ashton and photos of Roatan, check out www.gregflemming.com.)

There was an interesting exchange about this article on another thread a few weeks back.... http://pyracy.com/index.php/topic/19288-gaop-essential-reading-list/?p=415999

On February 24, in 1725, the trial of Matthew Perry and a number of other sailors began in Newport, Rhode Island. Perry was the first mate aboard the ship John and Mary when it was captured off the coast of Belize by members of the Low-Spriggs pirate crew, now under the command of Richard Shipton (Low had been cast adrift some months earlier). Three pirates went aboard the John and Mary to take command, with orders to follow Shipton's vessel. Perry was initially bound with his hands tied behind his back, but in a matter of days, several other captives aboard the ship, who were entrusted by the pirates, were able to free Perry and gave him one of their pistols. Anchored off the coast of Guanaja in the Bay of Honduras one afternoon in late December, Perry and the other captives suddenly rushed the pirates, killed two of them, and regained control of the ship. The men cut their cables and immediately set sail back home to Newport. When they arrived, however, they were put on trial -- because the men, with “force and arms,” had killed “two of the subjects of our Lord the King.” Yet since these two “subjects” were by all accounts pirates, there never seemed to be any question of the crew’s innocence. The men recounted their capture and escape, and all of them were found not guilty.

I know that smaller fishing schooners (< 50 tons) were crewed by as few as 5 men in the early 1700s, and shallops with probably fewer men.

Great stuff on Coxon and Worley.

February 12 -- Today is the anniversary of the birth of Cotton Mather (February 12, 1663). Interestingly, tomorrow will be the anniversary of his death (February 13, 1728). America’s foremost Puritan minister during the early 1700s, Cotton Mather railed repeatedly against piracy and offered his counsel to a long line of condemned pirates, ranging from Captain William Kidd, in 1700, to William Fly, who was executed in Boston several decades later, in 1726. When six members of Samuel Bellamy’s crew were condemned in 1717, Mather made the “long and sad walk with them from the prison to the place of execution,” where he delivered final words before the pirates were hanged. Mather and other Puritan leaders saw piracy as a vivid symbol of everything that was wrong with colonial New England at a time of deteriorating social and religious values -- and pirates awaiting execution provided rich, engaging material for sermons. (http://www.gregflemming.com/2014/02/02/pirates-pulpit/) Mather died in 1728 and is buried in Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in Boston’s North End.

I can appreciate that. Not to belabor the point, but Zacks' sources are decent so if you want to take a look at them I'll get them to you.

On February 4, 1724 a crew of pirates and captives sailing under the command of John Phillips spotted a snow off the coast of Maryland. Phillips immediately started to chase, although the snow was moving so quickly through the water that it took about three days for the pirates to draw within range and capture the vessel. Phillips sent three members of his crew and one forced man over to the snow to take command. The men sent over to the snow were led by a pirate named Samuel Ferne, who had been with Phillips since he first formed his crew in 1723. But Ferne’s loyalty to Phillips was crumbling. Like just about everyone else on the pirate ship, he was tired of dealing with Phillips’ rage day in and out. The night the pirates captured the snow, Ferne decided to abandon Phillips. Ferne and the other pirates extinguished all the lanterns aboard the snow and tried to slip away into the dark, open sea. But Phillips immediately suspected what Ferne was up to and put out all of his lights too. With both vessels darkened, neither had much of an advantage and Phillips was able to stay relatively close to the snow. The attempted escape by Ferne did not end well. Regaining the snow several days later, Phillips fired at the snow and then, after the deserters ultimately surrendered, he killed Ferne by thrusting a sword almost entirely through his body and then, a moment later, shooting him in the head. http://www.gregflemming.com/2013/09/14/marthas-vineyard-and-pirate-mutiny/

I think it's worth a read. I enjoyed it.

Not really, no. The passage I quoted appears on page 30 of The Pirate Hunter, but Zacks does not use footnotes so I cannot easily determine which source he used for this particular quote or passage. He does list an extensive list of sources in the back, including some primary / archival sources. If you don't have a copy of the book, I could scan those pages and email them.

Colin Woodard has a new article this month in Smithsonian about Blackbeard/Teach/Thatch... http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/last-days-blackbeard-180949440/?all

Richard Zacks, in The Pirate Hunter, describes the ritual in his description of Captain Kidd's Adventure Galley: The ritual varied from ship to ship but, more often than not, it involved a chance for the crew to extort some hard liquor or money from the equator virgins, i.e., first-time crossers. The Adventure Galley crew, with playful taunts, herded newcomers, including twenty-one-year-old heir Samuel Bradley and forty-six-year-old Benjamin Franks, off to one side. Then the men slung a rope through a pulley at one end of a lower yardarm. To test its strength, they tied a board to it and watched the wood splash in the sea and drag in the waves. "He, therefore, that is to be baptized, is fastened and hoisted up three times at the main yard's end, as if he were a criminal," wrote an eyewitness. "Thus, they are dipped, every one, several times in the ocean. But he that is dipped first has the honor of being saluted with a gun."

No, At the Point of a Cutlass isn't fiction -- it's true. Based on a rare manuscript from 1725, At the Point of a Cutlass uncovers the voyage of Philip Ashton -- a nineteen-year old fisherman who was captured by pirates, escaped on an uninhabited Caribbean island, and then miraculously arrived back home three years later to tell his incredible story. http://www.gregflemming.com/ Greg I would not have expected that from the title. I know the account, what exactly did you do with it? Did you do what Kevin Duffus did with Blackbeard's history? Brit., I should pass your feedback about the title on to my publisher! My book reconstructs the intertwined story of the captive Philip Ashton and the pirates he sailed with, who were led by Edward Low and Francis Spriggs. My research relies not only on Ashton's own account of his experience, but the narratives of several other captives who sailed with these pirates as well as trial records, newspaper accounts, and the logbooks of the Greyhound, the Mermaid, and the Diamond, all of which battled with the crews of Low and Spriggs. I also visited the island of Roatan, where Ashton was marooned for more than a year. You can read more (including the Prologue), if you're interested, on my site: http://www.gregflemming.com/.

As far as I know, only the printed versions exist today. I used both the original edition of Ashton's Memorial printed in Boston (1725) and the London edition (1726). Other than the title page and one brief passage (a difference likely due to a typesetting error rather than a substantive change), the two versions are identical.

No, At the Point of a Cutlass isn't fiction -- it's true. Based on a rare manuscript from 1725, At the Point of a Cutlass uncovers the voyage of Philip Ashton -- a nineteen-year old fisherman who was captured by pirates, escaped on an uninhabited Caribbean island, and then miraculously arrived back home three years later to tell his incredible story. http://www.gregflemming.com/ Greg

Foxe, Who is doing Pirates, in Their Own Words and when is it coming out?

Terrific post about Spriggs. In my book I have a great image of pirates from Spriggs' crew subjecting a captive to a "sweat": http://www.gregflemming.com/photo-gallery/

I personally like Cordingly's Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean a lot. Cordingly, who has written several other books on piracy and maritime history, including Under the Black Flag, wrote this book about Captain Woodes Rogers (~1679 - 1732). Rogers was once a privateer but later was appointed governor of the Bahamas and fought against Atlantic piracy. Cordingly's book recounts Rogers' many travels and experiences, but also touches on other noteworthy maritime events during this period, including the rescue of Alexander Selkirk, on whose experiences Defoe is believed to have based Robinson Crusoe.