Joseph Cooper Night Rambler

[The Island]

Guys, I am getting frustrated, I have searched and searched for a Joseph Cooper captain of the Night Rambler and found only his name mentioned in Hayward's " Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals vol. 3" in referance to a John Upton. Can anyone please help me out on any sources or websites that give more then his name any dates anything will be so helpful?

[Daniel]

Cooper, sans his first name, is mentioned in Gosse's The Pirates' Who's Who. Gosse's deficiencies have been mentioend before, but we're grasping at straws here.

Gosse says the Night Rambler was a sloop. He captured the Perry Galley three days from Barbados on 11/14/1725, and a French sloop the next day, and rifled them at Aruba. Their crews were starved by the pirates until the pirates' doctor got them some food. The Perry's bosun, a Mr. Upton, joined the pirates, and was later hanged for it in England; no word if Cooper and the rest of his crew were also caught.

[Daniel]

Well, having looked at Hayward, I see everything in Gosse (and also in Rediker) is pretty well taken directly from his book, so they are little help.

Austin Meredith has put together an odd little PDF about Kidd, which you can see here. Besides the Upton incident, on page 175 it mentions a Joseph Cooper amongst a group of seven men charged with piratically seizing the Antelope in the Delaware River in 1718. It also mentions that this was the same Cooper who, with his crew of pirates, were captured or killed in the Bay of Honduras in 1725. That might be the same Cooper who commanded the Night Rambler, at least the year is right, and the Bay of Honduras would be an easy sail from Aruba on the trade winds.

Edited March 25, 2010 by Daniel

[Daniel]

And another reference from John Fanning Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, from 1830:

Skipton, the pirate, with 80 men, is said to have been taken by his Majesty's ship the Diamond, in the bay of Honduras, together with Joseph Cooper, another pirate vessel. When one of these vessels saw she msut surrender, the Captain with many of his men went into the cabin and blew themselves up!

No sources are given unfortunately, so it could all be fancy. It's an interesting account, though; if true, it's the only case I know of where pirates actually did blow themselves up with gunpowder. It also mentions a Captain Line, who "had lost his nose and an eye," a possible historical case of a one-eyed Golden Age pirate.

Interestingly, Watson did not have access to Johnson's General History of the Pirates; he remembered his mother reading to him from it, but by the time he grew up, he was unable to locate anybody who had a copy.

Edited March 25, 2010 by Daniel

[Fox]

No sources are given unfortunately, so it could all be fancy. It's an interesting account, though; if true, it's the only case I know of where pirates actually did blow themselves up with gunpowder. It also mentions a Captain Line, who "had lost his nose and an eye," a possible historical case of a one-eyed Golden Age pirate.

Phillip Lyne, lost his eye and part of his nose in, I believe, the engagement in which he was captured.

Interestingly, Watson did not have access to Johnson's General History of the Pirates; he remembered his mother reading to him from it, but by the time he grew up, he was unable to locate anybody who had a copy.

Must have lived in the only time since 1724 that the GHP wasn't in print!

I've got some material relating to Upton somewhere - I'll dig it out later and see if it contains anything useful.

[Daniel]

Here's the best source I've found yet: an actual 1726 book by an A. Boyer called The Political State of Great Britain, which mentions Cooper's capture by the Diamond.

The Diamond Man of War . . . has taken a Pyrate commanded by one Cooper, and had a great many Prisoners on board, and was bound to Jamaica with them. He further says that Low and Spriggs were both marooned and were got among the Musketto Indians.

The correspondence was written from Piscataqua River on April 22, 1726; obviously, it would have taken some time to reach New England from the Bay of Honduras. It's interesting not only for the mention of Cooper, but for yet another theory on the ultimate mysterious fate of Low!

Edited March 25, 2010 by Daniel

[Fox]

Not much to add, but Daniel's information from Gosse is borne out by evidence given at Upton's trial and related in The History and Lives of all the most Notorious Pirates, and their Crews (London, 1732)

[Mission]

Hey, Ed just said Gosse got something right!

[Fox]

Hey, Ed just said Gosse got something right!

Nobody's all bad... except perhaps Nigel Cawthorne

[Daniel]

Hey, Ed just said Gosse got something right!

Nobody's all bad... except perhaps Nigel Cawthorne

Argh! Don't get me started on Cawthorne! I just read his book two months ago; OMG was it bad!