The Old Merchant Marine | Page 6

to make their hardihood astounding. It was not merely a
matter of small vessels with a few men and boys daring distant voyages

and the mischances of foundering or stranding, but of facing an
incessant plague of privateers, French and Spanish, Dutch and English,
or a swarm of freebooters under no flag at all. Coasts were unlighted,
charts few and unreliable, and the instruments of navigation almost as
crude as in the days of Columbus. Even the savage Indian, not content
with lurking in ambush, went afloat to wreak mischief, and the records
of the First Church of Salem contain this quaint entry under date of
July 25, 1677: "The Lord having given a Commission to the Indians to
take no less than 13 of the Fishing Ketches of Salem and Captivate the
men . . . it struck a great consternation into all the people here. The
Pastor moved on the Lord's Day, and the whole people readily
consented, to keep the Lecture Day following as a Fast Day, which was
accordingly done . . . . The Lord was pleased to send in some of the
Ketches on the Fast Day which was looked on as a gracious smile of
Providence. Also there had been 19 wounded men sent into Salem a
little while before; also a Ketch sent out from Salem as a man-of-war to
recover the rest of the Ketches. The Lord give them Good Success."
To encounter a pirate craft was an episode almost commonplace and
often more sordid than picturesque. Many of these sea rogues were
thieves with small stomach for cutlasses and slaughter. They were of
the sort that overtook Captain John Shattuck sailing home from
Jamaica in 1718 when he reported his capture by one Captain Charles
Vain, "a Pyrat" of 12 guns and 120 men who took him to Crooked
Island, plundered him of various articles, stripped the brig, abused the
crew, and finally let him go. In the same year the seamen of the
Hopewell related that near Hispaniola they met with pirates who
robbed and ill-treated them and carried off their mate because they had
no navigator.
Ned Low, a gentleman rover of considerable notoriety, stooped to filch
the stores and gear from a fleet of fourteen poor fishermen of Cape
Sable. He had a sense of dramatic values, however, and frequently
brandished his pistols on deck, besides which, as set down by one of
his prisoners, "he had a young child in Boston for whom he entertained
such tenderness that on every lucid interval from drinking and revelling,
I have seen him sit down and weep plentifully."

A more satisfying figure was Thomas Pounds, who was taken by the
sloop Mary, sent after him from Boston in 1689. He was discovered in
Vineyard Sound, and the two vessels fought a gallant action, the pirate
flying a red flag and refusing to strike. Captain Samuel Pease of the
Mary was mortally wounded, while Pounds, this proper pirate, strode
his quarter-deck and waved his naked sword, crying, "Come on board,
ye dogs, and I will strike YOU presently." This invitation was promptly
accepted by the stout seamen from Boston, who thereupon swarmed
over the bulwark and drove all hands below, preserving Thomas
Pounds to be hanged in public.
In 1703 John Quelch, a man of resource, hoisted what he called "Old
Roger" over the Charles--a brigantine which had been equipped as a
privateer to cruise against the French of Acadia. This curious flag of his
was described as displaying a skeleton with an hour-glass in one hand
and "a dart in the heart with three drops of blood proceeding from it in
the other." Quelch led a mutiny, tossed the skipper overboard, and
sailed for Brazil, capturing several merchantmen on the way and
looting them of rum, silks, sugar, gold dust, and munitions. Rashly he
came sailing back to Marblehead, primed with a plausible yarn, but his
men talked too much when drunk and all hands were jailed. Upon the
gallows Quelch behaved exceedingly well, "pulling off his hat and
bowing to the spectators," while the somber Puritan merchants in the
crowd were, many of them, quietly dealing in the merchandise fetched
home by pirates who were lucky enough to steer clear of the law.
This was a shady industry in which New York took the more active
part, sending out supplies to the horde of pirates who ravaged the
waters of the Far East and made their haven at Madagascar, and
disposing of the booty received in exchange. Governor Fletcher had
dirtied his hands by protecting this commerce and, as a result, Lord
Bellomont was named to succeed him. Said William III, "I send you,
my Lord, to New York, because an honest and intrepid man is wanted
to put these