FRANCIS FARRINGTON SPRIGGS, COMPANION OF CAPT. NED LOW
Francis Farrington Spriggs is supposed to have sailed from London
with Lowther, in March, 1721, in the ship “Gambia Castle,” and to
have willingly followed him in his piratical venture. When Lowther
joined forces with Ned Low in January, 1722, Spriggs was with him
and when Lowther parted company with Low the following May, Spriggs
seems to have thought Low a man after his own heart for he left his
old commander and followed Low in the recently captured brigantine
“Rebecca,” where he was made quartermaster. With Low he sailed along
the New England coast and north to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland;
then across the Atlantic to the Western Islands and back to the West
Indies where, late in the year 1722, a Rhode Island-built sloop was
captured which Low took over for his own command and Spriggs was given
command of the Marblehead schooner “Fancy,” that had been taken at Port
Roseway, Nova Scotia, in June. When Low and Spriggs had their narrow
escape from capture by the man-of-war “Mermaid,” in February, 1723,
Spriggs determined never to be taken and swore with a boon companion
and pledged the oath in a bumper of rum, that when he saw there was
no possibility of escaping they would set foot to foot and shoot one
another and so cheat the halter.[136]
Before long there was a falling out between Low and Spriggs or,
possibly, Spriggs may have been taken sick or been wounded; at any
rate, Charles Harris was in command of a sloop called the “Ranger,”
when the pirate vessel appeared off the coast of South Carolina on
May 27, 1723, and fortunate it was for Spriggs, for later on this
disastrous foray Low deserted his consort under fire near the Rhode
Island coast and the “Ranger” was captured and Harris and many of his
crew were tried and hanged at Newport. Spriggs served with Low on this
voyage, in his old station as quartermaster, until the ship “Delight”
was taken, off the Guinea coast, in the late fall. She was well suited
to their needs so four more guns were mounted on her and Spriggs was
given command with a crew of about sixty men. Within two days Spriggs
deserted Low--slipped away in the night--and for this reason. One of
the crew had murdered a man in cold blood and Spriggs was for executing
him as a punishment. Low, on the other hand, would not agree and so
there was a heated quarrel that embittered Spriggs and led to his
desertion.
The next day Spriggs was elected captain of the company by popular
vote, and a black flag was made with the same device as the ensign
carried by Low, namely, a white skeleton holding in one hand an arrow
piercing a bleeding heart and in the other hand an hour-glass. This
flag they called the “Jolly Roger,” and when it was finished and
hoisted to the masthead they fired all their guns in salute and sailed
away to the West Indies in search of prey. Before long they overhauled
a Portuguese bark that supplied some valuable plunder, but not content
with that alone, Spriggs determined to torture the men by “sweating”
them, a game that greatly diverted his piratical crew. Lighted candles
were placed in a circle around the mizzenmast, between decks, and one
by one the poor Portuguese were ordered to go inside the circle and run
round and round the mast, while in a circle outside the candles stood
the crew (as many as could crowd into line), armed with penknives,
tucks,[137] forks, compasses, etc., and with roaring songs and
boisterous laughter they pricked the terrified Portuguese as long as
he was able to foot it. This usually lasted for ten minutes or more
for the pirates took good care not to strike too deep and so kill their
victims.[138] When the “sweating” was over the Portuguese were set
adrift in a boat with a small quantity of provisions and their vessel
was fired.
[Illustration: “SWEATING” ON CAPT. SPRIGG’S PIRATE VESSEL
From an engraving in “History and Lives of the Most Notorious Pirates,”
by an old Seaman, London, n.d., in possession of Capt. Ernest H.
Pentecost, R.N.R.]
Near the island of St. Lucia, Spriggs took a sloop owned in the
Barbadoes, which was plundered and burned. Some of the crew were forced
and others who absolutely refused to go with him were cut and badly
beaten and set adrift in a boat. Captain De Haws was taken in sight of
Barbadoes and two of his men were forced--James Rush and Joseph Cooper,
both born in London, England. Some of Spriggs’ crew told Captain De
Haws that they had come away from Captain Low “on account of the
Barbarity he used those he took.”[139] A Martinico vessel was the next
capture. The men were abused in the usual manner, but their vessel was
not burned.
On March 22, 1724, a ship called the “Jolly Batchelor,” from Jamaica,
commanded by Captain Hawkins, was taken near the island of Bonaco, as
she was coming out of the Bay of Honduras. Her principal cargo was
logwood, but her stores and ammunition were looted and what the pirates
didn’t take they threw overboard or destroyed. In sheer mischief her
cables were cut, the cabins knocked down and the cabin windows smashed.
The first and second mates, Burrage and Stephens, and some of the
men, were forced and on the 29th the ship was allowed to go. Two days
before, however, a Newport, R. I. sloop, the “Endeavor,” commanded by
Capt. Samuel Pike, Jr., came up and was ordered to lay by. The crew
were forced and the mate Dixey Gross, “being a grave, sober man, and
not inclinable to go, they told him he should have his Discharge,
and that it should be immediately writ on his Back; whereupon he was
sentenced to receive ten lashes from every Man in the Ship, which was
vigorously put in Execution.”[140] Among those forced from the sloop
were William Wood and Thomas Morris, a boy about twelve years old.
Burrage, the first mate of Captain Hawkins’ ship, and a good navigator,
is said to have signed their Articles.
On April 2d, a sail was sighted and Spriggs gave chase. After several
hours they came close to her and fired a couple of broadsides when
a cry for quarter came from the ship and soon she was found to be
commanded by Captain Hawkins who had been looted and sent away only
three days before. This was such a disappointment that when the captain
came on board they laid for him with their cutlasses and soon he was
flat on the deck. Before he received a fatal blow, Burrage pushed in
among them and begged for the captain’s life and he having just shown
himself the right sort by signing their Articles his request was heeded
and Captain Hawkins was pulled to his feet. A bonfire was made of
his ship, however, and a little later, desiring more diversion, the
unfortunate Hawkins was sent down to the cabin for supper. This turned
out to be a dish of candles which he was forced to swallow and then, in
order to aid digestion, the poor man was thrown about the cabin until
he was covered with bruises and afterward sent forward amongst the
other prisoners.
Two days later Spriggs reached the small island of Roatan in the Bay of
Honduras. It was uninhabited and here he put ashore Captain Hawkins,
his boatswain, and an old man who had been a passenger on his ship and
who afterwards died on the island of the hardships he had undergone.
With them went Capt. Samuel Pike of the Rhode Island sloop and his mate
Dixey Gross, Simon Fulmore, a sailor, and James Nelley, one of the
pirate crew with whom Spriggs was at odds.[141] The marooned men were
given an old musket and a small supply of powder and ball with which
to make shift as best they could and Spriggs and his crew then sailed
away. Captain Hawkins and his companions supplied themselves with fish
and fowl and lived in comparative comfort for the next ten days, when
two men in a dugout canoe came in sight and after a time answered their
signals. These men conveyed them to another island which had better
water and plenty of fish and twelve days later the sloop “Merriam,”
Captain Jones, came in sight and answered their smoke signals. He stood
in and took them off and by this timely rescue they all finally reached
Jamaica safely. It is a curious coincidence that Captain Hawkins should
have been marooned on the island of Roatan only four days after Philip
Ashton, the Marblehead fisherman who had lived a solitary life on the
same island for nine months, sailed from the nearby island of Bonaco,
homeward bound, as is told in another chapter.
From Roatan, Spriggs sailed westward to another small island where
he cleaned his ship and then steered a course for the island of St.
Christopher, proposing to lay in wait for Captain Moore who had
surprised Captain Lowther while his vessel was on careen at the island
of Blanco. Spriggs had resolved to catch Captain Moore, if possible,
and put him to death for being the cause of the death of Lowther, his
brother pirate. Instead of Captain Moore, however, a French man-of-war
was found by Spriggs to be on the coast and not fancying such company
Spriggs crowded on all sail with the Frenchman after him. During the
chase the man-of-war unfortunately lost her main-topmast and so Spriggs
escaped the intended interview. Standing now to the northward, towards
Bermuda, Spriggs overhauled on April 30th, a schooner owned in New York
and commanded by Capt. William Richardson, who reported after reaching
Boston, that Spriggs had told him that he intended to ravage the
northern coasts and sink or burn all the vessels he took northward of
Philadelphia.[142] Captain Durell, in His Majesty’s ship “Sea Horse,”
was ordered to make sail at once in quest of Spriggs.
On May 2, 1724, the Boston owned brigantine “Daniel,” John Hopkins in
Command, was homeward bound in latitude 33° and near Bermuda, when a
strange sail fired a gun and soon hoisted a black flag. The pirate
ship was crowded with men and resistance was out of reason so Captain
Hopkins ordered his boat lowered and went aboard the ship. After
rifling the brigantine it was burned. Joseph Cole of Beverly, Mass.,
and Benjamin Wheeler of Boston, seamen on board the “Daniel,” were
forced “notwithstanding their importunate Prayers & Tears to him to
dismiss them.”[143] Spriggs swore to the master that “he designed to
encrease his Company on the Banks of Newfoundland, and then would sail
for the coast of New England in quest of Captain Solgard, who attack’d
and took their Consort Charles Harris; Spriggs being then in Low’s
sloop, very fairly run for it.”[144] Two days later Captain Hopkins
and his men, including John Bovewe and Elias Tozer, were put aboard a
Philadelphia sloop bound for Jamaica which in time they reached safely
and in April of the following year they were in Boston again.
Instead of going to Newfoundland, as he had threatened, Spriggs stood
to the windward of St. Christopher’s and on June 4, 1724, took a
sloop, Nicholas Trot, master, belonging to St. Eustatia. The plunder
of the vessel didn’t amount to much so the pirates thought they would
amuse themselves by fastening a rope around the men’s bodies, one by
one, and after hoisting them as high as the main- and foretops by
letting go of the ropes the unfortunate wretches would fall tumbling
to the deck with force enough to break skins and smash bones. After
the men were well crippled by this usage Captain Trot was given his
sloop and told to clear out. A week later, a Rhode Island ship bound
for St. Christopher’s was taken. She was loaded with provisions and
some horses, which the pirate crew soon mounted and rode about the
deck, backwards and forwards, at full gallop, cursing and howling
like demons, which soon made the animals so wild that they threw their
riders and spoiled the sport. They then turned to the ship’s crew and
whipped and cut them in a wicked manner, saying, that it was because
boots and spurs had not been brought with the horses that they were not
able to ride like gentlemen.
Captain Spriggs was seldom lacking in boldness and next he cruised off
Port Royal in the island of Jamaica and made one or two minor captures.
Two men-of-war at anchor in port were ordered out and the commander of
one of them, Capt. James Wyndham of the “Diamond,” ordered a course set
for the Bay of Honduras, thinking that Spriggs might return to his old
haunts. This proved to be correct for when the man-of-war sailed into
the Bay, Spriggs and his crew were there busily engaged in plundering
ten or twelve vessels that had been loading logwood. The pirates were
completely surprised and but feebly returned the fire of the man-of-war
and soon considered it wiser to get out their sweeps and row into shoal
water and so they at last escaped, there being but little wind. This
took place the latter part of September, 1724. Spriggs at that time was
in command of his ship, the “Batchelor’s Delight,” and had with him as
consort, a sloop commanded by Captain Shipton. During the encounter
they had six men killed and five or six wounded. Capt. John Cass, when
he reached Newport, R. I., from the Bay of Honduras, the first of
December following, brought an account of this affair and reported to
his owners the information that “a Spanish half Galley with about 50
Men on board, and a Perriagoe with 26 Men, now in the Bay of Honduras,
lye in obscure Places & Key’s to take vessels in their way there.”[145]
All these dangers to New England shipping must have added greatly to
the market value of logwood chips.
After escaping from the “Diamond” man-of-war, Spriggs sailed for the
Bahama Channel and on the voyage ran very short of provisions. He took
a sloop in the service of the South Sea Company, bound from Jamaica
to Havana, with negro slaves, and later a ship bound for Newport, R.
I., Capt. Richard Durffie, master. Spriggs proposed to put all the
negroes on board Captain Durffie’s vessel but the captain urgently
represented his want of sufficient provisions and the danger that they
all would perish by starvation and at last Spriggs transferred to his
ship only ten of the slaves and then let him go. Durffie put in to
South Carolina for fresh supplies and while there Capt. Jeremiah Clarke
of Newport, met him and brought home the news of his capture. Spriggs
and Shipton continued on their course towards the Bahamas and off the
western end of Cuba were so unfortunate as to again meet the “Diamond”
man-of-war, still in pursuit of them. As the wind lay their only means
of escape was to make for the Florida shore where Shipton’s sloop was
run aground near the Cape and lost. This sloop was owned in Newport, R.
I., and was in command of Jonathan Barney at the time she was taken by
Spriggs. When the sloop went ashore she carried 12 guns and seventy or
more men all of whom reached land safely only to fall into the hands
of the Indians, except Shipton and ten or a dozen others who escaped
in the ship’s canoe and finally reached Cuba.[146] It was said at the
time that the Indians killed and ate sixteen of the pirates and that
forty-nine were taken and carried to Havana; but why the “Diamond,” an
English man-of-war, should carry English pirates to a Spanish port is
not explained in any of the newspaper accounts of the affair. About two
thousand pounds value in gold fell a prize to the “Diamond.”
[Illustration: PIRATES KILLING A CAPTURED MAN
From an old mezzotint in the possession of Capt. E. H. Pentecost,
R.N.R.]
[Illustration: FIGHT ON A PIRATE SHIP
From an old mezzotint in the possession of Capt. Ernest H. Pentecost,
R.N.R.]
Spriggs, by good seamanship, was able to make his escape and in some
way afterwards picked up Shipton and the few men who escaped with him
and made his way back to the Bay of Honduras where on Dec. 23, 1724, in
company with Shipton, who at that time was in command of a perriagua
with ten white men and three or four negroes, he descended on the
logwood ships in the Bay and took sixteen vessels, one of which,
commanded by Capt. Kelsey, he burned. The captain was given a long-boat
and it being fair weather, he reached the uninhabited island of Bonaco
safely, from which he and his crew afterwards were rescued by a passing
sloop. Shipton took the ship “Mary and John,” of Boston, Thomas Glen,
master, and after plundering her, carried away the master and put him
on board a Boston sloop, Ebenezer Kent, master, which he had taken the
same day, intending to sail for the rendezvous at the island of Roatan.
The mate of the “John and Mary,” Matthew Perry, he left on board with
his hands tied behind him and later ordered three of his pirates,
together with two forced men, Nicholas Simons and Jonathan Barlow, all
double armed, to take possession of the “John and Mary” and follow him
to the rendezvous. Simons was to be the navigator and commander. But
after Shipton had gone, Simons and Barlow untied Perry’s hands and
proposed that together they attempt to kill the three pirates who had
come on board with them and if successful, to make a course for some
English port. The mate at once consented and Barlow gave him a pistol
and he started for the steerage where one of the pirates was rummaging.
Coming up behind him he snapped his pistol but unfortunately it missed
fire. The pirate had four pistols in his belt and immediately drawing
one he aimed it at Perry before he could reach the ladder. Strangely
enough this pistol, too, missed fire. Simons was in the cabin at the
time and hearing the snapping of the flints came rushing in crying,
“In the name of God and His Majesty King George, let us go on with our
design.” He shot dead the pirate who had attempted to kill the mate and
told another of the pirates who was present, if he made any resistance
he would kill him too. Meanwhile, Barlow and some of the ship’s company
had killed the third pirate. They then cut their cable and made the
best of their way to deep water and with no further adventures reached
Newport, R. I., the last of January, 1725.[147] After their arrival,
the circumstantial accounts of Simons and Barlow were published at
length in the Boston newspapers.
Simons claimed that he was the humble instrument that brought about the
disaster to the sloop commanded by Shipton, that was chased ashore on
the Florida coast, and that while in Spriggs’ company he and Barlow had
been treated “very barbarously; made to eat candles with the wick, and
often threatened to take away their lives.”[148] Barlow also related
that he had been forced by Low and afterwards served in Spriggs’ and
Shipton’s companies. He said Low had abused him, had knocked out one
of his teeth with a pistol and threatened to shoot down his throat,
“whereupon Barlow fell and was taken up sick which held him three
months.” He also repeated the story of the discarding of Low by his men
and his having been sent away with two other pirates in a French sloop
and nothing had been heard from him since.[149]
After Spriggs and Shipton made their captures in the Bay of Honduras
on Dec. 23, 1724, but little is known as to their later movements. In
April, 1725, a captain arriving at New York brought the report that
Spriggs was yet roving and had five vessels in his fleet. Early in
May, 1725, Captain MacKarty reached Boston from Jamaica, and reported
that not long before he had spoken a pink off the South Carolina coast
that had been taken by Spriggs, who was in a ship mounting twelve guns
with a crew of thirty-five men. Several vessels had been captured and
burned or sunk and the crews had been put aboard the pink and sent
away. The master of the pink told Captain MacKarty that Spriggs was
using his prisoners barbarously and that he threatened to be on the
New England coast very soon after.[150] The threatened raid did not
materialize and Spriggs and Shipton both dropped out of sight and we
now have no information as to what became of them save the rumor that
reached Boston a year later that they both had been marooned by their
men and “were got among the Musketoo Indians.”[151] And this may have
been their fate, for Spriggs’ quartermaster, one Philip Lyne, was
in command of a pirate sloop mounting ten carriage guns and sixteen
swivels and carrying forty men which was making captures on the banks
off the Newfoundland coast in the summer of 1725. This sloop had been
one of Spriggs’ consorts on the South Carolina coast earlier in the
year and appears to have deserted him. On June 30th, Lyne took the ship
“Thomasine,” Capt. Samuel Thorogood, bound for London from Boston, on
which were four passengers and after plundering and destroying most of
the ship’s lading and forcing five of the crew to sign his Articles,
he allowed the ship to go free with only a small store of stinking
provisions and a little water.[152] Lyne also took a Rhode Island
sloop, Captain Casey, which was burned and the master and men were
forced to go aboard the pirate vessel which then headed for the Cape
Verde islands. Lyne probably followed the example of Low and Lowther
and from there set a course for the Guiana coast, for in October,
1725 he was captured by two sloops fitted out at Curacao. During the
engagement a number of the pirates were killed but Lyne and four others
were “hanged by the neck until dead,” by the Dutch authorities on the
island, to the great satisfaction of all who had ever met them on the
high seas.[153]
FOOTNOTES
[136] See chapter on Philip Ashton.
[137] A short sword. Sometimes a rapier is called a tuck.
[138] “Sweating” generally was used to force information as to the
location of concealed valuables.
[139] _Boston Gazette_, Apr. 20, 1724.
[140] Johnson, _History of the Pirates_, London, 1726.
[141] _Boston News-Letter_, July 23, 1724.
[142] _Boston News-Letter_, May 21, 1724.
[143] _Boston News-Letter_, Apr. 15, 1725.
[144] Johnson, _History of the Pirates_, London, 1726.
[145] _Boston News-Letter_, Dec. 10, 1724.
[146] _Boston News-Letter_, Feb. 11, 1725; Oct. 7, 1725.
[147] _New England Courant_, Feb. 8, 1725 and _Boston News-Letter_,
Feb. 11, 1725.
[148] _Boston News-Letter_, Feb. 11, 1725.
[149] _Boston News-Letter_, Feb. 11, 1725.
[150] _New England Courant_, May 18, 1725.
[151] _New England Courant_, Apr. 30, 1726.
[152] _Boston News-Letter_, Sept. 16, 1725.
[153] _New England Courant_, Jan. 8, 1726.