Two miles offshore, a short time out of Spirito Sanctu, and making
good way for Rio de Janeiro, her destination, a Portuguese brigantine
of fair size and speed was destined to be the choicest prize a gang of
New England pirates were to pick up within a thousand-mile cruise. She
was to Quelch what the _Quedagh Merchant_ had been to Captain Kidd, the
crown and climax of his piratical career.
Everything aboard that brigantine was as merry as a wedding bell,
as the old saying goes. Besides the crew she had two beautiful and
charming passengers, ladies of local importance journeying to Rio on
any one of the many errands which attract ladies to the neighboring
centers of fashion, whether in France, the East Indies or upon the
coast of Brazil. One may imagine how pleasantly the balmy evenings sped
away with song and music and the inevitable dance.
And down those watery ways were drawing nigh a brig and tender manned
by foreigners, who, could they have visioned the contents of the
Portuguese treasure-chest, would have been beside themselves with
anticipation.
It was all so easy. The boat of the _Charles_ with ten men pulled over
to the Portuguese when they had brought him to a stop. Probably the
Portuguese had no idea he was being pirated; he may even have tossed a
rope ladder over the bulwarks to assist his enemies aboard.
Over the sides of the pirate ships lounged the New Englanders, casually
watching the progress of the robbery. They speculated that here was
probably another load of sugar and molasses and coffee. Another dreary
job of stevedoring was promised. After all, this pirate business was
pretty slow work; meanly paid drudgery it had been for the most part,
certainly not worth risking a fellow’s neck.
Somebody wigwagged vehemently from the Portuguese. Quelch dropped into
the tender’s boat to investigate. There were no sounds of fighting; no
clamor of struggle; but something material was going on.
He climbed the side of the Portuguese without meeting resistance, was
seen to walk about her deck in a deliberate way, then came back over
the side and got into his boat, carrying, however, two sacks heavy
enough to bring out the cords of his forearms.
In each of those sacks were fifty pounds’ weight of gold dust!
Frenzy flamed from the _Charles_ to the tender. Men leaped and danced
and shouted; and the round, thick rum jar passed merrily from hand to
hand. Their fortunes were made!
Yo-ho-ho, for a pirate’s life!
So good-natured were the sea bandits that they treated the two
Portuguese ladies with urbane consideration and the despoiled crew with
tolerance. They kept them all on the _Charles_ that night, and with the
coming of morning restored them to their ship and bade them be off.
Three days later the quartermaster, the carpenter and the captain,
composing a committee on division of profits, ordered a pair of scales
set up on the quarter-deck, from which each man had weighed out to him
his share of the fascinating dust. Added to that was a neat little
bonus of good, hard-ringing Portuguese gold coins, forty-five hundred
dollars’ worth of which were gathered in from this very profitable find.
Rich with the plucking of the gold bird, the _Charles_ and her tender
ran rapidly from the stage and stopped nowhere until they were abreast
the south end of the Brazilian coast and in the vicinity of Rio de
Janeiro.
Quelch was about ready to call it a day. The big scoop had been made,
and by this time the coast must have been getting a little warm
for him. The alarm was certainly raised; for in the last ship he
attacked--a Portuguese two-hundred-tonner carrying hides and other
merchandise--he met with his first real fight. This ship did not stop
at Quelch’s summoning round shot but crowded on sail and made haste
to get away, thus showing that Captain Bastian, her master, had had
warning of the character of the New England brig and her tender.
After chasing her for two days the pirates pulled up with her, and the
Portuguese, after a sharp trading of shot, gave in. When the pirates
gained her deck there was some altercation with Captain Bastian, who
was shot down and his body heaved overboard. In the reminiscence of
this incident there were several of the rascals who claimed the honor
of shooting Bastian, but after a quarrel which nearly came to fighting,
Cooper Scudamore--a minor ringleader, it seems--was conceded to be the
hero of that black job.
The captors took off hides, tallow and beef and then left the
Portuguese. They were ready for home now, and the little tender which
had journeyed a thousand miles with them was dismantled and set adrift
to float upon some Brazilian beach. The _Charles_ swung round and drove
northward for Boston, home and--not mother. The end of February, 1704,
was when they struck off from the Rio Region, concluding just about
three months of active piracy, perhaps three and a half.
It surely looked reckless for Quelch to come back to Boston with the
good merchants’ brig and with no trophies in his hold of England’s
enemies but shamefully of England’s ally, Portugal. It was as reckless
as it looked; but mere recklessness never bothered John Quelch.
Perhaps the yarn that Anthony Holding and he had spun together gave him
a confidence that he would not otherwise have had. It was a plausible
thing. All hands were to say that Captain Plowman had died naturally,
true only in part; that thereafter while cruising for Frenchmen
according to Plowman’s commission, now executed by Quelch, they beat
down as far as Brazil way.
Here they met with coast Indians who told them that a rich Portuguese
brig had been recently wrecked in those parts, from which the Indians
had obtained great treasure, of which the gold dust and doubloons on
the _Charles_ were a part, having been given to Quelch and his men
by the pleasant natives, who had little notion of the worth of those
things.
There was more than a good chance that the gang could have got away
with this story. Nobody could have checked them up, and the incident in
itself was not so utterly improbable; a circumstance like that _might_
happen in those far-off seas.
The trouble for Quelch was that he carried informers with him all the
time and brought them back with him to Boston. Pimer and Clifford and
the one or two other loyal men were only waiting their time. And Quelch
knew it.
Off the Bermudas, coming home, Quelch called for a journal Pimer was
known to be keeping and tore from it five or six leaves containing
a record of the various piracies from St. Augustine to Rio. Quelch
probably calculated that fear for their own safety would keep all
hands quiet when they reached Boston.
He was wrong. The _Charles_ was not long docked after her far-flung
cruise when Quelch and a number of the seamen were arrested and the
ship appropriated. There can be little question that Pimer and Clifford
or one of them hurried to the governor and informed.
The jig was up. Anthony Holding, the evil genius of the adventure,
shrewdly packed up his portion of the plunder and fled without waiting
for what he no doubt foresaw as inevitable and imminent, the approach
of the officers of the law.
Not so with Quelch. No back-alley dodging for him. With all the
circumstances of a business man in lawful enterprise he went to the
shop of one of the leading jewelers of Boston and there melted down a
quantity of Portuguese gold and silver coins. May have been fooling
with the jeweler’s crucibles when the rough hand of the officer thumped
his shoulder.
Captain Kidd was the last of the colonial pirates to be sent home
to England for trial. After that the Government authorized such
proceedings to be had in the colonies themselves, for the expense of
dragging the accused and the witnesses across the Atlantic was too
much. On June 13, 1704, Quelch and a group of his pirates were tried
for murder and piracy at a “Court of Admiralty held at Boston, in
her Majesty’s Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New England, in
America.”
Mr. Attorney General of the province, assisted by eminent queen’s
counselors, carried the prosecution; the defense was borne by the
accused themselves with the help of a Mr. Menzies, a lawyer appointed
by the court to assist them “in any matters of law.” It will be
remembered that in those times a defendant in a criminal action was not
allowed a lawyer for the purpose of ascertaining the facts of the case
but merely to advise on matters of legal practice, whose only job in
most cases was to assure the accused that what was being done to them
was all according to law.
The indictment was on nine articles or counts, beginning with the death
of Captain Plowman and ending with the taking of the Bastian ship off
Rio. The death of Plowman was made the fact of the murder charge.
Pimer, Clifford and a fellow named Parrot turned queen’s evidence. The
feeling of contempt which one seems to have for an informer can not be
extended to these men; for their action here was quite consistent with
their attitude from the beginning, which, as we have seen, had not been
hidden even from the pirates. They never approved the deeds done or
pretended they did. These are not your ordinary informers.
We have to take off our hats to lawyer Menzies. He put up a fine fight.
He showed himself unafraid of court or council and stuck to his
clients when more politic lawyers would have eased off. Really he beat
the prosecution.
It was this way. The commission to this court of admiralty was issued
under an act of parliament which provided that its proceedings should
be according to what was called the civil law, which was a different
procedure from that of ordinary criminal courts, being originally
from the old Roman law. Now, by the civil law, in a trial for piracy
an accomplice could not be a witness against the accused; and Pimer,
Clifford and Parrot were technically accomplices. Menzies had chapter
and book for it, too.
Mr. Attorney General floundered back on an act of Henry the Eighth, but
if Menzies had had a modern court his point would have stuck. Not that
this is a modern principle of law; but a modern court under the same
rules as this old court would have held with Menzies. The president
of the council, the provincial council constituting this court of
admiralty, hemmed and hawed and fudged by.
Menzies was both a lawyer and a man, but he really had no court to
try his case in. All the council could see was a case of piracy, and
away with technicalities. That would be all right, of course, if
technicalities did not exist for the protection of the innocent. Quelch
was guilty, no doubt, according to the gossip blowing about Boston, but
innocent so far as the court in its particular province was concerned.
Quelch didn’t say much. If he had he would not have done himself much
good. It is fair to say on behalf of the court that though it erred in
admitting Pimer, Clifford and Parrot as witnesses, there was a fair
showing of other proof which went to help the State’s case, though that
does not exonerate the court from the use of improper procedure in the
particular which has been shown.
“Guilty,” said the council. Cæsar-Pompey and the other negroes were
discharged along with the handful of men who showed they had sailed
under a sort of compulsion.
Twenty men, including Quelch, were sentenced to die; and of these,
six were hanged on “Charles River, Boston side, June 30, 1704.” They
were John Quelch, John Lambert, Christopher Scudamore (the cooper who
boasted of shooting Captain Bastian), John Miller, Erasmus Peterson and
Peter Roach (the automaton). The record is silent as to the fate of the
remaining fourteen; possibly their sentences were commuted.
The end of the matter is best told by one who saw it.
“On Friday, the 30th of June, 1704, pursuant to orders in the death
warrant, the aforesaid pirates were guarded from the prison in Boston,
by forty musketeers, constables of the town, the provost-marshal and
his officers, with two ministers, who took great pains to prepare
them for the last article of their lives. Being allowed to walk on
foot through the town, to Scarlet’s wharf, where the silver oar being
carried before them, they went by water to the place of execution,
being crowded and thronged on all sides with multitudes of spectators.
“At the place of execution, they then severally spoke as follows,
_viz._:
“1. CAPTAIN JOHN QUELCH. The last words he spoke to one of the
ministers at his going up the stage, were, ‘I am not afraid of death;
I am not afraid of the gallows; but I am afraid of what follows; I am
afraid of a great God and a judgment to come.’
“But he afterwards seemed to brave it out too much against that fear;
also when on the stage, first he pulled off his hat, and bowed to
the spectators, and not concerned, nor behaving himself so much like
a dying man as some would have done. The ministers had, in the way
to his execution, much desired him to glorify God at his death, by
bearing a due testimony against the sins that had ruined him, and for
the ways of religion which he had much neglected. Yet now being called
upon to speak what he had to say, it was but thus much, ‘Gentlemen,
it is but little I have to speak; what I have to say is this, I
desire to be informed for what I am here; I am condemned only upon
circumstances; I forgive all the world, so the Lord be merciful to my
soul.’
“When Lambert was warning the spectators to beware of bad company
Quelch joining said, ‘They should also take care how they brought
money into New England, to be hanged for it.’
“2. JOHN LAMBERT. He appeared much hardened, and pleaded much on his
innocency; he desired all men to beware of bad company; he seemed
in great agony near his execution; he called much and frequently on
Christ for pardon of sin, that God Almighty would save his innocent
soul; he desired to forgive all the world; his last words were: ‘Lord
forgive my soul. Oh, receive me into eternity. Blessed name of Christ,
receive my soul!’
“3. CHRISTOPHER SCUDAMORE. He appeared very penitent since his
condemnation; was very diligent to improve his time going to and at
the place of execution.
“4. JOHN MILLER. He seemed much concerned, and complained of a great
burden of sins to answer for; expressing often, ‘Lord, what shall I do
to be saved?’
“5. ERASMUS PETERSON. He cried of injustice done him, and said, ‘It is
very hard for so many men’s lives to be taken away for a little gold.’
He often said, ‘His peace was made with God, and his soul would be
with God,’ yet extreme hard to forgive those he said had wronged him;
he told the executioner he was a strong man and prayed to be put out
of misery as soon as possible.
“6. PETER ROACH (the automaton). He seemed little concerned, and said
but little or nothing at all.
“FRANCIS KING was also brought to the place of execution, but
reprieved.”
Many men have many minds. A little circumstance will bring a sense
of moral responsibility to one man; another would seem to awaken to
the fact of morality only by some such final catastrophe as the grim
gallows.