Mr. May’s premonition was justified by the event. On Wednesday,
November 26, 1696, at Execution Dock--which overlooks the Thames
at Blackwall, and was the usual place of punishment for Admiralty
felons--he and his fellow defendants were hanged.
Reading his quaint story (which in substance was his evidence at his
trial) we get the idea that if he and his fellow accused were to be
convicted at all it should have been for the capture of the _Gunsway_
and not for the theft of the _Charles the Second_. Mr. May is borne out
by the record when he says that he was convicted of the latter offense
by the five words of Mate Gravet: to wit, that May knew of the plot.
But there was no proof to support Gravet’s statement other than the
word of one Creagh, to whom, as we have seen, Mr. May rather bitterly
alludes, and accuses of seeking to serve his own interest in a serious
scrape in which he had become involved. Creagh would seem quite
unreliable. He had been one of the men who had left the _Charles the
Second_ at the Groyne, on Henry Avery’s invitation to all who had not
spirit enough to go along with him and collect their back pay to
depart more or less in peace. Reaching England again, he fell in with
an adventurous young chap by the name of Vaughan, who was then signing
men on the _Loyal Clancarty_, a small sloop which Vaughan planned to,
and did, turn over to the service of the then exiled Stuart king,
James the Second, and in which Vaughan disturbed the shipping of the
government until he was run down and captured in the Channel, after a
fight in which the attackers had to wade to the _Clancarty_ through
the shallows, with their weapons over their heads to keep them dry. He
and his crew were taken first to Dover Castle, where the warden who
registered them remarked that most of them were drunk at the time,
to be removed later to Newgate, in which latter prison, by what was
certainly a very odd circumstance, Creagh again met old shipmates of
the _Charles the Second_ from whom he had parted at the Groyne. With
the terrible charge of high treason lying upon him, Creagh saw his
chance and, expecting thus to purchase clemency in his own affair,
eagerly proffered his testimony against the alleged pirates, and was
accepted. Thus there was a great premium upon the conviction of Mr. May
and the others.
His character was brought out most damagingly at his own later trial on
the Vaughan business, during which his own brother was forced to take
the stand and brand him a liar and a rogue; a petty, sneaking rascal,
apparently, who did not hesitate to pilfer the poor resources of his
relatives.
He might have been telling the truth about Mr. May, but surely not
beyond a doubt.
If he is eliminated, then it was only a case of Gravet’s word against
Mr. May’s. There is nothing to be said against Gravet; he was under no
charge, no peculiar advantage would be his for furthering a conviction,
and his testimony was given in a pretty straightforward, manly sort
of way. But Mr. May argues that the situation at the Groyne itself
supports his own explanation of his conduct,--that the boat which Avery
allowed to leave with those who were unwilling to go could not possibly
hold the whole company of the brig and that he was one of those thus
forced to stay behind.
It must be remembered, as Mr. May points out, that he and his
co-defendants had already been tried and acquitted of the piracy of the
_Gunsway_, where, although it is not reported, that trial must have
been more likely, in the nature of things, to result in a conviction,
for Mr. May admits that he was an accomplice in that crime, though
present under a sort of duress. That the government was shocked at
the verdict in that case is very plain from the words of the judges
and prosecutors in the second case, where as Mr. May indicates,
extraordinary pressure was brought to bear to keep the jury from
straying out of the way as did the former one.
Somehow, Mr. May’s account lacks an ultimate convincingness, but it
may be said for him at this late day that, technically, there is a
very grave doubt of his guilt. His is the story of old dog Tray:
willingly or unwillingly, he was in bad company and to that unfortunate
circumstance he must lay a large portion of his misfortunes.
And what befell the naughty Henry Avery?
Mr. May’s narrative cannot give us that information because Mr. May
never saw his captain after they separated in the West Indies. At the
turn of the new century, we know he was still in the black books of
the British Admiralty, for an Act of Grace--that is a blanket pardon
to all pirates who should give up their wicked ways by such and such a
date--issued a few years after Mr. May’s demise, specifically excepts
from its clement scope, “William Kidd and Henry Every, alias Bridgman.”
Now, a yarn is told of the end of Henry Avery, which may be summarized
for what it is worth--probably not very much--for it is outside of
judicial records and consequently corrupted by legend. The effect of it
is that Avery continued in the West Indies, pirating the Spanish Main,
even to the Carolinas, until, satisfied that he had finally earned
a competence and an honorable retirement and with something of that
longing for home which is not altogether absent, apparently, from even
a pirate’s tattooed bosom, he decided to turn him again home.
He had an embarrassment of riches, if ever a man had. According to the
story, he had bags of diamonds taken from the _Gunsway_, of fabulous
value. Mr. May’s trial suggests that the loot of that ship was money,
and nobody says anything about diamonds, but the historian we are now,
with a caution, quoting says it was diamonds, and diamonds it shall be.
In due time, he got back to Bristol, but now found that he could not
sell his diamonds without incurring suspicion as an evil-doer. He tried
Ireland, as a place where folks might be less shrewdly curious, but he
discovered that the Irish were as much struck as the English by the
incongruity, say, of an egg-sized diamond flashing and coruscating in
a scarred and pitchy palm,--a feeling not immediately dispelled by the
extraordinarily sinister face above them.
Back to England--truly a millionaire tramp--where he foolishly resolved
to put his trust in merchants. Behind their aldermanic robes and
unimpeachable integrity, he expected to be able to put his unique
stock-in-trade on the market, which, indeed, he seems to have done, but
when he solicited his corpulent agents for an accounting he was met by
great round eyes and insulted mouths.
“Diamonds? What are you talking about? Diamonds? Begone, you rogue,
what do we know of diamonds.”
It sounds like some aspects of human nature, but whether it is history,
is not for us to vouch.
So Henry stewed a trip or two in a coasting forecastle,--where, had he
a mind to, he could have told the simple seamen a thrilling story of
the sea,--and then curled up and died, “not worth a groat.”
Morally, at any rate.