The Scottish Privy Council were now formally apprised of the affair,
which they cautiously handed over to the Admiralty. The Scottish
company had for about three years bewailed the absence of a ship of
their own, the 'Speedy Return,' which had never returned at all. Her
skipper was a Captain Drummond, who had been very active in the Darien
expedition; her surgeon was Mr. Andrew Wilkie, brother of James
Wilkie, tailor and burgess of Edinburgh. The pair were most probably
descendants of the Wilkie, tailor in the Canongate, who was mixed up
in the odd business of Mr. Robert Oliphant, in the Gowrie conspiracy
of 1600. Friends of Captain Drummond, Surgeon Wilkie, and others who
had disappeared in the 'Speedy Return,' began to wonder whether the
crew of the 'Worcester,' in their wanderings, had ever come across
news of the missing vessel. One George Haines, of the 'Worcester,'
hearing of a Captain Gordon, who was the terror of French privateers,
said: 'Our sloop was more terrible upon the coast of Malabar than
ever Captain Gordon will be to the French.' Mackenzie asking Haines if
he had ever heard of the 'Speedy Return,' the missing ship, Haines
replied: 'You need not trouble your head about her, for I believe you
won't see her in haste.' He thought that Captain Drummond had turned
pirate.
Haines now fell in love with a girl at Bruntisland, aged nineteen,
named Anne Seaton, and told her a number of things, which she promised
to repeat to Mackenzie, but disappointed him, though she had blabbed
to others. It came to be reported that Captain Green had pirated the
'Speedy Return,' and murdered Captain Drummond and his crew. The Privy
Council, in January 1705, took the matter up. A seal, or forged copy
of the seal, of the Scottish African and East India Company was found
on board the 'Worcester,' and her captain and crew were judicially
interrogated, after the manner of the French _Juge d'Instruction_.
On March 5, 1705, the Scottish Court of Admiralty began the trial of
Green and his men. Charles May, surgeon of the 'Worcester,' and two
negroes, Antonio Ferdinando, cook's mate, and Antonio Francisco,
captain's man, were ready to give evidence against their comrades.
They were accused of attacking, between February and May, 1703, off
the coast of Malabar a vessel bearing a red flag, and having English
or Scots aboard. They pursued her in their sloop, seized and killed
the crew, and stole the goods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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