It was the latter end of Queen Anne's War when they sailed to Jamaica, and during the time they were out, took two Spanish galleons very richly laden. Their first engagement was obstinate and bloody, and he, though a boy, was dangerously hurt as he bustled about one way or another as the captain commanded him. The second prize carried 74 guns and 650 men, yet the _Salisbury_ (but a 60-gun ship) took her without the loss of a single man; only a woman, who was the only one on board, going to peep at the engagement, had her head and shoulders shot off. Burk said the prize money of each sailor came but to £15, but some of the officers shared so handsomely as never to be obliged to go to sea again, being enabled to live easily on shore. Three years he continued in the West Indies, and there (especially in Jamaica) he learned so much wickedness that when he came home, hardly any of the gangs into which he entered were half so bad, though inured to plunder, as he when he came amongst them a fresh man. From this voyage he went another in the slave trade to the coast of Guinea. Here he endured very great hardships, especially when he had the misfortune to be on board where the negroes rose upon the English, and had like to have overcome them; but at last having been vanquished, and tied down in a convenient place, they were used with severity enough. Upon his return into England from this voyage, he went into the Baltic in the _Worcester_ man-of-war, in which he suffered prodigious hardships from the coldness of the climate and other difficulties he went through. The many miseries he had experienced in a life at sea might possibly have induced him to the resolution he made of never going on ship-board any more. How he came to take to robbing does not very clearly appear, further than that he was induced thereto by bad women; but he behaved himself with very great cruelty, for going over the first field from Stepney, armed with a hedging-bill, he attacked one William Fitzer, and robbed him of his jacket, tobacco-box, a knife and fork, etc. He robbed, also, one James Westwood, of a coat and ten shillings in money; last of all, attacking John Andrews and Robert his son, coming over the fields, he dove the old man down. His son taking up the stick boldly attacked Burk, and a neighbour, one Perkinson, coming in at the noise, he was overpowered and apprehended. As the fact was very plainly proved, he was on a short trial convicted, and the barbarity of the fact being so great, left no room for his being omitted in the warrant for execution.