He had the pleasure of seeing several of his old shipmates of the
_Mexican_ brought into Montego Bay, whence they were carried to
Kingston and ceremoniously hanged by the neck. Among them was Baltizar,
pilot of the pirate schooner, and in the words of Captain Lincoln:
“He was an old man, and as Jamieson said, it was a melancholy and
heart-rending sight to see him borne to execution with those gray
hairs which might have been venerable in virtuous old age, now a
reproach and shame to this hoary villain, for he was full of years
and old in iniquity.”
You may be sure that the picaresque Scotch rover, who had been so
faithful and kind, found a warm welcome at the fireside of Captain
Lincoln and in the taverns of the Boston waterside. He was contented
to lead the humdrum life of virtue and sailed with the skipper as mate
in a new schooner on several voyages to the West Indies. In his later
years he tired of the offshore trade and joined the fishing-fleet out
of Hingham during the summer months, while in the winter he taught
navigation to the young sailors of the neighborhood who aspired to rise
to a mate’s or master’s berth.
His grave is on the shore of Cape Cod, and as Captain Lincoln wrote of
him, “Peace to his ashes. They rest in a strange land, far from his
kindred and his native country.”
According to his own account, Jamieson was of a very respectable family
in Greenock. His father was a cloth merchant of considerable wealth,
but being left an orphan, he had run away to sea and engaged in an
astonishing variety of adventures. Of him Captain Lincoln said:
He had received a polite education and was of a very gentlemanly
deportment. He spoke several languages and was skilled in
drawing and painting. He had travelled extensively and his wide
fund of information made him a most entertaining companion. His
observations on the character of different nations were very
liberal; with a playful humorousness quite free from bigotry and
narrow prejudice.
An entertaining companion and philosopher, indeed, whose outlook had
been mellowed by the broadening influence of piracy, and you and I
would like nothing better than to have sat down with this reformed
gentleman of fortune a hundred years ago and listened to his playful
comments on the virtues and the vices of mankind, and his wondrous
yarns of men and ships and the winds that tramp the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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