Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Paul Cuffe, a Pequot Indian, During Thirty Years Spent at Sea, and in Travelling in Foreign LandsCuffe, Paul
History
Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Paul Cuffe, a Pequot Indian, During Thirty Years Spent at Sea, and in Travelling in Foreign Lands
Cuffe, Paul
Cuffe, Paul, 1795 or 1796-
About three days after the above action, about 4 o'clock A.M., we
discovered an English frigate, which gave chase to us, and fired
several guns, none of which reached us. This vessel we outsailed and
left far behind by 2 o'clock P.M. Eight days after this chase, we
reached St. Jago, and discharged our freight. Here we tarried three
weeks and sold the brig to a Spanish gentleman. We then took passage in
the American schooner Mary, bound to Alexandria, in the District of
Columbia, upon the river Thames. This vessel had been trading under an
English license, and had been taken by the schooner Rollo of Baltimore.
Her captors were sending her home as a prize. Of this we were not made
acquainted until we had got out to sea. When we set sail, we had nine
men sick with the yellow fever, six of whom died and were consigned to
the vasty deep, after the usual ceremony of the reading of prayers, &c.
We were off the east end of Cuba, when we discovered early in the
morning, a large sail to the eastward, which we took to be an American
man-of-war, but soon found we had been fatally deceived, for she was a
large English sloop-of-war called the Sapho, Capt. O'Brady. She fired a
broad side which sent all hands below except the captain and mate.--She
then stopped firing and run down upon us, and asked us if we did not
know it was war time, to which we answered in the affirmative. She then
run under our lee, and sent her launch and jolly boat with 30 men, who
boarded us. The Capt. having the old license from the British Admiralty
with him, presented it to the boarding master, who immediately went on
deck and informed the Capt. of the sloop that the schooner had a good
license, and was told by the Capt. to overhaul her well, and let her
go, if all was right. The boarding master then went below and told the
Capt. that he would overhaul his trunk, which he refused, but after
some threats from the former, the latter gave up the keys. Search was
then made and a commission from the schooner Rollo was found, and the
uniform coat of the Captain. This took from us all chance of escape,
for immediately after, a prize master and twelve men from the sloop
were sent aboard of us to take charge. The Capt. of the English sloop
then told the prize master to leave all the American sick aboard the
prize, and send the others aboard of his vessel. They then ordered all
our crew aboard the sloop except the second mate and myself, who
feigned ourselves sick.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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