The pirates own book : $b authentic narratives of the most celebrated sea robbersEllms, Charles
History
The pirates own book : $b authentic narratives of the most celebrated sea robbers
Ellms, Charles
Pirates
You are American citizens--this country affords means of instruction to
all: your appearance and your remarks have added evidence that you are
more than ordinarily intelligent; that your education has enabled you to
participate in the advantages of information open to all classes. The
Court will believe that when you were young you looked with strong
aversion on the course of life of the wicked. In early life, in boyhood,
when you heard of the conduct of men, who engaged in robbery--nay more,
when you heard of cold blooded murder--how you must have shrunk from the
recital. Yet now, after having participated in the advantages of
education, after having arrived at full maturity, you stand here as
robbers and murderers.
It is a perilous employment of life that you have followed; in this way
of life the most enormous crimes that man can commit, are MURDER AND
PIRACY. With what detestation would you in early life have looked upon
the man who would have raised his hand against his officer, or have
committed piracy! yet now you both stand here murderers and pirates,
tried and found guilty--you Wansley of the murder of your Captain, and
you, Gibbs, of the murder of your Mate. The evidence has convicted you
of rising in mutiny against the master of the vessel, for that alone,
the law is DEATH!--of murder and robbery on the high seas, for that
crime, the law adjudges DEATH--of destroying the vessel and embezzling
the cargo, even for scuttling and burning the vessel alone the law is
DEATH; yet of all these the evidence has convicted you, and it only
remains now for the Court to pass the sentence of the law. It is, that
you, Thomas J. Wansley and Charles Gibbs be taken hence to the place of
confinement, there to remain in close custody, that thence you be taken
to the place of execution, and on the 22d April next, between the hours
of 10 and 4 o'clock, you be both publicly hanged by the neck until you
are DEAD--and that your bodies be given to the College of Physicians and
Surgeons for dissection.
The Court added, that the only thing discretionary with it, was the time
of execution; it might have ordered that you should instantly have been
taken from the stand to the scaffold, but the sentence has been deferred
to as distant a period as prudent--six weeks. But this time has not been
granted for the purpose of giving you any hope for pardon or commutation
of the sentence;--just as sure as you live till the twenty-second of
April, as surely you will suffer death--therefore indulge not a hope
that this sentence will be changed!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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