One of Captain Bartholomew's crew in the _Royal Fortune_. Captured by H.M.S. _Swallow_ off the West Coast of Africa. He had been terribly burnt by an explosion of a barrel of gunpowder, and while seated "in a private corner, with a look as sullen as winter," a surgeon of the king's ship came up and asked him how he came to be blown up in that frightful manner. "Why," says he, "John Morris fired a pistol into the powder, and if he had not done it, I would." The surgeon, with great kindness, offered to dress the prisoner's wounds, but Ball, although in terrible pain, refused to allow them to be touched. He died the same night. BALLET, JOHN. Buccaneer. Third mate on board Woodes Rogers's ship, the _Duke_, but was by profession a surgeon, in which latter capacity he had sailed on a previous voyage with Dampier. BALTIZAR, CAPTAIN. A terror to all shipping in the Gulf of Mexico in the early part of the nineteenth century. Brought to Boston as a prisoner in 1823, taken thence to Kingston, Jamaica, and there hanged. For some extraordinary reason the American juries seldom would condemn a pirate to death, so that whenever possible the pirate prisoners were handed over to the English, who made short shift with them. BANNISTER, CAPTAIN. Ran away from Port Royal, Jamaica, in June, 1684, on a "privateering" venture in a ship of thirty guns. Caught and brought back by the frigate _Ruby_, and put on trial by the Lieutenant-Governor Molesworth, who was at that time very active in his efforts to stamp out piracy in the West Indies. Bannister entirely escaped punishment, capital or otherwise, as he was released by the grand jury on a technical point, surely most rare good fortune for the captain in days when the law was elastic enough to fit most crimes, and was far from lenient on piracy. Six months later the indefatigable captain again eluded the forts, and for two years succeeded in dodging the frigates sent out by Governor Molesworth to capture him. Finally, in January, 1687, Captain Spragge sailed victoriously into Port Royal with Bannister and three other buccaneers hanging at the yard-arm, "a spectacle of great satisfaction to all good people, and of terror to the favourers of pirates." BARBAROSSA, or "REDBEARD" (his real name was URUJ). Barbary Corsair. Son of a Turkish renegade and a Christian mother. Born in the Island of Lesbon in the AEgean Sea, a stronghold of the Mediterranean pirates.