The Pirates' Who's Who: Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And BuccaneersGosse, Philip
History
The Pirates' Who's Who: Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers
Gosse, Philip
Pirates
Hanged at Kingston, Jamaica, on February 7th, 1823.
GUY, CAPTAIN.
Commanded the frigate _James_ (fourteen guns, ninety men). Belonged to
Tortuga Island and Jamaica in 1663.
HAINS, RICHARD.
One of Captain Low's crew. When Low took a Portuguese ship at St.
Michael's in the Azores in 1723, he, with unusual kindness, simply burnt
the ship and let the crew go to shore in a boat. While the prisoners were
getting out the boat, Richard Hains happened to be drinking punch out of a
silver tankard at one of the open ports, and took the opportunity to drop
into the boat among the Portuguese and lie down in the bottom, so as to
escape with them. Suddenly remembering his silver tankard, he climbed
back, seized the tankard, and hid again in the boat, somehow, by great
good fortune, being unobserved by those on the ship, and so escaped almost
certain death both for himself and the Portuguese sailors.
HALSEY, CAPTAIN JOHN.
This famous South Sea pirate was born on March 1st, 1670, at Boston, and
received a commission from the Governor of Massachusetts to cruise as a
privateer on the Banks. No sooner was he out of sight of land than Halsey
turned pirate. Taking a ship or two, he sailed to the Canary Islands,
picking up a rich Spanish ship there. He next doubled the Cape of Good
Hope, and paid a call on the "brethren" at Madagascar. He then sailed to
the Red Sea, another happy hunting ground of the pirates, and met a big
Dutch ship armed with sixty guns. Halsey astounded his men by announcing
his sudden determination to attack only Moorish ships in the future. The
indignant crew mutinied, threw Captain Halsey and his chief gunner in
irons, and proceeded to attack the Dutchman. The mutinous pirates got the
worst of the encounter, and released Halsey, who only just managed to get
his ship away. Luck seems to have deserted Halsey for a while, for not a
Moorish ship could he meet with, so much so that his scruples against
taking Christian ships eased enough to permit him to bag a brace of
English ships, the _Essex_ and the _Rising Eagle_.
The captain of the former proved to be a very old and dear friend of
Halsey's quartermaster, and to show a friendly feeling, Halsey allowed the
captain to keep all his personal belongings. Nevertheless, they took a
comfortable booty, comprising some fifty thousand pounds in English gold,
out of the _Essex_, and another ten thousand out of the _Rising Eagle_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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