Rackam stood off towards the island of Bermuda, and took a ship bound to England from Carolina, and a small pink from New England, and brought them to the Bahama Islands, where with the pitch, tar, and stores, they clean’d again, and refitted their own vessel; but staying too long in that neighbourhood, Captain Rogers, who was Governor of Providence, hearing of these ships being taken, sent out a sloop well mann’d and arm’d, which retook both the prizes, and in the meanwhile the pirate had the good fortune to escape.
From hence they sailed to the back of Cuba, where Rackam kept a little kind of a family, at which place, they stayed a considerable time, living ashore with their Delilahs, till their money and provision were expended, and then they concluded it time to look out: they repaired to their vessel, and was making ready to put sea, when a guardacosta came in with a small English sloop, which she had taken as an interloper on the coast. The Spanish guardship attack’d the pirate, but Rackam being close in behind a little island, she could do but little execution where she lay, therefore the Spaniard warps into the channel that evening, in order to make sure of her the next morning. Rackam finding his case desperate, and hardly any possibility of escaping, resolved to attempt the following enterprise: the Spanish prize lying for better security close into the land, between the little island and the main; Rackam takes his crew into the boat, with their pistols and cutlashes, rounds the little island, and falls aboard their prize silently in the dead of the night, without being discovered, telling the Spaniards that were aboard of her, that if they spoke a word, or made the least noise, they were dead men, and so became master of her; when this was done, he slipt her cable, and drove out to sea: the Spanish man-of-war, was so intent upon their expected prize, that they minded nothing else, and as soon as day broke, made a furious fire upon the empty sloop, but it was not long before they were rightly apprized of the matter, and cursed themselves for fools, to be bit out of a good rich prize, as she prov’d to be, and to have nothing but an old crazy hull in the room of her.
Rackam and his crew had no occasion to be displeased at the exchange, that enabled them to continue some time longer in a way of life that suited their depraved tempers: in , we find him at sea again, scouring the harbours and inlets of the north and west parts of Jamaica, where he took several small craft, which proved no great booty to the rovers, but they had but few men, and therefore they were obliged to run at low game, till they could increase their company.
In the beginning of , they took seven or eight fishing boats in Harbour Island, stole their nets and other tackle, and then went off the French part of Hispaniola, and landed, and took cattle away, with two or three Frenchmen they found near the waterside, hunting of wild hogs in the evening: the Frenchmen came on board, whether by consent or compulsion, I can’t say. They afterwards plundered two sloops, and returned to Jamaica, on the north coast of which island, near Porto Maria Bay, they took a schooner, Thomas Spenlow Master; it was then the . The next day, Rackam seeing a sloop in Dry Harbour Bay, he stood in and fired a gun; the men all run ashore, and he took the sloop and lading, but when those ashore found them to be pirates, they hailed the sloop, and let them know they were all willing to come aboard of them.
Rackam’s coasting the island in this manner, proved fatal to him, for intelligence came to the Governor, of his expedition, by a canoa which he had surprised ashore, in Ocho Bay; upon which a sloop was immediately fitted out, and sent round the island in quest of him, commanded by Captain Barnet, with a good number of hands. Rackam rounding the island, and drawing near the westernmost point, called Point Negril, saw a small pettiauger, which at sight of the sloop, run ashore and landed her men; when one of them hailed her, answer was made, they were Englishmen, and desired the pettiauger’s men to come on board, and drink a bowl of punch, which they were prevailed upon to do; accordingly the company came all aboard of the pirate, consisting of nine persons, in an ill hour; they were armed with muskets and cutlashes, but, what was their real design by so doing, I shall not take upon me to say; but they had no sooner laid down their arms, and taken up their pipes, but Barnet’s sloop, which was in pursuit of Rackam’s, came in sight.
The pirates finding she stood directly towards her, fear’d the event, and weighed their anchor, which they but lately let go, and stood off: Captain Barnet gave them chase, and having the advantage of little breezes of wind, which blew off the land, came up with her, and, after a very small dispute, took her, and brought her into Port Royal, in Jamaica.
In about a fortnight after the prisoners were brought ashore, viz. , a court of admiralty was held at St. Jago de la Vega, before which the following persons were convicted, and sentence of death passed upon them, by the president, Sir Nicholas Laws, viz. John Rackam Captain, George Fetherston Master, Richard Corner Quartermaster, John Davis, John Howell, Patrick Carty, Thomas Earl, James Dobbin and Noah Harwood. The five first were executed the next day at Gallows Point, at the town of Port Royal, and the rest, the day after, at Kingston; Rackam, Fetherston and Corner, were afterwards taken down and hang’d
