So that to secure themselves against any mad desperate undertaking of theirs, they strongly barricado’d the gun-room, and made another prison before it; an officer, with pistols and cutlashes, doing duty, night and day, and the prisoners within, manacled and shackled.
They would yet in these circumstances be impudently merry, saying, when they viewed their nakedness, that they had not left them a halfpenny, to give old Charon, to ferry them over Styx: and at their thin commons, they would observe, that they fell away so fast, that they should not have weight left to hang them. Sutton used to be very profane; he happening to be in the same irons with another prisoner, who was more serious than ordinary, and read and pray’d often, as became his condition; this man Sutton used to swear at, and ask him, what he proposed by so much noise and devotion? Heaven, says the other, I hope. Heaven, you fool, says Sutton, did you ever hear of any pirates going thither? Give me H‑ll, it’s a merrier place; I’ll give Roberts a salute of 13 guns at entrance. And when he found such ludicrous expressions had no effect on him, he made a formal complaint, and requested that the officer would either remove this man, or take his prayerbook away, as a common disturber.
A combination and conspiracy was formed, betwixt Moody, Ashplant, Magnes, Mare, and others, to rise, and kill the officers, and run away with the ship. This they had carried on by means of a mulatto boy, who was allow’d to attend them, and proved very trusty in his messages, between the principals; but the evening of that night they were to have made this struggle, two of the prisoners that sat next to Ashplant, heard the boy whisper them upon the project, and naming to him the hour they should be ready, presently gave notice of it to the captain, which put the ship in an alarm, for a little time; and, on examination, several of them had made shift to break off, or lose, their shackles, (no doubt for such purpose;) but it tended only to procure to themselves worse usage and confinement.
In the same passage to Cape Corso, the prize, Royal Fortune, was in the same danger. She was left at the island of St. Thomas, in the possession of an officer, and a few men, to take in some fresh provisions, (which were scarce at Cape Corso) with orders to follow the ship. There were only some of the pirates’ Negroes, three or four wounded prisoners, and Scudamore, their surgeon; from whom they seemed to be under no apprehension, especially from the last, who might have hoped for favour, on account of his employ; and had stood so much indebted for his liberty, eating and drinking constantly with the officer; yet this fellow, regardless of the favour, and lost to all sense of reformation, endeavoured to bring over the Negroes to his design of murdering the people, and running away with the ship. He easily prevailed with the Negroes to come into the design; but when he came to communicate it to his fellow prisoners, and would have drawn them into the same measures, by telling them, he understood navigation, that the Negroes were stout fellows, and by a smattering he had in the Angolan language, he had found willing to undertake such an enterprise; and that it was better venturing to do this, run down the coast, and raise a new company, than to proceed to Cape Corso, and be hanged like a dog, and sun dry’d. One of them abhorring the cruelty, or fearing the success, discovered it to the officer, who made him immediately a prisoner, and brought the ship safe.
When they came to be lodg’d in Cape Corso Castle, their hopes of this kind all cut off, and that they were assured they must there soon receive a final sentence; the note was changed among most of them, and from vain insolent jesting, they became serious and devout, begging for good books, and joining in public prayers, and singing of Psalms, twice at least every day.
As to their trials, if we should give them at length, it may appear tedious to the reader, for which reason, I have, for the avoiding tautology and repetition, put as many of them together as were try’d for the same fact, reserving the circumstances which are most material, with observations on the dying behaviour of such of them, as came to my knowledge.
And first, it may be observed from the list, that a great part of these pirate ships crews, were men entered on the coast of Africa, not many months before they were taken; from whence, it may be concluded, that the pretended constraint of Roberts, on them, was very often a complotment between parties equally willing: and this Roberts several times openly declared, particularly to the Onslow’s people, whom he called aft, and ask’d of them, who was willing to go, for he
