Chapter III: Of Captain Bartholomew Roberts and

HIS CREW.

His beginning--Elected captain in the room of
Davis--The speech of Lord Dennis at the
election--Lord Sympton objects against a
papist--The death of Davis revenged--Roberts sails
southward in quest of adventures--The names of the
prizes taken by them--Brazil described--Roberts
falls into a fleet of Portuguese--Boards and
takes the richest ship amongst them--Make the
Devil’s Islands--An unfortunate adventure of
Roberts--Kennedy’s treachery--Irishmen excluded
by Roberts and his crew--Articles sworn to by
them--A copy of them--Some account of the laws and
customs of the pirates--An instance of Roberts’s
cunning--He proceeds again upon business, and takes
prizes--Narrowly escapes being taken--Sails for
the Island Dominico--Another escape--Sails for
Newfoundland--Plunders, sinks, and burns twenty-two
sail in the harbour of Trepassi--Plunders ten sail
of Frenchmen--The mad behaviour of the crew--A
correspondence hinted at--The pirates caressed
at the island of St. Bartholomew--In extreme
distress--Sail for Martinico--A stratagem of
Roberts--The insolent device in his colours--Odd
compliment paid to Roberts--Three men desert the
pirates, and are taken by them--Their trial--Two
executed and one saved--The brigantine deserts
them--Great divisions in the company--A description
of Serra Leone River--The names of English
settled there, and way of life--The _Onslow_
belonging to the African Company taken--The
pirates’ contempt of soldiers--They are for
entertaining a chaplain--Their skirmish with the
Calabar negroes--The _King Solomon_, belonging
to the African Company taken--The frolics of
the pirates--Take eleven sail in Whydah Road--A
comical receipt given by the pirates--A cruel
action of Roberts--Sails for Anna Bona--The
progress of the _Swallow_ man-of-war, in pursuit
of Roberts--Roberts’s consort taken--The bravery
of Skyrme, a Welsh pirate--The surly humour of
some of the prisoners--The _Swallow_ comes up with
Roberts--Roberts’s dress described--Is killed--His
character--His ship taken--The behaviour of the
pirates when prisoners--A conspiracy of theirs
discovered--Reflections on the manner of trying
them--The form of the commission for trying the
pirates--The oath taken by the commissioners--The
names of those arraigned taken in the ship
_Ranger_--The form of the indictment--The
sum of the evidence against them--Their
defence--The names of the prisoners of the _Royal
Fortune_--Proceedings against them--Harry Glasby
acquitted--The particular trial of Captain James
Skyrme--Of John Walden--Of Peter Scudamore--Of
Robert Johnson--Of George Wilson--Of Benjamin
Jeffries--Of John Mansfield--Of William Davis--The
names of those executed at Cape Corso--The petition
of some condemned--The court’s resolution--The
form of an indenture of a pardoned pirate--The
names of those pardoned upon indenture to serve
seven years--The pirates how disposed of--The dying
behaviour of those executed 275