#PIRATE MUTINY TRIAL#
One wonders what his response was his trial testimony only says that “I replied short”. The man on watch aboard the James, first mate Thomas Druit, was not in on the scheme. He rowed over in a longboat and delivered the password: a reference to a “drunken boatswain”. Meanwhile, another mutineer was delivering word to the James that tonight was the night. Creagh then went to bed, leaving the mutineers to fortify their courage with drink. Second Mate Creagh joined the men for a brief drink, and William May proposed a toast “to the health of the captain and the prosperity of our voyage.” It seems a bit of an odd toast, given the circumstances, and it’s easy to read it as a taunt. Another was William May, a middle-aged man who seems rather cleverer than most of his peers. One of Charles’ two second mates, David Creagh, encountered a group of men enjoying a drink down below. Captain Gibson of the Charles II was sick in bed, supposedly of a fever, but perhaps just dead drunk. On the night of May 7th, the mutineers took action. But others were aboard another ship in the expedition called the James. Their leader was Henry Every, first mate aboard the Charles II, and many of the conspirators were aboard that same ship. They’d heard tales of the fabulous riches awaiting pirates who preyed on the treasure vessels of the Mughal Empire in India and they wanted a piece. These men, numbering at least two dozen, had no intention of waiting without pay at anchor in Spain to be sold into slavery. In May of 1694, a conspiracy of sailors plotted action. I’m tempted to speculate that the Spanish government might have gotten wind of the expedition’s privateer inclinations and deliberately engineered this situation, but I have absolutely no evidence to back that up. Some of the sailors feared the Spaniards would sell them into slavery. He declared the expedition out of his control and that the sailors were now wards of the King of Spain and none of his concern. But the Parliamentarian was well-connected enough to escape his contracts. After several months, some of the families took him to court, asking for their husbands’ back wages. Back in Britain, Houblon’s promised aid for the sailors’ families also failed to materialize. Houblon sent word back that the petitioners should be locked in the brig. Some of the sailors circulated a petition asking for their pay and sent it back to James Houblon in England. Neither did the sailors’ wages, which were contracted to be paid twice annually. Weeks passed and the paperwork never materialized. In late 1693, the expedition stopped at the port of A Coruña in Spain to take on supplies and handle some paperwork, probably about the salvage or the arms deal. The Spanish Expedition ran into problems almost immediately.
There were a number of differences between this frigate and the Charles II, but it gives a sense of her. The first mate aboard Charles II will later be the protagonist of our story, a Devonshire seaman named Henry Every. The original captain of the Charles II had previously conducted a successful salvage operation off Hispaniola – though he would die soon after leaving port and be replaced by an alcoholic named Charles Gibson. Plus, if the ships did turn privateer, survivors could expect a share of the booty.
Houblon offered good wages and promised to look after the sailors’ families while they were away. The four crews of the Spanish Expedition drew from the finest sailors in Britain. After the mutiny, the mutineers would remove her protruding forecastle and aftercastle, making her even faster – genuinely uncatchable. By the standards of her time, she was a marvel: heavily-armed for her size and as fast as anything else on the water. She was a little more than a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide at the waist. And if, while they were down there, relations between Britain and Spain soured, the ships could use their remaining cannons to do a little privateering: state-sponsored piracy.Ĭhief among the four ships was the Charles II, an uncommonly fast 46-gun frigate built specifically for this expedition. Hurricanes had sunk many Spanish treasure fleets in the Caribbean and Houblon and his investors believed they could recover the bullion lying in wrecks on the ocean floor. Houblon’s Spanish Expedition would consist of four ships, heavily laden with cannon, which would sail for the Caribbean, sell some of their cannon to the Spanish military there, and then conduct salvage operations. In an era where the British East India Company was making money hand over fist in the Indian Ocean, Houblon and his fellow investors thought they’d try a scheme of their own in the Caribbean.
The ship in question was part of the so-called Spanish Expedition masterminded by the rich British Member of Parliament James Houblon.
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