United States or Papua New Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Do you remember that during the earlier days of the recent war with Spain this occurrence frequently took place? In the Caribbean waters a Spanish merchantman would be overtaken by an American warship. A few shots were sent over the bows of the merchantman with a demand for surrender. And then the Spanish flag was seen to drop from the merchantman's masthead in token of surrender.
Most of these men were more or less wounded and bandaged, for the crew of the merchantman they had attacked had offered a desperate resistance, knowing well the fate in store for them if captured. The said merchantman, a large brig, sailed close alongside of the pirate vessel with a prize crew on board.
Of my birth and parentage I know nothing, and my earliest recollections carry me back to the period when I was a boy on board a Trebizond merchantman, at a time when I was just recovering from what is called the Asia fever, a malady that often attacks those who come from the north of the Black Sea to the Asia coast to live.
And then a Levantine gale drove the crippled merchantman down on the Barbary coast. The blackness of that storm ended, for Nicholas Gay, in a plunge into the black waters and a glimpse of the high lantern of his father's ship dancing above the tossing foam like a witch-fire, for an instant before she went down.
The poor fellow commanding the schooner had by this time found out his mistake and immediately came on board, where, instead of being lauded for his gallantry, I am sorry to say he was roundly rated for his want of discernment in mistaking his Majesty's cruiser for a Yankee merchantman. Next forenoon we arrived at Nassau.
It furnished the ships touching there, now a merchantman, now a pirate, with horses and with wild pigs, the flesh of which had a well-known reputation for delicacy of flavour. Here was also a good supply of pure fresh water, as well as of some European fruits, such as apples, peaches, and cherries, the growth of trees planted here by those who first took possession of the island.
"No, no, captain; take her, and give us one fourth." Captain Small was delighted with his new employer's liberality, and the name Despair was changed to Hope. The vessel soon became famous as a merchantman all over the world. Her honest master, Captain Small, became wealthy, at the same time increasing the wealth of the owners. Robert and Ester Goffe were married one year after the death of Mrs.
If we fell in with a merchantman, we plundered her; and instead of going on the coast for slaves, we lay in wait for the smaller vessels returning home, when we used to take the slaves out of them, sometimes paying them in goods, and sometimes, if we were not afraid of detection, refusing them any recompense, and threatening to sink them if they dared to complain.
In former years, the Trebizond merchantman took on board his cargo of young and lovely Circassians, and navigated the Black Sea with a flowing sheet and a flag flying at his peak, which told his business and the commerce that he was engaged in; now the trade is contraband, and the slave ship has to pick its way cautiously about the island of Crimea, and keep a sharp lookout to avoid the Russian war steamers that skirt the entire coast, and keep up a never-ceasing blockade from the Georgian shore to the ancient port of Anapa.
I estimated that the distance of the stranger from us was then some twenty-five miles, and if she was making a speed of eight knots which was a fairly liberal allowance it would afford us ample time to drift fairly athwart her hawse; and this I hoped to do undiscovered, as I believed that, from the cut of her canvas, she was a merchantman belonging to one or another of our enemies, and I was most anxious that she should not take fright and bear up for either of the islands, involving us in a long stern-chase, with possibly a cutting-out job at the end of it if she should succeed in reaching the refuge of a harbour.