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Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period

Note 1 — CASES OF JOHN ROSE ARCHER AND OTHERS.

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This and the ensuing documents, nos. 119-122, are taken from the Massachusetts Archives, vol. 63, pp. 341-360, with some omissions of repetitious matter. Judge Sewall notes in his diary, May 1, 1724, "After Lecture I heard the good News of Andrew Harradine and others rising up and subjugating Phillips the Pirat". Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., XLVII. 335, where extracts telling the story are transcribed from the Boston News-Letter of Apr. 16, May 7, and May 21. Cheesman threw John Nutt, the master of the pirate ship, overboard; "Harradine struck down [John] Phillips the Captain with an Adds, and another man struck Burrell the Boatswain with a Broad Ax; and the rest fell upon James [or Joseph] Sparks the Gunner, and having in a few Minutes dispatched the said Four Officers, the rest of the Pirates immediately surrendered themselves Prisoners". The result of the trials here recorded was that William White and John Rose Archer the quartermaster were condemned to die, William Phillips (not the pirate captain), and William Taylor were reprieved and later pardoned, the others were acquitted. Acts and Resolves of Mass. Bay, X. 627, see also X. 437. A vivid account of the whole affair is given in the second edition of Johnson, General History of the Pyrates, pp. 396-410; another, in A Narration of the Captivity of John Fillmore, and his Escape from the Pirates (Johnstown, N.Y., 1806).

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