Note (return) — Chapter VII

The Danish governor of St. Thomas, whose name was Adolf Esmit, had formerly been himself a privateer, and had used his popularity on the island to eject from authority his brother Nicholas Esmit, the lawful governor. By protecting and encouraging pirates—for a consideration, of course—he proved a bad neighbour to the surrounding English islands. Although he had but 300 or 350 people on St. Thomas, and most of these British subjects, he laid claim to all the Virgin Islands, harboured runaway servants, seamen and debtors, fitted out pirate vessels with arms and provisions, and refused to restore captured ships and crews which the pirates brought into his port.434 The King of Denmark had sent out a new governor, named Everson, to dispossess Esmit, but he did not arrive in the West Indies until October 1684, when with the assistance of an armed sloop which Sir William Stapleton had been ordered by the English Council to lend him, he took possession of St. Thomas and its pirate governor.435