Note 34 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
Captain William Snelgrave, in his A New Account of Guinea and the Slave-Trade, 1754, paints a lively picture of the behaviour and conversation of privateersmen. “I took leave of the Captain and got into my Hammock, tho' I could not sleep in my melancholy Circumstances. Moreover the execrable Oaths and Blasphemies I heard among the Ship's Company shock'd me to such a degree, that in Hell itself I thought there could not be worse; for tho' many seafaring men are given to swearing and taking God's Name in vain, yet I could not have imagined human Nature could ever so far degenerate, as to talk in the manner those abandoned wretches did.” P. 217.