At the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of Philip Ashton
Year: 2016 Language: english Author: Gregory N. Flemming Genre: Fiction Publisher: University Press of New England ISBN: 1611687802 Format: MOBI Quality: eBook Pages count: 256 Description: A handful of sea stories define the American maritime narrative. Stories of whaling, fishing, exploration, naval adventure, and piracy have always captured our imaginations, and the most colorful of these are the tales of piracy. Called America’s real-life Robinson Crusoe, the true story of Philip Ashton―a nineteen-year-old fisherman captured by pirates, impressed as a crewman, subjected to torture and hardship, who eventually escaped and lived as a castaway and scavenger on a deserted island in the Caribbean―was at one time as well known as the tales of Cooper, Hawthorne, and Defoe. Based on a rare copy of Ashton’s 1725 account, Gregory N. Flemming’s vivid portrait recounts this maritime world during the golden age of piracy. Fishing vessels and merchantmen plied the coastal waters and crisscrossed the Atlantic and Caribbean. It was a hard, dangerous life, made more so by both the depredations and temptations of piracy. Chased by the British Royal Navy, blown out of the water or summarily hung when caught, pirate captains such as Edward Low kidnapped, cajoled, beat, and bribed men like Ashton into the rich―but also vile, brutal, and often short―life of the pirate. In the tradition of Nathaniel Philbrick, At the Point of a Cutlass expands on a lost classic narrative of America and the sea, and brings to life a forgotten world of ships and men on both sides of maritime law. Let's hope this time goes a little smoother, I've created the torrent in a 3rd torrent client(folx) that seems to be recommended on here. Upload is unthrottled, I've tried Qbittorrent(created torrent refused to seed even when confirmed it was pointing to correct folder and redownloaded torrent file from here 2x) Transmission(can see peers and was seeding but refused to connect) and lastly vuze(I also unfortunately set all my downloads in this one, it crashes about 6x an hour). If nobody manages to download, can someone who has a decent speed PM me and I'll upload it via a filesharing site for direct DL and they can then start seeding. This edition also contains many maps, and drawings.
Contents
Prologue JULY 19, 1723 Exactly one week before he died, Joseph Libbey stood in court and pleaded his innocence. Libbey had shown the judges a year-old copy of the Boston News Letter, from July 1722, that contained depositions by the captains of three fishing vessels. Those statements, sworn under oath, attested that Libbey was a forced man. But over the past thirteen months, Joseph Libbey had made enough mistakes for the witnesses who testified in court to claim he was in fact guilty of being an active member of a pirate crew that had been terrorizing the Atlantic coast. Libbey fired guns during the pirates’ attacks on other ships, the witnesses said. He was a “stirring, active man among them” and had been seen going aboard captured vessels in search of plunder. The gallows was erected on the long, narrow bar of sand and rock that formed Gravelly Point, at the edge of the harbor in Newport, Rhode Island. A large crowd of people had come to watch the condemned men die—not only Libbey, but twenty-five others accused of being pirates. Libbey was one of the youngest of the men, just twenty-one or twenty-two years old that summer. Before his capture he had been a fisherman from the small village of Marblehead, Massachusetts, where he had grown up. Like some of the other men who stood with him at the gallows, Libbey claimed he was the victim of cruel circumstances. He had not chosen to sail with the pirates; he and many of the others had, in one captive’s words, gone with “the greatest reluctancy and horror of mind and conscience.” In time, however, Joseph Libbey must have given in to the crew’s brutality—the threats, whippings, and beatings—and began helping out when the pirates attacked other vessels at sea. The execution was held shortly after noon on Friday, July 19, 1723. A local minister, Nathaniel Clap, said a final prayer. After that, it was time. Libbey stood on the gallows while a rope was placed around his neck, the thick knot of the noose positioned to the side of his head, under the ear, which was thought to be the most effective placement. When the bodies of the convicted pirates dropped, the ropes snapped tight—but only a few of the twenty-six men died instantly. The rest strangled for a minute or two longer, convulsing and gasping for air as they swung from the ropes. The crowd stood watching the morbid spectacle unfold. The eyes of the men bulged from their heads as they hanged, their lips slowly turning purple. “Oh!” a witness wrote afterwards. “How awful the noise of their dying moans.” Finally, the ropes gripping the men’s necks cut off the supply of blood to their brains and the flow of air to their lungs, and they died. When the sun set on Newport that day, the spectators had witnessed history, one of the largest mass executions ever held in the nearly two hundred years of the American colonial era.1 Two thousand miles away from New England on that summer day, another young man was sitting alone on the ground, surrounded not by a crowd of spectators but by utter solitude. He gazed out at the empty blue sea from a small cay that was no more than a few hundred yards off a remote island at the western edge of the Caribbean. The island had once, long ago, been inhabited by native people, and again later by a small group of British colonists who tried to build a plantation there but failed and left after just a few years. By 1723, the island was wild and desolate, overgrown and uninhabited for the past seventy-five years. The man who was stranded along its quiet, windswept shore was named Philip Ashton. Four months earlier, Ashton had run for his life into the thick, jungle-like woods of the island when his ship stopped there for repairs and fresh water. Now Ashton was completely alone, and the odds of survival were against him. He had no knife, no gun, and no way to make a fire. He was hungry and growing weaker by the day. He hadn’t eaten a cooked meal since he’d escaped on the island and was barely surviving on whatever fruit he could find growing on trees and the raw turtle eggs he could dig out of the sand. “Everything,” Ashton later recorded, “looked with a dismal face.” Ashton’s condition would continue to worsen and within a matter of months, Ashton would be so starved and sick that he would be close to death.
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At the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of Philip Ashton
Language: english
Author: Gregory N. Flemming
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: University Press of New England
ISBN: 1611687802
Format: MOBI
Quality: eBook
Pages count: 256
Description: A handful of sea stories define the American maritime narrative. Stories of whaling, fishing, exploration, naval adventure, and piracy have always captured our imaginations, and the most colorful of these are the tales of piracy. Called America’s real-life Robinson Crusoe, the true story of Philip Ashton―a nineteen-year-old fisherman captured by pirates, impressed as a crewman, subjected to torture and hardship, who eventually escaped and lived as a castaway and scavenger on a deserted island in the Caribbean―was at one time as well known as the tales of Cooper, Hawthorne, and Defoe. Based on a rare copy of Ashton’s 1725 account, Gregory N. Flemming’s vivid portrait recounts this maritime world during the golden age of piracy. Fishing vessels and merchantmen plied the coastal waters and crisscrossed the Atlantic and Caribbean. It was a hard, dangerous life, made more so by both the depredations and temptations of piracy. Chased by the British Royal Navy, blown out of the water or summarily hung when caught, pirate captains such as Edward Low kidnapped, cajoled, beat, and bribed men like Ashton into the rich―but also vile, brutal, and often short―life of the pirate. In the tradition of Nathaniel Philbrick, At the Point of a Cutlass expands on a lost classic narrative of America and the sea, and brings to life a forgotten world of ships and men on both sides of maritime law.
Let's hope this time goes a little smoother, I've created the torrent in a 3rd torrent client(folx) that seems to be recommended on here. Upload is unthrottled, I've tried Qbittorrent(created torrent refused to seed even when confirmed it was pointing to correct folder and redownloaded torrent file from here 2x) Transmission(can see peers and was seeding but refused to connect) and lastly vuze(I also unfortunately set all my downloads in this one, it crashes about 6x an hour). If nobody manages to download, can someone who has a decent speed PM me and I'll upload it via a filesharing site for direct DL and they can then start seeding. This edition also contains many maps, and drawings.
Contents
PrologueJULY 19, 1723
Exactly one week before he died, Joseph Libbey stood in court and pleaded his innocence. Libbey had shown the judges a year-old copy of the Boston News Letter, from July 1722, that contained depositions by the captains of three fishing vessels. Those statements, sworn under oath, attested that Libbey was a forced man. But over the past thirteen months, Joseph Libbey had made enough mistakes for the witnesses who testified in court to claim he was in fact guilty of being an active member of a pirate crew that had been terrorizing the Atlantic coast. Libbey fired guns during the pirates’ attacks on other ships, the witnesses said. He was a “stirring, active man among them” and had been seen going aboard captured vessels in search of plunder.
The gallows was erected on the long, narrow bar of sand and rock that formed Gravelly Point, at the edge of the harbor in Newport, Rhode Island. A large crowd of people had come to watch the condemned men die—not only Libbey, but twenty-five others accused of being pirates. Libbey was one of the youngest of the men, just twenty-one or twenty-two years old that summer. Before his capture he had been a fisherman from the small village of Marblehead, Massachusetts, where he had grown up. Like some of the other men who stood with him at the gallows, Libbey claimed he was the victim of cruel circumstances. He had not chosen to sail with the pirates; he and many of the others had, in one captive’s words, gone with “the greatest reluctancy and horror of mind and conscience.” In time, however, Joseph Libbey must have given in to the crew’s brutality—the threats, whippings, and beatings—and began helping out when the pirates attacked other vessels at sea.
The execution was held shortly after noon on Friday, July 19, 1723. A local minister, Nathaniel Clap, said a final prayer. After that, it was time. Libbey stood on the gallows while a rope was placed around his neck, the thick knot of the noose positioned to the side of his head, under the ear, which was thought to be the most effective placement. When the bodies of the convicted pirates dropped, the ropes snapped tight—but only a few of the twenty-six men died instantly. The rest strangled for a minute or two longer, convulsing and gasping for air as they swung from the ropes. The crowd stood watching the morbid spectacle unfold. The eyes of the men bulged from their heads as they hanged, their lips slowly turning purple. “Oh!” a witness wrote afterwards. “How awful the noise of their dying moans.” Finally, the ropes gripping the men’s necks cut off the supply of blood to their brains and the flow of air to their lungs, and they died. When the sun set on Newport that day, the spectators had witnessed history, one of the largest mass executions ever held in the nearly two hundred years of the American colonial era.1
Two thousand miles away from New England on that summer day, another young man was sitting alone on the ground, surrounded not by a crowd of spectators but by utter solitude. He gazed out at the empty blue sea from a small cay that was no more than a few hundred yards off a remote island at the western edge of the Caribbean. The island had once, long ago, been inhabited by native people, and again later by a small group of British colonists who tried to build a plantation there but failed and left after just a few years. By 1723, the island was wild and desolate, overgrown and uninhabited for the past seventy-five years.
The man who was stranded along its quiet, windswept shore was named Philip Ashton. Four months earlier, Ashton had run for his life into the thick, jungle-like woods of the island when his ship stopped there for repairs and fresh water. Now Ashton was completely alone, and the odds of survival were against him. He had no knife, no gun, and no way to make a fire. He was hungry and growing weaker by the day. He hadn’t eaten a cooked meal since he’d escaped on the island and was barely surviving on whatever fruit he could find growing on trees and the raw turtle eggs he could dig out of the sand. “Everything,” Ashton later recorded, “looked with a dismal face.” Ashton’s condition would continue to worsen and within a matter of months, Ashton would be so starved and sick that he would be close to death.
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