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Piracy - 1807 style
by Peter Anderson
As a boy Francis Rowland clipped grass from around tombstones for the sexton of the cemetery, Nathaniel Clark, a retired sea captain. Another boy told Rowland that Clark claimed he could talk to the dead. Rowland asked Clark about this, and Clark said it was true and told him this story. Clark was standing watch aboard ship one night off the coast of South America when a figure came across the deck and said to him: “I’ve got to leave, but I wanted to say goodbye.” And then the figure disappeared.
Some time later, home in Mattapoisett, Clark learned his friend had died the night his figure appeared aboard ship. Clark told his young helper that he could prove his story because he made an entry in the ship’s log. “I’d like to have that log,” Rowland said the other day at his home here. I would like to see the log myself, but the story might be better without it.
Rowland is 75 now, an amateur historian who has rediscovered a more important story, that of Joshua Cushing. Cushing should be the town hero, but towns do not make much of old heroes nowadays. Perhaps towns never did, and the fame of a place, Fall River for instance, may better lie with a non-hero, Lizzie Borden. Yet, Joshua Cushing might be an appropriate hero for these times, not that Rowland makes such a suggestion. And neither do I. It’s just a thought.
Mattapoisett’s amateur historian died in 1957, and Rowland got his material. About three years ago, Rowland found in all this material a long newspaper account of Joshua Cushing’s victory over Algerian pirates in hand-to-hand combat. The newspaper story begins: “On the fourth day of July, eighteen hundred and seven, the schooner Mary Ann, Ichabod Sheffield, of Sag Harbor, being master, sailed from New York, ballasted with dye-wood, for the Strait of Bellisle.
Algerian pirates captured the Mary Ann off Majorca. They took most of the Mary Ann’s crew to the pirate ship, leaving only the captain, Cushing, who was the mate, a cook and cabin boy aboard the Mary Ann. Nine armed pirates were put on the Mary Ann, and they gestured the captain and his mate and cook to sail her to Algiers. The Americans believed they would be sold as slaves in Algeria and decided to fight the nine pirates. When three pirates were tricked into looking over the rail, the three adult Americans threw them overboard. The captain barely managed to throw a fourth man overboard. Cushing killed a fifth pirate with a fish spear.
Cushing was about to die: “I saw the dagger descend on its fearful errand!” But then the cook clubbed the pirate “splattering blood and brains in all directions.” Cushing’s account in the old newspaper gets cloudy about here, but all nine pirates were killed and the Americans survived. That is not the whole story but a good part of it. The four Americans sailed the Mary Ann to Naples and thence home. But before leaving Naples, Cushing said he learned the Dey of Algeria demanded payment for the missing Algerians, and the US paid $16,000. The Mary Ann had been captured because the ship carrying the regular American tribute to the Dey had been delayed.
The American sailors taken from the Mary Ann were released with the help of the Danish and English governments and by the payment of tribute by the United States. That last part was glossed over when I was in school. What I remember is the “Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute.”
Joshua Cushing returned to Mattapoisett eventually and is buried there, a hero unremembered. There is some parallel with his story and today’s events. History doesn’t change much, only the weapons.
Status: OK
Status By: Lenora Robinson
Status Date: 2016-11-18