The ship crashed through the waves as the motley crew of men and women scanned the horizon for a ship to plunder.
The Jolly Roger fluttered in the breeze high above the ship.
The skull and crossbones were a clear message that pirates were aboard ready for battle.
. In the distance, a small fishing boat, loaded with a fresh catch appeared on the horizon, ready to be plundered.
The pirate ship as it sped towards them and no matter how hard the fishermen tried to evade them, it wouldn’t be long before their shadow loomed large over the small fishing boat.
There would be no escape.
You didn’t think I was talking about an epic battle on the high seas off the coast of the Bahamas or Cuba, did you?
After all, This isn’t the Pirates of the Caribbean!
YARRRRR I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today we are diving into Davy Jones’ Locker and cracking open a bottle of screech as we sail into the stories of the Pirates of Canada!
Captain Jack Sparrow never had an adventure on the high seas off the coast of Nova Scotia.
Treasure Island, Pirates of the Caribbean, the cancelled-too-soon Our Flag Means Death, are all set in tropical seas.
Even Assassins Creed Black Flag, made by the Canadian video game company Ubisoft, is set far away from our shores.
When we think of the classic pirate tales we don’t often think of the great white north.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a history of cunning captains, bold battles, and plentiful plunder in Canadian waters.
Almost as soon as Europeans arrived on the east coast of present-day Canada, there were ships filled with people ready to steal what they had.
One of the first pirates to roam Canada’s Atlantic waters was Peter Easton. Born around 1570 in Scotland, he was on the right side of English law when he arrived in Newfoundland in 1602.
He was a privateer, a hired mercenary on the high seas, employed by Queen Elizabeth I to protect the English fishing fleets from the Spanish during the Anglo-Spanish War.
The war began in 1585 and would last for two decades with much of the conflict taking place on the ocean, between the two nations’ growing navies.
As a privateer, Easton was allowed to press-gang any local fishermen in Newfoundland to work for him on the Grand Banks.
He could also legally attack any non-English ships or villages, doubly-so when the flag of the hated Spanish was flown.
Easton made his headquarters in present-day Harbour Grace, Newfoundland and Labrador.
His ship, the Happy Adventure flew the Saint George’s Cross flag, and became a welcome sight for English fishermen and feared by everyone else.
For two years, Easton attacked the Spanish anytime they entered Newfoundland waters, and he became quite rich from the stolen treasures.
It was a good time for Easton, and the fishermen he protected.
But then, in 1603 across the ocean, Queen Elizabeth I died and was succeeded by King James.
He took over the crown on June 23, 1604, and shortly after sued for peace with Spain and canceled all commissions for privateers in service of England.
The problem with mercenaries is that when you stop paying them, they can attack you just as easily as someone else and Easton had quite enjoyed the life of a privateer.
No longer employed by England, he was free to attack for his benefit and continued to attack Spanish, Dutch, and French ships that came into Newfoundland waters.
The transition from privateer to pirate was an easy one and the very fishing boats Easton had once protected were now easy prey to plunder.
This was likely quite the shock to the fishermen who had considered him an ally only weeks earlier.
After a few months of pirating around Newfoundland, Easton took the Happy Adventure to try his luck in the West Indies and the Mediterranean Sea.
At one point he blockaded the entire Bristol Channel separating South Wales from Southwest England allowing him to control all the trade entering and leaving western ports.
When he got bored of that, he returned to Newfoundland in 1612, much to the dismay of the fishing crews of the island.
The pirate who left Newfoundland with one ship years earlier, now had ten and over the next three years, he plundered vessels along the coast of Newfoundland.
It was a lucrative time for Easton.
But while fishing crews were at the risk of losing their catch to him, or being conscripted into his service, they were never truly in danger.
Easton lusted for loot, but he wasn’t bloodthirsty.
He could be bargained with like when the settlement of Cuper’s Cove, Newfoundland gave him two pigs in exchange for peace to which he agreed. and left the colony alone.
It is estimated that during his time in Newfoundland, about 1,500 fishermen joined him and although some were press-ganged into service, the majority joined voluntarily.
The choice was easy, either the back-breaking life of a fisherman, or be a pirate, while seeing the world, and taking what you wanted from other people.
Easton knew if he continued plundering Newfoundland the British armada would be sent to deal with him.
So, in a raid around 1614, where he plundered 30 ships near St. John’s, he captured Sir Richard Whitbourne.
Whitbourne had fought for the British against the Spanish Armada in 1588 and was a legendary sea captain who had spent three decades fishing for cod off the coast of Newfoundland.
Easton released him on the condition he go back to England and obtain a pardon for him.
When Whitbourne returned with a pardon, Easton left Newfoundland for good and spent the next few years harassing Spanish ships while leaving British ships in peace.
Early in 1613 the Duke of Savoy made Nice and Villefranche free ports and offered asylum and safe conducts to all pirates.
Shortly after, Easton sailed into Villefranche and met with the duke agreeing to invest in Savoy while ingratiating himself in his court Upon his retirement he was granted a pension of £4000 a year and was sworn to faithful service.
He married an heiress, became the Marquis of the Duchy of Savoy and died sometime after 1620.
Over the course of his time around Newfoundland, Easton caused an estimated £20,400, or £5.4 million today, in damages to the fishing fleets.
In the power vacuum left by Easton when he left, various small-time and unnamed pirates plundered fleets off the Newfoundland coast.
Typically, they were Portuguese ships robbing other ships, but sometimes the French joined and robbed the Portuguese.
Newfoundland fishermen tired of being robbed, took matters into their own hands.
One report from 1620 states,
“Certain English fishermen entered aboard a Portugal ship in the night in St. John’s Harbour with swords and axes wherewith they cut many of his ropes. A great combat between some insolent English and certain Portugals in Petyte Harbour.”
That same year, John Nutt arrived in Newfoundland as a gunner on a ship from England to settle on the island and start a family.
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In his late-20s, Nutt decided being a fisherman was not for him, but robbing fishermen intrigued him.
In 1621, he organized a small crew and seized a French fishing boat.
He was successful and was inspired to raid two more.
With a taste for pirating, he needed a larger crew and took his stolen French ship to England to recruit unemployed sailors and offered them more money than the Royal Navy.
Nutt returned in 1622 to raid ships in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
For three years, he lived a life of debauchery while avoiding capture by the British, but like Easton he knew it wouldn’t last.
In 1625, Nutt requested a royal pardon from John Eliot, a member of the British Parliament although some say Eliot offered the pardon directly.
On the belief he would be pardoned Nutt met with Eliot only for him to be arrested and sent back to England to be imprisoned.
Tried and convicted of piracy, Nutt faced the hangman’s noose, but he had one more trick up his sleeve.
George Calvert.
Nutt had met the Proprietor of Newfoundland and became friends when Calvert had employed him to raid rival fleets in the area.
Calvert was now the First Baron Baltimore and the Secretary of State under King James I, making him a powerful ally.
It pays to have friends in high places because Calvert immediately intervened and Nutt was granted a reprieve and was released with a full pardon, and £100 in compensation.
Nutt left the pirate life and faded from history.
Unfortunately for Eliot, he was charged with malfeasance of office for tricking Nutt and was imprisoned for four months.
From 1612 to 1620, pirates cost fishermen in Newfoundland an estimated £40,800, or £12 million today.
The mayor of Poole, Newfoundland, unnamed in my research, demanded something be done and asked England to send several ships to patrol and guard the harbours.
On Aug. 8, 1625, he sent a letter to the Privy Council stating that 250 boats in the Newfoundland fishing fleet needed protection and if ignored the problem would get only worse.
Four days later, he sent another letter stating 27 ships and 200 men had been taken in the previous ten days alone.
Whether or not his request was answered is unknown.
England was busy in 1625.
King James, I died in March, to be replaced by Charles I.
The bubonic plague killed 40,000 people in London and Barbary pirates enslaved over 60 people in Cornwall.
The problems of a far away colony were easy to ignore and that’s good for our story because there is still plenty more pirate history left to explore!
So far, our pirates have been English, but there were other nationalities involved in the game as well.
Pierre Maisonnat dit Baptiste was born in 1663 in southwestern France and joined the French Navy in his early-20s.
His enlistment coincided with King William’s War, fought from 1688 to 1697.
In 1690, Baptiste was one of 85 men defending the Acadian capital of Port Royal when English forces attacked the settlement with seven ships and 700 men.
Taken prisoner after the battle, Baptiste escaped his captors and fled deeper into Acadia, or modern-day New Brunswick.
With a new hatred for the British, he offered his services as a privateer to Acadian Governor Joseph Robineau de Villebon who took him up on it and Baptiste started to attack British ships.
During one daring raid near Boston Harbour, he took eight ships and earned praise from the Governor of New France Comte de Frontenac and quickly became a rising star.
He took possession of the warship Bonne and in June 1694 he arrived at Cape Sable off the coast of Nova Scotia and captured five British vessels.
Baptiste became a terror.
It got to the point where hundreds of fishing vessels would prefer to stay on the docks rather than venture out and risk capture.
Baptiste raided English ships around Nova Scotia and New Brunswick until May 1695 near Cape Breton when he engaged an English warship and was overwhelmed forcing him to abandon and retreat.
The loss of his ship was not going to stop him.
Throughout 1696, he attacked English settlements and captured two frigates at the mouth of the Saint John River.
Within weeks, the English struck back but Baptiste evaded capture and continued his reign of terror.
He armed two captured English ships, recruited Acadian men as a crew and captured eight more ships in Casco Bay in present-day Maine.
In that raid, Baptiste was injured three times but still fought back against two English privateer ships to return safely to Nova Scotia.
He continued his raids in Nova Scotia waters in 1696 and the start of 1697, but his luck ran out in May 1697 when he was captured and imprisoned by the British.
King William’s War ended in 1698, but the British were reluctant to release Baptiste.
Despite the reservations, Baptiste was released in December 1698, and he returned to Port Royal where he was made a captain of a small vessel.
Just like that Baptiste was back in business and went back to attacking British vessels.
In 1702, he was captured and imprisoned again.
That same year, Queen Anne’s War began and lasted until 1713.
It was fought between the French, English and Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
Queen Anne herself ordered that no prisoners be exchanged at the start of the war, and sentenced Baptiste to hang.
Upon hearing the news, Governor of Placentia, Newfoundland, Jacques-Francois de Monbeton de Brouillan sent a messenger to the governor of Boston there would be an attack if Baptiste was killed.
It saved Baptiste’s life, but he was imprisoned until 1706 when he was released.
For the next five years, he served as a port captain in Acadia, and helped arm privateers.
During the Siege of Port Royal in 1707, he served with distinction but after 1714 he faded from the history books.
But while Baptiste was at work, a mystery developed in Nova Scotia.
On a little piece of land called…Oak Island.
Oak Island is a non-descript stretch of land only 1.33 kilometres long and half a kilometre wide and sits a quarter of a kilometre off the eastern coast of Nova Scotia. Covered by trees, it is in the traditional territory of the Mi’kmaq People and didn’t see permanent European settlement until the 1750s.
It could be unremarkable if not for the possibility that someone, maybe, buried something there centuries ago.
Captain Kidd is one of the most famous pirates in history. A privateer turned pirate, Kidd was captured and put to death in 1701.
Since then, a myth has grown.
Legend has it, he buried treasure throughout New England, in present-day Canada around the Bay of Fundy.
But more importantly it is believed he hid treasure in Oak Island.
According to early settlers, a man named Daniel McGinnis found a depression on the island around 1799 while looking for farmland.
He had heard stories of Captain Kidd’s treasure on Oak Island, and he believed he had found it.
With the help of John Smith, and Anthony Vaughn, they dug into the depression and discovered a layer of flagstones two feet below.
Later variations of the story state that every 10 feet, they found a layer of oak platforms.
They eventually abandoned at 30 feet because of a superstitious dread in the pit of their stomachs.
Every good treasure hunt needs a supernatural angle.
In 1802, the Onslow Company allegedly dug for treasure and excavated 60 to 90 feet.
In this account, the men found charcoal, coconut fibre, putty and a stone inscribed with symbols.
The stone is long gone, but according to a 1911 account there were no actual markings upon inspection.
At around 60 feet, the pit flooded for an unknown reason.
No matter what they did, the water kept coming pouring in preventing more digging.
For the next two centuries, expeditions tried to find the treasure buried in the so-called money pit.
In 1909, the Old Gold Salvage Group, which included future American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, dug into the pit down to 113 feet and sent divers down to investigate. They found little of consequence.
Despite repeated excavations, very little has been found but the legend grew.
People claim items buried in the pit include the jewels of Marie Antoinette, a secret vault of the Knights Templar and evidence of the true author of William Shakespeare’s plays.
Maybe one of the Infinity Stones is down there too since we are throwing around random claims.
You may have even heard of the TV show The Curse of Oak Island, which has aired for 11 seasons and 181 episodes on History. Despite their vast efforts and expertise no significant treasure has been found.
Although none has been authenticated, the show claims to have found a Roman sword, a Roman era shipwreck and a 1,000-year-old lead cross.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there is a curse on anyone who attempts to search for the treasure and will meet an untimely fate.
Of the hundreds of people who have searched over the years, six have died.
But that may have more to do with lax safety precautions than a curse.
What do I think is in the pit?
A lot of money.
Not buried by pirates but sunk into it by people trying to find treasure.
The Golden Age of Piracy ran from the 1680s to the 1730s during which famous pirates such as Blackbeard and Anne Bonny emerged as legends.
It was centered in the Caribbean but there were a few pirates who travelled north to the cold waters of Canada.
At this time, it was an important source as fishermen and sailors looked for work, money, and adventure.
When pirates recruited them, those men had a choice to make, live normal lives in Newfoundland or take to the high seas and find fame and fortune for themselves.
They also arrived in Canadian waters to stock up on supplies, alcohol and to do some good old pirating.
One pirate who came to Canada during the Golden Age was one of the most famous who ever lived.
Bartholomew Roberts, also known as Black Bart.
Born John Roberts in Wales he first took to sea in 1695 when he was just 13 years old.
He slowly rose through the ranks on ships, typically in the merchant navy, eventually becoming captain of his own ship around 1718.
As soon as he became captain, he became a pirate.
Now known as Black Bart, he implemented a pirate code for his crew to follow.
This included giving every man a vote in affairs, and equal title to provisions.
No gambling was allowed on his ships, and it was lights out at 8 p.m. every night.
No boy or woman was allowed on the ship and anyone smuggling one aboard would be put to death. Musicians were given Sundays off, a luxury afforded to no one else.
Black Bart set sail for North America looking for easy plunder and reached the coast of Canada in June 1720.
He raided Canso, Nova Scotia and captured several ships around Cape Breton before traveling to Newfoundland where he raided the Ferryland harbour and captured another dozen ships.
On June 21, 1720, he attacked Trepassey, harbour where there were 22 merchant and 150 fishing ships.
The captains and crews of the merchant ships immediately abandoned their vessels and swam to shore.
Without any resistance, Black Bart had added 22 ships to his fleet.
The fishing vessels were too small for him to care about beyond taking their fish stocks.
But Black Bart was not satisfied.
He considered the merchant captains to be cowards and the next morning, Black Bart fired a cannon over the harbour.
He continued to fire a cannon every morning, until the captains met with him on his ship.
Once aboard, he told them to return to their ships or he would burn them all.
Each captain was now part of Black Bart’s crew.
A few days later, a brig was captured by Bart and his crew in the harbour giving him a powerful ship with 16 guns.
In late June, Black Bart left the harbour and burned every fishing vessel as he left.
A few days later near Nova Scotia, he captured ten French ships and took the largest of them with 26 cannons, as his flagship.
He renamed it Good Fortune and set out to cement his reputation as one of the greatest pirates who ever lived.
But then, only two years later, on Feb. 10, 1722, Black Bart was killed in a battle with the 50-gun HMS Swallow.
His body was wrapped in a sail with his personal effects, weighed down and thrown overboard as per his wishes.
In the mid-1720s pirates in the waters of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were a serious issue and the Governor of the Fortress Louisbourg, Francois de Bourville, requested extra naval protection.
One of those pirates was Edward “Ned” Low.
Born into poverty, he became a pirate in 1721 following the death of his wife in childbirth.
Unlike Black Bart, Ned Low revelled in cruelty.
In June 1722, Low arrived in Port Roseway, Nova Scotia and attacked 13 New England fishing vessels.
He hoisted the Jolly Roger flag and yelled that no fishermen would be given mercy if they resisted.
He captured and raided every ship.
Soon after he captured The Fancy, an 80-ton ship with 10 guns, and it became his flagship.
Most of the fishermen in the harbour were forced to join his crew, including a man named Philip Ashton.
Ashton was told to sign a pirate agreement with Low and become a pirate.
He refused and was beaten, whipped, kept in chains, and threatened with death.
He escaped in May 1723 in the Caribbean and later wrote an account of his life on the ship.
Low left Nova Scotia soon after, but he was back in Canadian waters by the summer of 1723.
Off the coast of Newfoundland, Low mistook a fully armed man-of-war ship for a fishing boat and nearly lost his life.
He escaped and sailed to the Grand Banks where he captured several boats.
With his piracy ego restored, he left Canadian waters, never to return.
Those who worked the waters off the coast of Canada were happy to see the bloodthirsty psychopath leave and his fate remains a mystery.
He was last seen off the coast of the Canary Islands in 1724. Some claim he was hanged that year, while others state he was still alive as of 1739 and languishing in a French prison.
Some pirates came to Canadian waters for directions.
Sometime in the 1780s, Jack Cook was out fishing when John Paul Jones, the pirate, not the bassist for Led Zeppelin, appeared on the horizon aboard his ship.
Jones was a naval commander in the American Revolutionary War who was called the Father of the American Navy.
A hero to the Americans, his enemies accused him of piracy.
In Nova Scotia, Jones captured Cook and ordered him to pilot the ship around the coast to show him the way into certain harbours.
. For three weeks, Cook was unwillingly in the employ of Jones, tortured with thumbscrews before he was abandoned on a random beach.
Jones appeared again a few years later in Chedabucto Bay in eastern Nova Scotia on a 60-gun ship, where he encountered two heavily armed vessels.
Jones saw escape would be impossible, and lowered treasure into a long boat which was rowed ashore to Fox Island.
His men followed in other boats as Jones and the rest of his crew scuttled the ship to prevent its capture.
As his ship sank beneath the waves, Jones and his crew disappeared into the island.
Aside from finding a boat submerged in a pond, no other clue was ever found of the whereabouts of Jones and his men.
He eventually wound up in the service of the Russians where he fought in the Russo-Turkish War and died at the age of 45 from kidney failure.
The Golden Age of Piracy may have ended in the 1730s, but it didn’t stop all together.
Eric Cobham and Maria Lindsay were two pirates whose lives are shrouded in myth and legend. Some even speculate that they never even existed, but they allegedly roamed the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.
In 1924, Philip Gosse popularized the couple’s story in the 1924 book The Pirates Who’s Who.
It is from that book and The Pirates and Outlaws of Canada, released in 1984, that this information comes from.
According to legend, the couple met in Plymouth, England around 1739.
Eric took Maria aboard his ship, which caused issues among the crew because it is believed a woman on a ship was bad luck.
The couple and the crew sailed to Newfoundland in 1740 where Maria and Eric began a reign of terror.
For the next two decades, they ruled the waves of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and became known for their cruelty.
Unlike other pirates who did not kill the crews that surrendered, Maria and Eric killed with abandon.
They gave no quarter and left no survivors.
One story states that Marie poisoned the entire crew of a captured ship just so she could watch them die.
In another story a group of sailors were sewn into gunny sacks and thrown into an ocean.
Sometimes, Eric and Maria simply shot sailors for target practice.
The lack of witnesses to their cruelty kept naval authorities from catching them.
Many of the ships they captured were most likely believed lost at sea without a thought of piracy.
One reason the couple may have chosen the Gulf of St. Lawrence was because the English Channel was becoming too dangerous for pirates due to the large presence of the British Royal Navy.
Into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, they could plunder ships from Cape Breton to Prince Edward Island with impunity.
In his book, Philip Gosse wrote,
“Maria took her part in these affairs and once stabbed to the heart, with her own little dirk, the captain of a Liverpool brig, the Lion, and on another occasion, to indulge her whim, a captain and his two mates were tied up to the windlass while Maria shot them with her pistol. In fact, she entered thoroughly into the spirit of the enterprise.”
In the late-1740s or early-1750s, the couple relocated to France.
Eric apparently became a judge, but Maria could not make the adjustment and it is said she went insane and took her own life or was possibly killed by Eric.
After her death, Eric became wracked with guilt and confessed to a priest.
He then wrote down his story which was published in a book following his death in the early-1760s.
The book allegedly sits in the Archives Nationales in Paris.
Now the question is, did they actually exist?
It is hard to say.
Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but they make for an interesting piracy story, nonetheless.
Pracy continued well into f the Napoleonic Wars.
The wars lasted from 1799 to 1815 as most of Europe united against Napoleon.
This was an important time for Canada as Napoleon’s blockade prevented the British from getting wood from mainland Europe and they turned to Canada.
It helped places like Bytown, now known as Ottawa, with their bountiful timber resources become important.
Off the Canadian coast, pirates attempted to take advantage of increased ship traffic to plunder what they could.
In an unspecified year during the Napoleonic Wars, the former Man-of-War ship The Polly was off the coast of Prince Edward Island when a suspicious looking ship appeared in the distance.
It was not a French ship, but a pirate ship looking for an easy capture.
The Polly was now a passenger ship, and the captain had the crew, and passengers open the port holes and were instructed to make it look like they were preparing for the defence of the ship.
Believing the ruse, the pirate ship turned around and left.
Around this same time in Halifax, a young man turned to piracy as he faced overwhelming debts.
Edward Jordan was born in Ireland in 1771 and participated in the Irish Rebellions of 1797-98. After he was pardoned, he moved to Nova Scotia and married his wife, Margaret.
Starting a new life as a fisherman, he had high hopes but quickly discovered he was not very good.
In 1809, heavily in debt, his creditors hired a merchant schooner to seize his ship, as he fished in the Grand Banks.
When the merchant ship arrived, Edward told the captain, John Stairs, that he wanted to take his ship into Halifax Harbour one last time.
Captain Stairs allowed Edward to sail towards Nova Scotia.
But surrendering was the last thing on his mind.
During the first three days of the journey, Edward befriended Kelly, a crewmember in Stairs’s ship and the two men hatched a plan.
On the third day Edward, Margaret and Kelly were on Captain Stairs ship, they stole pistols from the captain’s trunk and took over the ship.
Edward shot Captain Stairs in the face but missed, only grazing his cheek, but he killed a crewmember who had been standing behind Stairs. Edward was not going to miss twice, and Stairs threw himself overboard in the hopes of saving himself.
Edward assumed that the cold North Atlantic waters would kill him, and he sailed on with Stairs’ ship and his merchant ship.
He turned towards Newfoundland, with plans to get a new crew and journey on to Ireland.
But first…. a visit to a pub.
Meanwhile, Captain Stairs was rescued by a passing boat and upon his arrival in Halifax, explained what happened.
A bounty was put on Edward’s head.
Back at the pub in St. John’s, Edward believing Kelly to be flirting with Margaret started a fight.
Kelly fled the and got out of town as quickly as he could.
Edward and Margaret planned to escape across the Atlantic but on the day of their departure, the HMS Cuttle arrived.
The Royal Navy Ballahoo-class schooner had taken part in the War of 1812, and easily outmatched Edward’s small ship.
Both Edward and Margaret were captured immediately, and Kelly soon followed.
At their trial, Margaret testified that Edward was abusive during their marriage, and she only acted out of fear. Margaret and Kelly were acquitted of any wrongdoing, but Edward was found guilty of murder and piracy.
On Nov. 23, 1809, he was hanged.
After Edward’s body was tarred, chained and put at the entrance of Halifax Harbour as a warning to anyone else engaged in piracy.
But that is not the end of the story.
When his body was taken down, his skull was removed and found its way to the Nova Scotia Museum.
It was later exhibited in the Pirates: Myth and Reality exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.
But there’s one more story of piracy from Canada’s history you should know about
In 1843, Canada was two decades away from becoming a country when thousands of kilometres away the last of the Canadian pirates made a fateful decision.
George Fielding and his son, unnamed in my research, were looking to get to Peru from England.
Gaining passage on the Saladin, Fielding decided that instead he would much rather take over the ship and steal its cargo of guano, copper, silver, and a chest full of money.
Fielding persuaded the crew to seize the vessel, leading to the death of six crew members loyal to the captain.
With the ship under his control, he turned towards Newfoundland but it didn’t take long for his co-conspirators to become scared of his tyrannical rule and before they ever reached Newfoundland, Fielding and his son were thrown overboard, never to be seen again.
None of the remaining crew had the skills necessary to sail the ship and it was grounded at Country Harbour,
News had reached Nova Scotia, and the crew was arrested by the authorities and charged with murder.
Two crew members were acquitted as unwilling participants in the murder of Fielding and his son.
The other four were put to death by hanging on July 30, 1844, at the location of the present-day Victoria General Hospital in Nova Scotia.
Information comes from Canadian Encyclopedia, HeadStuff.org, Canada’s History, Wikipedia, Nova Scotia Maritime Museum, CindyVallar.com, Our Island Story, the Cod Fisheries, the History of Nova Scotia or Acadia Volume 1, The History of the County of Gusyborough, A History of the Island of Cape Breton,
