DEATH OF A NOTORIOUS PIRATE. 



65 



human justice of a part of its retributive triumph. But some accident or mistake 

 prevented the execution of this act of despair. Theach himself, surrounded by slaughtered 

 foes and followers, and bleeding from numerous wounds, in the act of stepping back to 

 cock a pistol, fainted from loss of blood, and expired on the spot." The few survivors 

 threw down their swords, and were spared to die on the gallows shortly afterwards. 

 Piracy was checked, -but not obliterated, by these means ; and about five years after this 

 period no less than twenty-six of these " sea rats " were executed in Rhode Island. 



This not being a history of America, the writer is spared all allusion to events of the 



THE " DARTMOUTH " IN BOSTON IIAKBOUU. 



period except so far as they bear on the sea and maritime matters. One of the greatest 

 among a long series of mistakes made at the time by Great Britain was an expedient, 

 ascribed to George Grenville, intended to strike a death-blow at smuggling. All the 

 commanders and other officers of British ships of war stationed off the American coasts, 

 or cruising in the American seas, now received injunctions and authority from the Crown 

 to act as officers of the customs ; they were compelled to take the usual oaths of office 

 administered to the civil functionaries ashore ; and, to reconcile them to what they might 

 think a service degrading to them, they were to receive an ample share of contraband and 

 confiscated cargoes. It must be remembered that they were totally ignorant of the laws 

 which they were now required not merely to guard, but to administer; and they had not 

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