Shift #29 - Collections Research
Thursday, June 20, 2024 | 9-10:30 pm CST/10-11:30 pm EST (1 hr 30 min)
Another day, another pirate to research! Tonight I focused on Samuel Tully, a man who came from a poor upbringing. Since there wasn't much for him at home (he was uneducated and had very little), he got a job as a foremast hand on a ship when he was a teenager. He sailed on two different excursions and ended up in France. There he ran out of money so he joined a French warship which he didn't stay on for very long. He was part of other vessels for a while until he deserted each one. Eventually he was on a ship that traveled from Virginia to England and managed to not catch yellow fever (which was rampant on board).
In England, he got married and went into business for himself until he was forced to join a ship called the Nonsuch where its commander, Captain Blackwood asked Tully if he would be part of a cruising frigate. Tully outright told the commander that he would not act upon orders of any officer and that he would abandon his post as soon as he possibly could. Though he was not agreeable, he was part of a group of boats that took over three enemy ships. He then moved on to be part of a different crew under Admiral Parker. This group encountered a group of people native to an island where a skirmish took place. Men on both sides died, via spears and bullets. (I learned a new term - cruising frigate, which is a small ship that had some speed and carried some weapons. Its main purpose was to scout nearby seas and thwart the trade of its country's enemies.). Unfortunately, this account on Tully is missing a page or two and as I looked at the other pages, the information I was reading didn't make sense.
I ended up having to search the book for a new pirate; the table of contents doesn't match the actual pages scanned so I had to take a best guess according to the table of contents' page for a particular pirate and go from there (doing this took a bit of time). I ended my shift looking at another pirate, Charles Gibbs AKA James Jeffers. It is the former name that he is known by through his exploits and crimes. The story begins with the voyage of the ship Vineyard from New Orleans heading north, of which Gibbs was part of the crew. One of the crewman had learned that there was an enormous amount of money on board the ship and told the rest of the 7-man crew about this. While they plotted on how they could take the money, they had one of their own distract the officers through different conversations. The crew then decided that the two main officers were old (and one was unlikeable) so they needed to die, especially to make room for younger crew men to take their place. Two men including Gibbs were assigned to murder the master of the vessel and two others were to kill the mate. It was actually Wansley, a black crewman who was a cook and the one who knew about the money, who dealt the murderous blow to the master and with Gibbs' help, they threw the body into the sea. The two other men who were assigned to kill the mate tried to do so but didn't finish the job. Gibbs joined two others to beat the mate and threw him overboard as well. The mate actually was not dead but swam for a few minutes before succumbing to his injuries and drowning.
The crew then took over the Vineyard and found the money which was split evenly among them. There were two crew members who didn't take part in the crimes and they were convinced to keep the murders a secret so they themselves wouldn't get hurt (and also get some share of the money). The crew sailed to Long Island to abandon the ship and there, they got into two small boats – a jolly boat that had 3 men and the four others were in a long boat. The jolly boat encountered problems along a sandbar and all those men drowned. The men in the long boat nearly drowned themselves but managed to survive and keep their boat afloat by dumping several bags of the money into the water. To be continued!
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