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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
A JOURNAL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
VOLUME XLIX—1920
EPISODES OF PIRACY IN THE EASTERN SEAS, 1519 TO 1851.
By S. CHARLES HILL. (Continued from Vol. XLVIII, p. 226.)
xv. THREE ACCOUNTS OF THE FIGHT BETWEEN THE DORRILL AND THE
MOCR A, 1697.
In the year 1696 the East India Company's ship. Mocha (Captain Leonard Edgcumbe) sailed from Bombay for China. The Captain was disliked by his crew and, apparently, was forced to take whatever men he could get to fill up Vacancies. At any rate sixteen of the new hands were old pirates, who had been trapped by the natives, but had made their escape. Whilst in captivity they had unsucoessfully appealed to the President to effect their release and, being received on board a. Company's ship, they saw an opportunity for revenge. When off Achin, on the 18th June, at their instigation the crew mutinied, murdered Captain Edgcumbe and set the loyal members of the crew adrift in a boat, in which after much difficulty they got to shore. The pirates renamed the ship the Resolution and elected Ralph Stout their Captain. Touching at the Nicobars, they picked up one Robert Culliford and his associates. Culliford had run away with another Company's ship, the Josiah Ketch, and going ashore to plunder the natives, the Armourer and other loyal members of the crew had recovered the ship and made off. When the pirates reached the Maldives, Stout attempted to desert, was caught by his comrades and murdered. His successor was Culliford. In July 1697 Culliford came up with the Company's ship Dorrill (Captain Samuel Hyde). We have three accounts of the fight : one by Captain William Willock, a prisoner on board the piratè, which is interesting as showing the absence of discipline on board a pirate ship, and the difficulty their captains had in persuading the men to fight when they met with a tough customer; another by William Soame, apparently the Company's Agent at Achin, which is probably Captain Hyde's account; and a third by Messrs. Solomon Lloyd and William Reynolds, who appear to have been Supercargoes on the Dorrill..
Captain Hyde had his colours nailed to the mast. It will be remembered that Captain Wright, when the Caesar was attacked, had his ensign seized to the ensign staff (see ante, Vol. XLVIII, p. 205). The distribution of money amongst his crew during the fight, and not the tot of rum of which one reads in piratical and naval romance, was the ordinary method of encouragement adopted by the captain of a company's ship.
