The Pirates' Who's Who Part 30

One of Captain George Lowther's crew. Hanged at St. Kitts on March 11th, 1722.

LEWIS, WILLIAM.

The greatest triumph and most important exploit of this pirate was the attacking, and eventually taking, of a powerful French s.h.i.+p of twenty-four guns.

Lewis enjoyed a longer career than most of the brethren, and by 1717 he was already one of the leading piratical lights of Na.s.sau, and his end did not come till ten years later. In 1726, he spent several months on the coast of South Carolina and Virginia, trading with the inhabitants the spoils he had taken from vessels in the Atlantic. He learnt his trade under the daring pirate Bannister, who was brought into Port Royal, hanging dead from his own yard-arm. On this occasion, Lewis and another boy were triced up to the corvette's mizzen-peak like "two living flags."

Lewis, amongst other accomplishments, was a born linguist, and could speak with fluency in several languages, even the dialect of the Mosquito Indians. He was once captured by the Spaniards, and taken to Havana, but escaped with a few other prisoners in a canoe, seized a piragua, and with this captured a sloop employed in the turtle trade, and by gradually taking larger and larger prizes, Lewis soon found himself master of a fine s.h.i.+p and a crew of more than fifty men. He renamed her the _Morning Star_, and made her his flags.h.i.+p.

On one occasion when chasing a vessel off the Carolina coast, his fore and main topmasts were carried away. Lewis, in a frenzy of excitement, clambered up the main top, tore out a handful of his hair, which he tossed into the wind, crying: "Good devil, take this till I come." The s.h.i.+p, in spite of her damaged rigging, gained on the other s.h.i.+p, which they took.

Lewis's sailors, superst.i.tious at the best of times, considered this intimacy of their captain with Satan a little too much, and soon afterwards one of the Frenchmen aboard murdered Lewis in his sleep.

LEYTON, FRANCIS.

One of Captain Charles Harris's crew. Hanged for piracy at Newport, Rhode Island, on July 19th, 1723. Age 39.

LIMA, MANUEL.

Taken by H.M. sloop _Tyne_, and hanged at Kingston, Jamaica, in February, 1823.

LINCH, CAPTAIN. Buccaneer.

Of Port Royal, Jamaica.

In 1680 Lionel Wafer, tiring of the life of a civil surgeon at Port Royal, left Jamaica to go on a voyage with Captains Linch and Cook to the Spanish Main.

LING, CAPTAIN WILLIAM.

A notorious pirate of New Providence. Captured and hanged shortly after accepting King George's pardon of 1718.

LINISLER, THOMAS.

Of Lancas.h.i.+re.

One of Captain Charles Harris's crew. Hanged at Rhode Island in 1723 at the age of 21.

LITHGOW, CAPTAIN.

Famous in his day for his activities in the West Indies, this pirate had his headquarters at New Providence in the Bahamas.

LIVER, WILLIAM, _alias_ EVIS.

One of Major Stede Bonnet's crew. Hanged for piracy at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1718.

LO, MRS. HON-CHO.

This Chinese woman pirate was the widow of another noted pirate who was killed in 1921. She took command after the death of her husband, and soon became a terror to the countryside about Pakhoi, carrying on the work in the best traditions of the craft, being the Admiral of some sixty ocean-going junks. Although both young and pretty, she won a reputation for being a thorough-going murderess and pirate.

During the late revolution, Mrs. Lo joined General Wong Min-Tong's forces, and received the rank of full Colonel. After the war, she resumed her piracies, occasionally for the sake of variety, surprising and sacking a village or two, and from these she usually carried away some fifty or sixty girls to sell as slaves.

Her career ended quite suddenly in October, 1922.

LODGE, THOMAS. Poet, buccaneer, and physician.

Born about 1557, he was the son of Sir Thomas Lodge, grocer, and Lord Mayor of London in 1563. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and Trinity College, Oxford. The poet engaged in more than one freebooting expedition to Spanish waters between 1584 and 1590, and he tells us that he accompanied Captain Clarke in an attack on the Azores and the Canaries.

"Having," he tells his friend Lord Hunsdon, "with Captain Clarke made a voyage to the Islands of Terceras and the Canaries, to beguile the time with labour, I writ this book, rough, as hatched in the storms of the ocean, and feathered in the surges of many perilous seas." On August 26th, 1591, Lodge sailed from Plymouth with Sir Thomas Cavendish in the _Desire_, a galleon of 140 tons. The freebooters sailed to Brazil and attacked the town of Santa, while the people were at Ma.s.s. They remained there from December 15th until January 22nd, 1592. Some of the Englishmen, of whom Lodge was one, took up their quarters in the College of the Jesuits, and this literary buccaneer spent his time amongst the books in the library of the Fathers.

Leaving Brazil, the small fleet sailed south to the Straits of Magellan.

While storm-bound amongst the icy cliffs of Patagonia, Lodge wrote his Arcadian romance "Margarite of America."

From the point of view of plunder, this expedition was a dismal failure, and the _Desire_ returned and reached the coast of Ireland on June 11th, 1593. The crew had been reduced to sixteen, and of these only five were even in tolerable health.

At the age of 40, Lodge deserted literature and studied medicine, taking his degree of Doctor of Physics at Avignon in 1600. His last original work was a "Treatise on the Plague," published in 1603. After practising medicine with great success for many years, Thomas Lodge died, it is said, of the plague, in the year 1625, at the age of 68.

LONG, ZACHARIAH.

Of the Province of Holland.

One of Major Stede Bonnet's crew. Hanged at White Point, Charleston, in 1718, and buried in the marsh below low-water mark.

LOPEZ, JOHN.

Of Oporto.

This Portuguese pirate sailed in the _Royal James_, and was hanged with the rest of the crew at Charleston, South Carolina, on November 8th, 1718.

LORD, JOHN.

A soldier. Deserted from Fort Loyal, Falmouth, Maine. Killed at Tarpaulin Cove in 1689.

LOW, CAPTAIN EDWARD, or LOE.

Born in Westminster, he began in very early life to plunder the boys of their farthings, and as he grew bigger used to gamble with the footmen who waited in the lobby of the House of Commons. While still quite small one of his elder brothers used to carry little Edward hidden in a basket on his back, and when in a crowd the future pirate would, from above, s.n.a.t.c.h the hats and even the wigs off the heads of pa.s.sing citizens and secret them in the basket and so get away with them. The Low family were the originators of this ingenious and fascinating trick, and for a time it was most successful, until the people of the city took to tying on their hats and wigs with bands to prevent their sudden removal. When he grew up, Ned went to Boston and earned an honest living as a rigger, but after a while he tired of this and sailed in a sloop to Honduras to steal log-wood. Here Low quarrelled with his captain, tried to shoot him, and then went off in an open boat with twelve other men, and the very next day they took a small vessel, in which they began their "war against all the world." Low soon happened to meet with Captain Lowther, the pirate, and the two agreed to sail in company. This partners.h.i.+p lasted until May 28th, 1722, when they took a prize, a brigantine from Boston, which Low went into with a crew of forty-four men. This vessel they armed with two guns, four swivels, and six quarter-casks of powder, and saying good-bye to Lowther, sailed off on their own account. A week later a prize fell into their hands, which was the first of several. Things soon became too hot for Low along the American coast and the West Indies, as several men-of-war were searching for him; so he sailed to the Azores, taking on his way a big French s.h.i.+p of thirty-four guns, and later, in the harbour of St. Michael, he seized several vessels which he found at anchor there. Here they burnt the French s.h.i.+p, but let the crew all go, except the cook, who, they said, "being a greasy fellow would fry well in the fire, so the poor man was bound to the main mast and burnt in the s.h.i.+p to the no small derision of Low and his Mirmidons."