thieving trade, or led on in it by his encouragement and assistance, and many of them at last betrayed and brought to justice by his means, upon which worst sort of murder he valued himself, and would have had it passed for merit, even with the government itself. FINIS. INTRODUCTION T HOUGH this Work seems principally to enter into the history of one man, namely, the late Captain John Gow, alias Smith, the leader or commander in the desperate and bloody actions for which he has been condemned; yet the share which several others had in the whole scene, and who acted in concert with him, comes so necessarily to be described and takes up so much room in the relation, that it may indeed be called the history of all the late pirates so far as they acted together in these wicked adventures. Nor does the calling him (I mean this Gow, or Smith) their captain, denominate him anything deeper in the crime than the rest; for 't is eminently known that among such fellows as these, when once they have abandoned themselves to such a dreadful height of wickedness, there is so little government or subordination among them that they are, on occasion, all captains, all leaders. And though they generally put in this or that man to act as commander for this or that voyage or enterprise, they frequently remove them again upon the smallest occasion nay, even without any occasion at all, but as humours and passions govern at those times. And this is done so often that I once knew a buccaneering pirate vessel, whose crew were upwards of seventy men, who, in one voyage, had so often changed, set up, and pulled down their captains and other officers, that above seven-and-forty of the |