Hunting the Last Great Pirate: Benito de Soto and the Rape of the Morning Star

by Michael Edward Ashton Ford

Overview

In 1827 the Duke of Wellington – former Commander-in-Chief of the British Army and British Prime Minister – ordered the withdrawal of British soldiers from the island of Ceylon after years of bloody conflict there. English cargo vessels, including the unarmed English Quaker ship Morning Star, were despatched to sail to Colombo to repatriate wounded British soldiers and a cargo of sealed crates containing captured treasure.

By January 1828 , Morning Star was anchored at Table Bay, Cape Town, before joining an armed British convoy of East Indiamen, heading north. Heavily-laden, she struggled to keep up with the ships ahead.

The notorious pirate Benito de Soto was the master of a heavily-armed pirate ship, lying in wait off Ascension Island in the mid-Atlantic to pick-off stragglers from passing convoys. Morning Star was easily overhauled by the pirate and stopped with cannon fire. Her captain and officers were executed and the attackers fled to Spain with cargo stolen from the stricken ship.

Later de Soto buried the treasure and travelled to British-ruled Gibraltar with forged identity documents to sell the spoils. The authorities, however, discovered his identity and he was arrested. Despite the absence of eye-witness evidence that he was the pirate captain, he was convicted of piracy before a British judge and jury and hanged at Gibraltar in early 1830. It is clear that proof of de Soto’s guilt in court was lacking, but astonishingly, when renovations were being carried out at de Soto’s former home village in Galicia, Spain, in 1926, much of the treasures he had plundered from Morning Star were found buried in the grounds there.

Almost 100 years later, British justice administered in London and Gibraltar was vindicated …

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526769312
Publisher:	Pen & Sword Books Limited
Publication date:	07/01/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	243
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Raised in colonial Africa, Michael Ford completed National Service in the Royal Rhodesian Air Force, after which he was called to the Bar in England. Returning to Rhodesia in the 1970s, he appeared as defence counsel in High Court war crime trials that arose during the civil insurrection in the country. Later, he also practised law in Hong Kong. After years living abroad, the family returned to live in England in the 1990s. He and his wife later retired to the Somerset village where they presently live.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Louisiana 1803-1823 1

Chapter 2 The Pirates: 1824 9

Chapter 3 The Quaker Morning Star: 1825 15

Chapter 4 Treasure of the Kingdom of Kandy: 1827 21

Chapter 5 Wellington's Troopship: 1827 27

Chapter 6 Cape of Good Hope and St Helena: January 1828 37

Chapter 7 The Eye-Witness: February 1828 47

Chapter 8 A Nobleman's Convoy: February 1828 57

Chapter 9 The Rape of the Morning Star: 19 February 1828 67

Chapter 10 Rescue 81

Chapter 11 Topaz: The Yankee Flyer 91

Chapter 12 Wellington's Men: April 1827 103

Chapter 13 The Hunt for Benito de Soto: May-June 1828 119

Chapter 14 Inquisition in Cadiz: May 1828 133

Chapter 15 Gibraltar: May - August 1828 145

Chapter 16 'There is no evidence at all': August 1828 163

Chapter 17 Crisis ('There is no legal evidence': Judge Howell) 179

Chapter 18 'There are no means of identifying de Soto': General Murray, September - October 1828 191

Chapter 19 The Trial: Gibraltar, January 1830 203

Chapter 20 Epilogue 219

Acknowledgements 225

Selected Bibliography 227

Index 229

Editorial Reviews

"This page-turner is more than a story of piracy on the high seas. It is a time capsule containing both the good and the bad of the era."

The Northern Mariner