The opium clippers / by Basil Lubbock.

  • Lubbock, Basil, 1876-1944.
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The opium clippers / by Basil Lubbock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    resolute character and many adventures. At one time he com¬ manded the famous little Emerald, of the Boston Jewel Line of Atlantic packets, after she had been sold into the East India trade along with her sisters. In the 1820ties and 1830ties it is no exaggeration to say that the Atlantic seas from the West Indies to the Canaries, and from the Cape Verdes to the Bight of Benin, were crowded by European pirates. In 1829 the Topaz, when close to St. Helena, was captured by the Spanish pirate Alcantra of the brig Macrinarian, her whole ship’s company being made to walk the plank. In 1832 Benito de Soto, in his notorious Black Joke, plundered the Morning Star. Captain Augustine Heard in the Emerald was running down the trades when he encountered another of these piratical gentry, the typical low black schooner, which after circling round him once or twice at a distance, ranged up under the packet’s lee bow and fired a round from her long-tom as a signal to heave-to. The Emerald's guns had been loaded and her crew kept out of sight. Captain Heard now ran up his colours, and sent his hands to the weather braces, before seizing his one chance of escape. “They who have seen Augustine Heard in times of danger,” wrote Forbes, “and they alone can conceive of the stillness which came over him, when the crisis was at hand, the greater the risk, the more quiet and unmoved he seemed. His dark eye never wavered for a moment and his voice, always low, sank to a hoarse whisper as he softly gave the order.” This was “to hard up the helm and round in the weather braces.” The Emerald was racing along before the strong N.E. trade; as the quartermaster hove the wheel up she lay down and, increasing her speed, headed straight for the beam of the waiting pirate. The next moment there was a tremendous crash, some blood¬ curdling shrieks, and the Emerald had crushed in the light hull of the schooner like an eggshell and sailed clean over her. Captain Forbes, who spun the yarn, for not a word about the incident could ever be got from Augustine Heard’s lips, ended up with the verse:—