OSEPH.

Coxswain to Captain Hood, he was promoted in 1763 to be a midshipman in
H.M.S. _Zealous_, cruising in the Mediterranean. Putting into Algiers,
Thwaites was sent ashore by the captain to buy some sheep, but did not
return to the boat and, it being supposed he had been assassinated, the
ship sailed without him. The fact was that young Thwaites, who spoke
Turkish and Greek, had accepted an invitation to enter the Ottoman
service. Embracing the Mohammedan religion, Thwaites was put in command of
a forty-four gun frigate.

His first engagement was with the flagship of the Tunisian Admiral, which
he took and carried to Algiers. He soon brought in another prize, and so
pleased the Dey that he presented him with a scimitar, the hilt of which
was set with diamonds.

Thwaites, having soiled his hands with blood, now became the pirate
indeed, taking vessels of any nation, and drowning all his prisoners by
tying a double-headed shot round their necks and throwing them overboard.

He stopped at no atrocity--even children were killed, and one prisoner, an
English lieutenant and an old shipmate of his, called Roberts, he murdered
without a second thought. When Thwaites happened to be near Gibraltar, he
would go ashore and through his agents, Messrs. Ross and Co., transmit
large sums of money to his wife and children in England. But Thwaites had
another home at Algiers fitted with every luxury, including three Armenian
girls.

For several years this successful pirate plundered ships of all nations
until such pressure was brought to bear on the Dey of Algiers that
Thwaites thought it best to collect what valuables he could carry away and
disappear.

Landing at Gibraltar in 1796, dressed in European clothes, he procured a
passage to New York in an American frigate, the _Constitution_. Arriving
in the United States, he purchased an estate not far from New York and
built himself a handsome mansion, but a year later retribution came from
an unlooked-for quarter, for he was bitten by a rattlesnake and died in
the most horrible agonies both of mind and body.

TOMKINS, JOHN.

Of Gloucestershire.

Hanged at the age of 23 at Rhode Island in 1723. One of Charles Harris's
crew.

TOPPING, DENNIS.

He shipped on board the sloop _Buck_ at Providence in 1718, in company
with Anstis and other famous pirates. Was killed at the taking of a rich
Portuguese ship off the coast of Brazil.

TOWNLEY, CAPTAIN. Buccaneer.

A bucca