cited his merchants very strongly for a
supply, but to no purpose; so that he was reduced to beggary. In this
extremity he was determined to return and cast himself upon the mercy
of these honest Bristol merchants, let the consequence be what it
would. He went on board a trading vessel, and worked his passage over
to Plymouth, from whence he traveled on foot to Bideford. He had been
there but a few days when he fell sick and died; not being worth so
much as would buy a coffin."

That very atrocious pirate, Charles Gibbs, squandered most of his
treasure, but it may be some consolation to know that $20,000 of it, in
silver coin, was buried on the beach of Long Island, a few miles from
Southampton, as attested by the records of the United States Court of
the Southern District of New York. Captain Gibbs was a thoroughly bad
egg, from first to last, and quite modern, it is interesting to note,
for he was hanged as recently as 1831. He was born in Rhode Island,
raised on a farm, and ran away to sea in the navy. It is to his credit
that he is said to have served on board the _Chesapeake_ in her famous
battle with the _Shannon_, but after his release from Dartmoor as a
British prisoner of war, he fell from grace and opened a grogery in Ann
Street, called the Tin Pot, "a place full of abandoned women and
dissolute fellows." He drank up all the profits, so went to sea again
and found a berth in a South American privateer. Leading a mutiny, he
gained the ship and made a pirate of her, frequenting Havana, and
plundering merchant vessels along the Cuban coast. He slaughtered
their crews in cold blood and earned an infamous reputation for
cruelty. In his confession written while he was under sentence of
death in New York, he stated "that some time in the course of the year
1819, he left Havana and came to the United States, bringing with him
about $30,000 in gold. He passed several weeks in the city of New
York, and then went to Boston, whence he took passage for Liverpool in
the ship _Emerald_. Before he sailed, however, he had squandered a
large amount of his money by dissipation and gambling. He remained in
Liverpool a few months, and then returned to Boston. His residence in
Liverpool at that time is satisfactorily ascertained from another
source beside his own confession. A female now in New York was well
acquainted with him there, where, she says, he lived like a gentleman,
apparently with abundant means of suppo