Around this day in 1706, Thomas Bowrey was extremely concerned about piracy. He was working on proposals for schemes to help reduce the menace. Why was this?
The previous year, Captain Thomas Green, John Madder and John Simpson from Bowrey’s ship, the Worcester, had been executed in Scotland on a false charge of piracy. The ship they were suspected of attacking the Speedy Return had, indeed, been taken by pirates but not by the Worcester. After being taken, the Speedy Return had been united for some time with another of Bowrey’s ships lost to pirates, the Prosperous.
Bowrey himself was attacked by pirates on the Malabar coast of India and was well aware of other acts of piracy in the East Indies. He was not to know that the next year another of his ships, the Mary Galley, was also to be taken – this time by French privateers (officially sanctioned pirates).
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