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The Low family were the originators of this ingenious and fascinating
trick, and for a time it was most successful, until the people of the city took
to tying on their hats and wigs with bands to prevent their sudden removal. When
he grew up, Ned went to Boston and earned an honest living as a rigger, but
after a while he tired of this and sailed in a sloop to Honduras to steal
log-wood. Here Low quarrelled with his captain, tried to shoot him, and then
went off in an open boat with twelve other men, and the very next day they took
a small vessel, in which they began their "war against all the world."
Low soon happened to meet with Captain Lowther, the pirate, and the two agreed to sail in
company. This partnership lasted until May 28th, 1722, when they took a prize, a
brigantine from Boston, which Low went into with a crew of forty-four men. This
vessel they armed with two guns, four swivels, and six quarter-casks of powder,
and saying good-bye to Lowther, sailed off on their own account. A week later a
prize fell into their hands, which was the first of several.
Things soon became too hot for Low along the American coast and the West Indies, as several
men-of-war were searching for him; so he sailed to the Azores, taking on
his way a big French ship of thirty-four guns, and later, in the harbour of St.
Michael, he seized several vessels which he found at anchor there. Here they
burnt the French ship, but let the crew all go, except the cook, who, they said,
"being a greasy fellow would fry well in the fire, so the poor man was bound to
the main mast and burnt in the ship to the no small derision of Low and his
Mirmidons."
Low and his crew now began to treat their prisoners with great brutality.
However, on one occasion the biter was bitten. It happened that one of the
drunken crew, playfully cutting at a prisoner, missed his mark and accidentally
slashed Captain Low across his lower jaw, the sword opening his cheek and laying
bare his teeth. The surgeon was called, who at once stitched up the wound, but
Low found some fault with the operation, as well he might, seeing that "the
surgeon was tollerably drunk" at the time. The surgeon's professional pride was
outraged by this criticism of his skill by a layman, and he showed his annoyance
in a ready, if unprofessional, manner, by striking "Low such a blow with his
Fists, that broke out all the Stitches, and then bid him sew up his Chops
himself and be damned, so that the captain made a very pitiful Figure for some
time after."
Low took a large number of prizes, but he was not a sympathetic
figure, and the list of his prizes and brutalities soon becomes irksome reading.
Low, still in the Fancy, and accompanied by Captain Harris in the Ranger, then
sailed back to the West Indies, and later to South Carolina, where he took
several prizes, one the Amsterdam Merchant (Captain Willard), belonging to New
England, and as Low never missed an opportunity of showing his dislike of all
New Englanders, he sent the captain away with both his ears cut off and with
various other wounds about his body. Low and Harris now made a most
unfortunate mistake in giving chase to a ship which on close quarters proved to
be not a merchant vessel, but H.M.S. Greyhound.
After a short fight, the coward
Low slipped away, and left his consort, Harris, to carry on an unequal contest
until he was compelled to surrender his ship.
Low's cruelties became more and more disgusting, and there can be little doubt
that he was really by this time a lunatic.
In July, 1723, Low took a new ship for himself, naming himself Admiral, and
sporting a new black flag with a red skeleton upon it. He again cruised off the
Azores, the Canaries, and the Guinea coast, but what the end was of this
repulsive, uninteresting, and bloody pirate has never been known.
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