“BULLY” HAYES

Hokitika Guardian, 23 November 1921, Page 4

“BULLY” HAYES

Discussing this notorious pirate, a writer in a Wellington paper says:—“Can you tell me how Captain ‘Bully’ Hayes met his death!-'” asks “Mangatainoka.” This is about tlie

only incident in Hayes’s life* tlmt is not in dispute, lie was killed by a servant in a quarrel aboard slop. One account gives the date at 18,(i anil another as IJ-t77. I think the earlier year is tlie correct one. Hayes bad•-stolen a vessel with the owner’s vile and

L.tlliltl in cargo and money. He quarrelled with one ol tho hands, oil or a cock or a steward. This mao !o iked j through a skylight, and saw llnies j loading a i.-volver to shoot bun. All.ayes was coming up the companion - | way the man lit bin C’e head with a belaying-piii or s one such ohjcUt. ami killed him. The vessel then sailed into Jaluit, in the Mar-lmll Islands, where there was great icjnieing over tlie annoiiueeineiu that "Bully” Hayes was dead at last. "| am an old sailor S 3 years o, s„o. adds '\M a Hga la ilioka . ” "I knew Hayes very well by sight. In 1850 Haves often caiue to Lyttelton with fruit from the Islands. Hargraves acted as agent for Hayes. On one occasion I stood very close to lla.ies, watching bis schooner drilling in ■' gale in Lyttelton. Hayes was a linelooking mail, about JO years ol ago, when 1 knew him, with big brown whiskers, and wore his hair very long; some said to bide bis cats. Some said lie had none! I looked when close to Inin but his long hair covered the place where they ought to be. Haves used to wear a high Yankee bat, a long brown coat, with a velvet collar, and his pants stuffed in Ids hoots. Sailors called Hayes’s style aping the Yankee. What country Hayes came from I never knew.”

The best evidence 1 have licanl of to Haves’s age was oluaiiO'J by a Nelson resident, to whom be sold a sextant in 1 Sti-1. Inside the case wa- a letter to Haves on his fifteenth biithdav, anil dated I*3l. This would make him 57 or 58 at the lime ot his death. The signature at the hottom bad been torn olf, and it was presumed Horn this that his real name was not Hayes. Hayes leeovered the letter, together w ith an old mint ieal almanac of his in the hack of wliieji were dates and memoranda from which it appeared that lie was horn in South America. Ills first appraianre ~n the New Zeal,'in! coast was in the Cincinnati at I’orl ( halmcis in I'd>2, and between that year and I'diT lie met'with various adventures in New /calami ports in the Black Diamond. Shamrock, and Ilona. He was attested in Queen Chailottc Sound and his ship seized lor debt at the Croixelles, but with customary adroitness lie got out. ol Ills difficulties.