LUCRATIVE PIRACY

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2616, 7 August 1923, Page 4

LUCRATIVE PIRACY

STORIES OF “BULLY" lIAYES

“THAT GENTLEMANLY MAX

REFINED METHODS COMBINED WITH CRUELTY.

Pirates of the accepted sort are a hairy set of ruffians, hung about with weapons and redolent of rum and rude oaths, declares Bassett Digby, F.R.G.S., in the “Manchester Guardian." You would not have taken Captain Haves, “that gentlemanly man,” for a pirate. Ho certainly wore a beard but it was a nice silky, well-combed, meticulously trimmed brown beard. He wore the clothes of a gentleman and talked the talk of a gentleman When the dirty work of the profession had to be done (and Captain Hayes was the last man to shirk it) you could always rely on his emulating Mr Neil Lyons’s Joe Golightly and “very politely” stabbing his victim in the spine or pushing him in the brine.

Hardly anyone in Britain has heard of Captain Hayes, but although he was knocked on the head by a mate fifty years ago bis name is familiar on every coral island of the Pacific. Many a South Sea island has never heard of Mr Lloyd George, but none is ignorant of “that gentlemanly man” whose exploits for twenty years set Oceania by the ears. What he was un to before 1858 I was unable to discover. I don’t think any one in the South Seas knows, for, though refined geniality, incarnate, he was never communicative about himself. Anyhow lie landed from the s.s. Orestes at Honolulu in 1858, and early in 185!) equipped with fifty dollars that be bad borrowed from a missionary, the Rev. Mr. Damon, be look a passage to San Francisco. A few weeks later he sailed into the lit lie cove of Kahulni, on the Hawaiian island of Maui, in charge of a brig bound for New Caledonia. He tried to pick up a eai'go of cattle. ,Sheriff Treadway promptly rowed out in a little boat and arrested him for having omitted to call first at the Customhouse a 1 Lahaina. Apologising for having been misled by bis mate, lie set sail for Lahaina with the sheriff on board Ten miles out at sea In* courteously gave Mr Treadway the choice of paying his passage to Now Caledonia or rowing home. He chose the latter alternative, Captain Hayes leaning over the taffrai! and smiling at him as lie started. About this time a warrant for Captain Hayes’s arrest arrived in Honolulu from Sail Francisco, where, it appeared, he liad stolen bis brig and fitted her out without bothering to pay any bills. The brig never reached New Caledonia. She ran on to a reef outside Wallace’s Island, and Hayes, with a boatload of his favourite men, reached the Navigator’s Isles. He next turned up at Batavia. as captain of a barque, and bad loaded a cargo of coffee for Europe when (be Dutch East India Company got: wind of his reputation. TU iet them unload her, but lie stuck to the charter fee. Presently be sailed into Hong Kong and collected a cargo of Chin - ese coolies for Melbourne. On (bo way be beard from a passing ship that a £lO landing tax bad been imposed on each coolie. Arrived a few miles off Melbourne, be opened bis seas-cocks and hoisted distress signals. Two salvage tugs responded. They found his vessel halffull of water and urged him to leave her. But lie persisted that lie would stand by the ship and work her in. No sooner bad be watched with

sweet satisfaction the tugs disappear landward with all the coolies (each representing a liability of £10) than ho pumped out the water and vamoosed. Not long afterwards be collected another cargo of cool--ies from a Chinn port (and flic £lO Australian landing tax for each) took tlmm to Hong Kong, “wangled” their naturalisation in that British Crown colony, and bra/.enlv lnaiiagod to land them in Australia as British subjects. There followed some years of mysterious South Pacific “trading" and raiding in the best Elizabethan Iradition. One fine day be rashly put into Upolu, the port of Samoa, ind the British Consul promptly ar■ested him. He submitted with good ’race and charming nonchalance.

His luck was in, for just then his old friend Captain Ben Please happened to arrive on a fast little brig. Obtaining permission to take bis chronometers aboard the Leonora one evening for readjustment, be was missing from Samoa in (be morning. So was the Leonora. When the brig got to Shanghai, Hayes, backed up by members of the crew whom lie had bribed, swore to an affidavit that lie owned her, and Captain Pease was gaoled. lie refitted and filled up with stores, paying cash for nothing except a spare mninyard, and slipped down the river out to the sea. At Saigon in Cochin China, be got a charter to take rice to Hong Kong and intermediate ports. At the first intermediate port lie went ashore with the owner of the rice. Promptly giving him the slip, lie nipped on board again and put out to sea, subsequently turning up in Siam, where be sold the whole cargo for a good , sum at Bangkok, and prudently applied a considerable part of the proceeds to having tlie Leonora copperbottomed. He cut things pretty fine, for, unknown to either of them ; at: the time the very night he sailed out of port again for the Pacific, an j incoming mail steamer was bringing ( - the owner of the rice. j A few weeks later Captain Hayes | met with an unfortunate contre-

temps. Tlis mate marooned him on an island. Was Captain Hayes

downhearted? Not a bit of it. He “found salvation” and an American mission gave him the command of a missionary schooner. He fared forth on her, threw the harmonium and the Bibles and hymn-books overboard, and returned to lucrative piracy. While bathing on the beach at Guam, however, he was arrested by the Spanish officials and sent for trial at Manila. Here, when in imminent danger of being garrotted for a number of murders and piracies, he managed to “get round” the powerful Roman Catholic hierarchy, became reconverted and disappeared. He 'turned up again in San Francisco, again stole a vessel—a smart schooner, the Lotus —and was off again, down to the South Seas. Once he was caught by the U.S. patrol ship Narrngnnselt, but he got on so well with the officers and made so favourable an impression on her commander, Captain Meade, (hat he was released while still at sea, on account of insufficient evidence, and had the exquisite satisfaction of receiving a gifi of new sails and gear at tile expense of the Government which had a heavy score marked up against him.

Captain Haves was always refined in his methods. When he came to knock senseless the maroon on a coral island the Frenchman from whom he had bought an interest in the schooner Giovanni Apinni he chose a moment when tlie hapless fellow was eloquently admiring the loveliness of an atoll past which they were sailing. He then came up softly behind him and tickled him behind the ear with a feather from his wife’s hat. As the Frenchman turned, after vainly trying to brush it. away, “that gentlemanly man'’ felled him with a terrifiie blow on the forehead.

Captain Hayes’s career was terminated not by the hangman, the garrotter, or I lie firing squad, nor yet by the shark or typhoon. A worm turned. He was knocked over the bead by a mate driven to desperation by his refinements of brufalil v.