Customer Reviews

Quelch's Gold: Piracy, Greed, and Betrayal in Colonial New England

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Just finished this great book. Not being a history buff, I opened the cover to this book with some doubts - how wrong can you be. This story picks you up on the first page, and has you snared through the rest of the journey. The story is well told, deeply researched and written in such a way as to deliver accurate historical events to the reader, whilst pulling you along at a good pace. I tried to put the book down a couple of times over the weekend, but found my mind constantly returning to the story, and compelled to pick up the story and see it through to its conclusion. And who would have thought you could bring together pirate gold, the british treasury and Isaac Newton all within the covers of one book !
A cracking good read - try it....

A victim of something he didn't understand, a sad fate indeed. "Quelch's Gold: Piracy, Greed, and Betrayal in Colonial New England" is the tragic story of John Quelch. With a massively valuable haul in his ship coming to the American colonies in 1704, Quelch finds himself charged with piracy against ally Portugal. Baffled at the accusation, Quelch stood powerless as his fate was decided. A history of a Massachusetts legend and look at the law of the early eighteenth century, "Quelch's Gold" is a worthwhile acquisition for history buffs.

John Quelch turned pirate in May of 1704. He stole the brigantine Charles from Marblehead, Massachusetts, setting sail for the coast of Portuguese controlled Brazil where he took seven prizes. Technically a privateer, John unfortunately plundered ships belonging to an ally of England. Upon his return to Marblehead he was arrested, tried and hung in a remarkably speedy, three week trial, the first legally constituted court of English Admiralty to judge a case of piracy outside of England. It was a role that none of the players, from the Governor's Council to the case lawyers, knew the roles for and the conduct of the trial was improvised in the extreme.

Quelch's execution was not viewed with favor by the citizens of Boston where piracy was an accepted form of employment that provided hard currency to a cash short economy. It appeared very strange that Englishmen would be hanged with such unseemly and suspicious haste. They were quite right. Quelch's gold it seems set off a feeding frenzy with land based buccaneers taking over from the sea rovers once the substantive fortune arrived on shore. Worse yet, it was subsequently found that with the death of King William III, the Govenor's authority to try Quelch locally under Admiralty law was invalid.

Follow then the course of Quelch's gold from Brazil's coast to the King's Treasury in London where a small portion finally washes up and none other than Sir Isaac Newton converts it into coin of the realm. This windfall arrives just in time to finance debts owing to the King of Prussia, Frederick I, for his services to the Duke of Marlborough in the English triumph over the French at Ramillies.

And yes, as you have already guessed, the Portuguese never saw so much as a shilling in recompense.