Hunting the Last Great Pirate

Book excerpt: A true, century-spanning saga of terror at sea, a dramatic trial, and a mystery at long last solved . . . In 1827 the Duke of Wellington—former Commander-in-Chief of the British Army and British Prime Minister—ordered the withdrawal of British soldiers from the island of Ceylon after years of bloody conflict there. English cargo vessels, including the unarmed English Quaker ship Morning Star, were dispatched to sail to Colombo to repatriate wounded British soldiers and a cargo of sealed crates containing captured treasure. By January 1828, Morning Star was anchored at Table Bay, Cape Town, before joining an armed British convoy of East Indiamen heading north. Heavily laden, she struggled to keep up with the ships ahead. But a heavily armed pirate ship and its master, the notorious Benito de Soto, were lying in wait off Ascension Island in the mid-Atlantic to pick off stragglers from passing convoys. This book tells the full story of how Morning Star was easily overhauled by the pirate and stopped with cannon fire, the bloody events that followed, the long quest to hold de Soto to account—and the remarkable discovery that was made nearly a century later.