The Last Pirate of New York
Page 19
I have pursued this story for twenty years, chased it in the way of a hobbyist or a private detective. In piecing it together, I made use of city records, articles, and books, but I relied primarily on the transcripts of the court case, as well as Hicks’s confession, which was published, along with articles about the arrest and the hanging, in a slim volume called The Life, Trial, Confession and Execution of Albert W. Hicks. I backed up, filled out, and corroborated those details with articles and documents published at the time and in the years that followed—some from still-familiar papers like the New York Post and the New York Times, some from long-defunct papers whose names are as resonant as names on the sides of old clipper ships: the Brooklyn Eagle, the New York Ledger, the Police Gazette. For the greater context of the story, which is America on the eve of the Civil War, I relied on census and crime figures available in archives and records, the Library of Congress, and dozens of books—some new, some old—which can be found, along with the most helpful newspaper articles, in the bibliography.
I have lived near and visited the streets where these events took place, though many have been rerouted and renamed, paved into something entirely different. Even the Hudson River is not the same—it’s smaller and tamer, transformed for the needs of the modern citizen. Every now and then, though, you stumble across a Manhattan building that has somehow survived every upheaval, change, and disaster—the draft riots and garbage strikes, the terror attacks and blackouts—yet still stands, conjuring up that ancient pirate city. For a moment, standing before the Fraunces Tavern at 54 Pearl Street, say, or the Edward Mooney House at 18 Bowery, you get a sense of New York as it was in the time of Albert Hicks. It was not really that long ago. My father was born in 1933. In his childhood, an old man—someone he could have spoken to in a candy store in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, near where the E. A. Johnson laid up, waiting for the wind—might have been a boy in the crowd that watched the last pirate swing.
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ARTICLES AND DOCUMENTS
“Captain Rynders and the Lone Star.” New York Times, March 15, 1855.
“Tammany Troubles.; Another Grand Battle—Royal in Tammany Hall. The Vermilion, Edict Repudiated, The Last Vestige of Mayor Wood Wiped Out. Meddling Country Politicians Instructed. The Indepndence and Dignity of the Demeoratic Party Vindicated.” New York Times, July 27, 1857.
“Serenade to Marshal Rynders; The Marshal’s Opinion of Serenades, and of the Sycophants who Generally Get Them Up.” New York Times, June 24, 1858.
“Law Reports. Murder Trials. Verdict of Guilty Against John Crummins for the Murder of Dennis McHenry—Trial of Mortimer Shay for the Murder of John Leary.” New York Times, February 2, 1860.
“Great Eastern—The Steamship Great Eastern Is on Exhibition.” New York Post, March 14, 1860.
“News of the Day.” New York Times, March 15, 1860.
“Arrest of Twenty-Four Females in Broadway.” New York Post, March 16, 1860.
“The Jury and the Press.” New York Times, March 16, 1860.
“Alexander Dumas in Italy.” New York Post, March 20, 1860.
“Law Reports. The Sloop Murders. Conviction of Albert W. Hicks, alias Wm. Johnson, for Robbery on the High Seas.” New York Times, March 21, 1860.
“The Case of the Abandoned Schooner.” New York Post, March 22, 1860.
Extradition Notice: “I, Albert W. Hicks, agree to go New-York with Officer George Nevins, of my own free will and accord. (Signed) Albert W. Hicks.” City Marshal’s Office, Providence, RI, March 24, 1860.
“The Murders on the Oyster Sloop.” New York Times, March 24, 1860.
“Alleged Horrible Cruelty on Shipboard.” New York Post, March 26, 1860.
“The Lower Bay Tragedy—Positive Identification of the Prisoner—He Is Taken to the U.S. Marshal’s Office and Examined on the Charge of Piracy—The Latest and Fullest Particulars.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 26, 1860.
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“News of the Day.” New York Times, March 27, 1860.
“The Tragedies at Sea. The Two Alleged Murderers in Custody.” New York Times, March 27, 1860.
“The Oyster-Sloop Tragedy.” New York Post, March 28, 1860.
“News Story.” Evening Post, March 28, 1860.
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By Rich Cohen
Tough Jews
The Avengers
Lake Effect
Machers and Rockers
Sweet and Low
Israel Is Real
Alex and the Amazing Time Machine
When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead (with Jerry Weintraub)
The Fish That Ate the Whale
Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football
The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones
The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse
The Last Pirate of New York
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RICH COHEN is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Tough Jews; Monsters; Sweet and Low; When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead (with Jerry Weintraub); The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones; and The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse. He is a cocreator of the HBO series Vinyl and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone and has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s Magazine, among other publications. Cohen has won the Great Lakes Book Award, the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award, and the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for outstanding coverage of music. His stories have been included in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing. Despite frequent predictions, he still lives in Connecticut.
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Twitter: @richcohen2003
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