Captain Gincks

Captain Gincks[lower-alpha 1] (fl. 1705-1706) was a privateer based in New York. He is best known for sailing alongside Adrian Claver, and for a violent incident involving his sailors while ashore.

Captain Gincks
OccupationPrivateer
Years active1705-1706
Known forSailing alongside Adrian Claver
Piratical career
Base of operationsNew York (state)
CommandsDragon
Bloody results of the 1705 New York riot started by drunken members of Captain Gincks' privateer brigantine "Dragon".

History

Gincks’s 130-man brigantine Dragon arrived in New York in August 1705 alongside Adrian Claver’s Castel del Rey and two other privateers, de Wint and Willoughby.[1] They had captured a richly-loaded 300-ton, 20-gun, 140-man Spanish ship near Havana, which they brought to New York as a prize ship. Claver rowed alongside the Spanish ship and captured it without waiting for Gincks, though his crew suffered several casualties in the attack. They set most of the prisoners ashore but brought a few prisoners back with them, including two Friars. The captured ship’s cargo consisted of, among other things, “350 pipes of wine and brandy.”[2]

The following month a Spanish prize ship taken by Thomas Penniston arrived, also laden with wine and brandy. Shortly afterwards the two privateer crews (mostly from the Dragon) began a drunken riot, where they “assaulted the Sheriff at his door without any provocation, & beat and wounded several persons that came to his assistance.”[2] Soldiers from the local fort assembled alongside marines from docked Royal Navy ships to break up the gathering. Two soldiers returning home stumbled into the mob and were attacked; after Ensign Alcock was beaten and badly wounded, the rioters stole his sword and killed Lieutenant Featherstone-Hough with it.[3] The militia arrived immediately afterwards, breaking up the riot and capturing several privateers involved with the attack. A sailor named Erasmus Wilkins was caught and charged with Lieutenant’s murder. Of the privateers’ behavior the Boston News-Letter wrote, “it would be too tedious to relate the particulars, but their insolence is beyond expression.”[4]

Gincks soon sailed again, this time to Puerto Rico where in early 1706 the Dragon engaged two French privateers, the Trompeuse[lower-alpha 2] and another sloop.[5] They damaged the Dragon’s sails and rigging, leaving Gincks unable to pursue them.[6] He claimed he had the battle nearly won and would have been able to capture both at once “had they not run,” but he still managed to send them back to port heavily damaged: “the French Privateers got into St. Thomas being much shatter'd, and several men killed and wounded.”[2] The Dragon’s damage was quickly repaired, enabling Gincks (with help from a Dutch ship) to capture another French privateer and two other vessels with which he returned to Jamaica, the last report of his activities.[2]

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See also

Notes
  1. Last name occasionally Ginks; first name unknown.
  2. Not the same Trompeuse belonging to Jean Hamlin or his predecessors.

References
  1. Groenendijk, R. L. Van Tuyl and J. N. A. (1996). A Van Tuyl Chronicle: 650 Years in the History of a Dutch-American Family. Decorah IA: Rory Van Tuyl. pp. 129–131. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  2. Weeks, Lyman Horace; Bacon, Edwin Monroe (1911). An Historical Digest of the Provincial Press: Being a Collation of All Items of Personal and Historic Reference Relating to American Affairs Printed in the Newspapers of the Provincial Period Beginning with the Appearance of The Present State of the New-English Affairs, 1689, Publick Occurrences, 1690, and the First Issue of the Boston News-letter, 1704, and Ending with the Close of the Revolution, 1783 ... Massachusetts Series, Volume One. Boston: Society for Americana, Incorporated. pp. 234–299. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  3. Maclay, Edgar Stanton (2008). Washington's Wolfpack: The Navy Before There Was A Navy. Tucson AZ: Fireship Press. pp. 22–23. ISBN 9781934757406. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  4. Wilson, Rufus Rockwell (1902). New York: Old & New. Philadelphia PA: J.B. Lippincott. p. 132. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  5. Alden, Henry Mills; Allen, Frederick Lewis; Hartman, Lee Foster; Wells, Thomas Bucklin (1895). Harper's (Volume 90 ed.). New York: Harper's Magazine Foundation. pp. 335–339. Retrieved 5 November 2017.
  6. Fletcher, R. A. (2013). In The Days Of The Tall Ships. Worcestershire UK: Read Books Ltd. ISBN 9781473383456. Retrieved 5 November 2017.
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