Aboard the Burnet, the mariners swore they had raised their voices long before Richard Pye met his end. John Jayne, the master, beat him with such sustained cruelty that the chief mate and another seaman chose at last to quit the vessel in Carolina. Their departure brought no cessation to the blows. At trial, the prosecution reconstructed the cabin boy’s final weeks from the lips of those who had trodden the deck alongside him: a light fetched too slowly, a morsel of pudding, a night cast out in the bitter cold, and, ultimately, a broken body denied the power of speech.
The bill of indictment fixed the fatal assault on 15 March 1725, aboard the Burnet, upon the high seas, within thirty leagues of South Carolina. Pye languished, it was alleged, until 21 March. John Jayne, a mariner of London, was summoned before a session of the High Court of Admiralty on 26 May 1725. He swore upon oath that two material witnesses, Captain Samuel Jennings and one Morpeth, had departed on a voyage some fortnight prior. Thereupon the court respited the trial.
Proceedings resumed on 25 April 1726. The men of the Burnet were called to the bar. Richard Faring testified that he had served aboard the master’s ship during the passage from Bristol to South Carolina. The plight of Pye, the cabin boy, struck him as so dreadful that he and several shipmates gave Jayne plain warning: should he not desist, they would abandon the vessel upon landfall. According to Faring, Ireland, the chief mate, and another hand did precisely that.
Ireland’s departure provoked bitter consequences ashore. For having spoken openly of Pye’s ill-treatment, the mate was sued by Jayne for slander and defamation, Faring affirmed, and found himself cast into heavy charges and vexatious suits in Carolina. Ireland had quitted the ship to escape the spectacle of torment; his dispute with his former commander now detained him before the provincial authorities of the colony.
Anthony Harper boarded the Burnet in Carolina on 29 December 1724, having agreed to serve as Jayne’s chief mate for the homeward run. The vessel, laden with pitch and rice, was bound for Bristol. Harper was already acquainted with the grievances lodged against the master. When he questioned Pye, the boy confessed he had enjoyed a few days’ respite from beatings, yet fully expected them to resume once they stood out to sea. He had repeatedly attempted to escape, whether by swimming ashore or climbing aboard another craft; each time, he had been thwarted.
The ship shortly departed Charles Town for the anchorage at Rebellion Road. Harper deposed that the violence promptly recommenced. Jayne would drag the lad to the leeward side, away from neighboring vessels, that his shrieks might not carry to other crews. One night, the Burnet fouled the anchor cable of Captain Jollop’s vessel. Jayne ordered Pye to bring a lantern; the boy failing to hasten with sufficient speed, the master, Harper swore, struck him several blows near the head with a knife. Jayne later maintained he had used only a small key. Harper identified the instrument as a penknife.
Once upon the open sea, sustenance and sleep became fresh pretexts for torment. For having taken a piece of pudding from the locker, Pye was weighted with a bag of sand and iron weights slung about his neck. His arms were extended and pinioned behind him with a broomstick; Jayne shoved him about and beat him across the deck. Harper stated that the captain laughed as the boy struggled. Thereafter, the lad was kept exposed upon deck in the freezing cold, and his provisions were served to him raw. This punishment endured for about a week, Harper related.
In the dead of his night watch, Harper came upon Pye on his bended knees, imploring leave to go below to warm himself and swallow a morsel of food. The mate suffered him to steal beneath the deck while Jayne lay asleep in his cabin. On another occasion, for a piece of sea pie and a sip of rum taken from a can, the boy was reportedly stripped naked, bound in the same posture, whipped, and left exposed until four o’clock in the morning. Harper repeatedly begged to be spared the sight of such scenes. His words to Jayne—that if he was resolved to murder the lad, he should not do it in his presence—reveal that the crew well perceived the fatal peril, yet proved unable to avert it.
Harper further testified that Pye was lashed to the mast day and night. Jayne kicked him in the belly and dashed water over him. One night, having scourged him over the loss of an axe, the captain commanded William Phipps to blow through a speaking trumpet while the boy cried out, thereby drowning his lamentations. When Pye grew too faint to keep his feet, Jayne drove him below. Harper declared that the master dashed the boy’s head against the companion ladder and hurled an iron pot full of water at him. The metal bruised his head; Jayne then thrust wet rags inside his shirt to prolong his torment, according to the deposition.
The testimony portrayed a body covered with contusions and turning black and blue. Pye was said to have lost the power of speech for about two days; even then, he remained lashed to the mast. Harper reckoned at forty-eight days the period during which the boy suffered this sustained brutality, before his death toward the end of March, when the ship lay off the Western Islands. These forty-eight days encompass a prolonged course of abuse, whereas the indictment isolated the fatal wounds inflicted in March. Nor do the geographical designations refer to the identical moment: the indictment placed the mortal assault off South Carolina, while Harper fixed the boy’s death near the Western Islands. Anthony Willis corroborated the greater part of Harper’s account, notably the child’s silence during his final days and his confinement to the mast.
On 25 April 1726, Jayne was called once more to the bar and pleaded not guilty. The record preserves the depositions, followed by the jury’s verdict: guilty of murder, with sentence of death. Richard Pye had not lived to recount his sufferings before his judges. Harper had delivered the boy’s plea for shelter; Faring, the crew’s vain remonstrances; Willis, the two days during which the child spoke no more.
On Friday, 13 May 1726, toward ten in the forenoon, Jayne departed Newgate in an extremely languid state. He was placed in a cart and conveyed by slow degrees to Execution Dock. The multitude harbored great apprehension lest he should expire before reaching the gallows; when he appeared somewhat revived, they rejoiced. Upon the scaffold, he delivered a paper to the high constable and covered his face with his hat. He remained thus throughout the ordinary’s prayer, yet repeated every word. When the divine took his leave, Jayne started up in great agony of mind, cried unto God for mercy, and begged salvation for his soul. The sentence of death was executed. After life was extinct, a blacksmith fitted iron chains about the body, which was carried by water and hung in gibbets over against the King’s Powder House at Greenwich. Aboard the Burnet, Jayne had ordered the cabin boy’s cries silenced beneath the blare of a speaking trumpet. Before the bar of justice, the men who had heard those cries at last gave them voice.