Second Mate Gravett was seized by the throat, the muzzle of a pistol pressed hard against his breast. "If you make any resistance, you are a dead man," the carpenter told him. Aboard the Charles the Second, Captain Gibson lay sick within his cabin; the crew’s longboat drew alongside, and men from the James galley took command of the vessel. Joseph Dawson, Edward Forseeth, William May, William Bishop, James Lewis, and John Sparks would later answer to the charge of having joined in this mutiny and the piracies that followed in its wake.
The assault took place off Corunna, upon a coast the proceedings refer to as the Groyn. Charles Gibson commanded an armed merchant vessel of forty guns. The company had languished without pay for months; several mariners saw their departure as an occasion to possess themselves of both ship and cargo. Captain Avery assumed the head of the enterprise. He told Gibson he must seek his fortune; should the captain join them, he might retain his command. Gibson refused to disobey his owners. He was thereupon ordered ashore with those who declined to follow.
The witnesses offered divergent accounts of the compulsion exerted upon them. Second Mate Gravett deposed that he was threatened and held at gunpoint until the vessel gained the open sea. David Creagh saw May level a piece at him, declaring he deserved to be shot. John Dan, for his part, related that the crew went ashore demanding their wages, after which a faction concerted their escape. The departures into the boat were not free to all: the surgeon was forcibly detained aboard. The question that would pursue the accused was where the boundary lay between being swept up in a mutiny and electing to abide with it.
Those who remained aboard carried the Charles the Second into the Atlantic. They took on salt and victuals, then put into the island of Maio, where they plundered English merchantmen. They captured the governor of the island, holding him until provisions were delivered, before sending him ashore. Along the Guinea coast, they ran up English colours to entice local merchants. Once these traders stepped aboard, the pirates stripped them of their gold and cast them into the hold in irons. At the Isle of Princes, seven were put ashore as slaves. The deposition of John Dan thus transforms a narrative of flight into a passage marked by captures, sales, and stripped hulls.
The ship altered her course repeatedly. Several prizes were burned or scuttled after the marauders had rifled them of what they desired. Off Africa, they sacked a town the proceedings style Moat, because its inhabitants refused all commerce with them. They then ascended the Red Sea, where other English crews fell in with their company. The confederacy swelled into a flotilla. They lay in wait for the merchant fleet returning from Mocha, took one vessel, and presently sighted the Gunsway, a great ship freighted with immense treasure, off Cape Saint John.
The engagement with the Gunsway endured some two hours, according to Dan. The pirates took her, stripped her, and dismissed her toward Surat with her passengers still aboard. Another witness affirmed that men were slain during the onslaught. The sums entered in the indictment—one hundred thousand pieces of eight and one hundred thousand chequins—measure the scale of the capture, though the record does not disclose how these riches were tallied. About a week later, the company divided the spoil. Some received a thousand pounds, others five hundred or less, by Middleton’s testimony. For men who had put their necks in jeopardy, or who pleaded they were carried along by force, this division became an argument of complicity as much as a reward.
Following the distribution, the Charles the Second made for the island of Providence. The pirates wrote to the governor to solicit safe harbour, promising him money; Avery offered still more, having secured for himself a double share. A messenger returned bearing leave to come and go at their pleasure. The company now commanded enough treasure to purchase an open door of refuge, yet their fellowship did not endure. At various stages, some hands were set ashore, others left behind; the Charles ended her days at Providence, while the men scattered their tracks across the Atlantic.
Before reaching Providence, they had likewise put French, Danish, and English seamen ashore at Dassaran; some, Middleton noted, feared being hanged should they return to England. Going ashore might purchase an exit from the fleet, but it offered no certain return to their former lives.
At the Old Bailey, Dawson pleaded guilty to the first indictment, which concerned the taking of the Gunsway; his fellows pleaded not guilty. The court, however, acquitted them all upon that charge, and the session was adjourned. Yet the matter did not end there: they were detained upon a fresh warrant, charged with further acts of piracy. On the 31st of October, a new indictment was laid concerning the Charles the Second. Gravett and Creagh recounted the seizing of the vessel. Dan then traced the company's course from the Guinea coast unto India, while Middleton confirmed several captures and the sharing of the money.
The defence rested upon the plea of having had no choice. Forseeth inquired of the judge whether it could be confirmed he belonged to the boat; the witness replied he had been ordered to return, yet refused. Forseeth maintained he could not have returned without leaping into the sea. May declared he was wholly ignorant of the design, and had he refused to accompany the rest, his life would have been forfeit. He affirmed he had related the circumstances at Bristol immediately upon reaching English soil, attempting to lay them before the Admiralty. The court pressed him upon the delay: wherefore had he not spoken sooner? He answered he was sick and had been carried from place to place before reaching London.
The Lord Chief Justice reminded the jury that whosoever joins in an act of piracy is guilty, though a single man may have devised it. He observed that those who wished to go ashore had the liberty to do so, save for the surgeon. This view did not wholly meet the prisoners' tales of terror and constraint; rather, it gave the jurors a compass by which to judge the acts committed after the departure. The jury asked to hear again the evidence touching Sparks: whether his presence, his participation in the prizes, and the share he received were sufficient proof of his consent. The judge asked them whether repeated actions might not express assent far more plainly than any words.
This time, the jury returned a verdict of guilty against the five men who had pleaded not guilty: Edward Forseeth, William May, William Bishop, James Lewis—styled William Lewis in the subsequent indictment—and John Sparks. Joseph Dawson had already pleaded guilty to the charges brought against him. In the days that followed, the six were tried again for the capture of two Danish vessels and a Moorish ship near Surat; Borrow’s account states they were all found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. It proceeds to state that they were executed on the 25th of November, without naming each man so dispatched. The contemporary 1696 reprint names Forseith and "the rest," but does not explicitly identify the solitary man spared; modern historical scholarship considers it probable that Dawson received a pardon. The cause did not merely determine whether Avery led the mutiny: it turned a progression of captures into evidence of consent. Dawson’s individual fate remains to be weighed apart from Borrow’s text.