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FANNY CAMPBELL, THE FEMALE PIRATE CAPTAIN

A Tale Of The Revolution

By Maturin Murray Ballou

1844

NEW YORK:

E. D LONG & CO., BOOKSELLER




PREFACE.

All books should have a preface, for the writer is sure to have
something to communicate to the reader concerning the plot of the story
or some subject relating to it which he cannot do in the tale. It is a
sort of confidential communication between the author and reader,
whom he takes by the buttonhole for a single moment, and endeavors to
prepossess favorably towards his story. We are one of those who place
great confidence in first impressions, and therefore design that the
reader should at least commence our tale unprejudiced. He will see at
a glance that our publisher has passed his judgment in commendation, by
the superb manner in which he has issued the work, and the great expense
incurred.

We have a few words to say concerning the subject matter of the tale. It
is a very romantic one, but no more so than many others, the incidents
of which occurred during the stirring times of the Revolution, and
which have since received the sanction of history. We have been at some
considerable expense in ferreting out the events of our tale, which have
been cheerfully met by our liberal publisher.




FANNY CAMPBELL.




CHAPTER I.

_LYNN IN OLDEN TIMES. HIGH ROCK. THE FISHING HAMLET. THE STIRRING EVENTS
THAT PRECEDED THE REVOLUTION. SOME OF OUR CHARACTERS. WILLIAM LOVELL.
FANNY CAMPBELL. THE HEROINE. CAPTAIN RALPH BURNET OF THE ROYAL NAVY. A
LOVER’S JEALOUSY._

|The town of Lynn, Massachusetts, situated up the Atlantic sea board,
at a distance of some ten miles from the metropolis of New England, has
been the locale of many an incident of a most romantic character. Indeed
its history abounds with matter more akin to romance than fact. There
are here the Pirate’s Cave, Lover’s Leap, the Robber’s Dungeon, all
within a pistol shot of each other. The story of its early Indian
history is also of a most interesting character, and altogether the
place is one destined to be immortal from these causes alone.

In that part of the town known as ‘Wood End,’ there is an immense pile
of stone rising perpendicularly on the side of a hill, fronting the
ocean, known far and near by the name of High Rock. This granite mass
is very peculiarly formed; the front rising abruptly nearly an hundred
feet, while the back is deeply imbedded in the rising ground and the
summit forms a plain level with the height of the hill and the adjoining
plain in the rear. This spot has long been celebrated for the extended
and beautiful prospect it affords. From its top which overlooks
rock-bound Nahant in a Southerly direction, may be had a noble view of
the Atlantic, and a breadth of coast nearly thirty miles in width. There
is no spot upon our shores where the sea plays a wilder or more solemn
dirge than on the rocky peninsula of Nahant; the long connecting beach
is here a scene of angry commotion from the constant and heavy swells of
the broad ocean.

At a distance of about ten miles in the South-West lies Boston. The
eye always rests upon the dense smoke that enshrouds it first, piercing
which, loom up the spires of its numerous churches, and towering above
them all, the noble State House is distinctly seen. Turn still more to
the West and you overlook the principal portion of the manufacturing
town of Lynn, with its picturesque collection of white cottages and
factories, appearing of miniature dimensions. Turn again towards the
North West and a few miles beyond the town of Lynn, lies the thriving
little village of Saugus. A full Northern view is one of woody beauty,
being a field of forest tops of almost boundless extent. In the
North-East through the opening hills and trees, a glimpse is had of the
water in Salem harbor, while the city itself is hid from view, reminding
one of the distant view of the Adriatic from the lofty Appenines, which
rise from the very gates of the lovely city of Florence.

This is a slight glance at the extended prospect to be enjoyed by a
visit to High Rock, at the present day, saying nothing of the pretty
quiet little fishing village of Swampscot, and the panorama of sailing
craft that always ornament the sea view.

Near the base of the rock there resided until a few years since the
celebrated fortune-teller, known by the name of ‘Moll Pitcher,’ a
soubriquet given her by the town’s people, her rightful name never
having been ascertained. She lived to a remarkable old age, and to the
day of her death the visitor who ‘crossed her palm with broad pieces,’
was sure to receive in return, some truthful or fictitious legend of
the neighborhood. There are many among us to this day who remember with
pleasure their visits to the strange old fortune-teller of Lynn, at the
base of High Rock.

We have been thus particular in the description of this spot as it is
the birth-place of two persons who will bear an important part in the
tale we are about to relate, and partly, because we love this spot where
we have whiled away many an hour of our boyish days. The peculiarities
of one’s birth-place have much influence upon formation of the character
and disposition. The associations that hang about us in childhood, have
double weight upon our tender and susceptible minds at that time, to
those of after days, when the character is more formed and matured, and
the mind has become more stern and inflexible. It behoves us then to
speak thus particularly of the birth-place and the associations of those
who are to enact the principal characters in the drama which we relate.

There lived at the very base of High Rock about seventy years ago, a
few families of the real puritanic stock, forming a little community of
themselves. The occupation of the male portion of the hamlet was that
of fishermen, while the time of the females was occupied in drying and
preserving the fish and such other domestic labor as fell to their lot.
The neighborhood, resembled in every particular, save that it was far
less extensive, the present town of Swampscot, which is situated but
about three or four miles from the very spot we are now describing, and
whose inhabitants, a hardy and industrious people, are absolutely to
this day ‘fishermen all.’

The date to which we refer was just at the commencement of the principal
causes of difference between the colonies and the mother country; the
time when shrewd and thoughtful men foretold the coming struggle between
England and her North American dependances. Already had the opposition
of the colonies to the odious Stamp Act, and more particularly the
people of Massachusetts Bay, as Boston and the neighboring province was
named, become so spirited and universal that the British Parliament had
only the alternative to compel submission or repeal the act, which
was at length reluctantly done. Yet the continued acts of arbitrary
oppression enforced by parliament upon the people, such as the passing
of laws that those of the colonists charged with capital crimes, should
be sent to England to be tried by a jury of strangers, and like odious
and unconstitutional enactments had driven the people to despair, and
prepared them by degrees for the after startling events that caused all
Europe to wonder and England herself to tremble!

The State Street massacre, the celebrated tea scene, in which the
indignant inhabitants of Boston discharged three hundred and fifty
chests of tea into the water of the bay, the thousand petty acts of
tyranny practised by the soldiers of the crown; the Boston Port Bill
blockading the harbor of Boston, all followed in quick succession, each
being but the stepping stone to the great events to follow. These
were the scenes at Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and the many
well-contested and bloody fields of the Revolution, until these United
States of America were acknowledged to be _free and independent!_

The bold and adventurous characters of the men were affected as well by
the times we have described, as by the hardy nature of their employment.
The dangers that often times surrounded the homes of the females, gave
rise to a stern and manly disposition even in those of the gentler sex
who formed a part of the community, and altogether it was made up of
stern and dauntless spirits. There was at the commencement of our
tale about the year 1773, two families who occupied one spacious and
comfortable cottage in the little neighborhood we have described.
These were the families of Henry Campbell, and William Lovell, both
fishermen, who sailed a staunch fishing craft together. Their families
consisted of their wives and an only child each-William and Fanny, and
it was the honest hope and promise of the parents that the children when
arrived at a proper age should be united to each other. Nor were the
betrothed on their part any way loth to such an agreement, for they
loved each other with an affection that had grown with their years from
earliest childhood. The course of true love seemed certain to run smooth
with them at least, the old adage to the contrary notwithstanding.

William had been brought up almost entirely on board his father’s
vessel, and he was as good a sailor as experience in this way could
make. He was now nineteen, with a firm, vigorous, manly form, and an
easy and gentlemanly bearing; his face when one came to be familiar
with it, was decidedly handsome; showing forth a spirit that spurned all
danger He was young, ardent and imaginative, and could but poorly brook
the confinement of his father’s occupation, which engaged much of his
time; his generous and ambitious mind aspiring to some higher calling
than that of an humble fisherman He was but little on shore, save in the
severe winters that come early and stay late in these northern latitudes;
but then this season was looked forward to with pleasure by all. The
long winter evenings were spent happily with Fanny, as she industriously
pursued some female occupation, while he perhaps read aloud some
instructive book or interesting tale, or they listened to some story
of the old French and Indian war from their parents, who had been
participators in their dangers and hardships. Then the subject of the
present state of the prospects and interests of the colonies, and the
oppression of the home government, were also fully discussed. Thus the
time had passed away until William had reached his nineteenth year,
when he resolved to make a bold push for fortune, as he said, and after
obtaining permission which was reluctantly granted by his parents, he
made arrangements to ship from Boston to some foreign clime as a
sailor. A distant voyage in those days was an adventure indeed, and
comparatively seldom undertaken.

William Lovell had been to Boston and shipped on board a merchant vessel
for the West Indies and from thence to some more distant port, and had
now returned to the cottage to put up his little bundle of clothes and
bid farewell to his old companions and friends, and to say good-bye
to his parents and her whom he loved with an affection that found no
parallel among those with whom he had associated. It was this very love
which had given birth to the ambition that actuated him, and the desire
to acquire experience and pecuniary competency.

It was the evening before he was to sail, a mild summers night, when
with Fanny he sought the summit of High rock. They seated themselves
upon the rough stone seat, hewn from the solid rock by the hand of the
red man, or perhaps by some race anterior even to them, and long and
silently did both gaze off upon the distant sea. It was very calm, and
the gentle waves but just kissed the rocky borders of Valiant and threw
up little jets of silver spray about the black mass of Egg Bock. The
moon seemed to be embroidering fancy patterns of silver lace upon the
blue ocean, which scarcely moved, so gentle were the swells of its broad
bosom under the fairy operation. This was some seventy years gone by,
years of toil and labor, of joy and sorrow, years of smiling peace and
angry war, three score and ten years ago, and yet within a twelve month
I have sat upon that rock, aye, upon that very stone, and looked upon
the same silvery sea, and viewed the same still, silvery scene; gazing
on the same iron-bound shores, and the black and frowning mass of
Egg Rock still there, as if placed a sentinel upon the shore, and yet
sufficiently within the domain of Neptune to lead to the belief