ORIGINAL PIRATES OF N.Y.C

 

I hasten to point out that the quartet who sought shelter at the Sheepshead Bay Inn, that stormy November afternoon, were not criminal masterminds. The lead voice was Charles Gibbs, a diminutive thirty-six year old fire plug.  The baritone was Thomas Wansely, a tall and powerfully built black man,  too curious by half.  The bass was voiced by Robert Dawes, a plump man, a cook and a nonentity.  But the tenor was John Brownrigg.  He possessed a fatal combination of greed and guilt.

Perhaps it was the warm food on that stormy Wednesday afternoon of 24 November, 1830. Or maybe it was the hot rum they imbibed. Or perhaps it was the flames of purgatory which John Brownrigg saw flickering in the hearthstone.  But something drove Mister Brownrigg to draw innkeeper Samuel Leonard aside and spill a tale of betrayal, murder and piracy.  

Just weeks earlier, explained John, six men had crewed the small brig Vineland, Captained by William Thornsby. They were docked at Vera Cruz, Mexico (above), freshly loaded with a cargo of cotton bales, and casks of molasses and rum.

Late in the day crewman Thomas Wansely had been ordered by Captain Thornby to stack a half dozen heavy barrels in the captain's quarters. Curiosity drove Wansely to pry open one of the barrels for a peek. 

Inside he found freshly minted silver coins – Mexican pieces of eight (above). 

And as the tide pulled the Vineland into the Gulf of Mexico, Wansely shared his discovery with first mate Charles Gibbs.

By Gibb’s figuring all the barrels together held today’s equivalent of over one million dollars in untraceable cash.  It was untraceable because, without a standardized national currency of their own, Spanish and Mexican coins circulated so commonly in America, that prices were figured as the equivalent in Spanish (and Mexican) currency, to the point that today’s ubiquitous American  dollar sign (“$” ) was borrowed from its Spanish inventors.

In the morning, Gibbs and Wansely opened one of the barrels of rum and shared the contents with Dawes, Brownrigg and the two other crewmen. And once they were all well intoxicated, Gibbs told them of the cargo of silver. 

He then confessed that the night before he had murdered Captain Thornby and thrown his body overboard. With that much money at stake, explained Gibbs, they were now all under suspicion of the  murder. So, Gibbs suggested, why not share the guilt and the silver between them. One crewman balked, and Wansley sent him into the briny deep with the captain.  

Thus motivated the others promptly agreed to become pirates. Still, as the little vessel crossed the gulf bound for New York, a second man sobered up and expressed regret. He joined his fellow law abiding mates when the four man crew sent him into the cold, heartless sea.

Their doubts thus drowned, on Tuesday, 23 November, 1830 the Vineland reached the westernmost spit of sand off New York (above). Its name derives from the Dutch ‘Conyne Eylandt’, meaning Rabbit Island. 

As was normal during the age of sail, ships seeking to enter or leaving NYC harbor anchored in an isolated corner of Jamaica Bay, to wait for favorable winds. There, with a nor’easter brewing in the gathering darkness, the four men struggled to lower a skiff and fill it with their burdensome barrels of silver pieces of eight. 

They then scuttled the Vineland and set her afire. As she sank into the muddy waters of the bay the four men in the low riding skiff set off for the windward shore, at what is today Rockaway Beach.

It was not beach weather. The surf was pounding. The gale was approaching. The landing was a disaster. Beaching their overloaded skiff In the crashing surf the four seamen lost most of their booty, and were able to save just 10% of the coins. Wet, cold and exhausted, soaked by a pounding downpour, the gang of four came to the realization they had not thought things through as well as they thought they had. While Wanesly and Brownrigg stood guard over what was left of their loot, Gibbs and Dawes walked to a tavern Gibbs was familiar with in the isolated village of Carnarsie.

The tavern was run by the Johnson brothers, John and William. It was the youngest, William, who answered the door that night. He recognized Gibbs and was willing to rent him a horse and wagon for an hour or so. Gibbs explained he had a heavy load to transfer from a boat.

Having thus obtained the tools required, Gibbs and Dawes returned to the beach, and, according to Brownrigg, the four men buried the remaining $56,000 in Mexican silver, marking the spot with a strand of ribbon tied to the saw grass. They then returned to Johnson’s pub and Gibbs paid for the rental with a generous bag of brand new Mexican coins.

The four men were headed for lower Manhattan, where they would claim the ship had been lost in the storm. Their convenient alibi was by now pounding the coast, and after having crossed Coney Island Creek (so called because until it was filled in over the next hundred years, it was responsible for Coney Island being an island) , the quartet had been forced to seek refuge in John Leonard’s Sheepshead Bay Inn, where John Brownrigg spilled his guts.

Inn keeper Samuel Leonard was nothing if not decisive. Quietly he gathered his staff and they fell upon the three villains. Well, two of the villains. Gibbs and Dawes were quickly tied to their chairs, but the tall powerful Wanesly broke for the woods, followed by the courageous waiter Robert Greenwood, who was armed with an unloaded flintlock pistol. An hour later Greenwood returned with Wanesly in tow.

The local justice of the peace, John Van Dyck, was summoned, and next morning Brownrigg lead the authorities to the buried treasure. Only the treasure was not there.  Under questioning Dawes related again the tale of the visit to the Johnson brothers tavern. Under questioning both Johnsons  confirmed the story, but, insisted, they knew nothing else. Van Dyck was certain that they did. And Van Dyck was correct.

The instant Gibbs had crossed William Johnson’s palm with the newly minted silver, the mastermind was awakened in William Gibbs. Perhaps if the payment had been less generous, or if Gibbs had paid in any other currency, his secret might have remained secret. As it was, 19 year old William immediately woke his older brother John, and after examining their weary horse’s hooves and finding sand there, the brothers searched the beach. 

They quickly spotted the ribbon and found the cache of stolen silver...which they promptly re-stole.  They dragged the boxes and bags inland a few hundred yards, divided and re-buried it in two new caches, one of about $40,000 and the second of about $16,000. And then they returned home for a hearty breakfast.

Justice of the Peace Van Dyke suspected this, or most of it. But he could prove nothing. And once a beachcomber discovered Mexican eights rolling around in the surf at Rockaway Beach, he was joined by hundreds of others combing the sand. 

After that there was no way of proving where the crazy eights had come from -  the cache or the surf or maybe from heaven above. Van Dyke could only choke the four birds he still had, in the Flatbush Jail and Courthouse. However it should be noted, that prisoners escaped so often from that facility that the local joke was prisoners were in constant danger of falling out of  the jail.

And then something predictable happened. Young William Johnson began to have second thoughts. Or a glimmer of guilt.  He approached the insurance company (yes, even in 1830 there were insurance companies), and inquired what they might pay as a reward for the return of some of the silver. The insurance company replied that they would be willing to make a generous settlement which might not leave the brothers filthy rich, but at least they would be free from worry of future legal entanglements. 

Encouraged, William returned to Rockaway Beach to confirm the security of both of the caches, whereupon he made a most distressing discovery.  He should not have trusted his brother.

You see older brother John was married.  And that meant yet another brain working on the possibilities of all that silver sitting quietly under the sand.  Clearly John or his wife, or the pair together, had reached the conclusion that even though John had not heard opportunity knock, William had awakened him to it. Mister and Mistress Johnson thus became convinced they were deserving of the larger share of the twice stolen silver. So they took it, and disappeared.  That left 19 year old William Johnson to return the remaining $16,000 in pieces of eight,  in exchange for a greatly reduced reward.

On Friday,  22 April, 1831, on Bedloe's Island, where one day the Statue of Liberty would stand on the foundations of  Fort Wood, the criminal masterminds Charles Gibbs and Thomas Wansley climbed thirteen steps of a scaffold, where they were both hanged by the neck until they were dead.  Gibbs had been convicted of piracy, and was the last man hanged for that crime in America - so his death was not entirely without meaning. Wansley, the black man, died for the crime of murder.  

Dawes and Brownrigg served short jail terms, and disappeared from history. William Johnson lived in Brooklyn until 1906. He married and produced at least one son and a daughter. I have no evidence, either way, if they were masterminds like their father, and their long lost wealthy aunt and uncle.

But nothing more was heard of the older brother John and his wife. They either escaped with a fortune in untraceable pieces of eight, or ended up robbed and or were murdered by better thieves.  And it is odd that such a fortune should disappear without a trace, because I would say that. on average, the percentage of successful pirates is usually pretty damn small.

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PAINTING OVER, The Widow and the Drunk

I guess it was inevitable that once these two met, their relationship would turn from unpleasant to downright ugly. The widow Jane Leland Stanford (above) was a rigid, humorless, devoted temperance adherent who worshiped a vengeful God. She was described by an acquaintance as a lady with "...an  assured position in the social and financial world."  In other words, she was born with an entitled stick up her bum, and after the death of her husband, she exchanged the wood for steel. 

Her antagonist, Ashley David Montague Cooper (above), was what was once politely called a bohemian, but more accurately he was a hedonist, an inveterate gambler, a constant drunk, a profligate womanizer, and an atheist. He was also a popular painter. About the only thing these two agreed upon was that if there was a hell, then A.D. Cooper going there in a hand cart. And it was fitting that their relationship, such as it was, sank completely when it ran aground on her rocks.

Jane's money came from her husband Leland Stanford (above), one of the ruthless rabid robber barons who built modern California and amassed a fortune of $50 million - one billion today.  

Jane Stanford's jewelry collection was the guilt on that gilded age, to the point she was known as the queen of diamonds. Her private hoard remains famous to this day because after Leland died of heart failure in 1893 the United States government slapped a $15 million tax lien (half a billion in 2021 dollars) on his estate.  Jane refused to pay even a portion of it, even though the drawn out legal battle threatened to destroy the memorial to her only child.  

The story that Stanford University was founded when Harvard rejected Leland Stanford Jr. (above) is a myth. The reality was that in 1884, when he was sixteen, the boy's doting parents rewarded Junior with a “grand tour” of Europe. It was while exploring the temples of Greece that the boy contracted typhus, and he died in Florence, Italy.  His parents were heartbroken, and the little comfort Leland could offer Jane was to tell her, “Now, all of California will be our child”. He might have actually said that, as reason for founding the University that bares his son's name.

Stanford University (above) was supposed to be free for all qualified students, women admitted equally with men, so that all students would be qualified "...for personal success and direct usefulness in life.” And when the cold hearted tax collectors prevented Jane from transferring money from her husband's estate to the university, Jane decided to sell her bling to keep the young university afloat. But first, she thought it would be a good idea to memorialize her donation. Consider it a sales pitch.

She carefully arraigned the 34 diamond studded tiaras, necklaces, cameos, bracelets, rings, ear rings, lockets, watches, diadems and other assorted brick-a-brack, on a red velvet piano cover, and had it photographed.  And then, because the resultant black and white image (above) did not do justice to the $100,000.00 ($3 million today) collection, Jane decided to have the collection painted as well. In the spring of 1898 she hired the most talented (and expensive) painter she could find, Ashley David Montague Cooper. The idea of donating what she intending on paying Cooper, to the cash strapped university, never seems to have occurred to the lady.

By the time he was thirty, "A.D." (above) was already famous and had recently sold a large canvas for $62,000.  One generous biographer described his technique as romantic "...with dramatic shadows and heavy, dark atmospheric effects that often obscured the background (and sometimes the foreground)...". The man himself was described as a "...notorious bon vivant...(with) a penchant for drinking and carousing"...but also "...exceptionally generous, polite and cultured with an aristocratic bearing".  

His most famous painting was titled “Inquest on the Plains”, (above) which depicted a  circle of American buffalo in the snow, surrounding a dead Indian warrior - shot with an arrow, of course.  Subtle was not A.D.'s approach to art. Said a critic, “When he was good, he was brilliant; when he was bad, he was laughable.” Most of his darkly romantic western allegories were hanging in the finest homes in New York City and London. 

His paintings of nude females (above) were hanging over most of the bars between San Francisco and his home and studio in Santa Cruz. He used them to pay off his own and his friend's bar bills. and A.D. had many friends and constant bar bills.  

And that may have been why, when the messenger arrived from Jane Stanford, A.D. agreed to the climb up Nobb Hill to her 50 room San Francisco mansion (above). However, the lady had a few rules. 

First, while he was working in the mansion, painting a still life of her lifeless diamonds,  A.D. was to wear formal dress. Secondly, he was to arrive at work sober, and since no alcohol was allowed on the premises, he was to do no drinking on the job. 

To be certain that her rules were adhered to Jane's personal secretary, Bertha Berner (above), was to be in the room with him and the jewels at all times. A.D. readily agreed, so Jane showed him the piano cover she had draped her jewelry upon, and the jewelry itself. To be honest, it did not seem like that complicated a job, a bit like asking Leonardo Da Vinci to paint a rumpus room. It wasn't as if the dowager was going to be looming over A.D. while he painted. The hedonist must have wondered, what could go wrong?.

What went wrong with A.D.'s plan was Miss  Berner. She was a younger version of Jane Stanford; her hair locked down in a tight white bun, her bedroom and office adjacent to Jane's bedroom, upstairs. By A.D.'s second session with the hoard, once it was clear Bertha was not going away, A.D. snapped.  According to Bertha, “he rose … made a deep bow with a flourish, drew a flask from his pocket, and took a drink. Then he said, ‘Now you watch me put a little fire into that sapphire!’” Bertha promptly reported this transgression to her mistress. But judging the work in progress, Jane decided to keep A.D. on the job and Bertha watching over the work..

Twice over the next few weeks A.D. became so inebriated Bertha had to be send him home. But climbing back aboard the wagon each time, he returned and forged ahead, memorializing this six foot by four foot record of wealth in every precise detail. When he had finished. A.D. was paid and discharged, and the painting hung in Mrs. Stanford's mansion's art gallery. For a few days it seemed the intrusion of the reprobate had been a mere bump in the broad serene calm which normally pervaded the Stanford mansion.

Then one morning a policeman knocked on the Stanford mansion's front door, delivering disturbing news. The officer reported to Bertha that a duplicate of the jewellery painting, this one on redwood, had appeared in the front window of a saloon in San Jose.  And worse, the items depicted were prominently identified on the canvas as being the property of Jane Leland Stanford. It was like an advertisement for any thieves looking for a new target. A.D. had even showed the chutzpa to have boldly signed the copy.

What Jane Stanford supposedly said was recorded by her faithful servant Bertha. "What a sad thing,” she supposedly said. “All that talent, dulled by John Barleycorn.”  She thereupon dispatched a servant and the police officer via the San Francisco, San Jose, Monterrey Railroad to retrieve the copy of her painting.  A little cash smoothed the transfer of the art from the saloon's window into the servant's hands, and it can be assumed that some silver also made its way into the police officer's pocket. Three hours later the copy was in Jane's hands, and promptly destroyed. And in any normal household that would have been the end of the entire affair.

It was not ended for Jane because, first, as a temperance supporter she had been made a laughing stock in front of her Nobb Hill sophisticates. And secondly, when Jane traveled to London to sell her jewels, she learned the unpleasant lesson all jewelry owners must eventually learn, about the difference between an insurance value of diamonds and the market value. 

Diamonds, it turns out, are for forever only until you try to sell them. Jane found buyers for only about ten of the jewels in the painting. That was enough to endow the University with $20, 000 a year to buy new books for the library. The fund is still being used for that purpose today, and is called “The Jewel Fund”.  But it did not come anywhere near to what Jane had paid for the jewels or what she had expected to sell then for.  She felt humiliated. 

So, immediately upon her return to San Francisco Jane had A.D.'s original painting taken down from her gallery and placed in storage. The queen of diamonds found it too painful to gaze upon her jewels. The next year, 1898, the Supreme Court ruled for the Stanford estate, and Jane no longer had to sell her diamonds.  Amazing how the wealthy always manage to avoid paying fines.

A.D.'s original painting stayed in the basement of the Stanford Nobb Hill mansion until Jane's death in 1905. The old lady died while hiding out in Hawaii. She was convinced that someone was trying to poison her. The Hawaiian police suspected strychnine, but most people considered that nonsense. And nobody ever proved she was murdered.

Jane had left Bertha $15,000 ( half a million today) and a house. Meanwhile the vast majority of Jane Stanford's estate, about $40 million (over a billion in today's dollars) went to the institution which bears her only son's name, Leland Stanford Junior University.

Ashley David Montague Cooper continued on his road to perdition, unimpeded by public disapproval or personal regret until 1919, when at the age of 62 “grey-haired, but stalwart and erect” the old reprobate married 36 year old Charlotte George. The couple shared five happy years together until A.D. died of tuberculosis, in September of 1924. Presumably he was exhausted. His painting of "Mrs. Stanford's Jewel Collection" was brought out of hiding after her death. Now considered "one of the most extraordinary still-lives of our time"  it hangs in Cantor Arts Center on the Stanford University campus. 

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