Merchant Cooke's 130-ton merchant vessel
Virgin was bound to Jamaica from London when Irish pirate
Philip Fitzgerald, who was serving the Spanish in the Caribbean, seized it in May 1673. Fitzgerald accused Cooke of transporting
logwood – which the Spanish considered contraband – and took the
Virgin to
Havana for condemnation as a
prize ship. Cooke and his crew were put into a small boat with few provisions and it took them over two months to make their way back to Jamaica. For over a year he protested to Spanish officials in the Caribbean and in Europe to no avail. In mid-1673 an “Edmund Cooke” led a mutiny aboard the trading vessel
St. Anthony. His crew disagreed on whether to seize it or ignore it and the Spaniard escaped; Coxon then advised the buccaneers to set out in canoes and
periaguas before the Spanish ship could report their activities. Ringrose wrote that “This day likewise William Cook, servant unto Captain Edmund Cook, confessed that his Master had oft times Buggered him in England, leaving his Wife and coming to bed to him the said William. That the same crime he had also perpetrated in Jamaica; and once in these Seas before Panama.” Sharpe also suspected Cooke of being involved in the mutiny which had placed Watling in command. When the buccaneers finally returned to the Caribbean in 1682, Cooke was among the party who petitioned the governor of
Antigua for permission to come ashore. His further activities are not recorded, though it is possible he continued his piracy. In 1683 Governor
William Stapleton of the
Leeward Islands wrote to London that “Captain Carlile goes this very day to look for one Cooke and one
Bond, two English pirates fitted from Saint Thomas. I have furnished him with men and powder lest he should be overpowered. He should be able to hunt them all down.” ==See also==