The Final Confession of Nathanial Stone

I arrive at my destination, Marshalsea Prison. Today I will be sat on the open cart with the notorious pirate Nathanial Stone, as we make our way to Execution Dock. This will be my first confession, on behalf of Paul Lorrain, the chaplain in residence at Newgate, overseer of London piratical confessions. I will encourage Stone to confess, and scribe as we travel across London Bridge, past the Tower of London to Wapping.

I feel nervous. Recently ordained, I have never met a pirate before, or indeed a murderer, and I have it on account this man is both. I understand I am protected, as well as the High Court Marshall who will be riding ahead of the cart this day, carrying the silver oar present at all the hangings for crimes on the high seas, we will be surrounded by officers from the admiralty. Foot soldiers will line the streets holding back the baying crowds. But what does one say when faced with the devil?

The horses stamp their hooves with impatience. We’ve been stood here waiting for ten minutes now. I can hear the crowd, currently being held back, the low hum of voices and the shuffling of multiple feet. Men, women and children. I have only ever seen a crowd this big before for royalty.

The gate nearest the north wall opens, and the stench from inside travels across. I swallow, holding back my vomit. I too am on show today, and it would not do me well to be sick, but the smell is putrid. Two guards with a young man between them, his legs shackled, leave the gate, and the crowd roars. I can hear the sound travelling into the distance, and I can feel the buzz of excitement as it stretches across the river to the gallows.

As the young man nears the cart, I get my first clear look at him. He is not at all what I expected. He has an almost angelic face, with dull blonde hair tied back with a dirtied velvet ribbon at his nape. There is trace of a beard growing where he has not recently shaven, but it doesn’t detract from his youthful and handsome face. I know his date of birth, he is twenty-eight years old, but he could easily pass for twenty-one. His clothes are filthy and the smell from the prison clings to them, but beneath the dirt the cloth is rich and unworn. He has the look of a gentleman.

The gaolers unshackle the bolts at his feet, and the young man reaches his hands to the side of the cart and pulls himself upward. He takes the seat opposite me, and I watch him as he pauses to look at his surroundings. His eyes go across to the roads edge, looking at the crowds gathered behind the soldiers. The crowd nearest us is now strangely silent, watching him in return. His eyes then look ahead of us, to his left, where the High Court Marshall is preparing to start the procession. His eyes now turn to me. Clear, aqua blue, and full of warmth, I find myself mesmerised. He holds out his hand out to me, like we are being introduced at a social event.

‘Hello, I’m Nathanial Stone, and you are?’

He has a cultured tone. I can instantly tell this man has been educated. I take his hand and give it a brief shake before letting go and placing my hand back on my knee. Unaware of how one is meant to respond on such an occasion I simply reply.

‘Hello Nathanial, my name is Robert Garrett. Second chaplain to Paul Lorrain. I’m here take your confession as we travel to Execution Dock. I’m led to understand you are allowed a quart of ale on the way, do you have a preference where and I’ll notify the guard.’

An easy smile crosses his face. I’m rather shocked as I find myself liking this man very much. There is something about him that draws you.

‘I’m afraid Mr Garrett, or do I call you Reverend, or Chaplain? I’m not a drinking man, it won’t be necessary to stop. I confess I’m rather nervous, so I think it best to get it all over with as soon as possible.’

I am not the only one feeling nervous it seems, although this man has much more reason than I. I nod to the driver who has heard our conversation. He nods to the officers ahead, who in turn call out to the High Court Marshall. Without looking back, he pushes his flea-bitten grey forward, silver oar held aloft, and our morbid procession commences. A new roar erupts from the crowd, and again I hear the ripple of noise in the distance as it travels across the river.

I look down at my paper and scribe the date and time. 11th November 1719, 10am. I then follow with the title: The final confession of Nathanial Stone. I look up at Nathanial who is carefully watching my hand as I write. Sensing my pause, his eyes look up to meet mine.

‘I’ve never done one of these before,’ he says, ‘Where should I begin?’

‘I haven’t either,’ I say. ‘This is my first.’

He laughs briefly, and I find myself laughing too.

‘I shall start at the beginning then,’ he states. I look back down at the paper and begin to write his words down as he speaks.

‘I was born in 1691 in Wapping, my father was a sailor and my mother took in washing. From what I remember we were happy, until my father returned from sea with an illness when I was seven years old. He was gone within days, and mother passed shortly after. I remember going to find his ship, which is the first time I met Captain Josiah Stone.’

The journey ebbs away, as does my awareness of the crowd. Nathanial talks and I struggle to keep up with my writing, but it is imperative I capture all he says.

He tells me how Josiah Stone had taken him aboard his frigate, The Silver Dawn, and trained him in the ways of the sea. An unmarried gentleman, Stone legally adopted Nathanial at age eleven.

‘Your name wasn’t always Stone?’ I ask.

‘No, I was born Nathanial Blake. I had no living relatives to take me in so Stone became my father. He was a good man, as was my own father before him, but I am proud to carry the name Stone.’

I continue to write.

During the war with Spain, Stone had turned his crew to the more lucrative trade of privateering, a percentage of all goods retrieved went to the Crown, but the spoils saw the crew wealthy.

It was early 1714, not five years past, when Stone had been fifty-six years old, he had been mortally wounded by a canon blast when attacking a Spanish Galleon, only a few short months before the war end. He had died of an infection a week later, and Nathanial had taken over as the new Captain Stone.

I have been so fully absorbed I check where we are, just nearing London Bridge. I wonder briefly if the bridge was designed to carry so much weight, crowded with onlookers as it is.

I look back down at my page and carry on writing.

After the war many privateers had turned to piracy. Stone had put the choice to the crew. Some crew members retired to settle down and buy their own land in either the New World, or the warmer climate of the Caribbean. Those that stayed with the ship made their base at Nassau on New Providence Island and became outlaws.

As part of the Treaty of Utrecht, England had been awarded a contract by Spain to supply the Spanish colonies in the America’s with African slaves. Within six months The Silver Dawn had met her first slaver ship. Horrified by the atrocities aboard, the crew had made a pact to track slaver ships only and free the slaves, receiving the ships as bounty to sell on. Across a four-year period, Stone and his crew had released over nine hundred people. Some had chosen to stay with the crew of The Silver Dawn, others had requested to be taken to safe land to start new lives of their own.

It had been May of 1719, just six months past, when Stone had been captured in port by the new governor, Woodes Rogers, and shipped back to England for trial. Stone had held the enforcers off whilst his men escaped inland.

I look back up to see we are nearing the end of our journey. I can see the gallows not more than one hundred yards ahead, a swarm of people surrounding the area. There are stalls selling ale and pies. You can feel the excitement in the air.

Our time together is coming to an end, and I find myself regretful. I cut in on him to ask one more question, one that has me burning with curiosity. It is my duty to put on paper the greatest sin of all in God’s eyes.

‘Tell me Nathanial, have you ever killed a man?’

I wait for his reply, dreading the disappointment that will come when he confesses this crime.

‘I have killed, yes, but I have not murdered. Robert, you must understand, these were bad men. They had stolen farmers and their families from Africa, free folk, to sell as slaves. Men, such as you and I, ripped from their families. Babes taken from a woman’s breast and killed, so she could serve as a wet nurse to the rich. Kept in such conditions they were that you would not keep an animal, down in the hold of the ship. The living chained to dead rotting corpses, whipped, and starved of food and water. You are a man of God, and I ask you, should any man on earth suffer so? And does any man on earth have the right to act as God and treat his fellow man as such? I think not, and I will go to the gallows today standing by that. I may die this day, but I die knowing I saved hundreds of men, women and children from a life of slavery and a certain death. So yes, when the slavers came at me with sword refusing to release these people, I cut them down with my own sword. I killed a few evil men so others could survive. I would do it all again if I were offered the chance to start my life over, for who am I to witness such suffering and do nothing to help?’

There is such passion in his eyes as he says these words, and I finally understand this, too, is a man of God. He finds himself on the wrong side of the law, and for that he will hang this day, but I know a great injustice is being done.

‘Nathanial,’ I say, ‘You are a good man, and it pains me so that there is nothing I can do to aid you in this situation.’

‘Worry not,’ he replies, ‘I understand this, and I am ready to go to my death, I just ask you, will you bless me and absolve me of my sins?’

I say the blessing as I hold his palm between mine, and end with the sign of the cross. He smiles at me one last time as the guard comes to take him away and up to the platform. I can hear the jeers of the crowd, but it forms a background noise only in my mind, as I am consumed with all I have heard in the last hour.

Nathanial will hang from a shortened rope today, the same as that for William Kidd, whose body still hangs over the dock from eighteen years previous. Nathanial will perform the Marshal’s Dance for the crowd. I find I cannot bear to look so I turn away, appearing to write for anyone who cares to glance in my direction.

Five minutes, maybe slightly more pass.

I hear the sound of the wooden floor give way to the loud cheers of the hungry crowd.