Richard Glover (d. 1697/98) was a pirate and slave-trader active in theCaribbean and theRed Sea in the late 1690s.
Richard Glover, his brother-in-lawJohn Hoar,Thomas Tew, and other captains had obtained privateering commissions from GovernorBenjamin Fletcher of New York in 1694.[1] Fletcher would later be accused of collusion, knowing full well that the captains intended to engage in piracy. Glover was given command of theCharming Mary, owned by John Beckford, Colonel Russel, and Judge Coats. That autumn, Glover outfitted the 200-ton, 16-gun, 80-man ship[2] inBarbados and sailed for the east coast of Africa, following Tew's "Pirate Round" route.
He arrived atAdam Baldridge's pirate trading post atÎle Sainte-Marie offMadagascar in August 1695, where hecareened theCharming Mary and traded with Baldridge. In October of the same year he sailed for Madagascar to pick up slaves and trade goods.[2]
Shortly afterwards Thomas Tew's 70-ton, 8-gun, 60-mansloopAmity came to the settlement, minus Tew, who had been killed fighting Moorish ships alongsideHenry Every. Under command of ship's masterJohn Ireland, theAmity quickly refitted and set out in December to hunt down theCharming Mary.
Ireland's men took over theCharming Mary, putting Glover and his crew on theAmity, though they let him keep all his supplies.[3] TheCharming Mary's crew electedRichard Bobbington as their new captain, refitted and resupplied, and sailed for theEast Indies. Conflicting stories place Richard Glover in the company ofDirk Chivers and/or John Hoar, capturing Moorish and other vessels in the area, though these may be conflating his exploits with those ofRobert Glover, or with theCharming Mary's other captains (Ireland, Captain Bobbington, andWilliam Mays, who may have captained it after he left his own shipPearl[4]).
Glover returned to Barbados, slave-trading along the way,[5] where theAmity was re-rigged as a brigantine by theCharming Mary's original sponsors. He visited Baldridge again in January 1697, trading with him and with Glover's brother-in-law and fellow pirate John Hoar.[2]
Dirk Chivers' shipResolution (taken in a mutiny from Robert Glover, no relation to Richard Glover[6]) was perilously low on supplies and badly damaged; that June offFort Dauphin,[7] Chivers seizedAmity, taking all its provisions and supplies and disassembling its masts, sails, and rigging to repair theResolution. They beached the guttedAmity on a reef, and over a year laterAmity was still visible as a hulk.[2]
Richard Glover's ultimate fate is not known, though New York records show that his will - which he had the forethought to have written out and witnessed in 1696 before he took theAmity back out to sea - was paid out to his widow Mary and his two children in April 1698.[8] He may have been among a number of pirate captains killed when angry natives overran and destroyed Baldridge's settlement later in 1697.[2]
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