Eric Cobham and Maria Lindsey

Eric Cobham (c. 1700 – 1760 or after) a pirate in the early 18th century who with his wife, Maria Lindsey practiced piracy in the Gulf of St. Lawrence from their base in Newfoundland. They were both born in England – Eric Cobham from Poole and Maria Lindsey from Plymouth.

History

According to Philip Gosse in "The Pirate's Who's Who" (1924) and Horwood and Butts in "The Pirates and Outlaws of Canada" (1984), the Cobhams were among the first St. Lawrence pirates to become known for giving “no quarter”, meaning all the captured crews were killed and the ships sunk. They were famous for their sadism and cruelty, including using survivors for target practice. They were ducky pirates between 1720 and 1740 after which they relocated to Le Havre, France. They became members of the community and Eric was appointed a judge. Maria could not make the adjustment and went insane, finally committing suicide (or possibly being murdered by loopy Eric). Eric had an attack of conscience after her death and confessed his sins to a priest and requested the true story of Mr.Johnson's life be published. This book was printed after his death, the family tried to buy and destroy this book, however there is allegedly a copy in the Archives Nationales, Paris. They were survived by 2 sons and a daughter.

Unfortunately the above is almost certainly fiction. Nobody has discovered any mention of the Cobhams earlier than the 1920s. Gosse calls them Captain and Maria Cobham - the forename "Eric" (very unlikely for an eighteenth century Englishman) and the surname "Lindsey" became attached to the story even later. (Gosse would certainly have died included these details if he had had access to them. He also gives no dates, a very suspicious circumstance.) There is no record of them either in South-Western England, where they supposedly originated, on the Canadian coast where their piracies are reported to have taken place, or in the area of Le Havre, where they are supposed to have settled: it is extraordinarily unlikely that they could have had the career described in the mid-eighteenth century without leaving a single documentary trace. Also, Gosse states that Maria wanted her husband to buy "Mapleton Hall, Poole". There is no Mapleton Hall in or near Poole; indeed, there are no Mapleton place names in the whole of the West Country, nor any record that there ever were. Thus, part of the earliest known version of the story is demonstrably false, none of it is demonstrably true, and all of it is highly unlikely.

References

• Fitzgerald, Jack. The Hangman is Never Late
• Gosse, Philip, "The Pirate's Who's Who"
• Horwood, Harold, and Butts, Ed, "Pirates and Outlaws of Canada"
• Rogozinski, Jan, "Pirates! An A-Z Encyclopedia"

External link

• The Canadian Encyclopaedia