George Cusack

George Cusack (died 18 January 1675) was an Irish pirate active in northern Europe and the West Indies in the late 17th century.

History

Cusack served as a gunner and sailor on several ships but his attempts at mutiny landed him in Marshalsea prison for a time. On his release in 1668 he traveled to Cádiz and signed aboard the Hopewell out of Tangier as a gunner. He and several associates mutinied and seized the ship, setting the officers adrift in a rowboat. They renamed the vessel Valiant Prince and had a forced merchant draw up false papers for it. When those conflicts ended in 1674 he falsely obtained a French commission to hunt Spanish and Dutch ships. He kept a small crew, forcing sailors to serve as needed, including his surgeon Jacob Marrelly.

With only 23 men he took a cargo ship leaving Norway, a 500-ton vessel called Saint Anne out of London under Captain Shorter. Cusack and his pirates put the ship's crew aboard a pink they had taken earlier as a prize, leaving them no gear or provisions, and set them adrift.

At the start of his trial, Cusack argued that the jury should be dismissed because it was composed of "Citizens; who did not (he said) understand Maritime-Affairs", demanding that he and his crew be tried by "men of their own trade", by which he was understood to mean fellow pirates. Cusack claimed to the Admiralty court that he had a commission, and when challenged tried to explain that his invalid commission was a mistake. The Court noted that valid or not, no commission would have allowed him to rob an English vessel, and he was convicted. He was executed on 18 January 1675 with thirteen of his crew, the rest acquitted for having been forced into piracy.

Obligations

Cusack's pirate code, or Articles, are one of the very few pirate articles preserved from the 17th and 18th centuries, and one of only two complete sets from the 17th century (the other belonging to Nicholas Clough). As reported, they read:

"...declaring their resolution of running away with the Ships and Cargo, and of taking or sinking all Ships or Vessels they should meet with belonging to any Nation, English only excepted: promising to all persons aboard that joyned with them, their proportion and shares of the Ship and Cargo; together with all other Ships they should afterwards take or surprize, according to the Lawes of Pleron: to which end he ordered to be drawn up in Writing an Obligation to himself as Captain, and the said Parslow as Lieutenant, expressing the Resolutions of the Subscribers upon their Oaths to live and die with them in this their present design..."