James Allison

James Allison (fl. 1689–1691) was a pirate and former logwood hauler, active near Cape Verde and the Bay of Campeche. Almost the entire record of Allison's piracy comes from trial records of a single incident, the seizure of the merchantman Good Hope.

History

The 300-ton, 22-gun trader Good Hope had been renamed from the Fortune of Courland, which had escaped Boston under suspicion of evading customs laws: in October 1689 the ship was seized, but the sailor put aboard to monitor the ship was thrown overboard. They sailed to Amsterdam later that year; by late January 1691 the Good Hope under Captain Jeremiah Tay arrived at Mayo in the Cape Verde islands to collect salt. In early February they were met by a 35-man sloop flying English flags. The visitor was Captain James Allison who claimed to be from New York, sailing out of South Carolina with a privateering commission against the French.

Allison emptied his own sloop, leaving behind only “”. They were tried in Massachusetts’ Superior Court because there was no formal Admiralty Court in the colony at the time. It is not recorded whether Allison survived the wreck of the Good Hope; his ultimate fate is unknown.