Page:Daring deeds of famous pirates; true stories of the stirring adventures, bravery and resource of pirates, filibusters & buccaneers (1917).djvu/31

 together with five Englishmen, whom they found on board. The latter they thrust into prison as soon as they got them ashore, and of these two were ransomed subsequently for the sum of 20 English nobles, while another became blind owing to the rigours of his imprisonment. In 1394 another Prussian ship, containing a number of merchants from Yarmouth and Norwich, was also captured off the Norwegian coast with a cargo of woollen goods and taken off by the Hanseatic pirates. The merchants were cast into prison and not allowed their liberty until the sum of 100 marks had been paid for their ransom. Another vessel, laden with the hides of oxen and sheep, with butter, masts and spars and other commodities to the value of 100 marks, was taken in Longsound, Norway.

In June 1395 another English ship, laden with salt fish, was taken off the coast of Denmark, the value of her hull, inventory and cargo amounting to £170. The crew consisted of a master and twenty-five mariners, whom the pirates slew. There was also a lad found on board, and him they carried into Wismar with them. The most notorious of these Hanseatic pirates were two men, named respectively Godekins and Stertebeker, whose efforts were as untiring as they were successful. There is scarcely an instance of North Sea piracy at this time in which these two men or their accomplices do not figure. And it was these same men who attacked a ship named the Dogger. The latter was skippered by a man named Gervase Cat, and she was lying at anchor while her crew were engaged fishing. The Hanseatic pirates, however, swept down on them, took away with them a valuable cargo of fish, beat and wounded the master and crew of the Dogger and caused the latter to lose their fishing for that year, "being endamaged there-*by to the summe of 200 nobles."