The New Hampshire Gazette

Extract of a Letter from Samuel White, Esq; the British Consul at Vigo, Dec. 17.

Four days ago came in here a French privateer called the Favorite, Capt. Saumel, who, on the 27th ult. between Cape Ortegal and Cape Finisterre, fell in with an English pink, about 100 tons, boarded her, and found only two Genoese on board, and seeing the vessel bloody on the deck, and in the cabin finding that all the papers had been thrown overboard, directly suspected they had murdered the captain and crew, and taxing them with the fact, they confessed that they had killed the captain, his son, and every soul, being seven in all. The cruel way they perpetrated this massacre was as follows: Each of these villains was in different watches, one in the master's, the other in the mate's. He that was in the mate's watch went down with them to sleep, and waited till he found them all fast asleep, then cut all their throats, and stabbed them in several parts of the body, and left them all dead. The captain being on deck, knew nothing of all this. This fellow then came upon deck, and told his comrade what he had done below: Upon which they both at once fell upon the captain, and cleaved him down with a hatchet; being not quite dead, they finished him with a musket; and then the man at the helm they cut in two; and so made an end of them all but the captain's son, who was left three days crying for his father. The third day they said, that as he squalled like a cat, they would dispatch him likewise; so they cut the child in two. The vessel is sent to Bayeux in France, with these two villains in her. She was, they say, the Peggy, Capt. Forman, was coming from Carolina to Lisbon, and had got within 60 leagues of the rock at Lisbon, when this horrid barbarity was perpetrated. This is the captain of the aforesaid privateer's declaration to the consul at Vigo, and says it is what the villains confessed to him on board.