Book summary “The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation”: summary

Introduction

Criminal subcultures pass down underworld folklore through generations to establish a shared lineage of violence and survival. You often see modern organized crime as a product of twentieth-century syndicates, yet its roots stretch deep into the nineteenth-century maritime frontier. Rich Cohen argues in The Last Pirate of New York that the 1860 maritime murder of an oyster sloop crew by Albert Hicks marked the brutal transition from frontier lawlessness to modern organized crime in New York City. Hicks served as the foundational, pre-gangster archetype of the underworld before modern gangs emerged. This book investigates the ghost ship massacre, the manhunt, the trial, the confession, and the cultural aftermath that shaped the metropolis.

• How did a simple maritime robbery turn into a drifting ghost ship?
• What methods did early detectives and penny press reporters use to track the fugitive?
• How did working-class New Yorkers turn a brutal killer into an antihero?

1. The Ghost Ship and the Murders

Albert Hicks serves as the foundational, pre-gangster archetype of the New York underworld. You find him operating as a pirate and murderer before modern gangs ever emerged. This figure predated the coining of the word gangster entirely.

Discovery of the Phantom Vessel

The discovery of a blood-soaked, drifting oyster sloop in the Lower Bay of New York triggered immediate panic. You would have watched sensationalized reporting spread across the city newspapers. On March 21, 1860, the schooner J. R. Mather collided with an unmanned and heavily damaged vessel.

Captain Ben Nickerson of the J. R. Mather spotted the phantom vessel in the dark. Subsequent vessels boarded the ship and found pools of blood, severed fingers, and signs of extreme violence. They towed the wreck straight to the Fulton Fish Market.

Nineteenth-century police methods relied heavily on physical trace evidence to reconstruct violent crimes at sea. Captain Hart Weed and Officer Washbourne boarded the E. A. Johnson at the Fulton Fish Market. They meticulously documented:

• slashed shirts;
• bloody handprints;
• augur holes meant to sink the vessel;
• severed fingers left on deck.

Captain Weed discovered three holes bored into the cabin floor behind the stove using a hot poker. You can see how these holes were intended to flood and sink the vessel to hide the murders. This occurred at 49 Beekman, the station house address of the second precinct where Captain Weed worked. The Fulton Fish Market itself had originally opened in 1822.

The explosive growth of nineteenth-century New York created dense, impoverished immigrant slums. You would recognize the violent waterfront ecosystem that sustained thousands of criminals. As Manhattan's population approached the mystical milestone of one million in 1860, immigrant arrivals processed through Castle Garden. Slums like the Five Points and the Fourth Ward became breeding grounds for street gangs, child pickpockets, and river pirates. An 1850 police report estimated that four hundred to five hundred pirates operated in New York City. Charles Dickens and Davy Crockett both documented the horrifying conditions and lively debauchery of the Five Points, built over the drained and polluted Collect pond.

The Massacre on the E. A. Johnson

Albert Hicks maintained a double life as a violent waterfront predator and a Freemason whose worldview embraced inverted moral realities. You find him growing up in Rhode Island following a family tradition of violent crime set by his brother Simon. His initiation into Freemasonry exposed him to allegories of hidden worlds where traditional moral meanings were inverted. Simon Hicks murdered an old man in Foster, Rhode Island, and escaped the gallows. This left an impression on Albert regarding the persistent possibility of escape within a family of eleven total siblings.

Hicks operated out of nickel-a-night flops in lower Manhattan. He visited bars where entertainments included rat-baiting and bear-baiting before committing his infamous maritime murders.

Albert Hicks methodically secured a berth on an oyster sloop under an alias, gained the captain's trust, and systematically murdered the entire crew for cash.

Hoping to steal the cash carried for purchasing oysters, Hicks sailed aboard the E. A. Johnson as William Johnson. The vessel was traveling at eight knots an hour when passing Sandy Hook. Investor Daniel Simmons had paid the captain two hundred dollars in silver coins. A lucky and clever oyster sloop captain expected an annual income of twenty thousand dollars.

Hicks murdered Oliver Watts, Smith Watts, and Captain Burr with an ax during the night before attempting to escape. Captain Burr weighed 135 pounds. After killing Oliver and Smith Watts on deck, Hicks fought Captain Burr in the cabin. He eventually bludgeoned him and severed Smith Watts's head.

The perpetrator's attempt to scuttle the stolen vessel and escape in a rowboat failed due to navigational steering difficulties. You see how an accidental collision at sea doomed the plot. After throwing the bodies overboard and ransacking the ship for cash, Hicks struggled to steer the E. A. Johnson. He collided with the schooner J. R. Mather and ultimately fled in the yawl after his scuttling holes failed to sink the boat. Hicks had used a heated augur from the stove to bore holes in the cabin floor. Blood and debris clogged the openings, preventing the vessel from sinking.

2. The Manhunt and the Shore Line

New York City in 1860 experienced a massive crime wave with a murder rate four times higher than modern levels. The murder rate was 14 per 100,000 people, totaling 110 reported killings. The true number was likely much higher because police avoided dangerous slums like the Five Points. Crime reporting was the foundational mechanism that propelled the newly established New York Times into becoming a paper of record. Elias Smith joined the New York Times shortly before the sloop murders and used his investigative flair to track the killer of the E. A. Johnson across states.

Nineteenth-century detectives operated without modern forensic tools, making conviction difficult and officers notoriously corruptible. Over half of all murder cases ended in acquittal in antebellum days. Detectives earned meager wages between three and ten dollars a day, leading many to advertise private detective services or accept bribes to lose evidence.

Detective George Nevins pioneered a scientific approach to tracking fugitives by meticulously reconstructing a physical chain of witness accounts.

Believing that every criminal leaves a verifiable trail through the world, Nevins tracked Albert Hicks's escape by interviewing every witness along his route from Staten Island to Rhode Island. Nevins and reporter Elias Smith retraced Hicks's exact footsteps across Staten Island, interviewing a stable hostler, farmers George Nedlinger and Michael Durney, dock keeper Abram Egbert, and bartender Augustus Gisler. It took detectives two hours to walk the distance across Staten Island from the landing to Vanderbilt's ferry.

Albert Hicks brazenly spent and laundered stolen money along his escape route due to his mistaken belief that sinking the ship eliminated all evidence. Hicks spent 40 dollars on clothing from a secondhand dealer on Greenwich Street. He exchanged a mixed bag of coins for 260 dollars in clean notes with broker Albert James at the Farmers' & Citizens' Bank of Williamsburg, receiving 130 dollars for silver and 130 dollars for gold.

Tracking the Fugitive

Detectives successfully apprehended Albert Hicks in a Providence boarding house by using a ruse involving counterfeit money. Nevins and Providence police raided the boarding house run by Mrs. Crowell at 1 a.m., pulled the blankets off the sleeping fugitive, and discovered stolen property including Captain Burr's silver watch along with 121 dollars in cash found in Hicks's pocket upon arrest.

To track a suspect successfully, you can follow these forensic steps:

• Identify the starting point of the suspect's flight
• Locate and interview every witness chronologically along the path
• Verify each step of the journey to construct an unbroken chain of evidence
• Examine abandoned personal effects and properties to connect the suspect to the crime scene

U.S. Marshal Isaiah Rynders managed sensational criminal spectacles and unruly mobs using strategic crowd manipulation. Rynders diverted an entire angry mob by secretly escorting a forger named Curtis out a side door on Chambers Street while the crowd mistakenly believed the prisoner was Albert Hicks. Hicks remained in the Marshal's office for public viewing for an hour and a half.

To manage high-profile arrests safely under public pressure, you can use these tactical steps:

• Conduct initial suspect inspections in a secure main office
• Permit controlled viewing for curious visitors to satisfy public pressure
• Deploy a decoy prisoner through a private exit to draw away hostile mobs

3. The Trial and Public Spectacle

Working-class New Yorkers turned the brutal killer into an antihero while prosecutors secured a swift conviction using federal piracy charges.

Life in the Tombs

You find Mrs. Hicks isolated and destitute in New York City with an infant child while her husband remains jailed. She wrote to her mother, Rebecca Bunting, for help or guidance during her crisis.

Rebecca Bunting wrote a letter to her daughter on April 18, 1860, stating she had nothing to offer and noting that her other children and relatives wanted nothing more to do with her. Mrs. Hicks had met Albert on the ship Isaac Wright in 1853 when she was 23 years old.

Albert's brother refused to support him or attempt to procure an alibi, arguing that the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming. Arnold Hicks wrote a letter from East Killingly on April 26, 1860, declaring that unnatural deeds produce unnatural feelings and refusing to provide assistance.

Amid severe economic stratification on the eve of the Civil War, the poor immigrant population of lower Manhattan romanticized Hicks. A popular rumor spread that he had been shanghaied and was simply striking back against shipowners, moneylenders, and police.

Citizens and curiosity seekers flocked to the Tombs just to catch a glimpse of Hicks, viewing him through the mesmerizing aura of a criminal living completely outside the law. P.T. Barnum visited Hicks in his cell and struck a bargain to create a wax figure of the killer for his museum.

P.T. Barnum visited Hicks in his prison and traded 25 dollars in cash and 2 boxes of 5-cent cigars for permission to cast his face in plaster. Because Hicks had no use for money for himself, he agreed to the deal to provide financial support for his wife and child.

The Legal Battle and Verdict

Federal prosecutors charged Hicks with piracy rather than murder because the missing bodies made a standard murder conviction difficult. Prosecutor James Dwight relied on an 1820 federal statute defining robbery on a vessel as piracy, which bypassed the requirement of producing physical bodies.

Defense attorneys argued that the crime occurred in New York Harbor rather than the high seas, meaning the federal piracy statute did not apply. Judge Smalley rejected this argument, prioritizing social stability and common sense over strict jurisdictional technicalities.

The prosecution built an airtight case through dozens of witnesses who connected Hicks to the victims via personal items, clothing, and forensic hair comparisons. Witnesses identified stolen personal belongings including a pocket watch, a daguerreotype containing hair locks, and hand-stitched clothing.

Catherine Dickenson identified her daguerreotype and locks of hair from her boyfriend Oliver Watts, while Abbey Hubbard recognized shirts she had sewn by candlelight for her son Smith Watts. The prosecution called 27 total witnesses during the 6 days the trial lasted.

Following a rapid jury deliberation of just 7 minutes, Albert Hicks was found guilty of piracy and sentenced to public hanging. Judge Smalley denied motions for a retrial and formally delivered the death sentence on July 13, 1860, emphasizing the brutality of the triple murder.

Albert Hicks was ordered to be taken to the prison and hanged by the neck until dead on July 13, 1860, at either Ellis Island or Bedloe's Island starting at 10 in the morning.

4. The Confession and Global Criminal Spree

Facing imminent public execution, Albert Hicks abandoned his lifelong defiance and sought spiritual salvation through a Catholic priest. Father Henry Duranquet spent hours with Hicks in Cell 8 of the Tombs, leading the prisoner to drop his reckless indifference and show deep anxiety about his fate.

Father Henry Duranquet, born in France and part of the legendary Jesuit family of five priest brothers known as les cinq pères Duranquet, spent his days as shepherd of the condemned on Murderers’ Corridor. He counseled Hicks that it was never too late to repent, confess, and win a place in the heavenly kingdom through genuine remorse and acceptance of Jesus Christ.

Hicks confessed to a lifetime of worldwide maritime and land murders, selling his story to fund his destitute family.

Prompted by the priest to tell the complete truth for eternal life, Hicks confessed on July 9, 1860, to Deputy Marshal Lorenzo De Angelis. He sought to financially assist his impoverished wife and child by selling his life story to New York publisher R. M. De Witt, though the resulting text was heavily edited into ornate Victorian prose. Albert Hicks, born in 1820 in Foster, Rhode Island, gave a partial confession to the Times in June 1860 detailing the oyster sloop murders and blaming the devil as the fifth personage on board.

Hicks's descent into absolute criminality was catalyzed by brutal imprisonment as an adolescent. After running away at age fifteen and stealing luggage in Norwich, Connecticut, young Hicks was sentenced to eighteen months in a cold, bug-infested penitentiary in 1835. The abuse he suffered there, followed by years of solitary confinement, distorted his psyche, leaving him with a deep desire for revenge against a world that had seemingly declared war on him. Hicks described spending an entire year in a solitary confinement hole, which transformed him from a reckless youth into a vengeful predator who decided to make the world feel as hopeless as he felt.

Hicks spent decades operating as a modern-day freebooter, infiltrating ships and gold camps across the globe with a partner named Tom Stone. Mastering the art of mutiny, Hicks joined whaling ships, merchant traders, and gold prospector camps, biding his time before inciting violence against officers and travelers, stealing fortunes, and blowing the money in boomtowns like San Francisco, Mazatlán, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires. Aboard whaling ships and in the goldfields of California, Hicks and Tom Stone operated like ruthless outlaws, murdering guards, stealing $100,000 of gold and silver doubloons from the brig Josephine, and burying silver bars stamped SINALOA worth $200,000 in Mexico.

Phrenologists examined Hicks's skull to determine whether his murderous nature was biologically preordained. Seeking answers about the killer's psyche, authorities escorted Hicks in shackles to Lorenzo Fowler's phrenological cabinet in Manhattan at addresses like 135 Nassau Street and 308 Broadway. Fowler mapped the bumps on Hicks's skull, diagnosing an overdeveloped combativeness and alimentiveness combined with a complete lack of ideality and spirituality.

P. T. Barnum commercialized Hicks's execution by creating a life-size wax figure and death mask for his American Museum. Barnum sent a plaster-of-Paris expert to the Tombs to create a death mask from the living prisoner. Albert Hicks happily traded his clothes for Barnum's new store-bought garments, believing he got the better deal, only to complain later that Barnum's stitching was shoddy and itchy.

5. The Execution and Aftermath

The public hanging of Albert Hicks on Bedloe's Island marked the symbolic end of an untamed maritime frontier era in New York.

The Execution Spectacle

Albert Hicks faced his execution on July 13, 1860, on Bedloe's Island. Over ten thousand people traveled on steamboats, barges, and rowboats to witness the event.

Marshal Isaiah Rynders detoured the execution steamer Red Jacket to show passengers the newly arrived British ironclad ship Great Eastern before reaching the island. A total crowd size reached twenty thousand as federal marines maintained order. Hicks maintained absolute calm and emotional detachment throughout his final hours. When asked for final words on the scaffold, Hicks simply told the executioner to make haste. At 11:15 A.M., Hicks was dropped from the gallows.

Resurrection and Legend

Following his execution, Hicks was buried at Calvary Cemetery. Grave robbers emptied the coffin shortly afterward, likely selling the body to students at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons.

A wax figure of Hicks stood in P. T. Barnum's American Museum until the building burned down on the exact fifth anniversary of his hanging on July 13, 1865. Albert Hicks was featured alongside Jack the Ripper in an April 4, 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone titled 'The New Exhibit.'

As modern police forces, professional journalism, and ironclad ships replaced the chaotic waterfront culture, Hicks embodied the final relic of an untamed frontier age. Bedloe's Island later became the site of the Statue of Liberty, permanently burying the pirate's ghost beneath the foundation of modern America.

10 Key Ideas

1. Criminal subcultures pass down underworld folklore through generations to establish a shared lineage of violence and survival.
2. Albert Hicks served as the foundational, pre-gangster archetype of the underworld before modern gangs emerged.
3. The discovery of a blood-soaked, drifting oyster sloop in the Lower Bay of New York triggered immediate panic.
4. Detective George Nevins pioneered a scientific approach to tracking fugitives by meticulously reconstructing a physical chain of witness accounts.
5. P.T. Barnum visited Hicks in his prison and traded 25 dollars in cash and 2 boxes of 5-cent cigars for permission to cast his face in plaster.
6. Federal prosecutors charged Hicks with piracy rather than murder because the missing bodies made a standard murder conviction difficult.
7. Hicks confessed to a lifetime of worldwide maritime and land murders, selling his story to fund his destitute family.
8. Phrenologists examined Hicks's skull to determine whether his murderous nature was biologically preordained.
9. The public hanging of Albert Hicks on Bedloe's Island marked the symbolic end of an untamed maritime frontier era in New York.
10. As modern police forces, professional journalism, and ironclad ships replaced the chaotic waterfront culture, Hicks embodied the final relic of an untamed frontier age.