To Mr. Terrance O’Bryan, living in Burleigh Street in the Strand. 
    Honoured Father and Mother,

The uneasiness I give you is more terror to me than the thoughts of death, but pray make yourselves as easy as you can, for I hope I am going to a better place; for God is my refuge and my strength, and my helper in time of tribulation, and pray take care of my brother now whilst he is young, and make him serve God, and keep him out of bad company.  If I had served God as I ought to have done, and kept out of bad company, I had not come to this unhappy misfortune, but I hope it is for the good of my soul, it is good I hope what God has at present ordained for me, for there is mercy in the foresight of death, and in the time God has given me to prepare for it.  A natural death might have had less terror, for in that I might have wanted many advantages which are now granted me.  My trust is in God, and I hope he won’t reward me according to my deserts.  All that I can suffer here must have an end, for this life is short, so are all the sufferings of it, but the next life is Eternal.  Pray give my love to my sister, and desire her not to neglect her duty to God.  I hope you are all well, as I am at present, I thank God.  So no more at present.

From your unhappy and undutiful son,
James O’Bryan.

The verses sent by James O’Bryan to his sister two days before his execution: 

My loving tender sister dear,
From you I soon must part I fear. 
Think not on my wretched state,
Nor grieve for my unhappy fate,
But serve the Lord with all your heart,
And from you He’ll never part. 
When I am dead and in my tomb,
For my poor soul I hope there’s room,
In Heaven with God above on high,
I hope to live eternally.

At the time of their execution James O’Bryan was about twenty, Hugh Morris seventeen, and Robert Johnson not full twenty years of age, which was on the 16th of November, 1730.

The History of the Life and surprising adventures of JOHN GOW, alias SMITH, a most notorious Pirate and Murderer

The principal use to which a work of this nature can be applied is to engage persons to refuse the first stirrings of their passions, and the slighted emotions of vice in their breasts, since they see before their eyes so many sad examples of the fatal consequences which follow upon rash and wicked enterprises, of which the following history exhibits as extraordinary an instance as perhaps is anythere to be found.

In giving an account of this malefactor, we are obliged to begin with his embarking on board the vessel which he afterwards seized and went a-pirating in.  It was called the George galley, and was of about two hundred tons burden, commanded by Oliver Ferneau, a Frenchman, but a subject of the Crown of England, who entertained this Gow as a private seaman only, but afterwards, to his great misfortune, preferred him to be the second mate in the voyage of which we are next to speak.