Upton having served his year out was discharged from his master, and going to New England, he there, in the month of July, 1725, shipped himself on board the Perry merchantman bound for Barbadoes.  The ship was livred and loaded again, the captain designing them to sail for England, whereupon Upton desired leave to go on board his Majesty’s ship Lynn, Captain Cooper.  But Captain King absolutely refusing to discharge him in order thereto, on the ninth of November, 1725, he sailed in the aforesaid vessel for England.

On the twelfth of the same month, off Dominica, they were attacked by a pirate sloop called the Night Rambler, under the command of one Cooper.  The pirate immediately ordered the captain of the Perry galley to come on board his ship, which he and four of his men did, and the pirate immediately sent some of his crew on board the Perry galley, who effectually made themselves masters thereof, and as Upton said, used him and the rest of the persons they found on board with great inhumanity and baseness, a thing very common amongst those wretches.  Upton also insisted that as to himself, one of the pirate’s crew ran up to him as soon as they came on board and with a cutlass in his hand, said with an oath, You old son of a bitch, I know you and you shall go along with us or I’ll cut out your liver, and thereupon fell to beating him fore and aft the deck with his cutlass.

The same evening he was carried on board the pirate sloop, where, according to his journal, three of the pirates attacked him; one with a pistol levelled at his forehead demanded whether he would sign their articles, another with a pistol at his right ear, swore that if he did not they would blow out his brains, while a third held a couple of forks at his breast, and terrified him with the continual apprehensions of having them stabbed into him.  Whereupon he told them that he had four young infants in England, to whom he thought it his duty to return, and therefore begged to be excused as having reason to decline their service, as well as a natural dislike to their proceedings.  Upon which, he said, he called his captain to take notice that he did not enter voluntarily amongst them.  Upon this the pirate said they found out a way to satisfy themselves by signing for him, and this, he constantly averred, was the method of his being taken into the crew of the Night Rambler, where he insisted he did nothing but as he was commanded, received no share in the plunder, but lived wholly on the ship’s allowance, being treated in all respect as one whom force and not choice had brought amongst them.