Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1909-12-14
aaiseellaneoas 8saaine.
EXECUTION ISLE VANISHING.
Spot Where Justice Carried Out Grim
Mandate of Law.

What are they doing to Nix's Mater"
OF all the questions that excursionists
have asked about Boston harbor this
summer none has been more FREQUENT,
says a Boston correspondent Of the In
ter Ocean. For months row OF
stakes has shown above the water
round the reef between Gallop's and
Long Island that is topped by the grim
little black pyramid. Many people
have thought the government intend
ing building breakwater to prevent
the shoal from washing farther out
into the channel. Others have sup
posed the stakes meant that the gov
ernment intended to eliminate the reef
altogether.
AS a matter Of fact, the stakes have
nothing at all to do with Nix's Mate.
They are range stakes, set up for the
guidance Of dredgers at work in Broad
Sound. Nothing has been done to
Nix's Mate lately, and the government
has not thought of doing anything to
1t in the future. Indeed, nature Is
taking care of the problem pretty well
without any assistance. Ever since
the slow, seagoing glacier dropped
Nix's among the other harbor islands,
10000 years since, the winds and surf
have been munchins at 1t steadily.
With astonishing swiftness Nix's
Mate Is disappearing. When the Puri-
tans first sailed up the bay in 1880 it
was a pleasant, grassy island of twelve
acres. In 100 it rose sheer from the
water to a considerable height, its fur
rowed, seaworn bluffs thached with
green sod and discernible for a long
distance down the harbor. Only 125
years ago it was an island large enough
to serve as a pasture for sheep and
to boast headland sufficiently i'm
posing to bear a name of its own
North End Point. Not a grass blade,
not a spoonful Of soil, remains. To-
day Nix's Mate is a slender spit Of
gravel not more than an acre in ex-
tent, just big enough to menace ships
and so require the beacon without
which 1t would be almost unnoticed.
The crescent shoal that stretches
southwest from the beacon would be
the most perilous point in Boston to-
day If 1t were not marked.
Therefore about century back the
Boston Marine society advocated and
obtained the erection Of the present
marker. All the stone blocks that
compose the 40-foot square platform
are fastened together with copper riv-
cts, and this foundation Is practically
indestructible. The platform Is twelve
feet high and the wooden pyramid ris-
es twenty feet above it.
Barren and vanishing, as If indeed
blasted by the curse of Nix's Mate, this
remnant of an island seems to have
a peculiarly fitting sentinel in the
black beacon that looks like a monu-
ment heaped above the dead, or. at a
little distance, not unlike gibbet.
The story goes so far back in the days
when Boston was young, that Captain
Nix was murdered at sea and his mate
accused Of the crime. Declaring him
self innocent with his last breath, the
mate was hanged on this island. When
the moose was about his neck the
sailor cried to the man who stood ready
Ye' are the murderers. If we do kill me,
may the solid ground you tread sink
beneath those waves, in token Of your
guilt and Of mine innocence"
If subsequent geological fact is any
proof, Nix's mate was innocent. Alas
for tradition, however, the island
doubtless began to melt into the waves
long before luckless Captain Nix was
murdered There are not wanting
those who discredit the legend alto
gether, pointing out that the place was
called Mixes Island" before any such
malefactor had been hanged in all
Massachusetts,. That was as far back
as 1886, when the colony granted Mixes
to John Gallop, of Gallop's Island. 1t
is not impossible, though, that some
ill-starred sailor met his death here on
some early voyage before the advent
Of the Puritans, and that his fate may
really have inspired the tradition.
There are many versions Of the story,
which indicate that nobody knows just
how Nix's Mate got it's name One
form Of the legend is that Nix was
pirate, who sailed into Boston Bay
about 1880. His ship was loaded with
treasure, and he and his mate went
ashore on the island at night to hide
it. When the treasure was safely be-
slowed, Nix, fearful that his compan-
ion might not keep the secret. killed
him and buried him near the gold.
But it was not necessary to seek out
legends for wild tales concerning the
gruesome little island. History, au-
thentic and indisputable, furnishes
list of many sanguinary scenes enact
ed in the fields of Nix's Mate. Here
it was that pirates were regularly
brought for execution. A score of
them were hanged here in colonial
times when the Massachusetts, coast
was beset with freebooters. There was
William Fly, boatswain on a three
masted SNOW" the Elizabeth, bound
from Jamaica for Guinea in the spring
of 1926. He induced the crew to mu-
tiny; they drowned the captain and
his mate and rechristened the vessel,
calling her the Fame's Revenge. Off
the coast of North Carolina they cap
tured a ship on which one William At
kinson was a passenger. Atkinson in
duced Fly's crew to mutiny in turn,
threw Fly and three of his officers into
irons and brought the Fame's Revenge
into Boston.
In the Boston courts Fly and his Of
ficers were sentenced to death. All
were executed on Nix's Mate, Fly be-
ing hanged in irons. His. three COM
panions were buried at the foot of the
gallows, but Fly's body, in its creaking
chains. swung on it's gibbet, a horrible
warning to seafarers, till it fell to
pieces. The records state that his
companions died repentant, praying
that others might be warned by their