page_title: Albert W. Hicks
section_title: Murder on the A.E. Johnson
hierarchical_section_title: Albert W. Hicks / Murder on the A.E. Johnson
caption_attribution_description: English: The sloop A.E. Johnson
context_page_description: Albert W. Hicks, also known as Elias W. Hicks, William Johnson, John Hicks, and Pirate Hicks, was a triple murderer, and one of the last persons executed for piracy in the United States. Cultural historian Rich Cohen places him as the first New York City legendary gangster figure, a bridge between the piracy of old and rise of a new 'gangster nation'.
context_section_description: Hicks hired on as a deck hand with the oyster sloop A.E. Johnson out of New York City, which he knew to be carrying a large amount of cash for buying oysters in Virginia to be transported back to New York. There were four men on the boat, including Captain George H. Burr, brothers Oliver and Smith Watts, and Hicks.
  It was nighttime as the boat neared the "Narrows". Captain Burr and Oliver retired to their quarters to sleep. Smith had night duty and Hicks joined him on deck, politely taking a turn on the wheel. Hicks saw something and pointed it out to Smith asking what it was. Smith didn't see anything. Hicks said look again. Smith turned his back. Hicks grabbed a sea axe and struck a blow to the back of Smith's head, felling him to the deck. Hearing the commotion, Oliver Watts stuck his neck out through the cabin hatchway. Hicks struck again with the axe, decapitating Watts. Hicks recalled that the body slowly sagged downward and the head rolled onto the deck, now sprayed with the blood of two brothers.
  Hicks carried the bloodied axe into Captain Burr's cabin, who was by now alert. The Captain was a tall, strong man and the ensuing fight lasted a while, with Burr almost strangling Hicks to death. Eventually Hicks managed to slash the captain with the axe, slicing off half his face, including an eyeball and nose left hanging on the axe blade. Exhausted from the struggle of killing Burr, Hicks searched the living quarters for loot.
  When Hicks returned onto deck, he saw a movement and was shocked to see Smith on his feet moving towards him; he believed it might be an apparition. Hicks forced the injured man overboard but Smith grasped a rail and hung on with a death grip. Hicks swung the axe and chopped off his fingers, which fell onto the deck; the rest of Smith slipped into the water. Hicks threw the other bodies and the axe overboard.
  The A.E. Johnson had been running unattended and struck another ship, the schooner J. R. Mather, breaking the Johnson's main mast and bringing down her rigging. Hicks set out to sink the ship, with the evidence of the killings, by drilling a handful of holes through the keel. He then took the money, about $230, and the possessions of the murdered crew, and abandoned ship in a yawl, rowing for shore and landing about daybreak next to a farmer's field on Staten Island just above Fort Richmond (Battery Weed). Believing that he would not be caught, he made his way back home to Manhattan, stopping at saloons merrily drinking and making a spectacle of himself.
  When the abandoned but still afloat A.E. Johnson was discovered the next day by the coast guard, they found the deck and cabin bathed in blood, including inexplicably a set of severed fingers. The city was shocked by the gruesome scene and intrigued by the mystery of what happened. Police detectives could see that a yawl was missing and began a search for it. After a few days a local boy led them to where it had been abandoned in some rushes. They began following a chain of witnesses who had seen a strange man carrying a large heavy sea bag. The detectives followed witness sightings all the way back to an apartment in Manhattan.
  Hicks learned the police were on his trail through newspaper reports and fled the city. Detectives had determined who Hicks was, and they continued to follow a chain of witnesses who remembered a large man with a wife and small child taking trains and boats northward. When police found the last witness to see him, a cabbie who took Hicks to a boarding home outside Providence, Rhode Island, they surrounded the house in the middle of the night and took him captive in bed without a fight. They found in his possession Captain Burr's watch, several money bags, and a daguerreotype belonging to Watts, among other damning evidence.
caption: Sloop A.E. Johnson
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