The Sun. — 1824-03-05 (London, England)

MURDER AND PIRACY.  [From the Glasgow Courier, March 2.]  We have been favoured. by a Mercantile.ifouse in Glasgow, with the following extract of•a letter, dated Madeira, Jan. 28. The English Papers have been filled lately with details 'o±. murders, bUt a circumstance has just'taken place.here, far surpassing their' irii horror and atrocity. An American schoonei' the Napoleon, Captain John Hall, having received the amount of her freight in cash, about 1,000 dollars, sailed from this on Friday last, the 23d inst. for the. Cape Verde Islands, having eight people on board, viz. the Captain. Mate, Cook, three seamen, and two Portuguese lads, one of them as steward to the vessel, the .other a passenger.  " The same night the three seamen murdered the Captain, the Mate, Cook, and Steward. After throwing their bodies overboard, they called up the remaining Portuguese lad who was asleep below, and having told him boastingly what had happened, ordered him to go and cook. them some ham and eggs, on which they regaled themselves, drinking copiously of wine and spirits from the cabin. Instead of running away with the vessel they now stood back for the Island, they then put out the long boat, but it being leaky and not well secured, owing to their drunkenness it broke adrift- and was lost. As they neared the coast they cut a hole in the side of the vessel to sink her, intending to have escaped in the jolly boat, which still remained, and give out that the schooner foundered, with those on board that were missing. The poor Portuguese lad (whose family, by-the bye, live next door to me) was meantime in an agony of terror, as lie understood, that to carry their plan into execution, it was fully their intention to sacrifice him before leaving the vessel; he had the address, however, to conceal his fears, and even pretended to join in their merriment and drinking:, but kept himself from getting intoxicated by pouring the liquor down his bosom instead of swallowing it. Becoming at last exhausted from drunkenness and fatigue, they went below to rest, desiring the boy to take charge of the helm, he allowed them to remain below undisturbed for some time,. when finding' ' they were fast asleep, he courageously cut away the jolly boat from the stern, jumped into it with only one oar, and was fortunately a good way off from the vessel before they discovered his flight. They had no boat left to follow him, the vessel. was water logged, and as if Providence had given them up, it fell a dead calm, so that even if they could have stopt the leak and pumped out the water, there was no chance of their getting away. " The poor lad was so frightened that when he reached the shore, he could hardly make his story intelligible. Armed boati were immediately sent off; and the vessel taken possession of, without the least resistance on the part of the three desperadoes, who still continued.very drunk. They asserted at first, that the Captain and those missing had left the vessel in the long-boat, but finding this story avail them nothing, they soon confessed the whole affair. One is a Swede, a native of Stockholm, another is an American, and the third, lam sorry. to hear, is an Englishmen. Poor Captain Hall was a slender young man, about four and twenty, and as he was going to be married on his return to America, had purchased a qr. cask of old Madeira to regale his friends on the occasion, which only served to regale his blood-thirsty assassins."