Thomas Green (captain)

[1] Green was celebrated in a contemporary ballad: Of all the pirates I’ve heard and seenThe basest and the bloodiest is Captain GreenThe Worcester was seized, probably at the bequest of the Secretary of the Company of Scotland (Roderick Mackenzie), when she came into the Firth of Forth simply to weather a storm; Green and his crew were alleged to have boarded a ship, the ironically named Speedy Return, off the Malabar coast in India, killed the crew and its captain Robert Drummond, stolen the goods on board, then sold the ship.

"[4] Green was sentenced to death, originally intended for the 3 April 1705, but this was postponed for a time at the request of the Queen's Privy Council.

During this time it became known to those involved in the trial that survivors of the Speedy Return had arrived back in England, and were ready to testify that it had instead been captured by pirate John Bowen, confirming the innocence of Green and his colleagues.

Green and two of his crew members, Simpson, an Englishman, and John Madder, a Scot, were found guilty and hanged on Leith Sands on 11 April.

Trevelyan concluded that the deaths of the three men served as an outlet for a widely held Scottish resentment of their Anglo-centric government's mismanagement.