Benito de Soto facts for kids
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Benito de Soto Aboal (March 22, 1805, Mouriera, a hamlet now a suburb of Pontevedra, Spain - January 25, 1830, Gibraltar.) was captain of the pirate ship Defensor de Pedro, sometimes incorrectly named as the Burla Negra ("Black Joke"), that was responsible for several piracies in the Atlantic in 1828, in a period of increased piracy following the independence of the new states of South America. The most notable attacks were on the British Indiaman Morning Star and the American ship Topaz, which involved great violence. De Soto was captured and tried in Gibraltar on 20 January 1830 and he was hanged on 25 January. Other members of his crew were captured in Spain. Their trial there began on 19 November 1829 and ten men were executed on 11 and 12 January 1830.
Turn to piracy
Defensor de Pedro was a Brazilian brig, commanded by a naval officer Mariz de Sousa Sarmento. In 1827 the Brazilian government gave Sarmento a licence to trade in slaves and as privateer, participating in the irregular warfare between Brazil and its neighbour the United Provinces of Buenos Aires (later Argentina). Sarmento assembled a multinational crew of around forty men, mostly from Brazil itself but also from Galicia, in north-western Spain, Portugal and France. Benito de Soto was engaged as the second mate. The Defensor de Pedro left Rio de Janeiro on 22 November 1827 arrived off Elmina, on the Gold Coast (modern Ghana), around 3 January 1828.
On 26 January, Sarmento went ashore with around eight members of the crew, and a Galician named Miguel Ferreira led a mutiny. Not all the crew joined in and the successful rebels forced ten of those who refused to join them into a boat and forced another ten to stay on board to man the ship. It seems that no slaves had yet been loaded, so the Defensor de Pedro sailed away into the South Atlantic as a pirate. There was now a crew of twenty-three men on board. There is no evidence either at this or any other stage that the crew changed the name of the ship to Burla Negra.
Capture and death
De Soto's crimes caught up with him after the Burla Negra struck a reef and was wrecked off Cadiz. He and his men headed for Gibraltar, but they were recognized and taken for trial in Cadiz. De Soto was hanged with his remaining crew.
See also
In Spanish: Benito Soto Aboal para niños
