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she could clearly see the figure of her husband. Richard Parker was dressed in a black suit of mourning, and his hands were bound. Those present on deck observed that he looked a little paler than usual but that he carried himself with a remarkable composure and fortitude. As soon as she recognized his familiar figure and realized that he had only minutes to live, Ann Parker shrieked, “Oh, my dear husband!” and fainted. After a few minutes she recovered, and looking across toward the flagship, she saw the chaplain in his robes turn away from her husband.
    While she lay unconscious in the bottom of the boat, Richard Parker had spoken briefly to the assembled ship’s company. He had knelt and prayed, and had then stood up and said, “I am ready.” The provost marshal had placed the greased halter around his neck but had done it so clumsily that Parker spoke to the boatswain’s mate who was standing nearby and said, “Do you do it, for he seems to know nothing about it.” The boatswain’s mate expertly made fast the halter to the reeve-rope and indicated that all was ready. Parker turned around and looked for the last time at his shipmates gathered on the forecastle. He nodded his head toward them and with an affectionate smile said, “Goodbye to you.” He then turned to Captain Mosse and asked him whether the gun was primed. He was told that it was.
    â€œIs the match alight?”
    â€œAll is ready.”
    Parker asked whether any gentleman would lend him a white handkerchief so that he could give the signal, and after a pause a gentleman stepped forward and handed him one. Parker bowed and thanked him and ascended the platform. A cap was drawn over his face, and he stepped firmly to the edge of the platform. He dropped the handkerchief and quickly placed his hands in his coat pockets. As the reeve-rope swung him in the air, the gun at the bows of the ship fired with a shattering boom that echoed across the water. The explosion was followed by a rising cloud of gunpowder smoke, but the eyes of the hundreds of seamen on the anchored ships and the waiting crowds on the shore were fixed on the black figure suspended from the yardarm on the flagship’s foremast. It was noted that Parker’s body appeared extremely convulsed for a few seconds and then hung lifeless.
    In all, some 3,000 people watched the last moments of Richard Parker, but his wife was not one of them. She lay senseless in the boat among the dozens of other small craft gathered around the warship. She said later that she “saw nothing but the sea, which appeared covered with blood.”
    For the third time she was rowed back to the shore. Almost overcome with shock and grief but still determined to be with her husband, she hired a fourth boat, and as she was once again rowed back to the flagship, she saw his body being lowered to the deck. By the time she came alongside, she was told that the corpse had been taken into a boat for burial ashore at Sheerness.
    This might seem to be the end of the story, but Ann Parker continued to demonstrate that desperate and heroic determination which enables some people to fight on when all seems lost. With some difficulty she managed to secure an audience with Vice Admiral Skeffington Lutwidge, who had recently been appointed commander in chief of the fleet at Sheerness. She told him she wanted to remove her husband’s body from the burial ground in the garrison. Lutwidge asked her why she wanted to take her husband’s body. She replied, “To have him interred like a gentleman, as he had been bred.”
    Ann Parker knew her husband was no criminal, and she wanted him to have a decent burial and the blessing of the church. Vice Admiral Lutwidge had no sympathy for the wife of the notorious leader of the recent mutiny and categorically refused her request. Having failed to get her way by official means, Mrs. Parker resorted to desperate measures. The place