The Wasp, 1918 · page 154 of 330
The Wasp — 1918 — page 154: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page appears to be narrative text rather than a cartoon, describing a maritime encounter from what seems to be a serialized story about Captain Trimmer and his brig, the *Good Cheer*. The passage recounts how Trimmer, apparently a pirate or privateer, deceives a New England schooner by feigning distress. When the schooner's crew boards to investigate (the narrator sarcastically notes they likely wanted to confiscate cargo, given their twenty armed men), Trimmer ambushes them in "short and bloody work." He then disables the schooner with hidden guns and transfers his "villainous company" and valuables to it. The satire likely mocks either actual historical piracy, government corruption, or possibly New England maritime practices—though without the visual cartoon or fuller context of the serialized story, the specific political target remains unclear. The tongue-in-cheek tone suggests *The Wasp* is critiquing maritime deception and violence.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE WASP 145 performed all the duties of navigating and sailing the brig. In the course of time a signal of distress brought a schooner from New England alongside the Good Cheer. Trimmer hid all his armed men save six, then informed the master of the schooner that he had escaped from a pirate only to be knocked about by a gale, and that he was now short of men, fresh water, and provisions. The New Englanders came aboard the brig in a hurry, doubtless to ascertain the nature of the cargo with a view to confiscating it. Otherwise, why did they come armed and to the number of twenty ? However that may be, Captain Trimmer’s fellows made short and bloody work of them. The schooner, left short-handed, attempted to escape at the first outcry of the conflict ; but Trimmer had foreseen this, and had the brig’s three guns ready trained on the schooner’s spars behind a screen of empty casks. So the schooner’s wings were crippled; and later she was overhauled. Captain Trimmer, and what remained of his villainous company, transferred themselves from the brig to the schooner, together with everything of value in the brig. comichooks.com