Ben Pease was youngest of seven children of Henry A and Mary A Pease.
10 Facts About Ben Pease
1.
2.
Ben Pease may have greater claim than Bully Hayes as being a South Sea pirate and "the last of the buccaneers," as Ben Pease appears to have been engaged in filibustering in his activities in the opium trade after China's defeat in the Second Opium War in 1858, when it was forced to legalize opium and allow the importation of opium.
3.
On 5 July 1865 Ben Pease received the first license to providing 40 laborers from the New Hebrides to Fiji.
4.
Alfred Restieaux, an island trader who had dealings with both Hayes and Pease writes that in late in 1866 or early 1867, Pease was introduced to Mr C A Williams, a ship owner of New London, Connecticut who bought a schooner that he renamed the Blossom.
5.
Ben Pease purchased the Water Lily, a 250-ton brig that was built for the opium trade into China, and later fitted it out to engage in the blackbirding trade in the Pacific.
6.
In 1870, Ben Pease assisted in Bully Hayes' escape after he was arrested in Apia, Samoa on charges of piracy, arising from his blackbirding activities.
7.
The accounts of the adventures of Hayes and Ben Pease differ in detail, but what is consistent between the accounts is that Hayes escaped from Samoa on 1 April 1870 aboard the Pioneer.
8.
Hayes and Ben Pease proceeded on a trading cruise in the Caroline Islands and the Marshall Islands.
9.
The cargo was sold in Shanghai; what happened to Ben Pease is uncertain, except that he never returned to Apia.
10.
Restieaux recounts the two stories that he had been told: the first was that Ben Pease drowned after jumping overboard from a Spanish man-of-war, the second, that he was killed in a fight in the Bonin Islands.