the principal shareholders of the voyage, though he avoided conviction through out-of-court settlements with two of the complainants. They suspected, probably with reason, that he had failed to let them know about a significant portion of the loot obtained from the voyage, and planned to keep it for himself and other members of his crew. The self-justifying version of events given by Shelvocke in the book A Voyage Round the World by Way of the Great South Sea was disputed by some who had accompanied him on that expedition, in particular by his captain of marines, William Betagh. Shelvocke nevertheless went on to re-establish his reputation and died on 30 November 1742 at the age of 67, a wealthy man as a result of his buccaneering activity. His chest tomb (since removed) in the churchyard of St Nicholas, Deptford, London, by the east wall eulogised "a gentleman of great abilities in his profession and allowed to have been one of the bravest and most accomplished seamen of his time." A wall tablet in the chancel commemorates his son, also George Shelvocke, who died in 1760 and accompanied his father on the journey round the world before becoming Secretary of the General Post Office and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Influence on Coleridge In his book Shelvocke described an event wherein his second captain, Simon Hatley, shot a black albatross while the Speedwell was attempting to round Cape Horn in severe storms. Hatley took the giant sea bird to be a bad omen, and hoped that by killing it he might bring about a break in the weather. Some seventy years later the episode would become the inspiration for the central plot device in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's narrative poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Coleridge's friend and fellow poet William Wordsworth shared the following reminiscences on the origins of the poem: Much the greatest part of the story was Mr Coleridge's invention; but certain parts I myself suggested: for example, some crime was to be committed which should bring upon the old navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime, and his own wanderings. I had been reading in Shelvock's Voyages a day or two before that while doubling Cape Horn they frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings twelve or fifteen