Sabin 41421, “Includes his adventures in South America, description of the Province of Rio Grande &c.”; Ferguson 317, “The autobiography of this celebrated adventurer, including a full account of the mutiny of the Lady Shore in which he was carried as a convict to New South Wales, and of the adventures of the landing party in their journey to Rio de Janeiro.”
Semple was the born in Ayrshire, the son of an exciseman, in 1776 he served briefly in America before being taken prisoner. He was “relieved early in 1777, by Lord Percy, whose retirement from the Army his country may justly regret, and Sir Peter Parker, then commander at Rhode Island. [He] was soon after wounded; and was in consequence sent home from New York, in the Bridget of Liverpool…” He then was involved with Mrs. Eliza Gooch, the novelist - “My amour with Mrs. Gooch having been related by the lady herself, in her Memoirs, though not quite correctly, I Ieave as it is… “
He then claims to have accompanied Frederick the Great in the campaign of 1778, to have been introduced the Catherine the Great, & “… to have accompanied Prince Potyomkin to the Crimea, and to have designed a uniform for the Russian Army.” [ODNB] In 1784 he was arrested for obtaining goods under false pretences and sentenced, in 1786, to seven years transportation. Released on condition of quitting England he moved to Paris, where he witnessed the execution of Louis XVI, returning to England shortly afterwards to avoid arrest. In 1795, returning to his old ways, he was again sentenced to transportation “this time for defrauding tradesmen” [ibid.]
His hopes of pardon being dashed, when scheduled to be shipped to Botany Bay, he melodramatically stabbed himself in Newgate - “…. in my frenzy, I snatched up a round pointed breakfast knife, with which I made a blow at my breast; I struck too high, and the knife would not enter; but I repeated the stroke lower down, and plunged it to the handle in my body.” - and subsequently went on hunger strike. Having recovered he was dispatched to Australia on the Lady Jane Shore. Despite Semple’s warnings of unrest amongst the troops onboard, mutiny broke out but he was allowed to leave in a boat with several others who would not make a common cause with the mutineers.
The party eventually landed in South America and after a series of almost credible adventures Semple made his way to Tangiers via Lisbon and Gibraltar and there surrendered himself to the British Minister. He was sent back to England and committed to Tothill Fields prison, where at the time of the publication of his autobiography he was still held. “Nothing further is known of him.” [Iibid.]
A very nice copy of this hard-to-obtain life of a notorious scoundrel.
