The Last Pirate I

By John Philip Stirling

This is a true-life story of Captain John Philip Stirling who is one of the world's biggest drug and money smugglers. Just google him to find over 1000 news articles and then join him bringing 2,566 kilos of cocaine worth over $250,000,000.00 from the Colombia-Ecuador boarders back to Canada only to get busted in his final approach aboard the 109-foot Western Wind.

Go to the jungles of Colombia where drug labs operate night and day. Learn smuggling out of Peru, Mexico and hear the truth about the people you hear about in the news on a daily basis. Learn how a pro navigates and travels the world ocean smuggling pot, cocaine, heroin and meth. Join an exciting trip around the world and into the lives of the people who do this kind of work and many times pay a very high price to do so.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Philip Stirling Stirling
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215653319

John Philip Stirling

I was born in St. Thomas Ontario Canada in March many years ago . I do not remember my blood Father being at home and when I was 10 my mother remarried to a wonderful man named Len Stirling. We moved from St Thomas and I grew up in Kingston Ontario. I had a normal childhood and Len taught me to fish and camp and bought us all a summer cottage that me and my brother were at from the minute we got out of school for the summer till labor day Sunday every year I can remember. I was a defensive end and a Halfback at my high school called Frontenac, plus played hockey and by the time I was 16 was playing for Three teams all at the same time, the Kingston Township Midget All Stars and Kingston Township Juvenile All Stars (which was a league 2 years older than I was) and the Midget Panthers in the house league. Kingston was a great place and I got my more refined education and dates at the Lakeview Manor Pub. We partied hard then and my best friends Richard M. , Charlie G. and Kenny W. plus the many others had a riot but separated in later years as people do. A sad thing really having to grow up. I met my wife of 37 years Marlene Hewitt in Kingston Ontario Canada at the lakeview Manor but earlier, I was a drug dealer starting in grade 9 where I drove from Kingston to Eddy St Pool Hall in Hull Quebec most Thursday afternoons while skipping classes . Every drug in the world was for sale there and I would buy $100 of MDA in caps for $0.60 each that they would count out on a pool table and then I would sell them at the high school during the Friday night dance. Everyone did them and if anyone whoever went to a Friday night dance put on by Paul Stanton our class president and fellow football and hockey buddy, says they didn't, their a liar. Hogan and I moved with Dirt Man Dan and his skanky girlfriend at the time, Diane Huff to Key Largo Florida where I went to buy pot. After a few months Dan and I were running 200 pounds of pot from Florida to Calgary Canada during the oil boom and making a fortune. My Smuggling started there and the rest is in the 4 books I have written called The Last Pirate 1,2,3,4 & 5 . I am available for and questions or advice or help or possible consultation at [e-mail] anytime and will never lie about anything to you. I did finally learn, the truth hurts sometimes a lot but only for a while, but a lie hurts forever and really bad.

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The Last Pirate I

Captain John Philip Stirling

This book, as with all my books are a warning that drug smuggling may be hazardous to your health and freedom and that the information here may or may not be 100% accurate.

The Last Pirate I

Copyright © 2022 John Philip Stirling

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Published in Canada by Tiberious Publishing

[e-mail]

ISBN 9798474697185

In dedication

to

all the Pirates

that

went before me.

Many court documents are the actual trial transcripts or evidence packets from the cases.

There is only one chapter in all our lives and so it is here.

1

The wind blew 20 knots off the starboard quarter as I approached the Columbia-Ecuador 200-mile EEZ border. The sky was cloudless, and the seas had a dirty tide flowing around our motionless ship.

I was four hours away from the most important drug deal of my life, and as Captain of the 109-foot M.V. Western Wind, I had yet to tell the crew what was about to happen. My engineer Shawn knew, but he was the only one who knew anything. I only wish I knew he was the one in the end who would turn on us all.

The others had just signed on to a fishing trip to make a living. Although some suspected and hoped something would happen to make them rich, they had no idea they would be handling an enormous load of cocaine that had ever been seen on the west coast of North America.

I had one young person on board, and I wanted to put him on the delivery ship and fly him home to Canada. I respected his father, and we were good friends at one time. There is no excuse, but when we left Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, I was not ever, up till the last minute, 100% sure I would go through with the plan. It had been put together over two years and with a million headaches. I didn’t know whether some glitch or screwup not attributed to me would happen. I mean, Colombians are well known to be late or just not showing up at all. Thinking back now, that kid was more of a man than any person on that boat, and his father should be very proud of how he conducted himself.

Unsure of how to proceed with the crew, I called a meeting. I didn’t know what to expect, so I yelled it all out in a forceful but calm manner: As you know, fishing has not gone as well as we had hoped. I have the chance to pick up about 2500 kilos of cocaine and smuggle it back to Canada.

Surprisingly, their eyes lit up like the New Years’ Eve Ball in Times Square as I continued: I want to be straight up with you all and want anyone who wishes to have no part in this to speak up now. There will be no problems; you can leave the ship in a few hours and be flown home. This is your choice. Do not be afraid or ashamed. No harm will come to you, and you have my solemn word on that. I will also pay for your way home in style and give you $20,000 for your troubles, but you must decide now. If you are leaving, you must go and pack your gear as you will be departing shortly.

They were all looking around the galley table at their mates, trying to see what each other was thinking. Reg was sweating like a dog he was and grinning like a lottery jackpot winner. I wished by the look in his beady eyeballs that I had never brought him. He made me nervous just then. Brushing the bad feelings away, I started to ask them one at a time for their answers but never really got the chance as they all started whistling and chanting with enthusiasm that they were all in and would not be counted out for any reason, no matter what. They were jumping up and down, high-fiving, cheering. In all the happiness, they forgot even to ask what they were getting paid.

As there were five of them, I had already considered what I would pay them for the risk and their futures. I felt a cool million dollars was fair for each of them. That was five million dollars coming out of my end already. You can say what you want about Captain John Philip Stirling, but I have never asked anyone to do something I would not do myself. I have never stolen a dime from anyone or any business; I have taken investment money from some friends, but if they win, it’s an investment, but if they lose, it turns into a loan. Somehow magically, I will get into that later. I do owe one person money D.R. but will get to him. If I said I would be somewhere at a certain time, you could count on me being there. Late was not in my vocabulary and I was not too fond of tardiness.

I told them all about the pay they would receive but did not hide the dangers. I quickly went over the subject of cops, jail, and family, should things not go as planned. I also explained I needed to sell some of the cocaine to pay them and that they would all be paid before I took a dollar.

Thanks, Skipper, we won’t let you down. You can count on us, was the cheeps from all.

The mood quickly changed to serious when I told them the pick-up was in 3 hours. At local Colombian time, it was about 3:30 p.m. (1530 hrs.), and on the Equator where we were, 6:30 p.m. (1830 hrs.) was sunset, day in, day out, 365 days a year, as that’s how it is at the Equator. They all hung there like scurvy dogs; their mouth opened wide waiting for my next order.

Pirates we are, I said, adding a little humour to break the tension I thought might go a long way. Go forward to the front to the hatches where the fuel tanks are and remove enough fishing gear to expose the plates covering the fuel tanks. Remove the nuts from the lugs on both the port and starboard side, pop the seals and take off the plates.

Nobody attempts to open anything or do anything that any of us would consider a violation of our accord. Got it? I added a warning at this point.

Aye-aye Captain! they all quickly replied, and off they scurried like a well-oiled machine.

The fuel tanks, one might think, are a curious place to hide 2,586 kilos of cocaine. Each bale is five feet long by three feet wide and weighs about 55 pounds or 25 kilos; each kilo is separately wrapped in heavy plastic and then in a burlap sugar bag. Small ropes wrap around the sugar sacks outside so you have something to grab. The bale looks like a kind of Christmas package from the 1800s. They are not the easiest thing to throw around the deck of a ship in a heavy sea and high winds. But I had a good crew, except for Reg.

The fuel tank doors are not the easiest to open either. There were 150 nuts on each entry, bolted onto the forward bulkhead of the ship. Both port and starboard tanks held 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel and were the size of 3 bedrooms put together of an ordinary house. I had used that fuel on the way down from Canada 5.360 miles ago from when we had left Victoria, BC, Canada, on New Years’ Eve 2000 and travelled south for about a month to arrive around the Equator in the Pacific Ocean.

We were about 300 miles from the Galapagos Islands, a notorious hot spot for the U.S. Coast Guard to hang around. I had received a waypoint for the pick-up by email, which was right on the 200-mile limit called the EEZ, and it was smack dab on the point where Colombia and Ecuador merge.

As darkness was beginning to creep up on us, I spotted a ship a little more than 16 miles away on the radar. On the deck of a boat, when there is no land, and you look out to the horizon, the distance you can see is about 12 miles due to the earth’s curvature. That being considered, you can quickly realize that you will not see exactly what that dot on the radar is visually right away. At 16 miles, it is a blip on a radar screen, and you must wait and watch. The rest of the screen is blank, and you do not know if it is the drug boat you are waiting for or the cops.

Although I have done many jobs before across many borders, both off and on the water, since I was 16 years old, the product before mainly was pot and 20 tons of black hashish a few times out of Holland. This was the first time I had moved cocaine in this large amount. No matter how often you do this job, the adrenaline runs like a river; it’s a rush. You are constantly looking for signs of intruders in your vicinity, both good and bad.

The ship had to get 4 miles closer to me for a visual from my ship’s deck, and I plotted her speed at 6 knots.

That would mean that at one mile every 10 minutes, the vessel would be in view in about 40 minutes.

After what seemed like hours and an hour before dark, she popped over the horizon, and I could see through the binoculars that it was a fishing boat, like us. I had not been told what kind of ship was coming, and as it cautiously approached my craft, I knew they did not know what to expect either, other than our sizeable Canadian flag on the stern of the vessel.

When I was smuggling pot out of Colombia to Florida, then up into Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where I grew up, I was in my teens, and it was the mid 70’s and early 80s. We would approach Colombia with great caution back then. The Colombians would send out one or two pangas2 with 8 or 9 crazy-looking people on it, with bandolero’s over their chest and toting machine guns and hand grenades. It was like a bad Mexican movie.

They would point guns, scream, and yell, threaten us. We would also point guns and yell and scream at them, with neither of the groups understanding a word each other said. It took 15 minutes or so to make sure we were the right people and in the 2 Small fibreglass boats 24 feet long.

Right place. Exciting, to say the least, and then 10 minutes later, they were trying to sell me hand grenades for fifty dollars each after the dust settled.

Remarkable when you are 18. I bought a couple of grenades every time I made the trip and threw them in a while. I blew up a palm tree once. Not very green of me, but at the time, global warming and saving the forest weren’t precisely a subject yet, and you did what you wanted. As I recall, I killed a palm tree and a few crabs, just so there is full disclosure.

Anyway, back on my ship and unsure what to expect, I had my trusty 12-gauge Winchester Defender shotgun and my Smith and Wesson 45 handgun within easy reach. I also had diesel-filled wine bottles mixed with soap and a rag stuffed down their mouth. The soap makes the fire from the explosion stick to everything it spills on, including people. I recommend them highly for all sailors to carry in questionable waters. It could save your family’s life one day. There are some low, desperate people out there sometimes. They are not drug smugglers, so don’t listen to the biggest liars in the world on that issue, the police. You should be more worried about them than us, I assure you.

The yet unidentified ship was now closing in on our position at the Ecuador and Colombia EEZ. 10, 8, 6, 5, then a stop at 4 miles away, and they were hovering as were we. It felt like an old western again, two gunfighters in the middle of the street watching who would flinch first. The radio was silent, the sun was setting, and the wind stopped as if time stood still. Silence. It was a little tense when there was no movement from either party or radio contact.

I began to think for a minute it might just be a simple fishing boat coming up to see what we were catching. It happens all the time.Seeing us on his radar, he might think we are some Gringos stealing his country’s fish. I have had it happen before and it’s not pretty. Guns can come out, and a lot of shit if they think you’re a Gringo stealing their fish in their waters.

Then suddenly, the radio blares out on Channel 16: Hey amigo, ready to work? It was poor English, but after working in Mexico fishing for 6 years, I had no trouble understanding what he was saying. I must say at this point the chills are running up and down my spine.

As all mariners know, Channel 16 is a worldwide emergency channel used to contact Coast Guard for help or other issues like maybe drug smugglers. Now these crazy bastards are yelling about a pending drug delivery at full blast on Channel 16. We are just off Colombia, the biggest cocaine producer in the world. Great, I am sure nobody is going to hear us, are they? Possibly the U.S. Coast Guard on duty won’t understand the Spanglish these people are speaking.

I should have just jumped off the boat right there and then and started swimming for the Galapagos Islands, but having more balls than brains, I answered him: "Ola amigo. Cambio tu fucking radio, por favor, rapido 27." (Change your channel please to 27. Fuck is an international word in any language). My Spanish sucks, but he got it after two tries, changed channels and began to steam towards us at full speed.

It was a small fishing boat 60 feet maybe, steel, a Peruvian number, no flag. They had about 30 crew on the deck and the Captain was in the wheelhouse on the upper deck of this 2-storey ship. I ordered my crew to stand by with lines. They had already deployed the large Scotchman buoys that would keep us from slamming into each other on the starboard side of our ship, and I called to the Captain on the other vessel to come alongside me, as she was smaller. He replied in Spanish that we would raft together and so we did with little fuss.

The people on the ship were happy to see us. They smiled and waved as did my boys and when we got within a few feet of each other, I gave the order to heave the lines to the other ship. I knew it was the first time any of my crew had seen Colombians out here on the ocean and they were very friendly to them as were the Colombians. Nobody on my ship spoke Spanish very much except me and my engineer. It seemed hand gestures to work fine and attest to the co-operation that can happen to people with a common goal.

The Captain of the Colombian ship was now on deck giving orders. The bales of cocaine were hidden under fishing nets and below deck in their fish holds and are now starting to back up on the deck of the Colombian ship. I was on my deck making sure the lines connecting us were properly done. In the open ocean the rock and roll of a big heavy ship does not allow you to tie tightly together as you would at the dock. You must leave enough slack in the ropes to let the ships move and roll with the sea but balanced with the need to stay together. Four feet waves at sea are normal. As a rule, the smaller the ships, the less space you need.

Once together, we started moving bales over the side, from their ship to ours. The crew on the Colombian ship was like a conveyor belt going from the hold to their deck, over the side and on to our deck. We only had a crew of five, but they kept up the quick pace of the Colombians who no doubt wanted to leave the area as soon as they could. My crew began to stack the deck with bale after bale. It was now totally dark, the sun long gone below the horizon, leaving just a glow of where it had gone down to the west of us in a rapid descent.

The wind that had gone dead earlier was starting to raise its ugly head and the sea began to come up. It went from 0 to 20 knots in minutes, and it was just then that one of the Colombians dropped a bale of coke overboard between the ships about midway. I knew this was possible and had seen it before moving tons of pot in heavy weather and I was ready.

I had a pike pole about 15 feet long on the ready. I grabbed it and flew down the stairs from my perch on the outer forward deck. The slender, dark-skinned man, whose eyes now bulged with great concern, was staring over the side of the boat, watching a few hundred thousand dollars and his life floating between the ships and would soon be out to sea.

I arrived and plunged the pole down at the bale and hooked it through the burlap bag the coke was wrapped in and pulled. It was heavy and I strained to lift it. I yelled to the man on the other ship who dropped it in the sea for help. Together, hand over hand, we worked in unison. We pulled the bale straight up until I could get my hand on one of the ropes wrapped around it and pulled it aboard my ship while the Colombian held the pike pole. I was able to drag it away from the other bales so that they would not get wet.

As the bale leaked salt water on the deck of my vessel, the Colombian looked at me while returning the pike pole and thanked me over and over. He was most likely getting paid $1,000 for his job delivering the product, but as the bale was worth about $200,000 + in Canada, he knew if the cocaine had been lost, he would surely have been shot dead when he reached shore or thrown overboard as a meal to the sharks and an example to others. The cartel had little sympathy for anyone losing $200,000 of their money, no matter what the story was. Life is cheap in Colombia. You can have someone killed for $100 or less, anyone, me, a mother-in-law, anyone.

As I surveyed the rest of the job, it looked like we were about half loaded. The night had turned dark, and the stars were beginning to show. The ship’s deck was starting to look like a warehouse, stacked with boxes from a distance, but instead, they were bales of cocaine, 101 bales exactly with about 22 kilos to the bale. That load turned out to be 2,585 kilos of 100% pure cocaine, fresh from the jungles of Colombia.

The work and the people involved in getting things to this point of delivery onto a Canadian ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean were considerable. Now in the starlight 200 miles off the Colombia-Ecuador coast, it was a rush and a half. I felt invincible, alive, and prosperous. Millions and millions of dollars worth, as Trump would say, WOW. Who would have thought I would ever get this far in the drug world against all the odds?

I was, sitting on top of 250 to 350 million dollars worth of cocaine. I thought of and then remembered all the people who were against me. Not the cops but the others, family who you could not tell anything about, people who were jealous and hated me just because I had more than they did or ever would. Another suitable time, I made friends who weren’t friends at all. Now they could all kiss my ass.

I was looking at Shawn, the engineer, putting the bales down the hatch and into the fuel tanks through the clean-out plates we had removed from the bulkhead. We could have fit it all in one tank, and thinking back now, I wish I would have given that order, but both sides were filled up equally anyway.

As the last bale came on board, I gave the Captain of the Peruvian/Colombian ship the signal to cast off the three lines that held us together. He did that like a pro, and we quickly parted. As the distance went from a few feet to a few yards, I waved to the Captain, whose name I never knew and then put my ship forward and increased the throttle.

I then pointed the vessel northwest between the Galapagos Islands and Cocos Island. My crew waved at the other ship’s crew waving us goodbye. We were all happy to be headed back to our homes and families.

On board my ship, the work was starting for us. We had an uneventful trip south from Canada a month earlier and now had 5,000 miles of ocean to cross to get home. Typically, we would be looking over our shoulders the whole way.

The boys took another hour to move the last of the bales below deck and secure the forward fuel tanks. Even with an air-powered ratchet gun and five people greasing nuts and seals, the fuel tanks took another two hours to secure and seal. The hatches had to look like they had never been opened in years. We applied a little paint here and there to cover the marks left by the socket wrench on the nuts. It was necessary to make the access to those forward hatches as difficult as possible to open.

I ordered nets, ropes and other fishing gear to fill in the hole leading to the fuel tank hatches. By the time they were done, it was packed to the top with heavy equipment that was hard to move.

2

An hour after our departure from the Colombians, we were doing 13 knots, our top speed. I wondered why they used Colombian nationals aboard a Peruvian ship for about 30 seconds and then concentrated on leaving the crime scene. As usual, you feel like going as fast as possible to get as far away from anyone and anything. I looked on the radar and could not see a thing. The Colombians had the same idea and took off in the opposite direction I had left from, which was southeast. That vector would take them back to Bonaventura, Colombia, their families, and their homes.

On the other hand, I would continue to distance ourselves and the mainland. I was heading at least 600 miles off the known shipping routes of Central America before turning North and homeward. There are two trains of thought I use in smuggling. One is to stay as far away from shore as fuel will allow—at least 600 to 1000 miles. Fuel is an excellent consideration in planning these trips as there are no gas stations in the middle of the ocean. It’s also best not to stop anywhere if possible.

A second way to go is to hug the shore about 60 miles offshore and blend in with other traffic. It depends on the time of year. One does not venture south from Canada on the ocean between Cabo St. Lucas, Mexico, and Honduras from July to November during hurricane season without standing out like a sore thumb. Going North of the doldrums and Equator just then is stupid, and a heat score to be close to shore.

The crew emerged from the bottom of the ship while pondering the job ahead of me, and they were all sweating like sex monkeys from the tropical heat. It was over 90 degrees and was now nearing midnight. Four had no idea what was about to happen until 6 hours earlier, and I do not think they had the time to grasp what had just happened or absorb the situation. They collected themselves silently on the deck in the breeze created by the swiftly moving ship and the slow rhythmic roll that was now somehow soothing.

I had stashed four cases of Canadian beer in my room, and although I never allowed alcohol on the ship, it seemed they had done their job and had nothing left to do for the month-long ride home but sport fish and watch TV. I figured they deserved it and the rest of the work left was up to me.

As they saw me lugging the beer down the stairs, they all jumped up to help. There were no cheers from all quarters of the deck. I went back up to the wheelhouse to set the autopilot that steers the ship on its new course home, slowed a bit to take off any strain on the engine or possible future problems caused by excessive speed, and went down to the deck to join the crew.

They were relaxed after a couple of coolies, and the fact that I had reported the radar was clear of any vessel traffic, as far as I could