There he called his crew together, and told them he intended to take his ship to the East Indies.

Those who were unwilling were overawed, Hand being a mighty 'pastionate' man.

He appears to have been half pirate and half trader; equally ready to attack other traders, or to trade himself in spices and drugs.

On the Sumatra coast, finding the natives unwilling to do business with him, he went ashore with a pistol in his pocket to bring the 'black dogs' to reason.

The pistol went off in his pocket and shattered his thigh, and that was the end of John Hand.
In the same year, six men, of whom four were English and two Dutch, while on passage in a native merchant's ship from the Persian Gulf to Surat, seized the ship, killing the owner and his two wives.