5 WALK THE PLANK THE ECONOMICS OF PIRATE TORTURERead more at location 1582
barking at a prisoner with sadistic pleasure, “Walk the plank!”Read more at location 1585
There are, in fact, no recorded cases of seventeenth- or eighteenth-century pirates, hook-handed or otherwise, forcing captives to jump off wooden planks. Further, pirates weren’t sadists who tortured everyone they encountered for fun.Read more at location 1589
Charles Johnson, for example, described Bartholomew Roberts’s crew’s apparent violent madness as follows: “It is impossible to particularly recount the Destruction and Havock,” which these pirates committed “without Remorse or Compunction; for nothing is so deplorable as Power in mean and ignorant Hands, it makes Men wanton and giddy …. They are like mad Men, that cast Fire-Brands, Arrows, and Death, and say, are not we in Sport?” “Like their Patron, the Devil,” Johnson observed, pirates “must make Mischief their Sport, Cruelty their Delight, and damning of Souls their constant Employment.”Read more at location 1592
pirates comported more with the attitude Captain Sam Bellamy expressed when he said, “I scorn to do any one a Mischief, when it is not for my Advantage.”Read more at location 1600
Pirates did in many cases torture captives. But they did so rationallyRead more at location 1601
that they elevated their reputation to the status of a piratical “brand name.” As a result of this brand name pirates improved their efficiency on the account, reaping greater rewards from their plunder.Read more at location 1603
Pirates tortured captives for three main reasons. First, they did so to elicit information, usually regarding the whereabouts of hidden valuables aboard captured ships. Second, pirates tortured captives to punish government officials for attempting to capture them or for capturing and hanging fellow pirates. Third, pirates used torture to punish unscrupulous or abusive merchant captains.Read more at location 1606
“hung eleven thousand moydores of gold in a bag out of the cabbin window, and as soon as he was taken by the said Lowe, cutt the rope and lett them drop into the sea.”Read more at location 1618
interested in discovering papers that might provide them with valuable information,Read more at location 1622
After Blackbeard’s crew seized one vessel, for example, “all their Papers were perused with the same Diligence as tho’ it had been at the Secretary’s Office here in England.”Read more at location 1623
By inflicting heinous tortures on those who hid or destroyed valuables, or who were suspected of hiding or destroying them, pirates could prevent behaviors that would otherwise erode their revenue.Read more at location 1628
heinous pirate torture prevented crew members on future prizes from attempting to withhold valuable booty.Read more at location 1631
creating a reputation for pirate barbarity that spread throughout the maritime world.Read more at location 1631
What’s more, pirates received advertisement for their reputation in popular eighteenth-century newspapers, which unwittingly contributed to pirates’ ruthless brand name, indirectly facilitating pirates’ profit.Read more at location 1651
This is why pirates spent so much time, as one court remarked, “making their Hellish InventionsRead more at location 1654
in response to the merchant captain discussed above who threw a bag of gold into the oceanRead more at location 1658
“Lowe cutt off the said Masters lipps and broyl’d them before his face, and afterwards murder’d the whole crew being thirty two persons” In a newspaper article in the American Weekly Mercury, a witness described how Low’s crew treated other resistant prisoners: “They cut and whiped some and others they burnt with Matches between their Fingers to the bone to make them confess where their Money was.”Read more at location 1659
“bound [one captive’s] hands and feet and ty’d (upon his back) down to the bowspritt with matches to his eyes burning and a pistol loaded with the muzzle into his mouth, thereby to oblige him to confess what money was on board.”Read more at location 1664
“placing lighted matches between the fingers of” his prisoners “to make them discover where the gold was.”Read more at location 1668
“they strappado’d him until both his arms were entirely dislocated, then knotted the cord so tight round the forehead that his eyes bulged out, big as eggs. Since he still would not admit where the coffer was, they hung him up by his male parts, while one struck him, another sliced off his nose, yet another an ear, and another scorched him with fire.”Read more at location 1674
“they tied long cords to his thumbs and his big toes and spreadeagled him to four stakes. Then four of them came and beat on the cords with their sticks, making his body jerk and shudder and stretching his sinews. Still not satisfied, they put a stone weighing at least two hundred-weight on his loins and lit a fire of palm leaves under him, burning his face and setting his hair alight.”Read more at location 1677
“being possessed of a devil’s fury, ripped open one of the prisoners with his cutlass, tore the living heart out of his body, gnawed at it, and then hurled it in the face of one of the others.”Read more at location 1682
“The Manner of a Sweat,” one pirate prisoner explained in the pages of the British Journal, “is thus: Between the Decks they stick Candles round the Mizen-Mast, and about twenty five Men surround it with Points of Swords, Penknives, Compasses, Forks, &c. in each of their Hands: Culprit enters the Circle; the Violin plays a merry Jig, and he must run for about ten Minutes, while each Man runs his Instrument into his Posteriors.”Read more at location 1687
captives expected to be brutalized whether they delivered up their valuables or not,Read more at location 1694
Philip Ashton, for instance, “learned from some” of his pirate captors “that it was one of their Articles Not to Draw Blood, or take away the Life of any Man, after they had given him Quarter.”Read more at location 1696
This explains the seeming generosity of the quartermaster on Captain Roberts’s ship who observed one of his men abusing a captive. When he saw this “the Quarter-master came forward, and took the Pyrate off from beating him, asking him how he wou’d like it were he a Prisoner.”Read more at location 1698
pirates often released some or all of the crew membersRead more at location 1711
Thus, when Phillips captured John Fillmore, for instance, Fillmore was “dread to fall into [Phillips’s] hands,” he later recorded, “having heard of the cruelties committed by that execrable pirate.”Read more at location 1713
particular pirate captains, for instance, enjoyed their own individual reputations.Read more at location 1719
Captain John Phillips, for example, enjoyed a fearsome reputation particular to him. And as I discuss below, so did Blackbeard and other pirates.Read more at location 1720
newspapers published in London and New England.Read more at location 1723
related information from pirate victims and released pirate prisoners.Read more at location 1724
fostering a “devil-may-care” image among the legitimate persons they interacted with,Read more at location 1733
As Bartholomew Roberts famously boasted, for example, “A merry Life and a short one, shall be my Motto.”Read more at location 1742
in the Boston News-Letter. According to the victim, Roberts’s men proceeded “with madness and rage to tare up the Hatches” and then “enter[ed] the Hould like a Parcel of Furies, where with Axes, Cutlashes, &c they cut, tore, and broke open Trunks, Boxes, Cases, and Bales, and when any of the Goods came upon Deck which they did not like to carry with them aboard their Ship … they threw them over board into the Sea … There was nothing heard among the Pirates all the while but Cursing, Swearing, Damning, and Blaspheming to the greatest degree imaginable.”Read more at location 1755
“every Thing that please them not they threw over board … every individual Thing they destroy’d; broke all my Windows, knock’d down the Cabbin … and then deliver’d me my Ship in a despicable Condition.”Read more at location 1760
One pirate victim’s account, published in the Boston News-Letter, spoke specifically to pirates’ apparent godlessness and confirmed the popular perception that pirates were “in the Possession of the Devil” and “laughing at the very thunders of God.” “In ravaging the Vessel,” this victim reported, “they met with two or three Bibles, at the sight whereof some started and said, They had nothing to do with them; or with God, nor any thing Above.”Read more at location 1762
sometimes to prevent giving Intelligence, sometimes because they did not leave men to navigate them, and at other Times out of Wantonness, or because they were displeased with the Master’s Behaviour.”Read more at location 1767
“Wanton” destruction Johnson describes was more likely a deliberate effort to foster an image of insanityRead more at location 1769
when a prisoner asked pirate John Phillips why his crew needlessly burned ships, Phillips “answer’d, it was for fun.”Read more at location 1770
Captain Teach, assumed the Cognomen of Black-beard, from that large Quantity of Hair, which, like a frightful Meteor, covered his whole Face, and frightened America more than any Comet that has appeared there in a long Time. This Beard was black, which he suffered to grow of an extravagant Length; as to Breadth, it came up to his Eyes; he was accustomed to twist it with Ribbons, in small Tails … and then turn them about his Ears: three Brace of Pistols, hanging in Holsters like Bandaliers; and stuck lighted Matches under his Hat, which appearing on each Side of his Face, his Eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a Figure, that Imagination cannot form an Idea of a Fury, from Hell, to look more frightful.Read more at location 1778
Blackbeard,” for instance, “was conscious of the public image he had created”Read more at location 1786
reputations for cruelty and insanity, which reduced victim resistance, and in turn promoted profits.Read more at location 1790
the world’s most notorious and fearsome pirate hadn’t so much as killed a single man.Read more at location 1792
another reason as well: to deter authorities from clamping down on them.Read more at location 1798
pirates directed their barbarity at government officialsRead more at location 1799
in response to the governors of Barbados and Martinique seeking to capture him, Captain Roberts constructed a special flag communicating his new policy: death for any Barbadians and Martinicans he might take on the account.Read more at location 1801
Captain Low, for example, was said to have an “irreconcileable Aversion to New-England Men” and consequently “let none of that Country depart without some Marks of his Rage.” Low’s “aversion” stemmed from the audaciousness of the New York–based man-o’-war HMS Greyhound, which once attacked Low and succeeded in capturing his pirate consort, Charles Harris.Read more at location 1805
Captain Low, for example, met with a ship “manned partly with English and partly Portuguese; the latter Low caused to be hang’d, by Way of Reprisal, for some of his own Men sent thither.” The English got off easier since Low had no axe to grind with them.Read more at location 1821
Bart Roberts used similar tactics to send a message to those acquainted with Captain Rogers, the man who led the two-ship expedition sent to attack him off the coast of Barbados.Read more at location 1823
“The Pirates seem much enraged at Bristol Men, for Capt. Rogers sake.” When Roberts’s crew members took a ship from Bristol, “They us’d” its captain “barbarously, because his Countryman, Captain Rogers … was of the City of Bristol.”Read more at location 1825
Charles Vane instituted a policy of mistreating Bermudan vessels because Bermuda’s governor arrested pirate Thomas Brown.Read more at location 1828
Virginia governor Alexander Spotswood, for example, couldn’t have been pleased when he learned from one of Bartholomew Roberts’s victims in 1721 that Roberts “expected to be joined by another ship and would then visit Virginia, and avenge the pirates who have been executed here.” If this frightened Spotswood, he must have wet himself a year earlier when he wrote to the Council of Trade and Plantations that if those “barbarous wretches can be moved to cutt off the nose and ears of a master for but correcting his own sailors, what inhuman treatment must I expect, should I fall within their power, who have been markt as ye principal object of their vengeance, for cutting off their arch-pirate Thatch, with all his grand designs, and making so many of their fraternity to swing in the open air of Virginia.” But Spotswood wasn’t alone.Read more at location 1832
According to Marcus Rediker, in at least some cases these sorts of pirate threats—backed by implementation—actually worked. As one Bermudan colonial official complained, for example, the island’s residents “fear’d that this very execution [of two pirates] wou’d make our vessels fare the worse for it, when they happen’d to fall into the pyrates’ hands” and so were reluctant to provide the testimony needed to condemn them.Read more at location 1840
“They pretend one reason for these villainies is to do justice to sailors.”Read more at location 1847
several pirates identified captain mistreatment of merchant sailors as their reason for turning to piracy.Read more at location 1848
by punishing abusive merchant captains, pirates contributed to a positive reputation among merchant sailors.Read more at location 1851
make merchant crews more willing to surrender to pirate attack,Read more at location 1852
it doesn’t seem pirates had profit seeking in mind.Read more at location 1854
to prevent situations of captain predation, British law included several protections for merchant sailors. But official legal protections could and did fail, leaving sailors without effective, or at least immediate, shelter from captain abuse. Where the law failed to reign in predatory merchant captains, pirates, oddly enough, picked up the slack.Read more at location 1857
for pirates, the additional cost of administering justice to predatory merchant ship captains was very low. Pirates were searching for and stopping merchant vessels to plunder them anyway.Read more at location 1867
If the crew informed their captors that its captain had “misbehaved,” the pirates punished him. Pirates did this with torture,Read more at location 1872
On taking a “whole Salt Fleet, consisting of about 20 Sail,” pirate captain Christopher Condent, for example, “enquir[ed] into the Manner of the Commanders’ Behaviour to their Men, and those, against whom Complaint was made, he whipp’d and pickled”—a torture that involved lashing the abusive officers and pouring brine on their open wounds.Read more at location 1874
One of Edward England’s pirates, for instance, immediately recognized Captain Skinner, whom he’d previously sailed under as boatswain,Read more at location 1878
“Ah, Captain Skinner! It is you? The only Man I wished to see; I am much in your Debt, and now I shall pay you all in your own Coin.” The pirates tied Skinner “to the Windless, and there pelted him with Glass Bottles, which cut him in a sad Manner;Read more at location 1880
Captain Thomas Tarlton must have been equally distressed to encounter a prisoner aboard Bartholomew Roberts’s ship whom he’d refused help to in the past. The prisoner “could not spare using some Reproaches of” Tarlton “for what he thought was Inhumanity.” This “getting to the Ears of Roberts, he took upon him, as a Dispenser of Justice, the Correction of this Tarlton, beating and misusing him grievously.”Read more at location 1883
Conversely, if a captured merchant crew spoke well of its captain,Read more at location 1886
For instance, when Thomas Cocklyn’s pirate crew took William Snelgrave’s ship and “endeavoured to beat out my Brains,” as Snelgrave put it, for ordering his sailors to defend their vessel, “some of my People that were on the Quarter-Deck observing, cried out aloud, ’For God’s sake don’t kill our Captain, for we never were with a better Man.’”Read more at location 1888
forge friendships with these men that could serve them in the future.Read more at location 1897
Pirate captain William Lewis, for example, took a ship “belonging to Carolina, commanded by [a] Captain Smith.” “Lewis used him very civilly, and gave him as much, or more in Value, than he took from him, and let him go, saying, he would come to Carolina when he had made Money on the Coast, and would rely on his Friendship.”Read more at location 1898
Sam Bellamy’s pirates showed surprising kindness to Captain Lawrence Prince who they’d recently plundered. “They gave the ship taken from Capt. Richards [another recent prize] to Capt. Prince, and loaded her with as much of the best and finest goods as She could carry, and gave Capt. Prince above Twenty Pounds in Silver and Gold to bear his charges.”Read more at location 1900
Merchant ship captain Knott, for example, couldn’t have been too disappointed at his crew’s capture in 1720. His pirate attackers “took what they wanted out of the merchantman and gave him money and goods of a very considerable value for the same.” Captain John Gow’s pirates felt particularly compelled to “ma[k]e a Reparation” to some of their victims, “giving” to one “what they had taken Violently from another” in “a strange Medley of Mock-Justice made up of Rapine and Generosity blended together.”Read more at location 1906
Merchant captains who feared pirate justice may have lessened their severityRead more at location 1913
Captains received no hearing for their part. Thus there was no objectivity under pirate justice.Read more at location 1919
at pirate hands. Pirate torture, while often heinous, was rarely arbitrary.Read more at location 1926
Francis Spriggs, for example, forced merchant captain Richard Hawkins to eat “a Dish of Candles” for his amusement.Read more at location 1941
Low, for example, burned one victim alive for no other reason than, “being a greazy Fellow,” he thought he “would fry well in the Fire.”Read more at location 1943
