Under the Black Flag

by David Cordingly

  For more than four centuries pirates were hanged at Execution Dock on the north bank of the Thames. The exact spot is shown on old maps of London and lies a mile downstream from the Tower of London on a bend of the river at Wapping. Today the riverside pub the Captain Kidd overlooks the original site of the gallows.

  In the early years of the eighteenth century, when Captain Kidd, John Gow, and other notorious pirates were hanged there, the waterfront at Wapping was a jumble of wharves, wooden cranes, and timber yards. Beyond the wharves were narrow streets lined with the houses of seamen, dockers, shipwrights, and their families. The main port of London was a little further upstream and centered on Custom House Quay. There the ships were moored three and four deep, creating a forest of masts and weather-beaten sails as far as Old London Bridge.

  The gallows was set up on the shore near the low-tide mark. After the pirates had been hanged, their bodies were slowly submerged by the swirling waters of the incoming tide. It was usual to allow three tides to pass over them before the bodies were taken away. The reason why pirates on both sides of the Atlantic were hanged “within the flood marks” was to stress the point that their crimes had been committed within the jurisdiction of the Lord High Admiral. He was responsible for the punishment of all felonies committed on the high seas and waterways up to the low-tide mark. Above the tide line, the civil courts took over.

  The foreshore along the banks of the Thames was composed of mud and gravel and smelled of rotten wood and weed and sewage, but it was firm enough to walk on at low tide, and even to drive a horse and cart across. When an execution was due to take place, large crowds gathered on the shore and in boats and ships moored out in the river. The condemned man had to travel in a procession from the Marshalsea Prison on the south bank, across London Bridge and past the Tower to Execution Dock. The procession was led by the Admiralty Marshal or his deputy, who carried the silver oar which represented the authority of the Admiralty. The pirate traveled in a cart and was accompanied by the prison chaplain. When the procession reached the riverside, there was a pause and the pirate was given the chance to address the crowds. Some, encouraged by the chaplain, mumbled a few words of repentance; others spoke defiantly, and occasionally at some length.

  The gallows was a simple structure of two wooden uprights joined at the top by a crossbeam. A ladder was leaned against the gallows, and the rope with the hangman’s noose was suspended from the beam. The pirate was helped up the ladder by the executioner, the noose was placed around his neck, and when the Marshal gave the signal, the executioner pushed him off into space. The drop was not always enough to cause death instantly, and it was not unusual for relatives or friends to pull on the pirate’s legs to put him out of his agony. Sometimes the rope broke, and the half-conscious man was hauled back up the ladder to be hanged a second time.

  After the submerging by the tides, the body was either taken away and buried in an unmarked grave or sent to Surgeon’s Hall for dissection, or hung in chains. The dissection of executed criminals had been authorized in Henry VIII’s reign and was common practice by the eighteenth century. This was the fate of a gang of pirates who operated from Hastings and were hanged in 1768. There were instances where a hanged man survived the execution. William Duell was hanged in 1740 and taken to Surgeon’s Hall for dissection. As his body was being washed, it was observed that he was still breathing. A surgeon bled him and in two hours he had recovered and was sitting up in a chair. He was sent back to Newgate Prison, and the authorities evidently decided that one hanging was enough. His sentence was commuted to transportation to the colonies.1

  After the public hanging at Wapping it was the custom to display the corpses of the more notorious pirates at places along the river where they would be seen by the crews of all ships entering and leaving the port. The body of Captain Kidd was suspended on a gibbet at Tilbury Point on the lower reaches of the Thames. Here it was a prominent landmark and would have remained visible for an hour or more as the ships navigated Sea Reach, that broad stretch of the river which curves around the desolate point. Further upstream, opposite the town of Woolwich, the body of John Prie, pirate and murderer, was hung in chains in 1727.2 Following the capture and trial of Captain Gow and his crew in 1725 it was ordered that Gow and his lieutenant be hung in chains, one of them opposite Deptford and one opposite Greenwich.3

  On the other side of the Atlantic the seaman faced further reminders of the fate of those who took up piracy. Outside the harbor of Port Royal, Jamaica, were two small islands or cays. On Deadman’s Cay the body of Calico Jack Rackam was hung from a gibbet following his execution in November 1720. Four months later the body of Captain Vane was displayed on the nearby islet of Gun Cay. In Antigua, some six hundred miles to the east, Captain Finn and four pirates were hanged in 1723. The judgment of the Admiralty Court was that the body of Captain Finn be hung in chains on Rat Island, which lies in the middle of St. Johns harbor.4

  On the east coast of America pirates were executed at Charleston, South Carolina, at Williamsburg in Virginia, and at Newport, Rhode Island, but it was at Boston that the seaman would have seen most evidence of pirate hangings. In June 1724 the Boston Gazette reported, “On Tuesday the 2nd instant, were executed here for piracy John Rose Archer, Quarter-Master, aged about 27 years, and William White, aged about 22 years: After their Death, they were conveyed in boats down to an island where White was buried, and the Quarter-Master was hung up in irons, to be a spectacle, and so a warning to others.” Three years later the body of William Fly was suspended from a gibbet on the island of Nick’s Mate at the entrance to the Charles River.

  To ensure that the displayed bodies remained intact for as long as possible, the corpses were coated with tar. This was normally used to preserve the wooden hulls of ships and would have been reasonably effective in preventing the ravages of the weather. It may also have discouraged the attentions of carrion crows and gulls. Once coated with tar, the body was fitted into a specially made harness of iron hoops and chains which held the head, body, and legs in place. An example of a set of irons and chains dated 1742 has been preserved in the Town Hall of Rye in Sussex. It would have taken a blacksmith some time to make and explains why this was the most costly item on the list of expenses incurred during the hanging and gibbeting of Archer and White at Boston. The hire of a boat and the cost of laborers to set up the gibbet and dig the grave of White came to £3.15s.8d, but it cost £12.10s “To Makeing of the Chains for John Rose Archer one of the Pyrats and the hire of a man to fix him on the Gebbet att Bird Island.” 5

  Detail from John Rocque’s map of London of 1769. Condemned pirates were taken in procession from the Marshalsea Prison, past the Tower of London (bottom left) to Execution Dock, which can be seen on the bend of the river between the New Stairs and Dock Stairs in Wapping.

  The bodies selected for long-term display in or outside ports were a tiny proportion of the total number of pirates who were executed. In the years between 1716 and 1726 more than four hundred men were hanged for piracy,6 an average of forty men each year. In 1723, when the war against the pirates was at its height, no fewer than eighty-two men were hanged. Back in 1617 Sir Henry Mainwaring complained that men were encouraged to become pirates because it was the custom “that none but the Captain, Master, and it may be some few of the principal of the company shall be put to death.”7 This was no longer the case in the early eighteenth century. When Captain Thomas Green and seventeen members of his crew were tried for piracy at Edinburgh in 1705, all except one were hanged. Thirty of the thirty-four members of Major Stede Bonnet’s crew were hanged in 1718. Forty-one of the fifty-eight members of Matthew Luke’s crew were hanged in Jamaica in 1722. Fifty-two of Bartholomew Roberts’ crew were hanged on the African coast in 1723. And twenty-five of the thirty-four pirates captured by Captain Solgard were executed at Newport, Rhode Island, in the same year. Of twenty-seven trials held between 1700 and 1728, in only five cases were the executions restricted to the ringleaders.8 Be
aring in mind that the total number of pirates operating around the shores of the Atlantic in 1720 was around two thousand men, we begin to see why the great age of piracy came to a rapid end. The hunting down of pirates by the Royal Navy, and the subsequent mass hangings of those captured, effectively eliminated most of the pirate leaders and decimated the ranks of the pirate community.

  But it was not simply the numbers of pirates executed which contributed to their downfall. The publicity surrounding the trials and the public nature of the executions ensured that seamen and their families were keenly aware of the penalty for piracy. The pronouncements of the judges, prosecutors, and clergy stressed the wicked nature of their actions and made it plain that pirates were enemies of all mankind. The trials, hangings, and the heavy condemnation of piracy by Church and State acted as a powerful deterrent to anyone tempted to join the pirates.

  Most trials lasted no more than one or two days, even when twenty or thirty prisoners were involved. There were no doubt practical reasons for hurrying things along. Following the Act of 1700 which authorized the setting up of Vice-Admiralty Courts in the colonies, it was usual for the colonial governor to preside over pirate trials, assisted by a group of local worthies and the captains of naval ships stationed in the area. The governors had many other duties to attend to, the captains would have been reluctant to leave their ships for more than a few days, and prominent citizens and merchants would have wanted to get back to their businesses and their estates. But the principal reason for the pace of the proceedings was the absence of arguments for the defense. In accordance with the usual practice of the day, the accused men had no legal representation and had to conduct their own defense. Since the majority of men on trial were seamen with little or no education, they were ill equipped to make a good case. Sometimes they offered nothing in their defense at all; sometimes they simply said that they were drunk at the time; mostly they claimed that they were forced men—that their ships had been captured by pirates and they had been compelled to sign the pirate articles. This was difficult to prove and relied on statements from other members of the pirate crew, or on the observations of the crews of attacked ships. Seamen, by the very nature of their roving existence, were unable to call on previous captains and shipmates to testify to their good character. Occasionally the sentencing of a prisoner was delayed to enable witnesses to be produced. In 1719 a Court of Admiralty was held at the Old Bailey to try three men, Laws, Caddiz, and Tyrril, for piracy. Laws and Caddiz were found guilty and sentenced to death, “but the trial of Tyrril is again deferred till April next, part of his witnesses being beyond the sea.”9 But this was rare, and the courts were not usually prepared to hold up the proceedings.

  The odds were always weighted heavily in favor of the authorities, who were keen to use the propaganda value of the trials and executions as a weapon in the war against pirates. After the hanging of forty-one pirates in Jamaica in 1722, Governor Lawes wrote to London, “I make no question but the example that has been made of these rogues will defer others in these paths.”10 It is noticeable that the authorities invariably fielded a strong team for pirate trials. When Quelch and twenty-four members of his crew were tried in Boston in 1704, the President of the Admiralty Court was Joseph Dummer, Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of the provinces of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire. He was assisted by two Lieutenant Governors, Thomas Povey and John Usher; by Nathaniel Byfield, Judge of the Admiralty; Samuel Sewell, First Judge of the Province of Massachusetts Bay; by Mr. Brenton, Collector of HM Taxes; Mr. Addington, Secretary to the Province; and by twelve members of HM Council of Massachusetts Bay. Bellamy’s crew faced a similar heavyweight assembly at Boston in 1717. Samuel Shute, the Governor, presided, and he was assisted by Lieutenant Governor William Dummer; John Menzies, the Vice-Admiralty Judge; the captain of HMS Squirrel; the Collector of Plantation Duties; and seven members of the Council.11

  The most extraordinary array of legal dignitaries was that assembled in London for the trial of Captain Kidd and nine members of his crew in 1701. The trial was held at the Old Bailey, and no fewer than six judges were concerned in the proceedings: Lord Chief Baron Ward, Baron Hatsell, Mr. Justice Turton, Mr. Justice Gould, Mr. Justice Powell, and Sir Salathiel Lovell, the Recorder of London. The counsel for the Crown consisted of Sir John Hawles, the Solicitor General, assisted by Dr. Newton, the Chief Advocate to the Admiralty, and Mr. Coniers, Mr. Knapp, and Mr. Cowper. In many ways Kidd’s trial was not typical. Kidd was kept in prison for nearly two years before trial, which was very unusual in piracy cases; and for reasons already explained (see chapter 10) the proceedings were turned into a show trial.

  One feature which Captain Kidd’s trial did share with other pirate trials was that Kidd was indicted for murder as well as piracy. Kidd maintained that he was provoked by Moore, the ship’s gunner he killed with a bucket, and had struck out in the passion of the moment, but his judges considered there was no provocation and the twelve-man jury found him guilty of murder. While piracy and murder both carried the death penalty, the courts regarded murder as the more serious charge, and when it could be proved, the prisoner had little or no hope of a reprieve. In sentencing Major Stede Bonnet, the judge declared, “But to theft, you have added a greater sin, which is murder. How many you may have killed of those that resisted you in the committing of your former piracies, I know not. But this we all know, that besides the wounded, you killed no less than eighteen persons out of those that were sent by lawful authority to suppress you.…”12 When Thomas Green and eighteen of his crew were tried in the Admiralty Court of Scotland in 1705, Green was charged with murdering ten members of the crew of the ship Worcester in addition to the charge of piracy. At his trial in 1726 William Fly was accused of murdering John Green, master of the snow Elizabeth, and Thomas Jenkins, the mate, by throwing them overboard.

  Some details of the proceedings in the trials of Calico Jack and the female pirates in Jamaica and the trial presided over by Governor Woodes Rogers at Nassau have already been noted, but one of the most significant of all pirate trials took place on the west coast of Africa in 1722. The records of the trial have been preserved and are worth examining because they show the workings of a Vice-Admiralty Court and provide valuable information about the attitude of the authorities to piracy at this date.13 The trial followed the capture of Bartholomew Roberts’ pirate ships by Captain Chaloner Ogle.

  The operations of Ogle’s ship HMS Swallow resulted in the rounding up of 268 men. Of these, 77 were black Africans, and 187 were white men, which included a number of seamen and passengers recently captured by Roberts during his raids along the African coast. Captain Ogle took all of them to the trading post at Cape Coast for trial by a Vice-Admiralty Court. Apart from nineteen men who died of their wounds before the trial, all the white men taken by HMS Swallow were examined by the court. The majority were subjected to individual cross-examination. Within three weeks of the formal opening of the proceedings, fifty-two men had been hanged, twenty had been condemned to penal servitude in Africa, and seventeen had been sentenced to imprisonment in London’s Marshalsea Prison.

  The setting for the trial was the castle at Cape Coast. This was a massive structure of medieval appearance with four great towers or bastions, battlemented walls fourteen feet thick, and some seventy great guns, most of which faced seaward and commanded the anchorage in front of the castle. Built by the Swedes in 1652, the castle was taken over by the English in 1664 and became the overseas headquarters of the Royal Africa Company. The agent-general of the company was based here, as well as a small army of merchants, clerks, workmen, and soldiers. The permanent garrison varied between fifty and one hundred men, depending on the ravages of disease and the supply of reinforcements from England.14

  In startling contrast to the daunting edifice of the castle with its spacious rooms, warehouses, and workshops, a beautiful garden was situated a short distance away. It much impressed Captain Uring when he visited Cape Coast on one of his voyages.
He described the garden as “abounding with all manner of fruits that the country produces, as China and Seville oranges, lemons, citrons, melons, pomegranates, cocoa-nuts, tamarinds, pine apples, grapes, limes, guavas, and the casava tree, all planted between the hills in exact order in walks, containing an extent of about twenty acres of ground.”15 As he walked among the rows of fruit trees under the tropical sun, it must have been easy to forget the primary purpose of the castle and the small town which it guarded. In common with Whydah, Elmina, Accra, and a succession of trading posts along the west coast of Africa, Cape Coast was established for the export of gold, ivory, redwood, and slaves. On the Gold Coast and what was sometimes called the Slave Coast, the principal export was black African slaves, who were shipped to the plantations in North America and the West Indies. It has been calculated that during the eighty years of its existence the Royal Africa Company alone delivered 100,000 slaves to the colonies. At the time of Bartholomew Roberts’ raids along the African coast, around 36,000 Africans were being transported across the Atlantic each year from the various trading posts.16 It was no doubt in the cells and compounds used for holding slaves before shipment that the men captured by HMS Swallow were imprisoned before trial.

  The trial began on March 28, 1722, in the great hall of the castle. As captor of the pirates, Captain Ogle was disqualified from sitting in judgment, and so Captain Herdman, the commander of HMS Weymouth, was appointed President of the Court. There were six commissioners: The Honorable James Phipps, General of the Coast; Mr. Edward Hyde, Secretary to the Royal Africa Company; Mr. Henry Dodson and Mr. Francis Boye, merchants; and to make up the required number, Lieutenant Barnsley and Lieutenant Fanshaw were summoned to join the commissioners. The heavy naval presence (the key witnesses were from the Swallow) may explain the brisk, seamanlike conduct of the proceedings. Legal jargon was kept to the minimum, and there seems to have been a genuine attempt made to give the prisoners a fair hearing.