Under the Black Flag

by David Cordingly

  Gow then headed for another island where he intended to plunder the house of Mr. Fea, a wealthy landowner he had known as a boy. However, his ship got into difficulties in the swift current which swept through Calf Sound and the pirates were forced to appeal to Fea for assistance. On February 14 the wind got up and the pirate ship was blown ashore on Calf Island. Gow tried to bargain with Fea but was outwitted, and he and all the remaining pirates were arrested. The Admiralty ordered a warship to be sent to Scotland to pick up the pirates and bring them to London for trial. The ship selected was HMS Greyhound, commanded by Captain Solgard, which three years before had captured Low’s pirates off Long Island. Solgard described his voyage north as a cold and troublesome cruise, but by March 25 he was back in the Thames with thirty prisoners on board and the pirate ship anchored alongside.

  The prisoners were transferred to Marshalsea Prison to await trial. Gow refused to plead and was therefore subjected to having his thumbs bound together and squeezed with whipcord. Although the executioner and another officer pulled the cord until it broke, Gow still refused to cooperate. He was taken to Newgate Prison to await torture and death in the Press Yard. The thought of the slow, agonizing death by the gradual buildup of weights on his prone body was too much for Gow, and he agreed to plead not guilty. The trial was held at the Old Bailey before Sir Henry Penrice, Judge of the Admiralty. Gow was charged with murder and piracy. Together with nine members of his crew he was found guilty and sentenced to death. After the execution, the bodies of Gow and Williams, his lieutenant, were ordered to be hanged in chains, “the one over-against Greenwich, the other over-against Deptford.”3

  Apart from his decision to head for Scotland rather than the Caribbean or the African coast, John Gow was typical of many of the pirates of the great age of piracy. He was a former seaman, he was a relatively young man, and his career as a pirate was short and involved extreme violence both on his part and on the part of the authorities. His story was reported in some detail in the English newspapers of the day, and attracted the attention of two of Britain’s greatest writers. In 1725 Daniel Defoe wrote a pamphlet which was published by John Applebee under the title An Account of the Conduct and Proceedings of the late John Gow, alias Smith, Captain of the late Pirates, executed for Murther and Piracy committed on board the George Galley. This was a racy description which closely followed the facts reported in the newspapers and at the trial, and included additional material which Defoe had gathered about Gow and his accomplices.

  A century later Sir Walter Scott used Gow’s story as the basis for a full-length historical novel which he entitled The Pirate.4 In 1814 Scott had visited some of the relevant locations in the Orkneys with Robert Stevenson, lighthouse engineer and grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson. Scott traveled as a guest of the Lighthouse Commissioners and was able to put his observations to good use in his book, which has extended descriptions of wild and mysterious Orkney landscapes and seascapes. Gow’s part is played in the book by Captain Cleveland, a considerably more attractive character than Gow himself appears to have been. The novel is full of local legends of mermaids and monsters and has an unusually rich cast of eccentric characters. Scott seized on Gow’s reported courtship of a local girl to create a complex plot which centers on the two beautiful daughters of Magnus Troil, a rich Zetlander of noble ancestry. It is the high-minded and imaginative Minna who falls in love with Captain Cleveland, the pirate, while her cheerful and more down-to-earth sister ends up with Mordaunt, the gallant hero of the story.

  Scott created an adventure story full of drama and romance which no doubt pleased his thousands of devoted readers, but like so many writers before and since, he played down the atrocities committed by the pirates. Captain Cleveland is a tragic figure who, like Byron’s corsair, is attractive to women and admired by his crew—a far cry from the brutal men who terrorized the seamen and passengers of merchant ships in their quest for plunder. The real world of the pirates was often closer to some of today’s horror movies than anything which appeared in contemporary books or plays. The depositions of two seamen who were attacked by pirates led by Charles Vane provide a vivid glimpse of the type of violence which was common among the pirates of the Caribbean.

  In May 1718 Nathaniel Catling came ashore in Bermuda and went to see Governor Bennett. He told the Governor that he was one of the crew of the Bermuda sloop Diamond. On April 14 they were sailing off Rum Key in the Bahamas when they were intercepted by the pirate ship Ranger commanded by Captain Vane. The pirates beat up the captain and all the crew of the Diamond, and looted the vessel of a black man and 300 pieces of eight. Nathaniel Catling was singled out and hanged by the neck until they thought he was dead. When they let him down on the deck, he was seen to revive, whereupon one of the pirates hacked him across the collarbone with his cutlass and would have continued until he had murdered him had not one of the other pirates persuaded him it “was too great a cruelty.”5 The pirates’ final act was to set fire to the Diamond.

  Five days after Catling had made his report, Edward North, the commander of the Bermuda sloop William and Martha, came to see Governor Bennett with a similar story.6 He said that his ship had been attacked by Vane off Rum Key within three hours of the attack on the Diamond. The pirates had boarded his vessel, violently beaten him and his crew, then dragged one of the seamen to the bows, bound him hand and foot, and tied him to the bowsprit. As he lay there helpless on his back, the pirates put burning matches to his eyes and the muzzle of a loaded pistol in his mouth, “thereby to oblige him to confess what money was on board.” In this instance they did not set fire to the ship, but Captain North reported that while they were on board, the pirates were continually cursing the King and the higher powers, and swearing damnation on the Governor.

  Although some of the pirate violence reported by colonial governors was the work of sadists and men looking for kicks to relieve the boredom of their existence, this was not always the case. Many pirate crews only resorted to torture and murder to achieve specific ends. Violence was most commonly used to enable the pirates to find out as quickly as possible where the captain, the crew, and any passengers on board had hidden their valuables; it was also used deliberately to create a terrifying image. As word spread of pirate atrocities, it was hoped that future victims would surrender without a fight. Another motive behind many of the reported cruelties was revenge. Pirates were quick to avenge any attempt to curb their activities, and many atrocities were revenge attacks on islands or the ships of nations which had imprisoned or hanged pirates in the recent past. According to the account of Edward North, the violence used by Charles Vane in the two attacks in the Bahamas described above was because a certain Thomas Brown had been detained for some time in the Bahamas on suspicion of piracy. Bartholomew Roberts was merciless in his treatment of seamen from Martinique or Barbados because the governors of those islands had made various attempts to capture him. In 1721 he raided shipping off Martinique and captured their crews. According to the report sent to London on February 18, 1721, “Some they almost whipped to death, others had their ears cut off, others they fixed to the yard arms and fired at them as a mark.”7 In 1721 Roberts endeavored to board a Dutch ship anchored at St. Lucia. The crew tried to prevent the attack by running out booms and fenders, and then opened fire. For nearly four hours they fought off the pirates and killed a great number of them. When the Dutch ship was at length overpowered, the pirates were ruthless in revenging the death of their comrades, and slaughtered any men they found alive.8

  Ships’ captains who hid or refused to reveal the whereabouts of valuables could expect no mercy. One captain was told by the crew of Edward England that if he concealed his money, they would immediately sink his vessel and throw him overboard with a double-headed shot about his neck. The captain decided not to risk the consequences.9 Another captain made the mistake of upsetting Edward Low, a sadist whose cruelties became a byword in the Caribbean. Here is Governor Hart writing to the Council of Trade and Pla
ntations in London from St. Kitts on March 25, 1724. He describes how Low “took a Portuguese ship bound home from Brazil; the Master of which had hung eleven thousand moydores of gold in a bag out of the cabin window, and as soon as he was taken by the said Low, cut the rope and let them drop into the sea; for which Low cut off the said Master’s lips and broiled them before his face, and afterwards murdered the whole crew being thirty two persons.”10 Governor Hart obtained this information and other details of Low’s atrocities from Nicholas Lewis, who was quartermaster to Low and was one of sixteen pirates captured and brought before an Admiralty Court presided over by Hart. Fourteen of the pirates were condemned to death and hanged.

  There is no mention of walking the plank in any of the accounts covering the great age of piracy in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and most writers on piracy have dismissed the practice as a myth created and made popular by works of fiction. However, one example of walking the plank has come to light. The Times of July 23, 1829, contains a report of a pirate attack in the Caribbean.11 The Dutch brig Vhan Fredericka, of 200 tons, sailed from Jamaica on April 12 bound for Haarlem in the Netherlands. She was in the Leeward Passage, two days from Cuba, when she was intercepted by a schooner. She endeavored to escape but was overtaken by the schooner, which hoisted Buenos Aires colors, fired a gun, and forced her to heave to. Thirty pirates boarded the Vhan Fredericka and proceeded to loot her. The Dutchmen protested, “but were laughed at by the ruffians, who proceeded deliberately to compel the wretched men to what is termed ‘walk the plank.’ ” The men were pinioned and blindfolded and had shot fastened to their feet before being forced into the sea. One passenger escaped because he revealed the whereabouts of the gold, and was later put ashore at Cuba by the pirates. It is possible that other examples of walking the plank may be found, but the fact remains that it was never the common pirate punishment suggested by so many books, films, and comic strips.

  Most of the Anglo-American pirates used forms of torture which were in common use among the buccaneers of the late seventeenth century. Some of these were described by Exquemelin:

  Among other tortures then used, one was to stretch their limbs with cords, and at the same time beat them with sticks and other instruments. Others had burning matches placed betwixt their fingers, which were thus burnt alive. Others had slender cords or matches twisted about their heads, till their eyes burst out of the skull.12

  The latter method was called “woolding,” after the word used to describe the binding of cords around a mast. It was a favorite pirate torture because it was fast and effective and only required the use of a short length of rope or cord. Some buccaneer tortures were more elaborate. Although Henry Morgan always maintained that he treated prisoners, and especially ladies, with respect, the reports from the Spanish side suggest otherwise. The citizens of Portobello suffered numerous cruelties after the capture of the town in 1668. Don Pedro Ladrón de Guevara maintained that the female prisoners were maltreated and oppressed and some were “burned in parts that for decency he will not refer to.”13 Another report describes the horrible fate of one of these prisoners: “A woman there was by some set bare upon a baking stove and roasted, because she did not confess of money which she had only in their conceit. This he heard some declare boasting, and one that was sick confess with sorrow.”14 A shipowner from Cartagena described how the buccaneers tortured Doña Agustín de Rojas, the leading lady of Portobello. She was stripped naked and forced to stand in an empty wine barrel. The barrel was then filled with gunpowder, and one of the buccaneers held a lighted fuse to her face and demanded to know where she had hidden her treasure.15

  One of the most ingenious and revolting displays of cruelty was that devised by Montbars of Languedoc. He would cut open the stomach of his victim, extract one end of his guts, nail it to a post and then force the wretched man to dance to his death by beating his backside with a burning log. Exquemelin describes the prolonged torture of a Portuguese by Morgan’s men after the taking of Gibraltar. Four stakes were set into the ground, and the man was suspended between them by cords attached to his thumbs and big toes:

  Then they thrashed upon the cords with great sticks and all their strength, so that the body of this miserable man was ready to perish at every stroke, under the severity of those horrible pains. Not satisfied as yet with this cruel torture, they took a stone which weighed above 200 pound, and laid it upon his belly, as if they intended to press him to death. At which time they also kindled palm leaves, and applied the flame unto the face of this unfortunate Portuguese, burning with them the whole skin, beard and hair.16

  The buccaneers then untied the cords binding him to the stakes and took him into a nearby church, where they lashed him to a pillar and let him starve for a few days. Eventually the man, who protested that he was only a poor tavern keeper, managed to raise the sum of 1,000 pieces of eight and was set free, “although so horribly maimed in his body that ’tis scarce to be believed he could survive many weeks after.”

  While the catalog of pirate cruelties is endless, it needs to be put into perspective. Pirates were not the only people guilty of violence and atrocities. Life for the common sailor in the merchant navy could be a living hell if he found himself on board a ship run by a captain who took a delight in bullying his men. In his book Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, Marcus Rediker has set down a devastating list of cruelties perpetrated by merchant sea captains during the early years of the eighteenth century. There was the case of Captain Haskins, commander of the Laventon Galley, who attacked John Phillips while he was asleep. He punched him several times and then gave him a dozen blows with a marlinspike. Phillips began to have convulsions, but he was forced up on deck and told to go aloft. In cold, driving rain and dressed only in his shirt and breeches, he was ordered to loose the fore topgallant sail. This was the highest of the three sails on the foremast, and was about 120 feet above the swaying deck. Handling the heavy, sodden canvas alone was a dangerous enough operation for a man in good condition, but Phillips was dazed and bleeding heavily from his wounds. He had another fit while he was clinging to the sail. Several members of the crew wanted to go to his assistance, but Captain Haskins swore that he would shoot anyone who attempted to help him. Phillips managed to complete the task and survived.17

  Richard Baker, a seaman on the ship Europa, did not survive. He had fallen sick during a voyage from St. Kitts to London in 1734 and was too weak to come on deck when ordered to do so. Deliberately and maliciously, the captain made him take two turns at the helm; after four hours of this, he whipped him and then tied him to the mizzenmast, where he hung for an hour and a half. Baker died four days later.18

  It is usual nowadays to regard a sailing ship as a thing of beauty, but it could be turned into a torture chamber by a sadistic captain. There were boat hooks and brooms and iron bars to beat men with. There were axes and hammers and cutlasses to cause grievous wounds. There were ropes of all sizes which could be used to whip, strangle, and stretch bodies and limbs. The shrouds and rigging were ideal places for hanging up a stubborn man by his arms for a few hours. And after a man had been flogged till his skin was flayed off, there were barrels of brine to throw over the wounds and plenty of salt to add to the brine to increase the pain. The records of the High Court of Admiralty are filled with horror stories of the brutality inflicted on seamen.

  The savagery of some of the punishments they were forced to endure is astonishing. John Cressey was ordered to place his middle finger in the hole of a block of wood. Captain Thomas Brown drove wedges into the hole with such violence that the finger was crushed and the arm swollen up. The block weighed nearly fifty pounds, and Cressey was forced to carry it around for the next half an hour.19 For stealing a chicken Anthony Comerford was lashed to the shrouds and condemned to receive two lashes from every member of the crew. Before he died, Comerford forgave all the ship’s company except the captain and the mate.20 Edward Hamlin was flogged, clamped into irons, and for eight da
ys and nights was exposed to wind, rain, and sun on the deck of his ship in Cádiz harbor.21

  It is not known how many merchant seamen were murdered or injured for life while at sea, but the barbaric behavior of the more tyrannical captains was certainly responsible for some men turning to piracy. Before his execution in 1724 the pirate John Archer declared, “I could wish that Masters of vessels would not use their men with so much severity, as many of them do, which exposes us to great temptations.”22 And at the trial of the crew of Bartholomew Roberts’ pirates in 1722, John Philps accused one of his former officers of starving the men: “it was such dogs as he that put men on pyrating.”23

  Life for the common seaman in the Royal Navy was nothing like so hard as life in the merchant service. The much larger crews meant that there were more men to share the heavy jobs, and a sadistic captain was likely to find himself court-martialed. The maximum punishment a captain could order on his own authority was twelve lashes. Nevertheless, life in the navy could be hard and dangerous, and serious offenses were dealt with ruthlessly. A single court-martial in 1758 sentenced a deserter to two hundred lashes, a mutineer to three hundred lashes, and a thief to five hundred lashes.24 Sodomy often meant a death penalty, and in one case the sentence was one thousand lashes.25

  In many respects life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was as harsh and violent as life in medieval times, and some of the punishments employed by the authorities in England and the colonies were as barbaric as anything dreamed up by the pirates and buccaneers. The usual treatment for men or women who refused to plead innocent or guilty was to be sent to the Press Yard at Newgate Prison or the Marshalsea. There they were stretched out on the ground, and as they lay there on their backs, weights were put on their chests. More and more weights were piled on until the prisoner agreed to plead. If he refused to plead, he was slowly crushed to death. The whole process could take several days, and the prisoner would be kept alive by being fed sparingly with coarse bread and water.