How And Where Pirates Were Executed, --- Ah, The Poor, Rousty Devils!...

      In The Golden Age Of Piracy, which lasted only about forty years, between about 1690 to about 1730, pirates caught would be tried, usually very publicly, the notices of the events tacked up on posts, for a trial of a pirate, especially a very notorious one, was considered great entertainment.  Indeed, riotous mass executions of whole crews, sometimes took place.  The biggest recorded amount of pirates executed was at Cape Coast, Africa in 1722, when fifty four pirates of "Black Bart" (Bartholomew) Roberts' crew were hanged.

     Pirates, caught by the English would be tried by the Admiralty often at the Crown Court on Old Bailey Street in London.  If found guilty they would be taken to Execution Dock in Wappling, on the banks of the Thames, above the lower water mark.  A chaplain would say a short prayer and then the accused pirate would have his chance to speak his mind.  One pirate said (and it's often been quoted) that he suffered great regret; --- he regretted that he didn't rob and plunder more, do more damaged to everything and all, if he was going to be hanged for it anyway!

                       

     According to Maritime Law, the pirate's body would be left for a day and a half, to be "washed by the tide". Then, it would be taken off the gibbet and, perhaps, buried in a common grave, without a marker.  Sometimes, as a grisly warning to all, the body would be tarred to preserve it a bit; then, it would suspended in a cage of chains until it rotted and it's eyes were partially pecked out by crows.  (This is what happened to Captain William Kidd's body, which was on display for years.)

                     

     Here are some of the recorded executions: 13 pirates of Blackbeard's crews in Williamsburg, Virginia (March 1718), Captain Stede Bonnet and 30 pirates of his crew in Charleston, North Carolina (October 1718), "Calico" Jack Rackham and 9 pirates in Kingston, Jamaica, (1720), Captain Charles Vane and a fellow pirate in Kingston, Jamaica (March 1722), Captain Harris and 36 men at Newport, Rhode Island (July 1723), Captain Finn and 5 men at Antigua, West Indies (1723), 11 pirates of the crew of Captain George Lowther, on Saint Kitts Island (November 1723), Captain Gow and 7 men at Execution Dock, London (May 1725), Captain Lyne and 19 men at Curacoa (1726).

     All these executions of often renowned pirates were the beginnings of the end of The Golden Age Of Piracy.