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Charles Vane

Pirate captain in the Bahamas passages and the Caribbean from March to December 1718, tried at St Jago de la Vega in March 1721 and hanged at Port Royal, who beat and half-hanged captives to make them give up their money.

BornNot establishedDiedhanged 29 March 1721, Port RoyalAlso writtenVane (1721 trial print and Governor Lawes' despatches); Vain (Bermuda depositions, May 1718); Vaine (carrier unresolved: given both to Woodes Rogers' despatch of 31 October 1718 and to the Jamaica newsletter of 31 March 1721)

Charles Vane took the King's pardon at Providence in the spring of 1718 and turned pirate again, robbed and beat his way through the Bahamas passages from March to December of that year, and was hanged at Port Royal in March 1721. The men he robbed lived to swear to what he had done to them, and the court that tried him convicted him on two counts out of six.

The 1721 trial print and Governor Lawes' despatches spell it Vane, the Bermuda depositions of May 1718 spell it Vain. A third form, Vaine, is period too, carried either by Woodes Rogers' despatch from Nassau of 31 October 1718 or by the Jamaica newsletter of 31 March 1721.4

The indictment styled him "Charles Vane, late of the Town and Parish of Port Royal, in the Island of Jamaica, Mariner". That fixes an abode and a calling, not a birthplace.5

The pardon he took and broke

Captain Vincent Pearce of HMS Phoenix swore to the start of it in the court that condemned him. About the latter end of March 1718, being then at Providence with the King's proclamation for the pardoning of pirates aboard, Vane surrendered to obtain the benefit of it, received it, and afterwards turned pirate.6

Afterwards was quick. Between 29 March and 23 May 1718 he took four sloops in the Bahamas passages: the John and Elizabeth off Abaco, then the Betty off Crooked Island, then the Fortune, then the Richard and John. His trial witnesses put him in the Lark; the Bermudians who swore against him that May put him in the Ranger. Two vessels, or one renamed under way.7

Lieutenant Governor Benjamin Bennett of Bermuda took ten depositions between 16 and 28 May 1718. They name Charles Vain, commander of the pirate sloop Ranger, and beating and robbery run through them all. Nathaniel Catling swore that the pirates of the Ranger hanged him by the neck until they thought him dead, then cut him with a cutlass when he revived. Edward North swore to a captive bound on his back to the bowsprit, matches burning at his eyes and a pistol in his mouth, to make him tell what money was aboard.8,3

Nassau, Charles Town, Long Island

Woodes Rogers came into Nassau on 26 July 1718 as governor with the King's pardon, and about two hundred men took it. Vane refused. He fired a French prize of twenty-two guns in the harbour to drive the Rose out, and was at sea next morning with about ninety men. Rogers' arrival has its own page.2

The Governor and Council of South Carolina reported on 21 October 1718 that two vessels under Vane lay off the bar at Charles Town, took a Guinea ship with enslaved people aboard and two sloops coming in, and attacked four going out. William Rhett went after him and came back with Stede Bonnet instead.10

John Shattock, master of the brigantine Endeavour, deposed at Robert Deal's trial that he met Vane's company off Long Island in the Bahamas on 23 October 1718, and that two days later he was "much beat and abused by the said Charles Vane, to force him to discover if he had any money on board his vessel".9

Turned out into a small sloop

Then it turned on him. Hosea Tisdell, deposing at the same trial, swore that on or about 23 November 1718 the company attacked a French man of war and was beaten off, quarrelled among themselves and divided, made the quarter-master captain, and turned Charles Vane, Robert Deal and fifteen men more out into a small sloop.11

The famous version, in which the crew brand Vane a coward for refusing the fight and elect John Rackham in his place, is Johnson's, six years later. Tisdell has them attacking, not shirking, and names no successor beyond the office: the removal is his, the cowardice and the heir are Johnson's.12

He and Deal took the merchant sloop Pearl, Charles Rowling master, in the Bay of Honduras on 16 December 1718. It was the last thing charged against him.13

The hurricane, the island and Ocracoke

The hurricane that wrecked his sloop in the Bay of Honduras, the months alone on an uninhabited island, and the recapture through a Captain Holford all come from Johnson, and so does the week of drinking with Blackbeard at Ocracoke in October 1718. The trial testimony pulls hardest against the last of those, putting Vane off Long Island in the Bahamas on 23 October 1718 and in the Windward Passage by 23 November.14,19,1

The trial and the gibbet

He was tried at a Court of Admiralty at St Jago de la Vega in Jamaica on Wednesday 22 March 1720/21, Sir Nicholas Lawes presiding. Six articles were read, covering six vessels taken between March and December 1718. He pleaded not guilty.15

The court convicted him on the first and second articles and no others: the John and Elizabeth, taken two leagues from Abaco, and the Betty, taken a league off Crooked Island. Sentence followed: to be hanged by the neck till he was dead. Everything else, the beatings, the Charles Town prizes, the Pearl, was never adjudicated. Two sloops hanged him.16

He was hanged at Gallows Point, Port Royal, on Wednesday 29 March 1721, a week to the day after the court sat, with John Hanson and Robert Hudson. The body was afterwards hung in chains on a gibbet at Gun Key.17

Lawes told London twice. On 20 April 1721 he reported the famous fellow named Vane taken, tried and executed; on 12 June he sent the printed Tryals home as an enclosure, which is how the pamphlet came to sit in CO 137/14. A Jamaica newsletter of 31 March 1721 got there first and got it half wrong, pairing Vaine with Racum as though they died together; Rackham had been hanged the previous November.18

The record is good on what Vane did to other people and empty on who he was. There is no birth date, no family, and nothing before the spring of 1718 in any document read here. The depositions were read in the printed calendar, not the office copies at Kew. He can be convicted from this paper. He cannot be described from it.

What the evidence does not settle

Birthplace and origins

  • What baptismal or family record, if any, establishes Vane's birthplaceUnverified

Birth year

  • Birth year of about 1680 is a modern estimateUnverified

Nationality

  • English nationality rests only on the Port Royal indictment addressUnverified

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. The week-long carousal with Charles Vane at Ocracoke in October 1718 rests on Johnson alone and is contradicted by the surviving trial testimony. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Early secondary source: Johnson and later writers; capped at Possible because the trial testimony in evidence places Vane in Bahamian and Cuban waters in late October to November 1718
  2. Woodes Rogers arrived at Nassau on 26 July 1718 as Governor of the Bahama Islands and administered the King's pardon there, about 200 of those who had been pirates coming before his Council on 1 August 1718, surrendering to him, claiming the benefit of the King's proclamation relating to pirates and taking the oaths of allegiance. Charles Vane refused: a French prize of 22 guns that he had taken was set on fire in the harbour to drive out the Rose, which cut her cables and ran out in the night, and the next morning Vane and about 90 of his men made off in a sloop. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Official gazette and colonial state papers: The London Gazette, issue 5706, for 23 to 27 December 1718, front page, letter from the Town of Nassau on the Island of Providence, read from the scanned issue: "That Day came before the Council about 200 of those who had been Pyrates, and surrendred themselves to the Governour, claiming the Benefit of His Majesty's Proclamation relating to Pyrates, and took the Oaths of Allegiance to His Majesty", the day being 1 August 1718, when the Council was assembled; the same letter for the Rose, the burning French ship and Vane's escape with "about 90 of his Men"; Governor Woodes Rogers to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Nassau on Providence, 31 October 1718, C.O. 23, 1, no. 10, calendared as Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 30, 1717 to 1718, no. 737, read on British History Online: "I arriv'd in this port 26th July in company with the men of warr ordered to assist me"
  3. Torture of prisoners to make them reveal hidden money is attested for three separate companies by documents independent of the General History: Edward North's deposition, calendared under 22 May 1718, on Charles Vane's men binding a captive to the bowsprit with burning matches at his eyes and a loaded pistol in his mouth, John Wickstead's deposition on George Lowther's men placing lighted matches between prisoners' fingers, and a Philadelphia newspaper of June 1723 on Edward Low's men burning prisoners' fingers to the bone; the practice is established, its frequency is not. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Sworn depositions and colonial newspaper, quoted in peer-reviewed scholarship: Depositions of Edward North and John Wickstead, Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, and the American Weekly Mercury of June 1723, all quoted in Peter T. Leeson, 'Pirational Choice' (2010)
  4. The name appears in period documents in three forms: Vane in the 1721 Jamaica trial print and in Governor Sir Nicholas Lawes' despatches, Vain in the Bermuda cruelty depositions of May 1718, and Vaine, whose carrier is given two ways in the surviving record, as Governor Woodes Rogers' despatch from Nassau of 31 October 1718 and as a Jamaica newsletter of 31 March 1721; the disagreement is not resolved here. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Trial pamphlet and calendared state papers: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica, printed by Robert Baldwin, 1721), CO 137/14/1; Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol 30, October 1718, no. 737 (Governor Woodes Rogers to the Council of Trade and Plantations); vol 30, May 1718, item 551; and vol 32, April 1721, item 463.iii (CO 37/10 No 17.iii)
  5. The 1721 indictment styles him "Charles Vane, late of the Town and Parish of Port Royal, in the Island of Jamaica, Mariner", a legal formula that fixes a place of abode and a calling rather than a birthplace. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Trial pamphlet: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica, 1721), the Vane articles at pp 37 to 40; CO 137/14/1
  6. Captain Vincent Pearce of HMS Phoenix deposed at the 1721 trial that about the latter end of March 1718, being then at Providence with the King's proclamation for the pardoning of pirates on board, Charles Vane surrendered to him in order to obtain the benefit of it, received it, and afterwards turned pirate. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Trial pamphlet: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica, 1721), deposition of Capt. Vincent Pearce in Vane's trial; CO 137/14/1
  7. Between 29 March and 23 May 1718 Vane took four sloops in the Bahamas passages, the John and Elizabeth off Abaco, the Betty off Crooked Island, the Fortune and the Richard and John; the trial depositions name his vessel the Lark while the contemporary Bermuda depositions of May 1718 name her the Ranger, and both forms are period. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Trial pamphlet and calendared state papers: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica, 1721), articles I to IV and the depositions of Benjamin Lee and Joseph Cockran; Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol 30, item 551 (CO 37/10 Nos 10, 10 i-x)
  8. Ten depositions taken before Lieutenant Governor Benjamin Bennett of Bermuda between 16 and 28 May 1718 name Charles Vain, commander of the pirate sloop Ranger, and record general beating and robbery of captives, Nathaniel Catling swearing that the pirates of the Ranger hanged him by the neck until they thought him dead and cut him with a cutlass when he revived. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol 30, May 1718, item 551 and enclosures 551.i to 551.x (CO 37/10 Nos 10, 10 i-x), pp 242-264
  9. John Shattock, master of the brigantine Endeavour, met Vane's company off Long Island in the Bahamas on 23 October 1718 and deposed that on 25 October he was "much beat and abused by the said Charles Vane, to force him to discover if he had any money on board his vessel". Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Trial pamphlet: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica, 1721), deposition of John Shattock in Robert Deal's trial; CO 137/14/1
  10. The Governor and Council of South Carolina reported on 21 October 1718 that two vessels under Vane lay off the bar at Charles Town, took a Guinea ship with enslaved people aboard and two inbound sloops, and attacked four outward-bound ships, and that Colonel William Rhett, sent out after him, took Stede Bonnet in the Cape Fear River instead. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol 30, October 1718, item 730 (CO 5/1265 No 121), pp 359-381
  11. Hosea Tisdell deposed at Robert Deal's trial that on or about 23 November 1718 Vane's company attacked a French man of war and was beaten off, then quarrelled and divided, made the quarter-master captain, and turned Charles Vane, Robert Deal and fifteen men more out into a small sloop. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Trial pamphlet: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica, 1721), deposition of Hosea Tisdell in Robert Deal's trial; CO 137/14/1
  12. That the company turned Vane out for cowardice in declining to engage the French man of war, and elected John Rackham captain in his place, comes from the General History of 1724; the deposition that records the removal names no successor beyond the quarter-master. Possible Consistent with the evidence, not established. Period narrative: A General History of the Pyrates, vol 1 (1724), Of Captain Vane and his Crew, against the deposition of Hosea Tisdell in The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica, 1721), which leaves the quarter-master unnamed
  13. After the company divided, Vane kept the sea in a small sloop with Robert Deal and took the merchant sloop Pearl, Charles Rowling master, in the Bay of Honduras on 16 December 1718, the latest act charged against him. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Trial pamphlet: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica, 1721), article VI and the deposition of John Hill; CO 137/14/1
  14. The hurricane wreck of Vane's sloop in the Bay of Honduras, the months marooned on an uninhabited island and the recapture through a Captain Holford all derive from the General History of 1724, and no deposition or despatch consulted carries any of them. Possible Consistent with the evidence, not established. Period narrative: A General History of the Pyrates, vol 1 (1724), Of Captain Charles Vane, and his Crew (Gutenberg etext 40580), with its later carriers; no primary document consulted records the wreck or the marooning
  15. Vane was tried at a Court of Admiralty held at the town of St Jago de la Vega in Jamaica on Wednesday 22 March 1720/21, Sir Nicholas Lawes presiding, on six articles covering piracies committed between March and December 1718, and pleaded not guilty. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Trial pamphlet: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica, 1721), the Vane trial at pp 37 to 40; CO 137/14/1
  16. The court convicted Vane on the first and second articles only, for taking the sloop John and Elizabeth about two leagues from Abaco on 29 March 1718 and the sloop Betty about a league off Crooked Island on 17 April 1718, and sentenced him to be hanged by the neck till he was dead; no court adjudicated the other four articles or any of the beatings. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Trial pamphlet: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica, 1721), verdict and sentence in Vane's trial; CO 137/14/1
  17. Vane was hanged at Gallows Point, Port Royal, on Wednesday 29 March 1721 with John Hanson and Robert Hudson, and his body was afterwards hung in chains on a gibbet at Gun Key. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Trial pamphlet: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica, 1721), the execution notice following Vane's trial; CO 137/14/1
  18. Governor Sir Nicholas Lawes reported Vane taken, tried and executed to the Council of Trade and Plantations on 20 April 1721 and sent the printed Tryals home as an enclosure on 12 June 1721, where it survives as CO 137/14; a Jamaica newsletter of 31 March 1721 names Vaine with Racum as though the two had been executed together, though Rackham had been hanged in November 1720. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol 32, April 1721, items 459 (CO 137/13 No 53) and 463.iii (CO 37/10 No 17.iii), pp 281-297; and June 1721, nos 523 and 523.i (C.O. 137, 14, ff. 6-7v, 8v-30v), pp 329-346
  19. The testimony in the 1721 trial places Vane off Long Island in the Bahamas on 23 October 1718 and in the Windward Passage by 23 November 1718, which leaves little room for the Ocracoke meeting with Blackbeard that autumn. Possible Consistent with the evidence, not established. Trial pamphlet: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates (Jamaica, 1721), the depositions of John Shattock and Hosea Tisdell in Robert Deal's trial; CO 137/14/1