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Newport

Deep, sheltered Atlantic port at the mouth of Narragansett Bay, seat of the elective government of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations under the charter of 1663, and the town that on 19 July 1723 hanged twenty-six of Edward Low's consorts between the tide marks at Gravelly Point.

Also writtenNew Port (the town, 1723 imprint usage); Aquidneck (the island, Narragansett name retained in colonial usage; Probable); Rhode Island (the island, colonial usage from the 1640s; Probable); Rhode-Island and Providence-Plantations (the colony, 1663 charter and period print); Narraganset, Bay of (the bay, 1777 chart title spelling); Gravelly Point (the execution site by Long Wharf, 18th and 19th century usage); Bull's Point (possibly the same or an adjacent point; Disputed); Goat Island (the island in the harbour, colonial usage from the 17th century)

Newport stands at the south end of Aquidneck Island, near enough the ocean that a vessel could come in from the Atlantic and lie at a wharf the same day. On 19 July 1723 the town hanged twenty-six pirates at the end of its own wharf.

The charter

Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was governed through the piracy period under the royal charter of 1663. Governor and assembly were elected annually by the freemen, and the Crown had little purchase on the colony's courts. Newport, founded in 1639 and grown into a haven for Baptists, Quakers and Jews, was the seat of that government, and the town house of about 1690 was where it met.1

Deep water

Goat Island lies across the front of the town and splits the harbour into inner and outer basins, with Brenton Reef the one substantial natural hazard on the seaward approach. Deep water lies close inshore, and modern pilotage calls Newport an important harbour of refuge, navigable through the year, though period conditions are inferred from that rather than surveyed.2

The carrying trade

Newport carried and provisioned rather than produced, shipping livestock, provisions, fish and timber, and distilling imported molasses into the rum that was its principal export. Captives were landed and sold here inside the piracy period. The town's dominance of North American slaving came after the pirates were hanged.3

The Greyhound's prize

On 10 June 1723 HMS Greyhound, Captain Peter Solgard, of the New York station, engaged two sloops off Long Island: Edward Low, in a vessel called the Fortune by some accounts and the Fancy by others, and his consort, Charles Harris's Ranger. At eight in the morning both hoisted a black flag; at half past eight, on the near approach of the man of war, they hauled it down, fearing a Tartar, and put up a red one. Low got clear that evening. Harris struck. The Greyhound came into Newport on 11 June with the prize, and thirty prisoners, "thirty lusty bold young Fellows", were landed and lodged in the gaol in irons.4

The same report calls the prize "a Pirate Sloop of 8 Guns, Barmudas built, 42 White Men and 6 Blacks". Thirty white men were landed in June and seven more in July, and thirty-six came to trial. The six Black men leave the record there.

The court and the arithmetic

A Court of Admiralty for the trial of pirates sat at Newport on 10 to 12 July 1723, under a commission founded on the act of 11 and 12 William III made perpetual by 6 George I, the machinery already used at Boston. Thirty-six men were tried, twenty-eight convicted and eight acquitted. The figures reconcile: thirty-seven prisoners came in, thirty in June and seven in July, one died in gaol on 15 July, and two of the convicted, Patrick Cunningham and John Brown the shortest, were recommended to His Majesty for remission rather than reprieved in form. Twenty-six were left to hang.5

Gravelly Point, 19 July 1723

Twenty-six men were hanged on 19 July 1723 on gallows set between the high and low water marks at Gravelly Point, at the harbour end of Long Wharf, between about noon and two in the afternoon, Charles Harris among them. Later writers call it the largest mass execution of pirates in colonial North America; twenty-nine of Stede Bonnet's crew were hanged at Charles Town in November 1718.6

The bodies went into the shore at the north end of Goat Island the same afternoon, between high and low water mark, in ground held unhallowed. The New England Courant of 22 July printed the flag set at the gallows: "Their Black Flag, with the Pourtrature of Death having an Hour-Glass in one Hand, and a Dart in the other, at the end of which was the Form of a Heart with three Drops of Blood, falling from it, was affix'd at one Corner of the Gallows. This Flag they call'd Old Roger."

Not Newport's pirates

The men killed here were not Newport's own. They were taken at sea by a Royal Navy ship stationed at New York, tried at Newport because that is where they were landed, and hanged in a town that had spent a generation living down its reputation. Gravelly Point is gone, filled and built over in the nineteenth century, and the Goat Island grave has never been located. The Friends of the Waterfront stand in Mary Ferrazzoli Park, the only interpretation on the ground, gives the number executed as twenty-three and dates the capture to 14 June 1723, a misreading of the Boston News-Letter's dateline.

What the sources cannot yet give is the paper behind this story: the treasurer's accounts and vice-admiralty records that would settle what became of the Ranger's six Black men, and any archaeology at all for a filled gallows site and an unlocated grave.

What the evidence does not settle

The Board of Trade quarrel with Rhode Island

  • Claims about the Board of Trade quarrel rely only on secondary references

Fate of the Ranger's six Black captives

  • Fate of the six Black men taken on the Ranger is unknownLikely

Physical remains of the 1723 executions

  • Whether the gallows site or burials can be identified archaeologicallyVery likely

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 general assembly of the English colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations sat for much of the piracy period at Newport, the colony being governed throughout under the royal charter of 1663, an unusually permissive instrument that made the governor and general assembly elective by the freemen of the colony and left the Crown very little direct purchase on the colony's courts. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Royal charter in facsimile and local history: Rhode Island Royal Charter of 1663, annotated edition, Rhode Island Department of State and Rhode Island State Archives; A Brief History of Newport, Newport Historical Society
  2. Newport's harbour lies on the east side of the East Passage of Narragansett Bay near the bay's Atlantic mouth, screened by Goat Island, which divides it into an inner and an outer basin, with deep water close inshore, sheltered anchorage in Brenton Cove and Brenton Reef the one substantial natural hazard on the seaward approach; the depths, shelter and year-round navigability are modern pilotage description from which the period conditions are inferred rather than surveyed. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Modern pilotage: United States Coast Pilot 2, chapter 6, Narragansett Bay, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
  3. Newport was a carrying and provisioning port that shipped livestock, salt provisions, fish and timber and distilled imported molasses into rum as its principal export, and enslaved Africans were landed and sold there within the piracy period, while the town's dominance of North American slaving belongs to the decades after the executions of 1723. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Institutional history: A Brief History of Newport, Newport Historical Society
  4. The men afterwards hanged at Newport were taken from Charles Harris's sloop Ranger, consort of Edward Low, when HMS Greyhound under Captain Peter Solgard of the New York station engaged both sloops off the Long Island shore on 10 June 1723, the pirates hoisting a black flag at eight in the morning and hauling it down for a red one at half past eight on the near approach of the man of war; Low escaped and Harris struck, and the Greyhound came into Newport on 11 June with the prize, thirty of the prisoners being landed and lodged in the town gaol in irons. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Period newspaper quoted in secondary works: Boston News-Letter, issue of 20 June 1723; George Francis Dow and John Henry Edmonds, The Pirates of the New England Coast, 1630 to 1730, Salem 1923; Twenty-Six Pirates Hanged at Newport in 1723, Online Review of Rhode Island History
  5. A Court of Admiralty for the trial of pirates sat at Newport on 10, 11 and 12 July 1723 under a commission founded on the act of 11 and 12 William III made perpetual by 6 George I, and tried thirty-six men, of whom twenty-eight were convicted and eight acquitted; thirty-seven prisoners had been brought in, thirty on 11 June and seven on 11 July, one died in gaol on 15 July, and two of the convicted, Patrick Cunningham and John Brown the shortest, were recommended to His Majesty for remission rather than reprieved in form, which leaves the twenty-six who were hanged. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Trial pamphlet and secondary works quoting period newspapers: Tryals of Thirty-Six Persons for Piracy, at a Court of Admiralty for tryal of pirates held at Newport, 10, 11 and 12 July 1723, Evans Early American Imprint Collection; Dow and Edmonds, The Pirates of the New England Coast; The Gravelly Point Pirates, quahog.org
  6. Twenty-six men were hanged at Newport on 19 July 1723 on gallows erected between the high and low water marks at Gravelly Point, at the harbour end of Long Wharf, the number being fixed by the colony's own printed Tryals and by the title page of Cotton Mather's sermon Useful Remarks; the description of this as the largest mass execution of pirates in colonial North America comes from neither print and is carried here as disputed, since twenty-nine of Stede Bonnet's crew were hanged at White Point near Charles Town on 8 November 1718, and what the Rhode Island record supports is only that no earlier piracy execution is recorded in that colony. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Trial pamphlet, period sermon and institutional history: Tryals of Thirty-Six Persons for Piracy, Newport 1723; Cotton Mather, Useful Remarks. An Essay upon Remarkables in the Way of Wicked Men, 1723; That Awful Spectacle, Newport Historical Society; The Pirate Executions of 1718, Charleston Time Machine, Charleston County Public Library