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Death: Battle, Disease and the Gallows
The ways golden-age pirates died between about 1690 and 1725: a minority in battle, far more of disease, drink and the ordinary hazards of the sea, and many of the captured on colonial gallows or at Execution Dock, with a few notable bodies gibbeted as a warning.
Also writtenPirate mortality; Death at sea and on the gallows; The gallows and the gibbet
Three things killed the men who sailed under the black flag between about 1690 and 1725: the sea and its fevers, the fight, and the state. They did not kill in equal numbers, and the best documented deaths are not the commonest, because trials and warrants generate paper and fevers do not.
What killed most of them
Pirates were sailors first, and they died of what sailors died of. Scurvy, dysentery, which the period called the bloody flux, malaria, yellow fever, smallpox and the venereal diseases thinned every crew that stayed months at sea, and the tropical and West African waters they worked were especially lethal. Beyond the fevers came drownings, falls from the rigging, powder accidents, exposure and the loss of a wrecked ship, with drink making each likelier. Marcus Rediker's reconstruction from trial records gives overwhelmingly young men, most in their twenties. None of it can be quantified: no pirate-specific mortality figures survive, and any figure for how pirates died can be given only cautiously and never as a hard number.1
Death in action
Bartholomew Roberts was killed off Cape Lopez on 10 February 1722 in action against HMS Swallow under Captain Chaloner Ogle; the grapeshot to the throat, a charge of small lead balls fired as an anti-personnel round, is Johnson's detail alone, and his own record carries the manner of death as possible. Combat was the least of the three killers, though no proportion can be put on it.2
The judicial death
The state supplied the third death and made it deliberately theatrical. A captured pirate was tried before an Admiralty court, at home or, under commission, at colonial centres such as Charles Town, St Jago de la Vega in Jamaica, Cape Coast Castle and Boston, and on conviction he was hanged. The sentence at Cape Coast Castle in April 1722, as the 1724 General History prints it, sent the condemned "to the Place of Execution, without the Gates of this Castle, and there within the Flood-Marks, to be hanged by the Neck till ye are dead".3
The drop was short, so death probably came by slow strangulation more often than by a broken neck. The convulsions of the dying had a name, the "Marshal's dance".
Scale is documented where cause is not: twenty-nine of Stede Bonnet's men hanged at White Point near Charles Town in November 1718, Bonnet himself on 10 December, fifty-two of Roberts's crew after the trial at Cape Coast Castle in 1722. That fifty-two is firm where the surrounding totals of those acquitted, respited or sentenced to servitude are not.
The gibbet, and how rare it was
For a few of the notorious a stage followed death: the body cut down after hanging and hung in chains in an iron gibbet at a conspicuous point, as a public deterrent. After the Jamaica trial of November 1720 John Rackam, George Fetherston and Richard Corner were taken down and hanged up in chains, one at Plumb Point, one at Bush Key and the other at Gun Key, and the six men sentenced at Cape Coast Castle in April 1722 were to be taken down after hanging and their bodies removed in chains to the gibbets already erected on the adjacent hillocks. Captain William Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock on 23 May 1701. Gibbeting was never the ordinary end of a hanged pirate; it was reserved for a few.4
The execution is dated 23 May 1701. The day is settled rather than merely probable: the title page of the printed account of the trial has Kidd "accordingly Executed at Execution-Dock the 23d" of May 1701.
What comes through Johnson
The memorable particulars stand on unequal ground. The tally of Blackbeard's wounds, five pistol shot and about twenty cuts, comes from Maynard's own report of examining the body and the Boston News-Letter, and the 1724 General History of the Pyrates repeats it; the "five and twenty" of the retellings is the later inflation. The story that Roberts's crew, honouring his wish not to be taken, weighted his body and threw it overboard in his finery so that Ogle never had him rests on the same book. No body was recovered, so it is plausible, but Johnson alone carries it, and it is possible at best.5
If fever, accident and foundering were the likeliest killers, a pirate's risk was never chiefly the risk of a fight, and the brevity of the average career owed as much to the sea as to grapeshot or the noose; that reading has not yet been checked against the record. The compensation clauses in many sets of pirate articles read as the arithmetic of men who expected injury as a normal cost: Roberts's ninth article promised 800 dollars out of the public stock to any man who lost a limb or became a cripple in their service, and for lesser hurts proportionably, while John Phillips's eighth gave 400 pieces of eight for a joint lost in an engagement and 800 for a limb. The gallows and the gibbet, for their part, are generally read as deterrent theatre staged by the state, meant to be seen by other seamen and to attach a squalid end to the black flag.6
What these sources cannot give is the balance. There is no pirate census and no muster roll of the dead, so no share can be assigned to disease, the sea, an enemy or a judge, and the primacy of disease and shipwreck rests on the general maritime record and on inference. The wound tally and the fate of Roberts's body would be settled, if at all, by naval papers and court records collated in full, which has not yet been done.
What the evidence does not settle
Causes of death proportions
- Relative proportions of death by disease, combat and execution are not quantifiedUnverified
Battle death legends
Whydah wreck casualties
- Casualty and survivor numbers for the Whydah wreck vary between popular accounts
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.
- Disease, shipboard accident, shipwreck, exposure and drink killed far more golden-age pirates than combat did, scurvy, dysentery, malaria, yellow fever, smallpox and the venereal diseases thinning every crew that spent months at sea and the tropical and West African waters being especially lethal, and the surviving trial records reconstructed by Marcus Rediker show a body of overwhelmingly young men, most of them in their twenties; no pirate-specific mortality figures survive, so no proportion can be stated as a number. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Secondary maritime history and demographic reconstruction: Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, Beacon Press, 2004
- Bartholomew Roberts was killed off Cape Lopez on 10 February 1722 in the action against HMS Swallow under Captain Chaloner Ogle, the grapeshot to the neck and throat being Johnson's detail, carried as Possible on his own record. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Museum secondary account: Death of Bartholomew Roberts, Royal Museums Greenwich
- Captured pirates were tried before Admiralty courts: in London at the Admiralty Sessions held by royal commission at the Old Bailey, where William Kidd was tried on 8 and 9 May 1701 upon six indictments; and in the colonies under commissions issued for particular centres, among them the Court of Vice-Admiralty at Charles Town in South Carolina before Nicholas Trott, Judge of the Vice-Admiralty, opened on 28 October 1718; the Court of Admiralty at St Jago de la Vega in Jamaica on 16 November 1720; the Court of Admiralty at Cape Corso Castle on the Guinea coast in 1722; and a special Court of Admiralty at Boston on 12 May 1724. On conviction they were hanged: Kidd was accordingly executed at Execution Dock on 23 May 1701, and the Cape Corso Castle sentence and warrant directed the condemned to be carried to the place of execution without the gates of the castle and there, within the flood-marks, to be hanged by the neck till they were dead. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Printed trial and printed history of the pirates: The Arraignment, Tryal, and Condemnation of Captain William Kidd, for Murther and Piracy, upon Six several Indictments, at the Admiralty-Sessions, held by His Majesty's Commission at the Old-Baily, on Thursday the 8th and Friday the 9th of May, 1701... who, upon full Evidence, was found Guilty, received Sentence, and was accordingly Executed at Execution-Dock the 23d (London, printed for J. Nutt, 1701), title page, read in the Internet Archive copy of the eighteenth-century collections scan; with A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724), attributed to Charles Johnson, for the colonial commissions: "On the 28th of October, 1718, a Court of Vice-Admiralty was held at Charles-Town, in South-Carolina... before Nicholas Trot, Esq; Judge of the Vice-Admiralty"; "November 16, 1720, a Court of Admiralty was held at St. Jago de la Vega"; "On the 12th of May, 1724, a special Court of Admiralty was held" at Boston; and the sentence at Cape Corso Castle, "to be carried back to the Place from whence ye came, from thence to the Place of Execution, without the Gates of this Castle, and there within the Flood-Marks, to be hanged by the Neck till ye are dead"
- The bodies of a few notorious offenders were cut down after hanging and hung in chains in an iron gibbet at a conspicuous point as a public deterrent, a selective and exemplary fate rather than the ordinary end of a hanged pirate. After the Jamaica trial of November 1720 John Rackam, George Fetherston and Richard Corner were afterwards taken down and hanged up in chains, one at Plumb Point, one at Bush Key and the other at Gun Key; and the six men sentenced at Cape Corso Castle in April 1722 were, after hanging, to be taken down and their bodies hanged in chains, the warrant directing the bodies to be removed in chains to the gibbets already erected on the adjacent hillocks. Captain William Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock on 23 May 1701. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Printed history of the pirates and printed trial: A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724), attributed to Charles Johnson: "Rackam, Feverston and Corner, were afterwards taken down and hang'd up in Chains, one at Plumb Point, one at Bush Key, and the other at Gun Key"; and the Cape Corso Castle sentence and warrant of 2 April 1722, "After this, ye, and each of you shall be taken down, and your Bodies hanged in Chains", with the note "The Bodies remove in Chains, to the Gibbets already erected on the adjacent Hillocks". For Kidd, the title page of The Arraignment, Tryal, and Condemnation of Captain William Kidd (London, printed for J. Nutt, 1701), "was accordingly Executed at Execution-Dock the 23d" of May 1701, read in the Internet Archive copy of the eighteenth-century collections scan
- The vivid particulars of the two famous battle deaths rest on unequal ground: the tally of Blackbeard's wounds, five pistol shot and about twenty cuts, comes from Maynard's report of examining the body and the Boston News-Letter and is repeated by the 1724 General History, the 'five and twenty' of the retellings being the later inflation, while the story that Roberts's crew, honouring his wish not to be taken, weighted his body and threw it overboard in his finery so that Ogle never captured him rests on the General History's narrative tradition alone and is no better than possible, though it is consistent with the fact that no body was recovered. Possible Consistent with the evidence, not established. Period narrative with embellishment, checked against museum accounts: A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, attributed to Captain Charles Johnson, 1724; Death of Bartholomew Roberts, Royal Museums Greenwich
- Many sets of pirate articles fixed compensation out of the common stock for the loss of a limb or a joint. Bartholomew Roberts's ninth article promised that if any man should lose a limb or become a cripple in their service he was to have 800 dollars out of the public stock, and for lesser hurts proportionably; George Lowther's sixth article gave one hundred and fifty pounds sterling to a man who lost a limb in time of engagement, and leave to remain with the company as long as he thought fit; and John Phillips's eighth article gave 400 pieces of eight for a joint lost in an engagement and 800 for a limb. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Pirate articles as printed in a period history: A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724), attributed to Charles Johnson, articles of Bartholomew Roberts, IX: "If in order to this, any Man should lose a Limb, or become a Cripple in their Service, he was to have 800 Dollars, out of the publick Stock, and for lesser Hurts, proportionably"; The Articles of Captain George Lowther, and his Company, 6: "He that shall have the Misfortune to lose a Limb, in Time of Engagement, shall have the Sum of one hundred and fifty Pounds Sterling, and remain with the Company as long as he shall think fit"; and the articles of John Phillips's company, 8: "If any Man shall lose a Joint in time of an Engagement, shall have 400 Pieces of Eight; if a Limb, 800"