When pirates were executed on a gallows placed between “the ebb and flow of the tide,” the scaffold on which they stood was allowed to fall by releasing the ropes holding it suspended in mid-air. This was always the climax of the spectacle for which thousands of spectators had gathered from far and near. Six pirates were hanged in Boston in 1704 and “when the scaffold was let sink, there was such a Screech of the women” present that the sound was heard over half a mile away. So writes Samuel Sewall, one of the judges who had condemned the pirates to execution.
Not infrequently the judges of a Court of Admiralty had brought before them for trial, a pirate whose career had been more infamous than the rest. A cruel and bloody-minded fellow fit only for a halter,—and then the sentence to be hanged by the neck until dead would be followed by another judgment,—dooming the lifeless body of the pirate to be hanged in chains from a gibbet placed on some island or jutting point near a ship channel, there to hang “a sun drying” as a warning to other sailormen of evil intent. In Boston harbor there were formerly two islands—Bird island and Nix’s Mate—on which pirates were gibbetted. Bird island long since disappeared and ships now anchor where the gibbet formerly stood. Nix’s Mate was of such size that early in the eighteenth century the selectmen of Boston advertised its rental for the pasturage of cattle. Today, every foot of its soil has washed away and the point of a granite monument alone marks the site of the island where formerly a pirate hung in chains beside the swiftly flowing tides.
NIX’S MATE, BOSTON HARBOR, IN 1775, WHERE CAPTAIN FLY WAS GIBBETED IN 1726
From an engraving in the “Atlantic Neptune,” Part III, London, 1781, in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society
MONUMENT ON THE SHOAL, FORMERLY NIX’S MATE, IN 1637 AN ISLAND OF MORE THAN TEN ACRES
From a photograph made about 1900
FOOTNOTES
[177] This was the man who enticed Anne Bonny to go to sea with him and become a female pirate.
[178] Advertisement. John Smith of Boston in New England late Mate of the Briganteen Rebecca of Charlestown burthen’d about Ninety Tuns whereof James Flucker was late Commander and Charles Meston of Boston aforesaid Mariner, late belonging to the said Briganteen, severally Declare and say, That the said Briganteen in her Voyage from St. Christophers to Boston, on the Twenty-eighth of May last past, being in the Latitude of Thirty Eight Degrees and odd Minutes North, the said Briganteen was taken by a Pirate Sloop, Commanded by one Lowther, having near one Hundred Men, and Eight Guns mounted. The Day after the said Briganteen was taken, the said Pirate parted their Company. Forty of them went on Board the said Brigantine Commanded by Edward Loe of Boston aforesaid, Mariner; and the rest of the said Pirates went on board the Sloop, Commanded by the said Lowther. And Declarants further say, That Joseph Sweetser of Charlestown aforesaid, and Richard Rich and Robert Willis of London, Mariners, all belonging to the said Brigantine, were forced and compelled against their Wills to go with the said Pirates, viz. Joseph Sweetser and Richard Rich on board the Brigantine, & Robert Willis on Board the Sloop. The said Willis having broke his Arm by a Fall from the Mast, desired that considering his Condition they would let him go; but they utterly refused and forced him away with them.
Signum John Smith
Charles Meston
Suffolk ss. Boston, June 12, 1722.