The Hanging of Six Pirates

by Laura Nelson

On November 15^th, 1717, six men were hanged for piracy in Boston, Massachusetts. They were: Hendrik Quintor, Peter Cornelius Hoof, John Shuan, John Brown, Thomas Baker, and Simon Van Vorst.

On April 26, 1717 the above-named men (plus a man named Thomas South, who went aboard unarmed and later was acquitted at trial as a forced man,) were sent to take charge of the Mary Anne. This ship was a type of wooden sailing ship called a pink. The ship had just been taken by the pirate Captain Samuel Bellamy. Their orders were to take over operation of the ship and to send back her captain and several crew members with the ship's papers. Each one went aboard armed with pistols and cutlasses.

Sam Bellamy ordered them to follow the pirate flag ship the Whydah Galley to a location on Cape Cod. Once there, he intended to plunder the Mary Anne for the more than 7,000 gallons of Madeira wine that they had discovered was in her hold.

During the course of the afternoon, the pirates plundered the ship, helping themselves to some wine they found in one of the cabins and various items of the crew's clothing. Eventually, they were ab;e to remove a heavy cable that was blocking the hatch and that was when they discovered the barrels of Madeira.
 

As the day wore on, a storm rolled into Cape Cod. It would be one of the worst storms in the area's history. It was preceded by dense fog and thunder and lightning.

An Arctic gale from Canada was colliding with a warm front moving northward from the Caribbean. “According to eye witness accounts, gusts topped 70 miles [113 kilometers] an hour and the seas rose to 30 feet [9 meters.]¹

As they made their way North, Sam noticed that the Mary Anne was falling behind the Whydah. He hollered for them to keep up. One of the pirates responded that he would “make sail until she couldn't sail anymore.” A lamp was lit and hung from the stern of the Whydah to help them stay on course.

Yet the Mary Anne, with her increasingly drunken crew, eventually fell so far behind that they lost sight of the Whydah. They eventually went aground on a beach near the town of Wellfleet, MA. To prevent the Mary Anne from breaking up any further, Thomas South, who was a carpenter, cut down the mainmast.

The pirates and the remaining original crewmen of the Mary Anne went into the hold and spent the night there. One of the pirates, unnamed, asked one of the crewmen to read from the Common-Prayer Book, which he did for an hour.

In the morning, the pirates and crewmen found that they were far enough ashore that they could walk from the ship onto the beach. There they spent the morning eating some sweetmeats that they had found in someone's chest and washing them down with more wine. Eventually a local, Thomas Cole, happened upon them and came across in his canoe to rescue what he thought were ordinary mariners who had been shipwrecked. He took them to his house. There one of the crewmen of the Mary Anne finally blurted out that these men were pirates and members of Sam Bellamy's crew.

The pirates left, planning on making their way to Rhode Island, which at that time was a known pirate haunt.

On their way there, they stopped at a tavern in Eastham, MA for refreshment. There they were apprehended by the local law and held in Barnstable jail overnight. The next day they were put on horseback, along with 2 survivors of the wreck of the Whydah, Thomas Davis and John Julian. By this time they had of course learned of the demise of the Whydah, and were despondent over the loss of their friends and their treasure.

Once in Boston they languished in its foul, dark jail until their trial on October 18, 1717. But not all of them got to go to trial. Sometime between April and October John Julian disappeared from the jail. He is reported to have been sold under the name of Julian The Indian to John Quincy of Braintree, MA.² Just to make things interesting, John Quincy's grandson, President John Quincy Adams, became a staunch abolitionist.³

Thomas Davis was tried separately from the pirates who had been on the Mary Anne. The court believed his claim that he was forced to go along with the pirates because he was a carpenter and was acquitted. The remaining seven were charged with piracy and robbery. The potential penalty was death by hanging.

All of them pleaded not guilty and asserted their defense that they were forced men. Thomas South was the only one the court believed and was acquitted. The other six were found guilty and sentenced to death.

“Cotton Mather – minister of Boston's Old North Church – was in the courtroom to hear the testimony and verdicts. A fire-and-brimstone preacher and prolific writer, Mather had entered Harvard at the age of 12 and had preached his first sermon at the age of 16. He was personally committed to persuading the pirates to repent. Throughout their months in jail, Mather regularly met with Bellamy's men. On November 15, accompanied by Cotton Mather, the condemned men were rowed across the harbor to Charleston, where their gallows had been set up at the water's edge.”⁴

Hangings in 1717 were public entertainments. In the days before television and movies, and when a large segment of the population was illiterate, entire families (including children) would turn out to watch the spectacle.

In those days, pirate's bodies were not buried after they were hanged. They were instead covered in tar and placed inside a gibbet⁵, then hung out in public where sailors coming and going from the harbor could see them and be warned against becoming involved with pirates.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clifford, Barry, and Kenneth J Kinkor with Sharon Simpson, Real Pirates, The Untold Story of the Whydah from slave ship to pirate ship, National Geographic, Washington, D.C.

Kinkor, Kenneth J, “Black Men Under the Black Flag,” in Bandits at Sea: A Pirate Reader, edited by C.R. Pennell, New York University, 2001.

“The Trials of Eight Persons Indited For Piracy” in British Piracy in the Golden Age, edited by Joel H Baer (2:289-319) Pickering and Chatto, 2007.

ENDNOTES

1Donovan Webster, “Pirates of the Whydah” in National Geographic Magazine (May 1999.) http:www.nationalgeographic.com/whydah/story.html

2Kinkor, Kenneth J, “Black Men Under the Black Flag,” in Bandits at Sea: A Pirate Reader, edited by C.R. Pennell, New York University, 2001, p 203

3“John Julian – Only Free At Sea” at Pirates of the Whydah, National Geographic. In February 1839, John Quincy Adams successfully represented the slaves from the Amistad rebellion. More information can be read at the National Archives web site: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/amistad/ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/whydah/ax/frame4.html

4Clifford, Barry, and Kenneth J Kinkor with Sharon Simpson, Real Pirates, The Untold Story of the Whydah from slave ship to pirate ship, National Geographic, Washington, D.C., p 136

5A gibbet is an iron cage that encases the body. The bodies would be left on display until they had completely decomposed.