Clik here to view.
1629: Jeronimus Cornelisz and other Batavia mutineers
It was 2 Oct 1629, Dutchman Jeronimus Cornelisz was noosed along with 15 other men by the Dutch East Indies Company for a reign of terror that included mutiny and murder off the coast of Australia.*...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1804: Little Harpe and Peter Alston, Mississippi pirates
On this date in 1804, two known as John Setton/Sutton and James May were hanged at Greenville, Mississippi. They were, in fact, Wiley “Little” Harpe and his outlaw partner Peter Alston — the survivors...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1835: Captain Pedro Gilbert and the Spanish Pirates
On this date in 1835, four Spanish pirates — it was supposed to be more — were put to death at Boston. Their captain, the Catalan Pedro Gilbert, was chief among them in death as he was in life. Three...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1862: Nathaniel Gordon, slave trader
On this date in 1862, the American commercial shipper Nathaniel Gordon was hanged at the Tombs for slave trading. Importing slaves to the U.S. had been nominally illegal for over half a century, but...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1831: Charles Gibbs, the pirate
On this date in 1831, pirate Charles Gibbs hanged on Ellis Island. This Rhode Island native followed his father’s trade in buccaneering and made an adventurously brutal life on the waves during the...
View Article1961: Alvin Table Jr. and Billy Wayne Sees, Bahamas pirates
On this date in 1961, two modern-day (but somewhat inept) pirates sailed into the history books by becoming the first U.S. citizens to be executed in the Bahamas. Alvin Table Jr., 26, mounted the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1573: Hans von Erschausen, Seeräuber
On this date in 1573, the Hanseatic city of Hamburg beheaded the Seeräuber Hans von Erschausen with his crew, leaving naught but a vast row of pike-mounted heads and some excellent woodcuts. Also on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1587: Thomas Conodale, A Sea Faringe man
Today’s obscure mariner hanged at the Wapping execution dock comes from a tidbit unearthed years ago by the now-inert blog ReScript: 30 Awgust Ano 1587: burial Thomas Conodale beinge A Batchelor He was...
View Article1800: Three Canadian pirates in Philadelphia
On this date in 1800, French Canadiens Joseph Baker (anglicized from Joseph Boulanger), Peter Peterson (LeCroix), and Joseph Berouse hanged in Philadelphia for a murderous mutiny. That trio had seized...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1860: Albert Hicks, the last pirate hanged by the US?
The hanging of Albert Hicks on Bedloe’s Island on this date in 1860 marked perhaps the last execution for piracy in U.S. history.* This was a century and more past the Golden Age of Piracy. By the...
View Article1827: Three Spanish pirates in Richmond, states’ rights cause
On this date in 1827, a “Carnival of Death” in Richmond saw the hanging of three Spanish pirates who had but recently perpetrated an infamous slaughter all their own. These men had shipped aboard the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1835: Francisco Ruiz, prostrated pirate
From the Lowell (Mass.) Patriot, September 18, 1835 — channeling, as the headling indicates, the Boston Morning Post. In addition to a wanton overuse of commas, this article’s casual alternation...
View Article1719: Richard Worley, pirate
(Thanks to Captain Charles Johnson — perhaps a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe — for the guest post. It was originally Chapter XIII “Of Captain WORLEY, And his Crew” in Johnson’s magnum and only opus, A...
View Article1820: William Holmes, Edward Rosewaine, and Thomas Warrington, pirates
On this date in 1820, William Holmes, Edward Rosewain, and Thomas Warrington aka Warren Fawcett all hanged in Boston as pirates. A Scotsman, an Englishman, and a Connecticut Yankee (respectively), the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1873: Four Cuban rebel generals
On this date in 1873, not five days after capturing the Virginius — a U.S. blockade runner illegally supplying separatist rebels in Cuba — Spanish General Juan Burriel had four of the rebel brass found...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1873: Captain Joseph Fry and 36 crew of the Virginius
On this date in 1873, Joseph Fry,* captain of the captured U.S. blockade runner Virginius, was shot in Santiago de Cuba along with 36 of his crew members. (The full roster of those executed on November...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1830: Benito de Soto, a pirate hanged at Gibraltar
On this date in 1830, the Galician or Portuguese pirate Benito de Soto was hanged at Gibraltar. One of the very last of the dying breed of high-seas pirates, de Soto mutinied aboard an Argentine slave...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1825: El Pirata Cofresi
I have killed hundreds with my own hands, and I know how to die. Fire! -Last words of Roberto Cofresi A monument to Roberto Cofresi rises from the water in his native Cabo Rojo. On this date in 1825,...
View Article1609: Captain John Harris, Captain John Jennings, and 15 other pirates at...
On this date* in 1609, seventeen pirates hanged at Wapping’s “Execution Dock”. Though English, a large number of them had been taken in Ireland. Elizabethan England had cultivated a reputation for the...
View Article1820: The pirates of the William
On this date in 1820, six pirates of the brig William hanged at the Maltese capital Valletta. This vessel had the previous July departed her Liverpool berth hauling a cargo of lucrative sugar to Malta...
View Article
