by Marianne
Ruane
Some pirates who
managed to escape disease died a quicker death at the hands of authorities.
William Kidd was captured in Boston and convicted of piracy, then sent to
England to be hanged in 1701. While his first noose broke, landing him on the
ground dazed but unharmed, the second attempt was successful. His body was
tarred and hung in a gibbet over the River Thames as a warning to other pirates
to change their ways. A gibbet, iron bands in the shape of a human form
designed to hold a corpse together, was generally left hanging for several
years until the body completely decomposed. The only complete gibbet in America
is on display in Philadelphia. It was made for the pirate Thomas Wilkinson, but
because he received a reprieve from hanging, the gibbet was never used. It hung
in the Walnut Street Prison and then Moyamensing Prison as a warning to
prisoners (wasn’t it already too late?) and eventually made its way to the
Atwater Kent Museum.
Blackbeard (also
known as Edward Teach) is another pirate with a colorful history and
ignominious end. He was a large man, very tall, with crazy black hair and a
long beard braided and tied in colored ribbons. Historians believe he may not
have killed anyone while plundering – he was so frightening that everyone
simply surrendered.
