Blackbeard: Famous in Philadelphia, Part 3

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.

Pirate Living: Grim and Gritty, Part 2

by Marianne Ruane

The majority of pirates were honest sailors who were either forced to become pirates when their ship was conquered or who willingly did so to escape the horrible conditions on their own ship. The British navy commonly forced men into sailor jobs, and seventy percent of those coerced died within two years.¹ Being captured by a pirate ship offered a slightly better alternative.

When pirates captured a ship, they would ask the sailors whether they had been fairly treated by their captain and commanding officers. If they hadn’t, the offending parties would be killed or tortured. “This was actually a common practice among some pirates, some of whom used more elaborate forms of punishment, like making the torturers run in circles for ten minutes while the men stuck forks, knives and compasses into their butts.”²

Philadelphia: Popular Pirate Destination, Part 1

An 1861 article from the Philadelphia Ledger announced that three coffins containing the remains of pirates hanged in 1800 for stealing cargo were found on Windmill Island (a now non-existent island in the Delaware River which had extended from Race Street to South Street) by some workers loading coal in the area. “The coffins were in an excellent state of preservation, and the skeletons within them were perfect, with the exception of two of them being without the skulls.”¹

Pirates not only walked the streets of Philadelphia, they also played a significant role in the city’s history, particularly in the first half of the eighteenth century. In 1699, four of Captain Kidd’s crew members were arrested and tried in Philadelphia. Around the same time, the pirate Henry Avery frequented the city. One of his men married the daughter of Pennsylvania’s Acting Governor William Markham and another entrusted his money to Governor Markham’s safekeeping when he was imprisoned in Philadelphia. Blackbeard reportedly stayed at an inn located at Second and High (now Market) Streets in Philadelphia during his visits from 1716-1718. “He is said to have made repeated visits to Philadelphia, and to have been countenanced and abetted by men in respectable repute.”²