{"id":24150,"date":"2013-08-08T04:22:40","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T11:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=24150"},"modified":"2013-08-08T04:22:40","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T11:22:40","slug":"pirates-rarely-made-people-walk-the-plank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2013\/08\/pirates-rarely-made-people-walk-the-plank\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates Rarely Made People Walk the Plank"},"content":{"rendered":"
John asks: Did pirates really make people walk the plank?<\/div>\n

\"ship\"<\/a>For thousands of years, pirates of various sorts have preyed on innocent ships at sea. Their exploits have been documented by the likes of Cicero and Homer in ancient Rome and Greece, and Vikings were once the scourge of the sea, plaguing seaside towns throughout the middle ages. However, the bloodthirsty pirates most commonly portrayed in movies and books today are those from the Golden Age of Piracy\u2014that is, the 16th<\/sup> and 17th<\/sup> centuries.<\/p>\n

During this time, pirates were not only common, but many of them\u2014the \u201cprivateers\u201d\u2014were actually hired by various governments to steal from other states. Spain dominated the new world and had ships carting riches back to the motherland constantly. The lure of gold, silver, and expensive spices was too much for many other countries who wanted to end Spain\u2019s dominance and take a bite for themselves. So they hired privateers to do the dirty work of stealing some of the ships\u2019 cargo.<\/p>\n

In the “Hollywood” representation of this Golden Age of Piracy, the standard way to kill anyone aboard a pirate ship is to simply make the individual “walk the plank”. But before Captain Hook, Captain Flint, and Captain Jack Sparrow, there was Blackbeard, Calico Jack, and Captain Kidd. In the midst of a naval robbery, did these real pirates actually take the time to make people walk the plank? At risk of disappointing pirate fans, the answer is mostly \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pirates did make people walk the plank every now and then, but historical records seem to indicate the practice was extremely rare. In fact, pirates preferred not to kill their victims. If they gained a reputation for killing everyone on board of every ship they took, crew members would simply fight to the death every time a group of pirates hopped on deck. That would be an awful lot of work for the pirates, who usually just wanted to take the gold and run. If they did need to get rid of someone, it was much faster to simply push them overboard rather than set up a plank and have them do it themselves.<\/p>\n

That being said, there are known instances of pirates having people walk the plank, with the generally accepted reason behind this practice simply being that the pirates did it to amuses themselves on those rare occasions there actually was time for it. Another theory as to the reason for making people walk the plank was that people were forced to do this so that the pirates couldn\u2019t be tried for murder\u2014after all, the people walked off the plank themselves. This latter reason is considered somewhat unlikely, however, because pillaging and piracy were generally hanging offenses anyway; if they were caught, a murder charge on top of everything else wasn\u2019t going to make much of a difference.<\/p>\n

But the more bloodthirsty pirates loved the psychological torture inflicted on their victims before making them walk the plank, right? Not exactly. Black Bart\u2014also known as Bartholomew Roberts\u2014was a pirate captain known for his somewhat psychotic tendencies. He was an incredibly successful pirate who is reported to have taken over 400 ships and accumulated some \u00a350 million in stolen goods. He also had a reputation for being violent and torturing his victims; yet Black Bart is only known to have made one person walk the plank in all his years of pirating.<\/p>\n

As to some specific other examples of pirates having people walk the plank, one of the more well-known cases was on board the Dutch ship Vhan Fredericka<\/i>. In 1829, pirates boarded the ship near the Virgin Islands and murdered almost every crew member by tying cannonballs to their feet and having them walk overboard. However, all in all, there are only about five cases of \u201cwalking the plank\u201d that can be definitively proven by historical records. It\u2019s possible that other instances occurred that were not recorded or whose records have been lost to time, but most likely the practice wasn\u2019t nearly as commonplace as fiction would lead you to believe.<\/p>\n

The phrase itself, \u201cwalking the plank\u201d, dates back to 1769, with the first documented reference being when a seaman named George Wood confessed to a chaplain that he had made several men \u201cwalk the plank.\u201d However, while the confession certainly took place, whether or not Wood actually made people walk the plank is still open to debate, owing to the lack of direct evidence.<\/p>\n

The phrase became more popular in the 1800s when authors began to use it in literature. In 1837, Charles Ellms wrote a boys\u2019 story book called The Pirates Own Book<\/i><\/a> which made the claim that an amateur American pirate, Stede Bonnet, made people walk the plank. In 1881, Treasure Island<\/i><\/a> by Robert Louis Stevenson was published. Walking the plank is mentioned at least three times in the book and the book’s popularity is undoubtedly the reason walking the plank became such a popular theme in fictional pirate stories.<\/p>\n

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