Walking the plank was a form of murder or torture thought to have been practiced by pirates, mutineers and other rogue seafarers. The victim was forced to walk off the end of a wooden plank or beam, the final six feet of which extended over the side of a ship. The victim, sometimes with hands bound or weighed down, then drowns in the water or is killed by sharks (which would often follow ships). The earliest known use of the phrase is the latter half of the 18th century. Some writers in the 20th century speculated that walking the plank may be a myth created by cinema; however, the phrase "walking the plank" is recorded in English writer Francis Grose's "Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue",[1] which was published in 1788 (first published in 1785).
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In 1769, mutineer George Wood confessed to his chaplain at Newgate Prison that he and his fellow mutineers had sent their officers to walk the plank.[2]
In July 1822, William Smith, captain of the British sloop Blessing, was forced to walk the plank by the Spanish pirate crew of the schooner Emanuel in the West Indies.
The Times reported on February 14, 1829 that the packet Redpole (Bullock, master) was captured by the pirate schooner President and sunk. The commander was shot and the crew were made to walk the plank.[3]
In 1829, pirates intercepted the Dutch brig Vhan Fredericka in the Leeward Passage between the Virgin Islands, and murdered most of the crew by making them walk the plank with cannonballs tied to their feet[4].
It was said that forcing loyal seamen to walk the plank was supposed, by the perpetrators, to "avoid the penalty for murder"[5] (by not actually killing the victims), but this would hardly have worked. Not only would most lawmen not have hesitated to prosecute any person who forced another to his death, but piracy and mutiny were also capital crimes. However, a plank-walking may have been easier on the perpetrators' consciences.
Although walking the plank plays a large role in contemporary pirate lore, in reality walking the plank was a very rare phenomenon. Most pirates, mutineers, etc., would not bother with such an elaborate means of doing away with their captives.[6] The few who particularly enjoyed torturing their victims (such as Edward Low) would probably have used longer-lasting methods.