Walking the plank

Walking the plank was a method of execution practiced on special occasion by pirates, mutineers, and other rogue seafarers. For the amusement of the perpetrators (and the psychological torture of the victims), captives were bound so they could not swim or tread water and forced to walk off a wooden plank or beam extended over the side of a ship.

Although forcing captives to walk the plank is a motif of pirates in popular culture in the 19th through 21st centuries, few instances are documented, so how common the practice was is debatable.[1][2]

Earliest documented record of the phrase

The phrase is recorded in English lexicographer Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, which was published in 1788 (first published in London in 1785).[3] Grose writes;

Walking the plank. A mode of destroying devoted persons or officers in a mutiny on ship-board, by blind-folding them, and obliging them to walk on a plank laid over the ship's side; by this means, as the mutineers suppose, avoiding the penalty of murder.[3]

Historical instances of plank walking

In 1769, mutineer George Wood confessed to his chaplain at London's Newgate Prison that he and his fellow mutineers had sent their officers to walk the plank.[4] Author Douglas Botting, in describing the account, characterized it as an "alleged confession" and an "obscure account... which may or may not be true, and in any case had nothing to do with pirates".[5]

A Mr. Claxton, surgeons-mate aboard the Garland in 1788, testified to a committee at the House of Commons about the use of the plank by slavers:[6]

The food, notwithstanding the mortality, was so little, that if ten more days at sea, they should, as the captain and others said, have made the slaves walk the plank, that is, throw themselves overboard, or have eaten those slaves that died.

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.[7]

The Times of London 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.[8]

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.[9][10]

It was said that forcing loyal seamen to walk the plank was supposed, by the perpetrators, to "avoid the penalty for murder",[11] but this legal argument would hardly have worked. Not only would most legal authorities not have hesitated to prosecute any person who forced another to his death, but piracy and mutiny were also capital crimes. Given the occasions on which it was known to have been employed, it appears more likely to have been an elaborate and unusual form of sadistic entertainment rather than a regular method of murdering unwanted captives.

In literature

Artist's conception of walking the plank (illustration by Howard Pyle for Harper's Magazine, 1887)

Despite the likely rarity of the practice in actual history, walking the plank entered popular myth and folklore via depictions in popular literature.

Captain Charles Johnson, in his 1724 book A General History of the Pyrates, described a similar practice (using a ladder rather than a plank) in the Mediterranean of classical antiquity – Roman captives were offered the ladder and given their freedom, provided they were willing to swim for it.[1]

The title page of Charles Ellms's sensationalist 1837 work The Pirates Own Book, apparently drawing on Charles Johnson's description, contains an illustration titled "A Piratical Scene – 'Walking the Death Plank'".[1][12]

Robert Louis Stevenson's 1884 classic Treasure Island contains at least three mentions of walking the plank, including at the beginning where Billy Bones tells bone-chilling stories of the practice to Jim Hawkins. (Treasure Island also popularized other now-common pirate motifs such as parrots, peglegs, and buried treasure.)

The concept also appears in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, where Captain Hook's pirates helped define the archetype.[13]

Modern usage

The term has been used in modern times to describe the resignation of a public figure which occurs amidst controversy, or was demanded by the public, corporate shareholders and suchlike.

The practice has been used in several modern films such as Hook, Down Periscope, and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Evan Andrews (October 2, 2013). "Did pirates really make people walk the plank?". History.com. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  2. ↑ Karen Abbott (August 9, 2011). "If There's a Man Among Ye: The Tale of Pirate Queens Anne Bonny and Mary Read". Smithsonian.com. Retrieved March 20, 2017. The notion of 'walking the plank' is a myth...
  3. 1 2 Grose, Francis (1788) [1785]. Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. p. 258. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  4. ↑ Botting, Douglas (1978). The Pirates. Time–Life Books. p. 58. ISBN 978-0809426508.
  5. ↑ Botting, Douglas (1978). The Pirates. Time–Life Books. ISBN 978-0809426508. Cited at Gary Martin. "Walk The Plank". The Phrase Finder. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  6. ↑ Abridgement of the minutes of the evidence, taken before a Committee of the Whole House, to whom it was referred to consider of the slave-trade, [1789-1791]. 1790.
  7. ↑ Earle, Peter (2006). The Pirate Wars. St. Martin's Griffin. p. 222. ISBN 978-0312335809.
  8. ↑ "[title unknown]". The Times. London. February 14, 1829. p. 3.
  9. ↑ "Atrocious Piracy". Carmarthen Journal and South Wales Weekly Advertiser. Carmarthen, Wales. July 24, 1829. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  10. ↑ Cordingly, David (1995). Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates. Random House. pp. 130–31. ISBN 978-0316911481.
  11. ↑ Grose, Francis (1788). A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. S. Hooper. Retrieved March 20, 2017. Cited at Gary Martin. "Walk The Plank". The Phrase Finder. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  12. ↑ Illustration: Charles Ellms (2004). "The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Pirates Own Book, by Charles Ellms". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved March 20, 2017. Illustration title: Charles Ellms (April 29, 2004). "The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Pirates Own Book, by Charles Ellms". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  13. ↑ Bonanos, Christopher. "Did pirates really say "arrrr"? – By Christopher Bonanos – Slate Magazine". Slate.com. Retrieved 23 July 2017.

Further reading

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