Walking the plank was a method of execution practised on special occasion bypirates,mutineers, and other rogueseafarers. For the amusement of the perpetrators and thepsychological torture of the victims, captives were bound so they could not swim or tread water and forced to walk off awooden plank or beam extended over the side of a ship.
Although forcing captives to walk the plank has been a motif ofpirates in popular culture since the 19th century, few instances are documented, all of which took place well after the classical "Golden Age of Piracy" which ended by 1730.
The act is described in a 1763 article about pirates from The Public Adviser:
Philadelphia, May 12. ... And it is also said, that four other small Vessels were cruizing about theGrenades andGuadaloupe, in the same Manner, manned by Spaniards and Caribbee Indians, who had taken several Vessels; among them one belonging to the Grenades, whose Crew they obliged to walk into the Sea, on a Plank fixed for that Purpose, but that one of them got ashore by good Swimming.[1]
The phrase appeared in a 1788 book on the slave trade, which recorded a 1779 incident in which slave-ship captains declared that if they ran out of water and food, they would save themselves by making their slaves jump overboard:
He then asked them what they had intended to have done with their slaves ... They replied, "to make them walk the plank," (i. e.) to jump overboard.[2]
The phrase is also recorded in the second edition of English lexicographerFrancis Grose'sDictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, which was published in 1788.[3] Grose wrote:
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]
PirateJohn Derdrake, active in the Baltic in the late 1700s, was said to have drowned all his victims by forcing them to walk the plank, but Derdrake may have been a fictional character.[4]
In 1769, amutineer, George Wood, confessed to his chaplain at London'sNewgate Prison that he and his fellow mutineers had sent their officers to walk the plank.[5] 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".[6]
A Mr. Claxton, surgeons-mate aboard theGarland in 1788, testified to a committee at the House of Commons about the use of the plank byslavers:[7]
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 BritishsloopBlessing, was forced to walk the plank by the Spanish pirate crew of theschoonerEmanuel in theWest Indies.[8]
The Times of London reported on 14 February 1829 that thepacketRedpole (Bullock, master) was captured by the pirateschoonerPresident and sunk. The commander was shot and the crew were made to walk the plank.[9]
In 1829, pirates intercepted theDutchbrigVhan Fredericka in theLeeward Passage between theVirgin Islands, and murdered most of the crew by making them walk the plank with cannonballs tied to their feet.[10][11]
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 bookA General History of the Pyrates, described a similar practice (using a ladder rather than a plank) in theMediterranean ofclassical antiquity –Roman captives were offered the ladder and given their freedom, provided they were willing to swim for it.[12]
The title page ofCharles Ellms's sensationalist 1837 workThe Pirates Own Book, apparently drawing on Charles Johnson's description, contains an illustration titled "A Piratical Scene – 'Walking the Death Plank'".[12][13]
InCharles Gayarré's 1872 novelFernando de Lemos: Truth and Fiction, the pirateDominique Youx confessed to capturing the schoonerPatriot, killing its crew and making its passengerTheodosia Burr Alston (June 21, 1783 – approximately January 2 or 3, 1813) walk the plank. "She stepped on it and descended into the sea with graceful composure, as if she had been alighting from a carriage," Gayarré wrote in Youx's voice. "She sank, and rising again, she, with an indescribable smile of angelic sweetness, waved her hand to me as if she meant to say: 'Farewell, and thanks again'; and then sank forever." Because Gayarré mixed fact with fiction, it is unknown whether Youx's confession was real or not.[14]
Robert Louis Stevenson's 1884 classicTreasure Island contains at least three mentions of walking the plank, including at the beginning whereBilly Bones tells bone-chilling stories of the practice toJim Hawkins. (Treasure Island also popularized other now-common pirate motifs such as parrots, peglegs, and buried treasure.)
The concept also appears inJ. M. Barrie'sPeter Pan, whereCaptain Hook's pirates helped define the archetype.[15]
