Like the first piratical attack, the first use of torture is unknown. Both, however, can be traced back to at least 2000 B.C.E., and once introduced, neither disappeared from history. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word itself dates back to Middle English (1100-1500) and in its earliest connotations “referred to a physical disorder characterized by twisting.” Governments implemented torture to extract information or make examples of people who defied the law. Henry VIII of England instituted a law that said if you didn’t attend church, you would lose an ear. A person might be pilloried for any number of sins, as Anne Marrow was in 1777. Her crime was unusual – she married three women while posing as a male then got caught – and while being put in the stocks meant being publicly shamed, she suffered even greater pain. Those who punished her put out her eyes before releasing her.

Some forms of torture resulted in severe pain, others in death. George Choundas, author of The Pirate Primer, lists sixty-four ways to torture and punish a person, from using the “bilbo” to “walking the plank.” Imagine having boiling water (or some other liquid) poured into your ears, or your lips sewn together or sliced off entirely? Shivers and Hore, late seventeenth century pirates, preyed on merchant ships in the Red Sea, “took a Sail-needle and Twine and sewed [John Sawbridge’s] Lips together and so kept him several Hours with his Hands tied behind him.” (Zacks, 127)
 
One torment often associated with pirates was flogging. This was a common form of punishment in the navy. After just three strikes of the whip, one recipient felt:

. . . every nerve from the scalp of my head to my toenails. . . . I put my tongue between my teeth, held it there and bit it almost in two pieces. What with the blood from my tongue, and my lips which I had also bitten, the blood from my lungs or some other internal part ruptured by the writhing agony, I was almost choked and became black in the face. (Gibbs, 24)

Whether inflicted at sea or on land, flogging was a brutal form of punishment. Near the end of the War of 1812, two men received severe punishments from the lash.

The shrieks of the [first] youngster were dreadful, calling upon God and all the holy angels to save him. After the first dozen another boatswain’s mate took the cat; and, when he [the prisoner] had received two dozen, he fainted and hung by his wrists. The punishment was suspended for a few moments until he had revived sufficiently to stand on his feet. He then took four dozen more, making six in all; and, when taken down, he could not stand. The other received seven dozen. He fainted, however, before he had received the first [dozen] and received the greater portion of his punishment in that state. The flesh was fairly hanging in strips upon both backs; it was really a sickening sight. (Gibbs, 24)

Since many suffered similar fates while following a legal trade, pirates didn’t often inflict the cat-o’-nine-tails, a whip made from nine knotted lengths of rope fastened together by a handle, on their mates. There were a few exceptions, though, to this. The articles signed by those who sailed with John Phillips included one variation of flogging:

5. That Man that shall strike another whilst these Articles are in force, shall receive Moses’s Law (that is, 40 Stripes lacking one) on the bare Back. (Defoe, 342)

This punishment is said to be the number Christ received, but it actually appears in Deuteronomy 25:3: “but he must not give him more than forty lashes. If he is flogged more than that, your brother will be degraded in your eyes.”

Another variant of flogging was known as whipping and pickling. Christopher Condent inflicted this torture on an abusive merchant master. After flogging the man’s bare back, the pirates poured salt water or vinegar over his wounds.

Bartholomew Roberts slew a drunken crewmember who insulted him. Jones cursed Roberts for killing his mate. The captain stabbed Jones with a sword, but that only riled the pirate more. He “seized the Captain, threw him over a Gun, and beat him handsomely.” (Defoe, 224) The crew took sides, and to stem the ensuing battle, the Company decided to punish Jones to maintain Roberts’ dignity. Jones endured “two Lashes from every one of the Company” (more than 100 men) as soon as his wound healed. This form of whipping was similar to that of running the gauntlet on a naval vessel or being flogged around the fleet.

The cruelest form of torment for a pirate wasn’t dancing the hempen jig (hanging), but becoming “Governor of the Island” – a polite way to say marooned! According to Bartholomew Roberts’ articles, “…if [the pirates] defrauded the Company to the Value of a Dollar, in Plate, Jewels, or Money, Marooning was their Punishment.” (Defoe, 211) This was also a punishment for those who left the ship or their stations during battle. Abandoned on a deserted island or spit of land that couldn’t support life, the pirate took with him the clothes he wore, a bottle of water, a pistol, powder, and shot. The island became his prison. The hot sun burned and blistered his skin. Without food and water, he starved and became dehydrated. At high tide, the water might flood the island or leave him standing in water up to his neck. And then there were the sharks! If the marooned pirate wished to end his life quickly, he used the pistol. Of course, committing suicide might damn a believer’s soul forever.

 

When Henry Morgan and his men captured Gibraltar in 1669, a Portuguese man endured several forms of torture once he told them he only possessed 100 pieces of eight. The pirates did not believe him, so they stretched him on the rack until they broke both his arms. Still he didn’t change his story.

They tied him with small cords by his two thumbs and great-toes unto four stakes that were fixed in the ground at a convenient distance, the whole weight of his body being pendent in the air upon those cords. Then they thrashed upon the cords with great sticks and all their strength, so that the body of this miserable man was ready to perish at every stroke, under the severity of those horrible pains. Not satisfied as yet with this cruel torture, they took a stone which weighed above 200 pound, and laid it upon his belly, as if they intended to press him to death. At which time they also kindled palm-leaves, and applied the flame unto the face of this unfortunate Portuguese, burning with them the whole skin, beard, and hair. (Esquemeling, 155)

Even then, the man didn’t confess and endured additional beatings and insufficient nourishment. Eventually, he and the pirates agreed on a ransom of 1,000 pieces of eight, which he paid.

Whether the man survived long after is unknown, but Alexandre Exquemelin recounts several other means the pirates used to gain information, such as hanging victims by their privates until those parts were torn from their bodies. Others were crucified with lit matches placed between their fingers and toes. The pirates under Francis Sprigg, who served under George Lowther and Ned Low before becoming a captain himself, captured a merchant ship under the command of Master Hawkins. After torching his vessel, they invited Hawkins below to dine with them. Food wasn’t served. Instead, they forced him to eat “a dish of candles . . . and then, in order to aid digestion, the poor man was thrown about the cabin until he was covered with bruises . . . .” (Dow, 280)

In 1922 Rafael Sabatini introduced readers to Captain Blood. Among the pirates populating his tale was Captain Le Vasseur, who held a length of knotted cord and asked, “You know what this is? It is a rosary of pain . . . capable of screwing the eyes out of a man’s head.” This was an actual form of torture the pirates used, although they referred to it as “woolding.” It was the simplest device for inflicting pain, and rope was always readily available on a ship. The “rosary” was wrapped around the head. A stick or other long, thin object was inserted at the back of the head inside the “rosary,” then the pirate twisted the cord to tighten it. If the victim opted to keep silent, his eyes eventually “burst out the skull.” There were times the pirates used this form of torture in combination with another. In February 1719, Walter Kennedy and his pirates wanted the chief mate of a vessel to reveal where the merchantman’s cash was hidden. This victim later told Admiralty officials the pirates “put a rope about his neck and drew him up under the main top and kept him hanging there about a minute and let him down again and then put a rope around his head and tied it across his ears and twisted it until he was almost blind and insensible.” (Sanders, 55)

Other forms of torture included strappado and sweating. A person who endured the former had his hands tied behind his back. Another rope bound his wrists then was slung over a yard or tree branch. The pirates lifted him off his feet before letting him freefall, but just before his feet touched the ground or deck, they jerked the rope to stop him. As a result, the man often suffered dislocated shoulders that made it so difficult to breathe he slowly suffocated. Sweating, on the other hand, was sometimes endured by captured captains who had misused their men. “Between decks they stick Candles round the Mizen-Mast, and about twenty-five men surround it with Points of Swords, Penknives, Compasses, Forks &c in each of their hands: Culprit enters the Circle; the Violin plays a merry Jig; and he must run for about ten Minutes, while each man runs his Instrument into his Posteriors.” (Redicker, 87)

Betagh, a member of George Shelvocke’s crew, wrote in his 1728 account that once they captured a Portuguese ship, the captain readily revealed where his gold was stashed, rather than endure “that piece of discipline used by the merry blades in the West-Indies, call’d ‘Blooding and Sweating’; which is done by making the captain, on declining to discover his money, to run the gauntlet naked thro the pyrate’s crew; each of them furnished with a sail-needle, pricking him in the buttocks, back and shoulders. And thus bleeding, they put him into a sugar cask swarming with cockroaches, cover him with a blanket, and there leave him to glut the vermin with his blood.” (Shelvocke, 19)

Lest you think only Caribbean pirates tortured their victims, examine those who hunted in the Pacific. Anyone who resisted the brigands sailing the South China Sea was stripped and had his hands tied behind him. Then he was hoisted from the deck by his hands and beaten with rattan rods. Sometimes he dangled there for almost an hour. To make certain someone paid a captive’s ransom, the pirates sliced off the victim’s finger or ear and included it with their demand for payment. If they failed to get what they wanted – money, food, opium, weapons, or naval supplies – a Chinese scholar revealed their victim’s fate in a poem entitled “Song of Ransom.̶