Charles Vane

 

 

Charles Vane’s tale is a moral one. He was renowned, even in pirate terms, as a cruel and sadistic man who mistreated his crew and killed prisoners whenever he was given the opportunity. His inability to make friends and influence people ultimately meant he himself met a sticky end, on 22 March 1720, he was hung in chains as a warning to other pirates of the punishment that lay in wait.

 

 

The pirate Charles Vane was notorious not only as a menace to law and order on the high seas, but also among his fellow pirates as a cruel, selfish man. In particular, he was known for ignoring the pirate code which stipulated, albeit informally, that all booty should be shared among the crew. He was also disliked for his habit of torturing and murdering prisoners whenever he had the opportunity. In fact, he showed so little respect for his fellow human being, friend or foe, that when he finally came to need help, he found none, and met a sorry end as a result.

 

Torture and murder

We know from official records that Vane was born in 1680 in England, but there is no mention of where he grew up, or how he came to take up a career as a seafarer. However, he made his first appearance into the annals of criminal history in 1716, when he joined the crew of pirate Henry Jennings. Jennings’ speciality was to prey on the ships and encampments of those who came to salvage sunken Spanish galleons, mostly off the coast of Florida. These ships were part of a treasure fleet that had sunk in 1715. Vane showed great skill at intimidating, attacking and robbing the salvagers, and soon progressed to captaincy of his own ship, sailing to the West Indies. In the Caribbean, he attacked a number of vessels and tortured the prisoners that he took. Pirates were not generallyknown for their genteel behaviour, but even so, it was unusual for a captain to inflict such unnecessary cruelty on those who had surrendered. Word of his bloodthirsty reputation spread, and on two occasions he was reported to the authorities for torturing the crew of two vessels that he had taken.

In a practise that proved disastrous for maintaining law and order on the high seas, notorious pirates were often given pardons by the authorities so that they could be enlisted as privateers. This meant that, instead of the pirates attacking ships at random for their own gain, they would be hired to attack enemy ships in the battle between the European powers – mainly English, French and Spanish – for control of the colonies. To this end, the Governor of the Bahamas, Woodes Rogers, visited the pirate haven of New Providence to offer pardons to the pirates there. Most of them enthusiastically accepted – after all, this was a chance to get off scot free, whatever heinous crimes they had committed, and, moreover, to gain new employment as privateers. Vane, however, was alone in rejecting Rogers’ offer. As Rogers’ warships approached, he set fire to a captured French ship he had in his possession, took a few pot shots at the naval warships and sailed off in the other direction.

 

Mutiny and revenge

Furious at his behaviour, Rogers had Vane pursued by a former pirate now working in his employ, one Benjamin Hornigold. However, Vane managed to give Hornigold the slip, and escaped to the Carolinas. Here, Vane continued to attack shipping, on one occasion mounting a blockade of Charleston Port, as the notorious pirate Blackbeard had done before him. One of Vane’s conquests was a large ship carrying around 100 slaves.

The attacks on Charleston, not only by Vane but by other pirates operating in the area, infuriated the local population, forcing the Governor of South Carolina to act. He sent two armed ships to track Vane down, commanded by Colonel William Rhett. Meanwhile, Vane was under attack from his own crew: his right-hand man, a pirate named Yeats, had gathered a posse of mutinous sailors under his command and sailed off at night in one of Vane’s ships, taking with him a good deal of booty as well as the entire company of recently captured slaves. When Vane found out, he vowed to take his revenge, but for the moment there was nothing he could do.

 

Drunken revelry

Despite these problems, Vane managed to escape Rhett, and once again emerged unscathed from the Governor’s offensive, eventually landing up in Ocracoke Island, North Carolina. Here, Vane met up with the notorious Blackbeard, and the two pirates, along with their men, embarked on a week of drunken revelry. When Vane sailed off again and began to plunder more ships, he found that Rhett was still after him. However, he was clever enough to outwit his opponents once more. He told his crew to talk about their plans to sail southwards in front of the sailors from the plundered ships. When Rhett caught up with the sailors, they gave him the information they’d overheard, so he set off southwards in hot pursuit of the pirates. Vane, however, had sailed north.

After a few months, Vane and his crew fell on hard times, since they had made few successful attacks. His crew, who showed very little loyalty towards him because of his cruelty, were beginning to grow restless. When they encountered a French ship, they urged their captain to attack it, which he did, exchanging a few rounds of gunfire; but on discovering it was a heavily armed warship, he felt it best to retreat. His crew disagreed, calling him a coward, and voting to make his quartermaster, Calico Jack Rackham, their new captain. Vane was unceremoniously ditched, and left only with a small ship and a few supporters to his name.

 

Hung up in chains

Undeterred, Vane sailed to an area off the coast of Cuba, and began again from scratch, attacking small vessels and eking out a living. But further disaster was at hand. In February 1719, Vane and his crew encountered a hurricane while sailing through the Bay of Honduras, and were shipwrecked. Most of the men drowned during the storm, but Vane, along with one other pirate, managed to swim to an uninhabited island. There, they survived for months on fish and turtle meat, until a ship came by.

The ship was captained by one Captain Holford, a former ‘friend’ of Vane’s. Unfortunately, Holford’s previous experience of Vane’s wily ways prompted him to give his old mate a wide berth, and he sailed straight past. Vane was eventually taken in by another passing ship, only to find Holford sailing up alongside and telling the rescuers that they had a dangerous pirate aboard. Vane was promptly arrested and imprisoned at Port Royal, Jamaica.

Despite the fact that Vane was evidently a deeply unpleasant man, who took a particular pleasure in torturing and murdering prisoners, he seems to have been somewhat more skilful and intelligent than most of the pirates of his day, remaining in open defiance of the authorities throughout his career, and outwitting them on many occasions. His downfall was that he treated his own men, and other sailors that he encountered along the way, just as badly as he treated everyone else: so that when at last he was shipwrecked and needed their help, he had no one to turn to.

After a swift trial, Charles Vane was hung on 22 March 1720. There were few who mourned his passing. Afterwards, his body was hung up in chains at Gun Cay as a warning to those who dared defy the law.