Pirate Punishments in the Golden Age of Piracy

Pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1730) both dished out and received a wide range of imaginative punishments. Victims of piracy endured torture, floggings, and ceremonies of humiliation, but when brought to justice, the pirates were given such punishments as lengthy prison sentences, transportation to work in the deadly conditions of African mines, or public execution by hanging.
The use of a whip to dish out punishments was a common occurrence on ships of all kinds of the period. For pirates, the risk of bearing such treatment was much reduced since a captain rarely dared to use such methods on a crew that had probably turned pirate in the first place in order to escape such harsh features of a life at sea. A flogging was usually only decided upon as the form of punishment if the whole crew, or at least the majority, agreed that the man had broken one of the ship’s articles, that is the list of rules they swore to abide by. The man who dished out the flogging on a pirate vessel was the quartermaster. Floggings were given for such misdemeanours as bringing women on board, striking another man, or not keeping weapons in an efficient state of readiness.
If a mariner was flogged, then he was tied to the mast or a grating and lashed on his bare back with a cat-o’-nine-tails. This special kind of whip consisted of nine lengths of rope, each of which was around one-quarter of an inch in diameter (c. 6 mm) and up to 2 feet (c. 60 cm) long. Each of the nine lengths had three or more knots to make the whip’s bite even sharper - sometimes more knots were added for more severe crimes. During a flogging, the sailor often bit on a bullet so that he did not cry out and raise the ridicule of his crewmates. If he did call out with the pain, then his mates would thereafter describe him disdainfully as a 'nightingale'.

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