{"id":2825,"date":"2022-03-22T14:26:04","date_gmt":"2022-03-22T14:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=2825"},"modified":"2022-03-22T14:27:12","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T14:27:12","slug":"punishment-at-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=2825","title":{"rendered":"Punishment At Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A few days or weeks ago, I discussed the pirates of the Great Lakes in response to a question asked by one of our nieces. Some of you know that one of my favorite days is Talk Like A Pirate Day<\/em>, and that I\u2019ve alway been fascinated with pirates. Unfortunately a lot of the \u201ccolorful\u201d things that pirates did and said, simply turn out to not be true, or at least not as romantic and adventuresome  as we wish they were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, walking the plank\u2026 we\u2019ve all seen movies where the blindfolded captive, prodded at cutlass-point is forced out onto a narrow board dangling over the sea \u2014 pirates must have done this, don\u2019t you think? Actually, there is no proof that swashbucklers ever made their enemies and victims walk the plank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the earliest definitions of the phrase \u201cwalking the plank\u201d appears in the 1799 book A classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue<\/em>, which explains it as \u201ca mode of destroying devoted persons or officers in a mutiny on ship board.\u201d 
Daniel Defoe who wrote Robinson Crusoe<\/em>, was the first English writer to make his characters walk the \u201cplank.\u201d In his book A General History of Pyrates<\/em>, he described ancient swashbucklers in the Mediterranean running a ship\u2019s ladder out over the waves and telling their Roman captives they were free to go, so long as they were willing to swim for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1800s, writers like Charles Ellms and Robert Louis Stevenson turned the ship\u2019s ladder into \u201cthe plank.\u201d Ellis\u2019 book The Pirate\u2019s Own Book<\/em> included the drawing of a prisoner tumbling off the \u201cdeath plank\u201d into the sea. In 1887, Howard Pyle\u2019s dramatic painting of \u201cwalking the plank\u201d for a Harper\u2019s Weekly article turned the plank into a visual icon that inspired all the pirate storytellers to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Most historians conclude that, while plank-walking did exist, it was relatively rare. If pirates did need to get rid of someone, it was much faster to simply push them overboard rather than set up a plank and have them do it themselves. In those rare instances when pirates had people walk the plank, it was probably simply because the pirates did it to amuse themselves on those occasions when there was time for it.
Another interesting theory as to why people were made to walk the plank was that the pirates couldn\u2019t be tried for murder \u2014 after all the people walked off the plank themselves. This theory doesn\u2019t hold much water though, because pillaging and piracy were generally hanging offenses anyway, so if they were caught, a murder charge on top of everything else wouldn\u2019t make much of a difference.\u00a0
But actually, I kind of like this theory \u2014 from what I can determine from my extensive research, no records exist of charges being brought against anyone who forced people to walk the plank, so maybe those old scalawags were on to something\u2026.
\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days or weeks ago, I discussed the pirates of the Great Lakes in response to a question asked by one of our nieces. Some of you know that one of my favorite days is Talk Like A Pirate … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2825"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2825"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2828,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2825\/revisions\/2828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}