People: Once More Into The Thames

We've talked about piracy on the River Thames, that great artery that made London what she was and is, before. The freebooting on the waterway was always lucrative, but it seemed to come into it's own as England did. By 1600 there was a good deal of documentation at the Admiralty Court about the river men who turned a profit by stealth and theft. Some of these people have come down to us with names at the very least and some with an anecdote or two attached. Today then, Brethren, a few river pirates from the Golden Age of Thames-side highwaymen.

First is the tale of one Garret Scottle of Limehouse in what was becoming London's East End. Scottle was involved in one of the trades that fed the great machine of seafaring, as were most of the inhabitants of his neighborhood. What he did precisely is unknown but business was bad enough that he rounded up a few men and left a punch house late on December 20th of 1607 with no good intent in his mind. The men, five in all, rowed a dinghy downstream to Deptford where they came upon a launch at anchor. They boarded her and managed to take fifty pounds before abandoning their prey and their own boat for shore. The raid was so badly bungled, probably due to the inebriation of the perpetrators, that the men were caught within 24 hours. All but one, including our man Scottle, hanged for their crime.

This act of desperation shows the lengths to which people would go to make a shilling. Many of the documented piracies seem to have been committed by amateurs. The waterways were only marginally patrolled by the navy and no police force existed on land. The poignant case of Elizabetha Patrickson and her husband William is in the same vein. The couple waded out to the boat of one Henrico Marten, a lawyer. According to the indictment against them, the Patricksons took a "turkee" (linen and silk blend) woman's gown, a dagger and a cloth doublet amounting to the ridiculously small sum of fifteen pounds. Caught virtually in the act, Elizabetha and William were tortured into confession (probably by pressing or with the ingeniously miserable iron bands known as Skeffington's grieves) and eventually hanged. Clearly the Patricksons are more to be pitied than censored.

For the knowledgeable few, however, professional river piracy was almost a sure bet. With the lack of reliable law enforcement, a ruthless, capable man or woman could spend years pillaging on the Thames and never fear the noose. One such thorn in the Admiralty's side was a man known as Black Will. Described by one victim as "... a black fellow... who said he knew he should never be taken for he had used that trade... these twenty years." There are documented cases involving Black Will from 1608 until at least 1620. In some he is an African. In others he is an Englishman wearing a black coat or with his face blacked or both. Will may have been more than one man, but he surely was never brought to justice.

A second famous river pirate of the time was Dick of Dover. Like Black Will, there are many accounts of Dick over a similar period. Some documents assert he was a sailor named Richard Catro. Catro was questioned at the Admiralty but denied he was the famous pirate. After a freebooting escapade involving 150 pounds worth of cloth taken from a French merchant near Tilbury, Catro was arrested and sentenced to death. Later mention of Dick of Dover puts his actually execution in question. Or perhaps, as with Black Will, more than one pirate sported the moniker.

Thames river pirates carried on, to some degree unchecked, throughout the 17th and into the 18th century. Better patrols, by citizen groups and the navy, slowed but did not stop the thieves as the 19th century approached. The stories that have come down to us, though, are a wonderful snapshot of the human condition in all its forms.

Some are as amusing now as they must have been frightening then. I personally love the story of the Ratcliffe brigand who boarded ships wearing a metal helm shaped like a skull. And the tale of hapless Arthur Hale, who appeared in Admiralty Court wearing a pair of silk stockings from the cargo he claimed vehemently never to have seen, much less stolen.

History: Along The Thames

River piracy is as old as humans and boats. One has to imagine that there were rovers and raiders along the Tigris and the Nile before laws prohibiting their spoilage of other people's property had even been written. There are two rivers in the world, though, where a lot of documentation exists on the subject. One is the mighty Mississippi and the other, perhaps to no one's surprise, is the Thames.

Much of what is known about Thames "pirates" comes from the High Court of Admiralty which was situated in London. This meant that, more than the provincial rivers where acts of pillage may have been taken care of locally without a lot of writing things down, the rovers on the Thames, once caught, were tried, sometimes tortured and executed with all due ceremony. And documentation.

Many of these people would hardly fit the pirate mode in today's popular mindset. They were more like waterborne vagabonds and pickpockets. Some even eschewed their own craft all together and simply hiked up their breeches or skirts and waded out into the muck to ransack a vessel left empty and vulnerable. It wasn't a pretty life, obviously, and with the threat of torture and death dangling over one's head it was clearly a life pursued out of necessity. These men and women were probably not the egalitarian "all for one and one for all" sorts that we now imagine pirates to be. It's a surety they were looking out for themselves at all times.

Piracy on the Thames, defined as a crime committed on the river or it's estuaries up to the high water mark, is documented as far back as the early 13th century. In Survey of London, John Stow tells of a fleet sent into the river from London in 1216 to bring Thames pirates to justice. They succeeded in catching these perpetrators, Stow says, "...as well innumerable others that they drowned, which had robbed on the river Thames."

The problem continued to grow and really took off in Restoration London. As the city became wealthier and it's population began to burgeon, crime naturally increased. Communities, largely populated by sailors and those who made a living on the sailing trade, sprang up east of the city proper and became notorious dens of vice and crime. Places like Ratcliffe, Limehouse, Redruth and Wapping all fell under this general umbrella with many more besides. It was here that fashionable Londoners imagine the threat lurked, just waiting to take advantage of them as they took a wherry to the theater or the gambling house.

And this was probably the main crux of the pirate problem. The Thames was a far easier way to get around the city than any of it's narrow, filthy Medieval streets could possibly be. By the time Charles II was firmly back on the British throne, it is estimated that up to 2,000 "wherrymen" were ferrying people to and fro for a fee around Westminster and Southwark alone. There was lots of wealth on the river and a dishonest sculler or bargeman could easily take extra cash from unsuspecting passengers and then disappear into the night.

Such arrangements led to entire families getting into the business of stealing. A clever wherryman might have his family lie in wait and then, when the time was right, strip the unsuspecting customer of everything he or she owned, from wig to shoes. No wonder than that many wealthy people would not travel without a bodyguard, much like the ersatz celebrities of our own time.

The individual stories of Thames river pirates are sometimes shocking, sometimes poignant and sometimes down right amusing. Many of them, though, are truly owed their own post. We'll return to this issue again, but for now suffice it to say that life along the Thames wasn't always easy or fun. For the lucky few, though, it did pay handsomely.