Capture of the Sloop Ranger

Résumé du livre

Off the coast of Block Island on June 10, 1723, pirate captains Edward Low and Charles Harris pursued a fleeing merchantman. The vessel turned out to be the British 20-gun Man-of-War, HMS Greyhound, under Captain Peter Solgard. Low's 70-man, 10-gun Fancy, and Harris' 50-man, 8-gun Ranger, engaged in a lengthy 'running battle' where eventually the Man-of-War chased them down with sail and oar. When the Ranger was crippled, Edward Low abandoned Charles Harris and escaped.

Thirty-five pirates had been taken prisoner, including Harris, to Newport, Rhode Island to stand trial. A total of twenty-six pirates would be hanged at Gravelly Point on July 19, 1723, with their ship's black flag affixed to the gallows as part of the public spectacle. Harris flew the same flag as Low and Spriggs: 'the same that Captain Low carried. And the newspaper article from the execution day reads: 'Their black flag, with the portrait of Death having an hourglass in one hand, and a dart in the other, at the end of which was the form of a heart shape with three drops of blood falling from it.'

People from New York to Boston celebrated the news of their demise, and one eyewitness from the crowd at the hanging stated: 'Never was there a more doleful sight in all this land than while they were standing on the stage, waiting for the stopping of their breath and the flying of their souls into the eternal world. And oh, how awful the noise of their dying moans.'

It is, to this day, the 'Largest Mass Execution in Rhode Island History'.

In 'Capture of the Sloop Ranger: The Largest Mass Execution in Rhode Island History,' public historian Gregory Duhamel tells the story of the crew of Low and Harris, from the causes that led to their involvement in piracy, their acts of misfortune to their riches, as well as the legacy left by those men who lived and died under the black flag.