Did pirates really make people walk the plank?

Question

You always see it in the movies, but did they really do it?

Answer 1

No, by all accounts, this is a myth. Pirates did not adhere to formalities in executing captives; they were either marooned or simply thrown overboard.

Another myth about pirates is that they sailed on enormous and distinctive-looking ships. In reality, pirates preferred small, nondescript, and swift vessels, which could attack and retreat quickly, and could be tucked into small, hidden harbors.

Answer 2

Actually, no evidence has ever been found to support the idea that pirates made people walk the plank. They did have areas on a ship where people could be locked up, and they certainy shot and killed eachother. In some instances, they also set people adrift, particularly in a mutiny, (most notably during the mutiny of the Bounty, when the greater part of the ship mutineed against Capt. Bligh and set him and several others adrift in the Pacific Ocean). No evidence exists on historical ships (which are what pirates stole from merchants and the navy) to suggest that there was ever a plank.

Answer 3

I'm not sure they actually walked a plank, but they probably did throw people over board that were to be punished. Many sailors feared drowning more than any other death, so being put over board was a dreadful punishment. The plank may have been to get the person a little ways from the side of the ship before they went over.

Answer 4

Why Not - - - any number of sick sadistic b (censored) s went to Sea - - - that said actually evidence is scanty and what popularized the notion was a work of fiction by a Scot named Robert Lewis Stevenson, a book called 'Treasure Island.'

As for that evidence - - - one that I recall was a letter from the early 1700s wherein the dozen or so passengers aboard an East Indian Ship sezied by Pirates, were sarcastically asked for either 'passage money,' and those who had none were, in the words of the letter, "asked to go ashore, being in the midst of the vast sea, they were 'escorted' over the side of the ship and left to drown," note no plank was mentioned - - - that said it truly was an 'invention' an embellishment by a master story teller eagerly seized upon by film makers....

Pax-----------------------

Answer 5

Yes they did do that. If you are out on the ocean and someone has committed a crime where you gonna put them? Those ships were pretty small actually and no place to keep someone who say steals stuff so they made them walk the plank which is the same as a death sentence.

Answer 6

Apparently, though from what I know of pirates, I would say that it did not happen often.