[The following is in regards to torture committed, by some of Captain Henry Morgan’s pirate crew, against their Spanish captives.]
The man led them to the hiding place of a group of Spaniards, and the usual ceremonies began, with a twist. According to Esquemeling, the pirates demanded that the slave kill some of the Spaniards as an initiation rite, “to the intent that by this perpetrated crime he might never be able to leave their wicked company.” The slave agreed, murdering one Spaniard after another and committing other, unnamed “insolent actions.”
Meanwhile the other pirates tortured the captives, with a Portuguese getting special attention. The slave marked him as a rich man, and Roderick worked him over with gusto, forcing his hands behind his back, tying cords to them, and lifting his arms straight up until they rotated over his head, “breaking both his arms behind his shoulders.” (It was a torture method still in use up to the Vietnam War, when it was inflicted on American POWs.)
The man would not talk, so the furious Roderick tied his thumbs and big toes to stakes and stretched him out, “the whole weight of his body being pendent in the air upon those cords.” He then took a stick and thrashed the cords until the man’s body was whipped back and forth, up and down. Nothing. Swearing that he’d kill the Spaniard, Roderick found a heavy stone and carried it to the man’s side and placed it on his belly, but the man held out. Roderick turned away, but another pirate took a torch from their campfire and began burning the man’s face, beard, and hair. The Spaniard said not a word. Finally he was starved for five days before agreeing to pay a ransom of 500 pieces of eight, or $25,000 in current dollars.
The pirates were underwhelmed. “Old fellow,” Roderick told him, “instead of five hundred you must say five hundred thousand pieces of eight; otherwise you shall here end your life.” Still the prisoner held out. The Portuguese man claimed he was just a poor tavern owner who could raise no more; a “thousand protestations” flowed out of him, until the pirates must have been sick of his voice. At last he agreed to 1,000 pesos for his release; he raised the sum in a few days, paid up, and then walked free, “although so horribly maimed in his body, that ‘tis scarce to be believed he could survive many weeks later.”
Note:
I did notice, and do find it a bit odd, that the author is here using the terms Spaniard and Portuguese interchangeably. Though the countries are neighbors, I don’t know of this being a common practice. The author does, however, definitely seem to be referring to the same person throughout. Sorry for the confusion!
Source:
Talty, Stephan. “An Amateur English Theatrical.” Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign. New York: Crown Publishing Group (NY), 2007. 155-56. Print.
No comments, yet...