Walter Kennedy grows up at Pelican Stairs in Wapping, the son of an anchor-smith, a boy with a 'too aspiring temper' who dreams of something bigger than his father's forge. When his father dies before his apprenticeship is done, Walter follows his own roving inclinations to sea, where tales of buccaneers and pirate kingdoms fill his head with visions of power.
Serving aboard a man-of-war during Queen Anne's war with France, he listens hungrily to every story of maritime desperadoes, from Sir Henry Morgan to Captain Avery. The line between navy sailor and outlaw blurs quickly in old England's waters, and Kennedy is already leaning toward the wrong side of it.
Step aboard and hear how a Wapping boy chased sovereignty on the open ocean: press the silver oar into his story.
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FROM THE 1735 TEXT
such is the justice of Providence that few or none of us preserve enough to maintain us
Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.
The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode.
Silver oar: not a rowing implement but a ceremonial mace, the emblem of the High Court of Admiralty. In old England it was laid on the table at piracy trials and carried before the condemned on the way to execution: a glittering reminder that the sea had its own law and its own theatre of death.
Petty treason: today treason means betraying your country, but in old England petty treason was a broader, darker concept: the crime of a subordinate killing a superior, such as a wife killing her husband or a servant killing a master. Piracy was once classed alongside it because it was seen as a betrayal of the sovereign's peace on the seas.
Upon the account: sailor slang in old England for turning pirate. It sounds almost like a business arrangement, and in a way it was: pirates kept meticulous accounts of plunder and divided shares by rank.
Man-of-war: today it might conjure an image of a jellyfish, but in old England it meant a warship of the Royal Navy, armed to the teeth and crewed by men who lived somewhere between discipline and desperation.
Buccaneers: the word originally referred to French hunters on Hispaniola who smoked meat on wooden frames called boucans. By the time Kennedy heard their stories, it meant freelance pirates of the Caribbean: men who operated in a lawless grey zone between privateer and outright criminal.
Ambuscade: the old form of ambush, borrowed from French and still carrying a whiff of military formality. In old England it sounded almost elegant; what it described was anything but.
Execution Dock: not just any gallows. In old England, this stretch of Wapping waterfront was where the Admiralty hanged its pirates, their bodies left on display until three tides had washed over them: the sea reclaiming its own.
About This Series
Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals (1735) is one of the earliest works of true crime in the English language. Each week this podcast retells one of its stories for today's listener, keeping the old book's most striking lines.
