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#Repost @thisdateinpiratehistory
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• 3 April •

On #thisdateinpiratehistory in 1722, the first six members of Bartholomew Roberts’ crew to be found guilty of piracy were hanged at Cape Coast Castle.

Upon being brought back to Cape Coast Castle after their defeat and capture by Capt. Chaloner Ogle, the most obviously guilty and the most obviously innocent were the first to be tried. Starved, emaciated, and dressed in rags, only a small handful retained their swagger.

At the end of March the court rattled through sixteen of the Old Standers in one day. Fourteen were found guilty; six were immediately sentenced to hang. The court was eager to remove any ringleaders from organizing a potential uprising.

These six, who could be considered the very core of Roberts crew, stood in front of Captain Mungo Herdman as he passed judgement: “It is your aggravation, that ye have been the chiefs and rulers in these licentious and lawless practices.”

As was so often the case, these condemned six were led to the gallows at Cape Coast Castle and hanged until they were dead. Their bodies were then taken down and hung in gibbets “on the most eminent hills around this place, very conspicuous to the shipping as it passes.”

The trials would continue for three weeks, with a total of seventy-two men sentenced to hang. Of those, twenty had their sentences commuted to seven years’ service in the mines of Cape Coast Castle - an effective, albeit much slower, death sentence. It was the greatest slaughter of pirates ever carried out by the Admiralty.

The First Six were:

William Magness
Thomas Sutton
Little David
Valentine Ashplant
Christopher Moody
Richard Hardy
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