Execution Dock Execution Dock was used for more than 400 years in London to execute pirates, smugglers and mutineers that had been sentenced to death by Admiralty courts. The dock, which consisted of a scaffold for hanging, was located near the shoreline of the River Thames at Wapping. Its last executions were in 1830. The legal jurisdiction for the British Admiralty was for all crimes committed at sea. The dock symbolised that jurisdiction by being located just beyond the low-tide mark in the river. Anybody who had committed crimes on the seas, either in home waters or abroad, would eventually be brought back to London and tried by the High Court of the Admiralty . Capital punishment was applied to acts of mutiny that resulted in death, for murders on the High Seas and specific violations of the Articles of War governing the behavior of naval sailors, including sodomy. Those sentenced to death were usually brought to Execution Dock from Marshalsea Prison (although some were also transported from the Newgate). The condemned were paraded across London Bridge past the Tower of London. The procession was led by the High Court Marshal on horseback (or his deputy). He carried a silver oar that represented the authority of the Admiralty. Prisoners were transported in a cart to Wapping; with them was a chaplain who encouraged them to confess their sins. Just like the execution procession to Tyburn, condemned prisoners were allowed to drink a quart of ale at a public house on the way to the gallows. An execution at the dock usually meant that crowds lined the rivers banks or chartered boats moored in the Thames to get a better view of the hangings. Executions were conducted by the hangmen who worked at either Tyburn and Newgate Prison. With a particular cruelty reserved for those convicted of acts of piracy, hanging was done with a shortened rope. This meant a slow death from strangulation on the scaffold as the drop was insufficient to break the prisoners neck. It was called the Marshals dance because their limbs would often be seen to dance from slow asphyxiation. Unlike hangings on land such as at Tyburn, the bodies of pirates at Execution Dock were not immediately cut down following death. Customarily, these corpses were left hanging on the nooses until at least three tides had washed over their heads. This practice stopped at the end of the 18th century. In the cases of the most notorious offenders, the Admiralty would order that their bodies were to be tarred and hung in chains at either Cuckolds Point or Blackwall Point- on the River Thames - as a warning to all seafarers about the fate awaiting those who turned to piracy. Though Execution Dock is long gone, this gibbet is still maintained on the Thames foreshore by the Prospect of Whitby public house.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 22:24:08 +0000
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