Charles Vane

Charles Vane was among the hardest and least sentimental of the Nassau pirates. Where Blackbeard traded on theatre and Bartholomew Roberts on discipline, Vane traded on plain menace. He tortured captives to make them give up hidden valuables, cheated his own men of their shares, and made himself notorious even among a company not known for gentleness.

Nassau

Vane came up under Henry Jennings and made his base at Nassau during the years the harbor answered to no government but its own captains. He preyed on shipping in the Florida Straits and the Windward Passage, and by 1718 commanded a brigantine and a small consort.

Defiance of Woodes Rogers

In July 1718 the newly appointed royal governor Woodes Rogers arrived off Nassau with a naval escort and the King's offer of pardon. Most of the pirates in the harbor accepted it. Vane did not. As Rogers's ships stood into the anchorage, Vane set a captured French prize ablaze, cut her loose, and sent the fireship drifting down on the squadron. In the confusion he slipped out past the men-of-war under a full press of sail, firing a defiant gun as he went.

The vote against him

Vane's downfall came from his own articles. In November 1718 his crew sighted a large ship and bore down expecting an easy prize — but she proved to be a French man-of-war, and Vane declined to engage her. The crew, led by his quartermaster John "Calico Jack" Rackham, put the question to a vote and found their captain guilty of cowardice. Vane was deposed and set adrift in a small sloop with the handful of men who stayed loyal to him.

Wreck and rope

He rebuilt a little, then lost everything in a hurricane that cast him away on an uninhabited island in the Bay of Honduras. A passing ship recognized him — her captain, an old acquaintance, refused to take a pirate aboard and sailed on. Vane was eventually picked up by another vessel whose master knew him too, and delivered to Jamaica. He was tried at Spanish Town and hanged at Gallows Point, near Port Royal, on 29 March 1721. His body was hung in chains at Gun Cay as a warning.

Related: Nassau · Calico Jack · Blackbeard · Port Royal