Fate of His Crew
Anne Bonny and Mary Read both claimed to be pregnant at their trials, ten days after Rackham's execution, and so were given a temporary stay until the claim was proven. Read died in April 1721 of fever related to childbirth, while Bonny was spared execution and disappeared from all historical records.
The day after Rackham's trial, two of his crew members, John "Old Dad the Cooper" Fenwick and Tom Brown (alias Bourn), were separately tried and convicted for mutinies committed in mid-June 1720 off Hispaniola.
All of the nine men who'd been drinking with Rackham's crew and were captured with Rackham's crew were tried and convicted in January 1721, then hanged in February 1721.
In a strange twist of fate, Rackham's old captain Charles Vane had been rotting for two years in the Jamaica jail awaiting his trial. Long after Rackham's body had deteriorated to bones in its gibbet, Charles Vane was finally brought to trial for his crimes, convicted and met with the same fate as Rackham.
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“The stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting things which matter for a nation—the great peaks we had forgotten, of Honour, Duty, Patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of Sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.”
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By all his engines, but was headlong sent
With his industrious crew to build in hell.”
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