Edward Low - Legacy

Legacy

Edward Low's acts, along with those of other pirates of the period such as Edward Teach, Bartholomew Roberts ("Black Bart"), and William Fly, led to a great increase in the military presence to protect shipping lanes, resulting in the effective end of the Golden Age of Piracy.

By 1700, the European states had enough troops and ships at their disposal, following the end of a number of wars, to begin better protecting their important colonies in the West Indies and in the Americas, without relying on the aid of privateers. Pirates based in the Caribbean were chased from the seas by a new British Royal Navy squadron based at Port Royal, Jamaica, and a smaller group of Spanish privateers, sailing from the Spanish Main, known as the Guarda de Costa (Coast Guard in English), or simply the Guarda.

Less is recorded of Low than of other equally prolific pirates such as Teach and Stede Bonnet. Howard Pyle, in an 1880 children's book on pirates, said: "No one stood higher in the trade than, and no one mounted to more lofty altitudes of bloodthirsty and unscrupulous wickedness. 'Tis strange that so little has been written and sung of this man of might, for he was as worthy of story and of song as was Blackbeard." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in his work The Green Flag, described Low as "savage and desperate", and a man of "amazing and grotesque brutality". The New York Times said "Low and his crew became the terror of the Atlantic, and his depredations were committed on every part of the ocean, from the coast of Brazil to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland".

Low has featured on stamps and commemorative currency around the Caribbean. A postage stamp featuring Low was commissioned by the Cayman Islands in 1975, and in 1994 the government of Antigua and Barbuda featured Edward Low and his brigantine, Rebecca, on a legal tender one hundred-dollar bill made of gold leaf.

"Ned Low" is one of the pirates featured on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at the Disneyland theme park in California. A duplicate of Low's flag was used for the flag of the fictional pirate Sao Feng in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean films. Low is one of the East India Trading Company employees in the game Pirates of the Caribbean Online.

Some of Low's haunts, such as the waters around the Isles of Shoals off New Hampshire and Isle Haute in Nova Scotia, attract treasure hunters who seek artifacts in the ships he sank.