Slavery and branding...

An other level of punishment for the common pirate was slavery. While the sentence normally was not a life time of slavery per-se, it often turned into slavery until death. This is because criminal slaves were often treated worse than African slaves. Imagine being sold to the owners of ships you used to attack!

Often the only way out of the forced servitude was death or running away. Because slaves were prone to suicide, some owners felt that Papists (Catholics) made better slaves because they would not commit suicide, fearing for their immortal soul.

The government would often dictate the length of enslavement at sentencing. Two common lengths were seven and eleven years. These were not the only lengths of time, but they do seem to appear quite often in the sentencing of pirates. When the court sentenced a man to slavery it was considered and act of compassion but in reality it usually meant a slow lingering death marked by hard labor, bad food, and continuous mistreatment.

In the movie, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jack Sparrow (Captain Jack Sparrow) has been branded with the letter "P" on the inside of his forearm. This was because Sparrow's " little run in with the East India Company", according to the movie.

There is quite a bit of confusion concerning the branding of people. Branding was not always done and quite often when a person was branded it was not by order of the court. Branding was a way of marking a person for life for a crime. Typically this was done to people who escaped the gallows and on the mercy of the court. The reason for the branding was to make sure the criminal did don't get this lucky break a second time.

This does not mean every pirate who was sold into slavery was branded. It means those that had a death sentence commuted might have been branded. For a very short time, English courts branded prisoners on the cheek. This practice occurred from 1699 until 1707. Before and after this time the common practice was to brand those who has been spared a death sentence on the hand or thumb.

Branding was also done by slave owners. If a person was to be a slave for life, he or she might be branded right away. However if a criminal was sentenced for a set number of years; then branding was held over the slave's head as a way to prevent escape attempts. It was common to flog and brand an escaped slave upon recapture. This was the warning that if an another attempt was made; the slave would be flogged and hanged!

 

In the movie Captain Norrington finds a brand on Captain Jack Sparrow's arm and orders for him to be hanged. This would have been an unlawful act in real life. The brand only meant that Sparrow's death sentence for piracy had been commuted for some reason. Unless Norrington could show evidence that Sparrow had committed an act of piracy since the commutation of the sentence, all Norrignton could really do is run him out of Port Royal.