Edward Low
Edward Low, also known as Ned Low, was a pirate of English origin during the latter days of the Golden Age of Piracy, in the early 18th century. Low was born into poverty in Westminster, Middlesex, and was a thief from an early age. He moved to Boston, Massachusetts, as a young man. His wife died in childbirth in late 1719. Two years later, he became a pirate, operating off the coasts of New England, Nova Scotia, the Azores, and in the Caribbean.
Low captained a number of ships, usually maintaining a small fleet of three or four. Low and his pirate crews captured at least a hundred ships during his short career, burning most of them. Although he was active for only three years, Low remains notorious as one of the most vicious pirates of the age, with a reputation for violently torturing his victims before murdering them.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described Low as "savage and desperate", and a man of "amazing and grotesque brutality." The New York Times called him a torturer, whose methods would have "done credit to the ingenuity of the Spanish Inquisition in its darkest days." The circumstances of Low's death, which took place around 1724, have been the subject of much speculation.
Early life
According to Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates, Edward Low was born in Westminster, Middlesex, England, in 1690.He was described as illiterate, having a "quarrelsome nature", and always ready to cheat,
running "wild in the streets of his native parish".
As a young man, he was said to be a pickpocket and gambler, playing games of chance with the footmen of the nearby House of Commons.
Most of his family appear to have been thieves. While young, his brother, Richard, was small for his age and is said to have been carried around in a basket on a friend's back; in a crowd, Richard would snatch the hats and wigs of passers-by. Richard later took to other forms of criminal activity and ended up hanged at Tyburn in 1707 for the burglary of a house in Stepney.
Life in Boston
As he advanced in age, Low tired of pickpocketing and thievery and turned to burglary. Eventually, he left England, and traveled alone to the New World around 1710. He spent three to four years in various locations, before settling in Boston, Massachusetts. On 12 August 1714, he married Eliza Marble at the First Church of Boston. They had a son, who died when he was an infant, and then a daughter named Elizabeth, born in the winter of 1719.Eliza died in childbirth, leaving Low with his infant daughter. The loss of his wife had a profound effect on Low: in his later career of piracy, he would often express regret for the daughter he left behind, and refused to press-gang married men into joining his crews. He would also allow women to return to port safely. At first working honestly as a rigger, in early 1722 he joined a gang of twelve men on a sloop headed for Honduras, where they planned to collect a shipment of logs for resale in Boston.
Low was employed as a patron, supervising the loading and carrying of the logs. One day, he returned to the ship hungry, but was told by the captain he would have to wait to eat, and that he and his men would have to be satisfied with their ration of rum. At this, Low "took up a loaded musket and fired at the captain but missed him, shot another poor fellow through the throat".
Following this failed mutiny, Low and his friends were forced to leave the boat. A day later, Low led the twelve-man gang, including Francis Farrington Spriggs, who went on to become a notorious pirate in his own right, to commandeer a small sloop off the coast of Rhode Island. Killing one man during the theft, Low and his crew turned pirate, determined "to go in her, make a black Flag, and declare War against all the World."
Piracy
First mate
Low, using his newly captured ship, lay in wait on a popular shipping route between Boston and New York. Within a few days, he and his crew seized a sloop out of Rhode Island and plundered it. His crew cut the rigging away to prevent the sloop returning too quickly to port to raise the alarm. He then captured a number of unarmed merchantmen near Port Rosemary.Low headed south and began operating in the waters of Grand Cayman, including being lieutenant to the established pirate George Lowther, who captained the Happy Delivery, a 100-ton Rhode Island sloop with eight cannon and ten swivel guns. When she was "destroyed by Indians", Lowther and his crew transferred to a sloop named the Ranger. Lowther's crew was constantly expanded by desperate sailors willing to join him. Fast acquiring a taste for cruelty, Low taught Spriggs a torture technique that involved tying a victim's hands with rope between their fingers and setting it alight, burning their flesh down to the bones.
Following a number of successful raids, Lowther eventually captured a large 6-gun brigantine named Rebecca on 28 May 1722. He gave it to Low to captain. With a crew of 44, Low amicably dissolved his partnership with Lowther.
Pirate captain
In one notable raid in June 1722, Low and his crew attacked thirteen New England fishing vessels sheltering at anchor in Port Roseway, Shelburne, Nova Scotia. Although outnumbered, Low hoisted his Jolly Roger flag and declared that no mercy would be given to the fishermen if any resisted. The fleet submitted and Low's men robbed every vessel. Low chose the largest, an 80-ton schooner, which he renamed The Fancy, armed with 10 guns, to become his flagship. He sank the other ships of the fleet and abandoned the Rebecca.The Boston News-Letter of 9 July 1722 published a list of those captured by Low. A number of the fishermen were forced to join Low, including Philip Ashton, who escaped in May 1723 on Roatán Island in the Bay Islands of Honduras, and who wrote a detailed account of life aboard Low's pirate ship. Before Ashton's escape, he had been beaten, whipped, kept in chains, and threatened with death many times – particularly by Low's quartermaster John Russell – as he refused to sign Low's articles and become a pirate.
Low's tactics consisted primarily of hoisting false colours and approaching an unsuspecting vessel. Off the coast of St. John's, Newfoundland, Low mistook a fully armed man-of-war for a fishing boat, and barely escaped. He moved on to Conception Bay, capturing a number of boats around the Grand Banks southeast of Newfoundland before crossing the Atlantic to the Azores. There, he captured a French pink, a narrow-sterned former man of war, which Low rearmed and refitted as his new flagship, naming it the Rose Pink. He also captured an English vessel with two Portuguese passengers aboard. Low had his crew hoist them up and drop them back down from the yardarm several times, until they died. He moved on to the Canaries, Cape Verde and then back to the coast of Brazil, where he was driven back by foul weather.
Low abandoned his plans of plundering the rich shipping trade off the coast of Brazil and moved on to the Caribbean. George Roberts, captain of a sloop trading from Barbados to West Africa, recounted a meeting with Low aboard the Rose Pink at the Cape de Verde Islands. Roberts' ship was captured by Low's fleet, of which he was now styling himself "Commodore".
Capsizing of the ''Rose Pink''
Forty leagues to the east of Surinam, Low and his fleet of two ships dropped anchor to remove growth such as seaweed and barnacles from the outside and bottom of the boats, in a process known as careening; no dry dock was available to pirates.Still relatively inexperienced, Low ordered too many men to the outside of the boat to work on the buildup, and the Rose Pink tipped too far. The portholes had been left open, and the vessel took on water and sank, taking two men with her. The Rose Pink had been carrying most of the provisions. Low was captaining a schooner, the Squirrel—and his crew were forced to strictly ration their fresh water to half a pint per man, per day.
Failing to reach their initial destination of Tobago due to light winds and strong currents, Low's depleted fleet made it to Grenada, a French-owned island. Hiding most of his men below deck, he was permitted to send men ashore for water. The following day, a French sloop was sent out to investigate, but was captured when Low's men emerged from hiding. Low, now commanding the captured sloop, gave the schooner Squirrel to Spriggs, his quartermaster, who renamed it the Delight, before sailing away in the middle of the night with a small crew following a disagreement with Low over the disciplining of one of Spriggs' crew.
Early 1723
Low's new fleet captured many more sloops, including one that Low kept, naming it the Fortune. During a trial on 10 July 1723 for a number of Low's crew members, a sailor on board the Fortune, John Welland, recalled how Low stripped his boat, including gold to the value of £150, then beat him and cut off his ear with a cutlass.Following this, Low's fleet captured a Portuguese ship called the Nostra Signiora de Victoria on 25 January 1723. The Victoria's captain allowed a bag containing approximately 11,000 gold moidores to fall into the sea rather than see it captured. One of Low's most noted episodes of cruelty followed: in his rage, he slashed off the Portuguese captain's lips with a cutlass, broiled them, and forced the victim to eat them while still hot. He then murdered the remaining crew. Low's own men described him as "a maniac and a brute."
Image:The Cruelties practised by Captain Low.jpg|thumb|left|The Cruelties practised by Captain Low, from A Pirate's Own Book
One story describes Low burning a French cook alive, saying he was a "greasy fellow who would fry well"; another tells how he once killed 53 Spanish captives with his cutlass. Some historians, including David Cordingly, believe this was deliberately done to cultivate a ferocious image. Historian Edward Leslie described Low as a psychopath with a history filled with "mutilations, disembowelings, decapitations, and slaughter".
Low, like other pirates of the time, tried to intimidate his victims into surrendering by threatening to kill or torture them. The crew of the targeted ship would hinder their officers from defending her, so afraid were they of reprisals. One failed torture session led to one of Low's crew members accidentally cutting him in the mouth. Botched surgery left Low scarred.
A snow called the Unity was added to the fleet and used as a tender, but was abandoned during an encounter with a man of war named the Mermaid. As Low's success increased in the Caribbean, so did his notoriety. Eventually, a bounty was placed on his head, and Low set out for the Azores, again teaming up with Charles Harris. As they terrorised the Azores, the pressure increased from the authorities, who by then had taken special notice of Low, despite the other hordes of pirates in operation at the time.