The Golden Age of Piracy

John Gow was a Scottish pirate who was active off the Iberian Peninsula from 1724 to 1725. He was captured in the Orkneys and hanged at Execution Dock on 11^th June 1725. His articles were written in his own hand writing and were found aboard his ship, the Revenge, not long after his capture in 1725. Evidence suggests that these articles were written only a few days before he and his crew were captured by the authorities after dangerous currents had pulled the ship onto a reef and forced it aground. Historians believe that the reference in Article IV to no going ashore “till the ship is off the ground” suggests that the ship was already grounded when this code was written.

These articles were written by Captain John Phillips and crew of the Revenge in 1724. The articles were recovered because the forced pirates on his crew mutinied against him and turned the loyal pirates over to the authorities along with the ship. This meant the pirate articles survived long enough to be recorded by Charles Johnson in his book A General History of the Pyrates, published in 1724. An example of strict enforcement the Articles was when a forced carpenter called Fern was killed for attempting to escape.

These articles are known to have been used by Edward Low and George Lowther aboard their ship. They were first seen in the Boston News Letter, and it appears that Low and Lowther had the same articles. This is probably because they sailed together from early January to the end of May in 1722. Lowe’s articles were published in the Boston News-Letter on August 1, 1723, and also The Tryals of Thirty-Six Persons for Piracy, Twenty-Eight of them upon Full Evidence were Found Guilty and the Rest Acquitted, which was also printed in 1723. The first eight points of George Lowther’s articles were published in A General History of the Pyrates (1724).