A Wapping riverside pub named for the pirate hanged at nearby Execution Dock – twice, when the first rope broke – and gibbeted for three years after
Captain Kidd carries a 4.3 across more than three thousand reviews and flies the name of one of history’s most famous pirates, in the very district where he met his grisly end. It is a riverside pub in Wapping, and the Prat’s history desk relishes a pub bold enough to name itself after a hanged man.
Wapping, on the river
Captain Kidd stands on the Wapping riverside, on the north bank, in the ancient maritime quarter – properly Docklands, appearing in this survey through the scrape’s reach along the Thames. It is a short way from Execution Dock, which is the whole point of the name.
The captain himself
Captain William Kidd was a Scottish sea captain who sailed in the 1690s, originally commissioned as a privateer to hunt pirates on behalf of the Crown – before being accused of turning pirate himself. Whether he was a genuine buccaneer or the unlucky scapegoat of powerful backers has been argued for three centuries; either way, he was condemned, and his name has echoed down the ages as the very type of the golden-age pirate, complete with the enduring legend of buried treasure that has sent fortune-hunters digging ever since.
Hanged twice at Execution Dock
The Prat cannot soften the grim detail, because it is the reason the pub exists. Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock, on the Wapping foreshore, in 1701. The execution was a botch: the first rope broke, and he had to be strung up a second time. Afterwards his body was not simply buried but gibbeted – tarred and hung in an iron cage at Tilbury, down the river, where it dangled as a warning to other sailors for some three years. Execution Dock was where the Admiralty hanged its pirates and mutineers, often leaving the bodies chained at the low-tide mark until three tides had washed over them. Captain Kidd the pub stands amid that dark maritime history, and names it directly.
The romance and the reality
The Prat finds the name a fascinating double thing. On one hand, “Captain Kidd” trades on the irresistible romance of piracy – the treasure, the black flag, the swashbuckling legend that has filled a thousand stories. On the other, the reality it names is brutal: a real man, hanged twice by a broken rope, his corpse caged for three years. A riverside pub in Wapping that flies the pirate’s name holds both the romance and the grim reality of the age of sail, on the very stretch of river where it played out.
Verdict
A 4.3 across three thousand-plus reviews is a solid score for a characterful riverside pub, and Captain Kidd earns it on setting and story alike. It flies the name of the famous pirate hanged – twice – at nearby Execution Dock, and gibbeted for three years after, holding both the romance and the brutal reality of Wapping’s maritime past.
Go for the Thames views and the pirate history, and raise a pint to Captain Kidd – privateer, alleged pirate, and the unluckiest man ever hanged at Execution Dock. The romance of piracy is best enjoyed, the Prat suspects, from the safe side of three centuries.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
