Charles Vane (c.1680 - March 29, 1721), was an English pirate who preyed upon English and French shipping. His pirate career lasted from 1716 - 20. His flagship was a brigantine named the Ranger. His death was by hanging at Gallows Point, Port Royal, Jamaica.
He started his career in piracy aboard one of Lord Archibald Hamilton's privateers. Vane was among the pirate captains who established a notorious base at New Providence in the Bahamas after the British abandoned the colony in 1713. In February of 1718, he surrendered to Vincent Pearse, commander of the HMS Phoenix, and also lost his ship the Lark. In return, he received a pardon for his past acts of piracy, which he promptly ignored..[1] When threatened there in August 1718 by Governor Woodes Rogers and two Royal Navy ships, Vane alone resisted them, driving the men-of-war back with a captured French fireship. Vane then escaped in his fast six-gun sloop, the Ranger, defiantly firing on the governor as he passed and threatening to return.
Downfall
He was despised for his cruelty. He also showed scant respect for the pirate code, cheating his own crews out of their fair share of plunder.
Vane subsequently traded up ships by capturing first a Barbados sloop and then a large 12-gun brigantine, which he also renamed the Ranger. He evaded his Royal pursuers and in October 1718 even enjoyed a week-long celebration at Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, with Blackbeard and his crew.
Vane turned south toward the Caribbean, only for his crew to vote him out of his captaincy for cowardice after failing to engage a larger French warship in the Windward Passage. Replaced by his quartermasterCalico Jack Rackham, he was cast adrift in a small sloop with Robert Deal and 15 other men. Subsequently he set about clawing his way back up the pirate ranks by seizing ever larger ships.
Vane's final blow came after his ship was wrecked in a storm in February 1719, separating him from his consort, Robert Deal. Vane was washed up on an uninhabited island in the Bay of Honduras. A ship eventually rescued him, but Vane was later recognized by a retired pirate named Holford, and was clapped in irons and taken to Jamaica. Two years later he was tried and convicted March 22, 1721 and hanged in Jamaica on March 29, 1721 (it is unclear why it took so long for the trial - either he was on the island longer than a few weeks, or there were witnesses to gather once he was captured). He died without expressing the least remorse for his crimes. After death, his body was hung from a gibbet on Gun Cay, at the mouth of harbor at Port Royal, as a warning against piracy.
References
^ Woodward, Colin (2007). The Republic of Pirates. Harcourt, Inc, 234-240. ISBN 978-0-15-603462-3.
Menefee, S.P. "Vane, Charles," in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 56 (2004): pp. 94-95.
Pickering, David. Pirates. CollinsGem. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY. (2006):p-75.
