Charles Vane (born c.1680 - died March 29, 1720) 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. Charles was among the pirate captains who established a notorious base at New Providence in the Bahamas after the British abandoned the colony in 1713. 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 then cruised north to New York, seizing yet more vessels, before turning south towards the Caribbean, only for his crew to vote him out of his captaincy for cowardice after failing to engage a larger French warship. Replaced by his quartermaster Calico Jack Rackham, he was cast adrift in a small sloop. 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 and he and one other survivor were washed up on an uninhabited island in the Bay of Honduras. A ship eventually arrived, months later, but Vane was recognized and both men were clapped in irons, taken to Jamaica, and there tried and hanged. He died without expressing the least remorse for his crimes.
References
- 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.
