Portal:Piracy/Selected picture/1

Image credit: Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates

Howard Pyle's illustration of pirate walking the plank, a form of murder or torture that was practiced by pirates and other rogue seafarers. It involved the victim being forced to walk off the end of a wooden plank or beam extended over the side of a ship, thereby falling into the water to drown, sometimes with bound hands or weighed down, often into the vicinity of sharks (which would often follow ships). The earliest use of the phrase dates back to 1769 but it is not known how long the method of making someone walk a plank in order to send them overboard had been practiced.