‘A rogue and a rascal’: John Gow, the Wick-born pirate executed 300 years ago today

His piracy career lasted for months rather than years, but Wick-born John Gow packed a lot of adventure into his time as a swashbuckling anti-hero before it all came to an ignominious end.

With mutiny and murder to answer for, Gow was eventually hunted down in Orkney and he suffered a grisly death at London’s Execution Dock 300 years ago today.

Gow – still in his late twenties when he faced the hangman’s rope – was described as an “outrageous pirate” by Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, while Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Pirate was inspired by Gow’s exploits.

He was known as “the Orkney pirate”, and that was the title of a booklet written by the late historian George Watson for Caithness Field Club in 1978, subsequently reprinted. However, Gow gave his birthplace as Wick in the county of “Kaytnes”.

His parents, well-to-do merchant William Gow and his wife Margaret Calder, had taken up residence in the oldest part of the town – east of Market Place, in the Parliament Square area – in a building now long gone that has been identified as Pesley’s tenement.

Gow is thought to have been born there in 1698, with the family moving to Stromness by the following year. It seems he ran away to sea and at some point, according to Watson, “formed an attachment” with a young lady from Thurso called Katherine Rorieson – although her disapproving father soon put a stop to the relationship.

In August 1724 Gow joined the crew of the Caroline in Amsterdam and was made second mate and gunner. But there was a growing mood of unrest on board and by November, while sailing from Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands to Genoa in Italy, a band of mutineers took matters into their own hands.

Three men seized the captain, Oliver Ferneau, who, according to Watson, “gave a good account of himself” despite the heavy odds, “until John Gow appeared and discharged a doubly loaded pistol into him. The badly wounded captain was then thrown overboard.”

Three officers were killed and the remainder of the crew rounded up, with the promise that they would come to no harm if they obeyed orders. The mutineers elected Gow as their captain. Extra guns were mounted on the deck, the Caroline was renamed as Revenge, and a life of piracy lay ahead – albeit a brief one.

Gow and his crew seem to have operated mostly off Portugal, Spain and North Africa and they attacked five ships. The booty they plundered on the high seas was not quite the mythical treasure chests of gold and jewels associated with pirate fiction: three times they targeted ships that turned out to have cargoes of fish. On another occasion they made off with cannons, small arms, sails, rum, brandy and other goods, while according to Watson the most valuable cargo they seized consisted of wine and fruit from a French vessel bound for Cadiz.

With an increasing risk of capture, and with supplies running too low for an Atlantic voyage, Gow headed for the familiar surroundings of Orkney. He and his men anchored in Stromness in January 1725 – by which time Revenge had been renamed George, and Gow was calling himself Smith as part of a cover story.

However, rumours began to circulate and the captain of a merchant vessel recognised the pirates’ ship.

In February, Gow sent an armed party to raid the house of the High Sheriff of Orkney, prompting magistrates to prepare for the defence of Kirkwall. Gow’s next target was Carrick House, on Eday, owned by his old acquaintance James Fea.

It all began to unravel for Gow when the ship ran aground on the Calf of Eday. An exchange of correspondence followed between Gow and Fea, but in the meantime the latter had sent for help and when it arrived the pirates were rounded up.

The full story of Gow’s escapades and his eventual capture was told in the book The Real Captain Cleveland (1912) by a latter-day member of the Fea family, historian Allan Fea. Cleveland had been the name given to the Gow character in Scott’s novel 90 years earlier.

At his trial in London, Gow initially refused to plead and he faced the agony of being pressed to death by order of the court. He changed his mind and, duly convicted, was one of 10 men sentenced to execution.

Gow was hanged at Execution Dock, on the Thames at Wapping, on June 11, 1725. His body was left to be washed by three tides, then tarred and hung in chains as a gruesome warning to other aspiring pirates.

It is said that Gow had a fiancée in Orkney, Helen Gordon, with whom he had once held hands through a hole in the mystical Odin Stone as they exchanged pledges. The story goes that Helen could only be freed from her promise by touching Gow’s hand after his death, and that she accomplished this task – although whether she went to London to fulfil this grim ritual, or had the severed hand sent to her, is not clear.

Relics of Gow’s seafaring exploits still exist. A telescope that belonged to him is part of the Stromness Museum collection, and Watson – who died in January 2023, aged 89 – thought the pirate’s sea chest and a pistol may have survived elsewhere.

It is possible that a cannonball now on display in Castlehill Heritage Centre was fired in the general direction of the 9th Earl of Caithness, who resided at Murkle, and against whom Gow reputedly held a grudge.

Writing in a Caithness Field Club bulletin in 1977, George Watson noted: “John Gow’s place in our local history is assured because he was a rogue and a rascal who eventually got his just deserts. At the same time Gow always showed boldness, fortitude and generosity.

“He also had a way with the lasses which endears him to all romantics. He tried his hand at piracy as we might try the football pools, knowing within himself that few succeed but that the prize could be enormous. He failed, because he was not ruthless enough, he was a bad judge of men and above all because the fates were against him.”

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