Edward “Ned” Low: the pirate called the cruellest

Who was Edward Low?

Edward Low was born in Westminster, London, probably around 1690. A 1724 book about pirates by “Captain Charles Johnson” says he grew up poor, could not read or write, and was a cheat and a thief even as a boy, but that book often exaggerates.

Low went to sea around 1710 and a few years later settled in Boston, where he worked as a rigger, fitting the ropes and rigging of ships. He married Eliza Marble at Boston’s First Church on 12 August 1714. Their son died as a baby; a daughter was born in 1719, and Low’s wife died soon after. When he sailed away for good, he left his little daughter in Boston. So he was not a Boston boy, as is sometimes said: he was a Londoner who made his home there as a young man.

How did Ned Low become a pirate?

Low took a job cutting logwood, a tree used to make cloth dye, in the Bay of Honduras, and was put in charge of a boat crew. Around December 1721 he quarrelled with his captain, reportedly over food. He fired a musket at the captain, missed, and killed another man. Then he and about a dozen others took a small vessel and raised a black flag.

At Grand Cayman they joined George Lowther, whose crew had recently mutinied on a Royal African Company ship, and Low became Lowther’s lieutenant. On 10 January 1722 they captured a Boston logwood ship called the Greyhound. On 28 May 1722 Lowther gave Low a captured brigantine, the Rebecca, with about 44 men, and the two parted on friendly terms.

Where did Edward Low sail and raid?

Low ranged further than most pirates of his day:

• New England, May–June 1722: he took vessels off Rhode Island and Block Island and whaleboats near Nantucket.
• Port Roseway, Nova Scotia, 15 June 1722: he seized about 13 fishing vessels, many from Marblehead, Massachusetts. He kept the Fancy, an 80-ton schooner, as his own ship.
• Newfoundland, July 1722: he plundered harbours and fishing boats, and only just escaped off St John’s after mistaking a warship for a fishing boat.
• The Azores, August 1722: he took seven ships at St Michael’s and a vessel called the Rose.
• Madeira, the Canary Islands and the Cape Verde Islands came next.
• He planned to raid Brazil but bad weather turned him back, and the Rose sank near Suriname while being careened, tipped on her side to clean the hull.
• The Caribbean, late 1722 to spring 1723: he cruised the Leeward Islands, Grenada and the Bay of Honduras.

Who was Philip Ashton, Low’s captive?

Philip Ashton was a young fisherman from Marblehead who was at Port Roseway when Low’s men arrived on 15 June 1722. Low asked the fishermen, “Are any of you Married Men?” He avoided forcing married men to serve, so he took young single men like Ashton instead. Ashton was kept aboard and carried across the Atlantic and back.

On 9 March 1723, at Roatán, an island off Honduras, Ashton slipped into the woods and hid until they sailed. He lived alone there for about 16 months, until Bay-men, English logwood cutters, found him in June 1724. He finally reached Salem, Massachusetts, on 1 May 1725.

His story was written up by a minister, John Barnard, and printed in 1725 as Ashton’s Memorial. It is told as a tale of being saved by God, but it is the best eyewitness account we have of life aboard Low’s ships.

Was Ned Low really the most cruel pirate?

He had that reputation in his own lifetime. Johnson’s 1724 book says no English pirate crew matched Low’s for cruelty. More importantly, in March 1724 the governor of the Leeward Islands, John Hart, wrote in an official letter that Low treated Spanish, Portuguese and British captives cruelly. The fear was real, not invented later.

There is good evidence that Low and his crew hurt and killed prisoners. But most of the specific, shocking stories come from Johnson’s book and from colonial newspapers, which printed rumours alongside facts. The historian Len Travers, who studied government papers for his 2023 book on Low, argues that much of the gory legend rests on rumour and imagination. The fairest answer is that Low was a violent man feared by many, but nobody can say for sure that every story about him is true.

What happened to Low’s crew at Newport in 1723?

By spring 1723 Low was sailing the Fancy with a second sloop, the Ranger, commanded by Charles Harris. On 10 June 1723, off Long Island and Block Island, they met HMS Greyhound, a Royal Navy warship under Captain Peter Solgard. When the Ranger was disabled, Low sailed away and left Harris and his crew to be captured.

The prisoners were tried at Newport, Rhode Island, on 10–12 July 1723. On 19 July, 26 of them, Harris among them, were hanged at Gravelly Point, on the shore between the high and low tide marks, and buried on Goat Island. Those 26 were about half of all the people executed in Rhode Island between 1673 and 1845.

What happened to Edward Low?

Low stayed at sea. In the summer of 1723 he took a large ship, the Merry Christmas, armed her with 34 guns and called himself admiral, and off Cape Breton he took 23 French vessels. His partner Francis Spriggs left him late that year. The last news in Johnson’s book is the capture of a ship called the Squirrel in January 1724, and Johnson admits he could not tell what became of Low afterwards. In March 1724 Governor Hart reported him still free with about 50 men.

After that, the record goes quiet. One account says his own crew turned him out early in 1724. There was a reported sighting in the Bay of Honduras in 1726, and a Boston newspaper claimed in 1740 that he had been seen at Porto Bello. None of these is proven. His fate remains a mystery.