Edward Low: Boston Widower Turned Pirate Who Fed a Captain His Own Lips

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Edward Low was born around 1690 in the slums of Westminster, an illiterate pickpocket whose brother Richard, a burglar, was hanged at Tyburn in 1707. Around 1710 he crossed to the colonies and settled in Boston, where he married Eliza Marble in 1714 and worked as a rigger. Their son died in infancy, and in the winter of 1719 Eliza died giving birth to their daughter Elizabeth. In early 1722, on a logging sloop cutting timber in Honduras, the captain told hungry men to make do with rum; Low fired a musket at him, missed and killed another sailor. Set adrift with 12 companions, among them Francis Spriggs, he stole a sloop off Rhode Island and turned pirate, serving briefly under George Lowther.

Captaining the captured brigantine Rebecca, Low sailed into Port Roseway, Nova Scotia, in June 1722 and took 13 fishing vessels without a shot, keeping a schooner he renamed the Fancy. He flew friendly colors until targets were in range, took about 100 ships in under three years, and wept over the daughter he left behind; he refused to force married men into his crew and let female captives go. He also sank his flagship, the Rose Pink, by leaving the lower gunports open while careening. When HMS Greyhound under Captain Peter Solgard attacked in June 1723, Low fled in the Fancy and left Charles Harris to be captured; Harris and 25 of his crew were hanged. Lowther and Spriggs later abandoned him, and his end is unknown.

• When a Portuguese captain dropped 11,000 gold moidores overboard, Low cut off his lips, broiled them and made him eat them.
• Low taught Spriggs to tie burning rope between a victim's fingers to force out hidden valuables.
• Forced recruit Philip Ashton was beaten and chained for refusing to sign the pirate articles.
• His own crew finally refused his orders to torture a group of fishermen.
• Accounts place his end in a storm, a hanging in Martinique in 1724, or as a gunner in Panama in 1739.