When the pirate ship departed, if the attackers did not really feel like shooting the crewmen dead and/or taking them as captives, they could just make the survivors jump from those planks into the water in a desperate attempt to reach their own ship. One possible interpretation of the myth was the pirates' habit of using the crew of the captured ship to drag valuables (which were, well, the purpose of the attack) to their own ship, walking the planks that formed a "bridge" between the two vessels. The intended function of a ship's plank was to allow the crew to sail up to and walk onto another ship, in case you were wondering. This wasn't necessarily fatal, but the barnacles that are usually found attached to the bottom of any ship made this a painfully unpleasant experience. A related punishment is Keelhauling, where the victim is thrown overboard with a rope tied to them, then hauled across (or if they're really unlucky, along) the ship's keel and pulled up the other side. In that case, the body of the murdered sailor would be bound together with the killer. Considering that in the sail-ship era most sailors couldn't swim, even that much effort could be excessive compared to simply tossing the victim overboard blinding, binding, weighting them, or giving them a plank, would only mean wasting a perfectly good planking or rope that could be used to maintain the ship.īinding was traditionally used in one case only: as a punishment for murder. Real Life pirates very rarely if ever executed people this way: as with The Mafia and their alleged fondness for Cement Shoes, they usually preferred to just shoot 'em and then dump the body overboard. An occasional twist is for an unbound victim to grab the plank on the way down or otherwise use it as a springboard into combat. The plankee often tells the villain exactly what he thinks of him, and vice versa.
It is also an excellent opportunity for last-ditch-bravado and summing up antagonistic relationships.
This is a good scene for building suspense, if taken slowly. Standard Pirate punishment: extending a wooden board or similar object over the side of a ship, and forcing the intended victim to step off the far end and presumably drown or be eaten by sharks or crocodiles.
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