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Execution

Execution Fort Hanging2 AWE
"Not more requisition orders?"
"No, sir. Execution."
―Weatherby Swann and the EITC clerk[src]

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, was the sentence of death or sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner was known as a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who had been sentenced to death and awaits execution was condemned and was commonly referred to as having an "appointment with the gallows". Etymologically, the term capital (lit. 'of the head', derived via the Latin capitalis from caput, "head") refers to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods, including hanging, shooting, and stoning.

Executions had been used by nearly all societies since the beginning of civilisations on Earth. Crimes that were punishable by death vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against a person, such as murder, assassination, and crimes against humanity, along with crimes against the British Empire such as treason and piracy. Also, in some cases, acts of robbery and kidnapping were capital crimes or enhancements. The executions of criminals and dissidents themselves often involved torture with painful methods, such as hanging, keelhauling, flaying, and impalement.

History

"Sorry, Christophe. I wish I could help you, but Teague's given the order for execution and there's no getting around it. Esmeralda says she'll pray for you."
―Jack Sparrow to Christophe-Julien de Rapièr[src]
Dead pirates

By the time Captain Jack Sparrow arrived to Port Royal,[1][2] James Norrington of the British Royal Navy had chased, captured, and executed some of the Caribbean's most fearsome pirates, eventually promoted from Captain to Commodore of the Fleet.[3] Details of pirate trials and executions were posted all around Port Royal.[4][5] After a hanging, or "a short drop and a sudden stop," Commodore Norrington showed off the bodies of executed pirates near the dock, hoping that this grisly spectacle and gruesome display would encourage passing sailors to obey the law. After his capture, Jack Sparrow was given a room with prison bars looking out across Port Royal bay. Although it was not the first time Jack had been locked up, he was worried, nonetheless, as imprisonment was the beginning of a story that ended with death by execution, for the punishment for piracy was the hangman's noose. Following the battle at Isla de Muerta, where most of Captain Hector Barbossa's crew of the Black Pearl were killed, Jack kept his appointment with the hangman at Fort Charles. The death warrant detailing the death sentence was drawn up following Sparrow's trial in Port Royal, and was signed by Governor Weatherby Swann.[4][3] Moments away from death, Jack couldn't help smiling as he remembered some of the crimes the town clerk read out in his death sentence, though his smile faded as the list ended with, "...you are sentenced to be hung by the neck until dead..."[4][5] However, at the very moment that the hangman pulled the lever to execute Jack, Will Turner dashed to the rescue—at great risk to his own, he knew that he might be hanged as a pirate himself, but he had a strong sense of what was right, with Elizabeth standing by Will in protecting Jack from Norrington.[1][2]

As supreme head of the East India Trading Company, Lord Cutler Beckett came to Port Royal to capture and execute scoundrels such as Jack Sparrow and the crew of the Black Pearl, and would do whatever he thought was necessary to achieve his goal.[4][6] Will Turner arrived as the chapel in chains, arrested as he dressed for his wedding with Elizabeth Swann, who was also chained shortly afterwards. Governor Weatherby Swann and Lord Beckett reads out the charges against them: "...conspiring to set free a man lawfully convicted of crimes against the Empire, and condemned to death," for which the penalty was also death.[4][7][8]

During Lord Beckett's ruthless campaign against piracy, the East India Trading Company hosted countless executions of those convicted of committing piracy or associating with persons guilty of piracy in an execution fort. It was at the execution fort where the song Hoist the Colours, called forth by Captain Hector Barbossa to summon the Fourth Brethren Court, was sung by those facing the gallows. When the newly-promoted Admiral James Norrington was summoned to Beckett's flagship, the HMS Endeavour, an Company clerk sets a sheaf of documents before Governor Swann, who mistook execution papers for more requisition orders. Norrington and Swann make eye contact, distressed, as Beckett stated that the Brethren faced extinction.[9]

In London, England, a town crier held a execution sign, which was a notice of public executions to take place in the 23rd year of King George II's reign, while standing in front of the Old Bailey, where Joshamee Gibbs was tried in a case of mistaken identity as Captain Jack Sparrow, until Sparrow himself arrived to rescue Gibbs from the gallows. After Sparrow escaped the royal guards, now-Privateer Barbossa threatened to hang Gibbs unless he helped in the British Navy's search for the Fountain of Youth. Later, aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge, Jack learned from Angelica about a prophecy foreseen by the quartermaster that Blackbeard would meet his death by a one-legged man, which she called a death sentence,[10] with the one-legged man later revealed to be Barbossa.[11]

Behind the scenes

Executions first appear in Irene Trimble's junior novelization for the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.[1][2] The term "execution" was first used through the mention of "Execution Dock" by Elizabeth Swann in Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio's early screenplay for The Curse of the Black Pearl posted on Wordplay in September 2005,[12] and was later published in the 2006 reference book Pirates of the Caribbean: The Visual Guide,[4] as well as the 2007 reprint The Complete Visual Guide.[5] The term "death sentence" was first used in the Visual Guide books,[4][3] as well as James Ponti's junior novelization for the 2011 film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.[10][11]

Appearances

Sources

External links

Notes and references

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003 junior novelization)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide, pp. 24-25: "Norrington"
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Visual Guide
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide, pp. 26-27: "Pirates Beware!"
  6. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide, pp. 44-45: "Lord Beckett"
  7. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide, pp. 26-27: "Wedding Bells"
  8. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
  9. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (junior novelization)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
  12. ↑ Wordplayer.com: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio