Pirates on the Piankatank

On May 12, 1729, at 1 A.M., five men and a woman quietly slipped aboard the sloop John and Elizabeth, which anchored at the Piankatank River’s mouth. After they seized the vessel’s tackle, they quickly overpowered the sloop’s master, John Grymes of King George County, and his servant, Alexander Abbott, who were sound asleep below deck. Grymes later said that he was forcibly placed in his cabin and that the sloop’s hatch was secured. The self-proclaimed pirates’ leader, and his accomplices stole Grymes’ and Abbott’s clothing and other personal belongings. Then, at daybreak, the would-be pirates weighed anchor. However, because none of them were unfamiliar with the Piankatank’s channel, the sloop quickly ran aground. 

When a high tide finally put the vessel afloat, currents carried it across the Chesapeake Bay to the Tangier Islands. Some of the men went ashore to obtain drinking water, but left hastily because they thought that the island’s inhabitants seemed suspicious of their motives. Over the next few days, the John and Elizabeth drifted up and down the bay, at the mercy of the tides and the sloop’s inexperienced crew. Finally, when a strong wind blew the sloop toward the mouth of the York River, the pirates allowed their two prisoners to go ashore in a small flat, clothed in some raw hides that were stowed aboard. 

​When the pirates were caught, they were identified as Edmund Williams, George Caves, George Cole alias Sanders, Edward Edwards, Jeremiah Smith, and Mary Critchett. All six were hauled before the Court of Admiralty on August 14 th , whereupon Grymes and Abbott identified them as convict servants. Passenger manifests for vessels that brought convicts to Virginia in 1727 and 1728 include the names of George Cole, Jeremiah Smith, and Mary Critchett, convicted felons who came to Virginia aboard ships registered in the Rappahannock River. Edward Edwards, a convict who arrived in early 1725, seems to have been the Piankatank pirates’ ringleader. All of six of the accused were found guilty and sentenced to death.

Taken from Lost Landscapes, Untold Stories: Mathews County, Virginia.