Dead Men Do Tell Tales | Goat Island, Newport, Rhode Island
Season 3 Episode 3
The Grim is opening the gate to Goat Island’s Pirate Graves, an unmarked burial ground on the shore of Newport Harbor in Rhode Island. In July 1723, twenty-six pirates captured from the sloop Ranger were hanged at Gravelly Point in the largest single execution of pirates the American colonies ever carried out. They were then rowed to Goat Island and buried between the high and low tide marks, denied hallowed ground even in death. This episode follows their story from capture to gallows: the Royal Navy chase that ended their careers, the Admiralty trial that decided who would hang, and the shoreline where they still lie, unmarked and unclaimed.
Along the way: Charles Harris, a merchant first mate forced into piracy who was captaining his own sloop within a year; the notoriously cruel Edward Low, who slipped away into the dark near Block Island; the battle with HMS Greyhound off Long Island; nineteen-year-old Marblehead fisherman Joseph Libbey and the forced-man plea that failed to save him; Cotton Mather’s sermon on the dead as “terrible Preachers”; and the ghost lights and phantom ship said to haunt Goat Island and Gravelly Point.
A gothic deep dive into Rhode Island history, colonial piracy, and the haunted pirate graves beneath Newport Harbor, from The Grim.
