Instructions to the LIVING, from the Condition of the DEAD

Instructions to the LIVING, from the Condition of the DEAD by Cotton Mather

“Instructions to the living, from the condition of the dead. A brief relation of remarkables in the shipwreck of above one hundred pirates, who were cast away in the ship Whido, on the coast of New-England, April 26. 1717. And in the death of six, who after a fair trial at Boston, were convicted & condemned, Octob. 22. And executed, Novemb. 15. 1717. : With some account of the discourse had with them on the way to their execution. And a sermon preached on their occasion.”

Pirates were not welcome in New England, and if they were captured, justice in the form of a trial and hanging was sure to be the result. Cotton Mather would visit the pirates in jail and preached to them before they were hung as he believed that anyone could repent and have peace after death.

On the 15th of November 1717, the Puritan minister accompanied the six condemned pirates of the Whydah Gally, as they were rowed across Boston Harbor to Charlestown to hang. The six men confessed and repented in the presence of Mather, but they were still hanged. This is Mather’s account.

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