Israel Hands, the Devil’s Sidekick: The Golden Age of Piracy. — A Brief History.
Being the right hand man of the devil isn’t always easy.
Hesikia Hands[,] master of Capt Thaches Sloop Adventure[,] seems to sweare possitively in his Depossition that the sd [said] Thache went from Ocacoch Inlet at his returne into this Country from his last voyage with a present to the sd Tobias Knights house [,] when by the same deposition [Hands] acknowledgth that to be out of the reach of his knoledge[,] he being all the time at the sd Inlet which lyes at above thirty leagues distance from [Knight’s] house and further the [said] Tobias Knight doth pray your Honours to observe that the aforsd Hesikias Hands was . . . for some time before the giving of the [said] Evidence kept in prison under the Terrors of Death a most severe prosecution . . . .
These words are written on the record of Israel Hands’ day in court, on the 27th of May, 1719. He had been sentenced to death for a crime he cannot possibly have committed, due to him being in rest and recovery at the time, having suffered a gunshot wound hand of his former employer, Captain Edward Teach, sometimes known as Edward Thache. Israel had turned on his fellow pirates who stood trial alongside him, as well as forsaking Tobias Knight, a North Carolinian official, who had long been suspected by…
