John Gow

Scottish pirate

John Gow (c. 1698–11 June 1725) was a notorious pirate whose short career was immortalised by Charles Johnson in the 1725 work The History and Lives of All the Most Notorious Pirates and Their Crews. Little is known of his life, except from an account by Daniel Defoe, which is often considered unreliable, the report on his execution, and an account by Mr. Alan Fea, descendant of his captor, published in 1912, almost two centuries after his death.

Gow was probably born in Wick, Caithness, to William Gow, a merchant, and Margaret Calder. He was raised in Stromness, Orkney, where he went to school and learned to sail a ship.

Prior to August 1724 he crewed a voyage from London to Lisbon and back, during which he plotted to seize control of the vessel. He failed to attract sufficient numbers, however, and the effort went nowhere. In London, word spread about the attempt, so Gow fled to Amsterdam, where he joined the Canary Islands bound Caroline as second mate. After several months' layover in Santa Cruz on the island of La Palma, on 3 November 1724 the Caroline departed for Genoa, Italy, with a cargo of beeswax, leather, and woolens. Over the next few weeks the Revenge began attacking British ships in the area, starting with the Delight (12 November) and the Sarah (21 November). The crews were usually set adrift, though some deemed useful were given the option of joining Gow's crew. Over the next few months, Gow attacked several other ships plying the region.

After a successful career as a pirate off the Iberian Peninsula, Gow decided to return to the Orkney Islands. He was running low on supplies, and the authorities were on his trail. Arriving in early 1725, he adopted the name Mr. Smith (Gow being Gaelic for Smith), and renamed his vessel the George, According to other accounts, some of his prisoners escaped there and notified the authorities. Rather than surrender, Gow and his men successfully raided the Hall of Clestrain on 10 February 1725,

According to the Newgate Calendar, Gow was slow to die when he hanged. To relieve his pain, some of his friends pulled at his legs, but this just broke the rope, causing him to tumble to the ground, from where he was gathered up and hanged again. After his death, his body (along with those of his crew) was left in the River Thames. The bodies were then tarred and suspended on the riverbank, as a warning to other would be pirates.

Daniel Defoe wrote a fictional account, The Pirate Gow. Gow also served as the model for Captain Cleveland in Sir Walter Scott's novel The Pirate. Gow was also featured in some of the writings of George Mackay Brown. The factual account of the capture of Gow was featured in the book The Real Captain Cleveland by Allan Fea (1860 1956), a distant relative of the pirate catcher, and published by Secker, London, in 1912.