It’s the 11th of October 1652. We’re in a Dutch fort on the shores of Table Bay in modern-day Cape Town where a sailor named Yan Blank is in very big trouble. He’s just been found hiding in the wilderness around the settlement. Authorities are relieved to find him. He had been missing for 9 days after all. But to the commander of Table Bay, a man named Yan Van Reebec, this sudden disappearance looks a bit like a case of desertion.
“And the sentence for this crime is perhaps the worst naval punishment in human history. Keelhauling.“
To make matters more troubling, under the justice system of the Dutch VOC, Yan Blank is not entitled to a fair trial under the judgment of his peers. Instead, Commander Van Reebeck and a few of his inner circle will decide whether or not Blank is guilty of this accusation and what his punishment should be.
Behind closed doors, Reebeck and his lieutenants come to a decision within only a couple of hours. Yandlank is found guilty of desertion and for just 9 days of being AWOL, he is sentenced to an unbelievably savage fate. He’s to be keelhauled, then to receive 150 lashes, and on top of that, he will then be enslaved for 2 years as punishment for deserting the VOC.
Quite an expensive 9-day holiday. The process began by running a line of rope underneath the vessel, either along or across the keel, the backbone of the ship. Which way the rope was sent depended on the severity of the crime and whether or not the authorities wanted the victim to survive. Since Yan Blank was sentenced to 150 lashes and then two years of slavery after his keelhauling, it’s reasonable to assume that the rope was installed sideways under the ship rather than along the entirety of its length. Either way, once the length of rope had been fastened, the victim was then tied to this line by the hands and feet and would be shoved off the side of the vessel and plunged into the water. Given the size of typical Dutch vessels during the 17th century, this would have been equivalent to falling from a one-story building. And at that height, the water would feel almost solid if you struck it at an awkward angle.
Since Yan had his hands and feet fastened, he was almost guaranteed to essentially belly flop into the ocean, stunning his body completely with the slam, whilst his scream was muffled with seawater. Given this was October, the water itself could have been as low as 5° C. Even without the physical trauma, hypothermia would have been a considerable risk.
By this stage, Yan Blank is in complete pain all over his body. His hands and feet are bound. He’s blind under the water. And most crucially, he can’t breathe. All of this already, and the actual process hasn’t even begun yet. It wouldn’t be until he had landed in the water and the crew had tightened the rope that the true torment could commence.
With a stern command from the officer, the men would begin to heave the rope from the opposite side of the ship, dragging the victim along the belly of the vessel. And here’s where it gets so much worse than you think. See, the underside of these naval vessels did not look at all like the varnished, neatly kept decks that were maintained above water. Instead, the belly would be riddled with barnacles, flaking wood corroded by salt and algae or mossy slime. All of this makes for a slippery surface studded with razor sharp crustation shells, barnacles in particular, which form knifelike ridges that can be several centimeters thick. The process would be equal in effect to dragging someone over a bed of serrated blades broken in pieces and arranged at irregular patterns.
Those forced to pull the line had a heartbreaking decision to make for their comrade underwater. Pull too slow and the victim will drown before he reaches the other side. Pull too fast and he might not make it in one piece. As Yan Blank felt the tugging on the rope, he would descend further into the black water and eventually be ground into shreds against the underside of the ship.
Even lightly brushing barnacle covered rocks whilst swimming can lead to some pretty nasty gashes. So being physically dragged across them would have been catastrophic. As Blank’s skin and flesh was ripped away from his back, arms, and legs, he would have also been scalped by whichever razor sharp shell dug into his skull.
And the whole time he would be unable to take a breath or scream, nor would he have any way of knowing how much longer the process would take. We don’t know how long Blank spent underwater, but we know that he survived because after being dragged out from the sea, he was left to hang for hours, still tied to the rope with limbs and fingers half amputated and his face and head completely disfigured by the countless lacerations and gashes inflicted on him.
To add salt to the wound, quite literally, the ocean spray lapping off of the ship would continue to season his wounds, making an already bloody and painful fate that much more excruciating. And although he was breathing for now, his odds for future survival were miserably low. Barnacles often carry bacteria and other microorganisms. And since his wounds were now festering in salt and filth, infection became the next ordeal to combat. Sepsis, tetanus, and gangrene were now major risks. And in a pre-antibiotic world, these are often as good as death sentences. This is part of the reason that keelhauling was so utterly dreaded by sailors. Even if you were able to survive the ordeal of being torn apart under the belly of a vessel and you were able to hold your breath long enough to avoid drowning, you still very likely to die from your wounds or in the case of extreme luck, be just permanently disfigured.
As a half-dead, wholly broken Yan Blank dangled over the mast of the ship for his crew mates to gorp at. It must have been front and center of his mind that survival would still not be the end of his torments. He still had 150 lashes with a cat of ninetails to endure. An unthinkably high number when 50 lashes alone is often enough to kill a man. And of course, should he survive that 2 years of slavery to endure. It was recorded that he did go on to take those lashes, but our sources stop there. And we’re not sure if Yan was sent off to slavery afterwards in a completely crippled and useless state or if he passed away during the lashing. Either way, for his fellow sailors in the VOC, many will remember Yan Blank’s fate by the keelhauling, a process that was reserved for Dutch seaman found guilty of the worst possible crimes.
I mentioned Dutch sailors specifically because during this time the Netherlands was the only navy that actually had keelhauling as an official punishment for delinquents with other major navies at the time such as the French and British preferring to use other punishments. In fact, the word itself actually comes from the Dutch term keelhalen which literally translates to killing or of course keelhauling. Although it’s worth bearing in mind that the fact that it was only officially practiced by the Dutch doesn’t mean that they were the only ones doing it. And there are controversies surrounding its unofficial use on voyages far from home, including an incident in 1880 when George Shaw Leev was confronted in Parliament with a recent report from Italy of a keelhauling on HMS Alexandria. Although he denied that such an incident had ever taken place, it’s also a bit of a myth that this was a pirate punishment. I would imagine pirates did probably use it in some cases, but the best records are of official uses under state navies like the VOC. This actually isn’t that surprising since pirates didn’t really have the same level of hierarchy aboard the ships, and they were typically much more egalitarian in terms of organizational structure, relying more on mutual cooperation and collective decision-making instead of top-down command, which relied on discipline to maintain order amongst crew members.
Let’s remember also that all pirates by default lived under the constant threat of death since any caught by the authorities were hanged. So these people are already risking their lives every day. Execution therefore as a means of deterrence and persuasion doesn’t really work the same way. That said though with full crew support capital punishments could be netted out. But these were rare and keelhauling was even rarer with usual punishments being marooning or a simple bullet. But this video is about keelhauling, not pirates. And although it was only officially practiced by the Dutch Navy, one of the best records we actually have for keelhauling comes from the British.
Although it should be said that they were actually watching the whole affair rather than doing the gruesome act themselves. And this firsthand account appears in a late 19th century issue of the Malbor Express. I’ll do my best to summarize it here for you, but I’ve left a link to the article itself in the description. The whole thing went down off the coast of Alexandria, where a British journalist saw two Egyptian sailors who were sentenced to this fate after committing what he describes as unnameable crimes under Ottoman law. The men were tied together and then to a rope that had run down the keel of the ship. So this time it was lengthwise all the way down the spine and then they were shoved overboard.
“They both screamed as they fell into the water and as the distance from the gangway to the surface was quite 14 ft, they must have been more or less hurt, but this was only the beginning of their miseries.”
The crew were then told to haul the rope, and the band on the ship started playing a solemn tune.
“I saw the two wretches go under and disappear. From the time they went under the surface of the water till they reappeared at the other side of the ship was just 24 seconds. It seemed to us to have been an hour.”
Then the author tells us that these unfortunate souls were forced to undergo the process not once but twice. And to use his words:
“The first frightful journey had terminated by their being scratched and torn. At the end of the second, they were mutilated. The nose of one wretch was torn straight away. One ear was gone, and the shreds of the clothing he had worn clung to him only where they were held by his bonds. He was blood, literally from head to foot. His companion’s condition was equally horrible.”
After this, they were then left to dangle off the side of the ship before eventually being scraped up the side of the vessel, striking against the ring bolts, the chains, and every cruel obstruction until they swung in free over the deck. Finally, they were released untied, both unconscious and most likely dead. At this stage, the correspondent actually asked those aboard if the men were dead, and he was told by the crew that it wasn’t a matter of public concern. And then finally, he tells us that:
“Nevertheless, we were offered coffee and cigarettes. It is needless to say that we did not accept either. For my part, I should rather have seen the ship’s company shot than accept any hospitality at the hands of its officers.”
So, needless to say, this correspondent didn’t like what he saw. Now, this has all been pretty dark and troubling so far. So, I’d like to end on another story about Keelhauling that frankly blew my socks off. And although it still involves some gruesome details, it’s such a banger of a story that when I came across it during my research, I just had to share it with you.
So, in the 19th century, there was a 17-year-old Spanish kid named Pedro Ramon Ikahal. You may recognize this name because he’s actually the brother of Santiago Ramon Ikahal, the Nobel Prize winner who founded the study of neuroscience. In fact, in the academic world, all of Pedro’s family were pretty big hitters, and expectations were high for his studies and performance. But in 1871, he failed one of his exams. And since he was utterly terrified of his father’s reaction, he decided to just skip town. And instead of facing the music, he walked to France, where he then boarded a ship called Queen, which was bound for South America.
Since Pedro didn’t have any money, he decided to essentially sneak on board as a stowaway. But since it was a 3-month journey across the Atlantic, he was predictably found during the voyage. Once he was discovered, the crew demanded that he pay the price for the ticket. And when he explained that he didn’t have the money to pay them, they decided that the next best thing was to make him pay in blood. And so he was subjected to keelhauling. But due to the fact that the ship was relatively new and had just been prepped for the journey, the belly of the vessel was more or less clean of barnacles, and he was fortunate enough to survive the whole process in more or less one piece. This clearly did not teach him the lesson that it should have and just a few days later after being back on his feet, he got involved in a dispute with an Italian passenger which ended in a knife fight and that Italian dying as a result.
3 months or so later, Pedro makes land in Uruguay sometime around early 1872. Lost and without much of a plan, he decides to join up with some revolutionary forces involved in a civil war, eventually sustaining a wound to his chest that leaves a nasty scar for the rest of his life. However, after his injury, he’s taken off of the front line and it’s discovered by his superiors that despite Pedro’s passion for adventure, he’s actually quite an educated young chap and literacy in the area was in short supply. So Pedro gets a tasty promotion becoming secretary to none other than Brigadier Tomato Apparitio. By this stage he’s in his early 20s and has run away from home after a failed exam, being keelhauled, had a knife fight at sea, and survived an enormous battlefield injury to the chest whilst also being a threemonth voyage from home. And now he’s secretary to one of the most powerful men in South America.
I think we can all agree young Pedro has done very well to land on his feet after such a turbulent start to life. But to no one’s surprise, he makes another rash decision and within a few years would find himself back in hot water after trying to desert by stealing his boss’s horse and pistol and then high-tailing it into the countryside. After being captured, the jig was up and Pedro was found guilty of desertion. He was lucky though and his fate was not to be keelhauling but instead death by firing squad. But once again fortune intervened and after some diplomatic wiggling with his dad pulling strings behind the scenes, Pedro finds himself pardoned with all charges dropped. And in 1878 he returns to Spain a free man and then goes on to start producing groundwork research with his brother on neurology as well as making his own waves in the field of histologology which is the study of organic tissue in living things. He would go on to live until the age of 96 finally passing away in December of 1950 making him one of the last people in living memory to ever witness let alone be a victim of keelhauling.
So yes, quite a life and fortunately for the scientific community, one that was not cut to ribbons under the belly of a ship. Most of course were not so lucky.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
