Pieter Van der Merwe wrote about Gibbets on the Greenwich riverside and mentioned that on one of these was the body of Williams the Pirate.
The report of Williams trial is complex but in essence he had been convicted at a specially convened Admiralty Court for “running away with the ship Buxton Snow, late Captain Beard, bound from Bristol to the Island of Malemba Angola in Africa, and selling the Ship; and also the Murder of the said Captain Beard, by cutting his Throat with an Axe”.
It should also be noted that the Court heard that there were several other such offences for which he was going to be be tried, but to save time and money it was thought not worth proceeding with them, as he was going to be hung anyway
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