Saturday 6 September 2008

Today’s adventure took me down rive a bit to the area of Wapping. Now a rejuvenated area of residential flats, it still holds some of the history of the old warehouses, dockyards and other associated maritime industries. The draw for me (other than the pubs, of course) was the site just below The Old Wapping Steps, Execution Dock.

Here pirates and other water-borne criminals were hung and allowed to be submerged in the rising river tides. The nefarious Captain Kidd was one of those to meet his demise here.

The gibbet has been reconstructed for us tourists, but it doesn’t remove the fact that in this place that actually did occur over the course of 400 years.