Kerr: The Isles of Shoals' Bloody Lady

Rachel Wall. Remember the name.

Not because she was the kind of heroic figure we’ve celebrated here in the Seacoast over the past few centuries, but because she could be the local metric by which we measure absolute evil.

Due to its coastal location, the folklore of our region includes fascinating legends of piracy, featuring such famous names as Blackbeard and Captain Kidd. But the cruelest, most bloodthirsty cutthroat to terrorize our waters may have been the young lady known as Rachel Wall, who based her operations among the Isles of Shoals back in the 1780s.

This is assuming, of course, that the facts of her life have not been overly embellished with fiction.

Rachel is believed to be the first female pirate born in America, and the last woman punished by hanging in the state of Massachusetts. So yes, she is an individual of historical significance – just not a very pleasant one. After all, history isn’t only shaped by heroes. For every character who’s made a noble contribution in creating the world we know today, there’s bound to be a villain coloring our darker legacies as well.

Rachel was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1760, to “honest and reputable parents” who taught her “the fear of God,” she claimed in a final confession shortly before her execution. She married a rough seaman named George Wall and found work as a servant in Boston. Linda Grant DePauw’s 1982 book “Seafaring Women” recounts how Rachel’s husband returned home from a voyage, accompanied by five other sailors and their female consorts, and Rachel joined them for a week of partying until all their money was gone.

That’s when the group decided to try their hand at piracy.

The men had served as privateers during the American Revolution, according to DePauw. Privateers were essentially legalized pirates during wartime, in that they raided and stole cargo from enemy ships. But now Wall and his companions decided to engage in the same activity for illegal profit, and Rachel joined in the fun.

The group borrowed a fishing vessel called the Essex (some claim it was stolen) and anchored at the Isles of Shoals, a collection of picturesque but physically treacherous little islands just outside Portsmouth Harbor, well known within the New England fishing industry. Their strategy was as simple as it was brutal, and echoed the deadly Sirens of nautical myth.

The cutthroats would ride out a raging storm within the rocky Isles, and then once the weather had passed they would put out to sea. When another boat came along on this busy shipping route, Rachel would hail the crew, pretending to be a damsel in distress lost at sea. Once the good-hearted seamen came aboard to offer assistance, her companions butchered the would-be rescuers. Then they plundered whatever they could and tossed the bodies overboard.

Their first victims were four fishermen aboard a schooner from Plymouth, Massachusetts, who offered the Wall crew a ride back into port, DePauw wrote. “In return for this kindness, the good samaritans had their throats cut,” she noted.

The murderers then transferred several hundred pounds of fish onto their own boat, sank the schooner, and brought the fish to shore to sell as their own catch. This was in addition to the victims’ cash they stole, and the fishing gear they returned to the Isles to retrieve and sell as well, claiming it had washed ashore during the big storm, according to DePauw.

Similar activities took place for a couple of years in the early 1780s, and ended only when Wall’s husband made a miscalculation during a hurricane off the Isles. When the storm initially subsided, the crew headed out to sea again – but this turned out to be merely the eye of the storm. Wall and one of his men were swept overboard during thrashing seas and drowned, and the survivors had to be rescued for real this time. In some versions of the tale, however, Rachel was the sole survivor.

A National Park Service website credits these villains with attacking at least twelve boats and murdering 24 or more sailors during their two-year reign. Author Greg Latimer claims in his 2020 book “Pirates and Lost Treasure of Coastal Maine” that the crew snared “$12,000 in plunder” during their escapades.

The young widow returned to Boston to toil once again as a servant, but didn’t give up her thieving ways. Apparently a highly skilled burglar, she took to sneaking onto ships anchored in the harbor at night to steal from their cabins, even as the sailors slept. She later confessed to swiping 30 pounds in gold coins from beneath the head of a sleeping French captain, and on another occasion stole a sea captain’s silver watch and the buckles from his shoes .

Her end came about one day in 1789 when she decided she liked a bonnet a teenage girl named Margaret Bender was wearing. Rachel threw the teenager to the ground and tried to steal the bonnet and her shoes. Bender’s family claimed she tried to rip the victim’s tongue from her mouth as well, the New England Historical Society reports.

Rachel was arrested for highway robbery and eventually sentenced to die by hanging. During her trial, according to the National Park Service, she claimed she never even laid eyes on Margaret Bender, “but admitted to several acts of piracy.” She also professed that murder was one of the few crimes she did not commit during her lifetime.

The Massachusetts Historical Society lists Robert Treat Paine – a signer of the Declaration of Independence – as the prosecuting attorney who called for Rachel to be put to death, and fellow patriot John Hancock as the governor who signed her death sentence. Rachel was not yet even 30 years old when her brutal life came to a halt. She was hanged at Boston Common on October 8^th of that year – the last woman to suffer such a fate, according to the New England Historical Society.

Mere hours before her public execution, she dictated a remarkable confession to a pair of her jailers which was published for public consumption, presumably as a warning to others tempted to follow her path. As part of her statement, she declared:

“I hope my awful and untimely fate will be a solemn warning and caution to every one, but more particularly to the youth, especially those of my own sex.”

D. Allan Kerr is a local history buff and member of the Portsmouth Athenaeum.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Kerr: The Isles of Shoals' Bloody Lady