Execution Dock, Wapping, London

In the episode, Gates leans heavily on maritime historian and author Colin Woodard, whom he credits as a recurring expert collaborator going back to his investigation of Olivier Levasseur. Woodard frames Henry Every not as a fringe figure but as the defining celebrity of 1690s piracy — someone whose fame was so widespread that later pirates like Blackbeard modeled themselves on Every's legend. That framing gives Execution Dock its investigative weight: this wasn't just where minor criminals were punished, it was where Every's own crew members were made into public examples, even as Every himself apparently slipped away.

Mainstream historians generally hold that Execution Dock was active from roughly the 15th century until the early 19th century, serving as the Admiralty's answer to the standard criminal gallows at Tyburn. The Admiralty had its own legal jurisdiction over crimes committed at sea, and hangings here were typically carried out at the low-water mark — a deliberate symbol that the punishment fell under maritime, not civil, law. The bodies were sometimes left in iron cages called gibbets along the riverbank as a warning to sailors passing on the Thames. No original structures survive, but the riverside location in Wapping retains strong historical associations.

The case of Henry Every himself remains genuinely open in ways that make him compelling beyond typical pirate mythology. Woodard tells Gates that Every pulled off 'one of the greatest scores in pirate history' — believed to involve the capture of a Mughal treasure ship — and then vanished so completely that his fate has never been definitively established. Whether he retired in obscurity, was quietly sheltered by sympathizers, or died in poverty is a question historians still debate. The execution of his crew members at Execution Dock in 1696 demonstrates that the authorities were actively hunting Every's network, yet Every himself was never captured.

Gates uses Execution Dock less as a dig site and more as an atmospheric anchor — a place to stand inside the historical record and let the stakes of Every's story become visceral. The episode doesn't claim to resolve where Every went or where his treasure might be; instead, it uses the site to establish, as Gates puts it, that the romantic image of pirates and buried treasure rarely matched the brutal reality most pirates actually faced. The Prospect of Whitby, conveniently offering what Woodard wryly notes is 'a view of a noose,' provides the setting for what is essentially a masterclass in contextualizing Every's extraordinary escape against that grim backdrop.