Wild Will, or The Pirates of the Thames was written by “Percival Wolfe.” “Percival Wolfe” was the pseudonym of Charles H. Ross. Ross (c. 1834-1897) was a prolific author of penny dreadfuls and plays who is best-known for his comic creation Ally Sloper.

Wild Will, or The Pirates of the Thames begins with Will, a notorious criminal, sitting in Newgate prison, waiting to be hanged. He is miserable in his cell, but when he is brought before the public he walks to the scaffold with pride and spirit. The crowds watching the execution cheer for him, and the troops surrounding the scaffold fix their bayonets to prevent anyone in the crowd from trying to rescue him. Will sees an opportunity and seizes it, knocking down the hangman, jumping on a nearby horse, and riding hellbent through the crowd. Will makes good his escape and sells the horse at the first inn he comes to. At the inn he hears about a local gang of bandits called the “Thames Pirates” because they work on the river and rob ships. At midnight the inn’s landlord tries to break into Will’s room and rob him. Will fights off the attack and escapes up the chimney. Will makes it to the Thames but is captured by one of the Pirates and taken to their cave, a den of horrors in which Will sees dismembered bodies, a skeleton is chained to a wall, and a man buried up to his head in the earth. As Will watches a girl walks up to the buried man and bashes his head in, killing him. Will grabs the girl, who is defiant about the murder and acts as if she has nothing to be ashamed of. She tells him that the cave is a water cave, that the water is rising, and that she killed the buried man to save him from drowning to death, which she and Will are about to suffer through. Will manages to find a way out of the cave, but while rowing across the river they are found by one of the Thames Pirates. The Pirates take Will into their headquarters and explain that the girl he saved is Daft Kitty, who is pretty but insane. They offer to take Will into their brotherhood, but to join he must drink from the “BOWL OF BLOOD!”¹ Will refuses to drink from the bowl, and the leader of the Pirates, the Black Fox, tells Will that if he does not drink from the bowl he will be killed. Will and the Black Fox duel, and Will kills the Black Fox. Will then claims the leadership of the Pirates, which the Pirates accept–only the strongest can rule them, and Will just proved that he was stronger than the Black Fox. He downs the goblet of blood and feels inflamed.

Will revels with the Pirates in an orgy of food and drink and then leads them on a pirate raid on the Thames. While they are gone some of the pirates cut Kitty’s tongue out and then force her to commit a burglary for them. During the burglary the pirates kill several men and take hostages. During their raid Will and the pirates abduct four beautiful sisters, but Will is too much of a gentleman to rape them and he kills two of the more brutish-acting pirates who attempt to do so. Will lets the sisters go, and when the pirates complain about this he kills their mutinous leader. Further piracy and plot twists ensue. Will, acting the highwayman, is attacked by Claude Duval (see: Claude Duval, The Dashing Highwayman) and defeats him in a sword fight. They become friends, and Duval introduces Will to Sixteen String Jack Rann, one of the friends of Dick Turpin (see: Rookwood). Will, Duval, and Rann capture Jonathan Wild (see: Jack Sheppard. A Romance) and hijack Wild’s ship, the White Hawk. Their attempt at piracy using the White Hawk goes badly and the ship’s crew sets Will adrift at sea on an open boat. Will lands on an island off the coast of England, is captured and taken to Newgate, and is hanged, but he is cut free before he dies, at which point the dreadful ends.

Wild Will, or The Pirates of the Thames is among the more entertaining of the Depraved Dreadfuls of the 1860s. Despite its subject matter the dreadful has a distinct lack of melodrama. The author sets a good pace and alternates between character moments and action scenes. The dreadful does have a relatively high level of blood and gore, however, and unpleasant scenes, like the pirates cutting Kitty’s tongue from her mouth, are dealt with in a casual manner. The dreadful also has a number of racist and antisemitic stereotypes.

Of interest to modern readers is the fact that Wild Will shows Thames river piracy at all. While the majority of critical and popular attention has always been on Atlantic piracy, and to a lesser extent recently Asian piracy, the truth was that piracy on the Thames was a significant problem in the eighteenth and to a lesser extent the nineteenth century. London, as the hub of the new British Empire, saw a huge amount of nautical business, and naturally attracted criminals intent on robbing the inbound ships laden with everything from tea to tobacco. “Some of the inbound ships never made it to the Pool of London. Pirates operating further down the Thames toward Tilbury would waylay the vessels as they came in. Wapping locals would have all the time in the world to observe craft being laden with outgoing goods during the working day and would brief the pirates, who would intercept the unfortunate captains at night. Robbery with violence was the norm – any resistance would be dealt with at knifepoint.”² It was only in 1797 that any sort of organized police force was established to deal with the Thames pirates.

Print: Percival Wolfe, Wild Will, or, The Pirates of the Thames. London: Newsagents’ Publishing Company, 1865.

¹ Percival Wolfe, Wild Will, or, The Pirates of the Thames (London: Newsagents’ Publishing Company, 1865), 15.

² John Rennie, “River Pirates on the Thames,” EastLondonHistory.com, accessed Jan. 20, 2019, http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/river-pirates-on-the-thames/