Alice Earle's 1896 Curious Punishments of Bygone Days showed readers what bilboes did to the legs of lawbreakers. Bilboes (always plural) or grillos are iron restraints normally placed on a person's ankles. They have commonly been used as leg shackles to restrain prisoners for different purposes until the modern ages. Bilboes were also used on slave ships, such as the Henrietta Marie.
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Components forming more than eighty bilboes have been recovered from the Henrietta Marie, an English slave ship that was wrecked in the Florida Keys in 1700 after delivering slaves to Jamaica. Bilboes were also found in the Molasses Reef Wreck, a Spanish wreck in the Turks and Caicos Islands from very early in the 16th century, which may have been a slave ship hunting Lucayans in the Bahamas. Bilboes were used to fasten two slaves together, so that the eighty-plus bilboes found on the Henrietta Marie would have restrained up to 160 slaves. Bilboes were usually not placed on every slave transported, nor were they left on for all of a voyage.
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Cottman 1999 Konstam:140-41 Malcom 2001 Malcom (Bilboes) Malcom (Hull) The Henrietta Marie wreck has yielded more than 7000 objects (and more than 30,000 glass beads), the largest collection of artifacts known from a slave ship. They have contributed greatly to our understanding of slave ships and the slave trade. Parts making up more than 80 bilboes have been found at the wreck site. As bilboes were typically used to shackle pairs of slaves together, the ones found at the wreck site could have restrained more than 160 slaves.
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Only the slaves that were strongest and presumably most likely to revolt or escape were kept in bilboes for all of a voyage.
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The person was often restrained barefoot, which added to the humiliation. They were popular in England and America in the colonial and early revolutionary periods (such as in the Massachusetts Bay Colony). They were used in England to "punyssche transgressours ageynste ye Kinges Maiesties lawes". Bilboes appear occasionally in literature, including Hamlet (Act V, Scene 2: "Methought I lay worse than the mutinies in the bilboes") and the journals of Captain Cook.
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Bilboes occur in different sizes, ranging from regular large ones to smaller sizes particularly fitting women's ankles and even sizes to restrain the wrists. The rod can also be fastened to a wall or a rigid trestle as it was mostly used in prisons. This way the person is restrained to stay put, while only allowing movement of the feet sideways inside the limited range the rod allows for. Bilboes used as public punishment in former times combined physical discomfort with public humiliation.
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The shackles were rigidly fastened to the wall of her confinement cell, so she was forced to remain in one place for the entire duration of her imprisonment. The charges were eventually dropped, so Louisa Calderon was released from her incarceration and the bilboes were taken off after months of being incessantly restrained. This excessive form of incarceration along with the preceding torture was later assessed as inhumane in a juridic reappraisal. Bilboes were used to restrain slaves on slave ships.
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When Thistlewood found out, he had her flogged and "put in the bilboes". Similarly, that same year, Damsel was bitten by a dog, but dreaded the European medical practices, and tried to hide the injury from Thistlewood, who, when he discovered it, "flogged her well & put her in the bilboes". Damsel instead put her trust in a slave named Will, who was owned by a Mr Wilson, and happened to be an obeah man. Many slaves had more confidence in creole "doctresses" than in European medicine.
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The male captives were normally chained together in pairs to save space; right leg to the next man's left leg — while the women and children may have had somewhat more room. The chains or hand and leg cuffs were known as bilboes, which were among the many tools of the slave trade, and which were always in short supply. Bilboes were mainly used on men, and they consisted of two iron shackles locked on a post and were usually fastened around the ankles of two men. At best, captives were fed beans, corn, yams, rice, and palm oil.
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After one beating, Solon ran away, but eventually returned, whereupon Thistlewood had him flogged and "a collar and chain put about his neck", after which he was immediately sent out to fish again. This was a punishment meted out to Solon on several occasions, often after he was recaptured following an attempt to run away. In 1776, when Lincoln failed to catch enough fish, Thistlewood ordered the unfortunate slave-fisherman to be flogged and "put him in the bilboes".Hall, In Miserable Slavery, pp.
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The ship that wrecked on Molasses Reef has not been identified despite extensive searches of records. Over 120 European ships are known to have been lost in the Americas by 1520, but none of them can be matched to the Molasses Reef Wreck. The lack of personal possessions in the wreck indicates that the crew was able to abandon ship, but there are no signs that the Spanish tried to salvage the armament on the ship. Four sets of bilboes were found at the wreck site.
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The wreck was found in 1972 during a magnetometer survey by a boat operated by a subsidiary of Mel Fisher's Treasure Salvors, Inc. (Fisher's company was searching for the Nuestra Señora de Atocha and other ships of the 1622 Spanish treasure fleet that had wrecked along the Florida Keys in a hurricane.) Two anchors and a cannon were found on the first visit. The wreck was visited again in 1973. Some artifacts were collected from the wreck, including bilboes, iron shackles that were used to restrain slaves.
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The bilboes may have been for use in punishing crew members, but they were also used to restrain slaves aboard ships. The ship may have been hunting for Lucayans in the Bahama Islands (in the broader sense that includes the now politically separate Turks and Caicos Islands) to take to Hispaniola as slaves (technically, as workers in the encomienda system). As the natives of Hispaniola died out, the Spanish recruited Lucayans to replace them. By 1513 almost all of the Lucayans had been removed from the southern Bahama Islands.
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According to legend, the device was invented in Bilbao, Basque Country within Spain, and was imported into England by the ships of the Spanish Armada for use on prospective English prisoners. However, the Oxford English Dictionary notes that the term was used in English well before then. Bilboes consist of a pair of "U"-shaped iron bars (shackles) with holes in the ends, through which an iron rod is inserted. The rod mostly has a large knob on one end, and a slot in the other end into which a wedge or a padlock is driven to secure the assembly.
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The official name of the town is Bilbao, as known in most languages of the world. Euskaltzaindia, the official regulatory institution of the Basque language, has agreed that between the two possible names existing in Basque, Bilbao and Bilbo, the historical name is Bilbo, while Bilbao is the official name. Although the term Bilbo does not appear in old documents, in the play The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare, there is a reference to swords presumably made of Biscayan iron which he calls "bilboes", suggesting that it is a word used since at least the sixteenth century.Beascoechea 1999: 138 There is no consensus among historians about the origin of the name.
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Other items found at the wreck site include trade goods apparently left over from trading for captives in Africa, goods acquired in Africa in addition to captives (including an elephant tusk), and gear belonging to the ship and crew. Part of the hull of the ship, including much of the keel and part of the stern post, have survived, and have been measured and reburied at the site.Cottman 2001:46 Malcom (Bilboes) Malcom (Trade goods) Malcom (Artifacts) Malcom (Hull) Two copper cauldrons found at the wreck site shed light on the diet of the crew and slaves on a voyage. Malcom argues that the cauldrons were used to prepare separate meals for the crew and the slaves.
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Sesse and his crew engage an approaching ship in combat, and win the fight; Virolet, the captain, is seized, and the rest of the opposing crew and their ship are sent to the bottom. Sesse originally intends to kill Virolet too; but his bold defiance provokes Martia, and Sesse allows his daughter to do what she will with the prisoner. Virolet is shown locked in the "bilboes" (shackles) with Ascanio, who turns out to be a noble and humane young man who has tried to moderate his uncle's rule, though without success. Martia confronts the two prisoners, and reveals that she has fallen in love with Virolet; she will free them and escape with them, if Virolet agrees to marry her.
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