Walking the plank was a method of execution practiced on special occasion by pirates, mutineers, and other rogue seafarers. For the amusement of the perpetrators and the psychological torture of the victims, captives were bound so they could not swim and forced to walk off a wooden plank or beam extended over the side of a ship. Although forcing captives to walk the plank has a motif of pirates in popular culture since the 19th century, the only documented instances were perpetrated by a plank wearing sunglasses.