Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Pirates' Code

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

How common was it for a pirates to walk the plank? Was there a lot of rum? And were relationships allowed on ships?Kate is joined by Rebecca Simon, author of 'The Pirate's Code' to find out about the codes that pirates had to live by.Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Joseph Knight.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Avast, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here with Yee's Fair Do's Warning. Why am I talking like that? Well, you might have guessed. We're actually talking about pirates today.

So you have got a piracy, fair do's warning. And I've just said that now. I have no idea what a Pirates Fair Do's Warning would actually sound like. So let's just go for the regular one. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other. adult in an adulty way and you should be an adult as well. We are talking about pirates and all things piraty, which is a lot of fun but does inevitably stray into topics around murder, kidnapping, arson, looting, all the kind of things that you think that pirates get up to. And it's

actually quite violent. So you might not want to listen to that this morning. You might just want to be on your merry way and leave the rest of us landlubbers and swash, Buckleers to get on with this episode. You have been warned. If you've watched the Pirates of the Caribbean films, you'll know there is something called the Pirates Code. And this is actually something that crops up in a lot of films about pirates. But according to Elizabeth Swan in Pirates of the Caribbean, it's the code that was set down by the Pirates Morgan and Bartholomew. And one of the things that it says they have to do is take a prisoner to their captain. And those who fall behind, stay behind. A good rule for pirates and also when you're out drinking with your mates as well,

you can implement that one. Better off for everyone, I'm telling you. But was there really a pirate code? Was that ever such a thing? Did it really begin and end in palais? Well, it turns out that there is a whole lot more to life on a pirate ship. The rules set down by Morgan and Buffalo me, and take me to your captain, because pirate ships were a proper business and had to be run like a business. And today, Betwixt the sales, we are going to find out more. Let's do this.

What are you going to have? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the fire. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

Goodness, I'm fearful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, dear. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Shates, the history of sex scandal. and society with me, Kate Lister. If you are the CEO of a major corporation and your employees are not behaving themselves, maybe they're turning up drunk, maybe they're stealing from your other employees, maybe they're gambling at work, maybe they're flirting with other employees when they shouldn't

be. Okay, what do you do? Do you contact HR? Do you send out emails? Do you instigate a new training program about appropriate employee behavior at work? Well, you might be. You might do, but if you're a pirate captain, that's unlikely. Pirates aren't known for having HR departments, but you did need to keep order. We like to think of pirates as rollicking, roaring, drunken reprobates, swashing a buckle, raiding anything and everything in sight and generally misbehaving. And although that reputation isn't entirely undeserved, you can't run a business like that. And these ships were businesses. Things had to. be kept in line in order and the staff, i.e. the pirates, their morale was important as well.

So you can see the problem here. How do pirate captains manage to keep law and order on board a ship of people who have thrown law and order out of the window already? Hmm. Well, I am joined by Rebecca Simon to find out how. What were the rules of being a pirate? What was it like living on board a pirate ship? Were the crew members healthy? What did you do for fun if you were a pirate? And did they have a HR department? All these important questions and more.

Welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Rebecca Simon. How are you? I'm doing great, thanks. How are you? I am super grateful that you are here at 8 a.m. your time. Oh, it's no problem. Very early morning history is always to be admired.

Thank you so much. You're welcome. Especially what you research, piracy, the history of piracy. 8am, that's early for piracy. It is a little early to start thinking in terms of that mind frame, but I think I can do it. I can do this. We're going to power through. Oh, thank God.

So my first question to you is, as an expert in the history of piracy, what brought you to this subject beyond the fact that pirates are just cool? It was actually because of when I was doing my master's in history. I was taking a course on Atlantic history, and we read a book by Marcus Rediker called Villains of All Nations. And it was about pirates in the Atlantic world. And I only knew pirates of the Caribbean pirates up until then. So I didn't know they were even a field to study.

And kind of learning about what the realities were behind them, I thought, well, how did we get from like what pirates actually were like to Jack Sparrow? So I decided to make that my area of study because I was just been really curious to see why people perceive certain things in history quite differently and how pop culture relates to that and pirates were the perfect lens and I ended up really enjoying the subject. There are certain groups throughout history who have been subject to quite heavy revisionism and romanticizing them. I think probably we do this with almost every historical period, but there are some. Vikings, they're one that we think of. We have this very Hollywood idea

of it. More and more, the Regency period with Bridgeton, we think that everyone was just running around chagging everything, like dogs on heat. And definitely pirates. We've definitely romanticized pirates, haven't we? And do you know, I really do fancy Jack Sparrow. You're going to disabuse me of this notion entirely now, aren't you? I mean, honestly, so do I. So it's totally fine. No shame there. So let's start with a basic, very starter question here. What is a pirate? So legally speaking, a pirate was someone who robbed and murdered on a body of water. And this could be any body of water. The ocean, a sea, lake, river, stream, anywhere that the High Court of Admiralty had jurisdiction. And that was the maritime legal

ruling body out of England. So it was kind of their job to determine who ultimately was a pirate or not. So if I happy slapped somebody walking down the canal and nick their watch, I could be a pirate. You could be a pirate for that. I thought it was a sea thing, but it can be any body of water? It could be anybody of water. In fact, in the states, in the modern day Midwest, on the Mississippi, there's a huge problem of river pirates, people attacking steamboats and that sort of thing. I think Mark Twain wrote about it in like Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, one of those two. But that's as far as I know. Wow. Honestly, I did not know that. So you can have river pirates as well as sea pirates. Oh yeah. Lake pirates?

Yeah, I mean, sure. If the lake's big enough, you know, if anyone's just kind of standing around, why not? mugging dinghies and things like that. So it's really up to the admiralty to define who is a pirate and who is a privateer. Because sometimes the distinction between the two is a little tricky. It can be tricky. A privateer is basically under contract called a letter of Mark. And they're working for a government. And their job is to basically rob any enemy ship in a very specific area during a specific amount of time. and they're allowed to keep 80% of their loot.

And whether or not they kill anyone in the process, the government looks away, unless there's going to be a stink from whoever that they were murdering. But that was basically what a privateer was. A pirate was not under any jurisdiction at all. And there could be sometimes, say, governors in colonial America who are saying, no, that person isn't a privateer. They're actually a pirate. This was the case with Blackbeard, Edward Teach, out of North Carolina.

the governor was like, oh, he's our privateer. And the governor of Virginia was saying, no, he's a pirate. So there was always like a bit of a stink about it in some areas. But during wartime, this is when we see the most amount of privateers, because everything is sticky in war. Which kind of wars are we talking about here? What are some of the earliest? Because presumably people have always been nicking stuff off ships and things in water.

When does the concept of a pirate turn up? The concept of piracy has been around since the ancient world, really. I think the word pirate comes from a Greek word, that means nuisance, pretty much, and it became to be attributed to those on the sea. Yeah, so there's reports out of ancient Greece and Rome talking about pirates who are robbing merchant ships going across the Mediterranean. But what's interesting is that pirates back then were seen a little differently. Depending on where they were from, pirates were sometimes seen as almost respectable brave heroic people, depending on where they were from, or considered

to be the absolute worst. But they've always been around. Where would a good heroic pirate have come from? Was it very geographically specific? In terms of it being geographically specific, it really just depended on the case-by-case basis. But if the person came from a high-ranking position, whether it was through their family status or the fact that maybe they'd work their way up to being captain or a commander of some sort, then that's where their reputation could really lift up. Okay. So it's a lot older than I thought it was as well. So what is this golden age of piracy that I sometimes hear about. What happened at that point to turn it from, there's loads of people nicking stuff on the seas, into what we kind of romanticize and think of now as quote unquote,

the golden age of piracy. Yeah. So the golden age of piracy that when people are thinking about pirates, almost guaranteed they're thinking of golden age pirates. So what the golden age of piracy was, it was a period of times from the mid-17th century up until the first quarter of the 18th century where you had organized bands of pirates throughout the Caribbean. up and down the American coastline and in the Indian Ocean Red Sea and also along the west coast of Africa. And what's different about these pirates versus pirates in the past is this is the first time we see pirates who are really pirating for themselves, not for government, not for some sort of power, but specifically for themselves. In fact, there are some historians

who would argue that these are the first actual real pirates according to the legal definition that we have in history. And this is because these are some of the first times where we are seeing, large bands of organized pirates who are not working under government or anything like that, unlike in the past. So this is where you have them just robbing indiscriminately and everything like that. So it's a very organized period of time. Now, in terms of golden age, that has sort of been invented by historians or some historians who argue there wasn't a golden age, but it gives it kind of a good distinctive period of time in which we do see these really infamous pirates. Because after the first quarter of the 18th century, when the Golden Age of piracy ends, we don't see

such organized bands of pirates ever again, really. It's smaller groups. Today, it's still smaller groups, but working for government, such as out of Somalia. So it's still very different. So they effectively go freelance, I suppose, because when you were describing what a privateer is doing, which is robbing ships and maybe killing people, but for the government, that sounds a lot like what I would think of as a pirate. Well, in a way, some pirates you could argue were freelance because there actually were some pirates who did work for local governors in the Caribbean and in North America because there were a lot of trade restrictions that the British put on their colonies because they

didn't want them trading with any enemy ships or anything like that or any European competitors, such as the Spanish. And so what they did is they passed the Navigation Act, which banned trade from anyone outside of the British colonies or outside Britain. And so a lot of people turn to piracy to get goods that they couldn't get otherwise. They're bringing in goods. They're actually helping the economy in a lot of ways. And a lot of governors would either outright help them or at least turn a blind eye. And this would allow them to have some protections in the Caribbean and in certain parts in North America.

That makes sense when you say, explain it like that. One of the questions I wanted to ask you is who would turn to piracy? And I know that's a very generalized question, but what kind of people were employed on a ship, perhaps? They were employed for local government and then just going, sad this, I'm going to be a pirate. was doing that? Sailors mostly? Yeah, so mostly other sailors were the ones becoming pirates, but you would also have some people who maybe were severely marginalized or couldn't get work elsewhere, such as maybe freed or escaped enslaved people. They could find a space on some pirate ships, not all, but some. We like to think that pirates were these major social

justice all about the little person, but most weren't. There's still the vast majority were white people from different European countries. But mostly they were people who didn't want to work as a merchant anymore or in the Navy anymore because they would have harsher treatment. Their food wouldn't be as good. Wages would get withheld on a pirate ship. Wages were distributed equally depending on like what your job role was, such as like let's say you work in a school. The administrators would get the exact same pay and all the teachers would get the exact same pay. This is sounding more and more appealing. Yeah. So that would be the idea on a pirate ship. but you also had a lot of people who were forced into piracy, or so they claimed.

People who were captured, usually skilled mariners, such as carpenters, navigators, that sort of thing. Because I have read that argument in many accounts of piracy. And if you're not careful, it can present it as a kind of diverse utopia on board these ships, where people with disabilities and people of color and people, you know, like outcasts coming together and they had an equal share. But you're saying that, no, that we have to be a bit careful with that. You've got to be a bit careful with that because there were a lot of people who just became pirates because they wanted to get rich quickly. Because if you were successful as a pirate,

even if you were only moderately successful as a pirate, you could do it for like maybe a year. And then if you're lucky, go home and be pretty comfortable for a very long time. Most pirates didn't do that, though. A lot of pirates just kind of enjoyed that life, making a lot of their own money, not having to answer to anybody. A lot of them, once they would go on land, would spend all of their money. And when they were out, they would go back to piracy. The reasons were just so far. wide, but it's a little complicated to state. It's because, oh, they were guaranteed a really phenomenal utopian existence on a pirate ship. Pirateships were their own entities. They did consider themselves to be their own nation because they didn't really have loyalties.

But it's a bit more complicated than that. And the appeal of, look, everybody's going to get an equal share of the booty around here, lads. I can see why you'd sign up for that. But then also, I'm thinking that once you're on board a pirate ship, you're already outside the law, what are you going to do when Blackbeard or whoever turned around and goes, nah, you know, you know, not going to have an equal share. Did that actually happen that it was an equal share? It was pretty much guaranteed on a pirate ship because in order for you to be a pirate captain, you kind of had to make sure that the crew was pleased with you because most people who became pirates did so became pirate captains because they mutinyed. So they had to be really careful

with it. So if a pirate captain was known to be withholding wages, it could be a massive, massive problem and it could cause almost an uprising on board. So no respecting pirate captain who wanted to keep their position would ever withhold wages or ever cheat wages. That makes financial business sense. Absolutely. One of my favorite pirates that I've read about, if you can have a favorite pirates, it's very easily to overly romanticize these people and forget that they were actually violent thugsy nicked stuff and hurt people. But my favorite pirate is Sheer Yang, the leader of the Red Fleet. Can you tell me a little bit about her because her story will just blow your socks off? Yeah, so she was a pirate out of China in the early 19th century. And we're not completely sure of her origin. Some believe she may have been the daughter of a prostitute. We're not quite sure. But she married a very powerful maritime captain. And they began commanding a fleet of pirate ships, a very large fleet. Hundreds of ships, over a thousand pirates were under their command. And then when her husband died, she took over. And she had very strict rules in terms of conduct. She allowed women on board to be pirates or even as guests on the

ships and any man who was accused of any form of harassment or assault would either be imprisoned or even thrown overboard. So she was very, very strict. And she was extremely powerful, extremely wealthy to the point where the Chinese government had to pay her to retire. And supposedly when she retired, she may have opened up a series of brothels, but we're not positive about that. Wow. I've read that before that she very harshly punished any men turn into sexual assault, but the caveat to this is she was also known to forced marriages. Yes, she was known to forced marriages. And she was brutal as well. I mean, you've got to be to a mass. I mean, this is more like a floating mafia that we're dealing with here, isn't it?

Yeah. She was extremely brutal, very harsh rules. And it's really the only way you could keep pirates under good control in that sense, or at least try to maintain order. I mean, her story is just, it's incredible. And how it's not the subject of numerous documentaries, I'm absolutely not sure because it blows your mind about like, how did a woman manage to amass this much power? And I'm a historian of sex work. So the fact that she might have been born in a brothel is really interesting to me because you get these people that they're already born into liminal social positions. Like they're already on the outskirts of it. So maybe that made piracy easier or maybe I'm reaching.

What do you think? It's hard to say it really kind of would depend on the situation. Like that's what could almost be a little frustrating about piracy is that it's so very, Like for her, it was to do with her husband. And when he died, she was supposed to co-rule with her son. But she basically was the person running the show. That's pretty rare. Most women in piracy who were able to rise into some sort of power on a pirate ship

was because they were already married to someone very powerful, probably on land or at least something local. As far as I know, I don't think her husband had that type of position. But between the two of them, like her husband was extremely powerful at sea. She didn't create the fleet, but she took it over. And you don't often hear about pirates just retiring to a rather comfortable existence being bought off. They often meet rather sticky ends, don't they? Most of them.

It's very few pirates who are able to retire. The pirate Benjamin Hornagold. Oh, hang on. Say that name again. Hornagold. I know, right? That's. Oh, ho. He was actually one who was able to retire. But he became a pirate hunter. So in a way, he betrayed this entire brother in a way.

Or behave yourself. That would be interesting to see how that one played out with his former crew members, like when the news got out that actually now he's hunting pirates. Yeah, it was a really big deal. We don't actually know how his fellow crew members reacted to it, but a lot of pirates would very much rebel against trying to get a pardon as a pirate until a little bit later, such as confessing their crimes to be pardoned. A lot of pirates didn't want to do that.

Hornigold would encourage it as part of his role as a pirate hunter. But he didn't last long as a pirate hunter, only about a year or two before he died. He was playing a dangerous game. Did he die of natural causes or was it suspicious? I think it might have been in a storm. All right. I was imagining like black spots. Was that from Treasure Island, whether pirates get black spots?

Was that completely made up as well? No, it wasn't made up. That was a lot of pirates suffered from syphilis. Of course they do. Yeah, and they called it the pox. Like blackbeards suffered from syphilis. and some believe this is why he blockaded the port at Charleston to get medicine for him and a lot of his crew,

many of whom were suffering very severe effects of civilists. One of my favorite things that was retrieved from the wreckage of the Mary Rose ship is a urethral syringe that would have had mercury in it. It's a brutal-looking thing. Relieves the symptoms but actually makes you sicker, right? Like, I've seen pictures of those, and I'm very glad I'm not a man. That's all I have to say.

Oh, and like being stuck on board a ship, as well. But that actually brings me to another point I wanted to talk to you about, about day-to-day life on a pirate ship. You've signed up, you're going to get decent wage. What would the health of these people be like? Because it wasn't great on ships anyway. We know about scurvy and weevils and syphilitic urethral syringes. What was your health like as a pirate? As a pirate, it was actually a little bit better. And this is because of pirates plundering other ships. When pirates were stealing goods from ships, about half of the goods they stole was replenish their own stores, get tools they need, any food that they could get. And so they

weren't quite as malnourished as other ships were. They didn't suffer from scurvy quite as much because they were able to get fresher food a little bit more often. So we think of pirates, like they're taking everything to get themselves rich. Well, only about half. The other half was to make sure they could still survive. So as a result, they were generally a little bit healthier in terms of nutrition. In terms of injury, that, of course, they were just as much at risk as everybody else. Infections were rampant on pirate ships. Water was precious.

You're not really going to use it quite as much to bathe. If you did, it was probably the seawater, but that dried out your skin. It wasn't very good. So infection ran rampant on ships if there were severe injuries. So if they were lucky to have some sort of surgeon or some sort of person who knew medical knowledge, then maybe they might fare a little bit better. But in terms of that, they lived under the same risks and danger as everybody else. Pretty grim and amputations are plenty, I would imagine. And when you say a surgeon, we're not talking about someone that maybe has been through medical school and is properly qualified and working with a surgical team.

Right. If you're lucky, they might have maybe been apprentice under physicians or maybe had been a physician themselves, but that was quite rare. Usually a surgeon was one who could perform amputations. Oh, just the very thought. I mean, that's probably why they were into the rum quite as much. I mean, there was no anesthetic, was there? No, there was no anesthetic. So yeah, a lot of times when people had to undergo an amputation, they would just get them as drunk as possible until ideally they would pass out from it. And so, you know, hopefully not feeling very much pain, but you can only do so much. And just waking up from a blackout with a missing leg. Yeah, you're under an extreme amount of pain. Usually they would cauterize the wound with a hot iron, so it would heal faster.

And oddly enough, it did kill bacteria. So that actually was quite effective in making sure they could survive an amputation. but it's one of the most painful things you can ever endure. I'll be back with Rebecca and pirates after this short break. We're about to witness the first coronation at Westminster Abbey in 70 years. And gone medieval from history hit is your perfect companion for the event. From the earliest English coronation records. To what the royal regalia used in the ceremony means.

From the surprising origins of the recognition part of the service. To the lavish banquets that took place afterwards. I'm Matt Lewis and I'm Dr Kat Jarman and on Gone Medieval in April we'll be exploring the medieval origins of this feast of pageantry We'll try to pick out the key moments for you to watch and trace their origins back into the mists of time We've got some great guests and fascinating topics

To lift the lid on a moment when Let's face it, people all around the world will have gone medieval Subscribe and follow Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts I'm talking to you, I'm getting a real sense that this is, I suppose when you think of pirates, you think of a single ship, a bunch of thugs, and it's very violent and it's like attacks here and there. But I'm still getting a sense from you that it's much more business and organized than that. Almost, again, like the mafia. This isn't just people willy-nilly just attacking ships on the water.

Yeah, in fact, pirates actually, in a way, were probably more organized than other sailors. They had to be for their own survival. They had a very strict set of rules known as the pirate articles. We would know them probably out of pop culture as the pirate code. Is that real? The pirate code is real. It is real on at least four ships. Four pirate captains. Definitely had pirate codes.

This would have been Blackbeard. It would have been John Gow. It would have been Edward Lowe, who oddly enough was probably the most brutal pirate out there. And a man named John Phillips. We have records of them actually having pirate articles. So it's safe to assume that all pirate ships did have to have very strict rules to maintain law and order in safety. so that way they could effectively attack other ships.

And also, even those attacks were quite orderly. They didn't want to really fight that much because if they did, they're at risk of losing their own crew. So they would usually try to get the other ship to negotiate. And they would work with a border master who was in charge of all the goods on all the records of that to do it as peacefully as they could. Now, some pirates were extremely brutal. They burned the other ship into the ocean.

They would capture everybody. It really depended. But in general, you want to get in and out of there as fast as you can. That makes sense. You want this to be efficient, basically. Like any criminal enterprise, you don't want to be titting around wasting time or putting people at risk. And I would definitely surrender straightway. And I imagine that other sailors were like that just once they saw them come in of just like, right, if I take it, lads. Yeah, no, exactly. Most of the smart ones would absolutely surrender. Because a lot of sailors weren't trained fighters unless they were members of the Navy and pirates weren't going to attack Navy ships. They're going to go for merchant ships. So what were the pirate rules? What do we know were rules on board the ships? So rules on board the ships were probably pretty simple and probably pretty predictable. So one of the first ones was usually having to do with sharing out the goods and payments to make sure it was all equal. You would have rules such as making sure your weapons were cleaned and maintained at all times. You had rules such as no

snapping your gun in the hold, meaning no practicing any shots down below deck because you don't want to ignite any gunpowder or accidentally shoot somebody, you have rules about how much money you get compensated for. If you were severely injured and required an amputation, you got compensated quite heavily for it. You would have rules about food distribution. Some pirates had rules against drinking. Against drinking. Yes, believe it or not, there were some pirates who did not want any drinking on their ship, such as Bartholome Roberts, I believe. He didn't really allow drinking unless they were on land. And this is because you didn't want people making any mistakes or getting in fights or anything like that. They would ban gambling for the similar reason. So these were pretty much

the type of rules that you're going to see, basically anything to maintain law and order and keep everything organized. Punishment, all that to be a unanimous decision amongst the crew. Wow. What kind of punishments are we talking about here was walk the plank, marooning, all that stuff? Did that actually happen? Walking the plank wasn't a thing. The most severe punishment was probably being marooned. They actually show it pretty accurately in Pirates Caribbean. You're left with a gun with just one or two bullets and maybe one or two other supplies, and that was it. And you were left on your own. But that was probably the worst punishment you could get. Pirates did not kill people on their own ship unless something really terrible happened. And

that was very much looked down upon to put it really, really mildly. But in terms of punishments, it would usually be floggings, being whipped, maybe being keel-hauled, which was also one of the worst punishments you get, you're tied to a rope, thrown overboard, and you're basically dragged underneath the ship. If you survived it, you were so injured, you would probably die of your injuries, or at least be extremely disabled from it. So that was a horrific punishment. But all those had to be decided unanimously by the crew. So doling out of punishment was a huge deal. And what infractions would warrant that? What would be like the most severe crime as a pirate? It would usually be stealing money or stealing goods that didn't belong to them, stealing for their own share.

So that was probably one of the worst, absolute worst offenses you could commit. And also probably fighting or accidentally or deliberately killing another crew member. Those would be the worst crimes you could commit on a pirate ship. Tell me about the much disputed practice of metallurge. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Yeah, I think you're pronouncing it correctly. That's how I pronounce it as well. So a lot of people love to believe either one of two things, that all pirates were gay or bisexual at the very least, or absolutely none were.

It's either one or the other. And the reality is I tell people the amount of what we would refer to as gay people or LGBT people on a ship was probably a similar percentage as your own place of work. But Madalitaj, what it was, it was a agreement, like a civil union. agreement between two pirates. And it was usually legally binding to that way they could protect their goods in case one of them died, usually so one could be in charge of sending it back to their families on land, or at least so it could have somewhere to go. Whether or not these were for romantic reasons, we don't know. And this is why a lot of people are like, oh, gay marriage happened on ship. It wasn't marriage. It was kind of a legal agreement. And also what we need to understand is that the

concept of homosexuality that we have today is actually a fairly modern concept from like the 19th century. Going from the 18th century sort of backwards, we don't really have ideas of homosexuality. It was considered a crime. So the idea of these romantic homosexual relationships, some actually, of course, did happen, but it wasn't considered to be like a sexuality. Yeah, you wouldn't have come out that had been no concept of I am gay, which is kind of sad because I like the idea of floating gay pirates. We all do.

We all do. We love the idea that they were this one refuge, but likely not. They were probably civil agreements. There were pirates who outright banned any sort of sexual relationships. What's interesting is one of Blackbeard's articles was banning any women or boy being brought onto a ship. So this does imply that there was same sexual relationships. The Blackbeard banned this because he didn't want any problems on the ship.

Good thinking, Blackbeard. That'll stop the gay pirates having to. You don't want the jealousy or the. possessiveness to come out. No, no. Metal attach was more like an insurance policy that two pirates might get together and say, look, I've got stuff and you've got stuff. If you die, I'll inherit your stuff. So it was more like that than a marriage. It was, but the thing is it had to be someone that you very much trusted. So they were probably very close. And this is one of the reasons why we believe that a lot of them may have been romantic. And some of them might have been. But in general, of course, it had to be

someone you trusted. So you're going to be picking probably your best friend on the ship. That's true. You're not going to be picking like the office snitch, are you? Right, exactly. Yeah. Tell me about women on board ships. Obviously, we've got Shia Yang, who just, if anyone said to her, women can't be on ship, she'd have just been like, oh, I don't think so, sunshine. But we do have examples of other women pirates. I'm thinking, Anne Bonnie. Yeah, so we have the two most famous female pirates are Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid who sailed. Oh, Mary Reid. How can I forget about Mary Reid for a second there? Yes. Always forgotten about poor Mary Reid in the docu-drama. Netflix, Lost Pirate Kingdom. She was cut out entirely. Was she? Yeah, she was. She wasn't mentioned at all. And the show Black Sales, she doesn't come on until like the final episode, I believe.

Poor Mary Reid is often quite ignored. And I think it's because Anne Bonnie became a pirate because she married a pirate captain. She was a pirate for love, whereas Mary Reid just became a pirate for unknown reasons. Kind of a sexier story, I guess. It is the sexier story. And we also have more information about Anne Bonnie in general. There is a birth record of her in Ireland. she's from Ireland. Whereas Mary Reid, we don't have any records of her, any legitimate records of her at least. There's maybe two possible records, but we don't know if they're actually her. So they only sailed for a couple of months, really, between August and October of 1721. But not for long. No, yeah, just for a couple months, really, under Jack Rakum. And they weren't

even that successful as pirates. But what made them so unique is that they were women who were fighting alongside the men, according to survivors of their attacks. They dressed as men. They were described as cursing worse than any of the men, brandishing their weapons, being tougher than anyone. But those were held hostage. Did say that whenever they weren't fighting, they were wearing women's clothes and they weren't quite as involved. There's also the idea, again, this is a very popular idea that the two of them were lovers. I have heard that, yes. We have no evidence for it. I personally am not convinced. And the reason for this is because Anne Bonnie was married to Jack Brackham, Mary Reid did marry a member of the crew. They were both pregnant when they were on trial in

Jamaica in November that year. So I personally do not believe that. But I also don't want to do any queer erasure, which I know is also a huge deal in history, a huge problem. But there just is very little evidence. We get the idea from the general history of the pirates by Captain Charles Johnson, published in 1724. And he said that Anne Bonnie had started to fall in love with another new crewmate, but was, quote, very disappointed to find that this crewmate was actually a woman, Mary Reid. The idea that the two of them actually were lesbian lovers comes out of an essay in the 20th century about them called Ann Bonnie and Mary Reid, they kill pricks. This is where it was saying that they were definitely a romantic couple.

And this really took off. And so this is why we really believe this. That's just kind of like we've gone. There was two women pirates who knew each other. they must have been lesbians. Right, exactly. That's not the case. It's not always the case.

No, I mean, you know, who knows? They may have dabbled, but there's certainly nothing to support that at all. Exactly. There's no evidence whatsoever. What happened to them, by the way? Did they, I don't suppose they managed to retire. No, they didn't, unfortunately, or at least we don't know. So we aren't completely positive.

They were put on trial in November of 1721, and then they were both found guilty. And they were both imprisoned, but they were given a stay of execution, meaning that it was being delayed because they were pregnant. They wouldn't be executed for piracy until after they gave birth. Now, the vast majority of women who were imprisoned with a death sentence rarely actually had that sentence carried out. It was quite rare for a woman to be executed for a crime. So that probably would have been the case for them as well.

Now, Mary Reid, she died of what was known as jail fever in April 1722. And this is typhus coming from lice. It's also possible that she may have died from complications of pregnancy or, even childbirth. And Anne Bonnie, we actually don't know. It was believed for a very long time that Anne Bonnie somehow managed to go home back to North Carolina because she had moved to the Carolinas as a child with her father. So some believe that she lived the rest of her life and died in 1782. I don't know where that record comes from. I have not found it. But there were some records that were discovered in the last couple of years that have death certificates from St. Catherine's Parish

in Jamaica. And Mary Reid is listed in April of 1722. But what's interesting is Anne Boeh, Bonnie was listed as death in 1733. So it's very possible that she may have lived out the rest of her life in Jamaica. Speaking of Jamaica, and I know that I'm going to have to draw my questions to a close eventually, although I could just sit here go, tell me about Pirates. I want to know or no, want to know or no. But I do want to know about Port Royal in Jamaica that was described as the wickedest place on earth.

And there's amazingly colourful characters, and especially the women selling sex in this place. But tell me about it. What was this weird pirate Sodom and Gamora of Port Royal in Jamaica? Yes, the Port Royal was referred to as the Sodom of the Sea. Oh, okay. Yes. So it's a tiny island just off the coast of Jamaica that's barely connected to Kingston, Jamaica, the capital, by like a very narrow spit of land. And today it's just a quiet fisherman's village. But in the 17th century, it was an absolute hotbed for what were considered to be the worst degenerates of society. Now, Jamaica was a very contested political space.

It was always being fought over between Britain and Spain. And so when you have this intense warfare going on over a place, oddly enough, that's when it can become safe to go to because the resources are stretched so thin that you don't actually really have very much authority. There aren't very many authorities who could keep law and order. So a lot of people gravitated to this area who maybe didn't have lives elsewhere. So it became an area where a lot of criminals were transported to. for labor, but would find a life in Port Royal. A lot of prostitutes live there, and this is actually because many prostitutes

were sent to the Caribbean because of a woman shortage, and there were cases of a lot of homosexual activity happening because of a lack of women. And so the idea was, let's bring prostitutes over, so we've got loads of prostitutes. That is a part of history that is very often glossed over, just swept under the rug, but the British government, when I know what we'll do, lads,

let's round up the women selling sex and we're going to deport them to Jamaica. Exactly. And so because you have so many prostitutes there, it's going to also cause very specific sailors to start gravitating to this area and these are pirates. And this is because things are so unstable. The governors of Jamaica actually did work with pirates taking advantage of this unstable political situation. So Port Royal was basically a place where you have a lot of criminals, accused criminals,

you've got a lot of pirates going there and you have loads of prostitutes. And to accommodate this, you have tons of taverns. So public drunkenness was actually the problem in Port Royal. And that was considered to be the worst thing. And this is because according to records that I found, it's been estimated that there was one tavern for every 12 people in Port Royal. Ooh. Okay. Yeah. So public drunkenness ran rampant, which caused a lot of crime that was happening, lots of fights, lots of violence.

We've got loads of prostitution. So that means there's a lot of disease in terms of syphilis or what they called the pox back then. You've got loads of pirates coming in and out because the governors were allowing them to offload their goods. It was basically a place that no one was able to control until 1692 when a massive earthquake destroyed a huge chunk of the island and it caused a lot of people to scatter and the Royal Navy swept in and imposed law and order. There's something almost biblical about that of just like nobody could control it and then there's this sudden act of God and it's literally wiped off the face of the earth, isn't it? And they have done excavations on where it was and

they've recovered thousands of rum bottles. One of my favourite characters to come out of Port Royal was a woman called Mary Carlton, I think her name was, and she's described as being the most notorious strumpet of Port Royal. And the description of her goes that she was as common as a barber chair, no sooner was one out of her than the next one was in. I've never heard of her. That is amazing. I love it.

What was her name? Mary Carlton, I think her name was. But there's a description, and they've got amazing names. There's one called Salt Beef, Nan, and No Nonsense Pears. and just these crazy names. But yeah, I mean, what a way to enter the history books. But my final question to you, Rebecca, as a historian of piracy, this is a very childish question.

I don't care. Who's your favorite pirate? Oh, yeah, I love that question. One of my favorite pirates is Captain William Kidd, and this is because the idea of him being a pirate is so convoluted. He was a privateer who sailed in the Indian Ocean, trying to capture Dutch ships because they were a threat to the growing East India Company who were developing their relationships with India.

And kids sailed in like 1696, 1698 then, and he ended up robbing the wrong ship. According to him under pressure from his crew, he murdered a member of his crewman in a fight over this. And what he didn't realize is he upset the Indian Mughals, the merchant elite class so much that they threatened to cut off all trade to the British and almost declare an act of war.

So Britain had to really show and prove that they were, going to do everything they can to capture kids. So they conduct a massive manhunt against him. And Kid is, you know, when he realizes this, he offloads his goods in the Caribbean and he writes to a friend of his and former financier, the governor of New York and Massachusetts, Lord Belmont, who lures him to Boston under the guise of protection, but actually has a kid arrested because he doesn't want to be associated as a pirate. So Kid maintains his innocence. He keeps saying, I have a letter of Mark. And then the authorities kept saying, no, we can't produce it. But it does exists, it's in the National Archives. It's really convoluted. So there are some who are very

hardcore about he was a pirate and others who say, maybe not. And it's because of this gray area that I find him really interesting. Rebecca, you have just been amazing to talk to. And if people want to know more about you and your research, where can they find you? So I have a website. It's Rebecca-Syimon.com. And you can find information about and links to things have written and podcasts I've been on. I'm on Twitter. My username is Bec-E-E-C-K-A. A-L-E-X. And I also am on TikTok where I've done loads of pirate history videos. It's pirate Beckel-Ex. So pirate and then Bec-Lex, same as my Twitter handle. I haven't been updating it as much recently, but you can catch loads of information. And I've published two books, Why We Love Pirates,

The Hunt for Captain Kid, and How We Change Piracy Forever, which is available on Amazon as an e-book, paperback, and as an audiobook. I wrote a biography about Anne Bonney and Mary Read called Pirate Queens, The Lives of Anne Bonney and Mary Read. It's available on hardback and it is on Audible. And in May, my third book will be coming out called The Pirates Code Laws and Life on the Pirateship, which will be available in hardback. You have been a busy, busy, B. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. You've been an absolute treat. Thank you so much. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you for listening. I thank you so much to Rebecca for joining me. I am considering

piracy as an alternative career now. But if you like what you heard before I run away to see, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if there is a topic you want us to look into, if you have a burning question you would like us to answer, or if you've just had a few rums and you want to say hello, you can now email us. And our email address is betwixt at history hit.com. Join me again Betwix the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by HistoryHit.