Dan Snow's History Hit - A Short History of Pirates

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Swashbuckling, murder and robbery on the high seas! We're bringing back the fan-favourite episode on Dr Rebecca Simon's 'Pirate Queens: The Lives of Anne Bonny & Mary Read' from our archive.She takes Dan through a dramatic history of piracy in the Caribbean and the Atlantic World. She tells the extraordinary stories of pirates Anne Bonny, and Mary Read as well as captains Blackbeard, Jack Rackham and the notoriously sadistic Charles Vane. She also gives Dan the lowdown on pirate treasure.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everyone, welcome to Antinode's History at Pirates. There is just something about pirates. People seem endlessly fascinated with the so-called golden age of piracy. The 17th and 18th centuries that saw the Spanish main, basically the Caribbean, set alight with a swarm of these freebooters. These maritime criminals who, thanks to great branding and good storytelling, have managed to get themselves remembered as all sort of more Robin Hood figures than the shameless, violent criminals that they certainly were.

So here on the podcast, this is a repeat. We've got the fantastic Dr. Rebecca Simons. She's the author of Pirate Queens, The Lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. She came on to tell us all about piracy in the Atlantic world. She told me the story of those remarkable female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. We played the hits as well. We talked about Blackbeard, Jack Rackham, and the sadistic Charles Vane as well.

So I thought we'd give this old favourite another airing. Enjoy. T-minus 10. Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff.

And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Rebecca, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Everyone chooses their area of expertise, depending on their own taste, but you've done well to choose pirates. I mean, being the world's leading expert on pirates is pretty cool, isn't it? It's a pretty good way to introduce myself at parties, that's for sure. Julius Caesar spent his time dealing with piracy in the Mediterranean, and one man's pirates, another man's armed seafarer.

Why do we talk about this golden age of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries? What is that? And also, is that just myth, or is there something true in that? Well, it is a genuine time period that pirate historians have sort of defined from around the time between 1670 and about 1730-ish. And the reason why we call it the golden age of piracy is particularly in the 18th century, this was the first time where we had large, organized bands of pirates with very specific holdouts and lots of really major captain leaders like we've never seen before. For the most part in history, piracy was kind of either isolated incidents or

maybe unique bands of travelers or raiders such as Vikings or the Sea Peoples in the ancient Mediterranean. But in the 1670s, we have kind of the first pirate round, which is kind of the buccaneers, French pirates in the Caribbean, which was quite organized as people were starting to colonize. And then in the 1690s, we head east to the East Indies, where there were a lot of kind of organized pirates over there against the East India Company, such as Henry Avery and in some cases, Captain William Kidd. cases Captain William Kidd. But the most famous one that people usually think about, such as Pirates of the Caribbean Pirates, that happens after the War of Spanish Succession, a period of peacetime starting around 1713, 1714-ish, where a lot of privateers, who are basically hired out mercenaries for the sea to capture enemy ships, found themselves out of work now that it was

peacetime and continued their pirate activities. And this is where we find all the really famous organized bands of pirates such as Blackbeard, Benjamin Hornigold, Charles Vane, Jack Rackham. And this is why we call it the golden age because after about 1730-ish, we don't ever see such an organized system and large system of piracy ever again. Do they take advantage of geography and the political geography of the Caribbean? I mean, is it just a place where it's difficult for, famously, the Spanish found difficult to protect their treasure fleets from English pirates and state-sponsored seafarers as well. and state-sponsored seafarers as well. But is it just the geography, the islands, the navigation?

Plus, early modern governments just aren't able to get a grip on that part of the world. And also, there's a lot of wealth there. Oh, yeah. It's kind of all of the above, really. The Caribbean and parts of North America were really ideal for pirates to hang out because in the 17th century, there was a lot of fighting between the British and the Spanish in terms of colonizing which islands Jamaica was fought over. And due to the political instability, they couldn't really watch out for pirates and those sorts of people who were sailing around. They were in really good

proximity to a lot of major trading lanes through the Caribbean and into North America. And also pirates because they sailed around so much, usually in smaller ships, they were able to get into these little isolated coves and keys into small islands that larger ships either didn't have the knowledge for or just weren't able to maneuver their way around. So pirates kind of always had the upper hand in this sort of situation. And through this, they were able to kind of create their own strongholds. They were able to become very organized. So that way they knew kind of which political parties were kind of fighting against each other, and they were able to take advantage as a result.

Tell me about some of these people that are still almost household names today, remarkably. You've just written a book about Captain Kidd primarily. Let's start with him. I mean, who was he? So Captain Kidd was a Scottish privateer in the very late 17th century. He was specifically ordered to be a privateer in the East Indies for the East India Company. They were given this contract called a letter of mark telling groups of sailors, we want you to attack these specific enemy ships. And in return, you can keep the loot that you're able to steal as a form of payment. But if they attacked anyone that wasn't listed, like let's say the British government said, we want you to go to

this area of the world and attack all the French ships, but then they turn around and attack Spanish ships, that's breaking the contract. So it could cause like a really big thing, you know, between one country and another. So he was essentially hired out by the East India Company to protect trade between the English and the Indian Mughals as the British was trying to really sort of build up their trading relationship into the East Indies. So that's what he was assigned to do. And unfortunately, he had a lot of bad luck on this particular voyage. He wasn't actually able to capture very many ships. The crew was getting really dissatisfied because of it because they just weren't getting much pay. They weren't getting very much action that was promised to them. So Kidd was under a lot of pressure to start attacking ships. And unfortunately, he became kind of reckless and began attacking

pretty much any ship that came by and essentially broke his contract by attacking ships he wasn't supposed to, including a large Armenian ship called the Kuwaita Merchant, which ended up being kind of his downfall, because it turned out that he thought it was supposed to be a Dutch ship, which is what Britain really wanted them to sort of attack or at least keep them from trade. Turns out it was an Armenian ship that was made by the French, captained by an Englishman. So this was a really, really big deal. Captain Kidd, you know, now has to essentially go on the run because his crew's threatening to mutiny. So he goes to Madagascar and it's there he finds out that the British government is after him. So he has to escape into the Caribbean. He believes he's not a pirate. He's saying, no, I have this letter of Mark. I thought this was very

legit. And not only that, he'd killed a crewmate in a fight on the ship. So thus kind of technically defining the law of what a pirate was, murder and robbery on the high seas. So he's trying to escape. He goes to the Caribbean, writes a letter to his friend and financier, Samuel Bellamont, Lord Bellamont, who's governor of New York and Massachusetts. Lord Bellamont, though, does not want to be associated with him anymore since he's now considered a pirate. So he lures him to Boston under pretext of safety. Captain Kidd goes and he's arrested on the spot

and thrown in jail for the next two years. Until then, he's transported back to London, goes on this trial, a big show trial. It's very dramatic. Insisting upon his innocence the entire time he's there, he's saying, I big show trial. It's very dramatic, insisting upon his innocence the entire time he's there. He's saying, I have character witnesses. The witnesses who come are crewmates who actually speak against him. And he says, I have a letter of Mark. Someone needs to produce it. And they say it's not able to be produced. They can't find it. They can't bring it.

But it does exist. You can go to the National Archives in Kew and take a look at it. So it did exist. And unfortunately, he was found guilty and he was hanged at execution dock in Wapping in 1701. His trial was published verbatim and he was strung up in the gallows for some say up to 20 years to serve as a warning against any other would-be pirates. So that's interesting that he was caught out by kind of grand strategy and diplomacy there. That's not the myth of the sort of the daring-do pirate just living by his wits and attacking ships as they pass out of some little cove in the Caribbean.

Is there any truth to that sort of latter representation? Yes, that latter representation comes in what we call the third round of the Golden Age of Piracy after the War of Spanish Succession. And so this is where we start seeing these kind of, you know, grand sort of those out for adventure and murder, swashbuckling pirates such as Blackbeard, for instance, who led a huge fleet and had, you know, very iconic look. You know, the long black beard, the long hair. He'd light candles in it when they went into battle. So to look like he came out of hell, essentially.

We have Charles Vane, who led several ships as well. And he was known to be very cruel and kind of sadistic towards his victims, often, you know, beating them horribly, sometimes even torturing them. Then you have Jack Rackham, who was famous for only sailing for two months on his own. He used to sail with Charles Vane until he went solo. And this is when he sails with the female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. And these are the pirates who went out trying to get wealthy and wanting to have this adventure during a time of peacetime and when trade was at its highest throughout the Atlantic world. So in a way, we need to think about these pirates. You read about the Thirty Years' War or many of the Italian Civil Wars, that there were just groups of mercenaries who just couldn't

stop. Once the diplomats and the powdered courtiers had agreed to stop fighting, a lot of these mercenaries were like, well, hang on. No, we had something going on here. We haven't got any other option. Yeah, and it was pretty similar for the pirates. You know, once the War of Spanish Succession was over, these people who fought as privateers, including Benjamin Hornigold, who trained Blackbeard, whose name was actually Edward Teach. Edward Teach was a protege of Benjamin Hornigold as a privateer during the War of Spanish Succession. A lot of them found themselves out of work. They generally loved the job because they had a lot of freedom to sail where they wanted as long as they attacked the ships they were supposed to. They were paid in whatever they could steal. And a lot of times it was actually quite a bit of money for them. So a lot of these sailors who perhaps grew up poor found themselves in quite a comfortable financial position. But then when the war ends, it's suddenly, okay, your contract's gone. You can't do this anymore. But a lot of these privateers decided, no, we like this autonomy. We like this freedom and the adventure and being able to get really good payment as well.

So a lot of them basically continued what they were doing. But at that point, this is when they started to become classified as pirates, going against, you know, the British law, essentially, classified as pirates going against, you know, the British law, essentially, who at this point was doing everything they possibly could to crack down on piracy because they were such a threat and they were so numerous throughout the Atlantic. You say that Blackbeard had a fleet of several ships. Like, you need logistics, you need a home base. Like, where did they do all that? There were two huge home bases within the Atlantic world. One came before Blackbeard's time in the 17th century, and this is Port Royal off the coast of Jamaica, kind of connected to Kingston,

the capital city, by like a little spit of land. This was during the time when the British and the Spanish had been fighting a lot over who could control Jamaica several decades before. The British had control, but at this point, by the late 17th century, there still wasn't very much law and order. They had laws against crime and piracy, excessive public drunkenness, but none of it was followed because it couldn't be enforced. So this was a really great place for pirates to congregate. They had good proximity to other plantation islands. There were lots of really hidden coves for them to kind of hide out in, good proximity to the Leeward Islands and also, of course, to North America. Then an earthquake in 1692 hits and sinks part of the island.

So now the Navy is able to swoop in and take over. So pirates scatter. Then they fight in the War of Spanish Succession. And then afterwards, they start to gravitate towards the Bahamas to the island of Providence and start to settle in a city called Nassau. So during the War of Spanish Succession, again, there wasn't very much governance happening. There were governors of the Bahamas, but because of the war, again, there wasn't too much enforcement. So a lot of pirates began gravitating towards Nassau, which sits off the coast of Florida, kind of in the middle of all these islands. So really good spot for them to kind of hide out. Nassau is already a city known for excessive drinking, lots of

prostitution, lots of crime. But then Benjamin Hornigold comes in and sees an opportunity saying this would actually be a really great legitimate city for pirates. So he comes in, establishes law and order. And essentially Nassau becomes known as the Pirate Kingdom, with Benjamin Hornigold being the Pirate King. So this is where most of the famous pirates we know actually kind of would get their start. They'd organize their crew out of Nassau, and from then they'd go sail, because it was kind of like a, for a few years, like a pretty good spot for them to go to, where a lot of them either knew each other or knew of each other. You listen to Dan Snow's history. You're listening to Dr. Rebecca Simon talking about pirates more coming up after this. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest

mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions.

And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Anne Bonny, legendary female pirate, meets, is it Jack Rackham? They meet in the Bahamas, don't they? Yes, they do. They meet at Nassau. Anne Bonny was married to kind of a former pirate named James Bonny, but she'd been disowned by her father, so he couldn't get her really substantial dowry of what that could be, so it wasn't a happy marriage at all. They wind up in Nassau,

and then James Bonny decides to work for the governor, Woods Rogers, who has really taken over the Bahamas now and kind of cracked down on a lot of piracy. He works for Woods Rogers as a pirate hunter. So Anne Bonney kind of leaves him, strikes up affairs with several pirates, and then meets Jack Rackham, Captain Jack Rackham. The two of them fall in love. Jack Rackham tries to convince pay James Bonney to annul the marriage. Bonney refuses. Woods Rogers actually sets out a proclamation trying to get Anne Bonney because he says he'll imprison her if she gets the marriage annulled. So Jack Rackham and Anne Bonney kind of organize a new small crew and steal away at night onto

the ship. And so that's kind of how she starts her practical career, literally kind of having to sneak off into the night with this pirate captain. And with them is a new recruit named Mark Reed, who proves to be quite a skilled sailor and finds herself attracted to him now and tries to seduce him because Anne wasn't really hiding her identity. Turns out Mark Reed was a woman in disguise named Mary Reed. And after she was discovered by Anne Bonny, the two of them actually don't sail under male disguises anymore and become some of the most famous pirates of the time. This romantic idea of pirates, almost a kind of Robin Hood-ization of pirates,

is that something that's obvious at the time? Are these people part of this kind of extraordinary, colourful texture of the North Atlantic world? These people come a little bit later. There was a time around the turn of the 18th century where you kind of could say a lot of pirates had a bit of this Robin Hood-esque sort of role. From the 1650s onward, Britain had so much conflict between their competition, the Spanish and the French, over plantation islands and the North American colonies that the British passed something called the Navigation Acts in 1651. And this blocked all trade against the Spanish and the French. So colonists couldn't get any goods outside Britain.

This is where pirates came in. Pirates robbed these Spanish and French ships, would bring their goods back and sell them to make money in the plantation islands. And this brought a lot of people pirate goods, essentially. So people actually in the Caribbean and parts North America, particularly the South, Virginia and the Carolinas and the Mid-Atlantic, such as Rhode Island, really worked with pirates. They'd protect them.

Sometimes the governors, you know, they'd look away or outright finance them. And so people had really good dealings with pirates. But unfortunately, this had to end around the turn of the 18th century look away or outright finance them. And so people have really good dealings with pirates. But unfortunately, this had to end around the turn of the 18th century when Britain began cracking down on piracy and establishing really strict laws and told the colonies, you have to arrest and try pirates the same way we do in England, or else we will consider you to be pirates. And so this kind of stopped a lot of that kind of trade. But before, people

actually had pretty good relationships with pirates. Not all, but a lot of them, particularly in the Caribbean and the southern colonies. But in the popular press, are they starting to appear? Pirates had always sort of been reported because they were always a threat, but they began to appear a lot in the early 1700s. Captain Kidd was reported quite a bit in both London and the American colonies. So by the time he was arrested, people already knew who he was because he'd been reported on for over a year at that point. But then when the third round starts around after the end of the war, Spanish succession, this is where we see a massive increase in a lot of printings about pirates because they were so numerous. And also a lot of American colonies

at this point, especially New England, really relied on a maritime economy. Logging trade, the fishing trade, and pirates became a real threat there. But this huge amount of publication was a way to both inform people of piracy and a way to kind of really build up pirates as these really terrifying characters, essentially. And you could see reports of these pirates all over British newspapers, all over American newspapers. I found thousands upon thousands of these articles because they were reprinted so much. When Blackbeard fought his last battle, I mean, it was like war. Yeah, it was. So Blackbeard actually only sailed for about two years as a pirate.

And what's funny is he wasn't even a super successful pirate. He didn't get that wealthy, but he was really notorious because of the way he fought. He fought with Gusto. He thought he was terrifying. And then finally, off the coast of Virginia, he's pursued by the Coast Guard led by Lieutenant Maynard and they engage the the Coast Guard captures Blackbeard's ship Blackbeard engages in a sword fight with Lieutenant Maynard Maynard stabs Blackbeard in the leg and Blackbeard shouts well done lad and continues fighting but he's weakened and then Lieutenant Maynard takes kind of his takes his shot basically and actually decapitates Blackbeard in battle, thus ending the battle and finishing off his crew.

And Blackbeard's head was put on the spike of a ship and sailed up and down the eastern seaboard of North America to kind of show off that he'd been killed. Is there any pirate treasure anywhere? No, as far as I know. I am in the camp very much that their pirate treasure is not a thing. We get the rumor from Captain Kidd because when he was arrested, he tried to bribe Lord Belmont saying, I hid all the treasure I captured on Gardner's Island, which is off the coast of New York. Island, which is off the coast of New York. And so Bellamont goes to Gardner's Island, or he sends people there and they don't find anything. But information about this had been published. And so now this kind of starts this whole idea about Captain Kidd buried his treasure, which a lot of people have been looking for ever since, even as recent as 2015, when people thought they found his sunken ship off the coast of Madagascar, but that ended up not being true. It was a hoax, basically. But this kind of really set off the

idea, especially again, in the 1800s, after the publication of Treasure Island, which was all about trying to find buried treasure. So this is kind of what really gives us the idea of it. People have excavated for treasure all over the place in the Caribbean, as far north as Canada, throughout the North American eastern seaboard, but nothing has ever been found. Pirates had no reason to bury anything. They went after goods such as wine, spices, textiles, medicines, anything they could sell. In fact, back in the 1700s, the word treasure simply meant valuable. So anything they could sell for money. They rarely went after ships that had loads of golds and jewels because it would weigh down a ship. And also at this point in the 1700s, there weren't

very many ships carrying those sorts of things. There was one case of a Spanish ship carrying gold that was wrecked on the coast of Florida. But other than that, we don't really have records of any major golden jewels as big findings for pirates. So buried treasure, if it exists, it has not been found. If someone finds it, I will be the first to say, yes, it's legit. But until then, I personally don't think it was a, I don't think buried treasure actually exists. I personally don't think it was a, I don't think buried treasure actually exists. Rebecca, you go from being the most exciting person at a party to being the most disappointing, I'm sure, in the space of like 45 seconds.

One of the first things people ask is buried treasure. And I say no, and the faces fall. So that's usually kind of my go-to. What's the most shocking thing about pirates? No buried treasure. You mentioned Treasure Island. I mean, Treasure Island treasure island i think is the book that got me interested in 18th century history as a kid my my kids are obsessed with it it is just so remarkable at kind of painting this world of buccaneers and treasure and islands and it's the sort of evil twin of british maritime dominance from 1700 onwards isn't't it? The fact that there is also this kind of buccaneering, freebooting world alongside the young Horatio Nelson and its highly polished ships of the line and stuff. It's fascinating.

Yeah, it's such a fascinating book. And it kind of really created this whole resurgence of an interest in piracy in the 19th century. And what's interesting is that Stevenson did heavily research pirates for this book. In the 1700s, there was a book published called The General History of the Pirates, which was published in 1724 by Captain Charles Johnson. It is a large volume. It was two volumes of biographies of pirates. That was a huge sensation. It's never gone out of print. You can order a copy online. It's very thick because it's about 800 pages in total with the combined volumes.

And it's an interesting source because it very much blends fact with fiction. A lot is embellished, but it includes really, really vivid descriptions of piracy. So Stevenson took a lot of information from these stories to kind of really build up his own world of piracy in Treasure Island, which was an immediate sensation when it was published in book form in 1883 in Britain, andacy going from in the 18th century, you know, these criminals who were stealing everything all the way up to Jack Sparrow. That kind of caused the evolution. Is this myth? Were there special ways of executing pirates reserved for those who disturbed the peace of the high seas? What was interesting about pirates is that in London, so it used to be that when pirates were captured, they were shipped back to London, thrown into Newgate or Southwark prisons, and then they were led by a procession of the Admiralty Court, which was the court specifically meant for all maritime affairs. And by the 18th century, they were really focused on targeting piracy. And so they would be led by

this procession through London, holding up a silver oar. There's one that exists still in the royal court's justice. And they would lead them through London and take them to East London in Wapping to a place called Execution Dock on the Bank of the Thames. water. So they would go up, have to go on the scaffold, give what was called a last dying speech, which was standard for public executions, even for non-maritime criminals. They were taken to the Tyburn Tree, which is actually outside of Marble Arch Station in West London. But pirates would give this last dying speech where they had to atone for their crimes, beg for forgiveness, and warn anyone from becoming a pirate. And then they would hang,one for their crimes, beg for forgiveness and warn anyone from becoming a pirate. And then they would hang and then their body would be dipped in tar and they'd have to and they would be strung up on the gallows for three tides to wash over them. And a lot of people, you know, came to watch these events, they were very popular, people wrote down all the speeches,

and they would print them and have them sold for people to buy very cheap within a day. So they were very popular. Then pirates became so numerous that the Admiralty Court set up their own specific courts in the Caribbean and then up in the American colonies. Thank you so much, Rebecca. You can come to my party any day. Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to the parties.