Dan Snow's History Hit - Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay

Episode Date: August 29, 2020

Jamie L.H. Goodall joined me on the pod to discuss pirates of the Chesapeake Bay. The story of Chesapeake pirates and patriots begins with a land dispute and ends with the untimely death of an oyster dredger at the hands of the Maryland Oyster Navy.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. You've all heard of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Well, I've got a much more interesting podcast for you now. I've got the Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay, that glorious stretch of water, nearly an inland sea that stretches up, tentacles reaching as far as the nation's capital, Washington, D.C. Chesapeake Bay was such a vital area of economic importance in the colonial period, in the early republic. A place of exchange, of trade, goods such as sugar, tobacco, enslaved African people arriving to and leaving from the middle colonies.

As a result, it attracted the attention of pirates. I'm really happy to have jamie goodall on the podcast she is she's such a great speaker and she talked me through the pirates of the chesapeake bay this is one of the weekly live zoom podcast records if you're a subscriber to history hit tv you get to join for free if you want to become a subscriber to history at tv join the zoom call or just watch the netflix for history hundreds of history documentaries, best in the world. Please just go to historyhit.tv, use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, and then you'll get a month for free and then you'll get a month for just one pound, euro or dollar. Please go and check it out. In the meantime, everyone, here's

Jamie Goodall. Jamie, thank you very much for coming on the podcast thanks for having me I'm really excited well I'm excited because you are you this is such a I mean it's we've got pirates we've got Chesapeake Bay we don't talk about Chesapeake Bay very much in the UK because that was the site of Britain's catastrophic naval defeat at the hands of the French which is tough and led directly to American independence. So that was a bad day in the office for Team UK, but Team GB, I should say, back then. Let's start with what's the definition of a pirate in your work? So for me, and I guess for most everyone, piracy is a matter of perspective. So depending on who you were and which side of the conflict

you found yourself on, pirates were called many different things. They might be corsairs or buccaneers or privateers. So I understand pirates to be those whose primary purpose was to disrupt commerce, specifically via waterways like oceans, seas, and rivers. specifically via waterways like oceans, seas, and rivers. But I also think pirates operated on land, maybe to a lesser degree, but I always think of Sir Henry Morgan and his sack of Portobello, for example. And so there's a fine line between piracy and privateering, but that's sort of how I understand pirates.

And there's, you know, Sir Francis Drake wasn't shy of going ashore a little bit as well and wrecking shop. So, and what kind of period are we talking about that the privateers caused those pirates in the Chesapeake? So primarily we're looking at from about 1630 to, I would say the 1790s for pirates specifically. But in terms of the ways in which privateers operated, of course, they would have been considered pirates by their adversaries. They were very active during the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the American Civil War, all the way through to the Oyster Wars. And the Oyster Wars don't end until 1959. Is the Chesapeake geography very important? Does that lend itself to piracy? Or is it important in terms of just the major cities, the major ports that it serves? I think both. So the Chesapeake Bay region specifically encompasses Maryland and

Virginia. And it extends about 200 miles from Haver to Grace, Maryland in the north, all the way to Virginia Beach, Virginia in the south. And it's a prime location for the economy of early America, especially. You have Baltimore and Fells Point. You have Richmond and Williamsburg in Virginia. So those are pretty prominent areas of economic activity, which makes them prime targets for piracy. And also, if you look at it on the map, it's an astonishing landscape. I mean, is there a sense in which there are places to hide as well, that there are local tides? Is it a good place to intercept if you know those waters?

Absolutely. There's tons of inlets and islets throughout the Chesapeake Bay, tributaries leading into rivers. So it was a really great place for pirates who understood the geography quite well. They can navigate into some of those areas and escape the larger ships that were coming after them. The piracy just grew up alongside those ports and those settlements that you mentioned, or was there a real starting point? So the major starting point was actually a land dispute between individuals in Maryland and Virginia about where the border between the two states was. So we have William Claiborne, and he set up shop in Maryland, but Virginia claimed that the property was actually Virginia. And so there's some piracy going back and forth where they're attacking the ships coming in and out of

Claiborne's property because he was very involved in trade, particularly with the indigenous populations of the region. And so that's sort of the first recorded incident of piracy in the Chesapeake Bay. What's the cash crop? I mean, are we talking tobacco here? Are we talking trade? What is the thing they're going for? Yeah, so the economy of the Chesapeake is based primarily on the region's accessibility and tobacco in particular. Access to fresh water and fertile soil made the region agriculturally quite productive, specifically with tobacco. Production of tobacco, of course, boomed after John Rolfe brought back a particularly sweeter strain of

seeds from his voyage to Tobago back to Virginia in 1612. So throughout the 1600s to the early 1700s, large-scale tobacco plantations really started to pop up along the rivers and shorelines of Virginia and Maryland. To give you an example, on the lower western shore of Maryland, a small group of gentry held plantations ranging from about 100 acres all the way up to 5,400 acres. And on average, individual plantations were about 1,000 acres in size. And in the colonial period, were the jurisdictions, or perhaps afterwards, but were the sort of divided jurisdictions of Maryland, Virginia, were those significant? I mean, could you, if you had a little boat and scuttled out into the Chesapeake and stole some stuff and then went back to Maryland, could the people of Virginia kind just because the ways in which the different courts handled everything. And so and it also, you know, in terms of the overlay with the local conditions, local piracy, and then also with the French and Spanish and other nations licensed by their

governments, I guess, to attack British and colonial shipping. Yeah. So one of my favorite pirates, I can't think of his name off the top of my head right now, but he was a French pirate who operated in the Chesapeake Bay region. And he was very keen on tobacco ships in particular. And so the Chesapeake Bay area did deal quite a bit with French incursions specifically, less so, at least in my research, with Spanish incursions. I think that happened more, yes, Louis Guittard. Thank you to Mark. I think that happened more. Yes, Louis Guittard. Thank you to Mark. So Louis Guittard operated in the Chesapeake Bay and he was a Frenchman. But I think a lot of the Spanish piracy or at least the conflicts with the Spanish are happening more towards Florida. So you mentioned Louis Guittard in the book and he appears to be one of your favorites, if that's not an inappropriate way of putting it. Tell me more about his career. So he didn't have a very long career, but he had a pretty violent career.

And it was very prolific, even though it was very short. In a single week, he attacked at least three to four ships, which is quite rare to be able to attack that many ships at a time. And as far as we're aware, he made away with his loot without much incident. Did he return to the Chesapeake or did he eventually get caught? He eventually got caught. Louis Guittard and his men tried to get the king's pardon, but the king was feeling less than generous. So unfortunately for Guattari and many of his men, they found themselves on the wrong end of the noose.

What is your sense of how much disruption these pirates caused? I mean, was it a nuisance or was it actually stifling economic development in the Chesapeake area? I think more than anything, development in the Chesapeake area? I think more than anything, it was probably a nuisance, primarily because the pirates actually helped the colonial economy in several ways. Because, of course, the colonists are dealing with embargoes at various points during certain conflicts. They're dealing with monopolies on certain products and goods. And so pirates were enabling them to get some of the goods that they might not otherwise have been able to obtain. And they also provided a bit of security against foreign incursions, particularly when the Royal Navy was otherwise preoccupied during conflict. So I would say that it didn't really stifle

economic activity in the Chesapeake Bay, but it was probably quite a nuisance to certain merchants, particularly those who were not in support of pirates the way other merchants were. Are there any aspects of the classic Long John Silver pirate myth that actually have any basis in the historical record that you've been able to find? So by and large, most of those are, of course, the fiction of Treasure Island and Robert Louis Stevenson. But one of the most popular myths, of course, is that pirates bury their treasure. And for the most part, we find that they're not burying their treasure. They're, of course, spending their money as quickly as they can. And for the most part, pirates aren't actually stealing money. They're stealing goods and

commodities that they can then sell to turn into money. So burying it makes no sense. But we do have evidence that Captain Kidd buried some of his treasure. So there's a little inkling of truth to that one. I've been reading recently about lots of women pirates or some women pirates, partly because they're now deeply in fashion with like young persons. My daughter is reading endless books about real historical women pirates. Are there any that you've come across in the Chesapeake? Unfortunately, I did not really come across many women in the Chesapeake region, because, of course, Anne Bonny and Mary Read are the most famous, but they're really operating out of the Caribbean and the Dancing Molly, which was a ship. And these women, their husbands were out pirating oysters, and they were left behind on the ship to sort of keep watch in case the governor came along to apprehend them. And in fact, the governor does come to apprehend the men,

but because they're on the opposite shoreline, he has to go after the ship instead, not realizing that it's being manned by several women. And they're able to make their escape across to the other shoreline and basically out of the reach of the governor. And so that's one of my favorite stories from the book, is the women of the Dancing Molly out maneuvering the Governor Cameron of Virginia. I should have asked when we're talking about cash crops and things, I mean, presumably the trade in enslaved people, particularly that part of the world with its slave plantations that

forced slaves to work on them, presumably that the trade in human flesh must have been as important as tobacco and sugar and things. Absolutely. And pirates played an integral role in the slave trade, particularly throughout the Chesapeake Bay, they were more than happy to provide enslaved peoples as a commodity. You know, you had some pirates, I know that some have argued that pirates were very egalitarian, very equitable, and that they would free enslaved peoples and allow them to sort of do what they wished to the crew that had enslaved them. But there were plenty of instances of pirates who captured enslaved peoples and turned around and sold them to willing buyers. Land a Viking longship on island shores.

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listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. And I guess that's another point. I mean, if some of these parts are operating locally, is it a matter of there would have been places and customers for these stolen goods around the Chesapeake? So you're dashing out, you're stealing, and then you're selling to people kind of on the black market. There's a whole local economy going on.

Yeah, absolutely. And I consider these, from my doctoral work on the piracy of the Atlantic world as a whole, I call these instances economies of opportunity. So where there are these little micro economies that develop in which pirates, because it's sort of, it's not really a black market, the way we think of the black market today, but it is sort of an underground economic market that's being set up where pirates have willing buyers, willing fencers to sell their loot. So, yeah. And speaking of enslaved people, what about freed?

We're reading more and more now about liberated people of African descent serving on the British side, particularly perhaps in the war perhaps in the Revolutionary War. Were there any pirates of African descent operating the Chesapeake? There were. And primarily those of African descent are operating as privateers more than they are pirates, although we do have evidence. I don't have names. Unfortunately, in the records, they were not named.

But there was a group of three men who had escaped slavery and were pirating along the Chesapeake Bay. But probably one of the most famous men was a man named George R. Roberts, who served in the War of 1812. He was even one of the few defenders of Baltimore who had his portrait taken by a photographer. That's how important he was to the war effort. But he wasn't the only black Marylander in particular to serve. We have men like Percy Sullivan and Henry James, Charles Ball, Gabriel Ralston, Caesar Wentworth. I mean, there's quite a large number of free blacks who are participating in the war effort as privateers. I mean, it's so fascinating. Why do governments,

I've always thought it would be kind of easy to clamp down on privateers, particularly in that area, because ships are kind of big and difficult to hide. I mean, you would have known, what efforts did the government go through, go to, I mean, I guess there were kind of waves of persecution. Yeah, it varied depending on the time and what's going on. But pirates really tended towards smaller vessels, more maneuverable, they could be manned by fewer people and so it was a little bit easier to hide some of those ships than say you know a royal naval vessel for example but in terms of prosecution at least early on in early America American history there's not a lot of prosecution there's a lot of pardons being meted out. And for the most part, the colonies are able to at least initially prosecute within their own courts. And so a lot of times because they're local men being judged by locals, they're often let go.

So after a while, the British government, of course, starts to put into effect laws that say, if you're captured for piracy, you have to be tried in England, so that they couldn't get away with activities like that. I mean, are many people transported to England and tried there? That's a huge deal. Yeah, there were quite a few. And the king, you could seek the king's pardon, but typically if you were brought to England for prosecution, you were going to be found guilty and most likely hanged. Yeah, I'll bet. We've got a question here from a History Hit subscriber. There's a blackbeard's point in Virginia. Is it that blackbeard? Is it the pirate Blackbeard? I believe so. I don't have

exact confirmation on that, but I imagine because he was pretty well known in those parts that I think that it's named after Blackbeard. Okay, so I've got a question that you are the right, you're the best person in the world to ask this question of. I actually don't really know who Blackbeard was. Did he exist? Is he like an actual, is he an actual person? I've always assumed it's a kind of crazy story. No, he was an actual person. And he wasn't as violent and as gruesome as people claimed he was. But he put on a persona of being very violent. And his entire look was quite menacing. So he was a rather large guy. He had, of course, his big thick black beard, hence the name, and he would braid and twist lit fuses into the beard so

that smoke would come out and he would look more terrifying. But one of my favorite stories about black beard is that off the coast of South Carolina, his men were sick and dying. He was in really bad straits. And instead of stealing a merchant vessel, he saw a ship carrying some of the most prominent men from Charleston. So he seizes that ship, holding those men hostage, and basically tells the the governor either send me medicine or I'm going to kill some of your most prominent citizens and so the governor of course is like yes here here's some medicine just please let them go and uh surprisingly Blackbeard does let them go but he still has a reputation to maintain so he sends the men back to shore naked oh wow okay

um that is uh that's okay so black bit deserves his evil reputation for that act alone um i there's there are people on the live on the in the chat asking about charles wilson in particular mark vent is his history hit subscriber is this you said pirates don't bury treasure but there seems to be some excitement around some buried treasure here. What's going on? Yeah, so Charlie Wilson, there's rumor that Charles Wilson buried some treasure in the Chesapeake Bay region. Legend has it that he had a hideout at Woody Knoll in Worcester County, Maryland. He also had a hideout at Assateague, but it was at Chincoteague that he reportedly buried this treasure, which would be worth perhaps four million dollars today. I'll quote from a letter he wrote to his brother,

which is where the rumors about the treasure come from. He writes this sort of riddle to his brother, there are three creeks lying a hundred paces or more north of the second inlet above Chincoteague Island, Virginia, which is at the southward end of the peninsula. At the head of the third creek to the northward is a bluff facing the Atlantic Ocean with three cedar trees growing on it, each about one and a third yards apart. Between the trees I buried in 10 iron-bound chests, bars of silver, gold, diamonds, and jewels, to the sum of 200,000 pounds sterling. Go to the woody knoll secretly and remove the treasure." But nobody's ever found Charles Wilson's treasure, despite all efforts. Okay, listen, Jamie, you can be honest. Have you been to look for that treasure?

I have not, but I am quite tempted. $4 million. You wouldn't know that. But anybody, all these weirdos looking for it, you've got the proper academic, you know, back. You've done all the reading. People do look for it, do they? They do. The problem is those trees you mentioned,

they're probably not going to be there anymore. But I mean, I, you know, when history is over, I'm just going to give my life. I'm just going to search for pirate treasure. That's so cool cool jamie i'm just going to ask you a quick question we've got adrian coles here where did pirates obtain their ships if they captured them were the existing crews forced to serve a new captain yes so if they seized a ship uh in existence then they typically either impressed the crew into their service, or they would maroon them on the nearest island or location. So it was often better to go ahead and join the pirate crew just to be on the safe side. So yeah. Otherwise, like I said,

they had backers in a lot of cases from merchants. So they might have somebody who secretly buys them a ship. But more often than not, it's by commandeering a ship. Well, thank you very much indeed for coming on the podcast. What is your book called? It's called Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay from the colonial era to the oyster wars. Thank you so much. That is just fascinating stuff. And it just reignites my... I haven't been to the Chesapeake since I was a kid and I just want to go back there and sail all over. It's just the best part of the world.

So thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. hi everyone it's me Dan Snow just a quick request it's so annoying and I hate it when other podcasts do this but now I'm doing it I hate myself please please go on to iTunes wherever you get your podcasts and give us five star rating and review it it really helps basically boosts up the chart which is good and then more people listen which is nice so if you could do that I be very grateful. I understand if you don't subscribe to my TV channel. I understand if you don't buy my calendar, but this is free. Come on, do me a favor. Thanks.