Empire: World History - 195. Blackbeard & the Pirates of the Caribbean

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

The history of pirates is a thrilling kaleidoscope of adventure, devastation, violence and political intrigue, and never more so than during the 17th and 18th centuries: the golden age of piracy. This saw the rise of some of the most famous pirates of all time, many of them united in the near mythical Pirate Republic at Nassau in the Caribbean. From Calico Jack, the colourful progenitor of the skull and crossbones, to Charles Vane, the pirate king himself who delighted in torturing his captives, and the eccentrically berobed Stede Bonnet, the golden age saw pirates drive the British empire to the brink of despair. None more so than Blackbeard, the famously ruthless pirate captain who supposedly set his beard alight before battle to frighten his enemies. But behind his flaming beard and terrifying reputation, who was the real Blackbeard? And what was it that led him into a life of bloodthirsty pillaging upon the high seas?  Join William and Anita as they discuss the golden age of piracy and the early life and career of the most famous pirate of all time: Blackbeard. To buy William's book: https://coles-books.co.uk/the-golden-road-by-william-dalrymple-signed-edition To buy David's book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Suppressing-Piracy-Early-Eighteenth-Century-ebook/dp/B0917NM46Y/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. His eyes naturally looking fierce and wild. He made altogether such a figure that imagination cannot form the idea of a fury from hell to look more frightful. Hello. Hello, William. I wasn't talking about you. Nothing personal, is it? No, no, I wasn't talking about you. Hello and welcome.

Hello, welcome. I'll explain that in just a moment. I'm Anita Arnond. And I am William Durimple. Yes, and look, nothing, nothing encompasses the spirit of adventure, the lust for wealth, the desire to travel far across oceans to foreign places. Than, William. Yes, you guessed it. Pirates. Yes, pirates. Yes, I know it's becoming more and more pantos in December. Sorry, you know, put it down in the comments. It's fine.

Look, we are discussing pirates today. And that little piece about the fury from hell was about Blackbeard. Who is a historical character, which I don't think I even knew. No, he's a thing. He's not just a thing of pantos. He's a person. And honestly, for most people, they think piracy started. Well, I mean, the younger ones with Jack. Sparrow, but the older ones with Errol Flynn. Captain Pugwash. Captain Pugwash. Good allusion there. Don't forget Captain Pugwash. Okay, so we've got three tiers of piratdom. But David Wilson, author, historian David Wilson,

is here to talk us through a real-life pirate named Blackbeard. Hello, David. Hello, how you doing? Good to be here. Where are you sitting and talking to us now? Hey, I'm sitting and talking to you from Glasgow in Scotland, so another Scott, I'm afraid. He'd never guessed from the accent. Not the easiest accident You're not being Glasgowian, but we'll make it work. Just watch William drift into the Glasgow that I'd like to see.

Within minutes. He was all Highlander a little while ago. It is now going Glasgow. I nearly ran out of petrol in Govern last week, so I was not far from you. Fun story. The closest I've ever been to running out of petrol. I had zero on that.

You know, it comes up and it goes five, three. Govern came to my rescue, Gulf Oil. Governer is a lovely place with lovely people, very nice people, very friendly people in Govan, I find. Anyway, good. So David, David, David, let's first of all start with, you know, the history of piracy. Because we've talked about pirates in relation to, you know, the burgeoning East India Company and where, you know, sort of privateers, were encouraged to go and rob the ships of the Dutch or the French or anyone else to take all the stuff that they'd already traded. The first meeting of the East India Company, the Spanish ambassador, reports to his court. that they were pirates, pirates, pirates, pirates, he wrote. And they bought an ex-pirateship, the scourge of malice, and rechristened it,

the red dragon to make it sound more respectable. The red dragon? Oh, like a pub. Like a pub, it sounds. But where does the route of piracy stretch back to as far as the timeline is concerned? Well, there's kind of quite a well-known quote that as long as man has went to the sea, there has also been someone waiting to capture them.

So piracy does stretch back to the ancient period as well. I guess we won't go back that far. But in terms of the piracy we're speaking about now in terms of early modern piracy. Really, there's a surge from the 16th century onwards. Once you have the so-called discovery of the Americas, you start to have a outpouring of plunder voyages, particularly from Northern Europe,

against the Spanish Empire especially. And are the English, the particular culprits here? Is it largely an English game? People like Francis Drake and Raleigh, these guys are busy at it, aren't they? They are busy at it. They sort of follow on from the French and the Dutch. It's really the French and the Dutch,

pioneer these piracies in the Atlantic, the Western Atlantic, but the English are not far behind them with people like Francis Drake. That's interesting because, you know, Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh are the gentlemen pirates. You know, we are used to seeing the imagery, the iconography of them as a well-dressed, well-educated, sort of this elite of society. And they're licensed, aren't they? They have licenses from the Crown to do this. Yeah, encourage, plunder your hearts out. But was that the same? Was that mirrored among the Dutch and the others as well? They were more, I guess, respectable, if you want to say that, more sort of aristocratic seafarers in that sense.

They did tend to have captains from the gentry. But as William says, although the Spanish would see them as pirates, they did see themselves as being sort of lawful maritime predators. Because they were licensed a lot of the time, not always, but a lot of the time they had licenses from the state, from the crown, to go off and attack the Spanish, or at least they claimed the legitimacy to do so. because when the Spanish first discovered the Americas, they put in place what is known as the line of demarcation. So in agreement with the Portuguese in 1494, you have the Treaty of Tordasseurs. And what that does is that all lands west of the Cape Verde Islands, essentially,

fall under Spanish control, at least that's what they claim. They claim they control that area. And all lands to the east that would be newly discovered would be the Portuguese. They sort of didn't realize that was a lot of Brazil. that's neither here nor there for that point in time. But what that then means is that anything beyond the line, the Spanish claim is there so that when anyone who isn't a sort of subject of the Spanish crown, when anyone traverses past that line, the Spanish call them a pirate,

regardless of whether they are there to commit piracy or otherwise, they become pirates. So, I mean, you've got that class of pirate who have the blessings of their state to go pillage another state that you may or may not presently be at war with, but you have recently or you will soon. But then you also have the ones who are railing against the state. I'm thinking about the Jacobites who are fighting against a power. And piracy is a thing for them as well, isn't it? Yeah, exactly.

So if you sort of fast forward past that point, so the 16th century is that more sort of licensed maritime predation, where there's a bit of a line of ambiguity between what's legal and what's illegal, what's illegal, what's piracy and what's not. But then by the time that you get to the 17th century and then the 18th century, the lines between piracy and privateering, between piracy and licit maritime predation becomes more starkly drawn

and this is especially the case in the 18th century because by that point you really do have this fine line between what is legal maritime predation and what is not legal, what is piracy and it's at that point that you start to get these figures that seem to be railing against the state or at least that's the claim that's often made about them. Well let's talk about one of them.

I mean, the pirate king himself, Charles Vane, the Jacobite sympathiser, you know, the one who a lot of people say he's the one, who inspired the pirate look, if you like. Tell us who he was and where did he start? What we know is he's operating from New Providence in the Bahamas after the War of the Spanish succession, so from around 1715, 1716 onwards. We start to see Charles Vane appear in the record, but he appears without any backgrounds. People then start saying that he was a Jacobite sympathiser. Again, we don't actually know how far he was a Jacobite sympathiser. But he was

quite a violent individual. As he attacked merchant vessels he would. torture, sailors and captains alike. And that's where he gets this no teniety from. But again, we don't know anything about how he dressed. Okay, so people just kind of back project onto him that he was, you know, wearing that very distinctive hat. So Keith Richards look-a-like. Yeah, the ruffled shirt, the open waistcoat. Okay, so not him, but is there a connection between him and Blackbeard? Yeah, so they are both operating around about the same time from the same area. So from New Providence and the Bahamas from Nassau. Wasn't there a Puritan Commonwealth or something in the Bahamas at one point, very improbably, because

Bahamas we associate with sort of James Bond and beach clubs, and the idea of guys wearing sort of, you know, black hats looking like Oliver Cromwell. It doesn't go. It was a formal English colony from about the 1660s onwards. It was settled by the Lord's proprietors of the Carolinas, similar to those who settled North Carolina and South Carolina. So they also claim the Bahamas and it becomes a colony. But to be honest, it's already pretty lawless.

Even though it is an official colony, there's a lot of pirates. smuggling, wrecking, all the way throughout that second half of the 17th century from the Bahamas. But during the war, it essentially becomes devastated by the French and the Spanish who both attack it several times during the war of the Spanish succession. So that by the end of the war in 1713,

the Bahamas is basically no longer a formal colony. It's lawless completely. There's no governance there. And there's just families spread across these islands. And they've got to make a living somehow. Is that the idea? They've got to make a living somehow. And then also, just because its location next to the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Florida, it's also a really good haunt for those who don't agree with the war coming to an end and who want to continue to attack the Spanish, which is where these pirates come from. Most of them had been

privateers during the war and then afterwards they sort of continue their attacks on the Spanish from the Bahamas. Okay, can I do a quick quiz for you just for the benefit to follow our listeners? Please. Okay, this has got to be real, not real, okay? Calico Jack. A real individual, Yes. Real, okay. Did he have the Jolly Roger? That's the other thing, which is associated with Calico Jack. Yes, exactly.

Okay, Calico Jack. Disgust. Calico Jack, Rackham, is also operating from New Providence at this point in time, so from 17-16 onwards. He is actually not a very successful pirate at all. He is in the record very briefly. He takes a few vessels around about Jamaica, but he's basically captured as quickly as he begins.

But what makes him famous is, yes, he's sort of been given the credit for the Jolly Roger. Is he Calico Jack because he wears Calico? He becomes calico Jack Rackham because he wears, yeah, this sort of calico outfit. So he's a sort of hipster pirate who's no good at all at Paris. It makes a lot of sense. Also what makes him famous is the fact that on board his vessel, he also has two female pirates who are operating as well,

Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid. Oh, tell us about them, quick, yeah. Yeah, they become really famous characters because it is so rare for women to be on board these vessels as active members of the crew. And they are, and Bonnie and Mary Reid. Afterwards there's this sort of story that goes around that they're hiding their identities, they're hiding their gender by wearing male clothing.

But if you read the testimonies of their victims, they really are not. I mean, it's very clear that these are women on board this vessel. They're dressed in skirts, dressed as women and not hiding their gender at all. That's amazing. How about Long John Silver? Real, not real.

Really, not real. Really, completely not real. Really, really, right. Definitely not real. And just to end, Captain Hook. I won't even answer. Really not real. Really not real?

Okay. Glad we've sorted that out. But it's interesting because I always thought Blackbeard was one of them, that it was just one of those names. Precisely. Well, let's talk about him. He had a real name, didn't he? He was Edward Teach.

Or Thatch. Or Edward Thatch. I think I prefer the idea of Thatch as a sort of Thatcher sort of precursor. He's definitely Margaret Thatcher's forebear. I mean, I think in the movies, they do call him Edward Teach. I'm sure I've seen that sort of replicated in those old... And there's a brand of rum after Edward Teach, isn't there? Yeah.

I mean, I think that Errol Flynn period, They were a little bit obsessed with him, weren't they? They call them Edward Teach, and the reason for that is that it's printed in one of the newspapers of the Boston newsletter, which has one of the largest circulations in the Americas. They print his name as Edward Teach. But if you look at all the records, his name was more likely Edward Thatch. It's just that Teach is the one that takes off. So they ran with the typo? That's amazing.

Gosh, okay. I remember I was at a pub quiz and they asked who what the real name of Blackbeard was and I wrote Edward Thatch and they wouldn't give me it. Oh, no. Outrageous. Always right, Edward Teach. Always write Edward Teach. Okay. So where was he born? When was he born? And tell me what was his background. The claims are that he was a Bristol seafarer who made his way to Jamaica to become a privateer during the War of the Spanish Succession. There's some other sort of more recent claims who say that his family actually migrated to Bristol when he was quite young.

And so he began his seafaring career in Jamaica. Either way, it seems he's connected to Jamaica somehow. And the family name of Thatch is fairly common. Em and Will's in Testaments in the 18th century in Jamaica. So it seems reasonable that he at least has his origins in Jamaica and that's where he starts his seafaring career. And people are fairly obsessed with him in his image early on. I mean, there's a lot of talk of his wild eyes. There's a lot of talk of, you know, this silk sling over his shoulders.

You know, he cuts a dash. Yes, is that something he invents, the bandolier? Is that a kind of invention of this guy? It's an invention, certainly, but it's an invention of a gentleman called Charles Johnson who writes a book in 1724. called the general history of the pirates. And it's really this book, which has been written at the same time that there's a surge of piracy,

and some of these actors are still already operating. But it's at that point that all these sort of myths come from, including the bandolier, the silk bandolier, and the idea of Blackbeard wearing a hat with matches that he likes to enact fear in his prey. I didn't know that one. That's great. It's brilliant. I mean, it's nonsense, basically. None of the victim accounts mention that, and you think they would mention it.

Okay. The only descriptions we have are. of him is that he went by the name of black beard because he let his beard grow and he tied it up in black ribbons. That's from one of his victims who says that. That really is the Jack Sparrow Keith Richards thing. That's real. Yeah, the black ribbons make sense. Okay, he sort of makes his name and finds his destiny, as you say, in the Caribbean. But before that, I mean, is he a cultured man or is he a ha-ha, rough and ready brute on the waves? What do we know about his refinement and education, should we say? Yeah, and what are our sources for him?

Until he erupts into the newspapers in 1716 onwards for his piratical attacks, we really know nothing about his background, his education. All we know is that similar to most pirates, he's a seafarer. So he has seafaring education, and he's likely more just a common seafarer, a common sailor like most pirates in this period. While they've been involved in privateering, seems to taking up a privateering commission in Jamaica. It doesn't seem likely that he was a captain of a privateering vessel, probably just rank and file sailor.

Do we know if he was literate? Has he left many letters or any written accounts himself? No written accounts from Edward Thatcher, unfortunately. However, there is at least one letter written to him, so we know he was littered. But this makes him fodder for, you know, films, books, fantasies. You can project onto him. You can project anything you like on him. And he can be the boogeyman. You can make him as frightening as you like. I mean, one thing, you know, to have a crew on a ship like this, if you are, you know, somebody from nowhere, Edward from nowhere, who, you know, we don't know. know very much about. Is it a lot of defections from the English Navy? Because we know, and we know from people like Samuel Johnson, that being in the Navy was hard. It wasn't very lovely. I mean, I think he wrote, you know, the lot of the sailor was very much the same as that of a prisoner,

only with the added possibility of drowning. It's a brilliant Johnson life. It's not great. So very Johnson. But, I mean, is that why people at sea would suddenly go, well, actually, forget this? I'll just go and join Edward from nowhere, who we don't really know very much about, because it's got to be better than this? To an extent that's true, but it was more merchant vessels where pirates sort of tended to recruit from, so particularly slaven vessels, but also other mercantile vessels as well,

where merchants who are being taken by pirates, some of their crews would join voluntarily, would join the pirates who were taking the vessel. They tended not to encounter naval vessels. They tended to avoid them as much as possible. So those defections didn't really happen into piracy, although perhaps some deserted and found their way on board pirate vessels as well.

but for the most part it tended to be more from the merchant side of things. So, okay, so he devotes his life. We do know that he does decide to be a pirate. Do we know how successful he was in the early days and who does he target when he's, you know, sort of little black bearded, little bearded, when he's just starting out. Who does he go for first? Black stubble.

Black stub, exactly. That makes sense. He operates, again, like most of these individuals from New Providence at first. He's actually sailing with one of the foremost captains in that area, Benjamin Hornagold, who's one of the origins of these pirates. crews from New Providence, so he sails with Benjamin Hornigold for a couple of years out of New Providence, mostly attacking the Spanish, it must be said, so they continue to concentrate their attacks on the Spanish, particularly.

Is there a religious talk of that? I mean, is it the fact that the Spanish are Catholic and they are Protestant, or is it just the Spanish are rich and got gold on the ships? A bit of both, so part of that is the religious context, but really it's more the local, the geopolitical context, because these are individuals who have been trained as privateers. They've been taking part in privateering voyages with Spain, where are the enemy. And they just want to continue that because Spain, they do have wealth as well. So they want to continue to plunder these vessels and to plunder the Spanish. What we haven't said, which we should perhaps clarify,

is that the reason that everyone is so keen on these Spanish vessels is the gold, silver, and is it tin? What are the other things that they're finding in the new world? Gold, silver, sugar as well, and tobacco on both these vessels, and lots of different manufacturers also that they're bringing to the Americas to trade, but mostly, to be honest, what they're interested in is the silver,

so the pieces of eight that we all know from all of the different films. Sorry, I need to do it. Pieces of eight. Pieces is what the parents say on all the movies. And again, just to explain what a piece of eight is, eight of what? Yes, describe.

The piece of eight is a silver coin, so it's eight pistols, basically, is what it's worth. Which is a significant amount, but these are large silver coins, and they are melted down silver from the mine, in Central and Southern America. And it's really what the Spanish are extracting from the Americas and sending back to Europe

to fund their wars and their empire building elsewhere. And it's that silver that the pirates want access to because it's that silver that circulates in the Caribbean as the main currency. All right, well, look, with all that in mind, with the idea of the plunder in mind, let's take a break. Join us after the break,

where we go from Goaty to full beard, I suppose. I love just stubble things so much, how to Trump it. Back soon. Welcome back. We are with David Wilson and we are now heading to the Pirate Republic of Nassau in the Bahamas. Now, in the films, we all know that sort of Pirates to the Caribbean Pirates Pub that they all go with the incredibly beautiful barmaids and all these characters around the tables with peg legs and so on. That is actually based on a real pirate republic and there is a historical basis for that. Yeah, exactly. So the pirate community at Nassau.

and New Providence begins after the War of the Spanish Succession. So from 1714 onwards, you have these small sets of pirates operating from NASA to attack the Spanish particularly. They are quite small scale. So you have these accounts of crews of about 25 people using canoes to attack the Spanish, but they start to build up their operations and to start taking larger vessels. And really, this is where you get the emergence of Benjamin Hornigold as being one of the leaders within this space.

But after 1715, this really explodes. the reason it explodes is that the Spanish flotilla, which carries all of the wealth from the mines of South America and Central America back to Europe, it actually gets shipwrecked off the coast of Florida on the 31st of July 1715. This is like whiskey galore, but with pieces of eight rather than whiskey. Pieces of eight cover the Gulf of Florida, let's say, and it causes a treasure hunting frenzy amongst seafarers throughout this Atlantic world, so the Spanish. This is brilliant. What date is this?

31st of July, 1715 is when it's wrecked. This is where we all should have been. 1715 in the Bahamas with gold littering the beaches. It's pretty good. People are still to this day, you know, working these wrecks. So they are still there doing this. But these pirates then start to operate these wrecks. But what that means is you get a lot of different seafarers from throughout the Atlantic

coming to Florida, but also coming to the Bahamas and starting to get involved in these pirate crews as well. And naturally, we get this explosion of a seafaring population. who turned to piracy. And who are the people that are part of this? They're mainly British, mainly English? What sort of nationalities would you find in this republic? Give us some stories. Particularly in the Bahamas, it was mostly British by this point

because it was a British colony. But there are French arriving and Dutch members of these crews as well. So one famous individual is a character called Olivier Labussy, who is an extravagant French captain. Oh, I know Labussy. He ends up in reunion. Exactly. I've been to his grave.

I've left a bottle of rum on his grave, in fact. Have you now? Oh, fantastic. Oh, wow. Amazing. I mean, I shouldn't say fantastic. He's not a good person. No, he's not a good person, but his grave is still a subject of, I mean, what we would call voodoo. And when you go there in the evening, there are these incredible crowds of people leaving offerings today for Labusi. Why wasn't he a good person? I mean, I don't think we've really highlighted what these pirates did. Give us the story. Yeah.

We think back in the pirates, we sort of romanticised these figures as being anti-establishment. What they were really doing was quite violently attacking merchant vessels and slaving vessels as well, and not treating either the sailors or the enslaved persons, they found all the captains particularly well. They were very violent. A lot of torture happened on both these vessels. And what they really wanted to do was enact fear in the broader seafaring community. So the torture, again, I've got to sound like a vampire, don't I? But I mean, you know, things like Walking the Plank or Kiel hauling and the stuff that, you know, we're raised on in the movies. Are these gifts of the Navy or gifts of piracy to the world? I think probably

bit of both, to be honest. With regards to the torture that we have that we see in the records, it tends to be a lot more violent in some ways than those. So things like burning matches under people's eyes as one of the ones that we have. Oh. Keep going, Demi, more detail. Oh, he shudges. More. Come on. Yes, more. Lots of lashing and whipping and then a lot of hanging people from the mass as well. The yardarm. Hanging from the yard of. Exactly. Things like this. And the reason they do that is because they want to feel them, but also to give up their treasure and to give up information of other vessels as well.

Okay, so the grave with the voodoo and the William Durham Porl whiskey offering. Rum. Rum, rum offering. What did he do this chap? So Olivia Lubussi is a really interesting character because he sort of comes into the record very early on, so he's operating from 1716 onwards. And he's committing piracies in line with other more British pirates, particularly Sam Belemy, as another individual he cruises with in the Leward Islands of the Caribbean.

And they are picking off different British vessels, different things, different French vessels. But Olivia Labussi is one of the very few pirates who then also directs to the west coast of Africa and is operating there, attacking the slaving vessels there. And in the Indian Ocean, ultimately. One of the very few who makes it to the Indian Ocean. Because really that's what they want. What these pirates want to do is to trade up their vessels to get bigger vessels so that they can then go to the Indian Ocean or to the coast of Brazil. Okay. And I mean, well, on the vessels, how big are we talking? Are we talking to match the

Royal Navy or much, much smaller than the Royal Navy vessels? So they start off in very much smaller vessels, but as they build up and build up, the reason they start to attack the slave trade, especially the slaving vessels, is because they want large vessels that basically can match the Royal Navy. If they have to, these are as big as the Royal Navy vessels in the Atlantic. Now, if I remember correctly, the big strike of Lubusi was when in the South Seas, he captures the governor of Goa going home with his fortune. and he pulls into Reunion and he gets the entire life savings of this enormous Portuguese

sort of megabucks governor. And that is his great find. And he buries it and it's never been discovered. And he leaves half the map or something. There's one wonderful stories about Labusi when he dies. He's being hung publicly by the French and he shows half the map and then takes the other half to his grave, so to speak. And it's never found.

So the bit with the X marking the spot, nobody needs. knows. Can we circle back to just for a second, the Pirate Republic again? Because you mentioned this amazing character, Benjamin Hornigold. And anyone who plays video games, Assassin's Creed, has a character, Benjamin Hornigold. Do you play Assassin's Creed? Do you know who I'm talking about? I've had to play Assassin's Creed for research, of course. Just for research. Of course. You've got a PhD in Assassin's Creed. I mean, I don't play it, but I know about it. So in the game, they have a very handsome, dashing, square-jawed, clean-cut, you know, girls might swoon kind of character as Benjamin Hornagold.

I just want to flesh out his personality because he's going to be very, very important in a little while because he's going to be Blackbeard's mentor. We can't lose sight of Blackbeard because he's the reason we're here. So, I mean, what do we know about what people said about Hornigold? How dripping in blood he was or how dripping in gold he was. Hornigold's really interesting because he seems to have been a British privateer during the war of the Spanish succession.

And he's one of the pirates who sort of continues to want to only attack the Spanish. So he has this sort of nationalistic strike to him as well. So he only wants to attack Spanish vessels. He does eventually start to attack some British vessels. But really, you can tell that Hornigold is a bit more patriotic than, say, some of the other pirates. And he's one of the first to take a pardon that is later offered. And he actually turns into a pirate hunter. So he is one of the less violent and one of the sort of more nationalistic, let's say, of the pirates.

But is it true that he becomes? Blackbeard's mentor at some point? Yeah, so Thatch first appears as a member of Hornigold's crew and is given his first command under Benjamin Hornigold. So he does become a bit of a mentor to Thatch. And at that point, sort of 17, 16, into early 1717, Thatch is very much loyal to Benjamin Hornegold and seems to believe in his mentor

and to sort of follow what his mentor sets out for him in terms of piracy in terms of really just focusing on attacking the Spanish. They do attack some British vessels. In fact, their largest prize comes in April 1717, where they take two trading slips not far from Jamaica, which are actually South Sea Company vessels, and they're reported to carry 25,000 pieces of eight, as well as several enslaved persons as well. And this is one of the first times that Honogold really attacks the British, but it's also interesting the type of South Sea company who have this trading connection with the Spanish as well.

So I think that may be part of the reason they attack it. I might right and understand it, as well as the pieces of eight, the commodities, that really mattered that you wanted to bring back to Nassau or back to the Bahamas would be flour, for example, because there's just no farming on NASA. So if you want bread,

you're going to have to steal the flour to make it. Is that right? I mean, is it more valuable than whiskey? They always did also, you know, make sure to raid the alcohol that was on board the vessels too, but you're right, it's more provisions that they need because at this point, especially by the early 18th century,

pirates are isolated from any colonial port, so they need to get their provisions from somewhere. So what they have to do is attack smaller, vessels and build up their provisions, build up their supplies to then be able to continue their piracies. David, what I haven't got in my head is the picture again in Nassau. Is it just a bunch of guys living anarchically for themselves? Or do they have a sort of pirate council? Is there any form of collective action that they take against the government? And do they defend themselves against the government? Is it genuinely a pirate republic or is it just a bunch of guys off the map doing their own

thing? It seems that there were different factions involved in Nassau and New Problem. And so, So there were different pirate captains who sort of had groups coalesce around them. So you had Hornigold as one camp. Vane seems to be another camp and Sam Bellamy as well. And these were individuals that they had their sort of crews who would follow them. But they also had to negotiate with each other because they were all using this pirate base. What's important to also remember is that there was a population in the Bahamas before these pirates started to operate there. So they're also working with some of the members of the community as well who are already involved in things like

piracy and smuggling as well. So they are operating as part of this broader illicit network. It's just the pirates seem to take over from this period. And is there a point in which the government takes these guys on? Do you ever have an organised Royal Navy attack on the pirate havens, or regular attacks? Does it go on over a period? What's really interesting is they don't. At first, the British government really sort of sleeps on this. There's a lot of colonial governors who are warning constantly about this pirate nest, as they call it, this nest of pirates in the Bahamas. They warn the government constantly that you need to take this out before it becomes too much of a problem. But they don't respond because basically they don't have the resources.

There's not a great Royal Navy presence in the Caribbean or the Atlantic at this time. And they don't really want to put the resources into somewhere like the Bahamas, which doesn't promise to become much of a lucrative colony. They sort of are happy to neglect it and ignore it until it becomes too much of a problem. And then they do take it on. And is there any sense that they are aiming mainly at the Spaniards, so the British government are fairly happy to let them get on with it? Or is there a point when they cross the threshold and they start attacking British vessels

and they become in the sights of the Royal Navy? Exactly. So by the second half of 1717, that's when these pirates start to just operate against anyone. So they start to take the Dutch, the French and the British as well. And it's really from that point on, really when the merchants get involved, the British merchants get involved, that's when you start to see more proactive measures against pirates.

But again, they don't go against New Providence. it takes an expedition by an individual called Wood Rogers, who then takes on New Providence basically as part of a private expedition rather than a naval expedition. With all this as backdrop, you've got sort of Edward Teach at the knee of the master with Hornagold sort of teaching him the ropes quite literally from the yard arm. But at what point does Edward Thatch teach Blackbeard say, actually my name is Blackbeard, now that is who I'm going to be? Is it a name that people start calling him because he's decided to grow his beard?

Or does image matter? I mean, I'll tell you something that was said about him, apart from the eyes, like a frightful meteor, his beard covered his whole face and frightened America more than any comet that has appeared in a long time. So, I mean, it's sort of circa 1717 that you hear him being referred to as black beard. His decision, the newspaper's decision, a journalist decision. I mean, who does this? I think it must be a bit of both because, you know, he has chosen to wear his beard in this way,

and it is quite long and quite distinctive. And what's useful for that is that if he wants to take vessels, what he wants to do is to take them quite easily. He doesn't really want to engage in a long-standing fight against these vessels. So if he can create a name for himself, whether that name is blackbeard or just an image of the black beard, if they see that from afar, then they might be more likely just to give up their vessel and to give up their goods without a fight, just to avoid any sort of torture or violence or anything like that. But at the same time, as news of his attack start to circulate, the newspapers are also building up this image as well,

which is really helpful for him, but it's also helpful. for the Royal Navy and for this campaign against piracy, because if you become notorious and if you become notorious as this Blackbeard, then you are going to become a target of these anti-piracy campaigns as well. So it sort of benefits both parties in some ways. When he's sort of morphing into Blackbeard, you know, growing into the image that he's got, he's sailing a six-gun sloop and a sloop for those who don't know, a much faster vessel, it's smaller, sleeker. I mean, it wouldn't be steam sloops at this point, would it? I mean, it's just a smaller, swifter vessel at this point in time.

A smaller, swifter sailing vessel. It tends to be favoured by pirates at this point in time because it's quicker and you can get in and out of place is much easier and much faster, so you can take a vessel and then escape. What's really useful about a sloop is it's got a shallow draft, so you can also escape into sort of shallower waters and around islands and creeks away from the Royal Navy

who are in much larger vessels and can't follow you into these areas. And at what point does he swap the sloop for, you know, the very famous, the vessel, the revenge? Where does he get that from? And what is that? It's actually called the revenge. that's the real name for Blackbeard's real ship.

I'm beginning to look at Pirates the Caribbean as a work of history now. So the revenge, the first revenge, there's the Queen Anne Revenge, which is a really famous flagship, but the revenge itself is actually a vessel that is purchased by an individual known as Steed Bonnet. And he's a really interesting character

because he is known as the Gentleman Pirate. He's actually a plantation owner in Barbados. He has a dressing gown, doesn't he, that he wears? Supposedly has a dressing gown. gown that he wears as well on board. But he has quite a comfortable life in Barbados. He's a plantation owner. He's a slaver. But he turns to piracy. No one really knows why he makes this decision, but he does. He builds a vessel. He calls it the revenge. He hires a crew. He also pays the crew, which is unusual on a pirate vessel to pay wages to your sailors. And he turns up in New

Providence. And really from that point on him and Thatch, their stories become intertwined because that starts to take Steve Bonnet kind of under his wing, but what he's really doing is using Steve Bonnet, using his vessel. Okay, well, I mean, the thing I heard about Steve Bonnet, the plantation owner, and again, I wonder how much is his sort of back-projected journalistic guff, but he has this, you know, he's on the plantation, he's got a family, he's very happy, you know, he's living the life of a gent, he has enslaved people, he has servants, they're living a lovely life and eating off silver, and then his children die,

and he has a complete sort of mental breakdown, and that's what leads to this lawless life. it's grief and woe, and then he just takes to the seas. Is that true? It's another one of these accounts that comes from Charles Johnson's a general history. And what he tries to do is he takes the little information we have and then fleshes it out of something that might have happened. We don't actually know if that's what happens to Steve Bonnet.

It certainly makes sense. That's maybe why he would turn to piracy. Tell us about this Charles Johnson. You've mentioned him a couple of times. What date is it written? How reliable is it? It's written and published in 1724, and we don't know who Charles Johnson is, this author. For a while, people thought it was Daniel Defoe,

but that's been thoroughly disproven now. So we don't know who Charrows-Johnson is, but what we do know is when you read the book, you can see where the facts are coming from, you can see the newspaper articles that you're using once you start to them into this research. But then you just start to see how he takes that and just runs a mile with it.

He takes little details and then, you know, turns it up to 11 and just goes with it. And where's he based? Who is he, this guy? So we don't know who he is, but we know the book is published in London, so it's basically a popular book for those interested in pirates. Yeah, for Pantas, and you can see why,

Because, I mean, he writes his delicious, gorgeous details. Like, you know, Bonnet has an entire library on his ship. You know, he's sort of like this gentleman pirate who can recite poetry at the drop of the hat and is pining for his dead children. I mean, you can see. Yeah, that's a great story, though. It's true, but it's one of these things that Charles Johnson is really interesting for understanding how people wanted to see pirates or how people wanted to engage with pirates.

So take us, David, to September 1717, and there is a crisis. Bonnet and his crew have limped into the pirate sanctuary at NASA having run a foul of a Spanish warship. Tell us what happened. Yeah, so Bonnet and his crew, when they are in the Caribbean, they mistake a Spanish worship for a merchant vessel, and they engage and are quite quickly dispatched away by the Spanish worship, as you can expect. And so they limp into New Providence having been devastated by this attack. And it's really from this point on that you start to see that Thatch becomes in charge. of this vessel starts to take over Steve's crew and his vessel with his own vessel and his own crew as well. And it's really from this point on, just sort of later 1717, where Thatcher's name

appears in the record more forcefully because he is terrorising the eastern seaboard of North America. With Steve Bonnet and Toe, basically his consort. So when you say terrorising the coast of America, what's going on? He's landing on a remote peninsula and raiding the plantations inland? Or what sort of stuff? be talking about. What they do is they sort of move from colony to colony from port to port and they just attack all the vessels that they can in a short amount of period so they move to New York, to Delaware, to the Chesapeake. They'll lie off the capes of these ports waiting for vessels to arrive or to try to leave. They'll plunder those but then before anyone can respond,

they'll just move up to the next port and they keep going and they take several vessels at this point in time and his name starts to become very well known amongst the colonies in the eastern seaboard. Okay, well look, let's leave you there and we'll be back in the next episode of this double bill on pirates and Blackbeard in particular and find out what this sort of burgeoning new career that's terrorizing everybody on the seaboard is going to do next. If you want to hear the next one already, you know what you have to do. Just join the EmpirePodUK.com. There's EmpirePoduk.com. You get all these mini-series in one big galoof. And also you get access to a newsletter and you get early tickets to any live shows we do.

But you're going to be back. We're going to be back till the next time we meet. Goodbye from me Anita Aranen. Goodbye for me, William, the Rumpel.