Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 492: Blackbeard Part II - P is for Pirate

Episode Date: May 14, 2022

This week the boys once again embark upon the choppy (and sometimes bloody) seas of pirate history, covering the pivotal years of Blackbeard's life as his chaotic reign worked its way across the Caribbean coastline.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk on the left That's when the cannibalism started Oh god, you know we did a lot of research this last couple weeks. Obviously we're learning a lot about sloops Oh, yeah, yeah, is that an app it sounds like a video game you're gonna find out the fuck a sloop is today my friend Okay, are we getting are we being problematic? No, but the thing about sloops is that's kind of where I hit my history wall Right like as soon as we get to like what type of mask the gunner arm Once we get to the bow sprint. I don't know what anything is and I'm boat blind like a guy

I can't tell the difference, but you know what I did do is I wanted a deep dive on just how gay pirates work Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, that's more like a me. That's okay. Oh, yeah, and guess what man? They gay I am been hanging out with the newly aroused Henry Zabrowski. Hey, hey, hey, something's got to happen on the wide open seas There's a forever strong Marcus Parks. I had a great joke that I wanted to share. Okay. Oh great great. Yes I'm um, it's a culinary themed, okay, and I was thinking about it based on last episode Pie rate calm send me pictures of pies And I rate them and I rate them from I would eat that that's number one to number five

And I would eat that and enjoy it. Why do you do a show? So isn't that why do I do a show? I eat that. Mm-hmm. I eat that and enjoy it. I also like the base. I'll eat it Pie rates.com. All right, everyone. We are on part two of Black Beard Now there are no official records of Black Beard's birth or his youth nor of how he came to the business of Privateering like so many other pirates before and after but the legend goes that Black Beard was the son of a Privateer who'd been active during the Dutch Wars before returning to Bristol to father little Black Beard Oh my god, can you imagine the farts of the Dutch Wars the Dutch up that's gonna occur Smell the inside of a wooden shoe

Yeah, just do that with your relationships. Is that fun the Dutch oven? I feel like kids used to make everyone smell each other's No, that's not something that two married men in their late thirties do to know I'm gonna get a bunch of DMs that say People are into the fart thing and they say that like oh, it's fun to fart in front of your spouse But we don't I actually go into another room to fart. Oh, no, I fart in front of my spouse plenty Well, you have to yeah, you have to but it but I don't make a game of it. No Okay, by what historians can loosely put together Black Beard's father died soon after Black Beard's birth And he was replaced with a crew stepfather who regularly beat Black Beard

This drove a 16 year old Edward teach to sign on to a ship as a cabin boy where he worked Transporting either goods or enslaved people to Jamaica. That's right. I'm so sick of being abused. I'm gonna go become a Cabin boy Maybe one day I'll be a cabin man. Do you have to go through a lot of other cabin boys? Oh, I don't think Black Beard needed to get beat to become a pirate There's a lot of stories if you really to get into deep in the idea of the nature of a privateer of a buccaneer Which I got into which is they it's familial. It runs in the family a lot of times So just Papa being privateer probably made baby be privateer because you get trained up as a little kid

And especially back in the day and the original versions of piracy pirate ears buccaneers Yeah, they feel a boost yes They also they needed a large amount of sea training. Yeah, just to do the job later on pirates would be it will be like mix They'd have a bunch of different style like whoever showed up because the way they would advertise for pirate ships as they literally would just put up a A up sign that said looking for adventure But then you just get raped on the ocean for years Now we know nothing of Black Beard's life as a cabin lad But we do know that he worked his way up to captain fairly quickly from what the math suggests

Black Beard was in his late teens or early 20s by the time he was commanding at the very least a small vessel Wow, I actually didn't realize how young so is that it was that normal for a captain be in their teens It's very normal for pirates to be most pirates were in their 20s the vast majority of pirates were in their 20s even captains But usually like late 20s. It was hard-living. Yeah Yeah, you have to be a certain type of person to want to sleep out rough You know what I mean pirates used to sleep on the actual surface of the ship, right? It's difficult You have to go piss in the bottom you go shit off the top Very difficult. Yeah. All right. I just always thought of them as older

Well once actually what's black beard became once he became black beard He was in his like early to mid 30s But that actually made him like by far the oldest guy on board, but and he had like an air of superiority He had like kind of like this air of seniority over his men just dead yet. He had survived that long Yeah, younger was later than yeah But regardless of age when black beard was still Edward teach and working on the legitimate side of the seafaring business He likely made his base at Port Royal in Jamaica Now in the late 17th century Port Royal was the unofficial capital of Jamaica and about as rough as any place on earth

It just said that is the soundtrack Of Port Royal to the point where it must have gotten pretty fucking obnoxious. Can you guys stop yarring? For a goddamn second I'm trying to rate me journal Reminds me of when we all went to have some food at the smokehouse after you guys saw Northman Yeah, I really continued to grunt Dog man Well Port Royal was basically a frontier town on the beach and like most frontier towns It gave both criminals and civilians Apple opportunity to spend their hard-earned pay on drink and women

Foreign drinks on a woman In fact Port Royal had the most taverns and brothels of any port in the entire Americas leading Puritans in New England to call Port Royal the Sodom of the New World Sure indeed, and I gotta tell you this is a great place to be a herpy man. Here's the herpy club We're dominating all over this place. I got I was on three dudes just yesterday Well the ship surgeon, which is one of the only civilians they would normally have on a ship Mostly his job was cut and sores off of pirates. Yeah, that's like what do you do? He'd men bones and he do shit, but the most the

Surgeon's biggest job was being like, yeah, this is gonna fall off in about two weeks. I'm getting too horny for this The horny as pirate ship surgeon But as it goes in the Caribbean Natural disaster is never far behind progress and much to the delight of soulless American moralists like Boston's cotton Mather the Sodom of the New World soon had its day of judgment. It's very biblical. Yeah, interesting in 1692 an earthquake measuring an estimated 7.5 on the Richter scale Absolutely destroyed Port Royal in what sounds like the most terrifying natural disaster in the Americas until the Galveston hurricane of 1900 at around 11 o'clock in the morning

The ground began to quake and the residents soon discovered that Port Royal was built not on bedrock. Yeah, but Sam Yeah, dude, that is very biblical, isn't it? Oh, yeah, because if you think about this whole criminal enterprise But they all thought oh merriment and enjoyment training see fairing and rape What an amazing place to be but then it sunk down to the depths of the ocean like it never was there before Yeah, that's creepy when the plates shifted underground the loosely packed sand up top Almost turned to liquid and the buildings quickly sink below the surface What didn't sink into the sand sunk into the ocean because in just two minutes a tsunami came that drowned Two-thirds of the town in water so high that even the vessels docked ashore could only be seen by their high masks

There's something about pirates getting drowned pirates versus God Yeah, and I'm actually gonna root for the pirates. I hope the pirates kill Gaia It was said by survivors that the loose liquid soil then formed into literal waves of sand With fissures repeatedly opening and closing Crushing everybody who fell inside. Wow. What year was this? 1692 didn't have that on my 1692 big Well those who were simply caught in the shifting sand survived for only a short time Because when the quake stopped the sand settled and those still struggling to get free soon

Suffocated under the weight or they were crushed that to me is the most terrifying image is someone Trying to dig their way out of the sand the sand settles and they're halfway out and you just hear Worse than drowning or not, I think it's worse and drowning That's worse than drowning. I heard that drowning in the moments of drowning. It's actually almost very peaceful Yeah, that's what they say, but they forget the moment where you're like Yeah, of course, but yeah, it does sound like this is even worse because you know, you're gonna die Yeah, but because Port Royal was after all populated mostly by cutthroats thieves and embittered tavern winches The more unsavory characters of the town began looting homes and warehouses

During the earthquake. What are you gonna do the ground shaking your professional criminal? Maybe you've been given a commission a letter of mark or a whatever bull should you've been doing legal crime for the state for a Long time, and then you sit in here like well, we we must continue doing what we've always done Still like we have to do it. We can't let it think about how mad they'd be All those lost brothers of ours if we didn't steal their things when they were dead I love the component of human nature will during the most tragic moments for one person's life another person just sees opportunity Yeah, oh, yeah, it reminds me what happened on 9-11 when a lot of scores were settled Mm-hmm. Oh, no, I'm talking to somebody about investing in stocks and as it plummets they like their eyeballs turn to gold

Spheres and they're like yes, this is the time now the things are crumbling Once it all settled the dead Intermingled with those who had been Disinterred from the Port Royal Cemetery during the earthquake had their fingers cut off afterwards by these unsavory Characters so as to easily remove their ring cool. So guys. I'm sorry. We have to take a small break. I have to go disinterred right now You're the living in Before the earthquake struck 6500 people had lived in 2001 story buildings in Port Royal

afterward 1,000 of those 6500 were dead. Oh my god Immediately during the disaster or in the following days from disease or entry those Envied the dead But while Port Royal never fully recovered its title of the Sodom of the New World What was left remained a favorite port for pirates and privateers for years after here Blackbeard arrived during the War of Spanish Succession praying on French and Spanish ships from Newfoundland to Brazil as a Legitimate British privateer and you could get what they do is they give them like special flags

Again, we'll get into some of the flags. We'll get a flags mostly on part three But it then I also read about when I was reading Ben Aver Johnson's the Sea Rovers manual I believe it's called they do Uh, everyone lied with the flags. Yeah, so it does get to a point We're like what is exactly the point of having a flag system if everybody is just trying to manipulate the flag system? And then gets like the center doesn't hold you could ask that question about any fucking human institution or any that agreed upon thing ever But he was he started a private here obviously, you know, they were so again legal crime They're allowed to do it right but what happened one thing was a result of Port Royal sinking into the fucking ocean was that there Was actually very few centered pirate towns. Yeah, privateer towns were more legitimate because technically they were all legal

They were all commissioned by the King where like something like this It's like now he arrives back to a sunken Port Royal which has become a pirate area Which is it looks just like from the fucking movies. It's just a abandoned Seaside tavern or like a party town and filled with like, you know ships laying on its side and shit It's fucking awesome. I mean, it's kind of the opposite of Palm Springs I want to thank everyone who came out to the Hall of Flowers Yeah, can't wait to get some weed there where it's like everyone there is old and they go to bed early And so it's not for me. No, but this town seems nice. Nice. No, it's not nice

No, no sense of like staying up all night and having fun with your boy I feel like yeah, they're all very unpredictable though Like you never know when their fight's gonna break out over you took the wrong guava and like you won too much on a dice game You love the gamble and honestly, you'd be the perfect one. They're like, let's see how many swords we can get in You might be a very good victim. It's a 17. I'd call it. I'd call it diseased disease It's a disease. I don't gamble again. I only gamble against the house. That's why I don't play poker I guess about three card. Yeah, well when the War of Spanish Succession ended after 12 years and 1713 All the privateering contracts including blackbeards were cancelled and you suddenly had an estimated

40,000 men who were out of work Those men all had lean fast heavily armed and well-maned ships that had been purposefully built To board rob and destroy merchant vessels and while not all 40,000 became pirates It's estimated that during this time period the golden age of piracy about 2000 dead and honestly 2000 pirates is quite enough. I guess that's enough. Yeah. Oh, yes Absolutely. Now the first historical mention of blackbeard is in the summer of 1717 about five years after the end of the War of Spanish Succession of which I very much wish there was some sort of shorthand in which I could use to refer to the War of Spanish Success I don't know. You call it the WSS. WSS. I don't know. That's even that that seems even more of a pain in the ass

The War of Spanish Succession which is all about the uni uni dad version of the HBO matches This is why again, we've become we've come so far as a people. Yeah We're yeah, we have more war than ever and devastating lives, but we have fun names. Iraqi freedom Yeah, that rolls off. Yeah, I rocky operations obsession. Yeah. Yeah, I don't even know what that war was about I know it's about succeeding, but I don't know what from and for where to I was gonna say the Iraqi one was about freedom This is because the Spanish the the king or the queen someone in Spain died and they had no air Oh, yes, they put the boy on there Who's gonna get it and then the French and the the French and somebody else were on one side and then the English and I think the

Dutch were on the other says the French and the French and Spain Well, Spain on one side and then I want you to join us on the other side for Marcus a nice new show half mumbled paraphrase history We promise to stumble through some of the big talking points of some of the biggest chapters in history Anyway by that time Blackbeard was working as a part of a larger pirate crew and at that year been given command of his own Sloop as a reward for outstanding achievement in the field of piracy And a lot of times I was given because if you captured a ship who else is gonna get it because a lot of times pirates are looking for They're there want to increase their own personal armada by other people's ships

Which is also what we do in civs quite a lot the idea is that you want to kill somebody else's armies Versus having to always generate your own. Yes, if you met Blackbeard right now, you guys would have so much to talk Oh, once again, so we haven't fully clarified what a sloop is I feel like it's when you get syphilis But what is it? I will tell you right now exactly what a sloop is for those of you who aren't up on your naval terminology belly button A sloop is a single masted sailboat. Hmm. It's just a sailboat with one mast Which under the command of the right captain could be a swift and dangerous vessel Especially when you got two or three sloops supporting a massive multi-masted main vessel and according to the sea rovers practice in a perfect world a sea rovan vessel was fast light

clean stiff and witherly Come over here and suck this. Oh, no, I'm talking about miss loop As far as who gave Blackbeard his first pirate command and who taught him the piracy tricks of the trade in general That was the aforementioned Benjamin Hornigold Hornigold had also been a privateer during the War of Spanish Succession And it's likely that he and Blackbeard had worked as privateers together fighting enemies of the British Empire on ships coming out of Jamaica

But when the war ended in 1713 Blackbeard Hornigold and hundreds if not thousands of other sailors were stuck in sudden poverty in Port Royal because might not surprise you that these men of the sea didn't often have savings to fall back on yeah And the idea of privateers and pirates hiding treasure was not really that common as you think because most of the time They blew through it as soon as they got it. Yeah, there wasn't a lot of treasure There was some there's some there's some but it's not as it yeah It's definitely not very prevalent like if someone's still out there searching for like, you know pirate gold like I found it all It's very little most of the stuff that was lost was stuff that was literally lost by the merchants own

Errors and problems and and various ships holding treasure Sinking which would then you'd find out then pirates would all show up like when a whale dies and a bunch of sharks go to eat it Yeah, you have pirate show up and then you'd have like the Spanish show it like there was one Huge one where like these Spanish galleons went down with all this like gold and silver aboard and the pirate showed up And then the British showed up after that and then the Spanish started fighting the British and then turned into this whole fucking like Tiny little war and this shit happened all the time It was just happening constantly in the Caribbean and in Florida to Florida was a big big place for shit like this Oh, yeah, man. Gasparilla you could have I've never seen more 40 year old nipples then during gasparilla

Gasparilla, I'm not quite certain. I remember when I was there I remember it was a time when it's like this is when adults act scary It's a type of pirate festival in Tampa. It's a pirate theme festival. Oh, okay. I mean, it sounds kind of fun Yeah, it's all right, but to keep themselves from starving or more realistically to keep them in the same lifestyle They got used to his privateers Hornigal gathered up a bunch of former shipmates and drinking buddies including Blackbeard to formulate a plan But at the end of it, they decided that the best course of action was to just keep doing what they'd been doing all along That meeting was to be like, all right boys, what are we doing?

It's been like I was thinking of a program where we teach young pirates how to read You're dumb if we ever thought about Maybe baking I would like to bake No, honestly, there's maroon you but no, yeah, of course Why don't you do what the fuck you've always been doing you have all the tools for it You have all the shit and the know-how this time British government's not getting a cut No, oh, okay as Benjamin Hornigal put it while the English and Dutch had consented to peace with the French and the Spaniards He and his men had never signed such a document and he was therefore well within his rights to continue in his chosen occupation

you know, I think if it wasn't for mass and ropes and And in sloops Marcus you'd be into the mafia, too You'd actually be into the mafia stories because this is all mafia talk. Yeah, it doesn't have to groups There's a little bit more to it. Yeah, I mean it's history. It just took place I mean I just I like just different hats really. I like Street Gangs It's when they get organ it's the organized organized crime That's what's boring because it does get to a point of like I always kind of think about that, too We're that's well. This is a central question about Blackbeard. Yeah, why you see in charge?

How do you get to be in charge? I think that is what's interesting about big figures with the mafia world, too It's like why does everybody care with this 70 year old man's doing just shoot him in the back of the head Which then happens a lot. I mean you've been publicly advocating for a mafia series for a long time And you know that the pendulum might be swinging who knows it's possible Sammy the bull Sammy the bull all I know is different hats when it comes to pirates and mafia They say give me a hundred clams. They mean money and if you're a pirate you actually want this Yeah, they were hungry The next time Benjamin Hornigold showed up in history

It was 1717 and he had gone from commanding a single sloop to sailing a 30 gun vessel called the ranger and Sailing at his side in a sloop of his own was Blackbeard going We Yes, I command you sloop suck your own dick Sloop suck your own dick. Hey. Hey, hey Listen, you've lost your mind. Okay, the sloop don't got a dick sloops or girls It's kind of pussy. I guess sorry Now considering how this was very much a criminal operation

Hornigold and his men needed a base of operations because one couldn't very well dock a pirate ship at a legitimate port and trade Obviously stolen goods. So Hornigold and his crew set up in New Providence Island in the Bahamas 175 miles north of Cuba in a deserted collection of partially collapsed buildings that had been abandoned by the British After attack by the French. Like I said, this shit happened all the time. All right Now any pirate base needed two types of traders one to supply the pirates with everything They wanted i.e. booze weapons medicine and food and another who would buy the plundered goods brought into port by the pirates You need old-school fence. Mm-hmm. Once that sort of commerce was established at New Providence a secondary Sin-based economy sprung up around it sprung up indeed

And for five years New Providence was home to some of the most unsavory people in the Americas Wait, this is the thing man You know again history is fun in a way because this despite all the sloops Is that you can really get into this that you could see how it's never Changed every single time they tell a group of people you stop With that criminal activity or you make us something that everybody loves illegal or they are hard to access It seems no matter what a giant other market Just always opens and they tell us rich. It's so it happens

Again And they do the same thing again and again and again the human brain computer doesn't learn from its past mistakes AI does oh, it seems like we're gonna lose the the war Great well as angus conston put it in his biography on blackbeard New providence became a finishing school for pirates a place where seamen like blackbeard could learn the trade from more Experienced captains tommy come in here. We're working on our ours today. So tommy Yoy, huh? I need to hear me. Okay, okay Get out I'll be a cabin boy

Well in addition captured ships could be refitted and re-screwed new providence making it the 18th century version of a chop shop And of course there was plenty of liquor and women whenever a celebration was in order because pirate ships had to be constantly changed If you go and run a raid right and the people would get to know what your ship looked like So they would start redesigning the outside of it I was really getting into the idea of like what they do like they would repaint the whole thing They would add stuff to make it look like other types of ships like a lot of times If what a pirate ship would do is they would they would make it look like it was a merchant ship

And they would put big empty boxes on it. So it looked like it was carrying cargo because oh, it all's about it was all about The surprise The idea that you wanted to get the edge on somebody else no matter what that's how you win right though You basically have to get close enough so that you can jump aboard and get him real quick So they would look like a merchant ship and then they would notice they were like oh that merchant ship It's dumping all its shit into the water and then they're putting up a it's a black flag. That's a that's a pie Yes, but I gotta say that Kelvin pissing on the queen's head there that they put that decal. That's really kind of funny And that's moving me towards a revolution

against Nike And sometimes they would paint canvas to make it to hide the gun ports They'd paint it to look like just more like the side of the ship. Yeah, and then once they got close enough They'd take off the canvas This is cool like that's that's why this is cool They would paint up logs to look like cannons. Yeah, so it looked like their ships are more heavily armed interesting But mostly though new providence's real importance lay in the back room meetings where pirate captains swapped intelligence Formed alliances and planned for the future of piracy

They planned for weeks for raids the idea of recon and intelligence for the pirate was the most Important thing they plan for weeks and weeks and weeks because the goal was you create a bunch of different plans of how you're going to attack something And then you throw it all away when it all goes to shit, which is they all said the same thing the ultimate sign of a pirate is He's able to react spontaneously Okay, and certainly there were highly complicated raids that lasted hours If not days sometimes that the back and forth would go on forever. I played red dead redemption. I know Oh, yeah And it required an impressive amount of coordination that wouldn't make sense to anyone who doesn't have decades of experience sailing

The way a fucking pirate battle goes and the way that would go back and forth and back and forth Yeah, it's a fucking incomprehensible man. If you don't have like, I don't know could you could you make much sense of it? No, I sure as hell couldn't I don't know what windward means and they said apparently that's a big thing Is it like, you know watch when he goes windward? Would you believe it means that's when it's gonna catch something and move it just just many ways There's one thing that they used to do was they would know the water so well They said that's also a thing that an X factor that can't really be described You have to know the ocean which it takes years and years of being on it

But what they would do a lot of times is they would hang Just over the horizon's edge Like they would know where things were like they would hang out in coastal areas Especially choke points because the open water was actually very difficult to find another ship You wouldn't know like it would because no there's no exact way to tell the location of a ship on open one So they would wait into these little channel locks and they would wait just over the rise of the horizon until they would come They would see it and then they would come and sweep around because the idea is that you want to get as close to them as possible Without them first noticing you okay, then you spring and then the idea is that you show aggression

Where they said that they run the guns, which is like you watch it It's like all like you see in the movies all the pirates with their muskets They pull them out because 20 muskets were actually way more capable to to fuck up a ship than even cannons It's like six cannons because number one the ammo was cheaper. I'm gonna do this for a long time The ammo was cheaper uh and cannons are again, it's all very unreliable. You just have to go That's you get it the rest of the strategy. It does seem incomprehensible if you don't know anything about boats A roast as dark as the night

Perfect for fueling the cryptid research and mad ravings required for your podcasting. Don't mind the red eyes He's just trying to warn you of the bridge the bridge Finally from the caffeine-addled brains of spring hill jack coffee and last podcast on the left Bre bring you mothman's red-eye blend. Yes, delicious Panama beans go to lastpodcastmerch.com To order yours today Well sometimes though amongst all these insanely complicated raids a raid sometimes amounted to little more than a beer run In one raid blackbeard hornigold and their crew of some 150 pirates invaded a portuguese wine vessel

Just for the wine. Oh, yeah, and it said that the men emptied the vessel's entire cargo of highly valuable white wine In just one drinking session at sea I mean it sounds like they had at least that was a fun night I think they want one of the most edifying things of the research into this this time period Is that all of the stereotypes are real? Yeah, and they're all like that. They are all they just were party animals It again a search for freedom Using crime. Yeah, they should have the wine vessel should have just been like Home a stinky pork or something. They shouldn't have been like we got wine here because

No, they knew because they would follow it's all recon They would go throughout the towns like the goal was there was a there's a it's far too long But all of the various things that a good pirate captain would know which is you need to know the 20 coastal cities of Any area where you're at you didn't know the taverns You didn't know who goes where where a certain things are loaded off. Where does the sugar go? Where does the alcohol go? Where does the grain go? Where does the weapons go? Like you have to know all of the shit so that you could start to identify ships over time Dressed as

Another type of ship. Yeah, yeah with like another country's flag flying and other types of watching it again and again Just like a bank heist. Well Now Benjamin Hornigold knew that being a pirate was not a job that produced a lot of old men So by 1718 he supposedly decided to give it up of his own free will but with the full blessing of the British government See Benjamin Hornigold still had love for queen and country. He was a former privateer You remember and he refused to attack any British vessel But this was an extreme rarity in the pirate world After the war of Spanish succession most pirates attacked whoever they wanted whenever they wanted

And this was proven to be a big pain in the ass to the British The British however were also warned pretty thin by the war of Spanish succession And it was proving to be difficult to find 2,000 criminals in the open seas of the Atlantic Right So King George I signed a royal proclamation that if any pirates surrendered themselves by September 15, 1718 Then they would receive a pardon for all Paratical actions they may have taken since the end of the war of Spanish succession And I don't know if it's accurate or not, but I know that I watched the documentary about Blackbeard that Nat Geo did

And one was like the governor of Virginia like when he found out that they were going to give a pardon to any pirate that Volunteered it and he's he's acted like the dean from an animal house They won't take my revenge from me like he was all upset. I don't even know if that was because I feel like He didn't Blackbeard did specifically make a A enemy of the governor of Virginia, but it's still like this idea I think they're probably Want to end it because they have been ripping apart all of their sure What do you want to be careful messing with power joe exotic tiger king? That's why he's behind the bars right now

Also, if you are a king king George the first you got to not have the first because then everyone's like well Then there's going to be king George the only Because it just sets you up. It sets you up to fail. I don't understand king names I know that there's a thing for it, but yeah, I won't learn it Yeah, because until until an American plays an American again on television I'm not learning anything about the british monarch. Okay. Well, they take a name when they become a monarch So, yeah, so they could call themselves like john constantine. That'd be cool. That'd be cool Like a comic book man. Yeah, I'm king hulk

That's fucking fun. That's cool. Yeah. I'm king dog set. Yeah I'm glorb You can do that. I mean you'd be murdered. No by your cousins. Yeah, glorb. Yeah, of course. King glorb No one's respecting king gloria. It doesn't matter if they respect me or not. They'll fucking kill them That's the problems if you're doing if you're using him like king glorb, you are literally gonna have to kill everyone you've ever met Well any pirates who didn't surrender under these pardon agreements were put under bounty 100 pounds for a captain 40 for a quartermaster gunner and 20 each for whatever random pirate one might be able to capture Can I ask what is the gunner the gunner is the I know the quartermaster is the

second in command I as is a director. Yeah I put it on on a He's the one that like the captain goes like I'm going to starboard and then quartermaster goes like Hey, all your dogs are going to starboard Yeah, he's the xo. Yeah He's like the fucking guy. Yeah, the bald man in battlestar galax a god damn it

Damn it. I'll do it. You're the captain I still will fight you. I'll take these god damn sylons out one by one if I have to That's exactly what it is. Well, what's the gun? Gunner's got guns, right? Yeah, he's shooting guns. Oh, yeah. I love that side stories lpotl the gmail.com He knows where the guns are. He shoots the guns. He knows where they are. The guns are here. You're the gunner now. Yeah. Oh, no. I don't need this responsibility To be honest because now that I'm looking at it. These are just sticks Can I be the sticker? You're the stick man now, yeah

But in a seemingly genius caveat to the bounty the bounty for a captain doubled to 200 pounds If the pirate crew turned in a captain themselves Oh, yeah, which naturally made some pirate ships a little more tense than they'd usually be because they're also pure democracies But on the other hand I think that this caveat also made certain the pirate captains had to keep their pirate crews happy And nothing made a pirate crew happier than a steady income from regular raids on merchant ships I got into how god it was a little bit It was too much for me

But I got into the details of how they create the pirate articles like what they do and there is a there is a Highly detailed breakdown of wages versus commissions And then you can sign a contract So this is where it started coming out of where you could create a contract with your captain Or like I'll get guaranteed money Like you pay me per hour or you pay me by what we get sounds like they're treated better than employees now Yeah, Amazon. Yes, they get too opt to like do you want a stock option or do you want a salary? And so they would find out and then they depending on what you were doing with with the promise of the booty that was coming

They would decide what it was beforehand, but it was like I guess it's the one thing that is truly Very like it's truly astounding about all this. It's just how detailed it was how granular it was how they sat And they they have to have these big kind of corporate meetings where the captain has to come out Explain the articles do all of this shit get everybody and they have to negotiate a contract Yeah, well, we're actually going to edit that out of the script of Pirates of the Caribbean 7. We did appreciate that, but we're actually going to add cthulhu with the dick Because the kids left cthulhu so but we love that you brought that to our attention If you wanted this to be accurate, we will feature several hours of contract negotiations within the film

It's Hollywood. Nothing will be accurate Now Hornigal got out at the right time and lied to the British government by telling them that he didn't actually Know that the war was over Even though the war had ended five years previous Is it possible that he didn't know? No, I mean he had to have gone to port and asked someone but he could have argued that maybe Well, I mean at the at the British were just like, all right fine. Whatever. Yes, please just stop being a fucking pirate. I don't care Basically, well, yeah, I actually was reading about the two about how fast rumor went

He would say like you'd be surprised the power of a bunch of people Yeah, but like it can send news across a country within days. I mean, we're doing it right now But we have the internet We remember those days It is suggested though that Hornigold may have been forced out by his crew into early retirement Because while Hornigold had a rule against attacking the British blackbeard had no such qualms. Yeah, get these itty-rit means Get him from tails to head Oh, the chip on your shoulder is growing again. Oh, no, it is cancer

It is a spite cancer So when Hornigold left blackbeard was elected captain of some 150 pirates With Hornigold out of the game blackbeard partnered with an unlikely cohort named steed bonnet Bonnet or bonnet. I think it might be steed bonnet. I think it is steed bonnet because he's because he's british He's not french. Well, I have not has it if an interview seems anybody seen our flag means death Somebody's seen the show. I haven't seen it yet, but apparently it's all about blackbeard and steed bonnet. I believe it's called Oh, no shit. Yeah, but I think they made this is where the thing is they make them kiss I think or they allude that they might be kissing seems like you're really caught up on all of that

He's just a thing I got into it. Oh, it's just a thing you got into. Oh, yeah I just wanted to see what happens with men with sashes on Uh, but yes, but they do there is some historical. I haven't seen the show yet Yeah, I had no idea. But hey for all you have this is the story of steed bonnet Bonnet was known far and wide as the gentleman pirate because he was for all intents and purposes Opposer Bonnet had been born to a family of wealthy sugar planters in Barbados But after both of his parents died in quick succession when bonnet was six years old

He was left orphaned with quite the large inheritance man. There's got to be nothing more unpredictable than a rich baby Because you can't give a baby millions of dollars. No, they don't know what to do with it. They just go go gaga There's shit on it. Yeah, they just end up taking up jazz or something Forget the one guy that hold him. He nearly loves Bonnet however grew up well and was generally esteemed and honored in Barbados when he came of age. Thank you After the death of his first child though bonnet fell into a deep depression and a short insanity I'm done When he came out of it, he decided that he wanted to be not a sugar baron

But a pirate man What would you choose? I kind of want to be a sugar baron. I kind of like I mean, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of bad stuff that goes to being a sugar baron in the late 17th century in the caribbean Like what walking around fucking cotton candy trees Yeah, you're right. It was like candy land owning slaves A lot of them and having them do all of the work. Well, I'll change that Yeah, I don't like that. I'm just talking about how sweet sugar is

Yeah, I'm gonna be a sugar boss. Yeah. Yeah, it's the caribbean at sugar plantation. How did now the one of you know this? Sugar grows on shelves. We just both wanted to be mayors of candy land. Yeah, that's what I mean We want to be I want to run the army of candy. Yeah, I was like give me some of today's crops Sweet sweet is the sun Yeah, I'm thinking more like cinnabons are growing in the ground. Yeah, I have a totally different image than a reality here Yeah, we're breaking all the rules of piracy bonnet bought his own sloop spent his own money to fit it with guns and provisions Actually hired a 70 man pirate crew. You look like a pirate and you look like a pirate and ooh, you look like one too come on in

And he called his ship the revenge, which is a little on the nose for a pirate ship if he asked me I kind of like it. It's okay, but it's just the revenge. You just started being a pirate You have no revenge to do or is he taking his revenge out on god for all the bad for being rich the dead child Well, you know the revenge sponsored by pirate.com They actually said you actually could get a commission for revenge. Yeah at the time period is very rare But I think I forgot what it was There was a term for it where you could get like and it's a special flag

That you could put up saying that you were on a king commissioned revenge mission. John wick. Yeah, wow And so on august 26 1717 Bonnet and his crew sailed out from Barbados and overtook a small brigantine under the command of captain thomas porter Let's get him boys Bonnet overtook the brigantine and boarded the ship introducing himself as captain edwards But captain porter was himself from Barbados and quickly recognized steed bonnet Um, your name is steed No, I am captain edwards. That's what I always wonder when it comes to actors who change their name

I think it's slightly less common. Uh, just because of social media But it's got to be weird going back to your hometown and just be like, no, my name is john stewart now Oh, yeah, well again famously sting is gordon. Yeah, his name is gordon. Yeah, but I think now people call him sting Yeah, okay. Yeah, you have to call him by their name for it's like Marilyn Manson But you get to know him back in the day. I guess he's a bad example now back in the day. He'd call him brian Yeah, and now I think he makes you call him Marilyn. Yeah, right. Mm-hmm. Yeah Okay so

Sorry, sorry Well less than a day into his pirate career bonnet had been embarrassingly outed as a cosplayer. No And the make matters worse captain porter didn't have anything of value on well. I love your hat So I'll be taking that The things didn't necessarily get better for steed bonnet from there He had no idea about what to do next or where to go and he was ignorant of certain unspoken rules of piracy Namely that you never engage in battle with a ship more powerful than yours unless you can do it by surprise They because they also talk about the essential nature because I read that too the essential nature of the pirate

Is it a go up against odds? You aren't prepared for and so there is a little bit of that But mostly that's about raving towns like they it's also about having a plan Like this blackbeard always had a plan. You know, like it was always like I he didn't do it unless he thought 100% like Yeah, I can pull this off. Yeah, steed bonnet is just attacking spanish warships because he thinks it's gonna be fun That boat's very big Let's go get it I want to get the big boat If we learn anything blackbeard for he has a plan much like elizabeth war and I'm sure everything's gonna work out great

Yeah Well, this ignorance of the rules of piracy led bonnet into battle with a spanish warship And during the ensuing fight about half of bonnet's crew was killed 30 or 40 men and that's Spanish or pro Oh, yeah, and it truly broke pirate code because it rears in truly and but blackbeard was the pinnacle of this thought process Which is you avoid the fight because you're trying to not kill your crew. Yeah, it's not about them It's all about like no to keep morale up I need to show them that we're only going to take risks if I have an edge You know, I have an idea of something to do. It was extremely extremely

Goosh to attack a big ship and kill everybody that's on your ship. Yeah, no self-protection Yeah, we've defeated bonnet sailed for the pirate sanctuary of new providence island And it was on the way that he encountered blackbeard Now at this point bonnet was severely injured from the battle with the Spanish His ship was gravely injured and he'd lost the confidence of the crew So when bonnet met blackbeard bonnet agreed that he would exchange repairs and provisions for blackbeard's quote-unquote Temporary command of the revenge. Why don't you run it? Like it seems like you got the beard and you're very mean and you're very big and you should do this

Mm-hmm, but even love to see the reflective moment where mr. Bonnet realized he was way over his head Just staring at the I don't even know what well steed bonnet arrives There is a lot of questions as to the nature of the beginnings of their relationship about whether or not He was a hostage or whether or not this was truly amicable or whether or not the Spanish of the Spanish The battle with the Spanish warship even happened. Yeah, it might have just been like a safe face like oh, yeah I was I was During a rainy night. Yeah, and he just sort of cowered to blackbeard like I know I can't go up against you But let's you know, let's be amicable about this. Yeah, can we join up which I think is the most

It's the smartest thing he could that's what we used to do with the president and vice president Mm-hmm But even after bonnet was physically better He suffered another severe depression and it said that blackbeard and this is actually kind of sweet Blackbeard never fully relieved bonnet of his captain's duties because he thought that it would only make bonnet's depression worse We can make him sad Well, that's why there's a little bit of talk about what the nature of their relationship was because they seem to be very Emotional and close for the time period and then I found out that it was very common

There was a thing called hot bunking which they used to do where men used to use to share a cot with another man And it was to watch each other's back guys. I believe it. Um, it was why they called it hot bunking hot bunking Because it was physically very warm. Oh guys, we have to take a small breaker. I have to go do a hot bunk There's a lot of terms here that do sound like shit But there is also a term that they did call there was a thing that they did called Matelotage Matelotage Matelotage which was sea marriages Like it meant for seamanship

And it was a same-sex civil union that they would sign together on boats that would basically Ensure that you willed your booty and plunder to somebody else when you died And then they could have it and a lot of times it sounds kind of like prison rules It is it's and that's what they said it wasn't that what they frowned upon was buggery Which was putting it up the butt and they anything else was cool You could suck dick and hand jobs all day long everybody loved them But they would just really didn't like getting going put it up the butt even though they did Well, I mean that's the thing if you don't put it up the butt, right? You're gonna end up with fissures

You can end up with all kinds of bad stuff They didn't have a loop. No, they didn't have any kind of Vaseline or any of the stuff you buy at the wonderful Beyblank I grab a squid. Yeah, you grab a squid Just fucking mash it up, right? You never catch a fish in grabbing us Probably that time to be like hey, you should get like you do that. Do you know what I'm gonna say? Like hey, we could just use it, right? Is that wrong? I don't know. Yeah, I'm it depends on the person. I don't know. Everyone's unique

I think the blowjobs are more intimate than anything. We're just talking about pirates Guys looking away. Yeah, you're gonna look dead in his eye and caught up here on that stuff Well, eventually Blackbeard returned control of the revenge back to bonnet and parted ways But bonnet would still never quite get the hang of pirate life For the next year, he flirted with pardons like the one Benjamin Hornigold had taken but in the end bonnet fully committed However, it must be said that bonnet was captain in name only because Blackbeard had left a man named Richards in charge of actually commanding the ship during battle. Basically, they just let bonnet wear the hat. Yeah I mean that's I mean for pirates. That's incredibly nice

They really did have this sense of decorum within their ships and the in these codes and the way they live their lives and and I don't know why Yeah, I guess just to stay Anybody that wasn't on that boat though was subject to whatever their fucking whims Right and we'll get into that later. Hey, would you say bonnet's kind of he's is he like the rooty of pirates? Yeah, I think he's definitely like the rooty came from a lot of money So, uh, I have to spot the wheel They just run because the wheel goes

The gunner, he's got bold him sticks. I already came to my school. I remember listening to that man attempt to speak So good I'm your clay Hey, what's up everyone? How you doing ben kissle here with Henry Zabrowski? Yeah, it's me, man. Yeah, bro. Henry Zabrowski is smoking some of that sweet last podcast on the left, babe Go out there and purchase yourself some. I hope you enjoy it. We have sativa We have indica and we have a hybrid and I have to tell you for my personal experience. They are wonderful

Super tasty live resin. You really get the delicious weedy taste, which is what I like and three different experiences You go to your local vape store and get it. Absolutely. Thank you all so much for supporting the show We absolutely love you can't wait to see on the road and get that vape Put it in your brain and have a good time And if you want to set your favorite weed store, give them a call and ask for them by name last podcast on the left It's weed. Hail yourselves, everyone. Hail Satan But regardless of who was in charge bonnet was still a pirate and by september of 1718 British authorities caught up to bonnet ship in north carolina on cape fear. Yeah

Bonnet's single ship was faced with three british vessels And all of them were caught on the shoreline during low tide while the battle was taking place The british got their ships free But bonnet was unable to do so and the british soon boarded Now bonnet's plan was to blow up the gunpowder storage as soon as the british boarded so he could end his career in a blaze of glory That's kind of a cool. Min didn't want to do that though. Oh, they didn't want to commit suicide Let's go man, because you know, it's like guys. We're all gonna do this together We're gonna kill them the same time that we kill ourselves

Like no Will Ferrell in that one movie where he's just in the underwear running around. I forget the kids loved it Old school. Oh, yeah Now guys didn't want to do that. They wanted to just kind of surrender and take their chances Yeah, what if we just go back to not being pirates anymore? Okay Um, interestingly though, even though bonnet was a poser He was considered to be the first prominent pirate to ever be captured by british authorities 23 of his men have been killed by british forces during his capture

And the rest were taken to the port of charleston south carolina for trial and certain execution That's the thing. I feel like you could have made the argument like, you know, they're gonna hang us anyway Yeah, that they were it's already over. No, it is. We'll just get everybody. They did in a very civil way They had a sham trial first. Yeah. Now despite bonnets attempted suicide on board the ship He still didn't want to go to the gallows So he attempted escape by donning a dress and disguising himself as a woman You can't write you can't write. You know what I mean? You can't make it up. Like he literally says like no one will know Yes, real well your name speed

Real tootsie moment for him But the escape attempt failed and bonnet was found guilty of piracy by november His execution was delayed seven times. However, after spectators found him so pitiful during his trial That they asked the governor to spare his life Send him back and send him send him back and have him return when he's more confident I am simply devastated by these two Becky, this is one of the worst executions I've ever been to. I hate me. I hate rope. I'm allergic to the fibers Get us a man who doesn't want to die, please

Well, finally though steed bonnet was hung from the gallows and over the subsequent five weeks 48 other pirates followed him the traditional spot to hang pirates in charleston was white point Which is now apparently a lovely little park. I'm sure charleston's a place filled with the history of death. Absolutely. It really is Would you say it's the edin burrow of america? God. Yes. Okay. Yeah It's said however, especially by charleston ghost tour guides That visitors have witnessed the faces of pirates peering back from the trees at white point Terrifying echoes of pirate screams fill the midnight air and the specters of hanging pirate ghosts can still be seen Swinging from the branches of white points mighty oaks

It is not recommended to visit white point at night alone They say because a ghostly pirate perhaps steed bonnet himself Still haunts the spot and is known to scream at passerby Tell the jury they're wrong I am an innocent. Well, let's just Because can I get a mulligan? I knew a man named mulligan But beard however would never have to put up with any of that bullshit By 1717 blackbeard had captured his ultimate prize

The ship he captured was originally called lock on code But under blackbeard's command it would be known as queen ans revenge. Yes And this came from the queen ans war the idea like all the privateers that were released to go do all of their legal Piracy for the government and then were told now your criminals. This is whose revenge Tristan now lock on cord was a french slave ship and like many slave ships at the time It was built for speed because the less time a ship spent on the waters of the atlantic The more enslaved people would survive the absolutely horrific journey Interestingly though lock on cord actually began its life as a privateer vessel

But had been converted into a slave ship after the age of privateering was over That meant that when blackbeard captured it lock on cord like all captured ships had to be converted into a pirate ship I'm sorry to do this, but I'm just a maybe I'm hungry the cord on blue That's all I think about when you say that he hasn't heard a single word. You said first He's thinking about He still sell cord on blue at Arby's. I don't know. Maybe I can go to an Just see and dance and chicken cord on blues dancing in front of him

Well, first the pirates removed the bulkheads set up in the hole that was usually used to prevent cargo from shifting The purpose behind removing the bulkheads was to make sure that all the plunder captured in raids was in plain view of Everyone at all times. Yeah, so everybody could know because you're waiting because to steal plunder, right from somebody else That was definitely punishable by death. So it's a sense of fairness. It's transparency being like here's all our shit Actually, they didn't even like lock the treasure boxes like lock them like all like we're all they got all the gold And all that nothing was ever locked Because they thought hey, we're all here in this together and if anyone steals we'll see them We'll kill them. Yeah, we will all kill them code of ethics. Okay

Well, if there was any space above the waterline down in the holes Then the pirates would cut holes in the side of the ship for additional gun ports Sometimes doubling the amount of guns that could be used in a raid Finally all decoration that might get in the way of battle was removed and a pirate ship was thus born It's really ruined the tgi friday's pirate ship. No more flair whatsoever But you should cut all the stuff on the inside because they had to run fast Yeah Now the queen ends revenge could go gun to gun against any royal navy ship on the artillery front

But his crew were still pirates not trained soldiers and a fully trained navy crew could fire three rounds to blackbeards too So if blackbeard wasn't able to board a ship and clash swords He was smart enough to know that he had no chance This meant that when blackbeard came across powerful british warships He would quietly slip away as fast as he could yes because they can notice they truly do that That's what about sea awareness is important because you could look at a ship and recognize its purposes and say like well That's a chopped and chopped ship like that is literally a thing that used to be something else

They have turned into a pirate ship and they can recognize it and they'll just fucking attack you Yeah, like uh, it reminds me of uh killdozer. Yes Yes, but this was what actually made blackbeard one of the best pirate captains around and certainly put him above captains Like steed bonnet blackbeard knew when to fight and when to run And it was this lateral thinking that led blackbeard to one of the most infamous criminal enterprises of his career The blockade of charleston. This is what he's known for yeah Now when it came to early 18th century british colonies in the americas, they were a few plumb sweeter than charleston south carolina No, in addition to not being as well defended as some of the new england colonies

charleston was fat with gold owing to its exports of rice and indigo in addition to the thriving slave market that charleston Still has today But that was the major complaint of the american colonies because they didn't have any backup Because they couldn't get over there because they were fighting their precious little european wars and they couldn't send an armada to come protect them I'm just happy that there will be no more wars in europe. Yeah, not one Now because the british colonists were getting so rich on these exports charleston's storehouses were filled with british luxury items like silverware cloth silk wine And the latest fashions books and precision firearms and it turns out 100 million toothbrushes

So they just never got there That stays that stays in the show And more of everything was getting shipped into charleston on a regular basis Problem was blackbeard wasn't equipped for it nor was he willing to engage in a raid on an actual town Because back in the day the uh old they used to do that all time privateers and bouquets That was kind of what they did but they were trained and you really had to hit it in a different You really had to like surprise a whole town which is very difficult So to leech charleston of its riches and to make a point blackbeard set up a blockade of four ships outside of charleston

Robbing whoever sailed in or out of the colony for an entire week ship sailed out to find what they thought was just another ship But when either the queen ann's revenge or one of blackbeard's other sloops came too close for the other ship to get away Blackbeard would hoist the black flag of the pirate and fire a warning shot Dang was this before he had his distinct flag or did he already have his specific flag? I don't know for sure, but his flag was fucking awesome. We are going to talk about the flag next episode Yeah, the flag is fucking sweet fucking satan Now not a single ship put up a fight when blackbeard's black flag was raised and the reason why is fairly simple See charleston had just been visited by captain vain

The notorious pirate who liked torturing people by burning matches inside their eyelids And no one was eager to see a repeat of vain's performance But even if vain hadn't visited the savagery of pirates in general were quickly becoming common knowledge amongst the american colonies That was the the power of marketing where it already been spread. I like these idea. They are they are monsters They'll torture you and murder you. They'll do all this fucking shit Meanwhile, they didn't know that pirates were using this against everybody's Everybody's they were using it against them and blackbeard was probably the best at it. Yeah, he was Well, there were a few pirates doing the work for all of them

Yeah, like one particularly fearsome crew was headed by an englishman named edward low who once cut off a ship captain's lips Roasted them and forced the captain to eat his own lips while they were still piping hot Yeah This is actually fun. This is really fun to new. We haven't done this one before It's actually wow, okay And after killing the lipless prisoner low then forced the ship's officer To eat the heart of one of his own crewmates what we have here is a service delectable It's it's an irony meat. It's it's so sweet

Source it right here. It's right here and it's really incredible. I'm gonna take it. It is your shipmates heart Yeah, that's gary's heart. Yeah, you please enjoy it with a reason And so when blackbeard set up his blockade in charleston No one dared to fight back and ships eventually just stopped leaving port There was however the matter of the ships coming in to charleston who had no way of knowing that blackbeard was waiting I would love to hear everyone in the bar talk about supply lines Oh, wow, nothing's changed Among those sailing in was a slave ship holding 86 people and when blackbeard boarded

He asked for volunteers amongst the enslaved out of the ones who said yes 14 were chosen and blackbeard's crew grew close to somewhere around 160 men The beauty of pirates is that in order to really call a lot of problems in terms of interrogation You have prisoners like dealing with other pirates is that all you have to do be like join my team All of the every single time they did an interrogation one of the first things They would do was put a contractor in front of you being like join the ship Would you believe it and fold it in that was exactly what I was thinking. I wanted to do What was the other part you shut up you cut my lips off and I eat him all of a sudden the contract

Sign it. By the end of the week long blockade blackbeard's crew had plundered 10 ships And had effectively paralyzed one of the richest colonies in the south Interestingly though, there was one point in which blackbeard had threatened to kill all the prisoners Send their heads to the governor and set all their ships aflame That was when the pirates demanded a chest of medicine from the shore I would love to see the local news story on the ups drivers kicking the boxes of all the skulls Tough tough day to be a delivery person Oh, yeah

Now the pirates had just spent a few months hanging around the west nds and the coast of central america Which were both rife with yellow fever However, it was more likely that the pirates were actually looking for treatments for the various venereal diseases They'd picked up in the caribbean ports specifically syphilis. Don't worry fellow herpes. They'll never fucking find us I'm syphilis Keep it down syphilis. You're gonna bring attention to all of us. It's so nice to be in another dick See something new new bush. Yeah, the drip drip goes by a fast man enjoy life See in those days the primary treatment for syphilis was an injection of mercury straight into the penis

Using a metal urethral syringe on the positive side to know what the temperature is God and we do have evidence that blackbeard's pirates used such a device When maritime archaeologists investigated a shipwreck that was thought to be queen ann's revenge They found an object designed specifically to inject mercury into a man's penis Why does it feel like old-timey medicine made things like oh, I think I sprained my pink You'd be like come over here. We're gonna cut your foot off. It feels with the idea of mercury going up in your penis doesn't sound like Outrageous syphilis. Yeah, and apparently the device had been used shortly before the queen ann's revenge sank into the sea I ain't dying with syphilis. My ghost can't have vd

And so threatened with the beheading of some 80 people the governor of charleston sent aboard a medical chest valued somewhere between Three and four hundred pounds and after all was said and done Blackbeard released his 80 or so hostages and sent them back to shore naked He was looking out for his men blackbeard is an interesting guy. He again a strategist He understood people's psychology understood kind of the way to run a ship He wanted to be successful and he he even said like how he he wanted to do this for a long time Right Partly blackbeard had sent them back naked because the clothes and jewelry worn by these prisoners was valuable

But mostly it seems like he did it because he thought it was funny. He did have a sense of humor Yeah, but in this the captives got off light Especially compared to let's call it the sense of humor that other pirates had. Yeah, it's it was dark In one game that some pirates played the pirates would all line up with sailing needles these big thick-ass needles used to sew sails And force the captives to run by as all the pirates jam. Yeah, ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah, bogey What they didn't realize was that turned out to be stevo And he became one of the most talented entertainers we have ever had It's a great great great great grandfather. Yeah

Afterward the bleeding victim was shut inside a barrel filled with cockroaches So the pirates could laugh at their screams of terror. He's screaming. He hates it. That's funny as hell Yeah, he really hates it. We've been kind of shitting on netflix lately, but it's better. I guess than that That's content. Yeah content. Yeah other times pirates would force captives to run endlessly around the main mass of the ship Until they passed out from exhaustion Oh, it's just that's I mean, that's like what you do when you're like a senior in high school You do that to freshmen like and you're a senior on the football team. Yeah, they're pirates We do it. It's called track and field. Yeah

I don't run with the trash bag on Oh, yeah, but when it came to real torture the result was far worse Yeah amongst regular tortures like beating whipping and cutting some buccaneers would tie a rope around the captive's head And tighten it more and more and more and tell the captive's eyes popped out of their skull But the thing about these more gruesome tortures is that there was rarely an angle Yeah, because they basically said most of the time if you were looking for booty and you needed them to tell you The location of something they would Chop your finger off until you said something or they make you join and they get it. These were all sadistic games. Yeah

See blackbeard wasn't at charleston to show people that pirates were to be feared because they were cruel He was there to show that pirates were to be feared because they were powerful They lived the way they wanted to live and nobody saved the entire royal navy was going to stop them from doing it Yeah, yeah, I love it and as it turned out the blockade was highly profitable in gold and silver alone blackbeard's crew It's sold in the modern equivalent of $400,000 Whoo, and all they had to do was sit and wait around for a week while the plunder came to them But this stunt did come at a price after charleston the entirety of the american seaboard new blackbeard's name

Which is exactly what blackbeard wanted. Oh, yes But it also made blackbeard public enemy number one in colonial america. Yeah now. He's on he's on everybody's radar And he has become the celebrity. He's always wanted to come They said this from his like and he didn't write journals because most of what we know about privateers and buccaneers Came from their wartime journals and pirates didn't journal Because number one they didn't want evidence because they knew it was evidence And they also knew that they they didn't care about their inner lives so super stupid But also, uh, is it too wet to have paper? No, they did dry captain captain area

Like a little room he could be in so we could have done he could have had a little elrond hubbard room Oh, yeah, he definitely did. Oh, yeah, he definitely did but blackbeard We what they did know about him is that he wanted to be notorious. Yeah Furthermore ports friendly to pirates were becoming fewer and fewer Much of the caribbean was now ruled by british authorities and anti piracy laws made the prosecution and execution of pirates far easier Individual governors officers of the crown and even major landowners were given the authority to hunt down pirates and hold trials Followed very swiftly by executions as far as what happened to captured pirates though that all depended on who captured them When a pirate was captured by the dutch east india company, for example, he would first be flogged with a cat and nine tails

Then his forehead would be branded with the letter p for pirates. Oh Oh, yeah, good. Okay. Finally. He'd be hanged from the yard arm of the ship. Did we need to do the branding? Because i'm gonna be hung anyways, so we could just go ahead and kill me which seems to be the worst of all of them But i'm in screaming burnout. It is funny when you hear like, you know, uh, like plain view like as a town Apparently that was something that was very reasonable pittsburgh pirates I guess that the the p that they have is actually this You know what also maybe connects me spiritually to all this content. You know, who else was a pirate? Bobby bonilla

He was san diego san diego pirates. I did not know that. Yeah, san diego. Yeah, you know, san diego I did not know that. No, you didn't know that. Bobby bonilla. No, i don't think it was a man Someone sent me that picture and i was like, wow, it's amazing what you could learn There's so much out there. I always knew him as a pirate myself interesting big wide world out there man. It is really is However Okay being hung from the yard arm was not the fate of blackbeard His death would be one of guns and swords and it's with blackbeard's final battle that will conclude our series next week Yeah, there's a lot more blood and guts, especially when it comes to blackbeard's final stand

Uh, which is again another thing that truly made him famous. All right next week. I'm going to talk about grenades Oh, yeah, they make their own man. I didn't know how many ships were taken down by grenades. We'll talk about that That's fucking sweet. Gornados. Yeah, it was fucking awesome. We'll also get to talk about black Caesar. Okay Yeah, black Caesar was fucking dudes in the history of piracy. Fantastic. All right, everyone. Well, thank you so much for listening Hope you're doing well out there. Um, we are currently in st. Louis Yes. So we're excited for the show and we're looking for I am so he's sailing the ports of st. Louis Are we near water here? Yes. That's the whole point of the thing. It's the separation. Yes, but we're not near the ocean

Are we no, this is uh, this was a massive trade. So I shouldn't I shouldn't get the the sushi that the hotel that we're at right now is See, Louis is known for its sushi. Oh, yeah, the Mississippi is some of the best sushi grade fish in the world Yeah, no, always get the sushi in anywhere in the Midwest. Yeah Especially the portal to the Midwest Yeah, yeah, it will be great because you know when you're violently shitting and stuff We'll just put a camera on it and we'll be great content content. Yeah, they have this great fish here called a lorg It's gonna oh man. It sounds good. It's a lorg and they're like

It's specialty hero is made by nuclear radiation. Oh, isn't that nice. All right everyone. Thank you so much for listening Any new announcements? Obviously soul plumber if you can get it get it. It's out there. We got a lot of shit coming up Yeah, we have all digital if you want okay You get dc direct or uh Comicsology available on both of those if you want to check out all six issues are all out now Check out the entire story of soul plumber and we will have a bound hardcover version as well But I don't know when things next year either. It's either next year or october one of the two Yeah, it's hard to it's hard to tell sometimes this wacky world of comic books

We do know that the z2 comic book is a almost stop pre you can pre-order that at z2 comics dot com And that'll be the last comic book on the left and we have more announcements coming Towards that you got us also Australia and Europe. Oh, yeah, dude. We can't fucking wait I'm gonna be fucking sick. I'm gonna spend my 40th birthday in Perth. Yeah, man. It's gonna be fucking awesome We can't fucking wait to see you didn't have that on my 2023 bingo car Now it's a virus We're coming around and also join us next 5 20 in our last technically what was our last show Yeah, but now it's not because we've got five more shows after but now because we had to push for now

We're back dude. It's may 20th at the beacon in new york city. We're coming home. That's a dream come true, honestly So thank you all so much for your support. All right, everyone. Hail yourselves. Hail satan. Hail game My ghostulations Oh my god, you got it. You are now officially a pirate congratulations. I want to go back to be in a comedian This show is made possible by listeners like you Thanks to our ad sponsors You can support our shows by supporting them for more shows like the one you just listened to go to last podcast network.com