True Crime Campfire - Black Flag: The Story of the Pirate Blackbeard

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

We've talked about a lot of notorious criminals here on True Crime Campfire, but do you think any of today's villains will still be widely known in three-hundred years? Will their names be known to almost everyone, and conjure up vivid if not exactly accurate images of a time long past? The subject of this week's story is a man whose brief but spectacular criminal career wrote him a place in history—not to mention on the hit TV show “Our Flag Means Death.” Time for some true crime on the high seas!Download the game "June's Journey" on Apple iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/junes-journey-hidden-objects/id1200391796"June's Journey" on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.wooga.junes_journey_hidden_object_mystery_game&hl=en&gl=US&pli=1Sources:Stephan Talty, Empire of Blue Water Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates Angus Konstam, BlackbeardFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. We've talked about a lot of notorious criminals here on true crime campfire, but do you think any of today's villains will still be widely known in 300 years? Will their names be known to almost everyone and conjure up vivid, if not exactly accurate images of a time long past? The subject of this week's story is a man whose brief but spectacular criminal career wrote him a place in history, not to mention on the hit TV show Our Flag Means Death. Time for some true crime on the high seas. This is Black Flag, the story of Blackbeard the pirate. So, campers, we're plunging into this one right at the end, in the waters off of Okrakoak Island, North Carolina, November 21st, 1718.

Black powder smoke, musty and sulfuric, still hung about the decks of the Jane. The ship had been battered by cannon fire, her decks scarred by battle and stained with blood, but her mission had been a success. the great pirate lay dead on the wooden planks. He hadn't gone down easy. His body was pierced by five bullet holes and 20 sword cuts. There was no question he was dead now, though. His head lay several feet from his body. You don't come back from that. Captain Maynard, his sword broken and his hand bleeding from his own almost fatal fight with the pirate, gave his men a gruesome order, and when the pearl finally set sail again, a severed head hung from the bowsprit at the front of the ship. its long Blackbeard waving in the breeze.

It's one way to send a message. And so ended the career of one of the most notorious figures of the golden age of piracy, Blackbeard. His criminal life had followed the same trajectory as most of his fellow pirates, full of adventure, and short, ending in an early violent death. Blackbeard was only a pirate for two years, but unlike most pirates, the shadow of his reputation still stretches down through the centuries. Here in the 21st century, he's still showing up in books, movies, TV shows, and video games. So what was it that made him so special? Well, first we need to set the scene. When we say pirates, that probably conjures up some very specific images.

Skulls and crossbones, peg legs and eyepatches, big tall ships, and battles with cutlasses and flintlocked pistols. Not to mention, dudes going, Arr. A lot of this is pretty exaggerated. It comes from Treasure Island. from dozens of Hollywood pirate movies from the late 1920s to the 50s, from Disney rides and movies based on Disney rides. But this is a fantastical interpretation of a real place and time, the Caribbean from about 1650 to 1730. This, of course, is not when piracy started, piracy's older than recorded human history and probably started soon after human beings first started going out on boats. It's been a constant danger of sea-going trade and travel right up to the present day.

And piracy in the Caribbean, the Captain Jack Sparrow stuff, wasn't even the main hub for all this. In the ancient Mediterranean, pirates were a force strong enough to threaten Rome. And in the early 1800s, pirate queen Zhang Yi-Sao could command fleets of tens of thousands of pirates in the South China Sea. Just let that settle into your imagination for a second, y'all. Pirate Queen. Ooh, I love it. She was badass. Once she retired from the pirate queen life, she went on to run one of the most infamous casinos in China. Bad ass. But Caribbean piracy coincided with an explosion in the publication of popular newspapers and books in the English-speaking world, as well as a sharp rise

in literacy. And of course, all these new readers just ate this shit up, all the dreadful stories of cruelty and heroism in the distant seas. I mean, who the hell wouldn't? The most popular book came out in 1724, a general history of the pirates. Pirates with the Y. I love that. But, by The Mysterious Captain Charles Johnson. This book was full of bloody drama, and it was a huge hit. It stayed in print for every year since. Now, how accurate it is, is debatable. Johnson's facts do more or less line up with official records pretty well,

but there's a lot of lurid gossip and rumor in there, too, which is one of the reasons it's so popular. We'll be quoting Johnson's book quite a bit, but just be aware that, you know, he should probably be taken with a little pinch of salt. There was so much pirate action in the Caribbean because of the vast amounts of wealth traveling back and forth across the Atlantic, trade which was, of course, itself, a lot more dreadful and cruel than anything the pirates did. Enslaved people were taken from Africa and forced to work on colonial lands stolen from indigenous peoples. It's like an evil sandwich with rich pompous Englishmen as the filling, who are also evil. Yeah. The fruits of their labor, sugar and rum and cotton and tobacco, were shipped back to Europe and sold for lots and lots of profit, some of which were used to procure more enslaved people, a never-ending loop of exploitation. The colonial powers of Europe were dicks to each other as well as to the indigenous folks. This was a time of near constant warfare, and one way those wars operated was through the use of privateers.

Privateers were privately owned vessels given permission to attack and raid the vessels of a nation's enemies, taking as much loot as they could to disrupt trade. And if that sounds a lot like state-sponsored piracy, well, that's pretty much exactly what it was. Trouble with that was, once a conflict was over, it wasn't always easy to put the privateers back in their box. You know, hey guys, time to give up this existence of high adventure and incredible profit, to go back to your lives of quiet desperation, trying to catch howling. a bit off the coast of Hull. No thank you. A lot of privateers slipped seamlessly into piracy, and this was the case with Blackbeard. There's really not much information on Blackbeard's early life, which is no surprise. Before he became notorious, he was just a sailor like thousands of others. We know he was born sometime around 1680, and according to Charles Johnson, he was from Bristol,

the major port on the west coast of England. His name was Edward Teach, possibly, anyway. Lots of pirates used aliases to avoid causing trouble for their families back home, which may be why there are so many probabilities and possiblys in the early part of the story. He could read and write, and we know he had some solid math skills because you needed them to navigate the sea, so it's likely that Teach had some degree of education in a time when that wasn't the norm. Like many young guys, Teach found a career at sea, which got a lot more exciting after 1702 when war broke out with the French. Soon, Teach was hired as a privateer out of Jamaica, where he earned the rep for boldness and courage. The privateers made life hell for French ships throughout the Caribbean and the Atlantic coast for years,

and then, in 1713, the war was over, and with it went all legal protection for the privateers. Edward Teach was left cooling his heels in Jamaica, but he and every other newly unemployed privateer had a place to go, Nassau, on the Bahamian island of New Providence. For years, this has been a safe. haven for privateers and pirates, and now it was entering its new era, as the Republic of Pirates. Man, if that ain't the most badass phrase I have ever heard, I don't know what is. Welcome to the Republic of Pirates. And the metal guitar. Literally, it sounds like the name of a mid-80s metal album name, or like it's a self-titled

album name by a band called the Republic of Pirates. And they have like themed outfits. The lead singer has an eye patch, the drummer wears a parrot, you know. Yeah, big fun. I'd go to that concert. I know. It sounds like a blast. It's like the pirate version of flogging Molly is what I'm picturing in my mind.

To keep the place from burning to ashes on day one, a bunch of powerful pirate captains got together and came up with a code of conduct for everybody to stick to. You have to be civil. Sort of. There were rules. When Christopher Columbus landed on the Bahamas in 1492 and discovered America, which obviously he did not, and like he sucks major donkey dick, but that's a story for another day. The first people he met were the Lucians, who lived throughout the islands. Within 30 years, the Spanish had killed or enslaved them all, and the Bahamas would be uninhabited for over a century until England established a colony on the natural harbor of Nassau. This colony didn't exactly thrive.

and when pirate Henry Avery sailed there in 1696 with a ship full of freshly stolen loot, the colonial governor was easily bribed to look the other way. After that, word got around that Nassau was a safe haven for pirates. After the French and Spanish attacked the place during the war, almost all the settlers left, and there was no governor. And the pirates took over the whole damn place. Which is, you know, pretty much what pirates do. Yeah, they're like roaches that way.

You see one, there's like 20 in the walls. Yeah. NASA was a place for pirates to spend their loot. So, you know, there were craft stores, artisanal cupcake bakeries, fancy little boutiques. Yeah, no, it was all bars, brothels, and gambling houses. And the only thing that kept the place from falling into chaos was the authority of the captains. One of these was a guy named Benjamin Hornigold. That's a good name for a pirate, isn't it?

They're all horny for gold. It really is. I'm sure it's Hornigold, but I'm going to say it Hornigold until the day I'm. I can't say it any other way. Horny gold, yeah. Horny gold. With the name like that, it shouldn't surprise you that Benjamin was kind of an odd duck. He was a patriotic pirate and he refused to attack British ships.

What a nerd, right? This went over like a lead balloon with his crew, as I'm sure you can imagine, who felt their pockets getting lighter because of their captain's scruples. And in 1716, they voted him out of office. Yep, voted him out. nice and democratic like we'll get to that a little bit later horny gold and his supporters who by now included our boy edward teach were put aboard a small sloop the pirates had captured and watched as horny gold's old ship sailed for the horizon old horny gold wasn't down for long the pirates soon

captured another ship and hornigold moved over there leaving teach in charge of the sloop a captain for the first time edward teach who was a big intimidating guy and also pretty damn sharp started deliberately building a terrifying image of himself, Blackbeard the Pirate. So what was life as a pirate like? First of all, did they really talk like that? Well, a few of them maybe sort of did. The pirate voice we all know and love is almost entirely the creation of one man, actor Robert Newton, who starred as Long John Silver in Disney's Treasure Island in the 50s, and then as Blackbeard the Pirate a couple years later. I'm not going to claim it's a great movie, but if hearing somebody say, Ar, a fiery winchie sounds like your idea of a good time, check it out. The voice is an exaggerated

version of the accent in southwest England, where Blackbeard and a lot of the other pirates came from. So, you know, some of them probably did sound something like that, but it wasn't universal or anything, which is kind of disappointing, I know. That's a sad ar. Yeah, sad ar. It's truly a tragedy. The driving me nuts joke has gotten me through some tough times and to find out that's not how pirates really talked. Oh. Wow. I know. I hope they at least had parrots on their shoulders because I could not deal with it if that part turned out to be fake.

Parrots making pithy jokes and swearing. That's I need to believe. For the most part, life as a pirate was way better than life as a sailor, either military or commercial. The only downside was that there was a pretty good chance you'd end up hanging from a noose at the into your career. So, you know, trade-offs. Sailors in legitimate work had hard lives for meager pay, living under discipline, which shifted between strict and freaking brutal. They had no control over where they went or what they did, and this works because in these situations, the ships are part of a larger system, you know, with higher authorities, like government authority. When a crew

has a brutal captain who's a little too free with the cat of nine tails, the reason they don't just chuck him overboard isn't because they're scared of him. they're scared of the consequences of dealing with him, of being hunted down and hanged as mutineers. But on a pirate ship, there was no higher authority. There was no framework of law or government other than what they chose. Each ship was essentially its own little self-contained nation. So how do dozens of criminals living in close proximity at sea organize themselves? Well, for the most part, through democracy. This wasn't because they were super enlightened and really just loved the idea. It was just a way for a small group of people to successfully operate without

flying a part of the seams. Pirate crews elected their own officers and set up their own rules of life aboard the ship. These pirate codes varied from ship to ship, but they usually determined the division of loot and tried to prevent drama among the crew. The harsh punishments and strict food restrictions and booze restrictions that you had on the merchant and military ships just weren't a thing on the pirate vessels. And because pirate ships were over-crued compared to merchant ships, each individual sailor had less work to do. So there were plenty of reasons beyond get-rich-quick why regular sailors jumped at the chance to go pirate. One example of these pirate codes made it clear that priority one was to keep things moving smoothly with the crew. They are pirates,

after all, things had the potential to get pretty wild. Gambling for money was banned, as was smuggling a woman on board, a sin which was no shit. shit punishable by death. Like, you'd have to be real bad off to risk that, you know? Damn. Anyone who secretly kept loot for themselves beyond the value of one dollar was to be marooned, like they would just leave your ass on an island somewhere. Yikes.

There was no fighting allowed between the crew. If two pirates were really determined to try to kill each other, they had to duel on shore, and the rules for that were so hilariously specific that it seems like they were really just hoping to delay them. fight long enough for everybody to calm the hell down and realize they didn't want to do it because you'd have to like fill out forms and triplicate and shit and just wasn't worth the trouble yeah it's got to be really like really intricate for like you to be like I don't want to shoot that guy anymore we're good yeah exactly they would just break your spirit you know with

the bureaucratic red tape you're like fine fuck it we just won't fight yeah and remember the Chinese pirate queen. One of the codes in her fleet was that you couldn't mistreat female captives. Like, if they took prisoners from a village, they weren't allowed to harm a hair on their heads. Yeah, they actually registered women on the ship manifest, gave them their own quarters, and if you touched them, you died a painful death. Right on, pirate queen. Hashtag feminism. And y'all know that I'm never the type to say good for her when someone kills a person, but like, good for her. her. They had it coming. Well, yeah, I mean, they knew the risks. So if you're going to go and do something creepy with one of the female captives, you knew what, you know, you knew what you

were getting yourself into. No sympathy for me. Anyway, back to the pirate code we were talking about before. Almost everybody got one equal share of any loot. The captain and quartermaster got two shares with other officers getting smaller divisions. The captain might have made twice as much money, but he wasn't twice as important, at least not most of the time. In day-to-day affairs, he was just a member of the crew, his one vote weighing no more than anybody else's when decisions were made on what to do. But when the ship actually went into action against another vessel, the captain's authority was absolute. In theory, anyone could be selected captain, but if a crew wanted to survive and thrive, the candidate pool was a lot smaller. For one thing, a captain needed to be

able to read charts and navigate. A crew could vote to, like, raid shipping off the coast of Florida, but somebody had to get them there first. And a captain was expected to earn his extra share of booty by leading the crew when the going got dangerous. So unless you'd already proven yourself to be capable of that, you didn't have a chance in hell. Blackbeard fit the role perfectly. He and Hornigold sailed up the eastern coast of the American colonies, plundering ship after ship. and the new captain's rep spread quickly. He was both skilled and fearsome, and Blackbeard knew how to play up the scariness.

He wore six loaded pistol strapped to his chest. He tied colored ribbons in his long black beard, and sometimes he'd hang thick, slow-burning fuses over each year, so they glowed red on either side of his face. Oh, wow. Okay, sounds like a good way to set your beard on fire, dude, but damn. Yeah, if you were superstitious, he looked demonic. if you weren't he just looked dangerously insane either way these little bits of theater worked like a charm and like listen it's kind of cute like I just imagine him getting ready

in the morning before a raid like tying tying the ribbons in his beard and then like prepping his guns like he polishing them like he's just like getting ready for like his day on stage you know you think he gave himself a little pep talk in the yeah he's 100% just he's He's the theater kid of piracy. He's like, who's the biggest scary this pirate? You are. Go out there and slay. Yeah, he was a big dude too.

This wasn't like a small dude. So just imagine you're on the other ship. And you see like this giant figure with like a ratted beard with like ribbons in it. And then all you see is two like red things at eye level. Like, oh my God. That is terrifying. That's freaking terrifying. Absolutely, yeah.

Ships would surrender as soon as they knew the dread pirate Blackbeard was after them. Blackbeard wanted loot, and he wanted to get it with as little fuss as possible. A fierce reputation was more useful for that than a cannon. And although there's no question at all that he was a tough son of a bitch, Blackbeard's tally of murders on the high seas was actually zero. Sure, he threatened murder, and he kidnapped and robbed and extorted. And one time he chained and whipped a captain to make him tell where he'd hit him. hidden the money on board of the ship.

We're not making a case for St. Blackbeard here. This is a bad dude. But murder, as far as we know, this cutthroat didn't actually cut any throats. Be damned. Blackbeard and Hornigold sailed back down the American coast to the Caribbean, where they parted ways. By this time, they'd heard of King George's proclamation for suppressing pirates in the West Indies. This was a threatening sounding name for what was actually a blanket pardon for any pirate who turned himself into a colonial government.

governor. Hornegold had had enough of the life by then, and he surrendered to the governor of Jamaica to have his slate wiped clean. Shortly afterwards, he took advantage of another aspect of the proclamation. Bounties placed on the heads of every pirate who refused to surrender. Benjamin Hornigold, one of the principal captains of the Republic of Pirates, turned pirate hunter. He chased after his former colleagues for two years before a hurricane finally wrecked his ship on a reef. Hornigold died, possibly captain. passed away on a tiny island where he died of thirst. It kind of feels like the sea itself took revenge against this guy.

He was lucky until he turned against the code. Yeah. Blackbeard, though, had no intention of giving up the pirate life. Back in Nassau, he met a fellow captain, a newcomer to the pirate game by the name of Steed Bonnet. Steed was most definitely a weirdo, described by his peers as the gentleman pirate and by me as a fucking idiot. Ha ha ha. was born into a life of aristocratic luxury on his family's sugar plantation in Barbados. Lives of luxury are a lot easier to come by when you enslave other humans and force them to do all the actual work.

And this was the case for the bonnet plantation. Ew. Yeah. As we said earlier, most of the worst things done in this story weren't done by the pirates. Steed's parents died when he was like six years old and he inherited their 400-acre estate. At some point, presumably not until he was technically an adult, he was made a major, a rank which back then was granted automatically to wealthy landowners. Again, ew.

So, he might technically have been an officer in the Barbados militia, but really he was about as much of a military man as Colonel Sanders. When he was 21, Steed got married, and shortly after, four children came along. So far, this was a boilerplate ideal life for a young aristocrat. He had wealth, rank, family, the respect of his peers, and other people doing all the damn work to support him. And then, in 1717, not long before his 30th birthday, he gave it all up and ran away to sea to become a pirate. Why, I really, really wish we had a solid answer for that, because it's just so bizarre, but all will ever have our guesses. Steed running off to sea was obviously a huge shock

to his whole social circle, but Steed doing something weird? Not so much. According to Charles Johnson, his acquaintances believed, quote, that this humor of going a pirating proceeded from a disorder of the mind, which had been but too visible in him some time before this wicked undertaking, and which is said to have been occasioned by some discomforts he found in a married state. Translation. A, the cheese had been sliding off the man's cracker for quite some time, and B, snobby folks on Barbados really like to gossip about each other's marriages. Also, a privileged man abandoning his family to go have some kind of crisis of mass

masculinity is hardly something to write home about. Very true. Johnson also notes that Steed was but ill-qualified for the business as not understanding maritime affairs, and that, as we'll see, was the understatement of the century. All Steed knew about the sea came from books. He loved to read, even set up a library in his cabin on his new ship. He read to his mostly illiterate crew whether they liked it or not. Oh, come on now, chaps gather around. to read you a story.

This one is called Winnie of the Pooh. I bet they, like, pretended to hate it, but actually liked it. I think they probably loved it. They brought their little pillows and blankets. Read us the one about Mary and a little lamb, sir. Is that, it sounds like, it sounds like, please, sir, may I have some more? It's all over twist, actually, not a pirate. With an R in there somewhere, I'm sure.

I actually kind of suspect this whole banana pants scheme of running off to join the pirates came from Steed reading romanticized pirate and sailor stories as a kid, but just to reiterate, at this point, this is a grown-ass man. So don't read books, kids, they'll turn you into pirates. And also, don't have more money than common sense, because it'll enable you to actually chase after the dipshit daydreams you got no business chasing. Steed bought a sloop and fitted it with ten guns and hired 70 men to sail with them, paying them a regular salary. Now, none of this was correct. Pirates stole their ships, they didn't buy them, and the crew worked for shares of the loot, not wages. But they weren't going to turn down easy money, and one night Steed's new ship slipped silently away from Barbados. He'd called her the revenge.

Now, if Steed had anything in his pampered life to feel vengeful about, it's lost to history. chances are he just thought the name sounded cool, which, yeah, I have to admit, it kind of does. Initially, and you have to think this was down to good luck and an experienced crew, the revenge actually had some success, plundering five ships off the coast of the Carolinas, Virginia, and New York. Despite this, though, the crew was uneasy. It was obvious to them that Steed was in way, way over his head, bless his heart, and they knew that they'd just pretty much gotten lucky so far. And that luck ran out off the coast of Florida, when Steed ordered an attack on a Spanish merchant ship.

But it turned out the merchant ship was actually a well-armed man-of-war, and as soon as the revenge raised their black flag, the Spanish started blasting. So I started blasting. Cannons, yeah. Steed was knocked unconscious almost immediately. I know, bless his heart, right? Half his men were hurt or killed, and the revenge, barely escaped to limp away to one of the safe harbors within range, which was, of course,

Nassau, the Republic of Pirates. Wicked, wak it, wak, and a wak, and a wail! Now, as a safe haven for any ship flying the black flag, NASA was a frequent stopping point for any pirate crew who was anybody, right? The captains and most of the crews all knew each other pretty well by now. So the arrival of a weird aristro like Steed Bonnet, half dead and on a half-destroyed ship, got a lot of attention. And Steed, in particular, caught the eye of another freshly minted new captain, someone who had quickly carved out a terrifying reputation. Our old friend Edward Teach,

aka Blackbeard. Or possibly it was Steed's ship that caught Blackbeard's eye. Which one carried more weight, the ship, or the man, is one of those questions will probably never have the answer to. That said, though, most of Blackbeard's actions were about money, so if you twisted my arm, I'd probably say that what happened next was mostly about Blackbeard getting his hands on the revenge. As Blackbeard and Steed got to know each other, Blackbeard could immediately tell that Steed knew jack shit nothing about captaining a ship. He talked to Steed's crew and with their consent put one of his own men in charge of the revenge. And then Blackbeard brought the injured steed on board his own ship. In his book, Charles Johnson said that because Steed wasn't used to

all the hard knocks of pirate life, Blackbeard convinced him that he'd be better. off coming to live as a guest on his ship instead. He could do whatever he wanted, he wouldn't have to work, and he'd get to sail the high seas and see the world. Which sounds kind of nice, right? Steed could take it easy and recover from his injuries and his new friend Blackbeard would take care of all the nasty hard work of actually being a pirate captain. Of course, there's no indication that Steed had any say in this new arrangement. I mean, it could have been a case of do this, or I'm going to leave your dumbass in Nassau to defend for yourself. Yeah, right.

Steed said, sure. And Blackbeard, with no struggle and no blood spilled, added a nice new ship to his little pirate fleet. So, what was going on here? If you've seen the show Our Flag Means Death, you'll know that in their version there's a romantic relationship between Blackbeard and Steed, which, like a lot of pirate stories, is based on evidence that's kind of flimsy but still compelling. It's pretty much from two quotes from Johnson's book that we already shared. The thing a minute ago about Blackbeard bringing Steed on board his own ship and treating him surprisingly gently and kindly, and the earlier one, where Steed's former neighbors gossiped about him being, quote, uncomfortable in marriage. If you were a writer in the early 1700s and you

wanted to let your readers know that a fellow wasn't exactly as straight as an arrow, saying they were uncomfortable in marriage might be how you did it. uncomfortable in marriage wink wink right like hey you know that guy's steve he goes by stephen now yeah i hear he was uncomfortable in marriage mm-hmm yeah he left his wife to go join the pirates mm-hmm right it's like when historians write about emily dickinson and sarah gilbert they're like they were close friends and lifelong confidants when in reality they were writing each other like smoke and love letters that would put Solomon to shame. Like, Professor, they were lesbians. It's okay. If Steed and Blackbeard were in a relationship, they were probably in one of the

safest situations in the whole Western world for a gay couple. There's some debate on how prevalent and accepted gay relationships were on ships at the time, but it seems fair to say that the answer was more than onshore. I mean, these were small, almost exclusively male societies with a lot of traditional superstitions about women. Some sailors of the time, especially pirates, used a system called matilatage, which meant a pair of them shared incomes, promised to fight alongside each other when necessary, and named each other as heirs. Sometimes this was just a practical thing, two good friends who didn't have families back home. But sometimes this was a way for guys who were, you know, really good friends to make it official. Next time you hear someone use

the word mayty in a pirate voice. Remember, they're talking about something that's kind of in the general ballpark of ye oldie gay marriage. And we're going to go off on a quick little tangent here before we get back to Steed and Blackbeard. We said earlier that pirate ships were almost exclusively male societies. And that's true with emphasis on almost. We're going to tell you what we know about the life of one of the few female pirates we do know about. And based on her story, we think there were probably a lot more we don't know about. Now, Mary Reid had a hell of a life, and we don't have time to do her justice here, but here's the short version. Mary identified herself as a woman, but from an early age, she dressed

and presented herself as a boy, and pursued careers that at the time were exclusively male, first as a sailor on a man of war, then as a soldier, first on foot and then in a cavalry regiment. Through various twists of fate, she wound up as a pirate on the ship of Captain Calico Jack Rackham, where, unbeknownst to her, she was crewing a little bit of the alongside another woman passing as a man, Rackham's lover, Anne Bonney. And I'm just going to read this bit from a general history of the pirates because it is so good.

Her sex was not so much as suspected by any person on board till Anne Bonnie, who was not altogether so reserved in point of chastity, translation, she liked sex, took a particular liking to her. In short, Anne Bonnie took her for a handsome young fellow and for some reasons best known to herself first revealed her sex to marry Reed. So this other lady pretending to be a man on the pirate ship develops a crush on Mary, who's also pretending to be a man, and makes a move on her like, hey, handsome, guess what? I'm a lady. I love this so much. It's hilarious. It's absolutely the stuff fan fiction is

made from. Like, it's just, oh yeah. It's so dramatic and gossipy and perfect. I just, I'm obsessed. Oh my God, I love it. Mary Reed, knowing what she would be. at and being very sensible of her own incapacity that way, because I guess she was a straight girl, was forced to come to a right understanding with her. And so to the great disappointment of Anne Bonney, she let her know she was a woman also. But this intimacy so disturbed Captain Rackham, who was the lover and gallant of Anne Bonny, that he grew furiously jealous, so that he told Anne Bonny he would cut her new lover's throat. Therefore, to quiet him, she let him into the secret also, Which just, okay, imagine how much this blue captain wreck him's mind, by the way, like, oh, yeah, don't worry, man. I'm a lady, too. Like, at that point, he's got to wonder how many of his men, you know, ain't. Yeah, it's probably just him and, like, 57 women in drag. Like, he's, like, the only genuine man on board. This is just him and a bunch of ladies wearing pants.

We should start a, we should start a Kickstarter with that script in mind. Like, I think. think that would be amazing. Oh my God. It's so funny. The Shakespearean messiness of all this aside, both Mary and Anne were completely successful at passing for men. The only people who knew the truth was the ones they told. It wasn't until they were caught and found to both be pregnant that the secret came out. And think about the craziness of this. These two ladies on the high seas, on all the high seas, just happened to bump into each other. Like, what are the odds of that? Well, we don't know the odds because we don't know how many women led similar lives without ever being discovered. I imagine a lot of them. That's what I suspect. Because, you know,

what else are you going to do back then? Sit home and like work on needlepoint. Fuck that. I can understand why women would do this. A hundred percent, especially if you're... Want to go out and have some adventure. Yeah. If you're poor, if like maybe your husband died and you don't have a way of making income, like there's just like all kinds of options. And like if you could easily, like, make cut your hair get dirty wear some pants and like men are like T-rexes like unless you're like they have no object permanence so like you just like you just cut your hair and they're like

that's a dude you know so it probably wouldn't even occur like it would just be so weird that it probably wouldn't even occur to anybody back then to think that a woman would do this because of course the all the prejudices about women at the time that they wouldn't even think they wouldn't want to they'd be too scared Right? In the meantime, there's just like hundreds of these women. It's just crazy to me. I love it. All right. So back to Blackbeard and Steed, who sat somewhere on the long spectrum between prisoner and matey. He was treated well anyway, read his books and wandered around the deck and his bathrobe. Was he free to leave? Probably not. But he also wasn't just tossed over the side or marooned or put off the ship in a boat. Blackbeard already controlled Steed's ship, so why did he keep Steed around? Blackbeard absolutely was not just a nice helpful guy always lend in a hand to dudes in trouble. So if he kept Steed around, it was because he

enjoyed being around him. Whether that was a platonic connection or gay as hell, we'll never know for sure, unfortunately, but I know what it is in my head canon, okay? Yeah, they were lovers in the nighttime for sure. Blackbeard and his fleet of three ships sailed further down into the Arabian and attacked a French merchant vessel at La Concorde. Both of Blackbeard's ships fired cannons and the French captain surrendered. La Concord, it turned out, was a slave ship. Blackbeard sailed it to a nearby island where he deposited the enslaved people from the hold and let the crew sail off in his old sloop, along with a whole bunch of beans so they wouldn't starve. Gee, thanks, Blackbeard. La Concord was by far a superior ship, and after being renamed the Queen Anne's Revenge, it became

Blackbeard's primary vessel. Anne had reigned during the recent war with the French, when Blackbeard had been a privateer, but the name was as far as Blackbeard's patriotic leanings went. Unlike his old buddy Benjamin Hornigold, Blackbeard had no problem attacking British ships. Pirates went after slave ships every chance they got, which has led some people to wonder if they were abolitionists, but unfortunately, nah, that wasn't it. Pirates didn't give a rat's ass about the enslaved people in the holds, unfortunately. They just wanted the ships themselves. These were almost always expensive, fast vessels for the horrifying reason that the quicker they crossed the Atlantic, the more of their captives would still be alive at the end of the voyage. How god-awful is that?

Ugh. Horrific. After recruiting several of the African men, Blackbeard abandoned the rest to their fates and sailed off to refit the Queen Anne's revenge with 40 guns, making her one of the most powerful ships in the Caribbean. Blackbeard moved into his new flagship along with Steed and all his books, and together, with Blackbeard in charge, obviously, they plundered ship after ship. This really began to cement Blackbeard's rep as the big daddy pirate of the Caribbean, but what really put the cherry on top of that reputation was when Blackbeard stepped up from taking on ships to taking on a whole damn city.

The city was Charleston, or Charlestown, in the British province of South Carolina. Blackbeard's fleet blockaded the port and for five days stopped and looted every ship trying to approach or leave. One of the ships carried prominent citizens trying to sail for London, including a member of the provincial council. Blackbeard took them all prisoner and sent one man back to the city with his demands. Charles Town better give him the treasure he wanted within two days or he would decapitate every hostage and send their heads to the governor. And what was this great treasure that Blackbeard was willing to rile up every British? colony for? Medicine. That's what. Now, medicine at the time included some new American things like

tobacco, coffee, and chocolate, although not always in the way you might expect. Want to know where the phrase blow smoke up your ass comes from? I'm not sure I do. Too bad. Back in the day, if you went unconscious, they used to literally blow tobacco smoke up your ass to try and revive you. Shut the fuck up. I will not. I will not. It's true. And medicine also included some old European favorites like stag penises and the ground schools of people who died violent deaths. Oh my God. Given the choice, I think I'd go for the chocolate doctor rather than the stag penis

doctor, you know, to each their own. It's just a personal preference. I don't know if it's like the difference between an MD or a DO or something, but I'd definitely be checking their certifications. Like did they go to Stagp penis university or Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, you know? Yeah. We don't know what medicine Blackbeard demanded. There were any number of diseases waxing and waning through the region, and maybe his crews were sick.

Or possibly, there was a personal problem he needed to address. In 1996, the wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge was found off the coast of South Carolina. Among the treasures they found was a metal urethral syringe with traces of mercury inside it. Because for centuries, injecting mercury up your dickhole was a common treatment for syphilis. Oh my God. Isn't Mercury like really toxic? Uh-huh. Good old 18th century medicine. Oh, no. Yeah. We don't know. It was Blackbeard, but somebody on the Queen Anne's Revenge was hurting. Oh, my God. Gross.

Because the pirates he'd sent into town with his messenger had immediately gotten blackout drunk, Blackbeard's deadline passed without any word from the colony. He didn't start Lopper's off heads, though. Instead, he sailed into the harbor to remind everyone he was there, and the panicked citizens handed over the medicine. Whoever needed it, dude, I hope it helped. Blackbeard then had his hostages hand over their valuables, including their nice clothes, and sent them safely ashore in their underwear. And then, really just to be a dick, he burned the ships he'd captured and sailed off. Damn, dude. I guess syphilis puts you in a shitty mood. syphilis and mercury dick. Poor guy. Seriously. And for the record, we're not making fun of him for having syphilis. You couldn't swing like a dead parrot around at that time and not hit somebody that had syphilis. That was just, yeah, everyone had syphilis. We're making fun of the 18th century medicine. I just don't want anybody to be like weirded out. No. He was putting mercury into his urethra. Lord have mercy. That's upsetting.

cities relied on maritime trade for their survival. They hated pirates, but after he'd held up a whole damn city, the colonies both hated and feared Blackbeard most of all. He was now the most wanted man in colonial America. And he knew that, of course. He also knew all about the king's proclamation offering pardons to any pirate who turned himself into a colonial governor. But first he had to take care of his crew. In June 1718, the Queen Anne's revenge ran aground on a sandbar in Beaufort, North Carolina. Now, if there's one thing Blackbeard undisputedly was, it was a damn good sailor. He wouldn't make this kind of mistake by accident. This was deliberate. It's like, oh no, we have run aground. We are helpless here on the sandbar. You know, I mean, he did it on

purpose, obviously. The Queen Anne's revenge could no longer be sailed. Another of his ships, the adventure, was almost entirely wrecked on the sandbars. So Blackbeard sent Steed inland to speak to Governor Eden and obtain pardons for them both, while Blackbeard stayed back to recover whatever he could from the grounded ships. Most likely he wanted to feel out whether this whole pardon deal was legit or if Eden would just, you know, string steed up. Governor Eden was quite happy to grant the pardons though, and Steed, his job well done, headed back to Beaufort. When he got there, he found that Blackbeard had done him dirty, and not only him, Steed's whole crew and hundreds of Blackbeard's own men were abandoned on the sandbar.

Oh, you son of a bitch. How could you do your boyfriend like that? Blackbeard had taken everything of value from the two wrecked ships and then plundered and damaged Steed's revenge for good measure and sailed off in one of his still functioning ships, which he apparently renamed the adventure. I guess he just really liked the name. He had betrayed Steed and hundreds of sailors, all of whom were thoroughly pissed. They wanted to knock the now more aptly named Revenge back into shit.

shape and go get Blackbeard, which would negate that shiny new pardon Stede had in his hands, but it turned out Stede wanted petty vengeance more than he wanted to return to his safe law-abiding life. I kind of can't blame him, actually. I'd want to go get his ass too. First, the revenge got back into the plundering game to try and make up for the booty blackbearded stolen from them. And now that he was fully committed to the bit, Stede turned out to be a pretty damn good pirate captain, taking ship after ship. He learned from the best, right? But Stead Bonnet would never get the chance to go after Blackbeard. The revenge was cornered in the Cape Fear River by two ships commanded by a colonel Rhett. All three ships ran aground on sandbars in the low tide,

and for the next six hours traded musket fire. Rett's ships were lighter, though, and when the tide came in, they floated free first. Steed's position was now hopeless. He told his men to go down and set fire to their powder stores so that the revenge and everyone on board would go up in one spectacular explosion. Yeah, but his crew said, nah, yeah, we're not doing that. And instead, when Rhett got close, Steed meekly surrendered. He's like, come on, guys, let's go out in a blaze of glory. No, thank you.

We're good. No. He'd never really fully won over his crew, and several of them agreed to testify against him after he was imprisoned in Charlestown. He had a brief moment of freedom after he bribed his guards, and he and one of his crew ran off disguised in women's clothing, but they were chased down once again by Colonel Rett and recaptured. Twenty-nine of Bonnet's crew were found guilty of piracy and hanged. Steed received the same sentence, but his execution was delayed seven times, largely because the people of Charlestown

had come to pity him. Steed's sanity, which had never hung from the sturdiest hook, had slipped entirely since his imprisonment. Nevertheless, though, Governor Johnson of South Carolina eventually ordered that the deed had to be done and Steed was hanged. He was buried alongside his crew in unmarked graves in local marshland. It was about 18 months since he'd given up his life of permanent ease and comfort on Barbados to run off and play pirate. I can't think of many better examples of fucking around and finding out. Steed Bonnet, the Fafo King. Patron Saint of Fafo. Meanwhile, Blackbeard had taken his ill-gotten gains over to Ocrow Coke Island and was apparently living it up with a new teenage wife. According to Charles Johnson, this was wife number 14 for Blackbeard,

which sounds like one of his exaggerations. I mean, Blackbeard was a busy guy. Where would he find the time? Even in modern times, I've heard guys describe their girlfriends as the wife, and I suspect 14 mistresses was probably more accurate. Yeah. Like, I think they were probably just living in sin, and Charles Johnson was clutching his pearls and had to say wife, you know? Yeah, exactly. Technically pardoned, Blackbeard just chilled for a while, but the lure of piracy was too great, and soon he was right back at it. The lieutenant governor of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood, was sick of pirates and was determined to either bring Blackbeard to justice or end his life. He was so dead set on this that he was willing to bend the rules to do it. So we hired some men from the British Navy

ships to go down to North Carolina and get Blackbeard. Headed by a guy named Robert Maynard, they took two ships, the Jane and the Ranger. Maynard found Blackbeard's adventure anchored off of Okra Cook Island. He didn't know it, but the ship was seriously understaffed at the moment. Half the crew was off partying in the town of Bath. As the two sloops approached, Blackbeard cut his anchor cable to save the time of raising it and turned his guns toward them. But when the sloops raised the union flag that announced them as vessels of the crown, Blackbeard tried to sail away. There was already musket fire between the ships, some of which had possibly damaged the adventures rigging and sent it out of control. It ran aground on the

sandpar. The ship still had her guns, though, and as the sloops got close, Blackbeard fired a broadside that killed or wounded 20 men on the Jane and nine on the Ranger. The Ranger was disabled, but the Jane sailed on. Blackbeard couldn't believe his luck. There was only Maynard and a few of the men left at the stern. This fool had delivered himself and his ship right into his hands. He yelled insults over to the Jane, calling the crew cowardly puppies. What's that saying? If it seems too good to be true, it probably is? Yeah, seems like our boy never heard of that saying.

When the Jane was close, the adventure threw grappling hooks to pull them close together, then threw grenades of powder and shot onto the deck before charging on through the smoke to try and overpower the outnumbered Lieutenant Maynard. But it was a trap. Maynard had sent most of his men down

below the decks to try and lure Blackbeard into boarding. Now that he had, they all came charging out, shouting and firing their guns. The startled pirates were pushed back, but Blackbeard was like, come on, guys, we've got this. And the fight began. Maynard and Blackbeard shot their pistols at each other. Blackbeard missed. Maynard hit, but Blackbeard didn't seem to notice.

The two men drew their cutlasses and fought till a heavy blow from Blackbeard snapped Maynard's sword at the hilt. By now, Blackbeard had been drawn away from the rest of the pirates and was surrounded by Maynard's men. Just as he was about to kill Maynard, one of these men slagely. lashed blackbeard in the neck, which directed blackbeard's blow down to cut Maynard's knuckles instead of ending his life. The Boston newsletter reported the conclusion of the fight, probably fanciing it up a little bit, because, you know, journalists back then never let facts get in the way of a good story. One of Maynard's men being a Highlander, engaged Teach with his broadsword, who gave Teach a cut in the neck, Teach saying, well done, lad.

The Highlander replied, If it be not well done, I'll do it better. With that, he gave him a second stroke, which cut off his head, laying it flat on his shoulder. Now, I don't know about you, but that dialogue sounds a little bit too sharp for dudes in the middle of a brutal fight to the death, but either way, Blackbeard, the most dreaded pirate of his ages, lay dead on the bloody deck in two pieces. His crew, seeing him fall, either surrendered or jumped overboard. Maynard hung Blackbeard's head from his bowsprit, flung his body overboard, and sailed back to Virginia. There, Blackbeard's head was put on a pole at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay to warn anyone who sailed by that piracy might seem sexy, but in the end, all it gotcha

was your head on a stick. He was most likely in his late 30s and had been a pirate for just two incredibly eventful years that sealed his place in history. A little more interesting than Jack Sparrow, isn't it? So that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Elle, Kaz, CJ, Michael, Catherine, Denise, Nicole, and Chris. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes even two,

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