You're Dead to Me - Blackbeard (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: November 14, 2020

Greg Jenner is joined by comedian Stu Goldsmith and historian Dr Rebecca Simon for a hilarious look at the life of the infamous pirate, Blackbeard.Produced by Dan Morelle Scripted by Greg Jenner Researched by Emma Nagouse Radio edit by Cornelius MendezA Muddy Knees Media production for BBC Radio 4.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. Hello, Greg here. How are you? Hope you're well. Right, good news first of all. We are busy recording Series 3 of You're Dead to Me. Takes a lot of work, in fairness, but we are recording a new episode this week and we hope that the series will launch in the early new year, just after Christmas. That's the plan, So that's exciting. In the meantime, you are possibly aware that we've been playing out shorter,

swear-free versions of You're Dead to Me on Radio 4 on Saturday mornings. So we are now putting them into the feed for you to be able to access. They will be here permanently. The short versions and the full-length versions are going to be in the same feed. So just scroll down and you'll see the originals.

And these are yeah half an hour long they're a bit less rude and of course we'll see you after Christmas for the new episodes of series 3 which is shaping up

to be a lot of fun anyway I wish you well take care of yourselves and we'll see you in the new year thank you bye

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me the history podcast for everyone BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the history podcast for everyone. People who don't like history, for people who do like history and people who forgot to learn any at school. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author, broadcaster and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories.

And you might have heard my Radio 4 series, Homeschool History, although that was for the kids. So what's this one all about? We'll see you next time. and sailing the high seas with the infamous pirate Blackbeard. Joining me to sort fact from fiction and talk all things maritime are two beardless landlubbers who thankfully have shown no signs of scurvy, at least not yet. In History Corner, we've politely kidnapped her while she visits the UK from America because she's literally writing a book on 18th century piracy. It's Dr Rebecca Simon. Hi, Rebecca. Thanks for coming. Sorry about the polite kidnapping. Hi, Greg. Thank you so much for having me. I don't mind the kidnapping at all.

And in Comedy Corner, he's one of the finest stand-ups in the land. He's the host of one of my favourite podcasts, the brilliant Comedians Comedian podcast, where he quizzes stand-ups on their creativity, their mental health, and on being funny. It is the splendid Stu Goldsmith. Hello, Stu. Hello. It's lovely to be here. Thank you for that lovely resume but I'm smarting from not being a pirate historian which sounds like the coolest job ever. Not least because that suggests it's not only your speciality but also that you play pretty fast and loose with the rules. Oh yeah absolutely. There's a thing we like to do in the show called the what do you know and the what do you know is our little introduction to the subject where I'm going to guess what you at home are probably aware of when it comes to this subject. So what do you know? And the what do you know is our little introduction to the subject where I'm going to guess what you at home are probably aware of

when it comes to this subject. So, what do you know? In pop culture, Blackbeard is the most famous pirate, apart from Jack Sparrow and Long John Silver and the Sean bloke from Napster in the noughties. But apart from that, Blackbeard. And he's a terrifying killer. He's got a thick, bushy beard into which he stuffs burning tapers.

He wields a cutlass. He yells, He kills his own crew. His flagship is called The Queen and Revenge. And, of course, he's played by the twinkle-eyed Ian McShane in the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which is the most expensive film ever made. Wow.

Wow, I didn't know that. Not a good film, but most expensive. So that's one accolade. Is it worth just hovering and saying that's tapers in the sense of fuses and not in the sense of those little animals with the long noses? I thought they were called tapirs. Oh, I see, I see. Yes, tapers as in fuses.

Just one of the gaps in my knowledge. Not to worry. So I reckon that's what people at home are probably thinking, Blackbeard. That's what comes into their head. But is any of this stuff true? What else is there to know? That's what we're home are probably thinking, Blackbeard. That's what comes into their head. But is any of this stuff true? What else is there to know? That's what we're here to find out. So let's go backbeard to Blackbeard to find out his historical roots.

Rebecca, who is Blackbeard really? What's his name? Where's he born? Basics of his childhood, please. So Blackbeard was born most likely as Edward Teach. That is the name that pops up in most documents. Sometimes you'll see Thatch or Thatcher, but generally historians agree his name was Edward Teach. And he was born in Bristol in England, approximately around 1680.

He came from a nice family. He was probably from a sort of a middle class family, definitely most likely a maritime family. And he was educated, so he wasn't illiterate by any means. So he's not sort of a street urchin? No, no, not at all. He was actually quite well to do in his age. He came from a middle class family. and illiterate by any means. So he's not sort of a street urchin? No. No, not at all. He was actually quite well-to-do in his age. He came from a middle-class family. That suggests it was something that his careers advisors said,

well, there's always piracy. I have no idea. Yeah, I was surprised too when I learned this. But is there an extent to which in order to be the captain of a vessel, assuming that that bit of it is real, you need to be able to read a map and you've got to have, you've got to be able to read and you've got to be able to, you know, you've got to be able to afford a boat, presumably. You've got to be middle class to be a pirate. God, that is so

depressing for working class kids out there. Even piracy is now taken over by people whose mum and dad can afford to fund them during the early years of piracy. Yeah, it's true. Most of the higher ranking, anyone on a ship, like the captains, quartermasters, pursers, they had to be educated for exactly your reasons. They had to be able to read maps, communicate with people on land and merchants. They had to be able to mark their inventory.

Most other sailors were more illiterate, but if you wanted to become captain, it was most likely that you'd have to be able to read more than your name. I love the idea that there's a hierarchy based on how illiterate you are. Well, I'm more illiterate, so I look up to him. Stu, you grew up in Bristol as well. Yes. Are you now suddenly regretting your life of not piracy?

Well, it's been a fairly piratical life, I'm not going to lie to you. No, I mean, I do like the idea that Blackbeard is likely to have had a broad Bristol accent. I mean, even as a vast beloved. I can't do it now. It's been a long time. What is it, people? You get off the bus in Bristol, you go, cheers, drive. And then he'll often say to you, all right, my lover. And then part of you thinks you really want to respond. Thanks, princess. I'm just going to continue it. So yes, a nice, he'd have been a sort of cider-drenched, apple-faced, lovely Bristolian. What else was happening in the world during the 1600s?

So 1680, so by this point, Bristol was a really bustling port city. Slavery, right? Yes, Bristol was kind of the hub that sort of controlled the slave trade and started the slave trade. Many of the ships that were built in Bristol were specifically meant for the slave trade. So Bristol does have an unfortunate legacy as being the second largest port next to London and also at this point, the second largest city besides London. And they had at this point something called the Society for the Merchant Adventurers, and they were established and meant to fund these ships and start kind of other fleets of ships. The slave trade also brought in other

goods into Bristol, such as sugar, rum, cotton, essentially items that slaves were the ones who were producing. And in 1680s, we're talking here about the end of the Stuart era. Us Stuarts can never hang on to an era. There's always some bloody revolution about to happen. So really what happens is you get Queen Anne. So Queen Anne will feature a little bit in the episode because his ship is called Queen Anne's Revenge. So she's sort of the queen who was in the movie The Favourite that won that Oscar. And she is sort of the last of the Stuarts. So in terms of what's going on, it's a massively transitional phase. There's been a big revolution, but a sort of silent revolution.

And it's also the birth of copyright law and all sorts of exciting new innovations, the birth of the novel. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And with the emergence of copyright law and also kind of removing the Licensing Act, there was a whole lot more freedom for newspapers to really grow, both in England and also across the sea in the American colonies because colonists brought over printing presses and books. Most of them were quite literate when they came over, at least into New England. So it was a huge explosion of the wealth of knowledge and books and papers and pamphlets and broadsides.

In my opinion, really cool time. Does that feed into why we know so much about Blackbeard? Because he was the first guy they wrote about. Like if you're the early adopter of Twitter, you get to be the Stephen Fry. Like he's the guy. There's news. We need news. There's this guy.

Exactly. I'm writing a book at the moment on the history of celebrity and celebrity is more or less invented in like 1709. That's kind of like the year when you get like the first major celebrity.

So he was the first celebrity pirate. He's one of the first. Yeah, he is. And was real. Like you mentioned Long John Silver who was not real. Not real. So he's the celebrity.

So he was the Kim Kardashian of his era. And the fuses, the tapirs in the beard are breaking the press. Maybe, maybe that's legit. We'll come to that a little bit later on, actually. But how does he get into piracy?

Because he doesn't start out as a pirate, does he? I mean, how does a young man go off to sea from Bristol? Well, for him, most likely he was a merchant or he worked at the Royal Navy. We do know that he was a member of the Royal Navy when the War of Spanish Succession started, and he was hired to become a privateer. And this is where he met another privateer named Benjamin Hornigold, who was the captain of a major privateering ship out of Jamaica.

What's a privateer, sorry? Oh, a privateer is someone who is legally sanctioned to rob enemy ships. So it was literally a legal document saying you have permission to rob, and in this case, any Spanish or French ship, and you may keep all the loot as your payment. It's work experience for pirates. Exactly. Okay. Did they not think this may cause somewhere down the line, once we've armed and, you know, given these people experience and how to rob stuff, did no one think

this may not be a good idea? It might have kind of slipped their minds because after the wars, when the privateering letter, they were called letters of mark, these official documents that they had to carry on ships. After wars, these letter of marks would essentially be expired and they weren't allowed to do this anymore. But many of these sailors were like, well, we're getting really great money and we like kind of having the freedom to sail. So we're just going to keep doing it. And this is how many privateers became pirates. And in this case, this is what Benjamin Hornigold did, is that he got kind of, he captured a new ship just outside Jamaica

and he took Blackbeard under his wing, essentially, I think as quartermaster. And this is where Blackbeard began to get his real career into piracy until Hornigold decided to retire. And then he gave Blackbeard control of his ship. And this is how Blackbeard got his career going. So it's literally an apprenticeship almost. Like you can come over, quartermaster is you look after the stores.

Is that right? You're like cutlasses over there and spices on the left. Yeah, kind of second in command. They're in charge of discipline. They're in charge of managing the stores. They're in charge of taking the loot that they would get from the other ships. Like logistics manager. Yeah, yeah, basically.

It's such a sort of weirdly unglamorous lifestyle when you describe it that way. Because actually, you know, we tend to think of piracy as sort of swinging from the main sail and shouting. But it's all about admin and teamwork. It was. It had to be quite orderly in order for them to survive. Like any other merchant ship, any other sailing ship, they had to be able to survive at sea and also be able to get supplies to kind of keep them going.

So pirate ships in a way were just as orderly as many others. Of course, there are exceptions to that rule, just like any other ship. How does he go from privateering, where he's essentially allowed to sort of, you know, tackle a Spanish ship and a French ship, to suddenly going, you know what, any ship will do. I'm now a pirate. Well, he started out with a ship called Revenge, and this was a ship that Captain Hornigold had given him. And then after some time, not too long after that, Blackbeard ended up capturing a French ship called Le Concorde. And that's the ship that he ended up renaming Queen Anne's Revenge, kind of a play on the War of Spanish Succession. And so this point, he was able to start gathering a larger crew.

And this was a large ship. It had been used for a long time. I think the ship was built around 1710. And then he captured it probably around 1717. So after It had been used for a long time. I think the ship was built around 1710 and then he captured it probably in 1717, so after it had been in use for seven years. And this became the thing that really launched him into becoming a powerful pirate. It was a huge ship that he was able to steal on his first go. So he stole it from the French?

Yes. So what's the first time when he, I mean, presumably as a pirate, he started stealing from the English as well. So that moment of thinking, oh, stuff it. Like, I mean, does he start attacking one and go, wait a minute, these are British. Ah, keep going. Yeah, he would steal from British ships, French ships, Spanish ships.

And what he would do is he would often hail other ships by throwing up a French flag. And a lot of pirates did this, is that they would throw up the flags of Britain, France, Spain, depending on who they were coming across. And then right beforehand, when they'd reach that other ship, they would take down that flag and then put up what's known as the Jolly Roger, the black flag with a skull and crossbones or a figure of a man holding kind of a spike with a bloody heart next to it. And he would do that immediately when the ship was too close to get away. And this would cause a lot of fear and intimidation.

The idea being that the people on the other ship would give up their goods pretty easily to make it a bit quicker and easier for everyone involved. So he catfishes them initially. Yeah, well, that is the drawback of the whole flag system, isn't it? It's like any idiot can put up any flag and go, yep, we're fine. And then the opposite of catfishing is he then puts up the terrifying I'm a pirate flag in the hope that people go, ah! Yeah, exactly. Don't have my face. And was he doing the burning fuses in the beard and the hair at this point?

I'm not sure when he started doing that. He started doing that pretty shortly after he got started. He grew out a huge, long, bushy beard and the beard was humongous. It came up almost to his eyes. So it covered most of his face. He grew his hair out very long. And this went against the social conventions of the day where men, if they wanted to be respectable, would have shorter hair and would be clean shaven to show themselves as being polite for polite society, essentially. So Blackbeard did everything opposite. He would

take these tapers and he would tie them into his beard, kind of coating his beard with wax so it wouldn't burn. And then showing up onto a ship, he looked quite monstrous. And the point of this was to scare and intimidate the people on the other ship so he could go in and steal their goods and get the other ship to surrender as fast as possible. Which is ultimately kind of a, it leads to the least death, right? That's actually kind of quite a pacifist way to do it. If you kind of scare them, well maybe pacifist isn't the right word, but if you scare them completely to the extent that they surrender, then fewer of them die. Yeah. And a lot of pirates actually preferred to do it that way, including Blackbeard, because the fewer people who died,

the fewer crew members you had to replace, the less damage a ship would have, and the more likely both sides could just be let go pretty quickly. I think every pirate, anyone who fought on the seas, did kill some people, but not as many as we're probably imagining. So, Rebecca, how many ships do you think is he raiding in a given month? Is it one? Is it five? What's his rate? I think it varied. It depended on where they were in the ocean.

If they were near a major shipping lane where a lot of merchant ships will come, then they could rob several of them. I think there was one document that said that in a space of 48 hours off the coast of the Carolinas, he had raided 15 ships. So that's a huge amount. But then there's periods of time where he doesn't raid any for several months, usually because he was restocking in the Caribbean. So pirates would essentially raid as much as they could in a safe manner. They also didn't want to risk getting caught. So they would kind of have to sort of pick and choose. They were really after large merchant ships that carried a lot of valuable

goods because they would sell these in the colonies. A lot of colonial governors sort of turned a blind eye to pirates because they brought in goods that they couldn't get otherwise. The British had really restricted trade amongst the West Indies and North America. They didn't want their colonists trading with the Spanish and the French because they wanted to control their own trade. Pirates were bringing in French goods, Spanish goods, other goods from Europe that colonists couldn't really get otherwise.

So it's sort of a bulk market, really. Yeah, like when you can't afford a DVD, so you buy a pirate one for a bloke in a greasy spoon. Yeah, exactly. D'ar! Mission impossible four! Are they slave trafficking? Sometimes.

There were some pirates who were known to engage in the slave trade, and they would take a lot of enslaved people and sell them in slave markets in the West Indies. Yeah, that time she's the brand star. It's not as cool anymore, is it? Well, there were several who did that. I would say there were many, though, who did not.

I think pirates were mostly after, or I know they were mostly after things like medicines, spices, which would preserve food and could also serve as medicines as well. And they were also really valuable, especially if they were coming from what was known as the East Indies. Silks, sugar, rum, wine,

especially Madeira wines or other French wines that were really, really valuable. These were the things they were really after. In terms of what we think about in terms of gold and treasure, that's not what they were after because that's heavy. It's going to weigh down a ship.

Oh, yeah, of course. You want saffron. Yeah, you do. It's so valuable back then. And also what's interesting is back in the 1700s, the word treasure meant valuable. So just things that were considered to be... So anything of value.

Okay, so you can have earrings with saffron in one and indigo in the other, and then we go, yeah, great. So actually, the Hollywood version of the buried treasure, it's not shiny trinkets and gold cups. It's going to be turmeric. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The whole buried treasure thing, unfortunately, is pretty much a myth. Pirates didn't bury their treasure because they didn't really have the treasure we're thinking of.

I know it's the most disappointing thing I tell people. Faces always fall. But I never understood why they were supposed to bury the treasure. You get the treasure, you bury it, and then you write a map and then you go off and... I mean, at what point do you spend it? I guess the idea is it's a bank, isn't it? I mean, the Vikings used to do this as well. So Vikings, we tend to find Saxon and Viking hordes in the ground

where they've buried a massive amount of gold and silver, and then they've clearly gone off to war or something. Forgotten about it. They've been killed, probably, or they've died of some horrible disease. And it's just sitting there in the ground for 1,000 years. So clearly you can't carry it with you, you can't walk around carrying all this stuff because someone will mug you and steal it. So sometimes you have to put it in the ground.

But I guess pirates aren't doing that as much because really they're living their life, aren't they? They're spending their money. They're spending their money, they're living on the ocean. I just think for a pirate bank, the ground, the listening bank, that's the only bank you can trust. We have lots of branches everywhere

zero interest and in terms of uh his relationships with ladies how many wives do you think blackbeard had six higher 60 14 14 is the uh sort of 14 wives living on board with him or in different ports? Rebecca, what's the comment on this? So Blackbeard was very popular with the ladies. He loved women. He was very charismatic. He was very intelligent and he was very charming. And oftentimes pirates were assumed to be a bit wealthier

and more adventurous because of their stealing. So they would become a bit more attractive in that way to women. And so he essentially married in every port he would visit, sometimes under pseudonyms, a lot of times on the ship. So it's questionable as to how legitimate he felt they were. But essentially, he was a man who loved to fall in love and would do so in every port. So he did marry up to 14 women. There are no reports of him ever being really unkind to women. He just pretty much enjoyed their company

and just liked marrying as many as possible. I mean, why can't he just date them? What's the marrying thing for? I think it might have just been kind of romantic, really, maybe back then, or in a way just... It's like a Mormon. He's like, let's marry you and you as well and also you. Let's become connected in the eyes of a law,

which I clearly have no respect for. That's an odd... But I think it could have also been a way of sort of insurance for him because if someone was captured or if a pirate was captured, they would sometimes, and they went on trial, they were sometimes given the opportunity to have someone come forward as a character witness to kind of talk about their good qualities.

Ah, there we go. It's legal insurance. It is, yeah. So a lot of women could testify him and also the people who would have married him, usually maybe other members of the ships or maybe some local magistrates even who wouldn't quite know who he was otherwise because he disguised himself and used aliases quite a lot.

And does Blackbeard hang out with other pirates? Do they ever get together? Blackbeard's active in 1717 to 1718. So he would have had a chance to meet several other pirates and he did partner up with a pirate named Steve Bonnet who was from Jamaica. So he was only active for two years? Only for two years.

Wow, that's where all of the myths and all of the Blackbeard stuff comes from. Because he was the only guy with tapirs in his beard. Yeah. He had the wildest image. So he was a privateer for a bit longer, wasn't he? He was, yeah. For several years. So hardcore pirate two years. Hardcore pirate on his own for about two years. Before that, he'd sailed as a pirate under the command of Benjamin Hornigold from about 1713.

Hornigold Smith. Until Hornigold gave him his ship in 1717. So he had about four years of essentially pirate training. And presumably your piracy get out once he's had enough of pirating, he takes the fuses out, shaves his beard off and just walks unknown amongst anyone else. Yeah, just kinds of sozies the hell out of there. He's made his fortunes, divided it between his 14 wives

and no one can identify him. Well, it's funny you mention that. He does briefly retire. So he attacks Beaufort Inlet. Please tell me he came out of retirement for one last big job. He literally does. Yes! So he attacks Beaufort Inlet. Please tell me he came out of retirement for one last big job. He literally does. So he attacks Beaufort Inlet. And then the governor's like, yeah, you can have a pardon. Yeah. So what happened around this time is in 1717, the king had issued a proclamation for the effectual suppression of piracy. And this was essentially a notice that said we are going to

eliminate piracy once and for all. And one of the ways they wanted to stop piracy was they were giving pirates a chance to be pardoned. Because generally, if a pirate was captured, they were put on trial and hanged for their crimes. But a pardon said, if you turn yourself in and name your accomplices, we will give you a pardon and you can keep your loot. So you've got to be like the deal is you've got to betray your friends. Yeah, you do. I would betray my friends like a shot. So you've got to, like the deal is, you've got to betray your friends. Yeah, you do. I would betray my friends like a shot. Would you?

Yeah, absolutely. So at this time at the Beaufort Inlet off the Cote, which is in North Carolina, what Blackbeard had come to realize is he had become too recognizable. People recognized the Queen Anne's Revenge because it was a huge ship. People recognized him for his looks. He was extremely notorious at this point because of the way newspapers described him. And so he was like, you know what, I need to lay low, and I'm too much at risk of getting captured. So what he did, it's quite wild, actually,

he gets his whole crew, at this point, he's got a crew of about 150 people, and he gets them all rip-roaringly drunk. So that way, everyone kind of passes out. And he deliberately has the ship kind of crash onto the shoals of Beaufort Inlet. And then at that night, he goes inland and eventually kind of pleads with the governor of Virginia to get his pardon. And it works. But in the meantime, Blackbeard goes back and takes 40 of his favorite and most skilled pirates with him who already kind of knew of this plan and kind of set off on a smaller ship, a more manageable ship. So he decks his main ship, goes and grasses everyone up and gets the pardon,

and then him and his main guys disappear in a smaller ship and get out of their pardon intact. Exactly. And then start pirating again. Yep, and then the men wake up the next morning and find they've been betrayed. And at this point, Steve Bonnet, the pirate, had been on the pirate ship

and thus has to kind of take over as command. But he's not a good pirate, so no one is happy about it. But what happens is that because they lose so much of the crew and the ship was so damaged going up onto the land, they had to abandon it. And eventually the Queen Anne's Revenge floated back out into sea and sank off the coast of North Carolina. So he goes back into piracy. Yeah, he was about 17, 18. And his luck runs out. It does. It eventually runs out off the coast of Virginia, where the Coast Guard is waiting.

Because at this point, there have been lots of reports, people knew who he was, and people were keeping track of maritime activities. And when he arrived, they had their fleet come out and they were ready for battle and began to engage Blackbeard and his whole crew in a massive battle on the ship. Yeah, because if you're not scared, if you're prepped for him and you're not going to be scared by the flag and you've got a fire extinguisher for the beard, if the initial shock tactics that he's used to using don't work and you're actually the Navy, then yeah, he's going to be in trouble. Wow. So this Coast Guard is led by a lieutenant named Lieutenant Maynard. And he's the one who...

Oh, that is such the name of a Coast Guard guy, isn't it? Hello. Maynard, hello. So Lieutenant Maynard goes onto the ship and he immediately engages Blackbeard into a fight. But first beforehand, Blackbeard takes a huge drink and he says, I damn you all to damnation if you offer no quarters or unless you offer no quarters. And this term quartering means you're offering mercy if you unconditionally surrender. And Blackbeard is saying, I damn you to hell if you do this, essentially meaning he's challenging them to fight to the death. And

Maynard responds, don't worry, we're never planning on giving you quarters anyways. So they engage into a fight, hand to hand combat, all the people, the Coast Guard and the pirates against everyone, cutlasses, which are kind of shorter swords that you'd hang off your hip. They were a bit curved and easy to transport and a bit safer to carry around. Pistols and knives. Lieutenant Maynard wounds Blackbeard by stabbing him in the leg. And Blackbeard shouts, well done, lad, as if he's sort of teasing him. Absolute boss move.

But because he's then weakened, Lieutenant Maynard decapitates Blackbeard in battle and thus ends his life as a pirate. Gets him in the leg. What else you got? Lops his head off. Fair enough, as his head rolls away. It was a bloody battle. A lot of casualties on both sides. Maynard himself lost about 35 of his own men in battle. I thought you were going to say limbs. And all of Blackbeard's crew, they were basically taken on shore and they were arrested and many of them were all hanged at the same time.

And Blackbeard's head mounted on the ship? Yep, it was mounted on a ship and it kind of went on tour up the coast, up and down the coast of North America. Classic pirate retirement.

Yep, to kind of show, yes, we killed him. And then legend has it that they encased his skull in silver and used it as a drinking vessel in taverns all over Virginia. You kind of travel around, people drink out of it. That sounds like a health and safety risk. What happened to it after that?

Please tell me Nicolas Cage rescued it from somewhere. The nuance window! This is where we allow Rebecca, our expert, to just go to town on whatever you want to talk about for three minutes and give us your nerdiest, most deeply researched take. So what are you going to talk to us about in a nuanced window? I'm going to talk about the process of how pirates were publicly executed in London and the Americas. Let me get the stopwatch up. Three minutes starting now. Okay. So at the turn of the 18th century, the people who were in charge of all laws relating to the sea was known as the Admiralty Court. They were the ones who were in charge of everything

that was on water, essentially lakes, rivers, oceans, et cetera. So if pirates were captured anywhere in the sea, they were transported back to London for trial. Generally, these trials were for show. And if they were known to be pirates, they were going to be executed no matter what. But they had to kind of have a show trial because it was the law. And then when they were found guilty, which happened almost every single time, they were then paraded through the streets of London down to Execution Dock in Wapping. They were then paraded through the streets of London down to Execution Dock in Wapping. There's a replica that stands now behind a pub called the Prospect of Whitby, which has been around since about the 1500s.

They were led by a procession of the Admiralty with a silver oar that kind of showed that they were the Admiralty. This silver oar is now in the Royal Courts of Justice, but it's kind of locked away. The pirate would then have to give a speech atoning for their crimes, begging forgiveness. A lot of pirates, because they were pirates, did away with this and decided that they didn't want to do it. And sometimes they wouldn't speak. Sometimes they would say, if you guys weren't such terrible sailors or terrible captains, we wouldn't have had to turn to piracy. It's your fault. And then they were hanged. They would be hanged in a gibbet until three tides had washed over them.

They would be hanged in a gibbet until three tides had washed over them. One pirate, however, Captain Kidd, who when he was hanged in 1701, he was in a gibbet for 20 years encased in tar as a warning to other pirates. So by the early 1700s, pirates had become so numerous that it became feasibly impossible for them to be able to take people back to England for their trial. So they began to set up admiralty courts in the colonies, namely in Jamaica, what was then known as Spanish Town, and is now part of Kingston. And then also throughout the American colonies, Charleston, Rhode Island, Boston, and New York. And they had to undergo the same process of this. And hundreds of people would come out and see them. They would publish the pirates' trial transcripts verbatim. They would publish their speeches, and they would get sold in bookstores everywhere and they would often be sold out immediately with a lot more printing so this is how pirates became really really famous um but that is how pirate executions

kind of helped create the famous pirates that we know of today awesome that's all we have time for today let me say a huge thank you to my guests in history corner dr rebecca simon and in comedy corner stew goldsmith and to you, fair listener, I say, Dar, fare thee well upon the high seas. Try not to fall into Davy Jones's locker. Never mind, it's fine, isn't it? I'll see you next time. Bye.

From BBC Radio 4, a new series from Intrigue, Mayday. On November 11th, 2019, James LeMessurier was found dead in Istanbul. He was the ex-British army officer who helped set up the White Helmets in Syria. Ordinary people trained to save civilians in the aftermath of bomb attacks, the biggest heroes in an ugly war. But lots of people here in the UK say all the White Helmets videos are staged, part of the greatest hoax in history. I'm Chloe Hedgermetho and I've spent the last year investigating the White Helmets and James LeMessurier, who they are, who he was and why he died.

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