April 25, 2026 • 59 mins
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, we just returned from the beautiful Baha Mar resort, and we're going through a pirate phase. So, naturally, we have to share an hilarious Classic episode: the so-called Golden Age of Piracy was a time of lawless, terrifying, at-times amazing and objectively ridiculous history. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore a fascinating claim: Did some anti-authoritarian pirates really form their own government?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow ridiculous historians. We are still riding the wave of
Baja Mar. We returned recently with a two part series
about pirates, and in our conversation, we realized there was
no better way to continue to continue our piracy phase
obsession than by returning to a classic episode about that
(00:23):
time pirates had a government.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, they were super egalitarian, those pirates. You think they
think of them as bloodthirsty rape and pillagers, but in
fact they were all about doing things by committee.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, pretty often. They seemed to be quite progressive, especially
considering the colonial powers at the time, or in comparison
to those and less.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
You know, we did make the point in the episode
that we did at Baha Maar that we're not trying
to romanticize them too much because they definitely raped and
pillage a plenty. They weren't just out there doing secret ballots,
but they did have a pretty robust system of governments
that they used in a kind of almost pirate utopia situation.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, it's strange because it was sort of a marriage
of convenience, like when a bunch of gangs will team
up in a film to fight against a larger threat aliens.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
FBI.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Yes, sure, this is the golden age of piracy was
thought to be a time of lawless, terrifying, ridiculous history.
But in this episode from a few years back, while
we were recording at Baja Mar, we realized we were
in the Bahamas, the very same place where, according to
(01:39):
some pirates, once upon a time had a government.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
And we loved all this pirate talk so much that
we did a bunch of resoarch that didn't even make
it into our contractually obligated pirate episode. So we've got
another one coming your way very soon, and then a
pile that we're gonna sprinkle a little further on down
the line, but we're going to talk about a pirate
of the Midwest of the Great Lakes.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
And then we're also going to explore the Barbary Coast
in depth. So stay tuned for both of those episodes,
as well as a secret episode.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
For now.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Please tune in to our classic for this weekend New
Providence That time Pirates had a government. Asterisk Ridiculous Histories
a production of iHeartRadio. Ridiculous Histories a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yoho Ho.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as
always so much for tuning in. Let's give it up
for the buccaneer, the privates here of ridiculous History, super
producer mister Rex Williams.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of rum or something
they loved, drum they did. It's a little sugary for
my taste.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I'm not yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That's true. I do like a tiki drink, though. I
really like a tiki drink, and a lot of those
do contain rum, but it's not like required, and it's.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Mixed with so many fruit juices. And there's this presentation
the equim ball. There's a great tiki bar that we
always try to go to when we're in LA and
we can tie. Yeah, we go to see we go
to We go to this tiki bar whenever we have
time in town. And it's a little place, but they
serve these amazing drinks and you have to be really
(03:48):
careful with those too, man, because I could drink like
one and then I think it's time to eat trash
street food and go to bed.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well, which is easy to do in LA. But also
I think tiki t or tiki tie is like in
the pantheon of like great American tiki bars. They invented
some drink there, some form of corpse revivor or whatever
it was. I mean again, I can't think of that.
Robert Lamb of stuff to splow your mind is the
guy that turned us onto the spot in the first place.
(04:16):
But it's super cool if you're ever there. It's also
right by the Scientology like studio backlot. It's like Scientology
just sort of bought a lesser like studio. It has
the gates and everything, and it's got all these billboards
for their propaganda stuff. But we don't want to get
sued by the Church of Scientology, so let's talk about
pirates instead. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Also, also, we were very respectful when we got two
or three cocktails deep and ran around and had a
boot like photo shooting.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
For the church. So thank you. We didn't hop the
gate fully.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
We just peek through, which is fine, which is totally fine.
I'm Ben your nol and we're talking there we go
when most people today in the West think of historical pirates,
not modern day pirates, which are definitely thing we kind
of think in terms of larger than life fiction. Long,
(05:08):
John Silver's not the restaurant. I still don't know anyone
who goes that restaurant. I don't know how they're open.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I do have one near my eyes. I do not go.
It's like there's a Long John Silver and a red Lobster,
sort of the last bastions of like fast food seafood,
you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, oh, and then Captain D's. I don't know if
that's still around.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
It's pronounced cap'n. It's like crunch. Okay, it's still around. Yeah,
maybe I'm misconsuring my captain versus captains. Yeah, Long John
Silver's and Captain D's I think famously not great, but
I think they're part of one of the or at
least Long John Silver is part of one of those
big hospitality groups that's like owns like a bunch of
(05:49):
other fast food restaurants. You will sometimes see a combination
Long John Silvers and uh whatever. Yeah exactly, so, yeah,
you're right, you're right.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
This is it's young brands, young brands who own so
much stuff. That's that's exactly what you're talking about, nol.
They they they're the same folks who own Pizza Hut, KFC,
Taco Bell, and like hundreds of other things. Then Long
John Silver's. Weirdly enough, you know, maybe we should do
(06:21):
store fast food origin stories in a later episode. We're
gonna get to the pirates. We're getting there with this
segue long. John Silver's, the restaurant in the US is
named after a character, a pirate in a beautiful novel
called Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson. And when we
(06:42):
when we think about this, when we think about pirates
in the West, we think about things like Johnny Depp
and Pirates of the Caribbean, or that ride at Disney,
Pirates of the Caribbean, And there are Pirates of the
Pancreas or Pirates of the Pancreas from It's.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Ricksteil Probaly, don't insult the Pirates of the Pancress gets
fair offended.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
That's true. That's true.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
He's put a lot of energy into that one. And
who are we to call someone's creative baby ugly?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
And they're real pirates, They're not all like whitewashed like
you know Disney pirates are right. I'm not going to
say the next line because it is not culturally acceptable.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So so, Noel, when you and I were talking about this,
when we knew it might end up being a two
parter or We're gonna see how it goes.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
But what do you think.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Of when you hear the word pirate, like historical pirates,
not modern day Somali pirates.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Yeah, I mean I think of what we were sort
of joking about at the top of the show. I
think of peg legs and parrots and you know, rum
and body rhymes and and and sword fights, walk the plank, cap' hook,
all that kind of stuff. But also I do think
of like a crew, you know, like like a like
a like a like a captain in charge of a crew.
(07:55):
And I guess modern day pirates like that will perhaps
hijack ships, cargo ships. I mean, it really was a
lot of that, you know, basically heists on the on
the high seas.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Right, Yeah, one hundred percent nailed it. These comedic takes
on pirates in fiction, these romanticized takes, they can be
a lot of fun, but parts of those tropes don't
line up with real world pirates. Today, we're asking whether pirates,
these tremendously anti authoritarian criminals, whether they actually made a
(08:30):
government of their own. You see this reference in video games.
You see this referenced in fiction and novels. And films.
To answer this question, we have to look at something
called the Golden Age of piracy. Depending on who you ask,
this is from like the mid sixteen hundred.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, Golden doo. It's funny you say that.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Because, like so many historical ages, the name Golden Age
of piracy doesn't become a thing until well after the
actual age has passed.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Now and most importantly, Ben it's a combination Long John
Silvers at Taco Bell, which does exist. There's a whole
Reddit thread devoted to this wondrous thing that exists, apparently
upon the face of God's green Earth. I'll try their
case ideas. I don't know. I don't know. Long John
Silver what you do is you go to the Long
John Silvers, get you some fish fingers, then go over
(09:25):
to Taco Bell or do you a case of da
and then just kind of combine them, you know, by hand. Right,
So this time, this goldeny.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah, this halcion era is more complicated than we might
initially assume, especially if we're only watching Disney movies about it.
Not all of the people we call pirates originally wanted
to be criminals, and most didn't have a weird like
specific er. Maybe pirate accent. They came from all parts
(09:54):
of Europe and different parts of the world. They sounded
like where they grew up, and sometimes they got Sometimes
a lot of times people didn't want to be pirates.
They ship mutinat because the navies at the time really sucked,
or they ended up getting kidnapped themselves and joining up
because they needed a job.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Guys, is the providence of the pirate accents? Is this
sort of like it seems vaguely Irish or something, or
vaguely European, But is it just does it sort of
just morph due to isolation? Is that sort of the
idea that's implied with these bizarro pirate drawls.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, a lot of times it does sound like it
might be some kind of Irish. It's really it's a
caricature of a dialect called West Country English.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Okay. And so the.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Reason we have this come about is because of those
works of fiction. Treasure Island comes out in nineteen thirty
four and then Captain Blood starring Errol Flynn. It's strange
because we see it's kind of like how Santa Claus
as we know it was made by the Coca Cola company.
(11:08):
The pirate accent is a work of entertainment.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Percent And you bring up a really great point in
this outline ban it's important to establish when we're talking
about this golden age of piracy. Uh, sometimes we're talking
about the wrong thing. Pirate is not the same as
a privateer. Oh Yeah's let's establish some terms upfront, because
(11:33):
what allowed this profession to flourish was the fact that
it was technically on the right side of the law
and could be considered just that a profession.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, it's really sketchy. It's kind of like I started
to think of a modern analogy, dude. It's kind of
like bounty hunters, which are technically, you know, they're on
the right side of the law. They bend the law
pretty often. Not all pirates are created equal. Like you said,
there were several distinct names for groups that sailed the
high Seas, And we don't have to get into all
(12:06):
the differences and details and nuts and bolts of buccaneer
versus pirate and so on or corsair, et cetera, but
we do need to know the difference between privateer and pirate.
Pirate is the most general term for outlaws on the
high seas law in order maritime crimes. It comes from
(12:28):
a Greek word, the purates, which means brigand, and it
was since like the thirteen hundreds, pirate has been a
term used for anyone who's committing crimes on the ocean,
and usually the folks who are thinking of when we
think of pirates, they're bandits on the water. They're violent,
they intimidate people, they raid ships at sea, or you know,
(12:51):
Viking style, they raid coastal settlements.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Isn't that funny too? How the word then became associated
with like bootlegging stuff, you know, like pirate music or whatever,
or like piracy in terms of like copyright infringement. I
wonder when that started to kind of come into being,
and if it was just sort of like an accident
maybe like a term that sort of took off and
got popular, or if there is some etymological crossover there.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I bet there's also a pr spin because remember the
three of us are the generation where you would go
to the movies once upon a time and you'd see
those PSAs that were like, you wouldn't download a car?
Would you stop piracy? I think it helped the powers
that be to compare people downloading stuff illegally to pirates
(13:39):
raiding ships.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
But it does look as well like the term piracy
began to be used in its more current form due
to some court cases, some old court cases that began,
like in the in the eighteenth century, piracy was being
used to describe the act of infringing on one's copyright. Nice, yeah,
the idea being theft.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
And we'll get to why that rings true a little
later in our show today. All Right, privateers make the
sexcellent point. Privateers are pirates with a co sign I
would call them. They get these letters of mark, kind
of like it's similar to the patent letters or letters
of patent we talked about snake oil. Right, So, a
(14:21):
country's authorities in the midst of the big colonial powers
all trying to take possession of the land across the Atlantic.
These big colonial powers will issue commissions to privately owned
vessels and they'll say, hey, if you see a ship
from another country or someone who doesn't work for us
(14:42):
trying to move goods, blood and treasure, then go get them,
sick them, and you've got our approval to do that.
They were private armies, they were mercenary armies. Often whenever
there was a war, a lot of letters of mark
went out and a lot of privateers went to seek
their fortune. But just like our pal Jesse James, you know,
(15:06):
when the war ends and your only skill set is
waging war, sometimes you just keep doing it on the
other side.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Of the wall. That's exactly right. Once maybe some of
the more legitimate prospects dried up, a lot of these
folks just kind of went and forged their own path.
Good example is sixteen ninety one, a guy named Thomas two,
(15:37):
who was born into a British colony in what is
today Rhode Island, took one of those charges that you mentioned, Ben,
one of these commissions from the Governor of Bermuda for
a privateering vessel a voyage to Africa to take over
a French fort that was located on the Gambia River. However,
(15:58):
instead of following instructions and attacking the French forts as instructed,
he and his crew decided to sail to the Indian
Ocean and plundered a ship, a Moughle ship which was
that would have been what like an Indian trading vessel,
probably loaded down with spices and all kinds of valuable
(16:20):
trade goods.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, a lot of stuff that you just couldn't get
in Europe.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
So this guy went rogue right away. He didn't like
wait for he didn't do the job and then be like,
you know what, I think I could do better, strike
out on my own. He just like like, screw this,
I'm doing the I'm gonna knock over this Spice ship.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
I like to say knockover too. Yeah, he was just like, guys,
who's gonna stop us? The king isn't here on the boat.
It's us, bros. Let's hurt people. So privateers were crimes, right,
Let's do crimes. So privateers were mercenaries. And the key
difference again was just the approval of a colone power.
(17:00):
Oh there's one other big difference. Unlike out now pirates,
privateers are expected to share their loot with their patron government.
So you can go, h you can go rob and
pillage a Spanish ship, but you have to go back
to the nearest English governor and give them their cut.
This is organized crime, oh absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
And for like a colonizing force like the British government,
this sort of is a way of extending their naval
reach right like and and keeping those that maybe would
seek to uh overturn their supremacy at bay, right, like
just because you know, by by promising treasure and glory
and all that stuff, you essentially not having to pay
these people because they're getting paid with what they get
(17:44):
and then you're taking your cut, your tribute. But they're
also like wreaking havoc on all these foreign vessels, right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
This is the this becomes a revenue stream for these
colonial power hours. For instance, in fifteen sixty eight, a
privateer we may know named Francis Drake takes part in
an excellent rapper. Yes, yeah, yeah, before he got into wrap,
even before Degrassi, he was a privateer and he was
(18:15):
in the Battle of San Juan de Ulua in modern
day Mexico, and he fought the Spanish and even though
he did get he did get whooked. When he came
back he had over forty thousand British pounds worth of
gold and silver. This was great news for the Crown.
(18:36):
These people were called Elizabeth's sea dogs for a while because,
like you said, they were kind of an off the
books army, and they got sent around not just to
rob resources from other colonial powers, but they also got
sent around because the monarchy wanted to make money off
the slave trade.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yikes. And this was like early days of the slave trade.
I mean, at least in terms of you know, a
global slave trade. So I mean these Sea Dogs and England,
if you can imagine, really were kind of the layers
of the groundwork for this whole you know, despicable industry
that would inevitably take the world by storm.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Man.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
And what we're saying it was a chaotic time. The
colonial powers were functioning like large international criminal syndicates France, Spain, England.
They're making them breaking alliances. They're all trying to grab
a piece of what they called the New World. And yeah, spoiler, No,
they didn't ask the people who already lived there for
(19:39):
their opinions.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Absolutely not. And Ben, I think it's something that we've
all seen, like in you know, whether it be sortain
sorcery type shows or maybe historical dramas, the idea of
you don't steal from certain folks, right like like if
someone is under the protection of a certain government, you know,
and and then you maybe do go rogue and steal
(20:02):
from the wrong crew. Because of the whole criminal nature
of the enterprise. Let's just call it what it is.
You could then be coming home to a real problem,
having a price on your head.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Oh absolutely, yeah, and that happens throughout history. And Okay,
so most of the pirate fiction we mentioned earlier, it's
based on this one period of time, just like so
many Great Western films are based on the Yeah, based
on a relatively short period of time called the Wild West.
Like we said, gold nature piracy refers to You'll get
(20:39):
some different opinions, but like anywhere, from the mid sixteen
hundreds to the seventeen thirties, pirates were roam in the
ocean everywhere. In general, there are like three distinct periods.
The buccaneers from sixteen fifty to sixteen eighty, those guys
were more focused in attacking settlements and ports. And then
the second age would be something called the pirate round.
(21:02):
It's around because if you look at a map, it's
a predictable trade route that follows maritime commerce. So whatever
wherever these ships piled with goods are going, where places
like the East India Company go, the pirates follow in
their wake, sometimes with the approval of other countries, other
(21:23):
colonial powers.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Then we also have, you know, an era that comes
right after the War of Spanish Succession, which you know,
it ends up leaving a ton of Anglo American sailors
and these privateers looking for work. So they've got you know,
we talked about that skill set, right like Jesse James
and all that. They know how to sail, but they
(21:46):
don't have an army to sail for. They don't have
the co sign of a government. So they're like, not
going to starve, They're going to apply their trade. Right.
So in a lot in a lot of ways, these
governments made their own monsters, didn't they you know what
I mean, they very much did. Yeah. So these folks
are now like, you know what, to the Caribbean, where
(22:06):
we will become the titular pirates of said Caribbean or
the Indian Ocean or the West African coasts. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
And during each of these three periods, piracy in the
Caribbean rises when conditions are right, and it fizzles out
when those conditions change. So what made the Golden Age
so golden?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
For piracy?
Speaker 1 (22:28):
First, you need a lot of unemployed, able bodied young men,
people who are out of work. They're desperate to survive.
You need a clear network of shipping and commerce. Right,
you need prey for predators to exist. These pirates they
need dev guns and ships and weapons. Most importantly, there
has to be little to no rule of law. I
(22:50):
don't want to give a shout out to eleanor Evans
over a history extra who in formed a lot of
what we know about the difference between privateers and pirates.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
And then just to your point about the wild West,
that lack of rule of law is always what really
set things off in some of these border towns, and
you know, some of these kind of frontier towns. You
might have yourself a sheriff, you know, but that's not
going to be merely enough in the face of like
all of the lawless nests that came with that period.
And with this we're talking about the open seas, man, Like,
(23:23):
how can you police the open seas without like just
a constantly deployed naval force. And it's just all of
these cross forces and cross interests bashing against one another.
During this time, it really was, you know, to your point,
a perfect storm of badassery and bad frankly bad attitudes.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Ben frankly bad attitudes, and all agreed colonial empires were
expanding across the globe, and they were often fighting any
number of other people, you know, native empires who said, hey,
we've got our own thing going on, stay away other
right European powers. So it's no surprise that they weren't
(24:04):
able to watch every maritime falling sparrow. They were unable
to combat or even find or know about every single
pirate ship interdicting valuable shipments, resource and treasure. Think about it,
there are compelling reasons for you to be a pirate.
You got no laws you have to follow from a king,
although you do have pirate code, which we'll talk about.
(24:25):
You got no overbearing nobles. You might win the lottery
and get tons of gold. You were also, if you
were a pirate, you were primarily after gold, silver and jewels.
But yeah, plunder just so, but you couldn't You wouldn't
find that often in big, big amounts. So a lot
(24:46):
of times pirates would take the cargo of a ship,
whatever that resource might be, you know, cinnamon, peppercorns, beer, rum, sure, rum,
and then you would you would steal that stuff and
you would take it to resell it somewhere where you
knew they weren't going to squeal on you to the authorities.
(25:07):
If you are working for a navy at this time,
you might have been kidnapped. You might have been press ganged, right,
or a term that didn't age well people would say
sometimes is shanghaiede. Just like, what's that thing where you
got people drunk to fix the vote?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Oh? What was that called? Oh, boy, cooping, cooping, coopy
there it is hanging with mister Cooper.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah. Yeah, so it's kind of like coopy. Uh, these
unscrupulous recruiters would get people drunk and then they would
have those folks wake up on you know, like a
Royal Navy ship. Haha, that was a wild Saturday you
were for us?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah exactly, Oh man, it's true. Yeah, and then and
then you've been You found a really great point on
World history dot org that a lot of these uh
you know, maybe workaday pirates would just gamble away their money,
you know, gamble away their plunder, their ill gutten gains.
(26:07):
But then you had some that actually kind of created
like a network, you know that like had a much
more forward thinking mindset and invested their doubloons correctly and
invested in their own fleet of ships. And that's when
you get the pirates of lore like your long John
silver types. I know he wasn't real, but like a Blackbeard,
(26:27):
and that guy was real. He commanded like a giant
crew and was very organized. And it wasn't just chaos,
rape and pillotry and on the high seas. It was
an enterprise. It very much was.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
And let's talk a little bit about their gold. The
most sought afterloot, as we said, was precious gems, silver
and gold, because these could be sold to a dealer
in a port that was low key cool with pirates,
pirate haven. But coins were even better because there was
no thought already to check whether or not this was
(27:02):
dirty money. You didn't have to down yeah you did
have to launder money. You could just show up with coins.
And at this time, you know, there are a lot
of different sorts of denominations around and yeah, you're right, No,
you could just melt them down if you want it.
But we're talking about like pieces of eight silver, ducats,
silver pesos, Spanish, the blues.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
There were no like serial numbers or any kind of
way of tracking them back to the bank that they
came from. There was no ink cartridge that would explode
when you like undid the band on them or whatever.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
There was a guy at the back of the tavern
or brothel who would like, bite a piece of gold.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I love it. Yeah, well there's already golden tooth that's
terrified to me. The metal in your mouth. Oh gosh, yeah,
I know, it's funny. It just becomes such like a
fun you know, cliche little trope. But yeah, I mean,
the golden age of piracy does likely refer to the
gold that was a flowing as well, you know, because
(28:00):
that stuff was really easy to move, It could really
easily be bought and sold. But also let's not forget
like that mogul shipping vessel that things like spices, things
like silk, things that were rare and that you couldn't
get everywhere, And there became why do you think they
call it the silk road man, the pirate bay. You know,
(28:23):
like all of this stuff was this underground black market
that sprang up, you know, around the types of stuff
that these pirates were hauling in.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
One hundred percent. Yeah, most of the time, again, they
weren't finding these holy grails of plunder. They were hitting
up ships for things like tobacco, sugar, rum, brandy wine.
You know, barrels of fur and lumber, and even flower.
They would still flower because this operation could also supply
(28:59):
the with much needed resources. Sometimes they would knock over
a ship that had very wealthy VIP pastors. They would
take all of those VIP's personal valuables, and they would
even you know, take the clothes off their backs and say,
I could sell this. I can make a ton of
money on this. They would steal food because they needed
(29:21):
to eat. They're also a working vessel at sea. They
would take whatever's in the ship's medicine chest. I read
one really interesting story where there's like a fishing boat
that gets knocked over by a much larger pirate ship
and all they take, dude, are the hats of the fishermen.
The fishermen had other stuff. They have fish, you know,
(29:42):
they're just a little boat of middle class fishermen. But
the pirates had got super drunk the night before and
they rolled up on this boat and they said, we
are going to take your hats because we partied too
hard and we all threw our hats in the water.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Or last night.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
So they would steal all kinds of stuff, you know,
the stories of treasure get exaggerated a little bit. They
also took rope, tackle, you know, nails, sales anchors, all
the stuff you need to run a pirate ship. But
here's the question. What do you do if you've got
a bunch of hot items and you can't go to
(30:24):
port and sell them because you're a wanted band.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Where do you go? Well, you mentioned those those pirate hubs, right,
or those pirate havens. You know, you essentially needed what
you might call today a fence. You know, he needed
a place that would take your ill gotten booty and
essentially I mean hold on to it, you know, well
while things kind of cooled down, right, and potentially then
(30:47):
move it for you, you know. But you also were
if you weren't in one of these sort of safe spaces,
you might likely have a price on your head or
be you know, un wanted posters and such. So you
needed these places that you referred to earlier ben as
pirate havens. One such, very famous one of these was
(31:09):
a city called New Providence. Oh yeah, there goes the neighborhood, right.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
This is located in the modern day Bahamas, and Spain
had claimed the island of New Providence after Crystabaul Cologne
legendary pill quote unquote discovered the New World. Eventually, the
land changed hands and England lay claim to it. If
we go back to the late sixteen hundreds, there's a
(31:37):
guy named Henry Avery. Henry Avery is a privateer who
made a boatload get it by plundering gold and silver
and elephant tusk and gunpowder from these trade ships heading
from India to a local harbor. And he was able
to bribe the governor of New Providence of the English
(31:58):
Bahamas at the time, a guy named Nicholas Trott, who
is super important by the way in Carolina's history. He said, look,
let me give you not just some gold, not just
some silver, but this entire ship of elephant tusk and gunpowder.
And all you have to do, my bro is, let
us operate safely here. Don't jam us up, Nick, Just
(32:18):
don't jam us up.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
No. So in sixteen ninety six, Avery successfully bribed the
governor Nicholas trot into establishing Nassau in the Bahamas as
a haven where the pirates could do their business freely.
You know, like Hamsterdam in the wire, you know, like
(32:40):
a drug free zone, but this is like a crime
free zone. The governors would essentially, you know, go through
the motions doing their due diligence and an act, you know,
being stewards of the law, and perhaps make some you know,
let's call them ceremonial attempts to stop or to shut
(33:03):
down piracy. But it's really no different than you know,
crime syndicants paying off the police, you know, or anything
like that. It really is just as simple as that.
If it might be made and people are lacking in scruples,
then these kinds of situations will thrive one.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Hundred percent, you know, and overtime as a result. That's
what I mean when I say there goes the neighborhood,
the place goes into decline. The governors are increasingly authorities
on paper only. The pirates are becoming more and more powerful,
and the federalal statistic about this. What you need to
know is there's a bunch of civilian settlers and soldiers.
They have a fort, French and Spanish ships team up
(33:43):
and they attack Nassau first in seventeen oh three, and
then a few years later they come back and do
the same thing in seventeen oh six. So a bunch
of settlers and soldiers leave at this point they cut
their losses. There's a heavily damaged fort left, and there
are no souls there. There's no one to enforce the
laws that existed even as this place was on decline.
(34:07):
If you look at the statistics, by seventeen thirteen, there
were over one thousand pirates in this community and they
far outnumbered the four hundred to five hundred people who
are just regular folks. Yeah, this is what you might
call a high of scummon villainy. It's starting to veester
over here, right, Yeah, and the main city becomes home
(34:30):
to folks like black Beard. We mentioned earlier pirates like
Jack Rackham, Benjamin Hornegold which is just hilarious, and Sam
Jay Rock was pretty cool, too fun to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
these guys have good names and they these guys all
used this island as a base. At some point there
were six hundred pirates not just living there, but sailing
(34:52):
from Nassau who raided shipping and shipping routes and ports
from the Caribbean all the way up to Maine. A
couple of them even started calling themselves the governors of
New Providence. We've got a great quote from a guy
named Thomas Barrow. He is quoted as saying that he
is the governor of Providence, will make it a second Madagascar,
(35:15):
and expects five or six hundred more men from Jamaican
sloops to join in the settling of Providence and to
make war on the French and the Spaniards. But for
the English, they don't intend to meddle with them unless
they are first attacked by them.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Okay, And this, you know, kind of worked out for
a time. They they came up with all name. I
wonder if this is where the Jolly Roger came from.
Probably not, I probably wasn't something that was more a
flag you'ed fly at sea. But they did come up
with a sort of you know name for their new institution,
the Republic of Pirates, because those two things go hand
(35:52):
in hand, you know, law and order and governance and piracy.
It did avoid attacking British vessels though, right, don't poke
the bear. Where it did get out about New Providence
becoming the safe haven for pirates looking to have a
good yoho ho and you know, kick back with some
RUMs and all that stuff. And it was also a
place that would essentially serve as a recruiting ground. Right.
(36:15):
Oh yeah, this place.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Launched some careers in the world of piracy. It was
mostly run by a group of real hard cases who
are collectively called the Flying Gang. The Flying Gang is
a team up that comes from a heist. In seventeen fifteen,
the Spanish treasure fleet sank during a hurricane off the
coast of La Florida. And when a pirate named Henry
(36:40):
Jennings learned that these ships had sank, he devised a
plan along with people like Benjamin Hornegold who we mentioned,
Samuel Bellamy who he mentioned, and a guy named Charles Vaine,
and he said, look, the Spanish are going to try
to salvage this. They're going to try to pull the
gold out from these sunken ships. We're going to be
there and we're going to steal the treasure from the salvagers.
(37:03):
They eventually called themselves the Flying Gang. And I'm trying
very hard not to write parody lyrics for the Flying
Gang to the tune of the Crying Game. But that's
how you know, that's how colonial powers were. They don't
want no more of the Flying Gang. And to your
point about people starting a career, Edward Teach aka Blackbeard.
(37:25):
He gets his start here, so does Jack Rackham, whose
pirate namer street name was Calico Jack. And a lot
of other people, including some female pirates like Mary Reid
and a body.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Yeah, and in case you guys are wondering, I'm over
here on Assassin's Creed Wikipedia searching all these names because
all these people are in Assassin's Creed for black Flags.
So it's kind of good been in nostalgia for me
right now.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
That's awesome, man.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Yeah, And I you know, I wasn't the biggest fan
of the maritime aspects of Assassin's Creed, but what a
great universe they've built. And I enjoy I enjoy a
couple of the games having that museum mode where you
can just walk around and look at buildings. Oh yeah,
I think that's the one set in Italy.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Anyway, here's the idea.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
These guys they do their heist, the pirates take their
wealth and Horne Gold and is Pal Thomas Barrow establish
a new community on this island, on New Providence, and
they set out to create a legitimate pirate republic. And
(38:32):
like you said, no, honestly, a lot of these guys
could be subjects to their own episodes. You know what
you need to know here is somewhere in a mostly
neglected part of the Caribbean that didn't have a huge
population at the time, some of the area's most dangerous
people put aside their typical rivalries for a common cause.
(38:53):
It's an avengers of maritime crime, you know, heist on
the high seas and they start attacking everyone except the
British at first.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Right, So by seventeen thirteen, the war of that War
of Spanish succession. That's hard to say Spanish successions. That's
what the war was about. I know, it's just literally
about too many esh sounds. It was over, it had
wrapped up. Thankfully, they figured it out, they figured out
how to pronounce it. But many of these British privateers
(39:23):
didn't get the memo we take for granted, like how
many movies are spoiled by the existence of smartphones, You know,
many problem there's that thing, but even just like in general,
like in the thriller of some kind, like how easy
would it be for someone just to have googled a
thing or to have the correct directions they didn't get lost,
or you know, for someone to be able to warn
(39:43):
them you know, in these days it was even worse.
You know, they would take months sometimes for word to
reach individuals who were out in remote areas, especially during wartime.
So a lot of these privateers, they did not get
the news that the war was over. This is the
kind of thing you hear about all the time, you know,
in historical situations where perhaps an action is taken, often
(40:05):
a tragic action due to not realizing the circumstances had
completely changed.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
One hundred percent. Man, I'm glad you bring that up,
because it reminds me of that Japanese soldier who didn't
know World War two had ended for decades and decades. Also,
people who were enslaved in the US who didn't learn
about emancipation for quite some time. The travel of information,
the frictionless travel of information, is probably one of the
(40:33):
biggest wins of recent humanity or the thing that is
going to spell the end of civilization.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Maybe both, maybe both maybe, And so these you know,
a lot of these these these uh, these privateers either
didn't get the news or wouldn't accept it, didn't didn't
think that it was true. So they, you know, slipped
further and further into piracy, which actually led to a
lot of you know, new blood kind of being pumped
(41:03):
into New Providence right to join that pirate republic and
causes an absolute boom in the numbers of pirates that
were hanging out there.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Yeah, exactly, And now New Providence is becoming a boom
town and it's not as unified as it was. This
place was only around, by the way, for a very
short amount of time, a little over a decade. And
over time, these pirates of New Providence, they stopped giving
British ships a hall pass. A lot of these guys
(41:35):
who were former privateers like working for England, start attacking
any ship they want, British or not. At their height,
they're giving themselves titles like Commodore. They're commanding fleets of ships,
and they can go toe to toe with the Royal Navy.
Sometimes they can even outgun it, which is a huge
deal because the Royal Navy is the big dog on
(41:57):
campus at this point.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
That's right, And this starts to make me think of again,
perhaps some thinking more along the lines of some fiction,
but this is when you know, you start to see
like things like in Game of Thrones, the Golden Compass
or whatever, like these like armies for hire, or even
we have now today with the Wagner group, you know
over there in the Ukraine or in Russia, the idea
(42:22):
that an independent group could become so large as to
rival a an official military. And even though you know
right now they're at odds, there could come a time where,
for enough money, maybe you could hire some of these
pirate crews to do your bidding. You know who knows.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Yeah, And at this point, you know, King George is
starting to get a little beefed up because it was
easy to ignore the crimes of these pirates as long
as they were attacking the British themselves. But the British
government was starting to get really concerned. They say, piracy
is so out of control that we're not getting British
(43:00):
settlers into these colonies, and if the land is unpopulated,
our foreign rivals may take it over. This is not
a sustainable situation. So George makes the decision. He contacts
a former privateer and makes some governor Woods Rogers, and
(43:20):
he says, Rogers, I want you to go over to
New Providence, go over to this high of Scumonbility, and
tell them that I will give them a pardon I
will give them an act of grace, a king's pardon.
This one is called a Proclamation for Suppressing of Pirates.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Right September fifth, seventeen seventeen, pirates would receive amnesty be
forgiven of their trespasses that includes murder, just so long
as they surrendered by the next January fifth of seventeen eighteen.
So it's thinking a lot of blind eye kind of mentality,
isn't it. It's like, we're going to unless you can,
(44:00):
need to operate outside the law, but we need you
to agree that we're putting a clock on this because
this isn't gonna work forever for everyone, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
They said, look, you will totally free pass you guys.
We've had fun, we've made some friends, we've plundered some ships,
we've had some laughs. But as long as you surrender
by this date, by January fifth, seventeen eighteen, later they
kicked the can down the road, then it's all good.
And Woods was the right guy for this job because
(44:30):
he was a former privateer and slave trader. He spoke
the cultural language of the pirates, and he did convince
a lot of them to take a square life. A
lot of pirates accepted a pardon, but some refused to
give up the game, notably folks like Jack Rackham and
Edward Teach. The problem was these guys, to your point,
(44:53):
they were living on borrow time. Either the Royal Navy
or local authorities would get them soon if the party
couldn't go on forever. And we'll tell you what happened there,
But before we do, let's get to the heart of
the question for today's episode. Was New Providence really a
pirate government?
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Kind of? Yeah, kind of. I mean they.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Had people with specific jobs, like they were organized crime, right,
So the mafia has a hierarchy, They've got specific duties,
they've got a code. What's the mafia code. It's not Omerta,
that's code of silence, right.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Oh, it's a I don't know, I just know Cosinostra.
I don't know. I always thought America kind of was
the mafia code, but maybe there's another one. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Yeah, but they had like, they had these rules, and
just like the mafia, the pirates said, we need a
code of behavior that will reduce internal conflict and maximize profits.
At the same time. You can find great examples of
real pirate code. We got one from a guy named
bartholomewle black bart Roberts. In seventeen twenty two. He and
(46:07):
his crew made a set of laws that are pretty
they're pretty interesting. Just put a few of these on here.
They're not all of them, but one of the ones
that might surprise a lot of people is voting. Everybody
got a vote on the ship except hostages.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
And jump back in one more time with Assassin's Creed.
Bartholomew Black Bart Roberts is actually the secret villain of
Assassin's Creed. For spoilers, he is the oh a spoiler
for a game that came out of one A PS three.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Next, you're gonna tell me what happened at at Ford Theater?
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Oh got yeah, No, but yeah he's uh he is,
I forget what his role is. He's the stage. Yeah,
so I saw that name and I had to jump
in here. I'm going away now.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
No, let's give it. Let's do a max with the
facts that second in the phone fallen lolge it's just
for you right now fast.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
But yeah, yeah, there we go. People could vote. You
had actually more of a say as an individual on
a pirate ship than you did in a Royal Navy.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
Pretty interesting, right, I mean, yeah, there was a certain
amount of equity right in this arrangement where everyone was
somewhat on an equal playing field. It's very interesting. I mean,
I'm sure in practice, maybe I don't know I've actually heard,
you know, I think that's stuff humans in history class
may have done an episode on this back in the
day when I was the producer of that show. And
(47:39):
I do feel like they really took this stuff very seriously.
The idea of equality. You know, it wasn't just on paper.
It wasn't like it wasn't a do as I say,
not as I do. You know, everyone lived by this code.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
One hundred percent man, and they were surprisingly progressive in
some ways. They also said in a lot of pirate code.
They said, don't steal from coworkers, you know what I mean,
don't hoard stuff from the crew. Don't rob. If you
rob a fellow pirate, you're gonna have your nose and
your ears split, and then we'll throw you ashore on
(48:12):
like the worst island we can find. They said, no gambling.
Weirdly enough, this is oddly wholesome until you think about it.
They had a curfew. They said, every night you got
at eight pm. You got to put out all the
lights and candles. They said, if any of the crew
want to sit around and drink, they have to do
it on the open deck without lights. And it's not
because they were worried about their bedtime. It's because lights
(48:36):
would help you identify a ship at sea.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was the like you know,
there's another term like that cut of your jib, Right,
that was one the idea of I like the cut
of your jib refers to the cut of the sail
on a certain ship, so that you could be identified
at sea. That's how you knew you that was a friend,
you know, or a friendly Right. I always assumed that
(49:00):
you meant like jaw or something like that, But no,
not the case. And this is the case too. The
idea of those lights being a really important identifier. Next
we have this is a very pirty one. I would argue,
stay ready to fight. It runs me of that Russell
Crow bit on South Park where he's fighting around the world,
(49:21):
you know, like singing songs and something some and fought
and around the world. That's very praty. Yeah, yeah, always
be ready for a fight. Each man shall keep his
piece cutlass and pistols at all times, clean and ready
for action.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
We don't know what it's gonna pop off, you know
what I mean. Stay frosty, stay sharp, five by five.
They also have workers cop They had an early version
of workers compensation. If you were crippled, or you lost
a limb, or you had another very serious injury in
your service with your pirate crew, you would get eight
(49:55):
hundred pieces of eight and if you were less, if
you were hurt less, egregiously, you would get a corresponding
amount of money. That's pretty cool. There are many places
and industries that don't bother doing that today, so that
might surprise some people, some of us with stereotypes about pirates.
We're not saying they're good people.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
We know that.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Pirate code also said, hey, the captain isn't necessarily a dictator.
We on the ship can all take a vote, and
if we don't like the captain or a leader, we
can vote them out. And again a lot of these
guys are coming from the tyranny of working for merchant
ships or the Royal Navy. This is super duper freedom
for them. So from seventeen oh six to about seventeen
(50:41):
eighteen these scallywags, I would argue they really did form,
if not a government, a political entity because they adapted
pirate code of the sea to become sort of the
by laws of their haven in New Providence. And they
were also very they were oddly progressive in terms of
(51:03):
race relations.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
For the time. Absolutely, that's another thing that always kind
of had me a little bit flummoxed, you know, in
addition to the whole workers comp thing. I mean, they
really were like some of the early kind of labor
rights activists. It's very very interesting. Another very interesting feature
of the Republic of Pirates, to your point, Bend, was
(51:26):
the fact that Africans were considered equal members of the crew.
And it's so interesting because we talked about how those
privateers or originally right that was a big early form
of slave trade. It would seem that what evolved and
became maybe the less lawful version of those pirateers that
(51:47):
were operating outside of the rule of law were in
fact much more humane than those operating under the rule
of life.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
I mean, yeah, imagine you're attacking a ship as a
pirate crew and you come to find that it is
not it is not just loaded with you know, like
cinnamon and pantaloons and rum. But they're also enslaved people
(52:15):
on there. You can be kind of a hero if
you're one of the folks who say, look, all the captain,
you know, all you other guys, we're gonna rob you
blind you who were enslaved. You can be free, you
can join us. That's a hard thing to say no to.
And we know that several people of American, Indian or
(52:36):
of African background became pirate captains in their own right.
One of the most famous is a guy called Black Caesar.
And look, okay, so weirdly progressive pirates were surprisingly weirdly progressive.
Back to our boy, Governor Woods Rogers arrives in Nassau.
He's got the king's pardon. He's pitching to people. One
(52:58):
dude accepts. He doesn't just accept. Benjamin horne Gold says, okay,
I'll stop being a pirate, and Rogers says, well, you're
a special case, my friend. He says, hey, ben, if
you want a new job, why don't you become a
trader and help me hunt down all your buddies. And
(53:18):
so horne Gold like that goes from being a pirate
to a pirate hunter, and he's chasing down all of
his former colleagues, anyone who doesn't take the king's pardon.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Nah, put his money? Where's not this? Yeah? This is in.
Speaker 3 (53:35):
Case you'all were wondering. Horn of Gold is very much
a villain in Assassin's Creed Blackflow.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
Oh good, I was gonna ask.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
He starts off the game. Actually he's like one of
your mentors. But no, it changes.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
You actually have to hunt him down at some point.
He's a pill. He's a pill in real life too.
But he didn't get everybody. He got around ten other
salty dogs. On the morning of December twelfth, of seventeen eighteen.
Nine of those fellas were.
Speaker 1 (54:07):
Yeah, they were executed. They were killed, Yeah, for piracy.
And you wonder if they got captured. I couldn't find
the answer to this. Maybe someone can help us. If
those pirates got captured and they recanted their crimes, could
they take the king's pardon right before they were executed?
Speaker 2 (54:25):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
I don't know, but like you said, no, our buddy,
Benjamin Hornigold doesn't get everybody. The pirate hunters don't get
everyone in New Providence. A lot of folks get away
Charles Vain Blackbeard. They go on to pursue their villainous
careers elsewhere in the Caribbean, and just like that, after
eleven very strange years, the Republic of the Pirates is gone.
(54:50):
And overall, as conditions change, the fortunes of the pirates
in general decline in the mid seventeen twenties, and they
it never became as powerful as they were for that
brief time in the seventeen tens. And along the way,
you know, a lot of those guys can't live that
(55:10):
demanding life as they age. But if they were smart,
buccaneers and pirates and smugglers and privateers all had invested
their gains. And so now these guys, a lot of
them were no longer criminals. They owned plantations, they owned
legit businesses, and there seemed to be a rule of
imperfect law spreading throughout the Caribbean. And that's kind of
(55:34):
that's kind of the story.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
But it is it's so interesting. It's like we started
with all of this pillage and violence, and I'm going
to come back to this thing that I think we
were both taken by the legal version of piracy is
almost like as much more of a free for all
than this version, at least of the illegal version, right,
(55:56):
I don't know. It's fascinating, and there's a.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
Lot of there's a lot of stuff we found for
tangents and trivia that we might save for a future episode.
I think we'll call the Day now. Oh, one fact,
we can say the eye patch wasn't always to cover
up a damaged eye, because there were no electric lights
and it could be dangerous to have a lot of lights.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
Inside a wooden ship.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
Often the eye patch was used to keep one eye
in the dark, so that when you suddenly ran below deck,
you could take the patch off and your eye would
already be used to low light.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
Way. Yeah, that's always. That's literally just tabby something brand new.
I assumed it was maybe for like sharp shooting, you know, yeah, maybe,
But I love this idea that it was to help,
you know, have your eye quickly already adjusted to the dark.
That's very interesting.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
Or else they were all just very bad at not
hitting things with it.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Who knows, Yeah, who knows.
Speaker 1 (56:54):
We can't wait to We can't wait to explore more strange,
ridiculous things with you, folks. We want to give a big,
big thanks to our super producer and Assassin's Create consultant
mister Max Williams and Noel I gotta I gotta tell you.
I gotta ask you too. If you had been press
(57:15):
ganged into the Royal Navy and a pirate ship came
by and robbed your ship and said, hey, do you
want to join with us?
Speaker 2 (57:25):
What would you do? Peep pee a little probably, and
then just say whatever you say, sirs. I'll be your stooge,
I'll be your I'll be your Schmie. Play nice until
you can get the shore, right. Yeah, I'd probably be
a bit of a Shmi figure.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
I remember Schmi that was from Pirates of the Caribbean, right,
believe Peter Pan, Peter Pan.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
Another another we could maybe do an episode on Peter
Pan because.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
That is a messed up or story as well. Story
for another day. Yeah. I think it's called what Finding Neverland?
I think that the book about it. It's very very sad,
but yeah, man, thank you for this. This pirate's romp Ben,
who by the way, has also served as the research
executive on this particular episode. So much cool stuff in
(58:22):
the world of piracy, and I literally learned like six
new things today, so thank you.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
And big big thanks dude, Jonathan Strickland, Wait heally gets one,
keep that part.
Speaker 2 (58:32):
In thanks, big big, big thanks of course.
Speaker 1 (58:35):
Chris Arrassio deceives, Jeffco, Alex Williams who composed this slap
and Bob and big thanks to you.
Speaker 2 (58:42):
Noel looks like, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
I think maybe we stick with podcasting for now before
we stick full.
Speaker 2 (58:49):
Pirate gamy pirate radio. Let's try that. We'll see next
time puts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(59:09):
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow ridiculous historians. We are still riding the wave of
Baja Mar. We returned recently with a two part series
about pirates, and in our conversation, we realized there was
no better way to continue to continue our piracy phase
obsession than by returning to a classic episode about that
(00:23):
time pirates had a government.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, they were super egalitarian, those pirates. You think they
think of them as bloodthirsty rape and pillagers, but in
fact they were all about doing things by committee.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, pretty often. They seemed to be quite progressive, especially
considering the colonial powers at the time, or in comparison
to those and less.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
You know, we did make the point in the episode
that we did at Baha Maar that we're not trying
to romanticize them too much because they definitely raped and
pillage a plenty. They weren't just out there doing secret ballots,
but they did have a pretty robust system of governments
that they used in a kind of almost pirate utopia situation.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, it's strange because it was sort of a marriage
of convenience, like when a bunch of gangs will team
up in a film to fight against a larger threat aliens.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
FBI.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Yes, sure, this is the golden age of piracy was
thought to be a time of lawless, terrifying, ridiculous history.
But in this episode from a few years back, while
we were recording at Baja Mar, we realized we were
in the Bahamas, the very same place where, according to
(01:39):
some pirates, once upon a time had a government.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
And we loved all this pirate talk so much that
we did a bunch of resoarch that didn't even make
it into our contractually obligated pirate episode. So we've got
another one coming your way very soon, and then a
pile that we're gonna sprinkle a little further on down
the line, but we're going to talk about a pirate
of the Midwest of the Great Lakes.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
And then we're also going to explore the Barbary Coast
in depth. So stay tuned for both of those episodes,
as well as a secret episode.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
For now.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Please tune in to our classic for this weekend New
Providence That time Pirates had a government. Asterisk Ridiculous Histories
a production of iHeartRadio. Ridiculous Histories a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yoho Ho.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as
always so much for tuning in. Let's give it up
for the buccaneer, the privates here of ridiculous History, super
producer mister Rex Williams.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of rum or something
they loved, drum they did. It's a little sugary for
my taste.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I'm not yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That's true. I do like a tiki drink, though. I
really like a tiki drink, and a lot of those
do contain rum, but it's not like required, and it's.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Mixed with so many fruit juices. And there's this presentation
the equim ball. There's a great tiki bar that we
always try to go to when we're in LA and
we can tie. Yeah, we go to see we go
to We go to this tiki bar whenever we have
time in town. And it's a little place, but they
serve these amazing drinks and you have to be really
(03:48):
careful with those too, man, because I could drink like
one and then I think it's time to eat trash
street food and go to bed.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well, which is easy to do in LA. But also
I think tiki t or tiki tie is like in
the pantheon of like great American tiki bars. They invented
some drink there, some form of corpse revivor or whatever
it was. I mean again, I can't think of that.
Robert Lamb of stuff to splow your mind is the
guy that turned us onto the spot in the first place.
(04:16):
But it's super cool if you're ever there. It's also
right by the Scientology like studio backlot. It's like Scientology
just sort of bought a lesser like studio. It has
the gates and everything, and it's got all these billboards
for their propaganda stuff. But we don't want to get
sued by the Church of Scientology, so let's talk about
pirates instead. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Also, also, we were very respectful when we got two
or three cocktails deep and ran around and had a
boot like photo shooting.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
For the church. So thank you. We didn't hop the
gate fully.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
We just peek through, which is fine, which is totally fine.
I'm Ben your nol and we're talking there we go
when most people today in the West think of historical pirates,
not modern day pirates, which are definitely thing we kind
of think in terms of larger than life fiction. Long,
(05:08):
John Silver's not the restaurant. I still don't know anyone
who goes that restaurant. I don't know how they're open.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I do have one near my eyes. I do not go.
It's like there's a Long John Silver and a red Lobster,
sort of the last bastions of like fast food seafood,
you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, oh, and then Captain D's. I don't know if
that's still around.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
It's pronounced cap'n. It's like crunch. Okay, it's still around. Yeah,
maybe I'm misconsuring my captain versus captains. Yeah, Long John
Silver's and Captain D's I think famously not great, but
I think they're part of one of the or at
least Long John Silver is part of one of those
big hospitality groups that's like owns like a bunch of
(05:49):
other fast food restaurants. You will sometimes see a combination
Long John Silvers and uh whatever. Yeah exactly, so, yeah,
you're right, you're right.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
This is it's young brands, young brands who own so
much stuff. That's that's exactly what you're talking about, nol.
They they they're the same folks who own Pizza Hut, KFC,
Taco Bell, and like hundreds of other things. Then Long
John Silver's. Weirdly enough, you know, maybe we should do
(06:21):
store fast food origin stories in a later episode. We're
gonna get to the pirates. We're getting there with this
segue long. John Silver's, the restaurant in the US is
named after a character, a pirate in a beautiful novel
called Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson. And when we
(06:42):
when we think about this, when we think about pirates
in the West, we think about things like Johnny Depp
and Pirates of the Caribbean, or that ride at Disney,
Pirates of the Caribbean, And there are Pirates of the
Pancreas or Pirates of the Pancreas from It's.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Ricksteil Probaly, don't insult the Pirates of the Pancress gets
fair offended.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
That's true. That's true.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
He's put a lot of energy into that one. And
who are we to call someone's creative baby ugly?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
And they're real pirates, They're not all like whitewashed like
you know Disney pirates are right. I'm not going to
say the next line because it is not culturally acceptable.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So so, Noel, when you and I were talking about this,
when we knew it might end up being a two
parter or We're gonna see how it goes.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
But what do you think.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Of when you hear the word pirate, like historical pirates,
not modern day Somali pirates.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Yeah, I mean I think of what we were sort
of joking about at the top of the show. I
think of peg legs and parrots and you know, rum
and body rhymes and and and sword fights, walk the plank, cap' hook,
all that kind of stuff. But also I do think
of like a crew, you know, like like a like
a like a like a captain in charge of a crew.
(07:55):
And I guess modern day pirates like that will perhaps
hijack ships, cargo ships. I mean, it really was a
lot of that, you know, basically heists on the on
the high seas.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Right, Yeah, one hundred percent nailed it. These comedic takes
on pirates in fiction, these romanticized takes, they can be
a lot of fun, but parts of those tropes don't
line up with real world pirates. Today, we're asking whether pirates,
these tremendously anti authoritarian criminals, whether they actually made a
(08:30):
government of their own. You see this reference in video games.
You see this referenced in fiction and novels. And films.
To answer this question, we have to look at something
called the Golden Age of piracy. Depending on who you ask,
this is from like the mid sixteen hundred.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, Golden doo. It's funny you say that.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Because, like so many historical ages, the name Golden Age
of piracy doesn't become a thing until well after the
actual age has passed.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Now and most importantly, Ben it's a combination Long John
Silvers at Taco Bell, which does exist. There's a whole
Reddit thread devoted to this wondrous thing that exists, apparently
upon the face of God's green Earth. I'll try their
case ideas. I don't know. I don't know. Long John
Silver what you do is you go to the Long
John Silvers, get you some fish fingers, then go over
(09:25):
to Taco Bell or do you a case of da
and then just kind of combine them, you know, by hand. Right,
So this time, this goldeny.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah, this halcion era is more complicated than we might
initially assume, especially if we're only watching Disney movies about it.
Not all of the people we call pirates originally wanted
to be criminals, and most didn't have a weird like
specific er. Maybe pirate accent. They came from all parts
(09:54):
of Europe and different parts of the world. They sounded
like where they grew up, and sometimes they got Sometimes
a lot of times people didn't want to be pirates.
They ship mutinat because the navies at the time really sucked,
or they ended up getting kidnapped themselves and joining up
because they needed a job.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Guys, is the providence of the pirate accents? Is this
sort of like it seems vaguely Irish or something, or
vaguely European, But is it just does it sort of
just morph due to isolation? Is that sort of the
idea that's implied with these bizarro pirate drawls.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, a lot of times it does sound like it
might be some kind of Irish. It's really it's a
caricature of a dialect called West Country English.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Okay. And so the.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Reason we have this come about is because of those
works of fiction. Treasure Island comes out in nineteen thirty
four and then Captain Blood starring Errol Flynn. It's strange
because we see it's kind of like how Santa Claus
as we know it was made by the Coca Cola company.
(11:08):
The pirate accent is a work of entertainment.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Percent And you bring up a really great point in
this outline ban it's important to establish when we're talking
about this golden age of piracy. Uh, sometimes we're talking
about the wrong thing. Pirate is not the same as
a privateer. Oh Yeah's let's establish some terms upfront, because
(11:33):
what allowed this profession to flourish was the fact that
it was technically on the right side of the law
and could be considered just that a profession.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, it's really sketchy. It's kind of like I started
to think of a modern analogy, dude. It's kind of
like bounty hunters, which are technically, you know, they're on
the right side of the law. They bend the law
pretty often. Not all pirates are created equal. Like you said,
there were several distinct names for groups that sailed the
high Seas, And we don't have to get into all
(12:06):
the differences and details and nuts and bolts of buccaneer
versus pirate and so on or corsair, et cetera, but
we do need to know the difference between privateer and pirate.
Pirate is the most general term for outlaws on the
high seas law in order maritime crimes. It comes from
(12:28):
a Greek word, the purates, which means brigand, and it
was since like the thirteen hundreds, pirate has been a
term used for anyone who's committing crimes on the ocean,
and usually the folks who are thinking of when we
think of pirates, they're bandits on the water. They're violent,
they intimidate people, they raid ships at sea, or you know,
(12:51):
Viking style, they raid coastal settlements.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Isn't that funny too? How the word then became associated
with like bootlegging stuff, you know, like pirate music or whatever,
or like piracy in terms of like copyright infringement. I
wonder when that started to kind of come into being,
and if it was just sort of like an accident
maybe like a term that sort of took off and
got popular, or if there is some etymological crossover there.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I bet there's also a pr spin because remember the
three of us are the generation where you would go
to the movies once upon a time and you'd see
those PSAs that were like, you wouldn't download a car?
Would you stop piracy? I think it helped the powers
that be to compare people downloading stuff illegally to pirates
(13:39):
raiding ships.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
But it does look as well like the term piracy
began to be used in its more current form due
to some court cases, some old court cases that began,
like in the in the eighteenth century, piracy was being
used to describe the act of infringing on one's copyright. Nice, yeah,
the idea being theft.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
And we'll get to why that rings true a little
later in our show today. All Right, privateers make the
sexcellent point. Privateers are pirates with a co sign I
would call them. They get these letters of mark, kind
of like it's similar to the patent letters or letters
of patent we talked about snake oil. Right, So, a
(14:21):
country's authorities in the midst of the big colonial powers
all trying to take possession of the land across the Atlantic.
These big colonial powers will issue commissions to privately owned
vessels and they'll say, hey, if you see a ship
from another country or someone who doesn't work for us
(14:42):
trying to move goods, blood and treasure, then go get them,
sick them, and you've got our approval to do that.
They were private armies, they were mercenary armies. Often whenever
there was a war, a lot of letters of mark
went out and a lot of privateers went to seek
their fortune. But just like our pal Jesse James, you know,
(15:06):
when the war ends and your only skill set is
waging war, sometimes you just keep doing it on the
other side.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Of the wall. That's exactly right. Once maybe some of
the more legitimate prospects dried up, a lot of these
folks just kind of went and forged their own path.
Good example is sixteen ninety one, a guy named Thomas two,
(15:37):
who was born into a British colony in what is
today Rhode Island, took one of those charges that you mentioned, Ben,
one of these commissions from the Governor of Bermuda for
a privateering vessel a voyage to Africa to take over
a French fort that was located on the Gambia River. However,
(15:58):
instead of following instructions and attacking the French forts as instructed,
he and his crew decided to sail to the Indian
Ocean and plundered a ship, a Moughle ship which was
that would have been what like an Indian trading vessel,
probably loaded down with spices and all kinds of valuable
(16:20):
trade goods.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, a lot of stuff that you just couldn't get
in Europe.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
So this guy went rogue right away. He didn't like
wait for he didn't do the job and then be like,
you know what, I think I could do better, strike
out on my own. He just like like, screw this,
I'm doing the I'm gonna knock over this Spice ship.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
I like to say knockover too. Yeah, he was just like, guys,
who's gonna stop us? The king isn't here on the boat.
It's us, bros. Let's hurt people. So privateers were crimes, right,
Let's do crimes. So privateers were mercenaries. And the key
difference again was just the approval of a colone power.
(17:00):
Oh there's one other big difference. Unlike out now pirates,
privateers are expected to share their loot with their patron government.
So you can go, h you can go rob and
pillage a Spanish ship, but you have to go back
to the nearest English governor and give them their cut.
This is organized crime, oh absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
And for like a colonizing force like the British government,
this sort of is a way of extending their naval
reach right like and and keeping those that maybe would
seek to uh overturn their supremacy at bay, right, like
just because you know, by by promising treasure and glory
and all that stuff, you essentially not having to pay
these people because they're getting paid with what they get
(17:44):
and then you're taking your cut, your tribute. But they're
also like wreaking havoc on all these foreign vessels, right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
This is the this becomes a revenue stream for these
colonial power hours. For instance, in fifteen sixty eight, a
privateer we may know named Francis Drake takes part in
an excellent rapper. Yes, yeah, yeah, before he got into wrap,
even before Degrassi, he was a privateer and he was
(18:15):
in the Battle of San Juan de Ulua in modern
day Mexico, and he fought the Spanish and even though
he did get he did get whooked. When he came
back he had over forty thousand British pounds worth of
gold and silver. This was great news for the Crown.
(18:36):
These people were called Elizabeth's sea dogs for a while because,
like you said, they were kind of an off the
books army, and they got sent around not just to
rob resources from other colonial powers, but they also got
sent around because the monarchy wanted to make money off
the slave trade.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yikes. And this was like early days of the slave trade.
I mean, at least in terms of you know, a
global slave trade. So I mean these Sea Dogs and England,
if you can imagine, really were kind of the layers
of the groundwork for this whole you know, despicable industry
that would inevitably take the world by storm.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Man.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
And what we're saying it was a chaotic time. The
colonial powers were functioning like large international criminal syndicates France, Spain, England.
They're making them breaking alliances. They're all trying to grab
a piece of what they called the New World. And yeah, spoiler, No,
they didn't ask the people who already lived there for
(19:39):
their opinions.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Absolutely not. And Ben, I think it's something that we've
all seen, like in you know, whether it be sortain
sorcery type shows or maybe historical dramas, the idea of
you don't steal from certain folks, right like like if
someone is under the protection of a certain government, you know,
and and then you maybe do go rogue and steal
(20:02):
from the wrong crew. Because of the whole criminal nature
of the enterprise. Let's just call it what it is.
You could then be coming home to a real problem,
having a price on your head.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Oh absolutely, yeah, and that happens throughout history. And Okay,
so most of the pirate fiction we mentioned earlier, it's
based on this one period of time, just like so
many Great Western films are based on the Yeah, based
on a relatively short period of time called the Wild West.
Like we said, gold nature piracy refers to You'll get
(20:39):
some different opinions, but like anywhere, from the mid sixteen
hundreds to the seventeen thirties, pirates were roam in the
ocean everywhere. In general, there are like three distinct periods.
The buccaneers from sixteen fifty to sixteen eighty, those guys
were more focused in attacking settlements and ports. And then
the second age would be something called the pirate round.
(21:02):
It's around because if you look at a map, it's
a predictable trade route that follows maritime commerce. So whatever
wherever these ships piled with goods are going, where places
like the East India Company go, the pirates follow in
their wake, sometimes with the approval of other countries, other
(21:23):
colonial powers.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Then we also have, you know, an era that comes
right after the War of Spanish Succession, which you know,
it ends up leaving a ton of Anglo American sailors
and these privateers looking for work. So they've got you know,
we talked about that skill set, right like Jesse James
and all that. They know how to sail, but they
(21:46):
don't have an army to sail for. They don't have
the co sign of a government. So they're like, not
going to starve, They're going to apply their trade. Right.
So in a lot in a lot of ways, these
governments made their own monsters, didn't they you know what
I mean, they very much did. Yeah. So these folks
are now like, you know what, to the Caribbean, where
(22:06):
we will become the titular pirates of said Caribbean or
the Indian Ocean or the West African coasts. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
And during each of these three periods, piracy in the
Caribbean rises when conditions are right, and it fizzles out
when those conditions change. So what made the Golden Age
so golden?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
For piracy?
Speaker 1 (22:28):
First, you need a lot of unemployed, able bodied young men,
people who are out of work. They're desperate to survive.
You need a clear network of shipping and commerce. Right,
you need prey for predators to exist. These pirates they
need dev guns and ships and weapons. Most importantly, there
has to be little to no rule of law. I
(22:50):
don't want to give a shout out to eleanor Evans
over a history extra who in formed a lot of
what we know about the difference between privateers and pirates.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
And then just to your point about the wild West,
that lack of rule of law is always what really
set things off in some of these border towns, and
you know, some of these kind of frontier towns. You
might have yourself a sheriff, you know, but that's not
going to be merely enough in the face of like
all of the lawless nests that came with that period.
And with this we're talking about the open seas, man, Like,
(23:23):
how can you police the open seas without like just
a constantly deployed naval force. And it's just all of
these cross forces and cross interests bashing against one another.
During this time, it really was, you know, to your point,
a perfect storm of badassery and bad frankly bad attitudes.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Ben frankly bad attitudes, and all agreed colonial empires were
expanding across the globe, and they were often fighting any
number of other people, you know, native empires who said, hey,
we've got our own thing going on, stay away other
right European powers. So it's no surprise that they weren't
(24:04):
able to watch every maritime falling sparrow. They were unable
to combat or even find or know about every single
pirate ship interdicting valuable shipments, resource and treasure. Think about it,
there are compelling reasons for you to be a pirate.
You got no laws you have to follow from a king,
although you do have pirate code, which we'll talk about.
(24:25):
You got no overbearing nobles. You might win the lottery
and get tons of gold. You were also, if you
were a pirate, you were primarily after gold, silver and jewels.
But yeah, plunder just so, but you couldn't You wouldn't
find that often in big, big amounts. So a lot
(24:46):
of times pirates would take the cargo of a ship,
whatever that resource might be, you know, cinnamon, peppercorns, beer, rum, sure, rum,
and then you would you would steal that stuff and
you would take it to resell it somewhere where you
knew they weren't going to squeal on you to the authorities.
(25:07):
If you are working for a navy at this time,
you might have been kidnapped. You might have been press ganged, right,
or a term that didn't age well people would say
sometimes is shanghaiede. Just like, what's that thing where you
got people drunk to fix the vote?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Oh? What was that called? Oh, boy, cooping, cooping, coopy
there it is hanging with mister Cooper.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah. Yeah, so it's kind of like coopy. Uh, these
unscrupulous recruiters would get people drunk and then they would
have those folks wake up on you know, like a
Royal Navy ship. Haha, that was a wild Saturday you
were for us?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah exactly, Oh man, it's true. Yeah, and then and
then you've been You found a really great point on
World history dot org that a lot of these uh
you know, maybe workaday pirates would just gamble away their money,
you know, gamble away their plunder, their ill gutten gains.
(26:07):
But then you had some that actually kind of created
like a network, you know that like had a much
more forward thinking mindset and invested their doubloons correctly and
invested in their own fleet of ships. And that's when
you get the pirates of lore like your long John
silver types. I know he wasn't real, but like a Blackbeard,
(26:27):
and that guy was real. He commanded like a giant
crew and was very organized. And it wasn't just chaos,
rape and pillotry and on the high seas. It was
an enterprise. It very much was.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
And let's talk a little bit about their gold. The
most sought afterloot, as we said, was precious gems, silver
and gold, because these could be sold to a dealer
in a port that was low key cool with pirates,
pirate haven. But coins were even better because there was
no thought already to check whether or not this was
(27:02):
dirty money. You didn't have to down yeah you did
have to launder money. You could just show up with coins.
And at this time, you know, there are a lot
of different sorts of denominations around and yeah, you're right, No,
you could just melt them down if you want it.
But we're talking about like pieces of eight silver, ducats,
silver pesos, Spanish, the blues.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
There were no like serial numbers or any kind of
way of tracking them back to the bank that they
came from. There was no ink cartridge that would explode
when you like undid the band on them or whatever.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
There was a guy at the back of the tavern
or brothel who would like, bite a piece of gold.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I love it. Yeah, well there's already golden tooth that's
terrified to me. The metal in your mouth. Oh gosh, yeah,
I know, it's funny. It just becomes such like a
fun you know, cliche little trope. But yeah, I mean,
the golden age of piracy does likely refer to the
gold that was a flowing as well, you know, because
(28:00):
that stuff was really easy to move, It could really
easily be bought and sold. But also let's not forget
like that mogul shipping vessel that things like spices, things
like silk, things that were rare and that you couldn't
get everywhere, And there became why do you think they
call it the silk road man, the pirate bay. You know,
(28:23):
like all of this stuff was this underground black market
that sprang up, you know, around the types of stuff
that these pirates were hauling in.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
One hundred percent. Yeah, most of the time, again, they
weren't finding these holy grails of plunder. They were hitting
up ships for things like tobacco, sugar, rum, brandy wine.
You know, barrels of fur and lumber, and even flower.
They would still flower because this operation could also supply
(28:59):
the with much needed resources. Sometimes they would knock over
a ship that had very wealthy VIP pastors. They would
take all of those VIP's personal valuables, and they would
even you know, take the clothes off their backs and say,
I could sell this. I can make a ton of
money on this. They would steal food because they needed
(29:21):
to eat. They're also a working vessel at sea. They
would take whatever's in the ship's medicine chest. I read
one really interesting story where there's like a fishing boat
that gets knocked over by a much larger pirate ship
and all they take, dude, are the hats of the fishermen.
The fishermen had other stuff. They have fish, you know,
(29:42):
they're just a little boat of middle class fishermen. But
the pirates had got super drunk the night before and
they rolled up on this boat and they said, we
are going to take your hats because we partied too
hard and we all threw our hats in the water.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Or last night.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
So they would steal all kinds of stuff, you know,
the stories of treasure get exaggerated a little bit. They
also took rope, tackle, you know, nails, sales anchors, all
the stuff you need to run a pirate ship. But
here's the question. What do you do if you've got
a bunch of hot items and you can't go to
(30:24):
port and sell them because you're a wanted band.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Where do you go? Well, you mentioned those those pirate hubs, right,
or those pirate havens. You know, you essentially needed what
you might call today a fence. You know, he needed
a place that would take your ill gotten booty and
essentially I mean hold on to it, you know, well
while things kind of cooled down, right, and potentially then
(30:47):
move it for you, you know. But you also were
if you weren't in one of these sort of safe spaces,
you might likely have a price on your head or
be you know, un wanted posters and such. So you
needed these places that you referred to earlier ben as
pirate havens. One such, very famous one of these was
(31:09):
a city called New Providence. Oh yeah, there goes the neighborhood, right.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
This is located in the modern day Bahamas, and Spain
had claimed the island of New Providence after Crystabaul Cologne
legendary pill quote unquote discovered the New World. Eventually, the
land changed hands and England lay claim to it. If
we go back to the late sixteen hundreds, there's a
(31:37):
guy named Henry Avery. Henry Avery is a privateer who
made a boatload get it by plundering gold and silver
and elephant tusk and gunpowder from these trade ships heading
from India to a local harbor. And he was able
to bribe the governor of New Providence of the English
(31:58):
Bahamas at the time, a guy named Nicholas Trott, who
is super important by the way in Carolina's history. He said, look,
let me give you not just some gold, not just
some silver, but this entire ship of elephant tusk and gunpowder.
And all you have to do, my bro is, let
us operate safely here. Don't jam us up, Nick, Just
(32:18):
don't jam us up.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
No. So in sixteen ninety six, Avery successfully bribed the
governor Nicholas trot into establishing Nassau in the Bahamas as
a haven where the pirates could do their business freely.
You know, like Hamsterdam in the wire, you know, like
(32:40):
a drug free zone, but this is like a crime
free zone. The governors would essentially, you know, go through
the motions doing their due diligence and an act, you know,
being stewards of the law, and perhaps make some you know,
let's call them ceremonial attempts to stop or to shut
(33:03):
down piracy. But it's really no different than you know,
crime syndicants paying off the police, you know, or anything
like that. It really is just as simple as that.
If it might be made and people are lacking in scruples,
then these kinds of situations will thrive one.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Hundred percent, you know, and overtime as a result. That's
what I mean when I say there goes the neighborhood,
the place goes into decline. The governors are increasingly authorities
on paper only. The pirates are becoming more and more powerful,
and the federalal statistic about this. What you need to
know is there's a bunch of civilian settlers and soldiers.
They have a fort, French and Spanish ships team up
(33:43):
and they attack Nassau first in seventeen oh three, and
then a few years later they come back and do
the same thing in seventeen oh six. So a bunch
of settlers and soldiers leave at this point they cut
their losses. There's a heavily damaged fort left, and there
are no souls there. There's no one to enforce the
laws that existed even as this place was on decline.
(34:07):
If you look at the statistics, by seventeen thirteen, there
were over one thousand pirates in this community and they
far outnumbered the four hundred to five hundred people who
are just regular folks. Yeah, this is what you might
call a high of scummon villainy. It's starting to veester
over here, right, Yeah, and the main city becomes home
(34:30):
to folks like black Beard. We mentioned earlier pirates like
Jack Rackham, Benjamin Hornegold which is just hilarious, and Sam
Jay Rock was pretty cool, too fun to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
these guys have good names and they these guys all
used this island as a base. At some point there
were six hundred pirates not just living there, but sailing
(34:52):
from Nassau who raided shipping and shipping routes and ports
from the Caribbean all the way up to Maine. A
couple of them even started calling themselves the governors of
New Providence. We've got a great quote from a guy
named Thomas Barrow. He is quoted as saying that he
is the governor of Providence, will make it a second Madagascar,
(35:15):
and expects five or six hundred more men from Jamaican
sloops to join in the settling of Providence and to
make war on the French and the Spaniards. But for
the English, they don't intend to meddle with them unless
they are first attacked by them.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Okay, And this, you know, kind of worked out for
a time. They they came up with all name. I
wonder if this is where the Jolly Roger came from.
Probably not, I probably wasn't something that was more a
flag you'ed fly at sea. But they did come up
with a sort of you know name for their new institution,
the Republic of Pirates, because those two things go hand
(35:52):
in hand, you know, law and order and governance and piracy.
It did avoid attacking British vessels though, right, don't poke
the bear. Where it did get out about New Providence
becoming the safe haven for pirates looking to have a
good yoho ho and you know, kick back with some
RUMs and all that stuff. And it was also a
place that would essentially serve as a recruiting ground. Right.
(36:15):
Oh yeah, this place.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Launched some careers in the world of piracy. It was
mostly run by a group of real hard cases who
are collectively called the Flying Gang. The Flying Gang is
a team up that comes from a heist. In seventeen fifteen,
the Spanish treasure fleet sank during a hurricane off the
coast of La Florida. And when a pirate named Henry
(36:40):
Jennings learned that these ships had sank, he devised a
plan along with people like Benjamin Hornegold who we mentioned,
Samuel Bellamy who he mentioned, and a guy named Charles Vaine,
and he said, look, the Spanish are going to try
to salvage this. They're going to try to pull the
gold out from these sunken ships. We're going to be
there and we're going to steal the treasure from the salvagers.
(37:03):
They eventually called themselves the Flying Gang. And I'm trying
very hard not to write parody lyrics for the Flying
Gang to the tune of the Crying Game. But that's
how you know, that's how colonial powers were. They don't
want no more of the Flying Gang. And to your
point about people starting a career, Edward Teach aka Blackbeard.
(37:25):
He gets his start here, so does Jack Rackham, whose
pirate namer street name was Calico Jack. And a lot
of other people, including some female pirates like Mary Reid
and a body.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Yeah, and in case you guys are wondering, I'm over
here on Assassin's Creed Wikipedia searching all these names because
all these people are in Assassin's Creed for black Flags.
So it's kind of good been in nostalgia for me
right now.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
That's awesome, man.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Yeah, And I you know, I wasn't the biggest fan
of the maritime aspects of Assassin's Creed, but what a
great universe they've built. And I enjoy I enjoy a
couple of the games having that museum mode where you
can just walk around and look at buildings. Oh yeah,
I think that's the one set in Italy.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Anyway, here's the idea.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
These guys they do their heist, the pirates take their
wealth and Horne Gold and is Pal Thomas Barrow establish
a new community on this island, on New Providence, and
they set out to create a legitimate pirate republic. And
(38:32):
like you said, no, honestly, a lot of these guys
could be subjects to their own episodes. You know what
you need to know here is somewhere in a mostly
neglected part of the Caribbean that didn't have a huge
population at the time, some of the area's most dangerous
people put aside their typical rivalries for a common cause.
(38:53):
It's an avengers of maritime crime, you know, heist on
the high seas and they start attacking everyone except the
British at first.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Right, So by seventeen thirteen, the war of that War
of Spanish succession. That's hard to say Spanish successions. That's
what the war was about. I know, it's just literally
about too many esh sounds. It was over, it had
wrapped up. Thankfully, they figured it out, they figured out
how to pronounce it. But many of these British privateers
(39:23):
didn't get the memo we take for granted, like how
many movies are spoiled by the existence of smartphones, You know,
many problem there's that thing, but even just like in general,
like in the thriller of some kind, like how easy
would it be for someone just to have googled a
thing or to have the correct directions they didn't get lost,
or you know, for someone to be able to warn
(39:43):
them you know, in these days it was even worse.
You know, they would take months sometimes for word to
reach individuals who were out in remote areas, especially during wartime.
So a lot of these privateers, they did not get
the news that the war was over. This is the
kind of thing you hear about all the time, you know,
in historical situations where perhaps an action is taken, often
(40:05):
a tragic action due to not realizing the circumstances had
completely changed.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
One hundred percent. Man, I'm glad you bring that up,
because it reminds me of that Japanese soldier who didn't
know World War two had ended for decades and decades. Also,
people who were enslaved in the US who didn't learn
about emancipation for quite some time. The travel of information,
the frictionless travel of information, is probably one of the
(40:33):
biggest wins of recent humanity or the thing that is
going to spell the end of civilization.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Maybe both, maybe both maybe, And so these you know,
a lot of these these these uh, these privateers either
didn't get the news or wouldn't accept it, didn't didn't
think that it was true. So they, you know, slipped
further and further into piracy, which actually led to a
lot of you know, new blood kind of being pumped
(41:03):
into New Providence right to join that pirate republic and
causes an absolute boom in the numbers of pirates that
were hanging out there.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Yeah, exactly, And now New Providence is becoming a boom
town and it's not as unified as it was. This
place was only around, by the way, for a very
short amount of time, a little over a decade. And
over time, these pirates of New Providence, they stopped giving
British ships a hall pass. A lot of these guys
(41:35):
who were former privateers like working for England, start attacking
any ship they want, British or not. At their height,
they're giving themselves titles like Commodore. They're commanding fleets of ships,
and they can go toe to toe with the Royal Navy.
Sometimes they can even outgun it, which is a huge
deal because the Royal Navy is the big dog on
(41:57):
campus at this point.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
That's right, And this starts to make me think of again,
perhaps some thinking more along the lines of some fiction,
but this is when you know, you start to see
like things like in Game of Thrones, the Golden Compass
or whatever, like these like armies for hire, or even
we have now today with the Wagner group, you know
over there in the Ukraine or in Russia, the idea
(42:22):
that an independent group could become so large as to
rival a an official military. And even though you know
right now they're at odds, there could come a time where,
for enough money, maybe you could hire some of these
pirate crews to do your bidding. You know who knows.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Yeah, And at this point, you know, King George is
starting to get a little beefed up because it was
easy to ignore the crimes of these pirates as long
as they were attacking the British themselves. But the British
government was starting to get really concerned. They say, piracy
is so out of control that we're not getting British
(43:00):
settlers into these colonies, and if the land is unpopulated,
our foreign rivals may take it over. This is not
a sustainable situation. So George makes the decision. He contacts
a former privateer and makes some governor Woods Rogers, and
(43:20):
he says, Rogers, I want you to go over to
New Providence, go over to this high of Scumonbility, and
tell them that I will give them a pardon I
will give them an act of grace, a king's pardon.
This one is called a Proclamation for Suppressing of Pirates.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Right September fifth, seventeen seventeen, pirates would receive amnesty be
forgiven of their trespasses that includes murder, just so long
as they surrendered by the next January fifth of seventeen eighteen.
So it's thinking a lot of blind eye kind of mentality,
isn't it. It's like, we're going to unless you can,
(44:00):
need to operate outside the law, but we need you
to agree that we're putting a clock on this because
this isn't gonna work forever for everyone, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
They said, look, you will totally free pass you guys.
We've had fun, we've made some friends, we've plundered some ships,
we've had some laughs. But as long as you surrender
by this date, by January fifth, seventeen eighteen, later they
kicked the can down the road, then it's all good.
And Woods was the right guy for this job because
(44:30):
he was a former privateer and slave trader. He spoke
the cultural language of the pirates, and he did convince
a lot of them to take a square life. A
lot of pirates accepted a pardon, but some refused to
give up the game, notably folks like Jack Rackham and
Edward Teach. The problem was these guys, to your point,
(44:53):
they were living on borrow time. Either the Royal Navy
or local authorities would get them soon if the party
couldn't go on forever. And we'll tell you what happened there,
But before we do, let's get to the heart of
the question for today's episode. Was New Providence really a
pirate government?
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Kind of? Yeah, kind of. I mean they.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Had people with specific jobs, like they were organized crime, right,
So the mafia has a hierarchy, They've got specific duties,
they've got a code. What's the mafia code. It's not Omerta,
that's code of silence, right.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Oh, it's a I don't know, I just know Cosinostra.
I don't know. I always thought America kind of was
the mafia code, but maybe there's another one. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Yeah, but they had like, they had these rules, and
just like the mafia, the pirates said, we need a
code of behavior that will reduce internal conflict and maximize profits.
At the same time. You can find great examples of
real pirate code. We got one from a guy named
bartholomewle black bart Roberts. In seventeen twenty two. He and
(46:07):
his crew made a set of laws that are pretty
they're pretty interesting. Just put a few of these on here.
They're not all of them, but one of the ones
that might surprise a lot of people is voting. Everybody
got a vote on the ship except hostages.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
And jump back in one more time with Assassin's Creed.
Bartholomew Black Bart Roberts is actually the secret villain of
Assassin's Creed. For spoilers, he is the oh a spoiler
for a game that came out of one A PS three.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Next, you're gonna tell me what happened at at Ford Theater?
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Oh got yeah, No, but yeah he's uh he is,
I forget what his role is. He's the stage. Yeah,
so I saw that name and I had to jump
in here. I'm going away now.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
No, let's give it. Let's do a max with the
facts that second in the phone fallen lolge it's just
for you right now fast.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
But yeah, yeah, there we go. People could vote. You
had actually more of a say as an individual on
a pirate ship than you did in a Royal Navy.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
Pretty interesting, right, I mean, yeah, there was a certain
amount of equity right in this arrangement where everyone was
somewhat on an equal playing field. It's very interesting. I mean,
I'm sure in practice, maybe I don't know I've actually heard,
you know, I think that's stuff humans in history class
may have done an episode on this back in the
day when I was the producer of that show. And
(47:39):
I do feel like they really took this stuff very seriously.
The idea of equality. You know, it wasn't just on paper.
It wasn't like it wasn't a do as I say,
not as I do. You know, everyone lived by this code.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
One hundred percent man, and they were surprisingly progressive in
some ways. They also said in a lot of pirate code.
They said, don't steal from coworkers, you know what I mean,
don't hoard stuff from the crew. Don't rob. If you
rob a fellow pirate, you're gonna have your nose and
your ears split, and then we'll throw you ashore on
(48:12):
like the worst island we can find. They said, no gambling.
Weirdly enough, this is oddly wholesome until you think about it.
They had a curfew. They said, every night you got
at eight pm. You got to put out all the
lights and candles. They said, if any of the crew
want to sit around and drink, they have to do
it on the open deck without lights. And it's not
because they were worried about their bedtime. It's because lights
(48:36):
would help you identify a ship at sea.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was the like you know,
there's another term like that cut of your jib, Right,
that was one the idea of I like the cut
of your jib refers to the cut of the sail
on a certain ship, so that you could be identified
at sea. That's how you knew you that was a friend,
you know, or a friendly Right. I always assumed that
(49:00):
you meant like jaw or something like that, But no,
not the case. And this is the case too. The
idea of those lights being a really important identifier. Next
we have this is a very pirty one. I would argue,
stay ready to fight. It runs me of that Russell
Crow bit on South Park where he's fighting around the world,
(49:21):
you know, like singing songs and something some and fought
and around the world. That's very praty. Yeah, yeah, always
be ready for a fight. Each man shall keep his
piece cutlass and pistols at all times, clean and ready
for action.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
We don't know what it's gonna pop off, you know
what I mean. Stay frosty, stay sharp, five by five.
They also have workers cop They had an early version
of workers compensation. If you were crippled, or you lost
a limb, or you had another very serious injury in
your service with your pirate crew, you would get eight
(49:55):
hundred pieces of eight and if you were less, if
you were hurt less, egregiously, you would get a corresponding
amount of money. That's pretty cool. There are many places
and industries that don't bother doing that today, so that
might surprise some people, some of us with stereotypes about pirates.
We're not saying they're good people.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
We know that.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Pirate code also said, hey, the captain isn't necessarily a dictator.
We on the ship can all take a vote, and
if we don't like the captain or a leader, we
can vote them out. And again a lot of these
guys are coming from the tyranny of working for merchant
ships or the Royal Navy. This is super duper freedom
for them. So from seventeen oh six to about seventeen
(50:41):
eighteen these scallywags, I would argue they really did form,
if not a government, a political entity because they adapted
pirate code of the sea to become sort of the
by laws of their haven in New Providence. And they
were also very they were oddly progressive in terms of
(51:03):
race relations.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
For the time. Absolutely, that's another thing that always kind
of had me a little bit flummoxed, you know, in
addition to the whole workers comp thing. I mean, they
really were like some of the early kind of labor
rights activists. It's very very interesting. Another very interesting feature
of the Republic of Pirates, to your point, Bend, was
(51:26):
the fact that Africans were considered equal members of the crew.
And it's so interesting because we talked about how those
privateers or originally right that was a big early form
of slave trade. It would seem that what evolved and
became maybe the less lawful version of those pirateers that
(51:47):
were operating outside of the rule of law were in
fact much more humane than those operating under the rule
of life.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
I mean, yeah, imagine you're attacking a ship as a
pirate crew and you come to find that it is
not it is not just loaded with you know, like
cinnamon and pantaloons and rum. But they're also enslaved people
(52:15):
on there. You can be kind of a hero if
you're one of the folks who say, look, all the captain,
you know, all you other guys, we're gonna rob you
blind you who were enslaved. You can be free, you
can join us. That's a hard thing to say no to.
And we know that several people of American, Indian or
(52:36):
of African background became pirate captains in their own right.
One of the most famous is a guy called Black Caesar.
And look, okay, so weirdly progressive pirates were surprisingly weirdly progressive.
Back to our boy, Governor Woods Rogers arrives in Nassau.
He's got the king's pardon. He's pitching to people. One
(52:58):
dude accepts. He doesn't just accept. Benjamin horne Gold says, okay,
I'll stop being a pirate, and Rogers says, well, you're
a special case, my friend. He says, hey, ben, if
you want a new job, why don't you become a
trader and help me hunt down all your buddies. And
(53:18):
so horne Gold like that goes from being a pirate
to a pirate hunter, and he's chasing down all of
his former colleagues, anyone who doesn't take the king's pardon.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Nah, put his money? Where's not this? Yeah? This is in.
Speaker 3 (53:35):
Case you'all were wondering. Horn of Gold is very much
a villain in Assassin's Creed Blackflow.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
Oh good, I was gonna ask.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
He starts off the game. Actually he's like one of
your mentors. But no, it changes.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
You actually have to hunt him down at some point.
He's a pill. He's a pill in real life too.
But he didn't get everybody. He got around ten other
salty dogs. On the morning of December twelfth, of seventeen eighteen.
Nine of those fellas were.
Speaker 1 (54:07):
Yeah, they were executed. They were killed, Yeah, for piracy.
And you wonder if they got captured. I couldn't find
the answer to this. Maybe someone can help us. If
those pirates got captured and they recanted their crimes, could
they take the king's pardon right before they were executed?
Speaker 2 (54:25):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
I don't know, but like you said, no, our buddy,
Benjamin Hornigold doesn't get everybody. The pirate hunters don't get
everyone in New Providence. A lot of folks get away
Charles Vain Blackbeard. They go on to pursue their villainous
careers elsewhere in the Caribbean, and just like that, after
eleven very strange years, the Republic of the Pirates is gone.
(54:50):
And overall, as conditions change, the fortunes of the pirates
in general decline in the mid seventeen twenties, and they
it never became as powerful as they were for that
brief time in the seventeen tens. And along the way,
you know, a lot of those guys can't live that
(55:10):
demanding life as they age. But if they were smart,
buccaneers and pirates and smugglers and privateers all had invested
their gains. And so now these guys, a lot of
them were no longer criminals. They owned plantations, they owned
legit businesses, and there seemed to be a rule of
imperfect law spreading throughout the Caribbean. And that's kind of
(55:34):
that's kind of the story.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
But it is it's so interesting. It's like we started
with all of this pillage and violence, and I'm going
to come back to this thing that I think we
were both taken by the legal version of piracy is
almost like as much more of a free for all
than this version, at least of the illegal version, right,
(55:56):
I don't know. It's fascinating, and there's a.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
Lot of there's a lot of stuff we found for
tangents and trivia that we might save for a future episode.
I think we'll call the Day now. Oh, one fact,
we can say the eye patch wasn't always to cover
up a damaged eye, because there were no electric lights
and it could be dangerous to have a lot of lights.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
Inside a wooden ship.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
Often the eye patch was used to keep one eye
in the dark, so that when you suddenly ran below deck,
you could take the patch off and your eye would
already be used to low light.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
Way. Yeah, that's always. That's literally just tabby something brand new.
I assumed it was maybe for like sharp shooting, you know, yeah, maybe,
But I love this idea that it was to help,
you know, have your eye quickly already adjusted to the dark.
That's very interesting.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
Or else they were all just very bad at not
hitting things with it.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Who knows, Yeah, who knows.
Speaker 1 (56:54):
We can't wait to We can't wait to explore more strange,
ridiculous things with you, folks. We want to give a big,
big thanks to our super producer and Assassin's Create consultant
mister Max Williams and Noel I gotta I gotta tell you.
I gotta ask you too. If you had been press
(57:15):
ganged into the Royal Navy and a pirate ship came
by and robbed your ship and said, hey, do you
want to join with us?
Speaker 2 (57:25):
What would you do? Peep pee a little probably, and
then just say whatever you say, sirs. I'll be your stooge,
I'll be your I'll be your Schmie. Play nice until
you can get the shore, right. Yeah, I'd probably be
a bit of a Shmi figure.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
I remember Schmi that was from Pirates of the Caribbean, right,
believe Peter Pan, Peter Pan.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
Another another we could maybe do an episode on Peter
Pan because.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
That is a messed up or story as well. Story
for another day. Yeah. I think it's called what Finding Neverland?
I think that the book about it. It's very very sad,
but yeah, man, thank you for this. This pirate's romp Ben,
who by the way, has also served as the research
executive on this particular episode. So much cool stuff in
(58:22):
the world of piracy, and I literally learned like six
new things today, so thank you.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
And big big thanks dude, Jonathan Strickland, Wait heally gets one,
keep that part.
Speaker 2 (58:32):
In thanks, big big, big thanks of course.
Speaker 1 (58:35):
Chris Arrassio deceives, Jeffco, Alex Williams who composed this slap
and Bob and big thanks to you.
Speaker 2 (58:42):
Noel looks like, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
I think maybe we stick with podcasting for now before
we stick full.
Speaker 2 (58:49):
Pirate gamy pirate radio. Let's try that. We'll see next
time puts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(59:09):
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Noel Brown
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Betrayal Season 5
Saskia Inwood woke up one morning, knowing her life would never be the same. The night before, she learned the unimaginable – that the husband she knew in the light of day was a different person after dark. This season unpacks Saskia’s discovery of her husband’s secret life and her fight to bring him to justice. Along the way, we expose a crime that is just coming to light. This is also a story about the myth of the “perfect victim:” who gets believed, who gets doubted, and why. We follow Saskia as she works to reclaim her body, her voice, and her life. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.