The Hidden History of Jewish Pirates, Part 1: Escaping Europe

During the age of European expansion, members of the Jewish diaspora traveled to Caribbean and the continents of North and South America, often escaping the intense persecution of the Inquisition. Some became merchants, others explorers -- and some became pirates. Join Ben and Noel as they explore the little-known stories of these pirates and privateers, and why Jamaica became known as a haven for those fleeing European persecution.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome

(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. This is a big moment in
our history today because we figured out this is gonna
be a two parter before we started recording, which is
just huge for us. I know, just exercising a little
bit of forethought goes a long way. Uh and and

(00:49):
I thank you Ben for for pointing that out. It's
it is a milestone. Indeed, for a second, I thought
you were gonna some like historic anniversary or something, but
but I realized that was not the case. I'm so
sorry you're Ben. Yeah, your knowl uh huh. I continue
to be yes. And that's our super producer, Casey Pegram,
Casey Pegram. How do you feel about this? Case he

(01:11):
does that mean we're gonna like not have to retroactively
like shoehorn in our little bumpers, or we we apologize
for making it a two parter. This is this is
brand new territory we're exploring here today. Yeah, it's crazy.
We're gonna get to think about the outro and the
intro and where to split it. And yeah, it's it's
gonna be gonna be interesting. It's a lot of fresh Yeah,
we better get it right, Yes, well we'll we'll, we'll

(01:34):
get It's something I think this This is a fascinating episode,
fascinating topic today. It's something that the three of us
were not very aware of before we started working with
Gabe and diving into this story. But long story short,
the headline for this is that Jamaica was once the

(01:56):
h Q for Jewish pirates, which is some thing that
you know, when we think of pirates, most people think
of like Pirates of the Caribbean, some kind of um
Johnny Depp esque ragamuffin in rogue, right, lovable rogue. But
the truth is different. Pirates were very diverse. They depending

(02:18):
on the ship. They had a more democratic existence than
a lot of laborers at the time. But we're going
to explore a story about pirates that you may not
have heard before. If I might read a small exerpt
from Ed Kritzler's Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean. Speaking of which, guys,

(02:38):
quick poll, do you say Caribbean or Caribbean? I go
back and forth. Yeah, in the same way. It's kind
of uh, I don't know whatever sounds good in the moment.
I mean sure feels to me like the Ride of Disneyland.
Is Pirates of the Caribbean. Absolutely yes, And that phrase
it's always Caribbean cool. It's like data or data, or
if you're talking about that billy ocean song, it's Caribbean

(03:00):
the ocean in the desert, or you would say like
Caribbean food. You wouldn't say Caribbean food, right. See, Okay,
that this is great. We have cleared this up entirely.
It's definitely a tastemaker type situation. But also there are
clear cases where one or the other is more appropriate.
We can put that to bed now. So again, back
to the eggs a Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean at

(03:21):
the dawn of the Age of Discovery, when Spain's monarchs
banished them to purify and thereby unite their nation, followers
of the Law of Moses sailed with the explorers and
marched with the conquistadors. With the discovery and settlement of
the New World, they took solace in the hope of
finding there a haven, or at least putting distance between

(03:42):
themselves and the Holy Terror. Yeah, you know what, let's
let's go ahead and carry this out a little bit further.
So Chritzler goes on to say that unlike a lot
of other explorers, these individuals didn't have a home to
return to. They were some of the quote unquote foreigners
to permanently settle in the New World, and a lot

(04:05):
of them kept their religious beliefs secret, particularly like how
he breaks down in this next quote where he says
Jewish explorers, can quistadors, cowboys, and pirates were similar in
spirit to other settlers. But while others came to conquer,
search for gold, and collect a his words, not ours
quote bevy of Indian women, they came as well to

(04:27):
settle a land beyond the tentacles of the Inquisition. This
early history is largely unknown because few knew these pioneers
were Jewish. They would pose often as Christians to avoid
further persecution in the New World. That's right, and I'm
assuming Ben in that movie trailer esque exert I read

(04:48):
from Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean, the Holy Terror is
referring to those that would persecute them for their faith,
like them being Jewish, and the Holy Terror being what
the status quo of just Christiane entity Catholicism Inquisition. Yes,
that's right. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition except when you do,

(05:08):
and you become a pirate to escape it. M hm.
And it's strange. It's it's history that is still relatively
obscure to a lot of people. Each colony in the
New World had an underground community of Jewish people that
were known only to each other and to some other
Jewish people maybe in adjacent colonies or nearby colonies. According

(05:32):
to Chritzler, and this is also quote un pulling from
The Daily Beast on the Jewish pirates of the Caribbean. Caribbean, Caribbean,
I'm gonna be thinking about that. But according to Chritzler,
these individuals did pretty well in the economy of the
time as merchants, as traders and ship owners. And as

(05:53):
long as they kept up kind of a lip service
pretense towards Christianity, and as long as they did a
good job as shippers, as merchants and traders, no one
bothered to question them two closely. But once they established
this massive trade network, the powers that be started to

(06:14):
consider them expendable. Yeah, it's true, and it really was
a case of fleeing where they wanted to go someplace
that they would not be persecuted for for those secrets
and for their faith. And oftentimes some of these uh
these Jewish merchants of the Sea uh fled to Middle

(06:37):
Eastern countries like those in the Ottoman Empire, and another
huge wave of these folks landed in Jamaica. In fact,
there were so many Jewish folks fleeing for Jamaica that
they actually occupied a massive number of Jamaican legislative seats.
So many in fact, that in the nineteenth century, Jamaica's

(07:00):
parliament was the only one in the New World that
didn't have sessions on Saturdays because of Shabbat. It's fascinating
and tragic how European expansion across the Atlantic Ocean occurred

(07:21):
in step with a new wave of anti Semitism. The
same month that Crystal Bald Cologne or Columbus UH set
sail right trying to find a route to Asia, King
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella actually ordered the expulsion of all
Muslims and Jews from Spain, and then Portugal followed up.

(07:41):
So people are trying to escape somewhere, to your point,
and Jamaica became a I don't know, a home away
from home of sorts. It was anomalous at this time
because Jamaica was essentially a private possession of Christopher Columbus
and his family. He had been awarded the ownership of

(08:02):
Jamaica in perpetuity back in Does that mean he personally
benefited from any of their cash crops and exports and
things like that, like it was that even a thing? Yet,
like all that sugarcane and other farming commodities that would
come out of Jamaica, which we know was a thing.
He owned everything, you know what I mean? That's wild man,
that is wild. Yeah. And before we before we think

(08:25):
that is just something consigned to the dustbin of history,
I will point out there is an island in Hawaii
that is owned by a single family. It's a big island,
and they also h They also suppressed technology there. You
literally cannot go. It's like a fiefdom. But anyway, that's
what Christopher Columbus had and his heirs, who you know,

(08:48):
inherited Jamaica from him, kept their domain free from the inquisition.
So it does make sense for the Jewish diaspora to
travel there because it's one of the places and can't
get you, that's right. And then in sixti UM. This
was a year after a lot of Jewish refugees um

(09:09):
had arrived in Jamaica from Dutch Brazil, which is a thing.
The island wasn't being particularly looked after by It's uh.
I guess what do you call it? Like it's it's viceroy.
I don't know what. What would columbus of an owner?
I guess he wasn't doing a pretty shoddy job of

(09:31):
taking care of business and keeping a good watch on
his possession. And it was seized by Britain, totally hijacked,
pulled out from under him. No more island for Chrissy
Colombo yep. And the leader of this attack was one
Admiral William Penn, who will go on to be the
father of William Penn Jr. Who will go on to

(09:52):
later found Pennsylvania. Religious freedom was in pretty good shape
under the British rule. By Seventh Team twenty somewhere around
of the residents of Kingston, the capital of Jamaica, were
descendants of Spanish Portuguese Jews, So at this point the
Jamaican Jewish population was pretty well entrenched and they were

(10:14):
looking for some more opportunities at sea, some adventures, if
you will, and they started captain ng ships. This j
Post dot com article lists a few, uh, one of
which was the Queen Esther, the Prophet Samuel, and the
Shield of Abraham. So they were really leaning into their

(10:35):
Jewish faith with the mast heads, you know, of their
of their of their ships, right and um, they really
started kind of clustering around the Caribbean looking for sunken
treasure and sometimes straight up robbing people. Yes, yeah, that's
that's correct. We will mention though that they had a

(10:57):
specific bias. They wanted to a tax Spanish and Portuguese
ships because this was seen as payback for the torture
of Jewish people conducted by the Inquisition. This was also,
by the way, retaliation for confiscation of property. We have
to remember when the Inquisition persecutes people, they often have

(11:18):
laws that incentivize the investigators, the inquisitors. Uh. In one
of those laws is the idea that if you can
punish someone right for blasphemy or punish them for being
a witch or whatever, then you are entitled to all
or some of their worldly goods. So sometimes people were
getting persecuted just because they were well to do, but

(11:43):
then also socially vulnerable. So the some of these crews,
we have to be very clear about this, Some of
these crews did not see themselves as criminals so much
as like adventurers and people fighting the power that was
the Inquisition. This is where we get to really I

(12:04):
think a fun part of the episode, which is busting
some pirate myths. They set it up at the beginning.
But casey, as you guys know, pirrating was kind of egalitarian,
like surprisingly so back then, Yeah, that's right. I mean
you think of pirates is like almost like vikings, which
also that we didn't we bust some Viking myths recently
in our our Unicorn Horn episode, so similarly so, they

(12:28):
were more organized than one would think when would be
led to believe you think that vikings and pirates alike
were just bloodthirsty rapers and pillagers, and there certainly was
some of that going on, but they had a pretty
egalitarian situation where it was much more democratic than you
would be led to believe. Um, there was a sense

(12:49):
of equality among the ranks of some of these pirates,
and that is a big part of what attracted some
of these displaced Jews to join in that lifestyle because
it looked like an opportunity to be treated as equals
um and to make a little cash while they were
at it. Pirates were not just you know, going willing

(13:09):
nilly up and down the coast, burning things to the
ground with no sense of order. Um. They were totally
organized in fans of democracy. Right, yeah, yeah, that's right.
And it's not necessarily because of some sort of noble
altruistic motivation. It's because it's better for business. It's a
more sustainable model, So that's why they would do things

(13:31):
like elect their captain. It's brilliant when you think about it.
You know, this is an age where they're still like
press gangs and people are getting their drinks drugged somewhere
in Europe and they're waking up as essentially a slave
on a ship. But in the world of piracy, the
crew can elect their captain, which means the crew probably

(13:52):
picks a captain they like and a mutiny is less likely.
They also elect the quartermaster. The captain has like emergency
powers you could call them, but otherwise he has to
check with the gang if he wants to do stuff
during peacetime. I think it's inspiring. I'm not saying that
I can do in piracy here that I would want
to live on a pirate ship, but I think the

(14:15):
power of the vote is cool, and I think it's
really cool that pirates knew that. Wouldn't it be funny
if the word quartermaster was actually pronounced something like quormster,
you know, sort of the way boat swain's pronounced bosen,
one of these inexplicable nautical terms that just does not
read at all on paper the way it's pronounced, or
Worcester exactly like Worcester. What if quartermaster was actually quister?

(14:38):
I don't know, just spitball in here, but it's true. Um.
I mean, the the captain certainly was the you know,
the boss, but it was a power that came with respect,
literally the respect of his underlings, I guess, because they're
the ones that put this person in powers. You're absolutely right,
ben Um. There was a lot of checks and balances,

(15:01):
shall we say, built into this system. Pretty cool. Then
we move into another era of like or another I
guess wing of piracy UM called privateers, which is you could,
I guess refer to as legal piracy because it much

(15:23):
more has to do with reclaiming sunken wreckage on behalf
of a company and getting to keep some of that money,
or getting to do it for salvage or whatever, or
things like mercenary bounty hunting and the like. Right. Yeah,
so privateers are legal pirates at this time. They are

(15:45):
doing things that would be against the law, but they're
doing it with the explicit support of a sovereign nation.
So imagine that you are a bank robber if you're
listening to this, you and I and Casey nol we
we got together, we made a heist crew and we
started robbing banks. That's illegal, right, but imagine that we

(16:10):
have the support of the government of Canada. Like we're
right on the Canadian US border, and Canada says, we
love the way you all robbed banks. We want to
make your apple dumpling gang UH an official, an official
arm of UH, you know, the Canadian war machine. So

(16:30):
you will be pirates for us. But the Canadians seem
so friendly. I don't know that they would jump into
business with these uh, these these opportunists pirate weirdos. Yeah,
but this this example, we're bank robbers that Canada is
you know, approving of for these folks, I guess you know,
one interesting difference in the comparison is that these European

(16:52):
countries are paying people to start trouble and disrupt trade
lines half a world away. Look, and I'm really sorry
I characterized pirates as opportunist weirdos. That's the whole point
of today's episode. We're busting these myths. You know, everyone's
an opportunist. You're just looking for opportunity on the high
seas because they want to make a better life for

(17:13):
themselves and their families. And while there certainly was some absolute,
uh batty type behavior, I think all pirates were not
created equally awful. I think that's sort of the the
takeaway here, and it's interesting to think about. Yeah. I mean,
if you're a privateer, you're a pirate with a piece
of paper, an official letter that says you're allowed to

(17:34):
to break these laws and engage in this economic warfare,
and in return, you give that monarchy or that state
power a cut of the booty. Which sounds weird to
say that way, Okay, you give them a cut of
the earnings. I like the cut of your booty. Yeah,
cut of the booty. Yeah, I'm using them. I did
not see myself coining the phrase cut of the booty,

(17:55):
but here we are. So so the thing is that
if there wasn't a war going on that the privateers
could participate in, they just went back to being regular
pirates and they will pull out that letter if they
ever got in trouble they would essentially so weird. This
is going to be something for all the vexillologists in
the crowd. The difference between these ships in peacetime and

(18:19):
a wartime was mainly the flag. If they're working for Britain,
their flying the Union Jack or you know, the same
thing for Holland. But then if they're not currently privateering,
they just throw up the old jolly Roger. Which I
don't know about you guys, but if you ever looked
at those the old real examples of pirate flags, uh,

(18:39):
is the design different. It's still you know, there's still
like a skull crossbones thing, but there there's a lot
of variation there that hasn't happened that I was unaware of.
So you'll see one with a like a clothed person
handing a cup to a skeleton, a skeleton with an
arrow pointing at a heart, like a Valentine and stay

(19:00):
card heart and then wearing a crown. It's interesting they're
more detailed than I thought they were. That sounds pretty cool.
It sounds like some almost like Tarot card imagery a
little bit. I like that. Okay, So I think we've
we've laid the groundwork for this thing, this phenomenon of
of of of Jewish pirates um traversing the high seas

(19:22):
in search of great riches um. And I think this
is a good spot to close out this episode one
uh and uh and and and save some of the
notable um and individual stories of of pirates and privateers
of the Jewish faith from throughout history. I think that
gets an episode on. So what do you think, guys?

(19:43):
Agreed will also solve the mystery of why a lot
of people haven't heard of Jewish pirates in the modern day.
What are we talking about? We'll tell you in our
next episode. We hope that you enjoy Part one of
Jamaica and Jewish Pirates, and we hope you joined us
for Part two in the meantime. Thanks as always to

(20:04):
our super producer, the Jolly Roger of your heart and mind,
Pegram and the Jolly Rancher of my soul Um Casey
Pegram indeed, yeah, I know this one was a little
on the short side. We thought it was a clean
break to get into some really cool stories of some
of these these badass individuals in the next episode. Until then,
huge thanks to Alec Williams who composed our name. Christopher

(20:27):
Ocota is here in spirit, Jonathan Strickling the quiz Ster,
Big big thanks to Eaves, Jeff Cote, Thanks to Gay,
Loesia and Casey. No thanks to you guys, eight we
got so far without doing terrible parts. You cat's see
your next pun Fox. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,

(20:54):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.