August 9, 2024 • 17 mins
George Noory and author Richard Blakemore discuss the history of pirates, depictions of pirates in popular literature and film, if there were female pirates, and whether there are still pirates in the world today.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on
iHeartRadio and.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with your
Richard blakemore with us as book enemies of all.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
What made you write the book? Richard?
Speaker 4 (00:13):
I've been teaching a course on the history of pirates
at the University of Reading in the UK for some
years now, and it really came out of teaching that course,
those conversations with students thinking about all these issues around piracy.
And I freely admit that when I designed the course,
I thought, you know, people think pirates are call I'll
do a module on pirates and there'll be a way
to kind of.
Speaker 5 (00:32):
Get into other more serious historical topics.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
And actually the pirates took over the module in the
way you would expect pirates too.
Speaker 5 (00:41):
They just proved to be so interesting that we end
up spending all the.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Time talking about the way piracy develops and kind of
key individual examples, and I think also the significant world
history because it is a really important period in the
growth of international trade of connections between different parts of
the world, and piracy plays a really big part in that.
So having kind of taught that for a few years
(01:06):
that was really where the book came from, wanting to
try and share some of those ideas. And the starting
point for the book and the module is that image
of pirate that we have in our heads that we
spoke about at the start of this show. I'm kind
of wanting to say to people, if you've seen pirate films,
if you've played games, if you're aware of this image,
this idea in our culture.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
And you want to know where that comes from. You
want to know the.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Real history, You want to know the why is that
one moment.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
That we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Why do we think of pirates in this way when
there have been loads of other.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
Maritime plunderers throughout history. So trying to explain why this
one period in history has.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Come to be the image of pirates, why it's so important,
That's really what I'm trying to explain in the.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Book, Roger, where did the parrots come from?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
The pirates? So I have not found any evidence myself
of pirates specifically owning parrots. There's at least one buccaneer
called William Dampier who travels around on plundering voyages.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
Whether he would have denied being.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
A pirate, he would have claimed what he was doing
with legal but he is sort of attacking shipping outside
of the normal rules of war and things like that.
And he's also because he's trying to fashion himself as
not a pirate. He writes a best selling book about
his voyages in which he talks a lot about animals
and natural phenomena because he travels around the world. He
spends thirteen years and circain navigates the globe I think
(02:35):
three times in his life.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
And he mentions parrots.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
He mentions parrots talking in one of the places that
he visits. Whether he then owned a parrot, I don't know.
I think that the way it becomes associated very firmly
is in Treasure Island.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Right.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
This book published in the eighteen hundreds, quite a long
time after the moment of piracy in history that we
are talking about, and Treasure Island is I think one
of the other key landmarks here.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
It's the most popular book.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
I think it's there are more films and adaptations of
Treasure Islands than there are of any real pirate. It's
been such an influential.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
Piece of culture.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
But Robert Louis Stevenson, when he wrote that he was
inspired by Another.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
Book, which was written in seventeen twenty.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Four at the time the pirates were active, called The
General History of the Pirates.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
It's very well known amongst people interested in piracy.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
It's probably the most influential book that historians use. And
so although Robert Louis Stevenson was writing fiction with Treasure Island,
he was drawing on these stories that were circulating at
the time of piracy. And that's another big theme of
my book is that piracy is not just about what
pirates are doing, because whether you are a pirate or
(03:54):
not depends upon who your friends are, It depends upon
legal issues, upon the stories being telling about you, like
William Dampierre trying to tell stories about himself. And so
the most famous pirates, people like Blackbeard and Bonnie, Mary Reads,
bar Pani, Roberts, they are all featured in this book,
The General History, published in seventeen twenty four, and it's
(04:16):
from that book that a lot of these famous stories
about pirates that then kind of become definitive and get
picked up by Treasure Island and so on.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
Later.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Were there any women pirates or were they all men?
Speaker 5 (04:27):
So that we know of two within the kind of
period we're talking about.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
We know of two Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid, who
again are very well known.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
They're discussed in the General.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
History, and interestingly, they're the only two pirates who are
not captains, who get their own chapters, who get their
own illustrations. They're prominently talked about on the title page.
So the writer of this book clearly thought that these
two women made a significant story.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
That would appeal to readers. And we know for certain
that these two women sailed on.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
A pirate ship, were involved in piracy, were tried and
sound guilty of piracy, but were.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
Not executed because they both pleaded that.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
They were pregnant, which meant that you would not be
executed for the term.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
Of the pregnancy. And then one of them.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Died in prison from a fever, and the other we
don't know but probably was not executed.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
So we know about those two.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Women, and it's interesting how in the record of their
trial they do come across as really determined fearce, you know,
more piratical than their male comrades in some ways. But
then there's a lot of stories about them from this
General History book which I don't personally believe to be
true at all, because there's no other evidence, and the
(05:41):
way in which these stories are being told about them
is really to try to make broader points about how
women should behave and kind of saying that these two
women are behaving in a really bad way. They're sort
of accused of being sexually promiscuous and all sorts of
things like that, and so I don't think we can
take any of that to actually be true.
Speaker 5 (05:59):
The story worries about the two of them and their
lives on ship.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
We know, for example, the stories talk about them dressing
as men and hiding their identity, but we know that
they were known as women from the start of the
voyage or very early on in the voyage, so it
seems highly unlikely, and people outside the voyage knew that.
So it really seems highly unlikely that they were actually
pretending to be men on this ship and hiding in
a way that the stories are told. I think there's
(06:23):
also a really interesting point though, because the story of
those two women is so sensational because people assumed that
women didn't go on ships and they had to pretend
to be men, and we do know of other women
who did that, who dressed as men to travel on ship,
but also women were traveling on ships, women were emigrating
to the Americas, women were traveling on ships.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
They were involved in trade.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
They were you know, their husbands were sailors, or they
were family connections. Sometimes they were investors. Sometimes they often
we were talking about black markets earlier. Often women have
a really crucial role in selling plunder and other commodities.
So I actually think there's a much much bigger role
for women in the maritime world than we normally assume.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Was there a police patrol that hunted down the pirates.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Usually not, and this is part of the issue through
this period. Indeed, one of the reasons that plundering really
develops is because imperial governments are happy to sponsor plundering
because they haven't got their own naval resources. No one
really has a substantial navy until the very end of
the period we're talking about, and that's one of the
key changes that brings about that extreme surge of piracy
(07:33):
in the early seventeen hundred that we mentioned. The empires
in Europe build up much bigger navies, which gives them
greater control. They no longer need to rely on piracy.
You get naval patrols being established in Jamaica, in the
Chesapeake Bay. You get expeditions sent to Madagascar, but even
(07:54):
then navy ships are rarely as quick.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
Or as maneuverable as pirates.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
It was I wanted to clarify, I said the length
of a football field. I'm at half a football field,
and we were talking about the lengths of ships earlier,
so so shorter than I had suggested, but sort of
on the east coast of the Americas, even the smallest
navy ships can't get into the creeks and the bays
and the places that the pirate ships can hide. So
often the actions being there are expeditions against pirates, but
(08:21):
the expeditions are being organized by local colonial merchants in smaller,
fast and maneuverable ships. So the expedition that captures what
kills black Beard, for example, it's led by navy officers,
but it's actually ships from Virginia who are which are
sent out because they have the kind of small and
maneuverable vessels. So there are efforts to crap down on piracy,
(08:42):
but they're rarely completely successful.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Is it conceivable that there was a wealthy individual who
fronted the pirates, owned the ship and did it for money.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
Definitely happened.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
It definitely happened on many occasions in the early in
the late sixteen hundreds, that was the most common situation,
right because, as I said, most people who were carrying
out plunder were trying to do it legally. A really
good example here is a guy called Lord Bellamont who
is the governor of New York in the sixteen nineties,
and he invests in and bats and helps politically with
(09:21):
William Kidd's voyage. William Kidd is again a very famous
name in pirate history, and Kid is sent out to
capture other pirates. He's sent out as a pirate hunter
to the Indian Ocean. But when he arrives, I mean
he always denies this, but he does turn to piracy,
and by the time he gets back, political circumstances have changed.
What Kid did in the Indian Ocean as well known
(09:42):
because of reports, and Bellamont is actually the man who
then arrests Kid, possibly to save his own neck because he's.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Been involved in this voyage.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
And Kid is sent back to London and tried and executed.
But so investors in pirate voyages. Is all plundering voyages
very common in that really extreme surge with black Beard
and Bonnie and Reed Kaliko Jack. In the early seventeen ten,
it's much less common merchants. The laws have changed. Merchants
might get prosecuted for themselves, so they're.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
More careful about what they're doing.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
But even then, some merchants are going to the Bahamas
to trade with pirates, and black Beard and many other
pirates actually get pardons from some colonial governors. I think
black Beard is pardoned in North Carolina and then he
goes back to piracy. So there are questions about the
relationship between even black Beard and some of these colonial
authority figures.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Today there are modern day pirates Richard in the United States,
for example. What they do is steal the cargo of ships.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
Yes, yeah, so, I mean this.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Is a really interesting distinction where we have this historical
image of piracy which is fun, which is in games
and films and you know, theme park rides and everything,
but actually plundering at sea has never gone away. It
doesn't stop after seventeen twenties, which is sort of the
end of the period I'm dealing with. You still get plundering,
you get spikes of piracy in times of war, and
(11:09):
you see, it's very interesting to compare some of these scenarios.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
So a well known example is.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Somalia in the early twenty first century, around two thousand
and nine twenty ten, and there you have some similarities
in that there's a breakdown of politics during the civil war.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
There's an economic.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Crash because the territorial wars in Somalia not being protected,
so there's overfishing, there's very possibly dumping of materials, all
sorts of things going on, and so fishermen in Somalia
who can no longer support themselves turned to piracy and
start capturing ships. And again that kind of economic incentive
is a big feature of historical piracy. There's also, just
(11:46):
as there was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in
the early twenty first century, there's a big legal dispute
in the United Nations about how best to deal with this,
how do you who's responsible for stopping piracy, who has jurisdiction.
That's a big problem in the tenth the eighteenth century,
and still a big problem in the twenty first century.
But there are also differences in the way they operate. Obviously,
not just technology, but also ransom and capturing of individuals,
(12:09):
which which does happen in some historic episodes of piracy,
and a lot of these pirates in the present day
are also connected with sort of international gangs for finance
and all sorts of things like that, so it's not
exactly the same. But I think it's really interesting how
we have compartmentalized in our brains between sort of historical
piracy which is kind of safe and fun, and then
(12:30):
the presence of violence at sea still being a feature
of life today.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Did the cargo ships have armed crew members once piracy
started really getting big.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Yes, absolutely, so all merchant ships were carrying weaponry in
order to prit themselves, partially because of pirates, but also
because of the maritime war. And I think this is
another key point of the period the sixteen hundreds of
seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
There are more periods.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Of war between England and Spain, France, then Neetherlents, and
there are periods of peace. And so first of all,
that creates lots of opportunities for plundering, and second of all,
it means that merchant ships have to be protecting themselves
whenever they're going to see But that also means that
they're very easy to convert to pirate ships. Right, most
chips at sea would have had some kind of ammunition,
(13:18):
So if you want to use that ship for plundering,
it's quite easy to do that.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
In the movies, Richard, the pirates would bury their treasure
and then come back and get it later.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Did that really happen?
Speaker 4 (13:29):
This is a really interesting one because I think the
sort of yes and no answer. So we have some
records that the General History that I mentioned is the
sort of very important book does say that one of
the reasons the pirates like to operate in the Caribbean
is because you've got lots of isolated islands where you
can bury treasure. And I wonder if that's where Robert
Luis Stevenson got the idea for Treasure Island from. But
(13:54):
the book says they just do that so the heat
dies down, and then they would go and collect it.
It's not like a stash in that way. It's trying
to use it to briefly, and all of the stories
about really large kind of buried treasure emerge later. Right,
So William Kidd claims to have stashed his treasure, but
(14:17):
he does that when he's about to be executed, and
I think it's quite clearly an attempt to get off
the hook. Other pirates who are supposed to have left
large stashes of treasure, those rumors don't really start to
arrive until the twentieth century. So it's possible that pirates
were burying their treasure, but I think it's really unlikely
that you're going to find a massive cave full of
treasure chests hidden away someone.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
What was the legal penalty for a pirate who was arrested, charged, convicted.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
Well, execution is a very clear.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Pirracy carries the death sentence through this entire period, but
actually relatively few people are executed, partially because it's very
hard to catch pirates, as we've been talking about with
the police action and that are the extent of the ocean,
hiding on the coastline, hiding in the bays and the
inlets on the east coast of the Americas. So you
(15:10):
have to catch them first, which happens very rarely. So
most pirates that simply are never captured. Even when they're captured,
sometimes they get pardoned because these are skilled sailors, they're
skilled soldiers, they're people who are useful to the government. So,
as I said, even Blackbeard gets to pardon before he
goes back to piracy and has then killed in battle.
But some pirates are pardoned and turned to government employment.
(15:36):
And then even if you have not done that and
you put them on trial, not every trial leads to
a conviction, right, some of the most famous trials do
and those pirates executed. William Kidd is a good example
of that. But there are legal difficulties. So in theory
it's very simple if you're a pirate, you get executed,
(15:57):
but in practice it's very hard to catch and then
to prove that someone is a pirate.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
Because as we said, there's all these legal forms of plundering.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
So some people, when they're put on trial, we'll say, oh,
well I was doing it legally, and then sometimes they're
actually acquitted. So again we have this popular image of
the sort of the gallows and that of pirates, that
you're hanging on the gallows of the port cities and
on the River Thames, and that definitely happens, but it
happens less frequently than you might imagine.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
What was that language for a pirate Churchard where they go?
What does that mean?
Speaker 4 (16:32):
There are some theories that there were pirate language, but
the kind of are e Shuvinmi Timbers. I think that's
something that comes up. The theory I've heard is that
an actor playing long John Silver in an early theater
stage had a pronounced West Country Bristolian, brit Or South
even ex sort of the British coastal southwest coast accent,
(16:56):
and that's where the kind of pirate actually was so
popular that everyone then saw copying that to play pirates.
Many pirates came from that part of Britain, so they
may well have had that accent, but it doesn't I
don't think you started saying Arah when you became a pirate.
Like I said, pirate is a career stage usually for sailors,
people involved in the maritime world, so I think they
talked like other sailors. And it's a very international world.
(17:19):
You're English, Dutch, Spanish, French. You have some people who
are escaped from slavery, so African African heritage. You have
pirates in the Mediterranean from from North Africa and the
Middle East. You have pirates in the Indian Ocean, plunderers
who are who are from North and South India.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
From China.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
So you know, there isn't really one pirate language, just
because there's not one type of pirate.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on
iHeartRadio and.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with your
Richard blakemore with us as book enemies of all.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
What made you write the book? Richard?
Speaker 4 (00:13):
I've been teaching a course on the history of pirates
at the University of Reading in the UK for some
years now, and it really came out of teaching that course,
those conversations with students thinking about all these issues around piracy.
And I freely admit that when I designed the course,
I thought, you know, people think pirates are call I'll
do a module on pirates and there'll be a way
to kind of.
Speaker 5 (00:32):
Get into other more serious historical topics.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
And actually the pirates took over the module in the
way you would expect pirates too.
Speaker 5 (00:41):
They just proved to be so interesting that we end
up spending all the.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Time talking about the way piracy develops and kind of
key individual examples, and I think also the significant world
history because it is a really important period in the
growth of international trade of connections between different parts of
the world, and piracy plays a really big part in that.
So having kind of taught that for a few years
(01:06):
that was really where the book came from, wanting to
try and share some of those ideas. And the starting
point for the book and the module is that image
of pirate that we have in our heads that we
spoke about at the start of this show. I'm kind
of wanting to say to people, if you've seen pirate films,
if you've played games, if you're aware of this image,
this idea in our culture.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
And you want to know where that comes from. You
want to know the.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Real history, You want to know the why is that
one moment.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
That we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Why do we think of pirates in this way when
there have been loads of other.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
Maritime plunderers throughout history. So trying to explain why this
one period in history has.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Come to be the image of pirates, why it's so important,
That's really what I'm trying to explain in the.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Book, Roger, where did the parrots come from?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
The pirates? So I have not found any evidence myself
of pirates specifically owning parrots. There's at least one buccaneer
called William Dampier who travels around on plundering voyages.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
Whether he would have denied being.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
A pirate, he would have claimed what he was doing
with legal but he is sort of attacking shipping outside
of the normal rules of war and things like that.
And he's also because he's trying to fashion himself as
not a pirate. He writes a best selling book about
his voyages in which he talks a lot about animals
and natural phenomena because he travels around the world. He
spends thirteen years and circain navigates the globe I think
(02:35):
three times in his life.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
And he mentions parrots.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
He mentions parrots talking in one of the places that
he visits. Whether he then owned a parrot, I don't know.
I think that the way it becomes associated very firmly
is in Treasure Island.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Right.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
This book published in the eighteen hundreds, quite a long
time after the moment of piracy in history that we
are talking about, and Treasure Island is I think one
of the other key landmarks here.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
It's the most popular book.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
I think it's there are more films and adaptations of
Treasure Islands than there are of any real pirate. It's
been such an influential.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
Piece of culture.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
But Robert Louis Stevenson, when he wrote that he was
inspired by Another.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
Book, which was written in seventeen twenty.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Four at the time the pirates were active, called The
General History of the Pirates.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
It's very well known amongst people interested in piracy.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
It's probably the most influential book that historians use. And
so although Robert Louis Stevenson was writing fiction with Treasure Island,
he was drawing on these stories that were circulating at
the time of piracy. And that's another big theme of
my book is that piracy is not just about what
pirates are doing, because whether you are a pirate or
(03:54):
not depends upon who your friends are, It depends upon
legal issues, upon the stories being telling about you, like
William Dampierre trying to tell stories about himself. And so
the most famous pirates, people like Blackbeard and Bonnie, Mary Reads,
bar Pani, Roberts, they are all featured in this book,
The General History, published in seventeen twenty four, and it's
(04:16):
from that book that a lot of these famous stories
about pirates that then kind of become definitive and get
picked up by Treasure Island and so on.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
Later.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Were there any women pirates or were they all men?
Speaker 5 (04:27):
So that we know of two within the kind of
period we're talking about.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
We know of two Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid, who
again are very well known.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
They're discussed in the General.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
History, and interestingly, they're the only two pirates who are
not captains, who get their own chapters, who get their
own illustrations. They're prominently talked about on the title page.
So the writer of this book clearly thought that these
two women made a significant story.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
That would appeal to readers. And we know for certain
that these two women sailed on.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
A pirate ship, were involved in piracy, were tried and
sound guilty of piracy, but were.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
Not executed because they both pleaded that.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
They were pregnant, which meant that you would not be
executed for the term.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
Of the pregnancy. And then one of them.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Died in prison from a fever, and the other we
don't know but probably was not executed.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
So we know about those two.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Women, and it's interesting how in the record of their
trial they do come across as really determined fearce, you know,
more piratical than their male comrades in some ways. But
then there's a lot of stories about them from this
General History book which I don't personally believe to be
true at all, because there's no other evidence, and the
(05:41):
way in which these stories are being told about them
is really to try to make broader points about how
women should behave and kind of saying that these two
women are behaving in a really bad way. They're sort
of accused of being sexually promiscuous and all sorts of
things like that, and so I don't think we can
take any of that to actually be true.
Speaker 5 (05:59):
The story worries about the two of them and their
lives on ship.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
We know, for example, the stories talk about them dressing
as men and hiding their identity, but we know that
they were known as women from the start of the
voyage or very early on in the voyage, so it
seems highly unlikely, and people outside the voyage knew that.
So it really seems highly unlikely that they were actually
pretending to be men on this ship and hiding in
a way that the stories are told. I think there's
(06:23):
also a really interesting point though, because the story of
those two women is so sensational because people assumed that
women didn't go on ships and they had to pretend
to be men, and we do know of other women
who did that, who dressed as men to travel on ship,
but also women were traveling on ships, women were emigrating
to the Americas, women were traveling on ships.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
They were involved in trade.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
They were you know, their husbands were sailors, or they
were family connections. Sometimes they were investors. Sometimes they often
we were talking about black markets earlier. Often women have
a really crucial role in selling plunder and other commodities.
So I actually think there's a much much bigger role
for women in the maritime world than we normally assume.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Was there a police patrol that hunted down the pirates.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Usually not, and this is part of the issue through
this period. Indeed, one of the reasons that plundering really
develops is because imperial governments are happy to sponsor plundering
because they haven't got their own naval resources. No one
really has a substantial navy until the very end of
the period we're talking about, and that's one of the
key changes that brings about that extreme surge of piracy
(07:33):
in the early seventeen hundred that we mentioned. The empires
in Europe build up much bigger navies, which gives them
greater control. They no longer need to rely on piracy.
You get naval patrols being established in Jamaica, in the
Chesapeake Bay. You get expeditions sent to Madagascar, but even
(07:54):
then navy ships are rarely as quick.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
Or as maneuverable as pirates.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
It was I wanted to clarify, I said the length
of a football field. I'm at half a football field,
and we were talking about the lengths of ships earlier,
so so shorter than I had suggested, but sort of
on the east coast of the Americas, even the smallest
navy ships can't get into the creeks and the bays
and the places that the pirate ships can hide. So
often the actions being there are expeditions against pirates, but
(08:21):
the expeditions are being organized by local colonial merchants in smaller,
fast and maneuverable ships. So the expedition that captures what
kills black Beard, for example, it's led by navy officers,
but it's actually ships from Virginia who are which are
sent out because they have the kind of small and
maneuverable vessels. So there are efforts to crap down on piracy,
(08:42):
but they're rarely completely successful.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Is it conceivable that there was a wealthy individual who
fronted the pirates, owned the ship and did it for money.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
Definitely happened.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
It definitely happened on many occasions in the early in
the late sixteen hundreds, that was the most common situation,
right because, as I said, most people who were carrying
out plunder were trying to do it legally. A really
good example here is a guy called Lord Bellamont who
is the governor of New York in the sixteen nineties,
and he invests in and bats and helps politically with
(09:21):
William Kidd's voyage. William Kidd is again a very famous
name in pirate history, and Kid is sent out to
capture other pirates. He's sent out as a pirate hunter
to the Indian Ocean. But when he arrives, I mean
he always denies this, but he does turn to piracy,
and by the time he gets back, political circumstances have changed.
What Kid did in the Indian Ocean as well known
(09:42):
because of reports, and Bellamont is actually the man who
then arrests Kid, possibly to save his own neck because he's.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Been involved in this voyage.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
And Kid is sent back to London and tried and executed.
But so investors in pirate voyages. Is all plundering voyages
very common in that really extreme surge with black Beard
and Bonnie and Reed Kaliko Jack. In the early seventeen ten,
it's much less common merchants. The laws have changed. Merchants
might get prosecuted for themselves, so they're.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
More careful about what they're doing.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
But even then, some merchants are going to the Bahamas
to trade with pirates, and black Beard and many other
pirates actually get pardons from some colonial governors. I think
black Beard is pardoned in North Carolina and then he
goes back to piracy. So there are questions about the
relationship between even black Beard and some of these colonial
authority figures.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Today there are modern day pirates Richard in the United States,
for example. What they do is steal the cargo of ships.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
Yes, yeah, so, I mean this.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Is a really interesting distinction where we have this historical
image of piracy which is fun, which is in games
and films and you know, theme park rides and everything,
but actually plundering at sea has never gone away. It
doesn't stop after seventeen twenties, which is sort of the
end of the period I'm dealing with. You still get plundering,
you get spikes of piracy in times of war, and
(11:09):
you see, it's very interesting to compare some of these scenarios.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
So a well known example is.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Somalia in the early twenty first century, around two thousand
and nine twenty ten, and there you have some similarities
in that there's a breakdown of politics during the civil war.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
There's an economic.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Crash because the territorial wars in Somalia not being protected,
so there's overfishing, there's very possibly dumping of materials, all
sorts of things going on, and so fishermen in Somalia
who can no longer support themselves turned to piracy and
start capturing ships. And again that kind of economic incentive
is a big feature of historical piracy. There's also, just
(11:46):
as there was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in
the early twenty first century, there's a big legal dispute
in the United Nations about how best to deal with this,
how do you who's responsible for stopping piracy, who has jurisdiction.
That's a big problem in the tenth the eighteenth century,
and still a big problem in the twenty first century.
But there are also differences in the way they operate. Obviously,
not just technology, but also ransom and capturing of individuals,
(12:09):
which which does happen in some historic episodes of piracy,
and a lot of these pirates in the present day
are also connected with sort of international gangs for finance
and all sorts of things like that, so it's not
exactly the same. But I think it's really interesting how
we have compartmentalized in our brains between sort of historical
piracy which is kind of safe and fun, and then
(12:30):
the presence of violence at sea still being a feature
of life today.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Did the cargo ships have armed crew members once piracy
started really getting big.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Yes, absolutely, so all merchant ships were carrying weaponry in
order to prit themselves, partially because of pirates, but also
because of the maritime war. And I think this is
another key point of the period the sixteen hundreds of
seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
There are more periods.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Of war between England and Spain, France, then Neetherlents, and
there are periods of peace. And so first of all,
that creates lots of opportunities for plundering, and second of all,
it means that merchant ships have to be protecting themselves
whenever they're going to see But that also means that
they're very easy to convert to pirate ships. Right, most
chips at sea would have had some kind of ammunition,
(13:18):
So if you want to use that ship for plundering,
it's quite easy to do that.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
In the movies, Richard, the pirates would bury their treasure
and then come back and get it later.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Did that really happen?
Speaker 4 (13:29):
This is a really interesting one because I think the
sort of yes and no answer. So we have some
records that the General History that I mentioned is the
sort of very important book does say that one of
the reasons the pirates like to operate in the Caribbean
is because you've got lots of isolated islands where you
can bury treasure. And I wonder if that's where Robert
Luis Stevenson got the idea for Treasure Island from. But
(13:54):
the book says they just do that so the heat
dies down, and then they would go and collect it.
It's not like a stash in that way. It's trying
to use it to briefly, and all of the stories
about really large kind of buried treasure emerge later. Right,
So William Kidd claims to have stashed his treasure, but
(14:17):
he does that when he's about to be executed, and
I think it's quite clearly an attempt to get off
the hook. Other pirates who are supposed to have left
large stashes of treasure, those rumors don't really start to
arrive until the twentieth century. So it's possible that pirates
were burying their treasure, but I think it's really unlikely
that you're going to find a massive cave full of
treasure chests hidden away someone.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
What was the legal penalty for a pirate who was arrested, charged, convicted.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
Well, execution is a very clear.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Pirracy carries the death sentence through this entire period, but
actually relatively few people are executed, partially because it's very
hard to catch pirates, as we've been talking about with
the police action and that are the extent of the ocean,
hiding on the coastline, hiding in the bays and the
inlets on the east coast of the Americas. So you
(15:10):
have to catch them first, which happens very rarely. So
most pirates that simply are never captured. Even when they're captured,
sometimes they get pardoned because these are skilled sailors, they're
skilled soldiers, they're people who are useful to the government. So,
as I said, even Blackbeard gets to pardon before he
goes back to piracy and has then killed in battle.
But some pirates are pardoned and turned to government employment.
(15:36):
And then even if you have not done that and
you put them on trial, not every trial leads to
a conviction, right, some of the most famous trials do
and those pirates executed. William Kidd is a good example
of that. But there are legal difficulties. So in theory
it's very simple if you're a pirate, you get executed,
(15:57):
but in practice it's very hard to catch and then
to prove that someone is a pirate.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
Because as we said, there's all these legal forms of plundering.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
So some people, when they're put on trial, we'll say, oh,
well I was doing it legally, and then sometimes they're
actually acquitted. So again we have this popular image of
the sort of the gallows and that of pirates, that
you're hanging on the gallows of the port cities and
on the River Thames, and that definitely happens, but it
happens less frequently than you might imagine.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
What was that language for a pirate Churchard where they go?
What does that mean?
Speaker 4 (16:32):
There are some theories that there were pirate language, but
the kind of are e Shuvinmi Timbers. I think that's
something that comes up. The theory I've heard is that
an actor playing long John Silver in an early theater
stage had a pronounced West Country Bristolian, brit Or South
even ex sort of the British coastal southwest coast accent,
(16:56):
and that's where the kind of pirate actually was so
popular that everyone then saw copying that to play pirates.
Many pirates came from that part of Britain, so they
may well have had that accent, but it doesn't I
don't think you started saying Arah when you became a pirate.
Like I said, pirate is a career stage usually for sailors,
people involved in the maritime world, so I think they
talked like other sailors. And it's a very international world.
(17:19):
You're English, Dutch, Spanish, French. You have some people who
are escaped from slavery, so African African heritage. You have
pirates in the Mediterranean from from North Africa and the
Middle East. You have pirates in the Indian Ocean, plunderers
who are who are from North and South India.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
From China.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
So you know, there isn't really one pirate language, just
because there's not one type of pirate.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
The Best of Coast to Coast AM News
Host
George Noory
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