September 1, 2025 • 33 mins
Did pirates really have hooks for hands? Did they really make people walk the plank? Why is their flag called the “Jolly Roger?” In this episode, we separate myth from reality by looking at the true history of pirates.
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0:00 Separating Pirate Myths from Reality with Humor and History
5:06 Pirate Myths and Realities Unveiled
12:09 The Origins and Meaning of the Jolly Roger Flag
13:34 Pirate Life: Myths, Realities, and Drunken Adventures
16:29 Pirate Codes, Torture Methods, and Dark Humor
20:46 Famous Pirates and Their Legendary Exploits
28:31 Fascinating Pirate Facts and History Explored
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Did pirates really make people walk the plank?
Did they have pet parrots? Did they say are ahoy there?
My name is Zach Lee and I am thehost of the Ideological Podcast
and the director for the Institute of the Study.
What is it called? I'm a director of it, the
Institute for the Study of Philosophy, Politics and
(00:28):
Culture. Is it it just kind of rolls off
the tongue with those initial letters.
And today we are going to be talking about a brief and
interesting history of pirates. So I will be your your host
Calico Zach, right, Captain ZachSparrow.
(00:48):
And so as we as we dive in todayon what Stephen Hawking has
called the greatest podcast of all time, which is pretty
incredible. I was going to do the voice, but
I thought that would be way overthe top.
It's very hard to to quote him without doing his voice.
Today we're going to be talking about pirates and the history of
pirates. We're going to separate myth
(01:09):
versus reality, and it should bea ton of fun.
Today's episode is brought to you by You think it's going to
be rum, don't you? Because it's pirates.
No, that's too obvious. Instead, I've chosen liquid
death. You get it.
Because that's what pirates are.They're liquid death.
Liquid death plunder some booty they don't actually support.
(01:32):
Ideological podcast. Please do not sue us, OK?
We're going to talk about the history of pirates.
My background I'm I'm an intellectual historian, so I
like the history of ideas, you know, the history of philosophy,
that kind of stuff. And today we're going to be
talking about pirates. Who were they?
What did they believe? Should be a ton of fun.
I'm going to throw in some random pirate jokes here and
(01:53):
there just because why not? I mean, you should, as always, I
get my research from a bunch of different things.
I'm a big research guy, but a lot of the information comes
from a very helpful naval historian, a guy named David.
Accordingly, he's an English naval historian, and he's also
the former head of exhibitions at the National Maritime Museum
(02:15):
in England. So this guy's like the pirate
expert. Does that mean that he probably
died as a virgin? Maybe.
But who cares? You know, because he knows a
bunch about pirates, and piratesare fascinating.
So let's jump in pirate stuff. First of all, let's define some
of our terms. What is a pirate?
Right. For some reason, when somebody
(02:36):
steals like a movie or downloadsit illegally, we say they're
pirating instead of just stealing, which is weird.
Like when we when if somebody murders somebody silently, we
don't call it ninja ING. It's it's just murder.
But anyway, there's, you know, we think of Somali pirates and
Captain Phillips and the, you know, I'm the captain now guy.
I'm the captain now. What is a pirate?
(02:57):
A pirate is simply a sea criminal, OK?
It's a naval robber, specifically somebody that
commits robbery or other crimes on the high seas.
So there are pirates in the ancient world.
There are pirates in the modern world there.
There's always been bad guys on the ocean.
That's what a pirate is. Now, how's that different than a
Buccaneer? A Buccaneer is a football team.
(03:20):
I'm kidding. A Buccaneer is the name given to
pirates specifically around the Caribbean during the 17th and
18th centuries. So it's the 1600s and the 1700s
that's considered kind of the golden age of piracy, which is a
pun cause gold. What is a privateer?
Sometimes when you talk about pirates, you will, you will hear
the term a privateer. A privateer would be a private
(03:43):
ship that had permission from a government to attack rival
government ships. So like, if I worked with, you
know, if I was English, I could be a privateer and get this
Commission from the government of England to attack, let's say,
Spanish or French ships. And so there was a a bit of too
much crossover between what is aprivateer kind of a legal pirate
(04:03):
working for the government and a, a pirate like a like an
illegal pirate, like a bad guy. What is a Corsair?
Sometimes you'll hear this term Corsair that's used that is
simply a pirate in the Mediterranean.
Remember, pirates are not just in the Caribbean, which is what
we primarily think of, and for good reason, but they're pirates
around the Mediterranean were called corsairs.
(04:24):
So with that in mind, are we ready to get into some myth
versus reality with pirates? Wait, they're coming for you?
Death on the water. Liquid Death, which is just a
company that makes water. So I don't seems a little too
intense. It's like if you're a pencil
company and you call it something like murder pencils
(04:47):
and you're like, no, no, they'rejust pencils.
First pirate joke. What is a pirate's favorite
letter? No, not R.
You want to say R Rather it's the C myth versus reality
pirates. Let's start with the myths.
You ready? Pirates made people walk the
(05:09):
plank. That's a myth.
They didn't make people walk theplank.
I've read of 1 recorded account of somebody walking the plane
and it plank and it came from much later, like I think it was
1829 so after the golden age of piracy.
So that was it. Could it have happened?
Could it have happened a couple times?
Maybe, but that is generally A myth, which is sad.
(05:29):
Now pirates did have a plank that hung out over the water
with a hole cut in it so they could use the bathroom.
That's a different kind of thingthough.
So anyway, that's a myth. What about this one?
Pirates had gold as their primary treasure.
That's what we think of, right? We think of a chest of buried
treasure of gold. And that is also a myth.
(05:52):
Their, their primary treasure were things like silk, tobacco,
sails, spices, and listen to this one, slaves.
Unfortunately. So what a lot of people don't
realize is that pirates were huge slave traders.
They made a lot of their money transporting slaves.
We never see that we, we, we romanticize them.
(06:14):
But a big part of what, how theymade their money was by selling
people. And it's really terrible because
a lot of times, like if a pirateship went down or sunk, they
might have a bunch of slave slaves tied up underneath below
deck. And that would actually be be
really terrible. Sorry, somebody's knocking at
the door, but I'm not going to answer because it's probably a
pirate. What about this one?
(06:36):
Pirates buried their treasure. Is that true?
That is also a myth because theywant to spin their treasure.
You just don't want to bury it and put it in the sand.
That makes no sense. And so they usually wanted to
sell or spin their treasure and not bury it.
One exception to this is CaptainKidd.
(06:57):
You may have buried some treasure off an island of New
York, but the background of thatstory isn't super clear.
So they didn't have treasure maps, right?
So we think of X marks the Spot,we think of treasure maps, we
think of pirates bearing their treasure.
That's a myth. If you have a bunch of gold and
you're probably going to die because you're in a dangerous
profession, you go live it up. You don't just bury it in some
(07:18):
sand on some island somewhere. That's ridiculous.
Another myth when it comes to pirates, this is one that we
have, is that pirates just sleptbelow deck.
So what's underneath the top of the ship?
It's just pirates sleeping belowdeck.
Is that true? No.
Here's what they would have. Drinking water was kept in
barrels on the ship, and animalssuch as cows, chickens and goats
(07:38):
were kept below deck. So you've got like, this whole
zoo thing going on underneath this deck on a pirate ship.
Gross. Smells, feces.
Disgusting. Pirates are gross.
OK, pirate costumes during Halloween can be a little bit
attractive, but pirates themselves are gross.
How about this? All pirates used a black Jolly
(08:00):
Roger flag. That's what we always see right
on the movies. They come up and they've got
this swords or crossbones and a skull and that also it's not a
myth that they used that. It's a myth that that's the only
kind of flag that pirates use. They actually use a bunch of
different kinds. They would use other nations
flags to trick people. Pirate flags would have things
(08:23):
such as bleeding hearts, hourglasses to say that your
time is up, death is coming, burning balls, let's call that
great balls of fire, Spears, swords, and also entire
skeletons. More scary, scarier rather than
all of that is what is called the bloody red flag.
So what they would do is they'd fly their pirate flag and come
(08:44):
to take over your ship because they want your stuff primarily.
And if you didn't surrender, they would raise a red flag,
which meant they're going to freaking kill everyone on board.
It meant we will show no quarter, we will show no mercy,
everyone will die. So it's like, hey, here's our
scary flag with a skull on it. Now's the time to surrender.
Oh, you're showing some resistance.
(09:07):
We will send you to Davy Jones Locker.
Right. So that's, that's one of the
myths versus reality of pirate flags.
Here's another one that pirate ships were huge.
We, we see movies of pirates andwe think that the ships are
absolutely enormous. Most pirate ships were pretty
small because again, they're naval criminals.
They're trying to to go quickly,they're trying to get in, take
(09:28):
stuff. They're heavily armed, but
they're typically smaller so they can be faster and so they
can hide. And they're not huge.
These huge typical like movie enormous kinds of ships.
They wanted to outrun other ships.
They're not going to be as big as the the big warships.
For example, in the British Navy, which was the most
powerful Navy at the time, For example, a large pirate ship
(09:51):
might have 40 guns. By guns there we mean cannons.
The largest of British warships,though, might have over 100 guns
and a crew of 850. So they are no match as far as
firepower for like an actual, you know, naval vessel.
They're typically smaller. So that's again, another myth
about pirates is that their ships were these enormous
things. How about this one?
(10:12):
You ready? Pirates said are and and that
they were primarily British. That's also a myth.
Most pirates were. Wait for it.
What would you guess? What nation?
You guessed it, The French weren't.
Weren't. Don't get me wrong, good wine,
(10:34):
good lingerie, but the French? Just a bunch of pirate people.
So most pirates were actually French.
And then in the Golden Age of Piracy a little bit later on,
there were a lot of English pirates.
But we have a tendency to think they're only English.
That's why they talk like this. And they are always speaking
English. So there were Portuguese
pirates, Spanish pirates, you know, French pirates, English
(10:57):
pirates, Dutch pirates, all, allkinds of all kinds of pirates
back in the day. Let's talk about some things
with reality. So that's kind of sad when you
hear they didn't make people walk the plank.
They didn't really have a hook hand like Captain Hook or
something like this. We think.
Is anything we believe about pirates true?
Well, yes, here are some things that you would assume about
pirates that are true. They did dress the way that we
(11:19):
picture them, yes. They're wearing the naval coats,
trouser trousers, scarves, loosefitting shirts, that kind of
stuff. That is how they actually
dressed. So good news.
What you're thinking of as a pirate is probably similar to
the way that a pirate actually looked.
They did have parrots, yes. It's happening, guys.
Pirates, they're real, right? They're real.
(11:40):
They did have parrots and monkeys as pets because again,
they're in these tropical regions, and so they would take
these things as pets. Little monkeys and parrots and
brightly colored birds and stuffthey would keep as pets on the
ship, which is awesome. They did have doubloons and
pieces of eight as currency, which you've probably heard of
these things. By the way, a piece of eight
back then was worth about what $40 is worth today, depending on
(12:06):
the market and inflation and whois in office and blah, blah,
blah. OK, they did use the jolly Roger
as a flag yes again, it wasn't their only flag.
That was the myth, but they theydefinitely had that as a flag.
Now why is it called the Jolly Roger?
There's a lot of myth around this.
Some people think that it is thefrom the French Jolie Rouge
(12:28):
other people, which which which has to do with like this pretty
red kind of thing. The the most common view though,
is that it's a combination of several things.
It's showing death, but it's also smiling and it's happy.
It's like, it's like calling it joyful dead or like happy, you
(12:53):
know, destruction or something like that.
Also, this is something people don't talk about much.
This is enough. This is a big part of it.
The devil back then, one of the nicknames for him was old Roger.
So you have the Jolly Roger thatthe happy devil or the, the,
the, the joyful death or something like that.
And so it's meant to be this ironic thing where you see this
smiling skull and you're like, why is it happy?
(13:14):
Oh, they're also going to kill us.
It's meant to have that weird irony to it.
So there you go. Most pirates as you would think
we're single Now, don't get me wrong.
They are living it up with the ladies, right?
You know the winches, if you will.
Women be winching. And but only about 4% of pirates
were married. What would you do out on the sea
(13:35):
while you're just bored surrounded by a bunch of dudes?
Well, pirates would pass their time drinking, swearing,
blaspheming, gambling, singing and playing music.
OK, so kind of a typical Friday night for a lot of a lot of
people. Interestingly enough, there were
very few gay pirates. One of the one of the the books
that I was looking at, by the way, the best book on this topic
(13:56):
is Under the Black Flag, which is by accordingly that guy I
mentioned. It's so fascinating.
It's, it's really great, really well written, so highly, highly
recommended. I took a lot of this info from
that, but I think he mentioned something like, don't quote me
on this, but I think there were like 2 pirates during this whole
time that were executed for homosexuality.
Which is interesting because like you, you think of people
(14:16):
going to prison today and you'relike, well they'll just have to
be prison gay for a while because there's only men around.
But pirates just kind of waited till they got back to shore to
find some unbathed women. They did drink constantly.
OK, so drunkenness and drinking and all of that was big for
pirates. That is true.
That is not a myth. In in a lot of their records of
(14:38):
execution where they would kill pirates or hang them for, for
piracy, a lot of them mentioned that they were drunk at the
time, that they weren't fully incontrol.
But just to put it in perspective, water wasn't very
safe to drink back then. So in the 1600s, if you were a
sailor in the British Navy, do you know what your drinking
rations were? Your drinking rations Each day
(15:00):
was a gallon of beer and a pint of rum per day.
No water for you, just way too much alcohol all the time.
So these guys are constantly sloshed.
The reason that they're seeing mermaids and stuff is because
they are hammered. OK, they are hammered.
Popular pirate locations do include the places you would
think Jamaica, Nassau, all theseplaces where it's pretty, these
(15:24):
little islands, but also other places off the coast of Africa
like Madagascar. They were definitely missing
teeth. Remember, there were no
toothbrushes back then. Oral hygiene was not great and
their gums were typically bad because a lot of pirates who
would get scurvy. What is scurvy?
Scurvy's this thing your body does that's gross when you don't
get enough citrus. And so citrus fruits, citric
(15:47):
acid. I don't know.
I'm not a, I'm not a medical guy.
I'm a, I'm a humanities guy. But anyway, eat your fruits so
you don't get scurvy again. Scurvy.
This episode is brought to you by scurvy.
Gross. Keep your blood inside your
body. They also had, as part of
(16:08):
reality, a pirate code. Let me read you.
This comes from the pirate code of Bartholomew Roberts in 1722.
Listen to this code. So this is what you would sign.
Even though you're this notorious criminal and you rape
and pillage and plunder and you slave trade and you do all this
crazy bad stuff, you still have a pirate code because you can't.
You know, even thieves don't like when you steal from.
(16:28):
They don't. They don't like when other
thieves steal from them. Here's the code ready.
Every man shall be called fairlyin turn by the list on board of
prizes, because over and above their proper share they are
allowed a shift of clothes. But if they defraud the company
to the value of even $1.00 in plate, jewels, or money, they
shall be marooned. If any man rob another, he shall
(16:51):
have his nose and ears slit and be put ashore, where he shall be
sure to encounter hardships. If any man shall be found
seducing one of the latter sex meaning women, and carrying her
to sea in disguise, he shall suffer death.
None shall strike another on board the ship, but every man's
quarrel shall be ended on shore by sword or pistol.
(17:13):
Holy shit, that's awesome. So, you know you can murder all
these people. Don't fight on the ship.
Don't sneak women on board, right?
Don't steal from us. Steal from other people, or
you're going to have a problem, right?
So next joke. A pirate walks into a bar and he
has the steering wheel of a shipshoved down the front of his
pants. He can barely walk around, and
(17:36):
he's here in the bar bumping into things.
And the bartender says, Sir, yourealize you have a ship's
steering wheel in the front of your pants.
And the pirate says, ah, I know,it's driving me nuts.
How would pirates torture their victims?
(17:58):
On that note, how would pirates torture their victims?
Well, one common form of tortureinvolved wrapping somebody's
head with tight cords until their eyes popped out and they
died. Gross.
Another thing they would do was called keel hauling.
(18:19):
What is keel hauling? Listen to this.
Pay attention today. We're more humane with the way
we execute people. This is one of the things that
they would do is they would takesomebody and tie their arms and
legs and then they would drop them down the front of the ship,
drag them underneath the bottom of the ship till they got to the
back. And then we actually have a
little YouTube video. I don't know if we can cut in
(18:40):
there to to show you briefly what keel hauling was like.
Now remember, the bottom of a ship is covered with barnacles
and splinters and all of this. So people would die by drowning,
they would bleed to death, they would get torn up and lacerated
on the bottom of that ship. And if your body scraped along
the whole length of the ship andyou didn't die, they did it
again. There is a case of pirates, and
(19:04):
maybe more than one, but at least one of pirates soaking
someone's heart and spirits and then eating it.
One of the things pirates would do to each other on board if
they broke the rules like we just saw, or to other people is
what is called marooning. Being marooned on a desert
island. You've probably heard of this.
What they would do is they wouldsay, all right, here you go,
we're dropping you off on this island and you're just going to
(19:24):
die slowly. We're going to leave you maybe a
pistol with one bullet. So if you want to just end it,
you can. But marooning was pretty common.
They would bury people alive. Sometimes I read 1 case of
pirates making a woman stand naked in a barrel full of
gunpowder with a Wick in her face, demanding that she tell
(19:45):
them where she hid her treasure.So other people would hide
treasure, but the pirates would spend theirs.
Again, pirates. They would cut off people's
limbs, do terrible things. The craziest thing that I heard,
and again this comes from accordingly, is that the most
extremely there was a pirate whowould cut someone's stomach,
nail one part of their entrails,their intestines to the ship.
(20:07):
And then make them dance to their death by hitting their
back with a burning log until all their guts fell out.
I don't know if you've seen thatdeleted scene from the
children's movie Peter Pan wherethey do that.
It is very aggressive for littlekids to watch.
(20:27):
Let's talk about some famous fictional pirates.
You're ready. These are ones you've probably
heard of. This is this is what we think of
with pirates. There's a lot of like legend and
lore mixed with reality, so here's a few.
Long John Silver, right, the famous pirate who started that
disgusting food chain where everybody gets sick.
This episode is brought to you by Long John Silver.
(20:50):
Long John Silver's It'd be better to be marooned on a
desert island than to eat our fish.
Long John Silver and Treasure Island by Robert Louis
Stevenson. Captain Hook, right, and Peter
Pan by JM Barry. The Dread Pirate Roberts for
some of my older audience in ThePrincess Bride.
(21:12):
Captain Jack Sparrow, who's verylikable in Pirates of the
Caribbean. Edward Kenway in Assassin's
Creed Black Flag, which is probably the best pirate video
game, if that should even be a thing.
You can download it illegally. It's called Pirating Pirates.
And there's many others, right? But that these are the
(21:34):
characters we think of. We think of the the peg leg,
which by the way, when we talk about myth versus reality, that
that's actually a real thing that because they're on the ship
and they're constantly in battleand there are ropes running by
their legs and they're getting shot.
They did lose limbs. And so you did have pirates that
had no legs, walked with crutches.
The peg leg thing was real. Or some type of prosthetic leg
(21:56):
that is that is real as well. OK, let's talk about some famous
pirates. Are you ready?
Before we do that, I think it's time for another joke.
Where does a pirate go after work?
To the bar. OK.
What? What?
What is a pirate's favorite movies?
Rated R. What does a pirate drive to
(22:19):
work? A car?
No, a ship. Let's talk about famous pirates.
Here we go. John Rackham AKA Calico Jack.
If I had a pirate name it would be Calico Zac.
I like that. I think that's cool.
He was a flamboyantly dressed pirate captain who would wear
(22:41):
brightly colored clothes. He had a harem of mistresses off
the coast of Cuba. He worked with Mary Reed and
Anne Bonnie. 2 famous female pirates.
These these are women that dressed up like men and snuck
into pirate crews and became these famous pirates even though
they were ladies. Jack Rackham or John Rackham
(23:01):
worked with Mary Reed and Anne Bonnie.
He seduced Bonnie away from her sailor husband so she has a type
she likes, she likes semen, she likes men that are at sea and he
took her on board his ship. The women were eventually
condemned to death for piracy but were both pregnant so they
could not be hanged. While they were pregnant, Mary
(23:21):
Reed died in prison. Calico Jack.
John Rackham. Fascinating.
Another real pirate. Now this guy, kind of this next
guy kind of blurs the line between legal privateer and
pirate. He's a guy named Francis Drake.
You've probably heard of him, and he's kind of a big deal.
So there's Drake the singer, andthen there's Francis Drake, a
much bigger deal. He's the first Englishman to
(23:43):
circumnavigate the globe and notdie.
Remember, Magellan and his crew went around the world again,
which is a sphere, you dumb flatearthers.
And but Magellan died, right? He he wasn't Gellan like a
felon. He he died and and so other
people in his crew made it around.
As far as the first Englishman, though, and the first like
(24:04):
captain to go all the way as a captain to circumnavigate the
globe and not die was Francis Drake.
He was more of a privateer, but the Spanish called him a pirate
and gave him the name the dragon.
That is so sick. The dragon Francis Drake.
He famously one time captured a ship.
Listen to this called in Spanishthe Cacafuego or Shitfire.
(24:26):
OK it's the name of the ship. Great great name for a ship.
If you're looking for a a good ship name, highly recommend the
Cacafuego. Bartholomew Roberts, right, who
took over 4, who was again another pirate captain.
He was captain of a ship called the Royal Fortune.
He took over 400 vessels in his career.
(24:48):
OK. Bartholomew Roberts, I think his
nickname, I can't remember. I didn't write this down.
I think it's Black Bart because of that, because of his his
constant piracy. Henry Avery, another famous
pirate. He pulled off one of the largest
treasure heists in world history, in maritime history of
all time. He raided an Indian treasure
(25:08):
ship worth 10s of millions of dollars today.
OK. He was a captain of the ship
called the Fancy. OK, so that was that's Henry
Avery. Listen to this next one.
Henry Morgan. You heard of this guy?
You have you don't know it yet. You ever heard of Captain
Morgan? When it comes to rum, he's
always got his leg up. Captain Morgan.
(25:30):
This episode brought you by Captain Morgan.
Rump. Captain Morgan making ugly
winches look a little bit prettier.
Henry Morgan. So that's who Captain Morgan is
named off named after. He was a knight, so it's
actually Sir Henry Morgan. He was also the Lieutenant
governor of Jamaica for a while.So fascinating.
(25:50):
Pirates in politics. There's already a lot of pirates
in politics, if you ask me. William Kidd, Captain Kidd is
probably a pirate you've heard of.
He was the captain of a ship called the Adventure Galley.
He was a privateer turned piratewho was hanged for piracy and
his body bound in change and displayed in London near the
(26:12):
River Thames for years. So you're hanged.
Your body's wrapped in change, and you're just, you just, you
just get hanged up, hung up by the River Thames for years.
So people walk by and they're like, hey, there's a corpse in
chains hanging here by the water.
And you say, yeah, that was Captain Kidd.
They are not kidding around. And then, most interestingly,
(26:34):
you ready? Edward Teach.
You know him by his stage name. You know him by his, his, AKA
his alias Blackbeard. Edward Teach.
Blackbeard. Listen to this guy.
This guy was a crazy mof. He did have a black beard and it
was super long and also really high.
(26:54):
It went up almost to his eyes. OK, So big black beard.
Edward Teach, he used to tie ribbons into his beard.
He would also put matches or Wicks underneath his hat before
battle and light them on fire. He had crazy looking eyes.
He's got this big long beard with ribbons in it and he's got
Wicks or matches underneath his hat on fire.
(27:15):
So as he turns, there's smoke all around him as he's fighting.
So he looks like a demon. OK, so he's got all this stuff
going on. He was armed to the teeth.
He would have up to 4 pistols strapped to him, a knife and a
cutlass. He is rumored to have married 14
different women at different times.
So he had 14 marriages. And most notoriously, he married
(27:36):
a girl who was 16 in North Carolina.
After sleeping with her all night, he allowed five or six of
his crew mates to ravish her. He supposedly died fighting with
five bullets in him and 20 cuts.He was captain of the Queen
Anne's Revenge, which it was a very large pirate ship.
That was that. That one was unique and that it
was very big and very well armed.
(27:57):
That's Blackbeard. He's a sex crazed, crazy,
covered in smoke, huge beard, murdery people dies like
Rasputin where you just can't kill him.
Blackbeard, Edward Thatch or Edward Teach.
Fascinating. Let's talk about a few other
fascinating facts about pirates and then we will be done on our
(28:18):
voyage. So Avastji, pay attention.
Other fascinating facts about pirates.
Here we go. Pirates took part in the
Crusades in the Mediterranean. Did you know that we always just
think of the Crusades of these nights on land going to fight
the Muzzies? But instead there were also
(28:39):
anti, you know, Islamic pirates in the Mediterranean fighting
each other. And I think they're also, they
were also Islamic Muslim pirates, these, these Turks and
stuff also that were pirating the other way.
So I, that's again, pirates are very old.
The concept of criminality is very old.
And this is just criminality with water, right?
So really the only superhero you've got to watch out for
(29:00):
there is Aquaman, who's really alame superhero cause like most
crime happens on land and he's like just stands at the beach I
guess and is like, hey, why don't you come in the water and
say that, right? Why?
Why? You're just doing whatever you
want on land. Other fascinating facts about
pirates. Listen to this.
I don't know that you're ready for this one.
Who is the most successful, powerful, had the biggest Armada
(29:28):
of ships, pirate person of all time ready.
It's a chick, a pirate lady. Some of the most violent and
successful pirates were actuallyin the South China Sea.
Perhaps the most powerful piratein history was a former
prostitute named Missus Chang. She had 400 ships and about
40,000 people in her crew at theheight height of her power.
(29:51):
This is the early 1800s. Isn't that fascinating?
How old do you think the averagepirate is?
I think in our mind we think of him as like 40.
The average age of most pirates was about 27.
So young guys, most pirate shipshad a crew of around 80.
In between bouts of drinking, pirates would fire the ship's
guns just for fun. So they'd be like to here to my
(30:14):
wind chaff of Hispaniolia or something.
And then they would fire the guns and giggle and get back to
their drinking. There you go.
Listen to this Nassau, OK? This beautiful island became a
pirate Republic in the early 1700s.
This island became a pirate run state.
So imagine you have a nation that is run by and for pirates,
(30:38):
Nassau. You could come there, get your
ship repaired, sleep with the whores, get you some rum, hang
out with other pirates. And a lot of famous pirates were
involved in this. Nassau.
It was a pirate state, a pirate Republic.
Absolutely fascinating. You didn't know there was a
pirate Republic, did you? You didn't know there were all
these nations and then an actualpirate nation, which is insane.
(30:59):
Listen to this. Some battles were fought at sea
during storms and even with waterspouts, which are water
tornadoes. So imagine you're out there and
you see an enemy ship and they're firing cannons at you
and you're firing cannons at them and it's dark all around
you. The sky is dark, it's like green
and Gray. And you see this huge storm
(31:21):
coming. You look all around you and all
you can see is ocean. Huge waves, huge, you know,
white caps. It's you and another boat in the
middle of a huge storm. Waves are hitting you, and then
there are tornadoes going on around you in the water as
you're fighting this sea battle.I'm not sure that I can think of
(31:47):
something cooler than that. That's pretty cool.
When pirates were hanged, listento this because they had
committed crimes at sea. They weren't tried by a
traditional judge or something like that, because those are
land judges. Rather, it was the Lord High
Admiral, the one who is over things going on in the sea, that
would try them. And when pirates were hanged,
(32:08):
listen to this, what they would do is they would hang them in
places where at high tide, the water would wash over their
bodies. So it's, it's, it's, it's as if
to say, because you committed these crimes at sea, we are
killing you by the sea and the sea will wash over you and
you're judged by the Lord High Admiral.
It's all sea stuff. It's really, really cool and
really, really fascinating. There were some pirates, though,
(32:32):
that, you know, that changed their ways, that repented Cotton
Mather, a famous Puritan minister, especially out of
places like Boston, would call people to repentance.
He, he was like a chaplain in a lot of the jails, which is
really, really fascinating. So Speaking of needing
repentance, let me give you my last joke.
And this one's a dirty joke. So if your kids are listening,
maybe, maybe earmuffs them. What is the difference between a
(32:55):
dinner party and a pirate orgy? A dinner party says come as you
are. A pirate orgy says ours.
You come. I can't, I can't even.
It's too much. Don't e-mail me, I'll just
delete it and I'm going to keep telling my jokes.
What do you think of pirates? That is A brief History of
(33:15):
Pirates on ideological where we talk about things that are
interesting. Thank you for joining me.
Thanks for being part of my crewon this voyage as we talk about
the the history and fascinating facts related to pirates.
I hope that you join in next time.
Did pirates really make people walk the plank?
Did they have pet parrots? Did they say are ahoy there?
My name is Zach Lee and I am thehost of the Ideological Podcast
and the director for the Institute of the Study.
What is it called? I'm a director of it, the
Institute for the Study of Philosophy, Politics and
(00:28):
Culture. Is it it just kind of rolls off
the tongue with those initial letters.
And today we are going to be talking about a brief and
interesting history of pirates. So I will be your your host
Calico Zach, right, Captain ZachSparrow.
(00:48):
And so as we as we dive in todayon what Stephen Hawking has
called the greatest podcast of all time, which is pretty
incredible. I was going to do the voice, but
I thought that would be way overthe top.
It's very hard to to quote him without doing his voice.
Today we're going to be talking about pirates and the history of
pirates. We're going to separate myth
(01:09):
versus reality, and it should bea ton of fun.
Today's episode is brought to you by You think it's going to
be rum, don't you? Because it's pirates.
No, that's too obvious. Instead, I've chosen liquid
death. You get it.
Because that's what pirates are.They're liquid death.
Liquid death plunder some booty they don't actually support.
(01:32):
Ideological podcast. Please do not sue us, OK?
We're going to talk about the history of pirates.
My background I'm I'm an intellectual historian, so I
like the history of ideas, you know, the history of philosophy,
that kind of stuff. And today we're going to be
talking about pirates. Who were they?
What did they believe? Should be a ton of fun.
I'm going to throw in some random pirate jokes here and
(01:53):
there just because why not? I mean, you should, as always, I
get my research from a bunch of different things.
I'm a big research guy, but a lot of the information comes
from a very helpful naval historian, a guy named David.
Accordingly, he's an English naval historian, and he's also
the former head of exhibitions at the National Maritime Museum
(02:15):
in England. So this guy's like the pirate
expert. Does that mean that he probably
died as a virgin? Maybe.
But who cares? You know, because he knows a
bunch about pirates, and piratesare fascinating.
So let's jump in pirate stuff. First of all, let's define some
of our terms. What is a pirate?
Right. For some reason, when somebody
(02:36):
steals like a movie or downloadsit illegally, we say they're
pirating instead of just stealing, which is weird.
Like when we when if somebody murders somebody silently, we
don't call it ninja ING. It's it's just murder.
But anyway, there's, you know, we think of Somali pirates and
Captain Phillips and the, you know, I'm the captain now guy.
I'm the captain now. What is a pirate?
(02:57):
A pirate is simply a sea criminal, OK?
It's a naval robber, specifically somebody that
commits robbery or other crimes on the high seas.
So there are pirates in the ancient world.
There are pirates in the modern world there.
There's always been bad guys on the ocean.
That's what a pirate is. Now, how's that different than a
Buccaneer? A Buccaneer is a football team.
(03:20):
I'm kidding. A Buccaneer is the name given to
pirates specifically around the Caribbean during the 17th and
18th centuries. So it's the 1600s and the 1700s
that's considered kind of the golden age of piracy, which is a
pun cause gold. What is a privateer?
Sometimes when you talk about pirates, you will, you will hear
the term a privateer. A privateer would be a private
(03:43):
ship that had permission from a government to attack rival
government ships. So like, if I worked with, you
know, if I was English, I could be a privateer and get this
Commission from the government of England to attack, let's say,
Spanish or French ships. And so there was a a bit of too
much crossover between what is aprivateer kind of a legal pirate
(04:03):
working for the government and a, a pirate like a like an
illegal pirate, like a bad guy. What is a Corsair?
Sometimes you'll hear this term Corsair that's used that is
simply a pirate in the Mediterranean.
Remember, pirates are not just in the Caribbean, which is what
we primarily think of, and for good reason, but they're pirates
around the Mediterranean were called corsairs.
(04:24):
So with that in mind, are we ready to get into some myth
versus reality with pirates? Wait, they're coming for you?
Death on the water. Liquid Death, which is just a
company that makes water. So I don't seems a little too
intense. It's like if you're a pencil
company and you call it something like murder pencils
(04:47):
and you're like, no, no, they'rejust pencils.
First pirate joke. What is a pirate's favorite
letter? No, not R.
You want to say R Rather it's the C myth versus reality
pirates. Let's start with the myths.
You ready? Pirates made people walk the
(05:09):
plank. That's a myth.
They didn't make people walk theplank.
I've read of 1 recorded account of somebody walking the plane
and it plank and it came from much later, like I think it was
1829 so after the golden age of piracy.
So that was it. Could it have happened?
Could it have happened a couple times?
Maybe, but that is generally A myth, which is sad.
(05:29):
Now pirates did have a plank that hung out over the water
with a hole cut in it so they could use the bathroom.
That's a different kind of thingthough.
So anyway, that's a myth. What about this one?
Pirates had gold as their primary treasure.
That's what we think of, right? We think of a chest of buried
treasure of gold. And that is also a myth.
(05:52):
Their, their primary treasure were things like silk, tobacco,
sails, spices, and listen to this one, slaves.
Unfortunately. So what a lot of people don't
realize is that pirates were huge slave traders.
They made a lot of their money transporting slaves.
We never see that we, we, we romanticize them.
(06:14):
But a big part of what, how theymade their money was by selling
people. And it's really terrible because
a lot of times, like if a pirateship went down or sunk, they
might have a bunch of slave slaves tied up underneath below
deck. And that would actually be be
really terrible. Sorry, somebody's knocking at
the door, but I'm not going to answer because it's probably a
pirate. What about this one?
(06:36):
Pirates buried their treasure. Is that true?
That is also a myth because theywant to spin their treasure.
You just don't want to bury it and put it in the sand.
That makes no sense. And so they usually wanted to
sell or spin their treasure and not bury it.
One exception to this is CaptainKidd.
(06:57):
You may have buried some treasure off an island of New
York, but the background of thatstory isn't super clear.
So they didn't have treasure maps, right?
So we think of X marks the Spot,we think of treasure maps, we
think of pirates bearing their treasure.
That's a myth. If you have a bunch of gold and
you're probably going to die because you're in a dangerous
profession, you go live it up. You don't just bury it in some
(07:18):
sand on some island somewhere. That's ridiculous.
Another myth when it comes to pirates, this is one that we
have, is that pirates just sleptbelow deck.
So what's underneath the top of the ship?
It's just pirates sleeping belowdeck.
Is that true? No.
Here's what they would have. Drinking water was kept in
barrels on the ship, and animalssuch as cows, chickens and goats
(07:38):
were kept below deck. So you've got like, this whole
zoo thing going on underneath this deck on a pirate ship.
Gross. Smells, feces.
Disgusting. Pirates are gross.
OK, pirate costumes during Halloween can be a little bit
attractive, but pirates themselves are gross.
How about this? All pirates used a black Jolly
(08:00):
Roger flag. That's what we always see right
on the movies. They come up and they've got
this swords or crossbones and a skull and that also it's not a
myth that they used that. It's a myth that that's the only
kind of flag that pirates use. They actually use a bunch of
different kinds. They would use other nations
flags to trick people. Pirate flags would have things
(08:23):
such as bleeding hearts, hourglasses to say that your
time is up, death is coming, burning balls, let's call that
great balls of fire, Spears, swords, and also entire
skeletons. More scary, scarier rather than
all of that is what is called the bloody red flag.
So what they would do is they'd fly their pirate flag and come
(08:44):
to take over your ship because they want your stuff primarily.
And if you didn't surrender, they would raise a red flag,
which meant they're going to freaking kill everyone on board.
It meant we will show no quarter, we will show no mercy,
everyone will die. So it's like, hey, here's our
scary flag with a skull on it. Now's the time to surrender.
Oh, you're showing some resistance.
(09:07):
We will send you to Davy Jones Locker.
Right. So that's, that's one of the
myths versus reality of pirate flags.
Here's another one that pirate ships were huge.
We, we see movies of pirates andwe think that the ships are
absolutely enormous. Most pirate ships were pretty
small because again, they're naval criminals.
They're trying to to go quickly,they're trying to get in, take
(09:28):
stuff. They're heavily armed, but
they're typically smaller so they can be faster and so they
can hide. And they're not huge.
These huge typical like movie enormous kinds of ships.
They wanted to outrun other ships.
They're not going to be as big as the the big warships.
For example, in the British Navy, which was the most
powerful Navy at the time, For example, a large pirate ship
(09:51):
might have 40 guns. By guns there we mean cannons.
The largest of British warships,though, might have over 100 guns
and a crew of 850. So they are no match as far as
firepower for like an actual, you know, naval vessel.
They're typically smaller. So that's again, another myth
about pirates is that their ships were these enormous
things. How about this one?
(10:12):
You ready? Pirates said are and and that
they were primarily British. That's also a myth.
Most pirates were. Wait for it.
What would you guess? What nation?
You guessed it, The French weren't.
Weren't. Don't get me wrong, good wine,
(10:34):
good lingerie, but the French? Just a bunch of pirate people.
So most pirates were actually French.
And then in the Golden Age of Piracy a little bit later on,
there were a lot of English pirates.
But we have a tendency to think they're only English.
That's why they talk like this. And they are always speaking
English. So there were Portuguese
pirates, Spanish pirates, you know, French pirates, English
(10:57):
pirates, Dutch pirates, all, allkinds of all kinds of pirates
back in the day. Let's talk about some things
with reality. So that's kind of sad when you
hear they didn't make people walk the plank.
They didn't really have a hook hand like Captain Hook or
something like this. We think.
Is anything we believe about pirates true?
Well, yes, here are some things that you would assume about
pirates that are true. They did dress the way that we
(11:19):
picture them, yes. They're wearing the naval coats,
trouser trousers, scarves, loosefitting shirts, that kind of
stuff. That is how they actually
dressed. So good news.
What you're thinking of as a pirate is probably similar to
the way that a pirate actually looked.
They did have parrots, yes. It's happening, guys.
Pirates, they're real, right? They're real.
(11:40):
They did have parrots and monkeys as pets because again,
they're in these tropical regions, and so they would take
these things as pets. Little monkeys and parrots and
brightly colored birds and stuffthey would keep as pets on the
ship, which is awesome. They did have doubloons and
pieces of eight as currency, which you've probably heard of
these things. By the way, a piece of eight
back then was worth about what $40 is worth today, depending on
(12:06):
the market and inflation and whois in office and blah, blah,
blah. OK, they did use the jolly Roger
as a flag yes again, it wasn't their only flag.
That was the myth, but they theydefinitely had that as a flag.
Now why is it called the Jolly Roger?
There's a lot of myth around this.
Some people think that it is thefrom the French Jolie Rouge
(12:28):
other people, which which which has to do with like this pretty
red kind of thing. The the most common view though,
is that it's a combination of several things.
It's showing death, but it's also smiling and it's happy.
It's like, it's like calling it joyful dead or like happy, you
(12:53):
know, destruction or something like that.
Also, this is something people don't talk about much.
This is enough. This is a big part of it.
The devil back then, one of the nicknames for him was old Roger.
So you have the Jolly Roger thatthe happy devil or the, the,
the, the joyful death or something like that.
And so it's meant to be this ironic thing where you see this
smiling skull and you're like, why is it happy?
(13:14):
Oh, they're also going to kill us.
It's meant to have that weird irony to it.
So there you go. Most pirates as you would think
we're single Now, don't get me wrong.
They are living it up with the ladies, right?
You know the winches, if you will.
Women be winching. And but only about 4% of pirates
were married. What would you do out on the sea
(13:35):
while you're just bored surrounded by a bunch of dudes?
Well, pirates would pass their time drinking, swearing,
blaspheming, gambling, singing and playing music.
OK, so kind of a typical Friday night for a lot of a lot of
people. Interestingly enough, there were
very few gay pirates. One of the one of the the books
that I was looking at, by the way, the best book on this topic
(13:56):
is Under the Black Flag, which is by accordingly that guy I
mentioned. It's so fascinating.
It's, it's really great, really well written, so highly, highly
recommended. I took a lot of this info from
that, but I think he mentioned something like, don't quote me
on this, but I think there were like 2 pirates during this whole
time that were executed for homosexuality.
Which is interesting because like you, you think of people
(14:16):
going to prison today and you'relike, well they'll just have to
be prison gay for a while because there's only men around.
But pirates just kind of waited till they got back to shore to
find some unbathed women. They did drink constantly.
OK, so drunkenness and drinking and all of that was big for
pirates. That is true.
That is not a myth. In in a lot of their records of
(14:38):
execution where they would kill pirates or hang them for, for
piracy, a lot of them mentioned that they were drunk at the
time, that they weren't fully incontrol.
But just to put it in perspective, water wasn't very
safe to drink back then. So in the 1600s, if you were a
sailor in the British Navy, do you know what your drinking
rations were? Your drinking rations Each day
(15:00):
was a gallon of beer and a pint of rum per day.
No water for you, just way too much alcohol all the time.
So these guys are constantly sloshed.
The reason that they're seeing mermaids and stuff is because
they are hammered. OK, they are hammered.
Popular pirate locations do include the places you would
think Jamaica, Nassau, all theseplaces where it's pretty, these
(15:24):
little islands, but also other places off the coast of Africa
like Madagascar. They were definitely missing
teeth. Remember, there were no
toothbrushes back then. Oral hygiene was not great and
their gums were typically bad because a lot of pirates who
would get scurvy. What is scurvy?
Scurvy's this thing your body does that's gross when you don't
get enough citrus. And so citrus fruits, citric
(15:47):
acid. I don't know.
I'm not a, I'm not a medical guy.
I'm a, I'm a humanities guy. But anyway, eat your fruits so
you don't get scurvy again. Scurvy.
This episode is brought to you by scurvy.
Gross. Keep your blood inside your
body. They also had, as part of
(16:08):
reality, a pirate code. Let me read you.
This comes from the pirate code of Bartholomew Roberts in 1722.
Listen to this code. So this is what you would sign.
Even though you're this notorious criminal and you rape
and pillage and plunder and you slave trade and you do all this
crazy bad stuff, you still have a pirate code because you can't.
You know, even thieves don't like when you steal from.
(16:28):
They don't. They don't like when other
thieves steal from them. Here's the code ready.
Every man shall be called fairlyin turn by the list on board of
prizes, because over and above their proper share they are
allowed a shift of clothes. But if they defraud the company
to the value of even $1.00 in plate, jewels, or money, they
shall be marooned. If any man rob another, he shall
(16:51):
have his nose and ears slit and be put ashore, where he shall be
sure to encounter hardships. If any man shall be found
seducing one of the latter sex meaning women, and carrying her
to sea in disguise, he shall suffer death.
None shall strike another on board the ship, but every man's
quarrel shall be ended on shore by sword or pistol.
(17:13):
Holy shit, that's awesome. So, you know you can murder all
these people. Don't fight on the ship.
Don't sneak women on board, right?
Don't steal from us. Steal from other people, or
you're going to have a problem, right?
So next joke. A pirate walks into a bar and he
has the steering wheel of a shipshoved down the front of his
pants. He can barely walk around, and
(17:36):
he's here in the bar bumping into things.
And the bartender says, Sir, yourealize you have a ship's
steering wheel in the front of your pants.
And the pirate says, ah, I know,it's driving me nuts.
How would pirates torture their victims?
(17:58):
On that note, how would pirates torture their victims?
Well, one common form of tortureinvolved wrapping somebody's
head with tight cords until their eyes popped out and they
died. Gross.
Another thing they would do was called keel hauling.
(18:19):
What is keel hauling? Listen to this.
Pay attention today. We're more humane with the way
we execute people. This is one of the things that
they would do is they would takesomebody and tie their arms and
legs and then they would drop them down the front of the ship,
drag them underneath the bottom of the ship till they got to the
back. And then we actually have a
little YouTube video. I don't know if we can cut in
(18:40):
there to to show you briefly what keel hauling was like.
Now remember, the bottom of a ship is covered with barnacles
and splinters and all of this. So people would die by drowning,
they would bleed to death, they would get torn up and lacerated
on the bottom of that ship. And if your body scraped along
the whole length of the ship andyou didn't die, they did it
again. There is a case of pirates, and
(19:04):
maybe more than one, but at least one of pirates soaking
someone's heart and spirits and then eating it.
One of the things pirates would do to each other on board if
they broke the rules like we just saw, or to other people is
what is called marooning. Being marooned on a desert
island. You've probably heard of this.
What they would do is they wouldsay, all right, here you go,
we're dropping you off on this island and you're just going to
(19:24):
die slowly. We're going to leave you maybe a
pistol with one bullet. So if you want to just end it,
you can. But marooning was pretty common.
They would bury people alive. Sometimes I read 1 case of
pirates making a woman stand naked in a barrel full of
gunpowder with a Wick in her face, demanding that she tell
(19:45):
them where she hid her treasure.So other people would hide
treasure, but the pirates would spend theirs.
Again, pirates. They would cut off people's
limbs, do terrible things. The craziest thing that I heard,
and again this comes from accordingly, is that the most
extremely there was a pirate whowould cut someone's stomach,
nail one part of their entrails,their intestines to the ship.
(20:07):
And then make them dance to their death by hitting their
back with a burning log until all their guts fell out.
I don't know if you've seen thatdeleted scene from the
children's movie Peter Pan wherethey do that.
It is very aggressive for littlekids to watch.
(20:27):
Let's talk about some famous fictional pirates.
You're ready. These are ones you've probably
heard of. This is this is what we think of
with pirates. There's a lot of like legend and
lore mixed with reality, so here's a few.
Long John Silver, right, the famous pirate who started that
disgusting food chain where everybody gets sick.
This episode is brought to you by Long John Silver.
(20:50):
Long John Silver's It'd be better to be marooned on a
desert island than to eat our fish.
Long John Silver and Treasure Island by Robert Louis
Stevenson. Captain Hook, right, and Peter
Pan by JM Barry. The Dread Pirate Roberts for
some of my older audience in ThePrincess Bride.
(21:12):
Captain Jack Sparrow, who's verylikable in Pirates of the
Caribbean. Edward Kenway in Assassin's
Creed Black Flag, which is probably the best pirate video
game, if that should even be a thing.
You can download it illegally. It's called Pirating Pirates.
And there's many others, right? But that these are the
(21:34):
characters we think of. We think of the the peg leg,
which by the way, when we talk about myth versus reality, that
that's actually a real thing that because they're on the ship
and they're constantly in battleand there are ropes running by
their legs and they're getting shot.
They did lose limbs. And so you did have pirates that
had no legs, walked with crutches.
The peg leg thing was real. Or some type of prosthetic leg
(21:56):
that is that is real as well. OK, let's talk about some famous
pirates. Are you ready?
Before we do that, I think it's time for another joke.
Where does a pirate go after work?
To the bar. OK.
What? What?
What is a pirate's favorite movies?
Rated R. What does a pirate drive to
(22:19):
work? A car?
No, a ship. Let's talk about famous pirates.
Here we go. John Rackham AKA Calico Jack.
If I had a pirate name it would be Calico Zac.
I like that. I think that's cool.
He was a flamboyantly dressed pirate captain who would wear
(22:41):
brightly colored clothes. He had a harem of mistresses off
the coast of Cuba. He worked with Mary Reed and
Anne Bonnie. 2 famous female pirates.
These these are women that dressed up like men and snuck
into pirate crews and became these famous pirates even though
they were ladies. Jack Rackham or John Rackham
(23:01):
worked with Mary Reed and Anne Bonnie.
He seduced Bonnie away from her sailor husband so she has a type
she likes, she likes semen, she likes men that are at sea and he
took her on board his ship. The women were eventually
condemned to death for piracy but were both pregnant so they
could not be hanged. While they were pregnant, Mary
(23:21):
Reed died in prison. Calico Jack.
John Rackham. Fascinating.
Another real pirate. Now this guy, kind of this next
guy kind of blurs the line between legal privateer and
pirate. He's a guy named Francis Drake.
You've probably heard of him, and he's kind of a big deal.
So there's Drake the singer, andthen there's Francis Drake, a
much bigger deal. He's the first Englishman to
(23:43):
circumnavigate the globe and notdie.
Remember, Magellan and his crew went around the world again,
which is a sphere, you dumb flatearthers.
And but Magellan died, right? He he wasn't Gellan like a
felon. He he died and and so other
people in his crew made it around.
As far as the first Englishman, though, and the first like
(24:04):
captain to go all the way as a captain to circumnavigate the
globe and not die was Francis Drake.
He was more of a privateer, but the Spanish called him a pirate
and gave him the name the dragon.
That is so sick. The dragon Francis Drake.
He famously one time captured a ship.
Listen to this called in Spanishthe Cacafuego or Shitfire.
(24:26):
OK it's the name of the ship. Great great name for a ship.
If you're looking for a a good ship name, highly recommend the
Cacafuego. Bartholomew Roberts, right, who
took over 4, who was again another pirate captain.
He was captain of a ship called the Royal Fortune.
He took over 400 vessels in his career.
(24:48):
OK. Bartholomew Roberts, I think his
nickname, I can't remember. I didn't write this down.
I think it's Black Bart because of that, because of his his
constant piracy. Henry Avery, another famous
pirate. He pulled off one of the largest
treasure heists in world history, in maritime history of
all time. He raided an Indian treasure
(25:08):
ship worth 10s of millions of dollars today.
OK. He was a captain of the ship
called the Fancy. OK, so that was that's Henry
Avery. Listen to this next one.
Henry Morgan. You heard of this guy?
You have you don't know it yet. You ever heard of Captain
Morgan? When it comes to rum, he's
always got his leg up. Captain Morgan.
(25:30):
This episode brought you by Captain Morgan.
Rump. Captain Morgan making ugly
winches look a little bit prettier.
Henry Morgan. So that's who Captain Morgan is
named off named after. He was a knight, so it's
actually Sir Henry Morgan. He was also the Lieutenant
governor of Jamaica for a while.So fascinating.
(25:50):
Pirates in politics. There's already a lot of pirates
in politics, if you ask me. William Kidd, Captain Kidd is
probably a pirate you've heard of.
He was the captain of a ship called the Adventure Galley.
He was a privateer turned piratewho was hanged for piracy and
his body bound in change and displayed in London near the
(26:12):
River Thames for years. So you're hanged.
Your body's wrapped in change, and you're just, you just, you
just get hanged up, hung up by the River Thames for years.
So people walk by and they're like, hey, there's a corpse in
chains hanging here by the water.
And you say, yeah, that was Captain Kidd.
They are not kidding around. And then, most interestingly,
(26:34):
you ready? Edward Teach.
You know him by his stage name. You know him by his, his, AKA
his alias Blackbeard. Edward Teach.
Blackbeard. Listen to this guy.
This guy was a crazy mof. He did have a black beard and it
was super long and also really high.
(26:54):
It went up almost to his eyes. OK, So big black beard.
Edward Teach, he used to tie ribbons into his beard.
He would also put matches or Wicks underneath his hat before
battle and light them on fire. He had crazy looking eyes.
He's got this big long beard with ribbons in it and he's got
Wicks or matches underneath his hat on fire.
(27:15):
So as he turns, there's smoke all around him as he's fighting.
So he looks like a demon. OK, so he's got all this stuff
going on. He was armed to the teeth.
He would have up to 4 pistols strapped to him, a knife and a
cutlass. He is rumored to have married 14
different women at different times.
So he had 14 marriages. And most notoriously, he married
(27:36):
a girl who was 16 in North Carolina.
After sleeping with her all night, he allowed five or six of
his crew mates to ravish her. He supposedly died fighting with
five bullets in him and 20 cuts.He was captain of the Queen
Anne's Revenge, which it was a very large pirate ship.
That was that. That one was unique and that it
was very big and very well armed.
(27:57):
That's Blackbeard. He's a sex crazed, crazy,
covered in smoke, huge beard, murdery people dies like
Rasputin where you just can't kill him.
Blackbeard, Edward Thatch or Edward Teach.
Fascinating. Let's talk about a few other
fascinating facts about pirates and then we will be done on our
(28:18):
voyage. So Avastji, pay attention.
Other fascinating facts about pirates.
Here we go. Pirates took part in the
Crusades in the Mediterranean. Did you know that we always just
think of the Crusades of these nights on land going to fight
the Muzzies? But instead there were also
(28:39):
anti, you know, Islamic pirates in the Mediterranean fighting
each other. And I think they're also, they
were also Islamic Muslim pirates, these, these Turks and
stuff also that were pirating the other way.
So I, that's again, pirates are very old.
The concept of criminality is very old.
And this is just criminality with water, right?
So really the only superhero you've got to watch out for
(29:00):
there is Aquaman, who's really alame superhero cause like most
crime happens on land and he's like just stands at the beach I
guess and is like, hey, why don't you come in the water and
say that, right? Why?
Why? You're just doing whatever you
want on land. Other fascinating facts about
pirates. Listen to this.
I don't know that you're ready for this one.
Who is the most successful, powerful, had the biggest Armada
(29:28):
of ships, pirate person of all time ready.
It's a chick, a pirate lady. Some of the most violent and
successful pirates were actuallyin the South China Sea.
Perhaps the most powerful piratein history was a former
prostitute named Missus Chang. She had 400 ships and about
40,000 people in her crew at theheight height of her power.
(29:51):
This is the early 1800s. Isn't that fascinating?
How old do you think the averagepirate is?
I think in our mind we think of him as like 40.
The average age of most pirates was about 27.
So young guys, most pirate shipshad a crew of around 80.
In between bouts of drinking, pirates would fire the ship's
guns just for fun. So they'd be like to here to my
(30:14):
wind chaff of Hispaniolia or something.
And then they would fire the guns and giggle and get back to
their drinking. There you go.
Listen to this Nassau, OK? This beautiful island became a
pirate Republic in the early 1700s.
This island became a pirate run state.
So imagine you have a nation that is run by and for pirates,
(30:38):
Nassau. You could come there, get your
ship repaired, sleep with the whores, get you some rum, hang
out with other pirates. And a lot of famous pirates were
involved in this. Nassau.
It was a pirate state, a pirate Republic.
Absolutely fascinating. You didn't know there was a
pirate Republic, did you? You didn't know there were all
these nations and then an actualpirate nation, which is insane.
(30:59):
Listen to this. Some battles were fought at sea
during storms and even with waterspouts, which are water
tornadoes. So imagine you're out there and
you see an enemy ship and they're firing cannons at you
and you're firing cannons at them and it's dark all around
you. The sky is dark, it's like green
and Gray. And you see this huge storm
(31:21):
coming. You look all around you and all
you can see is ocean. Huge waves, huge, you know,
white caps. It's you and another boat in the
middle of a huge storm. Waves are hitting you, and then
there are tornadoes going on around you in the water as
you're fighting this sea battle.I'm not sure that I can think of
(31:47):
something cooler than that. That's pretty cool.
When pirates were hanged, listento this because they had
committed crimes at sea. They weren't tried by a
traditional judge or something like that, because those are
land judges. Rather, it was the Lord High
Admiral, the one who is over things going on in the sea, that
would try them. And when pirates were hanged,
(32:08):
listen to this, what they would do is they would hang them in
places where at high tide, the water would wash over their
bodies. So it's, it's, it's, it's as if
to say, because you committed these crimes at sea, we are
killing you by the sea and the sea will wash over you and
you're judged by the Lord High Admiral.
It's all sea stuff. It's really, really cool and
really, really fascinating. There were some pirates, though,
(32:32):
that, you know, that changed their ways, that repented Cotton
Mather, a famous Puritan minister, especially out of
places like Boston, would call people to repentance.
He, he was like a chaplain in a lot of the jails, which is
really, really fascinating. So Speaking of needing
repentance, let me give you my last joke.
And this one's a dirty joke. So if your kids are listening,
maybe, maybe earmuffs them. What is the difference between a
(32:55):
dinner party and a pirate orgy? A dinner party says come as you
are. A pirate orgy says ours.
You come. I can't, I can't even.
It's too much. Don't e-mail me, I'll just
delete it and I'm going to keep telling my jokes.
What do you think of pirates? That is A brief History of
(33:15):
Pirates on ideological where we talk about things that are
interesting. Thank you for joining me.
Thanks for being part of my crewon this voyage as we talk about
the the history and fascinating facts related to pirates.
I hope that you join in next time.
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