195. Blackbeard & the Pirates of the Caribbean

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0:29His eyes naturally looking fierce and wild. he made altogether such a figure that imagination cannot form the idea of a fury from hell to look more frightful. Hello. Hello, William. I wasn't talking about you. It's nothing personal, is it? No, no. I wasn't talking about you. Hello and welcome. Hello and welcome. I'll explain that in just a moment. I'm Anita Arnand. And I am William de Rimpel. Yes. And look, nothing, nothing encompasses the spirit of adventure, the lust for wealth, the desire to travel far across oceans to foreign places than, William, Harb-Harties! Yes, you guessed it. Pirates.

1:13Yes, pirates. Yes, I know it's becoming more and more panto, isn't it, Semper? Sorry. You know, put it down in the comments. It's fine. Look, we are discussing pirates today And that little piece about the fury from hell Was about Blackbeard Who is a historical character Which I don't think I even knew No, he's a thing He's not just a thing of pantos He's a person And honestly, for most people They think piracy started Well, I mean, the younger ones with Jack Sparrow But the older ones with Errol Flynn Captain Pugwash Captain Pugwash Good illusion there Don't forget Captain Pugwash Okay, so we've got three tiers of piratedom, but David Wilson, author, historian David Wilson, is here to talk us through a real-life pirate named Blackbeard.

1:59Hello, David. Hello, how are you doing? Good to be here. Where are you sitting and talking to us now? Hey, I'm sitting and talking to you from Glasgow in Scotland, so another Scot, I'm afraid. You'd never guess from the accent. I know, I know. Not the easiest accent either being Glaswegian, but we'll make it work. Just watch William drift into the Glaswegian burn. That I'd like to see. Within minutes. He was all Highlander a little while ago. It is now going Glasgow. I nearly ran out of petrol in Govan last week, so I was not far from you. Oh. Fun story. The closest I've ever been to running out of petrol.

2:31I had zero on that. You know, it comes up and it goes five, three. Govan came to my rescue. Gulf oil. Govan is a lovely place with lovely people. Very nice people. Very friendly people in Govan, I heard. Anyway, good. So, David, David, David, let's first of all start with the history of piracy because we've talked about pirates in relation to the burgeoning East India Company and where privateers were encouraged to go and rob the ships of the Dutch or the French or anyone else to take all the stuff that they'd already traded. The first meeting of the East India Company, the Spanish ambassador reports to his court that they were pirates, pirates, pirates, he wrote.

3:12And they bought an ex-pirate ship, the Scourge of Malice, and rechristened it the Red Dragon to make it sound more respectable. The Red Dragon. Like a pub, like a pub, it sounds. Where does the route of piracy stretch back to as far as the timeline is concerned? Well, it's quite a well-known quote that as long as man has went to the sea, there has also been someone waiting to capture him. So piracy does stretch back to the ancient period as well. I guess we'll go back that far. But in terms of the piracy we're speaking about now, in terms of early modern piracy, really, there's a surge from the 16th century onwards.

3:43Once you have the so-called discovery of the Americas, you start to have an outpouring of plunder voyages, particularly from Northern Europe, against the Spanish Empire, especially. And are the English the particular culprits here? Is it largely an English game? People like Francis Drake and Raleigh, these guys are busy at it, aren't they? They are busy at it. They sort of follow on from the French and the Dutch. It's really the French and the Dutch who pioneer these piracies in the Atlantic, the Western Atlantic, but the English are not far behind them with people like Francis Drake. That's interesting because, you know, Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh are the gentleman pirates.

4:20You know, we are used to seeing the imagery, the iconography of them as a well-dressed, well-educated sort of this elite of society. And they're licensed, aren't they? They have licenses from the crown to do this. Yeah, encourage, plunder your hearts out. But was that the same? Was that mirrored among the Dutch? and the others as well. I mean, they were more, I guess, respectable, if you want to say that, more sort of aristocratic seafarers in that sense. They did tend to have captains from the gentry. But as William says, although the Spanish would see them as pirates, they did see themselves as being sort of lawful maritime predators because they were licensed a lot of the time, not always, but a lot of the time they had licenses from the state, from the crown, to go off and attack the Spanish, or at least they claimed the legitimacy to do so.

5:04because when the Spanish first discovered the Americas, they put in place what is known as the line of demarcation. So in agreement with the Portuguese in 1494, you have the Treaty of Tordesillas. And what that does is that all lands west of the Cape Verde Islands, essentially, fall under Spanish control. At least that's what they claim. They claim they control that area. And all lands to the east that would be newly discovered would be the Portuguese. They sort of didn't realise that was a lot of Brazil. Now, they're here and not there for that point in time. But what that then means is that anything beyond the line, the Spanish claim is theirs, so that when anyone who isn't a sort of subject of the Spanish crown, when anyone traverses past that line, the Spanish call them a pirate, regardless of whether they are there to commit piracy or otherwise, they become pirates.

5:52So, I mean, you've got that class of pirate who have the blessings of their state to go and pillage another state that you may or may not presently be at war with, but you have recently or you will soon. but then you also have the ones who are railing against the state. I mean, I'm thinking about the Jacobites who are fighting against a power and piracy is a thing for them as well, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. So if you sort of fast forward past that point, so the 16th century is that more sort of licensed maritime predation where there's a bit of a line of ambiguity between what's legal and what's illegal, what's piracy and what's not.

6:22But then by the time that you get to the 17th century and then the 18th century, the lines between piracy and privateering, between piracy and licit, maritime predation becomes more starkly drawn. And this is especially the case in the 18th century, because by that point, you really do have this fine line between what is legal maritime predation and what is not legal, what is piracy. And it's at that point that you start to get these figures that seem to be railing against the state, or at least that's the claim that's often made about them. Well, let's talk about one of them. I mean, the pirate king himself, Charles Vane, the Jacobite sympathiser, A lot of people say he's the one who inspired the pirate look, if you like.

7:01Tell us who he was and where did he start? What we know is he's operating from New Providence in the Bahamas after the War of the Spanish Succession, so from around 1715, 1716 onwards. We start to see Charles Vane appear in the record, but he appears without any background. People then start saying that he was a Jacobite sympathiser. Again, we don't actually know how far he was a Jacobite sympathiser, but he was quite a violent individual as he attacked merchant vessels he would torture sailors and captains alike and that's where he gets this notoriety from but again we don't know anything about how he dressed Oh okay so people just kind of back project onto him that he was you know wearing that very distinctive hat So Keith Richards lookalike Yeah the ruffled shirt, the open waistcoat Okay so not him but is there a connection between him and Blackbeard?

7:50Yeah so they are both operating around about the same time from the same area So from New Providence and the Bahamas from Nassau. Wasn't there a Puritan Commonwealth or something in the Bahamas at one point? Very improbably, because Bahamas we associate with James Bond and beach clubs. And the idea of guys wearing sort of black hats and looking like Oliver Cromwell doesn't go. It was a formal English colony from about the 1660s onwards. It was settled by the Lord's Proprietors of the Carolinas, similar to those who settled North Carolina and South Carolina. So they also claim the Bahamas and it becomes a colony.

8:24But to be honest, it's already pretty lawless, even though it is an official colony. There's a lot of piracy, smuggling, wrecking all the way throughout that second half of the 17th century for the Bahamas. But during the war, it essentially becomes devastated by the French and the Spanish who both attack it several times during the War of the Spanish Succession. So that by the end of the war in 1713, the Bahamas is basically no longer a formal colony. It's lawless completely. There's no governance there. and there's just families spread across these islands. And they've got to make a living somehow.

8:55Is that the idea? They've got to make a living somehow. And then also just because it's location next to the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Florida, it's also a really good haunt for those who don't agree with the war coming to an end and who want to continue to attack the Spanish, which is where these pirates come from. Most of them had been privateers during the war and then afterwards they sort of continue their attacks on the Spanish from the Bahamas. Okay, can I do a quick quiz for you just for the benefit of all our listeners. Please. Okay, this has got to be real, not real, okay? Calico Jack.

9:26A real individual, yes. Real, okay. Did he have the Jolly Roger? That's the other thing which is associated with Calico Jack. Yes, exactly. Okay, Calico Jack. Disgust. Calico Jack Rackham is also operating from New Providence at this point in time, so from 1716 onwards. He is actually not a very successful pirate at all. He's in the record very briefly. He takes a few vessels round about Jamaica, but he's basically captured as quickly as he begins. But what makes him famous is, yes, he's sort of been given the credit for the Jolly Roger. Is he Calico Jack because he wears Calico? He becomes Calico Jack Rackham because he wears, yeah, this sort of Calico outfit.

10:00So he's a sort of hipster pirate who's no good at all at piracy. It makes a lot of sense. Also what makes him famous is the fact that on board his vessel, he also has two female pirates who are operating as well, Anne Bonny and Mary Reads. Oh, tell us about them quick. Yeah. Yeah, they become really famous characters because it is so rare for women to be on board these vessels as active members of the crew. And they are Anne Bonny and Mary Reid. Afterwards, there's this sort of story that goes around that they're hiding their identities, they're hiding their gender by wearing male clothing. But if you read the testimonies of their victims, they really are not.

10:34I mean, it's very clear that these are women on board this vessel. They're dressed in skirts, dressed as women and not hiding their gender at all. That's amazing. How about Long John Silver? Real or not real? Really not real. Really, completely not real. Really, really, okay. Definitely not real. And just to end, Captain Hook. I won't even answer that. Really, really not real. Really not real? Okay. Glad we've sorted that out. But it's interesting because I always thought Blackbeard was one of them, that it was just one of those names. Precisely. Well, let's talk about him. He had a real name, didn't he?

11:04He was Edward Teach. Or Thatch. Yeah, or Edward Thatch. I think I prefer the idea of Thatch as a sort of Thatcher sort of precursor. He's definitely Margaret Thatcher's forebear. Definitely. I mean, I think in the movies, they do call him Edward Teach. I'm sure I've seen that sort of replicated in those old... And there's a brand of rum after Edward Teach, isn't there? Yeah. I mean, I think that Errol Flynn period, they were a little bit obsessed with him, weren't they? They call him Edward Teach. And the reason for that is that it's printed in one of the newspapers of the time, the Boston Newsletter, which has one of the largest circulations in the Americas.

11:34They print his name as Edward Teach. But if you look at all the records, his name was more likely Edward Thatch. It's just that Teach is the one that takes off. So they ran with the typo. That's amazing. Gosh, okay. I remember I was at a pub quiz and they asked who what the real name of Blackbeard was and I wrote Edward Thatch and they wouldn't give me it. Oh no, outrageous. Always write Edward Teach. Always write Edward Teach. Okay, so where was he born? When was he born? And tell me what was his background? The claims are that he was a Bristol seafarer who made his way to Jamaica to become a privateer during the War of the Spanish Succession.

12:08There's some other sort of more recent claims who say that his family actually migrated to Bristol when he was quite young. And so he began his seafaring career in Jamaica. Either way, it seems he's connected to Jamaica somehow. And the family name of Thatch is fairly common. Em and Will's in Testaments in the 18th century in Jamaica. So it seems reasonable that he at least has his origins in Jamaica and that's where he starts his seafaring career. And people are fairly obsessed with him and his image early on. I mean, there's a lot of talk of his wild eyes. There's a lot of talk of, you know, this silk sling over his shoulders.

12:40You know, he cuts a dash. Yes, is that something he invents, the bandolier? Is that the kind of invention of this guy? It's an invention, certainly, but it's an invention of a gentleman called Charles Johnson who writes a book in 1724 called The General History of the Pirates. And it's really this book, which has been written at the same time that there's a surge of piracy and that some of these actors are still already operating. But it's at that point that all these sort of myths come from, including the bandolier, the silk bandolier, and the idea of Blackbeard wearing a hat with matches that he likes to enact fear in his prey.

13:13I didn't know that one. That's great. It's brilliant. I mean, it's nonsense, basically. None of the victim accounts mention that, and you'd think they would mention it. Okay. The only descriptions we have of him is that he went by the name of Blackbeard because he let his beard grow and he tied it up in black ribbons. That's from one of his victims who says that. That really is the Jack Sparrow, Keith Richards thing. That's real. Yeah, the black ribbons make sense. Okay, he sort of makes his name and finds his destiny, as you say, in the Caribbean. But before that, I mean, is he a cultured man or is he a rough and ready brute on the waves?

13:46What do we know about his refinement and education, shall we say? Yeah, and what are our sources for him? So until he erupts into the newspapers in 1716 onwards for his piratical attacks, we really know nothing about his background, his education. All we know is that, similar to most pirates, he's a seafarer. So he has seafaring education and he's likely more just a common seafarer, a common sailor like most pirates in this period. Will have been involved in privateering, seems to have taken up a privateering commission in Jamaica. It doesn't seem likely that he was a captain of a privateering vessel, probably just rank and file sailor.

14:21Do we know if he was literate? Has he left many letters or any written accounts himself? No written accounts from Edward Thatcher, unfortunately. However, there is at least one letter written to him, so we know he was literate. But this makes him fodder for films, books, fantasies. You can project onto him. You can project anything you like on him. And he can be the boogeyman. You can make him as frightening as you like. I mean, one thing, to have a crew on a ship like this, if you are somebody from nowhere, Edward from nowhere, who we don't know very much about, is it a lot of defections from the English Navy?

14:55Because we know, and we know from people like Samuel Johnson, that being in the Navy was hard. It wasn't very lovely. I think he wrote, you know, that a lot of the sailor was very much the same as that of a prisoner, only with the added possibility of drowning. It's a brilliant Johnson lie. It's a great, so very Johnson. But I mean, is that why people at sea would suddenly go, well, actually, forget this. I'll just go and join Edward from nowhere, who we don't really know very much about, because it's got to be better than this. To an extent, that's true. But it was more merchant vessels where pirates sort of tended to recruit from.

15:26So particularly slaving vessels, but also other mercantile vessels as well. where merchants who were being taken by pirates, some of their crews would join, voluntarily would join the pirates who were taking the vessel. They tended not to encounter naval vessels. They tended to avoid them as much as possible. So those defections didn't really happen into piracy, although perhaps some deserted and found their way on board pirate vessels as well. But for the most part, it tended to be more from the merchant side of things. So, okay, so he devotes his life. We do know that he does decide to be a pirate.

15:56Do we know how successful he was in the early days and who does he target? when he's, you know, sort of little black beard, little beardette, when he's just starting out, who does he go for first? Black stubble. Black stubble, exactly, that makes sense. He operates, again, like most of these individuals from New Providence at first. He's actually sailing with one of the foremost captains in that area, Benjamin Hornigold, who's one of the origins of these pirate crews from New Providence. So he sails with Benjamin Hornigold for a couple of years out of New Providence, mostly attacking the Spanish, it must be said.

16:26So they continue to concentrate their attacks on the Spanish particularly. Is there a religious talk of that? I mean, is it the fact that the Spanish are Catholic and they are Protestant, or is it just the Spanish are rich and got gold on the ships? About both. So part of that is the religious context, but really it's more the local, the geopolitical context, because these are individuals who have been trained as privateers, have been taking part in privateering voyages where Spain were the enemy, and they just want to continue that, because Spain, they do have wealth as well, so they want to continue to plunder these vessels and to plunder the Spanish.

17:00What we haven't said, and which we should perhaps clarify, is that the reason that everyone is so keen on these Spanish vessels is the gold, silver, and is it tin? What are the other things that they're finding in the new world? Gold, silver, sugar as well, and tobacco on both these vessels, and lots of different manufacturers also that they're bringing to the Americas to trade. But mostly, to be honest, what they're interested in is the silver, so the pieces of eight that we all know from all of the different films. Sorry, I need to do it. Pieces of eight? Pieces of eight is what the parrots say on all the movies.

17:32And again, just to explain what a piece of eight is, eight of what? Yes, describe. The piece of eight is a silver coin, so it's eight pistols basically is what it's worth, which is a significant amount, but these are large silver coins and they are melted down silver from the mines in Central and Southern America. And it's really what the Spanish are extracting from the Americas and sending back to Europe to fund their wars and their empire building elsewhere. wear. And it's that silver that the pirates want access to because it's that silver that circulates in the Caribbean as the main currency.

18:02All right, well look, with all that in mind, with the idea of the plunder in mind, let's take a break. Join us after the break where we go from goatee to full beard I suppose. I love just stubble things so much, I had to tramp it. Back soon.

18:22Welcome back. We are with David Wilson and we are now heading to the Pirate Republic of Nassau in the Bahamas. Now, in the films, we all know that sort of Pirates of the Caribbean Pirates pub that they all go with the incredibly beautiful barmaids and all these characters around the tables with peg legs and so on. That is actually based on a real Pirate Republic and there is a historical basis for that. Yeah, exactly. So the pirate community at Nassau in New Providence begins after the War of the Spanish Succession. So from 1714 onwards, you have these small sets of pirates operating from Nassau to attack the Spanish particularly.

19:01They are quite small scale. So you have these accounts of sort of crews of about 25 people using canoes to attack the Spanish. But they start to build up their operations and to start taking larger vessels. And really, this is where you get the emergence of Benjamin Hornigold as being one of the leaders within this space. But after 1715, this really explodes. And the reason it explodes is that the Spanish flotilla, which carries all of the wealth from the mines of South America and Central America back to Europe, it actually gets shipwrecked off the coast of Florida on the 31st of July, 1715. This is like whiskey galore, but with pieces of eight rather than whiskey.

19:39pieces of weight cover the Gulf of Florida, let's say. And it causes a treasure hunting frenzy amongst seafarers throughout this Atlantic world, so the Spanish. This is brilliant. What date is this? So the 31st of July, 1715, is when it's wrecked. This is where we all should have been. 1715, in the Bahamas, with gold littering the beaches. It's pretty good. People are still, to this day, working these wrecks. So they are still there doing this. But these pirates then start to operate these wrecks. But what that means is you get a lot of different seafarers from throughout the Atlantic coming to Florida, but also coming to the Bahamas and starting to get involved in these pirate crews as well.

20:18And naturally we get this explosion of a seafaring population who turn to piracy. And who are the people that are part of this? They're mainly British, mainly English. What sort of nationalities would you find in this republic? Give us some stories. Particularly in the Bahamas, it was mostly British by this point because it was a British colony. But there are French arriving and Dutch members of these crews as well. So one famous individual is a character called Olivier Laboussi, who is an extravagant French captain. Oh, I know Laboussi. He ends up in Réunion. Exactly. I've been to his grave. I've left a bottle of rum on his grave, in fact.

20:49Have you? No. Oh, fantastic. Oh, wow. Amazing. I mean, I shouldn't say fantastic. He's not a good person. No, he's not a good person, but his grave is still a subject of, I mean, what we would call voodoo. And when you go there in the evening, there are these incredible crowds of people leaving offerings today for Laboussi. Why wasn't he a good person? I mean, I don't think we've really highlighted what these pirates did. Give us the story. Yeah. We think back in the pirates, we sort of romanticise these figures as being anti-establishment. What they were really doing was quite violently attacking merchant vessels, enslaving vessels as well, and not treating either the sailors or the enslaved persons that they found, or the captains particularly well.

21:28They were very violent. A lot of torture happened on both these vessels. And what they really wanted to do was enact fear in the broader seafaring community. So the torture, again, I've got to sound like a vampire, don't I? But I mean, you know, things like walking the plank or keelhauling and the stuff that, you know, we're raised on in the movies. Are these gifts of the Navy or gifts of piracy to the world? I think probably a bit of both, to be honest. With regards to the torture that we have, that we see in the records, it tends to be a lot more violent in some ways than those. So things like burning matches under people's eyes is one of the ones that we have.

22:02Keep going, Demi. more details. He shudders. More, more. Come on. Yes, more. Lots of lashing and whipping and then a lot of hanging people from the mass as well. The yardarm. Hanging from the yardarm. Exactly. Things like this. And the reason they do that is because they want to feel them but also to give up their treasure and to give up information of other vessels as well. Okay, so the grave with the voodoo and the William Durham whiskey offering. Rum. Rum. Rum offering. What did he do, this chap? So Olivia Laboussi is a really interesting character because he sort of comes into the record very early on.

22:35So he's operating from 1716 onwards and is committing piracies in line with other more British pirates, particularly Sam Bellamy, as another individual he cruises with in the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean. And they are picking off different British vessels, different French vessels. But Olivier Laboussi is one of the very few pirates who then also directs to the west coast of Africa and is operating there, attacking the slaving vessels there. And in the Indian Ocean, ultimately. One of the very few who makes it to the Indian Ocean. Because really that's what they want. What these pirates want to do is to trade up their vessels to get bigger vessels so that they can then go to the Indian Ocean or to the coast of Brazil.