196. Blackbeard’s Reign of Terror

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0:29Dead men tell no tales. Ah, but they do tell tales, so says I, Blackbeard. Dead men tell no tales. Take heed, wretched cars. Your fight is sealed. We're getting into this. Gosh, should we do fake pirate accents? Ha ha! Ha ha! Hello, and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durrumpal. Yeah, here we are. Can I just say, we started off with Blackbeard as a disembodied voice on Pirates of the Caribbean, just in case you were wondering where that epic drama came from. Only the purest historical sources here on Empire. No, we're continuing on from the last episode where we discussed the early life and career of Edward Thatch, otherwise known as Edward Teach because of a typo we learned, Blackbeard as he later became known, the most feared pirate of his time.

1:23And we're delighted to be joined again by a historian and specialist in all things piracy to discuss the height of rain and terror. Big drum roll in your best pirate accent. Go on. David Wilson. Thank you very much. Does it make your toes curl, David? Does it? You would think I'd be used to it by now. Sorry. I can only say sorry. Look, in the last episode we were talking about the golden age of pirates and that was the 17th and 18th centuries where pirates were capitalising on the rise of trading companies. Like the East India Company and it is the enemy in Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah, exactly like the East India Company.

1:59So let's sort of hold hands with where we left off. And we'd sort of left you around about April 1717, where Blackbeard's close friend and pirate comrade had died when his ship was caught by a storm and sunk. I mean, first of all, let me just double check with our fact checking side. Any of that not bollocks? Did you need to make that all up? No, that was great, actually, not bollocks at all. So in April 1717, you have the Weider. So the Weider is captained by, at this point, Samuel Bellamy who was another pirate who had been operating in New Providence but he had captured this slaving vessel, the Ouida, as it passed through the Windward Passage on the way to the Bahamas and it was a large vessel that he armed with guns and had room for more crew members and room for more cargo and for more plunder as well so it was this substantial prize, one of the biggest pirate vessels of the time, the Ouida.

2:50And what happened to the enslaved cargo? It's a good question, so we're not sure when it comes to the Ouida itself we don't know what happened to the enslaved cargo but what would tend to happen is either the pirates would hand the enslaved cargo back to the slavers themselves Oh no, really? Yeah, so although we have this image of pirates sort of freeing enslaved persons Exactly, and sort of colourblind pirate crews that are a measure of multi-ethnic heaven No, all rubbish, huh? Unfortunately all rubbish, yeah, so there were definitely black pirates, there were definitely free black mariners on board pirate vessels but they were just as likely to be enslaved labourers as well.

3:25Just as I was throughout the Atlantic world, there was free black mariners and enslaved labourers on board vessels. But also handing back your cargo to the slaver, that is just, I'm not liking them at all very much. Blackbird is the same as we'll come to. Okay, well the Weida then, it's wrecked by a storm, it sinks and all of those on board, I mean it's thanks to Governor Shute of Massachusetts, are they fished out of the water or just plucked off the wreck or what happens to the pirates that he captures? Most on board the Weida actually die so in the shipwreck itself most die including Samuel Bellamy but there's another vessel alongside them, the Mary Ann and a few of those crew members survive there's seven in total who survive and they're quickly captured and taken to Boston and imprisoned there.

4:06There's a quote under strong guard and sufficiently bound from county to county sheriff to sheriff so these are high security risks these guys. And also the image that's painted is of these beleaguered pirates who've survived the death of their comrades they're put in prison cages and they are destined for the noose. And this noose reaches Blackbeard and he is furious. How dare you treat my pirate brothers like this? And it sets a lighter under him. Exactly. So what seems to happen from this point on is that Thatch really does start to terrorise the Eastern Seaboard at this point, really in response, it seems, to this attack, to this execution of pirates in Boston.

4:46Because it's either, this is a sort of pirate brethren who doesn't want them to be executed, But actually, I think it's more, this is what happens if you capture us and you execute us. This is what's going to happen is that we will terrorise the coast. So you take one of ours, we'll take 10 of yours kind of thing. Exactly. And what they also start to do, which is even worse than just taking the vessels and attacking these mariners, is they take the property of these merchants, particularly from Boston, and they just start to turn it overboard. So anything they don't want, they just start to dump it into the ocean.

5:15So they'd be completely ruining these voyages as well. So they're hitting them where it hurts. So, I mean, Boston is not, as we know from tea parties of yore, you know, they don't take this kind of thing lying down. Is there not a response from New England? Yeah, so these six pirates who are captured, well, the seven captured, but six of them are found guilty and executed, not too long thereafter. But also Boston starts to become one of these more prominent anti-piracy ports and they do start to outfit even their own vessels to go out and try to hunt pirates and to try to capture any who are operating nearby.

5:44Is there an awareness that New Providence is the centre of the hornet's nest, so to speak, that all these vessels are operating out of this archipelago. It's really well known. So by this point, everyone knows what's happened to New Providence. Everyone knows that this is now a pirate nest. The problem is that no one has the strength or the resources to attack it. They're all extremely scared of going up against these pirates because they do have large vessels, large cannons and large crews. So no one can quite coordinate against them. And they have the reputation for being nutters as well. So people are slightly scared of taking them on.

6:17The well-cultivated image, yeah. Well-cultivated nutter image. So in response, this is the bit I like best, in response to the execution of the crew, Blackbeard declares war on the British Empire. Go for it, David. Tell us what happens next. So he declares war on at least the eastern seaboard and they do start to terrorise this region. They take lots of vessels. They're dumping property into the water. They're even burning vessels as well. So any vessels they don't want, they start to burn some of them as well, set them alight. and they do this for a good few months but then it gets to winter time and no one wants to be on the eastern seaboard in winter so they go back to the Caribbean and start to terrorise the Caribbean at this point in time I love it, they go back for a sunny winter break in the Bahamas no, no, it's not a break because they're going to do some more terrorising where it's warmer, where they can wear the short sleeve as opposed to the anorak you know, the dumping the stuff over the side I love this story you know, there's one merchant aboard one of the ships that Blackbeard's taken and he just stands there and watches is about£1 ,000 worth of his personal cargo.

7:17Gets tipped over the side and he's begging, please, no, not that box. No, leave me that box. Oh God, not that box. And finally... Begs to be allowed to keep enough cloth to make just one suit of clothes. Yes, just that. And you know what? And Blackbeard looks at him and goes, nah. Just tips it all over. Throws the last bolt of textiles overboard. Yeah. And when you think that prior to this point, when he was operating with Hornigolds, they were actually quite, I was going to say nice, but there were more sort of pleasant pirates, let's say they would take goods from merchant vessels, but often they would leave a lot of the cargo with these individuals as well.

7:50So no more Robin Hood. Exactly. No more nice blackbeards. Okay, so they've gone off for their summer, not vacation, but summer pillaging, sunny and glides. Is the reason that they are so hard to catch, because everybody wants to catch them, everybody hates their guts at this point, is that they never stay more than 48 hours in a single place. You know, there is that discipline among the pirates that you are always moving, and if you're always moving, they can't catch you. Exactly, so they do move up the coast to the eastern seaboard And then when they get further north They will then start to move elsewhere Because you can't stay in the same place for too long Because that's when people find you And this is when all of the survivors' reports Start coming back as well to the press Because they don't kill everybody You know, the poor man with no suit to wear I don't think he dies because he lives to tell that story But he's only one of 15 vessels that he captures that year I mean, it's quite a successful hit, right?

8:38Yeah, exactly And what's interesting is they don't actually They don't murder very many people So there's a lot of violence against these individuals, but they don't ever go quite as far as murder. They try to stop that because, again, it's just another sort of capital crime that they could be punished for. So you've got some traumatised sea captains pouring into New York, Boston, Philadelphia, telling their tales and presumably agitating for a proper response. Exactly. So you start to get a lot of pressure coming into the governors about, you know, you have to respond to pirates. You have to respond to these attacks, which they can do, but they can only do it in a reactive way.

9:11so pirates attack for 48 hours and then they send out an anti-piracy voyage against these individuals but they're already away they're already up to the next colony There is sort of among these interesting reports of what was done these tales of woe as William put it you've got the unimaginatively named Captain Peter Peters who talks about how when Blackbeard's pirates took his ship they stole 27 bottles of his Madeira they hacked away his mask and then let him run aground and there was something in that you take my wine and you take my mast. What a bunch of bastards. You know, it's like, I love the order of woe that he expresses.

9:48It's very, very funny. It's quite an effective strategy, just cut down the mast and they can't get anywhere. So you can sort of continue to attack for a while before the news gets back to port that you're nearby. So you're not killing someone, you're not likely to be down for murder, but you're stopping them coming after you or raising the alarm. Exactly, yes. You need to kind of stop the news circulating too fast. Yeah. Was Blackbeard leading a flotilla of pirate ships or is he doing all of this just on one ship? Yes, how many ships are on this raid now? Really, it's mostly just Thatch and Bonnet at this point in time.

10:18So you've got two vessels. Thatch and Bonnet sounds like a sort of comedy double act, doesn't it? It's like two Edwardian ladies telling jokes by a piano. At the Edinburgh Fringe of August. But yeah, they have a sort of small two vessels that they are operating with at this point in time. Okay, so they're back to the Caribbean And now the next chapter in the Blackbeard story is, I suppose you could title it La Concorde, which is the name of a slave ship, which is sailing to trade with the African princes of Benin. How does this ship matter to Blackbeard's mythology and story? This is really where his name starts to get made because it becomes one of the largest flagships in the pirate fleet overall.

10:59So really what Blackbeard wants at this point in time is a larger vessel, a flagship for his fleet. And what he's looking for is a slaving vessel, because these are much larger vessels than anything else that's operating in this region, but they're also quite fast vessels because they are for slaving voyages. So they lie in way off the eastern coast of the Caribbean, waiting for vessels to return from West Africa to the Caribbean. What year is this now? This is in late 1717. Really, really active year for Blackbeard, yeah. Okay. Yeah, very active year. So late 1717, he is operating off the coast of the eastern Caribbean and the La Concorde arrives.

11:40Now, this is a slaving vessel which is owned by a merchant, by a French merchant in Nantes, which becomes the preeminent port of the French slave trade later on. It has already been on two slaving voyages to West Africa, then sailing enslaved persons in Martinique and Saint-Bomingue, modern-day Haiti. But this is its third voyage, and it has purchased 516 enslaved persons at Ouida on the West African coast, and that includes men, women and children. And in November, they arrive off the coast of the Lesser Antilles of the Eastern Caribbean, and it's here that they encounter Blackbeard and Bonnet.

12:15Who are in two ships, or have they got a fleet at this point? The account says that Blackbeard has two vessels at this point, one of 12 cannon and 120 men, and the other of 8 cannon and 30 men. So two vessels that are quite easily able to overcome the slaving vessel, because also at this point, the crew on the slaving vessel are sick with scurvy and dysentery and are unable to defend the vessel. So they take it relatively easily, to be honest. However, after they take this La Concurve, they then give the French one of their vessels and again they transfer the majority of enslaved persons on board this vessel and so the French captain is able to sail to Martinique and then sell the enslaved persons there still.

12:58So here's your cargo, we're only interested in the ship and you know these poor poor people who have been kept in hideous conditions under decks carry on with their ordeal. I don't like pirates, I used to think I did like pirates, I don't like pirates at all. Okay so right he's got his whopping great battleship, La Concorde. Does he carry on calling it La Concorde? Does he keep the name or does he rename it? No, this one gets renamed to the Queen Anne's Revenge, which becomes sort of Blackbeard's iconic ship. He's quite cinematic himself. I mean, he's aware of his sort of image, isn't he? Exactly.

13:28He knows what he's doing. He knows why he's calling it the Queen Anne's Revenge. He knows that that will capture the imagination of others. Is that anything to do with the Jacobites? And we've talked about the Jacobites a lot in the recent past, you know, the last Stuart monarch. Are they paying homage to her or is that just a name plucked out of a pirate hat? It's definitely a play on this Jacobite era. So the reason they call it this, some historians would claim it's because they do have these Jacobite tendencies and some might have that. But he's an Englishman. He's from Bristol, isn't he? Yes, he's supposedly from Bristol.

13:58Hence the Western accent. Exactly. Well, this is why I question it. I actually think that really what they're doing is they are trying to capture the imagination. They call it the Queen Anne's Revenge because they know it will basically get on the right side of annoying people like the Royal Navy, like the Crown. I think there's a bit of humour in it as well, to be honest, so it will become notorious. But I do think there's a wee bit of humour in these pirates calling their vessels things like the Queen Anne's Revenge or the King James. There's also maybe an element of pragmatism whereby if they can pretend or at least claim that they are rebelling against King George I and so on behalf of the Stuarts, then they can claim some form of legitimacy sort of flying a flag of convenience if you will but it doesn't ever work out that way and I do think it is just out of cheek basically.

14:43So I mean getting the Queen Anne's revenge hitherto known as La Concorde does it make him the most already flexing pirate in the Caribbean or are there bigger pirates than him at this time? No at this time now that the Ouida has been shipwrecked this is definitely one of the largest vessels of the time. Right okay so that in itself I'm guessing will attract more crew and more people who want to be under your jolly Roger Is he flying the Jolly Roger? We said that the Jolly Roger was an actual thing, but is he flying it or does it matter to other pirates? He's definitely flying some sort of black flag, really.

15:12In the record, what comes up is they say they're flying either a black flag or a death's head, so some sort of skull icon, but we don't actually know, again, what the flag looks like, but we know it's black and we know it has a skull on it. For all the demythologising, I'm impressed by how much of the legend actually is there in the reality of this. There's always a kernel of truth in these things. I love the way you still insist on fishing in the Book of Dep. I like it. It's good. Right, it's good. Okay, so look, as we were saying, you become more popular. People want to be with you if you're successful.

15:40And by 1718, Blackbeard has a flotilla of about six ships under his command with the magnificent Queen Anne's Revenge leading this flotilla. Is that enough to set up a blockade? Because, I mean, if you really want the big money, what you do is you blockade a port and you extort for, you know, as much as you can until the pips squeak. So at this point, exactly. He arrives back in the North American coast with the Queen Anne's Revenge now and he immediately blockades Charleston in South Carolina. Right. Which is the biggest port of all, isn't it? I mean, he's going for the jackpot straight away.

16:13It's one of the larger ports and certainly one of the most undefended as well on the coast. So they don't actually have a Royal Naval vessel in this port either. So it's quite a strategic choice also. OK, well, let's take a break there. Join us after the break where we find out what happens after the blockade.

16:34Welcome back. Well, we are now reaching the climax of Blackbeard's incredible story, which, as I said before, is far closer to the truth than anyone might have imagined. It's extraordinary. Yes, Pirates of the Caribbean fact. That's right. Or no, or no. David's going to regret coming on here. Anyway, let's have a look at the Blackbeard legend already. Will people up and down the coast all have heard of him? Is he in every newspaper or is it just reports of attacks? And is there a name behind them? By this time, there are starting to be the sort of the elements of the myth are starting to develop.

17:13You can see that he is becoming quite notorious in the written records, particularly in newspapers. He will become more notorious with his next attacks in North America. But certainly merchants would have known of him and some governors as well. So more around the sort of seafaring elite. I think his name was starting to become more known. And as we said, he actually now has, what, six ships? It's somewhere between a flotilla and a fleet now. Yeah, exactly. So he's got multiple vessels and around 400 men on these vessels as well. So a significant fleet and a significant crew. But it also means, presumably, if you've got 400 men, you have 400 mouths to feed.

17:48You need to keep the tempo up. There's no question of him going back and backing down. And also, you've been at sea for a long time and people get sick at sea. You know, you're not having fruit and veg. As we know, flour is a really expensive commodity because you don't have that, you know, growing on their little archipelago, pirate archipelago. You haven't got crop farming. OK, so, I mean, let's go back to the blockade. 1718, Blackbeard and four ships sail up to Charleston. He arrives in the harbour, fires on the city with all his ships. And then in what is considered to be one of the kind of bravest and boldest acts of his career, he sets up a formal blockade.

18:26David, take us from there. Exactly. So he sets up this blockade of Charleston, not allowing any vessels to come in or out without him basically raiding these vessels. But it actually comes back to Anita's point on having that many crew members and then trying to take care of them and trying to have the supplies to be able to have that many men. Because what he's really doing with this blockade is he wants to demand a chest of medicines for his crew. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Because, you know, you'd think if you blockade a port, you know, this is just me speaking, gold, jewels, you know, doubloons, pieces of eight.

19:01And Charleston is famously a rich port. It's a fantastically rich southern plantation place. Yeah, exactly. But he doesn't, he's just one chest of medicine. That's really all he asks for. So it shows you a little bit about the desperation of these figures as well. Even though Blackbeard is formidable at this point in time, he still has to blockade this port just to get access to this chest of medicines, which shows how desperate they must have been for this medicine. What kind of medicines are we talking about in 1718? What's he after? Unfortunately, we don't know exactly what it is he gets, but it will be some sort of medicine to respond to scurvy, to dysentery, to typhus.

19:34Actually, in his wreck, so we'll come to the fact that the vessel gets wrecked. But in the wreck, they have now surfaced that wreck, and one of the artefacts they also found was a urethro syringe. So I'll leave that for your imagination. Wait a minute. No, we're going to go into that on Empire Podcast. A urethro syringe is something rather appalling that goes up the bloke's hoo-ha, isn't it? To unblock and allow you to pee. Is that what it's for? Or for infections or something? To administer the mercury to cure syphilis. Oh. Yeah, so they've all got syphilis. That's what it is. That's what it is.

20:04I've come across this a lot in my 18th century readings and everyone is taking mercury and having to rub this thing into them. Rubbed or injected up? You rub. Well, no, this is an injection. The ones in India are rubbing themselves with. And this isn't just the pirates. I've been reading the diaries of Mount Stewart Elphinstone, who's an establishment character as any. And in Hyderabad, he gets a terrific case of the clap. And he describes in great detail his symptoms and his treatment. But isn't the treatment going to kill you? Well, we know that more than they did. We know that mercury gives you mercury poisoning.

20:39But they might have known it when they died. We can see that it has an effect on the clap. On the infection. Okay. We dwelt on that far too much and far too long. I'm sorry about that. Sorry, not sorry. It figures so prominently in 18th century letters. If you read any man's letters or journals, Mercury will turn up sooner or later at this period. Okay, so they're demanding the medicine. So Governor Robert Johnson of Charleston, he says yes. And does he throw in a couple of lemons for the scurvy as well? I mean, or do they just go with the very bare minimum? It seems like they really go with the bare minimum of the chest of medicines.

21:12But what Blackbeard says is that if you don't give me this, that he threatens to burn all of the ships in the harbour, but also to kill all of the captives that he has as well. So it shows you the desperation for that chest of medicines. On the flip side of that, Johnson isn't able to really do anything about this. He has to exchange this chest of medicines. He doesn't have a choice because he has no way to combat Blackbeard's blockades. Is there a feeling that he's sold himself cheap that he could have asked for half of the tax revenues of South Carolina? Am I imagining this or is he a bit of a crap pirate?

21:42You said it, not me. The people that we know about are all the pirates that got caught and executed. Well, it's not Leapahead yet because he's still at large, but he's clutching his... Clutching his bits. Clutching his limbset and clutching his bits and clutching his aspirin and he's off again. Okay, so then where now does his mercury-abbled crew go next? So they don't go very far. They actually move from South Carolina up to North Carolina and then Blackbeard runs the Queen Anne's Revenge aground at Beaufort Inlet. and it's thought that he does this intentionally. It's unsure how intentional this is, but at this point it seems like Blackbeard's ready to break up the crew and apparently what happens here is he breaks with Bonnet and most of Bonnet's crew and actually only a small portion of Blackbeard's crew, around 29 plus him, then leave with most of the plunder as well.

22:32So again, with this large flotilla, they'd already been operating elsewhere in the Caribbean and South America, so they seem to have made some riches and then decided actually now was the time to cheat. them out of the crew. So one of the ways that I read that they made some money before, you know, he gives up and runs his ship aground, is that they do this sort of toll collection from North Carolina. They take over an inlet and they say, right, you know, if anyone wants to pass here, you're going to have to give us some money to go past. I mean, how long does that last? Or not really very long at all?

22:59So it's only a few days where they do have this blockade. But while that's happening, they are taking vessels in and out and seizing the goods from those vessels. So they will gather a lot of plunder from those as well. And David, give us an impression of the crews. Are they all ne 'er-do-wells from the Bahamas? Are they people who have been captured and somehow made their peace with their captors? Who are these people? And is he ruling by fear or is it a sort of democracy of rogues? What's going on? It's an interesting mix of all of the above. So there are some members of his crew who are the sort of diehard pirates, the volunteer pirates who make up the core part of his crew and who are really in it for the riches, but also following Blackbeard as well, following his command.

23:39But there's also a lot of other individuals who have been forced on board, who have been forced recruits. When they take a merchant vessel, they'll force a few of the crew to join the pirate vessel just to help the day-to-day running of the ships. So there's a bit of a mix of these core voluntary pirates and then some more forced pirates and then some people in between who sort of move from being forced to becoming more voluntary. But from what you've told us, David, it doesn't sound like there's any great strategy. He's not trying to build up a fleet or conquer somewhere or become the king of the Caribbean.