Speaker 1: The year is seventeen twenty five. You're a sailor chopped
Speaker 1: on a merchant ship, and during backbreaking work and brutal conditions,
Speaker 1: your quarters, cramped and crawling with disease, are shared with
Speaker 1: enslaved people, Your wages paltry if they ever come, and
Speaker 1: the whip is never far from reach.
Speaker 2: Then over the horizon a ship emerges, It's black flag
Speaker 2: billowing in the wind. As it closes in, you see them,
Speaker 2: a crew of outlaws, men and women of every race,
Speaker 2: clad and stolen finery and ragged silks. They shout, laugh
Speaker 2: and rifle through cargo. There's no fear in their faces,
Speaker 2: only defiance, only freedom.
Speaker 1: One of them calls to you, why break your back
Speaker 1: for a captain who sees you as nothing? Take your share,
Speaker 1: take your life.
Speaker 2: You have a choice, stay and die defending the profits
Speaker 2: of your employers, or leap into a life of rebellion
Speaker 2: on the high seas.
Speaker 1: This is working class history.
Speaker 3: Ala Martina ha Oh, bela child, bela child, bela child,
Speaker 3: Chochio Lamatino.
Speaker 2: Before we get started, you may have noticed there's a
Speaker 2: new voice with me today who also doesn't have a
Speaker 2: British accent. My friend and colleague Audrey is here and
Speaker 2: I want to let her introduce herself.
Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Audre Kemp. I'm a journalist and community organizer.
Speaker 1: I've spent years covering labor and power, and I'm excited
Speaker 1: to dive into this story with you all.
Speaker 2: And as always, our podcast is brought to you by
Speaker 2: our Patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work and in
Speaker 2: return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes without ads,
Speaker 2: bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise, and other For example,
Speaker 2: our patreons of orders can listen to both parts of
Speaker 2: this double episode without ads. Now join us or find
Speaker 2: out more at patreon dot com slash working Class history
Speaker 2: link in the show notes.
Speaker 4: Yes, greetings, my name is Marcus Reddicker, and I am
Speaker 4: the author of a book called Villains of All Nations.
Speaker 4: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, published by Beacon Press
Speaker 4: in two thousand and four.
Speaker 2: Marcus describes in his book that to the authorities of
Speaker 2: their time, pirates were seen as dangerous outlaws. The term
Speaker 2: pirate comes from a Greek word meaning one who attacks ships,
Speaker 2: and Roman law labeled them quote enemies of all mankind.
Speaker 1: By the early eighteenth century, piracy had become a crisis
Speaker 1: for European empires. During this time, an estimated five thousand
Speaker 1: to ten thousand pirates prowled the seas, seizing hundreds of
Speaker 1: merchant ships, looting cargo and disrupting trades so severely that
Speaker 1: insurance rates skyrocketed and navy scrambled to hunt them down.
Speaker 2: And they didn't just take ships, they took riches that
Speaker 2: rivaled the fortunes of entire colonies.
Speaker 1: One of the most legendary pirate raids took place in
Speaker 1: seventeen twenty one, when John Taylor and Olivier le Vassel
Speaker 1: seized the Portuguese treasure ship Nosus Sonora Dicabo off the
Speaker 1: coast of Yennom Island. The hall diamonds, gold, and other
Speaker 1: treasures worth around two hundred million US dollars in today's currency,
Speaker 1: making it one of the richest pirate captures in history.
Speaker 2: But piracy wasn't just about plunder. It was a response
Speaker 2: to the brutal conditions of early capitalism.
Speaker 1: Global trade enriched merchants and shipowners, but sailors were left behind.
Speaker 1: They were underpaid, overworked, and eventually disposable.
Speaker 2: Many turned to piracy not just to survive, but to
Speaker 2: escape a system that had abandoned them.
Speaker 1: The pirates strived to build something new, a society where
Speaker 1: they elected their own leaders, shared their plunder equally, and
Speaker 1: lived on their own terms.
Speaker 2: And their rebellion would define what we now call the
Speaker 2: Golden Age of Piracy, spanning from the sixteen fifties to
Speaker 2: the seventeen thirties. During this era, figures like Blackbeard, Bartholomew Blackbart, Roberts,
Speaker 2: and Anne Bonnie made their names. Roberts, who's one of
Speaker 2: the most successful pirates ever, captured over four hundred ships
Speaker 2: throughout his career.
Speaker 1: Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid, both women fought alongside their crewmates,
Speaker 1: disguising themselves in men's clothing to claim their place in
Speaker 1: battle and defy the gender norms of their time.
Speaker 2: And then there was Blackbeard, who set his own beard
Speaker 2: on fire to terrify his enemies.
Speaker 4: The Golden Age of Piracy looms very large in the
Speaker 4: global imagination, but in fact it's not actually a single
Speaker 4: unitary thing. There were three distinct generations of pirates within
Speaker 4: the Golden Age. The first was in the sixteen sixties
Speaker 4: and sixteen seventies. An emblematic figure here is Sir Henry Morgan,
Speaker 4: and in fact he stole so much silver from the
Speaker 4: Spanish and took it to Jamaica that he was knighted.
Speaker 4: He became Sir Henry Morgan and became Lieutenant governor of
Speaker 4: this incipient slave colony.
Speaker 2: Over time, piracy evolved, the motivations, targets, and even the
Speaker 2: way pirates operated changed from one generation to the next.
Speaker 1: The first generation of pirates were called buccaneers, which operated
Speaker 1: primarily in the Caribbean during the mid seventeenth century.
Speaker 4: And that word comes from a style of capturing, cooking,
Speaker 4: and eating wild game on the various Caribbean islands on
Speaker 4: something that the French called a bucan, and so they
Speaker 4: became buccaneers because many of the early buccaneers lived this
Speaker 4: kind of roving life from one island to another.
Speaker 1: The buccaneers mainly targeted the Spanish Empire, stealing enormous wealth
Speaker 1: from the Spanish crown and weakening Spain's grip on the
Speaker 1: New World. England saw an opportunity, granting privateers legal cover
Speaker 1: to attack Spanish vessels.
Speaker 4: The second generation is where you see a change in
Speaker 4: the attitude from above. This is the generation of the
Speaker 4: sixteen nineties. There are two emblematic figures for this generation.
Speaker 4: One is Henry Avery, who captured a part of the
Speaker 4: treasure fleet of one of the rulers of India and
Speaker 4: got away with a massive heist of jewels and wealth,
Speaker 4: and he was never caught, so Henry Avery became kind
Speaker 4: of a folk hero.
Speaker 2: Another key figure of this era was William Kidd, born
Speaker 2: in Dundee, Scotland in sixteen fifty four. Kid made a
Speaker 2: name for himself as a privateer in New York. In
Speaker 2: sixteen ninety five, he got a royal commission to hunt
Speaker 2: down pirates and enemy ships in the Indian Ocean as
Speaker 2: part of England's plan to protect its trade routes.
Speaker 4: But when he got there, far beyond the reach of
Speaker 4: royal authority, he actually turned pirate himself, and this was
Speaker 4: a very big embarrassment for some of his wealthy English
Speaker 4: merchant backers. So he eventually was brought back to London
Speaker 4: and in an act that symbolized the changing attitude of
Speaker 4: the English government towards piracy, William Kidd was hanged. So
Speaker 4: from now on, piracy is not going to be acceptable.
Speaker 2: The reason for these changing attitudes about piracy, like most
Speaker 2: things in history, was money.
Speaker 4: In the late seventeenth century, one of the things that's
Speaker 4: happening is that the Caribbean colonies of England and other
Speaker 4: countries are producing massive amounts of sugar. The sugar is
Speaker 4: emerging as a very important commodity in the economy of
Speaker 4: Atlantic capitalism.
Speaker 1: By seventeen hundred, piracy had become a massive thorn in
Speaker 1: the side of colonial powers like England, France, and Spain.
Speaker 1: Pirate's targeted show the backbone of the colonial economy, driving
Speaker 1: up security and insurance costs and causing disruptions so severe
Speaker 1: that the losses outweighed the cost of competing with one another.
Speaker 2: Faced with a shured threat, these powers found less incentive
Speaker 2: to fight each other with privateers and instead unite it
Speaker 2: against the common enemy, ushering in a new era of piracy.
Speaker 4: So the third generation of pirates are active in the
Speaker 4: seventeen teens and seventeen twenties, and what's especially important about
Speaker 4: them is that there are no longer any wealthy people involved.
Speaker 4: This is the proletariant phase. This is the phase in
Speaker 4: which common sailors get control of an entire generation of plundering,
Speaker 4: and this, of course fuels all of the imperial governments
Speaker 4: to catch as many of these people as they can
Speaker 4: and to hang them up in gibbets at the entrance
Speaker 4: of every harbor as a deliberate act of terror, meant
Speaker 4: to send a message to common sailors. If you turn pirate,
Speaker 4: we will hunt you down and we will kill you.
Speaker 1: It was during this new proletarian, working class era of
Speaker 1: piracy when pirates started to see their very existence as
Speaker 1: a rebellion against the hierarchies of capital and began building
Speaker 1: their own, more egalitarian system. Their ships became spaces of democracy, fairness,
Speaker 1: and unity, directly challenging the systems they had escaped, and.
Speaker 4: This is one of the things that they were known for,
Speaker 4: and they were known for this in their own day.
Speaker 4: In other words, the elites who are hunting them down
Speaker 4: to kill them are going after them not only because
Speaker 4: they disrupted the commerce which was so valuable to these
Speaker 4: European imperial powers, but also because they posed a challenge
Speaker 4: to the standard way of running a ship.
Speaker 2: Life aboard a pirate ship existed in stark contrast to
Speaker 2: other more common jobs at sea, like being in the
Speaker 2: navy or sailing aboard a merchant vessel.
Speaker 4: So that the Royal Navy, for example, was very far
Speaker 4: from democratic. It was a violent, brutal, disciplinary regime. Similarly,
Speaker 4: the merchant shipping industry captains had tremendously concentrated powers, and pirates,
Speaker 4: in their democratic and egalitarian ways, posed real challenges to
Speaker 4: those other ways of organizing maritime labor.
Speaker 1: And the pirate's ability to not only imagine a better
Speaker 1: world for themselves, but to actually try and build one
Speaker 1: captured the imagination of the public as well.
Speaker 4: So this is the last generation of the Golden Age.
Speaker 4: It's dramatic. It was something that everybody wanted to read about.
Speaker 4: Whenever the authorities captured a group of pirates, they would
Speaker 4: be hangings that were public spectacles, but vast numbers of
Speaker 4: people would turn out, many of them to cheer the
Speaker 4: pirates because they were working class heroes.
Speaker 2: But in order to understand what makes the piracy of
Speaker 2: the eighteenth century so radical, first we have to understand
Speaker 2: transatlantic trade and the burgeoning capitalism of the sixteenth century.
Speaker 4: This is the period in which England is leading the
Speaker 4: way and moving out into the world, actually following Spain,
Speaker 4: who had a great deal of success in extracting gold
Speaker 4: and silver from the indigenous peoples and their lands in
Speaker 4: the Americas. But along come the Dutch and the English.
Speaker 4: They didn't find gold and silver, but they found something
Speaker 4: even better. They found things like sugar and tobacco and
Speaker 4: rice and these commodities that are going to be the
Speaker 4: lifeblood of the Atlantic economy.
Speaker 1: A lot of historians say the most important machine to
Speaker 1: the rise of capitalism is a steam engine, but Marcus
Speaker 1: has a different theory.
Speaker 4: It's the tall ship, which is actually a piece of
Speaker 4: technology that permitted Europe to conquer the rest of the
Speaker 4: world and to create these vast bluewater empires. You know,
Speaker 4: the maritime powers in the sixteenth seventeenth, eighteenth century occupy
Speaker 4: only a tiny part of the Eurasian land mass on
Speaker 4: the western end. But think about where those languages are
Speaker 4: spoken today, English, French, Dutch, Spanish. These are global languages
Speaker 4: and this reflects the power of those ships as instruments
Speaker 4: of conquest.
Speaker 2: And those ships can't sail around the world without the
Speaker 2: labor of highly skilled and trained sailors who could handle
Speaker 2: everything from navigation and rigging to carpentry. Their expertise kept
Speaker 2: the ships running and the trade routes alive.
Speaker 4: The ships don't sail by themselves. There's a labor issue here.
Speaker 4: So in this context, the growth of these empires and
Speaker 4: the growth of capitalism as a system has several crucial components.
Speaker 4: One of these is what Marks called primitive accumulation of capital,
Speaker 4: by that meaning the separation of workers from their means
Speaker 4: of subsistence. This happens through the enclosure movement in England.
Speaker 4: It happens through the slave trade in West Africa, where
Speaker 4: many millions of Africans, through war and other forms of dispossession,
Speaker 4: are going to be separated from the land, loaded onto
Speaker 4: slave ships, and carried to the Americas to build this
Speaker 4: nascent plantation system.
Speaker 1: Marcus explains that the plantation system central to global trade
Speaker 1: networks was responsible for the largest plant accumulation of wealth
Speaker 1: the world had ever seen. The system depended on the
Speaker 1: exploitation of millions of enslaved Africans, funneling immense wealth into
Speaker 1: the hands of a few. That wealth in turn financed
Speaker 1: further colonial expansion and the growth of European industries.
Speaker 4: So we're talking talking about massive amounts of money to
Speaker 4: be taken back to Europe plunder, but also the regular
Speaker 4: profits of production for the world market the plantation system
Speaker 4: produces for the world market. That's just the way it works.
Speaker 2: By seventeen hundred. European empires had built vast wealth through
Speaker 2: plundered resources and slave labor, but they were constantly at
Speaker 2: war with each other, competing for control.
Speaker 4: There are a series of Anglo Dutch wars in the
Speaker 4: seventeenth century, and in seventeen oh two there breaks out
Speaker 4: was called the War of Spanish Succession, and a fair
Speaker 4: amount of this war is about who will control the
Speaker 4: slave trade.
Speaker 1: This war, which lasted from seventeen oh two to seventeen thirteen,
Speaker 1: pulled in major European powers like France, Britain, and the
Speaker 1: Dutch Republic, all vying for dominance.
Speaker 4: And during that time, one of the ways that European
Speaker 4: powers waged war against each other is through something called privateering,
Speaker 4: and by that is meant a private merchant ship is
Speaker 4: geared out as a vessel of war and then given
Speaker 4: a bill of mark by a king or his minions
Speaker 4: to wage war on behalf of the king against the
Speaker 4: king's enemies, so to attack Spanish ships if you're English,
Speaker 4: or even French ships. That is essentially legal piracy.
Speaker 2: These privateers made a lot of money, but.
Speaker 4: When the war comes to an end, two things happen
Speaker 4: that are really important to understanding the rise of piracy. First,
Speaker 4: all those privateers are demobilized. In other words, once there's peacetime,
Speaker 4: the king can't give out these letters of mark there's
Speaker 4: no legal piracy going on. And secondly, the big navies
Speaker 4: of these European empires also demobilized, so thousands of sailors
Speaker 4: are basically paid off. Sometimes actually they're builked of their wages,
Speaker 4: but they leave the ships and the navies move from
Speaker 4: much higher level of mobilization to a much lower level.
Speaker 1: That left the port cities of the Atlantic. Teaming was
Speaker 1: skilled unemployed sailors, and.
Speaker 2: The ruling class responded to this labor surplus the way
Speaker 2: it always does.
Speaker 4: This army of the unemployed has very palpable impact on
Speaker 4: the way sailors who do have jobs are treated. They
Speaker 4: are treated much worse. They are treated more violently by
Speaker 4: the captains. Their wages go down. Wartime wages for sailors
Speaker 4: are pretty decent, but once there's this massive glut of labor,
Speaker 4: the wages come way down to a third of the
Speaker 4: level of wartime. The quality of food declines, the use
Speaker 4: of the lash increases.
Speaker 1: Thousands of seasoned sailors, many of them former privateers, were broke,
Speaker 1: angry and out of options, so they did what they
Speaker 1: knew best. They took to the sea. But this time
Speaker 1: they weren't sailing under a king's banner. They were sailing
Speaker 1: under the black flag.
Speaker 4: Pirates in the third generation of the Golden Age were
Speaker 4: just ordinary working sailors. They were not aristocrats who had
Speaker 4: lost their honor and go out to sea to marry
Speaker 4: the colonial governor's daughter. You know, it's nothing like that.
Speaker 4: It's just ordinary working people whose lives are really difficult,
Speaker 4: especially in this period after the War of Spanish.
Speaker 2: Succession, there were two primary ways a sailor could become
Speaker 2: a pirate around this time.
Speaker 4: The way that most people think that you become a
Speaker 4: pirate is through mutiny. That you basically organize an opposition
Speaker 4: within a ship a merchant ship almost always, and you
Speaker 4: rise up and you capture the ship, you create your
Speaker 4: own black flag, and you sail off toward the horizon
Speaker 4: as a new pirate crew. But that's probably a relatively
Speaker 4: small percentage of the people who become pirates.
Speaker 1: More often, however, pirates didn't have to take over a ship.
Speaker 1: They just had to capture one, and for mistreated navy
Speaker 1: or merchant sailors this could be an opportunity, and.
Speaker 4: When pirates captured a prize vessel, they would perform a
Speaker 4: very interesting ritual. They would come on board, and they
Speaker 4: wouldn't start plundering right away. They would call all the
Speaker 4: sailors up on deck, the sailors of the captured ship.
Speaker 4: They would bring the captain up on deck to face
Speaker 4: those sailors.
Speaker 2: And then the pirates, all of whom used to be
Speaker 2: common sailors like the ones aboard the captured ship, and
Speaker 2: all of whom had been whipped, starved, and cheated out
Speaker 2: of their wages by merchant or navy. Captains would ask
Speaker 2: a question that would change the fate of everyone on board.
Speaker 1: How does your captain treat you?
Speaker 4: And if they say, our captain treats us very badly.
Speaker 4: He doesn't pay us our proper wages, he doesn't give
Speaker 4: us the food we're supposed to get, and worst of all,
Speaker 4: he beats us all the time. If sailors step forward
Speaker 4: and say that in that moment, when the pirates have
Speaker 4: just captured their ship, that captain is in a lot
Speaker 4: of trouble. Because pirates will act as avengers for their
Speaker 4: seafaring brothers, and they will give that captain a whipping,
Speaker 4: usually in the very place where he would tie up
Speaker 4: sailors to whip them. That tie him up in the
Speaker 4: same place and give him the beating of his life,
Speaker 4: and in some instances they killed him. In some instances
Speaker 4: they gave the captain a whipping and then threw him
Speaker 4: overboard and especially bad cases.
Speaker 2: But the pirates weren't just out for vengeance. They had
Speaker 2: a system, a rough kind of justice.
Speaker 4: If a sailor should step forward and said, our captain
Speaker 4: is a decent man. He treats us well, he pays
Speaker 4: us our wages. In that case, the pirates would not
Speaker 4: only not punish the captain, they might give him money.
Speaker 1: One famous example of this was William Snellgrave, a merchant
Speaker 1: captain captured by pirates in seventeen nineteen off the coast
Speaker 1: of Sierra Leone. Despite being severely injured in the attack,
Speaker 1: he was spared, likely because his crew respected.
Speaker 4: Him, and the pirates gave him money and said, go
Speaker 4: home to London and show the merchants what happens when
Speaker 4: a captain treats his sailors well. So they would reward
Speaker 4: the decent captains, and they would punish the much more
Speaker 4: numerous violent captains.
Speaker 2: And once the captain's fate was decided, the Pirates turned
Speaker 2: to the rest of the crew with another offer.
Speaker 4: The pirates when they're getting ready to depart the prize ship,
Speaker 4: they said, okay, boys, who's with us? Do you want
Speaker 4: to come on board and join the pirate ship? And
Speaker 4: believe me, if you spoke out a bit against your captain,
Speaker 4: you had better go with the pirates because there was
Speaker 4: going to be trouble if you didn't. So this is
Speaker 4: the way they recruited people by doing things in defense
Speaker 4: of the common sailor, and also in telling them, look,
Speaker 4: you're going to join a ship where we vote on everything.
Speaker 4: We're going to elect our captain, We're going to elect
Speaker 4: a quartermaster to keep an eye on the captain to
Speaker 4: make sure he treats everybody fairly, and we're going to
Speaker 4: divide up everything we get very equally. It's not going
Speaker 4: to be the way it is on these naval and
Speaker 4: merchant ships.
Speaker 1: From that moment on, the pirates and whoever chose to
Speaker 1: join them would sail off into the sunset and the
Speaker 1: open sea out there.
Speaker 2: No captains or merchants had any power over them. They
Speaker 2: were miles away, not only from the authority of their
Speaker 2: former employers, but also from the institutions that reproduce the
Speaker 2: has seen social order churches, governments, families, et cetera.
Speaker 1: They were free to create a new order, one that
Speaker 1: worked on their own terms.
Speaker 4: They just get to decide for themselves how they want
Speaker 4: to run the ship, what do they do, how do
Speaker 4: they do it. Do they do it in the same
Speaker 4: way as the Royal Navy and the merchant shipping industry,
Speaker 4: And the answer resoundingly is no, they didn't do it
Speaker 4: that way. They created a very different kind of social order.
Speaker 2: Of course, some things had to say the same.
Speaker 1: As ship still needed someone who could read charts, navigate
Speaker 1: the seas, and keep them on course.
Speaker 4: You've got to have that. If you don't have that,
Speaker 4: the ship doesn't work properly. So you've got to choose
Speaker 4: someone who has those skills. But even so, the pirates
Speaker 4: would elect the person they wanted to lead them. Okay,
Speaker 4: so now this is at a time Bear in mind,
Speaker 4: this is at a time when poor people like sailors
Speaker 4: had no democratic rights anywhere in the world. Okay, nowhere
Speaker 4: did they have this kind of power. Because in most
Speaker 4: every country, if there is some voting. It's for people
Speaker 4: of property, and these pirates didn't have property, so they
Speaker 4: couldn't vote. So they vote, so they vot. They vote
Speaker 4: for a captain.
Speaker 2: But even the best captains could abuse their power, so
Speaker 2: the pirates built in a safeguard.
Speaker 4: They created a new position called the quartermaster, who would
Speaker 4: basically do two things. One keep an eye on the captain,
Speaker 4: make sure he doesn't abuse his power, and two divide
Speaker 4: up everything equally that they take when they capture prize vessels.
Speaker 4: And what's fascinating about this is that for that job,
Speaker 4: you're going to elect the most trustworthy person on the ship.
Speaker 4: It's the person you would trust to be fair to
Speaker 4: everybody and the person that you would trust to be
Speaker 4: suspicious of captains. So they voted on that. So it's
Speaker 4: like a dual executive in which there's this balance of
Speaker 4: power so that people are not abused.
Speaker 1: And they didn't stop there. Pirates elected officers for all
Speaker 1: sorts of roles.
Speaker 2: In fact, they voted on just about everything.
Speaker 4: One ship captain said, it's who was totally unaccustomed to this.
Speaker 4: He says, they're just constantly voting on everything. Where do
Speaker 4: we want to sail the ship, where's the best place
Speaker 4: to capture vessels? Who do we want to do this?
Speaker 4: Who do we want to do that? And the sovereign
Speaker 4: power was the crew as a collective. They had something
Speaker 4: called the Common Council, in which everybody had to vote.
Speaker 4: Everybody came out, they had debates. You know, some said
Speaker 4: let's go here, or they said let's go there, and
Speaker 4: then they would have a vote. This is all very
Speaker 4: unusual for the times.
Speaker 1: Democratic way of running the ship was crucial to pirate culture,
Speaker 1: and so was equality among the sailors.
Speaker 4: And here you'd have to look at this in comparative perspective.
Speaker 4: A captain on a royal naval vessel would probably make
Speaker 4: sixty to eighty to one hundred times as much in
Speaker 4: pay as the lowest common sailor. For the captain of
Speaker 4: a merchant ship, it might be ten, twenty, thirty, forty
Speaker 4: times as much, depending on how much of the cargo
Speaker 4: the captain owned, and they frequently did own quite a
Speaker 4: bit of it. But pirates didn't operate that way. First
Speaker 4: of all, they abolished the wage. They said, we're not
Speaker 4: wage laborers. We're partners in this enterprise. So it's like
Speaker 4: a cooperative we're partners, and so we're going to pay
Speaker 4: everybody according to shares, not the money wage. And this
Speaker 4: too is kind of fascinating because this is the period
Speaker 4: when wage labor is a sndant, this is part of
Speaker 4: the rise of capitalism. But the pirates didn't want to
Speaker 4: play that game, so they say we'll give shares.
Speaker 2: Every crew member received at least one share.
Speaker 1: Skilled workers like gunners, carpenters, or navigators earn slightly more
Speaker 1: due to the crucial roles they played on the ship.
Speaker 2: A specialist might get one in a quarter or one
Speaker 2: and a half shares, but that was about the limit.
Speaker 4: Look at the wage hierarchy, and look how the pirates
Speaker 4: have radically compressed it so that the distance between the
Speaker 4: top and the bottom is really minimal. And this, of
Speaker 4: course also appealed to the common sailor. They loved this idea.
Speaker 4: They loved the idea that the captain was not getting
Speaker 4: one hundred times as much as anybody else. So this
Speaker 4: democratic social order was really crucial. The authorities were very
Speaker 4: well aware of it, and they wanted to eradicate it
Speaker 4: because it was a very subversive example, this way of
Speaker 4: running a ship in which the rank and file were
Speaker 4: in control.
Speaker 2: That radical rejection of class hierarchy wasn't just about wages.
Speaker 2: It showed up in how pirates carried themselves too.
Speaker 1: Take Walter Kennedy for example. He came from a poor
Speaker 1: family in London, got by through burglary and pickpocketing, and
Speaker 1: eventually found his way to the Royal Navy. When he
Speaker 1: turned pirate, he made a name for himself by sharing
Speaker 1: loot equitably and refusing to follow the rigid social order
Speaker 1: of the time. People even called him the robin Hood
Speaker 1: of the Sea.
Speaker 2: But Kennedy's class defiance didn't stop there. When he was
Speaker 2: captured and put on trial, he showed up wearing a
Speaker 2: powdered wig, a symbol of the elite he had spent
Speaker 2: his life fighting against. It was a final act of mockery,
Speaker 2: a pirate's way of thumbing his nose at the system,
Speaker 2: even in the face of death.
Speaker 1: That defiance wasn't just personal, it was collective, and nothing
Speaker 1: symbolized that more than the flag they flew, the Jolly Roger.
Speaker 2: Let's start with a name.
Speaker 4: Jolly Roger had a specific meaning that came from the underworld,
Speaker 4: as it was often called in the port cities where
Speaker 4: people would speak a particular kind of language. It was
Speaker 4: called can't thieves can't. It was a very specialized vocabulary.
Speaker 4: And jolly is sort of well known, but Roger meant
Speaker 4: to copulate. Okay, to Roger, someone was to fuck them.
Speaker 4: So basically the Jolly Roger. The basic message of the
Speaker 4: Jolly Roger was fuck you. And I think this is
Speaker 4: kind of what they were trying to convey.
Speaker 2: But beyond giving anyone who looked at it the middle finger,
Speaker 2: the symbolism of the Jolly Roger conveyed the pirate's ideals,
Speaker 2: especially in contrast to the world they had left behind.
Speaker 4: Flags represent group identification with an idea or a set
Speaker 4: of principles. So you have flags of empires, for example,
Speaker 4: the Union Jack. What pirates began to do in the
Speaker 4: seventeen teens was to create their own flags. And this
Speaker 4: is you know, you've got to remember too, how important
Speaker 4: flags were to life at sea. This is how you
Speaker 4: signal from ship to ship, what you're doing, where you're going,
Speaker 4: who you are. Right there are all these banners and
Speaker 4: flags flying on every vessel.
Speaker 2: And the significance of flags as symbols of empire and
Speaker 2: hegemony make the iconography of the jolly Roger that much
Speaker 2: more subversive.
Speaker 4: Some people say that the origin of the pirate flag
Speaker 4: name jolly Roger comes from the French joles rouge.
Speaker 1: Which means pretty red in French.
Speaker 4: A lot of the early pirate flags were red, but
Speaker 4: it turns out black became the dominant color, and by
Speaker 4: the time we get into this third generation, almost all
Speaker 4: the pirate flags are black.
Speaker 1: And against that black flag.
Speaker 4: They choose the image of death, the death's head that
Speaker 4: could be a skull and crossbones, as it is now
Speaker 4: very commonly depicted, but in many cases, probably in most cases,
Speaker 4: it was an entire skeleton, as they called it, an anatomy,
Speaker 4: with a skull, and you could see all the bones
Speaker 4: of the body. And the skull was usually holding two things.
Speaker 4: It was holding in one hand an hourglass and in
Speaker 4: the other hand a sword or a spear or a dart.
Speaker 2: Marcus says that on one level, these images are pretty straightforward.
Speaker 4: Prize ship sees a pirate ship bearing down on them,
Speaker 4: up goes the jolly Roger, and you look at this
Speaker 4: image of death, and you see the weapon, and you
Speaker 4: see the hourglass, and what are you going to conclude?
Speaker 4: Would surrender or you will die, right, That's what they're
Speaker 4: That's what they're saying. They it's the black pirate flag
Speaker 4: is an instrument of terror. It's meant to terrify their
Speaker 4: prey so they won't fight back.
Speaker 1: In contrary to popular belief, a pirate would almost always
Speaker 1: prefer the outcome.
Speaker 4: Pirates would just always much prefer that people give up,
Speaker 4: And most most merchant ships did give up. They didn't
Speaker 4: want to fight these guys because they were very skillful.
Speaker 4: There were a lot more of them on a pirate ship,
Speaker 4: and you were going to lose. And if you piss
Speaker 4: them off by shooting at them, it's going to be
Speaker 4: worse for you when they capture you, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: But beyond just surrender or die. Marcus also says there's
Speaker 2: a second layer of symbolism to the Jolly Roger.
Speaker 1: And he says it speaks directly to the social order
Speaker 1: that all these pirates came from. Aboard naval and merchant ships.
Speaker 4: Captains who kept logs of their voyages would frequently draw
Speaker 4: in their log a skull and a crossbone to indicate
Speaker 4: the death of a sailor. It's a fairly common practice.
Speaker 4: So what sailors did when they became pirates, they seized
Speaker 4: that symbolism of the skull and crossbones and put it
Speaker 4: on their flag. Right, we're inverting the meaning of this, Right,
Speaker 4: we are trapped in this world of death. And it
Speaker 4: is absolutely true that the conordinary common sailor couldn't expect
Speaker 4: to live very long, right, and this fueled their decision
Speaker 4: to become pirates, the idea being, let us live well
Speaker 4: as long as we can.
Speaker 2: A symbol of the death of a common sailor holds
Speaker 2: an hourglass and a sword.
Speaker 4: There you go, death, violence, limited time. These are things
Speaker 4: that were really crucial to the lives of common sailors,
Speaker 4: and they put that on their banner, and then they
Speaker 4: fought back against those conditions under that manner. And so
Speaker 4: I think this is very revealing of their consciousness as workers,
Speaker 4: that these are the conditions we're in, and we're going
Speaker 4: to put this on the flag. We're going to have
Speaker 4: our own flag. You know, to hell with all those
Speaker 4: nation states. You know, we are free people and we
Speaker 4: will do what we want. And we, as they put it,
Speaker 4: declare war on the whole world, but of course not
Speaker 4: against common sailors. Right, those are the people that you
Speaker 4: defend you take vengeance against their class enemies. So there
Speaker 4: is a very strong anti national quality to this black flag,
Speaker 4: and everybody recognized it as such at the time.
Speaker 3: Alamatina a penal sata oh very lagi, very largile, very Largiuou.
Speaker 2: That's all we've got time for in this episode. Join
Speaker 2: us in Part two, where we talk more about everyday
Speaker 2: life aboard a pirate chip, the rules pirates lived, by,
Speaker 2: the alliances they built, and how their fight for freedom
Speaker 2: ultimately led to their downfall.
Speaker 1: Part two is available now for early listening for our
Speaker 1: supporters on Patreon.
Speaker 2: It's only support from you, our listeners, which allows us
Speaker 2: to make these podcasts, So if you appreciate our work,
Speaker 2: please do think about joining us at patreon dot com
Speaker 2: slash working Class History link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: In return for your support, you can get early access
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Speaker 2: If you'd like to learn more about the Golden Age
Speaker 2: of piracy, check out the web page for this episode,
Speaker 2: where you'll find further reading and more. You can also
Speaker 2: get Marcus's book Fill of All Nations, Atlantic Pirates and
Speaker 2: the Golden Age, and.
Speaker 1: His graphic novel under the Banner of King Death, Pirates
Speaker 1: of the Atlantic, a graphic novel with David Lester, and
Speaker 1: the links in the show note.
Speaker 2: Thanks also to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda, Jeremy Cusamano,
Speaker 2: Nick Williams, and Old Norm.
Speaker 1: Our theme tune is Bella Chow. Thanks for permission to
Speaker 1: use it from Disky dol Sole. You can buy it
Speaker 1: or stream it on the links in the show notes.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by me Audrey Kemp.
Speaker 2: And me Tyler Hill, produced by me Tyler Hill. Anyway,
Speaker 2: that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode
Speaker 2: and thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 3: Moon