Speaker 1: Welcome back to part two of our double episode on
Speaker 1: the Golden Age of piracy. If you haven't listened to
Speaker 1: part one yet, then I recommend you go back and
Speaker 1: listen to that first.
Speaker 2: Ala Matina penal Oh, bela child, bela child, Bela Chichi
Speaker 2: Chi Lamatino.
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Speaker 1: Last episode, we looked at the world that gave rise
Speaker 1: to the Golden Age of piracy, brutal working conditions, exploitation,
Speaker 1: and the same who chose to fight back by creating
Speaker 1: a new social order at sea.
Speaker 3: They took to the open seas, far away from authority
Speaker 3: of any kind, declaring war on the world They came from.
Speaker 4: Pirates depended on the great expanses of waters and seas
Speaker 4: oceans because they were very hard for the navies of
Speaker 4: the world to police.
Speaker 1: But when the whole world is against you, where do
Speaker 1: you go?
Speaker 4: Because you can't stay at sea forever. You have to
Speaker 4: go ashore. You have to get food, you have to
Speaker 4: get the barnacle scraped off the side of the vessel.
Speaker 4: You need to have a place you can go.
Speaker 3: Though the imperial powers of the day had their grip
Speaker 3: on much of the world, there were some places where
Speaker 3: they were weak and their resources were stretched. Then.
Speaker 4: For example, on some of the smaller Caribbean islands and
Speaker 4: lesser ports in Cuba or Puerto Rico or Sandamang, some
Speaker 4: of the bigger islands of the Caribbean, there were small ports.
Speaker 4: And the reason these ports were attractive was because there
Speaker 4: were usually petty merchants, you know, not the wealthy people
Speaker 4: who you know, were attached to the to the British government,
Speaker 4: but petty merchants who would be very glad to get
Speaker 4: the pirates' prizes, and they would let them have it
Speaker 4: for a very cheap price.
Speaker 1: Pirates established bases all along the Atlantic, on the coast
Speaker 1: of North America, parts of West Africa, and especially the
Speaker 1: Indian Ocean. Madagascar in particular, was one of the more
Speaker 1: notorious pirate haunts.
Speaker 3: In the Bahamas, a pirate stronghold called the Republic of
Speaker 3: Pirates was established from roughly seventeen oh six to seventeen eighteen.
Speaker 3: It was a self governed, anarchistic pirate utopia where famous
Speaker 3: pirates like Blackbeard and Anne Bonnie operated outside of imperial
Speaker 3: rule and traditional hierarchies.
Speaker 1: The republic was a base from where pirates could raid
Speaker 1: merchant ships and disrupt trade.
Speaker 3: In places like these, pirates established trading networks with merchants
Speaker 3: who had no loyalty to any empire, just a willingness
Speaker 3: to do business.
Speaker 4: And of course, pirates also had popular followings in these
Speaker 4: smaller ports because they would come ashore flush with money
Speaker 4: and they were going to spend it and give it away,
Speaker 4: and they would sometimes free enslaved people and free indentured servants,
Speaker 4: and they would come back to the ship with them.
Speaker 3: Most people love to see a pirate ship roll into town.
Speaker 3: For many Amantipaida, a party or even a shot at
Speaker 3: a new life.
Speaker 4: I've argued these pirate ships are like floating maroon communities,
Speaker 4: you know, the maroon communities made up of people who
Speaker 4: escaped the plantation system and move, for example, into the
Speaker 4: Blue Mountains of Jamaica or some other inaccessible place where
Speaker 4: they can build These very different social worlds separate from
Speaker 4: the plantation.
Speaker 1: Marcus describes pirate ships as a kind of autonomous zone
Speaker 1: outside the reach of kings and empires, operating on their
Speaker 1: own rules.
Speaker 4: It's a place where the people who are essentially refugees
Speaker 4: of the capitalist shipping industry can build their own world
Speaker 4: in ways like maroons could do on land, in forests,
Speaker 4: on mountains, and the sea is a very similar kind
Speaker 4: of place.
Speaker 3: Not to mention, the kinds of sailors who ended up
Speaker 3: becoming pirates were often the most skilled ones.
Speaker 4: And you know, once they're in control of those ships,
Speaker 4: they can sail them better than anybody else. It's very
Speaker 4: hard to capture them, so their skill is also related
Speaker 4: to their issue of freedom. But slowly the authorities do
Speaker 4: kind of cut off their contacts in different landed societies
Speaker 4: and makes it easier to capture them.
Speaker 1: And the reason the authorities of the day put so
Speaker 1: much effort into trying to capture pirates was that in
Speaker 1: building a more egalitarian society for themselves, they post a
Speaker 1: legitimate threat to the status quo.
Speaker 4: The pirates of the third generation seventeen teens in seventeen
Speaker 4: twenties captured thousands of merchant ships. This created a massive
Speaker 4: crisis in this very lucrative world of global trade.
Speaker 3: Marcus says in the seventeen teens. In seventeen twenties, maritime
Speaker 3: insurance rates skyrocketed.
Speaker 1: In some cases, insurance rates doubled or even tripled, and.
Speaker 3: In places like the Caribbean and West Africa, insurance rates
Speaker 3: could be as high as fifteen to thirty percent of
Speaker 3: a ship's total value.
Speaker 4: And that reflected the power of pirates directly, that they
Speaker 4: were capturing so many ships. It was so dangerous that
Speaker 4: these insurance houses in the metropolis in London and Paris,
Speaker 4: wherever they were, they were very keenly aware of it,
Speaker 4: and they were very worried about all the risks. So
Speaker 4: there is a major disruption of the capitalist trading system.
Speaker 1: Unlike financial crises caused by capitalism's own contradiction, this was
Speaker 1: something else entirely.
Speaker 4: This is a human creation. In other words, this is
Speaker 4: not one of those crises of overproduction or you know,
Speaker 4: the things that are irrational in the way that capitalism works.
Speaker 4: This is poor people banding together and fighting back and
Speaker 4: creating massive problems for the architects of the world economy.
Speaker 4: And as you would expect, they come down with great
Speaker 4: violence on the heads of these people who are disrupting
Speaker 4: their sources of income and profits.
Speaker 3: Pirates not only threatened the global economy, but a way
Speaker 3: of living that was the exact opposite of their formally
Speaker 3: oppressive existence on navy and merchant.
Speaker 1: Vessels, and they defied the social hierarchies of the day,
Speaker 1: fully aware that their decision to turn pirate would come
Speaker 1: with consequences.
Speaker 3: But they didn't care. Freedom was more important to them.
Speaker 4: These common sailors, most of whom will never know, make
Speaker 4: this decision to cross the line to become pirates. They
Speaker 4: live very well. For as long as they live. They
Speaker 4: feast all the time, they drink, elect their own leaders.
Speaker 4: They divide up everything equally. Many of them know that
Speaker 4: they're going to die. And this is another thing, you know,
Speaker 4: this Jolly Roger. There's a sense of humor among the pirates,
Speaker 4: which is really it's gallows humor. They know they're going
Speaker 4: to die as long as they stick with it, and
Speaker 4: most of them stick with it till the end.
Speaker 1: In Marcus's book, he talks at length about the sense
Speaker 1: of humor pirates had in light of this awareness that
Speaker 1: their freedom would likely be short lived.
Speaker 4: A group of pirates captured a ship that was carrying
Speaker 4: proclamations of the king, these big bundles of you know, broadsides,
Speaker 4: and oddly enough, the broadside was offering a forgiveness of
Speaker 4: crimes to pirates who would come in and accept the
Speaker 4: king's pardon and then go straight join the royal navy
Speaker 4: or do something like that. So the pirates have plundered
Speaker 4: this ship and they say, give us, give us all
Speaker 4: those proclamations, and the merchants, the merchant captain says, why
Speaker 4: do you want those? And they say, we're in need
Speaker 4: of toilet paper, and so they can't think of any
Speaker 4: better way than to use the king's proclamation for that purpose,
Speaker 4: so that there is that sense of humor. But again
Speaker 4: this is an instance where ordinary working people create a
Speaker 4: crisis of the world economy.
Speaker 3: That rebellious spirit shaped everything about a life aboard a
Speaker 3: pirate ship, including their infamous love of merriments. Music, dancing, sex,
Speaker 3: and storytelling. Weren't just ways to pass time. They were
Speaker 3: essential to morale. Reum flowed freely, and the crew lived
Speaker 3: by their own.
Speaker 1: Rules, and those rules extended beyond partying. Pirate ships have
Speaker 1: their own systems for survival, ones that prioritize fairness and
Speaker 1: collective care, as we covered in Part one. Unlike merchant
Speaker 1: or navy ships, where captains held unchecked power, pirate crews
Speaker 1: elected their leaders democratically. The loot capture during raids was
Speaker 1: also divided equitably among the crew, regardless of their rank
Speaker 1: or role on the ship.
Speaker 3: A captain could be voted out at any time, and
Speaker 3: the quartermaster made sure no one abused their authority, and
Speaker 3: when pirates got injured, they weren't left behind.
Speaker 1: There's even an argument to be made that pirates established
Speaker 1: the first social security system.
Speaker 3: In the popular imagination, pirates are often depicted with things
Speaker 3: like eye patches, pig legs, and hooks for hands, and
Speaker 3: that may not be entirely accurate, but Marcus says it
Speaker 3: does get to an essential truth.
Speaker 1: Being a sailor on any kind of vessel was a
Speaker 1: dangerous line of work, and it often resulted in getting
Speaker 1: aimed or killed.
Speaker 3: Pirates accommodated for this. Many of their charters contain rules
Speaker 3: that required the sailors to put a portion of all
Speaker 3: plunder toward a common fund.
Speaker 1: And that fund was used to provide for in or
Speaker 1: disabled crewmates.
Speaker 3: Even more than that, those who became disabled on the
Speaker 3: job weren't discriminated against, and on a couple occasions even
Speaker 3: rose to the rank of captain.
Speaker 1: Maimed pirates were guaranteed food and drink, among other things
Speaker 1: as part of this makeshift welfare system and a strong
Speaker 1: sense of solidarity and mutual support.
Speaker 3: One notable example of the determination pirates had to care
Speaker 3: for one another comes in April seventeen seventeen, when Blackbeard
Speaker 3: and his crew blockaded the city of Charleston until they
Speaker 3: were able to buy medical supplies necessary to treat their
Speaker 3: sick and wounded.
Speaker 1: One South Carolinian wrote of this blockade, quote, the trade
Speaker 1: of this place was totally interrupted, and added that the
Speaker 1: entire province was in quote a great terror.
Speaker 3: In this way, the pirate's disruption of trade and the
Speaker 3: global economy went beyond their desire to buck the system
Speaker 3: and declare war on the whole world.
Speaker 1: Their disruption was often for the express purpose of what
Speaker 1: people might now call mutual aid.
Speaker 3: This culture of autonomous, democratic control over their own shipps,
Speaker 3: as well as their organization of their social hierarchy, arose
Speaker 3: out of a long fought battle during the sixteen forties
Speaker 3: and fifties, before the so called Golden Age of piracy.
Speaker 1: You may remember from our first episode that prior to
Speaker 1: this era of piracy, privateers and buccaneers laid the groundwork
Speaker 1: for the more proletarian crews that made up the Golden Age.
Speaker 3: As these mercenaries waged war against Spain on behalf of
Speaker 3: the upper classes of England, France and the Netherlands, they
Speaker 3: were also building their more egalitarian tradition.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was known as the Jamaica discipline
Speaker 1: or the law of privateers. It was considered the antithesis
Speaker 1: of discipline and law, and was rooted in what Marcus
Speaker 1: calls a distinctive conception of justice and a class hostility
Speaker 1: to shipmasters, owners and gentlemen adventurers.
Speaker 3: It was based on the democratic control of authority as
Speaker 3: well as provision for the injured, and it was modeled
Speaker 3: after a fictional peasant utopia called the Land of Cocaine,
Speaker 3: where work had been abolished and property redistributed.
Speaker 1: Jamika discipline was shaped by the harsh working conditions of
Speaker 1: the time and had a few basic tenets.
Speaker 3: One a sense of justice that reimagined the brutal and
Speaker 3: hierarchical systems of merchant and navy ships. Pirates wanted to
Speaker 3: establish a more egalitarian and democratic order of things, as
Speaker 3: evidenced by the way they voted on just about everything.
Speaker 1: Two class hostility. Pirates were former sailors, working people from
Speaker 1: the lower classes who had been exploited and mistreated all
Speaker 1: their lives. Their code was explicitly antagonistic toward the ruling classes.
Speaker 3: Three, as we've discussed, provisions for the injured and a
Speaker 3: common fund to take care of pirates who had become
Speaker 3: disabled on the job.
Speaker 1: Four democratic controls on authority. As we mentioned in episode one,
Speaker 1: captains and officers were elected by the crew. Their power
Speaker 1: was limited. There were methods of removing captains who abused
Speaker 1: their power, and most major decisions were put to a
Speaker 1: vote outside of times of battle when quick thinking was essential.
Speaker 3: Marcus says, these ordinary working people came from all sorts
Speaker 3: of different backgrounds.
Speaker 4: Pirate ships were motley cruz. This is a phrase that
Speaker 4: I've used quite a bit in my work because it
Speaker 4: captures both the multi ethnic and multi national nature of
Speaker 4: a lot of ships, not only pirate ships, merchant ships,
Speaker 4: naval ships. I mean, the maritime labor market is international
Speaker 4: from the fifteenth sixteenth century. You look at the people
Speaker 4: who accompanied Columbus and Magellan, and there are Africans and
Speaker 4: Italians and Greeks and all kinds of people.
Speaker 1: This multinational coalition of sailors also comprised people of African descent.
Speaker 4: One major reason why that would be is that pirates
Speaker 4: did not have racial criteria for joining their band. In
Speaker 4: other words, what they wanted to know basically two things.
Speaker 4: Are you committed to the pirate enterprise? And two can
Speaker 4: you fight? And if you answer yes to both of
Speaker 4: those and believe me, a person who was an escape
Speaker 4: ee from plantation society would be a very committed member
Speaker 4: of your pirate crew given what they would have to
Speaker 4: go back to.
Speaker 3: Right, and many pirates of African descent played leading roles
Speaker 3: aboard their ships, and.
Speaker 4: That's because quite a few of them we now know,
Speaker 4: had military training back in Africa. This is very important.
Speaker 4: So when you know how to fight, when you know
Speaker 4: how to use a gun, when you have military discipline,
Speaker 4: this is a very attractive thing for allowing people to
Speaker 4: come on board the ships. So that's also a leveling
Speaker 4: sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Pirate ships were one of the only places in the
Speaker 1: Western hemisphere at the time that black men could attain
Speaker 1: power and money. Many black pirates were escaped slaves, and
Speaker 1: one of the most famous of these was a man
Speaker 1: known as Black Caesar. Legend has it that he was
Speaker 1: an African chieftain who evaded capture by slavers multiple times
Speaker 1: through his strength and cunning, but was eventually kidnapped. The
Speaker 1: slave ship that was transporting him to the America's encountered
Speaker 1: a hurricane, and he and a friend escaped in a
Speaker 1: rowboat during the chaos. Black Caesar went on to raid
Speaker 1: ships in the Florida Keys for almost a decade before
Speaker 1: joining Blackbeard's crew.
Speaker 4: Now there are also women pirates, and this is crucial.
Speaker 4: Now there aren't a lot of them, there are probably
Speaker 4: quite a few more than we know, because there were
Speaker 4: a lot of women in this period who dressed as
Speaker 4: men and went to sea or went to war. It
Speaker 4: was very common. Two women who were very famous in
Speaker 4: their own day, and Bonnie and Mary Reid were as
Speaker 4: tough and as good a fighter as any male sailor.
Speaker 3: Marcus says at one point Bonnie and Reid actually ended
Speaker 3: up on the same ship, and.
Speaker 4: The story of how they were captured is interesting because
Speaker 4: as often happened. A lot of the pirates seize their
Speaker 4: freedom to get drunk, and so when a naval vessel
Speaker 4: comes near, it turns out a lot of Anne and
Speaker 4: Mary's shipmates are drunk, and so they run down into
Speaker 4: the hold of the vessel to hide. Is if that's
Speaker 4: going to help them, And so Anne and Mary and
Speaker 4: one other pirate they stay on the main deck. They're
Speaker 4: firing the cannon and try to keep the naval vessel
Speaker 4: away from them. They don't succeed. They're captured. They're all
Speaker 4: taken into Jamaica to be hanged. Anne and Mary are
Speaker 4: not hanged because they're both.
Speaker 1: Pregnant, or at least they claimed to be.
Speaker 4: And British law at that time did not permit the
Speaker 4: hanging of pregnant women. So at the gallows, and this
Speaker 4: will give you a pretty good idea of Anne Bonnie's spirit.
Speaker 4: At the gallows. Jack Rackham, her lover, who was the
Speaker 4: captain of the vessel and who had gone down in
Speaker 4: the hole to hide, is standing there with a rope
Speaker 4: around his neck, and he looks at Anne and she's
Speaker 4: not giving him a sympathetic look, and Jack Calico Jack says, an,
Speaker 4: don't look at me that way, and Anne was reported
Speaker 4: to have said, Jack, if you had fought like a man,
Speaker 4: you wouldn't now be hanged like a dog. So this
Speaker 4: was Anne Bonnie's toughness. Mary Reid was every bit it's tough.
Speaker 1: And though it was less common than their forward thinking
Speaker 1: gender and racial attitudes, the pirate ship even allowed for
Speaker 1: the kinds of sexual relationships that were prohibited amongst polite society.
Speaker 4: It was just a freer place. And I find it
Speaker 4: fascinating that even though in all other maritime enterprises sexual
Speaker 4: contact between men is criminalized and ruthlessly punished, none of
Speaker 4: the articles for pirate ships mentioned this as an issue
Speaker 4: at all. So we don't have a lot of evidence
Speaker 4: about what happened on pirate ships, but we do know
Speaker 4: that they were freer places in that regard, as in
Speaker 4: almost all others.
Speaker 3: But that freedom came with the price. The authorities of
Speaker 3: the day did everything they could do not only capture
Speaker 3: and execute pirates, but make examples out of them.
Speaker 4: The government of England has long been, as my friend
Speaker 4: Peter Liinbach calls it a fanatocracy, that you rule people
Speaker 4: by killing them, you rule people by public executions. So
Speaker 4: in every port city. Anytime a group of pirates were captured,
Speaker 4: there would be a show trial, and there would be
Speaker 4: a highly public spectacle of execution, because again they wanted
Speaker 4: to send a message to common sailors who were joining
Speaker 4: these pirate ships.
Speaker 1: Around one in ten pirates met their fate at the gallows.
Speaker 1: The dead bodies of executed pirates were often left hanging
Speaker 1: outside of ports, rotting in the sun, a brutal warning
Speaker 1: to anyone tempted to follow their path.
Speaker 3: It sends the message this is what happens if you
Speaker 3: defy the existing order.
Speaker 1: Or if you get in the way of the ruling
Speaker 1: class accumulating more wealth.
Speaker 4: But sometimes it didn't work out the way the authorities
Speaker 4: wanted it to, because these pirates would seize the moment
Speaker 4: of their own execution to continue their critique of the
Speaker 4: way they were treated as common sailors.
Speaker 3: Many pirates face the gallows without fear. Some use their
Speaker 3: final moments to call out the injustice that had driven
Speaker 3: them to piracy in the first place.
Speaker 1: One of the most famous examples was William Fly, a
Speaker 1: notorious pirate who approached his execution in seventeen twenty six
Speaker 1: with complete disdain.
Speaker 4: He's going to be hanged. The famous Puritan minister Cotton
Speaker 4: Mather keeps talking to him, trying to get him to
Speaker 4: convert right, to admit that what he had done was wrong,
Speaker 4: and William Fly just completely refused. He's having none of it.
Speaker 4: He gets on the gallows and he makes a speech
Speaker 4: in which he says to all the ship captains out
Speaker 4: there in the audience, treat your sailors well, or this
Speaker 4: is going to happen, right. And this guy Fly had
Speaker 4: so much confidence in himself and his message. When he
Speaker 4: got up on the gallows and the hangman put the
Speaker 4: note the noose around his neck, William Fly took it
Speaker 4: off and said, you don't even know how to tie
Speaker 4: a proper noose, do you. And of course sailors who
Speaker 4: worked with rope all the time at sea were experts
Speaker 4: in tying knots. So his Fly actually retied the knot
Speaker 4: that would go around his neck, just to show them
Speaker 4: that he wasn't afraid. He was going to die game,
Speaker 4: and he was going to die cursing the powers that be.
Speaker 3: The pirates who pulled these kinds of stunts at the
Speaker 3: gallows did so knowing full well that a large number
Speaker 3: of people in the crowd were actually on their side.
Speaker 4: That's why the authorities didn't just stage these public executions.
Speaker 4: They had large numbers of armed soldiers to prevent the
Speaker 4: crowd from rescuing people from the gallows, and that did
Speaker 4: happen a couple of times. It happened once for sure
Speaker 4: in Jamaica, where a rowdy mob went and rescued the
Speaker 4: pirate before he was hanged.
Speaker 3: The pirates responded to the terror of the ruling class
Speaker 3: in kind.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, Marcus talked about how pirates used
Speaker 1: the Jolly Roger to strike fear into the hearts of
Speaker 1: their enemies.
Speaker 3: But he also says many pirates use their senses of humor, absurdity,
Speaker 3: and their flair for the dramatic to turn that fear
Speaker 3: back on the ruling class.
Speaker 4: Pirates understood the drama of social life, and one who
Speaker 4: understood it very well was a man named Edward Teach,
Speaker 4: also known as Blackbeard. He was a huge man, six
Speaker 4: foot eight or six foot nine in the average in
Speaker 4: the time when most people were about five foot six,
Speaker 4: and he would do things like when he went into battle,
Speaker 4: he had this big long black Beard He would take
Speaker 4: sparklers and put them in his beard and his hair
Speaker 4: and then set them on fire so that he had
Speaker 4: this satanic halo around his head, which was absolutely terrifying
Speaker 4: to everybody, because you know, his idea was, you're afraid
Speaker 4: of satanic imagery. Okay, I'm that I am your greatest nightmare. Right.
Speaker 4: So he's he's playing this part right, and it's a
Speaker 4: part meant to terrify, if not terrorize, your enemies.
Speaker 1: Marcus says, this dynamic of terror, this back and forth,
Speaker 1: is essential to understanding the Golden Age of piracy.
Speaker 4: But we do have to add one more terror to
Speaker 4: this story, which is the terror that ship captains used
Speaker 4: as they tried to control common sailors in their workplaces.
Speaker 4: That in some ways is the original terror, right, That's
Speaker 4: the terror against which piracy grew up. So there is
Speaker 4: this It's a dialectic, or almost a trialectic of terror
Speaker 4: at three different levels. And the pirates were they understood
Speaker 4: their role, and they wanted to be remembered as heroes,
Speaker 4: as people who in that moment of execution, had the
Speaker 4: courage to stand up to the authorities.
Speaker 3: This struggle between what Marcus calls the two terrors would
Speaker 3: eventually bring the Golden Age of piracy to an end.
Speaker 4: But then the British government passed a new law in
Speaker 4: seventeen twenty one that said, anyone who cooperates with pirates,
Speaker 4: and they're targeting these petty merchants who would bind, sell
Speaker 4: and trade with them. Anyone who cooperates with pirates is
Speaker 4: subject to the same punished schmuts as pirates themselves, meaning
Speaker 4: we will hang you too.
Speaker 1: The authorities thought that if they could separate pirates from
Speaker 1: their basis of support, they wouldn't have the resources to
Speaker 1: continue disrupting trade.
Speaker 4: Hundreds and hundreds of pirates were hanged, and essentially the
Speaker 4: struggle was forced back down below decks. In other words,
Speaker 4: you couldn't really capture pirate ships anymore. You didn't have
Speaker 4: a place where you could take them to refit. The
Speaker 4: smaller merchants or the allies that you had were terrified
Speaker 4: now of the government that they too were going to
Speaker 4: be hanged. So what happened was that piracy was I
Speaker 4: won't say eliminated, but reduced to a very large extent.
Speaker 1: But stamping out piracy didn't mean stamping out rebellion. The
Speaker 1: fight against exploitation just found new battlegrounds.
Speaker 4: The defeat, you might say, of this generation of pirates
Speaker 4: forced people into other forms of resists. One of the
Speaker 4: things that I noticed, which was quite fascinating and doing
Speaker 4: my research, is that in the period after piracy declines,
Speaker 4: the murder rate between captains and common sailors skyrockets. So
Speaker 4: this is kind of displaced into another kind of more
Speaker 4: individual violence.
Speaker 3: In addition to individual acts of rebellion, collective resistance also
Speaker 3: took shape. A few decades later. In seventeen sixty eight,
Speaker 3: the word strike was first used to describe work protests,
Speaker 3: when sailors struck down the sales of their ships in
Speaker 3: order to create a work stoppage.
Speaker 4: Sailors are natural born storytellers. Storytelling is a maritime art
Speaker 4: because you know, when you're at sea and you're separated
Speaker 4: from loved ones and your ship is under sail, there's
Speaker 4: not that much to do, so people tell stories. So
Speaker 4: these pirates became an endless source of stories. Stories of courage,
Speaker 4: stories of resistance, stories of standing up to the authorities,
Speaker 4: stories of thumbing your nose at them when you're on
Speaker 4: the gallows.
Speaker 1: By the seventeen thirties, the golden age of piracy was over.
Speaker 1: Naval patrols, intensified punishments, grew harsher, and colonial powers worked
Speaker 1: together to stamp out piracy. The world had changed and
Speaker 1: there was no longer room for pirates.
Speaker 3: In fact, some of the pirates we talked about in
Speaker 3: Part one didn't make it out of the Golden Age alive.
Speaker 1: Blackbeard was hunted down and killed in battle in seventeen eighteen.
Speaker 1: Black Caesar was a bored Blackbeard ship at the time,
Speaker 1: and was hanged in Virginia in seventeen eighteen.
Speaker 3: Bartholemew Roberts, one of the most successful pirates of all time,
Speaker 3: was shot and killed. In seventeen twenty.
Speaker 1: Two, William Kidd was hanged in London, his body left
Speaker 1: to rot over the Thames as a warning.
Speaker 3: Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid avoided execution by claiming to
Speaker 3: be pregnant. As Marcus said.
Speaker 1: Earlier, Read died in prison, and Bonding's fate remains unknown.
Speaker 3: But the legends of these pirates didn't die with them.
Speaker 3: They reappeared elsewhere, on stage and paintings and in the
Speaker 3: pages of books and perpetuity.
Speaker 1: Three hundred years later, we're still thinking, talking, and daydreaming
Speaker 1: about them.
Speaker 4: We remember the pirates, we remember their names. People love
Speaker 4: pirates today. We don't remember the people who killed them.
Speaker 4: So in a very real sense, the pirates have kind
Speaker 4: of won that. They sort of lost the battle, but
Speaker 4: won the war. And if the war is for a
Speaker 4: sense of justice, then then pirates have been the long
Speaker 4: term winners. And all this because people love them as
Speaker 4: folk heroes. They still do. I mean, I've been working
Speaker 4: on pirates off and on for decades, and everywhere I
Speaker 4: go around the world it's the same. People are just
Speaker 4: fascinated by them, and they're especially inspired by their courage.
Speaker 4: So that's a way in which they weren't defeated.
Speaker 2: Ala Martina Penala oh bela Chile, Bela Chile, Bela chi
Speaker 2: Cho chow Alamatino.
Speaker 1: That brings us to the end of our double episode.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Marcus Reddicker for taking the time to talk
Speaker 1: to us.
Speaker 3: We definitely recommend you get a copy of Marcus's book
Speaker 3: Villains of All Nations, Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age,
Speaker 3: as well as his graphic novel under the banner of
Speaker 3: King Death Pirates of the Atlantic, a graphic novel with
Speaker 3: David Lester, both available on the links in the show notes.
Speaker 1: It's only support from you, our listeners, which allows us
Speaker 1: to make these podcasts, So if you appreciate our work,
Speaker 1: please do think about joining us at patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash working class History link in the show notes.
Speaker 3: In return for your support, you get early access to content,
Speaker 3: as well as ad free episodes, exclusive bonus content, discounted
Speaker 3: merch and more. If you can't spare the cash, absolutely
Speaker 3: no problem. Please just tell your friends about this podcast
Speaker 3: and give us a five star review on your favorite
Speaker 3: podcast app.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast
Speaker 1: possible special thanks to Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez, Ohita, Jeremy Cusamano,
Speaker 1: Nick Williams, and Old Norm.
Speaker 3: Our theme tune is Bella Chow. Thanks for permission to
Speaker 3: use it from Disky del Sole. You can buy it
Speaker 3: or stream it on the links in the show notes.
Speaker 3: This episode was written by me Audrey Kamp.
Speaker 1: And me Tyler Hill, produced by Me Tyler Hill. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode
Speaker 1: and thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2: By luck Chou by luck Out, by luck Out John
Speaker 2: no matamba can be said Tony