Blackbeard: The Most Feared Pirate of the Caribbean

Public executions and the pirate threat

0:00It's a cold spring morning in the early 1700s, and a crowd is beginning to assemble on the dock. They are waiting for pirates, and it doesn't take long before they catch sight of them. A procession begins to roll into view, and at the head of it is an official of the Admiralty, carrying a silver paddle as the emblem of his authority. Behind him is a cart. On this day, it's full of some 15 condemned men, and a chaplain who's in the cart with them, urging them to repent.

0:35Most of the pirates ignore him. As the cart finally comes to a stop, very close to the gallows that have been erected, in full view of the crowd, the first pirate is taken out of the cart and led up toward that platform. He's asked if he has any last words. Yes, he says. I wasn't always a pirate. There were very few options left after I killed that bastard of a captain on my first ship. He made our lives absolutely miserable, so that many of us would rather have been dead.

1:10And if honest seamen weren't cheated and beaten and treated so miserably, far fewer of us would have become pirates. That's enough, says the official. The executioner lowers the noose over the man's head and tightens it, and within a few moments, he's left swinging in the air, and then his lifeless body is cut down. The same follows for the other 14 men in the cart. And then these corpses are tied to posts, out where the tide will wash them three times, so that they're bloated and full of water

1:46before they're finally removed from public view. These men are not going to have any kind of marked graves. Their bodies are destined to be dumped in some unmarked site or donated to medical schools. But not all of them. For a few, their remains will remain very public and very visible, because some of these pirates have their bodies tarred to slow decomposition and then placed into wire cages, which are left hanging from the gallows in full view of any ship and any crew going in or out of the

2:24port. These miserable remains are there to send a message. This is the fate that waits for pirates. But not everybody was deterred by this. And today, we're going to look at the story of one of the most famous pirates of them all, Blackbeard. You are listening to Villains and Virgins Podcast, and this is the story of Blackbeard. As I was preparing today's episode, I was already beginning to look forward to the conversation I'm going to have about it later this month. And this is

2:59something I do regularly for Patreon supporters of Villains and Virgins. I host these conversations, and we get into all the questions and the details and the extra material that I just don't have time to include in the regular episodes. And because there's been such a wonderful run of stories about pirates and privateers, from Francis Drake to Henry Morgan and now Blackbeard, I know that it's going to be a really interesting chat. So if you want to be in on that, head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert and become a supporter of Villains and Virgins Podcast. Because

3:35you don't just get to join this month's chat, you get access to all the previous recorded chats I've done, as well as an ever-growing library of monthly bonus episodes. And this month, that's going to mean even more pirate stories, including some of the lesser known and more infamous female pirates who are part of the golden age of piracy. So if any of that sounds interesting to you,

Early sea stories and trial realities

3:59head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert. As a boy, Blackbeard would have grown up hearing cautionary tales of pirates who were captured and swinging from the gallows and whose bodies were left in wire cages. But these aren't the only pirate stories he would have been familiar with. There were also very exciting swashbuckling tales of real pirates like Henry Avery, who was actually an Irish sailor turned pirate. And he did that when he and his shipmates were left high and dry by a

4:36treacherous investor and were looking at a life of either forced labor or imprisonment. So rather than accept the unfair hand that had been dealt them, Henry Avery led his fellow shipmates in seizing another ship and making their way out of the harbor, thus embarking on a life of piracy. They were now outlaws. They were their own bosses. And apparently, after capturing many other ships, including one of them that had an Indian princess on board, they became fabulously rich and later managed to retire

5:11and slip back into society anonymously to live off their wealth. Now the truth of what happened to Henry Avery and his men was a little bit less glorious and a lot more gritty. But the legend of Henry Avery, the adventure and the escape from an unfair lot that was dealt to him and his crew members as sailors inspired many young boys who would later go to sea. And we can only assume that Blackbeard as a boy would have heard all these same stories. Piracy was a high risk, high reward kind of occupation.

5:46And those men who were captured as pirates were soon brought before a panel of officials. There was no jury of your peers involved in a pirate trial. And the assumption was that these men were guilty. So the burden of proving their innocence lay on the individual men themselves. And of course, they didn't have defense lawyers. Many of them were common sailors, and most of them were illiterate. So that meant that very few men managed to escape a sentence of guilty. There were exceptions.

6:18Occasionally, a man was able to successfully argue that he'd been forced into a pirate gang and that he hadn't participated in a particular piratical action, and therefore he might be pardoned. But the overwhelming majority of men brought on piracy charges ended up hanging at the

Bristol origins and brutal maritime labor

6:35end of a noose. He was born around 1680, and we don't even know his real name. Historians think that he was called Edward Teach or Edward Thatch, but census records from Bristol in that period don't turn up families with either of those names. So the going theory now is that Blackbeard actually used a false name. That Edward Teach or Edward Thatch was a name he gave to deliberately disguise his

7:05actual origins and people who might still be related to him back in his port town. And the reasons he would have had for doing this are fascinating. Because of the few things we do know about Blackbeard as a young man, we know that he was literate. And that means he didn't come from a desperately poor family. He had some kind of education in a school, very likely in Bristol. He was able to read and write, and this put him significantly ahead of many of the common sailors that he would later work with.

7:37So if his family was respectable, then if he was going to go and do something completely disreputable like become a pirate, it's understandable that he would want to protect them from association with that. As a teenage boy, he would have seen ships coming in and out of the port, and sailors pouring off of them with their stories and sea shanties. Many of these ships were engaged in the slave trade, which in the late 1600s and early 1700s was booming. Ships coming and going

8:08out of Bristol were engaged in the triangular trade, and it worked like this. A ship leaving England would be laden with guns, beads, and metal. It would make its way south to the west coast of Africa, and there it would exchange its cargo for slaves. Having filled its hold with human cargo, it would then make the infamous Middle Passage across the Atlantic. The ships were headed for British colonies in the Caribbean, places like Jamaica and the Bahamas. And here, the human cargo of slaves would be sold,

8:42and the ship's hold would be filled with slave-produced products. Things like sugar and rum. And later, when the British had colonies in North America, things like tobacco and textiles. And this cargo would then be transported back to England. Essentially, the ships are sailing in a giant triangle, from England's south to Africa, from Africa over to the Caribbean, and from the Caribbean back to England. And all of this generated vast quantities of money. It would have been very easy for young

9:16Blackbeard, as a beardless youth, to find work on one of these ships engaged in this triangular trade. And there were two main kinds of work for a young man looking to get into life at sea. Many of the men working aboard these vessels were recruited by shady means. So the captains of merchant vessels were notorious for hiring guys called spirits. And these men would work the taverns and the inns, the establishments around a port city where sailors who'd just come back from a voyage

9:49would be likely to hang out. And these spirits, as they were called, were particularly looking for the young and the naive. People who were new to town, young men who hadn't yet been aboard a ship. And what they would do would be to offer them great wages and certain work if they would just sign a contract. Once the young man signed the contract, he was delivered to the merchant ship that had hired that spirit, and very quickly found himself putting out to sea and working for far less wages than he'd

10:22been promised. And that's because the first few months of his employment, the wages he earned were all paid to the spirit that recruited him. So that money got spirited away, leaving the young man with much less than he'd been promised. In some cases, these spirits or recruiters for merchant ships were looking for sailors who were drunk or in debt. And so they would offer to buy the sailor some drinks in exchange for him signing a contract, or wipe out his debts in exchange for him signing a contract to get on board

10:54another ship. And if the sailor wasn't drunk enough to agree to sign on and take employment, in some cases, very unscrupulous recruiters would simply pack up a drunken sailor who didn't really understand what was going on, dump him on a merchant ship. And by the time he got sober, he would find himself putting out to sea on board a merchant ship that he had no interest in being employed with. And of course, once you were aboard a ship like this, you were along for the ride. And that ride could take anywhere

11:24from months to years. If you thought merchant ships were bad, Royal Navy ships were worse. So the Royal Navy, of course, were not merchant ships. You're now involved in the British Navy, and you're working under officers. It's a very different power structure. But the methods they used to get men on board ship were even more aggressive. The Royal Navy employed press gangs. So these were gangs of armed thugs who would go into those same port towns where sailors were known to be, and they would

11:56literally round them up and forcibly drag them on board a Royal Navy ship. The way a press gang works is essentially kidnapping. And they weren't content with just grabbing sailors off the streets. They would actually go into inns where sailors were renting beds for the night. And in some cases, they would raid these places and grab sleeping sailors while they were unconscious. Even worse, press gangs were known to raid merchant ships that were coming into port. So literally before sailors had a chance to

12:29disembark and get on shore, they could already find themselves grabbed and taken to a Royal Navy ship. And once on board, you were still working for horrendous wages, but the discipline and other measures you were subject to were far, far worse. Sailors were so desperate to avoid being press ganged onto a Royal Navy ship that they would sometimes sign on to merchant ships with those spirit recruiters that I already mentioned if they thought that there was a chance of them being kidnapped and forced

13:01on board a Royal Navy ship. So if they signed a contract that said they were going to sea, tomorrow on a merchant ship, then that was one of the only things that could keep them safe from being forced onto a Naval ship. Now, whether you went to sea on a merchant ship or a Navy ship, once you left port, you'd be facing a very similar set of hazards. And the first of these was disease. Sailors commonly suffered from things like scurvy, dysentery, or the flux. Scurvy was of course caused by a

13:32lack of vitamin C. And this was a common hazard for sailors because they were subsisting on a diet of hardtack and salted beef. There were very rarely fruits or vegetables on the menu. English cuisine has hardly ever been praised for its excellence. And cuisine on board English ships was even worse than usual. Illness was bad enough, but the physical hazard of injury was a regular issue for sailors. And it came in many forms. You could easily lose a finger, mashed between things that you were loading

14:04on board a ship, or tangled in ropes that you were hauling on to hoist heavy loads. Other sailors lost limbs, which wasn't uncommon on a Royal Navy ship if you were involved in some kind of sea battle where there were cannonballs being fired into your ship, sending flying splinters everywhere. And then of course there was the hazard of falling. Sailors were regularly required to climb up into the rigging to hoist sails or to roll them up again. And if a man fell from that rigging, he was

14:34almost certainly going to die, whether he hit the water or hit the deck. In some cases men survived, but they did so severely injured or paralyzed. But even if everything goes well, even if our young sailor doesn't manage to contract scurvy or lose any fingers or hands on his voyage, and he manages to make it back to his home port more or less in one piece, his problems don't end there. Because even the meager wages that he was due would often be shortchanged. Sailors were cheated of wages in many different

15:08ways. And there are endless complaints about this in the historical record. So a captain could dock your wages for alleged offenses at sea. If he thought you'd been belligerent or had failed to do something properly, he could, in essence, invent offenses and use them as excuses to deprive you of some of the wages that you were due at the end of a voyage. Sometimes wages could be paid in the currency of a British colony, or rather in British pounds. And sometimes that currency could be worth as little as

15:3850% of a British pound. So if you were paid 50 pounds, but you were paid that in currency other than a British pound, you would end up with far less buying power. And then there was the tactic of paying sailors with a government-issued IOU. So this was very common on Royal Navy ships, where at the end of your voyage you didn't get cash, you got some portion of the wages that were due you as an IOU note, which could be exchanged for cash at some future unspecified date. And this left many

16:10sailors in a position where they were hard pressed for money they could actually spend. And so they would have to sell these IOUs to loan sharks, who would buy them for a fraction of the stated value that was written on that note, because the sailor needed cash now, and he couldn't wait to use this IOU at some distant point in the future. And if all of this wasn't enough, you also had to worry about ship's discipline. So discipline for sailors applied on both merchant ships and Royal Navy ships.

16:41But in the Royal Navy, it was much, much harsher. So any sailor had to watch out for getting on the wrong side of not only his captain, but any of the officers in charge of him. Forgetting to do a chore war or committing petty theft could result in a man being flogged or caned. And these types of beatings were meted out on a regular basis in the Royal Navy. There are reports of men being flogged so severely that they died as a result of their wounds. And then there were captains who enjoyed

17:12taking out their anger on men they particularly disliked. For example, beating them with a marlin spike. And a marlin spike is a metal tool used aboard ships for dealing with ropes. So think of it as a heavy metal bar with a pointy end. Then there were captains who sent their men aloft up into the rigging as punishment. So there are reports of some sailors being told they had to go up into the crow's nest or the little basket high up on the mast in bad weather and stay up there for hours or even

17:45overnight. And again, this is not because of a job they were being asked to do. This was purely punitive. You're going to go up there and stay up there until I tell you to come down. Now imagine being stuck in a little crow's nest on a mast aboard a ship that's being tossed in bad weather. The wind would whip through there. You would be freezing. You wouldn't be able to move much because you're in a tiny little basket. And if you had to stay up there for hours or even overnight, the level of stiffness, of cold,

18:20and even hypothermia you'd be suffering when it was finally time to come down would put you at risk of falling off the rigging because your hands and your muscles were too stiff and too cold to work properly. Imagine the worst boss you've ever had who happens to have the power of life and death over you, and also has a sadistic streak. This is the situation that some sailors aboard Royal Navy ships found themselves in. And under conditions like this, it's no surprise that some men occasionally

18:52mutinate. But the grim record is that on Royal Navy ships, the mortality rate could be as high as 50%, which means that these ships went to sea deliberately overstaffed because they knew that some men were not going to survive the voyage. Whether that was from disease or any of the other hazards or punishments we've described, there was a real risk that if you put to sea on a ship like this, you might not come home. And remember, after surviving all of this, when our young sailor finally comes back to

19:27port, he might only get ashore with enough time for a drink before he finds himself press-ganged onto another Royal Navy ship. Something that he had no interest in, work that he didn't want, but he could be violently kidnapped and forced into service, and now he's stuck on board another ship for another year or more. So in many ways, the lives of English sailors at this point in history are little better than those of indentured servants. Samuel Johnson, who's writing in the 1700s, remarks that sailors lived like

20:03prisoners with the added possibility of drowning. Now, all of this helps us to understand why some sailors

From privateer to golden age pirate

20:12might have decided that turning pirate was an attractive option. Before Blackbeard appears in the public record as a pirate, he probably begins his career as a sailor working on board a merchant ship, doing that triangular slave trade I already described. And as part of that trade, he would have been docked in Jamaica or other places in the Caribbean, because this is where slaves were offloaded and sold, and the merchant ships filled their hold with things like rum and sugar.

20:42While he was in the Caribbean, he would have been exposed to a different kind of life at sea, something that was very different from either merchant ships or Royal Navy ships. And that third option was called privateering. Privateering is basically piracy with permission. And we've covered a few famous privateers on this podcast, including Francis Drake and Captain Henry Morgan. But how it worked was basically that a captain got a letter of mark, or a letter of permission, from, say, the

21:14governor of Jamaica. And that letter allowed him to attack ships from one particular country, usually Spain. And so he and his men would attack Spanish ships, they would take them as prizes, they would bring them back to the port in Jamaica and sell them. And then they would give a cut of the proceeds of that prize ship to the governor of Jamaica who'd issued them the letter of mark. And they would similarly dispose of any cargo or other valuables that had been on board the ship. So privateers were basically

21:46semi-legitimate pirates. They worked with the permission of a state or governing authority, and they paid a portion of their proceeds back to that governing authority. This kind of business would have been available to Blackbeard in his 20s. If he'd already had a bit of experience as a sailor on a merchant ship, he would have met up with men in Jamaica or other islands in the Caribbean doing this kind of work, and he would have been a prime candidate for recruitment into a privateering ship. But the really interesting thing about privateering is that it's a halfway between merchant ships and Royal

22:22navies and the full pirate experience that we're about to get into. What makes privateering different is that men on board these ships were volunteers. They weren't press ganged in, they weren't duped in with false contracts. And they were working not for wages, as in the case with merchants and naval ships, but for a cut of the plunder that they would take as part of their privateering mission. And conditions on ship were much better because privateering crews weren't going for months and months at a time at sea.

22:52Essentially, it was a cooperative endeavor. The crew was working with the captain because they trusted his judgment, and his leadership depended on his ability to lead his crew to a profitable prize. If he didn't succeed in doing that, he wouldn't be captain for very long. Conditions on ship were much better because privateering crews weren't going for months and months at a time at sea. They would be much more regularly in and out of port, which gave them better food, access to alcohol, prostitutes,

23:22and this sort of thing on a regular basis. And also, they weren't subject to such severe punishment on board ship. In fact, if they didn't like a captain, all they had to do was leave the next time they put ashore, or if enough members of the crew disagreed with the captain's judgment, they could actually replace him. So the really interesting thing about privateering is that these guys are practicing pirate skills, but they're only using those skills for designated targets. And they're

23:54basically operating with official permission. But what is about to happen next will be known as the golden age of piracy. And this is when men who have honed pirate skills stop asking for permission or when to use them. The golden age of piracy that we're about to embark on here is actually a surprisingly short period of time. In fact, some historians date it to just over a decade between 1714 and 1725. Some others add a few more years and say, no, it really started closer

24:29to the beginning of the 1700s. But these are minor quibbles. The main thing to understand is that we're looking at a period that is a decade or at most two. And it is this period of time in which some of the most famous pirates, including Blackbeard himself, make their names. The event which really kicks all this off is called the Treaty of Utrecht, and it is signed in 1713. And what you need to know about this is basically it is a peace deal that ends a complicated war in Europe in which the French

25:02are fighting the Spanish, the English, and the Dutch. And so the impacts of this are political in Europe, but in the Caribbean they are economic. Because what happens is that local governors stop issuing letters of marque. There's peace in Europe. England is not fighting with these other countries. And so England is no longer authorizing privateers to attack the ships of those other countries. That would jeopardize the peace deal. And it's been a very expensive war, so nobody wants

25:33to do that. But what happens to all these guys who've been working on privateering ships, honing their attack and seize skills, and now suddenly no one is willing to give them permission to operate? Some of these men decide to take their skills and take a massive pay cut and become employed on merchant ships. So that's a significant downgrade, right? You're working on much longer voyages for worse food and less pay. But some of these guys said, I don't think so. We've spent all this time

26:07honing our skills. We're really good at chasing down ships, seizing them, and taking their stuff. We're not going to now just decide to work as regular seamen and be disciplined and be paid less. So we're going to keep doing exactly what we were doing before. And the fact that no one gave us a letter of permission, well, we don't really care. So at this moment, these men who are doing the same activities but no longer have letters have just switched from being privateers to pirates. And the

26:40next implication of that is that they can attack anybody now. A letter of Mark said that a privateer could only attack ships from one country. But if you're now operating as your own boss, you're not bound by any letters. You can attack anybody who's vulnerable. And that includes English ships, as well as Spanish, French, or Dutch ones. All of a sudden, England is not so thrilled with these former privateers that they have so long been using as their unofficial agents. Because these guys,

27:14who've now become pirates, are no longer paying a cut of any of their profits to the local governors or to the crown. And they've expanded their range of targets. So now English ships, including those heading for colonies in the Americas, are also fair game. So we see these pirates now expand their activities, ranging much farther afield and posing a significant threat to international shipping. They were no longer just operating in the Caribbean, as Captain Morgan had done.

27:45They were now operating as far afield as North America, where Britain had colonies and had ships going in and out to trade materials for those colonies. And in addition, government in North America was still quite weak. In other words, it was a perfect operating zone for pirate activities. Now, one logistical problem that immediately emerged for these privateer guys who were now pirates, was where to sell their stolen cargo and seized ships. They could no longer take it back to the port

28:17where the governor had issued a letter of marque because there was no such permission. They have no legal place where they can sell off their seized goods. They need to sell their cargo to people who aren't going to ask too many awkward questions. And so there's a place that emerges

New Providence and mentor Benjamin Hornigold

28:35to serve this new need. And that place is the Island of New Providence in the Bahamas. It's just off the coast of Florida. And it becomes this hub of activity for these now pirate crews. Many different ships are coming in and out of there, and they're bringing in their stolen cargo, and there are smugglers waiting to meet them. So these are merchants who are willing to buy stolen goods and then resell them in legitimate markets. And very quickly, a whole host of other little

29:07businesses springs up to serve the needs of these regularly visiting pirate crews. Some of these businesses include the ones you'd expect. Places like taverns and brothels. But they also included other types of business that served the needs of pirate crews. Many times you need to get something like a gun or a cutlass repaired, and you needed someone with special skills who was able to do that. So a whole host of these little businesses begin to spring up in New Providence to serve the

29:39regularly visiting pirate crews. And you'll have famous pirates encountering each other in these taverns or the streets of New Providence. And it's a prime place to exchange information about what the shipping routes are, which ships are coming and going, when the last Royal Navy frigate was sighted, as well as to find new crew members and to potentially collaborate on joint missions where you're going to use several different crews and more pirates to go after more ambitious targets.

30:09And this is the place where Blackbeard's life is going to take a critical turn. It is in Nassau Harbor of New Providence, a place full of pirates, privateers, smugglers, and adventurers, that young Blackbeard meets a man named Benjamin Hornigold and goes full pirate. Benjamin Hornigold would become Blackbeard's mentor, and he was a man who already had a distinguished career as a privateer. He'd been seizing ships operating under letters of Mark while the war had been going on, and now that the war

30:44was over, he decided to continue doing exactly the same things. But Benjamin Hornigold was kind of an edge case. He was a guy who was now officially a pirate because he didn't have permission, but he still thought of himself as a privateer. So he only wanted to attack Spanish ships, not English ones, because he still wanted to hold on to this veneer of legitimacy that had protected his privateerian career up to this point, even though conditions on the ground, or should I say in the water, had now changed. And one

31:19of the conditions that has changed is the people who are now willing to sign up as crew for Captain Benjamin Hornigold on his ship. These include some guys who are former privateers like Blackbeard himself, but they also include a range of other people who find the conditions of their lives intolerable. Some of the people signing up to be pirates are indentured servants, and this was a fairly common thing in the Caribbean and also in colonies in North America. But in the Caribbean what happened was you had

31:51prisoners, especially Irish prisoners, who were sent off to British colonies like Jamaica. And here they were required to serve like slaves for a period of years. Now the average indentured servitude period would be a contract of between two and seven years. And some people entered these contracts voluntarily. If you were a poor person and you were looking to start a new life in the colonies, you might sign yourself up as an indentured servant. But if you were shipped over as a prisoner, especially an Irish political prisoner,

32:27you got a special kind of contract. Those indentured servitude contracts could last up to 14 years. And the idea was that you probably wouldn't survive them. The conditions of extreme hard labor that you'd be subjected to, along with the Caribbean climate, ended the lives of many people who had such long contracts long before they earned their freedom. This was the whole point. So obviously, some men who found themselves indentured servants with these long contracts and had seen some of

33:00their colleagues die of horrible tropical diseases while they were working their term realized that this was a no-win game. And they ran away. Now, for men like that, taking ship with a pirate crew was a great way to ensure that you weren't recaptured and returned to your conditions of servitude. So piracy became a really attractive option for people in those conditions. And for the same reasons, it was also attractive to runaway slaves. So these were Africans who had

33:33been forcibly transported from Africa to work as slaves in the colonies. And unlike indentured servants, they didn't even have the mirage of an end of contract to look forward to. They were condemned to work there until they died. And many of them died in very short order. The life expectancy of a slave working on a sugar plantation in the Caribbean was horrifyingly short. And so if indentured servants were concerned at watching their fellows die in harness, black slaves even more so. Invariably, a number of them

34:09would run away if they had the chance. And for these men, taking ship with a pirate crew was an excellent way to avoid being recaptured and horribly tortured or killed as a result of their attempt to escape. And finally, there were mutineers. So these would be regular sailors who had rebelled against their captain, either on a merchant ship or a Royal Navy ship. And the penalty for mutiny was death. So for these men, they were already outlaws. Going aboard a pirate ship and trying to make their living that way

34:42didn't leave them with much to lose. When you think about these kinds of conditions, what would you do? If you had a choice between working on a plantation in Jamaica, working in the sugar cane in the blistering heat, being subject to beatings and whippings and all kinds of imaginative punishments that your overseer might dream up for you. Dragged out of bed, told when you're going to be working, when you're going to be eating, when you're going to be sleeping. Or you could go to sea on a pirate ship

35:13where you could be your own boss, live free, drink a lot of alcohol, and perhaps eventually die as a result of a Royal Navy cannon or hanging. It certainly beats being beaten to death in a cane field. And if I had to choose one of these two options, I would take the pirate ship every time. Many of the men who did this actually viewed themselves as Robin Hood-style outlaws. In fact, one of them, Sam Bellamy, essentially invokes the Robin Hood myth and he says,

35:45we're basically exactly like Robin Hood. And instead of working for these overlords, we steal from them and we are our own bosses. Don't you want to join us? And there were many people who said, yes, absolutely. The upshot of all this is that Benjamin Hornigold now finds himself the de facto leader of multiple pirate gangs operating out of New Providence in the Bahamas. And what we know about these guys is that they were generally fairly young. 60% of known recorded pirates were in their

36:22twenties. The remainder, the other 40%, were in their thirties or forties. So it was a young man's game.

Young recruits and shipboard democracy

36:30But there were even younger pirates than this. One of the youngest pirates on record was a boy named John King. And he was around nine or 10 years old on a ship heading from Jamaica to Antigua with his mother when his ship was overtaken by pirates. So there was a warning shot fired across the bow. The captain of the ship that little John King was on realized he had neither the men nor the

37:01guns to resist. So he turned his ship into the wind, basically bringing it to a stop. The pirate ship with its black flag approached. And very soon, John King's ship was boarded by pirates. Apparently, there wasn't a whole lot that was very valuable on board. So the pirates contented themselves with taking fancy clothes off some of the passengers, and they decided to grab a young black boy who was a slave on board that ship and take him as part of their crew. And the use of cabin boys was common

37:34on ships of this period, not just on pirate ships, but even on merchant ships and on Royal Navy ships. So the idea of having a boy on board to do some of these tasks wasn't unusual. But after the pirates have rifled through and taken people's pocket watches and fancy jackets, they're going to let everyone else go. And this is the moment where young John, who must have been watching wide-eyed, piped up and said that he wanted to join the pirate crew. The pirates must have chuckled at the nerve and the insistence of this young boy. But he was of an age that was pretty standard for cabin boys,

38:08so they decide to let him have what he's asked for. And in front of his absolutely shocked mother, little John King takes his pirate oath, solemnly swearing to abide by the pirate rules and not to steal anything, and formally becomes a member of that crew. His mother and the rest of the crew are going to be allowed to sail away on the ship that they arrived on, but young John will be going back on board the pirate ship with his new shipmates. Imagine the conversation his mother had when she

38:41finally got home to talk to John King's father. How do you explain what's happened to that boy? As it turned out, young John King's pirate career would only last about six months. And in that period, his crew took several ships, and eventually his own ship was wrecked in a violent storm on the waters of Cape Cod. Marine archaeologists later discovered the wreck of that ship, and in it a small fibula, a bone in the leg, still wrapped in a silk stocking and a leather shoe.

39:14This is all that remains of John King, the youngest recorded pirate. Piracy was undeniably dangerous, and in order to attract sailors, life aboard a pirate ship had to be substantially better than life on a merchant ship or a Royal Navy vessel. The history of privateering, or buccaneering as they called it in the Caribbean, had offered something of a third way, and that had been a century-long tradition which had already been developed. Piracy would now take these

39:48different models of organizing life on board ship that the privateers had developed, and refine them even further. Pirate ships were run very, very differently from ships of the Royal Navy. Essentially, pirate ships functioned as a sort of democracy. There was no major gap between the crew and the captain. The captain was essentially elected as leader by his crew, and they would agree to follow him as long as he did his job in their eyes. But the moment they were discontented with his leadership,

40:22they could vote to depose him and put somebody else in his place. So the gap between captain and crew was really very small. Even the physical gap between them was dramatically reduced. So if you were on board a Royal Navy ship, or if you've read any books about it, you'll know that the captain's cabin was a sacred space, and he sometimes entertained other officers or visiting captains from other ships, but it wasn't a place that the average sailor could just walk into. That was not the case on a pirate

40:55vessel, when even the walls between the captain's space and the crew spaces were often demolished. The captain had no special right to a cabin or room of his own, and could be obliged to sleep next to the other members of his crew. Furthermore, his power was diluted by the election of another official on board the pirate ship, and he was called the Quartermaster. The Quartermaster is also a figure of authority, but he gets his authority by being selected by the crew. And he's in charge of doing things like

41:27distributing the plunder that the pirates take when they capture a vessel, as well as assigning duties that individual pirate crew members will be assigned to perform. Men on a pirate ship are paid by getting equal shares of any plunder that they capture. The captain was entitled to something like 50% more, so he got a share and a half in many cases, although individual pirate crews varied in terms of how they set this up. But the thing that united all of them was that the gap between the captain's pay

42:01and the crew's pay was very, very small. Smaller even than it had been on privateering vessels, and a whole different world from the way pay was set up for captains versus crew on merchant ships and Royal Navy vessels. The only time when the captain's word on a pirate ship was absolute was when they were in combat. In moments like that, you were expected to do whatever you were told by the captain because that was his job, to lead his men in these moments. But if enough of

42:31the crew thought the captain's word was rubbish, and he hadn't given particularly good orders in that combat engagement, then that might be the very last fight that that captain had as captain. If the crew didn't like the decisions he had made, they could depose him and create somebody else as their next pirate captain. Pirates even had rules for resolving disputes to make sure that men weren't quarreling with each other or having fights on board ship, and they had compensation schemes to pay men who had

43:03sustained injuries on the job. So it was really quite a thorough list of rules that they had set up for self-government on board these ships. And of course, another feature that made pirate life vastly better to life on board other ships was the food and alcohol situation. Pirate ships were putting into ports regularly. They were not necessarily official ports, but sometimes you'd be going into a secluded cove, going out on shore, hunting wild animals or seizing them, and using this to

43:36make sure that the crew had access to fresh food, fresh meat, fruit, vegetables, and lots and lots of alcohol. The stories of pirate crews drinking heavily are absolutely everywhere. This was a major feature of pirate life, and the access to alcohol they had was in far greater measure to any other ship that a sailor might serve on. These rules for pirate life were actually called pirate articles. The pirate articles, which described the rules of life and how plunder was going to be distributed, and the

44:11codes that pirates were going to operate under, were actually written down and read out to potential crew members before they joined any crew. So when Captain Jack Sparrow talks about the pirate code, this is not a Hollywood invention. There were pirate codes, and they were more than just guidelines. So these codes are read out, and any potential crew member has to agree to these rules as a condition of joining. And almost always, joining a pirate crew was voluntary. There were, however, some exceptions.

44:42So if the crew had need of somebody with special services, something like a local naval pilot or navigator, someone whose knowledge of that coastline would be the difference between sailing through successfully or shipwreck, well, that guy was going to be taken aboard whether he wanted to be there or not, because they desperately needed his expertise to ensure that they avoided disaster. Similarly, someone who was a surgeon or a carpenter, these are other very necessary skills on board a ship. If a pirate

45:15crew was lacking this, and they came across a surgeon or a carpenter from a ship that they were seizing, that person as well might be pressed into service on the pirate crew. But sometimes, when pirate crews were running short on manpower due to recent casualties, and then they were unable to gain enough volunteers, some people would be voluntold. And these were typically young, unmarried sailors who would then be pressed into service on board a pirate ship if they had an emergency need for manpower.

45:46And speaking of volunteers, there is an interesting difference in habits when it comes to do with the treatment of slaves. So pirates who are operating out of the Caribbean are regularly intercepting slave ships that are heading into the Caribbean to deposit their human cargo and grab rum and sugar. So if pirates seized a ship like this, they would have the problem of what to do with its human cargo. So some pirate crews regarded these unfortunate humans as just cargo to be quickly sold off

46:18as soon as possible in exchange for cash. But other pirate crews regarded them as a potential source of manpower. There are some pirate crews who offered the option of volunteering as crew members to slaves on board ships that they captured. These pirates were of the opinion that former slaves would make committed crew members and fighters. And if they agreed to join, they were crew members just like everybody else with the same equal share. So the image that you might see from some films of

46:51pirate crews with a few black members is entirely accurate. And at one point, Blackbeard himself commanded a crew where nearly 50% of the sailors were black. And Blackbeard's mentor, Benjamin Hornigold, at one point picked up a ship that was full of slaves and he added 25 of them to his own crew. So this was something that was done. For slaves, it was hard to know if the pirates who were coming to take the ship were going to be friendly or if they were just going to ditch you on the nearest island. But there

47:23was at least a possibility of a new life open if you were seized by pirates. We know that Blackbeard sails with Benjamin Hornigold for many months. And Hornigold acts as a teacher, as a mentor, and he's teaching Blackbeard what is necessary to become an effective pirate captain. This is a slightly different skill set. It's more than just being a good sailor or a good navigator. This is about leading men who have to give you their consent in order for you to be effective. You can't terrify them

47:55with the lash and make them do what you want them to do. So you have to keep these men happy and they have to believe in your leadership. This meant you'd better be regularly leading attacks that led to cash or at the very least alcohol. And there's one story of Benjamin Hornigold's group when Blackbeard is a member and they overtake a Portuguese merchant ship with a full cargo of Madeira wine. The astonished crew watched about 150 pirates get to work drinking every single bottle of wine that they had in the hold

48:31before they released the men and their ship. And that was one way of keeping your crew happy.

Hornigold's retirement and Blackbeard's command

48:37Blackbeard's mentor Benjamin Hornigold was eventually deposed as a pirate captain and this had to do with a division of opinion between him and his men. Remember Benjamin Hornigold used to be a privateer and he was still clinging to the idea that if he only attacked Spanish ships and not English ones that there was something legitimate about what he was doing. His crew members on the other hand didn't have any such illusions and they were getting really quite irritated at watching vulnerable English

49:07merchant ships go sailing by as their pirate captain Benjamin Hornigold told them to stay put and not to attack. They were saying, but captain, look at all the plunder we could be having. Why are we not grabbing this ship? Because it is an English ship, Benjamin Hornigold would say. And his crew would be saying, and so? And so what? They didn't see any reason why they shouldn't attack English shipping. They weren't privateers and they didn't have those limitations. So Benjamin Hornigold annoys his crew enough that they decide

49:40they no longer have faith in his leadership. They depose him and they elect a new pirate captain who will lead them to attack any vulnerable ship that comes along. Benjamin Hornigold eventually leaves piracy altogether. And he does this when a king's pardon is issued. So word of this goes out to Jamaica and the other British colonies saying that if pirates agree to turn themselves into a royal official and abandon their ways, they'll receive a pardon for any crimes they've committed up to that point. And Benjamin Hornigold is actually quite instrumental in persuading many pirates who are

50:16congregating in the island of New Providence in those pirate gangs, that it's really a good idea to accept this pardon while it's available. Because if you didn't accept the pardon, and the time limit on it ran out, then you were going to be hunted down by the Royal Navy. So your odds of survival just got a bit worse. But not everyone agreed with Benjamin Hornigold, and Blackbeard was one of those who wasn't interested in abandoning the trade of piracy. It is in March of 1717 that Edward Thatch,

50:49now calling himself Blackbeard, graduates to his own command. He's been sailing around with Benjamin Hornigold's gang for about a year now. And when that gang captures another ship, a Sloop, which is a relatively small sailing ship with about six guns and 70 men, Blackbeard is put in charge of it, so he has his own command. And later, when Benjamin Hornigold loses the confidence of his crew and is no longer captain, Blackbeard takes his own ship and his own men and sails off on his own pass. He will become a far more notorious pirate than

51:24his mentor ever was. One of the key lessons of successful pirates was the use of fear. And this is something that Blackbeard learned from his mentor, but he took it to a whole new level. The captain and the crew of the target ship should be completely terrified at the approach of pirates, because the more terrified they were, the more likely they would be to strike their colors and surrender without ever having fired a shot. And that made the business of pirating the ship a whole lot easier. For this reason, having a reputation that preceded you was particularly

52:00useful for a pirate captain and his crew. And this is what likely led to the use of individualized pirate banners. The more terrified the captain and the crew of the target ship were, the more likely it would be that they would surrender without ever firing a shot. And this made the business of pirating their ship a whole lot easier. Blackbeard took the business of cultivating fear very seriously, and he began with his own physical appearance. He deliberately adopted features that

52:31were designed to be intimidating. So we have a number of descriptions of him from eyewitnesses from that period. All of them agree that he was very tall and very lean. But the most detailed account we have comes from a book authored by a guy called Captain Johnson, and he says as follows, quote, Captain Teach assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from that large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole face and frightened America more than any comet that has appeared there

53:05a long time. The beard was black, which he suffered to grow of an extravagant length. As to breadth, it came up to his eyes. He was accustomed to twist it with ribbons in small tails after the manner of Arrameli's wigs and turn them about his ears. In time of action, he wore a sling over his shoulders with three brace of pistols hanging from the holsters like bandoliers. He wore a fur cap and stuck a lighted match on each side under it. With appearing on each side of his

53:40face, his eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a fury from hell to look more frightful. If he had the look of a fury, his humours and passions were suitable to it. So the image we have of Blackbeard is this bizarre, intimidating figure with this wild hair and swirling smoke, burning ends of rope around his face, a very incongruous fur cap which must have looked pretty odd in the Caribbean, someone who looked like

54:16nobody you'd ever seen before. And everyone talks about his wild eyes appearing over this huge mass of black hair from which his face was totally concealed. Now the interesting reference to slow matches in this description, which are twirled around his ears, is actually something that was used aboard ships very commonly in this period. A slow match was a piece of rope that was specially treated so that if you lit it, it would stay lit but it wouldn't send little sparks or embers flying around. And this is

54:47really important because you were going to use this thing to ignite the black powder and fire the ship's guns. If it was spurting little sparks, then you might accidentally light that black powder and that could lead to some really disastrous accidents. So you would have these slow matches on board ship standardly, but the idea of lighting them and having them swirl around your face, this was something that Blackbeard invented for himself. And this performance was as much for the benefit of his crew as it was

55:19for his victims. Remember, Blackbeard is relying on his crew's awe and respect in order to retain his own command. And so they need to believe that he's the boldest, baddest, and most audacious of the lot in order for him to continue to be their captain. The fear campaign that Blackbeard used extended to his personal flag, his Jolly Roger. And Blackbeard's Jolly Roger looked a little bit different from the basic skull and crossbones in white on a black background that you are familiar with. Blackbeard's

55:52flag featured a white skeleton on a black background that was carrying a spear that went into a heart. So it was a very distinct design and when you saw that flag unfurled, it meant that the most famous pirate in the Caribbean was coming after you and it was time to be very, very afraid.

Cultivating fear and capturing ships

56:12Incidentally, Blackbeard wasn't the only pirate to employ this technique. The idea of a personalized pirate flag that designated a particular captain and his crew was used by many other pirate gangs of this period. So the Jolly Roger that we're familiar with, the single skull and crossbones, was actually first used in 1700 by an Irish pirate called Edward English, which is kind of bizarre all on its own. So he's the one who used that flag. But various other pirate gangs had their own

56:44spins on this. Some of them had skeletons with hourglasses or drinking cups. Blackbeard has a spear and a bleeding heart. So they put their own personality into those designs and they distinguished themselves and their crew from other pirates that might be operating. Whatever the individual design of the pirate flag, the meaning was the same. It meant that resistance would lead to death. So when you saw that flag unfurled, you had a choice to make. You could either surrender without fighting and hope

57:16that the pirates would just take your stuff, or you could attempt to resist. But if you did that, the promise of the black flag was that if you lost that fight, you were all going to die. The process of taking a ship didn't always look the same. Sometimes pirates used stealth. They would sail up if they had a small sloop or other boat that didn't look particularly intimidating, perhaps looking as though they wanted to exchange pleasantries with the captain of the target ship, maybe invite him aboard, and then once the captain and a few key officers were on board the pirate ship,

57:48then it would become obvious what was going on, and they would demand the surrender of the target ship. So that was a stealth kind of maneuver. But if the pirate ship happened to be large and well-crewed and well-armed, and remember, pirates always carried way more crew members than regular boats, because the whole point was to overwhelm and board with violence if necessary. So you might see this very large pirate ship sail up, lots of guns very visible on the deck, lots of armed men on the deck, the pirate colors are flying, and at this point, if you're not going to

58:20run and you're not going to fight, you better turn your ship into the wind so that it comes to a stop. That ship is going to pull up alongside yours, and very quickly all these pirates are going to board. At this point, you are at their mercy, because there's far more of them than there are of you, and they're all extremely well-armed. So once these pirates are on board a ship, they're going to loot it. And this often takes several hours, where these armed men are going through the ship, they're going through every single room, they're looking for valuables, they're inspecting the cargo, and they're also looking to take anything else that might be useful from that ship.

58:55And this could include some of the guns, or the ropes, or even the rigging. And then they would ask for volunteers. So this is an offer they would make to the captive crew of the target ship, and they would say, who among you would like to join us? And here are the conditions you can expect if you become a member of the crew. This is the offer we're making. Are there any takers? And usually they would get some, because conditions of sailor life being what they were on merchant ships, there were at least a few guys on most of these ships who decided that the pirate

59:29offer sounded pretty good. So the pirates are going to leave with whatever valuable they can take, and often a few members of that crew. Now, in many cases, they would leave the remaining crew on board their ship and let them go. If the ship they had taken was bigger or better than their own, they might trade ships. So they would take the crew of the target ship, put them on board the old pirate ship, and all the pirates would transfer themselves to their newly obtained ship. But occasionally,

1:00:00they would just destroy a ship that they had captured, sometimes for entertainment, sometimes because they've been insulted. And in this case, they would set that ship on fire and it would burn to the waterline, the point where the flames met the ocean and got put out. Blackbeard once took over

The gentleman pirate Steed Bonnet

1:00:18a ship from another pirate. And this is perhaps the most tragic comic pirate story of all time. Major Steve Bonnet was a most unlikely pirate. He wasn't one of these sailors who'd been suffering from bad food and tyrannical captains and floggings. No, he was a gentleman from England. He came from a wealthy family. He had an excellent education. And then he shows up in Barbados, which is at this point an English colony. And he sets up as a plantation owner. He marries a woman from a very important,

1:00:49well-connected family. He has three small children, and he even becomes a member of the Barbados militia, which is where he gets the title major. So he's not a Royal Navy officer at all. He's basically a gentleman who sometimes volunteers to do some drills with the militia. But for some reason, Steve Bonnet decides that all of this is unsatisfactory, and he wants to seek a life of adventure and daring on the high seas as a pirate. So at the age of 29, he goes about

1:01:20radically remaking his life. And there are various theories about why someone in his position would do this. Because he doesn't fit any of the normal motivations that get people to go onto pirate ships. He seems to have it made. So why does he want to throw it all away? Well, one theory is that his wife drove him crazy, quite literally. That he could not tolerate living with this woman, and he couldn't live anymore in the domestic situation that he had. And so he was running away

1:01:50from that. Another theory is that he just simply lost his mind. So at the age of 29, he decides that he wants to be a pirate. And being a man with a lot of money, he thinks, well, if I'm going to be a pirate, I need a ship. So I should go out and buy one. This breaks the first rule of piracy. Piracy 101. Pirates don't buy ships, they steal them. So even if a pirate had access to something as humble as a canoe or a dinghy, he would use that to row out to a larger ship,

1:02:21try and take control of that ship or steal it, and he would upgrade and continue going from there. But Steedbonnet begins his career as a pirate by going down like a very respectable gentleman and spending his money to buy a nice ship. Now that he has a ship, he needs a crew. So Steedbonnet goes down to the local inns and taverns where all the salty sea dogs are drinking their rum and telling their sea stories, and he tries to get men to sign up. But nobody seems particularly interested.

1:02:53So eventually, in order to get crew members, he has to resort to offering them wages. And this breaks pirate rule number two. Pirates don't work for wages, they work for plunder. So the fact that Steedbonnet has to offer men regular pay is a sign that no one is taking him seriously as a pirate captain. But he gets a crew to sign up. Then he sets out, and of course he needs more experienced sailors than himself because he really doesn't know much about operating a ship. But he's at sea for a

1:03:23little while and then he decides he needs to resupply. So he goes ashore and he buys provisions. Once again, pirate rule number three. Pirates don't buy provisions. They steal them or they take them. So while he's calling himself a pirate, and while he has ambitions of a career of adventure and treasure on the high seas, he's operating in a way that no self-respecting pirate would ever dream of. With all of this going on, it's no surprise that eventually Major Steedbonnet and his crew

1:03:56end up running into Blackbeard. And their pirate ship is pirated by Blackbeard and the real pirates. So Blackbeard's guys take control of the ship, and Blackbeard essentially politely suggests to Major Steedbonnet that he leave the running of the ship to professionals. And he can be a passenger, he can be along for the ride, but Blackbeard is very much now in command, and he's essentially absorbed Steedbonnet's crew into his own. So Blackbeard has just acquired a new ship,

1:04:26he's acquired a somewhat useless passenger, but a lot more men. The images we have of Steedbonnet on board Blackbeard's ship are even more hilarious because apparently he spends most of his time in his dressing gown with his library of books. So he's still acting very much like an English gentleman, even though he's sailing with the most infamous pirate in the Caribbean. And this persists even to the very end. So sometime later, Steedbonnet is eventually going to be hung for being a pirate

1:04:56because he insists very much on being one, even though he's actually offered several opportunities to leave the life as a result of his gentlemanly background. And when he's finally hung as a pirate, he reportedly goes to the gallows clutching a little bouquet of flowers. So determined to be a pirate to the end, suffering the execution of a pirate, but carrying flowers like some kind of gentleman.

The Queen Anne's Revenge and Charleston blockade

1:05:22That was Steedbonnet. So Blackbeard is sailing along with this largely expanded crew, this somewhat useless gentlemanly colleague, and then he hits it really lucky in November of 1717, because he and his men come across a 200-ton slave ship, French built, heading for the French colony of Martinique. And this ship is much larger and more powerful than anything Blackbeard has under his command. To give you a sense of the size, a sloop of the kind of small ship type that Blackbeard has could run somewhere

1:05:56between 40 and 80 tons, was a pretty common size. This French slaver ship was 200 tons, so very significantly larger than anything else Blackbeard has to work with so far. And even better, the captain of this slave ship realizes he's in no position to fight Blackbeard. And with a ship as big as his, in other circumstances he might have tried. But on this occasion he's got many crew members who are really quite ill. So he's undermanned and he's got an extra large cargo of slaves. So not enough crew members,

1:06:32lots of captives in chains. He's in no position to fight. Blackbeard realizes that with a few modifications, this French ship could be transformed into the ideal pirate fighting flagship. And so he takes this ship toward an isolated island, drops anchor, and gets to work. The main thing was to get rid of the slave decks and add more guns. And fortunately Blackbeard had collected quite a few from the previous ships that he'd plundered. So he had a gun collection and he could add these extra guns to this new ship.

1:07:07He also remodeled the stern and forecastle to make fighting and boarding on the deck much easier. By the time he was finished, this French ship had 40 guns and had been remodeled to maximize its speed. He now had his ideal pirate flagship. Head and shoulders above the much smaller sloops that pirates typically used. To put this in perspective, imagine if your local band of robbers traded in a car like a Honda Civic and got their own tank. That's the increase in strength and

1:07:41fighting power that a ship like this represents for Blackbeard and his crew. Blackbeard sends the original crew of this French ship away on his own sloop. So he basically does a ship trade. He says, you can have my little sloop. All of you can get on board here and go off wherever it is you need to go. I now have your ship which has been remodeled to be my ship. And Blackbeard renames this new fighting ship the Queen Anne's Revenge. Queen Anne being a queen in England who had presided over the Union of

1:08:12England and Scotland in 1707. So she's very much a contemporary monarch of the period. And what happened to all the slaves on this ship? Because there were more than 500 of them. Well, Blackbeard dumped most of them on an island nearby called Bequilla. But they didn't stay there for very long because the French captain of that former French slave ship returned as soon as he had a ship big enough, collected all these slaves off that island and took them to the nearest slave market. But not all of them. Because this is the moment where Blackbeard and his crew absorb a significant

1:08:48number of these former slaves into their crew. Some 70 black men join the pirate crew from this ship. So most of these slaves are not going to be fit members of the fighting crew, but the ones who can have the option of joining. Blackbeard and his men continue attacking merchant ships throughout the Caribbean. And during his command, it's estimated that he captured some 40 different vessels. But they don't want to stay in one place for too long. So they're moving off the coast of Jamaica and Barbados,

1:09:21they're heading up to Spanish-held Hispaniola, which is now modern Haiti in the Dominican Republic, and then up toward the coast of Florida. They don't want to stay in any one place for too long, because word of their activities will alert the Royal Navy, who will then be sent to track them down. By April of 1718, Blackbeard had four ships and some 250 men under his command. And of course, the larger the pirate force and the more manpower that they have to use, the more audacious their

1:09:54selection of targets could become. His next target won't be a ship, but a town. Or more precisely, all the traffic going in and out of it. On May 22nd, 1718, Blackbeard and his crew appear way north of their usual stomping grounds in the Caribbean. They show up outside Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston is one of the largest settlements in North America at this point. But it has a unique harbor because there are a number of sandbars that ships have to cross

1:10:27to actually get into port. Sandbars are really hazardous. They are hidden, shallow parts underneath the water where a ship can easily run aground. And so in order to enter the port, typically ships would wait outside the sandbar zone for a local pilot to come and lead their ship through that treacherous terrain, give them a deep water route in so that they could reach the port without incident. Now Blackbeard has already scouted this out, so he knows the lay of the land here, and he rolls up with his ship and blocks the only entrance that other traffic is going to use to get

1:11:02in or out of the harbor of Charleston. He then begins boarding ships that try to approach this gap to enter the harbor. And this isn't particularly difficult because a lot of captains of ships waiting to enter that zone would be expecting a ship to roll up next to them with some local pilot or navigator who would then transfer on board their vessel and lead them safely into port. So they're not initially alarmed at Blackbeard's ships coming very close and boarding. But of course, as soon as these men get on board,

1:11:35they realize that they're in for a very different experience. So in this way, Blackbeard and his crew managed to capture quite a number of ships without incident, coming alongside, boarding en masse, and then seizing everything of value. He's essentially conducted a blockade of the Charleston Harbor. He makes quite a bit of money in this shakedown operation, something like 1500 English pounds, which, if you translate that into today's currency, looks like about $400,000 US. But Blackbeard has a

1:12:07problem. And the problem is that many of his men are sick. And we don't know exactly what they were sick with. One possibility is venereal disease. And remember, pirates were fairly regular patrons at brothels. So venereal disease would not have been at all a rare thing. And one piece of evidence for this is that there was a syringe that was later found aboard Blackbeard's ship containing mercury, which was a standard treatment for venereal disease like syphilis at this time. The other theory is

1:12:38that his men were suffering from yellow fever contracted during a recent visit to the Gulf of Honduras. Whatever the actual disease was that afflicted Blackbeard's crew, we know that he was in search of medicine. And he didn't find any on any of the ships that he plundered while he was blockading the harbor. So eventually, he sends word to the governor of Charleston. And he says, I demand that you send me a chest of medicine. And he had a list of things that he wanted inside it. Blackbeard also promises that if the governor fails to send him the medicine chest, that he will

1:13:10kill all the prisoners he's captured from the ships he's plundered so far, and send their heads to the governor's residence. So that's a pretty terrifying threat. And this is one of those moments where Blackbeard is building his reputation. We don't know how serious he was about carrying this out, but the governor certainly took him seriously. So a chest of medicine was duly sent out to the pirate ship. After a week of blockade, with a fair amount of money and a chest of medicine, Blackbeard and his crew of six sailors sailed out of the Charleston Harbor. The blockade was over.

1:13:44Now normally, after a summer of cruising around and off the shores of North America, Blackbeard and his men would have expected to return to the Caribbean for the colder months. Now normally, after spending the summer cruising off the waters of North or South Carolina for the summer, Blackbeard and his men would have expected to head back to the Caribbean for the winter. You don't want to be caught in storm season on the Atlantic. So they would have gone back to the Caribbean, very likely to the island of New Providence in the Bahamas,

1:14:14which had become something of a pirate haven. But things were about to change, and that option was no longer open. Because in the spring of 1718, around about the time that Blackbeard is just finishing his blockade in Charleston, word of the King's pardon has gone out to all the colonies. So this is designed specifically to address the pirate problem in New Providence, which has spread out and is menacing international trade. And the King's pardon says, basically, you have a certain number of months to turn yourself in to an official and to leave

1:14:49piracy behind. And if you do that, you can start a new life. But if the time limit on this pardon runs out, and you haven't turned yourself in, we're going to hunt you down with Royal Navy ships and hang you. So with this pardon and warning that's now been issued, Blackbeard and his men know they can't go back to New Providence in the Caribbean. And Blackbeard's mentor, Benjamin Hornigold, is about to take advantage of this pardon, abandoning piracy and persuading many men to follow him. So this door

1:15:21is closing, and Blackbeard and his men are going to have to make a new plan. Now the second problem

The royal pardon and ditching the crew

1:15:27that Blackbeard has is the problem of too much success. Remember that his amazing pirate flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, is a pretty conspicuous vessel. And while it's great for overtaking ships, it's a great target for the Royal Navy. And so when these months of the King's pardon run out, Blackbeard knows that he's going to be very visible for Royal Navy ships who are dedicated to hunting down guys just like him. So in order to avoid hanging from the end of a rope, Blackbeard is going to have to

1:16:03make a cunning plan. And it has to be a secret plan. This plan is going to involve getting rid of his prize pirate flagship and also most of his men. He can't tell them about this because if they get wind of it, they might decide that they've lost faith in him as captain and maroon him on the nearest island, taking the ship and all the plunder and making their own way. He doesn't want that to happen. So he has to keep this plan really close to his chest. There are three steps to this plan.

1:16:36Step one, accidentally on purpose wreck the ship. So Blackbeard takes his fleet of four ships, including his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, toward the coast of North Carolina. And there he manages to run his flagship aground off a small island. Now this is a problem because if that ship stays aground for very long, it's going to be smashed to bits. So he sends a second ship, one of the four he has, a sloop, to tow his flagship off the sandbar. And the sloop also gets grounded. To make this work,

1:17:11he almost certainly needed the cooperation of his deputy Israel hands, because this is the guy who's in charge of piloting the sloop to try and get the flagship off the sandbar and then failing at that mission. So Blackbeard is going to lose two ships at this moment, the flagship and one of the sloops. This brings us to step two of the plan. Relocate the treasure and ditch most of the men. So for this, Blackbeard enlists the help of the gentleman pirate Steed Bonnet, who's still along

1:17:44for the ride as a passenger. He's been along for several months at this point. And Blackbeard finally finds him a job that he's going to be good at. He says, listen, I want you to go ashore and talk to the governor of North Carolina. This king's pardon we've all heard about, you're going to go and ask the governor to grant that pardon to all of us here on this crew, notwithstanding the blockade we just did to his neighbor over there in South Carolina in the Charleston Harbor. So your job is to sweet talk the governor of North Carolina into agreeing to pardon us all. And so he says to Steed Bonnet,

1:18:20you're going to do this. I'll send some of your men ashore with you. This is your mission. And when we've all been pardoned, I'll give you your ship back and we'll all be respectable men. So Steed Bonnet thinks this is a great idea. He goes ashore with some of his men. Meanwhile, Blackbeard and the rest of them get very busy. Blackbeard has two ships left at this point. One of them was originally purchased by the gentleman, Steed Bonnet, and the other is just a regular sloop. So Blackbeard has the remaining original members of Steed Bonnet's crew get their

1:18:53ship ready to sail. So they're busy making sure that everything is ship shape and stocked up. And Blackbeard and his men are working on the other sloop. But they're also quietly transferring any remaining plunder from Steed Bonnet's ship into the fourth remaining vessel. This brings us to step three of the plan, which is to sail away in one ship with all of the loot. Now clearly, Blackbeard can't fit the more than 200 pirates he still has aboard one single ship.

1:19:24He's going to have to leave most of them behind. So he gives them the slip in the middle of the night. And how it works is this. The pirates have all made camp on the shore, and that's where they've been living while they've been going on and off ships and making them ready to sail. So Blackbeard handpicks a small number of these men who are going to be part of his final crew. And when he gives them the signal one night, they row out to the two ships that are sitting at anchor. They go on board Steed Bonnet's ship and they take the sails and the ropes. Necessary equipment,

1:19:58which is going to be useful for Blackbeard, but which will also make that ship no longer ready to sail. They transfer this material over to the one remaining sloop, and then Blackbeard and his small handpicked crew of men sail away in that final ship with all the treasure and the sails and the rigging from the other ship. You can imagine how the rest of the men felt when they woke up and saw that they'd been left on this island, Blackbeard is gone, the treasure is gone, and they only have

1:20:31one ship which isn't even ready to go anywhere. They were furious. Now this would certainly be a violation of the pirate's code, which would have said that everyone was entitled to an equal share of that treasure, but this was a situation in which the code was interpreted by Blackbeard as more of a guideline, and he made off with all of it. A few days later, Steed Bonnet returns, having obtained the governor's pardon, and he finds that his ship is no longer

1:21:01seaworthy, most of his men are stranded over there on an island, and he's been given the slip. The treasure and Blackbeard are gone. So he's frantically trying to re-outfit his ship. He needs new sails, new ropes, and there are plenty of angry pirates who are ready to volunteer to crew that ship to go chase after Blackbeard and get their rightful share of the treasure, but they're never going to catch up with him. So where did Blackbeard go with his one ship and all this treasure? Well,

1:21:31he successfully obtained a pardon from Governor Eager, who was in charge of the colony of North Carolina, and he said, that's it. My piracy days are done. He redistributed the plunder amongst his few remaining men and said that he was now going into retirement. How sincere Blackbeard was about this is an interesting question, and there's some dispute about it. Some historians wonder if he could possibly have been sincere for half a moment about giving up his ways and deciding to retire

1:22:04and live off the money that he'd already obtained. If he was at all sincere, he didn't entertain that idea for very long. And there's other evidence that suggests that he might have actually made a deal with Governor Eden, which basically said, you grant us a pardon, we'll become residents of your little colony, we'll provide extra manpower and fighting ability if you need to fend off potential attacks, and if we bring some extra merchandise in, don't ask too many questions. It'll be a win-win situation.

1:22:37Over that summer, Blackbeard and his small crew are going on shorter voyages and getting the lay of the land in their new neighborhood, and by autumn, he's back to his old ways. Now, to give him some credit, he tries to keep his piracy far, far away from North Carolina, and to give it some plausible deniability. By autumn, Blackbeard is back to his old ways. He attacks and plunders two French merchant ships near Delaware Bay, and this is more than 260 nautical miles away from North Carolina. So he's

1:23:12really gone some distance away from his immediate neighborhood to conduct these activities. So Blackbeard sinks one of these ships, and he strips the other one of all its valuables. Which raises the question, what happened to the men who were crew on these ships? One suspects that these crew members might have all been loaded onto the one ship that was headed for Davy Jones' locker. After all, dead men tell no tales, and Blackbeard was at a point in his career where he definitely didn't want any eyewitness

1:23:44accounts of him conducting pirate activities. We don't know for certain what happened to these men, but they're not mentioned again in the historical record. Now Blackbeard was later called to account for his actions in front of Governor Eden in the colony of North Carolina. And his defense was, I just found these French ships floating and I boarded them to salvage them. After all, if you find an abandoned ship, first person aboard gets salvage rights. So that's all I was doing, he says. It sounds a lot like a criminal

1:24:16saying, you know, honestly, officer, I just found this bag of pink notes sitting here in the alley and I thought, finders keepers. That's essentially the defense that Blackbeard is making here. Governor Eden apparently didn't make too much of a fuss about this, and he took Blackbeard's word, if only because there were no conflicting accounts. But he may also have had some financial reasons for not wanting to ask too many questions. Not everyone was willing to believe Blackbeard's account, though. Blackbeard had already aroused the attention of some other observers,

1:24:49including the governor of the neighboring colony of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood. And he was particularly concerned about rumors that in September of 1718, Blackbeard and his men had played host to some other known pirates, and that these men were consorting together and drinking and hanging out off the coast of North Carolina. And Governor Spotswood thought to himself, this looks like pirate cooperation. This might mean that these pirates are migrating away from New

1:25:21Providence, where that haven of piracy is beginning to be dispersed, and some of them are washing up on the shores here of our American colonies. This is the last thing we need. So we've seen Blackbeard, who's supposed to be retired from piracy, hanging out with other known pirates in September, and then he just happens to find a couple of French merchant vessels mysteriously abandoned, and he plunders them. If it looks like a pirate, and it walks like a pirate, and it carries bags of

1:25:52loot like a pirate, it's probably still a pirate. This is what Governor Spotswood of Virginia thought. The last thing he wanted were colonial waters in North America to begin looking like the waters of the Caribbean, infested with pirates. So Governor Spotswood of Virginia decides to take matters into his own hands, and he organizes a Royal Navy expedition to go after Blackbeard and end his career once and for all. Governor Spotswood even puts a bounty on their heads. He says,

1:26:23I'm going to pay a cash bonus for any member of Blackbeard's crew that is captured or killed, and I will pay a hundred pounds for the capture or killing of Blackbeard himself. Now, a hundred British pounds back in 1718 translates to something like $23,000 US today. So that's a pretty significant financial incentive. At this point, Blackbeard's ship is anchored off Ocracoke Island, which is just across from Bathtown, North Carolina. And Blackbeard and some of his men are on board

1:26:57their ship at anchor, but a large number of the crew, including his trusted deputy Israel Hans, are ashore in Bathtown. The plan to get rid of these pirates is therefore a two-part plan.

Lieutenant Maynard and the final battle

1:27:10One section of Royal Navy sailors are going to head to Bathtown to apprehend the majority of the crew, and the other party of Royal Navy sailors are going to head to Ocracoke Island to take on Blackbeard and the men aboard his ship. Lieutenant Robert Maynard is the naval officer in charge of going after Blackbeard and his pirate crew at Ocracoke Island. And to do this, Maynard and his men are going to have to take sloops or smaller sailing vessels because their regular ship, the naval frigate HMS

1:27:43Pearl, is too large to get through the shallow waters around the island. Lieutenant Maynard and his men in their sloops quietly approach the far side of the island, the opposite side of Ocracoke Island to the one where Blackbeard and his men are anchored. They're approaching stealthily because they want to get close but remain undetected until the moment they're ready to launch their attack. That moment was in the pre-dawn darkness of the next day, which was Friday, November 22nd, 1718. And this is the

1:28:14moment that Lieutenant Maynard chooses to sail around the edge of the island with his three sloops and close the distance with Blackbeard's ship. Now, although Blackbeard only has one sloop at this point, it has eight guns on it. And Lieutenant Maynard and his two sloops had none. But in his favour, he had twice as many men as Blackbeard had aboard his ship. A lookout on Blackbeard's ship spotted these two sloops coming around the edge of the island and sounded the alarm. So the pirates are

1:28:44jumping out of bed, they're running toward the guns, and they manage to fire one of the ship's guns toward Lieutenant Maynard's ships. Lieutenant Maynard's response is to have his two ships sail close together, presenting the narrow front of the ship toward Blackbeard and trying to make a smaller target. Maynard's ships are closing the distance, and when Maynard is within a hundred yards of Blackbeard's ship, he and Blackbeard are close enough to exchange words. And Lieutenant Maynard leaves us an account of what Blackbeard says to him at this moment. Blackbeard apparently seizes a glass

1:29:19of liquor, and he raises it in this awful toast, and he says, damnation seize my soul if I give any mercy to you or your men, or take any from you. And Lieutenant Maynard apparently says, so be it, I wasn't expecting anything else, and the fight is now on. The ships are now close enough that the men on both sides are firing at each other with their flintlock pistols. And some of the men on Blackbeard's ship managed to get another volley off from the ship's gun. So this hits one of Maynard's two ships

1:29:53and takes it out of commission. Blackbeard's ship then fired their gun at Maynard's ship and hit it. So this is causing severe damage, and to make matters worse as they close the distance further, Blackbeard orders a volley of grenades to be thrown on board Maynard's ship. So yes, they had primitive grenades in 1718. So these are being scattered on the deck. They're exploding. And after this happens, Blackbeard says to his men, now's the time to board. All of these naval guys have been knocked out.

1:30:23They've been knocked senseless. There are only three or four left standing. Now's the time to board and finish them off. So Blackbeard and his men start jumping on to Lieutenant Maynard's ship. But what they don't know is that about a dozen of Maynard's men have been hiding below decks all this time. So they haven't been affected by the grenades. They swarm out onto the deck and Blackbeard and his men find that they're fighting many more men than they expected. Now it's all hand-to-hand fighting with the thuds and

1:30:54groans of men hitting the deck, people being cut or clubbed. And in this chaos, Blackbeard and Lieutenant Maynard seek each other out. And they're going to have something that looks like a duel. They first fire their pistols at each other. And apparently Maynard manages to hit Blackbeard with this and wound him. But Blackbeard is still quite capable of fighting. So he draws his cutlass and he closes the distance with Maynard. Maynard pulls out his sword. He tries to stab at Blackbeard, but he manages

1:31:26only to hit Blackbeard's metal cartridge case, which he's wearing strapped to his body. So the result of this is that Maynard's sword is badly bent and is no longer serviceable. Blackbeard then strikes at Maynard's sword hand and he manages to damage Maynard's fingers and destroy the finger guard on that sword. So Maynard's hand is bleeding, but his fingers are still intact and he too is still able to fight. Maynard throws away his sword, jumps back to create some distance and fires a pistol at Blackbeard.

1:31:59Maynard manages to hit Blackbeard a second time, but again only wounds him. So Blackbeard is still closing the distance. His cutlass is raised and he's ready to bring it down in a killing blow. But that blow never arrives because Blackbeard himself is suddenly slashed across the neck by one of Maynard's men. This was a terrible blow. Blackbeard was bleeding profusely from the neck, but he was still standing and he managed to cock his pistol a second time. But before he could fire it,

1:32:30he collapsed into a heap on the deck and died. One report of this battle says that Blackbeard was shot no less than five times and then slashed across the neck before he finally succumbed to his injuries. When Blackbeard went down, the fight went out of his men. They were already significantly outnumbered and the few remaining no longer had the stomach to carry on. Eight pirates now lay dead on the deck. Maynard's men later found another member of Blackbeard's crew, an African by the name

1:33:04of Black Caesar, who had been left onboard Blackbeard's ship with instructions to blow it up by lighting the powder magazine if the right signal were given. Five more pirates were taken prisoner aboard Blackbeard's ship and some men had escaped and were swimming towards the shore. But the battle had been incredibly costly for the Royal Navy as well. Eleven Navy sailors were dead and 22 were wounded, some of them severely. The other Royal Navy group, who had been in charge of going ashore at Bathtown and seizing Blackbeard's

1:33:38deputy, Israel Hands, and the majority of his crew managed to do so without so much as a fight. They surprised these pirates and seized them before they even realized what was going on. Lieutenant Maynard cut off Blackbeard's head and hung it from the bowsprit of his ship. In the end, there were 17 pirates who were captured and stood trial for piracy, and all but two of them were hung. The two who weren't hung received a reprieve because they managed to convince the judge that they

1:34:12had not participated in the attacks on the two French ships, which had occurred after Blackbeard and his men had been pardoned. So this is the end of the career of Blackbeard, who is the most famous pirate from the golden age of piracy. And what is so astonishing about it is how brief it was. His entire term as a pirate captain lasted a little bit under two years, and his career as a pirate, sailing under the command of Benjamin Hornigold, was probably only another year on top of that.

1:34:45So it wasn't a lot of time to create the massive reputation that he still enjoys. And it's certain that Blackbeard created a lot of chaos. This is why he ultimately became the target for Governor Spotswood, is because the activities of Blackbeard and men like him were creating massive insecurity in international trade. And very important people, like governors of colonies, were afraid to venture out in case they too should become captives or ransom targets for pirates like

1:35:19these. But in a very real way, Blackbeard and men like him, men who chose to become pirates, were rebelling against a system of trade in which the profits were largely collected by investors and plantation owners and made off the backs of ordinary sailors. The immense amount of wealth generated by the triangular trade came at an enormous human cost. The brunt of that was borne by the slaves themselves,

1:35:50many of whom died aboard slave ships or lived short, wretched lives on plantations in the colonies. But a large part of that wealth was also taken from sailors who were exploited on merchant and navy vessels, who were paid very low wages, who were often cheated by their captains for inflated offenses, and then press-ganged into service again and again when they would long since have rather done something else.

1:36:21And so the choice of going rogue, of becoming an outlaw and becoming a pirate, was an act of rebellion against a system that was largely stacked against the ordinary sailor and that profited off of his labor and his misery. The allure of piracy was as much about self-government and freedom from the lash and from the whims of your tyrannical captain as it was about treasure. There was, of course, the promise of that as well. And so life on board a pirate ship offered you

1:36:56a good time, lots of alcohol, adventure, and the potential at least of becoming enormously wealthy and perhaps slipping away into a life of anonymity to enjoy the fruits of your labor. This was a lot better than what most men could look forward to after a life as an ordinary sailor. So if you put yourself in the position of men like Blackbeard, what would you choose? A life as press-ganged labor aboard a ship? Or a life that you could make largely for yourself?

1:37:29Join me and Bea, the podcast cat, later this month for our live history chat and let me know what you would choose. Thank you for being with me on this episode and a very large thank you to all the wonderful people who support this podcast and make it possible. I'll see you in the next episode.

1:37:59Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.