transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Ridiculous History is a production of IHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always, so much for tuning in. That's our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.

Speaker 2:
[00:34] Hello, I am here and in the room for once.

Speaker 3:
[00:37] He's sitting in a chair. We're all here together.

Speaker 1:
[00:39] Yes, they call me Ben Bowlin for tax purposes, and that's Mr. Noel Brown.

Speaker 3:
[00:45] Did you do your taxes?

Speaker 1:
[00:46] What's that?

Speaker 3:
[00:46] You done your taxes?

Speaker 1:
[00:47] Is this a legal inquiry?

Speaker 3:
[00:48] Yes, it is.

Speaker 1:
[00:49] So we are also-

Speaker 3:
[00:50] Answer me, Damien!

Speaker 1:
[00:51] We are going to you live-ish. Fine. I don't care. I did do my taxes.

Speaker 3:
[00:57] Get black bags. See if I care. I was just trying to help you out.

Speaker 1:
[00:59] All right. Did you do your taxes?

Speaker 3:
[01:01] Nope.

Speaker 1:
[01:02] All right.

Speaker 2:
[01:03] I did my taxes in case we were wandering. I did them in January.

Speaker 3:
[01:06] You good boy.

Speaker 1:
[01:08] We have a fourth person joining us today, a longtime brother in arms, also a co-creator of stuff they don't want you to know, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Let's welcome the one and only Mr. Matt Frederick.

Speaker 3:
[01:23] Hey, everybody, Matt, the voice Frederick, Matt, the private privateer saving private Ryan's private private tears.

Speaker 4:
[01:33] Oh, quick TMI.

Speaker 2:
[01:34] Charles Bain of our podcast. No, that's wrong.

Speaker 1:
[01:37] Hey, hey, hey, that's a different one. As you can tell folks, because we're talking about being good boys and paying our taxes, we're leading into a, an exploration that we couldn't imagine occurring in a better environment. We are going to talk about some of history's most ridiculous, obscure and strange pirates. And we're doing it in the former home of Caribbean piracy.

Speaker 3:
[02:01] It's true. It's a little, it's a little different than it once was.

Speaker 1:
[02:05] It's, it, they classed up the joint. I don't know if they used to have flamingo yoga in the pirate days, but you know, here we are at Baha Mar, the lovely Baha Mar. We couldn't be more thrilled. We've been here for a couple of days. We are in guys, honestly, a posh studio. I'm going to say it, it's way better than what we're used to.

Speaker 3:
[02:24] It's well, you know, I mean, our individual homes typically serve as our studios, so results may vary. I like my situation. I hope you all like yours as well. This situation, however, involves a fishbowl type thing where there are children and their families just looking and pointing at the odd men.

Speaker 4:
[02:40] I just tried to make eye contact with the dad.

Speaker 1:
[02:41] That guy just iced Matt.

Speaker 4:
[02:42] Come on, dad, we're right here, dad.

Speaker 3:
[02:45] Matt, no, this is not how it works. Just be in your natural environment, dude. Let them observe you.

Speaker 4:
[02:50] I want to meet that dad.

Speaker 2:
[02:51] And to break the metaphorical fourth wall here a little bit, what's different today than it was from yesterday when we recorded Stuff I Don't Want You To Know is that's on video. Today, this is just audio.

Speaker 3:
[03:00] We're all hanging on.

Speaker 2:
[03:02] Well, we have the windows open, so there's this pathway that people walking down and yesterday just walked by like, whatever. Today, they're just like, huh?

Speaker 1:
[03:10] Well, because today, it's way easier to see kids.

Speaker 3:
[03:13] That's right. More of the foot traffic on that side of the cube.

Speaker 1:
[03:17] So you may hear a shout out people who are walking by, fellow visitors to Baha Mar. There are a lot of very curious kids here. You may also encounter a random guest because we had some folks walk in as we're recording.

Speaker 3:
[03:32] Likely shirtless.

Speaker 1:
[03:34] Likely shirtless. It's a look. It's a mood. It's a vibe. Guys, let's say we do it a listicle style here and get into stories of different pirates, often obscure, that we have been diving into over our past few days here at Baha Mar.

Speaker 3:
[03:57] Cliff diving, even. It was a false cliff, but I did cliff dove.

Speaker 1:
[04:02] I remember when we were texting about that.

Speaker 3:
[04:05] Cliff-diven?

Speaker 4:
[04:06] Yes, and then you go into a little cove of sorts, what do you call that? A grotto?

Speaker 3:
[04:11] A grotto, yes, much like the Playboy Mansion.

Speaker 4:
[04:13] Yes, and on the other side, within said grotto, you can see into this animal sanctuary that they've got set up in there, you can see all kinds of sharks and turtles.

Speaker 3:
[04:23] Hashtag not an ad.

Speaker 1:
[04:26] Hashtag kind of an ad.

Speaker 3:
[04:28] Hashtag kind of an ad.

Speaker 1:
[04:29] Kind of an ad.

Speaker 4:
[04:31] I'm sorry, I was genuinely excited about it.

Speaker 3:
[04:33] I know, that's why I had to say it, because we are genuinely enthusiastic about this place. It's super, super fun. Definitely no ad required, to be honest. They put us up and of course we're gonna gush about the place it rules.

Speaker 1:
[04:45] So, gentlemen, where should we begin? I guess we gotta talk about piracy in general. It's still a thing.

Speaker 3:
[04:52] We should start close to home and then move our way outward, back to our other home, perhaps.

Speaker 4:
[04:56] Oh, that's good.

Speaker 1:
[04:56] Yeah, and we can maybe end with the world's most successful pirate.

Speaker 3:
[05:01] Oh, there we go.

Speaker 1:
[05:01] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[05:02] Okay, like that. When I say close to home, I mean close to where we currently find ourselves at home and then maybe moving back towards the States.

Speaker 1:
[05:09] Ooh, and everybody check out our episode, Did Pirates Have a Government from a Few Years Back, Which Also Takes Place Here.

Speaker 3:
[05:16] It sure does. And I don't know if we talked about this on that episode, but I was doing a little digging. I know we talked about the eye patch trick. It wasn't necessarily that someone's eye had been removed by a parrot or a bullet. It was about flipping the patch to the other side if you needed to go down into the below decks. And then that eye that had been blocked would be pre-acclimated to the darkness.

Speaker 4:
[05:38] Beautiful.

Speaker 3:
[05:40] And the pegleggery of it all, that was done by just some really industrious and thrifty woodworkers who figured out how to use their certain set of skills to craft on the fly, what's the word? Prosthetics.

Speaker 4:
[05:57] I was thinking maybe you would put some divot or hole in the deck, so that you can really strap in if the waves got bad.

Speaker 1:
[06:06] Yeah, stability during waves and then just rock people in a sword fight, you know? How is that guy able to swing around so quickly?

Speaker 3:
[06:13] Well, and speaking of the sword fights of it all, Ben, the swashbuckling, you know, a golden age of Hollywood pirate sword fights we know as being very precision and fencing-like, not how it was. It was much more cutthroat and slash and burn, you know?

Speaker 1:
[06:27] Chaotic. And also we know that some pirate crews were actually really progressive for their time. We also know that the line...

Speaker 3:
[06:35] They even let women hang out.

Speaker 1:
[06:37] Right, right. Though in the West, it was still sometimes considered bad luck. We don't know if all the women were pirates. But we'll get to that.

Speaker 3:
[06:45] We'll get to some feminist piracy.

Speaker 1:
[06:48] We'll get to some feminism piracy. They got workers comp. There were Democratic votes on the ship.

Speaker 3:
[06:54] The booty was all split in equal shares.

Speaker 1:
[06:57] There was like a pension plan, you know, for people who were retiring or who were injured. But there were also so many misconceptions about piracy in general. It's like it's a really muddy gray line between a privateer, murky waters or dark waters. Did you guys ever see that cartoon?

Speaker 3:
[07:16] Dark waters?

Speaker 4:
[07:16] I saw the movie, Dark Waters.

Speaker 3:
[07:18] That was the one about the Teflon, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[07:22] There was a...

Speaker 3:
[07:23] Super fun hang.

Speaker 1:
[07:24] Yeah. There was another one. We'll get into it later. Just hit us up on Ridiculous Historians at Facebook if you remember that obscure cartoon.

Speaker 3:
[07:32] Especially if you're an old.

Speaker 4:
[07:33] Sounds familiar, Ben, but I feel like I can picture something in my mind of the art.

Speaker 1:
[07:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very pirate-coded, as Noel would say. I don't know if it holds up on rewatch, but it does bring us to a question.

Speaker 3:
[07:49] What about Flight of Dragons, though, Ben? Does that hold up on rewatch?

Speaker 1:
[07:52] Yes, it does.

Speaker 2:
[07:52] Okay, cool.

Speaker 1:
[07:53] And it is a Rankin bass. Callback.

Speaker 2:
[07:55] It is.

Speaker 1:
[07:55] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[07:56] I love the Rankins and the basses.

Speaker 1:
[07:57] I'm surprised you haven't seen that.

Speaker 2:
[07:59] I haven't.

Speaker 3:
[07:59] It seems like a bit of a deeper cut. I don't know that one.

Speaker 4:
[08:02] Guys, can we talk about New Providence Island, the island on which we are sitting right now?

Speaker 1:
[08:06] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[08:07] In the Bahamas, the Big Island. I feel like that's kind of what we're hinting at. The cool things in piracy, at least, well, there are a lot of interesting things, a lot of horrific things that happened with piracy. But during the Golden Age, like 1690, 1720, that's when here in the Bahamas, there was a place that was...

Speaker 3:
[08:29] An intentional community.

Speaker 4:
[08:30] Well, it was completely bombarded and everybody left because this place was destroyed. And then a lot of folks came back and rebuilt everything and used it as a, really a, it's strange.

Speaker 1:
[08:41] It's like an HQ.

Speaker 4:
[08:42] It is like an HQ.

Speaker 3:
[08:43] But it was also a bit of a pirate utopia.

Speaker 4:
[08:45] It's very strange because you're thinking about British or Spanish rule, back in the colonial rule back in the day, that is one of the big problems in the world. And you're talking about a bunch of people who are really good at ships, making ships go and functioning on the seas, a lot of them in the Atlantic Ocean, especially the ones we're talking about here, and the freedom that that represents, right? And then the freedom that the Bahamas represented at that time, when they created their own place, like as we were saying, like a free port. Not free port, but like a free port.

Speaker 1:
[09:18] But check out that episode of Stuff They Don't Want You To Know.

Speaker 4:
[09:20] Because Nassau, like now, what is now Nassau was basically the place we're talking about.

Speaker 1:
[09:25] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[09:26] And I'm trying to make a connection between the freedom that that place represented versus the colonialism, and how a lot of the pirateers began because they weren't getting paid right by people who commissioned them to be on a ship, to go somewhere and do something.

Speaker 3:
[09:41] To be privateers.

Speaker 1:
[09:43] Or absolutely conscripted them.

Speaker 4:
[09:45] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[09:46] Right? And made them in all function slaves. And we'll get to like also.

Speaker 4:
[09:51] And they just decided we're not doing this anymore.

Speaker 3:
[09:53] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[09:53] And the colonial powers had their own pirate armies. They just called them privateers and gave them little certificates that said what this guy does is fine.

Speaker 3:
[10:02] And I'm sorry, Matt, I didn't mean to interrupt. The privateer comment was not quite on base. You're more talking about when they were conscripted to just run supplies and victuals.

Speaker 4:
[10:11] Often, often. There's I think somebody you're going to be talking about today, Noel, and that thing happened in particular where a mutiny occurred because the pay stopped and they got stranded somewhere on a ship. And they said, well, I guess we're taking the ship.

Speaker 2:
[10:24] So to jump in here, like I think, Ben, we were talking about this maybe two nights ago, that basically on every long Spanish voyage, you basically read about there is a mutiny. Some is always a mutiny on all these things because they stop paying people. They like the food goes bad, goes bad. For some reason, God grabbed a bunch of cows. No, we're not going to talk about that one. I can't find enough sourcing on that one. Basil Hood, if you want to check that one out. But there's always getting overthrown because it really sucked. There's these liberties will be taken away because it's easy to, there's the romanticized view of pirates, where it's like, oh, these people weren't bad. The Pirates of the Caribbean view. Then there's like the Pirates were bad, but they were just terrible view. But it's like they were rebelling against a system that was really bad.

Speaker 3:
[11:07] The truth is somewhere in the middle. Of course, there's examples on both sides. But it's so interesting to think about how a ship at sea really is like its own little country. And a mutiny is really kind of like overthrowing the government. But it's a lot easier to do when you are kind of like a bunch of your closest pals, and then the guy that you want to overthrow, it's a little more functionally achievable goal on a ship. So that's probably why it happened so much more than like, you know, your average coup.

Speaker 1:
[11:34] Exactly, and then we also know, now to be clear here, we're primarily talking about piracy in the Caribbean, which is what most Americans are going to be thinking about right when you hear pirates, right? And a lot of that is probably due to Johnny Depp, but we have to realize that the colonial system in a very real way, it created the Caribbean piracy, right? Because these folks were under brutal class regimes, the punishments were incredibly harsh for all kinds of things because the captains and the colonial powers ruled through fear. So when we had when we had people who say were of darker skin tone, right? They would never have a chance to advance in a colonial operation at all. So why wouldn't you go somewhere else?

Speaker 3:
[12:20] And to the point of the egalitarianism of the pirate world, those folks would have been welcomed into the world.

Speaker 1:
[12:27] Yeah. Especially if they're able bodied. Yeah. And if not treated as equals, treated less horribly.

Speaker 3:
[12:34] Fair enough. So now I'm doing the romanticization again. It's easy to do, but at the very least, you're right, Ben, they were allowed to exist.

Speaker 1:
[12:41] They were allowed to exist, which doesn't seem like it's asking for that much. So I think we're all-

Speaker 3:
[12:45] It's a low bar to limbo on it.

Speaker 2:
[12:47] Very low bar.

Speaker 1:
[12:48] We're gently becoming pro pirate because of the meritocracy act. Yes.

Speaker 4:
[12:54] I want to make one point. It's uncomfortable, it's unsettling, it's gross and sorry, I know which show I'm on. We just have to point out-

Speaker 3:
[13:03] Nor PG-13, man.

Speaker 4:
[13:04] In the writing, there's a lot of reading that you can do about, quote, wild women, which you will see that phrase a lot when you're looking up the history of pirates.

Speaker 3:
[13:16] Sign me up.

Speaker 4:
[13:18] I'm sorry, maybe not.

Speaker 3:
[13:19] I don't know where you're going.

Speaker 4:
[13:22] I just want to point this out here because it's a truth of the thing. We're talking about the different versions of pirates that you'll read about and the way they are depicted. There's horrific SA happening across the board. Yeah, I walk back and comment. No, but just on ships when a port was raided, everywhere that was happening. It's all happening and pillaging. It's just very much so in the way we've spoken before, but I've spoken with you guys before about Vikings and the way they're depicted, but there's that gray area between the truths often, but there is horrific stuff in almost every pirate crew that I've read about.

Speaker 1:
[14:01] Yeah, there's no happy pirate squad. Yeah. You know what I mean? There's nobody who is raiding a ship to bring hugs. Yeah. This isn't happening. This is a great setup, Matt, for a story we'll get to later because we did say we were going to get into some feminism and piracy, which I'm really excited about. This is going to be crazy. But Noel, your proposition there about starting closer to the US centric view. Why don't you kick it with us on the, is there a pirate from the Caribbean that's really captured your eye?

Speaker 3:
[14:39] Oh, jeez, put me on the spot, why don't you? Well, you know what, I will talk about this guy, because it actually is also very applicable in terms of what we just discussed regarding the Golden Age of Piracy, and there was actually a thing that happened where King George I, kind of near the end of that Golden Age that Matt was talking about, 1717 to 1718, he passed something called the Acts of Grace, which essentially absolved a lot of these pirates for their crimes in the hopes that they would quit pirating. But some of them said, King George, you can take your pardon and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Speaker 2:
[15:20] Also to jump in here, I mean, Ben, I know you were this well, but so much of my knowledge of this time period just comes from Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, with Roger showing up, you know. Or is it Horningford? We're going to get into him eventually, but yeah, he's your friend, he betrays you, and you have to kill him later. Oh, so yeah.

Speaker 3:
[15:38] I've never played one of those games. Worth it?

Speaker 4:
[15:40] Oh, dude, this one's great.

Speaker 1:
[15:41] Start later in the franchise.

Speaker 3:
[15:43] That's what I heard.

Speaker 2:
[15:43] Oh, start earlier in the franchise.

Speaker 3:
[15:45] You like the pirate one, though?

Speaker 2:
[15:46] Don't start at one.

Speaker 3:
[15:47] Should I play the pirate one, though?

Speaker 1:
[15:49] Pirate one's great if you like the ship mechanics.

Speaker 2:
[15:51] Well, they're going to re-release it this year, unless they're not going to re-release it this year. Yeah, Ubisoft has been, they haven't officially announced it, but they've been working on a re-release, a remastering of Assassin's Creed IV, but they're also working on a remastering of Prince of Persia, which they canceled because Ubisoft's like going on.

Speaker 1:
[16:06] It's sort of like Schrodinger's Ubisoft right now.

Speaker 3:
[16:08] That's funny though, because Ubisoft is kind of the King George, the first of video games. They are. In a lot of ways, because, not to get too off the track here, but we're all huge fans of Claire Obscure Expedition 33, which is, one could argue as close to an indie game studio as might be able to generate what feels like a AAA title like Claire Obscure, and it was made up from folks who pitched that to Ubisoft and were continuously shot down and said, no, no, no, that's too weird, it's never gonna fly, and literally blew them out of the water when they started their own company, Sandfall.

Speaker 4:
[16:45] Dude.

Speaker 2:
[16:46] And by the way, I have my whole right arm exposed facing Matt right now, who refuses to play Claire Obscure, so he has to just stare at my Claire Obscure.

Speaker 3:
[16:53] Well, he's just got stuff going on.

Speaker 1:
[16:54] It's like you have to play it with the audio. We're getting off track.

Speaker 4:
[16:57] I would love it so much if it wasn't all AI generated. I'm only kidding, I'm only kidding.

Speaker 2:
[17:03] I'll throw you that ocean right now.

Speaker 3:
[17:05] The Proclamation for Suppressing of Pirates, also known as the Act of Grace. Always Forgiven. It was not an act of parliament, but it was a royal proclamation that King George I of Britain issued on September 5th of 1717, promising a pardon for all acts of piracy committed before the following January the 5th. To any pirates who would be so bold as to surrender themselves to the Crown, to proper authority before said deadline. There were other caveats associated with that, but we're talking about a dude named Charles Vane. I believe that's your reference point with the game, right?

Speaker 2:
[17:45] No, but he is a guy. You play as a fictional pirate Edward Tenway, but Vane is one of the guys you meet, and you don't think very highly of Vane. He comes off as a real pill.

Speaker 1:
[17:54] You mean Benjamin Hornygold in that one?

Speaker 2:
[17:56] Yes, he's actually like your mentor, and he's kind of like a guy that betrays you.

Speaker 1:
[17:59] Benjamin Hornygold, yes, Matt.

Speaker 4:
[18:01] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[18:02] Horny with an I.

Speaker 3:
[18:03] That's a banger of a pirate name. He's just horny for gold.

Speaker 4:
[18:07] We got Vane and Hornygold.

Speaker 3:
[18:09] Here's a quote from Captain Charles Johnson from a general history of the pirates with a Y, because they spelled things funny back then. All the pirates who were found at this colony of rogues, submitted and received certificates of their pardon, except Captain Vane and his crew, who as soon as they saw the men of war enter, slipped their cable, set fire to a prize they had in the harbor, and sailed out with their piratical colors flying, firing at one of the men of war as they went off. Boy, King, go off. They went off.

Speaker 1:
[18:46] And folks, to be clear, Vane is, to your point, Noel, is one of the people who looked at this offer, this olive branch from somebody that he totally freaking hated. And he played along at first, and he said, oh yeah, yeah, you know me, I'm a good boy. I'm an upstanding maritime dude. And they said, all right, there they were, the King's pardon for thee. And then just a few months afterwards, as he said.

Speaker 3:
[19:14] He blew up the spot. He literally said, to maybe unpack that kind of old timey quote I just read, he basically gave him the finger, set a ship on fire and fled with his pirate flag flying, saying like, first of all, this is important to note, Vane was a Jacobite.

Speaker 4:
[19:33] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[19:34] Meaning he was of the political ideology advocating for the restoration of the senior line of the House of Stuart to the British throne. So politically, he was just absolutely opposed to everything that the king stood for.

Speaker 1:
[19:48] Very Shia and Sunni.

Speaker 3:
[19:50] A million percent. It was like exactly a sectarian, you know, that kind of stuff. To the point where that probably informed his decision to give said finger and set said fire and he would F right on off into the sunset.

Speaker 1:
[20:03] And his boys loved it, let's be honest.

Speaker 3:
[20:05] His boys loved it.

Speaker 2:
[20:06] If I could jump in real quick, I think it's also important to understand on why the king was doing this because getting these pirates down was nice, but there was still a need for privateers, at least in their mind. And like Hornigold is one of these guys who would have maintained, he was a privateer, not a pirate. We'll probably talk about this more later. What's the line between a privateer and a pirate really? So yeah.

Speaker 3:
[20:29] But to your point earlier too, Max, I mean, and I think a couple of the other fellas made this point as well. The reason they moved towards piracy is because the privateering and the version prior to that just wasn't paying the bills. So basically the proposition here is come bend the knee and then go back to the old way where we are now in charge of you again. And political differences aside, that just didn't seem like a particularly good deal for Mr. Vane and his boys.

Speaker 2:
[20:59] And Hornigold got it good because his whole thing was like, Oh, I will screw over all my friends I made here in Nassau. But he's a real pirate.

Speaker 3:
[21:05] But they say no honor among thieves. I think that's a misnomer.

Speaker 1:
[21:09] Well, it depends on the type of thievery. But this is the kind of thing with privateers we have to remember. It's a really crappy commission gig. Because they're saying you can do what you want as long as you do it to this group. As long as you attack the Spanish or as long as you attack the British, you're fine. And you can take what you want from there. But we're not giving you health insurance. We're not giving you workman's comp or pension. It's a contract gig and we can end it at any time.

Speaker 3:
[21:36] That's a good example of seizing the means of production kind of stuff. Where it's like, I don't need you in your grace proclamation. I don't need the pittance that you're going to throw me for the work that I can go out and grab and do myself. Granted, there is something to be said and an argument to be made of having regular gigs and not having to always hustle and find the next...

Speaker 1:
[22:00] Shout out to everybody working in freelance...

Speaker 3:
[22:01] .the next galleon to knock over.

Speaker 1:
[22:02] Shout out to our fellow freelancers.

Speaker 4:
[22:03] I was going to say, it sounds like a gig economy. Isn't that the way to go? We've advanced so far since then and we've decided the gig economy is the thing that works the best for everyone.

Speaker 3:
[22:13] That's true, Matt. I think you made a mistake.

Speaker 1:
[22:16] This is a rig economy. I'm doing shit jokes.

Speaker 4:
[22:21] Got it. And it works on so many levels. Nice work, sir.

Speaker 2:
[22:24] Don't worry, Ben. I interjected the bad joke drum here manually. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[22:29] You are the bad joke drum of my heart, Max.

Speaker 3:
[22:32] So, not a lot is known about Charles Vane's early life other than the fact that he was a sailor. He is from Port Royal. Probably wasn't born there.

Speaker 4:
[22:42] Forgive me. Is Port Royal, Jamaica?

Speaker 3:
[22:44] I believe it's in... Yeah, I think it is. That's correct. And he is thought to have been born around 1690, probably in England, but he operated in Port Royal and again likely wasn't born there. He was, as I'd said, a big spokesperson for the Jacobite cause. He served as a privateer under Henry Jennings. And in 1716, this position helped him to knock over a Spanish galleon that had sunk off the coast of Florida in a storm and collect all of the literal sunken treasure therein. That's when he really started hanging out right here around Nassau and where we now sit. He had a super, super posh lifestyle and became an incredibly successful pirate, capturing merchant vessels from places as far flung as Hispaniola to New York. And just shout out to Wayne Savage and his website, The Golden Age of Piracy, getting some really good information from that. So let's go really quickly into the deal with the pardon. And I'm just going to read it really quickly from Wayne's writing because I think he does a great job of summing this up. Wayne really came into his own as a pirate when the news of the King's pardon reached Nassau, being one of those to refuse clemency. He was disgusted when more than half of the pirates, including his mentor, Jennings, accepted it. This is like a bad look as far as he was concerned. This was people denying their pirate ways and bending the knee, again, to the people they were rebelling against in the first place. Many others who rejected it were doing so on politically motivated grounds because they were also Jacobites. So he then, after doing the thing that I described in that quote, reached out to a lot of other Jacobites and a lot of people who supported his cause and started to amass more crew members for his operation. On February 1718 in, rather, the HMS Phoenix, which was a British ship, captained by a guy named Vincent Pearce, got to NASA, and he was kind of welcomed by the local folks. And that is when Pearce, he was kind of like the Jean Valjean and Javert kind of situation. He's the Javert to Vane's Jean Valjean, started to aggressively pursue capture of this escaped pirate who was flouting the very generous clemency offered by the king.

Speaker 1:
[25:33] Oh, we also have to point out too, I'm loving this story, Vane was even among other pirates, infamous for his cruelty.

Speaker 2:
[25:43] Really? Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:
[25:44] He was a hard guy. Yeah, he was not like, we just want to make sure you don't think we're painting him in too heroic a light.

Speaker 3:
[25:52] No, I'm not trying to, it's mainly just interesting, the dynamics of the whole life.

Speaker 1:
[25:56] The dynamics, fascinating.

Speaker 3:
[25:56] The politics and the rejection.

Speaker 1:
[25:58] Because it's not financial for him, it's personal.

Speaker 3:
[26:00] It is personal, and then sometimes that's what makes the most dangerous characters.

Speaker 1:
[26:03] Yeah, because you can rationalize whatever you're doing.

Speaker 4:
[26:05] Do we have one example of that, just so I understand what we're talking about?

Speaker 1:
[26:09] Of his cruelty?

Speaker 4:
[26:10] Yeah, and I don't want to go too dark or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[26:13] Not just, they wouldn't just beat other sailors when they were raiding ships. They would capture them, and sometimes not even try to ransom them, they would just torture them for long periods of time. And then they would also, I think this is the right guy, they would go really hard on one dude to make him an example to the other sailors, so that they would willingly give up all of their values or valuables, and then they would also beat those guys.

Speaker 4:
[26:42] Geez, okay.

Speaker 1:
[26:44] So it's like somebody is gonna try to mug you with a baseball bat, they say, give me your wallet, and you do, and they say, okay, now I'm gonna beat you.

Speaker 4:
[26:52] Yeah, now they got your stuff.

Speaker 3:
[26:54] No, it's real gangster shit.

Speaker 1:
[26:56] Yeah, gangster is a good way to beat the gaysers of the seas.

Speaker 4:
[26:59] As a palate cleanser between that and the next pirate we talk about, I want to clarify something from my own mind, and I think you guys might know better than I. The ships that many pirates would use were often smaller, right?

Speaker 3:
[27:13] Smaller than weaves.

Speaker 4:
[27:14] Like schooners? Yeah, schooners or sleuths. Sleuths, okay. So they're, they don't, they don't, just for me, they're completely lame in here.

Speaker 1:
[27:22] They're not like the huge brigadines.

Speaker 4:
[27:24] Exactly, or a galleon or one of these huge ships that maybe the Spanish Armada would have or another, you know, British forces would have.

Speaker 1:
[27:31] Not always. There were some chonky boys, but most of them are going to be more sleuths and schooners.

Speaker 2:
[27:36] The big exception would be under like Edward Teach's Queen Anne's Revenge, which was a man o war.

Speaker 4:
[27:41] Oh, wow, that's like the huge.

Speaker 2:
[27:43] That's bigger than a frigate. This is obviously Blackbeard, but that was like his prize was capturing that. But yeah, most people had small, agile ships.

Speaker 1:
[27:51] Yeah, because they could outmaneuver the bigger guys, and they were also easier to steal.

Speaker 3:
[27:57] It's like those gangs of dirt bike and ATV riders that we see around Atlanta. When the cops give chase, there's no way they can ever be caught. They zip off through a neighborhood or something.

Speaker 4:
[28:08] And the point I wanted to get to with all of that was that that's one of the reasons Nassau was so important and such a good place to go, because those smaller ships can get into this area much more safely and come in closer to land.

Speaker 3:
[28:22] And dude, the wind, man. Think about that. If you're a smaller ship, you can harness that wind if you're a skilled sailor and literally zip and go super-sail. It's crazy windy around here.

Speaker 4:
[28:33] The zephyrs.

Speaker 1:
[28:35] There's another point there that has always fascinated me historically, you guys. When we talk about sea serpents, this is a tangent, but when we talk about sea serpents or sea monsters, sea creatures of the deep, you see all those woodcuts of them swallowing up a ship entire, what we have to remember is that's not necessarily as implausible as it sounds for really big octopus or squid to attack a ship like that.

Speaker 3:
[28:59] David Jones, giant squid.

Speaker 1:
[29:01] Because in reality, they are so much smaller than they're portrayed in fiction. If you go on an accurate reproduction of one of those ships, you're going to think, oh, it's not the size of the sea monster, it's the size of the ship.

Speaker 3:
[29:15] It's the angle of the angle.

Speaker 1:
[29:16] Interesting. That's what makes a difference. It's the motion in the ocean.

Speaker 4:
[29:20] That's great.

Speaker 1:
[29:21] Fascinating facts.

Speaker 4:
[29:22] Because the tactics of a pirating ship is to come along, to find its way alongside, sneak up, basically, to a larger ship and get part of the crew on board, right? Because we're not talking about naval...

Speaker 1:
[29:34] Or maybe send out smaller boats under cover of night.

Speaker 4:
[29:37] Because we're not talking about naval combat often.

Speaker 3:
[29:39] Not in the same way.

Speaker 4:
[29:40] But if you play, like, Black Flag...

Speaker 1:
[29:42] You got a broadside, people.

Speaker 4:
[29:44] Well, it's broadside, but it's all about upgrading your cannons and all these other things. And I wonder how much of that actually played into the form of pirating that truly existed.

Speaker 1:
[29:53] Maybe at the state level role, so you would have something that's essentially like a battle mech, you know, the size of the big colonial ship. Those guys have all these tremendous capabilities if you stay still long enough for them to get to you. Right. So if you see them turning and facing the cannons toward you, you might have to wait for a while, right, to get your ass kicked.

Speaker 2:
[30:20] Absolutely. To jump in here with more Black Flag. There are, at the end of Black Flag, four like boss level ships in the fight. And if you try to just fight them as traditional, you're gonna get your ass kicked every time because they're so much more powerful than you can make your own ship. But so yeah, being nimble and fast in a lot of those fights and that's because they're usually against really large ships at Ben's point, they take forever to turn.

Speaker 4:
[30:39] Yes, but once they fire, you're dead.

Speaker 1:
[30:42] Yeah, it's kind of like getting in a fight with a sumo wrestler. You know what I mean? Like, just don't let them get to you.

Speaker 3:
[30:50] No, you got to sweep the leg.

Speaker 2:
[30:52] And to Noel's previous part about Charles Vane, when they got them all in Nassau, they had them blockaded into Nassau with all those massive ships. So it's like, yeah, those fast little ships can't really do much in that case.

Speaker 1:
[31:02] It's a wild fire, right? As long as those big ships are able to stay supplied.

Speaker 4:
[31:08] But blockade, I swear I've heard that term recently, blockade. What is that about?

Speaker 2:
[31:13] We're talking about history here, Matthew.

Speaker 4:
[31:15] Okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 1:
[31:15] Hey, let's get it straight. Hey! So Noel, Ridiculous, this, what happens?

Speaker 3:
[31:22] Well, I will get to that in 2.5 seconds. I just want to add, there was a detail that I left out when Vane decided to flee the coop after being offered that pardon. What essentially happened was, an envoy came to NASA, bearing the papers that would represent that pardon and make it official, and not only did Vane reject it and set a ship on fire, this guy's name was Rogers, he sailed the flaming ship directly at Rogers' fleet and created a diversion that he then used to piece on out.

Speaker 4:
[31:56] Wow!

Speaker 2:
[31:57] And he was all business as an assassin's creed, black flagged. Okay, I thought I'd know all of that.

Speaker 1:
[32:01] That was Woods Rogers. And the thing is-

Speaker 2:
[32:03] Who's the Templar?

Speaker 1:
[32:04] Yeah, in the game.

Speaker 2:
[32:07] In the game.

Speaker 1:
[32:08] Definitely in the game, in real life, who knows? But Noel, I believe that that crazy move to turn a ship into a fire ship, it didn't destroy this other guy's ships, right? It didn't destroy Rogers' fleet, but it gave him the opportunity.

Speaker 4:
[32:25] Yeah, just a distraction.

Speaker 3:
[32:27] Total, total, very, very expert god-tier diversion.

Speaker 2:
[32:30] Just to get out of there.

Speaker 1:
[32:32] Okay. All right. What happens next?

Speaker 3:
[32:34] Well, a lot of things happen. He pirates around, you know, for a while. He amasses quite a bit of wealth, of course. And then eventually, as is typically the case with folks flouting the law so openly like that, it eventually catches up with them. And it caught up with him in pretty epic fashion, in the form of an absolutely cut scene worthy twist, where he essentially is running from the authorities. He shipwrecks on an island. He gets rescued from the island and then gets aboard another vessel where he takes on a false identity for a while.

Speaker 1:
[33:11] He gets in situations.

Speaker 3:
[33:12] He gets in situations and he sure did. So in February of 1719, he got caught in a hurricane. The Bay Islands got shipwrecked on a literal uncharted island and basically, for all intents and purposes of what we know, uninhabited island, the rest of the crew died during the shipwreck. He was only able to survive because of some kindly turtle hunters, who didn't necessarily live there, but this is an island they knew about and he was able to barter for supplies or just appeal to the kindness of strangers. Eventually, what I was describing a minute ago, a merchant ship arrived and it was piloted by an ex-pirate named Holford. He didn't trust Vane, so he did not offer him a lift. In fact, he told him that he was going to leave him there, and that if he was still there when he came back in a month's time, he would give him a ride, but not to freedom, to the gallows.

Speaker 1:
[34:04] Okay. So he's like, I'll give you a pass because we both were in the game, but if I see you again, you're going to face justice.

Speaker 3:
[34:12] Correct. Another English ship eventually arrived in order to get fresh water. That's when Vane attempted to blend in with the crew using a fake name, and a bit of a disguise.

Speaker 1:
[34:23] It's me, Nigel Non-Pirate.

Speaker 3:
[34:25] Correct. He eventually, Colford catches up with that crew, who is an associate of the captain of this new merchant vessel that Vane is now basically stowing away on for all intents and purposes. And he then turns him in, narks him out. He gets tried and hanged in March of 1721 at Gallows Point, full circle back there in Port Royal. His lifeless corpse was hung in chains on the small island off of Gun Kay, near the port, near the coast rather. And this really represented kind of making an example of him, and many people looked at it as a very important visual cue signaling the end of the Golden Age of Piracy.

Speaker 1:
[35:13] Yeah, and you know, that's how you play the game, I guess. It's a larger than life tale. I think we've been pretty honest about the darker parts of it. But Noel, after all this, what do you think, man? You gonna do some piracy with me?

Speaker 3:
[35:30] I'm gonna go to the water park.

Speaker 1:
[35:32] Okay, if that's euphemism for piracy, I'm down.

Speaker 3:
[35:34] I am too. They may have a pirate themed ride, and I will gladly enjoy that.

Speaker 1:
[35:40] And so folks, we can't thank you again. Thank you enough for tuning in and joining us in an auditory way here at Baha Mar.

Speaker 3:
[35:48] We're doing an intentional two-parter. We all brought some really fun stories. That one ended up being a little beefier than we expected. So when we come back with part two, I think we might have two more for you.

Speaker 1:
[35:57] And of course, big, big thanks to Mr. Max, the free train, Williams. Huge thanks to our returning special guest, Matt Frederick. Matt, what's on your mind, man? Max, Max, Max, just for you. Here we come.

Speaker 2:
[36:18] It's Max with the facts.

Speaker 1:
[36:21] Matt, my favorite part of that song, if thank you again, is the sigh at the end. Just because it seems like a release of something almost sexual.

Speaker 4:
[36:31] No, it was. It was.

Speaker 3:
[36:33] He's dreaming.

Speaker 2:
[36:33] Yes. I think we have nine versions of that song now.

Speaker 4:
[36:36] That's great.

Speaker 1:
[36:37] I love the instrumentals, too.

Speaker 2:
[36:38] I never asked for one. I asked Matt to record one line for me, and he an hour later said it that day.

Speaker 3:
[36:44] Matt and Dylan, man, going above and beyond. Shout out to Dylan, the Tennessee pal, Fagan, who's always rocking the rutabagas over on Stuff They Don't Want You To Know. If you don't know what I'm talking about, do get you to a podcast platform of choice and check out our weekly listener mail episodes where you get a new rutabaga jingle just about every app.

Speaker 4:
[37:01] And if you're behind on the rutabagas, I think the plan very soon is to make an oops, all rutabagas at least special.

Speaker 1:
[37:10] And in the meantime, you can also check out our parent company, IGU. If you love this trippy stuff, we have a whoops, all illumination global unlimited episode. I miss making those, you guys. We should get back to those before IGU puts out a call to end our podcast piracy. What do we think?

Speaker 4:
[37:29] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[37:30] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[37:30] Always, always more.

Speaker 1:
[37:32] And always more reminds us the rest of the thank yous. Big shout out to Max's biological brother, Alex Williams, our brother in podcast arms who composed this bangin bop. Big reluctant shout out to a guy who totally would have worked for the British colonial powers, our own East India Company villain, rogue and impressionist at the Renaissance Fair, Jonathan Strickland.

Speaker 3:
[37:59] Doesn't he kind of do a bit of a pirate thing? AKA the Quister. AKA the Admiral?

Speaker 2:
[38:04] He's a real Woods Rogers sort of.

Speaker 3:
[38:06] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[38:07] Oh, good call back. And big thanks to Eve Jeffco. Big thanks to Christopher Hossiotus. Who else? Noel Brown.

Speaker 4:
[38:13] Can I shout out the kind of haggard-looking dove? There's like some really nice looking doves. And there's one.

Speaker 3:
[38:20] In the sanctuary?

Speaker 4:
[38:21] No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1:
[38:21] No, no, no. You can't rein those birds in.

Speaker 4:
[38:24] Dude, if you go in the sanctuary, they will give you a tiny little stick that has some bird seed on it, and the little birds will land on the stick and hang out with you for a while, and it's glorious.

Speaker 1:
[38:34] And speaking of glorious, we're going to return to the glory days of piracy in a way that's not often reported in Western history books. So tune in later this week. In the meantime, we gotta go catch some sun and some turtles.

Speaker 3:
[38:49] We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.