Season 4 Finale: Walking the Plank

spotlight on impostors. And in this most recent season, we told the tales of pirates throughout history. If you have not been with us in previous seasons, welcome. And also we have a tradition that we are about to enact today. At the end of each season, Maria and I pick our favorite shows from the season and our rick cocktails and mock tails to share during this the final episode.

As we do. We spent this season looking at whether or not the stories of plundering pirates could look different through a modern I but I mean, actually, who are we kidding when it comes to a typical pirate we didn't really expect their crimes to improve just over time. It is very easy to get caught up in the idea of a pirate's life. There are a lot of stories celebrating the romantic notion that sailing those high seas

was all about excitement and full of adventure. Just look at stories like Treasure Island, for instance, written by Robert Louis Stevenson. If you're not familiar, that is the tale that introduced us to peg legged and part loving pirates and their quest for buried treasure. This romanticism of piracy reminded us of the episode that highlighted Steed Bonnet. We bring him up specifically because Bonnet is a great example

of someone who was really chasing that dream. He was a wealthy landowner who left it all behind to have a more adventurous life. As it turns out, though, he bought that new life rather than putting in the time as pirates actually did. In his new life, we found as we learned about him, his crew didn't respect him at all, and they defected to Blackbeard's ships. We also learned he spent a lot of time hiding in his stateroom on his own ship, where he kept a personal library.

It was certainly different from his former life, but it probably was not what he expected. Most men and women on the seas did not have a background leg bonnet. Some turned to piracy for the money, some for the adventure, and some to escape terrible situations. Some pirates were bloodthirsty, others greedy, and some, like Jeanne de Clisson, we're in it just for revenge. If you remember her story, she spent thirteen years seeking revenge for the execution of her husband.

Third Team, It's a long time. Another prity fact that can take away from this season is that many were captured and tried and executed by hanging. That was the pirate way. But some pirates made enough money to retire from piracy and become wealthy merchants. A few became so successful or memorable, or even infamously brutal that their names carried through the centuries, and they're still recognized after all

this time. One of the problems, though, with uncovering the real stories of pirate legends, is that there isn't always much historical evidence about many of them, especially if they were never captured or never put on trial. If there

is evidence of their lives. The stories often but not always have been embellished, but embellished or not, though they did have interesting stories and among the pirates, we did definitely have our favorites, and we're sure you do too, So tell us the stories and drinks that you liked best on social media with the hashtag Criminalia. We would love to know which ones we have in common. But let's start now with our top three shows, Maria, who did you love this season? It was difficult to narrow

it down to three. I'm not starting them in any particular order. Our final episode was Charles Vane. We weren't originally going to talk about Charles Vane, but when he started to show up in other people's stories, I thought

it was really interesting to to do an episode on him. Also, I really liked that we learned that even though he was a really skilled captain, he was actually pretty much a coward who would not take on ships that he knew he couldn't fight a coward his execution because apparently he really tried to get out of that. He was a scally wag. He was a scoundrel, He was an outlaw.

He was everything that we want from pirates in the Golden Age of piracy, but I would say that above all it was because his creeping in and out of the story of others. Yeah, I mean prolific enough that he really does pop up in almost any Golden Age story. Did you have any thoughts on Charles Vane in your top three or did he not make it to your list? Chassis, as I like to call him, did not make my list.

Cassy is the perfect nickname for him, and I really really hope that when he was like partying with black Beard off the coast North Carolina, they called him. That nobody did, but in my heart they did. My own revisionist history. Um, the first one that I will mention is one that we already talked about in the intro here,

which is Steve Bonnet. And here's why. It has very little to do with him specifically as a pirate himself, but we talk and we even had an episode and I almost picked it about fictional pirates, and we have talked throughout the season about how romanticized pirates have become, you know, how the ifs have really kind of become what people accept as pirate lore, even though it's not really accurate to what most of these people were like, and Steve Bonnet is a good exemplification of the fact

that that was happening concurrently with the Golden Age of piracy. That's not a new problem, that's not a situation where history changed our view. There was enough romanticizing of pirates in the eighteenth century that he was like, oh, man, that sounds dreamy, right. So I actually have on my honorable mentions Steve Bonnet, and I also have in my honorable mentions fictional pirates who were considered real. And I

see the connection here. And I picked Steed as my honorable mention because he seemed to me to be perhaps the most unpiratey pirate that we talked about this season. The idea that he didn't actually perform any pirate duties, that he purchased everything to get into the world and perhaps was having a midlife crisis when he decided to do this all landed him on my top five, I would say, not my top three. Yeah, I mean he really didn't if he had really thought it through, want

a life of piracy. He wanted all of the luxury and the trappings of society that he was fortunate enough to have access to. He just wanted them on a boat. Could have just booked a cruise the boat. Yeah that's fine, you know, just creezing up and down the North Atlantic. Yeah. Bless his heart. He was cosplaying piracy thinking it was going to work out. Okay. So moving on from Steed, I really liked the Halloween episode that we did, which

was Pirate Hunters. It was mostly be has of our exploration of how a pirate becomes a pirate hunter and as it turns out, you're a pirate. But I think I went into it thinking, well, how much does the Navy provide versus how much do pirates provide when they're hunting other pirates. My conclusion was, if you're a pirate, you would sell out another pirate. And it was just a really fun episode to do on Legal And I'm going to put that in air quotes versus outlaw piracy. Yeah.

It's interesting to think about the ideology, and I'm sure this was part of what led Steve Bonnet to think it was pretty great, was that there was a certain degree where you did not have to feel a responsibility to anyone else but yourself. I see the appeal of that. Sure, the trappings of life get a little weighty, and exhausting at times. But um, who would want that job? I don't know a pirate who gets paid to do it. Perhaps the job maybe, but only until somebody else turns

on him. Are you saying it's lawless among pirates? What? What was stand up? Guys? My next one, I don't know that I would say it's super fun, but I really like it as a story. Is Rachel Wall. Yeah, she was not what I thought she was going to be, right. I mean, she's another one that's emblematic of people that found themselves in situations where they're like, well, here's what

we're doing now. I was quite taken by the fact that pretty much everything we know about her is based on that one document that she put together at the end of her life, knowing she was going to be executed, So we don't have verification on it. We just have to kind of take her at her word on most of it. But boy, she sure packed a lot into that Doctor, which wasn't that long. It's not a super long read, but there are a lot of details craved

in there. I did not actually have her as one of my honorable mentions, So I'm going to move on to my third choice. Which was Henry. Every I picked him because I thought he was really a great example of how pirate legends grow throughout that person's life. And afterwards we hear these things about Henry's life that just seemed poserus. You know, there was that that whole instance after the plundering the treasure ship, where maybe he had married this princess or maybe I forget exactly, maybe he

had started his own nation. All of these things that that people had made up about him, when really he was a person who managed to escape for what two years? So I think he was a pirate. I just felt like his legend made him infamous more than his actions do. Right. He actually seemed pretty shrewd about handling himself, doing the jobs he was doing him, saying jobs very loosely, and then getting out and being like, all right, well now I I'm going to fall back into one of my

other names. Exactly he had, like I don't know, ten twelve. I remember making a joke about how he also collected names. He was quite something. But I like that when he made his big treasure heist, he got out. He was smart enough to get out at his peak. Yeah, which very few I think we've seen very few. I could have more. Let's do one more. Yeah, right, So I had mentioned Rachel wall already, who I do also love.

We didn't mention in this ramp up that she's, you know, the the North American woman pirates essentially, and my my third choice is also a woman. And I bet it will not surprise you one bit. It's gun Clisson. I mean, she's got the whole story. She's angry, she loved her husband, She's got great style. She's like a rocket of just fervor and anger and ambition in terms of how much she took on and how much she did so I I love everything about that story. I obviously don't like

that she lost her husband. Let me just say, I don't think I would want a time travel back and really hang with any pirates realistic. I don't have romanticism about it. I'm like, that seems, you know, unclean and kind of unpleasant. But she might be the one that I would be like, I would love to make you a cocktail, ma'am. Come on in. I did not have her as my top three, but in my honorable mentions, I did have Grace O'Malley and one of the reasons for that is because she just seemed like such an

incredible bad as our entire life. Some of the other women we talked about may not have started out in a pirate family. I felt like Grace was truly her entire life a pirate. One little element that stood out to me about her in everything that we researched and talked about was that when she met Queen Elizabeth, she refused to bow because she felt she too was a queen. As soon as I learned that, I was like, badass, right, I mean, she was kind of pirate royalty and I

don't blame her for feeling that way at all. She didn't pick the Queen of Ireland. She would the Queen of Ireland. No, Oh, Grace, Gracy, she'd probably hate me for saying that. M let's talk about drinks. What do you have first? This mixologist, Well, I'm gonna have some duplication here because my first favorite drink of the season was also from the Rachel Wall episode. It's the Hanged Woman. She is my She's one of my two honorable mentioned drinks.

That's fantastic. I love when we overlap. So for anyone that doesn't remember the Hanged Woman is a splash of pumpkin syrup and a chilled coupe, and then three ounces of hard cider and three ounces of sham pain. If you want to do the mocktail, you use non alcoholic cider and a ginger ale. I cannot tell you the number of times I have made this drink since we did that episode, for myself, for my friends. We had people over for Halloween brunch and I made a batch

of it and it was amazing. It's just delicious, and it hasn't stopped being delicious for me, you know. I'm not like, oh no, Sometimes you try any thing and you go, oh this is delicious, and you drink a bunch and then you're kind of done. You're over for like a good five years. I'm I'm like, we always got to have champagne chilled in case I want to

Hang Woman at all times. Please have it ready. I made a note to myself about the Hanged Woman, not just how you know, tasty it was, but the pairing of the hard cider and champagne get you way drunk. So that's also part of that drink quick to drink, right. We we talked during the Charles Vain episode about how champagne as a v a coal for other spirits. It's just a little bit. You've got to be careful with it. At least in my experience, it accelerates things for me.

What was your your first drink? Okay, so my first drink was the Horned Helmet from Lagartha. We've already talked. I know that I am not a fan of putting whiskey and citrus together, which this recipe is whiskey, lemon juice, violet syrup, little club soda on the top. I also loved, loved, and I think this is because the whiskey and citrus issue had been taken out the mocktail version of this drink, which is steep black tea, lemons juice, violet syrup, and I did use a dash of bitters in mind, but

the syrup makes it this wonderful, beautiful color. It's so refreshing from lavender, which I find pops up a lot. Violet does not. Um Lavender often makes me think these days, it makes me feel like I'm drinking cleaning products, and so it was a very nice change to have a different flower. I also live in a place and this is important for people who don't live in a city. I live in a place where violet syrup will never be found a store any aisle, so I looked up

how to make it. It's super easy. So if you are in the same situation as me, trust me do it. It is a show stopper in this drink. I very much loved it. Most syrups that you would use in drink making are so easy to throw together, as it's usually like one part sugar, one part water. Add whatever the flavoring is, let it simmer till everything dissolves. Strain off any herbal bits in your golden You can make simple syrup. You can make this, Yes, so easy. I'm

glad you picked that one. I looked at it for a while and then I was like, I gotta make cuts because my cocktail list was long this time I had to make cuts to This was a great season for cocktails. I actually went back and forth as to whether or not this one should show up on my list because of the whiskey lemon juice issue. But here it is the mocktail. My second one again I'm a duplicator. It's the powdered wig. Powdered wig. Listen, I'll just say

up front, I'm going through a flip face. You know, I don't know what's going on there. I want my eggie drinks in abundance right now. It's just a thing I'm in the middle of. I'll get over it eventually. So for anyone that does not recall the powdered wig, it is two ounces of vanilla brandy, an ounce of simple syrup, one whole egg, and you shake it in a shaker until that egg has completely incorporated and become

really frothy. There's actually a great moment while you're shaking where you kind of feel it happened, like it has been aerated enough that it has stopped being a slashy liquid and it starts to be almost a foam that you're just like, am I still shaking a flu it? And then you can top it with nutmeg. We always have to say, like washer eggs, pregnant women in particular, uncooked eggs can be a little tricky, but you probably shouldn't be drinking a flip if you're a child. Anyway,

good point there. Look, I'm not here to judge, but I want everyone to be safe. So yeah, I just I love a I love a flip if you wanted to do the mocktail version instead of that vanilla brandy, which again, that's that's part of my problem is that I have a vanilla cogniac and vanilla brandy situation also brewing. So this is like the perfect drink for me right now. But if you're doing non alcoholic, you just use a low sugar apple juice in lieu of that brandy or

cogniac and you're all set. It's a good one, I feel like for this time of year, for those of us that celebrate any winter holidays, It's kind of like a variation on egg nog. It's not as heavy, but you still get that frothiness and that velvety mouth field. And I just again, I just I love a flip right now. I just love I have, not, to be honest, tried any drink but has egg in it, because I also have an egg in my drink's problem. Maybe this is why I only have two things that I like

to drink, and you're the reverse of me. I'm like, put weird things in and like, no, no, weird things, No, what are you doing? That nutmeg sprinkle on the top is all that I'm gonna like, but if you handed me one, I would try it, but I won't make it for myself because eggs. So my next one actually matches up with one of my favorite shows, The Pirate Hunters.

So this drink is the Betrayer. I picked it because I loved that there were two shri Rasha drinks in this season, So it became the choice between the Betrayer from the Pirate Hunter show and the King's Pardon. I believe was Charles Vains and the Betrayer one out because of the red ice hubes that put on the show in your glass as they're melting, certainly a plus for me.

In addition, I do like a good dacree and like an old school dacree, And I'm not judging the frozen dacories that you drink on beach because I've had plenty of those in my life too. The bitters, the red food coloring, it all worked together with I think this drink had white rum, simple syrup, lime juice perhaps and

a little club soda on the top. Yes, it is white rum, lime juice, simple syrup, right, and kiss a club soda on and not very much right, And the mock tail switches that out for I believe was almond syrup that you did in that that's off the top of my head. So yeah, the seeping of the red tendrils into the drink, plus the heat that you could get up from your seri roga depending on how much you put in. I loved. I like that one to you, just as you know, who doesn't enjoy a special effect drink?

Look right, I never get one, So like when that happens, that's words great. There's never any like red wine special effect. Yeah, and it um that was because we were doing that one also at Halloween times. Um, it kind of fit. I wanted something that had that, you know, seeping evil blood look to it. But I will say I was delighted that it worked as well as it did, because you never know. In my head, I usually make a

plan before I try anything. I'm not like, I don't know, just try this in while I'm sitting there, I usually like it comes to me pretty clearly what avenue I'm going to travel in terms of like, Okay, these are the spirits I want to use. This is thematically how I want to talk about it and think about it. And then this is this is going to be the

twist on this or whatever. That one, I was like, I kind of had it all in my head and I made it and it worked really well the first time, and I was like, well, bravo me, good for you. It is a fun one. That one was on my honorable mentions list. As you said, I like a I like a classic Dack. They're tasty and um very bright, and I'm having that heat on it changes completely what you think of dakar is, even if you're thinking of

an old school one. So I'm always down for a little mucking about it gave it a little extra which was super nice. That transitions nicely to my very favorite of the season, which is again I'm the duplicator, It's red sales, it's GENII songs. I had her honorable mention as well. So yeah, that one was an ounce and a half of cinnamon whiskey, a half founds Grandmagnier, a half found simple syrup, a half ounce of lemon juice,

and then that is topped with cranberry juice. All of those flavors come together in a way that, like the the cinnamon is just sort of this grounding note. I know, it's sometimes when you drink cinnamon whiskey it's a little harsh, but because of all the other elements, it really smooths that out and it just you're like, oh, this feels festive yet not assaulted to my palette in any way.

It's very delicious. I also really liked that it immediately conjured her ship, her black ship with her red sails and there it was just That's another one that I have made many times since we did the episode, So I always found that interesting. What becomes on your your list of go twos? Oh yeah, that I'm telling you. The Hanged Woman has been the most made at our house, again because that is an easy one to put together

for entertaining as well. So that's part of why in terms of sheer volume served, the Hangwoman was the one that I made the most red sale, because you can do it for entertaining purposes. So in terms of sheer volume, I have made the most of that red sales. In terms of ones I have made just for myself, when I'm like I would like to have a cocktail with dinner, that's the one that I go to nice my last drink. It was actually a little bit surprising to me, and

it was also again one of my favorite episodes. And this again is Henry Avery, the King of Pirates. The drink was called I Believe the Vanishing Pirates. It's a combination of ginger with strawberry. But it was the the elderberry that I found so aromatic and refreshing, and it's such a great drink for not this time of the year. It's a great summertime cocktail. You had put I Believe in your in your recipe strawby vodka, like if available,

or I would highly recommend the strawberry vodka. It would be good without it, but it brings to the table with the elderberry, the sweetness and brightness, and it all works very well together. Plus I'm a big fan of ginger beer. So this recipe had elder flower cordreal strawberry vodka or vodka ginger beer mocktail just minus the vodka

was the the ingredients from Montail minus vodka. You don't do the vodka, but you muddle the strawberries and the styrup and the strawberries together and then poor ginger beer over that, which is all excellent. Both drinks both very yummy. You know what's funny is I took this off my list and now as you talk about it in a manner, the wax is so rap sodic. Gosh, maybe now I want to maybe that one should have been on my list.

I did have a top four which had to do with another flowery type of thing, and because it was hybiscus, I wanted to put it on my list so badly, and it was four women made for Anne Bonnie, Mary Read, Martha Barley, and Mary Critchett. But I didn't want to put it on the list at the end because I didn't want to put it on the list for a single ingredient. And that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the drink, but it just didn't make it into top three.

I buscus, Oh my gosh, I love it. I have two honorable mentions in my cocktail lists, and these are also ones that I have made several times since we recorded them. The first is Teotis Curse, So that was the one that combined Uzo vodka and lemonade um for like a strange liquorice lemonade for anyone that thinks those two things don't go together to give it a whirl.

They surprisingly dovetail one another really nicely. Yeah. I have made that several times as well, and now I'm thinking about schedule another time to make one because it's also super easy. That was a quickie to throw together, and there's not a lot that comes out well, at least that I've noticed with um a liquorice forward labor unless you just have uzzo. So adding a lemonade to it was was. It's a really nice change. Yeah. I'm a big fan of all of the liquorice things to you know.

I love a little Anna set obviously, I love absence, I love Uzo. I know that's not for everyone, which is why we don't have a lot of liquorice forward. Yeah, it's for me. Like, if you feel like you are adventurous and willing to try a new things and you're a little scared of this one, I just would encourage you to give it a world because shockingly refreshing could

be its subtitle. My last honorable mention and this was the one that I think when we recorded it, I said, oh, this is my favorite right now, and we'll see where it lands. And it still is way up there, which was the bad tempered woman, which is the said al Hera drink, which is a combination of mint and green tea with ginger and then muddled orange and mint leaves together with a little bit of gin. WHOA, that was delicious. I love that you have embraced well. I mean, I

personally have not embraced the gin yet. I don't dislike it anymore, but it is a neutral reference to me now, and I like that you also have embraced gin, and I'm putting it in more drinks to try. It's helping me become more of a drink gin person. Excuse me,

well for me, and I think probably for you as well. Right, the more that I experiment with gin drinks, the more I realized that I there are things about gin I like for me, if you're just gonna do like a gin and tonic or something very similar like that, where it's it's only like a two ingredients, Gin is pretty much the spirits and the main flavor, I don't I

still don't really enjoy those that much. But if you can add in other ingredients that kind of pluck out notes from the gin and highlight them in a way that you know, I think for most people that don't like gin. It's like, there's that heavy, that juniper flavor. It smells very piny. It's a lot if you're not into really herbaceous things. Being able to find those other notes within a gin and bring those to the forefront, it makes the whole thing a lot more fun. It does,

and it's making me enjoy it more. So, thank you, yea. I will say this, I think I probably would have made more of those in the interim were it not for a time of year situation. Right. That is a very good beverage for warmer months, and it's been getting colder, so I'm I'm over here with my flips, right. I mean, it's like when I when I picked my beverages, I actually thought about it, but I intentionally tried to go season less, but there were somewhere they were just perfect

summer drinks. I was very pleased with our selection of drink options this season. There were a lot that I really labored over cutting and was like, oh, I'm sorry my babies as I kissed them goodbye to come off the list. But we can't just rehash every single drink. So hopefully you, dear listener, found something in our drinks and stories that you enjoyed that you will take away from the season and keep with you. Thank you for

joining us this season. We hope you will be here with us next season because we are going to talk about the fate of those who practiced witchcraft and alchemy, or at least were accused of having done so. And the good news, as always, you do not have to wait. We are going to leave the high seas, put our ship and I doc and then go into our season of sorcery right away that will come up next week, and we're also going to talk about the punishments that

witches and sorcerers have endured through time. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.