Who's the Greatest Pirate of All-Time?

That is definitely the one that was one of my favorites, although it's hard to pick a favorite, And honestly, it had been a few years since i'd really binged on Deep Thoughts, and I feel like that's the only way to experience them, like you have to read a hundred at a time, and so I was a little bit overdue for this. And for any listeners who might not remember Deep Thoughts, they were these silly and stupid one liners that were delivered as though they were these inspirational

and meaningful pieces of advice. And you know, Jack Candy actually been writing these since the mid eighties, but I'm pretty sure you and I both discovered them when Handy would read them on Saturday Night Live. Is that is that where you first heard them? Yeah, definitely, that's when when I was first exposed to him. Yeah, so this was the early nineties. I guess we were both in middle school at the time. And I thought about another one when Tristan was wearing these fancy kicks the other day.

He's got lots and lots of shoes, but he had some some really fancy ones on, and so I thought about this when it said before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away from them and you're in their shoes. So stupid. I love that, but it's kind of good advice. I guess it definitely is.

And actually, one of the other things I noticed is that there was more than one deep thought about pirates weirdly, but I think my favorite was pirates were always going around searching for treasure and never realized the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating. Well, I do feel like you're reading that is a sign because we've been talking about doing an episode on pirates for such

a long time now, we definitely have. I mean that that's how we knew it was time to do this, because we've been keeping this list of all the pirate stereotypes and I wanted to know what of them are actually true and you know, like we're pirates anything like the ones that we see in the movies. Did they actually say stuff like shiver mey timbers or buried treasure? Or did they really carry around monkeys and parrots? And my god, I hope that they did. But it's time

to find out, So let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my friend man Guesh Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass, I actually don't know what Tristan is doing today. I am up in New York. I'm in my hotel room, in this very fancy studio, which is just my ask in my hotel room. So it may not sound as great as Tristan usually makes it sound, but mano, I gotta know

what is Tristan doing. So he did not disappoint. He showed up in a total pirate Halloween costume. Um, he's got everything. He's got an ipatch, a bandanna, try corner hat, he's got hoop earrings, he's got a stuffed parrot. On his shoulder, and he even has a try corner hat for his stuffed parrots. I'm not sure how true to life that part is, but it is a nice touch. So well done, Tristan McNeil. Oh wow. And actually, I just as we're talking, I just got a text from

Ramsey's showing me a picture of Tristan. This is amazing. I mean, you could say every part of his costume is pretty much in line with the way that we conceive of pirates, because I mean, I guess this is how we're used to seeing them in books and pop culture. So thank you Tristan for furthering this stereotype of pirates. But it does make us wonder like, how much, if

any of this is actually true. And I don't just mean how pirates dressed in real life, but how they acted to Like, on the one hand, parrots we see in movies and theme parks off and come off as these really these charming and kind of rough around the edges folk heroes, almost like Robin Hoods of the Sea or something. Yeah. I mean, do you think about like Wesley from The Princess Bride and he's just kind of

a gentleman pirate. Yeah, that's that's exactly right. And you know, when you read these historical accounts and pirates mostly though sound like these bloodthirsty outlaws, it's a bit of a mixed message. So with today's show, we thought it would be fun to try to make sense of the competing pirate narratives and to do that will fact check some of the biggest stereotypes we typically associate with pirates and

see which ones hold water. And then a little bit later we'll separate pirate truth from pirate fiction when we share a few of our all time favorite pirates stories. So, Mago, you want to kick us off, like what pirate cliche do you feel like we should start with today? Well,

I was thinking about it. You know, it was international talk like a Pirate Day not too long ago, and while I did manage to slip a few hours into my conversation this year, I also, you know, I couldn't help feeling like a little bit of a phony since I actually have no idea how pirates talked, and as

it turns out, nobody does. So piracy was as peaked during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so there aren't really any audio recordings to refer to, and the witness accounts that we do have only include kind of a handful of quotes from actual pirates. What about writing from the pirates? I mean, it feels like there's got to be at least one pirate autobiography floating around out there, wouldn't there be? Yeah? Actually there really aren't. There. There isn't much of a

record of anything written by pirates themselves. Blackbeards supposedly kept a diary of all the exploits, but that's never been recovered. And so the little bit of writing we do have from actual pirates comes mostly from the ones who started out as nobility before going rogue, and since they tend to be really well educated, their speech patterns probably wouldn't

have mimiced those of most pirates anyway. So, you know, you think about all the talk of salty dogs and scally wags and pirates inviting folks to shiver me timbers whatever means, But like, none of those are phrases that pirates actually used. Yeah, probably not. I mean, like I mentioned earlier, there's no real evidence one way or the other, but most scholars think English speaking pirates from the so called Golden Age of piracy probably spoke the same way

merchant sailors did at the time. A lot of both of the people in these groups came from a riverfront neighborhoods in London, so it's likely they spoke with similar accents and used common slang. But sadly you don't really see shiver me timbers coming up in in much of that discussion. That's a real disappointment. But I'm guessing the pirate jargon we're used to mostly comes from books and movies, right,

stuff like Treasure Island or Peter Pan. I guess yeah, And Treasure Island in particular is the one that will come off a lot today. A lot of the phrases we connect with pirates were first popularized by the book in eighteen eighty three, and then again in Disney's movie adaptation in the nineteen fifties. And actually the movie version is also credited for our association of pirates with these gruff and vaguely Scottish accents, and that's because it starred

Robert Newman as the fictional pirate Long John Silver. So Newman was a native of southwest England, and as such he spoke with this really distinctive regional dialect called West Country English, and some of the dialect's characteristics line up perfectly with how most of us imagined pirates to have talked. So, for example, West Country speakers tend to emphasize their rs. They also replaced the verb is with b, which is, you know, a decidedly pirate move when you think of

constructions like where be the rum? And if that wasn't enough, West Country speakers are even known to replace the word yes with our sometimes huh. So our conception of pirate speech seems to be pretty arbitrary when you when you break it down like this, I mean, if it really does go back to just that one performance. Yeah, So Newman's role in Treasure Island wasn't his only one as

a pirate. He also appeared in a couple of other pirate movies in the era, and it was all of this together that started to influence other people's portrayal of pirates, until finally the West Country accent just became the standard. And while it might seem random that Southwest English accent would become the de facto voice, there's actually more of a historical connection than you might expect. So just listen

to this explanation I found on slate quote. It's not entirely arbitrary that Newton should have used an exaggeration of his own dialect to play long John Silver. The West Country, the southwest corner of England, including Cornwall, Somerset, Devon, Dorset and Bristol, has a long seafaring tradition, and so many historical pirates would likely have spoken in a similar way. Both Blackbeard and Sir Francis Drake were from that area,

although Sir Francis was technically a privateer. But perhaps the most famous inhabitant of the West Country is Hagrid from the Harry Potter series. Can't you just imagine Haggard saying you're a pirate? Harry end quote? Yeah, I mean I can easily imagine that, And I actually can't believe that I've never made that connection before, because Haggard totally sounds

like a pirate or yeah, fictional one, I guess. But you know, there is some evidence that pirates really did have their own unique way of speaking, including some bits of nautical lingo that eventually found their way into popular usage. And now the origin of these phrases can be pretty tough to pin down, but there are at least a few that are thought to have come from pirates and privateers, including, you know, learn the ropes, and of course three sheets

to the wind. And the first of these came from the need for sailors to understand how to use the complex system of ropes and pulleys that controlled the ship's sails, so they would literally have to learn the ropes. And so was three sheets to the wind just as literal? Or was that a term for being super drunk like how we use it today? This one was actually pretty literal too, And and actually the original phrase pirates used

was three sheets in the wind, not to it. And and so you might guess that the sheets in question were the sails on a ship, but actually they were the ropes that controlled those sails. So apparently if three or more ropes became loose, the sales would start flapping, and then the crew can lose control of where the

ship's headed. So if somebody's really drunk, they're just as out of control as a ship with three sheets and the wind m So another question I was eager to answer is whether or not pirates really hid buried treasure.

And while it does seem like this happened on occasion, it was definitely not a widespread practice, and in fact, I could only find a couple of historical accounts of pirates actually burying their loot, and even in those cases, the pirates only hit it for a short period while they waited for the heat from their latest tist to die down. In fact, pirate treasure never stayed buried for long, and they certainly didn't circulate a bunch of treasure maps with big red xs on them for people to go

looking for it. And that's partly because pirates didn't really deal in treasure chests full of gold or pieces of eight or whatever you like to imagine like. Instead, when pirates looted chips, they were stealing things like coffee and sugar and tea and textiles like whatever those ships were in, and then they would sell those spoils on the black market, and that's how they'd end up with the pirate gold

we associate with them. But even then, once pirates had all this golden hand, they weren't super frugal or forward thinking enough to invest it. Instead, you know, according to this maritime historian named David Accordingly, pirates typically blew their loot on drinking, gambling, and women as soon as they got to port. Yeah, I mean, I'd say that fits with the pirate lifestyle a lot more than squirreling away

your money. And you know, I mean I think about this, burying treasure would effectively be like putting your money in a bank, and I don't know, banking doesn't strike me as this very piratey thing to do. But exactly anyway, I mean, this idea of buried treasure had to come from somewhere, though, So do you do you think it just spawn out of those few scattered accounts that you found? I mean, that's why I thought at first, But it turns out this is another case that's rooted less in

history and more in treasure Island. So in the book, long John Silver is on the hunt for a stash of hidden gold, and of course a secret treasure man is the key to finding it. But what's funny is that Robert Louis Stevenson didn't actually invent this idea, and he didn't base it on real life either. Instead, he flat out stole the idea from another seventeenth century author,

Edgar Allan Poe. Poh really, yeah, So It comes from post short story The gold Bug, and the main characters hunt down Captain Kid's treasure using a cipher that's based on how frequently certain letters appeared in the English language in this story. And this is pretty much the same premise as in Treasure Island, except Stevenson substituted a map in place of the cipher, and the author later copped this too, like like in his preface to the book, he said, quote, the map was the chief part of

my plot. For that I broke into the gallery of Mr Poe. M alright, Well, a pattern is definitely starting to emerge here because I actually have another pirate stereotype that we can at least partly thank Treasure Island for, And that's the idea that pirates made people walk the plank. Not to be fair, plank walking did ex is among pirates to some degree, but most historians will tell you

that it was a pretty rare form of punishment. Now, the most recognizable example of the practice occurred in the mid eighteen hundreds, I think, and this was when an eyewitness reported that a British ship captain had been abducted by pirates and that quote, a plank was run on the starboard side of their schooner, upon which they made Captain Smith walk, and as he approached the end, they

tilted the plank when he dropped into the seat. Now beyond that, we know that some Caribbean pirates also forced captured sailors to walk the plank, and there even some accounts of Mediterranean pirates taking part in something similar back in the days of ancient Rome. In this case, the pirates would suspend a ladder out over the ocean and then mockingly invite prisoners to crawl out on it and swim back home to freedom. That seems pretty cruel, But

I'm curious how does Treasure Island fit into all of this. Basically, Robert Louis Stevenson and a few other writers of his air are mostly responsible for making plank walking, you know, more ubiquitous than it really was, and their stories presented as kind of the go to form of punishment that pirates used, and this idea was only enforced by popular illustrations and paintings from this same time period. Now all

of that really cemented. Plank walking is one of the visual icons of piracy, and the interesting thing about this misplaced attention is that it actually makes some pirates seem less cruel than they really were, because the pirates really wanted to do away with a mutinous crew member or a troublesome captive. I mean, they had far worse methods

than simply forcing somebody overboard. And you know, some of the more common practices included marooning someone onto an island, which almost always resulted in a slow death for the victim. Then there was the especially grizzly punishment called keel hauling, and this was when the victim was tied naked to a rope, thrown overboard, and then just tragically dragged beneath the entire length of the ship while barnacles cut up their skin. It's it's pretty gross to read about it. It

It feels horrible. In fact, I want to get us on have your note A S A P. So I'm just gonna come right out and tell you that pirates almost certainly kept parrots as pets. And so this is another pirate trope that was popularized by a treasure Island long John Silver was the first fictional pirate to walk around with a parrot on his shoulder, but in this case,

Stevenson was really drawing from history. So to give a little background when we talk about the Golden Age of piracy, which I still find such a funny phrase to say, you know, we're really referring to this period from about the mid sixteen hundreds to round seventeen thirty. And in that time, the recent discoveries of the America's in Australia

had created a boom and exploration. So for the first time in history, multiple nations were shipping tons and tons of money and valuable goods all across this largely uncharted and unprotected oceans, and of course this made them easy

picking for enterprising pirates, hence the term Golden Age. But in order to rob ships of their precious cargo, pirates had to go where the ships went, which meant taking to trade routes that mostly led to the Caribbean or West Africa or the various coasts along the Indian Ocean. And this required long voyages that lasted weeks or months at a time and often took the pirates to these exotic lands populated by unusual animals like parrots and also monkeys.

So let's get to the important part. Please tell me that the monkey thing is true? Because the world is kind of a rough place right now, and I feel like it would make me feel better to know that a pirate captain could have had a parrot on one shoulder and a monkey on the other one. So there isn't much documentation about that specific combination, but pirates with monkeys certainly weren't uncommon. Parents were the more practical pet though.

Parrots would eat things that were already on board, so you think about like fruits or seeds or nuts, and they didn't really need that much to sustain them. Plus they could be taught all these kind of neat tricks like how to talk. And you know, there's no better way for a pirate to start up a conversation at port than by introducing people to talking bird that he, you know, picked up. Well let's see. Well that's a

good point. And still you think after a while it might be kind of risky to walk around with a big, bright bird on your shoulder. I mean, it seems like that's a tough way to keep a low profile. Yeah, but it's also good branding. I don't think that many pirates actually kept their parents for that long. According to this historian, Angus Constant, author of the history of pirates. He writes, back home, people would pay good money for parrots and other exotic creatures, and sailors could easily buy

them in Caribbean ports. Some were kept, but most were sold when the ship reached home. So really they were selling them as soon as they got to port. That makes sense. So it's still it's nice to know that pirates really did keep parents, even if only for a little while. But all right, well, I know there's a couple more pirate myths that we want to take a look at. But before we do, let's take a quick break.

They're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about the facts and fiction that fuel the modern view of pirates. All right, Mago. So one of the more interesting topics that I looked into this week were the big gold earrings that pirates wore. And the question here wasn't whether or not pirates really wore them. I think, you know, most historians agree that many of them did, but why

did they wear them? So the story I'd always heard is that the ear rings were away for pirates to pay for their burials, Like, uh, if a pirate happened to die on land instead of at sea, the gold from their earrings could cover the cost, and obviously, even for a pirate, that would be preferable to just being put in this mass grave or left out for the crows to eat. I'm guessing yeah. I mean, there is

some evidence that supports this idea. But those earrings and other kinds of jewelry weren't just a fail safe for pirate burial. I mean they were also symbols of rebellion against the seventeenth and eighteenth century laws that we're really meant to control what people could wear or do in their private lives. So in England, just for example, men weren't allowed to wear jewelry, and certain colors were off limits for commoners to wear, and if somebody didn't conform

to those rules, they could be heavily fined or even imprisoned. So, as this pirate historian, Gael Sellinger put it, the so called sumptuary laws were quote a legal way for the ruling class to separate themselves from commoners by regulating what

they wore, what they could drink, and where they could live. Well, I mean it is easy to see how none of that would sit very well with pirates, who are obviously big fans of flouting the law whenever possible, right, yeah, exactly, But for full disclosure, some historians do question how widespread the practice of dressing flamboyantly and wearing ear rings really was.

And you know, many of them would argue that the bandanas and the sashes and earrings that we usually picture pirates wearing actually come from more like these series of drawings and children's books, and that those depictions had really

been based in Spanish bandits, not pirates. But you know, as was most things we've talked about today, there's not a ton of evidence in either direction, though, so it's likely that at least a few pirates did dress this way well, and that kind of in your face fashion sense would also fit into what we do know about pirates backgrounds. Most of them actually started out as crew members aboard the respective countries merchant marines or naval ships

before turning to a life of piracy. And from what I've read, life aboard those ships was often rougher and actually more tyrannical than it was on actual pirate ships. Like on a merchant ship, for instance, crew members lived in these squalid conditions. They were subject to a ton of rules that were just as strict, if not stricter, than those on land and merchant marines and naval captains.

They had the final say on everything that happened on their ships, which left many crew members feeling oppressed and really voiceless as a result. Yeah, and it's it's really no wonder that so many of them would jump ship and and sign on as pirates instead, because you despite their reputation, pirates weren't antarchic or lawless when dealing with one another. I mean, their ranks were composed of these

societal outsiders and outcasts, you know, that's definitely true. But they weren't so jaded as to think that social orders of any sort were automatically a bad thing. They just needed to find a better or what they saw as a more fair system, So on board pirate ships, that's

exactly what they did. I mean, the pirates recognized that in order to prevent infighting and to be able to keep morale high during their months at see, they needed to do things a little bit more democratically, and so to that ind pirate captains took a vote on just about everything, I mean, from where to go, what the steel, how to deal with prisoners. So really, the only time that the captain took complete control was during a battle,

and you know that's for obvious reasons. That's not a time when it would be smart to pause and take a vote. I love this idea that like deciding what the steel should be a democratic vote. Yeah, exactly, it's so fun. But you know, obviously there were more perks to pirate democracy than just saying you know where the ship would go or what you're gonna steal. If you listen to this breakdown I found from Robert Curson used this pirate historian and author of the book Pirate Hunters.

It's pretty great. So so here's what he says. Quote, the captain's vote didn't count any more than the lowliest deckhands. If they wanted to throw the captain out, they could dismiss him or lower his rank. They could maroon him on an island or dump him into the sea, all by vote. That was true even if a captain owned his own ship, they had a constitution and even compensation schemes for injuries. The captain almost never earned more than two or three times the way to the lowliest deckhand.

Think about how that must have struck. A guy who's come from a tyrannical rule on a merchant ship where the hours were terrible and the conditions even worse. He gets on a pirate ship and suddenly he has a real say in what they're doing. I mean, it sounds kind of amazing. Yeah, it's pretty weird to think about, but you know, some of these pirate were practicing democracy nearly a century before it took root in America and in France. And you know, those constitutions you mentioned were

even written down in some cases. And I was looking for some examples of this, and one of them I was reading about it was from one of the most prolific pirates of this Golden Age, and his name was Black Bart Roberts. Now, he managed to overtake more than four hundred ships during his many years at sea, which obviously is no small feat. But I think what I found most impressive about his career was this set of by laws that he and a crew member drafted back

in seventeen twenty two. Now, this included some pretty progressive rules that you might not expect, you know, from a pirate ship. But you know, take this worker's compensation plan that you had mentioned According to the by laws, quote, every man who shall become a cripple or lose a limb in the service shall have eight hundred pieces of eight from the common stock, and for lesser hurts proportionately.

I mean, it's kind of amazing that they got that sort of security from a pirate job, right, Like, no wonder so many people went into piracy. Yeah, and you know, to stick with black Bart's by laws for just a second here. That The other thing I think I was struck by was the picture they painted of life aboard his ship, because you know, we tend to think of pirates as this rowdy bunch of all hours of the night,

drinking and gambling. Of course, that's how things were when the pirates came to port, but according to these by laws, it was a very different story when they were at sea. So just listen to this from it as well. It says none shall game for money, either with dice or cards, and the lights and candles shall be put out at eight at night, and if any of the crew desire to drink after that hour, they shall sit upon the

open deck without lights. I mean, that's pretty amazing, and that there's this curfew on a pirate ship, Like, that's not something I would have expected exactly. And at the same time, you know there's no gambling. I mean, I guess if the goal is to form some sort of piece, those do sound like really smart moves. And you know, since we're talking about how shockingly judicious pirates could be, I do want to mention another famous pirate that fits

that bill, and that's black Beard. So he and his cohorts were based in the Bahamas and they were only active around seven years or so. But this period from seventeen thirteen to seventeen twenty was a super eventful one. In fact that there's some historians that argued that the term Golden Age of piracy should really only be applied to those seven years and that seven year span, so that kind of gives you an idea of how successful

black Beard and the other islander pirates were. By seventeen seventeen, the pirates had actually thrown the commercial trade of three separate empires into total disarray, and they even managed to beat back the Royal Navy's warships. I mean, whether you love them or hate him, these pirates really knew how to shake things up. Yeah, that's to put it mildly, I guess, But I mean, what was black beard deal anyway, Like, was he one of those legitimate sailors who went rogue

or had he always been more of a proper pirate? Yeah, so, he and most of the other pirates from the Bahamas started out on merchant naval ships, and in a way, their actions as pirates were kind of this revolt and revenge against their former bosses. And this is kind of a tangent, but one of black Beard's contemporaries was this guy named Captain Bellamy, and his crew especially loved this

new role that they were taking on. Like the crew actually called themselves Robin Hood's Men, and Bellamy once explained to a captive quote they vilify as the scoundrels do when there's only this difference. They robbed the poor under the cover of law, and we plunder the rich under the cover of our own courage. I want to make sure we don't go too far here and paint pirates

is more heroic than they really were. I mean, you're kind of saying black Beard was a level headed guy, or that his actions were maybe justified in some way, at least in his own mind. But how does that square with his reputation as being really a cruel and fearsome pirate. I mean he was a pretty violent guy, right well, I mean yes and no. So pirates on the whole did some pretty terrible things, and there's no

question about that. They invaded, they pillared ships and colonies, their ransom hostages, and pretty much ignored any laws but the ones they made up for themselves at sea. But in a lot of cases, including Black Beards, that brutality

was exaggerated. You know, it was mostly by the imperial authorities on land and the newspapers that they held sway over And if you think about it, nearly every bit of pop culture associated with pirates, including Treasure Island, is derived from those stories, and it's inspired by black Beard and these other Bahamas pirates. So that means a lot of our understanding of what pirates did is skewed as well, since most of it can be traced back to these

somewhat embellished accounts. So so you're saying black Beard wasn't as terrifying and cut throats as we might think, exactly, And there are actually dozens of eyewitness accounts of Black Beards victims and with the exception of his final bloody showdown with the Royal Navy, not a single one of them mentions the pirate captain actually killing anyone. And if that's kind of hard to swallow it, it's probably because black Beard and self purpose. He cultivated his image as

this fearsome force to be reckoned with. Like if you listen to this description, I found this at the Smithsonian. But but you'll see what I mean. Quote black Beard wore a silk sling over his shoulders, on which there were three braces of pistols hanging in holsters like bandeliers. Under his hat, he tied lit fuses, dangling some of them down the sides of his face so as to surround it with a halo of smoke and fire, making

him look more frightful than a fury from hell. Merchant crews would take one look at this apparition and the army of wild men around him, bearing cutlasses, muskets, and primitive hand grenades, and invariably surrender without firing a shot.

So I guess it was all for show then, like kind of an intimidation tactic, right, And I mean, some pirates really did perform the horrible acts we read about, like dragging someone who crossed them beneath their ship, but that wasn't their first choice, Like, they mostly wanted to just frighten people into giving up without a fight. And

that's actually what the whole pirate flag was about. Like when a black flag was hoisted, it was a message that another ship should prepare to be boarded and pillaged, but also that they wouldn't come to harm so long as they cooperated. Meanwhile, you've got like a red flag, which was a much more rare but a completely different story,

and that meant the pirates had come for blood. But this desire for non violent resolution really makes a lot of sense when you think about how practical pirates were in general. I mean, like why slaughter your captives when you could just ransom them for money or put them to work in your own crew. I mean, that's just

just business one oh one. Right, So, since we're on the subject of surprising pirate traits, we we should probably talk about how egalitarian pirates actually were, because you know, not only did they welcome those of low economic or social standing into their cruise, but they also made room for folks who were frequent targets of discrimination on land, and that includes Africans, European Jews, and women. But before

we get into that, let's take one more quick break. Okay, Well, so you mentioned before the break that pirrating was sort of an equal opportunity profession, and that makes sense when you think about it, because if you're on the run from the Royal Navy or whatever, the race or gender of your crewmates isn't going to be a top priority. And for the most part, pirates welcomed all commers and that have to be pretty enticing for people who felt

repressed or restricted on land. I'm guessing right, like, what did they have to lose? Yeah, that makes sense, and I do think a great example of that mentality are the bands of Jewish pirates that took to the open

Ocean during the early seventeen hundreds. That this is honestly something I'd never heard about before this week, and apparently historians are still piecing together their history as well, Like I was reading that just in this past decade, several graveyards were found in the Caribbean and many of the tombstone is their feature Hebrew writing and stars of David right alongside those iconic skull and crossbones symbols. I mean, that is pretty wild. So I hadn't heard about this either,

But what made so many Jewish people go pirate? Well, I guess the seeds of it were actually planted in the very same month that Columbus set sail back in four two. So after sending Columbus on his way, the King and Queen of Spain ordered the expulsion of all Jews and Muslims from the country. Now, Portugal did the same thing just a few years later. So these Spanish Portuguese Jews set out to find new homes, and many

of them wound up settling on Caribbean islands. And in fact, by the seventeen twenties, when Jewish pirates first set sail, un estimated twenty of Kingston, Jamaica's population was descended from Jewish exiles. Yeah, so a few of these Jews started captaining their own pirate ships and christening them with names

like Queen Esther and the Shield of Abraham. And for the most part, these Jewish pirates would exclusively target Spanish and Portuguese ships, not surprisingly because this was really seen his payback for those generations of unjust treatment. I mean, this is fascinating. So it sounds like we're still uncovering the full history of Jewish pirates. But I am curious are there any notorious ones we should know about, Like, like,

who's the Blackbeard of Jewish pirates? You know, I'm not sure about that exactly, but I think my favorite was probably Schmool Polachi, who supposedly joined in a number of pirate raids against the Dutch and Spanish ships. But here's the wild thing about Polacci. He was actually a rabbi, right, he was a rabbi pirate, Like that's kind of an oxymoron, right, Well apparently not. I mean, by most accounts, Polacci was

also pretty pious. So not only did he insist that his crew donate a tenth of their treasure to charity, he also made sure they all kept kosher during their voyages. That's amazing. So no shellfish. But uh, you know what we're talking about, how piracy was this drastic kind of escape for repressed people. And I think another great example of that are the many women who built new lives for themselves at sea. So most of them earned their

keepers servants or cooks or prostitutes. But if you also found work as merchant sailors, naval officers, and and even pirates. For instance, there's this Irish pirate named Grace O'Malley and in the sixteenth century she became one of the few female pirates to captain her own ship, and she made a pretty frightening name for herself all along the coast of Ireland. Like she had a bunch of really intense scars on her face, which he claimed were from being

attacked by an eagle. And if that wasn't badass enough, she also reportedly gave birth to her youngest son while aboard her ship and then proceed to fight off invaders with her baby in one hand and a sword into other. Is that Yeah, that's pretty impressive and definitely something black Beard can't claim to have done. But yeah, I think for my money, the undisputed queen of female pirates and and honestly maybe just pirates in general has got to

be Captain Ching Shew. In the early nineteenth century, she spent her youth working as a cortison on a floating brothel in Canton, China. Now, during this time she made a name for herself as this really shrewd businesswoman, and apparently she had a knack for blackmail and would often use the secrets that she'd heard as a prostitute. And she would do this in order to control her wealthy

and influential clients. So, as you might imagine, this was a pretty attractive skill to a pirate, which is how she came to marry this other very famous pirate, one of the South China Sea, and his name was Ching I Saw. And this guy was no slouch when it came to pirrating. And by the time he married the twenty six year old Ching she this was in I think eighteen o one, Chang had already united a bunch of rival pirate gangs into what he called the Red

Flag Fleet. So did Ching she have any power herself or was she kind of just this figurehead. No, she was definitely a very active participant in her husband's in her prize, and in fact, you know, many of these stories report that she actually demanded equal control of the fleet as a condition of their marriage, and her role really only grew as time went on. So it was only six years into their marriage that Chang passed away suddenly.

And this was at the age of forty two, and a few weeks later change she took her husband's place as the leader of the red flag fleet, which to me sounds a little suspicious, like her husband suddenly dies. But do we know how big that fleet was that

she inherited. Well, we don't know how many ships are men she inherited from her husband, but we do have a pretty good estimate of the size of her fleet a few years after she took over, And that's because in eighteen o nine, her forces captured an East India Company employee named Richard Glasspool. Now, after he was released a few months later, he writes this account of his experience,

and it included this detailed estimate of change she's forces. So, according to him, that were roughly eighty thousand pirates under her command and over eighteen hundred ships in her fleet. And so to give you an idea of just how vast her entourage was, consider that Blackbeard himself commanded only four ships and three hundred pirates, and that was at his peak. I mean, those numbers really are insane, Like eighty thousand pirates and ships like I don't know how

you could actually keep that many pirates in check. Well, chance she borrowed from other pirates playbooks in that regard, because once she took command, she quickly instituted this strict code of laws for all of her men to follow, and strict really is the key word here. And just as an example, if any pirate disobeyed as Superior's orders or started giving orders of their own, they were immediately

beheaded right on the spot. And you know, she had some really specific rules about female captives that you probably won't find in any other pirate codes, Like there was this one rule that said if a pirate took a female prisoner for his wife, he had to be faithful to her and couldn't sleep around. That's really interesting. But you know, I am still kind of hung up on the sheer size of her operation. I mean, her fleet probably like you could see it rivaling some of the

nation's entire armed forces from that time. I mean probably so. In fact, under Chin She's command, the Red Flag Fleet fought off not only the Chinese military, but the East India Company, the Portuguese Navy, and you know, they were undefeated for three full years until Ching She finally retired altogether back in eighteen ten. Wait, so she retired, like

I didn't even know pirates could do that. I mean, of course, not many of them did, and even fewer, if any, retired in a way that Ching she did. And you know, you look back at her retirement, it was actually part of a deal that she made with the Chinese government. And you know, after years of defeat, the officials were just desperate to get Ching She out of the spotlight by any means necessary, and so they extended this offer to her wherein she and her forces

would surrender and go their separate ways. And this was in return for amnesty and full pensions for every single member of the crew. Wait, all eighty thousand of them got pensions. Yeah, isn't that wild? So she and her forces were seen as such a big threat that the Chinese government basically paid them all to stop being pirates. I mean, it was definitely a one of a kind deal,

at least as far as I can tell. That is amazing, And you know, I know we're talking about criminals here, but I have to say it is pretty cool that not only were their female pirates, but kind of the most badass pirates of them all tend to be women. Here. Yeah, and there's actually this great quote that I wanted to read from a pirate historian and the author of a

book called Pirate Women. So her name is Laura Silk Duncom And and here she's talking about that attraction to pirrat ng and the freedom and entail that we mentioned earlier. And well she's talking specifically in this case about female pirates. I really think this could have applied to almost all the ones that we've talked about today. So here's what she says. All of these pirates had ships that were

very different and methods that were very different. But I think they share the desire to control their own fates, and the desire for freedom from convention would unite all these women. Their hopes to escape the normal and be a part of something adventurous would tie all these women together. And we all share that desire for adventure, not the desire for slitting throats or plundering the high seas. But one can empathize with the desire to have a say

and how their life goes. Yeah, I do feel like people want to have a say and how their life goes, and I like that. But how about we end on that note and start the fact off. So the Pittsburgh Pirates used to go by a totally different name, the Pittsburgh Alleghanies, you know, named after the Mountain range. But when they poached the second baseman from the Philadelphia Athletics

in the eighteen eighties, Philadelphia newspapers were outraged. They called it a theft, and they referred to the team as a bunch of pirates, and the name stuck. That's how they got the name. Wow. One of my favorite pirates who isn't often talked about these days is John Lafoote, who was a barefoot pirate who used to be the nemesis of Captain Crunch. So I don't know the full

story behind this rivalry. Apparently, Captain Horatio P. Crunch was created by an ad firm and this was in response to a survey that claimed kids hated soggy serial I love that they had to do a survey to find out that people don't like soggy cereal. But because the cereal was so crunchy, the pirates wanted it anyway. That the Captain was so popular and did such a good job of fighting off Lafoote that there was once a public movement to promote him to the rank of admiral.

But Quaker Oath was not convinced, and he's been overlooked now for I don't know several decades. Yeah, Admiral Crunch is into cereal. I'd pick off this right. So have you ever heard of Pirate Joe's in Vancouver? Yeah? I don't think so. So it's this store that was recently shut down. But basically, this guy in Canada would drive down to Trader Joe's groceries in the US because there are no Trigger Joe's stores in Canada. He'd buy a ton of stuff in bulk and then sneak it back

up and sell it at a higher cost. He had actually been banned from Trader Joe's stores for doing this, so sometimes he'd wear wigs or dresses or fake mustaches and pinstripe suits. It got really elaborate. Sometimes he'd even recruit day laborers to help him shop and pay at

the register like it was crazy. And when Trader Joe's took him to court in two thousand and sixteen, they did this in the US, they couldn't prove that he was actually hurting their business, so he kind of got to keep doing it for a while, and then finally Trader Joe's brought another court battle. During the last court battle, he took the p off his sign to change it from Pirate Joe's to I Rate Joe's. When he finally settled the case, the shop closed down in two thousand seventeen. Alright, well,

something equally ridiculous here. We we've talked about the Postafarian religion before in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, So for anybody who doesn't know, it was this satirical religion that was invented really in response to religious fundamentalist and the main claim is that a flying spaghetti monster is just as likely as any other type of God, so that's the one they chose to worship. But for some reason, the very first Postafarian wedding also had a

pirate connection to it. Now, the event took place in New Zealand. This was just a couple of years ago, and the bride and groom were head to toe in pirate gear and everyone there wore eye patches of course, right now, that said, there was also this nod to pasta and so the officiant wore a colender on her head, which is the official headdress of the church. The couple exchanged rings of pasta and and their vows they agreed

to always add all when boiling spaghetti. Very romantic. So when Julius Caesar was years old, he was kidnapped five pirates, and when the pirates asked for a ransom of twenty talents of silver, he just laughed in their faces and told them to up it to fifty because he was worth so much more than that. So that's actually the part of the story i'd heard before. But the part I didn't know was that he was stuck on the ship for thirty eight days, and during that time he

was not a good hostage. He was just completely unintimidated by these pirates. Not only did he refuse to coward to them, he actually treated them like they were his servants. He'd write poetry and then forced them to listen to it when he when he slept, he demanded they stopped talking, and instead of acting like a prisoner, he just kind of like stomped around doing what he wanted to do, and they kind of gave him respect for it. Of course, while he did act chummy with them the whole time,

he let them know that they should watch out. And when he was finally freed, he of course rounded up a small fleet, found his way back to them, took back his fifty talents, took the rest of their possessions as well, and then eventually had them killed, which you know is very Julius Caesar of him. That is so Julius Caesar of him. But all right, well, one of the best ways to fight off modern pirates might just be pop music, and in particular the music of Brittney Spears.

I was look at this old Guardian article from two thousand thirteen and Britney Spears emerged as this unlikely figurehead and a fight against Somali pirates. And that's because British naval officers started blasting the songs Oops, I did it again and Baby one more time at them, and strangely the tactic proved more intimidating than guns and harpoons, apparently because it's one naval officer put it quote her songs were chosen by the security team because they thought the

pirates would hate them the most. These guys can't stand Western culture or music, making Brittany hits perfect and as soon as the pirates get a blast of Brittany, they move on as quickly as they can. So what I love about that story too, is like you're talking about reporting for two and those songs I feel like came out in like two thousand, two thousand one septime around a minute. It's like they didn't just like pick the latest pop songs. They went back and specifically chose Brittany

to scare off, very specific. They're still just as powerful today, so I'd be curious that they if they go back and use them again. Well, I do feel like you have to get the trophy for that. I saved that one especially for last, just for that fact. I knew i'd get this one locked up. Well, I'm sure there are other great facts that we have not mentioned today about pirates, and we love to hear those from you guys.

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