Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuffy missed in History Class from house works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frog and I'm Tracy Wilson. Hey, you know what, I
Speaker 1: know what. Everybody loves Piro, but he does love Pirates.
Speaker 1: We mentioned in our last episode that we're doing some
Speaker 1: things a little bit different and doing several update episodes
Speaker 1: in a row. It's my fault what trump Jacks is
Speaker 1: a busy lady. I have a little time that I'm
Speaker 1: taking off work, and so we are doing this that
Speaker 1: we continue to have episodes. Well, I'm gone and listener
Speaker 1: Andy pointed us to a story in Smithsonian Magazines February
Speaker 1: fourteen issue which was called The Last Days of black Beard.
Speaker 1: It's by Colin Woodward, who has written four books, including
Speaker 1: The Republic of Pirates, being the true and surprising story
Speaker 1: of the Caribbean Pirates and the man who brought them down.
Speaker 1: Uh And that one's also the basis for the NBC
Speaker 1: show Crossbones, which stars John Malkovich's black Beard, and that
Speaker 1: premiere short really uh So. In this article, which we
Speaker 1: will link to in Shore Notes, Woodward writes about some
Speaker 1: of the newest discoveries about black Beard. And these have
Speaker 1: been gleaned from lots of archaeological and archival research. So
Speaker 1: intrepid people crawling through archives, reading all kinds of shipping
Speaker 1: documents and manifests and basically police reports from the eighteenth
Speaker 1: century have discovered new things about the life and death
Speaker 1: of black Beard. One of these stories is actually unearthed
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight and it involves the last two prizes.
Speaker 1: Prizes is maybe a generous word, but the last two
Speaker 1: ships that Blackbeard took before his final battle and death,
Speaker 1: which took place on November seventeen eighteen, and these were
Speaker 1: two French merchant ships, Latois d'Or and the rose Emilee,
Speaker 1: and black Beard took them with a faint He and
Speaker 1: his crew surprised and overwhelmed the crew of one. In
Speaker 1: order to turn it against the other. He faked like
Speaker 1: he was going at one of them and then speedily
Speaker 1: made a turn and went to the other one instead,
Speaker 1: took it over, and then used both ships to go
Speaker 1: back after the first one. This all happened in August eighteen,
Speaker 1: and that was about three months after the incident outside
Speaker 1: Charleston that Katie and Sarah talk about in our original
Speaker 1: episode on black Beard. At this point he had already
Speaker 1: grounded the Queen Anne's Revenge and so he was doing
Speaker 1: all of his rating in one of his sloops, and
Speaker 1: so he did this, you know, two ships simultaneously. Heist
Speaker 1: with a much smaller vessel than the ships that he
Speaker 1: was taking over. And Woodwards article also supports the idea
Speaker 1: that black Beard never actually killed anyone, which is a
Speaker 1: much discussed element of this historical figures life, at least
Speaker 1: not until that last bloody battle in which his throw
Speaker 1: was cut. He also writes about how black Beard got
Speaker 1: the Queen Anne's Revenge in the first place and what
Speaker 1: happened to its original cargo of slaves, and he fills
Speaker 1: in a three month gap in black beards known history,
Speaker 1: which is just after King George the First declared a
Speaker 1: pardon for all pirates who surrendered by September of seventeen eighteen.
Speaker 1: The two prevailing theories were that he made a name
Speaker 1: for himself in the Gulf of Mexico as the Great Devil,
Speaker 1: and the heat just basically laid low for a while
Speaker 1: to avoid capture. Woodward found handwritten papers in the British
Speaker 1: archives confirming that it was the former uh probably he
Speaker 1: was in pursuit of the Southeast Company's flagship, the Royal Prince.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot more detail about black Beards last
Speaker 1: Days in Woodward's article, and will link to that article
Speaker 1: in the show notes. Yeah, we didn't want to just
Speaker 1: basically summarize an article for your benefit in its entirety.
Speaker 1: Uh As this update. We also got an email from
Speaker 1: a listener named Carry following the first of our Unearthed episodes,
Speaker 1: and in that episode, we talked about the announcement from
Speaker 1: the Underwater Archaeology branch of the North Carolina Department of
Speaker 1: Cultural Resources, and they announced that they were intending to
Speaker 1: salvage every single scrap of the Queen Anne's Revenge by
Speaker 1: the end of which is this year. Carry let us
Speaker 1: know that they had already brought up more than a
Speaker 1: quarter of a million artifacts and a lot of them
Speaker 1: are now preserved and on display at the North Carolina
Speaker 1: Maritime Museum in Beaufort. And we'll take a little and
Speaker 1: break here before we go to the original episode. So
Speaker 1: now we're going to turn you over to Katie and
Speaker 1: Sarah with our original episode about black Beard, which originally
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand and nine. Hello, and Welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downie.
Speaker 1: So Katie, I've always really liked pirates in high school
Speaker 1: and my friends and I eased to have kind of
Speaker 1: good pirate jokes. I don't go to conventions or anything. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I actually haven't even been a pirate for Halloween, but
Speaker 1: I have. Really I do like them a lot, and
Speaker 1: of course one of my favorites is Blackbeard. Well, I've
Speaker 1: got you covered because the one Halloween I was a pirate,
Speaker 1: and then this past Halloween, I was Abraham Lincoln and
Speaker 1: wore a big black Beard, but mine did not have
Speaker 1: candlewicks in it, unlike black Beard. Blackbeard was one of
Speaker 1: the most feared pirates in history, and it's no wonder
Speaker 1: with the smoking fuses and the sashes full of pistols
Speaker 1: and cutlasses, pistols across the chests. He definitely mastered the
Speaker 1: art of intimidation, and he did a lot to keep
Speaker 1: that reputation up. He wanted people fearing him, although we
Speaker 1: don't have any evidence that he ever killed anyone who
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to kill him. But when you're fearsome pirate,
Speaker 1: that's not exactly the kind of rumor you want to
Speaker 1: spread around. The intimidation kind of saves you a lot
Speaker 1: of work. You you just fire a few warning shots
Speaker 1: and the ship gets handed over to you. You don't
Speaker 1: have to go through the trouble of actually fighting and swashbuckling.
Speaker 1: So every story that spreads around, like black Beer slicing
Speaker 1: off a passenger's finger when he wouldn't give him his ring,
Speaker 1: that all builds up to the great Blackbeard legend. But
Speaker 1: of course Blackbeard wasn't always a pirate, and he obviously
Speaker 1: had another name. He was born probably in Bristol, England,
Speaker 1: although that's debated around sixteen ninety as Edward Teach or
Speaker 1: possibly Edward Thatch. No one's quite sure, which will be
Speaker 1: a theme in Blackbeard's life. Somebody who's so surrounded in legend,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a lot of conflicting information about him.
Speaker 1: So Teach enlisted as a privateer for the British in
Speaker 1: the War of Spanish Succession, which went from seventeen o
Speaker 1: one to seventeen thirteen. Privateers were right on the cusp
Speaker 1: of legal The British government obviously wanted to have as
Speaker 1: big of a navy as possible, but they could enhance
Speaker 1: it a little bit with privateers, which were allowed to
Speaker 1: sack French and Spanish ships and take a share of
Speaker 1: the booty for themselves, which would help you develop your
Speaker 1: pirrating fills. But of course the war comes to an
Speaker 1: end eventually and privateers are no longer allowed to go
Speaker 1: around sacking French and Spanish ships, and there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people out of work, and some of them
Speaker 1: end up turning to piracy. And the golden age of
Speaker 1: piracy was the late seventeenth to the early eighteen centuries,
Speaker 1: and as far as America goes, there have been a
Speaker 1: bunch of laws passed by the British Parliament which had
Speaker 1: made smuggling something that was a bit more desirable because
Speaker 1: British imports were so expensive British taxes, right, you could
Speaker 1: buy things so much cheaper from a pirate than you
Speaker 1: could from them. So they would attack merchant ships carrying grain, molasses, rum, rope, tools, ammunition,
Speaker 1: pretty much everything, and go ahead and sell it to
Speaker 1: the colonists. And because North Carolina's outer banks have shallow
Speaker 1: sounds and inlets, it was a pirate's favorite hideout place,
Speaker 1: which is where black Beard established his home base. But
Speaker 1: that wasn't until seventeen eighteen, and before that he had
Speaker 1: to get in some more pirate training. He did, and
Speaker 1: he did that with Captain Benjamin Hornegal in the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: So in black Beard's sort of apprenticeship, almost with Hornegald,
Speaker 1: they depart together and plunder a bunch of Spanish and
Speaker 1: British ships of their coco and cordwood, sugar, rum, molasses,
Speaker 1: all of these useful things. It's not so much the gold,
Speaker 1: treasure and jewels, which of course is what you think
Speaker 1: of when you think of black beard buried treasure, but
Speaker 1: you might just be finding rum and sugar instead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and during this time, Teach gets his first captain c
Speaker 1: of a small sloop and then the big guns come
Speaker 1: out when Hornegal's fleet attacks a French slave ship called
Speaker 1: the Concorde that was bound for Martinique, and Teach makes
Speaker 1: this his flagship and renames it Queen NaN's Revenge. And
Speaker 1: it only had fourteen guns to start with, so he
Speaker 1: added a bunch to make it up to forty, because
Speaker 1: you know you need your guns when you're a pirate.
Speaker 1: It's more than eighty feet long their three masts, and
Speaker 1: he also installs a cannon, and Teach probably took this
Speaker 1: ship with his classic intimidation methods. Rather than a bloody fight,
Speaker 1: It's likely he just fired some warning shots and hoisted
Speaker 1: up the pirate flag and you know, the guy's surrender.
Speaker 1: They don't want any trouble with Blackbeard. But the captain
Speaker 1: of the Concorde also reported when he got back to
Speaker 1: France that Teach gave him a sloop to finish transporting
Speaker 1: his cargo of slaves, which I was surprised to hear that.
Speaker 1: I always imagined pirates making you walk the plank, and
Speaker 1: but that sounded very gentleman ling, we thought. And Horna
Speaker 1: Gold couldn't be Blackbeard's teacher forever because after the war,
Speaker 1: the British government wanted to get rid of all their pirates,
Speaker 1: so they got an officer named Wood's Rogers and hired
Speaker 1: him as the governor of the Bahamas and told him
Speaker 1: he'd better get rid of the pirates. So he said
Speaker 1: he would grant pardons to pirates who agreed to walk
Speaker 1: the straight and narrow, and Hornigold is one of the
Speaker 1: ones who agreed, and he became a pirate hunter. But
Speaker 1: that's okay with black Beard. By now because he's really
Speaker 1: struck off on his own and starts patrolling the Virginia
Speaker 1: and Carolina coast for his reign of terror from seventeen
Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen eighteen. So we've already mentioned that the Outer
Speaker 1: Banks is a fantastic place for pirates just because of
Speaker 1: how it's designed, but it was also a great place
Speaker 1: for black Beard himself because he met a lovely corrupt
Speaker 1: politician by the name of Charles Eden there who would
Speaker 1: allow him clemency in exchange for very generous bribes. So,
Speaker 1: in addition to the excellent geography of North Carolina and
Speaker 1: the corrupt governor um he's, black Beard actually ends up
Speaker 1: being kind of a folk hero. The people of North Carolina.
Speaker 1: They're not the wealthy rice growers or tobacco grow ors
Speaker 1: like South Carolina or Virginia, so they're more okay with
Speaker 1: this deal where they get essentially duty free goods from
Speaker 1: black Beard in exchange for sort of letting him letting
Speaker 1: him hang in the Outer Banks. And the folk hero
Speaker 1: stuff also comes from black Beard's challenge to the oppressive authority.
Speaker 1: He's lauded for sticking a hot poker into the eye
Speaker 1: of a British official, which sounds pretty awful, but I
Speaker 1: feel that that's a running theme and all the stuff
Speaker 1: that we've done about gangsters and outlaws in any way,
Speaker 1: part of it is public opinion of them being the
Speaker 1: hero who's the only one who's willing to go up
Speaker 1: against corrupt authority. But it also assumes that that opinion
Speaker 1: always turns at some point the the outlaw does something
Speaker 1: which just pushes the reputation over the edge. And for
Speaker 1: black Beard, this is in May seventeen eighteen in Charleston.
Speaker 1: So with four vessels and as many as four hundred
Speaker 1: pyre its, black Beard captures eight or nine ships coming
Speaker 1: into and out of Charleston over about a week, and
Speaker 1: he holds the cruise of the ship's hostage along with
Speaker 1: their passengers and passengers, their kids on board, women on board.
Speaker 1: And Blackbeard demands a chest of medicine in exchange for
Speaker 1: the lives of his passengers, but Charleston takes a while
Speaker 1: the pony up yes, and in the meantime, the pirates
Speaker 1: have decided they're not going to get it, and they've
Speaker 1: set all the citizens up to be hanged. Like preparations
Speaker 1: are underway. They're about to die and Charleston eventually comes
Speaker 1: up with the ransom and gets their people back, but
Speaker 1: not before the pirates have taken all of their clothing
Speaker 1: and jewelry. Yeah, they returned to shore almost naked as
Speaker 1: the outraged description is sent back to England. But all
Speaker 1: office goes down pretty quickly, and within a week of
Speaker 1: the Charleston hostage situation, the Queen Ann's Revenge is grounded.
Speaker 1: Honestly and bar near the entrance to present day Beaufort Inlet,
Speaker 1: and it's likely that Blackbeard beached this on purpose. He
Speaker 1: knew how to sail a ship and how to scurry
Speaker 1: around through the outer bank, so it's unlikely that he
Speaker 1: would accidentally ground his ship. Um, it's possible he was
Speaker 1: considering some kind of retirement, or at least at least
Speaker 1: trying to dismand this group of four pirates and break
Speaker 1: him up a little bit. Some people say he ma
Speaker 1: ruined a bunch of pirates on one of the sand
Speaker 1: bars when he left, and then took provisions from one
Speaker 1: of the other ships and got out of there. In
Speaker 1: addition to the black hate at Charleston, black Beard by
Speaker 1: this point had captured something like fifty ships and he
Speaker 1: was also charging tolls for other people ships to make
Speaker 1: it through Pamlico Sound. So things were beginning to come
Speaker 1: to a head. And while North Carolina and Charles Eden
Speaker 1: were pretty okay with the pirateing money off the whole
Speaker 1: situation right to the rich, Virginia planters and South Carolina
Speaker 1: planters were not, and they appealed to the Governor of Virginia,
Speaker 1: Alexander spots Would to do something about it, and he
Speaker 1: engages Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the Royal Navy to hunt
Speaker 1: down black Beard. And it's not as hard as it
Speaker 1: sounds to find black Beard. You know, you'd think it
Speaker 1: would be difficult to find a pirate, right, not if
Speaker 1: he's throwing the biggest pirate party known to man on
Speaker 1: Ocracoke Island, which I would kind of like to be
Speaker 1: invited to. I don't know, it might sound worth fun
Speaker 1: than it really was. Drinking, womanizing, and pirates from all
Speaker 1: over the world were invited to come, and come they
Speaker 1: did and made a complete spectacle out of themselves. So
Speaker 1: during this drunken pirate shindig, Maynard shows up with his
Speaker 1: loops intending to kill or capture Blackbeard, and the pirates
Speaker 1: are aware that Maynard is there, but they're trapped between
Speaker 1: this island and a sandbar. So they prepare themselves over
Speaker 1: the night, and well accounts they Blackbeard was very calm.
Speaker 1: His pirates were starting to get worried. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: freaking out a little bit. He kept drinking everyone else
Speaker 1: went out and put sand on the decks in case
Speaker 1: there was blood, and so blankets and water in case
Speaker 1: there were fires, and began preparations for battle. And Teach
Speaker 1: only has twenty men too, while Mannard has about sixty.
Speaker 1: But Teach his man advantage here is mounted weapons on
Speaker 1: his sloop, which is called the Adventure. So in the morning,
Speaker 1: everyone's kind of expecting Teach to try to make a getaway.
Speaker 1: Instead he waits and maynards men start to approach, and
Speaker 1: then at the last minute, Teach just shoots off to
Speaker 1: a little winding channel that which no one else saw. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's right by a sandbar, and manners men all get stuck.
Speaker 1: But Mannard pretty good captain, and he tells everybody to
Speaker 1: start throwing extra supplies overboard, and so they lighten the
Speaker 1: ships enough that they're able to sail free. And Mannard
Speaker 1: recounts that Teach drank damnation to me and my men,
Speaker 1: whom he styled cowardly puppies an insult. I am just
Speaker 1: going to be your new insults beware. And at this point,
Speaker 1: Blackbeard's crew is bombarding a Maynard's ship with iron scraps
Speaker 1: and nails from the guns, basically everything they've got, and
Speaker 1: so Maynard and his men go and hide below deck,
Speaker 1: all tricky like, and because the ship is so quiet
Speaker 1: after this bombardment they're even grenades involved, Teach things that
Speaker 1: they're dead, and the pirates board the ship, black Beard included,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, Maynard's men rush out their
Speaker 1: lives pride the gotcha moment, and Teach and Maynard go
Speaker 1: to a face to face battle that actually gets written
Speaker 1: about in the London papers, and it's really it looks
Speaker 1: like it should be in an action movie. Maynards still
Speaker 1: be if it hasn't already managed sort of is spent.
Speaker 1: He shoots black Beard. Um. Black Beard survived after being shot,
Speaker 1: and obviously guns are they put a big hole in
Speaker 1: you at this point, and Um, one of Maynard's men
Speaker 1: jumps in at the last minute of this brutal fight
Speaker 1: between these two men and slashes black Beard's neck, and um,
Speaker 1: I don't know how he did this with a with
Speaker 1: a bloody slash neck, but black Beard apparently says, well done,
Speaker 1: lad are maybe apocryphal, but it's still a good detail.
Speaker 1: But when he died, he'd been shot multiple times and
Speaker 1: stabbed multiple times and kept fighting until the very very end.
Speaker 1: And Maynard's man actually cuts off black Beard's head, which
Speaker 1: is strung up on the ship as a warning to
Speaker 1: other pirates. And Maynards searched and searched for black beards treasure,
Speaker 1: as people have been doing for years, but all he
Speaker 1: found were supplies and letters. And during the fight eight
Speaker 1: of the other pirates were killed, some cred for mercy
Speaker 1: and some were arrested and they were brought to trial,
Speaker 1: and all but two were hanged. So the pirates didn't
Speaker 1: get off so easily either. And this was pretty much
Speaker 1: the end of piracy, or at least the golden age
Speaker 1: of piracy. That was November twenty, seventeen eighteen, when black
Speaker 1: Beard was killed. So in addition to the legend about
Speaker 1: the treasure, there's another pretty amazing one about Blackbeard's skull.
Speaker 1: So his head is hung up on the ship, But
Speaker 1: what happens to the skull. Maybe it went to the
Speaker 1: University of Virginia. There's a legend that says the skull
Speaker 1: was dipped in silver and kept by the university, where
Speaker 1: fraternity members were once required to drink upon their initiation.
Speaker 1: As a great grandfather who went to the University of Virginia,
Speaker 1: and now I'm starting to wonder was he in a
Speaker 1: fraternity as a former member of the Greek system. I
Speaker 1: salute you U v A for a great rumor. You
Speaker 1: can actually go visit black Beard Island. It was acquired
Speaker 1: by the Navy Department and then in nineteen twenty four
Speaker 1: was made a preserve and breeding ground for wildlife and birds.
Speaker 1: You can only go there by boat, which I feel
Speaker 1: is sitting quaint now, is it is? If you would
Speaker 1: like to write to us, you can do so at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can visit us
Speaker 1: at Facebook dot com slash mist in History, on Twitter
Speaker 1: at mist in History, at mist in History dot tumbler
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Speaker 1: History or we Love to Pin. You can also visit
Speaker 1: us at our website, which is missed in History dot com.
Speaker 1: And if you would like to learn a little bit
Speaker 1: more about pirates, You can go to House of works
Speaker 1: dot com and type in the word pirates in the
Speaker 1: search bar, and you will get an article called how
Speaker 1: Pirates work, which is quite a fun read, uh And
Speaker 1: you can learn about that as well as almost anything
Speaker 1: else you can think of at how works dot com
Speaker 1: and we hopefully you do for more onness and thousands
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