Speaker 1: Hollywood adores a lovable rogue. Pirates are often depicted as wise, cracking,
Speaker 1: kind hearted individuals who set out for treasure but end
Speaker 1: up writing or wrong. In the end, they usually get
Speaker 1: the girl and the treasure. In six moviegoers enjoyed The
Speaker 1: Black Pirates with Douglas Fairbank Senior as a young man
Speaker 1: who joins a pirate crew to exact revenge for killing
Speaker 1: his father, and yes, the script follows the age old
Speaker 1: formula well. In ninety five, Pirates returned to the silver
Speaker 1: screen with Errol Flynn as Captain Blood, and of course,
Speaker 1: in two thousand three came the tremendously popular Pirates of
Speaker 1: the Caribbean franchise. Storytelling has no shortage of beloved characters,
Speaker 1: from Captain Jack Sparrow to Captain Hook and Long John
Speaker 1: Silver and many in between. Pirates are profitable for publishers
Speaker 1: and Hollywood alike, along with books and film. A new
Speaker 1: pirate emerged in the nineteen seventies. While they didn't hijack boats,
Speaker 1: they did seek a way to make money off the
Speaker 1: work of others. Woody Wise picked up his kids from
Speaker 1: school on a Friday afternoon and never returned home. Instead,
Speaker 1: they went on the run from the FBI. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, Wise had been pirating films. When the FBI
Speaker 1: agents arrived at his house, they carted away dozens of movies.
Speaker 1: He had once owned and operated his own theater, but
Speaker 1: television had cut into his profits. Movies were what he knew,
Speaker 1: and so he looked for a way to make more
Speaker 1: money with them. Wise befriended people working in a movie
Speaker 1: studio shipping department responsible for getting films into theaters. Yes,
Speaker 1: back then, movie theaters still used reels of film. Then
Speaker 1: he waited. When a new film came out it opened
Speaker 1: in theaters nationwide. After a few weeks, theaters needed fewer
Speaker 1: reels and NAT's when Wise saw a site hustle. He
Speaker 1: sold the extras, making about five hundred and seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars for each copy. The FBI, though caught Wise, Lucky
Speaker 1: for him, he received only a hefty fine. Today, books, movies,
Speaker 1: TV and streaming shows are frequently pira did and either
Speaker 1: sold or given away for all to see. It's estimated
Speaker 1: that pirated videos alone are viewed two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: billion times a year, and just like it had during
Speaker 1: the age of piracy, that theft comes at a cost.
Speaker 1: It's estimated that U S companies lose seventy one billion
Speaker 1: dollars each year to piracy worldwide. Those numbers are even
Speaker 1: higher over nineties seven billion, and that's just in the
Speaker 1: movie industry alone. It isn't a Victimus crime either. Over
Speaker 1: seventy thousand people in the music industry have lost their jobs,
Speaker 1: publishers have lost over three hundred million dollars, authors have
Speaker 1: lost significant portions of their income, and bookstores have suffered
Speaker 1: as well. Digital piracy might get its name from the
Speaker 1: people who once hijacked ships at sea, but it's hardly
Speaker 1: romantic pirates. The word itself hints at a story and
Speaker 1: captures our attention. It doesn't matter if that story comes
Speaker 1: from some self justification for digital piracy, a swashbuckling fictional character,
Speaker 1: or the real life men and women who sailed the
Speaker 1: seas during the golden age of piracy, because if the
Speaker 1: story stars a pirate, folks have always been intrigued. I'm
Speaker 1: Aaron Manky and welcome two pirates. Alexander was born in
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy six in a small Scottish town where everyone
Speaker 1: knew everyone. He had six brothers and his father, John Selcraig,
Speaker 1: worked as a shoemaker and a tanner in Lower Largo.
Speaker 1: By all accounts, Alexander was a wild child, constantly causing
Speaker 1: trouble in town and at home, and though he was
Speaker 1: the youngest, he repeatedly beat up his siblings. His mother
Speaker 1: sent him away, claiming that she wanted more for her
Speaker 1: youngest child and hoped that he would find his fortune
Speaker 1: at sea. Other sources say that she may have just
Speaker 1: wanted her young troublemaker out of the house. Six years later,
Speaker 1: he returned home and went right back to his mischievous
Speaker 1: and law breaking ways. He had gotten away with most
Speaker 1: of his behavior in his youth, but this time he
Speaker 1: would go too far. While the records don't clarify what
Speaker 1: exactly he did, authorities charged him with indecent behavior inside
Speaker 1: a church. To avoid the consequences, he skipped down and
Speaker 1: changed his last name to Selkirk. Of course, the court
Speaker 1: simply deferred the charges. Alexander found work at sea, and
Speaker 1: with his talent for navigation and mathematics, he quickly became
Speaker 1: an officer. His return to See proved timely to the
Speaker 1: War of Spanish Secession, gave Alexander options. He no longer
Speaker 1: had to choose between merchant and navy vessels. Privateering offered
Speaker 1: better pay. He joined the expedition captain by a man
Speaker 1: named William Dampier in seventeen oh three. The Lord Admiral
Speaker 1: had given them letters of mark, granting the crew the
Speaker 1: right to attack enemy vessels. Dampier commanded the St. George
Speaker 1: and gave Captain Charles Pickering the command of his second ship,
Speaker 1: the sink Points. Alexander served as Pickering's sailing master. The
Speaker 1: job required someone with a formal education, as reading and
Speaker 1: piloting were considered a senior officer. His role aside from
Speaker 1: reading maps, if they even had one, the sailing master
Speaker 1: also had to consider storms and the currents. While Alexander
Speaker 1: enjoyed the respect that came with his title, he didn't
Speaker 1: reciprocate it. He didn't think much of damp Here. The
Speaker 1: captain's previous work as a buccaneer put him at odds
Speaker 1: with captaining a navy ship. In fact, a previous ship
Speaker 1: that he had commanded sank, and although Dampier had been
Speaker 1: cleared of any charges surrounding the incident, that moment followed
Speaker 1: him wherever he went. Morale was not existent, and the
Speaker 1: crew suffered from a lack of provisions. Diseases like dysentery
Speaker 1: and scurvy were prevalent, and rats had invested the ship.
Speaker 1: An outbreak of scurvy plagued the crew while they sailed
Speaker 1: just off the coast of Brazil, killing Pickering and several
Speaker 1: other men. Thomas Straddling, Pickering's lieutenant, became the sink points
Speaker 1: new captain. In Alexander's opinion, Straddling was egotistical and lack
Speaker 1: the necessary experience. Most of the crew shared this assessment
Speaker 1: of the new captain, causing discord and talk of mutiny.
Speaker 1: A combination of events fueled Alexander's bad temper. He not
Speaker 1: only argued with Dampier, but he was also butting heads
Speaker 1: with Straddling. The crew thought their sailing master and their
Speaker 1: new captain were both equally arrogant. Disagreements between the two
Speaker 1: usually became a battle of wills. The crew sailed to
Speaker 1: the uninhabited island called Juan Fernandez for a few days
Speaker 1: rest and hopefully to find some supplies. When Strandling ordered
Speaker 1: the men to load the ship, Alexander refused. Instead of
Speaker 1: asking his fellow sailors to overtake the captain, he suggested
Speaker 1: they refused to sail and remain on the island. Instead,
Speaker 1: he reminded them of the poor conditions, their terrible treatment,
Speaker 1: and missed opportunities to raid ships straddling. Gave him an ultimatum, though,
Speaker 1: either the sailing master got on the ship or he
Speaker 1: stayed behind alone. Alexander refused to give in, and so
Speaker 1: he watched as his fellow crew members made several trips
Speaker 1: to transfer supplies to the sink point. He stood on
Speaker 1: the shoreline defiantly as the men loaded the last of
Speaker 1: the small boats. Marooning someone is one of the harshest
Speaker 1: punishments ever handed down. Still, he must have felt he
Speaker 1: had nothing to fear. He hadn't committed a crime typically
Speaker 1: punishable by marooning. Surely they would come back to get him.
Speaker 1: But with the last load, the men got into the
Speaker 1: skiffs one final time. Still he refused to join them,
Speaker 1: so they waved him off and pushed away from shore.
Speaker 1: And that's when Alexander realized the gravity of his decision.
Speaker 1: He had just marooned himself. San Fernandez Island was remote,
Speaker 1: just over four hundred and eighteen miles west of Valparaiso, Chile.
Speaker 1: Few ever passed much less stopped. He'd been convinced that
Speaker 1: his shipmates would have chosen him over straddling, He had
Speaker 1: called their bluff and lost. A few people survived the marooning,
Speaker 1: although Charles Vane and Bartholomew Roberts had both been fortunate
Speaker 1: to do so, and history would eventually tell us that
Speaker 1: in Captain Arnabus Lincoln and a small crew survived as well.
Speaker 1: Pirates had captured their ship and left them on a
Speaker 1: small island barely three feet above sea level. They had
Speaker 1: been left a blanket, a pot, and a few provisions.
Speaker 1: Of the twelve men, all but one lived to tell
Speaker 1: the tale, but for twenty days the men were on
Speaker 1: their own. In seventeen eighteen, part of Captain William Greenway's
Speaker 1: crew mutinied for refusing to turn pirate. They left him
Speaker 1: and a handful of others marooned on an anchored sloop
Speaker 1: incapable of sailing. Being the only one who could swim,
Speaker 1: Williams went to shore and returned with food. The pirates
Speaker 1: came back and forced him into piracy, but left the others. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the pirates were captured and a Spanish sloop returned to
Speaker 1: rescue the surviving men. For many sailors if exposure, storms, starvation,
Speaker 1: or dehydration didn't kill them, a bullet, did you see.
Speaker 1: Crews often left the maroon sailor with a pistol and
Speaker 1: a single bullet, giving them a choice to die a
Speaker 1: slow death or end their life by their own hand.
Speaker 1: But even that posed a dilemma. They had been damned
Speaker 1: to die on an island, but death by suicide, in
Speaker 1: their eyes at least, meant damning their souls to hell.
Speaker 1: And Alexander was well aware of the survival rates of
Speaker 1: maroon sailors, but he was also aware that he hadn't
Speaker 1: been left a pistol. He had no extra clothes, or
Speaker 1: a blanket or a single provision, And yet there he stood,
Speaker 1: with his feet in the sand, watching his fellow crewmen
Speaker 1: make their way back to the sink point. When he
Speaker 1: realized they meant to take him up on his threat,
Speaker 1: he ran into the water, shouting and waving at them
Speaker 1: to come back. At first they ignored his cries, and
Speaker 1: then they called back, reminding him that he had made
Speaker 1: his choice. His attitude and attempt to cause a mutiny
Speaker 1: had been his undoing, they reminded him, and his general
Speaker 1: disposition would no longer be their problem. He watched and
Speaker 1: called until all were boarded and the ship sailed from sight.
Speaker 1: He fared better than most, though the island had a
Speaker 1: good supply of fresh water. Spaniards who had once used
Speaker 1: the island had also left behind a small population of goats.
Speaker 1: He found edible herbs, wild plums, cabbages, and other vegetation.
Speaker 1: Alexander learned to overcome the lack of knives and pots
Speaker 1: to eat and cook with. Over time, he managed to
Speaker 1: domesticate the goats too. He refused to fish, hating the
Speaker 1: taste without salt, and the goats became more useful than
Speaker 1: just food too. When his pants and shirt wore thin,
Speaker 1: he used goat skin for clothing and even for the
Speaker 1: walls of his hut. He even domesticated a few feral cats,
Speaker 1: which helped with the other animal that the Spanish had
Speaker 1: left behind, rats. Regardless of the species, the animals kept
Speaker 1: him company, and Alexander often danced in his tent to
Speaker 1: pass the time, and even sang to the animals. Instead
Speaker 1: of wasting away, he thrived on the diet, which was
Speaker 1: much better than what some sailors and peasants ate. With
Speaker 1: apple food and water, he could only wait and hope
Speaker 1: that a passing ship would find him, and one day
Speaker 1: that's what he saw off the coast. Alexander might not
Speaker 1: have known what day it was or how many months
Speaker 1: had passed since he'd seen another human being, but he
Speaker 1: cheered and breathed, I have relief. His ordeal was finally over.
Speaker 1: And then he caught sight of the flag, and fear
Speaker 1: replaced joy. The flag was Spanish, and that meant the
Speaker 1: men on board were more likely to kill him that
Speaker 1: rescue him. He hastily disguised his camp and then shimmied
Speaker 1: up a tree. The men arrived and walked around for
Speaker 1: a while and even used the tree to relieve themselves,
Speaker 1: and then they left. Alexander was alone with the animals
Speaker 1: once more, and it would be a very long time
Speaker 1: before he ever saw another ship. In sev oh eight,
Speaker 1: privateer Woods Rogers set out on an expedition. The British
Speaker 1: governments and merchants sponsored his voyage, and both wanted the
Speaker 1: same outcome to impede the Spanish financially and hinder their
Speaker 1: military might, and the crew looked forward to a profitable
Speaker 1: voyage since the British government had waived their usual cut
Speaker 1: from any raids, and that allowed Rogers to negotiate with
Speaker 1: Bristol merchants to supply capital for two ships and their crews.
Speaker 1: Investors would receive a share of the plunder. Upon the
Speaker 1: cruise return, Rogers captain a ton frigate named the Duke,
Speaker 1: and gave command of the Duchess the smaller ship, to
Speaker 1: Stephen Courtney. The ships and crew set sail from Ireland
Speaker 1: in September of seventeen oh wait. Rogers developed a reputation
Speaker 1: of a tough but fair captain. When some of the
Speaker 1: men had gambled away everything they had, including their clothing,
Speaker 1: he banned gambling. The men worked hard, too, and Rogers
Speaker 1: rewarded them well. He made sure his men had good
Speaker 1: food and decent medical care, and of course, he supplied
Speaker 1: them with plenty of alcohol. At times, disagreements would crop
Speaker 1: up between captain and crew. Once the crew even mutinied
Speaker 1: when Rogers refused to attack ships from neutral governments. That
Speaker 1: same fate had befallen Captain Kidd a few years before,
Speaker 1: but Rogers managed to regain control quickly and continued his expedition.
Speaker 1: They raided several French vessels in seventeen o eight and
Speaker 1: seventeen o line, bringing in substantial profits, but later in
Speaker 1: seventeen o nine, lack of fruit caused a scurvy outbreak,
Speaker 1: and to prevent another mutiny, Rogers set course for a
Speaker 1: nearby island, hoping to restock. He hadn't expected to find
Speaker 1: anyone living there yet. As the landing party approached, a
Speaker 1: man with long hair and a beard wearing fur clothing
Speaker 1: anxiously hopped from one bare foot to the other and
Speaker 1: waved at them frantically. When the men met, Alexander Selkirk
Speaker 1: told Rogers everything, how he'd come to be marooned and
Speaker 1: how he managed to stay alive. The two compared dates,
Speaker 1: determining that Alexander had been on the tiny island for
Speaker 1: roughly four years. The next boat arrived, and Alexander couldn't
Speaker 1: believe who stepped on to shore. There before him stood
Speaker 1: William Dampier. It turns out Rogers hadn't known about the
Speaker 1: former captain's court martial or his previous command of the St. George.
Speaker 1: The truth about that came out after a lot of
Speaker 1: questions and talk after Alexander had been marooned. Disaster had
Speaker 1: struck the crew aboard the sink, point their ship had sank,
Speaker 1: leaving Straddling and the others stranded. After that, the Spanish
Speaker 1: had captured them, imprisoning them for piracy, and in the end,
Speaker 1: Alexander had survived, while his fellow crewmen had not. With
Speaker 1: this sort of blemished work record, Dampier had honestly been
Speaker 1: lucky to find a job at all, let alone as
Speaker 1: a pilot. Rodgers was so impressed with Alexander that he
Speaker 1: invited him to join the crew on the expedition. Surprisingly,
Speaker 1: though he refused. He told Rogers that he would rather
Speaker 1: remain on the island and die there than serve on
Speaker 1: a ship with Dampier. So Rogers solved the matter by
Speaker 1: taking him aboard the Duke and keeping Dampier on the Duchess,
Speaker 1: and Alexander agreed. The arrangement delighted woods Rogers, but not
Speaker 1: nearly as much as listening in great detail about his
Speaker 1: newfound friends story of survival. To his credit, Alexander returned
Speaker 1: to life at sea as though he had never left,
Speaker 1: and Rogers soon promoted him to second mate. They continued
Speaker 1: their journey, bringing in substantial amounts of treasure along the way,
Speaker 1: and when they returned to England, to a hero's glory.
Speaker 1: Alexander sailed with them as part of the crew, but
Speaker 1: life was never the same for him. Although the privateering
Speaker 1: had made him wealthy, Alexander said that he had never
Speaker 1: been so happy as those years on the island. Eventually,
Speaker 1: he took to the seas again and died of yellow
Speaker 1: fever in seventy one. Woods Rodgers began to think of
Speaker 1: publishing an account of their journey, but crew member Edward
Speaker 1: cook beat him to it. Rogers wrote a more detailed
Speaker 1: version months later, and while both books mentioned Alexander, rogers
Speaker 1: retelling fascinated readers the most. He had spent the most
Speaker 1: time in Alexander's company, after all, and he spent all
Speaker 1: of those evenings journaling what he had learned during their conversations.
Speaker 1: The War of Spanish Secession ended, leaving readers wanting more
Speaker 1: tales of the High Seas, so Rogers penned a cruising
Speaker 1: voyage around the world detailing their successful plunders and journey,
Speaker 1: along with detailed material of Alexander's marooning. Roger Is telling
Speaker 1: easily outsold Edward Cooks. The story captivated readers around the
Speaker 1: globe and inspired a whole new genre of seafaring tales.
Speaker 1: Woods Rogers, the man who brought the Golden Age of
Speaker 1: piracy to heal, could never have foreseen that his book
Speaker 1: would inspire authors to write about pirates fact or fiction.
Speaker 1: People couldn't get enough of them. This season, we've visited
Speaker 1: many of those stories here. We're fascinated with women like
Speaker 1: Granne O'Malley and Bonnie and Ching Shi, who all proved
Speaker 1: as fierce as their male counterparts, and legends like Blackbeard,
Speaker 1: William Kidd and Benjamin Hornegal never get old. There's Sam Bellamy,
Speaker 1: the Romantic Pirates, and of course the amusing Steed Bonnet.
Speaker 1: While Edward Lowe and Charles Vane will firmly remain the
Speaker 1: villains of the bunch, the Woods Rogers inspired one author
Speaker 1: to write about these real life pirates too. In seventy four,
Speaker 1: Charles Rivington hawked books near St. Paul's Cathedral. We've mentioned
Speaker 1: the book, A General History of Pirates, written by Captain
Speaker 1: Charles Johnson. The book detailed events surrounding the most infamous
Speaker 1: and notorious pirates to sail the Caribbean. The first three
Speaker 1: editions of the book sold out. The two volumes set
Speaker 1: sold in seventeen twenty six included additional pirates too. No
Speaker 1: one knew who Captain Johnson was, though while the author
Speaker 1: seemingly had a great deal of nautical knowledge, it became
Speaker 1: clear no such captain ever existed, and the author had
Speaker 1: used a pen name. Many people suspect he was actually
Speaker 1: Daniel Dafoe, who had written the widely popular Robinson Caruso
Speaker 1: in seventeen nineteen. That story, if you remember, follows the
Speaker 1: adventures of a man shipwrecked on an island. It's assumed
Speaker 1: that Defoe took inspiration from Wood's Rogers telling of Alexander
Speaker 1: Selkirk's marooning, but defoex wasn't the only one smitten with
Speaker 1: pirates and woods Rogers book. A young Scottish author spent
Speaker 1: a rainy afternoon with his young son on one particularly
Speaker 1: dreary day, he created a treasure hunt to pass the time.
Speaker 1: By the end of the day, though the author had
Speaker 1: such a great time that he began to work on
Speaker 1: a story. Ideas swirled in his head. Along with Woods
Speaker 1: Roger's story about fellow scott Alexander Selkirk. The author wanted
Speaker 1: a story full of adventure, gold, pirates and buried treasure.
Speaker 1: He created vivid characters, including a one legged man with
Speaker 1: a parrot on his shoulder. It was a magazine called
Speaker 1: Young Folks that published the first installment of The Sea
Speaker 1: Cook in eighteen eighty one. Although the author suffered a
Speaker 1: few health setbacks, he kept writing, and by eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: two he had added an additional seventeen chapters to the
Speaker 1: first and it's a story that's still adapted and read today,
Speaker 1: with characters like Captain Flint Long John Silver Billy Bones,
Speaker 1: and Jim Hawkins, and the author Robert Lewis Stevenson. And
Speaker 1: the final title of that book, Oh, you already know
Speaker 1: the answer by now, I'm sure the classic adventure now
Speaker 1: Treasure Island pirates have captivated us from the time they
Speaker 1: first sailed the seas, and although Blackbeard and Bellamy no
Speaker 1: longer hoist their flags, their spirits live on in the
Speaker 1: stories we tell, much like the Tale of the Pirate
Speaker 1: Princess from this season's very first episode. We love them
Speaker 1: so much that we honestly don't care if they're true
Speaker 1: or not. And with that in mind, we've got one
Speaker 1: final story in the cargo Hold for you to enjoy.
Speaker 1: Stick around after this brief sponsor break and my crewmates,
Speaker 1: Alie Steed will tell you all about it. Most ships
Speaker 1: avoided the area Lucy how to dubious reputation as the
Speaker 1: most pirate infested waters on Earth. Authorities repeatedly warned ships
Speaker 1: to steer clear. Sailing into those waters was like swimming
Speaker 1: with sharks. Yet one captain chose to ignore the warnings.
Speaker 1: His Groove twenty had been well versed in pirate attacks
Speaker 1: and he had cargo deliver. Though the crew disagreed with
Speaker 1: the decision to stay on course, the captain had final
Speaker 1: say and overrode them. They pushed onward, making good time
Speaker 1: towards their destination, and kept a watchful eye on the
Speaker 1: horizon for other ships. In the early dawn hours that April,
Speaker 1: four armed pirates aboard a small skiff approached the cargo
Speaker 1: ship and alert was sounded, sending men scrambling from their beds.
Speaker 1: As it stood, the ship was too big to outrun
Speaker 1: the pirates. All they could do was try to stop
Speaker 1: them from boarding. Training taught them that pirates would likely
Speaker 1: shoot at the bridge. First crewmember Mike Perry ushered the
Speaker 1: others on board to a safer location. Then he used
Speaker 1: the ship's rudder to swamp the pirates skiff. Still, the
Speaker 1: pirates closed in. Perry removed part of the ship's control
Speaker 1: from the bridge, and crewmember Matt Fisher controlled the steering gear.
Speaker 1: After sending off a few flares to signal distress, the
Speaker 1: ship went black, meaning that when the pirates boarded they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to control it. Perry, Fisher, and some
Speaker 1: of the other crew remained hidden and barricaded in a room.
Speaker 1: They listened for the sound of the inevitable That came
Speaker 1: at daybreak when the pirates tossed a grappling hook aboard
Speaker 1: and they heard to catch. Not long after came the
Speaker 1: captain's chilling words, the bridge has been compromised. Then the
Speaker 1: captain fell silent. Perry and Fisher didn't have to see
Speaker 1: the pirates to know the captain and those with him
Speaker 1: had already been taken hostage. If they were still alive,
Speaker 1: the pirates would probably come for them next. Perry waited
Speaker 1: outside the secured room, armed with only a knife. The
Speaker 1: dark compartment served as his only advantage. The pirates leader
Speaker 1: entered brandishing a gun. For a while, pirate and sailor
Speaker 1: engaged in a deadly game of cat and mouse. After
Speaker 1: a few tense moments, Perry stabbed the pirate and managed
Speaker 1: to take him hostage. The room where the rest of
Speaker 1: the crew was hiding had grown stiflingly hot, and they
Speaker 1: couldn't stay inside much longer. But now they had a
Speaker 1: hostage of their own, and negotiations began. For a while,
Speaker 1: it looked like the pirates were willing to exchange their
Speaker 1: leader for the captain, but at the last minute, the
Speaker 1: pirates forced the captain into one of the lifeboats and fled.
Speaker 1: In response to the hijacking, the U. S. Navy sent
Speaker 1: a destroyer and a frigate to the area while the
Speaker 1: pirates awaited their own backup. Once naval ships arrived, the
Speaker 1: situation became a standoff. With each advancing hour, the predicament
Speaker 1: became dire. Another band of pirates had recently captured four
Speaker 1: other vessels not far away. They were on route with
Speaker 1: fifty four hostages they planned to use as human shields.
Speaker 1: Three days into the standoff, a frustrated pirate fired on
Speaker 1: a frigate, striking no one. Luckily, four days into the situation,
Speaker 1: snipers killed three pirates on the lifeboat and rescued the captain.
Speaker 1: Authorities took the surviving pirate to the U S and
Speaker 1: charged him with conspiracy to seize a ship by force,
Speaker 1: conspiracy to commit hostage taking, and piracy. In the Golden Age,
Speaker 1: he would have been hanged. Instead, the court sentence stobbed
Speaker 1: dually mused to thirty three years in prison. If this
Speaker 1: story sounds familiar, it's because it happened recently. In two
Speaker 1: thousand nine off the coast of Somalia. Captain Phillips returned
Speaker 1: home safely, as did the rest of the crew aboard
Speaker 1: the m V Marris Alabama. There's no question that pirates
Speaker 1: still exist. In twenty ten, they attacked four hundred forty
Speaker 1: five ships, taking one thousand, one hundred eighty one people hostage.
Speaker 1: From January to March of twenty eleventh, there were a
Speaker 1: hundred and nineteen pirate attacks. Eighty three off the coast
Speaker 1: of Somalia. Four Americans were killed after pirates attacked their sailboat.
Speaker 1: The attacks are fewer today than they were ten years ago,
Speaker 1: they are becoming more violent and often fatal. Policing waters
Speaker 1: is difficult, and pirates often fly different countries flags to
Speaker 1: hide their intent, and like the Golden Age, piracy still
Speaker 1: has political roots. Reportedly authorities and governments are connected to
Speaker 1: some of these attacks. Today, pirate hotspots around the world
Speaker 1: are the northeastern coast of South America, Iraq, Bangladesh, the
Speaker 1: Malacca Straits near Indonesia, Nigeria, and Somalia. We've come a
Speaker 1: long way since pirates roamed the high seas stalking colonial
Speaker 1: coasts for prizes, But then again, reality or fiction, they've
Speaker 1: never really left. Stick around for a few more minutes
Speaker 1: to find out what's next. From Grimm and Mild Presents.
Speaker 1: Pirates was executive produced by Aaron Manky and narrated by
Speaker 1: Aaron Manky and Alexander Steid. Writing for this season was
Speaker 1: provided by Michelle Mudo, with research by Alexander Steed and
Speaker 1: Sam Alberty. Production assistants was provided by Josh Thane, Jesse Funk,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about this
Speaker 1: and other shows from Grimm and Mild and I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit grim and Mild dot com. The scribe sat down
Speaker 1: to do his work. It was just like any other day.
Speaker 1: He was in the business of copying and pasting millennia
Speaker 1: before we had computers to do the job for us.
Speaker 1: Bent over the page, he carefully scratched out over four
Speaker 1: hundred lines of hieroglyphs. This was a really important project.
Speaker 1: The document he was copying was already over a thousand
Speaker 1: years old, and its preservation was important. But although he
Speaker 1: was a master of his craft, he was a bit
Speaker 1: out of his depth with what he was transcribing. The
Speaker 1: source document talked about the human body from the top
Speaker 1: down and from the inside out, and this scribe was
Speaker 1: encountering glyphs he had never seen before. He scratched out
Speaker 1: his errors and made notes in the margins his writing
Speaker 1: implement clumsily, making strokes for characters unfamiliar to him. In fact,
Speaker 1: according to later scholars, he created the earliest known asterisks
Speaker 1: in the history of bookmaking. But what did make it
Speaker 1: onto his page was really marvelous stuff, a collection of
Speaker 1: anatomical case studies and a treatise detailing scientific procedures for
Speaker 1: dealing with various injuries. And then, in the middle of
Speaker 1: his project, somewhere between the thorax and the spinal column,
Speaker 1: he quit. No one knew why, not James Henry Breasted
Speaker 1: or any of the Egyptologists who came before him. It
Speaker 1: had landed on his desk in nineteen twenty, already estimated
Speaker 1: to be thirty years old. But James saw something important
Speaker 1: and alarming. When the scribe started writing again, he started
Speaker 1: copying something completely different. Magical incantations to fight pestilence, spells
Speaker 1: to manage women's health concerns, and tricks to make old
Speaker 1: men young again. James and his fellow Egyptologists didn't know
Speaker 1: for sure, but they suspected that this ancient scribe was
Speaker 1: unaware of the importance of the work he had left unfinished,
Speaker 1: and James would go on to spend years pouring over it.
Speaker 1: It proved to be a singular, remarkable artifact, the earliest
Speaker 1: known evidence of human dissection as a practice, a blueprint
Speaker 1: for ancient scientific surgery. Experts believed that the original document
Speaker 1: copied by the scribe was known as the Secret Book
Speaker 1: of the Physician and had originally circulated more than five
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. This document was important because it gave
Speaker 1: evidence of a stark departure from folk medicine and magic,
Speaker 1: replacing it with rational scientific observation. It represented a remarkable
Speaker 1: moment in time when people were finally pulling the body
Speaker 1: apart and going inside of it to seek out answers
Speaker 1: to its deepest mysteries. Sadly, James and his contemporaries never
Speaker 1: found the source document, and because of that we might
Speaker 1: never know how the original book ended. What did the
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians know about our inner workings? And how long
Speaker 1: ago did they know it? How much was lost only
Speaker 1: to need to be rediscovered again in a different time,
Speaker 1: in a different place. For the moment, it seems like
Speaker 1: it's lost to history, but the quest continues, and as
Speaker 1: a story it illustrates a powerful idea. Even today, we're
Speaker 1: still hard at work adding to our body of knowledge.
Speaker 1: I'm Aaron Manky, and welcome two bedside manners.