Dr. Ian Chambers F.R.G.S.

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Why my interest?

•My interest goes back to my childhood

•Many, many years ago in England and a cartoon called

•Captain Pugwash

• “Golden Age” 1680 – 1730•Across time •Ancient Greece to present day

•Geographical regions •From the Atlantic to the Pacific

•Regularly helped week countries build empires

•Usually begin class with•Greece and Roman worlds and piracy•Then go on to the Vikings

•Spanish colonists required by law to:•Associate only with members of the Catholic faith•Trade only with Spain

•“cut off the hands, feet, noses, and ears of the crews and smeared them with honey and tied them to trees to be tortured by flies and other insects”

• Early French merchants began to settle on the island of Hispaniola

Hispaniola & Tortuga • Ile de la Tortue

• Tortuga Island

• Named after the islands turtle population

•November 1558 Elizabeth Tudor ascended to the British Throne•“A domino factum est mirabile in oculis nostris”

•“This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous to our eyes”

•Elizabeth began to hand out

•Letters of reprisal or letter de Marque

Francis Drake Henry Morgan

•Letters of marque outlawed by most states in 1856 by the Declaration of Paris.

•Today only one country still retains the right with in its laws to issue such letters

•The USA

US Constitution• Article 1

• Section 8

• To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

• To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water

•War of Spanish Succession•1701 - 1714

•Conclusion saw inauguration of George I

• End of the War flooded Britain and its empire with unemployed sailors• no work and no home

base

• Led a surge in piracy • 1716 to 1726

StatisticsWHO, WHEN, WHERE, & WHY

Professor Marcus Rediker

• 1716 and 1726•approx 4,500 to 4,500 sailors turned pirate

•Numbers of active pirates by year•1716-18 – 1,800 to 2,400•1719-22 – 1,500 to 2,000•1723-26 – 1,000 to 1,500

•1716 - group of pirates claimed that there were:• “30 company of them”

•Allowing for an average of 80 men per ship•Suggest 2400 pirates at this time

•Rediker analyzed relationships between differing crews •70% of all crews active between 1716 and 1726 fit into two main lines of genealogical descent

•The two lines are•A) Captain Benjamin Horningold and the pirate rendezvous of Barbados•B) The meeting of George Lowther and Edward Low in 1722

Direct Descent

Crew division, dispute, over- crowding, new captain

= Sailed in consort

--- Other Connection

Common Crew members, contact without sailing

O Used Bahama Islands as rendezvous

Connections among Anglo-American Pirate Crews, 1714-26

•Age•Known for 117 pirates between 1716-26•Range was wide, 17 – 50•highest concentration in 20 – 24 age range

•Two additional factors defined who a pirate was•Single•No one at home to deter threat of death

•‘best of the best’• promise of better pay and conditions

•Order was maintained by the signed agreement

•Round Robin

• In addition ‘articles’ were often written defining parameters of behavior

•From Alexander Exquemeling's "Buccaneers of America"

•"they stipulate in writing what recompense or reward each one ought to have, that is either wounded or maimed in his body, suffering the loss of any limb, by that voyage."

Race•Expectations of predominantly white audiences •conditioned early fictional depictions of pirates of African descent. •stock characters who could be conveniently killed off•Used to exploit fear and prejudice by being portrayed as particularly demonic creatures

• “multi-culturalism” sprang not from idealistic sentiments of the "brotherhood of man”

• but from a pragmatic spirit of revolt against common oppressors.

•No known crew of the period fully white

Pirate Flags

•Most common symbol for pirates of the ‘golden age’•Two main background colors•Red or Black•Symbol of ‘no quarter given’

• Symbolism on flag

• Most common - human skull• Or “deaths head”

• Appropriated from the logs of ‘legal’ captains

• Shifted, in part, to a symbol of liberty• signified a fatal, yet accepted and chosen, end

• Other symbols found

• Heart• Truth? Death?

• Weapon• Tool of trade• Threat of violence

• Hour glass• Limited time – theirs and yours• Or lost time

• A symbol to fear

• Sign of consciousness within pirates that they were preyed upon

• A mark of commonality

•Edward Teach•aka Blackbeard

My take

• Some one who is barely there

• We know only about 2 years of his life

• Parentage?

• Birth place?

• Name?

Name?

• Most sources put him as “Thatch”

• Earliest use of “Teach” in Boston News-Letter 1717

• On occasion Drummond also pops up

• 1733 Edward Moseley, surveyor for North Carolina• Who had known him

• Labeled site of final battle as “Thatch’s Hole” on map of Province

• Probably use in Newspaper and Johnson of Teach is why this has stuck

•Captain Johnson

•1st Edition•Native of Jamaica•Went to sea as a boy• Privateer in Queen Anne’s War 1702 -13

•2nd edition• Born in Bristol, England•Wound up in Jamaica on Privateers

•Another contemporary source connects him to Philadelphia

•Extensive research in Jamaica, Bristol, & Philadelphia have found no records of him

Image

• Probably the most well known image of a pirate

• And most intent in creating an image

• Henry Bostock• Captured by Blackbeard Dec 5 1717

• “a tall spare man with a very black beard which he wore very long”

Captain Johnson

• This Beard was black, which he suffered to grow of an extravagant Length; as to Breadth, it came up to his Eyes; he was accustomed to twist it with Ribbons, in small Tails, after the Manner of our Ramillies Wiggs, and turn them about his Ears: In Time of Action, he wore a Sling over his Shoulders, with three Brace of Pistols, hanging in Holsters like Bandaliers ; and stuck lighted Matches under his Hat, which appearing on each Side of his Face, his Eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a Figure, that Imagination cannot form an Idea of a Fury, from Hell, to look more frightful