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Queen Anne's Revenge
248 Plays1 year ago
Privateers! Grappling hooks! Decapitation!
If you are a fan of Killer Shipwrecks be sure to check out Killer Biographies: https://www.killerbiographies.com
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Transcript
Sponsorship and Introduction
00:00:06
Speaker
Today's episode is brought to you by the law firm of Harmony and Hanrahan, who specialize in waterway litigation. Harmony and Hanrahan will get you back on the water.
00:00:41
Speaker
All right.
The Significance of Eight
00:00:42
Speaker
I'm raring to go today. This is episode eight. Yeah. So just give me a little something, a little something about eight. Eight is great. Eight is great. Crazy eight. Okay. And my favorite hockey player, Alex Ovechkin, wears the number eight.
00:00:58
Speaker
classic. Turn it on its side and it's the symbol for infinity. Yeah, that's right. So there's factoids about eight.
Listener Feedback on Vasa Ship Story
00:01:07
Speaker
Now I want to first of all quickly compliment you on last week. Since you told the story of the Vasa, I got so many messages from people I know who have either actually been to the museum in Stockholm or
00:01:23
Speaker
had known
00:01:40
Speaker
You really, you hit it out of the park. And the fun thing is this week, I'm going to tell you about a boat. Like last week, some of the features of the Vasa were that Vasa, it was all manufactured in one country. It was very fancy. It was very elaborate. It was very ultimately quite useless. Like within minutes of its launch, it's in the water.
00:02:07
Speaker
I mean, it's amazing how quickly two years of work primarily on those sculptures, which just makes no sense. But you know, one thing that I thought about when I heard the episode and I heard one of your comments, if you recall, the Vasa was that sort of disruptive technology in which they switched from borders.
Evolution of Naval Warfare
00:02:26
Speaker
The primary way in which the naval battles were fought were the guys would just like jump on board and fight.
00:02:33
Speaker
Then they switched to the cannons. And I remember you making the comment about, well, that's like a disruptive talk about disruptive technology. Like you're no longer hand-to-hand combat. So it's like it changes the profile of who you even need to have on board, right? They're just lighting cannons. I think they had the 12 pounder or the 16 pounder. And so I was thinking like, okay, so a shot put is 16 pounds. Like in the ball, that ball that they
00:02:58
Speaker
I like the thing that they're tossing, like the shot put. And I was thinking like, imagine like you're an early 1600s entrepreneur. I'm going to have a bunch of really strong guys on deck and they're going to throw these 16 pound balls. Yeah, cause damage. And if you in the head, you know. And just make sure that you have enough room on deck where they can do that whole spinning around thing that they do before they do the shot. Exactly.
00:03:26
Speaker
Okay, watch out guys. Because I didn't want to say this before, but we had some, some less than ideal results from our lurch test last week. Right. So before you do the shot, but like, don't do the whole spin.
00:03:57
Speaker
But I think that's a transition that takes
Boarding in Naval Battles
00:04:03
Speaker
a while to happen because today's ship that I'm going to talk about is going to be a little bit later and boarding is still going on.
00:04:03
Speaker
the lighter balls.
00:04:14
Speaker
You know, boarding doesn't totally go away. No, I associate it with pirates, period. Like, don't they still board in that show with Captain Phillips or the guy Tom Hanks plays a part in some pirates modern day? Didn't see. If I'm going to see a pirate movie, I want to see eye patches, but I don't necessarily want to see like Johnny. No, that's what I'm saying. You should see Captain Whoever and Tom Hanks. You know, the pirates board his ship.
00:04:38
Speaker
Yeah, but I don't want to see modern pirates. I want to see the golden era of pirates, like 1700s Caribbean, just no Johnny Depp. That's what I'm looking for. So what year are you talking
Queen Anne's War and Privateering
00:04:50
Speaker
about? Okay, so let's do this. So just as a framing or kind of orienting thing, this ship that I want to talk about today is more, and I know that she objected previously when I used this term in relation to Lizzie, but
00:05:04
Speaker
Today's ship, we're going to be looking at more of a workhorse and a ship that shows its usefulness in different contexts for different countries, for different captains, and just keeps going. That sounds very positive. Let's get right into it. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever heard anything about Queen Anne's War? It has to do with the war out of England.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, and you're right. It is a war out of England. You're on the right track here. So the bigger war that's going on in the early 1700s is called War of the Spanish Succession. It came up in one of our earlier episodes. I'm aware of the war of the succession in the United States, like the Civil War.
00:05:48
Speaker
when the south succeeded succeeded i feel like the south succeeded i feel like they didn't succeed overall i mean i'm sure there's certain ways in which they succeeded they succeeded in setting their region back many generations
00:06:05
Speaker
Something happens with a Spanish king where it's not clear who's going to be the heir and there's instability in terms of who's going to be the next Spanish king. Somehow the neighboring countries all have strong opinions about it. It winds up that there's a war that's basically sort of England against France and Spain.
00:06:24
Speaker
England against France and Spain, or is it a three way we're all fighting with each other? I think it's France and Spain are sort of on one side and England's on the other. And over there in Europe, we were talking in the early 1700s, so I think it's like 1701 to maybe 1714, something like that.
00:06:41
Speaker
Now, another thing that happens in wars of those days is that they have, um, you know, the official guys like the Navy, but then of course they have privateers. Now I vaguely knew of this term. It's sort of like halfway to a pirate. It's like in times of war, you can operate with the blessing of your home country and you can just do whatever you want to ships from the other side. You can seize them. You can.
00:07:09
Speaker
kill people on them, you can seize treasure from them because it's just sort of considered part of the war effort.
Privateers to Pirates Transition
00:07:16
Speaker
Okay, so there's a lot of privateers. Now, when this war of the Spanish succession is going on, it's also going on in the new world. And in the new world, these countries are actually, some of it's going on on the ocean.
00:07:29
Speaker
Okay. And has to do with ships that are involved in the slave trade or in the sugar trade and ships from, you know, the opposing countries attacking each other. But also, I think the two sides ally with different Indian groups in America. Interesting. And in this theater of the war, people talk about it as Queen Anne's War. Queen Anne's War. It's really the same thing, but in the New World, it's sort of known as Queen Anne's War. But in Europe, it's, we call it the War of Spanish Succession.
00:07:59
Speaker
But did Queen Anne inherit this war or did she instigate this war? I don't know if she instigates it, but she's in power when it, when it happens. I don't know. Okay. So the reason I tell you about privateers, he's the one that gave Isaac Newton a knighthood. No way. Queen Anne. Yeah.
00:08:16
Speaker
I always think of also that song, there's a Bob Dylan song where one of the lyrics is Queen Anne's Lace. I like Queen Anne's Lace, the flower, but my wife does not. And on the property here, Queen Anne's Lace seems to want to grow and it just sort of grows and I like it. Wife doesn't want it. Interesting. Or perhaps not that interesting.
00:08:36
Speaker
But the problem with these privateers, do you remember when the U.S. poured all that money into helping the Mujahideen kick out the Soviets from Afghanistan, and then you realize later there's blowback? Like, wait, all these people that we trained in sort of guerrilla warfare, what becomes of that after?
00:08:55
Speaker
That's the issue with privateers because these people are basically pirates, but in times of war, it's sort of allowed and the blessing is given for it. But then when the war ends, that war ends with something called the Treaty of Utrecht. I have no idea what the terms are, so don't ask me.
00:09:14
Speaker
It's a famous treaty like Magna Carter Treaty of Utrecht like there are you know like what are the dates memorize them like you know when you're in fifth grade exactly yeah exactly problem with these privateers is these guys get really like good at it and battle hardened and then the war is over and they're like okay there's not a lot of career paths open to me now that really take advantage of my skills other than just full-on piracy right
00:09:41
Speaker
So a lot of these privateers, um, just going to full on pirating and that does become a problem for countries like England and Netherlands and Spain and France who are trying to, um, do a lucrative trade and things like sugar and rum and slaves. And so in fact, one of the things that happens when there's inevitably like a boom in piracy after, you know, the privateers are all out of work and they go full time into, into piracy.
00:10:10
Speaker
that what the kings sometimes do is they say, okay, now we're announcing a pardon, okay? And there's a pardon period where if you turn yourself in, if you show up at the office, fill out the paperwork, you confess to all the stuff you did as a pirate, and you do it by this date, then you're pardoned for all of that, but you also have to commit to not being a pirate going forward.
00:10:35
Speaker
And so you might say, okay, well, what are the incentives here? Like what if you're, you know, you've just been like killing it as a pirate and you're just making a lot of money. It's like, why would I turn myself in? I'll take away my livelihood. But they also build in some incentives in terms of putting out bounties where if crew members will turn in a pirate or if other pirates will capture a notorious pirate who wouldn't yet they can earn money. So it also becomes more dangerous to continue as a pirate.
00:11:04
Speaker
The reason I mention all this stuff about privateers and pirates. Sounds like you've really given it some thought. Well, I had fascinated. I was like, privateer, I've heard that. What is that? There's words that, I don't know, I feel like at a different, you know, if I had started earlier, maybe I could have been a privateer. If you had been exposed to it at an early age, maybe you would have taken significant interest in learning the intricacies and gotten into it and then like really dedicating yourself.
00:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, I can see that. I don't think you'd mind like the lack of sleep, some of the lack of access to hygiene. Yeah, exactly. I'm not big on hygiene. I'm okay. I've always said I'd be good in prison. You know, I do well in prison. Boarding seems a little aggressive for you.
Blackbeard's Notorious Rise
00:11:46
Speaker
Like I feel like you could do it from a distance. Like I think you you're good at sitting back and like firing the cannon steady, like no mistakes. Like let's just light it the right way. Yeah, I don't know about the
00:11:55
Speaker
boarding. That sounds stressful. That's not my vibe. And these privateers and pirates were quite good with stuff like grappling hooks. Like they'd get close enough to the boat and then they throw the grappling hooks. So cool. Yeah. Like if they had a competition, they would definitely have like grappling hook. Like, okay, what are the pirate Olympics?
00:12:13
Speaker
Sure, like if they had like a sort of 1970s era ABC like TV show about it like you would definitely grappling hooks would be one of the like I could see Bruce Jenner back then like now I want to tell you a little bit about the ship there is a ship which is made we believe
00:12:30
Speaker
Maybe that was made in like 1710. They're not sure. There's some debate. Was it originally made in England, the Netherlands or France? But at some point a few years into its service as sort of like a merchant vessel, it's about a hundred feet long, about 25 feet across. It's called the Concorde. At some point in the first few years, it definitely is French and it's listed as La Concorde. This is during that war that we talked about earlier.
00:13:00
Speaker
And so some people believe that it was made in England, but then captured by the French during that war. And then they put it into service as a very successful part of that triangular trade where you sail down from France, down to the West coast of Africa. They get slaves in Africa. They take those to the new world. That took a turn.
00:13:22
Speaker
sounded like a, like a nice ship. And then all of a sudden it's like, wait, what has just been a spice ship now slave ship 1717. This ship is, has made most of its journey across the Atlantic. It's got, I believe 500 slaves as well as the crow.
00:13:40
Speaker
And it is intercepted, boarded, captured by a man who's given name. And now the cat's going to be out of the bag here. This guy's given name was believed to be either Edward Teach or Edward Theach or Edward Thatch. But do any of those ring a bell for you? Edward Teach.
00:14:01
Speaker
Teach does not at all ring a bell. Me neither, but you may know him by his nom de guerre. How about that? This sounds good. He's going to have a great nickname. Mr. Blackbeard. Hello. Blackbeard. Wait a second. Wait, wait, back up. I knew this is where we're going to speed up. Edward Teach was on the Concord.
00:14:22
Speaker
Edward Teach. So the reason I told that whole thing about privateers versus pirates, he Edward Teach was born in England. He was born in Bristol, England. And then as a young man, he worked as a crew member on privateering vessels in the New World. So he's working for the English side and they're the people who are allowed to just do whatever they want if they run across a French ship or a Spanish ship.
00:14:51
Speaker
So that's where he kind of makes his bones. He's working under a guy, a captain named, um, Hornigold, something Hornigold and teach is a tall, broad shouldered athletic guy, um, kind of striking in his appearance, very confident. And this guy Hornigold like kind of promotes him rapidly. Like is that this guy is captain material.
00:15:13
Speaker
And one of the things that happens with these pirates is, you know, they're often capturing a ship and then it's like, okay, we've got 200 crew on our ship. I'm going to pick my second best guy and put him in charge of the new ship and give him like 30 crew to start. And, you know, we'll go our separate ways.
00:15:32
Speaker
Have you seen our flag means death? No. Okay. Highly recommend it. That's the guy from flight of the concords, the guy who plays Murray. He plays a pirate and black beard is involved. I highly recommend our flag means death. Wait, the red headed guy from flight of the concords. What's his name? What's his name on Murray? And he's in a show called our flag means death and black beard is a, is a part of it. I highly recommend it.
00:15:58
Speaker
OK, so Blackbeard. So he gets he makes his bones as a young man. He's he's working on a British ship and he's learning the privateer racket as the war winds up. It's like, OK, this is the time we make that transition. We're not privateers anymore. We're pirates.
00:16:14
Speaker
And he's got his own ship now and he's on a ship that stops the Queen Anne. And basically he takes over the ship. Like I think Blackbeard connotes to people or they have this idea that he was an incredibly like scary, vicious guy or a sadist.
00:16:32
Speaker
Yes, he's scary, right? Isn't he every child's nightmare? He's definitely scary. And he puts some effort into that. He almost seems like a guy who's aware a couple hundred years early about some of the basics that we understand now for like a celebrity. Like my appearance alone can help sort of create the reality. So he's got like a long black beard.
00:16:58
Speaker
right so was that done on purpose like is that his trademark like did he like to be known by the beard like was the beard a thing yeah well wait you'll see in a second so he's he's got the big beard and he ties it up in like little i don't know what you would call it but he ties it up in some little like pigtails kind of in the beard in colorful
00:17:15
Speaker
ribbon. What? Wait, hold on. Hold on. Blackbeard? Blackbeard. Is that an ornate way of demonstrating his beard? Not ornate.
Queen Anne's Revenge and Tactical Operations
00:17:24
Speaker
It's more like it gives flair. Let's call it flair, not ornate. He was going to a shop like Blackbird, didn't just have it ragtagged like I have this long scraggly, scary Blackbeard. No. It's sort of like little corkscrew. Could it be long stocking beard?
00:17:40
Speaker
Check out some of the images. You see what I'm talking about. It's like these sort of thick strands of beer. But then he's got the big hat and he's tall and he's got the broad shoulders. But here's what I love. Right before he's about to engage in battle, the other thing he'll do is he'll take a couple of long strips of the fuse they use for cannon, put some sort of like under his hat so that a few of them are stringing out like with his hair and he lights them.
00:18:08
Speaker
So there is literally smoke coming from his head whenever he goes into battle. Oh, he's crazy. But that's the image. Like he's he's frickin terrifying when you see him. But the reality is when he takes a ship, a lot of times all he does is like, okay, this is our ship now.
00:18:25
Speaker
Give me all the valuable stuff. You 500 slaves, I noticed that, you know, unfortunately many had already died on the, on the trip over, you know, this is the so-called middle passage, the horrendous conditions and like just, you know, the worst human conditions you can imagine. A lot of them are already dead or sick and a lot of the crew are dead or sick. So it's, it's kind of limping.
00:18:47
Speaker
into the new world, honestly, when he intercepts it, he sees that all he has to do is like fire the cannon twice. And the and the captain of lock on court is like, dude, all yours, take the ship, be nice to my people. And Blackbeard says, Okay, well, I don't need all these people. Was he a killer? Was Blackbeard a killer? Not a huge killer. He was much more of like,
00:19:11
Speaker
The more you read about him, it's more like a really aggressive sort of corporate or Wall Street like just sort of like ambitious and greedy. But he's like, OK, this is what we're going to do. I don't have room on these boats to take this many people. So we're going to pull over to this. I like scary. I mean, as a as a kid, the blackbird is scary. Scary during the battle. But then once this surrender happens, he's down to brass. That's OK. Who wants to do my hair tonight?
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah. He's like, tell her she's got the night off. This was only two shots of the cannon. We're not doing the whole boarding thing. All good. But of the number of people on the ship we just captured, I'm going to put 80 on this Island. We'll just maroon them there. Somebody will get them eventually. We're going to take the ones that look healthy. We're going to bring them over, sell them for whatever they're worth. When they, when we get to land.
00:20:00
Speaker
And then this is going to become, it becomes his flagship vessel and he's so successful. So this is 1717 when that happens. Okay. And he says, um, screw it. I don't like the name lock on cord, especially cause I'm from England and we were just at war with you guys. So I'm renaming the boat and it's called Queen Anne's revenge.
00:20:23
Speaker
So he renames the boat. That's what I'm saying. He understands the importance of names, of image. Here's this Queen Anne's Revenge. We're going to go to mainland. We're going to sell the slaves for what we can get of the crew, the French crew that we captured. If there's some who look like we might want to use them as crew and they're willing to do that, they can be part of my crew from now on. Others will offload on the mainland. We'll also sell whatever we can on the boat.
00:20:51
Speaker
But they also do a retrofit of the boat because he says, this is not a slave ship anymore. This is a pirate ship. So he starts acquiring cannons. Hello. Basically. And doing little retrofit. It's all about the cannon. Yeah. And cannons of all size from all the way down from like, um, when we talk about a, um, a six pound cannon, that's the size of the cannonball, obviously. So he's got six pound cannons. He's got everything all the way down to like half pound cannon.
00:21:19
Speaker
And he's got cannons from wherever he can get them. You know, he's got some from England, he's got some from Sweden. He's got crew members, some crew members who are French, some are English, some who are black, some, you know, he is just, who's good at this? Who's good at boarding? Who can fire the thing? Who's good at navigating? It's practical.
00:21:39
Speaker
And he's really successful, but it reminds me a little bit of like his, he's got a huge name. He's world famous. But if you really look at his years of pirating, it's like a year and a half or two years. And it's somewhat manic. It's like just capturing more and more ships are getting more and more treasure. He keeps getting a ship. And then he's like, okay, you know, my second best guy on my boat right now is so-and-so you're in charge of this boat. Now here's 30 crew. You're part of my team. Wow.
00:22:09
Speaker
Um, so he's got like a fleet at one point he's got basically like five ships, 500, 600 men under his, and one of the things they do that they're famous for is in 17, 18, he is worried about some of his crew who are having medical issues. I don't know if Blackbeard himself is having medical issues, but he wants medical supplies, like good stuff, not just like.
00:22:33
Speaker
You know? Name brand. I don't want the band-aids that don't stick. Yeah, he wants name brand. He wants like the big pharma. He doesn't want like the street drug. But before you go on, because you say big pharma and I think of course sponsorships. Oh, we've never tried that. And Dramamine, we should we should check into the seasickness people.
00:22:52
Speaker
Drama mean is brilliant. Why isn't Lizzie thinking more creatively? Like I feel like you're doing enough research. Lizzie literally brought in a new sponsor. You introduced last week, super excited about it. I have not used the internet to find out what riparian rights are. Did you look it up? I actually did. I think this is like the whole thing about like who has the right to divert water from a river to use for irrigation or for like
00:23:19
Speaker
Like on the Colorado River, that's what they're always fighting about is like riparian. I applaud them for their specific expertise. So let's hear from our latest sponsor and we'll regroup on the other side. Sounds good.
00:23:33
Speaker
Nothing ruins a day on the water like getting cited for operating while impaired. This happens to you or a loved one called Harmony and Hanrahan. With offices in both Springhill and Bayport, Harmony and Hanrahan specializes in waterway litigation. This includes unlawful boat repossessions, riparian rights, disputed access points, and boats jeopardized by divorce proceedings or regulatory action. Harmony and Hanrahan will get you back on the water.
00:24:03
Speaker
All right, so let's get back to it. Before we heard from our latest sponsor, I was asking you about the origin of the name change. It changed from the Concord or the Concord and it went to Queen Anne's Revenge. So remember he had just finished serving as a privateer during Queen Anne's War.
00:24:25
Speaker
And I think there was leftover hostility toward the French. So when he took a French boat, he was like, okay, this is Queen Anne's revenge. He also, I think had, there may have had some allegiance to Queen Anne is the last of some royal family. I don't know if it's the Stewart's, but I think he had an elite, you know, an allegiance to the Stewart line or something.
00:24:49
Speaker
And if you think about it, Concord is the opposite of what he's doing because Concord means like harmonious or getting along. You know what I mean? It's like the opposite of discordant. Interesting. Yeah, it all ties in. Alright, so Blackbeard, he's renamed the ship and now he's got several ships.
00:25:06
Speaker
Yeah. He's got several ships. He's always got like, he's got this big one. It's a frigate. It moves fast, but it's also got a bunch of guns on it. And then he's got like sloops. I don't know how big a sloop is. It must be smaller, but he's got a few of those by now. Sounds like the beach boys, right? Yeah.
00:25:21
Speaker
I don't know if any of them were the John B, the Sloop John B. That's the Sloop, but I do know that one of them, when he does this thing where he sort of like says, okay, you're good on my crew. You're now in charge of this Sloop we just grabbed. And here's 20 guys and you get to name your Sloop. And so that guy says, and again, I'm going to show off my French accent.
00:25:44
Speaker
He names his sloop the mauvez en contra, which means like the bad meeting. Hold on, I have to get my fan. Can you say that one more time? This is all very sudden, mauvez en contra. This is the bad meeting. So that guy names his boat the bad meeting, which I think is an awesome name for a boat, you know?
00:26:05
Speaker
Especially for a pirate boat, you know? Like Queen Anne's Revenge sounds a little obvious. It's a little bit like, okay, we got it. So I think like having something a little more ironic, like a little more menacing. Yeah. That's when a sloop pulls up and you're like, Oh, this loop pulls up. You're like, Oh, Hey guys, what? Oh, shit. Oh, the King's Revenge. We're so mad. You know, I don't know.
00:26:29
Speaker
That meeting is a better name, but one of the things he does, so he's got, have you ever seen, and I know I'm going a lot of directions, it'll all come together, but did you ever see a movie called Hell or High Water? I did not. It's a movie about bank robbers in Texas. Interesting.
00:26:48
Speaker
But in modern bank robbers, like, you know, in the 1980s during the savings and loan crisis, it's based on real events. But the reason I mention it is it's like these guys are having some success robbing these banks, but it feels like there's something that happens, whether it's with pirates or with bank robbers, or maybe even with like corporate takeover guys where
00:27:08
Speaker
They have some success, but it almost seems to speed them up and make them more and more hungry. Like I got to keep swallowing something bigger. I got to keep moving forward. I got to keep, I don't know what that is, but he, Blackbeard definitely has that. Like he's, I mean, I think he dies at the age, uh, he dies soon after the, at the age of like 30.
Blockade of Charleston
00:27:31
Speaker
Wow. It's like those Roman emperors we talked about. A lot of stuff goes down by the time they're 30. They've already conquered other countries and stuff. Okay. Wow. But one of the things he does that he's apparently known for is he's very keyed into what makes a boat operate well, who are good crew, who aren't good crew. If you're not good crew, he might just pull up on an island to get off the frickin boat. Today they call that recruiting. We're going.
00:27:55
Speaker
Well, but my point is he's recruiting, but he'll pull up to an island and dump the other people, even if there's no like shelters on that island or no reliable. He's just like, okay, good luck, guys. At least I'm not killing you. I mean, I might be killing you, but at least there's a chance you'll get rescued. But you would expect in some ways he has to live up to his name. You can't make him too cuddly. He's abandoning people to die.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, he's definitely like cutthroat and all about the business and not sentimental, but he doesn't. But he's not like massacring lots of people. Well, I mean, if you leave them on the island to die, it's like it's almost like put them out of their misery. I don't know.
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah, but it's a Caribbean. There's a lot of islands. There's a lot of boat traffic. At least that's a little less terrifying than. Coconut. Okay. You know, walk the plane. True. And I saw Castaway. Like, you never know what's going to happen. We should see if maybe the Tom Hanks production company will sponsor this episode because we've hit Castaway and also the pirate movies. That's two references in one show. I feel like, do we get royalties for that?
00:28:56
Speaker
Well, can we get paid any more than we're already earning? Okay, so when he gets a good crew, he would like to keep them healthy if he can. And he does want the latest in good medical equipment. So in a sort of aggressive move, he gets
00:29:13
Speaker
That flagship boat, Queen Anne's Revenge, and he gets four or five other boats, and he sails them all in to blockade the Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. He's not going to let any boats out, any boats in until they send out a full chest of the latest in medical supplies. Okay. Wow.
00:29:36
Speaker
One problem is, so one of the quickest ways to just try to do that, that transaction is he, you know, one of the first boats that tries to come out, he just grabs it and he says to this guy, look, two of my men are going to take you back into town. You explain what we need, what we've come for.
00:29:52
Speaker
and that no boats are going to be able to leave this harbor or come into it until we get our medicine, go. So he sends them in with two of his guys, but then he's expecting to get the guy back, you know, to see the guy coming back the next day or the day after that. And soon he's like, all right, it doesn't look like they're paying attention to us.
00:30:09
Speaker
let's maybe move in closer and start to like fire on ships or fire at the last minute. The guy that he sent in there shows up with the chest of medicine and black person to what gives it took you like four days. He said I was ready to come back two hours after I got I get there. I get the chest. He said the problem was the two dudes you sent me with got
00:30:32
Speaker
Roaring drunk and we're on a three day bender and I literally could not find them. I had to get a different ride out here to bring you this. There's a super eight. Where do you find these guys? And this is off the coast of South Carolina. And he's like, oh my, how am I going to get and get out there? Nobody wants to like, uh, you know, drive the boat out to deliver me to blackbirds. Nobody, everybody's freaked out. They're like blackbirds in our Harbor with all his boats.
00:30:58
Speaker
None of the ships are coming in. Our loved ones are like stuck on the wrong side of the blockade. So anyway, this guy brings the chest of medicine and Blackbeard is perfect. He goes, all right, everybody back off. Let's go back down to the Caribbean, back to our pirating ways. And then what happens is, you know, the pirate's life is dangerous and there are powerful people, whether they're political figures or business figures in some of the colonies or provinces along the East Coast of what will become America who
00:31:27
Speaker
You know, are saying to the English crown, this this is really becoming a problem. The pirates are putting a big dent in our whole project over
Blackbeard's Final Years and Legacy
00:31:37
Speaker
here. You know, it's what does Blyper do with the chest of medicine? Does he get the heck out of there? Yeah, he.
00:31:42
Speaker
He just backs off. He goes, and we're going to treat people for whatever they need to be treated with, and we can get back into business. The thing I mentioned about that bank robbery movie is it does feel like if you saw a movie about Blackbeard, and there are plenty of them, I'm sure. In fact, the Queen Anne's Revenge even features in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. At some point, Johnny Depp winds up on the Queen Anne's Revenge at some point. I have not seen those movies.
00:32:09
Speaker
But it does have that feeling like he, the last year and a half of his life, it's like he, it's both the time when he's coming most famous and some of his biggest, like richest captures, but it's also, there's more people after him. When you're on the top, everyone's targeting you. Yeah, exactly. There's a governor in Virginia who's just over it. And he's like, this is, this is not working for us. Forget this guy.
00:32:35
Speaker
Yeah, we got to get him. But and there's some tension because there's a governor. I don't think North Carolina is a colony. It's like a province or at that point. And that governor is more sort of cozy cozy with Blackbeard. Like they're not friends, but he's sort of like they have a gentleman's agreement.
00:32:51
Speaker
Like, you know, just don't blow up certain ships and just like, you know, your guys are kind of rough. So when you do come in to tell him, maybe go down to Ocracoke or like, it's just a rougher part of town or something. You know what I mean? Like, so that guy in North Carolina, he's sort of letting him operate. Where's the guy up in Virginia is like, screw this. I'm sending ships for him. We're going to get him.
00:33:13
Speaker
The other thing that's fascinating, in 1718, after this successful blockade, some of the ships he captures are documented, but there are plenty of smaller ones that aren't. It's like he's, of course, run across a small ship, easy peasy. Okay, did you write that one down? No, that's Sloop? We just got the Sloop. Dude, we did that with one grappling hook and two cabin boys. Before the grappling hook was thrown, those guys had all dived into the water when they saw your smoking hat. Right, it's like taking a putt inside a three, it's like, okay.
00:33:42
Speaker
That's a gimme. Get off your boat. Sometime in 1718, he does something interesting with two of his ships, both his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, and then a second ship called the Adventure. It appears that he purposely grounds them. What? He just runs them straight into off the coast of North Carolina.
00:34:00
Speaker
And then he uses smaller boats in his fleet or that are smaller boats that were on the Queen Anne's Revenge to offload the valuable stuff and offload the crew that he wants to keep and to get rid of the crew that he doesn't. And part of the thinking behind this is that I guess there's basic rules in piracy that it's almost like a law firm where it's like there's shares of the new plunder.
00:34:26
Speaker
And so sometimes there was an advantage to getting rid of a bunch of your crew before you paid out the shares. Classic. So yeah. Before we cash out, we're going to get these guys off the books. We're going to get them off the books. We know we have people chasing us. One thing he doesn't like about the Queen Anne's Revenge is it's big and it's identifiable. We're going to get away on the Queen Anne's. Everyone knows the Queen Anne's. Exactly.
00:34:49
Speaker
So he decides like, we're going to junk the ship. We're going to get the valuable stuff off. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to take all the cannons off, but we're going to run out of ground. Same with the adventure. We're going to leave a bunch of people either on those ships or maybe if we're feeling nice, we'll, we'll like let them on the row boats over to that little like island over there. But basically we're pivoting now so that all of these people that are coming to kill me, they're not going to be able to find the Queen Anne's revenge. And was it referred to as pivoting back then? Like was that?
00:35:18
Speaker
No, I like to use that term. I wonder if they had their version of like, wait, Blackbird, are we pivoting now? Like, is this one we pivot because we're getting in these smaller boats and Carlos is staying behind. This is more of a rebranding. He was a strategist and I don't think he let a lot of people in on his thinking. So he was just that dude who's like, okay, run out of ground. And people are like, what? He's like, run out of ground. You know, he was just like, all right, all of you, you get into this boat, only you, you get the rowboat, good luck, go to the island, whatever.
00:35:46
Speaker
I'm going in this loop, so and so you're coming. He was that dude. You know what I mean? That's 17, 18, but really, and there may have been some paranoia. There may have been some paranoia and fear because at the same time that he was becoming famous, he was also becoming sort of like whatever the equivalent of like being on the FBI's most wanted list was.
00:36:07
Speaker
And there's some evidence that once in a while he would use a different name. Like he would just, you know, if they heard a ship and he didn't want people to know that he'd even been in the area, he'd say, yeah, I'm Captain Jenison or whatever. You know, he'd just come up with a different name. Of course he would. But the least surprising part of this whole story is that he didn't use his real name.
00:36:27
Speaker
Like it's him being like a brilliant, you know, maritime strategist or he had the big ship and Hey, and he disguised his name. He didn't use his real name. Of course he didn't use his real name. Well, you think he's going to check in as Blackbeard? Blackbeard first name. It's just, it's just Blackbeard.
00:36:42
Speaker
here we are 300 some odd years later, and who are we speaking about? Black Bear. Clearly, what he did at the time was fairly significant if you're being spoken about 300 some odd years later. He was certainly in the popular imagination, people were scared of him, you know, he just because of all the things we've talked about, he had a reputation.
00:37:02
Speaker
And dude, it was scary enough to try to take a boat from, you know, Africa to the new world or France to the new world, you know, just to do it, even just fighting the elements. It was not an easy trip. Half the people on the Mayflower died like on the way over. And then if you throw in this other thing, oh, there's privateers and pirates. And, you know, every time a ship comes on the horizon, you're like, OK, am I about to die? Or is this somebody who speaks my language and is on my side?
00:37:31
Speaker
Um, all right. So where's he headed? Okay. So he downsizes, he gets on a smaller ship. He goes next to one of his favorite little hiding places along the Carolina coast, an island called Ocracoke Island. He has the crew drop anchor in a little inlet there. And that way he's like, he's sort of on land, but he's also, you know, he has access to the ocean if he needs to make a quick getaway.
00:37:56
Speaker
It sounds mellow, like not a lot of, you know, waves. It sounds mellow. And he also felt like, okay, he's ready for a break, ready for a little, you know, his guys ready for a little RNR. And also they're feeling a little extra wealthy because like, look, when it comes time to hand out the shares, we just offloaded 40% of our people. So we're actually much richer just for how,
00:38:19
Speaker
It's kind of like the way private equity will take over coming and just fire everybody and then just somehow make money at the end of it all. So they go up this inlet and he's docked there. He and his men are partying. I guess they don't leave enough security or lookouts or whatever. So some of the ships that have been directed by the governor of Virginia, but also the English crown, follow him up the inlet.
00:38:44
Speaker
and they engage with him and even though he was lax at the beginning, he's a real, he and his men are the exact opposite of the situation we had with the Vasa that you talked about last week where it's like all these elementary errors.
00:39:04
Speaker
These guys have been working in dangerous conditions and thriving for years, and they're really good at all the grappling hooks and the hand to hand combat and the boarding and the like. Right. This is their specialty. Yeah, this is what they do. His guys start, you know, firing the guns that they have. In fact, they I don't know what size cannon they shoot, but the first ship that's coming close to them, they hit
00:39:30
Speaker
And they're the ones who are like, oh, we're going to we can jump on board and kill these people. But the people on that ship pull a trick. The captain Maynard, he stays on deck at the stern and he directs most of his men below deck. And he says, wait for them to board. And then while then when they get on board and they're starting to order us around or tell us to do this or that, then you come up and attack and it works. Oh.
00:39:59
Speaker
Black Bears guys do not realize when they get on that there's a bunch of people hiding below. They pop up from under and it's people have both guns, but also cutlet, like a cutlass, I guess is a big sword. And so they're fighting with those also.
00:40:15
Speaker
It is like a movie. It is like a movie, especially because I think Blackbeard and Maynard, basically the two captains wind
Discovery of Queen Anne's Revenge
00:40:24
Speaker
up in a cutlass. You know, they both got their cutlass and are whacking at each other. Yeah. And Blackbeard apparently is good with the cutlass. And on one strike, the other guy Maynard's cutlass breaks at the hilt.
00:40:24
Speaker
And
00:40:38
Speaker
And so everybody's like, oh, and you know, the the accounts from people who are there say Blackbeard kind of had him or he wanted him. But two of Maynard's guys set upon Blackbeard with their cutlasses and stab him to death and hack him to pieces. Then just as a little calling card and to help spread the word, they cut off Blackbeard's head and they hang it from the prow of their boat. What? Yeah.
00:41:06
Speaker
You've got to be kidding me. I'm not kidding. This is a famous head. This is the fuses. This is the ribbons. So they want to broadcast to the world. This guy's done. We're the ones who did it. And so they sail their ship for however many days with Blackbeard's head hanging from the ground. Unbelievable. Now, you may say, well, you can say, like, Kit, you're telling a lot of gory details. You're just kind of cramming me with information. What about a shipwreck? Where's a shipwreck? How far into this episode are we?
00:41:35
Speaker
Feels like three hours. I don't know what it actually is. We're not called, you know, killer biographies, like with, uh, Blackbeard. And this is shipwrecks. Like, I don't want to lose the precious few listeners we have. Oh my God. Is today Thursday? I thought it was Wednesday. We do killer biographies. We do killer biographies on Wednesday. My point is we need a ship and with the Queen Anne has already been, has already been grounded.
00:42:01
Speaker
Yeah, we sure do. Well, here's the good news. The Queen Anne was grounded and disappeared for what is that? Almost 300 years in 1996. No. 30 feet below water. A company called Intersale or Intersal.
00:42:20
Speaker
Hold on before we get into any legal potential legal, what are you a shareholder of this new company? Is this predate your investment day? I think the most accurate way to put it is that I'm not currently invested in this company or any of its subsidiaries.
00:42:34
Speaker
OK, 1996, they track it down. They find the Queen Anne's Revenge and they can't believe it because Queen Anne's Revenge is sort of up there with the Vasa. It's from the golden era of pirates. And like I said, if you've watched the if you're one of those people who watched all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, then you know the Queen Anne's Revenge. If you're a fan of the band Flogging Molly, kind of an Irish sound, they have a song called Queen Anne's Revenge.
00:43:01
Speaker
So in 1996, people from this private company find it and it's a big deal because it's Blackbeard's boat. It's the boat that he was most famous for, for running. And like I said, it's the opposite of last week's boat in that when they confirm that this is what it is and they start picking up the pieces, you know, they find 30 cannon and they've already brought up 24 of those by now.
00:43:26
Speaker
They're like all different sizes. Some are from Sweden, some are from England. I think me, I don't know, maybe some are from France, but it's like, it is exactly what you would expect from a pirate ship, which is, it's like a pawn shop. It's like, dude, we get it where we can get it. You know, they also find some of the medicines that had been in that medicine chest. And you're going to be very excited about the crown jewel of the medicine cabinet.
00:43:53
Speaker
is the urethral syringe. Any guesses on the urethral syringe? I was not pre-med. I did think about pre-med, but I do know what that type of device probably means, and I cannot believe that was included in a chest that pirates acquired. Okay. So they... And now you can see why they're so desperate to get in there, because the urethral syringe was for the treatment of venereal disease. Of course, all those islands and what's going on?
00:44:23
Speaker
Yeah, his island down there, the Blackbirds, like.
00:44:26
Speaker
The place he liked to hang out was called New Providence. Basically it's like Nassau and it does, it sounds like it was a rough, it was a rough area, colorful, you know, and whatever sin or vice you can think of. But this was preserved after 300 years? The urethral syringe. Yeah. So, um, you would inject the mercury into the urethra. That sounds risky. Yeah. And dude, and on a rocking ship, can you imagine?
00:44:54
Speaker
I mean, those ships, even those that did well in the lurch test were bound to be very rocky. This boat would have killed it in the lurch test. If he had not run at a ground and it had just gone to some more peaceful, it would have gone on for a long time and been a useful ship for a long time.
00:45:12
Speaker
Okay. What else do they find? It's found about a mile offshore. It's not in international waters. The state of North Carolina does have some, some strong claims to it. And so they say to the private company, let's do an agreement where you guys will get all the rights to stuff like video, both underwater of the rec as it exists, and then all the video showing the artifacts coming up.
00:45:35
Speaker
I'm going to guess thousands of artifacts, but they say, we don't want you, your private company to take the coins or like the gold dust or this or whatever. We want it all to live in one place, but you're going to get the rights to certain things. The permanent collection is going to live here in North Carolina.
00:45:52
Speaker
Let's see, what are some of the things they find? Well, you know, they find a lot of cannons and the cannons have markings on them where you can see exactly when they were built. And some of them were already old cannons, even before the ship was like some of the cannons had been built in 1640. It's like 80 years earlier.
00:46:09
Speaker
They also find pipes, they find pipe tampers to tamp down the tobacco.
Preservation Challenges
00:46:15
Speaker
They find the cannons, they find the cannonballs, they find navigational equipment, like the little brass, you know, dials and stuff like that. I mean, it's all encrusted, but then when they clean it all off, they, you know, nice shiny equipment. Some disappointment to me, no coins really so far. And they found plates, you know, and pewter.
00:46:35
Speaker
Oh, cool. I love when they find the plates, but it's not defined. It's not defined ceramic stuff. This is this is like pewter. This is like, this is a working army versus like, yeah, here's your China. Yeah, think of like the summer camp, you know, and you got your canteen. It's more down one unit.
00:46:53
Speaker
some gold dust, but remember what happened when it went down. It was a premeditated thing. We're getting rid of these ships and we're taking most of what we can that's valuable. Okay. Of course. But the cannons, they believe that there were 40 cannons on that ship so far. They've found 30 of them and they've been able to bring up 24 of them. The photos are impressive. The website to go to is QAR, standing for Queen Anne's Revenge.
00:47:24
Speaker
qaronline.org and then you navigate to the gallery of the artifacts. Incredible, including the urethral syringe. Wow. How did I not know that they discovered Blackbeard's ship?
00:47:37
Speaker
I think there's a part of me that wondered if Blackbird was even real. Oh, he was real. He was real. He was definitely real. And he had that name Edward Teach or what's his name? You know, back then spelling was not standardized, so it was common that a name would get spelled in different ways in different places. So the different ways it's spelled is either Edward Teach, Edward Theach, or Edward Fatch. So those are the three spellings that are given for him, but soon he was just Blackbeard, which was simpler and easier to spell.
00:48:06
Speaker
And easier to remember people who are interested can go to the website and see like, can you actually go and visit and see these artifacts? But you can definitely see them online. Did they bring the ship up? Like was the ship in a condition that they could raise? Like does the ship exist or was it just the artifacts from the ship? I should really know that, but I don't think cause you had a week and I know you're traveling, but you'd think since it's your ship, we would know the state of the ship. Right.
00:48:30
Speaker
This, this episode comes with homework. If I were to get, if we do a grade, I'm a B minus something like that is fine with me. I will say this about the fascinating ship. I just was curious of like, well, did I have the ship or is it full underwater? Yeah. And I was tugged in a few different directions because I got more fascinated by Blackbeard, especially when he was running out of time and then his head is hanging off.
00:48:53
Speaker
You know, he had me at the slow fuses burning in his hair and under his hat. I'm coming into that cinematic again, put that in a movie and people are like, yeah, right. But the world of shipwreck recovery was rocked in 1996 when it was confirmed that this is the Queen Anne's Revenge. That was a big deal just because it was Blackbeard and it was his most famous ship.
00:49:16
Speaker
And, um, but one of the challenges was most of the ship, like the actual structure of the ship was under about four feet of sand. So that, you know, if you do watch the videos, there's a lot of the kind of like, it looks like a shop vac, you know, like the, the sucking the sand off the, and then, you know, especially in contrast with last week where your Swedes did such a beautiful job bringing the entire Vasa up. Yeah. They took years.
00:49:46
Speaker
Yeah, they sounded super well organized. Nobody was going to their Supreme Court to fight among each other. Whereas this feels a little bit more like, I mean, just when you see them lifting a single cannon onto the boat, it's like, maybe we should have gotten a bigger boat. Like the boat that they're putting the cannon on is sort of violently rocking, just trying to like, put this cannon on the back.
00:50:08
Speaker
This is Blackbeard. Let's put some effort into it.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:50:11
Speaker
Yeah. And I think the company is a little bit like the dog that catches the car. Like the company that found it, you know, when I see their boat that they're doing some of this work, let's just say it's not like a Vescovo level financial backing. And like I said, a single cannon they put on the boat, it's like, oh God, I think these guys might wreck, you know?
00:50:31
Speaker
Like this shouldn't be, it shouldn't be like a 50 50 chance every time we pick up one of these 30 cannons. Like today's shipwreck is a ship that went out to get the ship and upon getting one cannon.
00:50:46
Speaker
than that ship. We're definitely eventually, if we do enough seasons of this, we're eventually going to do. We'll get to that point where it's like, when did this show jump the shark? I think it was when they talked about the boats that capsized recovering elements of the ship that they were finding. That would be bad.
00:51:02
Speaker
So the reason I mentioned that, that it's a more of a smaller operation is that I just am not sure that they've had the resources yet to extract the entire hundred foot frigate from under the four feet of sand. Like it, it sounds like, dude, they don't even have all the cannons. You think that some crazy obsessive billionaire would say like, Oh, I want to get Blackbeard ship in my house. You know, I'm going to pay the whole thing. Yeah. Just, uh, I'll pay a hundred million dollars. Just go get whatever it takes. Yeah.
00:51:32
Speaker
Um, and I think they're going to have to do that thing with it. Maybe, uh, I don't know where, you know, you inject some sort of like chemical that will, will stiffen it up. That'll make it harder so that it doesn't all just like fall apart when it comes up. When we're done, look up some images of black bear, the drawings of him at that time.
00:51:50
Speaker
They said, you know, by the end, when before, you know, the head hanging from the prow, before that his reputation was preceding him. And so sometimes by the time they pulled up to a boat, people were like, no problem. Like they just lay down all their weapons. And he would say to them, who wants to join me? Who wants to be left on this nearby island?
00:52:11
Speaker
I thought he was like a sadist and a serial killer. It seems more like he's just greedy. All right. Well, incredible. I mean, what a great story. I mean, again, very biography heavy and great. Yeah, pretty, but yeah, I probably set the record this week for, um, how long it took me to get to the shipwreck.
00:52:30
Speaker
But the Queen Anne's Revenge, I mean, and so cool that it exists and that we can see photographs of all of these articles. Look at the drawings of him and look up q a r online dot org and navigate to the artifacts. It will blow your mind.
00:52:47
Speaker
Cannot wait. And Dr. Troyer, we do need to say to rate, to share, to review, what are all the things that Lizzie tells us in terms of promoting the show? Because we do have sponsors. We have an obligation to grow our audience. How do we do that? Let me see. She sent me a message here. We are to ask our listeners to rate, review, and subscribe.
00:53:10
Speaker
So, you know, you hit the little, it's like the little stars, like they're not filled in and then you just like tap on them and then they fill in, tap those in five of those short review, something to the effect of, you know, my life was changed. I found, you know, faith in God again, after listening to this, just something simple, you know, just honest, positive reviews. Why not? It takes a second. So let's get to our outro music. Fantastic story of the Queen Anne's revenge. And we will see everybody next week. Sounds good.