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Pirates of the World with Dr. Jamie Goodall - Ep 58
407 Plays5 years ago
In this episode, we are chatting with Dr. Jamie Goodall. Dr. Goodall is currently a staff historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History and has just released a book about pirates. Her new book is titled, Pirates of the Chesapeake: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars. We grapeshot her with questions about pirates and she enlightens us. So sharpen your sabers and load the muskets, and be prepared for this interview to be pirated across the internet.
Literature Recommendations
- Why We Love Pirates: The Hunt for Captain Kidd and How He Changed Piracy Forever by Rebecca Simon
- Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570–1740 by Mark G. Hanna
- National Geographic Pirates & Shipwrecks by Jamie L. Goodall
Guest Contact
- Instagram and Twitter: @l_historienne
- Website: jamiegoodall.com
Contact
- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to episode 58 of a life and ruins podcast. Re-investigate the careers of those living a life in ruins. I'm your host Carlton Gover and I'm joined by my co-host Connor Johnen and David Howe. In this episode, we are chatting with Dr. Jamie Goodall.
Dr. Goodall's Work and Pandemic Start
00:00:27
Speaker
Dr. Goodall is currently a staff historian at the US Army Center of Military History and has just released a book about pirates. Her new book is titled Pirates of the Chesapeake from the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars.
00:00:38
Speaker
So sharpen your savers and load the muskets and be prepared for this interview to be pirated across the internet. Dr. Goodall, thank you so much for joining us this evening. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty well. I was planning on taking a nap and apologies in advance if you hear my dogs. That's okay. I'm doing really well. Glad to hear it.
00:00:59
Speaker
Where is this the U.S. Army Center of Military
Influences and Education Path
00:01:02
Speaker
History? So there's two offices. Essentially, there is at Fort McNair and then at the Pentagon. And so I am technically outfitted at the Pentagon, although because I started right at the start of the pandemic, I'm still based out of Fort McNair for now. All right. I can't imagine living back in Northern Virginia or the or the D.C. metro area. That must be an absolute nightmare at this point in terms of traffic.
00:01:28
Speaker
So, you know, generally when we have guests on the show, there's always kind of like a driving force kind of behind what they get into. And, you know, usually with our guests, it comes down to where they were either a history nerd or a science nerd growing up, which kind of led them down this path and review either of those.
00:01:43
Speaker
I was most definitely a history nerd. My mom had all these time life books on ancient Egypt and ancient Rome and the Roman Republic. And so I just, that was what I read growing up. I actually did my bachelor's degree in archeology because of my fascination with ancient Rome and ancient Egypt.
00:02:04
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. I think I had those same books. I remember like looking through them all the time. I'd bring them to school and they were like basically damaged and not like readable at that point. But yeah, I read them a lot. And nothing drove you into going into primates to hang out with, with Dr. Jane Goodall and really throw people for a loop.
00:02:23
Speaker
Well, so good is my married name. And so growing up, that wasn't really a thing for me, although to be fair, I actually did have a fascination with primates. And I thought about going into primatology for a little bit till I read a story about this one time a monkey ate this woman's face off. And I was like, maybe I don't want to go into that after all. Yeah. Yeah. That happens. What can you do? Yeah. I don't think books or, uh, primary sources usually do that. So that's kind of nice.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah. So where would you grow up?
Childhood Historical Experiences
00:02:56
Speaker
So my dad was in the Navy and until I was about eight years old, I spent most of my life in Norfolk, Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina. After he got out of the Navy, we moved to Statesville, North Carolina, which is just north of Charlotte. And so that's where I pretty much grew up. It's the middle of nowhere really. Gotcha. At least the coast of those places are gorgeous, but yeah. Yeah.
00:03:20
Speaker
Well, and especially if you're a history person, you know, there's the time depth there is much, much greater than what we have here out West. So at least there's a, there's opportunities for a young history buff to explore and be entertained out there. Oh yeah. We definitely went to like Jamestown and Williamsburg and stuff a lot when I was a kid.
00:03:39
Speaker
Williamsburg for a child is probably the most boring place on the planet. As an adult now, Colonial Williamsburg I think is awesome, but I can just remember being a kid and like trying to beg my parents to stay at Busch Gardens just one more day or just leave us at the roller coaster and they could go hang out in Colonial Williamsburg. I'm surprised that people, they don't have like people pass out and die like from wearing those like really thick costumes all day. And it's like what, 90 degrees and 600% humidity. You know, it's, it's,
00:04:09
Speaker
It'd be a miserable job. I mean, it'd be cool to be there and be around that stuff, but oh my goodness. So you talked about, you know, the Time Life books as an inspiration for archaeology and history. So did that kind of continue into high school and then ultimately into college and propel you into this lifestyle that you live now?
00:04:29
Speaker
Yeah. So I remember my time life books getting me into a little bit of trouble in high school because I had this history teacher and he was the stereotype. He was the football and softball coach and he really didn't like teaching, but he had to.
Career Transition to Museum Studies
00:04:44
Speaker
And I remember him talking about Nefertiti as a God. And I was like, no, Nefertiti was a queen. And he was like, you're wrong. You don't know what you're talking about. So I brought in one of my time life books.
00:04:58
Speaker
And he was so angry with me. It didn't help that I played softball. So he, you know, I had extra laps that day. And so, yeah, it carried me all the way into college.
Thesis and Academic Pursuits
00:05:12
Speaker
Like I said, it did my undergraduate degree in archaeology because I had this like grand notion of
00:05:17
Speaker
Indiana Jones and all that fun stuff. And I really thought that that was going to be my life until we had to do a required dig as part of the degree program. And I herniated three discs in my back the first week. And I was like, archaeology, it was literally backbreaking work. And I was like, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. Yeah. What were you doing? That sounds intense.
00:05:43
Speaker
It's just, I think, cause I had scoliosis when I was growing up and I think it was just the action of being hunched over for extended periods of time. Between that and the Black Widows, I was like, I'm done with this. Yeah, the bugs definitely are not my favorite part of archeology. I will be the first to admit that. And so you got your bachelor's of arts in, like, was it an anthropology bachelor's or was it like an archeology specific bachelor's degree?
00:06:12
Speaker
It was an anthropology degree with a concentration in archaeology. Excellent. You got that at good old Appalachian State University down there in Boone, North Carolina. I did. And thank you so much for pronouncing it correctly. Absolutely. I know how it goes. I know the lingo. So what, like four year degree, you're able to knock it out four or five years. And then did you go directly into a master's at Appalachian State or did you like take some time off in between degrees?
00:06:38
Speaker
So actually, because I took so many AP classes in high school, I actually finished in three years. And so I did go straight into a master's degree at App State. That's impressive. Yeah.
00:06:49
Speaker
That was a master's of arts in public history and museum studies, correct? Yeah. I took a museum class in my undergraduate program and I was like, well, I love archaeology and I love the history and everything. So maybe I could turn that into a museum career where I'll still get to work with all the cool artifacts, but I don't actually have to be the one digging them up.
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great way to swing it, seeing being able to work with objects like after they've been excavated out of the ground and still be able to do valuable research and work on the objects. So what was your thesis based on for that master's program?
00:07:22
Speaker
So I did it because I was thinking about PhD programs, but I did a master's thesis sort of revisiting the history of Iredell County, North Carolina, which was where I grew up because the only history that had been written about it was by this guy. He was sort of like a, he was a history buff. He wasn't a professional historian and he really took a positive view of slavery, if you will. And so I sort of did a revision of that in my master's thesis.
00:07:52
Speaker
Not a good angle, you know, to be angling these days. Yeah. Did you always know that you were going to go into a master's program or did you get to the end of the three years and be like, well, what happens next? Because, you know, I think we have all experienced that or, you know, standing on the edge of a cliff, like where does my life take me now as with an anthropology degree? So, yeah, was was that always in your mind as part of this?
00:08:16
Speaker
No, so I am a first generation college student. I didn't even think I was going to go to college, let alone get a master's degree. And so it was, I was at the end of the three years coming up on graduation and I was like, well, I don't want to be an archeologist. What do I do now?
00:08:31
Speaker
So that's when i was like well i'll just stay in school because i can defer my student loans and it'll be groovy and everything will work out fine and then i was finishing up my master's degree and i was bored out of my mind i did a eight week internship in brownsville texas for my program and.
00:08:51
Speaker
She had given me this list of things to do. And I was supposed to work from nine to five Monday through Friday. And so I finished the list and I was like, all right, cool. Well, I'll see you tomorrow and I'll, you know, look for your list tomorrow. She's like, what are you talking about? And I was like, I finished the list that you gave me to do. She was like, that was the list for your internship.
00:09:12
Speaker
And I was like, well, she had never had an intern before and she didn't know like what to do with an intern. And so she had created this whole list of things that she thought would take me eight weeks to do. And it took me eight hours to do.
00:09:29
Speaker
So then I was like, well, what do I do now? And I was like, well, I'll go for a PhD. Cause I really enjoyed the teaching aspect of my master's
Pirate Research and Dissertation
00:09:38
Speaker
program. I was a teaching assistant. And so that's what led me to the PhD, but definitely did not think that I was going to go that far in school. Wow. And where did, where did your work with, with pirates start to begin during this time? Was that well into your PhD program or did you start having this like burgeoning passion for
00:10:00
Speaker
Pirate passion. Pirate passion. Yeah, I guess. I don't know if that's... Yeah. Where'd your pirate passion come from during your education? Because your dad was in the Navy, right? So you already kind of have like a background of your dad being a sailor. You're living on the coast, starting in Norfolk, Virginia, the old... Were you in the 757 area code or is that... I was. 757. All right. And then, yeah, you're moving down to North Carolina. So when does this, like I said, the pirate... As David said, this pirate passion start taking root.
00:10:29
Speaker
When does it set sail? Yeah, it's interesting because I had never really thought about pirates before. It wasn't something that I grew up with or had thought about. But in my master's program, I had to take a European imperialism class. And as part of that class, we had to write a final paper on some aspect of imperialism.
00:10:49
Speaker
And I had come across a quote which had compared Sir Francis Drake to Sir Henry Morgan and essentially called Morgan England's second Drake. And I thought that was kind of like a bullshit comparison. So I was like, Morgan is his own man. And there might be some similarities, but he's, you know, he's hardly the second Drake. So I wanted to explore more of that. And so I wrote that paper and that was the paper that I used as my writing sample for PhD programs.
00:11:18
Speaker
And I started getting all sorts of rejection letters and I was like, oh no, what am I going to do? And so I did the one thing that I tell people to never do. And that was at the time I was dating a guy from Ohio. So I was like, I'll just put in applications at Ohio State and Ohio University.
00:11:37
Speaker
Well, the only schools I got into were Ohio State, Ohio University, and Auburn. Auburn wasn't going to offer me funding. Ohio University wanted me to do women's studies. And at Ohio State, the woman who was going to become my advisor was like, hey, I saw your paper on this pirate stuff. Do you think you want to turn that into a doctoral dissertation? And I was like, yes. So that's how I ended up at Ohio State. That boyfriend, long gone, but the degree lasts forever.
00:12:07
Speaker
I mean, I guess, unfortunately, you're fortunate. That's kind of how it goes in life. So yeah, I mean, right there. Yeah. I guess one could say you Jack Sparrowed your way into, you know, a PhD. So that's good. Before you mentioned Morgan, is that the Morgan of the pirate code set down by Morgan and Bartholomew? Yes. Okay. I know that. That's a real thing.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah. I think it was at a Disney embellishment that they made. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Okay. I saw the guy who was like, okay, we sat down by Morgan and Bartholomew. Anyway, who's Bartolomew? I want to say it's probably Bartholomew Roberts. Oh, okay.
00:12:49
Speaker
but I'm not a hundred percent. Okay. Distraction. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, total distraction. My bad. Uh, I'll do that. So, uh, you got your PhD there. What was the dissertation project like on pirates?
00:13:03
Speaker
So at the time that I was writing my dissertation, Mark Hanna's book hadn't come out yet. Kevin McDonald's book hadn't come out yet. And so I thought I was onto something new, which apparently I was not. I essentially took the stance that pirates were sort of beneficial to the economy. And I looked at what I call economies of opportunity and how pirates sort of
00:13:28
Speaker
influence tastemaking throughout the colonies, particularly among the Caribbean islands. And what do you mean by tastemaking?
00:13:37
Speaker
So by taking goods that may or may not have been bound for a particular location, they helped to influence the consumer choices of those islands. Gotcha. And also by virtue of the money that they brought into these islands, they enabled people who maybe wouldn't have been able to participate in luxurious consumption to do so.
00:13:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a super interesting idea because I think we all we think about as pirates is just like taking stuff and murder and a bunch of awful things, but they are really this like complex entity that served in a bunch of roles and really, really did a lot more than, than they're, they're getting credit. And that's, was your research based on kind of primary sources and, uh, historical accounts and things like that to ultimately
00:14:26
Speaker
figure out the influence of pirates on local communities. Yeah, I actually tried to use my archaeological background a little bit. Texas A&M's nautical archaeology program had done a underwater dig at Port Royal, the part that had sunk into the ocean after the 1692 earthquake. And so I used a lot of archaeological evidence and material culture, particularly in my taverns chapter, to sort of talk about how pirates contributed to the economy and
00:14:54
Speaker
how we can sort of tell what sorts of people they interacted with based on the structures, the physical structures of the taverns themselves and the types of goods that were in those taverns. But I also relied a lot on Admiralty records and official government correspondences. So the colonial office records and the calendar of state papers, those were really important to my research as well.
00:15:21
Speaker
Excellent. That sounds like that, that stint in archeology kind of paid off towards the end.
Global Piracy and Cultural Impacts
00:15:26
Speaker
And with that, we'll be right back with segment two of episode 58 of life ruins podcast. So enjoy these words from our sponsors. Welcome back to segment two of episode 58 of a life hurts podcast. We're going to talk about the early history of piracy here with a Dr. Goodall. So not the, not the champ one, the pirate one.
00:15:46
Speaker
My question is, the first book I read on pirates that wasn't, you know, Treasure Island, it was also by Daniel Dafoe though, and it was like Pirates with a Y, not an I, is that, I know that's like an early telling of pirates and that was from like an author's perspective and I assume there's like British and French and Spanish like depictions of pirates and stuff too. So I guess all that rambling, I'm asking like, what is the earliest like, you know, conception of pirates and is that book pretty good or?
00:16:14
Speaker
So the earliest conceptions of pirates, I mean, you have to figure that from the time people started to sail the open waters, then you had pirates. Right. So some of the earliest pirates we have record of, we have ancient Egyptian inscriptions.
00:16:29
Speaker
which relate some tales of piracy. There are some ancient Roman transcripts that we have, but a lot of that's happening in the Mediterranean and it's very coastally limited just because people weren't sailing, you know, across the Atlantic ocean just yet. As far as a general history of the Pirates book by Captain Charles Johnson, which some, there's been a lot of debate. Was it Defoe? Was it not Defoe? Okay.
00:16:57
Speaker
I'm sort of of the camp that it probably wasn't just because the writing styles are so different. That book is actually, it's really interesting because we have enough evidence to corroborate some of the stuff that's in that book. So there is elements of truth to the book, but we also know that he made up a lot of stuff and he really sort of like exaggerated a lot of stuff because he wanted to sell books.
00:17:20
Speaker
And so it's a great place to start, but it's definitely one of those that you have to sort of take with a grain of salt. And like some of the pirates are real and Bonnie, Mary Reed, Jack Rackham, like they're real pirates. But then there are other individuals in those books that we don't have evidence for. So it's not to say that they weren't real, but we just don't have their name in the records.
00:17:41
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. And I guess to go back to that point, I guess I had heard about, you know, like Carthagin pirates and like, I'm assuming there was like some off the coast of India. I'm overhearing somewhere, but I know like China and Japan and Korea had like a large pirate culture as well. I don't know if that was like in ancient or, you know, was definitely in the age of exploration time. But anyway, there you go.
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah. So I just actually published a book, a zine with national geographic on pirates and it's a global look at piracy. And so I do have segments on Korean and Japanese and Chinese pirates. And we can follow that back all the way to like the ninth century through the 12th century in terms of Japan, especially, uh, a lot of those pirates went well into the 19th century. So it was very interesting to see just the.
00:18:32
Speaker
temporal scope of piracy in that region. And it operated very similarly to piracy in the Atlantic, but it was also very interesting because you had groups like the Colored Flags. So you had the Black Flag Fleet, the Red Flag Fleet, Green Flag Fleet, and they were all under the leadership of Qing Xi, who was a sex worker turned pirate who took over for her husband after he was killed. And she
00:19:00
Speaker
basically had leadership over 70,000 some odd men. So pretty impressive actually compared to what's going on in the Atlantic. Yeah. I have a book called Ben Thompson's badass and it like each chapter is like a different person in history and she has one. And I remember reading that and being like, this lady is awesome. Oh, I love her.
00:19:22
Speaker
Yeah, like fleets of people that she was in control of. And so, yeah, I think she was in Pirates of the Caribbean, her like a figure, amalgamation of different people was her, I think in the third one. Yeah. Yes, that was her. And I love her because she retires.
00:19:38
Speaker
And she gets like, so the government's like, we really need you to stop. You're a problem. And she's like, all right, cool. Give me a title and some land. And they're like, okay, that's fine. Wow. Fair trade. What happens to all the pirates under her command? Do they just kind of dissipate into the seas or?
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of them, they also retire. They give up their life of piracy and some of them go off and become pirates on their own, but a lot of them just give up and they surrender.
00:20:15
Speaker
I've never heard of a pirate retiring, so that's fantastic. There's probably a bunch of folks who are like, yeah, I can do that too. I'll get really good at it, and then I won't get murdered in a ship being attacked by a Spanish galleon or something like that. The lifespans of pirates in general wasn't very long, right? They didn't live very long as part of this kind of career that they chose.
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah. So what's interesting about the majority of pirates is that they might do one or two ventures and then just quit because it was such a dangerous and difficult lifestyle. And if you were a pirate more often than not, like your life would be cut short, especially if you went up against the Royal Navy, but it was very dangerous. And so that's why a lot of pirates, they did just one or two ventures because they didn't want to risk their life for too long.
00:21:11
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like the bigger countries didn't really have, they weren't very lenient. There was kind of one sentence if you found out you were a pirate or something like that. You know, there's not a lot of leeway that was given to folks like that. Right.
00:21:26
Speaker
That's interesting. Are genders represented the same on pirate ships? Are women and men equally represented as pirates? Because I always feel like it's depicted as a male dominated thing, but I am not sure if that's an actual fact or there's more women that were actually pirates in the past.
00:21:47
Speaker
Yeah, it was definitely a male-dominated situation. Part of the issue that we run into is that with women who did serve onboard pirate ships, they would disguise themselves as men because women were viewed as bad luck on ships and it would anger the sea gods if you were to have a woman on board and you would risk foul weather and running your ground.
00:22:11
Speaker
So if they did serve, they did so as men, which is how Mary Reed gets her start is she is disguised as a man. And it's only when and Bonnie encounters her that her true identity becomes known. And it's because and Bonnie and Jack Rackham were an item. And Jack Rackham was very jealous of the time that and Bonnie was spending with Mary Reed. And he assumed they were having an affair. And she's like, No,
00:22:41
Speaker
Idiot. She's a woman. I'm a woman. That's how I know. So we do know that women participated. It's just finding them in the records is almost impossible, with the exceptions of Anne Bonny, Mary Reed and Ching Chi, especially.
Pirates vs Privateers
00:22:58
Speaker
Interesting. And in terms of like how different governments
00:23:03
Speaker
handle piracy issues, right? Like, of course, a lot of our audiences probably be a little bit more familiar with Atlantic pirate ventures and how especially like the Royal Navy dealt with pirates. But when you were talking earlier about how, you know, one pirate captain was basically just bought off with land and a title. Do we see like around the globe, different strategies in dealing with piracy?
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah, I think really what we're seeing is different strategies at different periods of time because, you know, with the Elizabethan era, of course, the crown was sort of openly supporting piracy and they were known more as privateers, even though they were just pirates with the letter of Mark.
00:23:52
Speaker
And so how governments dealt with pirates shifted over time as pirates became more of a nuisance and less of a helpful segment of society. And I think that happens sort of globally too, just in terms of when they've outlived their usefulness, then it's time to stamp the pirates out. Gotcha. I guess we should have done this earlier, but in your opinion and what you write, what is the definition of a pirate? I guess so we can put this into context with the rest.
00:24:22
Speaker
So my definition of pirates is a little complicated because I think of pirates as more than just seaborne villains, but I consider them commerce raiders. And so that can happen primarily on the open waters, but also happens on land because we saw with Henry Morgan, for example, and the sacking of Panama or Maricaybo or any of those areas, the pirates were more than willing to pillage and plunder on land as well.
00:24:52
Speaker
So basically, for me, any commerce raider who primarily operates on the ocean is a pirate. And that's interesting, right? Because one of my favorite figures of history is John Paul Jones. Not sure how that started, but I really like John Paul Jones. And for us, the United States, right, he's considered an American patriot. But largely back in Great Britain, he's considered a pirate. So kind of like, where does that
00:25:19
Speaker
line, as you say, they're commerce raiders, right? Do we see this use of pirate? Is it rather fluid depending on who's talking about sailors and ships? Or is it more of just an overarching term to describe anyone who's just bothering a country's fleet?
00:25:39
Speaker
Oh, it's absolutely like for me, it's a spectrum because it is so fluid because there's really only two things that separate a pirate and a privateer and that is perspective and a letter of mark. Sometimes those letters of mark are coming from governors who don't have the authority from the crown to give those letters of mark.
00:25:58
Speaker
And so it gets even more complicated when you look into it. And, you know, of course, for England, if they've issued a letter of mark and their commerce rating is part of war, they view that as a patriotic duty, whereas the Spanish are looking at it and they're like, you bastards are pirates. Like, what do you mean you're a patriot?
00:26:20
Speaker
That's not how this works. And so the line between pirate and privateer is really fine and very easily cross. Okay. Interesting. Cause like a lot, I know Edward teach the infamous Blackbeard career as a pirate. And then he got, was his letter of Mark, was it the governor of South Carolina or North Carolina that kind of employed him as a privateer later in his, in his career?
00:26:43
Speaker
I think it was the governor of North Carolina who was well known for colluding with pirates. Blackbeard actually terrorized the governor of South Carolina and kidnapped a bunch of gentlemen from Charleston and basically told the governor, either you send us medicine so I can tend to my sick crew or I'm going to kill them. And the governor's like, yeah, here, take it. Here's your medicine. And Blackbeard's like, all right, cool.
00:27:11
Speaker
He actually lets the men go, but not before he strips them naked. And then he sends them back to shore so that you've got all these like rich gentlemen from Charleston rowing to shore naked. And is it like another part of that story that he, like his crew that went to town to get the medicine were delayed because they went to the bar afterwards and kind of got drunk and came in. That is the rumor. Yes. Okay. Yes. That's the, that's the story. I never heard that one.
Pirate Activities in Various Regions
00:27:40
Speaker
All right. Well, good stuff. Man, this is such a fascinating broad topic because I don't even consider, I really didn't even think about pirates outside of the Atlantic or really even outside the Caribbean. And you've, when you, when you got up to the mid Atlantic, right? Working for, you know, essentially the army.
00:27:56
Speaker
your shift kind of went from the Caribbean to looking more at like mid-Atlantic, specifically, you know, Chesapeake Bay pirates. And how different is our, if at all, the pirating ventures and like the Chesapeake Bay as opposed to the Caribbean?
00:28:11
Speaker
They're really not that different. Largely they operate in the same way. They're attacking ships for whatever it is that they can get off of them. So what's happening in the Chesapeake is that if they're attacking outbound ships, they're primarily getting tobacco, which could be very difficult to move. It's very heavy and bulky and
00:28:35
Speaker
they would have to find a good outlet for it. So more often than not, they're attacking ships coming in from the Caribbean, which has a lot of those more luxurious items like textiles and porcelains and stuff like that. But the Caribbean pirates are doing the same thing. They're attacking the inbound and outbound ships, trying to get whatever commodities they can.
00:28:57
Speaker
and finding a place to fence them. Chesapeake Bay pirates make a lot of use of rivers and inlets and islets and tributaries just because it was an easy way for them to escape official vessels who were coming after them because they tended to have much smaller ships, sometimes even smaller than the Caribbean pirates would use. And so it was just an easy way to escape.
00:29:21
Speaker
Did they ultimately have a place in the Chesapeake that they would like home base at or go back to, to, to sell these, these goods? I'm thinking like the Caribbean, you see, you hear about like Port Royal and these kinds of big cities that were, might not officially been, but they harbored pirates and bought goods from them. Was there a place in the Chesapeake that kind of operated like that?
00:29:43
Speaker
There wasn't one like, there wasn't a Tortuga or a Nassau, but areas like St. Mary's and Acomac and St. Matthew's, they were all really well known places for pirates to go and fence their loot. But really anywhere they could find in the Chesapeake to sell their goods, they were going to do it.
00:30:02
Speaker
I grew up on Long Island and my middle school like team was the Buccaneers but I didn't know until reading like about pirates that like Captain Kidd had like buried treasure like way up in Long Island and like Connecticut and things like that and I guess I should have known growing up on an island there was probably piracy but yeah I just didn't know it extended that far north like up into Canada and stuff too because you only think about it as you know Caribbean I guess because of the movies and Treasure Island and stuff but
00:30:30
Speaker
Yeah, I'm actually working on a book right now that focuses on New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, specifically New York, but engaging sort of with the Mid-Atlantic as a whole. New York was definitely a hotspot for piracy.
00:30:45
Speaker
That's really cool. I assume like towards the city more, right? Or would it just be like up and down the. Yeah. New York city, the Harbor there was, was well-known for outfitting pirate ventures to the Indian ocean and to Madagascar. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. We'll get back to that. Cause I'm, my interest is really pink. This has been, this has been extremely fun. So we'll be right back with segment three of episode 58 with Dr. Goodall.
00:31:11
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 58 of a life in ruins podcast, where we are investigating pirates currently with Dr. Jamie Goodall. And you had ended the last segment talking and mentioned Madagascar as a place that piracy occurred. Could you kind of explain its importance in piracy in general?
00:31:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So Adam Baldrige was a gentleman who dabbled in piracy and he actually set up St. Mary's Island, I think it is, off the coast of Madagascar and basically used Madagascar as a base of operations with which to launch raids coming from
00:31:48
Speaker
primarily New York, but other parts of the Eastern seaboard. And it was really a place where pirates could come and refit their ships. They could fence their goods. And it was a really great launching point for Indian ocean raids, because at this point in the late 1690s, early 1700s, the Mughal emperor is moving a lot of gold and jewels and treasure essentially.
00:32:11
Speaker
And so this was sort of becoming a hotspot for them. And so Madagascar was, I think as you mentioned, sort of the wild, wild West of the Indian ocean.
Dark Side of Piracy
00:32:22
Speaker
And it was a really great place for pirates to just chill out. And they would go all the way to New York from Madagascar. They would. Yes, they would. Wow. Long trip. I assume the ships were like fast enough at that point, but still.
00:32:37
Speaker
Now we've mentioned New York and New England a couple of times and the whaling industry, especially like the 19th and 18th century was absolutely lucrative. Now, did pirates interfere with that industry at all? We don't have a lot of evidence for whether or not they did.
00:32:54
Speaker
would venture to guess that they may have participated in it as a means of income because they were involved in all types of industries so they were not just stealing like timber and linens and stuff but they were very involved in the transatlantic trade of enslaved peoples so they were willing to get into sort of any industry that would make them money.
00:33:14
Speaker
I was going to ask about that actually because I had heard, maybe it's a colleague of yours, I couldn't remember his name, but it was a podcast he was on talking about how there's all this romanticism of pirates and things like that, but part of how they got their start and money was human trafficking.
00:33:32
Speaker
things like that. Can you speak to that at all? Or like, is that like a huge factor or is that kind of just a small thing? I don't know. Yeah. So it's sort of a historiographical shift that's occurred in the last, I would say five to 10 years, because the early king of pirates was Marcus Rediker and his book, Villains, Fall Nations, and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Rediker takes a very
00:33:57
Speaker
on a sort of pseudo Marxist approach to piracy and views them as these egalitarian floating democracies. And this is where we get, I think, some of that romanticization from this idea that they were all, you know, they voted on everything and
00:34:12
Speaker
they shared everything. And so it was really this attempt to stick it to the man in a way that they couldn't do on a royal naval ship or a merchant vessel. But over the last five to 10 years, I think more scholars have paid attention to the more nefarious aspects like participation in the transatlantic trade of enslaved peoples.
00:34:36
Speaker
particularly the more gruesome aspects of that. And so I know Kevin McDonald in his book, which has an Indo-Atlantic focus, he talks a lot about pirates and the trade and looking at pirates as slavers.
00:34:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's just a historiographical shift that we're seeing and pirates were definitely very active in that trade. Okay. Yeah. I think it was Ewan was the, the author or the professor who wrote that it was about Blackbeard and so I can't remember his name, but yeah, I had never heard that. And even watching like history channel docs as a kid, I didn't like, they don't kind of tell you that. And I was obviously a little bummed to hear that's like what pirates did, but it makes sense. Like that was a huge economy at the time, unfortunately, but yeah.
00:35:21
Speaker
And so, Clay, on the opposite side, as we're talking about some of the more nefarious things that pirates are involved in, in terms of Atlantic pirates, are there any famous pirate hunters that were employed by someone's crown, some country's crown, to go and kind of stamp out piracy?
00:35:40
Speaker
Yeah, probably the most well-known pirate hunter was Woods Rogers. He was sort of the guy to avoid if you were a pirate. He was well known for collecting his bounties and putting many pirates into the hangman's noose. Alexander Spotswood of Virginia was a governor that really also, he attempted to stamp out piracy on his end. And so he would employ pirate hunters as well.
00:36:08
Speaker
Interesting. And like, even on both sides of this, when we talk about Pirates of Pirate Hunters, we're talking about, you know, these are primarily captains, right? And how large of crews that are under these guys is these individuals not necessarily employed, but command usually. They could command anywhere from like 25 to 50 men up to 100. And some odd men, it really just depended on the size of their ship and who was available at the time. And so it all just depended from place to place.
00:36:38
Speaker
It can depend on ship to ship. If you upgrade yourself, then you can start taking on more people and things like that. I don't think they had Jack Sparrow and had their one black girl or whatever like that. I think it was way more complex than that. Yeah. Right. Primarily, are pirates using sloops and other small vessels as their pirating ships?
00:37:04
Speaker
Yeah. Some of the most popular are sloops, clippers, and schooners. Just because they're small, more maneuverable, they're faster. You could man them with fewer crew members, still be able to manage the vessel. Gotcha. And if they do have smaller crews, like these merchant vessels that are part of the transatlantic trade, do they fight off pirates? Or more often than not, if they were boarded, they would just kind of give up. Like how did pirates treat captured vessels in their crews?
00:37:33
Speaker
So one of the sort of misnomers is that pirates were so bloodthirsty that they would kill everyone they came across. But the reality is that if you wanted to attack a vessel and have the crew willingly surrender to you, you had to have a reputation for mercy because otherwise the crew is just going to fight back because they're going to realize no matter what, death is the answer.
00:37:57
Speaker
And so more pirate crews offered some sort of clemency. And this would enable them, of course, to get more of the goods out of the ships. They still would torture individuals. So they're not like still, you know, they're still not the nice guys here, but they were well known for keel hauling, which was a really terrible.
00:38:20
Speaker
way to torture somebody and ultimately kill them. But that's where you tie them up with a rope and toss them overboard and drag them along the bottom of the ship as the ship is moving. And so you're either going to drown or bleed out. One of the two is pretty awful.
00:38:36
Speaker
And it's not like smooth, smooth holes underneath. It's like barnacle infested, like just knives. There's a really good song by ale storm. If you listen to pirate metal, that explains
Pirates in Popular Culture
00:38:48
Speaker
that very well. I love it.
00:38:52
Speaker
Awesome. Did you happen to play Assassin's Creed Black Flag or do you know what it is at all? Yeah, I've played it a little bit. I don't own a copy of it. So I've only ever played it at friends houses, but it's a lot of fun. Yeah. I remember playing that and it was like the first open world pirate, like grand theft auto type game. And I was in love with it. And like, apparently all history is like pretty good knit too, which is neat. But, uh, anyway, Carlton, you had a question.
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, are there any in particular like pirates that you're fascinated with Dr. Goodall? Like when, when you're, you're a scholarship in, into this topic is, is very starting with Caribbean looking at the mid Atlantic. And as you said earlier,
00:39:34
Speaker
Moving up into some of the more northern states, what's kind of your favorite part of history to learn about in regards to pirates themselves? I mean, I'm a sucker for the Golden Age just because that's where all the action is. That's where all the more well-known pirates are. But I would say probably out of all the things that I've studied, my favorite pirate is Steve Bonnet, just because he was a wealthy merchant from Barbados.
00:40:03
Speaker
And he just had a midlife crisis and decided, I'm going to sell my business, ditch my wife and children. I'm going to buy a boat. I'm going to hire a pirate crew, which is the worst way to get a pirate crew. And I'm going to go pirating. And so, of course, his crew expected him to continue paying them.
00:40:23
Speaker
even if they didn't plunder any ships, because they're like, you already paid us once, you got to keep paying us. He was the worst pirate ever, but he's just, he's my absolute favorite because of how terrible he was. He was known as the gentleman pirate. Yeah. Which is not like a fear inspiring name. Right. Like earn a reputation.
00:40:44
Speaker
What ended up happening to him? So if you're saying he's like a really bad pirate, like, you know, please explain what give us his exploits or lack thereof. Well, at one point Blackbeard takes them under his wing and tries to show him the ropes. But eventually Blackbeard's like, you just are worthless. Like this is not going to work.
00:41:05
Speaker
So Blackbeard ditches him. Ultimately, I don't know what happens to him in the end, but I do know that his crew abandons him. And so he loses the ship and the crew that he had spent all that money on. So didn't work out well for him, unfortunately. Is it pretty common to have captains turn to piracy, merchants turn to piracy or lords turn to piracy? Is there because it seems like
00:41:33
Speaker
there might be like, Oh, I'm not doing so hot. I might need to go get some more money. I'm going to go become a pirate for a little bit. I'm not sure if that, that happens very often.
00:41:42
Speaker
Yeah, more often than not, it's sort of the average sailor that turns to piracy or just the average sort of average man. So they're either on a merchant vessel and they're tired of the brutal beatings and the poor treatment and the lack of food. Same with the Royal Navy ships. They're treated absolutely atrociously. A lot of times their pay is withheld. And so these are the kinds of individuals whose lives might inspire them to turn to piracy as opposed to
00:42:11
Speaker
say a captain of one of those ships who's getting regular pay and is sort of in control. So yeah. Sorry to just keep like throwing random questions at you, but this is really fun for me.
00:42:24
Speaker
Was it a mostly like European, like male dominated field or were there like, you know, people of color from like around the world that kind of did, you know, American pirating? Cause I assume overseas there was a lot, but I think in one book I read there were like some Indian pirate, like overseas Indian pirates. I'm not sure if that's like true or not.
00:42:46
Speaker
Yeah, there are definitely people of color on on board these pirate ships because a lot of times the ships like we see them referenced as like having multinational crews or motley crews, which means they're made up of a bunch of different ethnicities and groups.
00:43:02
Speaker
And so it was not uncommon to have people of color. I mean, there were even black pirates. So there were some pirates who would free enslaved Africans and allow them to serve on their ships. Not as to what level of freedom they had on those ships is sort of debatable. But the fact is that they were essential crew members.
Dual Nature of Pirates
00:43:26
Speaker
And you would hear all sorts of languages being spoken on a lot of these ships.
00:43:31
Speaker
That's honestly kind of incredible. Well, there is like, yeah, I guess starting to wrap this up, there's one thing you'd want people to know more about pirates, you know, like what would that be? So I want them to know more about the sort of dastardly things that they did that because it's important that people know how
00:43:51
Speaker
beneficial they could be economically, but I think we've romanticized them to the point that we forget just how gruesome they could be. And I wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post that garnered some significant negative attention, which I was not expecting because all I said was that pirates were bad people.
00:44:11
Speaker
And apparently I got yelled at for cancel culture and people were saying I was trying to cancel the Buccaneers, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And I was like, I never, I didn't say anything about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers changed in their name. Like, I don't know where you're talking about. So I want people to know how terrible they could be.
00:44:30
Speaker
Excellent. Yeah. Before we end the show, Dr. Goodall, what are a couple of sources, you know, they can be books, articles, videos, or et cetera, that you would recommend for anyone interested in learning more about pirates or to know, you know, the more fuller truth of pirates and their dastardly behavior.
00:44:45
Speaker
So I would say Rebecca Simon just came out with a book called Why We Love Pirates and The Hunt for Captain Kidd, which is a really fantastic book. So very accessible. I would definitely recommend that. If you want something a little more academically detailed, mark Hannah's pirate's nest.
00:45:03
Speaker
is a fantastic book. And then I'm going to shamelessly plug my National Geographic book is seen that came out.
Oyster Wars Explanation
00:45:11
Speaker
I do not get any royalties on it. So that's unfortunate, but it's just really cool to see my magazine in stores and on Amazon. So yeah, I mean, be proud of that. That's really cool.
00:45:24
Speaker
And also this new 2020 book that just dropped Pirates of the Chesapeake from the colonial area to the oyster wars. We will also, we will promote that for her because we are very excited. Yeah. We'll also put up a couple of Dr. Goodall's other guest appearances because a lot of your interviews are absolutely fired.
00:45:43
Speaker
Yeah. And honestly, like the amount of puns that go into a lot of these titles that you're featured on is just fascinating. And I'm trying to come up with something that's more original than just our or, you know, along on long seek. Yeah, this is it's just great. It's so fun having you on here. I have a quick question in the last like minute we have. What is the the oyster war in the quickest way? Is it like the emu war or not at all?
00:46:07
Speaker
So basically the oyster wars lasted from about 1830 to 1959. And you were an oyster pirate either a if you were an out of state waterman. So if you were not a resident of Virginia or Maryland, you were considered an oyster pirate.
00:46:23
Speaker
Or if you used illegal dredging methods as opposed to the legal tonging methods, you were considered an oyster pirate. And so the wars are between the government officials and the oyster watermen of the Chesapeake Bay. Okay. I thought there'd be a lot more keel hauling, but that's, that's equally, it's pretty deadly. There were, there were a number of deaths in the oyster wars. So, okay.
Conclusion and Farewells
00:46:48
Speaker
Well, yeah, it's been great having you. Where can our listeners find you on social media, Dr. Goodall, if at all. So they can find me on Twitter and Instagram. My handle's the same for both. It's at L underscore H I S T O R I E N N E, which is the historian or the feminine French for the historian. And I have a website, JamieGoodall.com.
00:47:13
Speaker
Awesome. Those will be on our show notes. And because this is a life in ruins, we have the all important question. So if you were given a chance, again, Dr. Goodall, would you choose to study the history of piracy again in a ruins archaeological sense as well, as long as you're not doing the actual digging?
00:47:38
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. I wouldn't trade this for the world. Cool. Yeah, exactly. Well, when we just interviewed Dr. Jamie Goodall, you can find her on Twitter and Instagram at L underscore historian. You can find that here on our show notes and here on wherever you're listening to this podcast. And as always, we'll link her Twitter and Instagram on our, to the post that you might be seeing this on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. Um, so you can follow her directly from there.
00:48:07
Speaker
Cool. And then if you guys could please, you know, rate and review the podcast on Apple, Spotify, all the, all the good stuff. You guys usually shoot DMs. Just keep doing that. Be helpful. We also got the merch store in Redbubble. You can get shirts. Are you wearing it? I'm always wearing it. And with that, we're out.
00:48:32
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archaeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. Yeah, I guess it's time for Connor's joke. This one is so bad. So what is regularly given to the sea around 8 a.m. if the digestion is right?
00:49:01
Speaker
What is regularly given to the sea? Around 8 a.m. If the digestion is right. The captain's log. Oh, God, dude. That was bad. All right. Well, I'm glad we ended it on that note. Yeah, thanks for that, Connor. All right.
00:49:32
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster and Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.