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Episode 320 - Great Mischiefs

Episode 320 - Great Mischiefs

Released Tuesday, 3rd October 2023
Good episode? Give it some love!
Episode 320 - Great Mischiefs

Episode 320 - Great Mischiefs

Episode 320 - Great Mischiefs

Episode 320 - Great Mischiefs

Tuesday, 3rd October 2023
Good episode? Give it some love!
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Episode Transcript

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Today's episode is brought to you by our supporters

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on Patreon, including our

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Commodore class. That's

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Commodore's Obvious, Misfit,

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Sean, DJJesus72,

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Lee, David, Torso

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and Pinches, Matt, The

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Snarlin' Sea Dog, Hangman

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Strain, John, Sir

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Rancid Cheese, Shelby,

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Florida Man, Hartman,

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Skipper, The Sextant, Brian,

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Cap'n Crunch, Roger

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the Jolly, Vibran, Artemis

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Doc Lindsey, Pitlock,

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Ward, Workman, Chairboat,

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Gunsway Sally, Cannon

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Monkey, Rum Runner, Madiminita

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Sparrow, Hayfay, Bull,

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Vertigon, Rumgut, The

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Snarlin' Sea Dog, and

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Bootstraps Bailey.

1:58

Hello, welcome to the colony,

4:00

and most of the settlers of Jamestown moved

4:02

inland and had been housed at the

4:04

College of William and Mary. Now

4:07

William and Mary, as I'm sure you remember,

4:09

was a new institution that had been

4:11

paid for mostly with funds captured

4:14

from the pirate captain Edward Davis.

4:18

But William and Mary was on a much more

4:20

pleasant piece of real estate than Jamestown.

4:24

Jamestown was basically in a swamp, complete

4:27

with pestilential swarms of

4:29

malaria-riddled mosquitoes in the summertime.

4:32

It wasn't a nice place to live. So

4:35

when they began to rebuild the capital of Virginia,

4:37

they didn't do so at Jamestown. They

4:40

did so near the College of William and

4:42

Mary, on a piece of ground that

4:44

would go on to become Williamsburg.

4:47

It's kind of like what's happening with Port Royal over

4:50

in Jamaica. Port Royal

4:52

fell into the sea back in 1692,

4:55

and the government and most of the people from

4:57

Port Royal were now living in what

4:59

we would consider today Kingston, but

5:02

they still called it, for now, Port

5:04

Royal. Now John James

5:06

had been a pretty serious problem for Virginia

5:09

for about a week and done a fair bit of damage

5:11

in his short time there. But

5:14

Virginia was about to experience a rash of piracy

5:17

that would make the depredations of John James

5:19

look like child's play. This

5:22

is episode 320, Great Mischiefs. This

5:28

piracy, this epidemic of piracy that's

5:30

about to break out is bad, but

5:33

it may not actually be as bad

5:35

as the sources tell us. We've

5:38

got a lot of sources about it. We

5:40

have virtually everything that Governor

5:42

Francis Nicholson wrote to his colonial

5:45

administrators, his military leaders and

5:47

other governors in the region, as well as the Admiralty

5:50

and the Lords of Trade. He wrote a

5:52

lot of letters, and they were almost all saved

5:55

by the College of William and Mary. But

5:58

he also may have been... Exaggerating

6:01

just a bit to

6:04

make his situation seem worse than it was, because

6:06

what he really wanted were better

6:08

and more defenses. The

6:11

only ship that Virginia had with which

6:13

to defend herself was the Essex Prize,

6:16

a ship that was old, undermanned,

6:19

and only had sixteen guns on board.

6:23

And the captain of Essex Prize,

6:25

John Aldred, was less than

6:27

enthusiastic about, you know, going

6:29

out there and doing his job. Governor

6:32

Nicholson was desperate for better defenses

6:34

from the Royal Authorities, which

6:37

was the case all over the Atlantic world. It

6:39

wasn't just the Chesapeake that was having a tough

6:41

time. Carolina,

6:44

Massachusetts, New York, Jamaica, the Bahamas,

6:46

everyone needed better defenses from

6:48

pirates. The home country

6:51

was having trouble providing all of these

6:53

better defenses, and you can really

6:55

begin to see why if you were a colonial

6:57

administrator, you might decide

7:00

to turn to privateers to

7:02

defend your shores. But

7:04

Nicholson wasn't there quite yet. Most

7:07

of the piracy in Chesapeake Bay immediately

7:09

after John James left was small-scale

7:13

stuff, coastal raiding. You know,

7:15

on one occasion there was a canoe

7:17

that carried maybe a dozen men

7:19

and attacked a ranch on an island

7:22

in the Chesapeake that stole

7:24

five or six cows,

7:26

which was bad news for the ranchers, absolutely.

7:29

They had to watch while the pirates slaughtered

7:31

and salted their animals and then sailed

7:33

away. But it's not like that was shaking

7:36

Virginia to her core. Now

7:39

nobody knows who these cow thieves

7:41

were, and it's possible they weren't really

7:44

pirates, maybe just a group

7:46

of people who needed some beef and knew where

7:48

to get it. There was another

7:50

case where a ship was boarded and

7:53

was ransacked, but they didn't

7:55

take anything valuable, just

7:57

water barrels and food stores. Which,

8:01

again, may not actually have been pirates,

8:04

as we understand them. You know, they were raiding

8:06

at sea, so yes, guilty of piracy,

8:10

but they may just have been people who were living

8:12

on the knife's edge of real poverty, even

8:15

starvation, and needed

8:17

water and food.

8:20

Because this kind of thing was happening a lot.

8:23

It seems like every couple of weeks there was

8:25

another raid, but it was never someone searching

8:27

for profit. It was usually somebody searching

8:29

for

8:30

supplies,

8:32

salted fish, beer, pork,

8:34

that kind of thing. But despite

8:36

this, and despite the fact that everybody knew it was

8:38

a real problem, the Essex Prize

8:41

just couldn't do anything about it. Or

8:43

maybe she wouldn't do

8:46

anything about it. Every

8:48

time that Governor Nicholson ordered Captain

8:51

Aldred to go out on patrol, Captain

8:54

Aldred just kind of didn't. Sometimes

8:58

he would write back to the Governor that he didn't have enough men,

9:01

or maybe his hull wasn't in disrepair, or

9:03

he needed to careen the ship because

9:05

she was suffering worms. And

9:08

these are all legitimate complaints that were, you

9:10

know, actually happening, but it was

9:13

so bad that he almost never

9:16

actually went out there to sail. On

9:19

the rare occasion that Essex Prize

9:21

did go out on patrol,

9:23

she would return after just a few days.

9:27

At one point, Governor Nicholson threatened

9:29

to fire and court-marshal

9:31

Captain Aldred.

9:33

Captain Aldred said, okay, fine, I'll go out

9:36

there, I'll hunt down some pirates. But just a few

9:38

days later he returned, saying

9:40

that the winter weather had been so bad he was

9:42

in danger of losing Essex Prize completely.

9:46

And he wasn't, again, he's not lying about

9:48

any of this. The winter of 1699-1700 was

9:50

terrible, and I'm sure the weather was

9:52

a real problem for his

9:55

rickety old boat. But

9:58

that doesn't do anything to change the facts. that

10:00

the pirates in Chesapeake Bay, these

10:02

reiners who just kept coming, were

10:04

a real, real problem for

10:06

Governor Nicholson, and of course the

10:09

people who actually got robbed.

10:11

Do you

10:12

ever find yourself in need of a title

10:15

for something, only to discover

10:17

that someone else has picked the perfect

10:20

title before you get there? It's

10:24

infuriating. In Pirates

10:26

of the Chesapeake, Donald G. Shemet,

10:29

titled the chapter about this period,

10:31

the winter of 1699-1700, he calls it the winter of discontent. And

10:39

it really was. The

10:41

Council of Virginia, and you

10:45

know I had to resist the urge

10:47

to do a whole episode about the history

10:49

of Virginia. It's all pretty

10:51

interesting stuff, and there are some great rebellious,

10:54

anti-authoritarian trends running through

10:57

the whole thing, the kind of stuff I love.

11:00

But I don't want to delve too much into it. The

11:02

really abbreviated version goes

11:05

like this. The boom crop

11:07

of the 1600s was tobacco,

11:10

especially in Virginia. Small

11:12

holders in the Virginia colony could make a

11:15

living, even a good living, growing

11:17

tobacco on just a couple of acres. In

11:20

the 1670s, the navigation

11:22

acts really kind of kneecapped these

11:24

small holding planters. It

11:27

forced them to sell strictly to

11:29

English merchants, which led

11:31

to a glut of tobacco in English

11:33

warehouses and a sudden drastic

11:36

market crash. This

11:38

led to a lot of farmers losing their land,

11:41

and eventually an insurrection called

11:43

a Bacon's Rebellion. Now,

11:45

Bacon's Rebellion gets pretty dark

11:48

at times. The forces

11:50

of Bacon's Rebellion attacked a lot of Native

11:52

American settlements, settlements that

11:55

were allied with the large

11:57

holding Virginia planters. terrible

12:00

massacres took place, and then retribution

12:02

happened, and more terrible massacres took place.

12:06

It was a bloody affair. But

12:08

this rebellion led to a kind

12:10

of a culture of bottom-up politics

12:12

in Virginia. The lower

12:15

and middle classes tended to struggle pretty

12:17

hard against the aristocratic

12:19

upper classes. Eventually,

12:22

this led to the formation of the

12:24

Virginia House of Burgesses. A

12:28

burgesses is like a middle-class freemen.

12:31

It's the English version of the German burger

12:33

or the French bourgeois. By

12:36

our time, about 1700, the

12:39

burgesses had amassed quite a bit of political

12:41

power in Virginia. The

12:43

ranks of the militia were filled with

12:46

burgesses and lower-class farmers.

12:49

And when the pirates began to harass the Chesapeake

12:52

Bay, and when the pirates began

12:54

to harass Chesapeake Bay, it

12:56

was the burgesses that were hit the hardest. So

12:59

this lower house of legislature

13:01

in Virginia drafted a letter that

13:03

was intended for the governor and eventually

13:06

the king.

13:07

It read, in part, quote,

13:10

Of late many notorious robberies

13:12

have been committed by pirates within this

13:14

colony, whereby it appears that

13:16

the dangers from those people do continually

13:19

grow greater and greater. Therefore,

13:22

His Majesty's most sacred council

13:24

do pray that—and

13:26

I'm actually going to stop it there—they spend

13:28

an amazing amount of ink on useless,

13:31

flowery language for the king. To

13:34

paraphrase, though, they're asking the governor

13:36

to write to the king about the, quote, Great

13:38

Mischiefs and Prejudices that were

13:41

plaguing the colony. This was exactly

13:43

what Governor Nicholson wanted. He'd been

13:46

writing the Lords of Trade and Plantations

13:48

for months now, begging for better

13:50

defense by sea, and gotten

13:52

basically nowhere. But this letter

13:55

represented the people of Virginia,

13:57

the burgesses, as well as some of those larger

13:59

plantations.

14:01

And it proved that he wasn't just some crank,

14:03

you know, this was a real problem that everybody

14:05

recognized. The Crown

14:08

would eventually respond to

14:10

this letter, but it was going to take some time.

14:13

In the interim, the conflict between

14:16

Governor Nicholson and Captain Aldred

14:18

grew worse. The

14:21

Governor, after yet another pirate

14:23

attack and in quite a rage, sent

14:25

agents to board the Essex Prize.

14:28

And what they were supposed to do isn't exactly

14:31

clear, but nothing good in

14:33

that case. But those agents were refused

14:36

permission to board. So the

14:38

Governor himself came down to the docks

14:41

with a party of militia men behind

14:43

him to arrest Captain

14:45

Aldred for dereliction of duty. Captain

14:49

Aldred, though, was barricaded inside

14:51

his cabin. He said that he was

14:53

very sick and probably contagious,

14:56

so he couldn't open up for the good of the Governor.

14:59

But everybody knew that this was a lie.

15:02

He was just refusing to go quietly.

15:04

Now, they could break down the door, drag

15:07

the captain away in chains, put him in jail,

15:09

maybe execute him. Or

15:12

they could just confine the captain to quarters,

15:15

and that's what they did. For

15:17

five days, Aldred

15:19

was kept under lock and key for less

15:21

than a week. But then another pirate

15:24

attack happened. The Essex Prize

15:26

was still just sitting there, her captain, in

15:29

custody, and nobody could respond.

15:32

So Governor Nicholson sighed, released

15:35

Captain Aldred, and told him, quote,

15:38

laying aside all possible excuses

15:41

and delays with all possible

15:43

speed, sail Essex Prize

15:45

into Chesapeake Bay and cruise

15:47

according to my former orders. I

15:50

require and command you not

15:52

to fail as you answer the

15:54

contrary to your peril.

15:58

End quote. He's telling Captain Aldred.

16:00

Captain Aldred that if he doesn't go out

16:02

there and do his job, he will be

16:04

arrested and court-martialed. Captain

16:07

Aldred ignored him. He had no

16:10

intention of sailing out to the bay with a

16:12

ship in such poor condition, and

16:15

the two men found themselves at a stalemate.

16:18

But winter was breaking, and with the

16:20

spring came relief. On 20

16:32

April 1700, HMS Shoreham arrived. The

16:37

Shoreham was an impressive

16:40

ship. She was

16:43

a 360-ton, 32-gun, fifth-rate

16:45

ship of the line in fantastic

16:48

condition. Now, a 32-gun

16:50

ship could usually be classed either as

16:52

a fifth-rate or a frigate, and

16:55

I've seen both referred to as a man o' war,

16:57

but I think technically it should

16:59

only refer to a fifth-rate ship of the line.

17:03

And I know that I personally have been inconsistent

17:05

about this in the past, because

17:08

it can get confusing if you don't have the specifics

17:10

of a ship. The difference

17:13

between a fifth-rate and a frigate isn't

17:15

the number of guns but where they're placed

17:17

on board a ship. A

17:20

frigate always had her guns on the

17:22

main deck, with a few

17:24

smaller guns mounted on the quarter deck

17:26

in the folksle. But a fifth-rate

17:29

ship of the line, a man o' war, had

17:31

a lower gun deck that was reserved for

17:33

even bigger guns. And

17:35

that gun deck is what makes all the difference.

17:38

They called these ships double-deckers

17:41

or two-deckers. Now,

17:43

these distinctions weren't officially codified

17:45

until the 1750s, and pirates would take

17:49

any guns they could find that they were able to use.

17:51

They didn't much care about those rules anyway.

17:54

But the guns on that lower deck were

17:57

important for ships that were not pirates.

18:00

In the case of the Shoram, there were eight

18:03

demi-culverins on the gun deck,

18:05

four on either side. The demi-culverin

18:08

was maybe the most commonly used

18:10

cannon for the first half of the 18th century.

18:14

There were 3,400-pound guns that fired 10-pound round balls.

18:20

On land, they could be drawn by a team of two

18:22

horses, and they were

18:24

capable of breaching a ship's hull or

18:27

a castle walls with only a few shots.

18:30

Now, naturally, there were much bigger guns

18:33

out there, but those

18:35

were usually only found in maritime

18:37

situations on much larger ships

18:40

of the line. On land,

18:42

they would usually only be employed in

18:44

major sieges because getting

18:47

them to the fortress you were trying to

18:49

besiege was difficult. The

18:52

demi-culverin was the biggest easy-to-move

18:54

cannon available, but

18:56

of course we'd never see one on board a pirate

18:58

ship. Sinking the ship that

19:01

you were attacking was never the

19:03

goal, and while they were useful

19:05

for open combat, pirates

19:07

wanted to avoid combat if at

19:10

all possible. Pirates almost exclusively

19:13

stuck to smaller bore cannon, but

19:16

it made the Shoram, and really, any

19:18

vessel that carried these guns

19:20

a major threat to any pirates

19:22

that they might encounter. And it was

19:25

the sort of thing that any pirate who spotted

19:27

a ship like that would know that they

19:29

carry. The demi-culverin was a ship-sinker

19:32

and pirate-killer. Way

19:36

back in 1144, the

19:38

bishop of a city and fridence called Sanmalo,

19:41

named Jean de Chateaune, made

19:43

Sanmalo a haven for those seeking

19:46

asylum. Sanmalo

19:48

was a city in Brittany, in what

19:50

is today northwest France, that sits

19:52

on the English Channel. Now,

19:54

at the time, Brittany wasn't really part

19:57

of the Kingdom of France. independent

20:00

barony, or dukedom, depending on

20:02

who was in charge, that had ties

20:05

of fealty to the king of Francia,

20:07

but was not part of the kingdom. But

20:10

in 1144 all of that was up in the air. This

20:14

was a tumultuous period in Western

20:17

Europe. In England they were going

20:19

through something called the Anarchy, when multiple

20:22

claimants vied for the English throne.

20:25

On the continent the Baron of Anjou

20:27

was conquering land all over

20:29

Normandy and Brittany, and even in France.

20:32

Now in just a few years' time all of that's

20:34

going to be settled, thanks mostly

20:36

to the Empress Matilda, who's going to play a key

20:39

role in founding the Engèvement Empire.

20:42

But in 1144 it was all warfare

20:45

and chaos and blood. Northwest

20:47

France, which was one of the centers of chaos

20:50

and blood, needed a place like

20:52

Sommalo was a haven, a refuge

20:54

for the people who were suffering, and

20:56

it served admirably as such. But

21:00

its place as a city of asylum

21:02

made Sommalo a desirable

21:04

location for people on the run from the

21:07

law, and its place

21:09

on the Channel ensured that it quickly

21:11

turned into a haven for pirates,

21:14

and the independent-minded in France.

21:19

Sommalo had a little revolution back in the

21:21

1590s and declared their independence from

21:23

France. The slogan

21:26

was, not Breton, not French,

21:28

but I am of Mallow. It

21:30

was Sommalo IV who finally corralled

21:33

these rebellious tendencies, but

21:35

he didn't do so by laying down the law.

21:39

Instead he issued letters

21:41

of mark to the sea rovers from Sommalo,

21:44

and they were called the French Corsairs. And

21:47

it actually plays an interesting role

21:49

in the etymology of the word corsair.

21:53

You can trace it back to ancient Latin, where

21:55

it meant basically what it means today, it's another

21:57

word for pirate. But it had fallen

21:59

out of use almost completely until the French

22:01

resurrected it thanks to the citizens of Sanmalo.

22:05

While the Dutch had the sea dogs, the French

22:07

had the corsairs, and that was

22:10

the word that the Spanish adopted to mean

22:12

pirates, their corsarios, because

22:15

the French from Sanmalo spent so much time

22:17

fighting the Spanish in the Bay of Biscay. And

22:20

Sanmalo was home to a lot of

22:22

French privateers, you know, Jean

22:24

Bart was one of their number, and

22:27

more than a few of these privateers turned pirate.

22:33

In 1699, one Sanmalo sloop,

22:35

a privateer, abandoned their

22:38

home city, sailed for Saint-Domingue,

22:40

and turned pirate. They had

22:43

very little success finding and capturing

22:45

prizes, though. They just didn't know anything

22:47

about the geography or the wind patterns,

22:50

they didn't know the good shipping lanes. They

22:52

were just too ignorant of the region

22:55

to be very successful. And

22:58

then one night, in early 1700, a

23:02

young man named Louis Guitard

23:04

took his canoe out for a midnight

23:06

cruise. Reportedly

23:09

he was on his way to a midnight liaison

23:11

with a woman who was regrettably

23:14

married. He set out from his

23:16

home in Pointe-Guevara, but he

23:18

was never going to reach that late-night liaison.

23:21

He was happened upon by that pirate

23:24

sloop lurking in the darkness. They

23:26

overtook his canoe, scooped him up,

23:29

and forced him to serve as their pilot.

23:32

As it happened, Guitard was perfect for

23:34

the job. He had some experience in this

23:36

field, having been a privateer

23:39

in the past. Thanks

23:41

to Guitard, the pirate's fortunes

23:43

immediately improved. They

23:45

took a Dutch trader that was carrying linen

23:48

and brandy over in the Leeward

23:50

Islands. They impressed

23:53

the surgeon into service, but released

23:55

the ship and the rest of her crew. immediately

24:00

led them to success they had not yet

24:02

seen, they elected Louis

24:05

Guitard as their captain. And

24:08

as surgeon, he gave Guitard some fantastic

24:11

intel about a rich prize. He

24:14

told the pirates that there was a ship sailing

24:16

near Salt Tortuga off

24:18

the coast of Venezuela carrying an impressively

24:21

rich cargo. One of the pirates

24:23

would say later on that

24:25

the surgeon told Guitard about this

24:28

ship, in spite, to

24:30

be revenged upon the master of the ship

24:32

who had wronged him of six or seven hundred

24:35

crowns.

24:36

End quote.

24:38

Their little pirates loop headed south and

24:40

they found their Dutch prize. The

24:43

vessel was called Vrede, or

24:45

Peace, in the Dutch, Captain

24:47

Cornelius Isaac. The

24:50

cargo turned out to be less

24:52

impressive than the surgeon had suggested,

24:55

but the ship itself was a fine

24:57

prize. She was eighty-four

24:59

feet long, twenty-five feet

25:01

wide, one hundred and forty tons,

25:04

and twenty-eight guns. She

25:06

would serve the pirates well as a flagship.

25:09

Louis Guitard dubbed her the French translation

25:12

of peace.

25:13

Lapat.

25:14

Guitard offered a place on board to any

25:17

crewman who chose to join him from

25:19

the Vrede. And if you did willingly,

25:22

but since he intended to

25:24

keep both Lapat and his old

25:27

sloop, he had to impress more than

25:29

a few into service. One

25:31

of these impressed pirates, named

25:34

John Huling, asked Captain

25:36

Isaac to write him a ticket to

25:39

declare his innocence in any piracy

25:41

in which he might be forced to engage. Captain

25:45

Isaac wrote him a letter that read, quote, We

25:48

underwritten do declare that John

25:50

Huling is forced against his will to

25:52

stay and remain upon the ship Lapat

25:55

under the command of Louis Guitard, and

25:58

have set our hands to witnesses. yet to

26:00

ye end, nobody should trouble

26:02

him or should pretend he was there by

26:04

his own consent." Cornelius

26:07

Isaac. With his flagship

26:09

lapa and a sloop in tow, Captain

26:12

Guitar set out on a cruise of the West

26:14

Indies and beyond that

26:17

would eventually go on to rival some of the most

26:19

notorious cruises of even the pirates

26:21

of Nassau. Over the following

26:24

couple of months, Guitar captured

26:26

at least four different merchant ships,

26:29

and every time they took one they offered the men

26:31

an opportunity to join their ranks, which

26:34

swelled every time. Apparently

26:37

though, the pirates took to doling out retribution

26:40

against the captains of the merchant ships

26:43

they took. On one

26:45

occasion, where nearly everybody

26:47

on board was eager to join

26:49

the pirates, Guitar noticed

26:52

that they were a lot more willing

26:54

than most others to join a pirate ship.

26:57

The captain was apparently a

26:59

brutal man and wound

27:01

up hanged by the yard-arm while

27:04

his officers were put in the ship's longboat

27:06

and set adrift. The

27:08

rest of the crew from that particular prize

27:11

just stayed on board and joined

27:13

up with lapa, which

27:16

brings his total number of ships now to

27:18

three in his growing fleet.

27:21

In April 1700, Guitar

27:24

spotted a one hundred ton pink out of

27:26

Bristol called Baltimore under

27:28

a Captain John Lovejoy. They

27:30

were in the waters just between the Bahamas

27:33

and Florida. Guitar sent

27:35

the other ships away and raised Dutch

27:37

colors. He struck

27:39

sail and made it look as though his ship were

27:41

unable to sail, just drifting

27:44

in the water. Captain Lovejoy,

27:46

being a decent human being, stopped

27:48

to help. Baltimore came

27:50

up alongside lapa, hailed her,

27:53

and got a response in Dutch. The

27:55

pirates kept up the ruse until Baltimore

27:58

was right up alongside them. Then,

28:01

Captain Guitar's men burst out of their hiding

28:03

places and opened fire, a combination

28:05

of both small arms and big guns.

28:08

One man, on board Baltimore, James

28:11

Waters, was killed. The

28:13

pirates leapt over the rail to board the merchant

28:15

ship with their swords drawn. The

28:18

crew of the Baltimore didn't even have time to

28:20

respond, but even if they did, it's

28:23

unlikely they would have resisted. They

28:25

were a very small ship with a very small

28:27

crew and no big guns on

28:29

board. Louis Guitar decided

28:32

that the Baltimore would make a fine addition

28:34

to his collection of ships and

28:36

made her part of the fleet. Now,

28:39

the men were somewhere around Florida and they had

28:41

a decision to make. They

28:43

could head back to the West Indies, but that

28:45

was getting a little hot after their recent piracies.

28:48

They could make for Africa, let the heat die

28:50

down in America, and maybe steal

28:53

some Muslim gold or they

28:55

could sail up the Atlantic seaboard of America.

28:58

It was Captain Lovejoy of the Baltimore

29:01

that decided the issue. He

29:03

was questioned by the pirates, probably pretty

29:06

brutally, and Lovejoy told

29:08

Guitar that Chesapeake Bay was guarded

29:10

only by Essex Prize, a

29:13

small, slow ship in poor

29:16

repair, hardly any defense

29:18

at all. It made Chesapeake

29:20

Bay and all of her rich shipping seem

29:22

like a prime target. The

29:24

pirates took a vote and headed north.

29:28

Of course, what Lovejoy didn't know and what

29:30

the pirates therefore did not know was that

29:33

HMS Shoreham was waiting for

29:35

them. Next

29:38

time, we'll see what happens when an entire

29:40

fleet of pirate ships comes into conflict

29:43

with one Royal Naval Ship

29:45

of the Line. I'd

29:47

like to thank everybody for listening. I'd

29:50

like to thank everybody who has helped to support

29:52

the show, all of our patrons on Patreon,

29:55

everybody who has left us ratings or reviews,

29:58

and everybody who has recommended this show. You

30:00

all make it possible. Thank you. The

30:03

Pirate History Podcast is a member of

30:05

the Airwave Media Podcast Network.

30:08

If you'd like to check out some of their other fine shows,

30:10

like Southern Gothic, you can do

30:13

so at airwavemedia.com. Our

30:16

theme music was, as always, The

30:18

Old Captain by the Fantastic Band

30:20

Brilliant. You can find more of their work

30:22

on Facebook, YouTube, Bandcamp, and anywhere

30:25

else fine music is to be found. As

30:28

always, most importantly, thank

30:30

you for listening.

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