The Rise And Fall Of The Pirate Golden Age | Outlaws | Timeline

this channel is part of the history hit network stick around to find out more [Music] of all the renegades in britain's age of outlaws pirates were the most pursued hunted down on the high seas their bloody exploits would be followed by an appalled but enthralled public [Music] in may 1701 the corpse of a convicted pirate was brought down river from execution dock to the lower reaches of the thames here at tilbury point the body was tarred to preserve it and then hung in chains above the shoreline the body was that of captain william kidd whose exploits and downfall had so captivated the country kids corpse was displayed here as a dire warning to all seafarers entering the great port of london to resist the temptations of piracy kidd was the product of an era of feverish mercantile expansion powered by a vast network of seaborne trade by plundering this global movement of commodities and riches pirates became the most wanted outlaws in the world with flamboyant names like blackbeard calico jack and black bart pirate captains would become infamous beyond the seas and through ballads plays and books they would be transformed into legend and that transformation from reality to mythic outlaw is one of the most enduring historical puzzles of the period i'm going to take to the seas to explore just how this change happened and examine the devastating impact of these swashbuckling adventurers captain kidd's tarred corpse would rot away here over several years until the birds had picked his carcass clean but this warning went unheeded for the golden age of piracy was only just beginning [Music] [Music] for a man who would come to be seen as heralding an age of piracy captain kidd had never set out to be a pirate at all by the late 1690s with the escalation of the nine years war against france kidd as a highly experienced sailor saw the opportunity to make his fortune not as a pirate but as a privateer piracy was outright robbery on the high seas but privateers were mercenaries issued with a license by the government to loot the merchant ships flying the colours of england's enemies at sea their licence was issued in the form of a letter of mark and reprisal and this one dated the 11th of december 1695 is kid's own privateering commission granted and signed by no less than the king of england himself william iii [Music] but this wasn't quite as it seemed because there was a second commission this one to hunt down pirates in the indian ocean whose plundering was seriously disrupting trade with the east now this venture was cooked up by a shady syndicate of some of the most powerful men in england who would all share from the spoils of kids enterprise and with the king himself due to get a 10 share in the profits the stakes were very high failure was not an option and yet kids misfortune was to begin almost as soon as he set sail as his ship the adventure galley slipped down the thames here at greenwich kidd armed with a newfound arrogance from having an actual royal commission believing himself above the law refused to dip his flag and fire a salute at a royal yacht as he passed which was against all custom and when outraged the captain of the yacht fired a shot as a reminder kid's crew responded with a surprising display of impudence they climbed the yards and slapped their backsides in disdain [Applause] the response was harsher than they could have ever expected because of kids failure to salute the captain of the naval yacht retaliated by boarding his ship and press-ganging most of his carefully hand-picked men into naval service history hit is a streaming platform that exclusively releases quality historical documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world from ancient neolithic cultures to the dawn of the space race history hit has thousands of hours of content with unrivaled access to the world's best historians we're committed to bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a 14-day free trial and timeline fans can get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use code timeline at checkout [Music] with only a skeleton crew kids set course for madagascar known to be the great pirate bolt hole of the indian ocean for its good anchorage and strategic position on important mughal trade routes from india then being exploited by europe's maritime powers we're talking about an age of tremendous colonial rivalry france spain holland and england all endeavouring to create colonies and to conquer land and so you've got a lot of merchant ships of different nations competing um to get more money out of the caribbean or india and from the far east and pirates aren't fools they gather where the trade routes are narrowing and they can pounce within sight of madagascar kids suffered a major setback when a third of his crew perished with cholera and the only new recruits he could find turned out to be former pirates men who had already turned to piracy and expected kid to do the same kids bad luck persisted after several more months without plunder or prizes and facing the very real prospect of returning home empty-handed kidd made the grave decision to leave the indian ocean and head for the red sea a rich area full of mughal merchants and wealthy pilgrims traveling to and from mecca kids presence there all but announced that he had turned to piracy [Music] after a devastating raid on an indian mughal fleet by a pirate named captain henry avery two years before the east india company whose monopoly on trade with the indian subcontinent depended on the continuing patronage of the vastly rich mughal empire was extremely wary of it happening again but kid's crew now put increasing pressure on him to take prizes no matter what flag they sailed under in desperation kid attacked a mughal merchant convoy technically his first foray into piracy but when he was repelled tensions between kid and his crew spilled over the ship's gunner william moore claimed that he had brought the crew to ruin and desolation upon which kid picked up a heavy iron hooped bucket and brought it down on moore's head with such ferocity that he fractured his skull and moore later died admiralty law allowed captains a degree of leeway in the use of violence but this was murder kidd remained unrepentant though confident that his good friends in england would save him from prosecution and still feeling empowered by his letter of mark from the king he now grew more and more reckless in january 1698 after some minor successes kidd took his greatest prize a 400-ton armenian ship called the quaida merchant which was sailing with french passes for which kidd had a license to attack however when he discovered that its cargo was owned by a mughal nobleman he tried to hand the ship back but his crew refused wishing to avoid a full mutiny kid relented and kept his new prize but when news reached london various naval commanders were sent out to pursue and seize the said kid and his accomplices for the notorious piracies that they had committed now a wanted man with several englishmen of war in pursuit and with the east india company paying for his blood kidd made sale for boston where his friend lord belamont the governor of new york had promised him safe refuge but kidd was sailing into a trap that would land him in the dock this here is a letter from lord belamont which he had sent to captain kidd lord belmont had financed all of kids expeditions and they'd been friendly with each other you can see in the language of letter here he's saying do not be discouraged by the false reports of ill men don't believe what people are telling you okay yes you may be assured of my having interest employed to do you all the service that i can he's going to do everything he can to help him but actually he was luring captain kidd to boston to get him arrested lord bellamot did not want to be associated with piracy at all whatsoever okay so he used that previous friendship to get kid but unfortunately when he arrived in boston he was then thrown in prison do we think he was was a bit gullible here was he was he just relying on a sense of trust that existed before i think kid was desperate at this point to be honest i think he knew that unbeknownst to him somehow he had been accused of piracy when he did not believe he was a pirate and so he was going to take any means he could to try to protect himself it seems clear to me that kid hasn't been unfairly labeled as a pirate he was clearly a pirate he attacked the ships of a nation and he didn't have a license to do so i think kid was a pirate but i think above everything else he was a scapegoat and this is because just a few years before a pirate named henry avery had disrupted trade between the moguls and the east india company and then just a couple years later captain kidd does the same thing the moguls then threatened to cut off all trade which would have practically bankrupted the east india company britain had to make kid an example to the moguls that yes they would take care of piracy in the most brutal fashion so they could show the world exactly what would happen to a pirate if they threatened trade and the british economy so what we have here is an indication of just how much of a show trial this was this lengthy document that i'm holding is the actual trial transcription verbatim of captain kids trial and this sold out because it sold so many copies at this point pretty much everybody knew who captain kid was because his crimes had been reported in newspapers for several years on both sides of the atlantic um people were fascinated with pirates because these were maritime outlaws committing their crimes thousands of miles away they didn't declare allegiance to their formal countries they were these people who had social mobility uh that nobody else had and people wouldn't be able to see them until their execution [Music] what was the scene like at kids execution well actually i could show you that sam because there's a picture here in the new gate calendar so this here is a pirate being executed at execution dock this is how captain kid would have been executed you can see the noose is around his neck here's the crowd of people and here we have the admiralty marshal sitting on his horse and in his hand you can see right here the silver ore of the admiralty um the silver ore was always present at these executions i've actually got the silver ore that was used at the street trial and execution let's have a look there it is so there it is as you can see it's got all the symbols that's definitely the tudor arms this is the garnet and coronet of james stewart the duke of york that and very clearly the fouled anchor which was the symbol of the admiralty yes a very powerful symbol of maritime authority it was yes uh definitely everyone who would see it would know exactly what it meant [Music] however there's one further and even more compelling artifact from kids darkest days and it's this a letter from captain kidd to sir robert harley the leader of the tories it's kid's last desperate attempt to save himself from the noose and what's particularly interesting are these few lines that in my late proceedings in the indies i have lodged goods and treasure to the value of one hundred thousand pounds which i desire the government may have the benefit of it's a massive bribe and the promise of an enormous stash of loot this is kids real legacy the founding myth of buried pirate treasure [Music] the secret location of kids treasure if it ever existed has never been found even though there continue to be claims of its discovery up to this very day kidd had highlighted not only the easy seduction of piracy but also how privateers quickly became a hindrance and were shut down by the government when they ceased to serve the interests of the nation and its expanding empire the government's attitude to piracy changed because of the exploits of a kid because they damaged british trade and britain's future was going to be a great maritime nation this was accepted already this was the way that a small island could get global power um so obviously piracy which people had winked at before because it simply damaged the spanish or other people that people didn't really care about now it was a problem and it had to be suppressed [Music] but far from suppressing the pirate menace kids very public humiliation only served to heighten the fascination with these maritime outlaws and in particular it now rekindled a feverish interest in the elusive captain henry avery the one pirate who had got away avery had made the most profitable pirate raid in history when in september 1695 he captured the gang isawai a heavily armed mughal trading ship carrying over six hundred thousand pounds worth of precious metal and jewels the equivalent of 52 million pounds in today's money for his actions a bounty of a thousand pounds had been put on his head leading to the first worldwide manhunt in recorded history but unlike captain kidd avery slipped the net and rumors abounded for years that he had ended up in a pirate republic called libertalia [Music] as the story goes libertalia was a place where people were equal and goods were shared and laws were fair and the pirates flew a white flag as opposed to a black flag to show that you know there was no threat and people were free under this flag and stories like that of course are a great threat to society back home which is tremendously unequal and very harsh [Music] fugitive outlaws had always caught the public imagination and avery was no exception stories of his big prize his vanishing act and his pirate utopia passed between deckhands across the oceans and returned to england in the form of popular balance and this one was purportedly penned by avery himself [Music] now this is the course i intended for to steer [Music] my falsehood nation to you i declare if avery was indeed the author of this ballad then he was not only fueling his own infamy but spreading sedition balance were very dangerous things they were banned in periods of political unrest because you could turn a populist like that by selling singing valors it doesn't seem likely to us today ballets particularly appealed to the lower classes they were very accessible they were sold on the streets and they were just printed on single sheets of paper on one side and if you couldn't read where he were or the ballad manga would sing the ballad in order to attract a crowd and and make their sales for the price of a few pennies well nothing at all if you could remember it you were up to date with the latest news i have done the no wrong thou must me forgive the sword shall maintain me as long as i live whilst pirates clearly had mass appeal what was now surprising was that amongst the chattering classes swashbucklers like avery and tales of his remarkable disappearance became the fashionable new topic and it was a play based on avery which did much to foster the legend of the pirate as a brave outlaw the successful pirate opened at the theatre royal drury lane in 1712 set as a tragic comedy it cast avery as a self-styled king of the pirates and features a rum bunch of incompetence hotly debating the virtues of piracy come on now sir i'll oppose you with his fault is he not extremely violent and intemperate with his desires granted a hero should be though that immoderate desire for power that unquenchable appetite for rule that has long been dignified by the slaves of tyrants but he is no tyrant therefore tis virtue in him to desire power the public absolutely loved it much to the irritation of the critics one of whom was outraged by the way that it glamorized villainy in making a swabber a mere deckhand into the hero of a tragedy notwithstanding all you've said he's still only an overgrown thief why the worst you hypocrites of order can say and it is to his immortal honor is that he has left the pale of custom and is a royal outlaw but for one member of the audience the writer and journalist daniel defoe the play was proof enough of the pirate's broad cultural appeal with his customary journalistic chutzpah defoe was to capitalize on the pirates appeal and their ambiguous morality not only in robinson crusoe but in several of his books making him in effect the first pirate novelist but there was another book published in this period which surpassed all others in chronicling the lives and exploits of the pirates of the great golden age now i was brought up on stories of real pirates and they were all inspired by this book as titles go it's pretty difficult to beat a general history of the robberies and murders of the most notorious pirates this was the pirate brilliantly packaged and neatly presented and the public absolutely loved it the book tapped into a growing vogue for criminal biography but its author a captain charles johnson remains a mystery figure as elusive as many of the pirates themselves johnson displayed such a detailed knowledge of the life and language of the sea that it was thought by many that he must have been a retired sea captain that he'd perhaps attended pirate trials or even interviewed pirate crewman but there has also been a long-standing and far more intriguing belief that johnson was merely a pseudonym for our old friend daniel defoe within that slim volume are the detailed lives of 20 or so celebrated pirates and it has become sort of a touchstone for piracy and it's been used as the basis really for the golden age of pirates and what i found fascinating over the years as i've done research in different areas is it all checks out the capture of ships and what the various pirates did with the crew and did with the ships totally authentic [Music] and one of the most surprising details of johnson's book is its account of a democratic code of conduct or the pirates code as it was generally known the pirates code provided rules for discipline for the fair division of plundered loot and it even set aside specific sums of money for injuries sustained to different parts of the body for example in pirate currency the most highly valued part of your body was your right arm for which you received 600 of these pieces of eight your left arm was valued at 100 less and your legs at 100 less again bizarrely a finger and an eye were equally valued at 100 pieces but i suspect that you had to make your own eye patch semen had a very harsh life they worked for long hours for years for very low pay when tales came back about pirates running their ships on more democratic lines made joint decisions and decisions in common and shared their suppliers this would never have happened on a navy ship or a merchant ship and this is egalitarian so a pirate crew could easily find its numbers swelled by sailors desperate to escape an oppressive ship and more than happy to switch allegiance and sail under the black flag and the lure of the black flag was to become far greater following the end of the war of the spanish succession in 1713 which not only saw atlantic trade resume but also witnessed thousands of british seamen relieved of military duty the result was a large number of idle but highly trained sailors at a time of considerable seabourn trade as all of the european maritime powers sought to expand their colonial empires now a great deal of money could be made transporting goods on this network but if you knew that network you could of course just steal it which is why peacetime provided so many opportunities for the maritime outlaw this was especially so in the seas around the west indies with its lucrative trade in sugar and more notoriously slaves there were ships all over the place merchant ships uh waiting to be plundered so you had in the bahamas a whole lot of unemployed seamen adventurers out of work privateers and pirates all waiting for action it became so full of people looting and raping and whatever that it became in a way what we call now a failed state [Music] [Music] during the war of the spanish succession nassau in the bahamas had been utterly ransacked and left in ruins by 1715 still ungoverned and undefended it had become a pirate haven by the following year the pirate population outnumbered nassau's law-abiding citizens by ten to one it had become in effect a pirate republic a sprawling encampment of carousing fornicating sailors funding their profligate lifestyles with plunder it seemed as though captain avery's mythical pirate kingdom had come alive [Music] [Applause] [Music] one of the rising ring leaders of this new encampment of renegades was a tall robust englishman from bristol named edward teach by march 1717 teach had formed a company of 70 men aboard his six-gun sloop and had begun to cultivate a formidable reputation [Music] his flag was soon the most feared on the horizon and with his mane of course dark locks he now went by the catchy new name of blackbeard the skull and crossbones has been a symbol of death since the middle ages and in this great period the pirates adopted it as their own menacing symbol with each captain having his own version and unsurprisingly for blackbeard who was obsessed with his image his flag had it all if ever there was a symbol to strike fear into the heart of your victim then this was it a skeleton holds an hourglass in one hand to show you that your time is running out and a spear in the other threatening to draw blood from your heart if you do not surrender and if this wasn't enough blackbeard added horns and cloven feet to his skeleton to signify that he was in league with the devil sailors during the early 18th century were almost universally superstitious and aside from the sight of blackbeard's flag the sight of the man himself was enough to cause the crews of merchant ships to surrender [Music] his reputation rests entirely on his appearance which was vividly recorded in captain johnson's book this beard was black which he suffered to grow of an extravagant length as to breadth it came up to his eyes he was accustomed to twist it with ribbons in small tails and turn them about his ears in time of action he wore a sling over his shoulders with three brace of pistols hanging in holsters like bandoliers and stuck lighted matches under his hat which appearing on each side of his face his eyes naturally looking fierce and wild made him altogether such a figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a fury from hell to look more frightful blackbeard was ruthless on one occasion when a victim didn't voluntarily offer up the ring on his finger and simply cut it off ring and all and he wasn't above maiming his own crew we also know that he shot his second mate israel hands in the knee just to remind him who was boss [Music] if blackbeard looked like a walking arsenal then it was for a very good reason flintlock pistols like this only fired a single shot and they were also notoriously unreliable at sea so if your pistol failed to fire because of a damp charge you could go straight on to the next one and then when both were used up you still had your cutlass one of the most important articles of the pirates code was to keep your pistols and cutlass clean and fit for service especially in the run-up to an attack they would all be on deck waving cutlasses firing in the air and as they came alongside they would also throw primitive form of hound grenade onto the deck of the merchant ship which caused chaos and send over a grapple rope and haul themselves alongside by which stage normally the petrified crew not used to battle just said we surrender blackbeard's reign of terror lasted two years tormenting the american eastern seaboard from the caribbean to north carolina he plundered sugar rum and loot from a series of english merchant vessels [Applause] [Music] but following his ruthless blockade of charlestown harbour in may 1718 the governor of virginia issued a warrant for blackbeard's arrest with a reward of a hundred pounds for his capture dead or alive lieutenant robert maynard of hms pearl was dispatched to hunt him down and eventually tracked him to the shallows of ocracoke inlet [Music] blackbeard raised a bottle of liquor in salutation and declared that maynard and his crew were cowardly puppies before calling out to them damnation sees my soul if i give you quarters or take any from you blackbeard was ready for a fight the ensuing battle was brief and bloodthirsty as the ships closed in blackbeard's men hurled bottle grenades and using grappling hooks and boarding axes they clambered on board but maynard had hidden most of his crew below deck and they now took the pirates by surprise engaging in furious hand-to-hand combat with blackbeard coming up against maynard himself holding his cutlass aloft blackbeard lunged with such ferocity that he sheared off maynard's blade near the hilt but coming for him again blackbeard was surrounded and hit from all sides riddled with shot and cut to ribbons blackbeard then suffered a terrible wound to his neck from a scotsman wielding a broadsword well done lad said blackbeard before staggering but cocking his pistol again i'll do better said the scotsman before hacking away at his neck again deeply killing that great man dead on his own deck with their captains fighting spirit blackbeard's men fought on but were soon overcome as proof of blackbeard's death and in order to collect the reward of a hundred pounds maynard called for blackbeard's head to be severed [Music] and hung up on the bow sprit [Music] the rest of blackbeard's corpse was then thrown overboard where upon hitting the water according to legend it then swam several times around the sloop searching for its own severed head before sinking without trace because of his fearsome reputation blackbeard's death was seen as a major coup in the war against piracy and in propaganda terms as significant as the trial and hanging of captain kidd but even with blackbeard gone there were still some 2000 pirates roving the seas the colonies were facing what amounted to an imperial crisis we've got the golden age pirates rampaging across the caribbean they're disrupting trade the colonial governors are complaining to london you've got to do something about it the governor of jamaica is saying i can't send a ship in or out without it being captured by pirates and one of the things the authorities do they get onto the admiralty and they say send more ships to the caribbean so it actually becomes part of the brief of the navy to suppress the pirates the naval ships that were sent out tended to be what are called or eight ships they were 40 guns or so and they were powerful vessels but they were quite big they weren't able to go into shallow estuaries and bays the pirates uh selected mostly what are called sloops they were relatively shallow draft compared with the naval ships so they could sneak in and out of estuaries and bays and channels that the naval ships couldn't get into the naval ships if there are only four to cover the entire caribbean and there were what two to three hundred pirate ships operating in that same area the naval ships couldn't be everywhere at once so the navy had a difficult job and in a way the pirates had the advantage [Music] but as the government soon realized it would take more than deploying a few more naval ships in 1717 under the new king george the first one of the measures taken to quell the pirate menace was the issue of a royal proclamation an act of grace in which the king promised that any pirate who voluntarily surrendered himself to british authorities within a year would receive his most gracious pardon one of the pirates who took advantage of this amnesty albeit briefly was captain john rackham whose colorful cotton clothes earned him the equally colorful nickname of calico jack calico jack achieved lasting fame not for his actions which amounted to seizing a handful of vessels in the seas of jamaica but for his association with two of his crew members which became one of the most beguiling and frankly suspect episodes of the entire golden age of piracy [Music] it was whilst taking advantage of the pirate amnesty and frequenting the taverns of nassau that calico jack met and courted a bold young irish woman named anne bonnie and with his return to piracy soon after he took her to sea and she joined his crew dressing in men's clothes now here the story takes a rather brilliant turn when calico jack's sleep revenge captured a merchant ship he acquired a young sailor by the name of mark reed now anne bonnie who was serving on jack's crew dressed in men's clothes took a bit of a fancy to this young sailor and in a quiet moment alone revealed to him that she was in fact a woman upon which mark reed revealed that he was also a woman named mary [Music] in late 1720 a merchant sea captain named jonathan barnett with a commission to hunt down pirates took calico jack and his crew by surprise whilst they enjoyed a rum party anchored off jamaica jack and his men were too drunk to fight and fled to the hold leaving only bonnie and reed to resist the two women flew at barnett's men like furies firing their pistols wielding their cutlasses and axes and shouting obscenities as they went but they were unable to rouse their crew who tamely gave up with calico jack himself calling for quarter calico jack's female crew members would end up behind bars but their exploits have posed questions ever since and for leading folk musician martha tilston their story has provided the inspiration for a new composition which she has asked me to perform with her martha it's really exciting that you've written a ballad about pirates because ballads were the way that the activities of the pirates which happened thousands of miles away were brought home and sold to the masses you're part of a long tradition well i imagine it was totally fascinating for people to hear this especially for women who maybe we're not in a situation where they're having a particularly adventurous life on living a life that was very sort of stuck at home to read about that as a way of escaping or to hear about it so you'd pass the story around but it would have spread i think the news and the story would have spread because a good story spread through music and storytelling at that time you've written a duet so there's a male voice the the voice of the jailer who's taking anne bonnie off to her cell yeah and then and bonnie and mary read singing i wanted to get the male and the female i think what was beautiful about the lady pirates is they're out in this fairly male world but there was there was a good female presence there and it's nice to put that across and also the voice of the law and the outlaw i guess let's give it a go okay [Music] oh step aside i'm and bonnie i am a lady pirate and there's more beside me out on the sea all dressed in [Music] on the edge of life we're living and we'll take if you're not giving then we'll slip away into the velvet night well come with me and bonnie i'll show you to yourself an outlaw is an outlaw and you all hang just as well and you all hang just as well but you thought that we never could tell but you didn't hide your shape so well thrown like a barrel over the ocean and we had your pair no you never knew thrown [Music] on the oceano [Music] there's something really romantic and very attractive about the idea of these female pirates out and were they dressed up as men or not and why were they dressed up as men and i mean for me my instinct when i read about it or heard about it and was that that's just going to be easy to climb the rigging if they haven't got scared i can imagine that when they were taking over other ships or when they're in battle that to sort of to not obviously be a woman might be advantageous but i can't imagine they hid the fact that they were women for that amount of time on a ship with loads of men i mean that's the thing i think that really stands out for me i mean i like to think that all of the men knew they were women and yeah for sure they would i can't imagine how you do it but also why would you do it calico jack was her lover so i mean how would she keep that from the whole ship we commandeered a ship one day out on the stormy seas [Music] [Music] through history [Music] legislation passed since captain kidd's trial meant that admiralty law could now be administered in the colonies that the accused did not need to be sent back to england unsurprisingly jack and his men were found guilty at the ensuing trial and was sentenced to death now in prison jack was allowed to see anne one last time but far from pitying him she brazenly reprimanded him for their capture had you fought like a man she scowled you need not have been hanged like a dog it was at the point of their sentencing that bonnie and reid's story took its last and most dramatic twist when the judge passed sentence he asked them if they had anything to say the ladies replied my lord we plead our bellies they claimed that they were pregnant the judge ordered a physical examination to be undertaken and both women were indeed found to be pregnant and both were granted a stay of execution for mary reed however this was no happy resolution as she contracted a fever soon after the trial and died in prison as for anne bonnie there's no historical evidence that she was executed or released like captain henry avery she simply vanished [Music] following his execution calico jack's body like that of captain kidd was hanged in chains as a warning to others on a sandy spit of port royal in jamaica now known as rackham's key but plenty of others would follow him to the gibbet [Music] nassau in the bahamas which had been a pirate republic of lawless riot and drunken revelry had been brought under control with the appointment of captain woods rogers as the island's governor he continued to offer that royal pardon and set about rebuilding the island's defenses hampton woods rogers is a key figure in the war against the pirates he was a tough and resolute sea captain he had orders to drive the pirates from their lodgement and he goes out there with a fleet of ships gets a hostile reception but he establishes order he captures some pirates and he then sets up a show trial which he presides over nine of them are hanged on the beach in front of the fort of nassau and this sent a signal really across the caribbean that there's a man in nassau now who's in charge who's restoring order and in effect um it was an example to other colonial governors that if you're tough with the pirates you can get rid of them following the clamp down in the caribbean many of the pirates set off across the atlantic for other less well-patrolled waters [Music] and it was to the slave coast of west africa that they headed it was in these waters just two years before that one sailor had risen to prominence a pirate captain to eclipse all others in what was to be the final flourish of this age of plunder [Music] his name was bartholomew roberts an outspoken and disciplined man who swore the welsh complexion would lead to him being remembered as black bart like many sailors of his generation bart had faced a dilemma when his ship had been captured by pirates and he had reluctantly turned pirate but that reluctance was then blown out of the water when his crew elected him captain since i have dipped my hands in muddy water he surmised it's better to be a commander than a common man [Music] over the course of three years from 1719 black bart had wrought havoc among merchant shipping on both sides of the atlantic and by the time he reached the shores of africa in june 1721 he was in command of a flotilla of three vessels in addition to his flagship the royal fortune such was the size and loyalty of his combined crew that black bart's little fleet seemed like a proper navy especially when you consider the way that he further formalised the pirate's code amongst his articles or rules he stipulated that no one was to game at cards or dice for money anyone found seducing women or bringing them on board disguised would suffer death oh and the lights and candles had to be out by 8 pm so that's no fun no women and you all had to be tucked up early bartholomew roberts was in a way the most resolute and unbending of all pirates he was rather puritanical character i should think completely terrifying to meet those who did put up a fight with bartholomew roberts had a really bad time and were usually eliminated in horrible ways i mean not just cutting off ears and noses but he would hang them up in the rigging and use them for target practice and this was simply in order that the word would get around you don't mess around with bartholomew roberts black bart proved so elusive that those in pursuit began to think he was invincible beyond capture even pistol proof as his own crew described him however there was one man captain challenger ogle of hms swallow who had been tracking bart for some eight months and he was soon to find his quarry in his sights sail ahoy sail ahoy when the cry came for sale ahoy black bart was enjoying a breakfast of strong tea because he abhorred liquor and salmo a pirate specialty of pickled herring boiled eggs meat and vegetables but for a man normally so disciplined and astute black bart had finally been caught out [Music] looking through his telescope he saw that the approaching ship was using the old ruse de gea of flying false flags and he quickly ordered his men to ready themselves for battle black bart perhaps sensing that the fatal hour was upon him decided to go out in style and dressed gallantly for the engagement as captain johnson's general history of the pirates records roberts himself made a gallant figure being dressed in a rich crimson damask waistcoat and breaches a red feather in his hat a gold chain round his neck with a cross hanging to it a sword in his hand and two pairs of pistols hanging at the end of a silk sling flung over his shoulders according to the fashion of pirates bart's plan was a characteristically bold one if he was to stand any chance of escape he would need to force that naval ship onto a new course but that involved sailing directly towards her which would expose his ship to cannon fire [Music] the two ships closed on each other and exchanged broadsides captain ogle's ship the swallow remained unscathed but black bart lost its mizzenmast though on it sailed heading out into open sea however as the noise subsided and the smoke cleared after that first broadside the helmsman noticed bart slumped on deck on a pile of rigging not realizing he was injured he swore at him to get up and fight like a man but bartholomew roberts was dead his throat had been ripped out by grape shot and before his body could be seized and taken as a trophy his faithful crew wrapped it in a sail weighed it down with shot and consigned it to the deep a second broadside brought the royal fortunes main mast down upon which black bart's crew with their spirits sunk and their captain gone called for quarter for his success captain ogle was awarded a knighthood the only british naval officer to be honoured specifically for his actions against pirates the battle black bart's death and the subsequent trial of his remaining crewmen at cape coast castle on the coast of ghana was to prove the turning point in the war against pirates and this is their death warrant a small piece of paper that would herald the end of an era ye and each of you are adjudged and sentenced to be carried back to the place from whence you came from thence to the place of execution without the gates of this castle and there within the flood marks to be hanged by the neck until you are dead dead dead [Music] like captain kid some 20 years before these 52 dead pirates swaying out across the atlantic were a stark reminder of the perils of piracy it was the greatest slaughter of pirates ever carried out by the admiralty and in the stroke it brought this brief and bloody age to a dramatic finale black bart's short career had amounted to capturing over 470 vessels and plundering riches worth a total of around 20 million pounds in today's money when the rewards so greatly outweigh the risks it's no wonder that so many sailors embraced the life of piracy in his book captain johnson devotes more space to black bart than to any of his contemporaries and it includes a quote from bart himself that for me serves as a mantra for all pirates in an honest service says he there is low wages and hard labor in this plenty and satiaty pleasure and ease liberty and power a merry life and a short one should be my motto now what's that if not the faustian pact of all outlaws as george and britain's imperial and mercantile ambitions marched on so its navy grew in size and strength bolstered by vast numbers of sailors who only a few years earlier might have easily joined the ranks of the pirates they may have been a bunch of common outlaws but these pirates had shaken the very foundations of a fledgling empire that would spread across the world once their lawless reign over the seas was ended and these maritime renegades left a powerful legacy ordinary men and women forging new identities and a dangerous vision of freedom far removed from the authoritarian social order of george and britain to the establishment they were enemies of mankind but to the public they became folk heroes and have remained so ever since it would seem that in this short but sensational period in our history it was the pirate and not britannia who really ruled the waves [Music] next time outlaws come closer to home in the teeming cities of george and britain and with no established police force the thief the robber and the cheat could live beyond the law rogues like jack shepard who no prison would hold and deacon brody the original jekyll and hyde [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 1,058,602

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, highwaymen, pirates and rogues, piracy documentary, pirate documentary, colonial explorer documentary, francis drake, captain morgan, blackbeard, walter scott, long john silver, captain kidd, calico jack, madame cheng

Id: pX7F-Hxvr80

Length: 59min 24sec (3564 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2022