# The Flying Gang

An episode of [Stuff You Missed in History Class](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/283605519), 27 Jul 2026, 32 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/cfb428ef-eafc-44d0-9d09-ae2701747e6f/ad62bf75-31b4-43fa-8be0-b4920128c46b/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=fb626e1f-112c-4246-a40d-ae2701747e7d

For part of its history, Nassau was a notorious hotbed of pirate activity. And it was home to a maritime criminal network known as the Flying Gang. Research: • "Bahamas, the." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia™, The Columbia UP, 2025. Gale OneFile: High School Edition, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A69385873/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=7f7affa4. Accessed 8 July 2026. • Ahrens, Wolfgang P. “Naming the Bahamas Islands: History and Folk Etymology.” Names and Their Environment. Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, Glasgow, 25-29. August 2014. Vol. 1. Keynote Lectures. Toponomastics I. Carole Hough and Daria Izdebska (eds). First published 2016 by University of Glasgow under Creative Commons license. https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_576595_smxx.pdf • Butler, Lindley S. “North Carolina 1718: The Year of the Pirates.” The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 95, No. 2 (APRIL 2018). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45184933 • Cartwright, Mark. "Benjamin Hornigold." World History Encyclopedia, 09 Sep 2021, https://www.worldhistory.org/Benjamin_Hornigold/. • Craton, Michael. “A History of the Bahamas.” London. Collins. 1962. • Enthoven, Victor. “‘That Abominable Nest of Pirates’: St. Eustatius and the North Americans, 1680—1780. Early American Studies , Spring 2012, Vol. 10, No. 2. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23547669 • Fox, E.T. “Jacobitism and the ‘Golden Age’ of Piracy, 1715-1725.” International Journal of Maritime History, XXII, No. 2 (December 2010), 277-303. • Hahn, Steven C. “The Atlantic Odyssey of Richard Tookerman.” Early American Studies, Summer 2017, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Summer 2017). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/90011103 • Keegan, William F. “The Native Peoples of Turks and Caicos.” Florida Museum. https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/caribarch/education/tc-peoples/ • Kinsella, Pat. “The real pirates of the Caribbean: your guide to Nassau's pirate republic.” History Extra. 1/20/2022. https://www.historyextra.com/period/stuart/nassau-pirate-republic-flying-gang-real-pirates-caribbean/ • Lane, Kris. “Pirate Networks in the Caribbean.” From Empires of the Sea: Maritime Power Networks in World History. Brill. 2020. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv2gjx041.18 • Leeson, Peter T. “An‐arrgh‐chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization.” Journal of Political Economy , Vol. 115, No. 6 (December 2007). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/526403 • Moore, David D. “Captain Edward Thatch: A Brief Analysis of the Primary Source Documents Concerning the Notorious Blackbeard.” The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 95, No. 2 (APRIL 2018). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45184934 • Queen Anne’s Revenge Project. “Did You Know Blackbeard’s Mentor Was a Pirate Hunter?” 3/8/2018. https://www.qaronline.org/blog/2018-03-08/did-you-know-blackbeards-mentor-was-pirate-hunter • Rediker, Marcus. “‘Under the Banner of King Death’: The Social World of Anglo-American Pirates, 1716.” The William and Mary Quarterly , Apr., 1981. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1918775 • Saunders, Gail. "Rogers, Woodes (c. 1679–1732), privateer and colonial governor." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. January 03, 2008. Oxford University Press. Date of access 9 Jul. 2026, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-24006 • Sheposh, Richard. “Republic of Pirates.” EBSCO. 2023. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/republic-pirates • Wilson, David. “The 1715 Plate Fleet and the Rise of the Pirates.” History Today. 6/30/2015. https://www.historytoday.com/1715-plate-fleet-and-rise-pirates • Woodard, Colin. “The republic of pirates : being the true and surprising story of the Caribbean pirates and the man who brought them down.” New York, NY : Mariner Books. 2007. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
[0:04] Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
[0:14] Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. If you're watching this on Netflix,
[0:17] Speaker 1: it looks a little different from how it typically looks
[0:21] Speaker 1: because we are recording from the studio at Bahamar and
[0:24] Speaker 1: Nasau in the Bahamas. I thought, since we were in
[0:28] Speaker 1: the Bahamas, it might be nice to record something that
[0:31] Speaker 1: was specific to where we are, and that of course
[0:34] Speaker 1: led me to pirates because for a period during its history,
[0:38] Speaker 1: Nasau was a notorious hotbed of pirate activity. It is
[0:43] Speaker 1: coincidental that the Assassin's Creed franchise has literally just put
[0:48] Speaker 1: out a remaster of the game that is set both
[0:53] Speaker 1: here and during all the things that we were talking about,
[0:56] Speaker 1: because we're going to be talking about Nasa as a
[1:00] Speaker 1: pirate republic, particularly home to a maritime criminal network known
[1:06] Speaker 1: as the Flying Gang. And to start with a little
[1:09] Speaker 1: bit of background, today, there are about thirty inhabited islands
[1:13] Speaker 1: in the Bahamas, which has a total of about seven
[1:16] Speaker 1: hundred islands and more than two thousand keys. Prior to
[1:20] Speaker 1: the arrival of Europeans in the late fifteenth century. This
[1:24] Speaker 1: archipelago was home to the Arawakan speaking people known as
[1:27] Speaker 1: the Lukayo or Lucayan people. This name comes from their
[1:31] Speaker 1: own name for themselves, which is Luku Kairie, meaning island people.
[1:36] Speaker 1: They may have shared common ancestry with the Tainos who
[1:40] Speaker 1: lived in other parts of the Caribbean, and they're sometimes
[1:43] Speaker 1: called the Lucayan Tainos. They probably made their way to
[1:47] Speaker 1: the Bahamas from other parts of the Caribbean by the
[1:49] Speaker 1: year eight hundred, and in the late fifteenth century their
[1:53] Speaker 1: population totaled about forty thousand people. According to a twenty
[1:57] Speaker 1: fourteen paper titled Naming the Bahamas Islands History and Folk
[2:02] Speaker 1: Etymology by Wolfgang p Arns, the name Bahama is Lucayan.
[2:08] Speaker 1: It comes from their name for Grand Bahama Island that
[2:12] Speaker 1: was Bahama, meaning large upper middle land. New Providence Island,
[2:17] Speaker 1: which is where Nasau is located, was called Nimma or
[2:20] Speaker 1: a middle water. This paper references sixteenth and seventeenth century maps,
[2:25] Speaker 1: a lot of which include Lucayan names for all of
[2:29] Speaker 1: these islands and almost no Spanish ones, and that also
[2:32] Speaker 1: referenced a lot of earlier scholarship into history and linguistics
[2:37] Speaker 1: The first Europeans to arrive in the Bahamas were part
[2:40] Speaker 1: of Christopher Columbus's first expedition to the Americas. They made
[2:45] Speaker 1: landfall on Guanahani, known in English as San Salvador Island
[2:49] Speaker 1: in fourteen ninety two. Columbus and his crew captured and
[2:54] Speaker 1: enslaved some of the people they encountered in the Bahamas,
[2:57] Speaker 1: and other Europeans who arrived later in the fifteenth and
[3:00] Speaker 1: sixteenth centuries did the same. Lucayans also died of diseases
[3:05] Speaker 1: that were introduced by the Europeans and as the result
[3:08] Speaker 1: of violence, as well as while they were doing the
[3:11] Speaker 1: work that they were forced to do while enslaved. That
[3:14] Speaker 1: included diving for pearls off the coast of Venezuela and
[3:18] Speaker 1: working in silver mines. Over the course of this enslavement
[3:22] Speaker 1: and genocide in the sixteenth century, the Lucayan people ceased
[3:27] Speaker 1: to exist as a distinct cultural group. When Wamponcee de
[3:31] Speaker 1: Lyon arrived in the area in fifteen thirteen, he said
[3:34] Speaker 1: he encountered only one person in the northern Bahama Islands.
[3:39] Speaker 1: It is likely that some people were able to flee
[3:42] Speaker 1: to other parts of the Caribbean and to find homes
[3:44] Speaker 1: with other indigenous communities. There are definitely people with Tino
[3:49] Speaker 1: ancestry still living today, and in recent years there's been
[3:53] Speaker 1: a big resurgence in Tino identity in the Caribbean. There
[3:57] Speaker 1: are also other Ariwuakan speaking peoples in other parts of
[4:00] Speaker 1: the Caribbean and in South America today. Columbus of course
[4:05] Speaker 1: claimed all of the islands he encountered for Spain, and
[4:08] Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century other European powers, including Britain, France,
[4:13] Speaker 1: and the Dutch Republics, started claiming parts of the Caribbean
[4:16] Speaker 1: as well. In sixteen twenty nine, British King Charles the
[4:20] Speaker 1: First granted territories in America to Robert Heath, including quote
[4:25] Speaker 1: Bahama and all other isles and islands lying southerly there
[4:29] Speaker 1: or near upon the foresaid continent. Heath did not really
[4:34] Speaker 1: do much to try to settle or occupy the Bahamas,
[4:37] Speaker 1: and for a few decades after this other British efforts
[4:41] Speaker 1: to maybe establish some kind of settlement were largely unsuccessful. Then,
[4:45] Speaker 1: in sixteen seventy the British established Charlestown on the island
[4:50] Speaker 1: of New Providence. The Spanish raided Charlestown, and they burned
[4:54] Speaker 1: it down in sixteen eighty four. A little more than
[4:58] Speaker 1: a decade later, in sixteen ninety five, the British rebuilt
[5:01] Speaker 1: it and named it Nassau, after the House of Nasau,
[5:04] Speaker 1: which was a German aristocratic dynasty by that point. The
[5:08] Speaker 1: King of England was William the Third, also known as
[5:10] Speaker 1: William of Orange, who was descended from William the First,
[5:14] Speaker 1: also known as William the Silent or William of Nasau. Unsurprisingly,
[5:19] Speaker 1: considering that we just talked about Spain burning down Charlestown,
[5:24] Speaker 1: this whole period was full of ongoing fighting among the
[5:28] Speaker 1: European powers that were trying to claim and exploit various
[5:32] Speaker 1: Caribbean islands. They sent colonial officials and naval ships to
[5:36] Speaker 1: the islands, and they issued letters of mark authorizing privateers
[5:40] Speaker 1: to use their own ships to attack and capture enemies.
[5:44] Speaker 1: For the most part, privateers were not paid by the
[5:46] Speaker 1: government that authorized them to do this. Their income came
[5:50] Speaker 1: from the ships and cargoes that they captured along the way.
[5:54] Speaker 1: So this was not just about claiming islands territory. It
[5:59] Speaker 1: was interconnected with the European powers rivalries and their conflicts
[6:03] Speaker 1: with one another. The number of privateers surged during the
[6:07] Speaker 1: Nine Years War from sixteen eighty eight to sixteen ninety seven.
[6:11] Speaker 1: That was between France and the Grand Alliance, and the
[6:13] Speaker 1: members of the Grand Alliance included England. The North American
[6:17] Speaker 1: component of the Nine Years War was known as King
[6:20] Speaker 1: William's War. The War of the Spanish Succession started a
[6:24] Speaker 1: couple of years after the Nine Years War ended, and
[6:27] Speaker 1: that continued until seventeen fourteen. That war was between the
[6:31] Speaker 1: Spanish Habsburgs and the Spanish Bourbons and all of their
[6:34] Speaker 1: various allies. The War of the Spanish Succession also had
[6:38] Speaker 1: its own American component, and that was known as Queen
[6:41] Speaker 1: Anne's War. These wars and the hostilities among all these
[6:45] Speaker 1: nations were interconnected with the rise in piracy in the
[6:48] Speaker 1: Caribbean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In theory, privateers
[6:54] Speaker 1: only attacked the ships that their letters of mark authorized
[6:57] Speaker 1: them to attack, generally the enemies of whoever it was
[7:00] Speaker 1: that issued the letter. But that could mean passing up
[7:04] Speaker 1: some of the most lucrative ships, so some privateers turned
[7:08] Speaker 1: to piracy because they could just make more money that way.
[7:11] Speaker 1: When wars ended or when letters of mark expired, privateers
[7:15] Speaker 1: were left without a legitimate source of income, and that
[7:18] Speaker 1: also led some to become pirates. Other pirates had previously
[7:22] Speaker 1: served in navies. When European powers scaled back their navies
[7:27] Speaker 1: after wars were over, these sailors were similarly left without
[7:30] Speaker 1: a job. Navies, especially the British Royal Navy, also were
[7:35] Speaker 1: notorious for very low pay, including long delayed payments, ruling hours,
[7:41] Speaker 1: terrible working conditions, and an intense culture of discipline. There
[7:46] Speaker 1: could sometimes be severe punishments like being flogged associated with
[7:52] Speaker 1: this discipline, so a lot of out of work sailors.
[7:54] Speaker 1: Once they were put out of a job, they did
[7:56] Speaker 1: not really want to go back to that life, even
[7:59] Speaker 1: if a job became available. Pirate ships, on the other hand,
[8:03] Speaker 1: were seen as an option that was both fairer and
[8:06] Speaker 1: more lucrative. Sometimes this is depicted in an overly romanticized way,
[8:11] Speaker 1: with pirate crews having this almost communal spirit and dividing
[8:15] Speaker 1: their loot equally, and a lot of this comes from
[8:17] Speaker 1: fictional depictions of pirates and a perception of them kind
[8:21] Speaker 1: of as folk heroes. But pirate ships of this era
[8:24] Speaker 1: did typically function under a written compact, which was created
[8:29] Speaker 1: when a captain was assembling a crew, or at the
[8:31] Speaker 1: start of a voyage, or if a new captain was
[8:34] Speaker 1: taking over. This compact outlined how plunder would be distributed,
[8:40] Speaker 1: what all the rules were, and how discipline would be
[8:42] Speaker 1: carried out. In most of the surviving compacts, everyone got
[8:47] Speaker 1: a share of the plunder, with officers getting a little
[8:50] Speaker 1: bit more. So the captain might get a share and
[8:52] Speaker 1: a half or two shares, while lower ranking officers usually
[8:56] Speaker 1: got more like a share and a half or a
[8:58] Speaker 1: share in a quarter. This was wildly different from the
[9:01] Speaker 1: way things worked on most other vessels, where the captains
[9:05] Speaker 1: and the officers got hundreds or even thousands of times
[9:08] Speaker 1: more than the ordinary sailors did. On many pirate ships,
[9:12] Speaker 1: disputes were settled and punishments were determined by voting. If
[9:17] Speaker 1: someone stole something from another member of the crew, or
[9:20] Speaker 1: was cowardly during a fight, or broke a relatively minor rule,
[9:24] Speaker 1: their punishment might be whatever the majority of the crew
[9:27] Speaker 1: thought was appropriate. That did not mean that everything went
[9:31] Speaker 1: smoothly or that everybody was satisfied with life or ships
[9:34] Speaker 1: all the time. These ships could still be incredibly violent places. Again,
[9:39] Speaker 1: these were criminal enterprises. Captains and officers could still be
[9:44] Speaker 1: unreasonable or cruel. Ships could still run aground, or run
[9:48] Speaker 1: out of provisions, or get into all kinds of misfortune.
[9:52] Speaker 1: Some ships codes outlined punishments that could still be severe,
[9:56] Speaker 1: including death or being marooned on an island somewhere. But
[10:00] Speaker 1: for the most part, for a lot of people, life
[10:02] Speaker 1: as a pirates still seemed better than the alternatives. Laps,
[10:06] Speaker 1: privateering contracts, and out of work navymen can't really account
[10:10] Speaker 1: for all of the pirates in this era. There were
[10:13] Speaker 1: also pirates who had previously been merchant seamen, who often
[10:17] Speaker 1: faced similar conditions to those on navy ships, but the
[10:21] Speaker 1: large majority of pirates had been one of the three.
[10:25] Speaker 1: Roughly a third were British and roughly a quarter were American,
[10:29] Speaker 1: and there were also pirates from all over Europe and
[10:31] Speaker 1: South Asia sailing in the Caribbean and the Atlantic. It's
[10:35] Speaker 1: likely that between a quarter and a third of the
[10:38] Speaker 1: sailors on a typical pirate crew were black, many of
[10:41] Speaker 1: whom had liberated themselves from enslavement. There were also pirates
[10:45] Speaker 1: who had enslaved people on their crew, or included slaves
[10:49] Speaker 1: as part of the loot to be distributed. We will
[10:53] Speaker 1: get to the rise in piracy around Nasau. After a
[10:56] Speaker 1: sponsor break around the time that Britain rebuilt Nassau in
[11:09] Speaker 1: sixteen ninety five, Sir Nicholas Trott was named governor of
[11:13] Speaker 1: the Bahamas. Nasau was the capital, but there were really
[11:16] Speaker 1: not many people there, and Trot did not have a
[11:19] Speaker 1: lot of support in defending Nassau. This was during the
[11:22] Speaker 1: Nine Years' War, and he was naturally concerned about the
[11:25] Speaker 1: possibility of a French attack on Nassau. So when an
[11:29] Speaker 1: arm ship arrived at port in March of sixteen ninety six,
[11:33] Speaker 1: with a captain calling himself Henry Bridgeman and offering Trot
[11:38] Speaker 1: a bribe to kind of look the other way, Trot
[11:41] Speaker 1: thought this ship's presence might work as a deterrent. In
[11:44] Speaker 1: addition to its armaments, the ship's crew doubled the number
[11:48] Speaker 1: of men in Nassau. Trot also thought it was possible
[11:52] Speaker 1: that if he denied entry to this ship, it might
[11:55] Speaker 1: leave and join the French side. That captain was really
[11:59] Speaker 1: pirate hen who we've covered on the show before. Six
[12:03] Speaker 1: months before this, he and other pirates had pulled off
[12:06] Speaker 1: what's been described as the most profitable pirate raid in history.
[12:11] Speaker 1: That was on a Mughal Empire fleet whose passengers included
[12:15] Speaker 1: members of the emperor's family who were returning from the Hajj.
[12:20] Speaker 1: This was a massive international incident, and there was intense
[12:23] Speaker 1: pressure on British authorities to find every and bring him
[12:26] Speaker 1: to justice. Eventually, someone told Trot whoevery really was, and
[12:32] Speaker 1: Every fled before he could be captured. By that point,
[12:36] Speaker 1: most of Every's crew had divided their spoils among themselves
[12:39] Speaker 1: and scattered. Trot was dismissed as governor later that year.
[12:44] Speaker 1: The War of the Spanish Succession started about five years
[12:48] Speaker 1: after this, and in seventeen oh three, a combined Spanish
[12:51] Speaker 1: and French fleet attacked the Bahamas. They raided Nassau. They
[12:56] Speaker 1: spiked all the cannons in the fort, and they took
[12:58] Speaker 1: about eighty people prison That included acting Governor Ellis Lightfoot,
[13:04] Speaker 1: who some sources call Ellis Lightwood. They also took British
[13:08] Speaker 1: soldiers and enslaved Africans captive. Lightfoot and some of the
[13:13] Speaker 1: other captives were later ransomed, but a lot of people
[13:16] Speaker 1: were killed during this raid. When the next appointed governor,
[13:20] Speaker 1: Edward Burch, arrived in seventeen oh four, he found Nassau
[13:24] Speaker 1: almost completely destroyed and virtually deserted, and he described the
[13:29] Speaker 1: few remaining survivors as not even having a shift to
[13:32] Speaker 1: cover their nakedness. Birch quickly went back to England. After
[13:38] Speaker 1: he left, no one replaced him in Nassau for years.
[13:42] Speaker 1: A second Spanish raid in seventeen oh six scattered the
[13:45] Speaker 1: few people who had made their way back to Nasau.
[13:48] Speaker 1: For all practical purposes, the Bahamas were ungoverned, with maybe
[13:52] Speaker 1: five hundred British subjects scattered around the islands and fending
[13:56] Speaker 1: for themselves. England's part in the War of the Spanish
[14:00] Speaker 1: Succession ended in seventeen thirteen with the Treaty of Utrecht.
[14:04] Speaker 1: This was one of a whole series of treaties that
[14:06] Speaker 1: ended this war, and there was a bunch of other
[14:09] Speaker 1: stuff going on in the treaty. Among other things, it
[14:12] Speaker 1: ultimately led to the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia,
[14:17] Speaker 1: which we've covered on the show before. The part that
[14:20] Speaker 1: is most relevant to this episode is that it ended
[14:23] Speaker 1: England's part in the war, and consequently it ended England's
[14:26] Speaker 1: need for so many privateers. This is often cited as
[14:30] Speaker 1: a big factor in the spike in pirate activity in
[14:32] Speaker 1: the Caribbean in the eighteenth century. As all of those
[14:35] Speaker 1: former privateers are not all of them, but a number
[14:37] Speaker 1: of them decided to turn to piracy, and that was
[14:41] Speaker 1: one part of it. But by the time the war ended,
[14:44] Speaker 1: Nassau was already full of pirates. They had started moving
[14:48] Speaker 1: in as soon as the British abandoned it. Privateers hired
[14:52] Speaker 1: by other governments had moved in as well, including ones
[14:55] Speaker 1: hired by the British colonial government of Jamaica. The big
[14:59] Speaker 1: draw Nasau's harbor. It was too shallow for the kinds
[15:03] Speaker 1: of large warships that the colonial powers were using, but
[15:06] Speaker 1: it was great for the smaller, faster ships that pirates
[15:09] Speaker 1: and privateers preferred. This was also true of other harbors
[15:13] Speaker 1: and bays in the Bahamas. There is a persistent but
[15:16] Speaker 1: incorrect idea that the name Bahamas comes from the Spanish,
[15:20] Speaker 1: thanks to Christopher Columbus calling the area Bahamar or shallow sea.
[15:26] Speaker 1: Two of the pirates who were working out of Nasau
[15:28] Speaker 1: in the seventeen teens were Benjamin Hornigold and Henry Jennings.
[15:33] Speaker 1: Sometimes people make it sound like the two of them
[15:36] Speaker 1: teamed up to spawn an entire world of piracy in
[15:39] Speaker 1: the Caribbean all by themselves, but they were more rivals
[15:43] Speaker 1: than friends. They sort of shifted between privateering and piracy
[15:47] Speaker 1: at different times, and at more than one point one
[15:51] Speaker 1: of them managed to capture one of the other's prizes.
[15:55] Speaker 1: It's also likely that there were at least a thousand
[15:58] Speaker 1: pirates operating in the Bahamas by the time each of
[16:01] Speaker 1: them turned to piracy, so this was not an ecosystem
[16:03] Speaker 1: that they just created. At the same time, most of
[16:07] Speaker 1: the pirate captains operating out of Nassau were connected to
[16:11] Speaker 1: what are the other of them? Most of the Caribbean
[16:14] Speaker 1: pirates who were not connected to them were connected to
[16:17] Speaker 1: George Lother or Edward Lowe, who largely operated out of
[16:21] Speaker 1: the Bay of Honduras on the coasts of Guatemala and Belize.
[16:26] Speaker 1: The pirates connected to Horneguld and Jennings became known as
[16:29] Speaker 1: the Flying Gang, and Nassau was nicknamed the Republic of Pirates.
[16:34] Speaker 1: The Flying Gang was the largest group of pirates in
[16:37] Speaker 1: the early decades of the eighteenth century and the biggest
[16:40] Speaker 1: threat to maritime trade between the Americas and Europe and Africa.
[16:45] Speaker 1: Pirates associated with the Flying Gang also terrorized local people
[16:49] Speaker 1: living in the Bahamas, including the few British subjects who
[16:52] Speaker 1: were still living in and around Nasau, and they attacked
[16:56] Speaker 1: coastal settlements all across the Caribbean and the Americas. The
[17:00] Speaker 1: Flying Gang was not really a formalized group with like
[17:04] Speaker 1: a clear hierarchy and organizational structure. It was more like
[17:08] Speaker 1: a loose confederation of ships and crews that were all
[17:11] Speaker 1: working under generally similar ideals. This confederation grew and expanded
[17:17] Speaker 1: over the course of its activities, so newly established pirate
[17:21] Speaker 1: crews often started with a couple of men who had
[17:24] Speaker 1: served together somewhere on the same ship and kept in
[17:27] Speaker 1: touch and got a ship of their own. If one
[17:30] Speaker 1: pirate ship captured another vessel, they would either kill its
[17:33] Speaker 1: crew or put them ashore and then take over that ship,
[17:37] Speaker 1: sort of splitting the two ships with two crews, bringing
[17:42] Speaker 1: on the second one and keeping any of the captured
[17:45] Speaker 1: crew that maybe did want to become pirates. Pirate activity
[17:50] Speaker 1: also surged after a Spanish fleet was caught in a
[17:53] Speaker 1: hurricane in seventeen fifteen and driven onto reefs off the
[17:56] Speaker 1: coast of Florida. These ships were traveling together along with
[18:01] Speaker 1: a French frigate. Due to fears about all of the
[18:03] Speaker 1: pirate activity in the area, ten ships, most of them
[18:07] Speaker 1: laden with silver and gold and other valuable cargo, were
[18:11] Speaker 1: run aground, capsized, or sunk, with only the French frigate surviving.
[18:16] Speaker 1: It's likely that at least fifteen hundred sailors died of drowning, injury,
[18:20] Speaker 1: or dehydration after managing to get ashore. Salvagers rushed to
[18:25] Speaker 1: this area from all over the Caribbean and eastern North America.
[18:29] Speaker 1: It was a massive series of shipwrecks in shallow water.
[18:33] Speaker 1: It was easy pickens for salvagers, and pirates moved into
[18:37] Speaker 1: salvage from the rexes well and to try to attack
[18:41] Speaker 1: and plunder the other salvage ships. Of course, Spain really
[18:45] Speaker 1: objected to all of this, since the rex and their
[18:48] Speaker 1: cargo were all considered Spanish property, and Spain demanded that
[18:52] Speaker 1: other nations that had sent the salvage crews withdraw. Governor
[18:57] Speaker 1: Archibald Hamilton of Jamaica commit Henry Jennings and John Wills
[19:02] Speaker 1: as privateers. Their commission was ostensibly to attack pirates, but
[19:08] Speaker 1: Hamilton encouraged them to salvage the Spanish wres he had
[19:12] Speaker 1: purchased shares from the ships, so he would be getting
[19:15] Speaker 1: part of that salvage. What Jennings and Wills actually did
[19:19] Speaker 1: was attack and plunder the storehouse where the Spanish were
[19:22] Speaker 1: storing the cargo that they had managed to pull out
[19:25] Speaker 1: of the wreckage. Hamilton eventually ordered the ships that he
[19:29] Speaker 1: had commissioned to return to Jamaica, and he barred British
[19:32] Speaker 1: subjects from the Rex site. This just led to more piracy, though,
[19:36] Speaker 1: as ships that had previously been operating under at least
[19:40] Speaker 1: his British authority just defied that order and kept doing
[19:44] Speaker 1: it and also attacking other Caribbean targets in retaliation for
[19:49] Speaker 1: having been barred from the shipwrecks. Hamilton wound up being
[19:53] Speaker 1: arrested for his role in all of this in October
[19:55] Speaker 1: of seventeen sixteen. Some of the most well known pirates
[19:59] Speaker 1: of the eighteenth century were connected to the Flying Gang.
[20:03] Speaker 1: One of Hornigold's officers was Edward Teach or Thatch, also
[20:07] Speaker 1: known very famously as Blackbeard. Another was Samuel Bellamy. Charles
[20:13] Speaker 1: Vaine had served under Henry Jennings and John Rackham aka
[20:16] Speaker 1: Calico Jack, had served under Charles Vain and Bonnie and
[20:21] Speaker 1: Mary Reid, who we have also covered on the show before,
[20:24] Speaker 1: served on Jack Rackham's ship. And there was also Steed Bonnet,
[20:28] Speaker 1: who we talked about in twenty thirteen, who was an
[20:31] Speaker 1: outlier in terms of how people came into piracy. He
[20:35] Speaker 1: was a wealthy planter who abandoned his wife and family
[20:38] Speaker 1: to become a pirate and fell in with Blackbeard. Because
[20:42] Speaker 1: of all of this pirate activity, people started describing Nasa
[20:46] Speaker 1: as another Madagascar. Madagascar was also a hotbed of pirate
[20:51] Speaker 1: activity that started in about sixteen fifty. Madagascar was also
[20:55] Speaker 1: home to the pirate utopia of Libertalia, although that might
[20:59] Speaker 1: have been more legendary than real. We did an episode
[21:03] Speaker 1: on that in twenty eighteen, and we are going to
[21:05] Speaker 1: talk about how the golden Age of piracy in the
[21:08] Speaker 1: Caribbean ended after we paused for a sponsor break. Through
[21:21] Speaker 1: the early seventeen hundreds and seventeen teens, a lot of
[21:25] Speaker 1: people were justifiably worried about piracy, from people living in
[21:29] Speaker 1: the Caribbean and coastal areas of the mainland, to the
[21:33] Speaker 1: captains of merchant vessels, to international governments whose economies and
[21:38] Speaker 1: whose colonial efforts really depended on being able to traverse
[21:42] Speaker 1: the oceans without being continually attacked and plundered, but for
[21:46] Speaker 1: a while British authorities in the Caribbean did not do
[21:49] Speaker 1: very much to try to stop it. That changed in
[21:53] Speaker 1: seventeen seventeen. On September fifth of that year, King George
[21:57] Speaker 1: the First issued a proclamation offering to pardon acts of piracy,
[22:02] Speaker 1: giving the pirates a deadline of the following September fifth
[22:06] Speaker 1: to surrender themselves to officials in Britain, Ireland or the colonies.
[22:11] Speaker 1: This proclamation also empowered British sea officers, governors, military commanders,
[22:16] Speaker 1: and others to quote seize and take such of the
[22:19] Speaker 1: pirates who shall refuse or neglect to surrender themselves. Accordingly,
[22:24] Speaker 1: it offered a reward for any such person who discovered
[22:28] Speaker 1: or seized any pirate who had not surrendered. The award
[22:31] Speaker 1: was one hundred pounds for commanders of ships or vessels,
[22:35] Speaker 1: and then it went down incrementally to twenty pounds for
[22:37] Speaker 1: every private man. There was also a bounty for crews
[22:41] Speaker 1: who turned on their captains, either delivering those captains to
[22:46] Speaker 1: the authorities themselves or causing them to be delivered to
[22:49] Speaker 1: the authorities so that they could be brought to justice
[22:51] Speaker 1: and convicted. The reward for that was two hundred pounds
[22:55] Speaker 1: for every such commander. As word of this proclamation spread,
[23:00] Speaker 1: sub pirates made their way to British governors or other
[23:03] Speaker 1: authorities to surrender. When Captain Vincent Pierce of the HMS
[23:07] Speaker 1: Phoenix arrived at New Providence Island in February of seventeen eighteen,
[23:12] Speaker 1: more than two hundred pirates surrendered to him. Some of
[23:16] Speaker 1: the pirates who accepted the King's pardon later returned to piracy.
[23:21] Speaker 1: The book A General History of the Pirates from their
[23:24] Speaker 1: First rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence to
[23:26] Speaker 1: the present time, which was published in seventeen twenty four,
[23:30] Speaker 1: described men going back to piracy quote like the dog
[23:34] Speaker 1: to the vomit, which is a turn of phrase that
[23:36] Speaker 1: I really love. But others took the money that they
[23:40] Speaker 1: had earned as pirates and started new lives in one
[23:43] Speaker 1: of the many, many parts of territory that the British
[23:46] Speaker 1: had claimed in the Caribbean and North America that were
[23:49] Speaker 1: considered thinly settled at that point. Henry Jennings may have
[23:53] Speaker 1: been one of those people, although his fate after surrendering
[23:56] Speaker 1: is somewhat unclear. Some of the former pirates turned pirate
[24:01] Speaker 1: hunter after being pardoned. One of those was Benjamin Hornigold.
[24:06] Speaker 1: He tried to bring in Charles Vain, but Vain's ship
[24:09] Speaker 1: was too fast. Some of his other efforts were more successful,
[24:13] Speaker 1: and on December ninth, seventeen eighteen, nine pirates Hornigold had
[24:17] Speaker 1: captured were put on trial in Nassau. They all pleaded
[24:22] Speaker 1: not guilty, and one of them, named John Hips, was
[24:25] Speaker 1: given a reprieve when he testified that he had only
[24:28] Speaker 1: been a pirate because he was forced to. Everyone else
[24:32] Speaker 1: was found guilty and hanged. Eventually, Hornigold had earned enough
[24:36] Speaker 1: trust that he was tasked with voyaging to Mexico to
[24:40] Speaker 1: try to establish a new trade route. But the ship
[24:42] Speaker 1: that he was on wrecked in seventeen nineteen, and Hornigold died,
[24:46] Speaker 1: either drowned in the wreck or after managing to make
[24:49] Speaker 1: it to an island. And of course, there were some
[24:52] Speaker 1: pirates who refused to surrender. One of the most dramatic
[24:56] Speaker 1: was Charles Vain, who accepted the king's pardon and then
[24:59] Speaker 1: just turned pirate again. Vain was a Jacobite, a supporter
[25:03] Speaker 1: of the Stewart claim to the British throne in the
[25:06] Speaker 1: seventeen teens, he corresponded with Jacobites in Britain, proposing that
[25:11] Speaker 1: he and his ships be put in service to James
[25:14] Speaker 1: Francis Edward Stewart. The antagonism between England and Spain was
[25:18] Speaker 1: also interconnected with the Jacobite movement, with Spain later backing
[25:23] Speaker 1: a Jacobite uprising. That is another way that these greater
[25:27] Speaker 1: international disputes were tangled up in the evolution of piracy.
[25:31] Speaker 1: In seventeen eighteen, when new colonial governor Woods Rogers arrived
[25:35] Speaker 1: in Nassau, there were British ships with him and they
[25:38] Speaker 1: trapped Charles Vain and his ships in the harbor. So
[25:42] Speaker 1: Vain filled one of his ships with gunpowder, set it
[25:45] Speaker 1: on fire, and pointed it at the awaiting British fleet.
[25:49] Speaker 1: Vain managed to escape as the British ships tried to
[25:52] Speaker 1: evade the fire ship that he had created. He left
[25:56] Speaker 1: several ships loaded with cargo behind in the harbor. Other pirates,
[26:00] Speaker 1: probably hoping that their own crimes would be overlooked, reported
[26:04] Speaker 1: this illicit cargo, which the British impounded. Vain continued attacking
[26:09] Speaker 1: and harassing ships, including working with Blackbeard off the coast
[26:13] Speaker 1: of North Carolina. He was eventually shipwrecked and captured in
[26:17] Speaker 1: seventeen twenty and then hanged in seventeen twenty one. Woods
[26:21] Speaker 1: Rogers was another big part of the effort to put
[26:24] Speaker 1: down piracy in the Caribbean. From seventeen oh eight to
[26:27] Speaker 1: seventeen eleven, he had been on a round the world
[26:30] Speaker 1: privateering expedition that also included slave trading and anti piracy
[26:36] Speaker 1: efforts around Madagascar. On this voyage, he encountered Alexander Selkirk,
[26:41] Speaker 1: who had asked to be put ashore off the coast
[26:44] Speaker 1: of Chile after a disagreement with his captain. Selkirk was
[26:48] Speaker 1: stranded there for four years and became the inspiration for
[26:52] Speaker 1: Daniel Dafoe's Robinson Crusoe. Rogers had earned about fourteen thousand
[26:57] Speaker 1: pounds during this voyage and had written a book about it,
[27:00] Speaker 1: which is called A Cruising Voyage round the World, and
[27:03] Speaker 1: that came out in seventeen twelve. So Rogers wasn't just
[27:07] Speaker 1: the governor. He essentially owned the Bahamas. He signed a
[27:11] Speaker 1: lease on the islands for twenty one years. He was
[27:14] Speaker 1: tasked with forming a government, rebuilding the Fort of Nasau,
[27:18] Speaker 1: and getting the colony functioning and was suppressing piracy, and
[27:22] Speaker 1: he carried a copy of that royal proclamation with him.
[27:26] Speaker 1: By the time he arrived on July twenty fifth, seventeen eighteen,
[27:29] Speaker 1: a lot of the most notorious pirates had already accepted
[27:33] Speaker 1: the King's pardon or maybe been killed, although the ones
[27:36] Speaker 1: that had not the ones that had returned to piracy
[27:40] Speaker 1: were causing ongoing issues. It is very tricky to put
[27:44] Speaker 1: an exact end date on the golden age of piracy
[27:47] Speaker 1: in the Caribbean, but between all of the surrenders, hangings
[27:51] Speaker 1: in shipwrecks, and the efforts of woods rogers to regain
[27:54] Speaker 1: control of Nasau and the rest of the Bahamas, most
[27:58] Speaker 1: of the pirates were either pardoned or dead by seventeen
[28:01] Speaker 1: twenty one. That included Samuel Bellamy, who was killed in
[28:05] Speaker 1: a shipwreck in seventeen seventeen, Blackbeard, who was killed in
[28:09] Speaker 1: a fight with the British Navy in seventeen eighteen, Steed
[28:13] Speaker 1: Bonnet who was hanged in seventeen eighteen, and Jack Rackham
[28:16] Speaker 1: who was hanged in seventeen twenty and Bonnie and Mary
[28:20] Speaker 1: Reid were both sent to prison rather than being hanged,
[28:23] Speaker 1: and their fate after that is not clear. The end
[28:27] Speaker 1: of the age of piracy had a huge economic impact
[28:30] Speaker 1: on the Bahamas, and it might not be what you're expecting.
[28:34] Speaker 1: Rogers had plans to start up a whaling industry and
[28:38] Speaker 1: to reinvigorate the salt trade. But while piracy had been
[28:42] Speaker 1: an active threat all over the Caribbean and all across
[28:45] Speaker 1: the Atlantic, fewer pirate ships meant less maritime traffic overall.
[28:51] Speaker 1: A lot of the time, pirates' illicit goods had also
[28:54] Speaker 1: been a lot cheaper than goods that were acquired and
[28:58] Speaker 1: shipped in under legitimate means. Rogers had that twenty one
[29:02] Speaker 1: year lease on the Bahamas, but he wasn't able to
[29:05] Speaker 1: make it profitable. He became exhausted and sick and eventually
[29:09] Speaker 1: went back to England, where he wound up in a
[29:11] Speaker 1: debtors prison. But things were apparently even worse under his successor,
[29:16] Speaker 1: and he was reinstalled as governor in seventeen twenty nine.
[29:19] Speaker 1: He continued in that role until his death in Nasau
[29:23] Speaker 1: on July fifteenth, seventeen thirty two. Of course, Nasau and
[29:27] Speaker 1: the Bahamas have a whole history after this point. For centuries,
[29:31] Speaker 1: Britain maintained a white minority rule over a predominantly black
[29:35] Speaker 1: population largely descended from enslaved people who have been brought
[29:39] Speaker 1: to the Caribbean. An independence movement evolved in the twentieth century,
[29:44] Speaker 1: and the Bahamas was granted limited self government in nineteen
[29:47] Speaker 1: fifty five and broader self government in nineteen sixty four.
[29:52] Speaker 1: The Commonwealth of the Bahamas was recognized as a sovereign
[29:55] Speaker 1: state on July tenth, nineteen seventy three. And that so
[30:00] Speaker 1: much piracy? Do you have so much listener mail? I
[30:04] Speaker 1: do have listener mail. It is from Andrea. And Andrea's
[30:09] Speaker 1: email was titled perfect Timing. Andrea wrote, Dear Holly and Tracy,
[30:13] Speaker 1: I just wanted to send my thanks for your incredibly
[30:16] Speaker 1: thoughtful and thought provoking subjects. I just returned from a
[30:19] Speaker 1: trip to Boston where we visited Bunker Hill. I did
[30:22] Speaker 1: see the blacard with the quote about the suffrage movement.
[30:25] Speaker 1: I've planned trips with specific stops to previous podcast subjects,
[30:29] Speaker 1: including this most recent trip. I was able to visit
[30:32] Speaker 1: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as well. I appreciated knowing
[30:35] Speaker 1: about the unique collection in the art heist. This made
[30:38] Speaker 1: history and art more relevant to me. I have a
[30:41] Speaker 1: PhD in SYMHC and have enjoyed listening to you for
[30:45] Speaker 1: long car rides and commutes. I would suggest George Eastman
[30:49] Speaker 1: as a podcast topic. He was a fascinating person. Holly
[30:52] Speaker 1: is nodding. For those of you who cannot see shortlist, shortlist, shortlist.
[30:57] Speaker 1: Uh yeah, Holly, we should reagree about that because I
[31:00] Speaker 1: might have some resources for you, okay, or if you're
[31:03] Speaker 1: already on it, it's on your shirt. I'm got on it.
[31:05] Speaker 1: I just as long as he happened. Yeah, I know
[31:07] Speaker 1: of some potential things. I'm including pictures of my adopted
[31:11] Speaker 1: kat Uriel. She is quite the lady. She was adopted
[31:13] Speaker 1: at age twelve when my brother moved overseas and could
[31:16] Speaker 1: not take her with him. She's truly spoiled in our house.
[31:20] Speaker 1: Thank you again for your delightful podcasts. Sincerely, Andrea. Since
[31:24] Speaker 1: we are not recording this from our laptops today, I
[31:26] Speaker 1: do not have the pictures to describe, but I did
[31:28] Speaker 1: look at them before we flew to the Bahamas and
[31:31] Speaker 1: they are indeed adorable. So thank you so much, Andrea
[31:36] Speaker 1: for this email. If you would like to email us,
[31:38] Speaker 1: we are at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. You
[31:42] Speaker 1: can find our show notes, including links to all the
[31:45] Speaker 1: resources that we used in this episode, at our website,
[31:48] Speaker 1: which is Missed Inhistory dot com, and you can subscribe
[31:51] Speaker 1: to the show on the iHeartRadio app, but anywhere else
[31:54] Speaker 1: you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
[32:01] Speaker 1: History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
[32:05] Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
[32:09] Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.

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