[Transcript]
Not Just Fiction: Piracy Was Real Here
Okay, folks, allow me to set the scene with an excerpt from one of my favorite childhood books.
His stories were what frightened people most of all, dreadful stories they were about hanging and walking the plank and storms at sea and the dry Tortugas and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main.
Can anyone name the book? If you said Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, you're my people.
Oh, and even if you didn't recognize it, you're all still me mateys, and we be sailing these high seas together.
Don't worry, I'm not going to do that pirate voice the whole way through. But pirates weren't just the stuff of great works of fiction.
Here in the Gulf waters, piracy was a very real profession. And here's a fun fact for you. At one time, piracy was actually legal.
Privateers: The Crown's Legal Pirates
And not only was it legal, it was considered a respectable profession. So let's rewind the clock a little bit back before pirates were the stuff of legend, before the eye patches, parrots, and plunder.
In the late Middle Ages, European monarchs began handing out documents called Letters of Mark.
These were essentially hall passes for private ship owners, giving them the royal thumbs up to attack enemy vessels during wartime.
These state-sanctioned sea raiders were known as privateers, and they played a crucial role in naval warfare.
In fact, they were essential during conflicts like the Anglo-Spanish War of 1812.
And the Anglo-Spanish Wars. See, during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, England and Spain were locked in a bitter rivalry.
It was one soaked in politics, religion, and, of course, gold.
Spain had been hauling back mountains of treasure from the New World, and England wanted in on it.
The thing was, the difference between a struggling kingdom and a sprawling empire was maritime power.
But the English crown wasn't going to build a giant navy from scratch.
That would be highly expensive and slow. So they handed out Letters of Mark like candy to ship captains willing to raid Spanish vessels.
These, quote unquote, legal pirates got to keep a share of whatever they captured, gold, silver, sugar, spices, as long as the rest went back to the crown.
It was a win-win, provided that you didn't die and weren't Spanish or French or Dutch or whoever England was mad at that week.
So you can see how the moral compass at sea was already spinning a little wildly. It was a time of, as my editor Matt says, increased exploration and exploitation.
Golden Age of Piracy: Rogue, Rich, and Ruthless
Well, by the late 1600s, things started to get a bit more, shall we say, unruly. The colonial powers were, for the time being, at peace.
So many privateers found themselves out of work, but they still had heavily armed ships and a taste for the high seas.
On top of that, trade was picking up again and ships loaded with gold and silver were loaded with treasure were crossing between the Americas and Europe.
So what did the privateers do? They turned rogue. This period in the late 17th and early 18th centuries is what historians call the golden age of piracy.
Life Aboard a Pirate Ship
Now, most pirates weren't just mindless marauders. They were strategic and, dare I say it, even democratic. Most pirate crews operated with their own codes of conduct.
They shared plunder equally, and they even elected their captains. The Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, with their plentiful islands and hidden coves, became the perfect playground for these sea bandits.
So, as you look out on the water today, imagine one of those privateer schooners way out in the distance.
The wooden ship was picking up speed along the waves, its billowing white sails calling away.
Imagine that stowed away treasure and a crew of men moving about the deck, their eyes on the horizon, looking for their next steal.
It was a hard life, but those who could hack it often became local legends, feared pirates whose reputations preceded them.
And that's what we're going to talk about today.
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