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Misfortune's Melody · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
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  Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Charles Joseph made cabinets, but he was a musician too.
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  Speaker 1: He played the serpent, a wooden instrument in the shape
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  Speaker 1: of a large s, but instruments were expensive in the
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  Speaker 1: early eight hundreds, and Charles Joseph decided to make one
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  Speaker 1: for himself. He followed the pattern of another Belgian craftsman
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  Speaker 1: and soon enough had his own serpent ready for him
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  Speaker 1: to play. But his budding talent for crafting musical instruments
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  Speaker 1: wasn't the only thing he was nurturing. There was also
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  Speaker 1: his courtship with Marie. He met her when he turned
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  Speaker 1: his talent for crafting intricate mechanical devices to the service
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  Speaker 1: of a local factory. He made their spinning machines, and
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  Speaker 1: he met to his future wife at the same time.
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  Speaker 1: After they were married, he was soon also nurturing his
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  Speaker 1: young son Antoine Joseph. That was a bit of a mouthful, though,
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  Speaker 1: so the little boy was nicknamed Adolph, the first of
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  Speaker 1: the family's eleven children, but one of just three who
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  Speaker 1: would grow to adulthood. It was a time of great
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  Speaker 1: loss for the family, but it was a time of
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  Speaker 1: change beyond them. The factory closed and they moved along.
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  Speaker 1: They made their way to Brussels, and that's where the
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  Speaker 1: family serpent business really caught on. And then young Adolph
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  Speaker 1: watched as his father's work turned from cabinets to clarinets.
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  Speaker 1: Serpents were followed by flutes and then bassoons. Innovations and
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  Speaker 1: happy accidents were turning the small operation into a veritable
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  Speaker 1: orchestra stockpile, and each new instrument had a twist, an
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  Speaker 1: improvement over the reeds and the woodwinds of the past.
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  Speaker 1: Not all the accidents were happy, though, Remember those tragedies
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  Speaker 1: that turned the family of eleven children to a family
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  Speaker 1: of just three. Well, Adolph avoided a similar fate by
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  Speaker 1: the thinnest whisker. For instance, he once fell down three
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  Speaker 1: flights of stairs and landed hard on the stone floor
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  Speaker 1: at the bottom. They say he cracked his head. Fortunately
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  Speaker 1: he was able to recover and It was far from
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  Speaker 1: the last of his close calls. Once he was burned
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  Speaker 1: in a gunpowder explosion. I don't know the full story there,
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  Speaker 1: but it doesn't sound safe. Or there's the time that
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  Speaker 1: a falling stone from a roof came down on his head.
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  Speaker 1: It left him with a scar that he would carry
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  Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. At the age of three,
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  Speaker 1: he drank a cloudy white mixture. Maybe he thought it
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  Speaker 1: was milk, but it turned out to be a poisonous
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  Speaker 1: slurry of chemical sulfates that could have also killed him.
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  Speaker 1: But somehow young Adolph survived after he almost drowned in
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  Speaker 1: a river. Once his mother said he is a child,
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  Speaker 1: can them to misfortune, He won't live in the area.
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  Speaker 1: The little boy became known as the little Ghost. It's
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  Speaker 1: a sad testament to just how dangerous it was to
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  Speaker 1: escape childhood unscathed. In those days. His hardhead and his
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  Speaker 1: iron stomach were apparently only matched by the constitution of
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  Speaker 1: his lungs. A few stories said that on multiple occasions
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  Speaker 1: he went to sleep with his room filled by the
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  Speaker 1: poisonous fumes of new varnish. It was a familiar danger
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  Speaker 1: to the family of instrument makers. Maybe it was even
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  Speaker 1: what had killed some of his brothers and sisters. Whatever
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  Speaker 1: the case, on each of those occasions, something happened that
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  Speaker 1: kept young Adolph alive. It had to be a comfort
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  Speaker 1: to his parents, especially since so many of their other
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  Speaker 1: children didn't have Adolph's sheer luck. Not to mention his
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  Speaker 1: resilience to bounce back from so much misfortune, but I
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  Speaker 1: think we can all be glad that Adolph managed to
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  Speaker 1: pull through. Maybe it was his personality. Some historians have
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  Speaker 1: said that he was notably fiery, always pushing beyond whatever
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  Speaker 1: ranks were around him and breaking down categories to find
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  Speaker 1: something new. Maybe it was just his good bones. But
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  Speaker 1: whatever combination of fate and toughness carried Adolf through his
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  Speaker 1: kisses with death, it also protected the inventiveness of his
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  Speaker 1: young mind. First, it was turned towards the world of
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  Speaker 1: music itself. He trained at the Belgian Royal School of Music,
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  Speaker 1: and by all accounts he was a star. Private lessons
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  Speaker 1: on the clarinet made him a virtuoso, but he didn't stay.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe it was a reminder of just how precious family
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  Speaker 1: can be in the midst of so much loss. But
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  Speaker 1: something brought Adolf back home. The family workshop was a
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  Speaker 1: place of tragedy, sure, but also a place of invention.
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  Speaker 1: And at fifteen Adolf wasn't just wowing people with his
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  Speaker 1: clarinet skills. He was also showing off his instrument designs.
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  Speaker 1: But he was thinking beyond his father's woodworking. His first
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  Speaker 1: exhibitions were of flutes and clarinets made in Ivory. When
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  Speaker 1: they came under the eye of the chief conductor of
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  Speaker 1: the opera house in Paris, he wasn't impressed. He called
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  Speaker 1: Adolf's work barbarian instruments. But the young inventor got wilder
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  Speaker 1: and more inventive. Still, the standard clarinet has seventeen keys.
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  Speaker 1: Soon Adolph was showing off a boxwood clarinet with twenty four.
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  Speaker 1: One of the musicians in Brussels who saw it said
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  Speaker 1: that he would never play an instrument made by the
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  Speaker 1: weedy little pupil. What came next was an instrument that
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  Speaker 1: put Adolph's name in mouths all around Brussels, than Paris,
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  Speaker 1: and then everywhere that people were making music in Europe.
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  Speaker 1: Because he made his next bass clarinet in brass. He
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  Speaker 1: gave it bends that followed the twists and turns of
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  Speaker 1: his own life. He gave it a sweet and haunting
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  Speaker 1: honey tone that carried all the sorrow and joy and
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  Speaker 1: inventiveness of his father's machines and his family's losses. And
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen forty one, at the Belgian Industrial Exhibition, he
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  Speaker 1: gave the world the testament to his creativity and the
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  Speaker 1: prize one from his survival. And it was the thing
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  Speaker 1: that would in turn survive him, to give life to
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  Speaker 1: songs and sounds beyond anything he could imagine, and it
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  Speaker 1: would carry his name, the name of Adolph Sachs, the
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  Speaker 1: inventor of the new clarinets in brass, the saxophone. The
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  Speaker 1: lives of pirates have been written about and portrayed on
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  Speaker 1: stage and screen for generations. They were bandits of the
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  Speaker 1: sea who took what they wanted, drank heavily, and killed
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  Speaker 1: people just for the fun of it. Some fairy tales
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  Speaker 1: would have us believe they were incompetent fools, while popular
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  Speaker 1: novels portrayed them as cunning cutthroats in search of buried treasure.
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  Speaker 1: But no pirate on record was quite like Benjamin. Benjamin
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  Speaker 1: was born in England in the late sixteen hundreds. He
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  Speaker 1: was relatively unknown until seventeen thirteen. When he started committing
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  Speaker 1: acts of piracy on the high seas. Many of his
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  Speaker 1: early efforts were focused on merchant ships sailing near the
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  Speaker 1: island of New Providence in the Bahamas, and he operated
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  Speaker 1: exactly as you might expect. He and his crew with
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  Speaker 1: lion waits for the perfect moment when they would rob
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  Speaker 1: the vessels carrying goods to and from the islands. But
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  Speaker 1: rather than command a massive sailing ship armed with cannons,
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  Speaker 1: Benjamin and his men traveled by canoes and snuck onto
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  Speaker 1: ships in order to loot and rob them of their
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  Speaker 1: goods before getting away. But after several years of flying
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  Speaker 1: under the radar, Benjamin eventually upgraded from those little canoes
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  Speaker 1: to a ship called the Ranger. It was armed with
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  Speaker 1: thirty cannons, making it the deadliest vessel in the Bahamas
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  Speaker 1: at the time. The pirate captain traveled with quite the
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  Speaker 1: entourage back in the day, too. He built his crew
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  Speaker 1: from a few dozen to almost three fifty across a
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  Speaker 1: fleet of five ships, and a second in command was
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  Speaker 1: pretty talented as well, none other than Edward Teach, better
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  Speaker 1: known to history as Blackbeard, a vicious killer, despite no
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  Speaker 1: verified accounts of him actually having killed anyone with his
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  Speaker 1: own hands. Benjamin developed a reputation for himself as well,
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  Speaker 1: especially among the ships passing through the Bahamas, so much
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  Speaker 1: so that the Governor of South Carolina once sent an
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  Speaker 1: armed vessel of his own to take down the troublesome
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  Speaker 1: pirates and bring him back to face justice. But Benjamin
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  Speaker 1: fought back with his massive fleet of armed ships. The
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  Speaker 1: governor's forces soon realized they were outgunned and fled in terror.
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  Speaker 1: It seemed that Benjamin could not be stopped. However, although
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  Speaker 1: he behaved like a pirate, there was a code that
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  Speaker 1: he followed. For example, he refused to attack ships of
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  Speaker 1: the British Empire as he supported the country's economic policies. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: he only went after enemies of the crown. He also
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  Speaker 1: liked to drink a lot. On one occasion, he caught
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  Speaker 1: a merchant ship sailing off the coast of Honduras. As
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  Speaker 1: he and his men stormed the decks, they corralled the
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  Speaker 1: unlucky crew members, who didn't think that they would live
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  Speaker 1: to see tomorrow. Swords were drawn, men wept. By the
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  Speaker 1: time it was over, Benjamin, Edward Teach, and the other
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  Speaker 1: crew of the Ranger had relieved the merchant vessel's crew
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  Speaker 1: of everything they'd come for their hats, and amazingly no
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  Speaker 1: one was killed. According to the tale told by one
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  Speaker 1: of the passengers who had witnessed the attack, Benjamin and
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  Speaker 1: his men had gotten so drunk the night before they'd
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  Speaker 1: thrown all of their hats over the sides of their ship.
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  Speaker 1: They had only boarded the other vessel to find replacements. Unfortunately,
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  Speaker 1: not everyone agreed with Benjamin's Shenanigans nor his pirate code.
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  Speaker 1: Growing tired of only attacking non English ships, they took
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  Speaker 1: a vote and ousted him as captain. With no crew
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  Speaker 1: of his own and a bounty on his head by
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  Speaker 1: various governments, Benjamin sought a pardon from King George the First,
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  Speaker 1: who granted it on one condition. The hunted now had
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  Speaker 1: to become the hunter. The one time pirate was given
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  Speaker 1: a new mission and a new purpose in life to
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  Speaker 1: take down other pirates for the British Crown, especially his
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  Speaker 1: former crewmates. He even went after his old partner, the
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  Speaker 1: legendary Blackbeard Benjamin Hornegold hunted pirates for almost two years
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  Speaker 1: until his new ship was destroyed in a hurricane. The ship,
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  Speaker 1: the captain, and all its crew were tragically Lost at Sea,
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  Speaker 1: hats and all. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
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  Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.