Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Short Stuff: Women Pirates

Transcript

Short Stuff: Women Pirates · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is short stuff,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: uh ahoy, which is pretty appropriate, Chuck, even though you
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: always say it not always most of the time it's
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: not very appropriate. This time it fits very well. That's right,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: because we're talking about pirates with a Y, Pirates with
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the Y, and also pirates with two X chromosomes. That's right.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the TV show Our Flag Means Death?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I did. I watched the first few and I just
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: kind of fell out of it. But yeah, it's a
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: very very cute show. Yeah, okay, did you watch Have
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: you watched all of them? Yeah? Yeah, I like it
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: a lot, but it kind of got me wondering because
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: a big you know, it's kind of known as the
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: most queer positive show on television and the show about pirates,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: so you might if you haven't seen it, you might think, well,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: that's odd. But on the show there as a female
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: character who was masquerading as a man pirate, and then
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: there I don't want to spoil anything, but there's also
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: a budding relationship of the same sex, which is a
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: very kind of fun reveal. On the show, and I
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: was just kind of wondering if that's all made up
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: for this show. And it turns out it looks like
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: piracy and pirate ships were kind of a haven sometimes
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: for gay women or now what we probably would know
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: as trans people, because you could hide out and you know,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I think as long as you did your work, there
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of uh well, I mean, who knows
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: how they were really treated, but it seemed to be
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: like a place that people could go in the queer
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: community and the whatever sixteen hundreds, And I don't I
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: don't think Chuck, um, you had to necessarily just identify
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: as a different gender, um like you could you were
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: if you were a woman in were out of the
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: high seas, you were probably dressing like a man one
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: way or another. Largely because ships, um it was considered
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: bad luck to have a woman on a ship. But
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the two women that we're going to talk about, uh
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and Bonnie and Mary Reid, they were such b A's
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: as pirates with a y or and I it doesn't
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: matter that they were openly women. Um who did still
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: dress his men, but everyone on their ship knew they
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: were women, and they were reputed to have been the
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: um the toughest, most ready to fight pirates on on
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: the ship, including the captain. That's right, and they were
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: doing it in the middle of We love our Golden ages,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: and they were certainly active in the golden age of
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: piracy from the mid seventeenth century to like the first
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: quarter of the eighteen Uh. And we need to think
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a few people Britannica. We should just always think Britannica. Yeah,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: the s s Britannica and Mark Mancini from how Stuff
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Works dot com because they point out a very sort
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: of truism, which is, Uh, there were books about pirates
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and stuff back then. One very notable one. Uh. The
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: long title is a General History of the Robberies and
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Murders of the most Notorious Pirates with a y uh
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and or as it's generally known, a general History of
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the Pirates. And these books back then were hot sellers,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: so they were fun, but you couldn't count on them
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: to be historically accurate necessarily. Uh. It seems like they
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: kind of went with lore when they didn't know if
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: it was fact or not, and they wanted to tell
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the good story and sell books. Yeah. So it's the
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: same as true crime, as it's always been basically, well,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: I think it's a little better now, right, I'm sure
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: it's much better. But there there is a that book,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: in particular, the General History of the Pirates UM, It's
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: it's it. It provides a conundrum for historians piracy, especially
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the Golden Age of piracy, because that's really what it covers. UM,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: because there's a lot of stuff in there that probably
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: is true. There's a lot of stuff in there that's
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: probably embellishment, and if you read, you know, the actual text,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: it's really hard to differentiate one from the other. So
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: you have to read the book basically as a historian
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: and go through and find documentary evidence to back up
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: this claim or or the other. And UM, in particular
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: with Mary Reid and a Bonnie, they've had a really
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: hard time to do that. So I have my hat
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: off to Mark Mancini from How Stuff Works, because he
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: didn't fall for any of it. And there stuff in
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: the Britannica Encyclopedia entries that has been proven to have
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: been made up by novelists as late as the nineteen sixties,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: and it's being touted as fact. And it's not just
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Britannica Wikipedia. There's a ton of like reputable sources that
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: that have just kind of fallen for these um, these
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: inaccuracies that have been did as flourishes over the years.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I wonder if Mark Mancini read the book and said, hey,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, I think everywhere it's italicized, it's still
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: will be its. There's a lot of italics in there too, giveaway. Yeah.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: So the book itself is written by a guy named
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Captain Charles Johnson, who did not exist. That's a pen name,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: And I've seen it attributed typically to Daniel Defoe, the
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: author of Robinson Crusoe, and then alternatively there was a
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: publisher named Nathaniel Missed, and they think that it was
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: probably one of those two guys who wrote it. Yeah,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: apparently Defoe worked for Missed. So I think it's just
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: one of those things where their professors and people in
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the literature community that like to pull up their sleeves
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: and battle it out on that when the rest of
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: us don't really care. But the point is the general
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: history or a general history of pirates with a Y
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: has some stuff that we should go over either way.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I agree, And Bonnie, should we take a break first? Uh? Yeah, Well,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: we'll take a break, and we'll come back and introduce
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: the world to Anne, Bonnie and Mary. Read alright, what
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: a great cliffhanger, as I was saying. And Bonnie Uh
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: born in Ireland near Cork, Ireland and apparently had a
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: pretty rough childhood, as I bet a lot of kids
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: back then had, and was the illegitimate daughter of an
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: attorney who was married. But this was the baby he
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: had with his maid servant lady, and supposedly he would
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: dress her as a boy as a kid to sort
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: of deflect from the fact that she was illegitimate and
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: just say no, this is my my boy servant who's
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: going to be my assistant training at this point. Um.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: And eventually the the scandal got out, the whole thing
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: was was known to the county, and um the guy
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: lost his practice. Her father, who's sometimes identified as William Cormack,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: James Cormack, and a bunch of other names. But the
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: upshot is her her lawyer father basically lost his practice
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: because of the scandal, and so he moved his daughter
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Uh and and um the servant made her and mother
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: to Carolina and probably to Charlestown, which is now known
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: as Charlestown is if they moved to Carolina at any
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: point from Europe, that's probably where they settled. Yeah, like
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Bill Murray exactly, anybody who's anybody ends up in Charlestown. Uh,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: so they end up And this was he said Carolina.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: This is before there was a North and South Carolina,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: and A think they just said that we shall be
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Carolina in one day there would be an NFL team
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: that represents us both. That's right, although I think they're
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: more The Panthers are definitely North Carolina, so that's where
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: they're base. But I think they did that in a
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: bid to get South Carolina people to root for them too, Yeah,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: and to cough up some money, like the New England
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Patriots are like just all of New England should root
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: for us exactly or well green Bay Packers is like
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the opposite of that. Why because it's specifically in Green Bay. Yeah,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: they said no one else in Wisconsin root for us exactly.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: It's specifically in a very small town and it's I
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: think the team is owned by the town too. Yeah.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: I gotta go to a game there. I bought my
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: friend Adam one share of Green Bay Packers stock last year.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: That's a great Christmas present. It is, but it's meaningless apparently.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Uh so where are we here? Um, they moved to Charlestown.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: That's right, they moved to Charlestown. Historical records are very fuzzy,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: but it may have been born and full Ford with
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the alias of Bonnie and supposedly got that name from
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: being married to another pirate, uh named James Bonnie, but
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: then went and married and I don't know about Mary,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: but at least went off with a pirate named John
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Rackham who she definitely worked with. Like, we have records
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: that prove that she worked for John, and I think
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know if this is a speculation or not
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: that they were kissing and stuff. Yes that I think
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: that's pretty much proven. But yes, documentary evidence shows that
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: she was a pirate with John Calico Jack Rackham. It
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: is a great name. So um again, it was weird
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: that Rackham would have a woman on board with him
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: is considered extremely bad luck. But Rackham had not just one,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: but two women on board with him because in addition
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: to an Bonnie, he had another woman pirate named Mary Reid,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: who also had a kind of a strange um early
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: life as well. That that landed her on the high seas. Eventually,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: I wonder if it was like one is bad luck
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: and two a party. Yeah, well that was one thing.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: So Mary Read in particular, Um she was, so I
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: read the Ambonnie was not Um as chased as Mary
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Read was. But Mary Reid would fall in love really
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: easily and be like, let's get married, and so she
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: did that a few times. But there was one man
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: who tried to have his way with Mary Read, and
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: according to the history of the Pirates Um, she beat
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: him nearly to death. So she she she could definitely
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: handle herself for sure from an early age. Yeah. And
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: there was also this story that they both were aboard
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: UM dressed as men, and this almost certainly seems like
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: it's probably made up, but both dressed as men, and
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Bonnie crushed on Reid as a woman masquerading as a man,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: thinking it was another man. And then it sounds like
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: straight out of a TV show. They go into a
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: side room and both I guess, like pull off their
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: fake mustache at the same time. Yeah, and the ace
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: bandages exactly uh and went ah, we're both women. But
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: that that definitely sounds like it's in italics, right, for sure.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: I also saw though, that there was a book as
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: recently or as early as like the seventeen fifties that
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: that supposed that they were actually lovers. Okay, well, that
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: sounds like overactive imagination of a male writer to me, right.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: So the upshot is, though, that we do know from
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: the scant documentary evidence that Mary reid And and Bonnie
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: were both pirates with Calico Jack Rackham on the ships
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: that Rackham stole, and they engaged in piracy. Witnesses at
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: their trial spoiler alert, they were, and they ended up
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: caught and tried said like these women would curse and
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: spit at the men. There was one person who said
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: that the men were hiding below decks, and Mary reid
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: And and Bonnie were above deck fighting and the men
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: wouldn't come out, so and Bonnie shot into the into
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the lower decks and actual one guy because she considered
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: them being cowards like they were. They were definitely known
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: to have fought as pirates. They weren't captured, they weren't
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: there against their will. They were swash buckling with the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: best of them. They were there for the booty. They
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: were uh so they were collecting booty all over the place,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: and eventually a um, I guess you would call it
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: sort of a most wanted sort of declaration was put
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: out naming them as pirates and enemies to the Crown
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: of Great Britain. And this was in September of seventeen
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: and this is because well they were pirating everywhere, but
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: a few weeks before, in August of that year, they
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: stole a ship named the William and really sort of
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: went to town, uh, basically through October, so they had
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: a nice run through the fall. And then in late
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: October seventeen twenty, Uh, they were entertaining some gentlemen, not
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: just the ladies, like the whole crew. I think they
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: were what like five or six of them total. I
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: saw a dozen, Okay, let's say a dozen. Then uh,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: and they were entertaining some guys, uh, mariners from the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Port Royal and apparently he got a little out of hand,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: turned into a big fight and drew some attention, and
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: a pirate hunter named Jonathan Barnett snagged them into custody
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: and that was it. They had actually slipped if you
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: read the pirate history, Uh, they'd slipped through the hands
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: of other pirate hunters. A few times and some really
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: amazing daring dues. If they're true, even if they're not true,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: it's still worth reading. Yes, exactly, Chuck, thank you, Williams Sapphire. Um,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: they they this time though, they were caught and they
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: were tried in Spanish Town, Jamaica, and apparently every single
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: person ended up being found guilty. They had a couple
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: of different trials. A couple of guys really were abducted. Um.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: They were French like hunters on an island and they
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: were abducted and full worst into this and they were
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: still tried and um convicted and every single male crewman
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: was hanged. Right. But there's a good final twist another
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: TV scene moment. Uh. In court as they were being
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I guess uh read their verdict, Marian Anne looked at
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: each other and winked and at the same time said
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: threw their arms up and said we're pregnant. Uh. And
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: apparently that was the deal they were not. It was
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: called pleading the belly, which will get you out of
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: being put to death at least and being hanged. But
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: they were not making it up. They were uh, you know,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: inspected I guess I hope by a doctor and found
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: to be really pregnant, and so they avoided the gallows. Yeah. Um,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: they were probably in their second trimester. Later historians said
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: um Mary Reid died fairly shortly after the following April,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and some historians have said that probably coincide with childbirth,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: so she might have died in childbirth. Her grave is
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: in St. Catherine, Jamaica. You can go visit it. And
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: um and Bonnie though she became more obscure according to
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: the history Captain Johnson's history. Um, she was let go
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: at some point. Uh, and we don't know where she went.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: But all only this we know that she was not executed.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: What a great ending. Yeah, I also saw that after that.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Some people suppose that she went back to Charleston, married
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: another man, had eight kids. And it would be possible
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: then that there are descendants of Ambonnie out there running
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: around on the Isle of Palms. Perhaps probably maybe they'll
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: find my tooth. It's that's some booty right there. That
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: some boy. I'll give you some other booty. Short stuff
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: is out. Stuff you should know is a production of
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio for more podcasts. My Heart Radio is
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: it that I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows h m hm