The Flying Gang

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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:09Holly Frey?

  We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts. Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships

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• 2:55Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 3:05Holly Frey?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And I'm Holly Frey. If you're watching this on Netflix, it looks a little different from how it typically looks, because we are recording from the studio at Bahama in Nassau in the Bahamas. I thought, since we are in the Bahamas, it might be nice to record something that was specific to where we are. And that, of course, led me to pirates, because for a period during its history, Nassau was a notorious hotbed of pirate activity. It is coincidental that the Assassin's Creed franchise has literally just put out a remaster of the game that is set both here and during all the things that we are talking about,

• 3:50Holly Frey?

  because we're going to be talking about Nassau as a pirate republic, particularly home to a maritime criminal network known as the Flying Gang. And to start with a little bit of background, today, there are about 30 inhabited islands in the Bahamas, which has a total of about 700 islands and more than 2,000 keys. Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th century, this archipelago was home to the Arawakan-speaking people known as the Lukayo or Lukayan people. This name comes from their own name for themselves, which is Lukukairi, meaning island people. They may have shared common ancestry with the Tainos, who lived in other parts of the

• 4:35Holly Frey?

  Caribbean, and they're sometimes called the Lukayan Tainos. They probably made their way to the Bahamas from other parts of the Caribbean by the year 800, and in the late 15th century, their population totaled about 40,000 people. According to a 2014 paper titled Naming the Bahamas Islands: History and Folk Etymology by Wolfgang P. Ahrens, the name Bahama is Lukayan. It comes from their name for Grand Bahama Island. That was Bahama, meaning large upper-middle land. New Providence Island, which is where Nassau is located, was called Nima or Middlewater.

• 5:16Holly Frey?

  This paper references 16th and 17th century maps, a lot of which include Lukayan names for all of these islands and almost no Spanish ones. And that also referenced a lot of earlier scholarship into history and linguistics. The first Europeans to arrive in the Bahamas were part of Christopher Columbus's first expedition to the Americas. They made landfall on Guanahani, known in English as San Salvador Island, in 1492. Columbus and his crew captured and enslaved some of the people they encountered in the Bahamas, and other Europeans who arrived later in the 15th and 16th centuries did the same.

• 5:57Holly Frey?

  Lukayans also died of diseases that were introduced by the Europeans and as the result of violence, as well as while they were doing the work that they were forced to do while enslaved. That included diving for pearls off the coast of Venezuela and working in silver mines. Over the course of this enslavement and genocide in the 16th century, the Lukayan people ceased to exist as a distinct cultural group. When Juan Ponce de Leon arrived in the area in 1513, he said he encountered only one person in the Northern Bahama Islands. It is likely that some people were able to flee to other parts of the Caribbean and to find homes with other indigenous communities.

• 6:40Holly Frey?

  There are definitely people with Taino ancestry still living today. And in recent years, there's been a big resurgence in Taino identity in the Caribbean. There are also other Arawakan-speaking peoples in other parts of the Caribbean and in South America today. Columbus, of course, claimed all of the islands he encountered for Spain. And in the 17th century, other European powers, including Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic, started claiming parts of the Caribbean as well. In 1629, British King Charles I granted territories in America to Robert Heath, including, quote, "Bahama and all other isles and islands lying southerly there or near upon the for-said

• 7:25Holly Frey?

  continent." Heath did not really do much to try to settle or occupy the Bahamas. And for a few decades after this, other British efforts to maybe establish some kind of settlement were largely unsuccessful. Then in 1670, the British established Charlestown on the island of New Providence. The Spanish raided Charlestown, and they burned it down in 1684. A little more than a decade later, in 1695, the British rebuilt it and named it Nassau, after the House of Nassau, which was a German aristocratic dynasty. By that point, the King of England was William III, also known as William of Orange, who

• 8:05Holly Frey?

  was descended from William I, also known as William the Silent or William of Nassau. Unsurprisingly, considering that we just talked about Spain burning down Charlestown, this whole period was full of ongoing fighting among the European powers that were trying to claim and exploit various Caribbean islands. They sent colonial officials and naval ships to the islands, and they issued letters of marque, authorizing privateers to use their own ships to attack and capture enemies. For the most part, privateers were not paid by the government that authorized them to do this. Their income came from the ships and cargoes that they captured along the way.

• 8:48Holly Frey?

  So this was not just about claiming island territory. It was interconnected with the European powers' rivalries and their conflicts with one another. The number of privateers surged during the Nine Years' War from 1688 to 1697. That was between France and the Grand Alliance, and the members of the Grand Alliance included England. The North American component of the Nine Years' War was known as King William's War. The War of the Spanish Succession started a couple of years after the Nine Years' War ended, and that continued until 1714. That war was between the Spanish Habsburgs and the Spanish Bourbons and all of their various allies.

• 9:30Holly Frey?

  The War of the Spanish Succession also had its own American component, and that was known as Queen Anne's War. These wars and the hostilities among all these nations were interconnected with the rise in piracy in the Caribbean in the 17th and 18th centuries. In theory, privateers only attacked the ships that their letters of marque authorized them to attack, generally the enemies of whoever it was that issued the letter. But that could mean passing up some of the most lucrative ships. So some privateers turned to piracy because they could just make more money that way. When wars ended or when letters of marque expired, privateers were left without a legitimate source of income, and that also led some to become pirates.

• 10:14Holly Frey?

  Other pirates had previously served in navies. When European powers scaled back their navies after wars were over, these sailors were similarly left without a job. Navies, especially the British Royal Navy, also were notorious for very low pay, including long-delayed payments, grueling hours, terrible working conditions, and an intense culture of discipline. There could sometimes be severe punishments, like being flogged, associated with this discipline. So a lot of out-of-work sailors, once they were put out of a job, they did not really want to go back to that life, even if a job became available. Pirate ships, on the other hand, were seen as an option that was both fairer and

• 10:59Holly Frey?

  more lucrative. Sometimes this is depicted in an overly romanticized way, with pirate crews having this almost communal spirit and dividing their loot equally. And a lot of this comes from fictional depictions of pirates and a perception of them kind of as folk heroes. But pirate ships of this era did typically function under a written compact, which was created when a captain was assembling a crew or at the start of a voyage, or if a new captain was taking over. This compact outlined how plunder would be distributed, what all the rules were, and how discipline would be carried out. In most of the surviving compacts, everyone got a share of the plunder, with officers getting a little bit more.

• 11:44Holly Frey?

  So the captain might get a share and a half or two shares, while lower-ranking officers usually got more like a share and a half or a share and a quarter. This was wildly different from the way things worked on most other vessels, where the captains and the officers got hundreds or even thousands of times more than the ordinary sailors did. On many pirate ships, disputes were settled and punishments were determined by voting. If someone stole something from another member of the crew, or was cowardly during a fight, or broke a relatively minor rule, their punishment might be whatever the majority of the crew thought was appropriate. That did not mean that everything went smoothly or that everybody was satisfied with life aboard ships all the time.

• 12:28Holly Frey?

  These ships could still be incredibly violent places. Again, these were criminal enterprises. Captains and officers could still be unreasonable or cruel. Ships could still run aground or run out of provisions or get into all kinds of misfortune. Some ships' codes outlined punishments that could still be severe, including death or being marooned on an island somewhere. But for the most part, for a lot of people, life as a pirate still seemed better than the alternatives. Lapsed privateering contracts and out-of-work navy men can't really account for all of the pirates in this era. There were also pirates who had previously been merchant seamen, who often faced similar

• 13:12Holly Frey?

  conditions to those on navy ships. But the large majority of pirates had been one of the three. Roughly a third were British, and roughly a quarter were American. And there were also pirates from all over Europe and South Asia sailing in the Caribbean and the Atlantic. It's likely that between a quarter and a third of the sailors on a typical pirate crew were black, many of whom had liberated themselves from enslavement. There were also pirates who had enslaved people on their crew or included slaves as part of the loot to be distributed. We will get to the rise in piracy around Nassau after a sponsor break.

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• 15:21Holly Frey?

  Hey, everybody, it's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fans' experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

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  It was going to rival anything that was already built, and that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 15:49Holly Frey?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

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• 16:02Holly Frey?

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  With the fans' experience, it's incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 16:13Holly Frey?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

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• 16:19Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 17:02Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:22Holly Frey?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jessa have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you.

• 18:02Holly Frey?

  All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 18:28Holly Frey?

  Around the time that Britain rebuilt Nassau in 1695, Sir Nicholas Trott was named governor of the Bahamas. Nassau was the capital, but there were really not many people there, and Trott did not have a lot of support in defending Nassau. This was during the Nine Years' War, and he was naturally concerned about the possibility of a French attack on Nassau. So when an armed ship arrived at port in March of 1696, with a captain calling himself Henry Bridgeman and offering Trott a bribe to kind of look the other way, Trott thought this ship's presence might work as a deterrent. In addition to its armaments, the ship's crew doubled the number of men in Nassau. Trott also thought it was possible

• 19:13Holly Frey?

  that if he denied entry to this ship, it might leave and join the French side. That captain was really Pirate Henry Every, who we've covered on the show before. Six months before this, he and other pirates had pulled off what's been described as the most profitable pirate raid in history. That was on a Mughal Empire fleet whose passengers included members of the emperor's family who were returning from the Hajj. This was a massive international incident, and there was intense pressure on British authorities to find Every and bring him to justice. Eventually, someone told Trott who Every really was, and Every fled before he could be captured.

• 19:56Holly Frey?

  By that point, most of Every's crew had divided their spoils among themselves and scattered. Trott was dismissed as governor later that year. The War of the Spanish Succession started about five years after this. And in 1703, a combined Spanish and French fleet attacked the Bahamas. They raided Nassau. They spiked all the cannons in the fort, and they took about 80 people prisoner. That included acting Governor Ellis Lightfoot, who some sources call Ellis Lightwood. They also took British soldiers and enslaved Africans captive. Lightfoot and some of the other captives were later ransomed, but a lot of people were killed during this raid.

• 20:40Holly Frey?

  When the next appointed governor, Edward Birch, arrived in 1704, he found Nassau almost completely destroyed and virtually deserted. And he described the few remaining survivors as not even having a shift to cover their nakedness. Birch quickly went back to England. After he left, no one replaced him in Nassau for years. A second Spanish raid in 1706 scattered the few people who had made their way back to Nassau. For all practical purposes, the Bahamas were ungoverned, with maybe 500 British subjects scattered around the islands and fending for themselves. England's part in the War of the Spanish Succession ended in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht.

• 21:26Holly Frey?

  This was one of a whole series of treaties that ended this war. And there was a bunch of other stuff going on in the treaty. Among other things, it ultimately led to the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia, which we've covered on the show before. The part that is most relevant to this episode is that it ended England's part in the war, and consequently, it ended England's need for so many privateers. This is often cited as a big factor in the spike in pirate activity in the Caribbean in the 18th century as all of those former privateers, or not all of them, but a number of them, decided to turn to piracy. And that was one part of it. But by the time the war ended, Nassau was already full of pirates.

• 22:08Holly Frey?

  They had started moving in as soon as the British abandoned it. Privateers hired by other governments had moved in as well, including ones hired by the British Colonial Government of Jamaica. The big draw was Nassau's harbor. It was too shallow for the kinds of large warships that the colonial powers were using, but it was great for the smaller, faster ships that pirates and privateers preferred. This was also true of other harbors and bays in the Bahamas. There is a persistent but incorrect idea that the name Bahamas comes from the Spanish, thanks to Christopher Columbus calling the area Bahamar or Shallow Sea. Two of the pirates who were working out of Nassau

• 22:50Holly Frey?

  in the 17 teens were Benjamin Hornigold and Henry Jennings. Sometimes people make it sound like the two of them teamed up to spawn an entire world of piracy in the Caribbean all by themselves. But they were more rivals than friends. They sort of shifted between privateering and piracy at different times. And at more than one point, one of them managed to capture one of the other's prizes. It's also likely that there were at least 1,000 pirates operating in the Bahamas by the time each of them turned to piracy. So this was not an ecosystem that they just created. At the same time, most of the pirate captains operating out of Nassau were connected to one or the other of them.

• 23:34Holly Frey?

  Most of the Caribbean pirates who were not connected to them were connected to George Loether or Edward Low, who largely operated out of the Bay of Honduras on the coasts of Guatemala and Belize. The pirates connected to Hornigold and Jennings became known as the Flying Gang, and Nassau was nicknamed the Republic of Pirates. The Flying Gang was the largest group of pirates in the early decades of the 18th century and the biggest threat to maritime trade between the Americas and Europe and Africa. Pirates associated with the Flying Gang also terrorized local people living in the Bahamas, including the few British subjects who were still living in and around Nassau. And they attacked coastal settlements

• 24:18Holly Frey?

  all across the Caribbean and the Americas. The Flying Gang was not really a formalized group with like a clear hierarchy and organizational structure. It was more like a loose confederation of ships and crews that were all working under generally similar ideals. This confederation grew and expanded over the course of its activities. So newly established pirate crews often started with a couple of men who had served together somewhere on the same ship and kept in touch and got a ship of their own. If one pirate ship captured another vessel, they would either kill its crew or put them ashore and then take over that ship, sort of splitting the two ships with two crews,

• 25:03Holly Frey?

  bringing on the second one, and keeping any of the captured crew that maybe did want to become pirates. Pirate activity also surged after a Spanish fleet was caught in a hurricane in 1715 and driven onto reefs off the coast of Florida. These ships were traveling together, along with a French frigate, due to fears about all of the pirate activity in the area. 10 ships, most of them laden with silver and gold and other valuable cargo, were run aground, capsized or sunk, with only the French frigate surviving. It's likely that at least 1,500 sailors died of drowning, injury, or dehydration after managing to get ashore. Salvagers rushed to this area

• 25:48Holly Frey?

  from all over the Caribbean and eastern North America. It was a massive series of shipwrecks in shallow water. It was easy pickings for salvagers. And pirates moved in to salvage from the wrecks as well and to try to attack and plunder the other salvage ships. Of course, Spain really objected to all of this since the wrecks and their cargo were all considered Spanish property. And Spain demanded that other nations that had sent the salvage crews withdraw. Governor Archibald Hamilton of Jamaica commissioned Henry Jennings and John Wills as privateers. Their commission was ostensibly to attack pirates, but Hamilton encouraged them to salvage the Spanish wrecks.

• 26:33Holly Frey?

  He had purchased shares from the ships, so he would be getting part of that salvage. What Jennings and Wills actually did was attack and plunder the storehouse where the Spanish were storing the cargo that they had managed to pull out of the wreckage. Hamilton eventually ordered the ships that he had commissioned to return to Jamaica, and he barred British subjects from the wreck site. This just led to more piracy, though, as ships that had previously been operating under at least his British authority just defied that order and kept doing it and also attacking other Caribbean targets in retaliation for having been barred from the shipwrecks. Hamilton wound up being arrested for his role in all of this

• 27:16Holly Frey?

  in October of 1716. Some of the most well-known pirates of the 18th century were connected to the Flying Gang. One of Hornigold's officers was Edward Teach, or Thatch, also known very famously as Blackbeard. Another was Samuel Bellamy. Charles Vane had served under Henry Jennings, and John Rackham, aka Calico Jack, had served under Charles Vane. Anne Bonny and Mary Reid, who we have also covered on the show before, served on Jack Rackham's ship. And there was also Steve Bonnet, who we talked about in 2013, who was an outlier in terms of how people came into piracy. He was a wealthy planter who abandoned his wife and family

• 28:00Holly Frey?

  to become a pirate and fell in with Blackbeard. Because of all of this pirate activity, people started describing Nassau as another Madagascar. Madagascar was also a hotbed of pirate activity that started in about 1650. Madagascar was also home to the pirate utopia of Libertalia, although that might have been more legendary than real. We did an episode on that in 2018. And we are going to talk about how the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean ended after we pause for a sponsor break.

• 28:36Holly Frey?

  Today's episode is brought to you by YouTube Premium. YouTube Premium takes something you already love, YouTube, and makes it even better. The content, the creators, the feeling of finding exactly what you're into for every mood and moment of your day. Premium transforms that experience into a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy YouTube. A YouTube Premium subscription gives you access to exclusive YouTube features and benefits, including but not limited to ads. Free uninterrupted videos. It's great for me. Sometimes my daughter comes up and is like, Dad, I want to watch octopuses using camouflage right now. And so it's great to just go straight to the octopus ad free. You got ad free uninterrupted videos. You got background play. You have offline downloads.

• 29:21Holly Frey?

  That's the good one right there. Download it ahead of time. Take it with you on your flight, underground bunker, wherever you're going without wifi. Also, you've got smart downloads. These work automatically to download videos by

• 29:33Speaker 01

  your favorite creators. So even if you forget to download ahead of time, Premium has you covered.

• 29:38Holly Frey?

  So if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply. We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks

• 30:23Holly Frey?

  to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends. Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 30:48Holly Frey?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter,

• 31:29Holly Frey?

  and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 31:47Holly Frey?

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• 32:30Holly Frey?

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• 32:48Holly Frey?

  Through the early 1700s and 17 teens, a lot of people were justifiably worried about piracy. From people living in the Caribbean and coastal areas of the mainland, to the captains of merchant vessels, to international governments whose economies and whose colonial efforts really depended on being able to traverse the oceans without being continually attacked and plundered. But for a while, British authorities in the Caribbean did not do very much to try to stop it. That changed in 1717. On September 5th of that year, King George I issued a proclamation offering to pardon acts of piracy, giving the pirates a deadline of the following September

• 33:32Holly Frey?

  5th to surrender themselves to officials in Britain, Ireland, or the colonies. This proclamation also empowered British sea officers, governors, military commanders, and others to, quote, seize and take such of the pirates who shall refuse or neglect to surrender themselves accordingly. It offered a reward for any such person who discovered or seized any pirate who had not surrendered. The award was 100 pounds for commanders of ships or vessels, and then it went down incrementally to 20 pounds for every private man. There was also a bounty for crews who turned on their captains, either delivering those captains to the authorities themselves, or causing them to be delivered to the authorities

• 34:17Holly Frey?

  so that they could be brought to justice and convicted. The reward for that was 200 pounds for every such commander. As word of this proclamation spread, some pirates made their way to British governors or other authorities to surrender. When Captain Vincent Pierce of the HMS Phoenix arrived at New Providence Island in February of 1718, more than 200 pirates surrendered to him. Some of the pirates who accepted the king's pardon later returned to piracy. The book, A General History of the Pirates from Their First Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence to the Present Time, which was published in 1724, described men going

• 34:59Holly Frey?

  back to piracy, quote, like the dog to the vomit, which is a turn of phrase that I really love. But others took the money that they had earned as pirates and started new lives in one of the many, many parts of territory that the British had claimed in the Caribbean and North America that were considered thinly settled at that point. Henry Jennings may have been one of those people, although his fate after surrendering is somewhat unclear. Some of the former pirates turned pirate hunter after being pardoned. One of those was Benjamin Hornigold. He tried to bring in Charles Vane, but Vane's ship was too fast. Some of his other efforts were more successful, and on December 9, 1718, nine

• 35:44Holly Frey?

  pirates Hornigold had captured were put on trial in Nassau. They all pleaded not guilty, and one of them, named John Hips, was given a reprieve when he testified that he had only been a pirate because he was forced to. Everyone else was found guilty and hanged. Eventually, Hornigold had earned enough trust that he was tasked with voyaging to Mexico to try to establish a new trade route. But the ship that he was on wrecked in 1719, and Hornigold died, either drowned in the wreck or after managing to make it to an island. And of course, there were some pirates who refused to surrender. One of the most dramatic was Charles Vane, who accepted the king's pardon and then just turned pirate

• 36:28Holly Frey?

  again. Vane was a Jacobite, a supporter of the Stuart claim to the British throne. In the 17 teens, he corresponded with Jacobites in Britain, proposing that he and his ships be put in service to James Francis Edward Stuart. The antagonism between England and Spain was also interconnected with the Jacobite movement, with Spain later backing a Jacobite uprising. That is another way that these greater international disputes were tangled up in the evolution of piracy. In 1718, when new colonial governor Woods Rogers arrived in Nassau, there were British ships with him, and they trapped Charles Vane and his ships in the harbor.

• 37:09Holly Frey?

  So Vane filled one of his ships with gunpowder, set it on fire, and pointed it at the awaiting British fleet. Vane managed to escape as the British ships tried to evade the fire ship that he had created. He left several ships loaded with cargo behind in the harbor. Other pirates, probably hoping that their own crimes would be overlooked, reported this illicit cargo, which the British impounded. Vane continued attacking and harassing ships, including working with Blackbeard off the coast of North Carolina. He was eventually shipwrecked and captured in 1720, and then hanged in 1721. Woods Rogers was another big part of the effort to put down piracy in the Caribbean.

• 37:54Holly Frey?

  From 1708 to 1711, he had been on a round the world privateering expedition that also included slave trading and anti-piracy efforts around Madagascar. On this voyage, he encountered Alexander Selkirk, who had asked to be put ashore off the coast of Chile after a disagreement with his captain. Selkirk was stranded there for four years and became the inspiration for Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Rogers had earned about 14,000 pounds during this voyage and had written a book about it, which is called A Cruising Voyage Round the World, and that came out in 1712. So Rogers wasn't just the governor. He essentially owned the Bahamas. He signed

• 38:38Holly Frey?

  a lease on the islands for 21 years. He was tasked with forming a government, rebuilding the fort of Nassau, and getting the colony functioning, and was suppressing piracy. And he carried a copy of that royal proclamation with him. By the time he arrived on July 25th, 1718, a lot of the most notorious pirates had already accepted the king's pardon, or maybe been killed, although the ones that had not, and the ones that had returned to piracy, were causing ongoing issues. It is very tricky to put an exact end date on the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean. But between all of the surrenders, hangings, and shipwrecks, and the efforts of Woods

• 39:21Holly Frey?

  Rogers to regain control of Nassau and the rest of the Bahamas, most of the pirates were either pardoned or dead by 1721. That included Samuel Bellamy, who was killed in a shipwreck in 1717, Blackbeard, who was killed in a fight with the British Navy in 1718, Steve Bonnet, who was hanged in 1718, and Jack Rackham, who was hanged in 1720. Anne Bonny and Mary Reid were both sent to prison rather than being hanged, and their fate after that is not clear. The end of the Age of Piracy had a huge economic impact on the Bahamas, and it might not be what you're expecting. Rogers had plans to start up a whaling industry and

• 40:05Holly Frey?

  to reinvigorate the salt trade. But while piracy had been an active threat all over the Caribbean and all across the Atlantic, fewer pirate ships meant less maritime traffic overall. A lot of the time, pirates' illicit goods had also been a lot cheaper than goods that were acquired and shipped in under legitimate means. Rogers had that 21-year lease on the Bahamas, but he wasn't able to make it profitable. He became exhausted and sick, and eventually went back to England, where he wound up in a debtor's prison. But things were apparently even worse under his successor, and he was reinstalled as governor in 1729.

• 40:47Holly Frey?

  He continued in that role until his death in Nassau on July 15, 1732. Of course, Nassau and the Bahamas have a whole history after this point. For centuries, Britain maintained a white minority rule over a predominantly black population, largely descended from enslaved people who had been brought to the Caribbean. An independence movement evolved in the 20th century, and the Bahamas was granted limited self-government in 1955 and broader self-government in 1964. The Commonwealth of the Bahamas was recognized as a sovereign state on July 10, 1973. And that, so much piracy. Do you have so much listener mail?

• 41:32Holly Frey?

  I do have listener mail. It is from Andrea, and Andrea's email was titled, "Perfect Timing." Andrea wrote, "Dear Holly and Tracy, I just wanted to send my thanks for your incredibly thoughtful and thought-provoking subjects. I just returned from a trip to Boston, where we visited Bunker Hill. I did see the placard with the quote about the suffrage movement. I've planned trips with specific stops to previous podcast subjects, including this most recent trip. I was able to visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as well. I appreciated knowing about the unique collection and the art heist. This made history and art more relevant to me. I have a PhD in SYMHC and have enjoyed listening to you for long car rides and commutes. I would suggest George Eastman as a podcast

• 42:17Holly Frey?

  topic. He was a fascinating person." Holly is nodding, for those of you who cannot see. Shortlist, shortlist, shortlist. Yeah. Holly, we should regroup about that, because I might have some resources for you. Okay, or if you're already on it, it's on your shortlist. I'm not on it. I just... Just as long as he happens. Yeah, I know of some potential things. "I'm including pictures of my adopted cat, Uriel. She is quite the lady. She was adopted at age 12, when my brother moved overseas and could not take her with him. She's truly spoiled in our house. Thank you again for your delightful podcasts. Sincerely, Andrea." Since we are not recording this from our laptops today, I do not have the pictures to describe, but I did look at them before we flew to the Bahamas, and they are indeed

• 43:00Holly Frey?

  adorable. So, thank you so much, Andrea, for this email. If you would like to email us, we are at [email protected]. You can find our show notes, including links to all the resources that we used in this episode, at our website, which is missedinhistory.com. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, but anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.

• 43:28Holly Frey?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 43:43Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You ever show up late to the game, and your friend's already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so

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• 44:47Speaker 05

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• 46:47Speaker 00

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