International Talk Like a Pirate Day with Ian "Long John" Ston and guests
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00:00O'er, Jim lad, if I've saved your life, you've saved mine, and I'll not forget it.
00:06I've seen the doctor waving you to run for it with the tail of my eye, he did,
00:10and I've seen you say no. As plain as earring, Jim, that's one to you.
00:15This is the first glint of hope I had since the attack failed, and I owe it you.
00:20And now, Jim, we're gonna go, but I see you're treasure hunting with sealed orders too,
00:25and I don't like it. You and me must stick close,
00:28back-to-back-like, and we'll save our necks in spite of fate or fortune.
00:33Hello, I'm Iain Johnson, and in honour of International Talk Like a Pirate Day,
00:38that was Long John Silver, the most famous fictional pirate of all.
00:42And, of course, he was speaking in the accent that every pirate that ever sailed the seven seas
00:48always spoke. Isn't that so? Staffed by university historian Dr David Wilson
00:53and Susan Morrison, the Scotsman's piracy correspondent.
00:58Oh, David, I'm so sorry.
01:10Well, no, basically, in a short answer, no. I guess when we think of pirates,
01:18I guess we think mainly of the pirates who were operating in the Atlantic Ocean in the 17th and
01:2318th centuries. Now, I think what is important to remember is that pirates were first and foremost
01:29sailors, and they were drawn from a vast population of seafaring communities. So,
01:34drawn from ports throughout the Atlantic world, and would have had various accents, dialects,
01:40would have spoken various different languages as well. So, whenever you were on board a pirate
01:45vessel, if you had been on board a pirate vessel, you would have heard lots of different accents,
01:49and you would have been part of basically a multinational crew. You might have heard
01:54a West Country accent, maybe not quite as bad as that one, Ian, but you would have heard a West
01:58Country accent. But, you know, maybe one or two on board, but not overwhelming like West Country,
02:05I would say. So, what would be the archetypal pirate accent? What's the most common accents
02:09you would hear? A good question. So, particularly in this period, the 17th and 18th century, there was
02:17a majority of pirates who were mostly Anglo-American. So, you would have heard lots of
02:21different sort of English dialects and Scottish dialects, Welsh and Irish as well. But really,
02:26there was no typical language. And as I say, there was lots of different diversity on board
02:33pirate vessels. So, although they would have shared a seafaring language, that wasn't quite
02:38unique to piracy. They would just share a seafaring language being sailors in this period.
02:43But really, you would have heard accents from all over, which maybe isn't as exciting, but in
02:48many ways, that's the truth. Is it right that the Scottish accent was quite common? Were quite a few
02:54Scots pirates? Aye, definitely. So, there was lots of Scots who were also pirates in this period and
03:02who operated from ports in Scotland and England, but also across the Atlantic and the Americas as
03:07well. So, there was definitely a lot of Scots involved there too. Okay. So, if you were to do a
03:15real pirate accent, a real archetypal pirate accent, what do you think that might be?
03:22I mean, probably, depending on where you're from, I mean, your own accent, to be honest, because
03:26you could have been drawn from anywhere, especially if you're on the coast, you'd
03:32have heard lots of different coastal accents. And I think it's also important to also say that you
03:36would also have heard different languages, so different European languages, but you would also
03:40have had West African accents, West African languages, and also Indigenous American accents
03:45as well, because there was also Indigenous and West African seafarers on board these vessels as well.
03:54Can I just stick up for Ian slightly though? Because what I think you did there, Ian, was
03:58kind of encapsulate the international flavour of a pirate crew by doing something that started out
04:05the West Country, veered remarkably close to, up towards Norfolk. Then I saw, I felt, there's a
04:12tang of Welsh in there, possibly Scouse, and then a little bit of Scotland. So, basically, you know,
04:19I think that's kind of, that your accent was all, I mean, as a pirate accent goes, it's right up
04:25there with Dick Van Dyke's Cockney. Yeah, absolutely. That was kind of the mark I was aiming for.
04:32So, how did the golden age of pirating actually begin? I mean, these ships were the sort of
04:36aircraft carriers of the day. How did sort of a bunch of nerdy wells get a hold of them?
04:43So, actually, in the 17th century, most piratical voyages, so most pirates, actually began in ports,
04:50and whether that was in Europe or increasingly in the Americas throughout the 17th century.
04:56And what you would find is, to be honest, a lot of merchants and others within the port would
05:00invest in piratical voyages, purchasing vessels for this purpose and recruiting seafarers from
05:06port towns to support these piratical voyages. So, actually, the sort of large ships that you
05:11see sailing out of ports that pirates were operating on, sometimes you would find that
05:15they were bought by merchants, bought by politicians of the day as well, who were
05:20invested and involved in these illicit operations. However, as imperial power started to clamp down
05:28on piracy more and more, and especially by the sort of end of the of the 18th century,
05:33that sponsorship from ports, the sponsorship of piracy from ports, started to decline.
05:38So, really, it's in the 18th century we start to see this, what sometimes is referred to as the
05:43golden age of piracy, is that period, a sort of 10-year period in the 18th century, where these
05:48pirates were isolated from colonial ports and other ports, and were sort of operating in isolation
05:55from those, and instead what you found was that pirates would trade upwards. So, a lot of the
06:01times you would find a small pirate crew operating from, say, a canoe, and they would take a small
06:05trading vessel, and then they would recruit more individuals, and then from that pirate vessel
06:10take a bigger vessel and a bigger vessel, and only from there would they then attack some of
06:14these larger vessels that they were really after, really looking to take these big trading vessels.
06:19But it took a good few years sometimes for them to be able to get to the point where they could
06:24actually attack these larger vessels, and what's quite interesting is once they then attacked these
06:28vessels, if they were successful and took it, they would then start to trade downwards, so they would start
06:33to take smaller vessels and smaller vessels, so that they could make a quick escape, because if
06:37you're a pirate, you don't really want to operate from a large vessel for that long a period, because
06:42large vessels are slow, and you want to try and escape as quickly as you can. So, although we often
06:47have this image of sort of large pirate crews operating from these large galleons, a lot of the
06:52time pirates were operating from really small vessels and making really quite small scale
06:58attacks on smaller trading vessels, only working their way up to these big outlandish attacks
07:04once or twice in their careers a lot of the time. Yeah, I mean the the Sloop is a favoured ship
07:12in the Caribbean piracy, it's a small meat ship, shallow draft, whips in and out, quite handy, but as
07:17David says, they are the ultimate capitalists, because it's like, well, we've got this ship, let's
07:22get a bigger one, yes, let's go, and you've got to feed them as well, so you keep taking bigger ships, so you
07:26can get the food supplies, and then once you get too big, you think, let's go back down again, so
07:30you're going basically from hijacking a big arctic truck, going down in a fast little getaway,
07:35is the way that you're moving through the maritime food chain, and the idea of the golden age,
07:40you know, which is that sort of Errol Flynn type thing, where I thought all pirate ships set sail
07:46with a male choir on board, and so probably didn't, apparently, which is surprising,
07:54because they'd hear you coming, wouldn't they, so that manoeuvrability of the pirate world,
08:00that flexibility, it's upward mobility, literally, it's really fascinating, oh, and by the way, I've
08:06got how to really speak like a pirate at the end, so don't think you're getting away with it, Ian
08:09Johnson. Okay, excellent, that's good to put right my terrible wrongs to the people of this
08:15country, and how successful were pirates, I mean, are the ones that sort of get away with all the
08:20loot and live happily ever after, or do they all end up on the end of a hangman's noose?
08:26I suppose it depends on how we define success, so most of the pirates, the piratical voyages that
08:33we actually know about, are those who were caught, so we often romanticise these figures like
08:37Blackbeard, or Bartholomew Roberts, or Captain Kidd, but these were individuals who were caught,
08:41which is kind of why we know about them, and why we know so much about them, is because they were
08:45the ones who were arguably not successful at all, because although they took quite large prizes,
08:52so they were successful in their piracies, they couldn't get away with their loot, so they were
08:57captured. There are, you know, several pirates who do escape and get away, but we don't know much
09:05about them, because they'll appear in the records once, they'll maybe take quite a substantial prize,
09:09but then they'll just disappear, and you never see them again in the records, they never, you know,
09:13pop up again, and those are the ones who were really successful, and in many ways, because we
09:18don't talk about them, it makes them even more successful, because they got away with it, and
09:22most pirates did want to get back, you know, once they once they took a prize, they wanted to spend
09:26their loot, so they wanted to come back to colonial ports and elsewhere, and return to society with
09:31their riches. Those who were caught and captured and then executed, you know, those
09:37are the ones who've become infamous, those are the ones we dress up as at Halloween, but those were
09:41arguably the losers of piracy. Or actually just pop a hat on and go into the office, by the looks
09:47of things, Ian. Or that, of course, yeah. You're not really getting away with it there. No, I used to on earlier on, but the
09:56parrot flew, so it's gone solo. But there was the, there was the tale of Captain Avery,
10:03where they thought he managed to get off with his ill-gotten gains, wasn't there?
10:09So he's sort of probably one of the more successful, well-known pirates, because he is one of the few who
10:14who takes this large, this large, rich vessel in the Indian Ocean, and then does manage to escape, and
10:20we never hear about him again. They're sort of, members of his crew are caught and executed, but he
10:25is never heard of again. But he is very much, kind of, atypical. He's quite a unique case. No one else,
10:31we don't really know what happened to him, and there's lots of, you know, romanticised tales about
10:35what he got up to and where he ended up. We basically have no idea. For the most part, those who escaped
10:41actually tended to be the rank and file, so if you were a very successful pirate, in terms of taking
10:47quite rich prizes, usually your name, the name of the captain, would become quite infamous,
10:52which then meant it was quite difficult to escape execution, unless you changed your name and sort of
10:56were able to hide. Unfortunately, a lot of captains didn't seem to be able to do that
11:00very successfully. However, a lot of their rank and file sailors, they were able to escape because no
11:05one really knew who they were, so if they were able to, you know, abscond on a smaller vessel
11:10into another port, somewhere or other, we just don't hear from them again, and actually don't
11:14appear in the records of the piratical attacks themselves. So yeah, if you were a pirate captain,
11:18you became more infamous, which is why it was quite difficult to be a pirate captain, quite
11:23hazardous, I should say, to be a pirate captain, especially. And how did it come to an end?
11:28What was the, what was the, what are the reasons why we don't have pirates sailing around the
11:33seven seas today? Or, we do have some, but... We don't get started from there, but we do, we certainly do
11:40have pirates, but I guess not of the ilk that we are speaking of. Basically, what
11:45happened was, especially with this period that we're talking about, the 17th and 18th century,
11:49these sort of figures in the, in the so-called golden age of piracy, by the end of the 17th
11:54century, there really was less support for pirates, for piracy, from colonial ports especially, and it
12:00really had been from colonial ports by the late 17th century, when a lot of pirates found their
12:05sponsors. By the end of the 17th century, they no longer find sponsorship there, which means that
12:10pirates can no longer sail back to colonial ports and easily sell their plunder, which then makes
12:14it a bit more risky, it's extremely more risky, and also less lucrative in the long run. There is
12:20still piracy, you have those, that 10-year period where you have these really notorious figures
12:25coming, coming to the fore, but by that point, you start to get a period of quite hostile legislation,
12:31some more proactive naval patrols, and most importantly, you get a lot of patrolling by
12:36smaller vessels of colonial harbours and coasts, which just mean that as pirates sail around the
12:40Atlantic, they start to get chased off the coast more and more that they're operating on,
12:44and therefore it just becomes, it just becomes more risk than it's worth in many ways, so you can't
12:49then recruit pirates, because if you're sort of taking a pirate, if you're taking another vessel
12:54and you're trying to recruit sailors to your cause, if they're seeing quite a lot of executions
12:58happening in ports, but also seeing the difficulty of being a pirate, because they see these greater
13:02patrols, why would you join? The whole point in piracy is that you could make, make money fast,
13:07essentially, whereas now that's not the case, so you start to find less recruits and less
13:13willingness to join piracy, and it sort of just peters out, basically. There are some large-scale
13:20attacks on pirates by naval vessels, but really those are few and far between. What really happens
13:25is it just becomes not really worthwhile anymore. Oh dear. Which isn't, which isn't that exciting,
13:31I'm afraid, with that analogy. No, no. No, it's amazing, though, that it's kind of like governments
13:38working together, you know, eventually the colonial authorities start to work together
13:42to clear out the nests of pirates and, you know, and just, if only they lasted longer, they could
13:47have gone into Technicolor and would have had much better films, is what I think, but it's amazing
13:51how it's just like, as a career choice, what you just said was, as a career choice, it didn't really,
13:57it wasn't attractive anymore, so you had your chance. You could make away with a couple of
14:02doubloons or you could dangle at the end of a rope, me hearties, so. Yeah, but what I'll say is that,
14:09you know, although the golden age of piracy, as it's referred to, does come to an end in the 1720s,
14:15piracy continues from then to today. I mean, there's still opportunistic small-scale attacks
14:20of pirates and then large-scale sort of outbursts of piracy at different times, but you just don't
14:25seem to have that same concentration of such a large population of pirates operating on such a
14:30such a vast scale and such a sort of geographical range as well after this point, and I think it
14:36is just because of that clampdown and also the fact that it becomes less lucrative to do so.
14:42Really what happens at this point is that those who are kind of taking small-scale attacks, so sort
14:46of picking off vessels here and there on certain coasts, the ones who are actually more successful
14:50because they get away, those are the ones who continue onwards. It's those small-scale attacks
14:55that continue rather than these large-scale sort of targeting of major shipping routes. That sort
15:01of fades away a little bit. Okay, and why do you think it is that we're so fascinated with
15:06pirates today? I mean, at the time, I assumed people like you and me would be terrified of
15:12pirates and hate them. They're evil, murdering people who kill for money, but nowadays they're,
15:17you know, funny hats and, you know, funny accents. Well, what's actually really interesting is that
15:23the pirates were romanticized even as they continued to operate in the 17th and 18th century,
15:27and as they committed real acts of violence and real atrocities, there is still a large amount
15:33of popular culture across books, across plays, across music that sort of tap into these Atlantic
15:40pirate myths. So even as these pirates who we're talking about are still operating, they are also
15:44being romanticized at the same time because people are fascinated by these figures, particularly those
15:49who are, you know, not operating on the seas, those who are not seafarers or those who are not
15:54merchants who have been attacked by pirates. There is a fascination, particularly in Europe and
16:00Britain, with these figures, and I guess it's a sort of a fascination with those who operate on
16:08the fringes because pirates always were on the fringes of society. They weren't really beyond
16:12society. They were just operating on the fringes in a very opportunistic fashion. So people were
16:17fascinated by them, this sort of sense of adventure, this sense of danger, but also because pirates are
16:23so unknowable, because actually we don't know that much about the average pirate because they don't
16:27leave that much in the way of records, they do provide a canvas to project all sorts of ideas
16:32and desires onto. So you can use pirates to think about how you would break free from societal norms,
16:38from rejecting societal and political conventions, and that's what you find even in the sort of late
16:4317th and early 18th century. People project these sort of radical political ideas onto pirates that
16:49don't actually exist in reality, but they're using pirates as this canvas to explore these ideas.
16:55I guess when we look at that you also need to remember that pirates in reality were operating
16:59on a purely opportunistic basis, most intended to return to landed society with their plunder,
17:04and really it was economic opportunity that was the driving factor here. And the one thing I do
17:10think that we need to address sometimes when we're just having these discussions
17:13is that we always look at the pirates, we never look at the victims, and we often villainize the
17:17victims of pirates as these sort of big merchant capitalists. But to be honest, pirates were
17:22extremely violent towards enslaved peoples, extremely violent towards indigenous peoples, to
17:27maritime communities, and to women as well throughout the Atlantic world. So sometimes
17:32when I see kids dressed up as pirates at Halloween, I do shudder a little bit. I guess that
17:37comes with the profession, but it's a strange one for me because I'm always thinking, they were
17:41romanticized at this point in time, but we do need to think about the violence and the reality behind
17:47these figures. Yeah, sometimes we do. Sometimes we forget. We're turning on Tom and Jerry style
17:53violence now. Do you think the passage of time has helped take away the reality of it? Oh yeah,
17:59I think so. Yeah, I think. The Black Pirates of the Caribbean, the whole franchise.
18:06Yeah. So I've got a broadside here, and David will be familiar with these that they
18:17published and they sent out, and it's actually got an account of a pirate hunter on it.
18:22So I thought, Mr. Johnson, part of this to you. In a proper, although it's a pirate hunter,
18:29it's brave Captain Gordon's home and brought with him prizes. Let's drink a cuppin to the brim and
18:35a health to Captain Gordon, because whenever he appears, he clears over our coasts of pirateers,
18:41though merchant ships trade without fears throughout the northern ocean. I'm not saying
18:46this is Shakespeare, by the way, okay, so everybody's looking for a great work, so don't know.
18:50Who does dispel our clouds of fears and saves our ships from privateers, who brings into our
18:56Lothian piers a North meal in abundance. There's about 82 verses of this stuff, so I thought I'd
19:03just give you a flavour of it, but that, Ian, it's basically how a lot of pirates and pirate hunters
19:09would actually have spoken. Right, yes, that's me corrected, thank you. Yeah, take the hat off
19:15before you get in the office, right? Right, well, that's been very interesting and entertaining,
19:23so thank you very much, Dr. David Wilson, and indeed Susan Morrison, Scotsman columnist and
19:28pirate expert of some kind, and hopefully we can do this again. Yeah, lovely, thank you so much,
19:37David. Thank you so much, sorry for once again ruining pirates for everyone, thank you.
19:42Bye.
19:46Yeah, take care. Okay.