December 29, 2009 • 32 mins
Although today's pirates aren't storming the coast of Florida or other eastern states, piracy is still around in this modern age. Join Josh and Chuck as they look back at the history of piracy -- and its successors -- in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com? Are and welcome to
the podcast, etcetera. I am Josh Clark with me to
(00:22):
be laughy? Who is that a little laugh? I just
I was joking. I thought who was going to be
the first one to do it? And I didn't know
you were going to literally lead in with that. Yeah,
I like to surprise you. Boom. Well that's a good one.
It's hard to amaze me. I'm glad you did it.
Chuck study wasn't going to do I know, and what
I last like thirty seconds? Such a pushover. I haven't
(00:43):
announced you yet. That's Chuck Bryant, right, Sara, etcetera. Yeah,
this is stuff you should know. The Pirate edition. Um,
I think we should be done with the pirate talking. Yeah,
that could get really annoying. Yeah, you want to know
what is probably the most annoying day of the year,
some kind of pirate day? September nineteenth, talk like a
pirate day? Really, I think I remember that because Strickland
(01:06):
came was like slinging ours all over the Austine Tricklin
Anti dub are being into pirates stuff, Tracy, she wrote
this right, Yeah, it's a great article. Yeah, she's the
keeper of the house stuff works voice. She is indeed
like the old sage on that led Zeppelin poster with
the lantern. Yeah, that's that's why I think of a tracy.
(01:28):
Except when Star Trek Earrings speaking of off comes your head.
We're going to get into that, chuck, because we're talking
about pirates, and whenever pirates got caught, people love to
cut off their head and post it as a warning
to other pirates. Yeah that's gross, Yeah it is. You
mean to define pirate, Gosh, can you really define pirate? Sure,
(01:48):
a pirate is someone who uses a boat to attack
another boat with the intent to kidnap, steel or otherwise
do harm. Being bang boom end of podcasts. But that's
not all there are. There are a few of criteria.
I can't do that, please stop. There are a few
other criteria. Um, it must be for private gain using
a private vessel, and it's for gain like it can
(02:10):
be um like green Peace coming up on like a
whaling ship or something not pirates um, and they operate
outside of a government authority, because back in the day
they used to governments use things people called privateers. Yeah,
and a lot of pirates started out as privateers, which
are basically pirates, government licensed pirates. They had like a
(02:31):
letter of mark that said this guy is allowed to go. Um, yeah,
I'll do whatever to say the French or the Dutch.
But the problem is or maybe the Spanish during not
times of not war, peace I think is the way
that most people put it. Peace, peace, thank you. During
(02:52):
times of peace. Uh, these privateers would be out of
work and they'd be like, well, I have one skill
and so then they turned to piracy, right, or they
could have just gone and been like regular seamen and
um not gotten paid all that much? Yea, And who
wants to do that, right when you can plunder and
get the loot. Right. One of the reasons that people
(03:12):
engaged in piracy from early on is the same reason
that they do now. Uh. The economy a lot of
times when things are down, just like anything else with theft,
and we we talked about shoplifting and stuff like that
another podcast, UM one hour ago, the crime rate goes up.
So poverty led to an increase of in piracy over
(03:34):
the years, and not just it's not only when times
are tough, when times are really good too, and there's
a lot of trade on the high seas that the
opposite will attract pirates as well. Yeah, the golden nature piracy,
which we'll get into and uh piracy actually has a
very long, hearty tradition that dates back at least to
the fourth century BC. Yeah, the Luca Yeah, I've never
(03:56):
heard of that. I hadn't either, man. They attacked boats
off of the coast of uh what is now Turkey
in the fourteenth century. Yeah, a long time ago. Yeah,
that's a very long time ago. That's as many as
thirty four years ago. It seems like almost since there
were boats on the high seas, there was piracy. Yeah.
Tracy makes that point too. As long as people were
applying the high seas with goods that were worth stealing,
(04:18):
people stole them in boats piracy. Um, you might have
heard of the Corsairs, famous pirates. That was fifteenth and
sixteenth century, and of course the they were the Barbary Pirates,
the Barbary Pirates, which actually I wrote an article on
the Barbary Pirates. They were America's first terrorist threat. Really, huh.
It was Jefferson was the one that had to deal
(04:40):
with them. And they actually got their start from the
Red Beard brothers who were Turks. But they went down
to North Africa and I think converted to Islam and
they used to kidnap and torture and murder Spaniards and
Spaniards did the the opposite. But these two brothers, but
brothers Barbarosa, which means red Beard, gave the start to
(05:03):
the Barbary Pirates. They were very successful for I think
over a century did not know that. Yeah, and then
of course the buccaneers, the lousy, stinking Tampa Bay Buccaneers
are named after the pirate buccaneers of the seventeenth century.
So that's just a I mean, there's a lot more
history in this article, but that's an overview, if you will.
(05:23):
It is an overview, uh, And it's it's not just
European or African. The Chinese used to like to pillage
in pirate after the Han dynasty around to twenty BC.
They used to like the pirate. Yeah, I'm trying to
get this word out as a verb now too. Like that.
And also I decided the new Rick role is Dion
(05:44):
Warwick performing do you know the way to San Jose. Yeah,
I've been. I've been. It's worked so far. Did it
to Robert Lamb and he was like, that's good. Where
was that going anywhere? Okay? So, Josh, what do you
think of when you think of a pirate? What comes
to mind? What mental image do you get? I think
of a guy with maybe a tricornered hat, a tricorn,
(06:07):
it's called a tricorn. Okay, some hoop ear rings. What
are those called hoop ear rings? Okay? Parrot that says
things like pieces of eight and dead men tell no
tales and stuff like that. Um, a peg leg usually
or a hook for a hand. Um. I think of, um,
very weathered, scarred skin, tattoos. I think of Johnny Depp.
(06:30):
What about the clothes. The clothes, um, you know, a
ruffled shirt and a little fruity long coat. Um, yeah,
a long coat leather probably, um and uh I also
think of, um, a nice long sword, maybe a sure
flint lock pistol and uh. Furies also come to mind,
(06:52):
because usually if you run into a furry, there's someone
dress as a pirate nearby. Well, Josh, you want to
talk about if that's real or not? That stuff you
just named in the Golden Age of piracy, which is
this is the when we think of all those things.
You're thinking of the Golden age of piracy, right, And
actually I was surprised after reading this article how short
(07:12):
it was, but I guess we'll get to that. It
was like fifty years or so, between sixteen ninety and
seventeen thirty. Okay, yeah, forty years, and that's when you
might have heard of people called black Beard. Yeah, Calico Jack.
Have you ever heard of him? Yeah? He was you know,
he was controversial, and I know it was because you know,
(07:33):
I do know why, but I know you because he
allowed women pirates. Not only did he allow women pirates,
he had a pretty torrid affair on the high seas
with one and Bonnie. It seems like a good reason
to have a woman pirate. Yeah, they had a kid together,
which was born in Cuba. Um he stole her away
from her husband and she basically was this housewife who
(07:56):
went into a life of piracy. And she and another
mean named Mary Reid. We're aboard Calico jack ship. Right.
Once the crew found out that they were women, they
accepted them because I think Calico Jack was like, if
you don't cut your hat off, but don't accept them
too much, as I'll cut your head off. So they
dressed as women, um when they were just sailing, and
(08:18):
then when they were about to start fighting, they would
dress up as men, and apparently they killed as many people.
So if there's anybody else on that ship and a
witness for when they were both caught later on um,
a witness who testified against them said that they swore
and cursed with the best of them. Good for them,
(08:38):
women's lib way back in the golden age of piracy. Yeah.
So one of the reasons it was the golden age
back then, Josh, is from what you just said, that
was when the seas were really flying around between Africa
and America and Europe. Have you heard the theory that
African slaves Africa was tapped for slavery simply because of
(09:00):
a trade wind. Really. Yeah, that went from the east
coast of the United States right down to um, what
is that western Africa? Interesting? Yeah, it just took your
right down and that's where that's why Africans became slaves
because it was so easy to get there. Interesting. Yeah,
although the Portuguese already had a lock on the slave
trade by the time you know the colonists started or
(09:21):
the English very true, we didn't make that up. Uh.
So lots of boats with like sugar and rum and startlingly,
it wasn't like big trunks full of gold coins usually, right,
that did happen, but it was more like goods. Yeah.
There was one specific ship that that that went down actually,
(09:43):
uh and the pirates treasure that you hear of a
lot um, it's pretty much personified or emblematic of this
one called the Wide Ah. Yeah, it was like pirate
Captain Sam Bellamy's ship, and it went down in seventeen
seventeen off the coast of Cape Comb, Massage usits and
it had literally chests of gold and jewels and things
(10:05):
in it when it went down. But normally they pillage sugar, frum, molasses,
stuff that you could turn around and sell in bulk
to somebody and say like Port Royal or whatever. So
the Golden Age, I mentioned it was big for two reasons.
One or that's what we think of when we think
of the traditional pirates, because the Golden Age was so big,
(10:28):
and because of books like Treasure Island and Peter Pan Right,
that's why we think of the pirates is is what
you described earlier. It's like Santa Claus being our conception
of Santa Claus comes from a illustration exactly from a
guy who is paid by Coca Cola. So let's go
over those real quick. The flag that you often think of,
(10:48):
the Jolly Roger. Did you do any additional research on this?
Tracy kind of traps around that one. It's a little sticky,
is it? And this is definitely a family friendly article. Okay,
can we mention it? No, we can't, But anybody can
type in origins of Jolly Roger in Google and find
it themselves, and we would bear no responsibility whatsoever for that. Well,
(11:11):
that flag made its first appearance in the early eighteenth century, Josh,
and before that there is a little non fact by
me at least, uh, you would and this makes total sense.
Pirates would fly up miss false colors basically to mislead
other ships that they were dangerous. Yeah, and total sense. Yeah,
that's the smart thing to do, right, smart. It's just
(11:32):
like the Jolly Roger, which I also found out from
this one often had a skeleton, not just the skull
and cross. Sometimes it was a black um flag with
a white skeleton UM. So it always struck me as
weird because you're like, hey, I'm a pirate and I'm
coming after you. But it turns out they did do
that purposely because in a lot of um, a lot
(11:54):
of ways, pirates were so feared that, um, the ship
would just be like, Okay, you're a pirate here to
take our stuff. Well, yeah, that's best case scenario. What
they want is for the ship to immediately surrender. So
that's what the pirates really looking for because then you
get the you get the cargo, you get whatever stuff
is on board, money maybe, um, and you get the ship. Yeah,
(12:15):
and a lot. Apparently it wasn't hard to flip a
crew over to piracy. I think there's a really thin
line between you know, legitimate semen and a pirate. Uh
during the golden age of piracy. And you know, if
you captured a crew and said I need you guys,
they'd say okay, or what they probably said was, you
have a couple of choices. You can become a pirate,
(12:36):
or we can shoot you in the face or maroon
you on this island. Yeah. I love that word. What maroon?
Yes really, yeah, I just think it's a great word.
And of course that means to strand on an island
or deserted island. Doesn't really work if you drop them
off in Haiti. Um, but you find a deserted island
drop off the crew. Sometimes they would leave them with
supplies and other times they leave them with nothing and
(12:57):
you just leave, and it's pretty much a sentence pretty much. Uh.
Their clothes Josh, that you described are you know it
could have been real because they basically wore what people
wore at the time. But a lot of times they
would get the clothes from that We're maybe being shipped
to rich, wealthy people or so they would have like
fine clothes, like the ruffled churts and all that. Parents true,
(13:20):
We're not true. I don't think it's true. Not necessarily,
she says. Um, they did capture parents to sell them.
But um, that's that's from Treasure Island. Yeah, basically hooks
and pegs legs. Yeah, that happened. Do you know why
because being a fire it was dangerous. You get your
(13:42):
arms and your legs blown off many times. So there
were probably some peg legs walking around stumping around. And
but that was also from Captain Hook and Treasure Island.
So a lot of these things are fictional but may
or may not have happened. And um, flintlock pistols, I
had those it then, that's true. But they didn't work
(14:02):
very well at sea, yeah, because of the saltwater. Right,
but they still used them when they could the very
at least you can club somebody in the head with it.
They're big. Um. And then along with obviously the swords
and daggers and all that stuff that you're familiar with,
right uh and chuck, we we are focusing on the
Golden Age of piracy. I think we should say. One
of the reasons that gave rise to it was the
War of Spanish Secession. Alright, what I was talking about
(14:25):
about the privateers, right, yeah, and that happened many, many times. Um.
The War of Spanish Secession gave rise to the Golden
Age of piracy because there were so many privateers. But
the United States used to give letters of mark pirates
that actually, uh are privateers that turned pirate. Um, the
British did it it. It happened, I think, um, well
(14:46):
into the nineteenth century there were privateers turned pirates. Yeah,
another falsehood. They are often depicted as steering these huge galleons.
They would often attack these galleons. But a galleon isn't
great if you're going to be in a a pirate
because you want to get in and out. It's all
about speed. In fact, modern pirates use speed boats mainly,
(15:08):
which we'll get too in a minute, but they usually
used um smaller uh sloops and schooners, so so they
get in and out quicker, but no less cool. Or
they could have also used a brigantine, which um what
it was. It's like a larger version of the schooner.
It could hold about a hundred and fifty men, uh
(15:30):
and probably about thirty cannons. Not bad, No, you could
do some real damage with that. So what's lifelike on
a boat, Josh? It's it is, indeed, because they're not
feasting on like fine meals and drinking fine wines. They
I mean, I guess if they pillage some than they could.
(15:51):
But when that's gone, dude, they're eating spoiled meat. They
are eating water tainted with algae, which you could eat actually,
and they drank it and uh they ate their water
with a fork, that's how bad it was. And they
ate something called hard tack. Yes, I've never heard of that.
You know what another word for hard tech is what
sea biscuit? Really is that where that comes from. I'm
(16:13):
learning all kinds of things. That's like a really hard cracker.
And they took that out to see because it didn't
spoil is fast, but I'll bet it was hell on teeth.
Well yeah, and they also said that it was you know,
when you're out to see for that long, it's like
weevils like crawling around and that's gross. Yeah, so you're
not exactly happy, and probably after a couple of days
(16:35):
of eating hard tack and spoiled meat, you are really
really ready to go butcher a crew to get your
hands on their food. Yeah. I imagine that you had
no trouble persuading your crew to go after each and
every ship you came upon. I would think, So, you know,
you know how they did that, how they came up,
and you want to talk about how that they did
their thing. Yeah, let's let's talk about that. Usually at
(16:55):
night they would sneak up on the stern side and
they would uh throw up the grappling hooks and they
would climb aboard and try and get them to surrender
as quickly as possible. Right, Like you said that The
ideal confrontation was one where the other ship just gave
up immediately without a fight. Right. Sometimes that didn't help
(17:16):
or it didn't work, um, so they would have to fight,
and they would what did you say, grappling hooks. Yeah,
the grappling hooks to get up so they board, sure, right,
and that you'd want to actually keep your um, your
ship out of cannon fire range. Um, so that you
would just get in a few boats and swim over
to it or row over to it, and then climb aboard,
(17:37):
and then the massacre would begin, right, or if not
a surrender, then the masket would be and they would
disable the rudder to which I didn't know, which is
pretty smart. Yeah, straightaway, so they couldn't steer away or anything, right,
but you could still toe what I imagine, Yeah, I
guess because the ideal situations to get the boat. That's
why they didn't want to bombard them with cannon fire,
(17:57):
because you want to take the boat and everything that's
got on it in one piece. And plus, even if
you don't intend to take the boat, you don't want
to sink it before you can get to the cargo. Right.
So there was cannon fire that did happen when all
outs failed. And I think Tracy said they also fired
a grape shot. Have you ever heard of that? Huh?
(18:17):
Whell those like small little cannonballs. It looks like a
little bunch of grapes actually, and they would spit like
spew out like a shotgun. Yeah, I think somewhere else
they're they're molded together. I think they do spit out
like a shotgun, but they're like that bigger around the spray.
You're in trouble if somebody hits you a grape shot
and actually they would go for the guy at the
wheel was their first shot if they shot sure at
(18:40):
the other ship and the guy steering. Apparently when they
did capture crew, if they weren't in the mood to
um turn them. There were several things they could do
aboard the high season. One thing I read about was
um they would tie tie somebody to the mast and
just throw broken bottles at them until they got bored
(19:01):
with that. That was one thing. Hauling so this sounds awful. Yeah.
Keel hauling is when they tied a rope. They're big
on the rope and they would throw you overboard and
drag you under the keel of the boat, which pretty
much means you you drowned. Yeah, or and along the
way we're cut up by the barnacles that were stuck
to the ship. And they would do this to their
(19:21):
own guys. Apparently there was a strict code on the
boat with the crew, and if you disobeyed the code,
you would be treated just like the enemy would be. Uh.
One thing that is fiction is walking the plank. Chuck,
I did not know that either. Yeah, this is like
the totem pole. I'm just I'm learning. Apparently, right, that
(19:43):
was all. That's all just made up for books, right,
walking the plank. Yep, that's disappointing. Um, so let's see
what else, chuck. Oh Uh, Tracy made a really excellent
point that I hadn't thought of. But if you have
two ships and they're the same same type of ship,
how does one catch the other? If you're using sales
(20:03):
and oars, right, the same number of oars, same wind. Um. Apparently,
if you were a decent pirate, you would beat your
ship every once in a while and then clean off
the hole and the barnacles off the hole to make
it slide through a lot faster. Remember we were talking
about ships that are being outfitted with that ouze that
resembles a pilot whale skin. Um, the pilot whales keep
(20:27):
barnacles off, and this ouze is the aim of the
ouze is to keep um barnacles off of these ships
to go fat or more efficiently at least, and go faster.
And yeah, I think it was gonna cut fuel consumption
by like twenty percentage of consumption consumption. So that is
how you would catch up to somebody else. You could
also offload cargo, store it, maybe bury it in North
(20:48):
Carolina and um, yeah, that is an interesting point. I
ever thought about that because they they have the same wind.
That's right. Are we done with old pirates? Seems like okay,
modern modern times. Yeah, there was like there was a
lull between the nineteenth century and the twenty first century really,
and all of a sudden, we have pirates again. Yeah.
(21:11):
I mean there's probably little pirateing here, and they're not
like we've been seeing lately. Yeah, this one could almost
call this the second Golden Age of piracy. Josh, if
one were so inclined. Do you know why that is
flourishing again? Economy much for the same reasons that it
flourished back then. Economy is bad. Um, ship masters have
been reluctant to report them who ship masters? Ship masters
(21:35):
are reluctant to report the attacks because it can take
a long time and be expensive and hold them up,
so they'll just let it go undone. And they because
of the economy, their staffing crews with smaller, smaller crews,
ships of smaller cruise and the vast majority of modern
pirate attacks are happening in the Gulf of Aiden, and
they are being undertaken by Somali pirates. And one of
(21:57):
the reasons why the pirates are getting away from it
is because some only is as far as I know,
the one nation on the entire planet that doesn't have
a functioning central government. It's truly lawless, great place for
pirates to hang out, right, Um, we're land based these days.
Well they're hugging shore more right, but they have their
operations based on land all right. Well, I mean they
(22:18):
did that. They did the same thing during other ages
of piracy, like the buccaneers all hung out in Port Royal. Yeah. Um.
So the other reason the Gulf of Aiden is such
a hotspot for piracy. Apparently ten or eleven percent of
all of the world's oil goes through the Gulf of Aden,
which is a relatively relatively narrow stretch UM between the
(22:43):
Middle East and North Africa, northeastern Africa, UM, And it's
two fifty miles wide, and it's like that for nine miles,
so it's like a bottleneck. And then you're going right
alongside the only country on the planet without a functioning
central government. And I think eight percent of all of
the goods shipped UM globally go through the Gulf of
(23:06):
Aiden as well. Really yeah, so there's a lot of
cash that flows through that that goalf. So you know
how they operate nowadays, I do kind of just like
they used to, except with rocket propelled grenade. They have RPGs.
But they will do the same thing. They'll get a
smaller boat, it's faster boat. They will sneak up on
the stern and the dead of night with their grappling
(23:28):
hooks and board the ship. And of course now they
have you know, a crew of like that one incident
earlier this year was like six or eight guys, wouldn't it. Yeah,
So not as hard to overtake a ship these days
when you have machine guns and RPGs and a crew
of six that you have to overtake. Are you talking
about the Maresk, Alabama one where the Navy came in
and the snipers killed the guy he did a little
two tap. I would demend it. So yeah, but they're
(23:51):
not after cargo, which I didn't know. I thought, like,
it depends, well, I guess it does. But Tracy made
the point that they can't overtake these huge cargo ships
is they don't have the means to get rid of
all that stuff. So they're usually after uh like smaller
equipment on the boat in personal loot and sometimes they
carry a lot of money in safe And I found
(24:11):
it interesting because I think she wrote this in like
two thousand five, maybe two thousand six, and it seems
like two thousand seven or eight was when things really changed.
Remember the the cargo ship filled with Russian tanks that
was held, the cargo, the tanker filled with oil that
was held. So so they are going after the cargo
(24:31):
now they're just holding it for ransom. They're not trying
to fence it. Like you can't fence a hundred Russian
tanks or a container ship full of oil, but you
can't hold the hostage and get money. You can hold
it ransom and get money for you know, to to
release it. And that's what they've been doing successfully. Yeah.
I never followed up, but I did remember hearing about
(24:52):
a couple that was sailing around the world and they
were um kidnapped by pirates. I read something in the
New York Times that was this year, I think, but
I never found out what happened to them. Like a
wealthy couple. Do you remember that guy who um was
He had like a walk on part as and I
think is like, uh, I don't remember what he was,
but it was on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and he
(25:15):
killed some couple for their yacht. But this wasn't him. No, okay,
he wasn't a pirate. He's a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger Chuck. Yes,
Let's say we are aboard a cargo ship filled with
oil and pirates are heading our way with RPGs um
rocket launchers a K forty seven's what do we do? Well,
if you see them headed, I'm not really sure. I
(25:37):
know you can do beforehand. You cannot discuss your route
while you're in port. Yeah, like you don't don't go
to the bar and say, yeah, we got a shipment
of diamonds. We're gonna be taken to the Straits of
horror muth And I'll bet that guy that was good.
Actually that was the jackass shipmate who has a loud mouth.
(25:57):
That was a perfect impression. And you know what, I'll
bet that rule of thumb is this. It goes back
to the Luca. Yeah, I bet, I bet so. Yeah,
you just keep your mouth shut. Yeah, we've learned that
a lot on the show. Kind of if only we could,
um keep constant watch obviously to have someone up and
what's it called the crow's nest looking out avoid bottlenecks, which,
(26:17):
unfortunately with that one route you're talking about, it sounds
like it's kind of hard to do, if not impossible,
and uh, search your ship, you know, make sure no
one's stowing away. Sometimes pirates will already be there as stowaways.
It's like surprise call for help. I think there's uh
their systems now that monitor where your boats are. If
you're a cargo boat, shiplock, shiplock, there you go. What
(26:40):
do they do? It's like low jack for your ship. Okay, yeah,
well there you have it. Um, But yeah, if we
if you do see some pirates coming aboard. If you
ever happen to find yourself commanding an oil tanker and
you see, uh, you see pirates coming towards you, you
do call for help. As Chuck said, you also want
to sound your alarm, turn on your lights. You want
(27:02):
the pirates to know that you've seen them, so there's
no element of surprise. Yeah, it may actually deter their
attacks because you know, you're a huge cargo ship and
they're like five guys. Um. A lot of ships, especially tankers,
have their own fire hoses, like the big kind um,
and you can spray guys as they try to come
up the side of the ship. Kind Yeah, well you
(27:22):
know it's like yeah, um and uh, if you aren't
transporting oil or any kind of flamable material, there's actually,
um a new kind of technology that electrifies the whole
I heard about that. So the guy tries to climb up,
he's like surprise, Yeah, exactly. That'd be awesome. Oh it
would be dude. If I had that system, I would
(27:43):
go through that shipping channeling you're talking about, and I
would just like camp out the donuts in the Gulf
of Aiden. Yeah, just to smoke a cigar and crack
of beer and be like, can I get it? So
that's pirates that I that I'm sure that it's not
at all. It's the tip of the ice. Or even
as far as Tracy's article goes, there's still more that
we didn't touch on. But yeah, it's such a rich,
(28:05):
beautiful history films and corsairs and swashbuckling, etcetera. And we're
not touching on film and TV at all, because if
we mentioned a hundred pirate things, we would get an
email saying, I can't believe you didn't mention Pirate X
from movie X y Z. And actually there's a little
graph that Tracy had made for this article that it's
(28:26):
it's our ten favorite pirates. But we're just gonna go
ahead and break the news that this is Tracy's ten
favorite pirates. Is your favorite? I didn't see that black
Beard black Beards number one for historical pirates, and then
in fiction tread Pirate Roberts, the guy from Prince's Pride,
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, and the guy from Fireflies in
there too. I like Jack Sparrow. I didn't like those
movies weren't the best ever, but he was pretty awesome.
(28:48):
We just fell into what you said we weren't going
to do. Yeah, but come on, all right, Well we
welcome your emails. We'll give you the email address you
can send your angry pirate emails too. And this second, um,
let me say this, so no email with multiple ours
will be read or answered to. As a matter of fact,
I think we set up a spam filter that if
(29:09):
our appears in the email, it's just automatically deletes. We
can see okay, um, if you want to learn more
about pirates, type that word in pirates, pirate, um, something
like that into the handy search bar at how stuff
works dot com, which means it's time for a listener
May is indeed, Josh, today we have a listener mail.
I am going to call uh. Jerry was amazed by
(29:32):
this email. Awesome and I was too. Hey, guys, I
was listening to your podcast on hostage negotiation and you
had a little back and forth at about the ten
minute mark that made me laugh a little bit. This
isn't the one? Isn't this is the one? So should
we play that now? Yes? Let's I love doing that.
(29:53):
It's usually just a regular domestic scene and the worst ones, man,
the worst ones of those you see on the New
is where you see some dudes got a baby acting
as a human shield. Who does that? You've never seen that? No, oh, man,
it's it's the worst watching those cop shows. A baby
is a human shields. It's like the dad is out
(30:14):
of his mind and uh on drugs or something and
he'll have his baby and it's just it's the worst
thing in the world to watch unfold. Okay, Josh, this
from Danny, And here's what Danny has to say about that.
Except this is the one. I was one of those babies.
We were living in Queens, New York at the time,
and my father barricaded himself on our top floor apartment
(30:36):
for hours. He was holding me and threatening to jump
out of the window with me in his arms if
the police got too close. He didn't have any elaborate
demands other than wanting my mother to not take me
away from him in a custody dispute. The police used
a negotiator to try and distract him so the swat
team could do their own thing. Could do their thing,
but they deemed it too risky to try an assault
(30:58):
with him dangling me out the window like Michael Jackson did.
That's not in there. I just threw that in. Eventually,
the negotiators started playing to his religious beliefs, good tactic,
and got him to let a priest come into the apartment.
They were finally able to take him down without brute force.
You can imagine how much I appreciate the art of
obstage negotiations. No kidding, Danny. Uh. The story made the
(31:21):
cover of every New York newspaper that day, and I
have all of them saved odd souvenirs. I guess, thanks
for the great show. I know. So I couldn't believe
this happened in Danny, and I wrote him back and
I asked what happened to his dad? And um, I
have not heard back from him, so I'm not really sure.
But dude, Danny, glad you're around. Man. I know I
am too. That's just mind boggling. Actually, Uh, it turns
(31:45):
out people do use babies as human shields, and they
listen to stuff you should know twenty years on. If
you have an absolutely nutty, mind boggling real life story, Chuck,
Jerry and I are always interested in those. If you're Somalipoe,
then you listen to the show. Why not let us know.
Let us see your view. We we don't hear your
view very often here in the West, So let us
(32:07):
know what life is like for you, uh Somali pirate,
human shield or anything else. Let us know. Send in
an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics
because it how stuff works dot com. Want more how
(32:28):
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house. Stuff
works dot com home page. Brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com? Are and welcome to
the podcast, etcetera. I am Josh Clark with me to
(00:22):
be laughy? Who is that a little laugh? I just
I was joking. I thought who was going to be
the first one to do it? And I didn't know
you were going to literally lead in with that. Yeah,
I like to surprise you. Boom. Well that's a good one.
It's hard to amaze me. I'm glad you did it.
Chuck study wasn't going to do I know, and what
I last like thirty seconds? Such a pushover. I haven't
(00:43):
announced you yet. That's Chuck Bryant, right, Sara, etcetera. Yeah,
this is stuff you should know. The Pirate edition. Um,
I think we should be done with the pirate talking. Yeah,
that could get really annoying. Yeah, you want to know
what is probably the most annoying day of the year,
some kind of pirate day? September nineteenth, talk like a
pirate day? Really, I think I remember that because Strickland
(01:06):
came was like slinging ours all over the Austine Tricklin
Anti dub are being into pirates stuff, Tracy, she wrote
this right, Yeah, it's a great article. Yeah, she's the
keeper of the house stuff works voice. She is indeed
like the old sage on that led Zeppelin poster with
the lantern. Yeah, that's that's why I think of a tracy.
(01:28):
Except when Star Trek Earrings speaking of off comes your head.
We're going to get into that, chuck, because we're talking
about pirates, and whenever pirates got caught, people love to
cut off their head and post it as a warning
to other pirates. Yeah that's gross, Yeah it is. You
mean to define pirate, Gosh, can you really define pirate? Sure,
(01:48):
a pirate is someone who uses a boat to attack
another boat with the intent to kidnap, steel or otherwise
do harm. Being bang boom end of podcasts. But that's
not all there are. There are a few of criteria.
I can't do that, please stop. There are a few
other criteria. Um, it must be for private gain using
a private vessel, and it's for gain like it can
(02:10):
be um like green Peace coming up on like a
whaling ship or something not pirates um, and they operate
outside of a government authority, because back in the day
they used to governments use things people called privateers. Yeah,
and a lot of pirates started out as privateers, which
are basically pirates, government licensed pirates. They had like a
(02:31):
letter of mark that said this guy is allowed to go. Um, yeah,
I'll do whatever to say the French or the Dutch.
But the problem is or maybe the Spanish during not
times of not war, peace I think is the way
that most people put it. Peace, peace, thank you. During
(02:52):
times of peace. Uh, these privateers would be out of
work and they'd be like, well, I have one skill
and so then they turned to piracy, right, or they
could have just gone and been like regular seamen and
um not gotten paid all that much? Yea, And who
wants to do that, right when you can plunder and
get the loot. Right. One of the reasons that people
(03:12):
engaged in piracy from early on is the same reason
that they do now. Uh. The economy a lot of
times when things are down, just like anything else with theft,
and we we talked about shoplifting and stuff like that
another podcast, UM one hour ago, the crime rate goes up.
So poverty led to an increase of in piracy over
(03:34):
the years, and not just it's not only when times
are tough, when times are really good too, and there's
a lot of trade on the high seas that the
opposite will attract pirates as well. Yeah, the golden nature piracy,
which we'll get into and uh piracy actually has a
very long, hearty tradition that dates back at least to
the fourth century BC. Yeah, the Luca Yeah, I've never
(03:56):
heard of that. I hadn't either, man. They attacked boats
off of the coast of uh what is now Turkey
in the fourteenth century. Yeah, a long time ago. Yeah,
that's a very long time ago. That's as many as
thirty four years ago. It seems like almost since there
were boats on the high seas, there was piracy. Yeah.
Tracy makes that point too. As long as people were
applying the high seas with goods that were worth stealing,
(04:18):
people stole them in boats piracy. Um, you might have
heard of the Corsairs, famous pirates. That was fifteenth and
sixteenth century, and of course the they were the Barbary Pirates,
the Barbary Pirates, which actually I wrote an article on
the Barbary Pirates. They were America's first terrorist threat. Really, huh.
It was Jefferson was the one that had to deal
(04:40):
with them. And they actually got their start from the
Red Beard brothers who were Turks. But they went down
to North Africa and I think converted to Islam and
they used to kidnap and torture and murder Spaniards and
Spaniards did the the opposite. But these two brothers, but
brothers Barbarosa, which means red Beard, gave the start to
(05:03):
the Barbary Pirates. They were very successful for I think
over a century did not know that. Yeah, and then
of course the buccaneers, the lousy, stinking Tampa Bay Buccaneers
are named after the pirate buccaneers of the seventeenth century.
So that's just a I mean, there's a lot more
history in this article, but that's an overview, if you will.
(05:23):
It is an overview, uh, And it's it's not just
European or African. The Chinese used to like to pillage
in pirate after the Han dynasty around to twenty BC.
They used to like the pirate. Yeah, I'm trying to
get this word out as a verb now too. Like that.
And also I decided the new Rick role is Dion
(05:44):
Warwick performing do you know the way to San Jose. Yeah,
I've been. I've been. It's worked so far. Did it
to Robert Lamb and he was like, that's good. Where
was that going anywhere? Okay? So, Josh, what do you
think of when you think of a pirate? What comes
to mind? What mental image do you get? I think
of a guy with maybe a tricornered hat, a tricorn,
(06:07):
it's called a tricorn. Okay, some hoop ear rings. What
are those called hoop ear rings? Okay? Parrot that says
things like pieces of eight and dead men tell no
tales and stuff like that. Um, a peg leg usually
or a hook for a hand. Um. I think of, um,
very weathered, scarred skin, tattoos. I think of Johnny Depp.
(06:30):
What about the clothes. The clothes, um, you know, a
ruffled shirt and a little fruity long coat. Um, yeah,
a long coat leather probably, um and uh I also
think of, um, a nice long sword, maybe a sure
flint lock pistol and uh. Furies also come to mind,
(06:52):
because usually if you run into a furry, there's someone
dress as a pirate nearby. Well, Josh, you want to
talk about if that's real or not? That stuff you
just named in the Golden Age of piracy, which is
this is the when we think of all those things.
You're thinking of the Golden age of piracy, right, And
actually I was surprised after reading this article how short
(07:12):
it was, but I guess we'll get to that. It
was like fifty years or so, between sixteen ninety and
seventeen thirty. Okay, yeah, forty years, and that's when you
might have heard of people called black Beard. Yeah, Calico Jack.
Have you ever heard of him? Yeah? He was you know,
he was controversial, and I know it was because you know,
(07:33):
I do know why, but I know you because he
allowed women pirates. Not only did he allow women pirates,
he had a pretty torrid affair on the high seas
with one and Bonnie. It seems like a good reason
to have a woman pirate. Yeah, they had a kid together,
which was born in Cuba. Um he stole her away
from her husband and she basically was this housewife who
(07:56):
went into a life of piracy. And she and another
mean named Mary Reid. We're aboard Calico jack ship. Right.
Once the crew found out that they were women, they
accepted them because I think Calico Jack was like, if
you don't cut your hat off, but don't accept them
too much, as I'll cut your head off. So they
dressed as women, um when they were just sailing, and
(08:18):
then when they were about to start fighting, they would
dress up as men, and apparently they killed as many people.
So if there's anybody else on that ship and a
witness for when they were both caught later on um,
a witness who testified against them said that they swore
and cursed with the best of them. Good for them,
(08:38):
women's lib way back in the golden age of piracy. Yeah.
So one of the reasons it was the golden age
back then, Josh, is from what you just said, that
was when the seas were really flying around between Africa
and America and Europe. Have you heard the theory that
African slaves Africa was tapped for slavery simply because of
(09:00):
a trade wind. Really. Yeah, that went from the east
coast of the United States right down to um, what
is that western Africa? Interesting? Yeah, it just took your
right down and that's where that's why Africans became slaves
because it was so easy to get there. Interesting. Yeah,
although the Portuguese already had a lock on the slave
trade by the time you know the colonists started or
(09:21):
the English very true, we didn't make that up. Uh.
So lots of boats with like sugar and rum and startlingly,
it wasn't like big trunks full of gold coins usually, right,
that did happen, but it was more like goods. Yeah.
There was one specific ship that that that went down actually,
(09:43):
uh and the pirates treasure that you hear of a
lot um, it's pretty much personified or emblematic of this
one called the Wide Ah. Yeah, it was like pirate
Captain Sam Bellamy's ship, and it went down in seventeen
seventeen off the coast of Cape Comb, Massage usits and
it had literally chests of gold and jewels and things
(10:05):
in it when it went down. But normally they pillage sugar, frum, molasses,
stuff that you could turn around and sell in bulk
to somebody and say like Port Royal or whatever. So
the Golden Age, I mentioned it was big for two reasons.
One or that's what we think of when we think
of the traditional pirates, because the Golden Age was so big,
(10:28):
and because of books like Treasure Island and Peter Pan Right,
that's why we think of the pirates is is what
you described earlier. It's like Santa Claus being our conception
of Santa Claus comes from a illustration exactly from a
guy who is paid by Coca Cola. So let's go
over those real quick. The flag that you often think of,
(10:48):
the Jolly Roger. Did you do any additional research on this?
Tracy kind of traps around that one. It's a little sticky,
is it? And this is definitely a family friendly article. Okay,
can we mention it? No, we can't, But anybody can
type in origins of Jolly Roger in Google and find
it themselves, and we would bear no responsibility whatsoever for that. Well,
(11:11):
that flag made its first appearance in the early eighteenth century, Josh,
and before that there is a little non fact by
me at least, uh, you would and this makes total sense.
Pirates would fly up miss false colors basically to mislead
other ships that they were dangerous. Yeah, and total sense. Yeah,
that's the smart thing to do, right, smart. It's just
(11:32):
like the Jolly Roger, which I also found out from
this one often had a skeleton, not just the skull
and cross. Sometimes it was a black um flag with
a white skeleton UM. So it always struck me as
weird because you're like, hey, I'm a pirate and I'm
coming after you. But it turns out they did do
that purposely because in a lot of um, a lot
(11:54):
of ways, pirates were so feared that, um, the ship
would just be like, Okay, you're a pirate here to
take our stuff. Well, yeah, that's best case scenario. What
they want is for the ship to immediately surrender. So
that's what the pirates really looking for because then you
get the you get the cargo, you get whatever stuff
is on board, money maybe, um, and you get the ship. Yeah,
(12:15):
and a lot. Apparently it wasn't hard to flip a
crew over to piracy. I think there's a really thin
line between you know, legitimate semen and a pirate. Uh
during the golden age of piracy. And you know, if
you captured a crew and said I need you guys,
they'd say okay, or what they probably said was, you
have a couple of choices. You can become a pirate,
(12:36):
or we can shoot you in the face or maroon
you on this island. Yeah. I love that word. What maroon?
Yes really, yeah, I just think it's a great word.
And of course that means to strand on an island
or deserted island. Doesn't really work if you drop them
off in Haiti. Um, but you find a deserted island
drop off the crew. Sometimes they would leave them with
supplies and other times they leave them with nothing and
(12:57):
you just leave, and it's pretty much a sentence pretty much. Uh.
Their clothes Josh, that you described are you know it
could have been real because they basically wore what people
wore at the time. But a lot of times they
would get the clothes from that We're maybe being shipped
to rich, wealthy people or so they would have like
fine clothes, like the ruffled churts and all that. Parents true,
(13:20):
We're not true. I don't think it's true. Not necessarily,
she says. Um, they did capture parents to sell them.
But um, that's that's from Treasure Island. Yeah, basically hooks
and pegs legs. Yeah, that happened. Do you know why
because being a fire it was dangerous. You get your
(13:42):
arms and your legs blown off many times. So there
were probably some peg legs walking around stumping around. And
but that was also from Captain Hook and Treasure Island.
So a lot of these things are fictional but may
or may not have happened. And um, flintlock pistols, I
had those it then, that's true. But they didn't work
(14:02):
very well at sea, yeah, because of the saltwater. Right,
but they still used them when they could the very
at least you can club somebody in the head with it.
They're big. Um. And then along with obviously the swords
and daggers and all that stuff that you're familiar with,
right uh and chuck, we we are focusing on the
Golden Age of piracy. I think we should say. One
of the reasons that gave rise to it was the
War of Spanish Secession. Alright, what I was talking about
(14:25):
about the privateers, right, yeah, and that happened many, many times. Um.
The War of Spanish Secession gave rise to the Golden
Age of piracy because there were so many privateers. But
the United States used to give letters of mark pirates
that actually, uh are privateers that turned pirate. Um, the
British did it it. It happened, I think, um, well
(14:46):
into the nineteenth century there were privateers turned pirates. Yeah,
another falsehood. They are often depicted as steering these huge galleons.
They would often attack these galleons. But a galleon isn't
great if you're going to be in a a pirate
because you want to get in and out. It's all
about speed. In fact, modern pirates use speed boats mainly,
(15:08):
which we'll get too in a minute, but they usually
used um smaller uh sloops and schooners, so so they
get in and out quicker, but no less cool. Or
they could have also used a brigantine, which um what
it was. It's like a larger version of the schooner.
It could hold about a hundred and fifty men, uh
(15:30):
and probably about thirty cannons. Not bad, No, you could
do some real damage with that. So what's lifelike on
a boat, Josh? It's it is, indeed, because they're not
feasting on like fine meals and drinking fine wines. They
I mean, I guess if they pillage some than they could.
(15:51):
But when that's gone, dude, they're eating spoiled meat. They
are eating water tainted with algae, which you could eat actually,
and they drank it and uh they ate their water
with a fork, that's how bad it was. And they
ate something called hard tack. Yes, I've never heard of that.
You know what another word for hard tech is what
sea biscuit? Really is that where that comes from. I'm
(16:13):
learning all kinds of things. That's like a really hard cracker.
And they took that out to see because it didn't
spoil is fast, but I'll bet it was hell on teeth.
Well yeah, and they also said that it was you know,
when you're out to see for that long, it's like
weevils like crawling around and that's gross. Yeah, so you're
not exactly happy, and probably after a couple of days
(16:35):
of eating hard tack and spoiled meat, you are really
really ready to go butcher a crew to get your
hands on their food. Yeah. I imagine that you had
no trouble persuading your crew to go after each and
every ship you came upon. I would think, So, you know,
you know how they did that, how they came up,
and you want to talk about how that they did
their thing. Yeah, let's let's talk about that. Usually at
(16:55):
night they would sneak up on the stern side and
they would uh throw up the grappling hooks and they
would climb aboard and try and get them to surrender
as quickly as possible. Right, Like you said that The
ideal confrontation was one where the other ship just gave
up immediately without a fight. Right. Sometimes that didn't help
(17:16):
or it didn't work, um, so they would have to fight,
and they would what did you say, grappling hooks. Yeah,
the grappling hooks to get up so they board, sure, right,
and that you'd want to actually keep your um, your
ship out of cannon fire range. Um, so that you
would just get in a few boats and swim over
to it or row over to it, and then climb aboard,
(17:37):
and then the massacre would begin, right, or if not
a surrender, then the masket would be and they would
disable the rudder to which I didn't know, which is
pretty smart. Yeah, straightaway, so they couldn't steer away or anything, right,
but you could still toe what I imagine, Yeah, I
guess because the ideal situations to get the boat. That's
why they didn't want to bombard them with cannon fire,
(17:57):
because you want to take the boat and everything that's
got on it in one piece. And plus, even if
you don't intend to take the boat, you don't want
to sink it before you can get to the cargo. Right.
So there was cannon fire that did happen when all
outs failed. And I think Tracy said they also fired
a grape shot. Have you ever heard of that? Huh?
(18:17):
Whell those like small little cannonballs. It looks like a
little bunch of grapes actually, and they would spit like
spew out like a shotgun. Yeah, I think somewhere else
they're they're molded together. I think they do spit out
like a shotgun, but they're like that bigger around the spray.
You're in trouble if somebody hits you a grape shot
and actually they would go for the guy at the
wheel was their first shot if they shot sure at
(18:40):
the other ship and the guy steering. Apparently when they
did capture crew, if they weren't in the mood to
um turn them. There were several things they could do
aboard the high season. One thing I read about was
um they would tie tie somebody to the mast and
just throw broken bottles at them until they got bored
(19:01):
with that. That was one thing. Hauling so this sounds awful. Yeah.
Keel hauling is when they tied a rope. They're big
on the rope and they would throw you overboard and
drag you under the keel of the boat, which pretty
much means you you drowned. Yeah, or and along the
way we're cut up by the barnacles that were stuck
to the ship. And they would do this to their
(19:21):
own guys. Apparently there was a strict code on the
boat with the crew, and if you disobeyed the code,
you would be treated just like the enemy would be. Uh.
One thing that is fiction is walking the plank. Chuck,
I did not know that either. Yeah, this is like
the totem pole. I'm just I'm learning. Apparently, right, that
(19:43):
was all. That's all just made up for books, right,
walking the plank. Yep, that's disappointing. Um, so let's see
what else, chuck. Oh Uh, Tracy made a really excellent
point that I hadn't thought of. But if you have
two ships and they're the same same type of ship,
how does one catch the other? If you're using sales
(20:03):
and oars, right, the same number of oars, same wind. Um. Apparently,
if you were a decent pirate, you would beat your
ship every once in a while and then clean off
the hole and the barnacles off the hole to make
it slide through a lot faster. Remember we were talking
about ships that are being outfitted with that ouze that
resembles a pilot whale skin. Um, the pilot whales keep
(20:27):
barnacles off, and this ouze is the aim of the
ouze is to keep um barnacles off of these ships
to go fat or more efficiently at least, and go faster.
And yeah, I think it was gonna cut fuel consumption
by like twenty percentage of consumption consumption. So that is
how you would catch up to somebody else. You could
also offload cargo, store it, maybe bury it in North
(20:48):
Carolina and um, yeah, that is an interesting point. I
ever thought about that because they they have the same wind.
That's right. Are we done with old pirates? Seems like okay,
modern modern times. Yeah, there was like there was a
lull between the nineteenth century and the twenty first century really,
and all of a sudden, we have pirates again. Yeah.
(21:11):
I mean there's probably little pirateing here, and they're not
like we've been seeing lately. Yeah, this one could almost
call this the second Golden Age of piracy. Josh, if
one were so inclined. Do you know why that is
flourishing again? Economy much for the same reasons that it
flourished back then. Economy is bad. Um, ship masters have
been reluctant to report them who ship masters? Ship masters
(21:35):
are reluctant to report the attacks because it can take
a long time and be expensive and hold them up,
so they'll just let it go undone. And they because
of the economy, their staffing crews with smaller, smaller crews,
ships of smaller cruise and the vast majority of modern
pirate attacks are happening in the Gulf of Aiden, and
they are being undertaken by Somali pirates. And one of
(21:57):
the reasons why the pirates are getting away from it
is because some only is as far as I know,
the one nation on the entire planet that doesn't have
a functioning central government. It's truly lawless, great place for
pirates to hang out, right, Um, we're land based these days.
Well they're hugging shore more right, but they have their
operations based on land all right. Well, I mean they
(22:18):
did that. They did the same thing during other ages
of piracy, like the buccaneers all hung out in Port Royal. Yeah. Um.
So the other reason the Gulf of Aiden is such
a hotspot for piracy. Apparently ten or eleven percent of
all of the world's oil goes through the Gulf of Aden,
which is a relatively relatively narrow stretch UM between the
(22:43):
Middle East and North Africa, northeastern Africa, UM, And it's
two fifty miles wide, and it's like that for nine miles,
so it's like a bottleneck. And then you're going right
alongside the only country on the planet without a functioning
central government. And I think eight percent of all of
the goods shipped UM globally go through the Gulf of
(23:06):
Aiden as well. Really yeah, so there's a lot of
cash that flows through that that goalf. So you know
how they operate nowadays, I do kind of just like
they used to, except with rocket propelled grenade. They have RPGs.
But they will do the same thing. They'll get a
smaller boat, it's faster boat. They will sneak up on
the stern and the dead of night with their grappling
(23:28):
hooks and board the ship. And of course now they
have you know, a crew of like that one incident
earlier this year was like six or eight guys, wouldn't it. Yeah,
So not as hard to overtake a ship these days
when you have machine guns and RPGs and a crew
of six that you have to overtake. Are you talking
about the Maresk, Alabama one where the Navy came in
and the snipers killed the guy he did a little
two tap. I would demend it. So yeah, but they're
(23:51):
not after cargo, which I didn't know. I thought, like,
it depends, well, I guess it does. But Tracy made
the point that they can't overtake these huge cargo ships
is they don't have the means to get rid of
all that stuff. So they're usually after uh like smaller
equipment on the boat in personal loot and sometimes they
carry a lot of money in safe And I found
(24:11):
it interesting because I think she wrote this in like
two thousand five, maybe two thousand six, and it seems
like two thousand seven or eight was when things really changed.
Remember the the cargo ship filled with Russian tanks that
was held, the cargo, the tanker filled with oil that
was held. So so they are going after the cargo
(24:31):
now they're just holding it for ransom. They're not trying
to fence it. Like you can't fence a hundred Russian
tanks or a container ship full of oil, but you
can't hold the hostage and get money. You can hold
it ransom and get money for you know, to to
release it. And that's what they've been doing successfully. Yeah.
I never followed up, but I did remember hearing about
(24:52):
a couple that was sailing around the world and they
were um kidnapped by pirates. I read something in the
New York Times that was this year, I think, but
I never found out what happened to them. Like a
wealthy couple. Do you remember that guy who um was
He had like a walk on part as and I
think is like, uh, I don't remember what he was,
but it was on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and he
(25:15):
killed some couple for their yacht. But this wasn't him. No, okay,
he wasn't a pirate. He's a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger Chuck. Yes,
Let's say we are aboard a cargo ship filled with
oil and pirates are heading our way with RPGs um
rocket launchers a K forty seven's what do we do? Well,
if you see them headed, I'm not really sure. I
(25:37):
know you can do beforehand. You cannot discuss your route
while you're in port. Yeah, like you don't don't go
to the bar and say, yeah, we got a shipment
of diamonds. We're gonna be taken to the Straits of
horror muth And I'll bet that guy that was good.
Actually that was the jackass shipmate who has a loud mouth.
(25:57):
That was a perfect impression. And you know what, I'll
bet that rule of thumb is this. It goes back
to the Luca. Yeah, I bet, I bet so. Yeah,
you just keep your mouth shut. Yeah, we've learned that
a lot on the show. Kind of if only we could,
um keep constant watch obviously to have someone up and
what's it called the crow's nest looking out avoid bottlenecks, which,
(26:17):
unfortunately with that one route you're talking about, it sounds
like it's kind of hard to do, if not impossible,
and uh, search your ship, you know, make sure no
one's stowing away. Sometimes pirates will already be there as stowaways.
It's like surprise call for help. I think there's uh
their systems now that monitor where your boats are. If
you're a cargo boat, shiplock, shiplock, there you go. What
(26:40):
do they do? It's like low jack for your ship. Okay, yeah,
well there you have it. Um, But yeah, if we
if you do see some pirates coming aboard. If you
ever happen to find yourself commanding an oil tanker and
you see, uh, you see pirates coming towards you, you
do call for help. As Chuck said, you also want
to sound your alarm, turn on your lights. You want
(27:02):
the pirates to know that you've seen them, so there's
no element of surprise. Yeah, it may actually deter their
attacks because you know, you're a huge cargo ship and
they're like five guys. Um. A lot of ships, especially tankers,
have their own fire hoses, like the big kind um,
and you can spray guys as they try to come
up the side of the ship. Kind Yeah, well you
(27:22):
know it's like yeah, um and uh, if you aren't
transporting oil or any kind of flamable material, there's actually,
um a new kind of technology that electrifies the whole
I heard about that. So the guy tries to climb up,
he's like surprise, Yeah, exactly. That'd be awesome. Oh it
would be dude. If I had that system, I would
(27:43):
go through that shipping channeling you're talking about, and I
would just like camp out the donuts in the Gulf
of Aiden. Yeah, just to smoke a cigar and crack
of beer and be like, can I get it? So
that's pirates that I that I'm sure that it's not
at all. It's the tip of the ice. Or even
as far as Tracy's article goes, there's still more that
we didn't touch on. But yeah, it's such a rich,
(28:05):
beautiful history films and corsairs and swashbuckling, etcetera. And we're
not touching on film and TV at all, because if
we mentioned a hundred pirate things, we would get an
email saying, I can't believe you didn't mention Pirate X
from movie X y Z. And actually there's a little
graph that Tracy had made for this article that it's
(28:26):
it's our ten favorite pirates. But we're just gonna go
ahead and break the news that this is Tracy's ten
favorite pirates. Is your favorite? I didn't see that black
Beard black Beards number one for historical pirates, and then
in fiction tread Pirate Roberts, the guy from Prince's Pride,
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, and the guy from Fireflies in
there too. I like Jack Sparrow. I didn't like those
movies weren't the best ever, but he was pretty awesome.
(28:48):
We just fell into what you said we weren't going
to do. Yeah, but come on, all right, Well we
welcome your emails. We'll give you the email address you
can send your angry pirate emails too. And this second, um,
let me say this, so no email with multiple ours
will be read or answered to. As a matter of fact,
I think we set up a spam filter that if
(29:09):
our appears in the email, it's just automatically deletes. We
can see okay, um, if you want to learn more
about pirates, type that word in pirates, pirate, um, something
like that into the handy search bar at how stuff
works dot com, which means it's time for a listener
May is indeed, Josh, today we have a listener mail.
I am going to call uh. Jerry was amazed by
(29:32):
this email. Awesome and I was too. Hey, guys, I
was listening to your podcast on hostage negotiation and you
had a little back and forth at about the ten
minute mark that made me laugh a little bit. This
isn't the one? Isn't this is the one? So should
we play that now? Yes? Let's I love doing that.
(29:53):
It's usually just a regular domestic scene and the worst ones, man,
the worst ones of those you see on the New
is where you see some dudes got a baby acting
as a human shield. Who does that? You've never seen that? No, oh, man,
it's it's the worst watching those cop shows. A baby
is a human shields. It's like the dad is out
(30:14):
of his mind and uh on drugs or something and
he'll have his baby and it's just it's the worst
thing in the world to watch unfold. Okay, Josh, this
from Danny, And here's what Danny has to say about that.
Except this is the one. I was one of those babies.
We were living in Queens, New York at the time,
and my father barricaded himself on our top floor apartment
(30:36):
for hours. He was holding me and threatening to jump
out of the window with me in his arms if
the police got too close. He didn't have any elaborate
demands other than wanting my mother to not take me
away from him in a custody dispute. The police used
a negotiator to try and distract him so the swat
team could do their own thing. Could do their thing,
but they deemed it too risky to try an assault
(30:58):
with him dangling me out the window like Michael Jackson did.
That's not in there. I just threw that in. Eventually,
the negotiators started playing to his religious beliefs, good tactic,
and got him to let a priest come into the apartment.
They were finally able to take him down without brute force.
You can imagine how much I appreciate the art of
obstage negotiations. No kidding, Danny. Uh. The story made the
(31:21):
cover of every New York newspaper that day, and I
have all of them saved odd souvenirs. I guess, thanks
for the great show. I know. So I couldn't believe
this happened in Danny, and I wrote him back and
I asked what happened to his dad? And um, I
have not heard back from him, so I'm not really sure.
But dude, Danny, glad you're around. Man. I know I
am too. That's just mind boggling. Actually, Uh, it turns
(31:45):
out people do use babies as human shields, and they
listen to stuff you should know twenty years on. If
you have an absolutely nutty, mind boggling real life story, Chuck,
Jerry and I are always interested in those. If you're Somalipoe,
then you listen to the show. Why not let us know.
Let us see your view. We we don't hear your
view very often here in the West, So let us
(32:07):
know what life is like for you, uh Somali pirate,
human shield or anything else. Let us know. Send in
an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics
because it how stuff works dot com. Want more how
(32:28):
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house. Stuff
works dot com home page. Brought to you by the
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