Who Was The Gentleman Pirate?

Stede Bonnet was born into a wealthy English family on the island of Barbados in 1688. He had money, land and eventually a wife and children. But in 1717, at the age of 29, he turned to a life of crime on high seas to become a pirate of the Caribbean. And because of his status before turning to piracy, he became known as "the gentleman pirate".  But being a gentleman and being a pirate were two completely different ways of life, and the contradiction lead to many challenges for Captain Bonnet. From mutiny, to betrayal, to capture by the authorities, Stede found the excitement that he was looking for...and eventually lived to regret it. 
Join us as we explore the very strange life of a very unusual character that lived a double life during the golden age of piracy. Learn of his misadventures, his friendship with the famed pirate Blackbeard, and his legacy after he died.
 

Transcript

Kelly: 0:06

Everyone, welcome to another episode of dirt nap city, the podcast about interesting dead people. And I'm super happy to have such a great and interesting partner as the living. Alex marlim. Alex, how are you?

Alex: 0:20

Hey, what's up, Kelly?

Kelly: 0:21

We talked a little bit about the air in our last episode. And this time I want to talk to you about the C. O

Alex: 0:27

the seat. Yeah. We're talking about the C when we talked about Shackleton. Yeah, true. True. I liked about this. See when we talked about lots was on the sea fields.

Kelly: 0:47

Any other seafaring

Alex: 0:48

people? Oh, Napoleon.

Kelly: 0:50

Napoleon. Yeah, he did? Well, although I think part of his problem was the British had a better Navy than he did. So yeah. And by the way, big shout out to our Patreon supporters. We've got a couple of them. Now we've got Al from Austin. We've also got Chris from Austin. So appreciate those guys being early adapters, adapters, and adapters of our Patreon. They're much appreciated. And there's

Alex: 1:19

different ways to listen to us now too. You don't just have to do it through your, your podcast platforms. Right? Can you can you can watch us now too.

Kelly: 1:29

You can watch us on Youtube. That's right. We have our own YouTube channel, just search for dirt nap city on YouTube. You can listen to us on YouTube. It's interesting because some versions of our content are audio only, which is a thumbnail even though it's a video file. And then some of them are full videos where you see us in all our glory just like this if you if you're into that sort of thing. So lots of options. No,

Alex: 1:55

that's, that's great. I'm glad we can we can we can be there for people that want to just watch us.

Kelly: 2:02

You got to meet people where they are Alex. Is that true? That is true. As a matter of fact, that was sort of a theme. It's gonna be a theme of today's podcast hint about. Now I know you're a big fan of the 20th century. But our our, our subject for today was actually born in 1688 in Bridgetown, Barbados to British parents. He was born into wealth, he inherited land, and a sugar plantation. His parents died when he was six, and he inherited all those things. Are we

Alex: 2:38

talking about Alexander Hamilton? No, no,

Kelly: 2:41

I don't know if he was born in Barbados, or I know he's born in the Caribbean. I don't know if it was Barbados, but no good, good guest though. And this might have been a little too. Too early for Alexander Hamilton actually. 16 Yeah, yeah. I think he was born a little later than that. But this guy was actually in the military. He was in the Barbados militia reached the rank of Major, although there's not really much record of his military service. He was married and had children. He became friends with some people that were even more famous than him. But in 1717, you know, at a very young age still in his 20s At that point, I guess he was 29. He actually left his wife and children for life of crime.

Alex: 3:35

Oh, we must be talking about some sort of pirate. Oh, yes, we are some sort of pirate like. I'm glad you're doing this because I get all the pirates mixed up. Let's see. You got you got black beard.

Kelly: 3:51

Yeah, you got 100 Yeah. Oh, yeah. Red Beard.

Alex: 3:58

You know the beards. Yeah. Frank beard from ZZ Top.

Kelly: 4:06

Beard who was my Mr. Beard was my sixth grade. Teacher. Yeah, beard. Chris

Alex: 4:12

Beard. Former Longhorn basketball coach. Oh, yeah. Once you get all those guys out of the way. You've got John the feet. Yeah,

Kelly: 4:23

yeah. You know that. You know that Long John Silver was fictional pirate he wasn't a real pirate. Okay. And

Alex: 4:36

I didn't know that. I don't think

Kelly: 4:38

Jack Sparrow I think

Alex: 4:41

fake out Pirate Captain Hook.

Kelly: 4:44

Captain Hook was also a pirate Dr. Hook. Doctor was a real musician. See, see? Rock and roll is dead rock yacht rocker. I

Alex: 4:54

think Dr. Hook Yeah, yeah,

Kelly: 4:56

that's that's I thought how Yes it right he was here yacht rocker. I

Alex: 5:02

think I've named all the pirates. I know, haven't I? I must have forgotten. Oh, good one.

Kelly: 5:07

Well, this guy, as I said he was actually friends with Blackbeard, but he was not as famous as Blackbeard by any means. He was also not as good of a pirate. As a matter of fact, he was so bad that he actually ended up dancing the hemp and jig. December 10 on 1718 in 1718, and the idea with dancing the hemp and jig is

Alex: 5:31

no is that like walking the plank?

Kelly: 5:35

It's kind of like that only with a rope. It's getting hung. Oh, he was hung in 1718 He got caught at the age of 30 years old in South Carolina. We're talking about a guy known as the gentleman pirate. His name is Steve bonnet.

Alex: 5:52

Steve bonnet. The gentleman indeed. steed, Ste.

Kelly: 5:56

D. Steve. Every everything I've typed has been autocorrected to be Steve, but no it Stede Bonnet. All right.

Alex: 6:04

All right, let's hear about him. So

Kelly: 6:06

you never heard of this guy. Wow, that's very rare that I ever get somebody you've never heard of well, and I said Steve bonnet was born into a wealthy English family on the island of Barbados, inherited sugar plantation, lots of land. He got married, he served in the military. He had a good education. He ended up having children, he ended up having actually three sons and a daughter. One of his one of his sons died at a very young age, but his other his other two and his daughter lived on. But when they were about five years old, he actually abandoned them for life of piracy. He decided he'd had enough and took off now, there's a lot of debate as to why he took off but the most famous quote was that he had discomforts in a married state.

Alex: 6:57

So today, we would call this wanderlust, right?

Kelly: 7:00

Yeah. Yeah. Midlife crisis, mental health issues. Some people think, you know, he again, he was, he was one of the wealthiest men in Barbados, but he decided he wanted to be a pirate. Now, before we get into what he did this is talk about piracy for a second. It's been very much romanticized in the movies and books and all that sort of thing. But really, he lived right in the romantic age of pirates and in the right in the romantic location for pirates. Because you know, today you have pirates like these guys off the coast of Somalia that are attacking ships. Their life doesn't look very romantic, I don't think

Alex: 7:39

No, not at all. He was more of the Jimmy Buffett style of being a pirate, right?

Kelly: 7:43

As a matter of fact, there's a big question about why pirates can add parrots. You know, if you think because aren't Jimmy Buffett fans called parrot heads? Oh, yeah. No. So so you know why they kept a parrot.

Alex: 7:57

But

Kelly: 7:59

it's like a joke. No, for real. They did keep cats and dogs on ships to keep rats away and you know, kind of dogs could be enforcers and then defense mechanisms and cats would keep the rats away. But a parrot was just a status symbol. It was colorful. It was bright. It was like it was bling. It was like pirate bling. Yeah,

Alex: 8:20

I mean, if you were about to walk into a seafood restaurant, and there's a statue of a pirate with a do rag, eyepatch. Yep, a colorful suit, and he doesn't have a pirate. They probably don't have good fish tacos

Kelly: 8:33

doesn't have a parrot. You said, pirate. I was talking to a parent restaurant. And he does.

Alex: 8:42

I was talking about the ferret. If he doesn't have a pirate with them, you know, fish tacos are bad.

Kelly: 8:48

It was very much a status symbol to have a parrot. But if you think about it, you know a lot of people think that why would this guy run off and become a pirate? The big thing is, a lot of pirates at that time were escaped slaves. This was on the east coast, the United States. And this was happening like all over the Carolinas, all the way up into New York and all the way down into the Caribbean. But the escaped slaves saw it as a way to get away from from slavery. And even though it was a rough life, they had a chance to earn a reputation. There were a lot of people of color that were pirates at that time. And a lot of it was because they had escaped slavery. So

Alex: 9:33

they would escape slavery and just and just basically live on the water on their on their ships. And just that was I mean they weren't they weren't trying to go to the mainland, right? They were just no

Kelly: 9:47

they were just looking for a way to make a living to to sort of be able to earn their rights. And that was the thing is the pirates code was very much about kind of earning the right to move up the ladder, right to start to start out low and to move up the ladder. But another reason that a lot of people kind of saw piracy as a thing, and this is something that they suspect might have been a reason for Stede Bonnet was the dislike for the British government at the time. And this was a way for them through fighting, fighting with these merchant ships and taking these merchant ships. It was a way to kind of, you know, WAG a finger at the British Empire. Yeah.

Alex: 10:37

And this is several years, almost a century before. The Revolution Revolutionary War. Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly: 10:44

So Steve bought it. Like I said, he's got kids, he's got a wife, he's got a sugar plantation. He's doing pretty well. He says, Forget all that. And he goes out and builds a ship. He has a ship built for him. It's called the revenge. It's built with 10 guns on it. And it's a sloop. Now, do you know what a sloop is?

Alex: 11:09

No, but that's an awesome name for him ship the revenge. Especially if you just left your wife and kids. That's that's, that's really, he was really all in.

Kelly: 11:22

Most pirates actually got their ship by stealing it. Whereas steep on it. Stede Bonnet paid for his. He also paid his crew a wage, which was unusual, most of the time, they were paid based on performance, meaning they got part of the booty after a good raid. He didn't do that. He said, I'll pay you all the wage. And he attracted about 70 men to be his crew and go out.

Alex: 11:53

Well, it was pretty unusual probably for a pirate to start with money.

Kelly: 11:57

He said he was it was it was Yeah. And that's exactly why he was called the gentleman pirate. Now, initially, he took off towards Virginia, and near the entrance of Chesapeake Bay. And he actually had some success right out of the gate, he was able to capture and plunder for four ships right away, or, you know, in pretty short order. And it turned out one of those ships was from Barbados. And he was so concerned about people finding out that he had become a pirate, that he burned that ship because he didn't want it to go back to Barbados, and if for anybody to find out. And then he kind of struggled because he didn't know much about being a seaman or a captain or anything like that. And he had a hard time keeping the, the respect of his men. But he decided he was going to go to a place called the Republic of pirates, which was on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas. So he took off for that area, he wanted to kind of see what this Republican pirates was all about, join the club, learn the handshake, you know, get the t shirt, all that good stuff. And, but while he was on his way, he actually encountered a Spanish man of war, and he got into a fight with it. I think he might have accidentally started to attack it and then realized it was a warship and you know, ended up getting his ship pretty badly damaged, he got wounded. About half of his crew was killed and wounded. And he did escape but he ended up getting to NASA finally, and he had to kind of park it up for a little while, recoup, refit the revenge put more guns on he realized he was short on guns while he was in Nassau. That's where he met Captain Blackbeard. Now Captain black beards real name was Edward Teach,

Alex: 13:52

but I wondered how they could tell it was didn't everybody have a black beard back then?

Kelly: 13:57

I don't know. I mean, I've got kind of a gray beard going right now.

Alex: 14:01

But there were also all these guys were in their 30s too.

Kelly: 14:04

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, apparently black beards. Beard was pretty famous for being shiny. And it was something that was said that he could blind his enemies with his beard. Wow. But here's the weirdest thing is Stede Bonnet is this poofy shirt wearing guy with a ship by the way he had an entire library constructed in his quarters on the on the revenge which was pretty unusual. He had fine china on the revenge, which was pretty unusual. It was a fancy lead. He was a fancy lad and that didn't go over well with a lot of the men because they kind of just saw it as being I don't know sissy or something. But actually, Edward Teach aka Captain Blackbeard was impressed and they became friends. And what how happened is, as I said, steed, the gentleman pirate had been injured during that battle with the Spanish man of war. And he was injured so badly that he really couldn't do his duties. And so he asked Blackbeard, and by the way, he had a nicer ship than Blackbeard did at the time. And he asked Blackbeard to come aboard and kind of what was it called when you temporarily temporarily captain for him? Find a cafe pro pro tem?

Alex: 15:31

Yeah, sure. understudy? Well,

Kelly: 15:35

no, no. And that's the thing. Blanchard was a much better pirate and a much better sailor and everything else, but just to run the ship while he recouped. That was the thing.

Alex: 15:46

Now, I assume you mentioned pirate code. I'm sure. Pirates didn't steal from each other, right? Oh,

Kelly: 15:51

they did. They did. But at this point, he and he and Blackbeard were actually real friends. I mean, they actually became, as a matter of fact, there's a lot of question as to whether or not there was some intimate relation between the two of them. And it's not known necessarily, but but they were friends. They, they took care of each other. And so for a while, Blackbeard lived on the revenge and basically, captain of the ship. Now, in this whole thing about the relationship they had, there was this thing at the time called mate Latasha, have you ever heard of Maitland Taj? So it's this agreement that men would have. And it was pretty big with pirates from Europe, but it happened in the Caribbean as well. But they would decide to go into sort of a domestic relationship. And it meant that if one of them died, the other one would kind of take over their things. And it was kind of like a same sex marriage. And it came from the word Matey, you know, oh, boy, matey. Sure. So mate, Latasha was something that people would do to say, basically, if I die, you get my stuff. And if you die, I get your stuff. Well, and they would, they would look out for each other. And if you think about it, they would see a lot, right. There weren't a lot of women at sea. And, and nobody's really sure what the nature of that relationship between Blackbeard and and bonnet was whether it was, you know, just good friends or a little more than that, but, but ultimately, Blackbeard took over his ship was in command of it for a while, and they had pretty good success. As a matter of fact, they immediately went up to Delaware Bay, after he and Blackbeard had become friends and Blackbeard took over, they went up to Delaware Bay, and plundered 11 ships successfully. Now one of the captains from one of those ships survived and was interviewed later and asked about bonnet, and he described him as walking the deck in his nice shirt, lacking in any command, and still unwell from his wounds.

Alex: 18:08

So that's not a glowing review.

Kelly: 18:11

So they continued plundering ships up and down the US Seaboard. And in 1717, in November, they captured a ship called the la Concorde. And it turned out to be a French slave ship, la Concorde.

Alex: 18:27

Do I have a question? Just a point of clarification do pirates? Are they're pretty close to the coast? Yes. Just waiting for people about to come in. So they're not going well? Because otherwise you would never find anybody just out in the sea, right? No,

Kelly: 18:41

no, they were typically very close to the coast. As a matter of fact, they spent a lot of times at the mouths of rivers that that drained into the into the ocean, or in ports, because they were raiding shipping vessels, right? Or they were rating, trading vessels, cargo ships, you

Alex: 18:58

have to be far off out enough where the Coast Guard or whatever they call it, it didn't get them like the the other there was no us back then. So it was

Kelly: 19:10

pretty wild. Yeah, it was wild. Anyway, they they did capture this slave ship called the la Concorde. And what's interesting about that is Blackbeard actually ended up freeing a lot of slaves, you know, because when they captured a slave ship, they would really would release the slaves from their cargo holds. I mean, they're all chained together, right being shipped from from wherever to the EU well, to the Americas to serve as slaves or maybe being shipped over to another country from the Americas to serve as slaves. But a lot of those slaves decided they would join the pirates, you know, they were given a choice. You can join the pirates or maybe die. You know, I don't know what their options were. It wasn't that Blackbeard was an abolitionist. He just knew free labor was Good labor, right? And that these people would have some loyalty to him for freeing them, I

Alex: 20:04

suppose. So they were still slaves. But they weren't No, no, I

Kelly: 20:09

think we just said free labor. Well, free labor as in, he didn't have to do any recruiting. They were just right there. And the way that they would get paid was when they plundered a ship, they would get part of the part of the booty, right? And so, so they weren't necessarily paid day to day like steed. bonnets men were on salary. That was very unusual. They were paid as they succeeded, paid, paid on merit paid on what they did. And then I believe that even Pirates of color could move up the ranks. It wasn't it was really based on how badass a pirate you are not on your looks. Although your looks could maybe contribute to how bad a pirate you were, you know, for example, Blackbeard with his shiny black beard that could blind his enemies. So after they captured this look, look Concord, the French slave ship brought on the slaves as crewmates or maybe killed some of them if they didn't want to be pirates. But I mean, if if you were if you were in the hold of a slave ship, some guys rescued you and said join us or die. What would you say? Yeah, I'd probably join you. Yeah, yeah. So they ended up taking that ship that French slave ship and renaming it Queen Anne's Revenge. And that became blackboards new ship. He took that one and bought it went back in command of the revenge. And so the two of them kind of did some to ship fighting, you know, two different the revenge and the Queen Anne's Revenge. Did some fighting some plundering, and then eventually Bhanot really messed up on a mission. Maybe he hid. Maybe he didn't fight. I don't know what happened. But basically his crew lost faith in Him, and they joined Blackbeard on the Queen Anne's Revenge. At that point, Blackbeard said to bonnet, look, you're really, you're a really great gentleman. You're not a great pirate. And I think you'd be better off to just be a passenger on the ship. And he basically took over the Queen Anne's Revenge and the revenge and bought it became a passenger slash prisoner. Che well, well taken care of passenger on onboard

Alex: 22:32

the ships. So yeah, I guess at that point, you're pretty much our prisoner.

Kelly: 22:37

Yeah, yeah. Cuz his man had already kind of said, No, we're not going to follow you anymore. And he even told a few of his loyal crew that he wanted to get out of this life and go to Spain or Portugal and kind of live in exile, but

Alex: 22:53

just had a lot of crises like midlife crises. This guy says, Oh, yes, looking for the next thing to do. Well,

Kelly: 23:00

I mean, that's a pretty big, that's a pretty big leap that he took, and I think, whether he regretted it or not, he said he did. You know, he said he sort of wished he could go back to a normal life, but he couldn't go back to Barbados because everybody knew at that point what he had done.

Alex: 23:17

What a weird life. What a weird decision to make.

Kelly: 23:20

Yeah, yeah. The original decision is kind of the weirdest and the most on understood or misunderstood, because there's not really much documentation. How

Alex: 23:30

old was he when he did that? When he left his family? Oh, well, that

Kelly: 23:34

was 1717. And he was born in 1688. So 12 plus 1729. Okay, 20. He didn't have a very long career as a pirate, by the way. So at this point, he's living on probably on the revenge and his own quarters, but someone else has already been installed as the new captain, like one of blackbirds henchmen is now the captain of the of the revenge. He is sort of just a highfalutin passenger. Maybe the maybe the object of affection for Blackbeard. We don't know yet. But there was a there was an offer made by the governor of North Carolina, Charles Eaton, to actually get clemency. I think I'm using that word correctly. clemency is when forgiveness he could be pardoned if he turned himself in, swore off pirating, and became a privateer, and the privateer would actually fight against the Spanish and their shipping interest. So do you know what a privateer is?

Alex: 24:45

Well, I thought it had something to do with being a pirate, but I'm not so sure.

Kelly: 24:49

What does it does you're you're basically a government sanctioned pirate. You're you're you're paid to be a pirate, but you can only attack ships of the enemy. So he was given a pardon by the governor of North Carolina, and promised to be a privateer and fight against Spanish ship shipping ships. And Blackbeard had kind of convinced him he should do this because this thing went out this this notice went out to all pirates. Piracy was a big problem back then, right. And so this thing went out to all pirates saying if you will mend your ways, and promise not to do it anymore, we'll make you a privateer, you'll be forgiven. And you can have a better life and not worry about hanging

Alex: 25:34

man, because otherwise the states aren't getting their colonies aren't getting any other stuff that they're buying from these other. Right,

Kelly: 25:41

so this is a win win. They get rid of pirates attacking their ships, and they have pirates attacking the Spanish, which is what they wanted. Anyway, he takes his offer. But then after a short period of time, I mean, we're talking weeks here after he gets his pardon. He gets back into pirating. You know, it's about he can't get over it. He's back on the revenge somehow. But now, he actually changes the name of the revenge to the royal James. And he changes his name to Captain Thomas. Now, I've heard of that name, Captain Thomas. But he does this because he doesn't want to lose a part and he wants everybody to think that Stede Bonnet is is you know, a privateer on the revenge. And then Captain Thomas on the royal James is a totally different guy.

Alex: 26:31

I'd never heard this story, but I liked it. He goes

Kelly: 26:34

as far as to actually pretend to trade with vessels that he's robbing. So now he's robbing vessels. But he gives him something in return, and saying that he's trading with them. So that's just a sort of a half hearted way of kind of keeping his pardon intact.

Alex: 26:55

Did he have a fake mustache that he wore a

Kelly: 26:58

fake parrot, he had a stuffed parrot. He actually ended up, ravaging, pillaging and stealing from a lot more vessels, like more than 10 more vessels, taking prisoners rebuilding his crew, because he had lost a lot of his crew, and was even taking on more ships. Like he actually had two more sleeps in his fleet.

Alex: 27:24

So it turns out he was a pretty good pirate. At this point, he was doing okay. And a pretty good liar, too. Yeah, yeah. I

Kelly: 27:32

mean, he fooled everybody. I mean, of course, there were photographs back then. So nobody was really sure what he looked like, right? You had a description, you might have a sketch. So after a little while, though, he ended up getting into another scrape with another ship. And he has his his, the Royal James, aka the revenge gets kind of damaged, right? So he's got to go get it fixed. So he anchors in Cape Fear River, which is I believe in South Carolina, okay, near Charleston. And this is in August of 1718. So this is you know, he's been a pirate for a little over a year. At this point. He's starting to get his his sea legs about him. And what happens is he's anchored to do some repairs in the Cape Fear River. And word gets out that there's pirate ships anchored in the Cape Fear River. And Robert Johnson, who is the governor of South Carolina now before he was pardoned by the governor of North Carolina, now the governor of South Carolina, sends out a guy named Colonel William ret. To lead a naval expedition to fight these pirates and to go get him in the Cape Fear River. Surrett arrives on September 26, with two sloops they have eight guns. Each one was called the Henry and one was called the CNF. And he's got about 135 Men bonded at the time only had 45 men and this Navy guy will Colonel William ret, has 130 men, so he's pretty outnumbered, like, three to one kind of thing. On September 27 bonnet decided to try to escape out of this mouth of the river because he's trying to get back to the ocean and he's blocked. Rhett opens fire on him. And they get into this kind of, I guess you'd almost call it slow motion battle. Because these are big ships that don't move very fast and they're only powered by the wind. So they have to kind of like you know, hoist the mainsail and get the wind going in the right direction and then reload the cannon and put in the powder and you know, nothing happens super quickly. I don't think

Alex: 29:48

and most of the cannon shots probably don't hit. Yeah,

Kelly: 29:52

yeah. It's, it's it's a lot of a lot of hoopla. It's

Alex: 29:56

like the game battleship where you'd miss your miss and your This battleship,

Kelly: 30:01

yeah, it is only even even more crude, right? And so this goes on for about six hours, this battle between red and bonnet. And pretty soon the tide changes. Well, first of all Rhett's ships get stuck in in low tide and low water, you know, in this river mouth, near the Atlantic. And then bonnet ship gets stuck. But then red ship actually gets a high tide and is able to get out. And that's when they were able to basically make the royal James surrender. And so, what happened is, Rhett had come, demanded surrender, bonnet refused, at first, and threatened to shoot anybody on his crew who actually took the surrender. But the crew eventually won him over and raised the white flag. Now, you could raise the white flag, there was also a thing called Raising the red flag. Are you familiar with what that means?

Alex: 31:10

So the white flag is surrender. Yeah. Don't know what the red flag would would mean,

Kelly: 31:17

when you raise the red flag, it meant you were going to give no quarter. And to give no quarter meant you would show no mercy in a fight. So basically, everyone would die. So when you did that, it was giving the other guys an opportunity to, you know, back down, surrender, whatever. Or if you don't do it now, despite us to the death, they didn't do that. That was what bonnet wanted to do. But you

Alex: 31:44

can't bluff on that. By the way, you can't bluff. If you raise that red flag, it's once

Kelly: 31:48

you raise the red flag, you can't raise the white flag immediately after. No do overs, right? As part of the pirates way.

Alex: 31:57

That would be the Yeah, that would be really, really chickenshit thing to do. Right? It's

Kelly: 32:03

yeah. And again, it's called give giving no quarter, we're gonna give no quarter we've given no mercy in pirate language. So at this point, the ship surrendered. They were all taken by Rhett back to Charles Town, which was actually called Charles Town at the time. You know, two words. It's now Charles Charleston. Funny how that happened. And they were held. But they held bonnet and his first mate and his boatswain for in a separate place for about three weeks. And they held the rest of his crew somewhere else. I don't know why they did that. But the place where bonnet and his boatswain and his first mate were held, was actually at the home of the town Marshal. And it was sort of low security. And I guess it's because he was a gentleman. So they figured he deserved. You know, there was a lot of hierarchy back then. Right. So, and

Alex: 33:00

they knew he was a gentleman because of his shirt. That's the funny part. Right,

Kelly: 33:05

right. It's puffy shirt. Well, I mean, they figured out who he was right? They knew

Alex: 33:09

you get a hold of one of those shirts. You're right. And apparent.

Kelly: 33:13

no apparent doesn't do you any good. Because a parent means your bling. He's a pirate. But if you have if you're a gentleman, and you have one of these shirts, they knew who he was. They put him there he escaped. And that really ticked off the governor who put a bounty of 700 pounds on his head. And he was eventually tracked down to a place called Sullivan's Island. And he was captured after ret and his men came in and killed. The other men that were with him. He escaped with his boatswain and his first mate, they killed the boatswain and the first mate and he also had a slave and a Native American with him, who he promised he would give them a good position on his next pirate ship if they came with him. They were all killed, but it was not. He was taken to a more secure prison in Charlestown. And he was put on trial. Now while awaiting trial, he actually kind of charmed the city of Charlestown. And there was somewhat of an uprising in his defense, people thought that he said that he had been a victim that he wasn't really, you know, he was a gentleman and he had been under the influence of Blackbeard and these other pirates and he hadn't ever meant to hurt anybody and all this stuff. Well, the judge wasn't hearing any of it. And eventually, on December 10, of 1718 he What are they what was it called again? He on December 10 of December 18 He danced the hemp and jig,

Alex: 34:50

hemp and the hemp in being the rope. Yeah, like I haven't been rope. Yeah. What a scallywag he He seems like the kind of guy that today in contemporary times you would have been one of those guys. Well, I was gonna say he'd be one of those guys that had like, multiple families like he, you know, have right on the ground on here and then trying to balance another one. And you see these guys sometimes they get caught or when they died, all these different wives come out of the woodwork and yeah,

Kelly: 35:23

on trial for a whole bunch of different things. Just kind of a con man. Yep. Yep. Could be president.

Alex: 35:31

So it's, it's funny that those kinds of people exist in all times and just depending what, what, what the times call for their job changes, but those people exist all the time. So he never ran into Blackbeard again, after their after their nose. Matter

Kelly: 35:50

of fact, Blackbeard had gone back and taken some of the treasure that the two of them had hidden together. And he was pretty pissed about that. Bonnet was pretty pissed. And he did try to get revenge on Blackbeard. He tried to find him and get to him but he could never find him. Blackbeard was a good sailor, you know, much better sailor and he actually Blackbeard actually died shortly after bought it, like I think was captured and they really were cracking down on the on the pirates at the time. Now a couple of interesting things about Stede Bonnet. One thing is that he supposedly According to interviews with his men, he was one of the few pirates that actually made people walk the plank. That was not really a common thing back then most most men just got, you know, got their heads chopped off or, you know, run through with a with a cutlass or whatever. But he liked to make men walk the plank. Yeah, because

Alex: 36:47

he was like a pretend pirate. He wanted to be a pirate. Right?

Kelly: 36:52

Right. He didn't. He didn't like the idea of of stabbing somebody. It was it was much less bloody and messy to you tied them first, right? So they were bound, they couldn't swim. So they would basically have to walk off the end and probably drown because they couldn't swim, you know, unless they could get out of the ropes or the hump. But that was one of the things he did that most pirates didn't do back then. Another interesting thing about pirates in that day, they had a drink. Remember what the pirate drink was called?

Alex: 37:19

Who was some sort of Rum Punch. What was it?

Kelly: 37:25

It was Grog? Oh, Grog, it's called Grog. And it was? No, you're right. It was rum. It was rum mixed with water. And then usually something some sort of citrus with vitamin C to fight off scurvy.

Alex: 37:42

Wonder if Captain Morgan was a real guy.

Kelly: 37:45

We'll have to find out. Maybe we could get this episode's sponsored by Captain Morgan. If you're listening, put your right leg up or is it your left leg? A couple of famous pirate drinks that were around and again, you're right. Most of these drinks had some sort of juice or citrus in them to ward off the scurvy. There's one called the fog cutter. Now that sounds more like somebody with gas to me than

Alex: 38:10

what was in the fog cutter.

Kelly: 38:12

I don't have the all the ingredients but you can look it up. It did have rum in it though.

Alex: 38:18

So each one of these chips had to have a mixologist also. Right.

Kelly: 38:22

And that's probably something Stede Bonnet would have liked right to have a governor. They had one called the bumbo. And then this drink called the Barbary Coast was actually made with scotch and gin. It was sort of an exception. It didn't have rum in it. Yeah, I wouldn't like that. And then the whole reason I started doing this episode was because I started watching this show. It's on HBO called our flag means death. Have you heard of that? I've heard of it. Yeah, so it's this silly silly show about pirates. It has Rhys Darby as bonnet and to cut tyka what TD as Blackbeard Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, you know that guy's Yeah. Tyco with TD. Anyway, what's interesting is I started watching that show. I like Rhys Darby from Flight of the Conchords. Did you ever see Flight of the Conchords? He asked the manager. I liked him. And it's silly. My wife turned it out. She was like no, I'm not watching this. This is stupid. And it is pretty stupid. But what's interesting is then I decided to use Stede Bonnet as you know, I realized he was a real person. The show actually follows their real life pretty closely. Like it's all stupid and silly. But a lot of the things that happened in the show are based on actual real events, which I thought

Alex: 39:50

was I'm I'm getting the feeling that things were stupid and silly out on the sea back then.

Kelly: 39:56

Yeah, yeah, I mean, if if you call cleaving him to the bridge get stupid and silly, which is where you cut them in half with your sword.

Alex: 40:04

I mean, there was some violence too. Don't get me wrong. I just loved the idea though, that this guy who hadn't made he was rich. He had a family. He was like head of a sugar plantation. He's like, there's got to be more out there, right? Be a pirate. And then he goes and is a pirate and then suffered all the cons. It'd be like me saying, you know, I want to be a drug dealer.

Kelly: 40:27

And then he dies at the age of 32. He was only a pirate for two years. Very, very short, very short career and pirating,

Alex: 40:37

but you know, he he probably got everything he wanted out of it. You got to meet Blackbeard. He got to hang out with, with pirates. He got to get in a lot of scrapes. I mean, if that's what he wanted, he got the full life. Right.

Kelly: 40:48

I think he got it for a little while and then regretted it because he apparently was pretty. Like he was he begged a lot at the end, you know, I promise I promise to be better. Of course, he had already done that once and received a pardon. And then he escaped. And, you know, he did a lot of contradictory things. But Steve Stede Bonnet. You know, let's pour a glass of wine. Or, or what would you call it? What did they call cups back then?

Alex: 41:18

Sure. A chalice? Yeah, sure. Why not? He would have had a chalice the rest of the guys would have you know, probably drink out of a man skull.

Kelly: 41:27

Chalice I know. It's a good drink. It was called The Man skull. That's deed bonnet. The gentleman pirate. If you enjoyed this episode, hope you'll check out more. I think this is our first pirate episode. Right? Yeah, it

Alex: 41:40

doesn't seem like it is but I mean, I think we've we've talked about people that if they were born in the right time, they would have been pirates. You know, there's this very specific time period if you're living on the coast, and that it probably looked wrong, romantic and then like, Yeah, probably. I feel like he got in over his head. Yeah,

Kelly: 42:00

he did. He did. Mistakes were made. But it makes for a good story. And it makes for a good podcast. Yeah,

Alex: 42:07

and my favorite thing is just realizing that guys like him are timeless. They just it depends on when they live but they exist in our time to

Kelly: 42:16

Oh, yeah, there's plenty of them out there. But hope you enjoyed the episode. Thanks Alex for listening to the gentleman pirate. I loved it by now Nancy was kidnapped by Turkish pirates rainy Georgia, they consider me their mascot.

Alex: 42:39

Beyond

Kelly: 42:43

taste tastes and many things I had in my wedding would never see