00:00Pirates, much like their ships, come in all shapes and sizes.
00:04From pagan Vikings to the Barbary Corsairs, they've raided and looted throughout the ages.
00:10But one place was home to the most infamous of them all, the Caribbean.
00:16Now, unlike most, the Pirates of the Caribbean, no, not those ones,
00:21the actual Pirates of the Caribbean, started out with some semblance of legality.
00:26You see this? This is a letter of mark.
00:30It is a license given by the state to a private person, allowing them free reign to attack and capture
00:37enemy vessels,
00:38in exchange for splitting part of the bounty with the crown.
00:42Here you go, Guff. Thank you very much.
00:45It was essentially a way to privatize war, and that's why the licensees were called privateers.
00:51But when these letters were withdrawn or cancelled, the now unemployed privateers
00:56weren't always so eager to take down their flags and return to the mainland.
01:01Some of them just really loved sailing the seven seas.
01:05Ah, wind in my hair. Cue the Titanic.
01:08Ahem. And so, when their letters were revoked,
01:10they'd hoist the black flag and would continue doing what they did best.
01:15So, basically, most pirates were self-employed privateers.
01:19In the case of the Caribbean, many originally worked for the French and English empires,
01:24which would frequently raid Spanish ships, hauling gold back to Spain.
01:29Now, the bounty was immense, but it didn't always come easy.
01:33So, unsurprisingly, privateer ships were in constant need of repair.
01:37Pirate ships were a similar story, perhaps even more so, actually,
01:41because apart from the wear and tear of storms and battles, pirate ships also had to be quick enough
01:46to outrun other privateers.
01:49Now, the best way to speed up your ship is by cleaning it.
01:52Not the whole thing, of course, just the hull.
01:55You see, seaweed and barnacles love attaching themselves to a ship's hull,
01:59and this actually slows the ship down quite a lot.
02:02And you also have the constant threat of shipworms that eat away the wood.
02:07So, every few months, pirate ships need cleaning and repair.
02:11But here's the thing.
02:13It's not like you could just show up at any odd port, fix your ship, and go on your merry
02:18way.
02:19No. Pirates could afford no such luxury.
02:22Instead, they had to fix their ships by careening them.
02:26This meant finding a nice beach on some uninhabited island, where you could park your ship at high tide,
02:32and intentionally tip it on one side so you could repair it.
02:37Sometimes these repairs would last weeks, during which time the pirates were under constant threat
02:43of a Royal Navy ship stumbling upon them and blasting them to smithereens.
02:48Fire!
02:49This high risk meant that pirates would pay handsomely to any port willing to take them in.
02:55And that's how ports like Tortuga, Port Royal, and Nassau came about.
03:01Indeed, the most successful pirates throughout history have always had some sort of base to call home.
03:07The Vikings had their fjords, while the Barbary Corsairs had ports along the North African coast.
03:14Of course, these bases weren't just places to fix your ships.
03:17There were also hubs for information, trading, networking, and of course, endless debauchery.
03:24Easy tiger, it's a family show.
03:26Now keep in mind that these bases were always reliant upon the tacit approval of the great naval powers at
03:32the time.
03:33France and England in the case of the Caribbean, and the Ottoman Empire for the Mediterranean.
03:38This approval lasted for as long as the privateers and pirates were useful.
03:43And Tortuga, specifically, was very useful.
03:46Its key location on the northwestern tip of Hispaniola made it hotly contested between
03:52the French and the Spanish.
03:54And indeed, the island would change ownership no less than eight times in the early 1600s.
03:59To most pirates, this uncertainty was not good for business.
04:03But they would soon find a much more lucrative arrangement in nearby Jamaica.
04:09You see, in 1655, the English conquered Jamaica from the Spanish.
04:13But their forces were stretched thin, and they didn't really have the resources to defend
04:17the island.
04:18The newly installed governor of Jamaica, however, got a bright idea.
04:22He invited the Tortuga pirates to come over to Port Royal and make it their main base.
04:28In doing so, he not only got the pirates on his side, he also made Port Royal practically
04:34unassailable, for it quickly became the greatest pirate haven the world had ever seen.
04:46For a brief moment, Caribbean piracy experienced a golden age.
04:52Until a massive earthquake struck right at the center of Port Royal, killing 2,000 people and
05:00sinking about two-thirds of the town beneath the sea.
05:03The few surviving pirates praised God for sparing their lives, only to be washed away by the ensuing
05:09tsunami that obliterated whatever was left of Port Royal.
05:13To most, this was about as clear a sign of divine punishment as one can get, and indeed,
05:19this event did mark the beginning of the end for Caribbean piracy.
05:23Of course, there are always those who don't take a hint, and these stragglers actually banded together
05:30to create a new base on the sparsely populated Bahamas.
05:34There, the English had abandoned their only major settlement, Nassau, after a Franco-Spanish attack
05:41in 1703. The pirates moved in about three years later and established their very own pirate republic,
05:49without the patronage of any country, and where the only law was pirate code.
05:54Somewhat surprisingly, this audacious experiment lasted a full decade before being violently suppressed
06:00by the British. Ah, the British, suppressing everything that is fun except for the great
06:06British chip, Britain's contribution to world cuisine. At which point, piracy in the Caribbean
06:12truly began its terminal decline. Oh well, at least we got a few good movies out of it.
06:19Well, my friends, thank you for watching. I hope I haven't discouraged you from hoisting the black flag
06:25yourself, even though we're now three centuries past the time it was truly worth it.
06:30Make sure to leave a like and subscribe if you haven't already, of course, and we'll see each other again
06:36in two weeks for the next turbulently tempestuous installment of SideQuest, me hearties.
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