 away from where we are today, and so I will get to that in a few minutes, but it's always great to speak in a venue like this and to be in Newport. A few years ago I was reading for pleasure a history of the pirate Henry Morgan by Stephen Talty, and about a third of the way through the book I came to a quote, a direct quotation from a young man talking about how awful it was to be living aboard a pirate ship. And when I read that I stopped. I was surprised and confused and very intrigued. How could there be a quotation, some sort of narrative or recollection from someone who'd actually sailed aboard a pirate ship? And so I looked into this and found out that there was in fact such a man. His name was Philip Ashton. He was a young fisherman from Marblehead, Massachusetts, and he had in fact been captured by pirates and sailed with them for nine months. But there were two other things that were really remarkable about Philip Ashton's story. First of all, he was captured by this man. This was a pirate named Lo, and he was without question one of the worst human beings of the 18th century. He was notorious on both sides of the Atlantic for the torture of the men that he captured, literally taking a cutlass and slicing off their ears or their noses. One British official said at the time, a greater monster never infested the seas. But the second thing that's interesting about Philip Ashton's story is that after sailing with Edward Low for nine months, he escaped. He ran off on an uninhabited island in the far western part of the Caribbean called Wellerton. And he lived there for almost two years, most of that time completely alone. In fact, Philip Ashton has been called America's real life Robinson Crusoe. And in fact he was, and that part of the story is also quite, quite fascinating. So learning all of this, learning what a rich story it was, I decided to write the book, which I did, and what I'd like to do today is talk to you just a little bit about Ashton's life, how he came to fall into the hands of the pirates, his cruise with Edward Low, and then his time as a castaway on Roatan. And of course, you know, happy to take any questions or comments, answer questions about my research, and so forth. So let me begin by giving you a little, just a background on Philip Ashton and his life. Ashton's story begins in 1722. Now if you think back, 1722, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and every colony in America was a British colony. We were still under British rule, and we're just starting to gain a sense of commercial independence. Boston at the time was the biggest city in America, and one of the largest exports out of colonial America was salt cod. And so young men like Philip Ashton would go from Marblehead, Massachusetts, which was the salt cod capital of the New World, up to the coast of Nova Scotia, where they would fish for weeks at a time, hauling in cod and salting it, putting it below decks, and then bring it back to Boston and Salem, where it was exported to the Caribbean and to London. And this is a very nice engraving of a wooden schooner that was salt cod fishing. And that's exactly the type of schooner that Philip Ashton was on in the summer of 1722. They were doing handline fishing, which means each of the men would hold a couple of lines over the sides of the deck and just haul the cod in. And they would be up there in these relatively small wooden boats, as I said, for a couple of weeks at a time. But on the weekends, they would rest. They would go into a secluded harbor and rest. And so in the middle of June in 1722, Philip Ashton and his small crew went into this harbor on the eastern coast of Nova Scotia, which is called Shelburne Harbor, at the time it was called Port Rosway. And it's a wide, open, very protected harbor. And when they arrived, there were about a dozen other boats there, most of them fishing vessels from Marblehead, Massachusetts. There was also a trading ship, a brigantine, out of Boston that had just returned from the Caribbean. And the guys pull into the harbor, they anchor, they relax, have some dinner. And just before sunset, they see four men rowing over from that brigantine to the boat, to the fishing vessel. And at the time, they had no reason for alarm. They had some guns below deck, but they didn't go and get them. They assumed, quite naturally, that these four men from the brigantine were coming over to catch up on news, to visit, to just spend time together. And so they welcomed the boomer board and the four men climb aboard, and then, in an instant, everything changed. Because those four men were pirates. They were pirates from the crew of Edward Low, and they had captured that brigantine from Boston just two weeks earlier off the coast of Maryland. And they pull cutlasses and pistols out from their clothing, they line the men up on the deck, and they start shouting orders. And they look over the deck, look over the ship, look over the men aboard, and decide very quickly that they're going to take two of the men, Philip Ashton and his friend and crewmate, Joseph Libby, back to the pirate ship with them to force them aboard the pirate ship. So from Philip Ashton's narrative that he left us, we get incredible detail into the combination of threats and enticements that the pirates used to try and force young men like Philip Ashton. He was 19 years old at the time. He comes face to face with Edward Low, who points a pistol right at his head, and demands that he join the pirate's crew and sign his name to the ship's articles, which Philip Ashton refuses to do. Little later on, he goes below deck, and the pirates try to encourage him in a more friendly manner, offer him a drink, tell him that life will be better off as a member of the pirate crew than as a fisherman, and that he should join them. But again, Ashton refuses. But it doesn't matter because they've decided that they're going to keep Ashton and a few other fishermen. And after the weekend and after taking a new ship and making a number of repairs, they head out and Philip Ashton shales with them. And what proceeds is a long, arcing voyage across the Atlantic and back. And from Ashton's narrative, we get this incredible first-hand perspective of life aboard a pirate ship. He talks about the many other vessels that they capture. Capturing probably vessels at the rate of one or two a week. There were British warships patrolling the Atlantic at this time looking for pirates because they were just wreaking such havoc on the maritime trade. And the crew has several very close encounters with British warships. Off the coast of Brazil, they almost sink at one point when they get caught in a massive hurricane. And then Philip Ashton himself almost drowns when two vessels sink. So it was a really incredible voyage filled with attacks on other vessels and also filled with danger. It was also far from pleasant for Philip Ashton because remember, he didn't join the pirate crew. He remained as a captive. And there were a number of captives aboard. And they were treated essentially like servants. And he talks in his narrative about life aboard the ship where every week or so, one of the pirates would come after him with a cane or a sword to unleash a whipping or a beating. And he spends a lot of his time jumping down into the hold and hiding out, trying to stay out of their way. Now this was a really interesting question. And really one of the more fascinating aspects to come out of this story is that if Philip Ashton didn't want to join the pirate crew, if he so steadfastly refused to join, why did they keep him? Why didn't they just shoot him? Or set him off on some uninhabited island? And the fact is that these captives, captives like Philip Ashton and many others, were integral to a working pirate ship during this era. This period of the early 1720s is sometimes referred to as the Golden Age of Piracy. It was the peak of Atlantic piracy during this period of the 18th century. And many, many, many of the men who were aboard were captives like Ashton. The image of pirates that comes down to us today is one of relatively jolly men with tricornered haps or bandanas and an eyepatch and a bottle of rum. And a lot of those were true. Many men did choose to become pirates. But a significant portion of the men I found in my research who were aboard pirate ships were forced men, impressed men, like Philip Ashton. And they were needed to cook, to clean, to help man the sails, to stand cold nighttime watches. And most importantly, when pirates were attacking other vessels, to have this crowd of men aboard the deck to make it look like there was this formidable force approaching. And then, of course, once the ship surrendered or was captured to help carry everything that they wanted aboard and bring it back onto the pirate ship. So captives were integral. And if you look at the newspapers from this time, every two or three weeks, you'll see a report of a pirate capture, not just by Edward Low, but by many of the other pirates, and of young men being forced aboard and taken as captive. Now, when men came aboard, they had two choices. They could, like Philip Ashton, refuse to join, either because on principle, he didn't want to break the law and become a pirate, or because he was scared of the consequences of being part of the crew. Or they could join. And this actually brings us back to Newport and back to one of the more tragic aspects of this story. Because if you remember, on the night that Philip Ashton was captured in Nova Scotia, they took two men. Philip Ashton and his friend, another young man from Marblehead, and crewmate named Joseph Libby. And during the crews, Joseph Libby took a slightly different course. He probably got tired of all the whippings and beatings, got tired of all the abuse. And he seems to have joined the pirate crew. And that had serious consequences for him about a year later in June of 1723. When Edward Low's fleet was cruising north off the tip of Long Island, and they were spotted by the British warship, the Greyhound, which was cruising the American waters and looking for pirates. And what proceeded was a brutal, brutal, 12-hour battle at sea, somewhere between Long Island and Block Island. They spotted each other just after sunrise in the morning, and they proceeded to circle each other, getting closer and closer, and ultimately engage in battle, as I said, for close to 12 hours. And by the end of those 12 hours, one of Edward Low's two pirate ships was completely battered. Its mast had been shot down. The deck was splintered with gunshot. Many of the men were wounded, several had been killed, and the ship surrendered. And so the Greyhound brought the vessel back to Newport. And all the men who were aboard were put in jail. And about a month later, they were put on trial. And Joseph Libby was one of those men. Now, Joseph Libby was a forced man. And at his trial, he held up a copy of the Boston newsletter that had, this is an actual image that's in my book, of this notice that was published in the Boston newsletter. It's a sworn statement by several sea captains saying that Joseph Libby and Philip Ashton and a few other men were forced aboard the pirate ship. They did not choose to join the pirates. But also at the trial here in Newport, several other men testified that they had seen Joseph Libby take things off of captured vessels. That they had seen him hold a gun during battles. And that he was an active, stirring man aboard the pirate crew. And so in July of 1723, Joseph Libby and 25 other young men, many of them captive, were hanged right here on Gravely Point in Newport, Rhode Island. It remains one of the largest mass executions in the history of America. And after that hanging, you may recognize this. This is a view of Newport from Rhode Island. And the bodies of all of those condemned men were taking from Gravely Point, which is right here. And I think we're right about here. And they were brought out and buried on Rhode Island. So a tragic ending, and clearly speaks to the consequences of those who joined pirates and were captured, not to mention those who were pirates themselves. So Philip Ashton was very lucky to get away, although that experience almost killed him as well. Slightly before this, in March of 1723, the pirates had stopped in an island at the far western end of the Caribbean called Roatan, which is nestled pretty much right between what is modern Belize and Honduras. Roatan is a relatively small island. At the time, it was uninhabited, and it was known and very popular among pirates as a resting place. Because it was secluded, it was uninhabited, it had some very nice harbors, and they could go there and repair their ships, rest, relax, celebrate. And that's exactly what Edward Lowes' crew did. This is the entrance to Port Royale at the far eastern end of Roatan. And they pulled in, and they made camp, and they repaired the ships, careened the ships, cleaned them, and spent about a week there. And on the last day that they were there, Philip Ashton sees about five or six men coming ashore in one of the boats to go get fresh drinking water, and he pleads with them to take him. He says he's never been let to go ashore yet. Please take me. And so they do, and he hops aboard, and they go ashore to find drinking water. Now, when I went down to Roatan to research the area, which is still uninhabited, this part of the island, where Philip Ashton had been marooned, I wanted to figure out where might they have gone. So this is a survey done of this harbor, Port Royale Harbor, just 20 years after Philip Ashton was there. And there are four rivulets of fresh water, or fresh water sources that were marked in the survey. So with my guide, I went around to each of these, because this was, without question, probably one of the spots that they went, since we know they were anchored right in this harbor. And this is an example of what it looks like. You can see the very narrow beach. And then right here on the left, you can see this small little creek running down from the hills. It's a very hilly mountainous area. And so it was at a spot like this that they pulled ashore, and Philip Ashton helps carry the cast out of the boat up to the shore. He lies down and takes a drink of water. And then he starts casually walking down the beach. And every now and then he'll stop and pick up a shell or a stone. And then he keeps going a little bit further. And after a while, one of the pirates looks up and says, where are you going? And he says, oh, well, I see some coconuts. I'm going to look for coconuts. And so they continue with their work. And Philip Ashton keeps walking. And then when he gets just far enough away, he turns and dashes into the woods. And as you can see, then as in now, it's very thickly wooded, very hilly, almost jungle-like. And he gets far enough in that he can hide out in some bushes, and he just waits for them to leave. And when they're done with their work, they do call for him, but they don't really spend much time looking for him. Because as Ashton himself says, nobody in their right mind would run off in such a wild and desolate place. And so they leave, and the pirates sail off, and Philip Ashton is free. But he's also alone on this uninhabited island. Now, Philip Ashton has been called America's real life Robinson Crusoe. But quite frankly, he could have written the book on what not to do. Because he had no advanced notice that he was going to be able to run off. So he brought nothing with him. He brought no knife. He brought no gun. He had no way to make a fire. And he didn't even have shoes. He was barefoot. And so you can imagine navigating this forest and these beaches month after month in bare feet, which is what he had to do. So he looks around the island. He takes stock of where he is. He picks up branches and palms and makes a shelter or a couple of shelters near the shore. And he spends a lot of his time just roaming the island looking for food. Now, fortunately, because of the environment on the island and because of the time of year when he escaped, which was March, there were fruits and vegetables available to him. And he talks in his narrative about eating things like these are cocoa plums or beets plums that are native to the area. He talks a lot about this fruit, which is called the sapote fruit, which is native to this part of Latin America. At first, he was cautious about some of these fruits and foods that he didn't recognize. But then he saw wild animals eating them. And so he felt comfortable eating them and eats a lot of them. He even would go along the beach and look for sea turtle eggs that were buried in the sand and dig those up. But of course, he had no fire, so he had no way to cook them, so he'd eat them raw. And he's able to scrape out a living, literally claw out a living with his bare hands for a number of months. But as the fall comes, October, November, which is the rainy season, his condition starts to deteriorate. This is the period of the year when Roatan gets most of its rainfall. The cold, windy rains come day after day, just sheets of rain. And he, of course, has no way to keep warm. He gets soaked to the skin. He eventually becomes sick, spends days at a time just lying in his shelter. And at some points falls into a stupor. And in fact, at one point, he describes himself as almost dead. And chances are, if he hadn't have gotten help, he probably would have died there on the island, and we never would have known about his story. He does get help, but not because anyone's looking for him, but simply because of where Roatan is located near the coast of Belize and Honduras. And the reason for that is that area is the only place in the world where this type of tree grows. This is called the logwood tree. And what makes logwood so special is that the inside of the tree, the wood, is so dark, dark red that if you take a piece of it and put it in a bucket of water, the water will turn blood red. And so this was highly, highly prized as a material for clothing dye in Europe. And it was a huge export out of both Newport. There were a number of vessels here in Newport. And in Boston, they were engaged in the logwood trade. They'd send vessels down to what is now Belize and Honduras. They'd go onto the coast, cut down the logwood, fill their ships, and come back to Boston or Newport where it was then exported to Europe at a very high profit. It was such a profitable trade, in fact, that in 1725, 26, the same period when they were building the new Anglican church in Boston, logwood traders donated several tons of logwood to help pay for the skeeple of that church in Boston. And it was very much appreciated by the church. And so they dedicated this pew to them. Now that skeeple, that church is the Old North Church in Boston. And that skeeple, of course, is where they hung two lanterns on the night of the first night of the American Revolution on the night of Paul Revere's ride. And so the next time you're in the Old North Church in Boston, you can go up and find in the front left part of the church this red pew. And there's a plate there that's dedicating it to the gentlemen of the Bay of Honduras who were engaged in this logwood trade out of Boston and helped pay or finish the construction of the church. Now, if you look at the map from the area, this is a map dating back to this period. This is Rollerton. And that's where the logwood cutters would go. And that, of course, that area that is now Belize was territory that Spain considered to be its property, its grounds. And so Spain did not, like British and colonial merchants, harvesting logwood one bit. And they would send privateers down here. They would attack any vessels that they found. They would burn the logwood, and they would kill the men. So it was an incredibly, incredibly violent area. So occasionally, some of these logwood cutters would come out to the islands to escape the Spanish attacks and just to hang out for a while. And that's what happened twice during Philip Ashton's time on Marblehead. The first time, it was just a solitary man, an older man, who'd been working in the area for some time. And he comes out with his dog to rest, to escape the Spanish, and to go hunting. And he sees Philip Ashton standing on the island. He's just completely surprised that anyone's there. But, you know, hangs out with him, spends some time with him. He brings with him food, some pork, a way to make a fire. And so Philip Ashton gets to eat. He's warm, and he has companionship. But unfortunately, only for three days, because the man says, I'm going to go off hunting. And he invites Ashton to come with him. But Ashton's so weak at this point, and his feet are so cut up and battered that he can't go with him. So he stays there. And a storm comes through the area, capsizes the man's canoe, and he never returns. So he only had a companion for three days. But that man had intended to come back, and had left behind a way to make a fire, a knife, some tongs. And so Philip Ashton, because of that brief visit, was now able to survive in a much better way. He could catch fish. He could cook the fish when he caught it. He could roast sea turtles if he caught them. And obviously, he could keep a fire going and make himself warm. So that solitary visit probably saved his life. A few months later, another group of Baymen, the Baymen are the logwood cutters. They were called Baymen, because they worked in the Bay of Honduras. Another group of logwood cutters come out to the island, and also see Philip Ashton there. And at first, they're a little wary of this guy living on this island. And not only that, but he looks quite sick. In fact, he's so weak that one of the men has to go over and pick him up and carry them back to their group. But they take Philip Ashton in, invite him to live with them, and they make a camp on one of the nearby islands. And again, give him new clothing, give him food. He's got companionship, and he's much, much better off. You would think he would be safe, but even at this point, he's not perfectly safe, because as I said, Roatan and the neighboring islands were very popular with pirates. And while he was living with these logwood cutters, the pirates from Edward Lowe's crew come back and make a stop at the islands, and they see the Baymen's camp. And one night, they come and attack the camp, and Philip Ashton and a few others are able to get away, only by jumping in a boat and dashing off. But what's ironic about this is, Ashton came within inches of being captured by the very same crew he'd run away from two or three years before. So Philip Ashton does eventually get back, and there's a whole nother part about the story, about when he comes back and how his story was received, both here and in London. But I think what I'll do is tell you one last story, one last kind of miraculous turn of events, and then obviously open it up to questions and discussions and perspectives, anything you want to talk about. So because the Spanish were just notorious for attacking the colonial traders, logwood traders, and because there were so many pirates in this area, England sent a British warship to patrol the area and protect colonial interests. And so there was one that spent a lot of time there. It was called the Diamond. It fought with pirates on many occasions. It fought with the Spanish on many occasions. And it often would lead convoys of ships carrying logwood back to safer waters to protect their holds. So in March of 1725, Ashton had been on the island for two years now, when he was now living with a few of the Baymen. The Diamond is leaving a convoy away and back towards Jamaica. And again, a storm hits the area and the ships get scattered and separated. And some of them come to rest right off the island where Philip Ashton was. And in the morning, Ashton sees the ship out there and he sees some men coming ashore in a boat to get water. So he goes down to the beach and meets them and tells them about the situation. And the vessel they were from was from Salem, Massachusetts, which is the very next town over from Marblehead. And he knew the ship's captain. So of course they take him aboard and he makes his way back. And in May of 1725, he arrives back in Salem and walks over to Marblehead to his parents' home where he was, as he says, welcomed as one coming from the dead. And he makes it home. So it's an incredible, incredible story. And we're so lucky to have it. And this is the narrative that was published later that summer by his minister that recounts the full adventures of Philip Ashton's, obviously, with the pirates. And this was obviously one of the foundations for my book. So I'll stop there and I would love to answer any questions about Philip Ashton's life, the pirates, my research or anything else people want to say. Yeah. What age do you think he was when he was on the island? So he was 19 when he was captured. So it would have been, he would have been 1920 and 21. Yeah. That's good. Yes. Whatever happened to Captain Loeb? Yeah, that's a great question. So if you look up Edward Loeb, some people will say that he was killed. He was captured and killed. I don't think that's true. Based on the research I did, he was actually, remember I talked about how notorious he was for the torture. Eventually his own crew got sick of him and voted him out as captain because pirate crews could elect their captain. They voted him out and put someone else in charge and set him off on his own with a couple other guys. But we know from the reports of sea captains that were down in the low town area and from the correspondence from the British warship, the diamond that was patrolling the area, that Loeb was spotted as late as 1726. So he wasn't ever captured. He wasn't ever killed, unlike some of his partners. And nobody knows what happens to him. He may have died. He may have, you know, hid out somewhere for the rest of his life. But he was never brought to justice. Yes. Can I ask you something about how they buried those hung pirates to stop their souls from? Something to do with the tie tie? Yes, yes. Yeah, the tradition was when the pirates were, when pirates were hanged, executed, they were buried between the high tide mark and the low tide mark on the island. And I don't know what the tie in is to the souls, but basically it was kind of this netherland between the sea and the land. Yes, but that's exactly right. Yes. This was a very long trip that you outlined up here. And if they were attacking two and three vessels a week, where did they store everything that they took? Or were they not targeting particularly rich vessels? So the storage and then how they got rid of the things of value, because there was no landfall there, what did they eventually do to it? And the third part is those vessels after they were attacked subdued and all the things that had value to them were offload, did they just continue on their way? Were members of his crew taking over those vessels? Yeah, so three really good questions. The first in terms of what did they do with all the stuff they captured? Well, first of all, you have to remember, again, you think of pirates, you think what do they want? They want gold, they want silver, they want diamonds, money. Clearly that's what they wanted, but they were attacking ships that were crisscrossing the Atlantic and the Caribbean. What were those ships carrying? For the most part, they weren't carrying gold and diamonds and silver, they were carrying logwood, they were carrying salt cod, they were carrying grain, they were carrying tobacco. I mean, so the ships were just trading vessels and that's mostly what they captured. So when they captured a ship, they looked over what was aboard and they would definitely take water, they would definitely take food, they would take sails, they would take guns or cannon, whatever they could find aboard that they could use, that's most of what they took. Sometimes they were vessels full of grain and they would just go aboard and dump it all overboard if they wanted the ship. But they weren't interested in most of what the vessels had aboard. And they would use that because they couldn't stop in harbors and get more food or get more water, they had to go to very secluded spots. So their sustenance depended on capturing ships and getting food and water from these vessels. And there were times when they were very short on water and Philip Ashton talks about the rationing that had to go on board the ship because they were so low. So that's mostly what they took. Now they did occasionally capture a Spanish vessel that did have valuables, gold and silver. It didn't happen that often. There's a nice little story in my book about a theory by a Massachusetts historian called Edward Rowe Snow, who believes he found one of Edward Rowe's treasure maps and found some treasure buried up in Canada. But that was the exception. Mostly what they captured was everyday wares. And then finally, what happened to the vessels that were captured? Sometimes the pirates thought it was a good vessel, they wanted it, and so they would take it and they'd send either get rid of one of their own vessels and give that to the men or they would just take it and take everybody who was aboard. Sometimes they would just take what they needed and let the ship go. That's how the Greyhound knew that Edward Rowe was heading north from Long Island is another vessel that had just been captured, met up with the Greyhound and said Edward Rowe's pirate crew is coming this way. So there was a risk there, but by and large they would let the crews go, take what they needed and let the crew and the ship go. Yes? I was in Bermuda one time and they executed one of the natives. So they brought an executioner up from Jamaica. So my question is, how do you get assigned the job of executing 25 people? Yeah. I don't know, and it's not recorded. You can read the trial from the pirates from here in Newport. But it's not recorded who did the execution or maybe it was multiple people. It must have been quite, I mean it was, from everything we know from the records and the descriptions, it was a very well attended event. It was, there were a lot of people there and it was probably quite a production. But I don't know who drew the short straw to have to actually pull the line. Did Ashton write his biography? Does that what you used as a basis for the book? This is exactly what I used for the basis of the book. I also used the narratives of several other captives who also sailed with Edward Lowe, the shorter ones, including a couple of young men from Newport. I used a lot of newspaper reports from this time period about these attacks and then I used the log books of the British warships that I mentioned that fought with the pirates. I was able to get those logs from the National Archives in London and get their perspective on the attacks and the battles. Philip Ashton actually didn't write this narrative. What he did is when he came home, his minister in Marblehead, John Barnard, was totally taken by this story. He thought it was an incredible story, not only because Barnard loved ships in the sea and it's an interesting story, but also because he thought and had a very powerful message about how even an ordinary man like Philip Ashton can be saved through miraculous intervention. And so the very Sunday after Philip Ashton came home, he gave a sermon with Philip Ashton and his parents sitting right there about this story. And then he proceeded over the next couple of months to sit down and record the whole story. And that's how it got written up and it was published in Boston in 1725 and then a year later, another edition was published in London. It was a very popular book at the time, but it was recorded by his minister, John Barnard. Philip Ashton himself didn't write it. Yes? I was saying that the period when these hanging supplies here at Newport, Newport was a very new village. When you consider that Newport was incorporated in the 1680s or something like that, it did not develop, you said it was a large city, the largest town on the East Coast, very likely it was, but there wasn't much going on here for trade or people or people other than the hard-scrabble living trying to put together some kind of life for themselves. So if you frame that period when the hangings took place, you could imagine the issue around thieves. Yeah. Fencing stuff. Yeah, so just, if I said Newport, I meant to say Boston was at the time the largest city in America, but Newport was a pretty well-established trading port. I mean, there was a lot of trading and exporting that came out of Newport. The governor of Massachusetts came down and presided at the trial that they had of the pirates. So you're right, it was, all of these towns and seaports were relatively new. The bulk of the inhabitants were probably engaged in trading and fishing. But this was a big event in Newport and not only the trial, but then the execution. It's interesting to comment that the judge from Massachusetts came down because this wasn't really Massachusetts' turf. Whether it was the mass-based association. Yeah, it might have been just because he had the authority under British rule to preside at the trial. Yes? There were some of these pirates at the very, is there any actual knowledge? No, I mean, there's the marker down by the harbor here that talks about the execution. In terms of where they're actually buried, if you go online, there are, I think I've seen a couple references to which end of God Island they're buried on, but I don't know if those are accurate and I never came across anything that indicate where exactly they were buried. Yes? They were buried on the north tip of the island supposedly part of the hotel if they have told you where they were buried, but they just wanted to. Okay. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. On the north end, yeah. So it's where a few days passed Halloween, but we should have gone out there on Halloween and seen if that was the case. Yeah? To the pirates that would seize crew members and you said you found that listed in the paper, the same one that had happened, were there also listings for the Royal Navy Impressment Gangs or did those two kind of get commingled and everything was attributed to the pirates? So the Royal Navy Impressment Gangs, I don't know how much of that was going on during this period, it may have been, but when that really flares up obviously is leading up to the American Revolution and then the War of 1812, when it was notorious and a real concern for New Englanders. So I didn't come across a lot of it during this period in the early 1720s. I may be wrong in this, but didn't piracy surge again on the 1812, that's what was supposed to happen. So in 1726, did it surge and end up back down and then come back up at the end of the century? Yeah, that's exactly right. So this golden age of piracy, the time when you had Blackbeard, Louder, Spriggs, Edward Low, Bellamy, who was shipwrecked off of Cape Cod, that peak is called the golden age of piracy and was about 1715 to 1726. One of the last pirates hanged was a guy named Frye who was hanged in Boston in 1726. And then it tapered off for a while and then you're right. It came back again around the War of 1812 and you see spots of it throughout the 1800s in different parts of the world and of course from different nations. And it never has completely gone away. In fact, we still have pirates today. Yes. We have a speaker here at the War College and he told about the Newport Pirates who went offshore and became pirates. Then they'd come back here and everybody would treat them nicely. Yeah. Yeah, there's been a lot written about collusion between pirates and merchants and illegal importing of goods and wares. But the pirates during this period that I talk about, and certainly people like Edward Low, they had no connections with the mainland. They were just true rovers who were out just capturing any ship from any nation that they could find to get what they could. Yeah. Yes. But didn't slavery and the rum table room where the pirates left off? They didn't have Newport turned into a slave center and a rum center? Yes. So. Do you want a slave center? Yes. Both of those were very important parts of Newport's maritime history. And there were both slavery, the slave trade and the rum trade leading up to the revolution in the War of 1812, a big, big part of it. Yeah. Also they didn't know a lot of the pretty fancy families up in Bristol had something to do with that. Yeah. Yes. What type of animals were on that island? Animals that he could catch and eat. Yeah. Were the animals he had you afraid of that would catch him? Yep. So there were a lot of animals. There were deer. There were wild hog. At one point he was chased down by a wild hog and had to jump into a tree. There were a lot of snakes, including boa constrictors. So there were animals he had to be afraid of. He spends as much time complaining about the insects, the mosquitoes and the sand flies, which was constantly attacking him, than he does about the animals. And the biggest problem is he wasn't able to catch any of the deer or wild hog. That would have certainly made his life a lot better. But he had no way to catch them. He tried building a trap by digging into the sand, but he only had his bare hand, so that didn't work. And even if he had caught one of them, he had no way to cook that food for much of his time. So it was, you know, there was a lot of natural wildlife on the island that he encountered, and in many cases had to be afraid of, but he wasn't able to take advantage of much of it. Yes? So when you went there, did you have to go by boat or can you get to that area now by a road? Yeah, so you can, so Rotan is kind of divided into two halves. There's the commercial half, and you can fly in there on a jet, cruise ships go there. It's very tropical islandy with hotels and resorts and so forth. The end where he was, fortunately for my research, is still uninhabited. There are a few diving camps because it's very well known as a diving destination because it has this very, very deep coral reef that circles the island, which is what gave the harbor such protection. And so there are a few diving camps, but there's no roads going out there. So yeah, I had to take a boat from one point about halfway through the island out to there and I stayed at a diving camp or was able to cruise around and research. Yeah. What was his life after this event? Did he go back to being a fisherman? Did he marry? Did he have descendants? Yes. So we know from church records up in Marblehead that he married and had children. He married twice. Once about a year or so after he got home, married a young woman. She died about a year later, either during or shortly after childbirth of his first child. But then he married again and he had five more children with that second wife. And so we know from the birth of his youngest son that he lived to be in his forties. But what we don't know is what he did. I would have to speculate that he may well have gone back to fishing because in Marblehead, if you were a young man in Marblehead, that's all you did. I mean, that's what Marblehead existed for. And so he may well have gone back to fishing, which would have been interesting because what would have been like to go back up to Nova Scotia and sail in those same waters and how would he have felt every time he saw another ship passing? But unfortunately there's no, and we don't know when he died exactly. There's no headstone for him in Marblehead. He may have died at sea. So all we do know is about his marriage and the birth of his children. And unfortunately that's about it. Yes. I was very interested in the idea of having to sign on which shows, I guess, a lot of literacy more than I might have expected from a pirate crew or from the people that they capture. Yeah. And also the keeping of records that could then be used against people when they were caught. Yeah. Any comments on how literate people were? Yeah, I mean, I don't know how literate they were. Some were probably literate. I mean, they would sometimes take a board as captives doctors because they wanted to have a doctor aboard. Some of the captains may have been literate. Some of the men who were also highly valued as captives were navigators, people trained in navigation at this time. But what the articles, so they did have written articles and Edward Lowe's articles after he was captured were published in a newspaper. But what also was interesting is how democratic a pirate crew was. I mean, 1722, it was a remarkably democratic institution. The crew, as I mentioned, elected the pirate captain. And the pirate captain had unquestioned authority only when they were middle of a battle. The rest of the time, the crew made decisions about where they went, who was captain, who was quartermaster, and so forth. And when they got tired of Edward Lowe and his brutality, they voted him out, sent him off and elected another man as captain. And so that in itself is quite remarkable. And that was one of the appeals of piracy during this period was, if you were aboard a warship or a trading vessel, the captain had almost unlimited authority and could tell you what to do, could whip you for any infraction, could limit your food. It was just a hard, hard living. And the pirate said, you know, you come aboard with us and we're a much more laid back, fun, loving atmosphere. Yeah. Yes. Did the pirates have identifying flags when this British or the American ship that was ship without looking for them? Yeah. Would they be able to identify them by nature of? Right. Flags or would they have to get up and talk to them? No, no. So the pirates would do a couple of things. They would have flags of a nation if they wanted to be under disguise when they're approaching a vessel. And they wouldn't necessarily have a pirate flag because they wanted to be anonymous and not raise suspicions. They would also have, during this period, black and red flags. And each of the pirate crews had their own black flag that had, you know, their own symbol or set of symbols on them. And when they were attacking a vessel, they would raise the black flag. And when a ship saw that going up, you would say, oh, this is a pirate. And we better surrender. And most of the times, the vessels, if the deck was lined with men, lined with guns, they would just surrender. They wouldn't even fight. They also had what they called the red flag. And if a ship attacked back and the pirates put up the red flag, that meant you've pushed us too far. You didn't surrender. So now we're going to fight to the death. And we're going to really just let you have it. And they used both of those in the battle here with the Greyhound. And one of those quartermasters talks about the use of those flags. So they would try and be anonymous until the point at which they wanted to engage. Then they'd raise the black flag and hopefully, the ship would surrender. And they'd just take everything they wanted and let them go. So generally speaking, when they captured a ship, the crew was safe. They didn't sound like they'd see the slosh buckling and these sword battles. They'd just take what they wanted and move them along. Yes, if the crew did not fight back, they were generally safe. And most of their anger was reserved for sea captains. They would take it out, including Edward Lowe. He would take it out on the sea captain. He would sometimes ask the crew, was this a good captain or a bad captain? If they said he's a fair and just man, they'd let him go. If they said he was not a fair and just captain, he was an awful captain, they might kill him. They might torture him. But this idea of surrendering, it's incredible how prominent it is. There's a nice story about when Blackbeard was again down where the logwood cutters were off of Belize and he was approaching some vessels and a sea captain from Boston called his crew together and said, look, the ship is coming. It looks like they're coming from us. For us, are you gonna be with me? Are you gonna fight? And the crew said to their captain, if it's a Spanish vessel, we'll fight, but if it's pirates, we won't. Because they knew there was just no point in it. They're probably gonna lose and the pirates were just gonna be that much more violent for their having resisted. Is the Skull and Crossbone sort of a myth? No, I mean, from what we can tell, that was a very common feature of pirate flags during this period. In fact, there's a, in the description, in the Boston newspapers of the execution here in Newport, one of the things they hung on the gallows was Edward Lowe's flag that they had aboard, which I believe had a Skull and Crossbone. So it's not a myth. But they did vary. They varied from crew to crew in some ways. Yes. A delicate question you may not want to address. What was the fate of the women aboard that captured vessels? They generally would let them go. During this period and during much of maritime history, it was believed that women aboard a ship was bad luck and so they would not take them aboard. And they would, when they captured the Rebecca, which is one of the first vessels that Edward Lowe took at the start of his career, there were men and women aboard. They took a couple guys as captives, they took the ship and they let everyone go and they made it back to Boston. Yes. I have a question back to the governor of Massachusetts over seeing the trial of the pirates. I know several decades later when the gas bidder commission sat here in Newport to investigate the gas and they didn't allow any Rhode Islanders to sit on that commission because Rhode Island was a hotbed of insurrection and it sort of would be really bad if people did. Was that going on back then? Could that have been the reason that? I don't know. I don't think so because I think there were probably some Rhode Island leaders on the trial. There were seven judges. I think it was more because it was under the Admiralty Laws of England that the governor of Massachusetts had to come down and preside. But I'm not sure. If you look up, you can find the trial online. It's been, the whole trial has been published so it might have some insight about that. Did the pirates actually use people watching the flanks to separate them? No, so they did not. During this period, there's absolutely never any mention of making a captive walk a plank. And one of the scholars who's done a great deal of research on piracy, I think did an exhaustive exploration of this topic and found maybe only one example of someone being made to walk a plank. They would tie them up to a mast and beat them. They would shoot them. They would set them off on islands. But walking a plank never seems to have been a punishment. It was probably something that came out of Robert Louis Stevenson and just got embedded into our popular conceptions. What about Keele Hall? Yes, Kareening. Yes, they did that all the time. And again, that's why they would stop at islands like Roton is, of course, they're wooden ships. They didn't have any copper plating or anything on the belly of the ship. And so they would have to stop every two or three weeks and kareen their vessels. And so they looked for these secluded places where, because you're completely exposed when you're doing that. And they would stop for a week or so, clean the vessels, repair them, kareen them, and so forth. Did that quite a bit. And they used to kill all people? Oh, kill all people, yeah. I don't know about that. Again, most of the tortures that other than Edward Low, who was in the category of his own, most of it was whippings and beatings. Sometimes the pirates generally would threaten you with torture rather than torture because what they wanted you to do is join the crew. Low himself just went off the deep end either because he was such an angry man or he was literally psychotic. But what he did was in a category of his own. Yes. This is a natural log. Someone's log that you've got the hand put over. Yeah, so this is from a ship. Oh, this. Yes, this is from one of the British warships that fought with Low's crew. And I was able to get these handwritten log books, as I said, from the National Archives in London. And that's what the handwriting is. Any other questions? Yes, one more. Faster than Tom X in the movie. Yeah, I think this would make a great movie myself. So we'll see. Anyway, well, thank you so much for all the questions. We'll come back to you.