History Unplugged Podcast

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The American Navy was birthed in the Barbary Wars. Sure, there was a token navy in the Revolutionary War, but battles were mostly won in that war by American privateers (or, if you were British, pirates). To understand where the U.S. Navy came from, we need to take a step back and look at the stake of naval warfare in the 18th century.

The early American Navy resembled the British Navy in its use of British ship designs, naval tactics, and organizational structures, largely inherited from the colonial period when the colonies relied on British maritime power. Many American naval officers had British training or were influenced by British traditions, such as ship discipline, officer ranks, and the use of frigates for protecting trade routes.

However, the U.S. Navy was different in its focus and scale. While the British Navy was a vast global force designed for empire-building and large-scale warfare, the early American Navy was smaller and more focused on defending American merchant ships, often relying on nimble frigates rather than large ships-of-the-line. Additionally, the U.S. Navy operated with a more democratic ethos, as naval officers in America were often more accountable to elected officials, reflecting the values of the new republic.

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The pirates that exist in our imagination are not just any pirates. Violent sea-raiding has occurred in most parts of the world throughout history, but our popular stereotype of pirates has been defined by one historical moment: the period from the 1660s to the 1730s, the so-called "golden age of piracy."

The Caribbean and American colonies of Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands—where piracy surged across these decades—are the main theater for buccaneering, but this is a global story. From London, Paris, and Amsterdam to Curaçao, Port Royal, Tortuga, and Charleston, from Ireland and the Mediterranean to Madagascar and India, from the Arabian Gulf to the Pacific Ocean.

Familiar characters like Drake, Morgan, Blackbeard, Bonny and Read, Henry Every, and Captain Kidd all feature here, but so too will the less well-known figures from the history of piracy, their crew-members, shipmates, and their confederates ashore; the men and women whose transatlantic lives were bound up with the rise and fall of piracy.

To explore this story is today’s guest, Richard Blakemore, author of “Enemies of All: The Rise and Fall of the Golden Age of Piracy.”

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.