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The place where TIME began | A history of GMT
On location at Royal Observatory, Greenwich in southeast London, HistoryExtra's Elinor Evans unpacks how astronomers, mathematicians, and global powers collaborated to create Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
Long before smartphones and digital clocks, time was a local affair, creating chaos, confusion and even danger. On location at Royal Observatory, Greenwich in southeast London, HistoryExtra's Elinor Evans unpacks how astronomers, mathematicians, and global powers collaborated to create Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Joined by Louise Devoy, Senior Curator of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, we investigate the milestone innovations in this story, including the story of the Observatory Time Ball, the Shepherd Motor Clock, and George Biddell Airy's meridian Prime Meridian. From solving longitude at sea to defining timezones for the entire planet, this is the story of how we learned to master time. View Green Video on the source website Find out more about the history of time, space and navigation and plan a visit to the Royal Observatory
Tudor explorers: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Jerry Brotton guides us through the turbulent waters of Tudor exploration
By the time the Tudors took to the waves, much of the world had already been mapped by Europeans. So what was left for Tudor explorers to uncover – and should we call them 'explorers' at all? Historian Jerry Brotton doesn't think so. In this episode, he tells Kev Lochun how the Reformation drove the Tudors to sea, how Ireland became their Vietnam, and why some of the era's most famous names were little more than pirates. Jerry Brotton takes listeners on a whistle-stop tour around the world in AD 1500
Seven of history's most disturbing ghost ship stories that will haunt your dreams
Discover the truth behind the mysteries and histories of ghost ships, from the most famous examples in nautical legend to forgotten vessels adrift on the oceans…
You're a sailor (or, maybe even a famous pirate). Several weeks out to sea, you come across another ship that seems to be acting strangely. Getting a closer look, you realise it is floating adrift, with no sign whatsoever of its crew. It’s a ghost ship. What is a ghost ship? Ghost ships, also known as phantom ships, are vessels that are found derelict at sea with no crew aboard and nothing to explain what happened to them. While it sounds like the stuff of legend – and fuel for seafarers’ nightmares – ghost ships are real nautical phenomena. They have inspired horror-infused stories and wild theories alike, and their names can send shivers down the spine. Here, from the golden age of piracy to 20th century tales, explore some of the most famous and mysterious ghost ships throughout history, each with its own chilling tale. What are most famous ghost ships in history? ● Mary Celeste ● SS Baychimo ● Flying Dutchman ● MV Joyita ● Carroll A. Deering ● Ourang Medan ● Jian Seng Mary Celeste The most famous ghost ship of them all has to be the Mary Celeste. Having left New York in early November 1872, bound for Italy, the merchant brigantine was spotted drifting alone in the Atlantic Ocean on 5 December. The abandoned ship was found by the Dei Gratia off the Azores, but there was no trace of Captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife, their two-year-old daughter, or his small crew of seven. While the cargo and crew’s personal belongings were undisturbed, the sails had been only partially set, a log entry had not been made in the last 10 days, and a lifeboat was missing. Read more | John Ward: the real Jack Sparrow? What’s more, although there was water in the hold, the Mary Celeste was at no risk of sinking. So, what caused Briggs and the crew to desert a seaworthy ship? And what were their fates? There have been many theories. Despite a lack of evidence, some were suspicious of mutiny, piracy or an elaborate fraud. In the years since, natural phenomena like waterspouts (essentially, a tornado at sea) or fears that the gases leaking from the alcohol in the hold could explode have also been mooted. While no conclusive explanation has ever been uncovered, the leading hypothesis suggests that Briggs believed the ship to be sinking, incorrectly. It was taking on water and one of the pumps seemed to be broken, which may have led the crew to carry out a hasty and premature evacuation. Ultimately, the reason for Mary Celeste’s abandonment remains one of maritime history’s greatest mysteries, as is the fate of its crew. SS Baychimo For ten years from 1921, when it came under the ownership of the Hudson's Bay Company, the cargo ship SS Baychimo traversed the fraught northern waters of the Arctic Circle, carrying furs and other goods to and from trading posts on Canada’s north coast. In October 1931, it became trapped in pack ice off the coast of Alaska. Completely stuck and with no prospect of breaking free before the ice crushed the ship, the all but skeleton crew of 15 were evacuated by plane. The men who stayed hoped to wait out the winter by living in a wooden shelter near the stricken Baychimo. But after bunkering down for several days during a blizzard, they emerged to find the ship had disappeared. They assumed it had sunk; in fact, the Baychimo remained afloat and had broken free of the ice after all. After being corrected by seal hunters who had spotted it floating free, the sailors tracked it down, retrieved some of its cargo and then abandoned it once more. Over the next few decades, the Baychimo was spotted numerous times in Arctic waters. Attempts were made to board or salvage the vessel, but the ice and weather conditions meant it always eluded capture. The last confirmed sighting of the crewless ghost ship was in 1969. That said, there have been sporadic reported sightings since. Is it possible that its voyage continues? Flying Dutchman A name that can strike fear in a sailor’s heart, the Flying Dutchman puts the ‘ghost’ in ‘ghost ship’. Unlike the real vessels on this list, this ship is based on myth and legend: a ghoulish warship unable to make port, so doomed to sail the oceans for eternity. And to see it is a portent of disaster. Read more | Did pirates really walk the plank? First mentioned in literature in the late-1700s, supposed sightings of the Flying Dutchman, often through thick veils of mist and fog, have been reported for centuries. The future George V and his brother Prince Albert Victor apparently spotted the ship off the coast of Australia in 1881. Yet no evidence exists that the Flying Dutchman was ever real. Instead, it occupies a more archetypal place in the lore of naval history. The Flying Dutchman has inspired poems and stories, an opera by Richard Wagner, and, most recently, the terrifying ship captained by Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. MV Joyita Few maritime mysteries are as perplexing as that of the MV Joyita, a luxury yacht-turned-commercial vessel that disappeared in the South Pacific in 1955. It had set sail from Samoa on 3 October with 25 passengers and crew aboard bound for the Tokelau Islands just over 300 miles away. It never reached its destination. But five and a half weeks later, the Joyita was discovered more than 600 miles off course, still afloat yet partially submerged. All 25 people were missing, along with four tons of cargo, the ship's logbook and navigational equipment. Adding to the confusion, the radio had been tuned to the international distress signal but no SOS call had ever been received. The ensuing investigation brought no clear answers to what befell the ship. Since then, theories have ranged from piracy and botched abandonment after a mechanical failure, to kidnapping by a Soviet submarine and murder by a Japanese fishing fleet. Carroll A. Deering In late January 1921, the Carroll A Deering – a five-masted schooner built for speed and capacity in the post-First World War shipping boom – was spotted off the coast of North Carolina. It was heading right for Diamond Shoals: the so-called ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic’. It would take several days before anyone was able to board the ship, which had indeed run aground on the notorious shoals, but the 12-strong crew and lifeboats were missing. No sign of them has ever been found since. There was damage to the steering equipment, and an earlier communication with the ship revealed that the anchors had been lost, but the cause for the desertion has never been ascertained. Could it have collided with another vessel or had there been a misjudged mutiny? The captain had complained of the crew being difficult. Read more | Anna Bonny and Mary Read: a deadly duo Other theories have suggested the Deering was hijacked by Prohibition-era rum runners or Russian saboteurs. And, of course, with a mystery like this it wouldn’t be long before the Bermuda Triangle was mentioned. An intriguing clue to the ship’s fate emerged in April 1921, when a message in a bottle washed up claiming it had been captured by an “oil-burning boat”. The note, however, was found to be a hoax by a local fisherman. But further investigation of the Deering was impossible – in March, the wreck had been destroyed as part of efforts to remove hazards from the shoals. SS Ourang Medan The tale of the SS Ourang Medan is shrouded in mystery, marked by a significant lack of evidence and conflicting reports. In fact, that’s all it might be: a tale, an urban legend. After all, no ship of that name ever appeared on official records and shipping registers. According to the story, the Dutch ship was passing through the Strait of Malacca, off Indonesia, in the 1940s when its radio operator sent out a frantic SOS claiming the officers were dead, and that remainder of the crew probably were too, before transmitting one final, chilling message: “I die”. Read more | Pirate vs Buccaneer vs Privateer: what's the difference? A rescue ship rushed to the scene, but all that was found was the Ourang Medan adrift with no sign of life. The bodies of the crew were strewn everywhere, fixed with expressions of terror despite no visible injuries or clear cause of death. Before the ship could be investigated further, a fire reportedly broke out and the rescuers had to get clear of the ship before it exploded, sending the wreck into the depths. Theories have swirled around the fate of the Ourang Medan – as has the question of whether it truly existed. Regardless, it remains one of the most haunting ghost ship legends out there. Jian Seng Not only is the fate of Jian Seng’s crew unknown, but the ship’s very origins are too. In 2006, the 80-metre tanker was spotted from the air drifting off the coast of Queensland, Australia. It was both abandoned and damaged beyond use. Where the ship came from, who its crew was, and what it was doing in that part of the ocean has never been determined. The tanker bore no identifying marks. As the Jian Seng was not reported missing, and authorities could not track its ownership, it was suspected that the ship had been used for illegal activity, such as drug smuggling or forbidden fishing operations. The Jian Seng was eventually towed out to sea and scuttled. Still, its sudden appearance and the complete mystery about its past have made it a modern symbol of the chilling allure of ghost ships.
North, south, east and west: how ancient civilisations found their bearings before the compass
Why did the ancient Chinese associate north with power? What led early Muslims to pray to the south? And what role did winds have to play in our understanding of directions? Jerry Brotton takes us on a journey through the history of the four points of the compass
Writing in his philosophical work the New Organon in 1620, the English scientist and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon famously identified China’s three great inventions, “which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely printing, gunpowder and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.” Much has been written about the historical impact of printing and gunpowder. But there’s been far less emphasis on the magnet, and how (using lodestones to magnetise iron needles) it enabled the ‘obscure’ invention of the magnetic compass during the Han dynasty in the third century BC. This technology enabled China and, subsequently, other societies to navigate and orientate themselves according to the four points of the compass: north, east, south and west. We tend to think about these directions and the art of navigation as a consequence of the invention of the compass, but this is not in fact the case. The ancient history of direction and its relationship to the magnetic compass is altogether more surprising. How ancient civilisations understood east and west Thousands of years before the discovery of the compass, early human societies observed the sun rising in the direction we now call ‘east’ and watched it setting in the direction now known as ‘west’. East to west was probably the earliest prime axis that people understood by simply watching the sun’s path across the sky. The worship of the sun, or heliolatry, characterised ancient Egyptian worship of solar gods: Horus (the rising sun), Ra (the noon sun) and Osiris (the dying or setting sun). Read more | Sun gods and goddesses: 16 solar deities from world history This initial east-west solar axis was gradually followed by the understanding of another axis. This one ran vertically from north to south, and could be identified by observing the sun and stars. At noon the sun is always due south in the northern hemisphere and due north in the southern hemisphere. Living in the northern hemisphere, you can also look up at the stars and find north according to Polaris, the North or Pole Star. If you live in the southern hemisphere, that direction is identified by Polaris Australis, the South Star. The four cardinal directions By combining the two axes – east-west horizontally and north-south vertically – ancient societies created the basic framework for what we now call the four cardinal directions. The word ‘cardinal’ comes from the Latin cardinalis, which can mean something (or someone) of fundamental importance. That’s why, in the Roman Catholic church, it refers to a priest ranking beneath only the pope. The names for these four directions were inspired by the human body: our front and back, left and right, even top and bottom. In many ancient languages, ‘front’ and ‘back’ are synonymous with east and west. In Hebrew, east – qedem or mizrach – also means ‘forward’ or ‘front’, while ‘west’ – achor – is a synonym for ‘behind’. In ancient Chinese, the pictograph for north, bĕi, represents two people back to back. The dark and cold north is synonymous with the ‘back’ of the body, while the ‘front’ looks southwards (nán), in the direction of light and warmth. The earliest surviving record that we know of that names the four cardinal directions was inscribed on a clay tablet during the first great Mesopotamian empire, the Akkadian dynasty (c2350–2150 BC). It is a rudimentary topographical map known as the ‘Gasur map’, showing an agricultural estate. At the top left is IM-kur, ‘east’; at the bottom left is IM-mar-tu, ‘west’; and to the centre left IM-mir, ‘north’. The prefix ‘IM’ refers to winds, not astronomical observations. Other Mesopotamian texts describe four principal winds forming a diagonal cross, equivalent to the modern directions of north-west, north-east, south-east and south-west. When the cuneiform text on the map is read from top to bottom, IM-mir, the direction from which the regular north-western winds blow, is the prime orientation. What this shows is that the farmers cultivating the land more than 4,000 years ago understood the four cardinal directions in terms of wind direction and changeable climatic conditions. Why? Because they were crucial for the cultivation of crops and could mean the difference between feast and famine. The importance of the winds Ancient Greek philosophy and science inherited the Mesopotamian preoccupation with winds. Mythical personifications of the four directions as gods first appear in the ancient works of Homer (c800 BC). His celebrated epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, both mention four deities representing cardinal winds. Boreas, the north wind, is possibly an archaic variant of ‘mountains’ or ‘roaring’. Notos, the south wind, derives from ‘moist’. Eurus, the east wind, comes from the ‘brightness’ of sunrise. The western wind of Zephyrus stems from the ‘gloom’ of sunset. Later Greek philosophers offered a more naturalistic account of direction. Aristotle’s Meteorology (c350 BC) includes the earliest known geometrical diagram of cardinal directions according to wind systems, depicting eight principal winds in his conception of the Earth. Listen | Roderick Beaton picks out the key moments in 4,000 years to explore how the Greeks changed the world The Romans adopted many of the Greek terms for directions based on winds, and introduced some new Latin words. North came first, named borealis or septentriones, a reference to the ‘seven stars’ of Ursa Major (which appears to rotate around the northern star, Polaris). South was given several new terms, including australis (‘harsh’ or ‘sharp’ – thanks to the harsh heat and hot, sharp winds) or meridionalis (from ‘midday’). West was occidentalis (‘falling’ or ‘passing away’) and east was orientalis (‘rising’ or ‘originating’, as in the sun). So, when we speak of being ‘disoriented’, we are literally saying we are unable to find the east. The role of Judaism and Christianity These ideas and terms were accepted until the ninth century, when a radical change took place that changed the names of the cardinal directions. This happened under Charlemagne (748–814), emperor of much of the northern part of Europe. In attempting to unify the continent, Charlemagne initiated many political, economic and educational reforms. This included abandoning winds as a means of classifying directions and renaming the four directions using proto-Germanic words, derived from Indo-European roots. Nord (north) came from the proto-Indo-European term, nórto-s – ‘lower’, or to the ‘left’ (of the rising sun looking east). Est (east) drew on the Indo-European austo-s – ‘light’ or ‘shine’ (as in the morning). Sund (south) derived from an archaic term for the sun, sú-n-to-s, referring to the south as the direction of the midday sun. Oëst (west) took its name from the proto-Indo-European uestos with its many meanings of the evening, including red (as in the setting sun). Versions of these words are now recognisable in most modern European vernacular languages. The impact of these evolving ideas of the cardinal directions underpinned early theological belief across various cultures. Jewish and Christian theology revered the east as the prime cardinal direction of worship and celebration. The story begins in Genesis: God “planted a garden eastward in Eden” (Genesis 2:8). The messiah’s second coming is predicted as arriving from the east, “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:27). Mizrach, or east, thus became the Jewish direction of prayer. Early Christianity expanded the Jewish mizrach by developing the Latin term Ad orientem – ‘to the east’ – to understand east as its sacred direction. The idea can be seen on medieval Christian maps, such as the mappa mundi housed in Hereford Cathedral. Here the cardinal directions are represented on its outer ring from the top, moving clockwise, from oriens (east), meridiens (south), occidens (west) to septentrio (north). The Garden of Eden is shown at the top, then time flows downwards through images of Old Testament empires, the birth of Christ and the rise of Rome, with Jerusalem at the centre. It ends at the westernmost point of Gibraltar at the bottom of the map. The differences of early Islamic maps Where east sat at the top of early Christian maps for theological reasons, on many early Islamic maps south was the prime direction. This was because most of the societies that first converted to Islam lived directly north of Mecca. As a result, believers prayed due south, a practice that oriented their world maps accordingly. On a map dated 1297 (copied from the 10th-century geographer Muhammad al-Istakhri), the world is oriented with south at the top. Africa is a claw extending deep into the Indian Ocean, and the vertical bar running from top right downwards is the Nile, flowing into the Mediterranean with three islands: Cyprus, Crete and Sicily. Europe is shown below, including Muslim Spain (al-Andalus). The map’s finest detail lies at the heart of the Muslim empire, whose various administrative districts are demarcated in red. Arabia sits in the centre of the map with the holy sites of Mecca and Medina. Why China put north at the top While east and south defined the theological directions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in China north sat at the top of their world maps, hundreds of years before Europe adopted such a convention. In Chinese belief, the emperor was the ‘Son of Heaven’, the earthly manifestation of the supreme deity inhabiting the Pole Star. The emperor looked ‘down’ south on his subjects from an elevated position on high in the north, while they looked ‘up’ northwards to him. ‘South’ (nan) was expressed in its pictograph as a liana plant, evoking the luxuriant vegetation of the south as viewed from the drier, colder northern latitudes. But north remained the direction from which imperial power and authority emanated. Read more | Has China always been the world’s greatest superpower? For centuries, China was a global leader in the technology of navigation – and it was only in the 12th century that the magnetic compass started to appear in the Mediterranean for use in navigation. How these compasses moved west is still unclear. But they were decisive in enabling Christian navigators to develop sailing charts known as ‘portolans’ to navigate across, first, the Mediterranean, and then the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Maps of European exploration Yet though their explorations were facilitated by a Chinese technology, Europe an explorers didn’t initially follow the Chinese convention of placing north at the top of their maps. Eight years after Christopher Columbus’s momentous voyage to the Americas in 1492–93, Juan de la Cosa, owner of Columbus’s flagship, La Santa María, drew a map showing the new ‘discoveries’ in the west. The writing on the map suggests that it should be oriented with west at the top – one of the few world maps to ever privilege ‘west’ as its cardinal direction. The west briefly became the cardinal direction – until European scholars, who tended to revere the classics, chose to mimic the ancient Greek practice of placing north at the top. Juan de la Cosa’s map also features a ‘compass rose’ in the middle of the Atlantic, a symbol of the key role that the instrument was to play in the coming centuries. Soon, with the European age of discovery gathering momentum, the magnetic compass would well and truly triumph. Many of us may have naturally assumed that the compass gave us the words we use for the cardinal directions – north and south, east and west. Yet, as the long and colourful history of our relationship with orientation and navigation proves, it was the other way round. This article was first published in the October 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why and when was such a confederation formed, and are there really five of them? Jonny Wilkes explains the history behind the coastal alliance…
Long before the British Isles had a professional navy – let alone laid claim to rule the waves – lessons had been learned on the need to protect the lands from seaborne threats. The Romans had found the tribal peoples of Britain divided and ripe for invasion; Vikings crossed the North Sea unimpeded to maraud the coast; and as the French increasingly entered the picture, the narrowness of the stretch of water today known as the English Channel posed an obvious danger. It was to combat this danger that a federation was formed of coastal towns, predominantly in Kent and Sussex, to ensure there were always ships, and men to crew them, for the crown. In return for their ‘ship service’, these so-called ‘Cinque Ports’ received privileges, freedoms and honours, enough to see them survive in a ceremonial capacity to this day. What are the Cinque Ports? There were five original ports, although more towns would be added over the years. They were: Sandwich Dover Hythe New Romney Hastings While the idea of the Cinque Ports developed gradually, the first formal acknowledgement of the confederation came in the reign of Edward the Confessor (r1042–66). It turned out the Anglo-Saxon king had good reason to fear boats crossing the channel, with the Normans on the way. The role and stature of the Cinque Ports truly bloomed after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and they remained a powerful entity throughout the Plantagenet dynasty, complete with their own coat of arms, and judicial and political influence. Why are they called Cinque Ports? Since the Cinque Ports were properly established under the Normans – earning a mention in William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book – the name that caught on was, unsurprisingly, the Old French version of ‘five harbours’. It didn’t stay at ‘cinque’ for long, however. The Ports turned to their neighbours to help build the ships, so more than 30 towns ended up in the confederation. These included the two so-called ‘ancient towns’ of Rye and Winchelsea and ‘limbs’ across Kent and Sussex, such as Faversham, Margate, Ramsgate, Deal, Folkestone, Lydd and Tenterden. What were the Cinque Ports’ responsibilities, and what rights did they receive? Ship service in the original five ports meant building and crewing a regular supply for the royal fleet. The commitment was for 57 ships – Dover and Hastings providing 21 each, and the other towns giving five each – for 15 days of service every year. Before the Royal Navy, this could prove critical in a naval conflict. On dry land, the Cinque Ports had responsibilities in the lucrative industry of herring fishing, each appointing a bailiff to keep order at the days-long, often-rowdy annual herring fair at Yarmouth. For assisting the crown, the portsmen (as residents of the Cinque Ports were known) enjoyed a degree of self-government. Their rights and privileges were entrenched in a series of royal charters over the centuries, including Magna Carta. Among them were exemptions from several taxes, rights to claim ownership of property (especially cargo from wrecked ships), and honours at court – notably carrying the canopy over the king and queen during coronation ceremonies. The ports even established their own courts of law and had political representation. From the 13th century, each Cinque Port, as well as Rye and Winchelsea, had two MPs. What was the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports? The highest office within the confederation was the Lord Warden who, beginning with Stephen de Pencester in 1268, simultaneously held the title of Constable of Dover Castle. The Lord Warden, who was also the Admiral of the Cinque Ports, became one of the most powerful officials in the kingdom, and it was a highly sought-after title. In the list of previous wardens are names such as the future Henry V and Henry VIII, the Duke of Wellington, and Winston Churchill. To date, the only woman to hold the role is Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, from 1978 to 2002. What happened to the Cinque Ports? A variety of causes contributed to the decline of the Cinque Ports: ships got bigger so needed larger ports; changing geography meant the original ports lost their strategic value (Sandwich, for example, is now around two miles inland); then, under the Tudors, the navy was established. Still, the Cinque Ports survives to this day as a ceremonial organisation.
Clotilda: the last slave ship to America
Hannah Durkin tells the story of the survivors of Clotilda, the last ship to transport enslaved people from Africa to America
The transatlantic slave trade was formally abolished in both Britain and the US in 1807 and 1808 – yet slave ships were still forcibly bringing enslaved African people to the Americas right up to the 1860s. David Musgrove speaks to historian Hannah Durkin about the long history of this horrific trade, through the eyes of the survivors of Clotilda, the last ship to transport slaves to America. Hannah Durkin is the author of Survivors: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade (HarperCollins, 2024). Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Waterstones
Pirates didn’t only spread chaos in Caribbean and Atlantic waters. Adam Clulow reveals how east Asian raiders, including a female commander ignored by historians, terrorised China’s shores from the 16th century
Spring 1553 brought terror to large swathes of the coast. Settlements along the shore were hit with successive assaults from the sea as, in “the third month... [pirates launched] a large campaign to attack [the coast]. The combined fleet consisted of several hundred warships that covered the sea.” This account, which goes on to list the towns and cities that fell to the marauders’ depredations, gives a sense of the scale of these raids, describing a vast armada of pirate vessels carrying thousands of men. These large-scale series of raids weren’t launched on the Spanish Main by Caribbean buccaneers or by Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean. In fact, the description comes from the Mingshi, a history of the Ming dynasty in China. It recounts an attack by so-called wakō, or Japanese pirates, under the command of their leader Wang Zhi, who assembled huge fleets for raids on the coast. Read more | Ghost ships through history Piracy has always been a global phenomenon. For millennia, pirates have preyed on rich shipping lanes and vulnerable coastal settlements. Although European pirates dominate the popular imagination, east Asia – particularly China and Japan – was one of the great centres of historical piracy. East Asian piracy was vast in scale and reach. It was also stunningly persistent with successive waves of large-scale piracy. And it was strikingly cosmopolitan, with multi-ethnic crews straddling national boundaries. In the 16th century, huge pirate fleets consisting of hundreds of vessels ransacked the Chinese coast. Although dressed as ferocious Japanese warriors, most of these pirates were in fact Chinese, and they were led by Chinese entrepreneurs based in Japan. Then, in the 17th century, a new pirate king created a maritime organisation that would come to challenge the Dutch East India Company, eventually invading Taiwan and ejecting the Dutch from their prized east Asian colony. And in the 19th century, a Chinese female leader emerged from the Cantonese sex trade to command tens of thousands of pirates. Cycle of crime For most people today, the default image of a historical pirate is based on notorious European outlaws such as Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. Such figures, who were active primarily in the Caribbean and the Atlantic, became so well-known because writers like Captain Charles Johnson, author of the bestselling 1724 book A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, created a larger-than-life image that penetrated deep into the popular imagination. But these mariners who operated during what’s now called the Golden Age of Piracy – spanning the later 17th and early 18th centuries – were generally not very successful. Their careers were short and violent, marked by the occasional seizure of rich vessels but usually ending in capture or execution. By contrast, east Asian pirates developed organisations that, at their zenith, looked a lot like actual states with huge resources and reach. Historians who work on pirates talk about a piracy cycle – applicable globally, but key to understanding east Asian pirates. According to this model, pirates transitioned through four stages as they became more successful. In the first stage, small, fragmented groups emerged, usually drawing support from impoverished coastal populations. They engaged in low-level piracy using one or two vessels, attacking vulnerable ships or settlements but with little organisation or staying power. In this phase, pirates were little more than small-scale parasites, preying on commerce but with limited capacity to inflict serious damage. Read more | How a mid-life crisis created the 'worst pirate of all time' Although most east Asian pirates never escaped this phase, the more successful ones transitioned to stage two of the cycle, which saw significant organisation and growth. Fuelled by plunder, pirate leaders amassed small fleets, allowing them to target richer targets. This in turn gave them access to more resources, enabling further growth. Once they reached stage three, pirate fleets could consist of hundreds of vessels and tens of thousands of pirates. Such groups required clear rules, structures and even fully formed bureaucracies to manage income and resources. Contrary to popular ideas, most pirates were not political revolutionaries seeking to create alternative orders or maritime utopias. Rather, they developed strict hierarchies that funnelled plunder upwards to key leaders, while ensuring their crews remained well fed and armed. At this stage, pirates faced a crucial test. Established states recognised that such groups, with their powerful fleets and tens of thousands of fighters, posed a dangerous threat that must be co-opted or defeated. In stage four of the piracy cycle, then, pirates could form their own de facto states – and indeed some successful east Asian pirates did precisely this. Or they could seek recognition by, or integration into, powerful Asian states. If they could successfully navigate this difficult transition, pirate leaders could morph from outlaws into admirals, and their fleets into state navies. But making this final leap proved perilous, even for the most successful. Dawn of the ‘dwarf raiders’ <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/10/GettyImages-1485439170-9edbea5-e1696254326595.jpg" width="620" height="401" alt="An 18th-century Chinese painting depicting a naval battle between wokou pirates and the Chinese. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="An 18th-century Chinese painting depicting a naval battle between wokou pirates and the Chinese." /> East Asian pirates have a long history; scattered references stretch back thousands of years. But something changed in the 14th century, when huge fleets of pirates attacked Korea, ranging far inland and challenging the state. These pirates were known by two Chinese characters, 倭 寇, which can be pronounced as wokou in Chinese, waegu in Korean or wakō in Japanese. It’s a derogatory term for Japanese people that is sometimes translated as ‘dwarf raiders’. These wakō raids, to use the Japanese pronunciation, started small and were easily resisted. But they swiftly grew as pirate leaders transitioned to stages two and three of the piracy cycle. In c1370, wakō pirates attacked a Korean province, destroying 30 warships and taking the tax grain accumulated by the state. And in 1374, a massive fleet of 350 wakō ships struck the Korean coast, burning down an army barracks and killing thousands of soldiers. Who were these so-called ‘dwarf raiders’? Their bases were in western Japan, which was convulsed by successive natural disasters including famines and pandemics. But Murai Shōsuke, a leading historian of medieval Japan, suggests that we should rethink what he calls a “nationality-oriented approach” to the wakō. Read more | Anne Bonny and Mary Read: the deadly female pirate duo Instead, Murai argues that we should think of these pirates as members of marginal maritime communities that straddled different national boundaries and cannot be easily fitted into modern categories. By the 16th century, Japan was famous as a global centre for piracy. Indeed, Japan and Korea appear on some European maps of this period as Ilhas dos Ladrones – in Portuguese, the ‘Isles of Pirates’. From the 1520s, pirate chiefs based in Japan assembled large fleets with the aim of launching attacks against targets located primarily in China. Raids peaked between 1550 and 1560, when 467 were recorded – including the massive coastal assault under Wang Zhi described at the start of this article – before gradually declining over the following three decades. Despite the size of their fleets, the wakō were essentially bandits operating on shore, using their ships primarily for transportation. Having landed, fighters fanned out to attack vulnerable settlements before return- ing to their vessels with plunder. The Ming dynasty Wakō zukan – the most famous pictorial representation of such pirates – provides a compelling illustration of the progress of one raid. This long hand scroll depicts a small pirate fleet arriving in ships equipped with bamboo sails. Landing, the pirates fold their sails and spring ashore, carrying lances. Two pirates climb a rocky outcrop where one, perched precariously on the shoulders of the other, scans the horizon for potential targets. Having sighted a distant settlement, they signal their confederates and prepare for the attack. Burning and looting, the wakō carry away a rich haul from a defenceless village before they are interrupted by Chinese forces that arrive to confront them in a pitched battle at the centre of the scroll. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/09/GettyImages-1371475595web-ea56b70.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Detail from the Wakō zukan showing Ming dynasty troops advancing on pirate forces in Taiwan." title="China/Taiwan: Detail of a battle between wokou pirates and Ming Dynasty forces from the scroll painting 'Ming Qiu Shizhou Taiwan zoukai tu' (Victory in Taiwan by Qiu Shizhou of the Ming), Qiu Ying (1494-c.1559)" /> This depiction suggests a relatively equal fight, but the highly motivated wakō often fought with such ferocity that they were able to overcome even well-entrenched garrisons. Although described collectively as Japanese pirates, the wakō were essentially multi-ethnic, though their leaders were generally Chinese. The Mingshi explains that, “because famous traitors such as Wang Zhi, Xu Hai, Chen Dong and Ma Ye... were not able to succeed in the mainland, they escaped to the islands [of Japan] to become ringleaders. The Japanese listened to their commands, and they enticed them into attacking. The great pirates of the seas used Japanese dress and insignia, and attacked the mainland in separate expeditions. There was no one who did not gain huge riches, and for this reason the troubles from Japan increased.” Powerful pirate lords Wang Zhi, frequently identified as a key ringleader, was born in Anhui province in China, around the early 16th century. For a time he was a smuggler tapping into the rich Japanese market. According to the Chouhai tubian, a detailed account of wakō piracy, Wang Zhi began to organise voyages to Japan in 1540, and quickly established a presence in the port of Hirado, where “the barbarians trusted and followed him, calling him Captain Wu Feng”. By the 1550s, piracy clearly presented greater opportunities than smuggling, and Wang Zhi recruited fighters for large-scale raids on Chinese targets. He proved remarkably successful in his new role, swiftly moving through the stages of the piracy cycle, amassing large fleets and forging powerful connections with local lords. He was also instrumental in the introduction of European firearms into Japan. When Portuguese traders arrived there in the 1540s carrying matchlock firearms, they were accompanied by a “Confucian scholar from the Great Ming called Gohō [Wu Feng]”. This was in fact Wang Zhi, in one of his many guises. Over the following decades, firearms revolutionised Japanese warfare, heralding a new era in which long rows of foot soldiers fired devastating musket volleys. For all his riches and power, Wang Zhi stumbled in the final stage of the piracy cycle as he attempted to secure recognition from the Chinese state. After organising a series of devastating attacks, he was eventually lured back to China in 1557 with promises of amnesty. Once there, though, he was arrested and subsequently executed. In the early 17th century, Zheng Zhilong – another remarkably cosmopolitan figure – picked up where Wang Zhi had left off. Born in Fujian, he worked in the Portuguese trading post of Macao before moving to Hirado, the same port in western Japan where Wang Zhi had been based. There he befriended Dutch East India Company merchants and married a local Japanese woman. By the 1620s, Zheng Zhilong had moved his operations to the seas around Fujian, where he emerged as one of many pirate captains who prospered in the busy shipping lanes off China’s traditional maritime hub. He became so powerful that the Ming government decided to co-opt him, offering a position as admiral – and giving Zheng Zhilong, once the most formidable pirate in the region, the task of suppressing piracy. Armed with this official endorsement, he soon dispensed with his rivals and emerged as the head of the powerful Zheng maritime network, which successfully fused maritime violence with long-distance trade. Read more | Pirate John Ward: the real Captain Jack Sparrow It was later taken over by his famous son Koxinga, who used it to challenge the Dutch East India Company. The contest between these two formidable maritime organisations reached a climax in 1662 when Koxinga successfully invaded Taiwan, ejecting the Dutch from their profitable colony. Wang Zhi and Zheng Zhilong had remarkable careers, building maritime empires from scratch. They are also relatively well known, the subjects of many books and articles. But their careers are arguably eclipsed by a female pirate who has, until recently, been largely ignored by historians. This was Zheng Yi Sao, who rose from the humblest of origins to command a vast pirate fleet. Pirate queen Successive wakō pirates were helped immeasurably by the fact that they could retreat to a sheltered base in Japan. In the 19th century, Chinese pirates found a safe haven in the rebel Tây Sơn state in Vietnam. When Tây Sơn power started to fade, Chinese pirates forged a new confederation, drawing together thousands of maritime marauders. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/09/LieutTurnerandBoatsCrewoftheShipTeamadePrisonersbytheLadronePiratesRMGPU6380web-cd0d4f7.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Hand-coloured fine art print showing British sailor John Turner being captured by pirate lord Zheng Yi near Macao in 1806." title="British sailor John Turner is captured by pirate lord Zheng Yi near Macao in 1806. Over time, the most powerful east Asian pirates came to threaten trade routes. (Illustration from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)" /> A key leader in this process was one Zheng Yi, who controlled a formidable force of some 70,000 fighters and 400 vessels. When he died in 1807, his wife – known to us simply as ‘the wife of Zheng Yi’, or Zheng Yi Sao – took over. Zheng Yi Sao was born around 1774 and, like many other young girls in China in that period, was probably sold into prostitution by her family; certainly, she worked in the sex trade in Guangzhou (Canton). In 1801, she married pirate leader Zheng Yi. After he died, she took their adopted son, Zhang Bao, as first her lover and later her husband, and assumed full control of the family business. Like other successful pirate leaders, Zheng Yi Sao developed robust internal structures to bring order to a sprawling coalition of maritime marauders. Under the command of Zheng Yi Sao and Zhang Bao, an expansive code of laws was issued, with transgressors subject to harsh penalties. Anyone not obeying orders or attempting to seize command were put to death. Sexual assault of female prisoners was punished, though pirates could take individual women as wives or concubines. The code also strictly regulated the sharing of plunder. At the height of her power, Zheng Yi Sao controlled a pirate operation that extended influence over both land and sea. Like many successful pirates, she made money less from the violent capture of rich vessels than from selling protection, ensuring safe passage for merchants – if they paid up. Her fleets not only challenged the Chinese state but also became a significant threat to international traders. In a short space of time, pirates attached to Zheng Yi Sao forced five American schooners to retreat to a nearby port, seized a vessel belonging to a Portuguese colonial governor, and prevented a Siamese (Thai) tribute mission from reaching its destination. Faced with a mounting crisis, Qing officials recognised that they could not defeat Zheng Yi Sao’s pirate organisation by force; instead, they had to negotiate. On the podcast | The golden age of piracy: everything you wanted to know Zheng Yi Sao travelled to Guangzhou to meet the governor-general there. When she surrendered alongside Zhang Bao in April 1810, her fleet boasted 226 ships, 1,315 cannon and 17,318 pirates. Zhang Bao would go on to lead Qing navy ships into action against other pirates. Remember Blackbeard? That scourge of the Caribbean coast was killed in action while probably still in his thirties. Other pirates were hanged for their crimes. Yet, rather than being hunted to her death, Zheng Yi Sao was able to negotiate her own surrender, and died a wealthy woman at the age of 69 – a true measure of pirate success. This article was first published in the October 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine
Into the jaws of hell: the WW2 sinking of USS Indianapolis
In the final days of World War II, a US Navy crew endured unimaginable horrors when they were left stranded in the waters of the Pacific, facing hypothermia, madness and sharks. Jonny Wilkes tells the story of USS Indianapolis, and reveals how its sinking inspired a speech in Steven Spielberg masterpiece Jaws
“That’s the USS Indianapolis,” mumbles Quint as he points to a scar on his arm; a tattoo he had removed a long time ago. The very name stops Hooper’s laughter. The jovial mood is lost and the men’s drunken, one-upping exchange of stories about their shark inflicted wounds abandoned. A look of pained understanding now on his face, Hooper can only say: “You were on the Indianapolis?” So begins a monologue by the grizzled, briny and fanatical shark hunter Quint in Jaws (1975), a chilling three-and-a-half minutes that have gone down in cinema lore. At the core of the scene was a real ship, a heavy cruiser sunk by the enemy in the Second World War after completing the most top-secret of missions. And that was just the beginning of a traumatic ordeal, the worst disaster in US naval history. While not everything said by Quint – played to perfection by Robert Shaw – was factually accurate, the scene captured the tragedy with harrowing authenticity. It got survivors who saw Steven Spielberg’s movie talking about what they went through, many for the first time, and helped ensure the Indianapolis would not be forgotten. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/06/2K4KXDM-1987b38.png" width="620" height="413" alt="Robert Shaw as Quint in Jaws. In an iconic scene, the character talks of surviving the sinking of USS Indianapolis – and his terrifying encounters with sharks (Photo by Alamy Images)" title="Robert Shaw as Quint in Jaws. In an iconic scene, the character talks of surviving the sinking of USS Indianapolis – and his terrifying encounters with sharks (Photo by Alamy Images)" /> By mid-1945, USS Indianapolis, or ‘Indy’ to the crew, had earned 10 battle stars serving in the Pacific Theatre, but its war looked to be over when damaged by a Japanese kamikaze fighter off Okinawa. Instead, while at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco Bay, orders came in to transport a mystery cargo with all haste to the island of Tinian. No one, including the captain, could know what was inside the two cylindrical containers and large crate brought aboard and kept under armed guard at all times. The purpose of the top-secret mission was to deliver the enriched uranium and some of the parts that would make the atomic bomb, Little Boy: the one to be dropped on Hiroshima. The crew’s guesses of airplane engines, whiskey to celebrate the end of the war, or scented toilet paper for the Pacific commander, were way off. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/06/GettyImages514970922-7505cbe.png" width="620" height="413" alt="Charles B McVay III, captain of the USS Indianapolis and the first US Navy officer to be court-martialled for losing a ship (Photo by Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images)" title="Charles B McVay III, captain of the USS Indianapolis and the first US Navy officer to be court-martialled for losing a ship (Photo by Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images)" /> The Indy completed the voyage without incident in just 10 days, arriving on 26 July and met by a host of high-ranking officers impatient to take control of the cargo. The job done, the ship headed for Guam before making for the Philippines. It wouldn’t get there. Where and when did the Indianapolis sink? Shortly after midnight on 30 July 1945, the submarine I-58 snuck up on the Indianapolis and fired six torpedoes. Japan may have been near defeat, but commander Mochitsura Hashimoto intended to keep fighting. One torpedo slammed into the starboard bow and another hit amidships, setting off huge explosions and causing the ship to list severely. It took only 12 minutes to sink. The Japanese sub had prepared for another attack before realising that was not needed and making a swift exit from the area. Of the nearly 1,200 men on board, around 900 survived the sinking and went into the water when the order was given to abandon ship. With many terribly burned or injured, they left with the barest provisions and limited numbers of lifejackets, and in the darkness they could not see that they were leaping into the gloopy oil slick leaking from the engines. There was a catalogue of catastrophic failings that doomed the Indianapolis. The ship did not have sonar to detect submarines and the captain’s request for an escort had been denied, despite naval intelligence of enemy activity in the area. Meanwhile at Leyte, it was not regulation to record an arrival, meaning that nothing was done when the Indy failed to show up when expected on 31 July. Perhaps most egregiously, although multiple distress signals had been sent before the ship went down – warrant officer Leonard Woods gave his life staying in the radio room – the three stations that received them failed to act. One commander was allegedly drunk, another had demanded he not be disturbed as he played cards, and the third dismissed the message as a Japanese trap. Hundreds of miles from land and in shark-infested waters, the men waited for a rescue that would never come. The hours turned into days. Using lifejackets or, if lucky, a handful of rafts, floater nets and debris from the wreck, they bobbed on the surface in small groups. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/06/GettyImages615309878-06f0e53.png" width="620" height="410" alt="Japanese naval commander Mochitsura Hashimoto testifies at a US inquiry into the sinking of the USS Indianapolis after the war (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)" title="Japanese naval commander Mochitsura Hashimoto testifies at a US inquiry into the sinking of the USS Indianapolis after the war (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)" /> How many Indianapolis crew were attacked by sharks? During daylight, the sun burned them; at night, they shivered from unbearable cold. They had no drinkable water (other than what could be cupped in their hands during a brief spell of rain) and no food, save for a handful of men who eventually salvaged some Spam and crackers. All the while, men were dying. Hundreds of sharks, mostly oceanic whitetips and tigers, circled the groups and got so close they bumped into legs. At first, they went for the mounting dead bodies, but grew bolder with each attack until wrenching screams and men being pulled under became frequent occurrences. Sharks were not the only killers, though. More succumbed to dehydration, hypothermia and exhaustion; others choked on the oil or were poisoned by salt water. Drinking too much caused hallucinations, from imaginary islands in the distance to fresh water being served on the Indy wreck at the bottom of the sea. The descent into madness caused some men to turn on their friends, attacking them in the belief they were the enemy. One last killer was losing the will to live. By the third day, many could not fight any longer and let themselves sink under the surface. On 2 August, the fourth day in the water, salvation finally came when a passing PV-1 Ventura on a routine patrol, piloted by Chuck Gwinn, happened to spot the survivors, almost impossibly from 3,000 feet up. Gwinn – the ‘Angel’ – sent for help, and a PBY seaplane arrived on the scene. On the podcast | Saul David describes the horrors of the long campaign to defeat Japan in the Second World War Pilot Adrian Marks ignored orders not to land on the water and loaded up 56 men, even laying them out on the wings. Although he could not take off, his plane became a safe haven. By now, a major rescue operation was underway with ships racing to the spot. The first, USS Cecil J Doyle, arrived after dark and the captain turned on the searchlights, against wartime regulations, as a beacon. Since the survivors were spread over many miles of ocean, the rescue went well into the fifth day – with shark attacks and deaths continuing the whole time. How many survived the sinking of the USS Indianapolis? While the sharks were by no means responsible for all the deaths, of the around 900 men who went into the water – on 30 July, not 29 June – only 316 came out again. Four days after the rescue began, Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima; the survivors learned of the first nuclear weapon from their hospital beds in Guam. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/06/GettyImages466684321-65d162e.png" width="620" height="411" alt="Survivors pictured en route to hospital. Only 316 of the men on board USS Indianapolis made it back to dry land alive (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)" title="Survivors pictured en route to hospital. Only 316 of the men on board USS Indianapolis made it back to dry land alive (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)" /> By then, their tragedy was being buried. News of the Indianapolis would not be made public until the day of Japan’s surrender. And for the captain, the ordeal was far from over. Read more | Was the US justified in dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War? Jaws brought the story of the Indianapolis to new generations and gave voice to the remaining survivors, many of whom had struggled to talk about their experiences in the decades afterwards. It is why when many people hear the name Indianapolis to this day, their reaction is similar to Hooper’s. The 316 men that Quint embodies went through nothing short of hell. They suffered unimaginable hardships, they lost friends, they witnessed countless horrors, and they carried their pain for the rest of their lives. The commander of the USS Indianapolis: Captain Charles B McVay III The commander of the USS Indianapolis was blamed for the tragedy, launching a decades-long fight to clear his name Surviving the sinking and the days in the water, Charles B McVay III, captain of the USS Indianapolis, was court-martialled – the only time such an action has been taken in US Navy history. Although cleared of failing to abandon ship in a “timely” manner, he was found guilty of not employing evasive zigzagging manoeuvres before the attack. That is despite the extraordinary move of having the commander of the Japanese submarine, Mochitsura Hashimoto, testify, only for him to say that zigzagging would have achieved nothing. McVay never fully recovered, and took his own life in 1968. But the survivors knew their captain had been scapegoated and worked to clear his name for decades. Finally, in the 1990s, public sympathy rose in their favour after a 12-year-old student, Hunter Scott, made headlines after studying the Indy for a history project and interviewed hundreds of survivors. In 2000, the US Congress passed a joint resolution exonerating McVay. This article was first published in the April 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed
Tails from the deep: separating the real folklore of mermaids from Disney stories
Mermaids are beautiful, benevolent and captivating – or at least that is the Disneyfied version. Writing for BBC History Revealed, Dr Hetta Howes separates the real-world legends from the fishwives’ stories...
What image comes to mind when you hear the word ‘mermaid’? For many people, it will be Ariel, the redheaded Disney princess who trades her tail for legs and her voice for a chance to win herself a life on land. For others, the word will conjure the wan heroine of Hans Christian Andersen’s original fairytale who, unlike her Disney counterpart, is rejected by her prince and dissolves into sea foam, losing the chance to gain an immortal soul. It’s largely thanks to the popularity of Andersen’s fairytale that mermaids have become standardised in the west over the past two centuries. Like Ariel, they are depicted as hybrid creatures, with the torso and head of a beautiful woman and the tail of a fish. They often carry a mirror and a comb, and have the speech and personality of a human woman. On the podcast | Sirens, succubi & sex symbols: a history of female monsters However, the history of the mermaid myth, and its many manifestations across the globe, reveals a far more complex picture. Mermaids transform depending on which seas we find them in. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes monstrous, sometimes seductive, sometimes maternal – and oftentimes all of these at once – these enchanting entities can be a far cry from the tragic victim of Andersen’s influential tale. Mermaids, regardless of where they call home, are persistently contradictory, ambivalent and powerful figures, used to represent the unknown and the undiscovered. Were mermaids and sirens one and the same? The origins of mermaids are difficult to trace. While some cultural historians believe that fish goddesses in early religions were their ancestors, others consider sirens to be the first models for mermaids. Made famous by Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey, sirens are bird-woman hybrids who lure sailors to their deaths through song and who may eat the flesh of men who do not please them sexually. In the 13th century, writer Richard de Fournival recorded three kinds of sirens, two of which are actually half woman and half fish. This helps to explain why sirens and mermaids became interchangeable in Renaissance Europe. Both were consistently associated with fertility, seduction and the dangers of sexual encounter – and people really did believe in their existence. Tales of mermaids and sirens were spread by travellers from sea to land, and sightings are recorded by sailors from the Middle Ages right through to the 18th century. In 1608, explorer Henry Hudson wrote that on one morning “one of our companie looking over board saw a mermaid”, reportedly with the tail of a porpoise and long dark hair. In 1493, near the Rio del Oro (on what is present day Haiti) Christopher Columbus recorded a disappointing encounter with three sirens, describing them as “not so beautiful as they are painted, though to some extent they have the form of a human face”. According to legend, sirens haunt Haitian waters to this very day. Lasirèn, a beautiful woman with a fish tail, is a Haitian spirit summoned by the blowing of a conch. A symbol of wealth and seduction, she bestows prosperity on those she favours, but angers easily. Carrying a mirror to represent the portal between the human and mystical worlds, she might visit you in a dream and take you down to her underwater realm, to teach you sacred secrets. Folktales and Victorian freak shows During the Renaissance, cosmographers often marked unexplored waters with the phrase Hic sunt sirenae – here be sirens/mermaids. As mermaids often represent the mysterious unknown, it is unsurprising that anyone who managed to get their hands on one was eager to show it off, and to turn the public’s fascination to their own financial gain. One of the most famous examples of this phenomenon is the Feejee Mermaid, which made its way from Nagasaki to London in 1822. In Japan, instead of mermaids an explorer might find ningyo. Literally translated as ‘human fish’, these are more varied, and often more monstrous, than European mermaids. All have fish bodies, but some have a horned human head, others a monkey-like head or a scaled face. According to legend, eating the flesh of these creatures will elongate the life of the consumer. The folktale Yao Bikuni tells of a young girl who does just that, and becomes immortal. After outliving several husbands she seeks solace in a convent, but suffers so much ennui that she eventually takes her own life. Another tells of a fisherman who manages to catch a ningyo and feeds its flesh to his children. However, instead of gaining eternal youth, they immediately grow scales and die. Both tales warn us that encounters with Japanese mermaids might have devastating consequences. In 1854, when Japan opened more widely to trade, exportation of ningyo to sideshows in America and Europe, where they were rebranded as mermaids, became a prosperous business. Captain Samuel Barrett Eades bought one from Dutch sailors, for a vast sum of money. He seems to have been convinced that his Feejee Mermaid, with the head of a monkey, the bottom of a fish and a face contorted in pain and terror, was not only worth the expense, but real – despite the expert opinion of various naturalists who deemed it a fabrication. Read more | Is the Fountain of Youth real? The advertisement for its London exhibition declared Eades’ mermaid “The wonder of the World, the admiration of all ages, the theme of the Philosopher, the Historian, and the Poet”. Apparently, the general public were as convinced as Eades, or at least very curious: the Mirror estimated that 3,000- 4,000 people per day paid their shilling to visit the mermaid. Eventually, as new marvels were brought to shore by other explorers, interest in the Feejee Mermaid waned and the exhibition shut down. It eventually ended up in the hands of ‘greatest showman’ PT Barnum, who successfully toured the creature around America. The mermaids of Africa Rivers, lakes and seas have been crucial historically in African regions for trade, food, communication and transport. However, bodies of water also have far darker associations due to the Transatlantic slave trade, which transported millions of enslaved people across the Atlantic, a journey during which many died. African mermaid lore therefore represents both the dominance and ambivalence of water in the continent’s culture. Water spirits, which had long been honoured and celebrated in Africa, become entangled with European iconography of mermaids from the 15th century onwards, as Euro-African contacts increased. In the Yoruba tradition, saints and spirits called orishas are sent by Olodumare, the origin of virtue and morality, to rule the forces of nature. The orisha Yemonja is mother of the oceans and is often visualised as a siren or mermaid – a beautiful woman with the tail of a fish – holding a conch shell. Temperamental and associated with fertility, Yemonja is worshiped as a protector of women and children and a champion for justice. She increased in prominence in the Caribbean and Americas when enslaved survivors of the Middle Passage began petitioning her for alleviation of their suffering. Another Yoruba water deity is Oshun. Goddess of sensuality and fertility, she reigns over the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove in Nigeria. Folktales describe her spiteful temper and the sinister smile she reserves for those who have wronged her. Three memorable mermaids from around the world Atargatis Thousands of years ago, so legend has it, an egg fell from the sky into the Euphrates river. A fish, realising it had found something special, nudged the egg to shore where it hatched a goddess. Thought by many to be the first mermaid, Atargatis (also known as Dekerto) was a Semitic goddess, worshipped in northern Syria 3,000-4,000 years ago. Associated with the Moon and fertility, Atargatis reigned over the sea and controlled its waters. However, her story is a tragic one. She fell in love with a shepherd, but ended up killing him after bearing his child. Consumed with guilt and shame she jumped into the sea, where she acquired the lower body of a fish and where she is said to remain to this day. Mélusine According to medieval French legend, a beautiful fairy named Mélusine was singing by a fountain when she met a nobleman, Raymond. She agreed to marry him, on one condition: he must leave her alone on a Saturday. The couple enjoyed a happy marriage for many years, and Mélusine used her powers to build the powerful fort of Lusignan. But, one fateful Saturday, Raymond spied on Mélusine. He found her bathing – and spotted that she had the tail of a ‘serpent’. Mélusine was transformed into a dragon by Raymond’s betrayal and flew away. Some say that Mélusine’s cries still haunt Lusignan. But those seeking the mermaid today are more likely to find her on their Starbucks coffee cup, as the company’s logo is reportedly based on a 16th-century depiction of her likeness. Sedna Inuit mythology tells of a girl who refused to take a husband and instead, married a dog. Furious, the girl’s father took her out to sea in a boat and threw her overboard. When she tried to climb back in, he cut off her fingers to drown her. But her fingers changed into seals – or whales, according to other versions of the legend – and she survived. The girl became Sedna, a sea goddess who guards the oceans. With sea creatures entangled in her hair, Sedna is half woman and half fish, and is often depicted with the bottom half of a killer whale. During the 20th century, local water goddesses became increasingly homogenised under the general name of Mami Wata, pidgin English for ‘Mother Water’. While her name seems to have emerged with the slave trade, the concept of Mami Wata can be traced right back to the earlier African orishas and other indigenous water spirits. A powerful and contradictory figure, she is always attractive, with the torso of a woman and the bottom half of a fish tail, often accompanied by a snake. While she is known to be seductive and dangerous, Mami Wata is also associated with fertility (although, ironically, it is believed that her followers can’t bear children). A liaison with Mami Wata often requires a significant sacrifice – perhaps celibacy, or even the life of a family member – but she can bestow great wealth in exchange; known as a “capitalist” deity, she is materialistic and associated with social mobility. Mami Wata is traditionally worshipped in trance dances, a practice that slave owners tried to curb. A symbol of female liberation and empowerment, the deity allows women to become powerful priestesses and healers in return for their devotion. Mermaids, from the waters of Haiti to the sacred groves of Nigeria, continue to seduce us. Disney’s The Little Mermaid is about to get a live-action reboot, Beyoncé dressed up as Oshun in her music video for the single ‘Hold Up’, and Monique Roffey’s The Mermaid of Black Conch was awarded Costa Book of the Year for 2020. Mysterious and powerful, forces for destruction and protection, mermaids not only hold up a mirror to the mystical, the supernatural and the unknown, but also to our own societies – and to ourselves. What to read about more fantastical creatures? Here are some of our most popular articles… Basilisks, manticores and more: medieval fantastic beasts (and where to find them) From dragons to unicorns: finding fantastic beasts in ancient history 5 facts about the Loch Ness Monster This article was first published in the May 2021 issue of BBC History Revealed
Hell on high water: the rise and fall of the golden age of piracy
The golden age of piracy saw waves of rogue sailors terrorising the Atlantic world from 1670 to 1730. But what, asks Rebecca Simon, drove this period of maritime pillage and plunder?
Listen to a version of this article: In August of 1720, a pirate named Captain Bartholomew Roberts led an attack on a British merchant ship out of Boston. According to the Boston News-Letter, the pirates stripped the sailors of their money and effects (weapons, tools and jewellery) and stole the ship’s artillery and gunpowder. Survivors claimed that the pirates were “cursing, swearing, damning and blaspheming to the greatest degree imaginable”. The pirates knew that if they were captured, they would publicly hang, but they paid no heed to these consequences. They claimed that “if it should chance that they should be attacked by any superior power or force which they could not master, they would immediately put fire with one of their pistols to their powder and all go merrily to hell together”. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of incidents like this during the golden age of piracy – a 60-year period when organised piracy flourished in the Caribbean, East Indies and along the North American seaboard. Pirates have plied their trade throughout history, but most of them were so-called privateers, working for kingdoms and governments to attack enemies and bring wealth back home. The 17th century saw a new breed of pirate emerge: men (and sometimes women) who plundered ships entirely for their own gain. On the podcast | Rebecca Simon responds to your questions on the 17th-century golden age of piracy What were the pros of piracy in the 17th century? While piracy was a dangerous world, where anyone caught was almost guaranteed to hang, but the life appealed to many people. Pirate ships were extremely diverse. Crews were made up of men and women from Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, North America, India and China. Christians, Jews and Muslims sailed together – sometimes alongside freed or escaped enslaved people from Africa. Pirate ships were places where people could escape social persecution, and their crews had often chosen piracy over careers in the Royal Navy or on merchant ships, where conditions were notoriously poor. Naval and merchant ships offered the prospect of harsh punishments, meagre rations and a lack of sanitation. Pirate ships were often more egalitarian places where sailors could vote captains in and out based on their abilities. They also promised better and more abundant food – courtesy of looting – and every pirate was guaranteed their equal share. Yet egalitarianism and the prospect of a good hearty meal weren’t the only factors driving the surge of piracy in the 17th century. Geopolitics played a critical role. Intense competition between Europe’s colonial superpowers along the Americas’ eastern seaboard left the waters unsupervised and chaotic. This was the perfect environment for pirates to turn the seas into their own private playground, raiding, plundering and killing with seeming impunity. And at the vanguard of this maritime crimewave were the English. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/02/MMNK1F-079bcef.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="An early 18th‑century map of the central Americas. During the golden age of piracy, this region offered extremely rich pickings (Photo by The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo)" title="An early 18th‑century map of the central Americas. During the golden age of piracy, this region offered extremely rich pickings (Photo by The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo)" /> How did the English change the pirate world? Until the 16th century, England’s European rivals, particularly the Spanish, had led the charge to colonise the New World, and made themselves fantastically wealthy in the process. All that changed in the 1600s when – having already established colonies at Virginia and across New England – the English made a move south to the bustling trading centre of the Americas: the Caribbean. They arrived in a region already swarming with Spanish, French, Portuguese and Dutch vessels, which gave English pirates ample opportunity for raiding. Then, at the midpoint of the 17th century, the authorities in London passed a series of laws that made the plunder of merchant ships irresistible not only to English pirates, but colonists too. The 1651 Navigation Act stated that colonial goods could come in only on English vessels. The aim of the legislation was simple: to cripple the economies of England’s European competitors. Not only foreign merchants suffered since cutting off a diverse range of desirable goods in an instant meant the act denied English colonists a valuable income stream. Read more | Privateers, buccaneers and corsairs: why not all pirates were created equal And so these colonists now began to turn to pirates. Plantation island governors and those in the southern North American colonies either turned a blind eye to pirates, who could spirit in goods such as wine, silks from Asia, spices, cash and sometimes jewels – or they financed piracy outright, aiding and abetting the raids whenever necessary. One such raid took place in 1695 when a group of pirates led by Henry Avery captured the Indian ship Ganj-i-Sawai, slaughtered many of the men and women on board and made off with everything. Avery mysteriously disappeared after the raid, but many of his men sought refuge in North America – and they found it, mostly in Philadelphia and Providence, Rhode Island. On the podcast | Henry Avery: the legendary 17th-century pirate Avery’s raid on the Ganj-i-Sawai was utterly ruthless but it was far from unusual. Soon, piracy was so rampant across the Caribbean that it had become impossible to keep the shipping lanes under control. Too many governors and colonists entertained pirates, which only encouraged illegal maritime activities. Pirates were also starting to go after Spanish ships, which threatened the precarious peace between the two nations. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/02/GettyImages-520719011-41a0f6c.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A 19th-century painting shows pirates storming a Spanish galleon in the mid-17th century (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="A 19th-century painting shows pirates storming a Spanish galleon in the mid-17th century (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> The golden age of piracy was very much fuelled by the turbulent relationship between Spain and England. Nowhere was this more evident than in the waters around the island of Jamaica. By the 1650s, this hotbed of English piracy found itself at the centre of escalating tensions between the two nations. War broke out in 1654, and when the conflict ended in 1670 with the Treaty of Madrid, Spain acknowledged English ownership of Jamaica. That may have been good news for the English state, but it didn’t look that way for pirates. One of the stipulations of the treaty was the promise to protect Spanish ships from their raids. It was in London’s interests to end the pirates’ reign of terror across the Caribbean. The English developed a two-pronged approach to eradicating piracy. First, they passed the Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Piracy in 1700, which promised a pardon to all men who turned themselves in and named their accomplices. This was not as successful as the authorities hoped, since pirates did not trust that the conditions of the pardon would be upheld – and, sure enough, sometimes they found themselves pressed into the Royal Navy. London’s second tactic was much more aggressive. That was to establish Admiralty courts in the Caribbean and North American colonies with the express aim of trying and executing pirates using the same, harsher penalties imposed in English courts. Until then, colonial courts had been able to operate more or less autonomously, punishing convicted pirates as they saw fit. And, as the colonies were frequently reliant on piracy to fill their coffers and bring in desirable goods, those punishments were often light to non-existent. Such laxness, London decreed, had to be stopped. Yet no sooner had this new era of zero tolerance come into effect than a sharp deterioration in Anglo-Spanish relations reset the relationship between the English authorities and pirates once again. In 1701, the War of Spanish Succession broke out, embroiling most of Europe in a conflict over who would control the Spanish throne. Much of the war was fought at sea and England found itself in need of skilled seamen and fighters. Suddenly pirates had the upper hand. The English authorities issued a proclamation promising all pirates a pardon if they agreed to fight as privateers for the government against the Spanish and its allies. Under their contract, known as a letter of marque, the privateers would be allowed to keep much of the loot they stole from enemy ships. Most pirates took advantage of this proclamation because they were able to continue their operations without fear from persecution. It was a win-win situation for everyone involved. Scourges of the sea: the Atlantic world’s most notorious pirates Henry Avery Avery worked on a merchant ship and led a successful mutiny against his captain, before sailing for the East Indies where he antagonised Indian Mughal ships. In 1695, Avery attacked the Ganj-i-Sawai, brutalising its crew and the women on board and plundering it dry. In order to avoid all-out war with India, Britain organised a manhunt: some of Avery’s crew made it to the American colonies, but the man himself was never found. His fate remains a mystery. William Kidd The privateer turned to piracy in 1698 when he robbed a ship called the Quedagh Merchant off the coast of India and sailed for Madagascar. On learning he was wanted for piracy, Kidd headed to Boston for refuge, but was arrested and imprisoned before being shipped back to England. He was hanged at Execution Dock on the shoreline of the Thames on 23 May 1701. Kidd is best known for claiming to have buried his loot, which sparked a long-running fascination with pirates’ buried treasure. Blackbeard Edward Teach fought as a privateer in the War of Spanish Succession (1701–14). He turned to piracy and captured the French slave ship La Concorde, renaming it Queen Anne’s Revenge. Teach was dubbed Blackbeard because of his black hair and hirsute appearance, which he used to intimidate his victims. Lighted candles were woven in his hair during battle to give the impression that he was sailing out of hell itself. Teach was infamous for blockading Charleston, South Carolina for more than a week. He was beheaded in battle on 22 November 1718. Samuel Bellamy Bellamy was best known for ordering his men to charge naked on to ships to scare his victims into a rapid surrender. In 1717, he captured the British slave ship the Whydah Gally, which was worth tens of millions of dollars, making it the wealthiest ship in the Atlantic world and Bellamy the richest pirate. Yet his great wealth was short-lived: on 26 April 1717, his boat was caught in a storm off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and crashed into rocks, killing almost everyone on board, including Bellamy. Treasure from the Whydah Gally is still being excavated to this day. Mary Read and Anne Bonny The only known female pirates during the golden age of piracy, Mary Read and Anne Bonny sailed with Captain Jack Rackham between August and October 1720, and were known to fight with their shirts open to intimidate their victims into surrendering. Survivors later claimed that the women fought and swore more than any of the men. They were captured in late October 1720 and found guilty of piracy in November of that year, but received stays of execution as both were pregnant. Read died in prison in April 1721 while Bonny’s fate remains unknown. Read more | The most famous and despicable pirates from history What was the Nassau pirate republic? If the period from the 1670s to the 1730s is widely remembered as a golden age of piracy, then the years during and immediately after the War of Spanish Succession surely marked its zenith. During the conflict many pirates began gravitating toward the island of Providence in the Bahamas to settle in the city of Nassau. Thanks to its proximity to Florida, the Bahamas was the gateway to the Caribbean and North America. The Spanish and British often fought over them: the former seeking to use the islands as a springboard from which to attack British ships; the latter wanting to employ them as a defensive base for North America. Yet during the chaos of the War of Spanish Succession, pirates were able to claim the islands for themselves. By the time the war ended in 1714, Nassau had gained a reputation for violence, disease and malcontents. This all changed when a man named Captain Benjamin Hornigold spotted an opportunity to create an official community where pirates could congregate safely. Hornigold was formerly a leading privateer in the war and mentor to many future infamous pirates, such as Edward Teach (better known as Blackbeard) and . He knew that, with the conflict ended, many privateers would suddenly find themselves unemployed. He also knew that many of these men would turn pirate and needed a safe harbour from which to launch their raids. He therefore stepped in and created law and order. Read more | The real pirates of the Caribbean: your guide to Nassau's pirate republic The pirates dubbed him “the pirate king of the pirate kingdom”. Nassau was now the pirate capital of the Atlantic world. Yet soon that capital would come under attack. In 1718 a former privateer called Woodes Rogers became the first royal governor of the Bahamas. He had a mission to eradicate piracy, and a burning desire to wipe the pirate kingdom off the face of the Earth. No sooner had he taken up his new post than Rogers had issued a proclamation that offered all pirates a pardon if they confessed their crimes before September of that year. More than 200 pirates took up the offer, reasoning that the risks of piracy now outweighed its rewards. Rogers couldn’t rely upon the support of the Royal Navy, for whom piracy was now simply not a priority. But he could call upon the assistance of Hornigold. In a remarkable turn of events, he rounded on his former brethren and became Rogers’ chief pirate-hunter (quite possibly because he viewed being in Rogers’ good books as a smart career move). Hornigold died in a wreckage somewhere along North America’s eastern seaboard in 1719, but that didn’t stop Rogers having almost 100 people publicly executed during his war on piracy. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/02/MMNJR6-af16bb5.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Woodes Rogers, seated in a 1729 painting, who as governor of the Bahamas waged all-out war on the Caribbean’s pirates (Photo by The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Woodes Rogers, seated in a 1729 painting, who as governor of the Bahamas waged all-out war on the Caribbean’s pirates (Photo by The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Read more | Did pirates really live on the island of Tortuga? Soon, other powerful figures were seeking to destroy pirate captains. Among them was Alexander Spotswood, lieutenant governor of Virginia, who ordered the coastguard, headed by Lieutenant Robert Maynard, to hunt down Blackbeard. Maynard caught up with his quarry on 22 November 1718 and instantly engaged him in battle. During the fight, one of Maynard’s men stabbed Blackbeard. “Well done, lad!” the cornered pirate shouted. With Blackbeard distracted and injured, one of his assailants beheaded him. The head was mounted on a ship’s mast and paraded up and down the east coast, signifying the power of those working to bring pirates to heel. Blackbeard may have been the most famous of all the pirates, but the wealthiest (at least, in the early 1720s) was Bartholomew Roberts, who commanded the world’s largest pirate fleet. His death in February 1722, after being struck by a stray bullet in a battle off the coast of west Africa, was somehow symbolic of the enormous squeeze that was being exerted on pirates across the Atlantic. Read more | Hunting pirates: how piracy's golden age came to an end With relative peace and stability replacing war and chaos along North America’s eastern seaboard, the pirates’ traditional hunting grounds were providing increasingly meagre pickings. It has been estimated that nearly 4,000 pirates were arrested between 1700 and 1726, many of whom were put to death. One of those to die was a man named William Fly who, in July 1726, was led to a scaffold in Boston. Overseeing the execution was a preacher, Cotton Mather, who spoke to a rapt audience about the evil of piracy. Fly had nothing to say and stood defiantly, refusing to atone for his actions before meeting his fate with the noose. Fly’s was the last major execution (one performed in front of a large crowd at which he was expected to utter his dying words) of a pirate in the Atlantic world. As such, it heralded the end of the golden age of piracy. Within a few years, the Atlantic world would be rocked by conflict again, in the shape of the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–48) and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48). Yet instead of triggering a resurgence of piracy, these conflicts saw the few remaining pirates trading in their black flags for the letters of marque borne by state-sponsored privateers. For around 60 years, pirates had made the waters of the Caribbean and beyond very perilous places to sail. Their reign of terror may have been brought to a violent end, but they sailed into history. There, they’ve haunted the popular imagination – almost as successfully as they haunted sailors in the 17th and 18th century – for almost 300 years. This article was first published in the January 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine Check out our series on pirate myths: Did any real pirates wear eyepatches or have peg legs? Was walking the plank a real pirate punishment? X marks the spot: did pirates bury their treasure? Did real pirates fly the Jolly Roger? What is the origin and meaning of the pirate expression ‘shiver me timbers’? Did most English pirates really talk with a West Country accent?