Stories of pirates are hugely popular but what do we really know about the history of piracy? Let’s explore common assumptions about pirates and figure out which ones are true and which are myths.
You may have heard of the larger-than-life “Black Caesar” who plundered alongside Blackbeard. But as it turns out, there were dozens of pirates of African descent referred to as “Black Caesar.” In this episode of Rogue History, we will unearth the stories of some lesser-known Black Caesars and examine how certain forces shape the stories we remember today.
Why is the woman pirate Zheng Yi Sao not as well known as the male pirate Blackbeard? Zheng Yi Sao had a fleet of 1,200 ships at the height of her powers whereas Blackbeard had just four or five. Join us as we explore the incredible and unsung stories of history’s most notorious women pirates.
Songs like “A Pirate’s Life for Me” and “Dead Man’s Chest” are as prevalent in pirate lore as eye patches or treasure maps. These tunes, however, were written more than a hundred years after the golden age of piracy. Join us as we trace the roots of TikTok’s viral sea shanties and examine the types of music pirates likely heard on the open seas.
Imagine being at sea for weeks on end. The supply of food and water is running out. No major port will let you in to restock. For pirates, finding food was often more important than finding buried treasure. In this episode of Rogue History, we bite into the creative ways pirates sustained themselves. Max Miller from Tasting History joins us to demonstrate one bizarre buccaneer recipe.
Did you know that the United States’ first foreign war was with pirates? After the U.S. declared independence, Barbary pirates began capturing Americans in the Mediterranean and holding them for ransom. At one point, Congress agreed to pay them a huge portion of its federal budget. Join us as we uncover the truth behind the pirates that nearly snuffed out the U.S. economy.
For 200 years, Japanese waters were ruled by self-proclaimed Sea Lords. They held immense political power and even helped integrate Japan into the early global economy. Despite this, medieval Japanese society labeled them “kaizoku,” or “pirates.” In this episode of Rogue History, we dive into the origins of Japan’s Sea Lords and explain how one family solidified their legacy.
From movies like “The Goonies” to TV shows like “PAW Patrol,” we’re obsessed with the idea of finding a pirate’s lost treasure. Did pirates actually hide their treasure? And what makes something a treasure anyway? Maritime archaeologist Joel Cook unearths the unsettling truth behind treasure hunters and explains their complicated role in modern archaeology.
Spy balloons once marked a great leap forward in the art of intelligence gathering. No longer were soldiers safe from enemy reconnaissance on the ground. They could now be watched from the air! From the French Revolution to the Civil War, balloons loomed over battlefields. Join us in a time when an oddball inventor sent President Lincoln a decisive telegraph — from 500 feet above the ground.
The details of Walter Loving’s complicated double life remained classified for over 60 years. Born to formerly enslaved parents, he became a famous band conductor and an advocate for Black Americans. When the U.S. military grew paranoid that Black Americans were colluding with German spies, they recruited Loving to infiltrate his own community and de-radicalize leaders. So whose side was he on?
Juan Pujol García was a nobody. A failed chicken farmer, he bought his way out of service during the Spanish Civil War. But when Hitler came to power, he couldn’t just sit by and watch. He devised a daring plan: to stop the Nazis, he would get close to them. As a double agent, he could feed Nazi intelligence to the Allies. This is the bizarre true story of the spy who altered the course of WWII.
Not only was Chevalier d’Eon a respected diplomat, trusted spy, and cunning secret agent, they also were a pioneer of publicly expressing gender fluidity in 18th-century France. From an undercover mission in a Russian court to gathering intelligence against Great Britain to blackmailing a King with information that could have caused a war, d’Eon was a master of their craft.
The Edo period marked the start of 250 years of peace for Japan, but it came as a death sentence for shinobi. These highly trained spies mastered the art of deception, infiltration, and some even worked as assassins. But when these talented figures started dying out, legend and mythology took their place, and eventually turned into the classic ninja characters we see in movies and tv today.
In the 1940’s, the US government had a mission: find Soviet spies that had infiltrated their nuclear program. To do that, they needed to find a way to decode Soviet messages, notorious for being “unbreakable.” So they turned to the Venona Project. This group of talented mathematicians, consisting largely of women, went on to expose spies in nearly every agency in the federal government.
Moses Dickson, a traveling barber in the years before the Civil War, had a secret– he was one of twelve members of a covert society that planned to recruit men who were “courageous, patient, temperate, and possessed of sound common sense.” Their goal? Launch a coordinated insurrection against slaveholders and claim land for black people in the South. And they almost did.
In ancient Mesoamerica, an elite class of merchants helped build the Aztec Empire. How? By mastering the arts of spycraft, disguise, and self sacrifice. These Pochteca acquired plenty of wealth and status and they traveled between cities to collect tribute, trade for valuables, and most importantly work undercover to gather information. But this wealth and power sometimes came at a deadly cost.
How does one of the most notorious pirates in British history become an iconic hero of the American Revolution? Long before he went toe-to-toe with the most powerful navy on the face of the planet, John Paul Jones was just a simple Scottish merchant ship captain…who committed a murder…or two.
Was Peggy Shippen the real mastermind behind Benedict Arnold’s betrayal? Peggy successfully fooled the most powerful men in America, including George Washington, into believing she was just an innocent and naive creature. It wasn’t until 150 years later that her role in the plot was discovered, when pages of secret correspondence were uncovered.
The British government vowed freedom to enslaved people if they could escape and take up arms against their Patriot enslavers. But when the British failed to deliver promised land in Nova Scotia, the Black Loyalists needed a leader to step up, sail across the ocean, and demand a solution. That man would be Thomas Peters, a former prince who escaped enslavement in North Carolina.
