to whom we are grateful for their generous support over the past several years and it's that kind of commitment that enables us the program to to bring to the university into the community outstanding speakers such as our guest tonight. eric j. dolan is the author of the fascinating book black flags blue waters. the epic history of america's most notorious pirates. eric grew up near the coasts of new york and connecticut and from an early age developed an interest in maritime affairs. toward that end. he earned a double major in biology and environmental studies then getting a master's degree in environmental management from yale. that was followed by a phd. in environmental policy and planning from mit where his dissertation focused on the role of the courts in the cleanup of boston harbor. erica's held an interesting variety of jobs many of them related to his interest in the natural world. the one thing that remained constant throughout his career. has said is his enjoyment of writing and telling stories about topics that he has found most intriguing. this is led to the publication of more than 60 articles for magazines newspapers and professional journals. it is also resulted in the publication of a number of very popular books that include. today is the titles. the furious sky the 500-year history of america's hurricanes. brilliant bacons a history of the american lighthouse when america first met china and exotic history of tea drugs and money in the age of sail. for our fortune and empire the epic history of fur trade in america. leviathan the history of whaling in america as well as the previously mentioned black flags blue waters. all of these books have achieved not only popular but critical acclaim. that's a very difficult task indeed to pull off. as one reviewer of the pirate book wrote quote the book is a fascinating adventure story filled with robes rascals and ruthless renegades. this is staring history that reads like a novel. another has said that in that book dolan quote proves again. skillfully presented narrative nonfiction is even more gripping than swashbuckling mythology. if you've never read dolan before prepare to have a new favorite historian. and so it is a great pleasure to welcome tonight to the university of mary washington and to the great lives podium a truly gifted writer eric j dolan. thank you bill for that wonderful introduction and thanks to bill and terry and ali for giving me a wonderful meal a few minutes ago and ali for organizing all of this. last time i was in fredericksburg was back from my wife and i lived in maryland in 1996. and i remembered then all the antique stores and today i went down to fredericksburg and they're still there and it was a lot of fun. but anyway, thanks for coming out tonight. i know it's kind of a tough situation. i'm just getting back into the swing of giving talks. i've given about 40 or 50 zoom talks over the past two years and now i'm just starting to give talks in person. so this is really a thrill for me to have an audience. now pirates have long been among the most colorful and memorable celebrities in popular culture. a lot of that has to do with books that use pirates as a motif and the most famous example of that of course is robert louis stevenson's treasure island, which was published in 1883 stevenson weaves a wonderfully dramatic tale of the search for pirate treasure replete with a map of skeleton island. where an x marks the spot where treasure is to be found. treasure island is also the book that gave us that familiar sea shanty refrain 15 men on the dead man's chest yoho and a bottle of rum drink in the devil had done for the rest yoho and a bottle of rum and now you know why i became a writer and not a singer. now during this talk. i'm going to be showing a number of new yorker cartoons that relate to the pirate theme in case you can't read them. i will read the the punchline for what it's worth yoho and a chilled pinot grigio actually rhymes you'd be amazed. there are hundreds of cartoons that the new yorkers put out over the decades that use pirates as a theme now movies have also had a major impact on how we view pirates. most recently disney's pirates of the caribbean franchise is generated a renewed pirate mania. this fellow looks like johnny depp, right? actually, i wanted to have a picture of johnny depp in the book. i reached out to disney and i tried to get a hold of johnny depp's agent, but i was unsuccessful. so i found this at the library of congress. it is a johnny depp impersonator in front of grahman's chinese restaurant in california. i think he did a pretty good job now with all these cultural references. it's no wonder than that pirate costumes are among the most popular worn on halloween on halloween night and international talk like a pirate day is eagerly anticipated by millions every september 19th. and this one says no i don't know where your pirate shirt is. there's no denying. it pirates of grabbed hold of our imagination many of daydreamed about leaving traditional society behind boarding a ship and throwing in their lot with the hearty men and women intent on taking what they want and getting rich while enjoying the luxurious freedom of sailing the world's oceans with a hold full of rome mark twain captured this longing in his memoir life in the mississippi when he admitted that even though ian ian his friends had but one ambition to be steamboat men now and then we had a hope that if we lived and we're good. god would permit us to be pirates. there are plenty of children out there who would love being a pirate? historians can certainly poke holes at these fictional fictional representations of pirates, especially those that depict them as unnaturally attractive rakish yet good-natured rapscallions having a grand old time looking for love adventure and treasure on the waves. the reality of piracy is nothing like the breathless musings of a new york times reporter in 1892 who bitterly complained it cannot but be a source of regret to every true lover of the picturesque that pirates are no more and piracy has lost its popularity what tremendous fellows they must have been what heroes dandy's wits were to be found among them. they were immensely superior to land brigands who are mere milk compared with blackbeard and captain kidd. while real pirates were incredibly intriguing and compelling characters. they most definitely were not tremendous fellows instead. they were seaborn criminals who were neither endearing nor heroic. this says half of me loves being a pirate and half of me regrets it. now black flags blue waters cuts through the hollywood imagery and mythology surrounding pirates and reveals the dramatic and surprising history of american piracies golden age spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s when lawless pirates plied the waters of north america and beyond the golden age was the most dramatic era of maritime marauding the world has ever known it produced such iconic characters as william kidd and blackbeard along with thousands of others whose names are less familiar, but who's despicable deeds are no less riveting. much has been written about that time period and this book adds to that literary lineage, but with a twist. rather than focusing broadly on this era black flags blue waters zeros in on the history of the pirates who either operated out of britain's american colonies or plundered the ships along the american coast from the early 1680s to 1726. these pirates had an exceedingly close often tempestuous and frequently deadly relationship with the colonies. many people view pirates in a romantic light, but there was absolutely nothing romantic about them other than the legends woven about their exploits after they were gone. that is not to say that pirates were born boring far from it while the pirates of black flags blue waters can't compete with the magnetic charms of and witty reparte of captain jack sparrow. they are compelling characters nonetheless and when i read this slide makes me laugh because there's somebody that wrote a comment about the book on amazon and he gave the book one star and his first line he said for some reason this guy hates pirates and he went on to complain about the fact that my book dispelled a lot of the myths about piracy. and the real story of american pirate american pirates is even more astonishing and fascinating than any fictional pirate adventure ever written or cast on the silver screen. this says i'm sorry you tapped into something. no one cares about. and that relates to how i picked topics for my books. the most difficult thing is finding a topic that i think will excite me and potential readers the origin story for black flags blue waters started with my kids, lilly and harry are shown here as a teenagers after i finished my book on lighthouses. brilliant beacons a history of the american lighthouse. i was looking around for a new topic and i asked lily and harry what they thought i should write about and i had a couple of ideas one of them was pirates when i mentioned pirates both of their eyes lit up and they say dad that's it. you have to write about pirates and i got very excited because neither of my children had up to that point read any of my books, so i thought this is gonna be my big chance lily even throughout a possible a few possible titles for the books including swords sales and swashbucklers. and arg, which i had to tell lily much to her chagrin is a word that no pirate of this era ever uttered. it is more a byproduct of hollywood in the mid 20th century. when i began working on this book, i knew very little about pirates, but that was by design. i always choose topics. i know very little about you may be thinking maybe i don't know much about anything, but it's really because i have to spend two years working on these books and i get bored rather easily if you ever saw my resume, you would think i couldn't keep a job and part of the reason i go to very different topics is because i like being excited by what i'm working on and i hope that that excitement translates to the written page. now sure i'd seen a number of movies with pirates in them including all the pirates of the caribbean movies the last three of which are rather poor treasure muppets treasure island one of my favorites the goonies hook and even princess bride the princess bride with its dread pirate roberts. but i hadn't read any books about pirates not even treasure island, which i somehow missed in my misspent youth. i knew what pirates dreamed about the big score. capturing a ship with a hold full of spanish silver pieces of eight gold doubloons. i had heard about blackbeard, but really didn't know much about him other than the fact that he had a black beard. i'd also heard about captain kidd, but the only thing i knew about him was that he supposedly buried treasure all along the eastern seaboard from delaware all the way on up to oak island, nova scotia. of course, that is a total myth but it hasn't stopped many people over the years from spending significant amounts of time and money searching for buried treasure and coming up empty. so leaving it with a broker didn't do any good at all. i'd also heard that pirates drank a lot, especially rum, which was supposedly the pirates drink of choice and that fact is 100% true one pirate even admitted that the love of drink and a lazy life were stronger motives than gold in learning in into piracy. unfortunately for him. he uttered these words a few before he was hanged. the more i learned about pirates, however, the more fascinated i became pirates were an important part of american history and their story was more complicated and intriguing than i suspected. the first known instance of pirate piracy off the american coast occurred in the summer of 1632 when a pirate named dixie bull and his men plundered a number of english ships before disappearing from sight. other than that the main collect connection that the colonies had with piracy during these early years was twofold first some american merchants traveled to jamaica and other caribbean islands to trade with the pirates and in turn some pirates who had gotten wealthy retired to the colonies to enjoy their riches. in 1684, for example jamaican governor sir thomas lynch noted that the northern colonies are now full of pirate's money pirates had lynch claimed carried the equivalent of 80,000 pounds sterling into boston alone a city that one english official labeled as the common receptacle of pirates of all nations now to get an idea of the magnitude of this loot consider that at the time an average labor in the colony earned about 10 pounds per year. and a woman got roughly half of that while a captain of a merchant vessel pulled down about 72 pounds. now the mid-1600 is also an era of the buccaneers. does anybody know who this is? he's got a rum named after him. henry morgan, yes was when men like henry morgan who's more famous now for his run than for his exploits rome the caribbean in search of spanish treasure ships to plunder the treasure ships were full of silver and gold that came from mines and mints in central and south america. the men's produced copious quantities of coins including gleaming gold doubloons and most importantly eight real coins those so-called pieces of eight or spanish silver dollars and at dinner i was talking about the fact that after i write a book. i always try to get something that reminds me of the book. and i thought naively when i started this book that maybe i could buy a piece of eight after i was done, but once i realized the actual prices for good piece of eight that idea left me rather quickly. now the buccaneers favorite haunt was point royal on the english island of jamaica arguably the wealthiest english city in the new world by 1680 port royal's veneer of sophistication could not hide its decidedly sleazy underbelly, this is when port royal gained the weller earned reputation as the sodom of the west indies and the wickedest city in the world. an unsavory melange of buccaneers and privateers prowled port royal streets and alleyways in search of liquid and current and carnal pleasure as one buccaneer said of his peers whenever they have got a hold of something they don't keep it for long. they are busy dicing -- and drinking so long as they have anything to spend. some of them will get through a good two or three thousand pieces of eight in a day and the next day not of a shirt on their back. he continued my own master used to buy a -- of wine and set it in the middle of the street with. carol had knocked in and stand barring the way every passerby had to drink with them or he'd shot them dead with a gun. he kept handy. on june 7 1692 a massive earthquake struck port royal and jamaica when it was all over nearly two-thirds of the city had slipped beneath the waves and more than 5,000 people were killed including many buccaneers the gruesome aftermath integris of aftermath hundreds of dead bodies. a bloated bodies could be seen floating on the surface of the harbor and washed up on the shore a local ministers survived the earthquake called it a terrible judgment of god. that was brought down upon the heads of the most ungodly devouched people in the world. by the late 1600s buccaneers had been largely replaced by the so-called red -- the pirates who left from the american colonies and sailed to the indian ocean where they prayed on ships coming from the mughal empire or what we know today as india and they were traveling between india and the see ports of jetta and mocha on the surface red sea men appeared to be nothing more than privateers for a fee. they had been issued privateering licenses or letters of mark by colonial governors, which gave them permission to attack french ships since at the time england was at war with france, but these governors knew full. well that the red sea men had no intention of attacking french ships instead. they planned to go around the cape horn cape good hope indonesian ocean and attack moogle ships the red sea men were the most successful pirates of all with some of them such as henry avery amassing considerable fortunes. avery's greatest success was capturing the ganja salway, which was one of the flagships of the emperor aurangzeb on board were more than a thousand people going to mecca and they were loaded with jewels and money. the pirates plundered the ship for several days. when they weren't gathering loot, the pirates engaged in an animalistic and vile -- viciously raping numerous women a few of the intended victims unable to bear to have their families and friends see them ravished in defiled killed themselves by either jumping over the side of the ship or stabbing themselves. while in the indian ocean the red sea men used the island of saint marie off the off northeast the northeastern coast of madagascar mainland as their home base. there is plenty of gambling on the island as one might imagine a single toss of dice earned the lucky pirate from new york. 1300 pieces of eight in one brawl 14 pirates who were bitterly unsatisfied with the amount of loot. they had managed to obtain in their last voyage decided to split into two groups of seven and fight to the death to see who would get the money. one group of seven was completely demolished and five of the other group of seven were killed the last two guys must have just looked at each other and said, okay, let's just split the money. now the red sea men were welcomed with open arms in america because they were in many cases the father's sons and brothers. of the the people in the colonies they were much beloved members of their communities and they were seen as going halfway around the world to rob quote unquote infidels and bring all that valuable money and jewels and silk back to america. now although the red sea men were welcomed in the colonies the british parliament and the crown the sprunt despise them not only did pirates break the law, but they also threatened the entire east indian trade which was a bulwark of the english economy the resulting crackdown on pirates used a combination of stricter laws more effective prosecutions naval attacks on pirate ships and increased hangings to greatly reduce the pirate threat in the atlantic and by 1700. it was almost completely eliminated. this general reprieve from piracy continued for the duration of the war of the spanish succession between 1702 and 1713 and if you were like me the war of the spanish succession is one of those wars they taught you about in high school and you still have absolutely no idea what it was and why they fought it. the only significant case of piracy in the colonies during the war was when captain john. welch sailed with his fellow mutineers from marblehead my hometown marblehead, massachusetts in august of 1703 after murdering the captain. of the privateer they were on they then headed to brazil where they plundered a number of ships and came back to marblehead with more than 10,000 pounds worth of -- including a bag full of gold dust. crouching part of his gang were caught after returning to marblehead and they were hanged on friday, june 30th 1704 at the edge of boston harbor thousands of people came out to see them be sent off to eternity the famous purits and preacher cotton mather spoke to the assembled throng. he stood up and steadied himself on a boat. that was just offshore and if you ever been in boston, they were hanged right down the hill from cops hill burial ground near the old north church. and so cotton mather got up and he gave his sermon and he began. we the ministers have told you often. yay. we have told you weeping that you have by sin undone yourself. we have shown you how to commit yourself into his saving and healing hands and how to express repentance. we can do no more but leave you in his merci