Pirates Who Accidentally Chose The Worst Targets

[00:00:00]The lifeboat incident. On April 8th, 2009, 240 mi off the coast of Somalia, four pirates in a small dinghy were racing towards a slow cargo ship. The pirates were led by a young man named Abduel Muse. Somali pirate crews were holding hundreds of sailors hostage, collecting milliondoll ransoms daily.

[00:00:19]These four pirates were experts and had done this same mission many times already. This was just another ransom for them. The four pirates hooked their ladder, scaled the hull, and seized the bridge. They held the ship's captain, Richard Phillips, at gunpoint, but the rest of the crew had vanished. They had scattered below deck and cut the power, plunging the corridors into total darkness. Muse went to hunt them down, but in those pitch black hallways, a group of unarmed sailors ambushed Muse.

[00:00:46]They heard him and almost killed him, but he still managed to escape. The ambush didn't matter. The pirates still had exactly what they came for. Richard Phillips was still their hostage, and they were going to use him as leverage.

[00:00:58]The pirates used the ship's lifeboat as their escape and abducted Phillips with them. He was now trapped inside a tiny boat with four armed and increasingly desperate pirates. He quickly realized that he was alone and that nobody was coming to save him. But there was just one slight mistake the pirates had made, and it had been painted on the side of the ship the entire time. The mayor's Alabama was flying an American flag. The United States has a very old and very personal history with piracy. The mayor's Alabama was the first American flagship to be seized by pirates in roughly 200 years, and they weren't going to let it slide. Taking an American captain hostage doesn't open a polite ransom negotiation. It summons the United States Navy. The destroyer, USS Banebridge, arrived first, followed by a frigot and an amphibious assault ship. Days of negotiation went nowhere and the situation for Captain Phillips deteriorated. He was getting more scared and desperate. So he threw himself into the ocean in a frantic escape attempt and was dragged back inside. The pirates were becoming crazier with every passing hour. Philillips was going to die soon.

[00:02:04]While the world watched the standoff play out on the news, a team of Navy Seal snipers had secretly parachuted into the ocean at night and set up their weapons on the Bane Bridg's deck. These were the most elite soldiers in the US Army. But they had an impossible mission ahead. The men had to fire from the moving deck of a warship at a small lifeboat bouncing on the waves through tiny windows and had to hit all three pirates at the exact same time. If even one pirate survived a single second longer, Philillips would be killed. It's one of the hardest shots possible, done three times simultaneously. On April 12th, one of the pirates aimed his weapon at Captain Phillips back, and the Navy Seal commander finally gave the order. Three shots, three hits, and three dead pirates. By some miracle, Captain Phillips managed to walk away without a single scratch. During all this, Muse was reluctantly aboard the destroyer to negotiate. But this turned out to be the luckiest decision of his entire life. He was flown to New York in handcuffs and sentenced to nearly 34 years in federal prison. And in case you think the pirate community learned anything from this, well, seven months later, another crew attacked the Mayor Scalababama again. The exact same ship.

[00:03:16]This time it carried an armed security team and the pirates were driven off in minutes. The Emperor incident. In 75 BC, the Salician pirates were hunting for prey. They were not some scrappy crew of outlaws on a stolen boat. The Salicians were a naval superpower commanding a thousand ships. They raided Roman ports, plundered coastal towns, and kidnapped Roman officials for ransom. Rome, the single most powerful state on Earth, could not control its own sea. When one of the pirate crews intercepted a small vehicle near a tiny island, they captured a 25-year-old Roman noble on his way to roads to study public speaking. But out of every ship of that entire sea, these pirates had just captured the single worst hostage in recorded history. They had captured Julius Caesar. The pirates sized up their new noble hostage and set his ransom at 20 talants of silver, a fortune. But Caesar was offended. He told the pirates that 20 talents only was insulting and that they clearly had no idea who they were holding. Caesar told them that they should demand 50 silver talents. Their hostage just negotiated his own ransom. 50 talents is well over a ton of silver. And the pirates, well, they gladly agreed. Over the 38 days that followed, the most feared pirates in the Mediterranean slowly began to realize that they had not taken a hostage. They had acquired an employer. When Caesar wanted to sleep, he sent word around the camp, ordering the pirates to keep the noise down, and they actually listened. He joined their exercises and their games, casually bossing around sea raiders like they were his own personal staff. But throughout his time as hostage, Caesar kept making them one very specific promise. When this is over, I'm going to come back and I'm going to crucify every single one of you. The pirates thought this was hilarious. This funny little nobleman could never do something like that. When the ransom arrived, all 50 talents of silver, they released him, but they were a little sad to see their entertainment go. At this point in time, Caesar wasn't in the military and commanded no soldiers. But guess what was the first thing that Caesar did? He raised an armada of ships and sailed straight back to the island where he'd been held. When the Roman armada arrived on the island, they found the pirates still anchored there, casually splitting up the ransom money. Caesar captured all of them and took back every single silver talent. Then he kept the exact promise he'd been making for 38 straight days. Every pirate who' held him was crucified. But because the pirates had treated him decently during his captivity, he had their throats cut first so that none of them would suffer on the cross. That was kindness dealt by the hand of Julius Caesar.

[00:06:09]The drunk crew incident in February of 1722 off the coast of West Africa, the deadliest pirate fleet on the planet sat at anchor, fresh off yet another capture. It was commanded by the best pirate in history. His name was Bartholomew Roberts, and his achievements were genuinely absurd. Over the previous three years, Roberts had captured more than 400 ships. By comparison, Blackbeard, the most famous pirate in history, captured around 30.

[00:06:38]Roberts strangled entire trade routes, embarrassed entire navies, and did it all in style. Going into battle dressed in a crimson waste coat, a red feather in his hat, and a diamond cross hanging around his neck. The man dressed like a final boss. And to be fair, he was one.

[00:06:55]On the morning of February 5th, one of his lookouts spotted a sail on the horizon. The moment the mystery ship noticed the pirate fleet. It swerved hard away and began to run, exactly like a fat merchant vessel, panicking at the sight of the most dangerous crew on the ocean. That ship was free money. Robert sent one of the ships, the Ranger, tearing off in pursuit, packed with pirates already arguing about how they'd split the loot. The merchant ship stayed just ahead of them hour after hour, leading the chase further and further over the horizon. And slowly, it began letting them gain. The pirates closed in on their helpless, terrified prize. But there was only one problem. Roberts had accidentally targeted the worst ship in the sea. The fleeing ship wasn't a merchant. It was the HMS Swallow, a fully armed Royal Navy man of war commanded by a captain named Chaliner Ogle. The Royal Navy had finally had enough of Roberts, and the Swallow had been dispatched to the African coast to hunt him down. That initial swerve hadn't been panic at all. Ogle had actually been steering wide to avoid a sandbank, but the instant he realized the pirates had mistaken the maneuver for a terrified escape. He simply played the part. He kept deliberately luring the ranger far from the other pirates so they could have never heard what was about to happen. Once they were alone, out of sight, and out of earshot, the swallow stopped fleeing. It turned around, threw open its gunports, and opened fire. The pirate ship was shredded and captured in a single engagement. Its crew never getting anywhere near the prize they had been chasing. Then the swallow came back for Roberts himself. And here's the thing.

[00:08:35]The day before, Roberts's men had captured a ship called the Neptune, and pirate crews celebrated every successful capture. the only way they knew how. By the time the swallow sails appeared on the horizon, one of the deadliest pirate crews on Earth was either drunk or violently hung over. Roberts, who was calmly eating his breakfast, was informed that the approaching vessel was a Royal Navy warship. He stood up, put on the full Crimson outfit, and took the helm personally. His only hope was trying to escape straight past the warship with a crew that could barely stand. The swallow fired one broadside of grapeshot, which is essentially a giant cannonball shotgun blast, [music] and Roberts was struck in the throat and ended instantly. Still standing at the wheel in his crimson and feathers, his crew, honoring his long-standing request to never be taken alive, threw his weighted body overboard before surrendering, and it was never found.

[00:09:30]What followed was the largest pirate trial in history with over 50 men hanged at Cape Coast Castle. And historians widely mark Roberts's passage as the moment the golden age of piracy ended.

[00:09:44]The Sandbar incident. At dawn on November 22nd, 1718, off the coast of North Carolina, the most feared pirate on the entire Atlantic Ocean stood on his deck. His name was Edward Teach, but the world [music] knew him as Blackbeard. and he was a living legend.

[00:10:01]He went into battle with pistols strapped [music] across his chest and slow burning fuses woven into his enormous black beard so smoke would curl around his face and [music] make him look like a literal demon. Earlier that same year, he had blockaded the entire city of Charleston, holding its harbor and its citizens hostage. And his ransom demand for an entire American city was a chest of medicine. The man held a city for cough syrup. and he got it. After that, Blackbeard accepted a royal pardon, officially retired [music] from piracy, and settled in North Carolina.

[00:10:35]But he was a pirate after all, and he immediately went back to robbing ships while the local authorities looked the other way. On a November morning, he was watching two slopes creep slowly towards his anchorage, small, slow, lightly crude, and he saw they were carrying no cannons, none at all. Someone had apparently sent rowboats to arrest the most dangerous man on the ocean.

[00:11:00]Blackbeard thought this was the easiest fight of his entire career. He maneuvered his ship into position and unleashed a full broadside straight into the lead sloop. And it was devastating, ending or wounding a huge portion of the crew in one blast and taking out the commander of the second sloop entirely.

[00:11:18]When the smoke cleared, the lead sloop was a drifting wreck with barely a handful of men visible on deck. So, Blackbeard moved in to finish them off.

[00:11:27]He hurled his handmade grenades onto the shattered deck and boarded through the smoke with about 10 of his pirates, ready to cut down whatever survivors were still crawling around. But Blackbeard had just accidentally made the biggest mistake of his life. The deck wasn't empty because everyone aboard had been ended. The deck was empty because the most feared pirate alive had just walked straight into a trap that was set before he even fired a shot. The two sloops were commanded by a Royal Navy lieutenant named Robert Maynard, sent on a privately funded mission by the governor of Virginia, who was so fed up with Blackbeard that he paid to unal alive him out of his own pocket. Maynard was an experienced officer, and he knew that he had no chance at all in winning a straight fight. So, he planned his entire strategy around being underestimated.

[00:12:16]The moment that broadside tore through his ship, Maynard ordered nearly every surviving man to hide below deck with pistols and swords drawn and ready, betting on a single assumption that the most arrogant pirate alive would personally board what looked like a defeated ghost ship. The instant Blackbeard's boots hit the deck, the hold erupted. Maynard's men came pouring up from below, and the pirates suddenly found themselves outnumbered and surrounded in their own ambush. In the chaos, the two commanders found each other and what followed was an actual one-on-one duel. They fired their pistols point blank. Maynard's shot hit, but Blackbeards missed. They drew swords and Blackbeard, a giant of a man, swung so ferociously that he snapped Maynard's blade clean off at the hilt. He reared back to deliver the finishing blow on the defenseless commander. But in that exact instant, one of Maynard's sailors slashed him across the neck from behind.

[00:13:09]When it was finally over and they examined the body of Blackbeard, they found five gunshot wounds and 20 sword cuts. It took 25 separate injuries to put the legend down. Maynard ordered Blackbeard's head removed and hung from the bow spread of his sloop as proof for the bounty, and it was later displayed on a pole in Virginia as a warning to other pirates. Legend even claims that when the headless body was thrown overboard, it swam a few defiant laps around the ship before finally sinking.

[00:13:44]If there's a lesson here, I think it's this. Be very careful about who you mess with in life, because you never know truly who you're dealing with. Or better yet, maybe just don't rob anyone at all.

[00:13:56]Now, go and have yourselves a happy day.