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Locksmiths talking about locksmith stuff
1718. Nassau, Bahamas. Famed pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, uses his fleet of ships to blockade the settlement. Quickly, those in charge of the colony gave up what valuables they had to spare their lives. As Blackbeard and other pirates continued to plunder the Eastern Coast of North America, governors and citizens alike started taking action to protect their money and riches.
Tim Coleman:Little did they know, the Pirates were using the same technology to their advantage.
Tyler J. Thomas:I'm Tyler j Thomas.
Jeff Moss:I'm Jeff Moss.
Tim Coleman:And I'm Tim Coleman. Together, we will explore and discuss these events from the perspective of over thirty years of combined locksmith and door hardware experience. This is The Three Tumblers. Now, Keys to the Caribbean Pirates and Locks. Piracy on the seas has been romanticized by Hollywood and suffered by victims.
Tim Coleman:Illegitimate crews of stolen ships have forced their way onto vessels carrying valuable goods since the start of people exploring the seas. After small raids on merchant ships in the Aegean Sea around thirteen fifty BC, pirates continued to take what was not theirs so they could spend the wealth as they pleased. With the discovery of the New World in the sixteen hundreds, it opened the doors to more opportunities to those looking to make a dishonest living at the cost of others. So most of the crews on these ships had prior sailing experience. They were either former merchants, former military, but they had experience and they were brought together by the pirate captains to go out and basically steal from these other ships.
Tim Coleman:Their knowledge of being a crew set them apart because they answered to no one. After the discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492, The Caribbean became the main hub for exporting spices, sugar, and rum back to Europe. More valuable commodities like gold and silver were also in abundance on ships leaving the ports. English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French ships all sailed from the area loaded with treasures to make the three month journey back to their homes.
Jeff Moss:This sort of reminds me of, in the scene of Goodfellas where they're, you know, stopping the cigarette trucks and the raiding the trucks that had booze and putting money in things and just, you know, everybody, you know, stuff they had never seen before. Sugar and rum was not common in Europe. Gold and silver was pretty rare back then. So if somebody knew that someone had something and they wanted it, they were gonna get it, which doesn't seem much more different than today where somebody has a car that the thieves know that they can easily get it, they're gonna go for it.
Tim Coleman:In the sixteen thirties, the French and English both occupied the island of Tortuga, just off the coast of modern day Haiti. With the Spanish and other parties shipping goods through the Windward Strait, the rulers of England and France decided to raid those ships and take their goods as their own. The age of buccaneering had began. This legalized piracy initially worked well for the countries, but eventually, these privateers decided they could make a lot more money if they didn't have to give up an extra 30% to the government.
Tyler J. Thomas:Buccaneering was initially an early example of what we now call proxy wars, where countries don't necessarily help things directly but they do kind of help things indirectly because it aligns with their interests. You know, things like turning a blind eye to obvious buccaneering ships when they cross paths with you because hey, you know, they're not gonna go after your country's vessels or things like loosely enforcing laws that attract Buccaneers to your ports who in return won't harass the other ships coming in and out of that port. But I said initially because things got direct pretty quick. Jamaica's governor flat out invited Buccaneers to base their ships at Port Royal so that they brought back their plunder to sell and trade in his territory. The Royal Navy eventually started lending officers to buccaneering ships so that they could train them to be better pirates.
Tyler J. Thomas:I mean, of these pirates was so successful that Charles the second knights him when he comes back to Europe. And and the crescendo, I guess, if you wanna call it that, is when the English crown starts licensing buccaneers with letters of marquis, which essentially legalizes their efforts in return for a share of the profits. That's what we just talked about. Years later, the navigation acts left a few colonies in North America and The Caribbean so cash starved that some of the governors started basically underwriting pirate ships to get the coins that they needed to keep things afloat on their end. No pun intended.
Tyler J. Thomas:So trade and foreign policy at the time not only creates the situation but exacerbates it. And since these buccaneers are now going around and stealing everything on ships, countries and companies start working on protecting their ships better and that includes starting to secure their goods on board better.
Tim Coleman:With ships being raided and their bounties plundered, governments and their shipping companies started looking for ways to protect their goods. Contracting blacksmiths in Germany, The Netherlands, and within their own countries, specialized shipping containers were handmade in the form of large chests. These armada chests were reinforced with iron bands in hopes that when pirates raided the ship, they would take only the goods that were easy to carry off.
Tyler J. Thomas:Armada chests are essentially strong boxes and both of which are the forerunner to modern Armada chests show up in the sixteenth century and most were thick wooden boxes reinforced with interwoven iron bands so basically cutting or breaking through them wasn't gonna be easy. Some of the fancier chests were made entirely of wrought iron, so opening them definitely wasn't easy. They were also big, generally around the size of a modern footlocker, and you would expect them to weigh at least a few 100 pounds empty. As we just heard, the hope was that the pirates would go for the easier targets. But even if they wanted the chest, it wasn't gonna be easy.
Tyler J. Thomas:You gotta move that big old chest off the ship, take it to yours, and then take it to somewhere on land to open it up, assuming you had somebody willing and able to help. Because it's not like ships had forges or a bunch of tools on board that would help. Logistically, these chests presented a series of hurdles that you would hope, would deter the pirates just enough to move on. You know, go after the sugar, the tobacco, or whatever else is on board. Leave this alone because it's gonna be a pain in the butt.
Tim Coleman:To lock these chests shut, many had thick hasps that padlocks were secured through. Padlocks were invented in the early fifteen hundreds and came in many different shapes and sizes, and each had a unique key. Some Spanish and French padlocks had double shackles with double locking mechanisms, meaning two keys were needed to unlock them. Other chests had locking mechanisms inside the lids with as many as eight bolts to resist even the strongest scallywags attempts at prying it open.
Jeff Moss:Yeah. So I mean, back in the day, if you were a locksmith, part of your multi year apprenticeship, you would have to make a lock and that was probably a padlock. So a lot, you know, everything back then was one off, custom made stuff by either a blacksmith or locksmith. You know, the concept is the same or the the footprint is the same as what we're used to now, but, you know, they didn't have ball bearings, they didn't have brass or any of the materials really that we have now. So you start to see, you know, things getting mass produced and the pancake style lock was one of the first, which is like a brass body.
Jeff Moss:The key goes in the bottom at an angle and, it's like a single bolt that comes up through the top. And they're, you know, sort of flat, maybe the size of not a actual pancake but like a silver dollar pancake. They have not been made in a very long time but that's a commonly older mass produced lock. You know, everything is factory made. Not really the same, but there are some craftsmen that still make padlocks and then they also have trick locks where you have to have multiple ways to get into it.
Jeff Moss:You have to push something over, to slide something else, to move something else, to then expose the keyway, and you gotta have the key in exactly the right spot. I don't know that those were actually used. I think those are more just for show and tell. But again, there are guys that make those. One guy I know in Germany who makes some fantastic one of a kind trick locks.
Jeff Moss:My friend Bob has some different ones from over the years, different people. You know, this is back when they were true artisan craftsmen. By and large, you don't see that anymore.
Tim Coleman:During a time when the wind was the only means of propulsion for ships at sea, pirate captains knew that speed was their biggest advantage when it came to capturing their targets. Since their ships were usually captured and stolen from others, pirates would strip them down of all unnecessary weight to make them lighter. The ships of trading companies, however, were usually laden with the booty pirates were after and could only go about half as fast. So speed was the goal of pirates. The faster you could get out of there with your loot, the better off you were.
Tim Coleman:You had to have that ship that was lightened up. In other words, all non essential items. Anything that was not required for the operation of that vessel was taken off. All the extra weight was taken off. That allowed the ship to sit higher in the water, thus reducing drag on the hull and getting more speed.
Tim Coleman:The hulls also had to be cleaned. There are things like barnacles and other sea creatures that will grab on and live on the surface of the hulls and they create drag just like you would be worried about with an airplane or anything else of aerodynamics or in this case, aqua dynamics. And also maintaining the condition of the sails was very important. In classic movies, we see people fighting the pirates and they jump onto the sail with the dagger and slice it all the way down. If you were to slice the sail completely apart in a sailing ship of this time, you would essentially be crippling that ship.
Tim Coleman:You you might not completely disable it, but you would make that ship very, very ineffective on the water. These crews were well practiced. They knew how to swab the decks. They knew exactly where to position the rigging and everything else that was required of them at the time because, as we said earlier, they were former sailors of other fleets. Knowing they couldn't outrun their predators, merchant ship captains would make it as difficult as possible to slow down the theft of highly valuable items like gold.
Tim Coleman:Locking these heavy metals inside of a chest that could not easily be broken into would force pirates to choose other goods to steal.
Jeff Moss:Yeah. And, you know, gold and steel are heavy, bulky stuff. Rum is much lighter in weight and more value. Same with sugar, you know, it can be sugar's heavy, but it can be sold at much higher prices and a lot less effort. So, you know, if they know what ships are carrying and it's not gonna be as much work, well, then the obvious thing to do is get the stuff that gives you the most money for the least amount of work and, profit.
Tim Coleman:With the likes of Bartholomew Roberts, Calico Jack Rackham, and Blackbeard all prowling around, governors of the local colonies also started keeping locked chests on land as well. Pirates were well known to raid settlements on the coast under the cover of cannon fire, riding dinnies up to the docks and then returning to their ships with recovered loot.
Tyler J. Thomas:This is right around what historians call the golden age of piracy, which is basically the time between the mid seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Around this time, you had very valuable cargoes being shipped across the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans between Europe and their colonies. India had a tremendous economic output at this time, bigger than all of Europe combined, And they did this namely through silk and calico trades. But there's no powerful navy operating in the Indian Ocean at this time, so it left high value vessels crossing between Europe and India very vulnerable to attack. And as we just heard, it wasn't even limited to just ships at sea.
Tyler J. Thomas:Pirates also engaged in land raids where they basically pull up to a port, ransack, pillage, and or plunder, and then get back out to sea. And some of these ports got hit two, three, five times. One of them even got hit eight different times. So they were hitting these things pretty regularly.
Tim Coleman:Monday, May '1. Captain William Kidd was found guilty of piracy and murder. After capturing the Quita merchant in January 1698 and leading his crew on a trail of pillaging from India to Madagascar to the Caribbean, North Carolina, and New York. His crew mutinied and he was betrayed by his friend, Governor Belamont of New York. Back in England at Wapping's execution Dock, Kidd was hanged, twice.
Tim Coleman:The first time, the rope broke and Kidd survived. The second time, he died within minutes. His body was hung over the River Tames at Tilbury Point as a warning to all pirates for three years. Legends and stories surround Captain Kidd still to this day with rumors of buried treasure that has never been found.
Tyler J. Thomas:The idea that most or even a good number of pirates buried their treasure is based on myth made by authors in Hollywood. You know, people like Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and Robert Louis Stevenson with Treasure Island really paint a different picture of how pirates actually went about their business back then. The Goonies, that's another good example, especially for our generation because it too fed into the idea that pirates were hiding their treasure everywhere. Now that's not to say that pirates didn't go around burying things, they did. But here's where we kinda get into semantics and classifications because archaeologists don't consider buried treasure to be the same thing as a hoard, and they found thousands of hoards.
Tyler J. Thomas:They considered buried treasure to be more of a cultural concept, but not an actual objective. To this point, there's only been one authenticated treasure chest ever and it belonged to a pirate from Rhode Island. But none of that makes for a good story or a legend, so the idea that there's still buried treasure out there exists, and it persists. Oak Island up in Nova Scotia, I mean, they're still digging around there because they think that there's treasure buried underground.
Tim Coleman:Tuesday, 11/22/1718. Commanding the HMS Pearl and two sloops given to him by governor of Virginia Alexander Spotswood, Lieutenant Robert Maynard sailed to Bath, North Carolina. From there, he tracked down the notorious pirate, Edward Teach, just off of Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks. After drinking a glass of liquor, Teach, better known as famed Pirate Blackbeard, shouted to Maynard, damnation seize my soul if I give you quarters or take any from you. A bloody battle ensued, and by the end, Blackbeard's head dangled from the mast of the pearl.
Tim Coleman:Like his predecessor, Blackbeard was also rumored to have buried treasure. While his ship, Queen Anne's Revenge, was discovered off the coast of North Carolina in 1996, there has been no significant treasure discovered at the site to this day. North Carolina is ripe with pirate history. I mean, there's just so much from Blackbeard and all the other pirates who sailed up and down the coast of colonial America. They loved the Outer Banks because there were so many there are still so many little backwater channels, coves, places that you can hide, sounds, islands, everywhere.
Tim Coleman:And I think that that is part of what kind of gives a little bit of fuel to people thinking that there is a buried chest of treasure out there somewhere. But you have to remember, these chests were several 100 pounds by themselves, so it wasn't economical to take that filled with gold and try to carry it off of a ship in a smaller boat that may sink just under that weight itself. But having said that, there have been a number of pirate artifacts artifacts found having along the coast of North Carolina and South Carolina, Virginia, Caribbean, etcetera. And some of those artifacts do include keys, but not really tied to any sort of pirate activity. But that still fuels the rumors.
Tim Coleman:1795, Northern Coast of present day Colombia. French brothers, Jean and Pierre Lafayette, attacked the Spanish city of Cartagena, plundering supplies, goods, and valuables. They also took hostages and demanded ransom for their release. But with more legitimate means of income from the new nation of America, this raid marked the last remnant of the golden age of piracy.
Jeff Moss:Yeah. And, you know, in the more modern days with tariffs and trade agreements and things like that, there really is no need for piracy between other countries because they're just making money importing and exporting. So George Costanza had it right as an importer slash exporter.
Tim Coleman:After The United States declared independence in 1776 and with the end of the war of eighteen twelve, governments began working together to solve issues affecting them all. In August 1790, the Revenue Marine of the United States was formed. Later reformed as the United States Coast Guard, one of its charters was to protect merchant ships in the waterways of The United States from piracy, a mission that it proudly carries out to this day. While the golden age of piracy is long gone, there are still lasting effects from that time. The armada chests were a forerunner of strong boxes, which eventually became modern day safes and protect our money and valuables from theft and fire.
Tim Coleman:Piracy has not disappeared, however. In many waterways today, pirates have taken over vessels for robbery and ransom. Thankfully, technologies like safes, locks, and secure keys have continued to protect the world's goods.
Tyler J. Thomas:Executive producer is Tyler j Thomas. Technical producer is Jeff Moss. Writer and editor is Tim Coleman.
Tim Coleman:For source material, see our website, 3tumblers.com. Get this episode and others wherever you get your podcasts.
Jeff Moss:This has been a Three Tumblers production. Copyright 2024. All rights reserved.