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Dr. Jamie L.H. Goodall is a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C. She is the author of Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars, National Geographic’s Pirates: Shipwrecks, Conquests, and their Lasting Legacy, Pirates and Privateers from Long Island Sound to Delaware Bay, and The Daring Exploits of Black Sam Bellamy: From Cape Cod to the Caribbean. She has a BA in Archeology, an MA in Public History and Museum Studies, both from Appalachian State University, and a PhD in history from Ohio State.
In our conversation we discuss why pirates are seen as so glamorous – the clothes, the swashbuckling, the adventure, the accent. But you won’t be surprised to hear that the life of a pirate was somewhat different to this.
Jamie explains about pirate culture, and the democracies on board ship, the arrangements around compensation, and the famous “Pirate Code.” We hear about the successful pirate, Black Sam Bellamy, AKA the Prince of Pirates, who had a reputation for being a kinder pirate, and how that worked for him.
As you’ll expect from The Sword Guy Podcast, we have a chat about weapons and fighting. What weapons did pirates use? Were they as bloodthirsty as we’ve been led to believe?
We also find out Jamie’s hopes for a biopic of Black Sam Bellamy, and her upcoming book about the taverns, inns and public houses of Virginia.
Transcript
Guy Windsor
I'm here today with Dr Jamie L H Goodall, who is a historian at the US Army Centre of Military History in Washington, DC. She is the author of Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay, From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars; National Geographic's Pirates, Shipwrecks, Conquests and their Lasting Legacy; Pirates and Privateers from Long Island Sound Delaware Bay; and The Daring Exploits of Black Sam Bellamy, from Cape Cod to the Caribbean. She has a BA in Archeology, an MA in Public History and Museum Studies, both from Appalachian State University, and a PhD in history from Ohio State. So without further ado, Jamie, welcome to the show.
Jamie Goodall
Thanks so much for having me.
Guy Windsor
So just whereabouts in the world are you? Let's orient everyone.
Jamie Goodall
So I live in Alexandria, Virginia, but I work in Washington, DC, so I spend a lot of my time just in the Northern Virginia DC area.
Guy Windsor
I've been to the Northern Virginia DC area.
Jamie Goodall
Oh yes. How did you like it? Or did you?
Guy Windsor
Some of it was lovely, and some of it was very much not. But that's pretty much true everywhere you go.
Jamie Goodall
That's fair. Yes, it's quite congested here, lots of traffic.
Guy Windsor
There's an awful lot of cars, an awful lot of roads, but actually, it's one of the few bits of America that seems to have a working public transport system.
Jamie Goodall
It does. It's really nice. I lived briefly in Maryland. I've lived all over the south of the United States, and there's not a lot of really good public transit systems across the nation. So being in an area that has a relatively decent working one has been nice.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. Okay, so pirates is the theme and the topic, and clearly your work tends to focus on pirates. So what is it with pirates? Like everyone seems to be mad about them, there's Pirates of the Caribbean, and there's, you know, pirate costumes, and we're talking about people who stole stuff and murdered people, but somehow they're super glamorous. So how, how did that come about?
Jamie Goodall
It's really interesting. I talked a lot with some of my colleagues about this. What is it that makes them so glamorous? Or, how have we romanticised them so much? And I think a lot of it stems from the time period itself. I mean, obviously, piracy has existed for as long as human beings have navigated open waters and has traded along the oceans. But the Golden Age in the Atlantic world, the pirates that most people are most familiar with, I think there's this idea that they're the underdog. They are down on their luck swashbucklers who are stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. That very Robin Hood-esque mentality, even though that was not necessarily the case. And the altruism, you could debate that all day, but I think the reason why is people are just fascinated by bad people. That's why there's so many serial killer documentaries, right? There's just something fascinating about people who are willing to risk life and limb to hurt others. I don't know why we're fascinated. Maybe it's a sort of morose obsession.
Guy Windsor
The earliest sort of pirate story I could think of about which sort of did that was Treasure Island. Is that the original ‘pirates are actually quite glamorous’ source, do you think?
Jamie Goodall
I think so. It's where we get a lot of our stereotypes about pirates. You know, peg legs, eye patches, parrots. So I do think that Treasure Island and sort of this whimsical, here you've got this young kid who's off on an adventure. And so it makes it seem as though pirate life could be adventurous, despite the fact that in all reality, it was very dangerous, it was very difficult, it was not at all a fun lifestyle to live. But Treasure Island does give us that sort of framework for traditional pirates, I think.
Guy Windsor
And also somehow when you think ‘pirate’, you're thinking that period. Like 1700s where they're wearing these very impractical long coats, all that sort of thing.
Jamie Goodall
Yes, somehow pirates look very different from your average sailor, even though, in reality, that's not at all. They would have looked just like any other sailor. So I think it's just really interesting the ways in which the vision of pirates has developed over the years. Because if you go back to say films from the 1940/50s on pirates, they have this very posh British sound. They have this very glamorous look. They're very clean. And then after the 1950s with Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver and then later Blackbeard, you get a shift to where they're a little more gritty. They've got that West Country exaggerated accent that we come to know as pirate-speak.
Guy Windsor
The “Aaaaarrr”. Like, what the hell is that about?
Jamie Goodall
Yeah, and that's the thing. Pirates were a motley crew. They were from all over the world. They would have all sounded very different, no different than your average sailor.
Guy Windsor
Okay, now we're going to come back to modern ideas of what pirates might have been like, but let's lay a bit of historical groundwork, because you are sort of the pirate historian person. So your PhD examined the ways and I confess I haven't actually read it, which is naughty of me, but there we go. Your PhD examined the ways in which taste making and material culture developed in Caribbean islands via informal commercial networks amongst pirates, of smugglers, merchants, government officials and residents of the 17th and 18th century Atlantic world. So every PhD generally has a research question, what really was your research question and what was its answer?
Jamie Goodall
So I never honestly thought about pirates until the PhD. I wrote a paper in my Master's program comparing Sir Francis Drake and Sir Henry Morgan, and that was my writing sample. And so when I got accepted to the PhD program at Ohio State, the woman who had become my advisor said, have you maybe thought about writing about pirates for your PhD? And I was like, I didn't know that was an option. And so one of the things that I wanted to look into, right? Because at that point, you really have all of the work coming out from Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations. And he really takes a bottom-up approach to looking at piracy. Much more on a social banditry aspect, as opposed to more of the economics. And a lot of his conclusions were basically that pirates represented these proto democratic, egalitarian floating societies, or these floating democracies. And I was intrigued by that because I remember reading so much on Sir Henry Morgan, and the attacks on Panama, and just the vicious, vile nature of a lot of those attacks, the raping and pillaging and burning of cities. And I was like, how do you go from being a proto democratic, floating society to this? Where's the cognitive dissonance? Where is that happening?
Guy Windsor
But were they really proto democratic societies? Or is that a myth?
Jamie Goodall
Well, I think it varied from ship to ship, so I don't think you could say pirates as a whole were those egalitarian democracies, but they were a little more progressive than maybe some of the other groups of people. In some ways, I won't say every way, but some ways, in that every person on board certain ships would have equal shares. They had votes. They would agree on when to attack, what to attack, etc. So in that way, they also practiced matelotage, where individuals on board the ship would enter into an economic arrangement that if something happened to one of them, their partner would get their share of whatever.
Guy Windsor
What was that word?
Jamie Goodall
Matelotage.
Guy Windsor
Okay, yeah, I've never heard that word before in my life.
Jamie Goodall
Yeah, I didn't until I was doing the research for the PhD. I had never heard of that. Some have interpreted those relationships as possibly being same sex. And the thing is, there's no evidence really, one way or the other whether any of those were so I think you can read into that what you will, but for the most part, they were economic arrangements. A lot of pirates had families, and so if something happened to one of them, their partner would take that person's share back to that person's family.
Guy Windsor
Do we have records of that actually happening?
Jamie Goodall
We do, we do. There were a lot of pirates who wrote letters. We have evidence of some pirates whose ships were seized by the Royal Navy. They had chests on board that had correspondence going back and forth between individuals, family members. Daphne Giacopolis has done quite a bit of work with pirate families and the relationships there. Her books are a really great resource for that aspect of things.
Guy Windsor
That sounds like one of those things, which, if a pirate is just a villain, of course they'll say yes, of course mate, if you die, I'll take all your money to your wife and kids. And actually, when they die, and they have a bit of paper saying, yes, give me his share. And they go, oh, I've got more money now. And then we'll just keep it. Because that would be a more piratical thing to do than actually keep your word and deliver the cash to the people who need it,
Jamie Goodall
And that's the thing about pirates, right? They're humans, so some of them probably absolutely kept the other person's share. But if you were willing to enter into that sort of arrangement to begin with, I think there's a level of trust there between those specific individuals. They're complex people, and that was sort of what drove my research for the PhD, was, how were they operating in society? Because obviously we view them as disruptors of society, disruptors of economic transactions, because they're stealing, they're looting. But I wanted to know more about where did these people come from? We have the vision of them as these bachelor swashbucklers that are just either down on their luck or thirsty for adventure, but to have so many of those at the time seemed unlikely. So I wanted to know more.
Guy Windsor
And we should probably distinguish between pirates and people who behave like pirates, but with a letter of Mark.
Jamie Goodall
Correct. So it's a very fine line between piracy and privateering, because privateers operated in much the same way as pirates. They attack ships to in order to steal their goods and then profit from that. The key differences, obviously, there's a lot of legal nuance, which I'm not a legal scholar, so I'm not very good with the supreme technicalities, but I think for most people, it's easiest to just break it down. There's two things in my mind that separate a pirate and a privateer in this time period. Perspective, and that piece of paper, that letter of Mark, or that commission. Because obviously, if you're an Englishman who is attacking the Spanish and you have this letter of Mark from the English government that gives you legal ability to attack the enemy shipping. So in this case, a lot of Anglo Spanish wars, for the English, you are a privateer.
Guy Windsor
So sort of like an adjunct to the Royal Navy, kind of, sort of.
Jamie Goodall
But to the Spanish, they don't recognize the legality of your letter of Mark. To them, you are a pirate, so from their perspective, they would not view you as a privateer, and in many cases, they did not treat you as such. Rather than treating you as a prisoner of war, for example, should you be captured by the Spanish, conducting your privateering, they would charge you as a pirate, and sometimes they would negotiate across governments for the release, like you would a prisoner of war. But in some cases, the Spanish would just hang you as a pirate. They would not bother with the legalities.
Guy Windsor
Fair enough, really. These people are behaving like pirates. If you've captured enemy soldiers who are in uniform, and it's a slightly different thing. But it's kind of standard practice that you can shoot spies. I'm not saying I approve of it. I'm saying it's that sort of standard practice that if somebody is a spy, they are not entitled to the same protections as someone who is a soldier who is serving openly.
Jamie Goodall
And then the problem with letters of Mark, too, is who has the authority to give those letters of Mark, and that changes over time and space. Initially, letters of Mark could only come directly from the Crown, for the English. Later on, you see a lot of colonial governors assuming that their position as governor grants them that authority to issue letters of Mark on their own. And sometimes the Crown would accept that. And then there were times where they're trying to play nice with other nations, and they would not. So it gets really murky.
Guy Windsor
So they become basically deniable. So if it's politically expedient to say yes, absolutely, letter of Mark, privateer, he's one of us. Fine, but having the governor issue that means that they could actually say, Well, no, that doesn't stand up in court at all. Off you go. You're a pirate, and should be hanged like a common pirate. How very, uh, pragmatic.
Jamie Goodall
Governments are very good at trying to cover their own asses, aren't they?
Guy Windsor
Yes, they still are now. They still are now. Okay, so you mentioned Sir Harry Morgan. I mean, he has a knighthood. One assumes he's a privateer, not a pirate, correct? Okay, so he was a good enough privateer that he was knighted for his privateering.
Jamie Goodall
Yes. So both Drake and Morgan, coming from this background of you've got the English who are trying desperately to catch up to the Spanish and the Portuguese, who have a basically a century head start on colonisation, and the English realized very quickly, how are we best going to catch up to that? Well privateers make for good recruits. The thing about Morgan especially though, is that a lot of his actions were undertaken, it's more rather than ask for permission, you seek forgiveness. And I think that that played in his favour, the fact that he brought in so much money certainly played in his favour. And I think the knighting of men like Morgan was also about placating people, because Morgan becomes Governor of Jamaica at one point, and you've got people on the ground who are supportive of individuals like Morgan who are protecting the islands when the Royal Navy fails to do so. They are providing goods and services that maybe the islands are lacking because, again, the English government, or the British government is not providing and so rather than risk uprising, or revolution, they hold these individuals up to a higher standard and placate the masses, I think, if you will.
Guy Windsor
I would think that if I was an ordinary English peasant living near the coast, I would be more frightened of the Royal Navy than I would be of pirates, because pirates are unlikely to steal me and make me work on their ships for 20 years, whereas the Royal Navy did that sort of thing all the time.
Jamie Goodall
Yes. I mean, there were some pirate crews or captains who I think probably had that experience. A lot of pirates came from the Merchant Marines or from the Royal Navy. They experienced that brutality. They experienced the impressment into service, and so I think sometimes they replicated that with their own crews. But by and large, it was for pirates, at least, it was a join if you want, unless they've attacked your ship, in which case, sometimes it was join or die.
Guy Windsor
Or it would be just die because we're full.
Jamie Goodall
Well, they could. The thing about pirate life is it so short. Most pirates do one or two ventures, and they retire because it's such a difficult lifestyle. It's not a career for them. It's not something that they're looking to make into a lifestyle. So your turnaround of crews was quite high.
Guy Windsor
That's interesting, because, again, to my mind, that counts as common perception. A pirate is a pirate is a pirate. No, a pirate is a temporary job you do to hopefully make a bucket load of money and then quit.
Jamie Goodall
Absolutely, absolutely.
Guy Windsor
So, okay, I have a question which every fan of The Princess Bride will, right now, have in the top of their mind, okay, the Dread Pirate Roberts. Yes, he wasn't actually the Dread Pirate Roberts at all. The title just passed down from one person to another. And so they could do it for a couple of years and then retire. Is there any actual record of that happening?
Jamie Goodall
Not that I am aware of. The vast majority of pirate captains who ended up with nicknames like Blackbeard. They were names that were bestowed for specific reasons, specific purposes. For Blackbeard, for example, this was just part of his persona. We don't actually have any records until his final battle, that Blackbeard ever killed anybody, but he was able to build a reputation around his physical image and his nickname as a means of setting the stage. Because if you could terrify people in advance, it made it that much more likely they're going to surrender to you and not fight back. But most pirates they just went by their names. And some of them didn't even get nicknames till later, like Black Sam Bellamy. There's no record of Sam Bellamy ever being referred to as Black Sam in the historical record until Captain Charles Johnson's book, these pseudo biographies of pirates came out in 1724.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so who was Black Sam Bellamy?
Jamie Goodall
So Black Sam Bellamy, the first official records we have of him is when he shows up in Massachusetts in 1714, 1715. He was an individual who, by best estimates, based on other records came from the West Country of England, which was a very popular hotspot for producing pirates because of the maritime nature of their economic system. That also happens to be a region where a lot of the precursors to Golden Age pirates, the Elizabethan Sea Dogs, a lot of those individuals came from that region, and so the best guess is he was a sailor. May have either willingly or was pressed into service as a teen or very young child into the Royal Navy during the War of Spanish Secession. But he shows up in Massachusetts seeking fortune. There's been lots of tales of shipwrecks from the Spanish trying to leave South America to head back with their bucket loads, boatloads, literally, of silver. And he wants to try his hand at that. And he meets up with an individual, Paulsgrave Williams, who has money, because he comes from a family of silversmiths and merchants. Black Sam Bellamy has experience as a sailor. The two of them say, hey, your brains my money. We could certainly clean up these wrecks. And of course, in 1715 the very major wreck of two plus Spanish treasure ships off the coast of Florida, happens because the Spanish, despite the fact that they learned very early on how to protect their ships from pirates, do not know how to protect themselves from hurricanes. They're very bad at that. So they go down there. That's where they're going to make their fortune. And unfortunately, that didn't work out for them, because the Spanish very quickly set up a perimeter and are trying to get all of their silver back up off the ocean floor.
Guy Windsor
So they knew where the shipwrecks were, and they were doing literally, like raising it up. How on earth did they do that before scuba equipment?
Jamie Goodall
There is proto scuba equipment at this point, because diving is a really popular thing. Now, it was very difficult in deeper waters, but we're talking about an area that is more on the shallow end. It's right off the Keys. But there were these dive bells I think they were called, but basically a bucket.
Guy Windsor
They had dive bells already. So they were using dive bells to get the silver up. Wow.
Jamie Goodall
They were also using fishing scoops. So for example, oyster fishermen would use what was called dredging to scoop up large groups of oysters, which was terrible for the oyster industry. But that same concept could be applied to trying to salvage coinage and small bits off the ocean floor in areas where it's not that deep. So they're using kind of the same scooping mechanism, just scoop up, get all the sand up. It doesn't matter, you'll sift it later,
Guy Windsor
Oh, I see. So they're basically digging up the ocean floor and taking it all up and then sorting it out. Wow. I had no idea that sort of thing went back that far in history.
Jamie Goodall
I'll have to find it, I can't think of the title off the top of my head, but there's a really great article about so Bermudians have developed a really strong reputation of being salvage divers in the 19th century. But this article gets into the history of how they developed that proclivity and where a lot of the early tech comes from that will later become more modern diving equipment. I'll have to find that and send that to you, because it's really fascinating.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. Thank you. Yes, we'll put it in the show notes. So Black Sam Bellamy, he goes and has a go at this silver but can't get at it because the Spanish are already there. So what does he do next?
Jamie Goodall
So he ends up running into some pirates from the Caribbean at this point, the Flying Gang, as they were called, and you've got individuals like Captain Hornigold, and they're really impressed with Bellamy's moxie, like just his drive, and they kind of take him under their wing, and Bellamy learns the ropes of pirating before he and Paulsgrave Williams go off on their own. They are pretty successful. At one point, I think they even they stab their fellow brethren in the back, stealing their ship.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. That's piratical.
Jamie Goodall
And Bellamy ends up with a multi ship crew. He's got sort of a little flotilla going on, and he develops a reputation. He's the one who becomes known as the Prince of Pirates. He also gets that Robin Hood moniker, just because of the fact that he, by all accounts, those he's attacked, they say, look, this guy actually like they treated us relatively well. Certainly they attacked us and stole our stuff, or the stuff we were hauling for somebody else. But they did not kill us. Some of the crew, they drank together and commiserated about life at sea. And so he develops this kind of reputation of being a kinder pirate, which I think played in his favour, so that when he did attack, people were more like, oh, you know what? You're a good guy.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, there's, there's a balance to be struck between you don't want to fight this guy, because if you do, things will go very badly, but if you do surrender, you'll actually be treated well. If you surrender and you're going to get killed anyway, you might as well fight, because there's some chance of survival.
Jamie Goodall
And that's the dance for most pirates, right? Is you want to be fearsome enough that you've put the fear of God in people, but you want to have a reputation for clemency so that people are more likely to say, you know what, especially because a lot of times this isn't their stuff. Why risk their lives for somebody else's profit?
Guy Windsor
That’s a good point. So what happened to him in the end?
Jamie Goodall
So at one point, he and his little flotilla attack the Whydah, which was a slaving vessel. It was on its way back from a very profitable slaving voyage. It was heading back to England when Bellamy and his crew attacked. They managed to hold onto this ship. It becomes Bellamy's flagship now, and it's one of the more interesting, because most of the time, pirates preferred vessels that were smaller because they were faster and more manoeuvrable. It was better for escape. You wanted to be able to hit and run. So this is obviously a much different vessel than the traditional pirate vessel, just because this is a larger ship. It is designed to hold hundreds upon hundreds of enslaved Africans and the goods that they would then traffic from the coast of Africa. But it's an interesting construction, so they decide they've got this ship now. They're doing pretty well. They, Paulsgrave Williams and Bellamy, decide they want to make their way back to the Massachusetts area. They want to see family. Well, Williams does. Bellamy doesn't have any family there, but the legend is that Bellamy has a beloved in Massachusetts waiting for him, Maria Hallett, and that he's going to go visit her. Williams is going to go visit his family. But as they make their way back to the New England region, they hit a terrible nor'easter. This storm comes out of nowhere, and despite their best efforts of staying together and everything, they lose all sight of how close they are to the coast, how shallow or deep the water is. Everything gets crazy, and unfortunately, Paulsgrave Williams has stopped off to visit family, but Bellamy and a couple of the other ships continue on. They hit this nor'easter, and they are wrecked. Off the coast of Cape Cod. Their ship is completely destroyed. The vast majority of the crew of the Whydah perishes, including Bellamy himself, bodies are washing up on the shore. People are freaking out. And there were, I think, three survivors, maybe, who managed to make it to shore rather than drowning.
Guy Windsor
Three out of about how many?
Jamie Goodall
150 plus, I want to say. It was quite a number of people who died. Those individuals were arrested and transported, I want to say, back to England to await trial for pirating. But Bellamy, unfortunately did not survive. The legend goes that his beloved Maria Hallett, if she existed, was so devastated by the loss that she becomes the Witch of Wellfleet. She kind of goes mad.
Guy Windsor
That puts an interesting complexion on things. I mean, you'd think there'd be a legend about actually, he survived with a great big chest of gold, and she's sloped off, and they are on some desert island somewhere, having a nice time.
Jamie Goodall
Some people did believe that Bellamy did run off, but just didn't take Maria with him.
Guy Windsor
But that would be worse.
Jamie Goodall
I think he perished, and the Whydah is so far the only confirmed pirate ship to be excavated, to have been found and excavated in Maritime archeology. Barry Clifford and his crew found the Whydah. They've spent the last several decades going back to the site. They've retrieved, I think so far, the bell of the ship and anchor. They've found a shoe which speaks to the truth of a young boy on board, John King, said to be the youngest pirate of all time. I think he was nine or 10 years old, allegedly. And if this shoe is part of that, then, wow. They found lots of gold. There's lots of gold coins. The Whydah Museum has, I think, is open in Cape Cod. And you can go there and see the materials they've excavated so far. And Barry Clifford's son is also a maritime archeologist now, and he is continuing his father's work on the Whydah.
Guy Windsor
That's super cool. Have you ever been to the Varsa Museum in Stockholm?
Jamie Goodall
I have not unfortunately.
Guy Windsor
Oh, my God, you would love it.
Jamie Goodall
I want to go to Stockholm so bad. Yeah, you
Guy Windsor
walk in at ground level, and you are at keel level of this gigantic early 17th century ship. It's just unbelievable. It's right there, and you can almost reach out and touch it. And the restoration job, they've done on it, the preservation, rather than restoration, absolutely incredible. It is totally worth going. Just go to Stockholm just to go to the Varsa. I mean, there's a bunch of cool stuff in Stockholm. I like Stockholm. It's a really nice city, but the Varsa is to me, like the crown jewels of that particular city. And you are a little bit interested in maritime history. It's stunning. And I'm almost speechless, which is unusual for me. Have you been to HMS Victory?
Jamie Goodall
Yes.
Guy Windsor
Oh, good. Okay, so that's maybe even better, because you can actually get on it.
Jamie Goodall
So I got to be a visiting scholar at the University of Essex for a little while. And while I was there, my host took me to a bunch of maritime sites across the area, and that was one of our stops. To see HMS Victory, and I was just in awe.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, it's an incredible thing. And it's tiny. I mean, it's a big ship for its time, but it's really not very big. Put it up against a modern warship, and it's barely a jolly boat.
Jamie Goodall
I know, that's been one of the most fascinating things for me, is getting to visit historical ships, historical wooden sailing vessels, compared to my dad was in the Navy when I was a child, and one of his last ships that he was on was an aircraft carrier. Being on that in comparison, and you're like, this is a floating city. This is a massive ship.
Guy Windsor
It’s a floating airport. It is incredible.
Jamie Goodall
And when you're seven, eight years old, it's even bigger, because you’re very tiny skinned. You've never had skinned knees until you've tripped on the tarmac of an aircraft carrier.
Guy Windsor
Well, it has to be super grippy.
Jamie Goodall
Well, you know, you don't want the planes landing and
Guy Windsor
sliding off. Yeah.
Jamie Goodall
Could be a problem, I think.
Guy Windsor
I once met a bloke whose naval career was, he was the guy who set up the catch ropes that the fighter hook catches on to decelerate them when they land. He had happened to live next door for like 30 years to one of my best friends. And I happened to meet him in the yard. We got chatting and I asked him what he had done in the Navy, because he was wearing a navy cap or something, so I could tell he’d been serving. So what have you been up to? He was like, well, you know, on aircraft carriers, you know that rope? That was my job. It's so specific, but if you don't get it right, you lose a $100 million aircraft and two very expensive, highly trained people, at least.
Jamie Goodall
Yeah, that would be a bad day for you on the job if you screwed that up.
Guy Windsor
So HMS Victory a lot smaller than a modern aircraft carrier. Okay, so speaking of naval vessels and whatnot, do we know anything about the how pirates actually fought?
Jamie Goodall
We do. Again, a lot of these individuals are coming from a background where they've been on Royal Naval vessels or merchant marine ships, and so they've had a lot of that tactical training that they carry on to the pirate ships. Now, in terms of if fighting did break out, again, we've sort of talked about how it was in the best interests of all involved if there was no fighting, because you don't want to lose any member of your crew. You don't want to risk injury.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, it's like if you get mugged, the thing to do is you hand over your watch in your wallet. It's just not worth getting hurt over.
Jamie Goodall
But pirates, they had a very wide array of weapons that they would carry with them. Many of their ships had cannons so that they could fire warning shots. It was in their best interests.
Guy Windsor
You have to have cannon. All the merchant ships had cannons. So if your ship doesn't have cannon, you can threaten to come alongside whoever. They'll just blow you out the water.
Jamie Goodall
Most pirates, they're not shooting at the ship itself. If they get into attacks, they’re shooting at the sails, because you really don't want to risk damage to the ship, because if you damage the ship you're attacking, then you risk damage to the goods that you're trying to steal.
Guy Windsor
It's basically like knocking out the engine on a on a car. If you take out the sails, they can't manoeuvre. They can't they're dead in the water. They can't really do much, except hopefully their guns are pointing the right direction and they can shoot. That's it.
Jamie Goodall
Yeah. So if they've come on board and they're attacking you, they would have their cutlasses and some knives, but they preferred to use their pistols. Blunder busses were very popular. They had their rifles. Obviously, they would use them to shoot people if necessary, but they tended to use them a lot as, almost like hammers. They would use the butt of the gun a lot to inflict injury, because if you're using the butt of the gun to inflict injury, you're injuring the person, less likely to kill them than if you've shot them. You also are not risking your hands, your physical hands to punch them. You're able to reduce the risk of injury to yourself. So that's sort of their modus.
Guy Windsor
Okay, my grandfather was a doctor and a very interesting bloke. He did fencing and archery and stuff like that. And when I was a kid playing with cap pistols and whatnot, he told me that the way you see people knock each other out by whacking them with the butt of the gun is a daft thing to do with a gun. It's much better to hit them with the barrel. But it strikes me that on board a ship, they've got things like Marlin spikes and sticks of all sorts and sizes. So why are they using an expensive and delicate and you know, if you're holding it by the barrel and you're hitting them with the butt if it's loaded, there's not an insignificant chance it might go off and it's pointing at you when it does it. It does seem like an odd thing to do.
Jamie Goodall
If they're using their rifles, they're definitely shooting the person. It’s their pistols that they're more often than not using the butt of the gun in hand to hand combat, and it's usually because they've gotten too close to the person. But for a lot of them, these aren't expensive, because they're stealing them. They’re stealing their weapons. So if something happens to it, they just steal somebody else's. But again, for the most part, it's better to try to subdue the people as opposed to killing them, because a lot of times you need to interrogate them to find out, because there are a lot of hidden compartments on ships for certain things, and so you want to interrogate to find out where everything is. So it's not good to shoot, because if you shoot first, you don't really get to ask questions later, usually. And they've got axes and other weapons. Any weapon or any tool that you would have on board a typical ship, right? So axes are very good for cutting ropes and breaking up wood, what have you, cargo crates. Anything they could get their hands on would become a weapon, honestly. So I think it's the least likely is that they're using their guns for their hand-to-hand combat, but it's there if they need to. They're using, like you said, there's sticks and all sorts of things on board that they can use. But they really try to minimize hand-to-hand combat.
Guy Windsor
Well, you would, because it's risky.
Jamie Goodall
I mean, at least for a pirate, many pirate ships had what amounts to workman's compensation, which is very different than if you were in the Royal Navy or elsewhere. So at least you had that.
Guy Windsor
Hang on. So if they were injured in the line of sort of duty, there was a compensation scheme for them?
Jamie Goodall
There was, and it varied from ship to ship, of course.
Guy Windsor
And you didn’t get that in the Navy?
Jamie Goodall
I mean, the Navy might have said that they had that, but the Navy was very good at withholding pay, withholding rations, so if they didn't have to pay out. They're going to find every reason not to.
Guy Windsor
So if you’re injured you're better off being a pirate than a legitimate sailor.
Jamie Goodall
Yeah, because what they would do is because once you're injured as a pirate, depending on your injury, you're no longer really useful on the ship, right? And so they basically it's a payout of you've done your service. Thanks for your time. Here's a payout. Now go and retire.
Guy Windsor
Okay, yeah, someone should have told Nelson that when he lost his eye. Okay, you mentioned the term ‘pirate code’. All right. Again, that's one of those things where there's all sorts of romantic crap about the pirate code in the modern consciousness. So what actually was it? How was it codified? And how do we know what it was?
Jamie Goodall
So aside from the so-called Brethren of the Coast, which was a very loose coalition of pirates during the later part of the Golden Age, there was no standard code for pirates by and large. Aside from it's best not to attack each other, like work with us, not against us, sort of thing. Aside from that, there was no real code. But each ship, by and large, would have their own individual codes, and this is where they would agree upon as a crew. And so a ship could have multiple codes as the crew changes, but the code would be things like, based on this role, this is your share, or do you want to do equal shares regardless. A lot of ships would vote on their captain, and the captain would really be captain only in name, just to have a centrepiece, a unifying piece.
Guy Windsor
But how for sailing, you have to have somebody in charge.
Jamie Goodall
Yes, the thing about a lot of these captains, though, is everybody would vote. And on a lot of these ships, they would vote on who to attack, when to attack, where to sail, and so the captain really was there as a guide to say, this is what we've agreed upon, trying to keep order. They would typically only be sort of ruling during battle, during some sort of a conflict, because you would need that sort of organising force, but because so many pirates wanted to operate in this equal realm, they all viewed themselves as equals. It was hard to have a hierarchy on a ship the way that many traditional sailors would. You still had on a lot of these ships, different roles, which on another ship might be considered a hierarchy, but a lot of this hierarchy is sort of in name only for a lot of pirates. That's not true of every pirate ship, because you have ships like Blackbeard’s ship where he is captain and he is ruling with an iron fist, and so again, I think a lot of that is people mimicking what they've learned and replicating that on their pirate ships. But the codes would also have things like whether or not matelotage agreements were allowed. It would have things like shore leave. You know, if you don't return to the ship, if you want out of your role, this, that and the other. So it's all different kinds of rules. And we have a few codes survive.
Guy Windsor
Were they written down?
Jamie Goodall
Some of them. A lot of this is verbal, but plausible, because plausible deniability is very important. If you're a pirate, you don't want to have various records of your pirating, but some did, and we have a few that show up in the court records. That's how we know they existed. Because there were a couple of crews that were captured, and as part of that capture, they found it among various papers.
Guy Windsor
So it’s mentioned in the court records. Do we actually have the documents themselves?
Jamie Goodall
I don't know if we have any surviving copies. I think we just have the transcription of that in the court records. I could be wrong, but I have not seen a physical copy.
Guy Windsor
That would be so cool. You'd have to have a facsimile, and you’d stick it up on your wall, and that'd be like, this is the pirate code. This is what we're going to do.
Jamie Goodall
When I was a full time professor, one of the classes I got to teach was Pirates of the Atlantic. And so what we did as a class was I am the captain. You are the crew. Everybody came up with a pirate name for themselves.
Guy Windsor
I want to go to your university. That sounds like a lot more fun than mine.
Jamie Goodall
And we had a ship's code, which was basically a classroom code of conduct, how we wanted to treat each other, et cetera. The students got together in groups and designed flags, and then they voted on which flag they wanted to represent our class. And then they came up with a ship name.
Guy Windsor
What was the ship name?
Jamie Goodall
Oh, I would have to find it again. I actually have a picture of the flag that they came up with somewhere, but I'll have to look it up, because it was wild. And I remember, they wanted to vote on my pirate name. And I was like, I already have one.
Guy Windsor
Okay. Okay, hang on. What is your pirate name, Jamie?
Jamie Goodall
My pirate name is Torienne.
Guy Windsor
Ah, okay, that was going to be my next question, who is Torienne?
Jamie Goodall
This came about because I met some people at the Maryland Renaissance Festival one year. I used to go a lot, and I go every year now to sign books, but I met some people there. They were part of what they called the Mari Nostrum, it was just a little group that they would all hang out at the festival on the weekends. And so they had the ship's tailor. She would design costumes for people. She was a seamstress in her day job. So when they met me, they said, well, you're a scholar, you will be the ship's scholar. And I was thinking, okay, how do I come up with a good pirate name that sort of speaks to being the ship's scholar? And my social media handle is La Historienne, French for the historian, and I was obsessed with Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. So I combined la Historienne and Tyrion, and came up with Torienne because I drink and I know things. And that became my pirate name.
Guy Windsor
Tyrion Lannister is the dwarf, right? The actually interesting one.
Jamie Goodall
I mean, the only Lannister really worth talking about.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I don't have a lot of time for a swordsman who is so incredibly right handed that when he loses his right hand he can’t fight at all with the left. That's like, no, I'm sorry, no. Like, sure enough, you'd be better one hand than the other but you should be able to pick it up with the other hand. That was silly. That was silly. Bad Mr. Martin. Okay, so does Torienne get to come out and play very much?
Jamie Goodall
Well, every year at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, I go out to sign books during pirate weekend. So as part of being in the author's tent at the festival for Page after Page Books, you are an employee of the festival for the day, and so you have to be in costume. And so, yeah, I become Torienne when I'm there to sign books. And I mean, I would love to be able to go more frequently, but now that we've moved out of Maryland and into Virginia, it does make it a little more difficult to get up there. It's a little bit of a hike, but it's still fun to play sometimes.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. Okay, now I have a couple of questions that I ask all my guests, and the first is, what is the best idea you haven't acted on yet?
Jamie Goodall
Okay, so working for the Army as a historian, I don't get to do a lot of pirate stuff in my day job, unfortunately, but I was working on a manuscript on the history of the Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. That's a mouthful, and it is as boring as it sounds.
Guy Windsor
So that's the work you do for the army?
Jamie Goodall
Yes, that's part of the work. And so I was doing that, and part of the OAA, they run what is called the civilian aids to the Secretary of the Army, the CASAS program, which are civilians across the United States who represent their constituents in various states. One of those civilian aids happens to be, and I believe he still is, a civilian aid, Sean Astin of Goonies fame, of Lord of the Rings, Samwise Gamgee fame. And because I was writing the OAA history, I got invited to their event one day where the CASAS were going to be. Had no idea, because it's just open, if CASAS want to come or not. Did not know he was going to be there. He was there. I met Sean Astin. Nearly pissed myself, because I love Sean Astin, and he asked me about what I like to do outside of work. And I told him about my pirate books, and he said, we should do a Sam Bellamy biopic. We should do something like that. And I said I have dreamed of taking my research, taking my work, and making it into something, not just like a documentary, but like something cool, and that would be amazing. So that's my idea that I haven't acted on yet. I have emailed Mr. Astin. He did give me his email address, so I am awaiting word back to see if he will help me. Because I assume trying to make a movie requires a lot of money.
Guy Windsor
And it helps if there's a star already attached to the product.
Jamie Goodall
Yes. And so my idea that I haven't acted on yet is to make a Black Sam Bellamy biopic.
Guy Windsor
Wow. So what's the first step of that, writing the screenplay?
Jamie Goodall
The first step is to, what do they call it? It's a one pager, but it's just a summary of what I envision the biopic being, to get screenwriters, etc, on board. So, if that comes to fruition, then the next step would be writing a screenplay, getting the basics and everything. I've never made a movie, so I imagine there's a million other steps in between those two things, but yeah, so we'll see.
Guy Windsor
So why haven't you written the treatment yet?
Jamie Goodall
I've drafted it. I think I'm just I'm terrified. So I have ADHD. I have rejection sensitive dysphoria to the max. I have imposter syndrome like you wouldn't believe. So I think I'm just terrified that somebody's going to read it and be like, that is a really shit idea. What are you thinking? You're a terrible pirate historian. That's why I haven't done anything with it yet.
Guy Windsor
You know you got a PhD in this stuff, right? Honestly, one of the reasons I got a PhD in recreating historical combat systems was because I wasn't really sure whether my academic work was up to scratch. And this was one way that I would actually get proper professional academics to actually have a really detailed look at what I was doing and go, oh, that's good, or that's not so good, or whatever. And yes, I failed my first viva because the work wasn't up to scratch. But that was not unexpected. But so it worked. But after that, you can't really go well, I don't really know the academic stuff. So no one can reasonably say you don't know your pirate stuff. No one can reasonably say that. Sam Bellamy, do you really know anything about him? Jamie, I mean, really? Doesn't that bloke on the internet who's watched a couple of pirate movies know a bit more about it than you do? He certainly thinks he does.
Jamie Goodall
Yes. I think social media has also not helped, because on the one hand, you have people who are like, absolutely, you're the expert. But you do have so many of those individuals who will come out of the woodwork. And I think part of it too is when I wrote an op ed, when Made By History was still part of the Washington Post. It's not very often that I get to write on current events because of my historical specialty. I don't do politics, which you can make all these comparisons, etc. But I think it was 2019, or early 2020, when Tampa Bay Buccaneers were in the Super Bowl, and I was like, oh shit, I have the ability now to bring history to current events.
Guy Windsor
So what actually are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?
Jamie Goodall
I gave a very basic history of how Tampa Bay came to be associated with buccaneering, the history of pirates, you know, calling into question our romanticisation of them. I never said anything bad. I never said that the Buccaneers should change their name. I'm sorry, pirates and buccaneers are not a protected marginalised class of people. So never said any of that, but the editors gave it a pretty contentious title, I would say, a title meant to sort of draw people's attention, but it ended up being in a very negative way, to the point that I was receiving death threats, rape threats for the article. Somebody sent me a screenshot on Snapchat. I ended up on the Daily Mail's news thing on Snapchat, all over the Daily Mail, people seeing my pirate tattoo and saying, oh, you're just a hypocrite, etc. And so I think a lot of that has made me a little trepidatious when it comes to some of the more public stuff, sometimes.
Guy Windsor
Bit gun shy.
Jamie Goodall
A little bit. I think that, that experience, I mean, you know, it's a little terrifying.
Guy Windsor
Absolutely. But then your treatment thing isn't a public document, it just goes out to potential filmmakers, or you would probably start with Sean.
Jamie Goodall
I did, and I have sent it to him. I am waiting.
Guy Windsor
And he knows and he knows that you're not an idiot because he actually gave you his email address,
Jamie Goodall
yes, which is still surreal, still, yeah.
Guy Windsor
These famous people. They're just people like anyone else, and they need friends like anyone else. They just have to be a bit more careful as to putting their email address on the internet would be a really bad idea.
Jamie Goodall
Yeah, I could see that would be a problem. There's a lot of interesting people out there.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, huh? So, you've actually acted on the idea. You've produced the treatment, and you sent it off to someone who is capable of seriously helping you get it made.
Jamie Goodall
Yes. Nothing's happened, so I feel like I haven't really acted yet.
Guy Windsor
Well, I look at it the other way around, like, if there's something I want to happen and that I have a part to play in that, if I want a particular book to be out, I write the book, and I published a book, and I basically did all myself. But that's that. That's not the same process for every sort of project, every sort of thing, if you've done the bit you can do, and it's now out there in and it's in other people's court, you've done it, you've acted on it, you've done the thing. And, yeah, I mean, if you don't hear back in a while, at some point you may need to chase a little bit or whatever. It's not like it's over, but right, you completed the step you're able to complete. The thing that's under your control, you've actually done.
Jamie Goodall
Well, I don't have any other really brilliant ideas.
Guy Windsor
I don't mean, so could you please come up with something else you’d like to have done. I mean, it's like you have the imposter syndrome and you have the fear of rejection, all that sort of stuff, but you still actually went and did the thing.
Jamie Goodall
Yes, that's true.
Guy Windsor
So, I think you should be giving yourself more props for that than you actually are.
Jamie Goodall
Thank you.
Guy Windsor
You're very welcome. Okay, my last question, now you're sort of in the business of making history available to people, right? And if somebody gave you access to a large pirate chest full of cash to spend improving historical understanding worldwide. How would you spend the money?
Jamie Goodall
For me, I would love to have the ability, have the time, so this money would help with that, to do more public facing things. I've always wanted to have a YouTube channel that I could actually pour time into. I don't have that ability at this point, because there's so much that goes into it. You don't just record the videos. There's so much that goes into having a successful YouTube channel, I should say. So I would love to have more public facing opportunities like that, to reach more people, to put lectures on, to get to interview really cool people who are doing historical things.
Guy Windsor
Well, top tip then, do a podcast.
Jamie Goodall
I had a podcast, Uncorked History with Kelly Pollack. Unfortunately, she does so much. She does so many podcasts. Her most popular one is Unsung History, and so she really wanted to pour more time back into her main work. And so I'm looking at possibly reviving Uncorked History, but just need another co-host that can help me out with it. I just don't have the ability to run it by myself.
Guy Windsor
Okay, what's, what's stopping you from running it by yourself?
Jamie Goodall
Mostly time. It helps me to have a co-host that can help me with the legwork of getting the podcast show notes, the backgrounds and all of that stuff, because work that goes into it, you don't just sit and record with somebody, as you well know.
Guy Windsor
You definitely don't just sit and record with someone. The 90 minutes or so you spend recording is the fun bit, and there's like, three times that much work around it. Finding the people, contacting the people arranging the meetings, getting the transcriptions and show notes and images and all that stuff done. All of the grunt stuff, like show notes and transcriptions and all that sort of stuff, my assistant does that for me, because if I did it on my own, I would have quit ages ago, because it's just not the sort of thing I'm good at. But I find the people or sometimes people recommend them. I find people, and then I approach them. Every now and then I do get approached by somebody's assistant to do some project or something with them. And that always strikes me as a bit tacky. I do that myself always, but anything that can reasonably be outsourced, I've outsourced because otherwise, yeah, it's just too much work. But it's less work than video, because creating audio is a lot easier, and the whole video thing, like YouTube, has become really difficult. If you look at all the successful YouTube channels, the production values are insane. I mean, they even do these special like thumbnail things, so that their video looks like it's going to be super amazing, and explosions and whatnot. And back in the old days, you just took a random frame from the video, and that was fine, and nobody cared. But now you have to stand out. And of course, when everybody is shouting like that, it's very difficult to stand out through production values, because they're so high everywhere. So also, I don't like YouTube as a platform at all. It's a cess pool.
Jamie Goodall
I used to watch a lot of YouTube videos, and I have not really been on YouTube that frequently in the last several years, just because, I do think the algorithms are really terrible, the way things get promoted.
Guy Windsor
And also the comments I mean, you'd have to turn comments off everywhere, because otherwise, yeah, it's just horrific, I mean, and that's how I know that I'm crap at my job, is because arseholes on YouTube have said so. Clearly their opinion is much more valuable than the opinion of the people who actually pay me to do my work. Come on. Okay, so if you have this bucket of cash, so you would use it for creating a podcast or a YouTube channel?
Jamie Goodall
Yeah, creating public facing content, and whatever platform that that might work best on, I have no idea, but it would be having the money to be able to take the time to do that.
Guy Windsor
Hopefully will sort of tie in with sort of selling books and whatnot. Because, I mean, hopefully people listening to this show will go out and buy all of your books straight away.
Jamie Goodall
That would be lovely and happen to buy my books, they are welcome to reach out to me, and I will send them a free signed book plate sticker for their copy.
Guy Windsor
Well, there we go.
Jamie Goodall
I also have bookmarks if they want them,
Guy Windsor
And if they're difficult to find online, people can always send it to me, and I'll happily forward emails to you because all the listeners know my email address, so they can send it to me and I'll send it on no problem. Okay, so free book plates, that's a nice idea. I've sent them out to some people who've bought some things who buy from me directly. I've sometimes sent those out, and people seem to like them. You don't publish your books yourself though, do you?
Jamie Goodall
No. The books I've published so far, the three main books, have been through the History Press. I actually have a fourth book with them that I'm working on right now. It's called, tentatively, right now, it's A Spirited History of the Taverns, Inns and Public Houses of Virginia. It will still feature pirates. Pirates will still be featured, but it's going to be focusing on alcohol consumption and drinking spaces as forms of socialisation and economic exchange, etc, etc, so and it's going to cover the history of these spaces in Virginia, from the colonial era to the modern day.
Guy Windsor
So, basically a history of boozing.
Jamie Goodall
Yes.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. Are you familiar with a book called The History of Drunkenness?
Jamie Goodall
I am. It's actually on my shelf right now.
Guy Windsor
Mark Forsyth. Excellent book. He happens to be very good friends with my sister, so I actually know him socially. And he's so anytime he has a book out, my sister gives me a copy of it for next birthday or Christmas or something. So I have a reliable supply of Mark Forsyth books. And that one was fascinating. Just how far back it goes that people will go to extraordinary lengths to get shit faced. Interestingly, your podcast, The Uncorked History, I noticed when I just flicked through the web page that you mentioned what you're drinking in every in every episode. Yep, so what are you drinking now?
Jamie Goodall
Right now, I'm being a basic girl drinking some pumpkin spice coffee.
Guy Windsor
Okay? Because it is for you like, about 10 past 10 in the morning.
Jamie Goodall
It's 11:10.
Guy Windsor
That's pretty close to wine o'clock, actually.
Jamie Goodall
We’re getting there. I’ve got it on standby.
Guy Windsor
So what made you decide to do a book on like pubs and drinking culture?
Jamie Goodall
One of the chapters in my dissertation was on pirates and taverns. And I really wanted to explore more of that. I felt like it was one of the better dissertation chapters I had. And living in Virginia now. I was born in Virginia because my dad again being in the Navy, that's where he was stationed. A lot of historians have looked at tavern spaces, coffee houses across the globe and sort of their role in society. So I just wanted to take a microcosmic look at that, but then not just do it in one particular time period, sort of see how they've evolved in this particular place over time. I want to see if there's any continuities. I want to see if there's any differences maybe to how we use these spaces today comparatively.
Guy Windsor
Do you know Eleanor Janega?
The name is familiar, but I'm not sure.
Guy Windsor
She's a medieval historian. So different periods of different area. She's fab. She's been on my show twice, one of the few people who've been and I've met her in person when she's been in Ipswich giving a lecture and went out to the pub afterwards. If I say she's a massive drinker, that is totally misleading, but also kind of true, because she's Czech, and has kind of the stereotypical Czech approach to beer, which is similar to the German approach to beer. Beer is food, and that's that. So it just occurred to me that when you were describing your book, it's like, oh, my God, Eleanor would love that. So I'll be happy to put the two of you in touch if you'd like.
Jamie Goodall
Yes, I would love that.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I'm not going to volunteer her services without talking to her first obviously, but she'd be just the person, I think, to read it before it goes out. Because one of the hardest things about writing books is finding the right beta readers before publication. And I think Elena might be a good choice.
Jamie Goodall
That would be amazing. Yeah, one of the fun things that I'm trying to incorporate into the book is so not just having the history, but within each chapter will be profiles of specific taverns or specific bars and stuff across time and space, and it'll have a related cocktail or drink recipe.
Guy Windsor
Oh, fantastic idea.
Jamie Goodall
Yeah, profiles of historic places that maybe don't exist anymore, but then there's some that do still exist, like Gadsby’s Tavern. I want to say it's the oldest, continuously operating Tavern in the state of Virginia.
Guy Windsor
Dating back to about when?
Jamie Goodall
1780 something, I want to say is what they have listed.
Guy Windsor
By American standards that's pretty old.
Jamie Goodall
To be from then and continuously operating, which means it has never stopped operating as a tavern since then. Which is, you know, for the United States, pretty good.
Guy Windsor
That is pretty good. That's respectable.
Jamie Goodall
I was talking with a friend of mine about the book, and we were talking, sort of laughing, about what's old in the United States. And then you talk to Europeans, and they're like, ha! Your 200 year old building, come to this 3000 year old monastery.
Guy Windsor
But then, you know, in America, 100 years is a long time, and in Europe, 100 miles is a long way. Also, a friend of mine called John O’Mara, we were in a car driving through Chicago, and I was kind of ribbing him a bit about how buildings in America are also young. And he's originally Irish. His family, at some point, probably a century or two ago, came over from Ireland, and he said, well, you know, I'm Irish, and so all of my medieval buildings are still in Ireland, which is an interesting way to put it. You know, I look at the buildings around me and go, yes, okay, these are sort of mine, because I sort of come from here. But actually, if you move somewhere else, your buildings remain yours.
Jamie Goodall
My mother-in-law's from Ireland. She's from Sligo. So she has a very similar perspective. She's like, yes, I live here and I'm in the United States, but you know, my family's homes and stuff are still in Ireland.
Guy Windsor
And your culture built those things, those medieval cathedrals, just as much as mine did.
Jamie Goodall
I did remember the ship name that my students came up with because it was absolutely inappropriate. And I remember being, you guys are going to get me fired, they came up with the crew of the Chum Guzzler.
Guy Windsor
The Chum Guzzler.
Jamie Goodall
That was the name of their ship. And I was like, you guys are going to get me fired, but this is what you voted on.
Guy Windsor
The Chum Guzzler. Okay. Chum is stuff you throw for sharks.
Jamie Goodall
So they went with the Chum Guzzler as a play on that.
Guy Windsor
Okay, thank you for explaining. Excellent. Well, thanks so much for joining me today, Jamie, it's been lovely to meet you.
Jamie Goodall
Thanks so much for having me and for being so flexible with the scheduling. This was fantastic.
