00:01:45.080And we do talk about Our Flag Means Death a little bit in this episode as well, and just
00:01:48.420kind of the connections of real pirates and how they really were these kind of
00:01:51.900multi-ethnic diverse crews of people. Anyway, Catherine Howe. So she writes history nonfiction0.71
00:01:58.320and she also writes fiction. So this is like, while it's a novel that's written as though it's
00:02:03.080itself a historical document in parts, like she really draws from real history. And so a couple
00:02:09.740things about her is that she's written other historical fiction before. She served as editor
00:02:14.740for the Penguin Book of Witches, which is a book that compiles kind of like oldie timey writing
00:02:20.600about witches from back in the day. Coming out next year, she mentions this in the podcast,
00:02:24.360she's compiling the Penguin Book of Pirates, which is just like oldie timey records of actual
00:02:29.460pirate stories like put into a book. Anyway, she is also descended from three women who were tried
00:02:34.640for witchcraft in Salem. So she is, again, we've talked about this podcast, one of the only people
00:02:40.700able to legitimately say, you know, I am the descendant of the witches that you couldn't burn.
00:02:45.580She and her family live in New England, in New York City. And I mean, I'm just gonna,
00:02:50.600share the conversation because she explains about the book better than I ever could.
00:02:55.300And we get into pirate talking and it's all such a good time. And I do want to say,
00:02:59.960I recommend this book as I recommend every book personally that I talk about on this podcast.
00:03:05.300I read them all. When I have an author on the show, it's because I read the book and I liked it.
00:03:09.460So you know that that's got my stamp of approval. So if you're looking for, for instance, this time
00:03:14.320of year, if you're listening to this, when it first comes out, it's like November and, you know,
00:03:18.500people doing a lot of gift giving for various holidays. And so if you, all the books that I've
00:03:24.000talked about on the show, I recommend, and if you want to find a list of them, I'll put that in the
00:03:27.740show notes. But also if you go to my bookshop.org page, there's a list there of all the books that
00:03:33.600I've ever mentioned on the show. Actually, I'm just going to see if there's like a cute URL I
00:03:38.640can give you to see that bookshop. Yeah. So if you go to bookshop.org slash shop slash vulgar history,
00:03:44.620there's a bunch of lists there including recommended historical fiction that i recommend
00:03:49.680all the books by authors who i've interviewed on vulgar history and i added a new list there
00:03:55.140that's the holiday gift guide so it's books i haven't featured on the show they're all new
00:03:59.640books like 2023 because i always find when i'm giving a present to somebody i'm never sure what
00:04:03.980they've read or what they haven't so i try to always give them like a new book anyway so this
00:04:07.420holiday gift guide is there all the books that i've ever talked about on the show are all there
00:04:10.980And so, yeah, I just want to make sure that, you know, when I talk about a book, like that's
00:04:14.840because I legitimately recommend it. I know people like book recommendations. And so just so, you
00:04:19.940know, that's what every time there's an author on, that's because I super recommend the book.
00:04:23.100And this one I really recommend. So anyway, please enjoy my conversation with Catherine Howe.
00:04:34.000All right. So I'm joined today by Catherine Howe. And so your book, the shorter title is
00:04:38.940A True Account. Can you say what the full title of it is? Sure. The full title is A True Account,
00:04:44.820Hannah Massuri's Sojourn Amongst the Pirates Written by Herself. And the reason that it has
00:04:49.560such a long, ridiculous title is because it's kind of a play on the titles that books used to
00:04:55.560have in the 18th century. You know, being a true account of this, that, and the other thing would
00:04:59.280go on and on and on and on and on. And so it's kind of a wink at, you know, what books were like
00:05:04.660in the 18th century, which is when much of the story in A True Account takes place.
00:05:08.160Well, exactly. And so the book itself is sort of, it's like a book within a book. And one of them
00:05:12.700is, can you talk about how, how the book has kind of the two different time periods?
00:05:18.220Sure. It's, it's a little bit funny. It's not unusual for me to write, um, two time periods.
00:05:22.560That's something that I, that I end up doing a lot in lots of novels, but this one is a little
00:05:26.380bit different. It opens in Boston in 1726, where a girl named Hannah Missouri, and we never really
00:05:33.680learn how old she is exactly, but she's meant to be in her late teens, 17 or 18, or something like
00:05:38.780that. She's been bound out to service in a tavern called Ship Tavern, which really existed. And then
00:05:43.940she goes to a hanging of some pirates who were led by a guy named William Fly. And this is a real
00:05:49.920thing that happened too. And in fact, the account of William Fly's hanging in Boston in July of 1726
00:05:56.540is taken from the historical record. Everything that people say, scaffold and stuff, is actually
00:06:01.900drawn from primary sources. And William Fly turned pirate because of hard usage. And so essentially
00:06:08.780he led a mutiny and they rechristened their ship, the Fane's Revenge, and then they went pirating
00:06:13.720off Cape Hatteras. And then, but because sailing a ship and navigating a ship are actually two very
00:06:18.680different skills, especially in the days before GPS, William Fly captured a fisherman and tried
00:06:24.260to force him to navigate them over to Martha's Vineyard to pick up fresh water. And the fishermen
00:06:29.000and fooled them and ended up taking them to Boston instead, where they were captured. And then they
00:06:33.240were publicly tried and publicly hanged. And then William Fly's body was gibbeted, which means his
00:06:39.480body was left hung in chains and left to rot in a public place. In this case, it was on a rock
00:06:46.020called Mix's Mate, which is one of the Boston Harbor Islands. So my character, Hannah Massuri,
00:06:51.240is there when William Fly is hanged. And then through a series of circumstances, she has to
00:06:56.780run for her life, and she disguises herself as a cabin boy and joins what she thinks is a fruit
00:07:01.940packet bound for the Azores. But it turns out very quickly that that's not what it is.
00:07:07.880And then there's a sort of surprising shift that happens in the book, because up until that point,
00:07:11.900it's felt like we're just following along with Hannah on her adventure. It's in first person,
00:07:15.760and we're inside Hannah's head. And then all of a sudden, we realize that the whole time we've
00:07:19.480been reading over someone's shoulder. And the person we've been reading over her shoulder is
00:07:24.360Marion Beresford, who's a professor at Radcliffe in around 1929. Her student has found
00:07:30.760Hannah's true account. And the title of the book that she has brought to the professor is
00:07:35.080A True Account, Hannah Massori's Sojourn Amongst the Pirates Written by Herself.
00:07:39.000And Marion is then drawn up into some intrigue around whether or not this true account is
00:07:44.840actually true. And so that's where I like the sort of the double meaning of the title of your
00:07:49.940book, the shorter title, just a true account, because part of the journey of the book is
00:07:54.720Marion trying to determine, is this a true account? But at the same time, we're following.
00:07:58.540So there's the two parallel plot lines go throughout the book.
00:08:02.160Right. Yeah. So over the course of the story, we follow along on Hannah's adventure,
00:08:06.020and we also follow along on Marion's adventure as she tries to uncover what some of Hannah's
00:08:10.820secrets were. And as someone who is a historian who also writes historical fiction, as you can
00:08:15.740imagine, I spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, the distinction between what is true
00:08:20.260and what is not true, what is emotionally true, but factually false, which is, of course,
00:08:26.740all fiction, ideally is emotionally true, but is factually false. So even though it is a true
00:08:32.160account is an adventure story, and it's about women, you know, taking risks and kind of stepping
00:08:37.480outside the strictures of what their societies tell them they have to do. It's also got kind of
00:08:42.800a more, perhaps a more meta or literary project at its core as well. Yeah. And that's where,
00:08:48.420when I was reading the book, and this is where I very much want to let you explain the plot of it,
00:08:52.480because things like that, when we first meet Marion and the book pivots, I was like, wait,
00:08:56.680what? What's happening? Yeah, that was meant to be kind of confusing. And if you, if some of the,
00:09:02.580some of the reviews are like, wait, what's happening? But it was, it was meant to make
00:09:05.720you say, wait, what's happening. It was meant to be like, wait a minute, this is not what I thought
00:09:09.340it was. And so it ends up being, yeah, it's not what you think it is. Well, no, exactly. And I
00:09:14.060will just say that there's other moments in the book where I was like, wait, what? So, but, you
00:09:18.260know, spoiler free discussion with you. But I mean, we have to explain that there's a two parallel
00:09:23.120plot lines. But I love that when you're explaining the plot of your fictional novel, that's called
00:09:28.120A True Account, you started explaining the actual history of William Fly. I know. I'm working on a
00:09:34.700lot of levels. I'm really fun at parties, as you can imagine. Everyone I have in my podcast is.
00:09:38.500it would be a great party. But so I wanted to ask you about, you clearly know so much about like the
00:09:43.620pirate history and stuff. Can you talk about some of the like women and piracy, for instance,
00:09:49.200like your character is fictional, but her experience was drawn from, I believe, just from
00:09:54.180the afterward in your book, from your reading about real women on pirate ships. Can you talk
00:09:58.880about that? For sure. In fact, I did so much research for a true account that next April,
00:10:03.840I think it's been changed to April 30th. I'm publishing a book with Penguin Classics called
00:10:08.380The Penguin Book of Pirates, which is a primary source reader all about the golden age of piracy,
00:10:14.480which should be pretty fun. But so yeah, Hannah's story is based in some part on
00:10:19.540some actual accounts of things that really happened. So one famous instance, there were two
00:10:25.380women, Anne Bonny and Mary Reed, who both ended up in the same, disguised as men and in the same
00:10:32.940crew with a guy named Calico Jack Rackham. And Anne Bonney was Calico Jack's lover and Mary Reed
00:10:39.280was, you know, sort of took up with somebody else. But both of them had wildly different
00:10:44.060backgrounds. They were both, but essentially they were both from working class backgrounds
00:10:47.400and found themselves in disguise. And in the 18th century, it was not like today. It was,0.95
00:10:53.920there was a much more sort of rigid expectation of the performance of gender roles. And so if
00:10:58.800you saw someone dressed, you know, clothed as a particular gender, you would not really
00:11:03.040second guess it all that often. And there were also boys on every single ship in the maritime
00:11:08.940world, you know, boys who are, if you've seen Master and Commander, there are all these kids
00:11:12.600who are, some of them are officers and are characters, and many more of them are just
00:11:16.120like Loblolly boys who are running around being helpful. So it wasn't actually out of the realm
00:11:20.420of possibility for someone to be able to pass themselves off as, you know, a teenage boy or a
00:11:25.760young man simply by dressing and acting in the expected way. But I also took Hannah Missouri's
00:11:31.560name from a real person who existed. The real Hannah Missouri, she lived in the 19th century.
00:11:37.620She was from Beverly, Massachusetts, and she married a ship captain. It was not all that
00:11:42.360unusual for the captain's wife to come along in the merchant marine. So she shipped out with her0.92
00:11:48.960husband with a load of locomotives. This is the 19th century. They're going to bring a load of
00:11:53.320locomotives around the Horn, which is simply mind-boggling to me, up the Pacific coast,
00:11:58.740drop them off in California. And then they were going to go all the way over to California and
00:12:02.000pick up a load of Chinese laborers. Because of course, this is a time when it was just after0.99
00:12:06.000the gold rush and the big sort of opening of settlement in California. So they pick up a
00:12:10.120load of Chinese laborers. And while they're heading back across the Pacific, Hannah's husband died.
00:12:16.840So no one was in charge of the ship effectively. And then they started to run out of fresh water
00:12:21.560And the crew started to mutiny and the passengers all started to mutiny.0.52
00:12:26.520And Hannah held the mutiny off and took control of the ship with a pistol.
00:12:30.840And then she hung the flag, their like signal flag or their ensign upside down off the backstay0.98
00:12:36.120and then was rescued by sort of a proto version of the U.S. Navy.0.70
00:12:40.620After that happened, Hannah sued for her husband's percentage of the ship1.00
00:12:44.980and then went back to Beverly and used the proceeds of that suit to buy her own house.
00:12:50.020And then she lived until the first she remarried a dentist, she lived quietly. And then and she0.97
00:12:54.960never had any kids as far as I could ascertain. And she died in, I think, the first decade of
00:12:59.740the 20th century. And I just loved thinking about this woman, I kind of stumbled upon this story in
00:13:03.760a funny way. And I loved thinking about this, like, you know, little Yankee, Yankee woman,
00:13:08.960like walking down the street in like 1905. And she'd been around the horn. And she had put down
00:13:15.000a mutiny all by herself with just a handgun. Like, it was amazing. And so I thought, Oh,
00:13:19.140my gosh, Hannah, you're so badass. So I took her name for my character in the novel. And I hope,
00:13:25.100I hope she forgives me for that. I know the surname is so interesting. There's a couple
00:13:28.880of times in your book where the character Hannah, she says her last name and they're like, misery,
00:13:33.580Hannah misery. Got it. Like it's such a, it's such an evocative name.
00:13:38.140I know. It seemed like such a good pirate name too. Hannah misery.
00:13:41.240well and then also you've got experience yourself um with ships and boats boats boats not ships
00:13:50.380technically boats are smaller i know it's funny you wouldn't think you'd have to define the
00:13:54.020difference but but a ship is big and a boat is small okay yeah that's that's the difference but
00:14:00.000yes my only my only uh hobby i only have one hobby i'm so boring all i do is write write write
00:14:06.380And parent, parent, parent. And in my otherwise limited free time, I'm a sailor. And so I like going out on the water. I like bombing around. I like racing. I take my son out on the water. He has his very own monkey fist, which is kind of like a round knot thing that you can throw over the side and then haul it back. And it's pretty fun.
00:14:27.440And so, of course, like a lot of sailors, I'm enamored of stories of daring at sea and things like that. And I've seen Master and Commander too many times and things like that. And so I was really interested in writing a pirate story because also I feel like one of the reasons that we are so romantic about pirates is because we don't actually know all that much about them. And so as a history person and as a sailor, I wanted to learn a little bit more about what the reality of it was.
00:14:55.520Well, and I will say, so part of the book, like the part of the book that is the true account, although the book is called the true account, this is like, there's the levels, like the, the point of view of Hannah on the ship, sorry, boat? No, ship. She's on a ship.
00:15:11.040Well, she's on a ship. I've only ever been on boats. I know it's weird.
00:15:16.960But I mean, I could tell. Well, I mean, just having read about you, I'm just like,
00:15:20.180you know what you're talking about with the like, with the ropes and the whatever. I'm just like,
00:15:24.520this was written by a person who knows what she's talking about.
00:15:26.860Hopefully. Thank you. I hopefully not too much. I actually so this is actually my second stab at
00:15:31.320writing a pirate novel. I wrote I wrote another one that was set in a totally different place
00:15:34.580in a totally different time. And it was too ambitious. It was trying to do too many things.
00:15:38.020and as a result it just tragically it's just fatally flawed it just doesn't work and when
00:15:42.820i was first showing it to my agent and trying to figure out if it was salvageable or not
00:15:46.060she she said it was too patrick o'brien-y which is to say that it was too patrick o'brien is the
00:15:52.220guy who wrote the like series of there's like 20 of them about which turned into the film master
00:15:58.280and commander and they are relentlessly technical i must say like i i love reading them but if you
00:16:05.120are not a sailor and if that is not something you're particularly interested in it's uh it's
00:16:10.300sometimes it can be kind of a slog and so one of the things i tried to do with hannah when she
00:16:14.100she like runs away in a boat but she doesn't she doesn't know any she doesn't know anything and so
00:16:19.200we are looking at the story from inside her perspective and her perspective is of a new
00:16:23.900a newcomer so she starts to figure some things out she starts to grab a few things but i try to
00:16:28.660keep it from being too relentlessly, tiresomely technical. I will tell the listeners, as I've
00:16:36.020read the book, and I was just like, oh, what? My knowledge of any of this is like zero. So I was
00:16:42.340like, wow, that sounds true. That sounds correct. But it was not overwhelming at all. I didn't mean
00:16:48.420to imply that at all to the listeners. I'm glad to hear it. You know, it's funny. There have been
00:16:52.280a couple of remarks from readers here and there. Typically, so I'm most known for writing fiction
00:16:57.600about Salem witches. I've written a couple different witch books. My first novel was
00:17:01.120The Physic Book of Delivering Stain. I like writing American stories basically about ordinary
00:17:07.320people who are caught up in really extraordinary circumstances. But I'm also, I'm really kind of a
00:17:12.760wimp. Most of my books are pretty PG-13. There's not really language or much sexuality or things
00:17:19.560like that. And this book is a little bit different, but it's because, and so there's more violence in
00:17:25.260this book than in any other book that I've done, but I didn't make any of it up. Like the violence
00:17:31.240that appears in the book, which is done by some pirates is stuff I took from the historical
00:17:38.360record. It's stuff I took from primary sources, stuff I don't think I could have made up. And so
00:17:43.320that's one of the interesting things to me about writing historical fiction and like trying to
00:17:47.360kind of, you know, create a story inside, inside the archive. So if you were, if you're a little
00:17:52.920squicked out. I apologize. I found that so interesting. Cause I think you mentioned that
00:17:56.560in your, in the afterward of the book as well, that like, you know, this is, this happened here.
00:18:00.380So, which is interesting. So this is, again, like the book is operating on various levels,
00:18:04.760but one of them is, so you've got the character Marion in the book is trying to confirm,
00:18:08.580is this true account actually real? And then they're saying like, well, you know,
00:18:12.780this really happened and this really happened. So, you know, the, what they're reading,
00:18:17.820um they're like yeah that checks out but then in your afterward you're like this really happened
00:18:23.980and this really happened and i'm like oh okay okay like the fact checking they're doing is
00:18:28.400like basically it's like it is true because these are facts that you yourself figured out can you
00:18:33.840talk about um because you just mentioned your specialty is like new england and things like
00:18:38.800that so just the history of piracy i guess like you're i don't know so i'm in canada i grew up
00:18:46.140in Nova Scotia where there's a history of privateers and things like that. Sure. There are
00:18:52.320privateers here too. Nova Scotia has a maritime history that's very similar to New England's and
00:18:57.600certainly the fishing heritage. So there's a guy, I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say
00:19:03.000that Hannah ends up finding herself on a pirate ship while she's in disguise. I will say, I think
00:19:08.660the back of your book i think it's in the title of your book um right of course yeah so it's not
00:19:16.320a spoiler at all but she ends up with a real guy who was a who was a real pirate named ned low
00:19:20.800or edward low and i do take some liberties with what happens but many of the things that happen
00:19:25.980while she's with him are things that really happen to ned low and his crew and i don't want to go
00:19:30.700into too much detail but like like there's one instance where where ship ends up being scuttled
00:19:35.480And that actually really happened, like, like by mistake, it was kind of interesting. But Ned Lowe is perhaps best known because he raided the fishing fleets off the Grand Banks. So Canadian and New England fishermen. And so there was a guy from Marblehead, Massachusetts named Philip Ashton, who was a fisherman on the Grand Banks, and he was captured by Ned Lowe and like, hauled off down to the tropics.
00:20:00.000And he refused to sign the articles and join Ned Lowe's crew and he ended up escaping and hiding out marooned on an island. And it was before he was, you know, he was surviving on his own in the jungle until he was another like Salem, another ship out of Salem came by and Philip Ashton managed to get a ride home with them.
00:20:18.220And so he published a kind of like best-selling tell-all book in the 18th century about his life amongst the pirates with Ned Lowe.
00:20:26.800And so, which is getting back to your question, like, you know, the maritime history of Nova Scotia and New England is actually very closely related.
00:20:34.240So there would have been Canadian guys who were on the Grand Banks at the same time.
00:20:38.280And now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors.0.99
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00:23:32.160and we're back so when you're looking at the the history of it like the when you say you're
00:23:39.700pulling the details about you know the the gruesome bits and stuff like that so are there
00:23:44.360are a lot of what you're looking at books like that like someone's memoirs yeah philip ashton's
00:23:49.800memoir or like a lot of details about golden age pirates come from a book that has a kind of a
00:23:55.840shadowy authorship and the book is called a general history of the pirates and it was written
00:24:01.140by a guy named Captain Charles Johnson. And for some time, some historians thought that Captain
00:24:07.060Charles Johnson was a nom de plume for Daniel Defoe. Can you just remind everyone who Daniel
00:24:11.800Defoe is? Sorry, yeah, Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe. So an 18th century, like, adventure
00:24:17.820tale author. And A General History of the Pirates was first published in 1724. And then it was
00:24:24.920so massively successful that it had woodcut illustrations, and then it went through all
00:24:30.560these subsequent reprintings where some of the stories were kind of elaborated upon or like
00:24:35.440went into more detail or whatever. And so a lot of the kind of golden age pirate stories like
00:24:41.360Blackbeard shows up in A General History of the Pirates. And one of the ways that we know about
00:24:45.380him and what he was doing off the coast of North Carolina is from Charles Johnson. There are other
00:24:50.640accounts that are published kind of simultaneously. And there are different accounts. So in the book
00:24:56.560that's coming out the penguin book of pirates there's some excerpts from a general history but
00:25:01.120there are also some excerpts from like like ship's logs or from you know accounts of people that they
00:25:06.780wrote after the fact after they were raided by pirates or things like that so there are a number
00:25:11.020of different ways of figuring out what life was like among pirates uh in the late 17th and into
00:25:18.520the early 18th century and so the book that you have coming out you said next year at some point
00:25:23.020the one, the, um, the, is it the penguin book of pirates? So, and that's looking at what we're
00:25:29.340talking about now, just sort of like the golden age era, like piracy in and around like, cause
00:25:35.280I've on my podcast, I've talked about like pirate, like the Barbary pirates and like
00:25:39.220Zhang Yisou in China, but you're looking at more like sort of like around like Jamaica and like
00:25:43.180that sort of stuff. Well, we, we actually include a little bit about the Barbary pirates on the
00:25:48.060Barbary coast. And also, um, at least one, a couple of examples from the South China Sea or
00:25:52.520from Sumatra. But yes, it's mostly, it starts in the 1500s and it goes up to the beginning of the
00:25:58.12019th century. In fact, the last example it looks at is the Amistad, which was an interesting case
00:26:03.020because, which was turned into a film. I haven't actually seen the film. The Amistad was in 1839
00:26:08.580and it was when a group of illegally enslaved people, people who had been enslaved illegally
00:26:16.200in Cuba, or being moved from one place to another. And they took over the ship, they mutinied.
00:26:23.580And then they ended up being captured off of, I think it was New York, it was even New York or
00:26:30.020Washington, I don't remember. They were captured by the US Navy. And then there was an interesting
00:26:33.760trial that resulted from it. And the result was because the Spaniards who claimed ownership of
00:26:40.400them thought that the people should be returned back to them. But at this point, it was illegal
00:26:46.040to import enslaved people into the United States, even though slavery was still legal in the United
00:26:51.060States. And so there was this sort of surreal moment in which the people of the Amistad who
00:26:55.500had mutinied were accused of piracy, but they were accused of piracy because they had plundered
00:27:02.220themselves. Because they had claimed their own value as cargo. And so it's kind of an interesting
00:27:10.140moment. But yeah, in the Penguin Book of Pirates, I spent a lot of time in the late 1500s through
00:27:15.680the 1600s and into the beginning part of the 1700s, which was the so-called golden age of
00:27:20.260piracy in the Atlantic theater. Yeah, I guess that's what I was thinking of. So it's like
00:27:24.220Atlantic, so like between... Mostly, mostly Atlantic, but there's actually, there's a kind
00:27:30.740of a fascinating network of littoral spaces, you know, which is to say worlds, like the ocean is
00:27:37.700kind of its own country in some regard, because especially for in the merchant marine, but also
00:27:43.780especially amongst pirate crews, people will come from all over. And one of the things that I think
00:27:49.100is interesting about pirate crews and that I try to represent when talking about the pirate crew
00:27:53.060in a true account is that they were very multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic,
00:27:57.560you know, people would come together from all over the world. And so the lingua franca would
00:28:01.320be anything from English to French to Spanish, to any number of, you know, Western African
00:28:06.820languages as well. And one of the biggest places in the 18th century for European or Caribbean or
00:28:12.680or North American pirates to land and hide out was actually an island off of Madagascar called
00:28:18.340St. Mary's, which ended up being kind of an infamous pirate nest, as it were. So to talk
00:28:24.920about it as being restricted just to the Caribbean is actually kind of a kind of a simplification.
00:28:30.660Yeah. So I'm just coming in here as I would call myself the average and average amount of knowledge
00:28:36.520about pirates in general. Am I too deep in the weeds already? It happens, Anne. I get in the
00:28:40.320i get in the weeds this is good it's good and i think it's really good and that's part of what i
00:28:44.500think is really interesting about this book so a true account the novel we're here talking about
00:28:48.380although i can't wait to read your your pirate non-fiction book too but i think like so much of
00:28:54.640um of history of i guess you call it like western history it's when you think about the movies and
00:29:00.660stuff it's just like that multiculturalism is not represented oh it's completely overwritten if you
00:29:06.560look at like the pirates of the caribbean movies everybody's white everybody's the same you know
00:29:10.880and that's it's simply not it's simply not accurate so like on the the crew that hannah
00:29:15.240joins you know just to give you for an example like blackbeard we were talking about before
00:29:18.780he was a white guy but like by the time he was defeated a third of his crew were uh were black
00:29:26.040or were men of color in fact william kidd ended up leading a crew of 90 in the in the records
00:29:32.880they're described as Moors, 90 men of color. And so in Hannah's world, I tried to, with the crew
00:29:41.020that she's working with, I try to represent, I try to be, you know, honorable to what the historical
00:29:45.880record has to tell us. And so Ned Lowe's kind of right-hand guy, in actual history, he was named
00:29:51.240Charles Harris. And I still allude to him being named Charles Harris. I don't know what the real
00:29:56.360Charles Harris was, but in the story, he is a self-liberating man of color. And we never really
00:30:01.860find out what his backstory is in a lot of detail. But that kind of backstory is actually not that
00:30:09.320uncommon for men of color who found themselves turning to piracy. There's also a character who
00:30:14.960is from what at the time was called Spanish Florida, who had then spent a lot of his time
00:30:20.120living in the valleys, which was the kind of entry point, the customs entry point in the
00:30:25.840Louisiana bayous outside of New Orleans, because New Orleans isn't actually on the Gulf of Mexico.
00:30:30.520it's like up this network of of bayous and so you had to go through this community called the
00:30:34.580valleys before you got there so i you know the crew that hannah finds herself among are these
00:30:40.940guys like many of them are english or north american or what have you but many more of them
00:30:45.280are just drawn from all these other oceanside maritime communities which is more accurate to
00:30:52.020like what history tells us about pirate crews so this just leads us to another thing i was just
00:30:57.300hoping you can explain to everybody in your why have pirates been such a why have people been
00:31:03.680into the romance of pirates for so long and i think yeah well also just like and connected to
00:31:10.920that it's like the romance and the story of pirates has been around i don't know you could
00:31:15.280tell me but like since treasure island or something oh longer than longer than that i
00:31:19.240mean treasure island is interesting because treasure island is is a 19th century story
00:31:23.300that is set in the 18th century. But one of the things that I found fascinating when I was
00:31:27.520researching about pirates is, so a lot of the guys who were active pirates in the like 17 teens
00:31:33.140and into the 1720s, so like contemporary to the story in a true account, they had been reading
00:31:38.620broadsides and hearing stories about the previous generation of pirates, the ones who were active
00:31:43.720in the 1680s and the 1690s, like Henry Morgan was a whole previous generation before that.
00:31:48.520So one of the things that I found fascinating about pirates is the romance is attached to them almost from the very beginning.
00:31:54.680And the difficulty of disentangling what is true and what is not true and what is myth happens from the very beginning, which is one of the reasons that a pirate story, I feel like, is so rich for historical fiction.
00:32:09.240So there's kind of people, that's so interesting that they became pirates, but maybe because they heard the stories about this is what being a pirate is like.
00:32:16.740and those people, but yeah. Yeah. Well, so, so here's a funny example. Like if I don't,
00:32:22.400I haven't actually seen the show myself because when I'm writing a novel, I try to kind of keep
00:32:26.320my head in my own world, but there's a show called our flag means death, which is about a
00:32:31.680guy named Stevie Bonnet. Stevie Bonnet was a real guy. He, but he was also very unusual in how he
00:32:38.560ended up turning to piracy because most people, so piracy was punishable by death. So no one in
00:32:43.520their right. And it was really hard. Most pirates did not have a long, successful career that then
00:32:48.440led them to retire and live like a king in Patagonia, as it were. Most pirates were like
00:32:53.960William Fly. They were under extreme duress, and then they led a mutiny or something, some sort of
00:32:59.300extremity happened, and then they kind of threw all caution to the wind. And then they had a very
00:33:04.840short career, then they were put to death in a public and spectacular way. Well, Steady Bonnet
00:33:13.520he was a enslaver. He was a plantation owner in Barbados. He had everything going for him from
00:33:18.620an 18th century perspective, but he decided he wanted to be a pirate, even though he had no
00:33:23.920maritime experience at all, didn't know how to sail a boat. He got all this money together. He
00:33:28.040bought a boat. He hired the crew. He kitted it out and he's like, I'm going pirating. And it's so,
00:33:32.640it's just, it's just like unheard of because in the 18th century, you know, most people didn't
00:33:36.300have any sort of choice over, you know, what direction their lives went. And getting back
00:33:41.480to an earlier part of your question like like why are we still so romantic about pirates despite
00:33:46.860the fact that they were violent and lawbreakers and you know often rapists and otherwise you know
00:33:53.420really despicable people and i think the reason for our romanticization of them is because of the
00:33:59.040the freedom that they represent you know they represent this this idea of overthrowing all
00:34:04.580the values that your culture forces you to adhere to and throw it all over for self-government and
00:34:13.560self-determination. It's a way of rejecting the class structure or the class hierarchy that you
00:34:19.220come from. It's a way of rejecting the legal structure that you come from. Government on
00:34:23.160pirate ships was by popular acclaim. And so there's some historians who've pointed to it as
00:34:28.360a proto-democracy. But one of the things that I think is important to think about is golden age
00:34:34.000piracy represented this extreme freedom on the one hand, but it was so inextricably bound up
00:34:39.920with the slave trade, the transatlantic slave trade, the money that was made in it, the movement
00:34:45.340of goods and services that were part of the trade in enslaved people. So you have this extreme
00:34:52.580freedom colliding with the most extreme case of unfreedom, and each can't really exist without
00:34:59.840the other it's a really contradictory contradictory set of things actually so you just mentioned that
00:35:05.340that the the governance on pirate ships and your book does get into this i don't i hope this isn't
00:35:11.520a spoiler i don't think it is but like you talk about like the fact that ships are like okay here's
00:35:15.880what our rules are going to be here's our sort of like and that it reminded me because again like0.82
00:35:19.900the the main pirate who i've ever researched was jung yi sao in china and she had this rule like
00:35:25.340code of conduct and you had this in your book too i'm like oh i guess this is a thing just like
00:35:28.760pirate, which is great because I think about pirates as a sort of like lawless, whatever,
00:35:34.160but they had their own, they couldn't just be chaos at all times.
00:35:38.060No, no, you wouldn't, you wouldn't be able to, you wouldn't be able to raid another ship if there
00:35:41.920was no, if no one was, you know, doing their job or, or if everyone was too drunk or, you know,
00:35:47.020things like that, there was actually a pretty rigid, and this is so getting back to Philip
00:35:51.560Ashton, the guy who was captured by Ned Lowe, he refused to sign the articles. So the articles were
00:35:57.920the rules by which the pirate crew determined that they would comport themselves. And Philip
00:36:03.780Ashton refused to sign them. And that meant he essentially refused to join. But it's interesting
00:36:08.040that, you know, that that would be the symbolic thing that they had that was necessary. Like they
00:36:14.300actually still had to have, Zhang Yisao was actually, I'm familiar with her. She led an
00:36:20.900entire coalition. She was kind of in charge, not just of a pirate ship, but of a fleet effectively.0.96
00:36:26.260and she was part of an organization of sort of a confederation of other pirate fleet leaders that
00:36:32.560were active in the South China Sea around the same time she was active in the early part of
00:36:35.840the 19th century as well and also so there's the rules on the pirate ship and you're describing
00:36:40.680sort of the romance of it that even affects people and maybe why they would so something
00:36:44.580like Steed Bonnet you know very specific weird case of a person who chose this life but like
00:36:50.700characters like hannah in your book and lots of people on that ship like this is she was in an
00:36:56.920extreme situation and she just kind of found herself there she had to run away from her
00:37:00.220regular life but a lot of people fell into that not because like oh this will be a fun adventure
00:37:04.760but just kind of like i have no choice i need to be here or sometimes they're on a ship that was
00:37:09.900that was raided and then you know they were given the option to join like like like philabastion
00:37:14.420was and they and they decided sure that they would so there's one moment hannah's part of the
00:37:18.260story where they see a ship that's French and they decide to attack it. And a number of things go down
00:37:25.500on the ship that they attack the French ship, but two of the guys who were the crew on the French
00:37:30.560ship end up joining up with the pirates. And at one point, Hannah is reflecting on them that when
00:37:35.200they woke up that morning, they thought that they were just regular crew members, law-abiding
00:37:39.760citizens doing their job, and now look where they are. Now they're having wine poured down their
00:37:44.360throats and their captain's been murdered in front of their eyes and, you know, their lives
00:37:49.800have gone in a wildly different direction. And one thing that was fun to think about in writing
00:37:53.380Hannah in A True Account was thinking about kind of the moral compromises that she is forced to
00:37:58.380make because she grew up in Boston in this just post-Puritan moment. She's part of the like0.54
00:38:05.400generation right after the Salem witch trials. And so, and she's uneducated, you know, she's1.00
00:38:10.960been forced to go to meeting every Sabbath. So she has a lot of kind of biblical references that
00:38:16.060she makes in the course of her everyday speech or the way that she thinks about the world. But she
00:38:20.740has a pragmatic approach to her own moral code. And some of that is indicative of or reflective
00:38:28.860of the lack of power that she had based on her class. Yeah. And there's a collision too of like1.00
00:38:35.340her class and also being a woman of just like her opportunities even the circumstances that0.83
00:38:41.640led her to be on this pirate ship you know that's the premise of your novel but what would her life0.77
00:38:46.640have been had she not done that like not great like she had very few options she had she had
00:38:53.000very few options i mean she was she was bound out she was a girl of all work um in a kind of family0.97
00:38:58.480run household and you know she would probably have ended up married to some kind of you know1.00
00:39:04.080worker. And she would have, you know, had a passable of children or not had a passable0.99
00:39:10.340of children, depending on how things go, you know? And so, yeah, she, I think she was keenly
00:39:15.120aware of while she feels some regret when she leaves her life in Boston behind, she,
00:39:20.720she definitely does it with the knowledge that her options were very limited.
00:39:26.760And that sort of thing is always so interesting to me in history and historical fiction is where
00:39:30.620it gets explored the most of just a person who has so few options, but like Hannah is like,
00:39:37.340she's smart and she's capable. And like, given the opportunity, she rises to the occasion,
00:39:41.820you know, and how many, how many people, women, but other people in history, just
00:39:46.120who could have done something so cool, but just they weren't able to.
00:39:50.000Yeah. And that's one reason that I focus. I'm so much more interested in writing
00:39:54.220stories about the kinds of people who leave almost no record of themselves in the archive.
00:39:59.020You know, I feel like I've personally, I've never been motivated by stories about, you know, kings and queens, because I feel like they have so much record of themselves in the archive that like, I don't really care. Like, I feel like the real opportunity in historical fiction is to do your best to reconstitute a person who is the kind of person who would have really existed.
00:40:26.000You know, that is something that I try to take very seriously in my historical fiction.
00:40:31.100You know, Hannah wasn't a real person, but there were people who were like Hannah, who lived a life like Hannah in some way, shape or form.
00:40:38.260And they're exactly the kind of person who persists as a name on a headstone and nothing else or sometimes not even that.
00:40:45.280And that's where one of the first things you said in this conversation was the emotional truth or I forget what you called it.
00:40:51.700And this is where you have like you so much fact, obviously, like you have a whole book.
00:40:56.000of sources coming up. But between those facts, it's like, okay, so what would the lived experience
00:41:02.780have been like? If you know, like point A, point B, point C, like this is what happened in history.
00:41:06.540So imagining a person. Yeah. So you can, I think, fill in those blanks. And this is,
00:41:11.140I think historical fiction is the only way that we can reconstruct these lives.
00:41:15.740Essentially. Yeah. In some respects, yes. I mean, it's funny as, you know, as the best historians,
00:41:22.940people like Mary Beth Norton who wrote the most incredible book about Salem ever she wrote um
00:41:28.640in the devil's snare and she was able through her readings of the archive to actually reconstruct
00:41:35.960like how gossip moved among a community like it's just astonishing but that level of scholarship
00:41:42.720is so hard to achieve and I think that there are opportunities to tell stories about the kinds of
00:41:50.860lives that people live. Um, if we're willing to let fiction do some of the work. So your book,
00:41:58.440a true account is, is kind of how I've seen it referred to. Um, yes. Yes. You can call it just
00:42:06.300a true account. I think that is technically it's title. I had, I had a, we had a smackdown about
00:42:10.880whether or not there was going to be a subtitle and a colon and whatever, but, uh, no, it's a
00:42:15.380true account. Yeah. So your book, a true account, it's, um, when this episode comes out, it will
00:42:19.400have just come out. And you're going to be doing events, I presume. And how can people find out
00:42:24.660where you're going to be and what you're doing? For sure. I'm going to be coming to a couple
00:42:29.160different cities. So Cambridge, Mass, Houston, which is where I'm from, Cincinnati. And I have
00:42:36.720a couple of fun like lunch events, one in Murrells, Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, and one in San
00:42:42.400Diego. And all of those are going to be on my website, which is katherinehow.com. And you can
00:42:48.600also keep up with me on instagram where my handle is at katherine b how i'm still on twitter kind of
00:42:55.080sorta um as at katherine b how i'm also on threads trying to get the hang of that one katherine b how
00:43:02.060and i have a facebook page which is which is katherine how and um and so you can keep up
00:43:08.180with me and on linkedin you can keep up with me on any of those places but basically oh and i have
00:43:12.160a new sub stack um which is which is kind of fun and but it's linked on the website as well so the
00:43:17.220website is katherinehow.com and my last name is spelled h-o-w-e how are you but with me on the end
00:43:23.820what's the premise of the sub stack i'm just curious um mostly it's just like a like notes
00:43:29.660on writing and and it's going to be some notes on history as well once i kind of get into it
00:43:34.240it's all free it's going to be about once a week um so it's a little bit writing life a little bit
00:43:39.600writing craft and a little bit history i was going to say it's so it's not just pirates only but
00:43:44.360no there's no it's not pirates only there are i mean there will be some pirates because i have
00:43:49.820pirates on the brain but it's also going to be you know as as it goes on it's going to be and
00:43:54.620as i start thinking about subsequent projects i'll be sharing things that i read there as well
00:43:58.400oh that's fascinating and that's so interesting too i i love having these conversations on my
00:44:02.920podcast because like i i so enjoyed reading your book but i love talking and learn like to an author
00:44:08.880and learning how it came together and clearly you've got much, I mean, you know so much about
00:44:14.720boats and ships and the difference, but piracy, but also just research. I think that's,
00:44:21.100I think it's so interesting and I love hearing how people research and how people put a book
00:44:25.920together. So for sure, I'll be subscribing to that myself. Oh, great. I'm so glad. I will. I hope,
00:44:30.420I hope that you'll enjoy it. Yeah. I think it'll be fun. Well, thank you so much for joining me
00:44:35.380today. This was such a fun conversation. Thank you so much for having me, Anne. I really appreciate it.
00:44:45.760So again, Catherine's book is called A True Account. That's the title that you would find
00:44:51.040it under. It has a subtitle that makes it longer, but it's hard to remember. So I'll just say A True
00:44:56.060Account by Catherine Howe. And I would love to know if you read it, what you think about the
00:45:01.440various twists and turns in this book it's it's a historical fiction novel set in two time periods
00:45:07.760and then there's also twists on top of that that make it so interesting anyway so all of katherine's
00:45:14.220information like if you go to katherinehow.com you can get all of her links to social media her
00:45:17.940newsletter etc and if you want to follow me i am on instagram at vulgar history pod i have a website
00:45:26.120that's vulgar history.com and if you go there there's a form so you can contact me if you have
00:45:30.880when you read the book, if you want to share your thoughts, you can contact me. You can also
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00:46:08.340so this asshole all the there's just various kind of like spin-off podcasts i do i try to have like
00:46:13.620at least one bonus episode like on the patreon each month except when i get really busy and0.95
00:46:18.360yeah and then also if you want to join the patreon and just kind of like because sometimes i post
00:46:22.780stuff there that's just like free like all the book club stuff for instance um where we've been
00:46:27.620talking about Let the Dead Bury the Dead by Alison Epstein. I just posted a live video with
00:46:32.800Alison talking about the book. So all the book club stuff is free and you can join the Patreon
00:46:36.820for free as well. You just choose the like free option. And I am working to try to get 500 members
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00:46:49.040I'm currently at 475 members. So even if you join for free, just to bump up that number,0.62