Colony, Chapter 2: Maine and Massachusetts were different from the start

Maine is celebrating the bicentennial of its statehood this year, but the story of our beginnings lies in the millennia and centuries that preceded March 15th, 1820, the day we regained our independence from Massachusetts. 

Colony, an ongoing six-part series in the Maine Sunday Telegram, tells that story, and the second installment appeared in this past edition. It explores the stark differences between early Maine (Royalist, Anglican, West Country-dominated) and Massachusetts Bay (anti-aristocratic, Puritan, East Anglia-dominated) and how they quickly came to be rivals in the early 1600s.

Also thanks to the New York Times's Sam Sifton for plugging the series in his NYT Cooking newsletter this week. "It’s behind a paywall but worth the investment: The Portland Press Herald’s history of Maine on the occasion of the state’s bicentennial year," he writes.

[Update, 3/5/2020: You can read Chapter 3 here.]

If you enjoy this series and want more, consider reading my cultural history of Maine, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier (Viking, 2004) and, on Maine-Wabanaki relations in more recent times, the Portland Press Herald series "Unsettled," also available as an ebook at the usual outlets.

Talking the Republic of Pirates in, yes, Nassau, The Bahamas, Feb. 24

My third book, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down is the most comprehensive, back-to-the-archives account of the most famous pirate outbreak in history, the one that's responsible for virtually all of our pirate pop culture imagery and the inspiration for the pirates of Robert Louis Stevenson and the Walt Disney Company.

That pirate gang was able to become as fearsome as it did because they had a fortified base, a pirate republic if you will, at Nassau in the failed British colony of the Bahamas, which had been sacked and destroyed by the enemy in the War of Spanish Succession. Blackbeard, Sam Bellamy, Calico Jack Rackham, Stede Bonnet, Mary Read, Anne Bonny and many other infamous pirates gathered together there, protected by the repurposed fort, supported by a population of rogues, escaped slaves, and opportunists, and supplied by the unscrupulous merchants of Harbour Island. Its a remarkable tale from start to finish, and the book has inspired an NBC series (Crossbones with John Malkovich and Kate Foy) and Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, which recreated early 18th century Nassau in great detail (and for which I served as a historical consultant.)

So it's with great pleasure to announce that on Monday, February 24, I'll be speaking on the pirates in Nassau at the Pirate Republic Brewery Taproom, located, appropriately enough, on Woodes Rogers Walk on a site that would have been smack in the middle of the old pirate village. It's at 6pm and free and open to the public. Parrots optional.

On Blackbeard, 300 years after his death, in the New York Times

Republic of Pirates fans take note: 2018 has been the 300th anniversary of Woodes Rogers' landing at Nassau, marking the formal -- if tumultuous and uncertain -- end of the pirate republic, and Thursday was the anniversary of Blackbeard's death in a pitched battle with sailors of the Royal Navy.

I'm thankful that the New York Times opinion editors let me share my thoughts on the significance of this occasion -- and the reasons for Blackbeard's uninterrupted popularity -- in Friday's paper. It's a nice bookend to the tricentennial, a year I started in Bath, North Carolina, talking about the pirate and his death on an iced-in dock with Rogers' unlikely descendent, actress Hilary Duff.  Enjoy the piece.

Also on Thursday back in the U.K, the Bristol Post ran this piece on Blackbeard's real name (it's Edward Thatch, not Teach) based on an interview they conducted with me a few years back. Thatch's family was from the Bristol area, even if the latest evidence -- from researcher Baylus Brooks -- indicates he himself was likely born in Jamaica.

I last wrote on Blackbeard for Smithsonian a few years back, sharing new research by Mike Daniels on his final capture.

Speaking on the Scots-Irish legacy in Maine and the nation, Aug. 14, Brunswick, Maine

This is the 300th anniversary of the coming of the Scots-Irish to New England and to mark the occasion, there's a multi-day conference taking place this week at Bowdoin College sponsored by the Maine Ulster Scots Project.

The 2018 Diaspora Conference and Reunion opens tomorrow morning, August 14 at Bowdoin's Kresge Hall and continues through Thursday, with presentations from scholars on both sides of the Atlantic.

I'm pleased to be giving the opening keynote Tuesday night on the impact of the Scots-Irish migration on both Maine and North America, issues I wrote about in some detail in The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier and American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America respectively. I'm preceded by Norman Houston, director of the Northern Ireland Bureau, the diplomatic mission of that part of the UK to the US and Canada.

Conference information can be found here.

At 1 pm tomorrow I'm also speaking about the political ramifications of American Nations in Maine Public radio's live interview and call-in program, "Maine Calling." Tune in if you can.

Talking pirates on the Under the Crossbones podcast

Recently Phil Johnson, host of the Under the Crossbones podcast, contacted me and noted that we've next year will mark the 300th anniversary of Blackbeard's death in the Battle of Ocracoke Island. How time flies!

I talked to Johnson about Blackbeard, the Golden Age pirates, and how I researched my history of them, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down. Our conversation has just posed online for your pirate listening pleasure.

Thanks to Phil for his interest and hope you all enjoy.

UK discovers Republic of Pirates

The media is a fickle beast, and most especially the British print variety, which suddenly last week decided they needed breaking news about Blackbeard, the infamous pirate who died 298 years ago. Thus, out of the blue, some of the revelations my nine year old biography of Blackbeard and his gang, The Republic of Pirates, have been making headlines there.

It started with the Bristol Post, the daily in the city that may have been Blackbeard's port of birth. Someone there discovered the two-year old U.K edition of the book and, therein, that Blackbeard's real name was actually Edward Thatch, rather than Edward Teach as is commonly thought. I had an enjoyable conversation with reporter Tristan Cork, who wrote this piece, "Bristol pirate Blackbeard's real name was NOT Edward Teach, American historian conforms." He includes my full email response to his question on this score, for those wanting the details.

The next day, an editor for SWNS.com, a news and PR site out of Bristol contacted me on behalf of the Daily Mail, which apparently outsources to them the troublesome task of actually reporting their stories. I had a thoughtful interview with one of their reporters about Blackbeard, which informed this Daily Mail story on Thursday. The Mail managed to get my name wrong and the erroneously state that I'm based in New York and the byline for the story is of someone I never spoke to. They go on to, ironically enough, report how "the guidebooks, plaques, posters, and history books have been getting [Blackbeard's] name wrong all this time." Fancy that.

But they do say I'm the "leading authority and writer on the golden age of piracy" and give some nice plugs for the book, so I'm not complaining. After all, "it's absolutely true because I read it in the Daily Mail."

The Sun, not to be left out, ran this story Friday which, umm, "borrows" all of its reporting from the Daily Mail story. The tabloid -- Britain's largest circulation paper -- is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

In any case, I'm pleased the pirates' story is getting attention in the country where many of them were born, and glad that my newspaper career has largely centered on this side of the Atlantic.

Republic of Pirates, now in Hungarian

I'm especially pleased to announce the Hungarian language edition of my third book, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and The Man Who Brought Them Down, as I called Budapest home for nearly five years between 1989 and 1995.

The new edition, Kalózköztársaság, is from Könyvmolyképző Kiadó in that most paprika-worthy of cities, Szeged. At this writing it's even on sale at their website -- just HUF 2764. I gather the official release date is February 24, but it seems to be available now.

Republic of Pirates, the inspiration for the NBC drama "Crossbones", is also available in US, UK, Spanish, Portugeuse, Polish, Danish, and, shortly, Taiwan Chinese editions.

In Smithsonian, a newly-discovered account of Blackbeard's final days

The newsstand edition cover.

Subscribers of Smithsonian Magazine should be receiving their February 2014 issue right about now and -- unlike the newsstand edition -- it has Blackbeard on the cover.

Inside of either edition, you'll find my story on Blackbeard's final days, including an exclusive, newly-revealed eyewitness account of his final ship captures. These documents were discovered by underwater explorer Mike Daniel, the man who found the wreck of Blackbeard's flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, back in 1996. There's also a suite of other recent discoveries, some of which post-date the 2007 publication of my book, The Republic of Pirates, which by coincidence was released in the United Kingdom a few days ago.

So enjoy, and give Republic of Pirates a read if you find you're wanting to know more.

For those following along, my last piece for Smithsonian Magazine was on the "Great Pyramids of Bosnia" and the dangers of pseudo-science in the December 2009 issue.

On pirates in Connecticut, Britain, and video games

The golden age pirates, the subject of my third book, The Republic of Pirates, are returning to the zeitgeist with gusto. Yes, there's the NBC series based on the book coming in February, with Neil Cross writing the script and John Malkovich playing Blackbeard, but that's not all. Consider:

There's a worldwide publicity drive afoot for the new Assassin's Creed video game release, Black Flag, which is also set among the Golden Age Pirates. This week, The Telegraph of India interviewed the game's chef scriptwriter, Darby McDevitt, who kindly plugged Republic of Pirates: "Colin’s book provided us with the answer to one crucial question we had –– how do we get all of the most famous pirates in history together in the same story? It turns out that The Republic of Pirates was the answer." (For more on the golden age pirates, enjoy my recent Game Informer interview.)

Meanwhile, UK's PanMacMillan has revealed the forthcoming publication of the UK and Commonwealth edition of Republic of Pirates. The release date is set for January 2014, just ahead of NBC's "Crossbones." As is often the case in Britain, it's going straight to paperback, retailing for just £8.99, or about the annual wages of an ordinary sailor in 1715. (Thank you, inflation.)

Examiner.com, an online sweatshop for freelance writers, today named "Crossbones" one of the "top five promising premises for the fall tv season", which is even more impressive given that it's a mid-season replacement, so not out in the fall at all. "Old ‘Blackbeard’ is played by the incomparable John Malkovich," the writer notes. "‘Nuff said." I'd actually add a bit about writer Neil Cross being the creator of BBC's crime drama "Luther" too, but point taken.

Finally -- and unrelated to any of the above -- The Hartford Courant ran this piece on pirates in Connecticut and approaches, drawing heavily from an interview I did with them earlier this year.

Reviewing "The Plantagenets" in the Washington Post

In the Washington Post this weekend, you'll find my review of Dan Jones' new book, The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England.'  

It's an excellent book on a compelling, if disturbed, set of subjects. Here's an excerpt from the review:

"Those depressed about the state of 21st-century American politics take solace: Governance really has advanced since the late Middle Ages, when any lout, psychopath or 10-year-old might wind up as your chief executive, triggering a family feud, uprising, civil war or, as often as not, a combination of the three. The Plantagenets’ dysfunction surpasses anything on reality television in that the actors lead armies against one another."

Enjoy.

For those looking for more literary criticism, my most recent review for the Post was of Olympia Snowe's new memoir/call to action, Fighting for Common Ground, published in June, and before that of a boisterous, flawed attack on the late Christopher Hitchens.