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Episode 18: June 11, 2025 - full "strawberry" moon with Angus Konstam, naval historian and author of The Pirate Menace: Uncovering the Golden Age of Piracy
Tonight, Tom is joined by his friend, Naval historian and writer Angus Konstam. Interestingly, this full moon night coincides with the 300th anniversary of the hanging of Orkney's pirate, John Gow.
Hear about:
• The Valient Book of Pirates - early days
• Unraveling the difference between pirate fact and fiction
• Cuddly pirates?
• Why not to use a live parrot at a pirate event
• Orkney's most-known pirate, John Gow - not the stuff of legends
• Did an oppressive system create piracy?
• The pirate John Gow's early days in Stromness
• Privateering - the big business of licensed piracy
• The difficulty of tracking down information about a pirate's early life
• Gow, a navigator and a literate pirate
• Gow's first failed attempt at a life of piracy
• Dire happenings on the Caroline, and the birth of the Pirate Gow
• Re-imagining the Caroline, according to pirate tradition; enter the Revenge
• About drying fish for transport by ship
• The Navy's pirate pardon scheme
• Gow the fish pirate?
• Finding a place to lie low when the scene got too hot - Stromness! - and how Gow's story came to an end
• Love pirate-style: Helen Gordon, the Odin Oath, and what happened to Gow's hand?
The pirate press gang
• The attack on the Hall of Clestrain - pirates soundly defeated by clever women
• Where was the original Hall of Clestrain?
• Final bungled attempts at Carrick House, the home of Gow's old schoolmate
• The pirates' come-uppance "sooth"
• Where was Execution Dock in London?
• Twice-hang-ed Gow
• How Pirate Gow's telescope came to the Stromness Museum and a shoe buckle from James Fea the pirate-catcher in the Orkney Museum
• What is known about John Fullerton: Orkney's other pirate?
• Mrs Captain Mary Jones the pirate-killer
• A bit about the dread pirate Blackbeard and psychological warfare, and how many times did hid headless body swim around his ship?
• Women pirates from the Bahamas, who "pleaded their bellies"
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