THINK LIKE A PIRATE: FIRST STEP

THE FIRST STEP to THINKING LIKE A PIRATE

So you want to think like a pirate? Great! But it is going to require a complete re-education of everything you have been taught in school, church and the military. What you have been taught in life is the way things are supposed to be, not they way they really are. This is an extension of the philosophy to ‘do as I say not as I do’ and a lot of teachers, parents, ministers and supervisors hoping that the next generation will be more humane than the last.

This re-education is necessary. Since the days of Plato’s school at Akademia (385 B.C.E.), the sacred grove of olive trees dedicated to the goddess Athena and the etymological root of our word academic, there has been a disconnect between what is learned in school and the make-a-buck world. This has been one of the greatest shocks to students entering the job market and the greatest cause of personal failure.

This is to be expected. There have been ‘town and gown’ problems since the Middle Ages. But the disconnect then was merely one of perception. Today, courtesy of the Internet, the chasm is much wider and growing rapidly. The woman who graduated from college in 1950, for instance, could expect to work her entire career with the background and knowledge she acquired in college. By 1960, this had changed. Those who graduated in the 1960s have only be able to get through half of a career before the world changed so much that what they learned was not adequate for the technical realities of real life. This was cut in half by 1970 and half again in 1980.

The one industry that has failed to recognize this profound disconnect is education. Education is taught the same way today as it was when our grandparents went to school. If there is a difference, it is only that the same, dull classes that were taught by flesh-and-blood teachers have been recorded so the same, dull lectures can be broadcast to students who live far away from the school. If Rip van Winkle came back after 80 years of sleep, the only aspect of the culture he would recognize was education.

The first step to thinking like a pirate is to wipe away all of the myths and legends you have been taught since childhood. Yes, some of those myths and legends may be

true. But only some of them. The big problem is that there are a lot of things you fervently believe which are, alas, false. It isn’t so bad that they are not true; what is bad is that you are making decisions based on those false assumptions.

Now I’m sure a lot of readers will give me the ‘yeah, yeah, yeah,’ and say that some things like mathematics just don’t change. They are the same now as the first day a caveman counted on his fingers. OK, here’s a little test. Suppose three men go fishing. They drive all the way to the river and when they got there it is raining so hard they don’t want to fish. Rather than drive all the way back to the city and return to the river the next day they decide to spend the night in a local motel. They go to a small motel where the clerk tells them he has some good news and some bad news. The bad news was there is only one room left. The good news is that the one room has three beds. That was fine with the three fishermen. Each paid $10 for a total and $30 and they go up to the room.

Twenty minutes later the owner of the motel returns. When he learns that the three fishermen had rented the last room for $30 he tells the clerk a mistake had been made. The rooms were $10 each but the room with the three beds rented for $25. So the clerk was given $5 to return to the fishermen. The fishermen were happy at the honesty of the clerk but could not divide the $5 between themselves evenly. So they each took a dollar and gave the clerk a $2 tip. Each of the fishermen thus spent $10 on a room and got a dollar back so the room actually cost each of them $9. The three fishermen combined therefore spent $27 on the room and they gave the clerk a $2 tip. But $27 and $2 are only $29. But they started with $30.

What happened to the extra dollar?

Most people rush through their education without giving much thought not only to what they did pick-up but what they failed to learn. This is particularly true for my field, history. Every student in America has to take history and 99.999999999% of them leave school with no other thought than to never take another history class as long as they live. Worse, they come away with one of the three beliefs that are even worse than not wanting to take another history class:

1. Technology has changed everything so what was will never be again.
2. History repeats itself.
3. Reading Chinese history does nothing to help us understand Americans.

All three of these statements are worse than false. They lull you into believing that history has no value and never should have been a required subject in the first place — and particularly Western Civilization because, after all, that was all about people who we aren’t so there is no connection to the ‘real world.’

All three of these statements are based on the basic misunderstanding of what you are supposed to be learning in history. What you are supposed to be learning is that all humans are the same. They have been the same since the ancient Egyptian and will probably be the same when the world goes to ice in a billion years. Sure our bodies will change but basic human nature will not. It does not matter if we are talking about the ancient Chinese, the empire of Gonga Musa, the American Colonial period of what is going to happen over the next 100 years. Human nature does not change. This is why history is always relevant.

The problem is that teachers spend weeks on why and how historical people and cultures were different from us and less than a fraction of a second on how they are the same. There is no difference. Once you get past the trivia, you will find that all humans are the same. Now I am sure you want some historical examples so here they are.

1. Regardless of what culture you live in — or lived in — you have/had to eat. If you did not grow what you ate you had to buy it from someone. But before you can buy anything you have to have something to sell. If you have something to sell you need some value system to make the transaction. In all times of human history, things of value were traded, bought and sold based on a value system. Today it is called money. Whatever it was called in whatever culture we are studying, its value was the same. If you had a lot of it you were called wealthy. If you didn’t have enough of it you prayed for more of it. Or a route to more of it. Money does not bring happiness but lack of money doesn’t either. If you want to understand history, understand human nature. If you want to understand human nature, ‘follow the money.’

2. There are only four ways to get money: inherit it, marry it, steal it or earn it. The easiest is the first. The hardest is the last. You can marry it but, as the old Italian saying goes, “If you marry for money you will earn every penny of it.” Stealing it leads to the generation of negative cycles which will be discussed later.

3. In every culture in every era of human history there are people who will lie, cheat, steal, kill, deceive, connive and whatever other verb you want to throw in to get ‘money for nothing.’ “Easy money” has ruined more people than worshiping the wrong god. The lure of quick and easy wealth has set off gold rushes, salt stampedes, spice expeditions, pogroms, massacres, slaughters and corruption beyond explanation. Human nature is predictable so we know that out of every thousand people, there are a certain number of individuals who have no problem being anti-social and will lie, cheat, steal, kill, maim, whatever for money or what money will buy. It was a problem the ancient Egyptians faced and we are facing today.

4. All cultures had and have problems with individuals who suffer from addictions. The only difference was the substance at hand. There were drunks in ancient Egypt and we have inebriates today. Hallucinogenic spirits were and are highly prized — read “expensive” for “highly prized” — and quite a few people will indulge too deeply. Drunks and drug addicts are nothing new on the world stage; neither are the tragedies at home and work that are caused by that addiction.

5. Nothing is easy. Every job, not matter how small, is fraught with difficulties. While fairy tales, Hollywood and bookies would have you believe that fame and fortune is just beyond you reach, it’s not. Everything takes time and if you are lucky to arrive on Easy Street you got there by working smart, working hard, working long hours and taking risks. The greater the reward at the back end the greater the risks to be taken at the front end.

6. Nothing is cheap. If you are getting something at a low price, one of four things is happening, all of them bad. The first three are the basics of business: there are only three variables you can adjust: price, quality or service. If you buy pair of shoes for $5, they will not be of the highest quality and you will not be able to return them. In this case, price trumps quality and service. If you want higher quality or a guarantee of service, the price has to go up. The fourth factor in keeping prices low is slave labor. This, by the way, is nothing new. Slave labor is cheap so the product can be priced artificially low. Slavery is one of those perpetual myths that it is economic. It is not and the consequences of making money from forced human labor or coming off slavery are horrific. The American Civil War is a good example.

7. Jobs, prestige and income have remained the same throughout the ages. Medical doctors have always been highly regarded throughout history and could command high wages. Tenant farmers have always done poorly economically. This has remained unchanged over the centuries. Culture and era make no difference. Whether you are talking about the Egyptians, Hittites or right now in the United States, doctors are well paid, tenant farmers are not.

8. Percentages of profit are the same throughout history as well. This is not an unwritten rule; it’s a reality of economy. When it comes to making money, everyone estimates the amount of money they will make and if it is worth their time to get involved in the business. If it is easy to make money in the shipping industry, for instance, the number of people getting into the industry will go up. As there is more competition, the profits go down. As profits go down, people will get out of the business. Over a century or two, the only people left are those willing to work for the profit percentage that exists. Even as the population goes up, the percentages remain statistically the same. At no time in history could you make a killing on the free market with the assurance that no one else would get into your business.

9. True to the old adage, that which goes around comes around. This is the very basis of the Ten Commandments. You should not do bad things, like covet your neighbor’s wife or kill someone, because retribution will come your way. The roots of World War II were in the Versailles Treaty of World War I and that treaty was payback for the Franco-German War of 1870. Sunni and Shia have been at each others throats for more than millennia even though they are offshoots of the same religion. Negative cycles perpetuate themselves and grow in intensity and vitriol. Good cycles are a little different. There is rarely a direct link between the good deed you do and the reward you receive. The greatest reward from doing good and starting a positive cycle is that you do not get sucked into the consequences of a negative cycle. People who commit crimes get caught, go to jail and then cannot find a job when they get out. So they commit another crime and perpetuate the negative cycle. Honest people do not make a lot of money but they do not go to jail either. Over the long run, honest people have better lives than dishonest people.

All of these principles are true whether you are talking about the Sumerians, Canadians or tribes in deepest, darkest Africa. No human society is immune from human nature. History is the study of human nature. It is not taught that way but that’s the fault of the educational system. It does not take long for intelligent humans to understand that is why history is important. You can read history and learn from other people’s mistakes or you can make those mistakes yourself. Reading history gives you a significant edge. You’re not going to live to be 6,000 years old so you are not going to get the opportunity to make and learn from all the mistakes mankind has already made.

The first step of thinking like a pirate is understanding that there is nothing new under the sun. Or, as Harry S. Truman noted, “the only thing new is the history you don’t know.” If you do not understand history you will not understand human nature and you be cursed to repeat your error until you realize you are making a mistake. Good decisions come about because you’ve made a lot of bad ones. But you don’t have to make all the bad ones to arrive at a good one.

If everything you’ve read so far sounds like a mixture of an economics and history lecture, you are quite perceptive. History is the story of economics and economics is the driving force of history. This concept is new to most people because history in high school and college is usually taught as a story of the politics and personalities. The character of George Washington is more important than his policies. The change in the character of the American Republic under Jackson is more important than the step-by-step disaster of the destruction of the Bank of the United States. The maneuverings of the political parties during the elections — and slogans of those elections — are more important than the driving economic forces of the era. History is being taught backwards, students are asked to study the politics and how they affected economics. The reality is the other way around.

Once history has been taught properly, as the ongoing story of economics, a lot of events make more sense. They also have more relevance to today. In this case, there is a Hollywood adage that makes sense: Follow the Money. History is the story of economics and economics are driven by money. So you follow the money. If you want to understand what is going in history or in your business, ‘follow the money.’ Who is making the money? How are they making the money? How are they losing money? Historical events are generated by who is and who is not making money. The American Revolution was a war over who was spending American tax dollars and for what. The American Civil War was fought over an uneconomic lifestyle, slavery. World War II began because Germany did not want to keep paying reparation payments. Economics is the generating factor, thereafter and only thereafter politics becomes the concluding factor.

It will take a while for most people to become skilled at finding where and how money drives politics in history and real life. In my classes, it takes a semester. But once you have discovered the nexus it is hard to ignore. It will also make you skeptical and you will see the invisible hand of greed and avarice in every political move. Good for you! You have locked in on the driving force of business, industry, history, politics and current events. You don’t have to like it, just understand it.

People who are well grounded in history internalize realities of the real world. They have a deeper understanding of what is going on around them. They ‘play the game’ better, so to speak, whether they like being in the game or not. A significant part of playing the game is a result of keeping three things in mind at all times: Margin of Success, Numbers and ROI (Return on Investment.)

Margin of Success

One of the most important rules of thinking like a pirate is also an important rule of life: the margin of success is very small.

Today, as in all other eras, it is easy to be seduced by large numbers. Success seems to come that way. Take Wal-Mart, for instance. In one quarter of 2007, Wal-Mart had profits of $2.8 billion. $2.8 billion! That’s a lot of zeros and it makes people feel that their investment of $100 a month is not even chicken feed. $2.8 billion! That sounds like a military budget, not a store’s profit.

But do not be misled by that figure. In the same quarter Wal-Mart had $76.8 billion in sales. Mathematically that is about a 3.6% return on sales. That’s not very much, particularly considering that Wal-Mart had to have more than $150 billion in stores and other assets to make that 3.6% return.

The point here is that you have to think small. Very few people or companies are going to zoom into the financial ozone. Those that do are like skyrockets. They certainly go up but they also disappear in a bang of red and far too often that red is ink.

Yes, there were pirates who made a killing, excuse the pun, and retired quietly. But they were the exception. Most of the pirates who were able to save money retired on substantially less than a king’s ransom. But they did retire. If you want to think like a pirate, get used to thinking of how small numbers make big differences. The numerical increase in the national unemployment figure from 4.2% to 4.3% may look small but it indicates a large number of people who are suddenly unemployed.

At the same time, do not be fooled that low numbers indicate profits. Low numbers at the start of any operation are to be expected. It’s not how you start your enterprise that counts; it’s where you are in five years. Great inventions shlep into the culture like stray cats, unexpected, unannounced and unwilling to leave.

Now let’s look at some nuts-and-bolts of small numbers and how they make big changes. Offering a numerical explanation, in my state, Alaska, in 2004, we had a population of about 650,000 residents. This excluded nonresident living in Alaska like military personnel, temporary workers in the oil fields, etc. Of these residents, roughly one-quarter were under 18 so the total number of people who could have voted was about 500,000. Of these, less than 460,000 registered to vote and only 28.21% of them (129,145) actually voted. Yeah, you say. So what?

Well, Alaska has 40 legislative districts. Thus each district represents 16,250 people of whom only 3,229 actually voted. That means that the representative for one hypothetical district was, on the average, decided by 20% of the people who actually lived in the district.

But wait. It gets numerical more complicated. In Alaska, about 50% of the electorate in a General Election is No Party. So, again keeping this as general as possible, of the 3,229 votes cast, 1615 were cast by Democrats or Republicans. It is safe to assume that Democrats will vote the Democratic candidate and Republicans for the Republican candidate. But the “No Party” people have to choose between the Democrat and the Republican. Of these “No Party” people, about 1/3 are former Democrats and 1/3 are former Republicans and they will most likely vote that way when push comes to shove. That means that only 1/3 of those who will actually cast a ballot were truly undecided. In the average district, how those 533 actually vote will decide who represents the district. In terms of real numbers, 3.2% of the district residents will decide the entire matter.

When I work as a political campaign manager, I know that I will win or lose depending on how that 3.2% of the district will vote. So my advertising is aimed at those in the 3.2%. My phone calling is aimed at those 3.2%. I could care less about the other 96.8% because their votes are already in the bag for me or my opponent. It’s the 3.2% that is going to will make the difference. That’s not a lot of people.

In reality, it’s even easier than that. In an election where there are no burning issue or inspiring candidate — which is about 90% of all elections — the undecideds will break in the same percentages as the candidates. In other words, if a candidate is running at 60% in the ongoing polls, it is a safe bet that the undecideds will break out at the same percentage. So, if my candidate is running at 57%, I can reasonable assume that he/she will pick up 57% of the undecideds.

Further, all other things being even — which is tough to say when it comes to a political campaign — only half of those undecided are actually neutral. The other half are split 50/50 leaning Democratic or Republican. So now instead of having 3.2% to concentrate on, I only have to find the 1.8% of the district electorate and get them to vote for my man. That’s only 267 votes! For those of you not in the nuts-and-bolts of politics, 267 votes is a lot when you have a district of 16,500.

Now I am sure that there are a lot of skeptical readers at this point. If you are one I am sure you are mumbling something about how politicos real screw up the bean counting and no one really knows what is going to happen in any election. Incumbents usually win no matter how dull they are and when you get a charismatic candidate like in the Presidential election of 2008, the pollsters were consistently wrong.

All of what you have said is true. When there is a burning issue or a charismatic candidate, the general rules of running a campaign go out the window. That’s why the pollsters were so off the mark in 2008. The personalities and issues drew thousands of people to the polls and caucuses who normally would not have voted. A lot of these people registered to vote at the caucuses which means that the political pollsters could not contact them before the caucuses.

But 90% of all races are dull, dull, dull. That’s why it is so hard to get the voters to the polls. Which is also why conservatives win well over 50% of the time. Conservatives voters will vote. They will vote consistently. They will vote even if they think both candidates are garbanzo beans. They will hold their collective nose and vote. Liberal voters, on the other hand, have a tendency to feel less compelled to actually show up at the pools. If there is not a burning issue on the ballot, they don’t show up in large numbers. Over the long run, more conservative voters than liberal voters actually show up at the polls. Thus, over the long run, more conservative candidates are elected.

Back to the concept of small. As a campaign manager I know my success depends on how I can manipulate those 267 votes. If I find what makes them tick, I can lure them over to my side of the equation. But these 267 are fickle. I am not going to get all of them with one advertisement or one mailer or one phone call. But I will be able to peel a few off with each advertisement, mailer and phone call. So I keep advertising, mailing and calling.

If you happen NOT to be one of those 267 people, you are probably sick to death of the advertising, mailing and calling. Frankly, I don’t care. You’ve already made up your mind who you are going to vote for. You are not part of my audience. So go ahead and be rude about the ‘state of politics.’ Whine to the newspapers. Please! The more you talk about the negatives that I am running, the more publicity they will get. I don’t care about you. I care about peeling away any one — or two or three or four — of those 267 undecided voters.

If you think I’m tooting a bad horn, take a look at some historical numbers in national presidential elections. Choosing seven (7) campaigns for which we have solid population records, note that at best a little more than 1/3 of the population actually voted. When you compare winner versus loser, the reality of my numbers is even more educational.

Year Pop (M) Votes (M) % of Total Vote % of Difference D/R

1880 50 9 (18%) less than 1%

1900 76 13 (17%) 6.2%

1920 106 25 (24%) 28%

1940 142 49 (35%) 10%

1960 189 64 (34%) less than 1%

1980 237 80 (34%) 10%

2000 291 101 (35%) less than 1%

In three (3) of these seven (7) elections — 1880, 1960 and 2000 — the margin of victory was less than one percent! That’s almost half! Just in case you think that I chose election years where the percentage difference would be close, below are the statistics for the other 24 presidential elections over the same time period — and note that I did not put in the Election of 1876 that was a tie.

1884 1%

1888 1%

1892 3.6%

1896 4.6%

1904 21.6%

1908 12%

1912 21%

1916 3.3%

1924 33%

1928 16%

1932 18%

1936 24%

1944 8.3%

1948 4.3%

1952 11.4%

1956 16.1%

1964 22.8%

1968 less than 1%

1972 23.6%

1976 2.1%

1984 19.6%

1988 7.6%

1992 7.1%

1996 9.3%

Using my figure of 3.2% as a guide, in the 31 Presidential elections between 1880 and 2000, there were seven (7) where the margin of victory was lower — and two (2) more that were darn close. Four (4) more were under 5% and six (6) more at or under 10%.. That means that 17 elections out of 31 were decided by less than 10% of those who actually voted. That’s more than half!

If you really want to get technical, there were 12 races where there was Third Party candidate running who got close to or over 1 million votes. Those years were 1892, 1912, 1920, 1924, 1932, 1948, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1992, 1996 and 2000. If the Third Party numbers were added into the mix, that would tighten the percentage margin of success even further.

Sure there were lots of reasons that the numbers came out the way they did but, frankly, those are just excuses. There were 31 contests and 31 winners and one-third of them won by less than 5%. Now let’s specifically look at the races that were won by more than 5%, 16 of them. In eight of them, there was a sitting President including two men succeeded a President who died in office (Coolidge in 1924 and Lyndon Johnson in 1964). Four other elections had incredibly popular or unpopular national figures running — General Dwight D. Eisenhower (1952), Herbert Hoover (1932), Hubert Humphrey (1968) and Jimmy Carter (1980). In one election, 1912, the opposition party was split so the election was not a head-to-head, Democrat vs. Republican. Summing this all up, in only four (4) elections between 1876 and 2008 was there margin of victory of over 5%: William McKinley in 1900 (6.2%), William Howard Taft in 1908 (12%), Warren G. Harding in 1920 (28%) and Herbert Hoover in 1928 (16%).

So, in more than 30 elections for President of the United States over the past century and a half, only four (4) have been barn burning runaways for head-to-head competition with no sitting president. Those are pretty slim margins when it comes to electing a President of the United States.

The success rate of small businesses in America is much worse. 90% of all small businesses fail within the first year and of those that are left another third will fail within five years. Now think of criminals in the same manner. The average bank robber, for instance, gets away with about $1,000. If the robber is a single male, he has to pull off a bank robbery every three weeks to come up with enough money to get above the poverty line. Sure there are some robbers who get away with hundreds of thousands of dollars but they are less than 10% of all bank robbers ‘in the business.’

Now consider pirates in the same terms. While history texts talk about the walloping success of some pirates on some ventures, statistically 90% of pirates were failures. They got just enough money to starve. They also grew old fast. A ship owner gathering men for an expedition was going to hire the young and the strong first. The older men went to the back of the line. (Talk of age discrimination!)

To think like a pirate you have to have ice water for blood. Life is a numbers game and the margin for success is very small. Far smaller than you even imagined. In every contest only one person will win. You win by playing the numbers. If you understand your audience, 90% of the time you will win. That’s a lot better odds than a pirate ever had.

NUMBERS

If you want to think like a pirate, the next rule is to know how to count. This is not some academic exercise or elementary school drill. Lots of people know numbers but they don’t know how to count. Counting is substantially different from tabulating. Politicians count; economists tabulate. There is a significant difference.

For the concept of counting, a negative example will work better than a positive one. If you want to think like a pirate, the single worst thing you can do is listen to a theoretical economist. These individuals are the people who will tell you with uncanny clarity why what they said yesterday didn’t happen. Worse than that, they will have you believe that over the long term everything works out. They can’t give you a bean’s worth of quality advice as to what will happen tomorrow but they get better the longer they carry out their calculations.

They are also dangerous because of what they get you to believe is reality. As an example, an economist will swear on a stack of Samuelson’s that every dollar in an economic transaction can be found somewhere. There are no wasted pennies. If Company A buys a machine part from Company B, Company A uses the money earned to pay utility bills, offer raises to employees, cover rent and show a profit. Company B uses the machine part to make money which it uses to do the same. It’s a perfect economic act with both sides for both sides can track their productivity to the penny.

But this economic law falls flat on its face when one of the parties is an individual. When a customer buys an automobile for $35,000, the automobile company registers the $35,000 to the penny in its books. But the customer is not getting an equivalent amount of economic satisfaction. The instant he signs the ownership papers, the car loses value. It is now a used car. In a split second, the value of a car has dropped by a good percentage even though it has not moved a millimeter on the show room floor.

Further, when the customer drives off the vehicle lot, he starts polluting the air. As there are lots and lots of cars and factories polluting the air the rates of lung afflictions and deaths go up. That causes the insurance rates to rise. Though the automobiles and factories are the cause the pollution they do not pay a dime toward mitigating the damage they have created. The customer has to pay that increased cost.

If questioned about the latter example, theoretical economists will say that air pollution is a “social cost.” A “social cost” is something that does not have a dollar value so it cannot be entered on the books of the automobile company. But it will have a real cost to the family whose daughter has a respiratory problem and they live in the smog belt. Here the theoretical economist is “tabulating” numbers while the family is counting them.

If you want to think like a pirate you have stop tabulating and start counting. All business is predatory but for a business to stay solvent over the long term it has to ‘play the game right.’ There are very few short cuts to success and no opportunity lasts long enough.

Counting means being realistic about the chances of success, not theoretical. You have to run realistic numbers. A good example of doing it the wrong way is a company that offers the only service in a small town. Suppose it is a glazier. Since he is the only one in town all he has to do is make sure his price is lower than what it would cost to have someone from outside his town offer him competition. So he jacks up his price under the theoretical economic philosophy that that you should charge what the market will bear. So he charges $100 for a job that would have cost $25 in some other town. Since no one is going to travel all the way to his town to replace a $100 window, he gets away with being predatory.

So, for a number of years, this glazier does very well. He is greedy and is making lots of money. But sooner or later someone else is going to get into the field. If there are large profits to be made, there will be competition. Now the glazier has competition so that $100 window he once replaced will now have to be done for substantially less. He is going to have to meet and beat his competitor’s price to stay in business.

Suddenly he has three problems at the same time. First, since he has been predatory for so many years, he has been making the investments and improvements he needs to dodge taxes. Now he has a company that needs a high income coming in the front door to stay in business. He needs to keep replacing windows for $100. But if his competitor forces him to drop his price to, say, $50, that will cut into his income flow and cause great financial distress. If he can, he has to readjust his expense to account for the loss of income.

Second, he will probably still be able to do the big jobs because he has the equipment. But that is not going to last long. His competitor is going to start on the small jobs and his client base will blossom because he is not cheating his customers. People know when they are being cheated. They do not like it and will only put up with it as long as they have to. Giving an option, they will take it. If the competitor treats his customers well, he will find enough business to buy the equipment he needs for the big jobs. This then takes customers away from the established business and aggravates his financial condition.

Third, the new glazier can more readily expand into other areas. The old company had the glass business in town locked up. Because it was making money hand or fist, it didn’t bother to invest in other options. It did not spend a dime on R&D (Research & Development) because it did not have to. Following the advice of the theoretical economist, it ‘made hay while the sun shined.’ Now that the company is losing money, it can’t put any funds into R&D. If money is very tight, the company cannot afford to spend on marketing, advertising or promotions. If its income continues to go down hill, it will have to lay off employees which will lengthen the time it takes to finish jobs and affect quality. Disaster now looms. When the established glazier goes out of business, the theoretical economists will say that this was the consequence of a downturn in business. Actually it had more to do with greed than competition.

The difference between the two glaziers is that one was a tabulator and the other was a counter. The tabulator was greedy. He did not care about market rates, industry-wide percentages of return, customer satisfaction or long term market development. He thought he was being a good businessman because he got the business. He did well because he was greedy and his success killed him.

If he has any brains at all, the competing glazier will not make the same mistake his competitor did. If he jacks up his prices because he’s the only one in town, the same thing will happen to him that happened to his former competitor. If he keeps his prices reasonable, there will be no incentive for a competitor to enter the market. Over the long run he will make more by being reasonable than his former competitor did by being greedy.

In the world of the pirate, greed killed. You jumped onboard a prize ship too fast and were run through. You grabbed for the best grog without looking to see who was supposed to get it. You fought before you thought, spent before you saved and drank before you ate. You pissed your wealth against the wall. Like 90% of all people in all lands in all eras, you ended up no better off economically than his parents.

But 10% of the pirates were counters, not tabulators. They understood numbers. It was possible to drink and cat just as pleasantly on half of what you came home with as it was all of it. With money you could move up the economic food chain; without it you were no better off in three weeks than you were before the last raid.

Only 10% of all people are counters. This 10% is an interesting number as it constantly comes up. While no one knows what the actual figure is, the 10% notion was coined by one of the most underrated thinkers of the last century, W. E. B. Dubois. In September of 1903 he wrote an article that was part of a collection of essays titled “The Negro Problem.” (DuBois was black.) In that article, DuBois stated that one is ten black people would become influential in the world. These people, the “talented tenth,” would move up the economic food chain because they worked both hard and smart, became educated in the true sense of the term and were willing to take the personal risk necessary to succeed.

That 10% is a good figure to use. Only 10% of all people, regardless of their ethnic background, education or era in human history, are going to succeed. But they are going to have to do it on their own. Social systems are not set up for people to succeed; they are designed to keep the largest number of people happy with what they have. This is not a cruel assessment, it is reality. Not everyone who wants to make a living as an actor will be able to do so. Of the tens of thousands of writers, painters, sculptors and musicians, only about 10% will be able to make a living at it.

If you want to think like a pirate you have to be a counter. That means you have understand that you have to make it into that 10% to be a success. You become a success slowly. You save money instead of spending it. You invest for the long term instead of the quick turnaround. You are conservative in your enterprises and only take calculated risks.

Thousands of fortunes went through pirate hands but only hundreds of pirates died in bed. The lasting fortunes were made by the counters. These were the merchants and smugglers who bought rummage low and sold high. Then there were the tavern and brothel owners who managed to save money. Sir Henry Morgan started as a seaman and earned is way to a mansion and 1000 acre plantation on Jamaica and the income it produced.

If you want to think like a pirate you have to be a counter, not a tabulator. Few stumble into fortune and most of those who do piss it against a wall. Modern statistics indicate that 90% of all people who win large jackpots or lotteries find them selves broke. That’s understandable. Like 90% of the pirates they were tabulators, not counters. 90% may have been failures but 10% were not, the “talented tenth,” those who became successful through their own personal virtues.

ROI (RETURN ON INVESTMENT)

The third basic requirement to thinking like a pirate is to understand your ROI, “Return on Investment.” This is another of those realities of life that everyone thinks they understand but are actually a bit fuzzy on the details. Though it is a financial term, you should be incorporating it into your mind set whether you are in business or not.

First, and most sadly, you would be amazed at how few people actually know how much they earn. When I worked with the United States Census Bureau as a Field Representative, I was amazed at how many people did not really know how much they earned. They generally knew how much they got in each paycheck had no idea how much they earned yearly. Or hourly. While I can understand not knowing your paycheck to the penny, I found it hard to understand how many people only knew they made “about 45,000 a year.” They didn’t even know if that was before or after taxes.

You are never going to know if you are earning what you should if you are unaware of how much you are making. How much you are making is equivalent to what you are worth. Do you know how much you are worth? To the penny? If you don’t you could be being cheated and not even know it.

All pirates knew how much they made. When the booty was distributed, each pirate made sure he got his cut. To the penny. Sure, they pissed their wealth against a wall, but they knew how much they were worth.

Let me give you a good example of how not knowing what you are worth is dangerous to your wealth. Suppose you are a small union and you are negotiating for a three-year contract. Let’s keep this easy by saying that everyone in the union is making the same per hour rate and has the same benefits. The employer comes back and offers you a 3% raise per year in addition to whatever the rate of inflation is and a 3% per year increase in health benefits.

Having worked for a union I can tell that there things will immediately happen. About a third of the members will yell and scream that that 3% is not enough. One third will say that the employer is low balling the figure so the negotiators should demand three times that increase so they can settle for a bit more than the 3%. The last third will talk about fishin’ an’ huntin’.

Since you’re the negotiator, what do you do?

Good question, right?

Well, you think like a pirate. Be a counter not a tabulator. First, find out your members should be making. But be careful how you do it. There is always someone who knows that Charlie who works across town for so-and-so is making $4 an hour more with better benefits and Sam across the highway is making $3 an hour more but has one heckofa health insurance package.

But when it comes down to the nuts-and-bolts, who knows how much your members should be making?

Actually, that’s the easiest question to answer. You punch up your State Department of Labor Statistics web page and look. The Federal government also has those statistics on-line. Your first assignment is to compare what your members are making with what the standard rate is. Just because you don’t like your employer does not mean he is trying to cheat you.

Second, when it comes to health insurance, your members are being screwed no matter what the terms are. Chances are your members are in a big package that treats all of the insured the same. Single men and women are probably paying the same amount as married member with families. You will be told by the employer that “on the average” everyone has the same coverage but that’s bogus. Maybe your members would be better off with no health insurance and extra money in their pocket so they can join another insurance plan. Don’t say “That’s not true!” until you explore the possibilities.

But that was an easy answer. A much more difficult one is to figure out the ROI if you are, say, a realtor. The easy answer, the one a theoretical economist would give, is that if you can make more doing something else then your ROI is better at the other job. This, of course, is hogwash. The time it will take to retool and the money it will cost to retrain may make the transition unreasonable. But theoretically the economist is correct in the sense that if you are making $10 an hour as a realtor and could make $15 an hour as a sonogram operator that you should change jobs. But you cannot become a sonogram operator just by wanting the job.

While this concept may seem a bit obvious to many readers, it is actually a critical piece of survival to a growing number of Americans. With American businesses downsizing, outsizing and outsourcing, small businesses have boomed. Two decades ago, being a small business meant that you had to work at it fulltime. Today, courtesy of the Internet, you can run two, three or four small businesses out of a home office at the same time.

But just because you are efficient does not mean you are making money. Coming up with the price of your product is becoming more difficult because many small businesses are undercutting themselves to get customers and slopping the losses into one of their other small businesses. This is a very risky way of doing business but these people are thinking like pirates.

How can you lose money to make money? After all this is exactly opposite of the adage that to ‘make money you have to spend money.’ The driving motivation for this business move is thinking like a pirate. Now only should you know what you are worth, you should know where the big money is. Your ROI is not just making money on your labor today; it’s making big bucks downstream.

You need an example? OK, you are an individual who is running three small businesses. You run a real estate office that is making money, a print operation that makes bumper stickers and a small art supply store. You are making pretty good money at real estate but know that over the long run you’re going to be getting out of that business. Selling homes pulls you out of the office too often and when you are on the road with a buyer, your print operation and art supply store run without supervision.

You think like a pirate. You ask yourself, “Where is the big money and how do I get it?” You decide that the big money you want to go after is in contracting services in your community. Large companies want someone who will handle the time-consuming problems they have: arranging travel, cutting through red tape at city hall, setting up community meetings, getting pamphlets written, printed and distributed. What you know from being around your regular customers is that there is a need for this kind of a service. You see an opportunity to take advantage of this outsourcing.

So how do you get the new business started? Simple. You already have an office, a local track record for getting projects done on time and on budget. And you have connections you can use. But you also know you are going to lose money in this business for three years. So how do you make those three years count?

Think like a pirate.

One way you can do it is to expand your bumper sticker business to include business forms and drop your prices below your competitors. You can afford to do that because you can swallow the financial shortfall in your print business. You’re making enough through the real estate office to offset the loss. Your competitors, who only have their print shop to make money, cannot take the red ink. They cannot cut their costs but you can. You do. Now you are getting a lot of business clients you did not have before.

Because you know you are going to be getting out of the print business in three years, the maximum time the IRS will allow you to operate at a loss, you make as many high quality contacts in large businesses as you can. Show them you can finish their jobs on time with quality. Yes, you are taking a loss with every print job you sell. But you don’t care. You are after the big money. You get big money from big companies. The easiest way to get inside big companies is know someone there. Because you are willing to operate your print shop at a loss for three years, you have three years to make the high level, personal contacts you need to go after the big money. (This is certainly counting, not tabulating.)

What about your competitors? They’re losing business. Yeah, so? Business is a predatory enterprise. Any business that does not take advantage of an opportunity is not working to its full potential. You are not responsible for other people’s stupidity, only your own opportunity.

Well, isn’t this a bit bloodthirsty? Good question. The answer is yes. But it requires a longer explanation. Business has always been a bloodthirsty enterprise. Businesses came and went and that was the way it was. Then, in the 1960s, America made a social change. It was peace and love and get along with your neighbor. This mentality grew and flowered under President George H. W. Bush with his policy of a “kinder, gentler nation.” By 2000, the national mood was feel good and live and let live.

We have paid and are paying a very high price for this touchy-feely mentality. The quality of American education has gone into the toilet, our production jobs have gone overseas, we value cheap goods over high quality standards, candidates for national office are getting elected without talking about the critical issues of the day and entertainment has become the leading American export. Gone are the days when an American product was synonymous with quality.

At the same time, our international competitors have been thinking like pirates. American visitors to China are shocked at the pollution caused by their factories. European products flood onto the American marketplace. Illegal immigrants are doing skilled jobs that used to be done by American craftsmen at half the price. Canadian drugs are coming across the border by the boxcar load. At the same American dollars are flooding out of the country to OPEC countries, Japanese car manufacturers, Chinese toy producers and European industries. We taught the world how to do business and they are eating our lunch.

We are our own worst enemy. We have changed from a country that made money by making things to rabble of greedy speculators. Investors place their money in mutual funds rather than into businesses where they use their expertise to help the company prosper and grow. Large businesses feel justified in shaving corners to make profits instead of earning them. In the 1980s the reputable firm of E. F. Hutton & Company was caught check kiting. The scheme involved over 400 banks and gave E. F. Hutton about $250 million in phantom cash, money that was technically the banks’ but which E. F. Hutton had access to without paying any interest. Over the next few decades there were scandals involving some of the largest companies in America including Enron, Silverado Savings & Loan, Adelphia and Halliburton.

What is point here? The point is that ROI does not just mean money in the bank. Cash is a very poor measure of your worth. ROI means getting out of your effort what you want. If you want to shovel horse manure for $100,000 a year, that’s your choice. If that is what you want out of your life, it’s your choice as well. But if you are reading this book it’s a good bet that you are still looking to make $100,000 a year.

At some point in their lives every human being from the ancient Egyptian midwife to the guy who manages the 7–11 on 23rd Street will realize he/she has a choice. He/she can choose to work hard and make money or make less money but have a more rewarding personal life. Most people choose the former because they need the money. But the operational word in the last sentence is choose. They have made the choice. Their ROI is cash. Those who choose less cash and more personal satisfaction view their ROI in a different way. Maybe they want to spend more time with their family, follow in the footsteps of Jesus or feel that someone should be doing something about the homeless. What these people choose to do is not important. What is important is that they understand what their ROI is and that they can choose their own path in life.

CONCLUSION

Summing up this chapter is easy. If you want to think like a pirate you have to acquaint yourself with certain realities. The three, intertwined realities you must internalize are margin of success, numbers and ROI. You have to constantly reassess yourself and re-check your sense of direction. This re-constant checking is critical because the margin for success for 90% of what you do is in the range of less than a handful of percentage points. That’s why you have to be a counter, not a tabulator. There is not a lot of wiggle room for most success.

Understand why you are in the game. If you are in it for the money, make sure you are being paid what you are worth. Don’t be snookered by your employer, your union or your spouse. Be informed and, in this day and age, virtually all the numbers you need are available vial the Internet. There is no reason to be uniformed.

On the other hand, if you are more interested in personal satisfaction or service to mankind, I salute you for a choice well made. If I was not married to a woman who spends money faster than the US Mint can printed it and did not have the most expensive free dog in the universe I would be doing the same thing.

Edward a. teach, ALSO KNOWN AS blackbeard

If there is any one individual who personifies the pirate to the American public it is Edward A. Teach, better known as Blackbeard. Though he only had a two-year reign of terror, he lives in our nightmares as the most ferocious pirate of the Seven Seas, a psychopath with a lust for killing and torture, rape and pillage as well as many of the other fine arts of maim and mayhem. His very name was enough to cause brave men to grow faint and women to hide their dowry. Hollywood made millions on the “Lord of the Outer Banks” and his visage continues to appear on TV and computer games as diverse as SpongeBob SquarePants, Time Squad, and Megaman Battle Network. He is the perennial pirate, the epitome of evil in the age of sail and his name is catchphrase for all that is beastly, heinous, repulsive and villainous.

And it is all a lie. There is not a single scrap of evidence that Blackbeard ever killed a single person or tortured anyone. He was all theater and he was so good at his schtick that stage and screen actors have been using it for almost 300 years. He was all bluster and that’s not bad. It worked and that, in the long run, is what success is all about.

Teach was probably about six feet in height, which was a tall man in those days. In an era where most men shaved, Teach allowed his hair and beard to grow. By the time he became a pirate, his beard hung to the center of chest. He braided his long hair into pig tails and tied small pieces of ribbon in the braids. He wore a three-cornered hat, called a tricorn, which was unusual as pirates usually went bareheaded, and stuffed several lighted hemp fuses in his beard. As the fuses smoldered and smoked they accentuated his dark piercing eyes and made him appear as an apparition from Hell.

Teach was fortunate inthat he became a pirate at the end of the Golden Age. By then pirates and their techniques were well known. Generally speaking, as long as a ship did not resist capture, the pirates weren’t wont to kill anyone. Usually it just took a shot across the bow to stop the ship. Often just the pirate flag was enough.

[Interestingly, the original pirate flag was just a bloody shirt. When the pirates had more blunt, it became a red flag. Supposedly this was an indication that if there was any resistance everyone on board would be killed. This is the legend and may be true but the fact of the matter was that once the pirates ran up what became known as the “Jolly Roger” most ships allowed the pirates to board without a fight. Then, as now, the cargo was insured.

The “Jolly Roger” of Hollywood is invariably a black flag with white skull and crossbones superimposed. Authentic Pirate flags varied in their design but most were white symbols with a black background. Skulls were popular as were bones. The actual term “Jolly Roger” harkens back to the days of the red flag, the name a butchering of the French term “joli rouge,” or “pretty red.”]

Once on board, Blackbeard, with his hemp smoking, was an imposing figure. He usually had pistols, knives and cutlasses all about his person indicating that he would have no difficulty butchering the entire ship’s company if given the chance. He, literally, scared the Hell out of the passengers and crew. After he had stripped the ship of its cargo and the passengers of their money, he and his crew left.

There are lots of tales of Blackbeard ‘running around’ the historical community and most of them are, at best, great stretches of the truth. He supposedly maintained a running battle with the H.M.S SCARBOROUGH, a 30-gun British man-of-war. At best this would have been foolhardy. It’s a fine story but the log book of the SCARBOROUGH records no such battle. Other stories of Blackbeard that are dubious include marrying a 16-year old as his 14th wife and turning her over to the pleasure of his crew while he watched and, on another occasion, locking himself and his crew into the hold with several pots of lighted brimstone. He was supposedly the last to emerge from the smoky hold and said to his crew, “Damn ye, ye yellow-bellied sapsuckers! I’m a better man than all ye milksops put together!”

With a footnote as to accuracy, the yellow-bellied sapsucker is indigenous to Eastern Alaskan, Canada and the American northeast. While there are some in North Carolina they nest in high elevations of which the coastline has few. How Blackbeard would have known about yellow-bellied sapsuckers is unclear. The statement is therefore suspect. “Milksop” has been around since the 1400s and meant, then, an effeminate man. Today it means a weak or ineffectual person. It is unclear what the term meant if and when Blackbeard used it.

Of two acts there are no historical doubts. One is the blockade of Charleston, South Virginia. In May of 1718, a month before he was to accept a pardon, he and several hundred pirates plugged up Charleston. They took five ships that were coming into or leaving from Charleston and threatened to torture all of the passengers and crew unless their terms were met. Considering that Charleston was a wealthy city and some of the hostages were prominent Charleston residents, the ransom was expected to be high. But the demand was for a chest of medicines, an item that might have been worth a few hundred dollars in today’s money. After Blackbeard had secured the medicine, he released the hostages and ships and sailed away.

Shortly thereafter, loaded with treasure, he tried — and was successful at — increasing his share of the booty. He purposefully ran his flagship, QUEEN ANNE’S REVENGE in a sand bar in Beaufort Inlet in what is now Pamlico Sound off the coast of North Carolina. Then he had his men use a second ship to try to pull the first one off the sand bar. What that one become stuck as well, he ordered all of the booty from the first two ships transferred to the last ship, ADVENTURE. After the treasure was securely on board, he abandoned his men that were still on the first two ships. When some members of the crew on the ADVENTURE raised a hue and cry, he had them marooned on a nearby island. Then Blackbeard with a chosen crew sailed off to Bath, North Carolina where he accepted a King’s Pardon for giving up his pirating ways. (Now that’s thinking like a pirate!)

Even as a non-pirate, rumors of exploits continued to surface. He supposedly bribed the Governor of North Carolina for safe haven, built a home nearby and wooed the Governor’s daughter. Supposedly the daughter rebuffed the pirate because she was already engaged. This enraged Blackbeard, who sought out the young man, murdered him and severed his hands before he had the body dumped into the sea. He had the hands sent to the Governor’s daughter as proof of her fiancés death. She, according to the legend, wasted away and died soon afterward.

While this is the stuff of Hollywood legend, it is not historically accurate. First, there is not a scrap of evidence that Governor Charles Eden took any money from Blackbeard. The rumor that he was ‘on the take,’ which appears in far too many history books, was generated by the Lt. Governor of Virginia at the time, Alexander Spottswood, who had good reason to tar Eden with every brush at his disposal. (That reason will be made clear later in this section.)

Second, there was no reason for Blackbeard to bribe the Governor. He got a King’s pardon just like any other pirate that swore to abandon his illegal ways. Why would Blackbeard pay for something he could get for free?

Third, with regard to the pirate living near the governor, in 1718 everybody lived close to the Governor in those days. In 1708, admittedly a decade earlier than Blackbeard, the town in which the Governor lived, Bath, had a population of 50 people and 12 houses. But the town did not grow very fast. In the last Census, 2000, it only had 275 people. So, for Blackbeard to live near the Governor was not as significant and some historians would have you believe.

Then there’s the tale of the Governor’s daughter, her fiancé, the severed hands and the woman dying of a broken heart? It’s a fine story except that Eden did not have a daughter. He did not have a son either, for that matter. He died childless.

The only act of violence that has been directly associated with Blackbeard in the historical record — sort of — took place shortly before Blackbeard was killed. Supposedly, and the truth may have been stretched a bit, Blackbeard was drunk and seated when pulled a pistol on three men. He put the gun under the table whereupon one man left. Blackbeard blew out a candle that was on the table and fired his pistol. One pistol misfired. The other sent a ball into the kneecap of the ship’s Master, Israel Hands, crippling him for life. However, it is important to note that Israel Hands told this story to Captain Johnson, part of the contingent who attacked Blackbeard. Hands claimed the incident had happened before Blackbeard allegedly went back to pirating so this let Hands off the hook as being a pirate with Blackbeard. Hands was not hanged as a pirate. How reliable Hands was is not known. Since we only have the word of Captain Johnson that Israel Hands told him anything, I must add a word of caution. Johnson and the rest of the British soldiers who killed Blackbeard were, at best, shaving the edge of the law themselves. The worse Blackbeard appeared, the more justified their action.

In June of 1718, Blackbeard appeared before Governor Eden and received a pardon. This was just under the wire. All those who wished a pardon had to do so prior to September 15, 1718 and the pardon was only good for all acts committed before January 5, 1718. What probably made the pardon a bit unusual — assuming you considered a blanket pardon of pirates usual — was Blackbeard’s blockade of Charleston. That had happened in May. There must have been some flexibility in Eden, the Act or in Blackbeard’s excuse as he was granted the pardon in spite of the blockade.

Now the story becomes murky. Blackbeard lived in Bath for a short period of time and then went back to sea. Captain Johnson, the same man who reported the testimony of Israel Hands’ story being shot under a table by Blackbeard, reported that Blackbeard then looted several British vessels. There is no record other than Johnson’s word that this happened and there is great doubt that it occurred at all. If true, this would surely have brought the wrath of the English Navy down on his head and, frankly, Blackbeard was such an easily identifiable person that if the pillaging had been true, someone somewhere would have told the newspapers of the day that Blackbeard was back a-pirating.

Blackbeard’s next act does have historical documents to back up his claim — and, once again, maybe. Supposedly Blackbeard and his men ‘found’ two French ships at sea. One was loaded with cocoa and sugar and the other was empty. Blackbeard had his men transfer the sailors from the loaded vessel onto the empty vessel and sent them on their way. He then took the loaded vessel to Governor Eden and said he had found it abandoned and thus a legal prize. Eden, as required, held a hearing at which four pirates claimed the ship had been unmanned when she was spotted. Since the French sailors were not there to dispute the claim, Eden had no choice but to grant Blackbeard the right to the ship and her cargo. There was a silver lining to this ruling for Court claimed 20% of the cargo to offset its administrative expenses. This was a legitimate charge and amounted to 80 barrels of sugar of which 60 were sent to Governor Eden and 20 to Lt. Governor Tobias Knight. (The balance of this cargo will become important in a few paragraphs.)

Eden was prepared to live with the presence of Blackbeard in Bath and Pamlico Sound because had no choice. Blackbeard had committed not act that terminated the pardon and had a crew of pirates that was many times larger than any army unit he would raise. But Lt. Governor Alexander Spottswood of Virginia was not willing to live with Blackbeard so close to his colony line. So he proceeded to do something about it.

Everyone knew where Blackbeard spent his time, just off shore from what is now Ocracoke§. But taking the now-alleged pirate would be difficult. The waters were too shallow for a man-of-war but deep enough for careening. Even if a man-of-war could approach, it had no authority to attack the pirates as they had committed no act of piracy since their pardon.

But the niceties of the law did not concern Spottswood. Using his own money he chartered two shallow-draft sloops, RANGER and JANE, and crewed them with British navel volunteers. The legality of hiring British volunteers didn’t seem to bother Spottswood.

Under the command of Lt. Robert Maynard, 200 men went into Pamlico Sound and attacked Blackbeard. Since Blackbeard only had 22 men, the battle was never in doubt. The battle was ferocious and you can read the blow-by-blow in most books on pirates. Blackbeard himself took 25 wounds, five of them from pistols. He fainted from loss of blood allowing Maynard the time to sever the pirate’s head from his body. The body was dumped overboard whereupon — depending on the book you read — the headless body of Blackbeard swam around the ship three or more times. Thirteen of the pirates had been killed and the other nine were taken prisoner.

As far as the booty they expected to find — after all these were pirates — the pickings were unusually thin: 25 hogsheads of sugar, 11 barrels and 145 bags of cocoa, a barrel of indigo and a bale of cotton. In fact, some historians suggest that this was what was left of the cargo of the supposedly abandoned French prize.

But there were no doubloons. This was odd because Blackbeard and his crew were, quite literally, loaded with treasure in May. That was when Blackbeard abandoned two ships and marooned a good chunk of his crew before seeking a pardon. That treasure has never been found.

All of the pirates taken prisoner were hanged. Only Israel Hands was given a pardon and many believe that Hands was given the pardon for his assistance to Spottswood. Part of that assistance was giving Spottswood the reason to seize the barrels of sugar that had been provided to Eden and Knight as payment for administrative fees for deciding the claims of the French Prize. Spottswood claimed this was bribe money. He order the sugar seized even though it was in another colony and he had no legal authority to do so.

Spottswood then sold the alleged bribe at auction for $500,000 in today’s dollars. This should have been money that went to the Crown but Spottswood, as the saying goes, ‘had expenses.’ He repaid himself for the leasing of the sloops and other costs of the operation. Then there were the costs of storage of the plunder and costs associated with the sale of the plunder and then the costs of the trial and the costs of housing the prisoners and the costs associated with mass execution.

After those expenses, Spottswood paid Maynard and his men, the naval contingent that had actually did the bloody work. They should have been paid collectively $110,000 in today’s dollars. But “after expenses” they only netted a fraction of that amount and not for about four years.

Israel Hands, reasonably, was the last man alive who knew where Blackbeard hid his treasure. Could he have traded knowledge of the treasure over to Spottswood to avoid the gibbet? No one knows. Spottswood remained Lt. Governor until 1722 when he was replaced but by then he was the richest man in Virginia.

Interestingly, though there is no documentary evidence to support the claim, Blackbeard’s head was defleshed and his skull installed in the bottom of a punch bowl. Today it resides in the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

But what of the motive of Spottswood? He was not even Governor of Virginia yet he funded an expedition that many would say was nothing more than piracy disguised as a military operation. He ordered an attack on a civilian vessel that had committed no illegal act and orchestrated the hanging of nine men he alleged were pirates on the basis of one man, a turncoat, who had everything to gain by lying. Further, he ordered military personnel to invade the land of another colony and seize property of the other colony with no warrant. He then sold the purloined property in order to pocket a lion’s portion of the proceeds. Then he ruined the reputations of Governor Eden and Lt. Governor Tobias Knight both in his time and the historical record.

Why? Cash is a good reason. Blackbeard’s buried treasure could be another one. A third scenario raised is that he feared that Blackbeard and other pirates might may Pamlico Sound another Port Royale of New Providence. This is a bit far-fetched but, at the time, there were probably many who believed it could have been true. One could even suggest that Spottswood was concerned that if another Port Royale had been established it would have been within the coastal waters of North Carolina and not Virginia and those his colony would lose out on valuable sale of rummage.

Whatever the reason, Blackbeard was dead, Eden’s reputation was besmirched and Spottswood was a wealthy man.

What to learn from the saga of blackbeard

The most obvious lesson here is that the so-called honest people are far more crooked that than the people who are supposed to be the outlaws. Yes, Blackbeard was a disreputable fellow. But he was nowhere as disreputable as the Lt. Governor of Virginia. Spottswood is the only one who comes away with cash. Everyone else is sullied. Spottswood was the perfect survivor. He got every one of his enemies, real or perceived, and got away with the cash. He played the system perfectly. Blackbeard was dead. Spottswood’s bills were paid, he profited mightily, possibly from Blackbeard’s treasure and he died in his bed. He skinned them all and lives on in history as one of the great Lt. Governors in American colonial history.

Probably the most important real world lesson from the saga of Blackbeard is not to believe your press clippings. Blackbeard created a persona for himself and it made him a lot of money. A LOT of money. He made hay while the sun was shinning. When he got out of the pirating business he should have quit. But he didn’t. Or couldn’t. It doesn’t matter now because in either case it killed him.

Greed, as my father used to say, is only good in very small amounts. It will motivate you. But too much greed will ruin you. Blackbeard had a lot of greed in him and it killed him. As far as cash on hand, he died with what he had in his purse, (there were no pockets yet.) Even more chilling, he may very well have funded the wealth of the man who ordered his death, Alexander Spottswood.

The most important lesson from Blackbeard actually comes from Spottswood. No matter what field of endeavor you choose to make your life’s work, you will find a Spottswood in the mix. These are the legal pirates. They are brazen because they are willing to play the numbers. Spottswood gambled he could kill Blackbeard, ruin Eden and walk away with cash in his pocket. But to ‘win,’ using a 21st Century term, he needed two things: a somewhat legitimate reason to start the adventure and some guarantee that he could cover his posterior afterwards. He made up a seemingly legitimate reason; that Blackbeard was thinking of creating a Port Royale in Pamlico Sound. He knew Blackbeard would never be able to deny it. After all, dead men tell no tales.

As far as covering himself, Spottswood probably felt confident that he could, at the very least, turn one pirate. That was nothing new. In this case, fortune was kind the daring. In Israel Hands he had the perfect foil. Spottswood probably dangled the full pardon before the eyes of Hands for testimony and, probably, the location of Blackbeard’s treasure. Hands died in obscurity; Spottswood passed away with great wealth.

Never underestimate the power of someone who is willing to be brazen. Edmund Burke had it right: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Never forget that in your job, your life and the current events of your city, state and nation there is a Spottswood and he/she is, as you read this, plotting.

SIR HENRY MORGAN

Henry Morgan was the pirate’s pirate. He ‘played the game’ perfectly. He thought like a pirate. He did exactly what one has to do then — and now — to survive and prosper. If you are looking for the paramount example of thinking like a pirate, Henry Morgan is your man.

That being said, he was an exceedingly dangerous individual, a pit viper in elegant dress. He was a master organizer and charismatic commander but would sell out his best friend at the drop of hat. He was one of the few pirates to die fabulously wealthy and in bed — but he most probably kept a brace of pistols under his pillow for he never knew when his past would catch up to him. He initiated the Golden Age of Piracy and died when it was still possible to switch sides — and in his case, frequently — without ending up in a gibbet.

Little is known of his early life and it is assumed he was born in Wales about 1635. He was not of superior social stock so advancement in the British Isles was impossible. Thus he went to sea where advancement was. The first solid record we have of Morgan is at age 19 when he sailed with a British expeditionary force to the Caribbean. The Crown was intent on snatching the island of Hispaniola from Spain It was the second largest island in the Caribbean (behind Cuba and is now split between the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic) but the expedition was an abject failure. But rather than retreat with nothing, it too Jamaica as the consolation prize.

Cashiering out of the service of the Crown, Morgan remained in the Caribbean as a mercenary. Fighting under Commodore St. Christopher Myngs, he was one of many former British soldiers who kept the Spanish from taking the English-held islands in the West Indies.

If there was any one person who can be credited with jumpstarted the buccaneer and pirating era, it is Myngs. He swept in the Caribbean with more than 300 men and proceeded to plunder the Spanish Main. His attacks were frightening to the Spanish because he would do the unexpected. He would go ashore undetected by the residents and then attack the Spanish city from an unexpected direction. Because he attached quickly, no one had time to run off into the jungle with their money. They and their treasure would be captures inside the city. Then Myngs would take his plunder quickly and go.

He was also a very cagey commander. Though he was supposedly in the employ of the English government as a commander, this did not seem to stop him from ‘dipping into the till.’ What finished his career as an officer — but started it as a buccaneer — was his skimming of 12,000 pieces of eight before he split what was left of the booty with his crew. This clearly did not endear him to his crew. What did not endear him to the British, his employer, was the taking and looting of six Dutch ships. At that time the Dutch were allies of the British. Myngs was called back to England where he was either stripped of or resigned his commission. Then he returned to Jamaica where he continued his activities as a privateer.

Morgan learned quite a bit from the Myngs and profited greatly. By 1661 he had saved enough blunt to purchase a ship. Now he was both a mercenary and subcontractor to the Crown. But from the beginning, Morgan was a political animal. Though he was not well educated, he understood the ebb and flow of international politics and suited his actions to always end up on the right side of the issue.

Technically all of the Caribbean was owned by the Spanish. But that had been with the Treaty of Tordesillas which had been originated by Pope Alexander VI. But the Papal Line of Demarcation had been made in 1493 when Spain, Portugal, England and France were all Christian. But that was only until the advent of Martin Luther. After Luther, the main branch of Christians in Europe was called Catholics. Luther’s offshoot was Lutheranism and then Henry VIII changed the Catholic Church in England to Anglican in 1536. This is a mercifully short way of illustrating that by the time of Henry Morgan, the English didn’t give a farthing for what the Pope had given the Spanish in the Caribbean. It was, to use an anachronistic American sports expression, “anyone’s ball game.”

Religious differences between Spain and England aside, there were economic matters at dispute as well. Military ones too. Both were co-equal powers on the sea so there was every reason to get along with each other rather than fight. So, on paper, by the time Morgan became a mercenary captain, an uneasy truce had been arranged between the English and the Spanish. Sort of.

In line with the treaty, the English king, Charles II, agreed to withdraw his warships from the West Indies. So Commodore St. Christopher Myngs and his flotilla were recalled to England. But, technically, Charles II could not recall ships owned by “subcontractors” like Morgan. So Morgan and nine other mercenary captains were left untouched by the edict. Using the combined influence of his experience, knowledge and charisma, Henry Morgan became the leader of the flotilla.

Thus began a murky period in Caribbean history. Technically, England and Spain were not at war. Technically, Spanish troops were not supposed to keep trying to drive the English off islands the Spanish claimed under the Treaty of Tordesillas. Technically, British representatives on all islands in the West Indies were supposed to maintain a neutral, if not pro-Spanish, demeanor. Technically, the buccaneers who were taking the brunt of the Spanish attacks were not supposed to be involved in any acts of violence. There were a lot of “technically” here and no one, for one instant, believed that any one party was going to abide by any treaty signed half-a-world away.

The Royal Governor in Jamaica at that time was Sir Thomas Modyford, a man for whom public office was simply a way of enhancing his personal fortune. But he was no fool. With the recall of the British warships, Jamaica was militarily defenseless. While he was supposed to be maintaining, at the very least a neutral position, he was under no illusions that the Spanish would try to drive the British off Jamaica if they had half a chance. With no troops at his disposal, he did the next best thing. For a fee and a percentage of the plunder, he began issuing Letters of Marques. One of the first men in line was Henry Morgan.

With a handful of ships and several hundred men at his command, Morgan began raiding Spanish settlements. He caught the settlements by surprise and returned to Jamaica heavily laden with booty — much to the pleasure of Governor Modyford. Modyford was also pleased when Morgan raided the Spanish city of Gran Granada, 111 miles up the San Juan River in what is now Nicaragua. He caught the community, as large as an English city, completely by surprise. Morgan and his men sacked the city and returned to Jamaica rich and as heroes.

By the time Morgan got back to Jamaica, England and Spain were back at war. Gleefully Morgan now made out a list of the Spanish cities he expected to sack. With men lining up to go on any adventure he had planned, he would not want for booty-thirsty compatriots.

The first city on his list was Puerto Principe, a hide trading center in the center of what is now Cuba. Morgan and his men captured the city quickly but most of the residents fled. The booty was not as large as the buccaneers had wished but it was enough to whet their appetite for more. The next prize on Morgan’s list was Porto Bello on the Caribbean coast of what is now Panama.

Known as the “Paris of the Pacific,” it was a rich prize. There was only one problem. Actually there were three of them: two were castles and one was a fort that surrounded the city. Morgan, well aware that his men would probably not be willing to attack a fortified city, didn’t tell anyone of his destination. Insisting that Spanish spies were everywhere, it was not until he came close to Porto Bello did his men realize their true destination. Then it took all of Morgan’s considerable powers of persuasion to convince the buccaneers that Porto Bello could be taken.

In the past Morgan had depended heavily upon the element of surprise. That was not to be his ally here as his men were spotted outside the city. Landing several miles up the coast from the city his men advanced on foot. They were able to take a guard blockhouse but the firing alerted the city that the buccaneers were nearby. The buccaneers quickly captured the fort and one of the castles. To take the final castle, Morgan ordered that Spanish citizens — including priests and nuns — be used as human shields by his men. The tactic worked and soon Morgan’s men had taken the city.

Once the city fell, Morgan allowed the buccaneers to run rampant. But they were under strict orders not to burn the city. Morgan intended to ransom the city. He sent a letter to the Spanish governor demanding 350,000 pesos or he would remove all of the artillery, burn the city to the ground and transport the entire population to Jamaica where he would see that they were treated as well as English prisoners of the Spanish had been treated. (The Spanish tortured prisoners.) After still snippy correspondence, the Spanish Governor paid the ransom.

Once again, Morgan returned to Jamaica a wealthy, honored man. It was probably his intention to retire but that was not to be. After the men he had taken to Porto Bello had spent every peso they had, they began demanding that he go on another expedition. This time he chose Maracaibo on the Gulf of Venezuela. It was a bust. The expedition was spotted before it arrived and most of the residents fled into the hills. The buccaneers, all 650 men, spent the next two months searching the jungle for fleeing townspeople to torture then to reveal where they had hidden their wealth. Then Morgan and his men headed inland onto the waters of Lake Maracaibo to loot and pillage further.

What they did not know was that a Spanish fleet was sailing to intercept them. When the buccaneers returned to the mouth of Lake Maracaibo, they found the Spanish fleet had them boxed in. When the Spanish demanded he surrender, Morgan sent back the message: “We’ll meet you in battle.”

Outnumbered, outgunned and outmanned, Morgan had to resort to cunning. Fortunately for him, he was a master at misdirection. He ordered a seized Cuban merchant ship to be outfitted as his flag ship. As his men were feverously working to cut its decks down and install cannons, Morgan let slip to some Spanish spies that he was also stockpiling a sloop as a fireship. In those days, a fireship was one that was loaded with explosives. It would be sailed into a critical position in the heart of the enemy’s fleet and then exploded. With luck, it would set all the enemy’s ships on fire.

The Spanish anticipated the move and began preparing for the onslaught. On the morning of April 27, 1669, it came. Morgan, commanding a fleet of 13 ships, moved with a favorable wind into the Spanish fleet. Morgan’s flag ship came directly toward the largest Spanish warship, the MAGDELENA, the flag ship. Morgan’s ship was flanked by two frigates which were firing on the Spanish fleet. But the Spanish were not to be deceived. They knew there was a fireship lurking in the advancing privateers and that was their biggest worry.

But they could not see the sloop.

Suddenly the frigates broke from alongside Morgan flagship as it came alongside of the MAGDELENA. Pirates immediately jumped aboard the Spanish ship and tied it to Morgan’s flag ship. Then they jumped overboard to be picked up by canoes that had been heaved over the side of the frigates. There was no sloop fireship. What the Spanish assumed was Morgan’s flag ship was the fireship! The cannons on board were just logs painted black and the ‘crew’ were dummies tied upright on the railing. Only a dozen men were actually on the vessel. Onboard, every cubic inch of the ship was packed with gunpowder and the decks were thick with a combustible mixture of tar, pitch and brimstone.

When the faux flagship went up, it took the Spanish flag ship with it. The other Spanish vessels scattered. But Morgan had another surprise for them. The Spanish were anticipating a sea battle so their ships were anchored. Thus they were not moving. Now the privateers swarmed onto the canoes Morgan had brought along the expedition. The canoes were low on the water so the Spanish cannons were useless against the privateers. And the canoes moved faster than the Spanish warship so the privateers were able to board several of the Spanish warships. Some of the Spanish fleet was able to cut and run and many Spanish sailors abandoned their ships and fled by the fort at Maracaibo.

It was a stunning Morgan victory.

But only for the moment.

While the Spanish fleet had been scattered, the Spaniards were within the fort at Maracaibo and the fort’s guns controlled ingress and egress to and from Lake Maracaibo. The privateers may have won the sea battle but their booty was still on vessels in the lake. After several bloody assaults on the fort, Morgan realized he could not take the citadel

But he was not about the leave his booty in the lake.

Once again, Morgan had to come up with a devious plan. He knew that the fort only had about six cannons that could be fired. Six cannons could not sink his entire fleet but they could do great damage. So he had to figure out a way to reduce the number of cannons on the fort and, at the same time, develop a way to slip out of lake with as little damage to his ships as possible. Getting the Spanish to assist him was the easiest part of the plan.

The first thing he did was order all men onboard all the ships and divided up the loot. This was done to give them something to fight for when the time came. Next, he ordered the men to be as inconspicuous as possible on deck because the Spanish were constantly watching the affairs of the fleet. Then he began hoodwinking the Spanish.

Using the same canoes that had ruined the Spanish fleet, he began transporting men from the ships to the jungle j-u-s-t at the end of the Spaniards ability to see what was happening. What the Spanish did see were canoe-loads of buccaneers being transported to the jungle and empty canoes coming back. Canoe and after canoe went over load and came back empty. The Spanish assumed that the buccaneers were preparing to attack the fort from the rear. So they moved a number of their cannons to the rear of the fort.

What they did not know was that the canoes were actually ferrying the same men back and forth. When the canoes went from the ships to the shore, the men were seated in the canoes. When the canoes returned, the men were lying down holding boards over themselves so it appeared the canoes were empty. Canoe by canoe, the Spanish thought they were looking at an assault force. So they moved their cannons to repel those invaders. All but one.

As soon as night fell, Morgan ordered all ships to cut their anchor ropes and break for the sea. As the fleet of privateers broke for the sea, the single cannon covering the entrance to the lake began firing. By the time the other cannons were repositioned, Morgan’s ships were out of range. Once again Morgan returned to Jamaica a hero.

Skimming over the murky world of international politics and predation in the West Indies by both the English and Spanish, suffice it to say that Morgan proposed to attack the richest Spanish city in the New World. His target was Panama City — which has the same name today. But he had to act quickly. England and Spain, again, were in negotiations for some kind of a settlement regarding the West Indies.

Getting a band of buccaneers was not difficult. Morgan had such a reputation for success that no one doubted he would — and they would — come back rich. So he was able to muster a fleet of 36 ships and more than 2,000 men.

But this expedition would not be as easy as the others. Morgan was to learn first handed what the French and American engineers would learn 200 years later. What came to be called the Panama Canal Zone — and now the country of Panama — was dense, snake-infested, mosquito-ridden jungle. The buccaneers had the misfortune to arrive during the dry season so the rivers they expected to use as transportation corridors were nothing more than mud holes. This forced the men to advance through the jungle on foot carrying supplies on their back. It took the men ten days to reach the city, none of them pleasant.

By the time they reached Panama City, the Spanish were waiting. They had about 600 cavalrymen and more than 2,000 soldiers. It was an impressive defense force. But that was as the sun set on January 28, 1671. When the sun came up the next morning, 2/3 of the Spanish army had fled into the hills.

Forced to reposition his men, the Spanish commander wedged what was left of his army between a steep hill on his right and the cavalry on the left. Morgan spotted the fatal flaw in this plan and sent his men up the steep hill. When they topped the ridge and came down the far side, they took the Spanish by surprise. It was rout and within two hours Morgan had taken the city.

But there was bad news coming. First, most of the residents of Panama City had already fled with their valuables. They had known the buccaneers were coming for a week so there was plenty of time to be far away by the time the city fell. Second, the Spanish artillery commander had been ordered to destroy all powder magazines before retreating. Following orders he did just that. However, since most of the structures in Panama City were of wood, when the powder went so did the homes. This set the city ablaze forcing the buccaneers to spend their time putting out the flames, not searching for loot. When the fires were finally extinguished and the treasure gathered, the amount was so small that Morgan was accused of holding back the bulk of the loot. Morgan claimed otherwise and advised everyone to search for the money that should have been there. It was never found. But then again, Morgan immediately left for Jamaica without telling any of his men he was leaving.

Back in Jamaica a rich man — while the men he had left in Panama City continued to plunder Spanish cities — he ran afoul of one of the “technicalities’ that were discussed previously in this section. Since England and France had signed a peace treaty before Morgan had taken Panama City, he could not have been a privateer. So he had to have been a pirate. Charles II of England, under intense pressure from the Spanish King, had to do something. So he had Morgan arrested along with Governor Modyford, the man who had given Morgan his Letter of Marque. Modyford arrived in London and was immediately sent to the Tower of London as a criminal. Morgan walked the streets of London as a celebrity.

Morgan was more than a celebrity. He ‘thought like a pirate.’ He understood the mood of the era and the politics very well. He was also a good student of human nature. So, while Charles II was dealing with the Spanish king, Morgan was developing “friends in high places.” They, like him, understood that there was a lot of money to be made in the West Indies. They also knew that the history of relations between England and Spain were mercurial. Morgan was clever is showing that he was the only one on earth — or at least in the British Isles — who had even a ghost of an idea of how to secure Jamaica for the British and keep the Spanish at bay. Without him, Jamaica would surely fall to the Spanish and then, like dominoes, the rest of the British colonies would follow. That would mean a hard dollar loss to many of those “friends in high places.”

Charles II got the message too. He may have been negotiating with the Spanish but he did not necessarily trust them. So he sent a clear message to them. On January 23, 1674, Morgan was knighted and, adding insult to injury to the Spanish, made Lt. Governor of Jamaica. A further slap to the Spanish came when Modyford was freed from the Tower of London and returned to Jamaica as the Chief Justice.

But there was a caveat. Now that Morgan was Lt. Governor, he no longer had the ability to dance along the edge of the law. He ‘was’ the law. Charles II made it clear — and probably crystal clear to Morgan — that raiding would have to stop, Morgan followed those instructions. He was no fool. He understood that the ‘game’ had changed. Now, as Lt. Governor, he spent his time hunting down his former comrades who had turned to piracy. Or, depending on how you want to word it, former privateers who suddenly found themselves pirates because of a document signed half-a-world away they were not aware of.

Morgan died in August of 1688. He was wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. He had been Lt. Governor of Jamaica and owned a plantation of 1000 acres. And he died in bed. His momentary legacy was that in 1688 there were virtually no buccaneers or pirates doing business in the Caribbean.

What to learn from sir henry morgan

Henry Morgan was the personification of the principles of this book. He thought like a pirate. He understood every single rule. He used corruption to his advantage. He read the tea leaves correctly every time. He used his personality to achieve what his ancestry denied him. He was, in the vernacular of our day, “the perfect blend of bullshit and brains.”

What is particularly instructional about Morgan is that he was the proverbial ‘average guy.’ There is not a shred of evidence that he was a genius or even that his intelligence was above average. He had a lot of common sense and he will willing to take risks. These in themselves are not unique to his era or ours. What made him different is that he was a creative thinker. He planned what he was going to do. He understood human nature and used it to his advantage. He fooled the Spanish at Maracaibo twice. Both times he was outnumber and out manned. Both times he used a clever ruse.

Morgan was unique because he understood that conventional thinking was not good enough. The successful man had to be clever. Wealth and position come with birth while brains come with experience. But cleverness is the quality of the individual. With it one could retire a wealthy buccaneer and die in bed. Without it your body might be in a gibbet for years.

Woodes rogers

When it comes to the Golden Age of Pirates, perhaps the least-known most important name is that of Woodes Rogers. And when the name does come up, most people are most likely to say “are you sure you spelled his name correctly?” But Woodes Rogers — and the name is spelled correctly — is one of the most significant individuals of the Golden Age of the Pirates.

Rogers had a less than illustrious start. Born and raised in Bristol, he followed in the footsteps, or at least the wake, of other privateers from that city. It was a fashionable way to make a living and quite lucrative. He started out as a common seaman and worked his way up to Captain. At 30 he was funded by a collection of merchants to lead an expedition to harass Spanish shipping in the Pacific. That’s right, the Pacific. Not the Atlantic. Of course the merchants expected him to return loaded with treasure. This was not to be a scientific expedition.

With his Letter of Marque, he headed out into the Atlantic. He sailed south along the coast of South America and battled the winds and waves around Cape Horn. Some the most hazardous waters in the world are on both sides of South America here. The winds blow uninterruptedly and the early sailors referred to them by latitude in which they arise: “roaring forties,” “furious fifties” and “screaming sixties.”

Rogers rounded the Horn with difficulty and then proceeded up the coast of South America. Midway up the coast where Chile is today, he spotted a signal fire on a remote island. Venturing ashore he discovered a Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk, who had been abandoned on one of the San Fernandez Islands four years earlier. Selkirk’s tale of survival was subsequently made famous by Daniel Defoe in his novel ROBINSON CRUSOE.

Selkirk himself was made immortal as Ben Gunn in Robert Louis Stevenson’s TREASURE ISLAND. Selkirk served with Rogers until they returned to England in 1717 whereupon Selkirk was made famous with books and newspaper stories. The publicity apparently went to his head and he, at 41, ran away with a 16 year old milk maid. They went to London where he abandoned her and went off to sea again. He died at sea of yellow fever four years later. (In 1966, the island on which Selkirk was marooned was officially renamed Robinson Crusoe Island and a nearby island, Alejandro Selkirk Island.)

Rogers himself returned to London in triumph. He came back loaded with treasure, which made his backers very happy, and he also returned with a captured Spanish galleon he had ‘picked up’ at what is now Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baja California. His capture of the Spanish galleon showed he was just the man for a very difficult task. He was made Governor of the Bahamas to perform a single task: subdue piracy.

But, as they say, there was a catch. The capital, so to speak, of the Bahamas was on the island of Nassau and the city was New Providence. With the destruction of Port Royale in 1692, New Providence was the new ‘pirate central.’ The king had offered pardons to all the pirates in New Providence in February of 1718 but of the several thousand brigands there, only 209 had accepted the pardons. That offer, by the way, had been made by a British officer who had not stayed in New Providence. He had sailed into the harbor, read the pronouncement, took 209 pardons and left. Rogers was going to actually stay in New Providence.

Even though Rogers arrived with a heavy contingent of support — three Royal Navy warships, three private vessels and a company of marines — he was clearly not welcome. News of his arrival preceded him and many pirates who were not intent on accepting pardons — one of them being Blackbeard — left before he arrived. One of the fleeing pirates, Charles Vane, wanted to make sure Rogers got the message that he was not welcome. As Rogers approached New Providence, Vanes pulled a prize in front of Rogers’ approaching ship and set it ablaze. This was the “warm welcome” Vane had told his fellow pirates he would give Rogers. Vane fired shots at Rogers and then fled north, eventually linking up with Blackbeard in Bath, North Carolina. (Rogers arrived in July of 1718. Vane was eventually captured and hanged in Jamaica the next year.)

The pirates who remained in New Providence realized that fighting Rogers was a losing proposition. So they resorted to the age old tactic of bribery. They figured that Rogers would be like all of the other appointed governors; he would talk openly of reform and then take money under the table and turn a blind eye to the ongoing depredations.

But the pirates were in for a surprise. Rogers was not going to take any bribes and he was really was going to clean up piracy.

But how was he going to do it?

That’s a good question and the answer is one of those brilliant, creative thinking ideas that changed the way the world spins. Using a modern expression, Rogers was a man who knew how to “think outside of the box.” His plan was so ingenious that it is worth the few paragraphs needed to illustrate the solution.

First, even though Rogers was the Governor and had three war ships and a company of Marines, cumulatively that was not going to be enough to fight off a Spanish attack. The Spanish could — and would — hit the colony a thousand men strong. What had kept the Spanish from attacking New Providence before was that the several thousand men there were pirates who would fight, not plantation owners would run to the hills.

While it was true that England and Spain were at war as Rogers was sailing into the harbor at New Providence, there was no guarantee that the war would last and even a casual look at the history of two countries showed that peace was just a period of cheating before the next conflict. The Spanish would be coming. It was not a matter of “if,” but of “when.”

Second, ending piracy was a noble goal. On paper. Everything is simple on paper. The devil is in the details. After these brigands signed the pardon papers, what were they going to do? Had there been several hundreds pirates, they could have scattered themselves — or been scattered — to remote settlements where they could have earned a living as farmers or traders or some other honest work. But there were as many as 3,000 of them in New Providence. That was too many to be able to parcel out a dozen here and a dozen there. Even if they all accepted the pardon, what were they going to do?

Third, it wasn’t just the pirates that were going to be affected by the pardons. There were also the merchants, smugglers, gaming house owners, brothel strumpets, tavern owners and everyone else who made money on the pirating business. This was a lot of people who were going to be unemployed. There were going to be a lot of empty buildings and a lot of empty ships in the harbor. This pardon business was going to economically ruin the Bahamas.

Fourth, even if the pirates accepted the pardon, there was a very good chance that ‘goodness would not hold.’ How were these reformed cutthroats going to feel after six months of unemployment knowing that their old jobs were never going to come back? Even worse, what would happen if a lot of the pirates on the ground joined up with a fleet of pirates on the sea who didn’t like the way things were going? There was enough manpower there to drive Rogers and his small English contingent into the sea. While the reformed pirates would certainly fight against the Spanish, they might not fight against a combined force made of Blackbeard and Vane or other popular rouges. And keep in mind that Blackbeard, Vane and those “other popular rouges” had been, in our modern vernacular, former employers of the pirates who had accepted the pardons. Life may not have been all skittles and beer in the days of piracy but it might appear a lot better than life after a pardon.

These, then, were the real life problems Rogers had to face. One more became apparent when he arrived in New Providence. He was given a royal welcome. Everyone signed up for the pardons. Everyone. Rogers knew he was being set-up and it did not take him long to find out why. That happened when the bribes started coming in. One by one he turned them down. As he turned each one down, the next got larger. It was only after the bribes became staggering and were still refused that the pirates realized that they had met their match: an honest man.

But that honesty did not solve a single one of the four specific problems Rogers knew he had. He had to solve every one of them — not just one or two or three — but every one of them — and quickly.

So what did he do?

It is problems such as this that divide the men from the boys. Anyone could have solved one or two of these problems. But not all four at once. That took the work of a creative genius and for this the Bahamas have been blessed. Woodes Rogers did it.

His solution was actually so simple it is amazing no one had thought of it before.

What was this brilliant idea? He stated that any pirate that cleared 120 square feet of land and built some kind of structure on it could have the land for free. Free. Not a mortgage. Free.

On the face of it, this sounds like a ridiculous offer. Why would a pirate, a rouge of the bounding waves, be interested in 120 square feet of land? What we are talking about here is a plot of land about the size of an average second bedroom in America. There’s not a lot of ‘living’ to be had with 120 square feet. But what a lot of us do not understand now that Woodes Rogers understood then was that by giving the pirates a piece of property, they had something to lose. None of them had ever actually owned real estate. That just was not possible in their era. But now they could have land. They would have a home — rude though it have to be — that was theirs. They could forage for food in the jungle. That was free. But with 120 square feet of land, they would not have to live ‘on the street.’

Now for Phase II. As the men were clearing their 120 square feet of land, Rogers announced that he had information that the Spanish were considering an attack on New Providence. This was a bare-faced lie but it was believable because the Spanish had the unhappy tendency to do just that. Whether there was a treaty or not.

Clearly, Rogers told the pirates who were now land owners, the only way to hold off the Spanish was to repair and arm the fortress at the head of the harbor. It was sadly in need of repair and would have to be ship shape if it was going to fend off the Spanish. This struck a chord with the new landowners because now they had something to lose. So they, with no financial incentive, pitched in to repair the fort.

Phase III, he still had to deal with pirates who wanted to return to New Providence, eliminate the establish government and re-establish a pirate stronghold. While the fort could hold off the ships, it could not guarantee the former pirates’ loyalty — even if they now had something to lose.

So, once again, Woodes Rogers reached into his bag of tricks and pulled out a rabbit. He convinced the pirates who were now land owners that if a contingent of pirates did return, they would most likely destroy the fortress that had just been repaired. This was logical as the invading pirates would not want to have someone shelling their ships. But the problem, Rogers explained to the land owners, was that if the incoming pirates destroyed the fort as part of their invasion plan, there would then be nothing to hold off the Spanish if they did invade. The island of Nassau was not large enough for them to hide out for long and there was ever reason to believe that if the Spanish could land, they would capture or kill every one they found. For the blacks, who represented a sizeable portion of the population, the best they could hope for under the Spanish was slavery. More likely they would be castrated and burned alive — if they were lucky.

The way to stop the pirates from tying to retake the island, Rogers suggested, was to capture the pirates before they took New Providence. Using a thief to catch a thief, he outfitted several ships with men to hunting pirates. Since these men know the routine of the most dangerous pirates in the West Indies, they had no trouble catching the last of the pirates that were still operating. Seven years later, 1725, the last of the pirates was hanged and the Golden Age of Piracy ended. Rogers returned to England in 1721, but went back to Bahamas in 1729 as the new captain-general.

WHAT TO LEARN FROM WOODES ROGERS

In every office, neighborhood, political party and business there is a ‘Dirty Harry.’ Dirty Harry is personified by Clint Eastwood in a movie of the same name and the persona of Eastwood in many of his movies. He is the guy who always gets the dirty work. He’s the one the boss calls into the office and says ‘take care of the problem and don’t tell me how you did it.’

The Golden Age of Pirates, Woodes Rogers was Dirty Harry. He was given an impossible task with 28 cents to accomplish the impossible. But he did it. He used ‘every trick in the book’ and did it. Legally. He went personally broke doing it but, in the end, he was able to retire a wealthy man. He was smart, he was clever and he was audacious. He made the Bahamas what they are today, a traveler’s paradise in the West Indies without the difficulties that other island nations have faced. Compared to Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, the Bahamas are proof that democracy is both workable and profitable for the citizenry.

From Woodes Rogers we should learn two things. First, you solve difficult problems by ‘thinking outside of the box.’ He didn’t even bother to start ‘inside the box’ first. He just came up with a different approach and caught everyone by surprise.

Second, to be a quality leader you have to quality concepts. He did. He understood that the ‘game’ had only changed on his side. The Spanish didn’t give a whit about the pardon game. They didn’t just want the pirates gone; they wanted everyone gone. They wanted the French out, the English out, the Dutch out, the pirates out, the buccaneers out, the non-Spanish colonials out, the cimarrons out, the escaped slaves out and the renegades out. They wanted to make the Spanish Main what Spain itself was not: 100% loyal Christian Spaniards. What made the Spanish so dangerous was that they had a well- funded Navy and army in the Caribbean and they were no afraid to use either in the ongoing effort to rid their Pope-given lands of non-Spaniards.

The problem Woodes Rogers faced was that for every pardon he gave there was one less man to fight the Spanish. The more pardons he gave, the smaller his militia became. So he had to come up with a scheme to turn the former pirates into a militia and had to convince them to choose to do it. This is was a one-shot deal. If he could not do it, he and they would have been wiped off the island with the first Spanish invasion and the official language of the Bahamas would today be Spanish.

[This chapter is from Steven Levi’s book WHAT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO LEARN FROM PIRATES IN THE HIGH SCHOOL CLASS YOU SLEPT THROUGH available on Kindle.]

§According to local legend, Blackbeard named Ocracoke. When he knew he was going to be attacked, he wanted dawn to approach quickly. “Oh, cock crow,” he muttered. But there is no documentation of this statement.