The Pirate History Podcast · Matt Albers

Episode 357 - Benjamin Raule

·29 min·1 clip

Raula brought two Spanish treasure ships to Port Royal and sold them to Henry Morgan.

1. The Pirate History Podcast focuses on Benjamin Raula, a Dutch privateer, merchant, and Prussian naval figure. 2. Matt hosts the episode and frames Raula as a man with scarce sources, while Benjamin Raula matters because he appears in Dutch, Prussian, Danish, and Caribbean history. 3. The episode asks what Benjamin Raula did to move from Zeeland wine business to piracy, naval service, and colonial profit. 4. Raula was born in 1634 in Middelburg, in the Dutch province of Zeeland. 5. Matt says the Raula family had Spanish ties, sold wine to the court of William of Orange, and earlier had privateering links to the sea beggars. 6. The Franco-Dutch War in 1672 left Zeeland unoccupied by France but cut off ship traffic to Spain and strained the family's debts. 7. In 1674, Benjamin Raula turned to the Grand Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm, instead of the Orangist government. 8. Friedrich Wilhelm, described as the Duke of Prussia and the Grand Elector, granted Raula a privateering commission. 9. Raula sailed from Dunkirk and captured 21 French warships over a couple of months. 10. Amsterdam refused to recognize his commission, and England detained him and branded him a pirate until he released the ships. 11. Raula then went to Berlin and was tasked with building a navy for Prussia. 12. He and his fleet captured Swedish ships in the Baltic, which Matt says formed the core of the Prussian navy. 13. Matt names Klaus von Bevern as Raula's top lieutenant, later an admiral in the War of the Spanish Succession. 14. Raula also took on Spain's unpaid debt to Prussia, which was tied to artillery purchases and naval guns. 15. In 1680, he led eight ships carrying 172 guns and captured two Spanish silver ships. 16. Matt says those prizes were sold in Port Royal, Jamaica, to Henry Morgan. 17. Raula returned to Berlin as General Director of the Marine and then helped negotiate with Conrad von Reventlau. 18. The deal led to Brandenburg leasing St. Thomas and founding the Brandenburg Africa Company, which Matt links to the forced transport of about 100,000 enslaved Africans. 19. The episode has a speculative, conversational style, with Matt pausing to note missing German sources and to imagine what the documents might say. 20. Listeners interested in pirate finance, Brandenburg-Prussia, or Caribbean colonial history will get the most from it, while listeners wanting a tightly documented biography may skip it.

As heard by us

A pirate career turns into an unlikely route toward Prussia's navy, shaped by detention, reinvention, and captured Swedish ships.

The Pirate History Podcast follows Benjamin Raula as a figure whose career sits awkwardly between piracy, privateering, and early naval state-building.

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Want to see a navy built from seized ships, unpaid debts, and one very inconvenient detention?

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