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During
The Golden Age of Piracy between 1689 and 1718, numerous rogues
pursued their lawless and murderous trade throughout the New
World.
Restrictive laws passed by the British Parliament had made smuggling
acceptable and even desirable in North
Carolina and the other American
colonies. Preying upon lightly armed merchant ships, the pirates seized their
contents and sometimes killed those who resisted. Because of its shallow
sounds
and inlets, North Carolina's
Outer Banks became a haven for many of these
outlaws in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Blackbeard was the most notorious pirate in
the history of seafaring. With a
beard that almost covered his face, he would strike terror into the hearts of
his
victims, according to some early accounts, by weaving wicks laced with
gunpowder into his hair, and lighting them during battle. A big man, he added
to
his menacing appearance by wearing a crimson coat, two swords at his waist,
and bandoleers stuffed with numerous pistols and knives across his chest.
The sight of Blackbeard
was enough to make most of his victims surrender
without a fight. If they gave up peacefully, he would usually take their
valuables,
navigational instruments, weapons, and rum before allowing them to sail away.
If
they resisted, he would often maroon the crews and burn their ship. Blackbeard
worked hard at establishing his devilish image, but there is no archival
evidence
to indicate that he ever killed anyone who was not trying to kill him.
Blackbeard's lawless career lasted only a few
years, but his fearsome reputation
has long outlived him. Thought to have been a native of England, he
was using
the name Edward Teach when he began his
pirating sometime after 1713 as a
crewman aboard a Jamaican sloop commanded by the pirate Benjamin
Hornigold. In 1716 Hornigold
appointed Teach to command a captured vessel.
By mid-1717 the two, sailing in concert, were among the most feared pirates
of
their day.
In November 1717, in the eastern
Caribbean, Hornigold and Teach took a 26
gun, richly laden French "guineyman"
called the Concorde Research indicated
she had originally been built in Great Britain. Hornigold subsequently decided to
accept the British Crown's recent offer of a general amnesty and retire as a
pirate. Teach rejected a pardon, decided to make the Concorde his flagship,
increased her armament to 40 guns, and renamed her Queen Anne's Revenge or
(QAR).
Shortly thereafter, the QAR encountered
another vessel flying the black flag.She
was the ten-gun pirate sloop Revenge from Barbados, commanded by Stede
Bonnet, "The Gentleman Pirate." Bonnet had been an educated and
wealthy
landowner before turning to piracy. After inviting the Revenge to sail along
with
the QAR, Blackbeard soon realized that Bonnet was a
poor leader and an
incompetent sailor. He appointed another pirate to command Revenge, and
forced Bonnet to become a "guest" aboard QAR, where he remained, a
virtual
prisoner, until she wrecked six months later.
During the winter of 1717 and 1718, the
QAR and Revenge cruised the
Caribbean, taking prizes. Along the way, Blackbeard decided to keep two more
smaller captured vessels. When he sailed northward up the American
coast in
the spring of 1718, he was in command of four vessels and over 300 pirates.
Blackbeard's reign of terror climaxed in a
week-long blockade of the port
of
Charleston, S.C. in late
May 1718. One week later, the QAR was lost at Beaufort
Inlet. One of the smaller vessels in Blackbeard's
flotilla, the ten-gun sloop
Adventure, was lost the same day while trying to assist the stranded
flagship.
Before leaving Beaufort Inlet, Blackbeard
marooned about 25 disgruntled pirates
on a deserted sandbar, stripped Bonnet's sloop the Revenge of her provisions,
and absconded with much of the accumulated booty aboard another smaller
vessel. Bonnet rescued the marooned men and, with them, resumed his lawless
ways aboard the Revenge, which he renamed the Royal James.
In October 1718, Bonnet and his crew
were captured near present day
Wilmington, North Carolina,
and taken to Charleston,
where they were tried for
piracy. All except four were found guilty. All of the rest except Bonnet were
hanged that November 8th. The record of that trial, published in London in 1719,
provided researchers with important clues to the location of the QAR site.
Bonnet
escaped briefly, but was recaptured and then hanged on December 10, 1718.
Meanwhile, Blackbeard
and his confidants had sailed to Bath, then
the capital of
North Carolina,
where they received pardons from Governor Charles Eden. In
November 1718, Governor Alexander Spottswood of Virginia, knowing that
Blackbeard and his men had continued taking ships
long after the period of
amnesty had expired, sent a Royal Navy contingent to North Carolina, where
Blackbeard was killed in a bloody battle at Ocracoke Inlet on November 22,
1718. During the action, Blackbeard received a
reported five musketball wounds
and more than 20 sword lacerations before dying. Blackbeard
had captured over
30 ships during his piratical career, and his death virtually represented the
end of
an era in the history of piracy in the New World.
Little is known concerning the origin of
Blackbeard the pirate. Documents
suggest both Bristol and London
in England, the island of Jamaica,
and even
Philadelphia as
his home. He is said to have operated out of Jamaica as a
privateer during Queen Anne's War between 1702 and 1713 previous to having
been a pirate.
Historical sources vary as to Blackbeard's real name. Though most publications
mentioning the pirate by name over the past couple of centuries have
identified
him as Edward Teach, the majority of primary source documents written during
the time of his activities indicate that "Thatch" or some other
phonetic derivation
was actually the name he was going by at the time. The name Drummond is
mentioned by one early source, but this is not supported by the vast volume
of
other documentation.
It appears that Blackbeard
began his piratical career under the command of
Benjamin Hornigold. Though Hornigold's
activities as a pirate can be traced back
to as early as 1714, it is not known exactly when Thatch joined his crew. The
earliest mention of Blackbeard by name is in the Boston News Letter in
October 1717.
Thatch and Hornigold
captured a French slave ship called the Concorde off the
island of St. Vincent around November 1717. Hornigold gave Blackbeard the
ship
and retired from piracy soon after. Thatch strengthened the armament of the
vessel, renamed her Queen Anne's Revenge, and for the next seven months
used the ship in consort with smaller sloops to harrass
shipping throughout the
Caribbean and up the eastern seaboard of North America.
It is not currently known how many
vessels Blackbeard captured during his
exploits, but a preliminary database compiled by museum researchers currently
contains over 45 prizes which can be directly attributed to Thatch's
activities.
Blackbeard
was eventually tracked down to Ocracoke Inlet, North
Carolina by the
Royal Navy and killed in a brief but bloody battle on November 22, 1718.
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