Blackbeard the Pirate

No trip to Beaufort would be complete without learning as much as possible about Blackbeard the pirate. He is the most widely recognized and certainly one of the most popular of early American historical figures. Benjamin Franklin can be credited for being one of the first to elevate Blackbeard to near hero and mythical status. Many thought of Blackbeard as the American Robin Hood – having that folklore status of taking from the rich those things that were not deserved. However, he has also been described as being one of the most ruthless and blood thirsty pirates who ever lived.

Little is known concerning the origin of Blackbeard the pirate. Documents suggest both Bristol and London in England as his birthplace. It is known that he had homes in Jamaica and Beaufort, North Carolina and possibly even Philadelphia. It is documented that he lived in this home when in Beaufort.

He is said to have operated out of Jamaica as a privateer during Queen Anne's War (1702-1713) 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 ( Thach, Thache) was actually the name he was going by at the time.

Blackbeard was known to sail the Caribbean and the colonial American coast as far north as New Hampshire. Due to lax laws, the British Parliament had made smuggling acceptable and even desirable in the American colonies during his reign. Preying upon lightly armed merchant ships Blackbeard quickly became the most notorious of sea captains. Due to its shallow sounds and inlets, North Carolina's Outer Banks became a haven and gathering place for many of these outlaws in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Sometime during the summer of 1717, Blackbeard 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 him, 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 his ship, where he remained a virtual prisoner, until the pirate company was split up some months later.

In November 1717, in the eastern Caribbean, Blackbeard took a 14-gun, richly laden French slave ship called Concorde. Blackbeard decided to make Concorde his flagship, increased her armament to 40 guns, and renamed her Queen Anne's Revenge (QAR). He even designed his own pirate flag - a play against the Jolly Roger.



During the winter of 1717-1718, QAR cruised the Caribbean. 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 May 1718. One week later, 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 purportedly trying to assist the stranded flagship. Before leaving Beaufort Inlet, Blackbeard marooned disgruntled pirates on a deserted sandbar, stripped Bonnet's sloop Revenge of her provisions, and absconded with much of the accumulated plunder aboard another smaller vessel. Bonnet rescued the marooned men and, with them, resumed his lawless ways aboard the Revenge, which he re-named 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 Town, then the capital of North Carolina, where they received pardons from Governor Charles Eden. However in November 1718, Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia 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 musket ball wounds and more than 20 sword lacerations before dying. Blackbeard had captured over 50 ships during his piratical career, and his death virtually represented the end of an era in the history of piracy in the New World.

The Recovery of Queen Anne’s Revenge in 1996

"We have extensive historical records, and there is no evidence of any other vessel with this kind of armament sinking anywhere during the 18th century on this coast," said Mark Wilde-Ramsing, director of the Queen Anne's Revenge Shipwreck Project, a consortium of researchers investigating the wreck.

Shipwreck records in the region are surprisingly complete. They include accounts of ships lost decades before the QAR and in more remote areas. "There were people living in the area, and a [different] wreck of this size should not have gone unrecorded," Wilde-Ramsing said. "Beaufort was a little fishing village, and really less than a handful of ships that size were ever reported in the area." The ship is still officially classified as "believed to be" the QAR. But mounting evidence suggests that the wreck is that of Blackbeard's ship.