Blackbeard- The Birth of America

by Samuel Marquis

  “What should we do then, Captain?” asked the bosun.

  “Why it’s up to you men. That’s why I called you up on deck.”

  “I think we should stay and fight,” said the first-mate.

  “No, that’s crazy,” countered the quartermaster. “If we fight them, they’ll destroy us. There’s five ships in that flotilla.”

  “You’ve got to make a decision, men,” said Wyer. “Needless to say, our backers won’t be happy if we surrender without a fight, but they’re not the ones whose lives are at stake. I’ll stand by whatever judgement you make.”

  “Well, will we get our full wages or not?” demanded one of the sailors.

  “It’s complicated. On the one hand, they may decide to—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” another seaman cut in, his face red with anger. “What does our standing and fighting or not have to do with us getting paid? They don’t have anything to do with one another!”

  “Shut up and listen, all of you,” the bosun broke in. “There is no way in hell we are going to resist a pirate force of five hundred or more men with only fifty. And they’re English too—they’re not even Spanish.”

  That was enough for the first-mate and he changed his position. “If they were Spaniards, Captain, we would stand by you as long as we could take a breath. But these are pirates, and Englishmen to boot.”

  “Not only are these men pirates,” pointed out a seaman, “they are the same men we fought the other night.”

  Wyer squinted. “What? Ye be certain of it?”

  “Aye, they be the same freebooters who came upon our stern. And now they’ve returned with that big monster with her forty guns. That’s got to be the Great Devil the logcutters spoke of. They say it’s captained by Blackbeard himself.”

  “Blackbeard!”

  “By the blood of Henry Morgan we’re all dead men,” lamented the quartermaster, whose legs were now visibly shaking. “That be the Queen Anne’s Revenge right there coming at us like a giant black whale!”

  At the mention of the notorious Blackbeard, the crew flew into a panic that Captain Wyer was unable to control, with men running and stumbling in all directions and yelling and screaming in pandemonium like a terrified pack of children. While longboats were hastily unfastened, the deck rang out with voices making the wild accusations of desperate seamen who were convinced they were about to meet a gruesome end from bloodthirsty pirates.

  “Blackbeard is the devil incarnate! Upon my honor we have all drawn our last breath!”

  “They say he puts lit cannon fuses beneath his cap and his face smokes like the devil himself when he goes into battle!”

  “They say he cuts off the heads of all his prisoners except one, leaving a single seaman alive to tell the terrible tale!”

  “They say he’s had fourteen wives and has given them to his crew to brutally rape before slitting their throats!”

  “We be doomed! We be doomed!”

  “Now stop this at once and get a grip on yourselves!” admonished Wyer. “Blackbeard is but a man, by thunder! He does not have supernatural powers, so avast all of ye!”

  The quartermaster shook his head. “He may not be a vengeful god or Lucifer himself, Captain, but he is a monster and vicious killer! We need to get out of here! There’s no time to waste!”

  “He’s right!” said the bosun. “If we stay here, we’ll all be murdered! We need to load provisions, abandon ship, and make for the coast in the longboats! If we hide in the jungle, maybe he’ll take what he wants and leave us alone!”

  “All right, that be not a half bad idea. But everyone needs to calm down,” said Wyer, knowing if he didn’t control his men quickly it would be every man for himself. “Let’s go, lads. To the shore it is then.”

  After throwing in basic supplies, including food, water, small arms, spare ropes and canvas, and a medicine chest, they lowered their longboats into the water and beat a hasty retreat towards the jungles ashore. South of the mouth of the muddy-watered Rio Balis, Wyer and his men found shelter amid the dense tropical foliage, piles of logwood, and mangrove swamps. From there, they watched the pirates plunder their massive merchantman. Day passed into night and the next day and night into another until on the third day, the pirates had picked the vessel clean and a huge bare-chested black man wearing a weather-beaten, wide-brimmed Spanish hat close-cropped on the sides and a huge golden earring in his left ear was sent to parley with them. The dark African rowed straight up to Wyer and his crew members along the edge of the mangroves.

  The seaman didn’t bother to step from the boat. “My name is Caesar and I am here to deliver a message from Captain Thache. It is the only message you are going to get so you must listen closely.”

  Wyer pushed aside the thick foliage and inched closer so he could hear and see better. Patters of excited conversation and rumbles of fear filtered up from his huddled merchant sailors along the edge of the jungle.

  “Thache be the pirate known as Blackbeard, correct?” asked Wyer, wanting to make sure who he was dealing with.

  “Aye, and here is his message for you,” said Caesar. “He says if you and your men surrender peacefully, no harm will come to you and you will be free to go. The captain is waiting for your answer in his great cabin.”

  Wyer looked at the African then at his men then back at the black man. “That’s it? I surrender and we all go free?”

  “Aye, Captain Blackbeard does not like to settle disputes with violence. It is against his nature—unless of course you refuse to accept his most generous offer.”

  Several men stepped forward and began talking all at once. “Don’t do it, Captain! He’ll kill you! He’ll kill us all! You can’t trust him!”

  Caesar raised his hand, silencing them. “That is not true,” he said. “Captain Thache is a man of his word. You can trust him just as sure as I sit in this boat before you.”

  Wyer thought a moment before coming to the conclusion that he had little choice but to surrender himself and his men and hope for mercy. “I’m inclined to agree,” he said, drawing unflattering curses from several of his crew members. “Now just hold on,” he pleaded. “Blackbeard does indeed have a fearsome reputation. But he has never been known to go back on his word.”

  More protests erupted from his men, but he cut off the resistance with an abrupt hand-chopping motion. “Plague on your scurvy heads, keep quiet!” he bristled. “I am the one taking the risk here, so if you’ll be kind enough to let me dispose of the present situation in my own way, I would appreciate it. The truth is, men, we have no choice. We’re out here in the bloody middle of the Spanish Main and can’t survive even another week on our provisions. We have to surrender—and that’s all there is of it!”

  “If that’s the case then the decision is an easy one for you,” said Caesar. “Come with me to speak with the captain. He has brandy, wine, and food waiting for you. He also has a surprise.”

  “A surprise?”

  “Aye, and I think you’re going to like it.”

  CHAPTER 34

  OFF COAST OF HONDURAS

  APRIL 11, 1718

  “I’VE BEEN REVIEWING your bill of lading and crew payment records,” said Thache to commence the much-anticipated conference with Captain Wyer. “And you know what I’ve discovered? Commerce is a funny thing.” He pointed at the signed paperwork on his map table. “Oftentimes, ye have one country produce something, while another exploits it for gain or improves upon it, making it into something bigger and better. Take this champagne we’re drinking, for instance.” He leaned across his map table and topped off his guest’s crystal flute. “A Frenchman named Dom Pérignon, from the Abbey of Saint-Hilaire in Limoux, first developed this wonderful sparkling wine we are drinking. But it be the English who took it and put it in a bottle, experimented with different glasses, temperatures, and corks, thereby mastering the art of making sparkling wine by fermenting it using suitably robust glass bottles. If the English had not done this an
d thereby learned to properly add bubbles to the local white wines of the region, we would not now be graced with champagne in Port Royal.”

  He raised his glass and the two men took a sip, both of them grimacing slightly as the making of sparkly wine was still in a process of experimentation and refinement.

  “We pirates are like England,” Thache then went on. “We take a sliver of the pie from some nation’s commerce, but in the process we transform that sliver into something else entirely.”

  Wyer appeared skeptical. “And what would that be?”

  “Hope. We give the average sailor hope for a better future. At least in the short term.”

  “When those around James the Pretender talked like that, they called it treason and hung them. Why you almost make piracy sound respectable.”

  “That’s because it is respectable, which is why gentleman pirates from fine Atlantic families have been going on the account for more than a century now. In truth, a pirate’s life not be any different or worse than what you do to exploit your crewmen or the logcutters of Campeche, who are paid mere pennies on the pound for the wood they cut.”

  Wyer’s grizzled face scrunched up. “I make an honest living, I do.”

  “So do I then. In fact, we are no different. We just go about it differently. That’s the only thing that separates us: our methods.”

  “I might be inclined to take offense to such kind of talk.”

  “That’s because you’re ignorant and don’t know who the real winners and losers are in international commerce.”

  The captain’s face had reddened and he now stood up from his chair. “I’m not going to sit here and suffer this kind of humiliation. Not by the likes of you.”

  “Oh, get off your high horse and sit down. I’m not trying to badger you—I’m just trying to make a point about maritime commerce. And the point I was about to make is my men earn more than you do. Black, white, brown, yellow—it doesn’t matter, they earn better than a captain’s wages. That is the value they bring to the commercial marketplace.”

  Wyer just stared at him as if he was staring at the face of the devil. It appeared he was too speechless to summon actual words.

  “Your average underpaid seaman has to work a decade just to earn what my men take in a month’s time. That’s a significant restructuring of the colonial wage structure, wouldn’t you say? It also happens to be the dirty little secret that ship owners, capital investors, sea captains, and the like don’t want them to know. And it also illuminates, in a very stark way, your true value as a sea captain. In a world of commerce with the lines drawn by us, you earn far less than what my seamen earn. Mind you, they drink and fuck it away within a fortnight every time we hit port, but it’s good to know they bring a greater commercial value to the colonial economy than you do.” Here he gave a conspiratorial smile and waved his hand expansively towards the paperwork resting on his map table. “Remember, William, I snuck a peek at your records. That’s how I know of what I speak.”

  Wyer shook his head in disgust. This egalitarian world of Blackbeard—driven and sustained by the pure pirate motive of profit—was a world he and the powerful merchants and government that backed them wanted no part of.

  “What the hell do you want from me? Are you trying to rub it in my face, is that it?”

  “No, William, that’s not what I be doing at all. My goal was actually to enlighten you, in the hopes that you might actually have a modicum of common sense and empathy betwixt your ears. But perhaps I was wrong. I actually called you here because I wanted to thank you for making the right decision.”

  “The right decision?”

  “By standing down and surrendering your vessel.”

  “To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel very good about any of this.”

  “And who could blame you? But you did the right thing and were smart not to burn or sabotage the Protestant Caesar.”

  “And if I hadn’t, what would have happened to me?”

  “We would have done you and your men irreparable damage. Irreparable damage.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Aye, I would not like to be listed in the survive of the devil by describing it, so let’s just say it crosses what I would call the bounds of good taste. But I also don’t want to focus inordinately upon the past because I feel that, at this moment, you need to brace yourself for the future. I have some unsettling news.”

  Wyer shook his head disparagingly, as if he were talking to a common street thug and not a maritime expert who had outsmarted him on three occasions thus far in their short relationship: the first by taking him by surprise and cutting him off before he could escape, the second in seizing his ship without any opposition whatsoever, and the third by getting him to stop hiding out in the jungle and meet with him—after his ship had been completely ransacked and plundered.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news, William my friend,” he said in the tone of a consoling family patriarch. “Unfortunately, I have to burn the Protestant Caesar.”

  “But why?”

  “Because she hails from Boston, and my little gang of gentlemen of fortune is committed firmly to destroying all Massachusetts vessels in revenge for the six pirates that were executed.”

  “You’re referring to the survivors of the Cape Cod shipwrecks?”

  “Aye, Captain Bellamy’s men. They were our mates and we loved them like brothers.”

  “The ones that fancied themselves Robin Hoods’ men.”

  “One and the same.”

  “But they not be Robin Hoods’ men—they be nothing but sea monsters and hell hounds who would sell their own mother for quick and easy plunder.” His voice turned to a low hiss. “As are you, you devil incarnate.”

  Despite the anger he felt inside, Thache forced himself to control his emotions. “William, William, William—what are we going to do with you? I suspected you might resort to losing your temper, but this…this vile language you bring into my cabin as my guest, well let’s just say I had expected more from a supposed gentleman like yourself.”

  “But there’s no reason to take me ship.”

  “As I just told ye, there quite plainly is. New England—and the city of Boston in particular—has declared war on us. What kind of shepherd would I be to my flock if, like the great Puritan spokesperson Cotton Mather, I refused to fulfill the wishes of my men in this great crusade of maritime equality and self-government of ours. No, Captain Wyer, the Protestant Caesar shall burn and, in one hour, you and your men are going to watch her burn. In return, I’m going to give you my smallest sloop, minus the cannon of course, along with plenty of food and water. No longboats for you, William. Only the best from Captain Blackbeard.”

  Wyer gritted his teeth, like an enraged dog. “Why you devil you. You take everything from me and then make me watch while you burn me own ship. What kind of man are ye? Who does a thing like that? Why I’ll tell you just who: a violator of all laws, humane and divine!”

  “No, William, ’tis a just and fair man who does such things, to impart an important lesson just like your Reverend Mather,” he replied calmly and without rancor. “In fact, I would have to say that this is far better than a greedy merchant captain like you—who pays his men a slave’s wages—deserves. Far better indeed.”

  CHAPTER 35

  WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA

  MAY 1, 1718

  AS SPOTSWOOD watched a dozen of his black slaves hard at work tending to his grounds and keeping his Governor’s Palace in fine working order, he wondered if they would ever have the temerity to rise up against him. Slave revolts were a great fear for Virginians, and he had pleaded for a strengthened law to prevent and deter slave insurrections in 1710 shortly after taking office. In his speech, he reminded the Virginia Assembly that constant vigilance was the price of continued subjugation: “the trials of last April’s court may show that we are not to depend on either their stupidity, or that babel of languages among them; freedom wears a cap which can without a tong
ue call together all those who long to shake off the fetters of slavery.” In his view, freedom wore the red cap of bloody rebellion, and he and his fellow slaveholders never doubted for a moment that their human chattel might one day suddenly rise up, clap it to their heads, and win their revenge.

  With his slaves drawing a visible sweat despite the pleasantly cool spring weather, he turned his gaze to his beloved “Palace” that his Council and the House of Burgesses thought was costing too much to build. The five-bay Georgian-style home was done up in Flemish bond with glazed headers and rubbed brick window jambs and lintels. Three stories in height, the residence sported elaborate exterior ornamentation, a cellar with eleven wine bins, a row of dormers on the roof, and a wrought-iron balcony at the central upper window. Just inside the gate, guarded by a stone unicorn on one side and a stone lion on the other, stood two brick advance buildings with gabled roofs that ran perpendicular to the main structure. Beyond the house was a formal garden, and a stable, carriage house, kitchen, scullery, laundry, and an octagonal bathhouse were arranged in service yards beside the advance buildings.

  The palatial residence formed the architectural centerpiece of Williamsburg while serving as the political nerve center of the second most important colony following New England. It had taken a continuous army of slave labor to build the mansion during the past eight years—yet it was still unfinished. All the same it was a masterpiece. Virginia planters were already beginning to build their own great houses to emulate and exceed it, even as they heckled the governor over its exorbitant cost to date.

  Spotswood required a total of twenty-five indentured servants and slaves to tend to the overall estate, in addition to the African slaves he owned and directed at his powder magazine. Depending upon their duties, some of these servants and slaves lived and worked in the outbuildings, while a portion lived and worked in the main house. There were stewards, personal servants, butlers, footmen, cooks, laundresses, gardeners, maids, grooms, and laborers. None of them received payment of any kind for their toils and services. Spotswood also hired tradesmen and laborers on an as-needed basis, and physicians from town attended to the governor’s family, indentured servants, and slaves—although for his servants and slaves Spotswood only rarely approved medical expenses to keep costs down, usually for significant injuries such as broken bones.