“I must needs say I had no idea it was so bad. I’ve always had a handful of crew members suffering the affliction during a given voyage, but most men keep it to themselves and find a way to manage.”
“Aye, the problem for me is my crew is too damned big. Plus I think we’ve got an epidemic. That’s why I plan to blockade Charles Town—so I can get my crew medicine.”
“Where do you think your men picked it up?”
“They’ve always been getting it. It’s just gotten worse in the past three months. I think some must have caught it in Nassau when we were here last summer, but most I believe got it in French Hispaniola when we were there in the winter. The pickings were slim and the men had to take what they could get. Not the cleanest wenches, I must say. Them Spanishers must have diseased them.”
Williams took a jolt from his tankard and assumed a thoughtful pose. “A siege of Charles Town for medicine. My, my, the things we do for our crews. And you haven’t told any of your men this?”
“Not yet. But they won’t have any problem with the blockade. In fact, they’ll be lively ho. But what they don’t know is the main reason for doing it is to secure medicine. I don’t want the crew to know how bad it has become. They know we’ve been on the lookout for more of the syringes and mercury, and more doctors to help us out in this area. But they don’t know how bad things are getting. My French doctors tell me that if I don’t do something about this, we could have a serious epidemic on our hands.”
“Well, you’re doing right by your men. That’s the main thing.”
He nodded and they settled into silence, quietly sipping their room-temperature ales. After a moment, Thache lit his clay pipe and began puffing on it, thinking about the uncertain journey that lay ahead for him and his men. After he had sailed into Nassau Harbor yesterday afternoon and divided the communal plunder, three hundred crew members had made official their decision to leave the company, which had thankfully lightened his burden. The arduous strain of managing seven hundred wild and rebellious sea rovers had taken a definite toll on him during the past several months, but four hundred pirates spread amongst four or five ships was still a challenge. Of those who were moving on, some had decided to join Williams and his crew, who were planning on heading soon for West African shores to prey on European slave ships. Others wanted to enjoy their earnings and wait out as long as they could by holding off on signing on with another ship until just prior to the arrival in mid-summer of Governor Woodes Rogers. Others planned to wait until his arrival and then take the King’s pardon. Still others were Jacobite stalwarts who wished to stay behind with Charles Vane to await reinforcements from the Stuart court-in-exile and perhaps fight it out against Rogers and the Royal Navy.
Blackbeard had a different plan. He saw the writing on the wall: the time of active piracy was coming to a close. It had been a good run, but the Crown and its bulldog enforcer the Admiralty had reached a turning point and were now taking an aggressive role in combating robbery at sea. King George’s pardon was creating divisiveness in the pirates’ ranks by inducing many of the best captains and officers to surrender and scattering crews to the wind. On a personal level, Thache was impressed with Charles Vane’s commitment to hold down the pirate base on New Providence at all costs. But he was too wily a strategist to join a hopeless cause, for the few hundred pirates in Nassau had little hope of repelling the formidable military force Rogers would soon have at his disposal.
Unlike Vane, Blackbeard had no intention of going out in a blaze of glory. He would rather be one of the few who got away with it all, which was why he was counting on one final orgy of plundering before obtaining a pardon for himself and his key crew members from Charles Eden. North Carolina’s governor had little choice but to try to improve the commercial position of his poor, out-of-the-way colony. Under the protection of Eden, Thache would retire. Then, when the coast was clear and there was no doubt that he was fully pardoned, he would return to Philadelphia to be with his beloved Margaret. But first, he needed to capture a dozen or so big prizes. Then he would have the financial security he needed to start a new life as an honest, law-abiding citizen.
The truth was it was no longer safe to be a pirate. Why even his old sailing companion Hornigold and the pretentious Jennings were supposedly planning on surrendering as soon as they had the chance. When Woodes Rogers arrived in mid-summer, he would promptly reestablish the British government and formally demand the mass surrender of the pirates and, at that point, not a single island in the Bahamas would remain safe for use as a pirate base or secure haven. Blackbeard knew he had to find a way to obtain his own pardon from someone who wouldn’t hold hard and fast to the January 5 date. Then he had to lay low and make sure the Crown wouldn’t somehow change its mind and reverse its decision.
“Arrgh,” he heard Williams say. “Look who be coming our way.”
Thache looked up to see Charles Vane. “He’s still on the warpath, is he?”
“You’re damn right. He’s trying to recruit holdouts to stay behind and fight. Woodes Rogers is going to crush him and it’s not going to be pretty.”
The vulgar, dangerously violent, but always entertaining former privateer stumbled up to them waving a half-drunken bottle of rum. “All right, here we go—now I’m getting to the cream of the crop. What say you gentlemen about joining my fight and sending King George’s pawn to his Maker as soon as his governorship sets foot on our merry little island. We can win this war and retain our freedom, you know. We can do it, by thunder. So are you with me?”
Thache looked at Williams and they both smiled. “I’m sorry, Charles, but I’m afraid we can’t join your crusade. We’re both going on the account soon and will not be standing by waiting for the new governor’s arrival. But we will drink a toast with you.”
“All right, mates. What do we drink to then?” asked Vane in a slurred voice.
Thache allowed his smile to widen. “You know perfectly well what, Charles. It’s your favorite toast.”
“Aye, to the damnation of that nefarious scupperlout, King George!” he roared, holding his bottle up and swishing the amber fluid in the sunlight.
Three dozen barefoot pirates were up and on their feet. “To the damnation of King George!” they shrieked in unison and then they tossed back their ales and spirits.
When the noise quieted down, Thache looked at Williams and gave a weary smile. “It was good while it lasted, Paul. But all good things must come to an end. I wish ye the best of luck in Africa.”
“And I wish ye the best of luck in the Carolinas. May you retire in comfort as a true gentleman of fortune. And for God’s sake, marry your beloved Margaret and start a family. If you don’t, you know you’ll regret it.”
“I know, Paul. In fact, I’ve known for some time.”
CHAPTER 37
CHARLES TOWN BAR, SOUTH CAROLINA
MAY 22-23, 1718
NORTH OF FOLLY BEACH, the massive Queen Anne’s Revenge looked majestic yet menacing. Her bristling six-pound cannons, arranged in a single row of gun ports, and muzzle-loading swivel guns peered out at unsuspecting Charles Town like thirty-eight black iron eyes. In her powerful wake trailed the Revenge, Adventure, and a Spanish tender they had taken off the Florida coast. At the moment, it was the most powerful pirate fleet in the world, and Edward Thache was feeling confident of success in his mission—a mission that he had yet to let his crew in on.
When Blackbeard reached the Charles Town bar, he seized the harbor pilot boat before it could sail to town to raise the alarm. Then, along an invisible arc nine miles south of town, the four vessels spread out across the approaches to the bar and waited, spiderlike, for ships to fall into their web. Behind the marshy point, Charles Town’s ample harbor stretched back until it reached the headland where the Ashley and Cooper rivers converged. There, where the deep bay offered protection from hurricanes and marauding French or Spanish, lay the capital of the proprietary colony of South Carolina, a bustling city of some five thou
sand people. Founded in 1670, the small hamlet named in honor of King Charles II was swiftly turned into the only English walled city in North America. Boasting one of the best deepwater harbors in the colonies, it was perpetually filled with merchant vessels transporting goods in and out of the city via the bustling ports of Boston, Philadelphia, Port Royal, Bristol, and London. Two shipping channels linked the harbor with the open ocean. The smaller channel hugged Sullivan’s Island, and the larger main channel ran just off the beach of Morris Island.
Blackbeard and his pirate flotilla sat off the bar between the two channels and patiently waited. He knew that Governor Johnson and the South Carolina militia were in no condition to resist his presence here. Though not in as desperate a condition as her proprietary neighbor to the north, the colony had been suffering from severe inflation and anti-proprietary factionalism from various planters and traders in addition to only recently recovering from a crippling Indian war of its own. At the entrance to Charles Town harbor, he would bring the entire colony of South Carolina to its knees and vowed that he would not leave until he had what he wanted: a simple chest of medicines. They would take considerable plunder too, of course, but the main thing they needed was of a medical nature. Since they had left Nassau without having any luck obtaining any mercury, urethral syringes, and other important items in combating his ship’s syphilis epidemic, the doctors had been urgently clear about that. The medical situation was desperate.
Within two days, he and his pirate gang had captured five vessels: the one-hundred-eighty-ton Crowley captained by Robert Clark and fifty-ton ship Ruby of Charles Town captained by Jonathan Craigh, both outbound to London; the sixty-ton William of Weymouth, England, captained by Naping Kieves and the eighty-ton Arthemia captained by Jonathan Darnford, inbound from England; and a small eight-ton sloop, the William, headed home to Philadelphia. The first vessel captured, the Crowley, proved the most valuable in Thache’s eyes. It wasn’t the twelve-hundred barrels of pitch, tar, and rice stuffed into her holds that caught his attention—these were of little value to him—but rather the large number of paying passengers in her cabins. Among them were several of Charles Town’s most distinguished citizens, whom he knew would command a handsome ransom in exchange for the critical medicine that his crew desperately needed.
As the ships were looted of provisions, the frightened passengers were rowed over to the Queen Anne’s Revenge, where they were thoroughly interrogated: who were they, what was their vessel carrying, what other ships anchored in Charles Town, and what valuable possessions did they have on their person or tucked away in their luggage. The most prominent among the prisoners turned out to be Samuel Wragg. A member of the South Carolina’s governing council who owned twenty-four-thousand acres in the colony, Wragg was returning to England with his four-year-old son, William. After politely interviewing the captives, Thache knew that they were worth more to him than all the cargo in the Crowley’s hold. He decided to call a general council to decide their fate.
“Mr. Howard,” he called out to his quartermaster upon the North Carolinian’s return from the Crowley. “We have taken five vessels and it is now time to hold a council in accordance with the articles. In preparation, I want you to take the more than eighty captives and place them safely in the Crowley’s hold.”
“In the hold?”
“Aye, in total darkness. I want to make sure our already terrified guests remain properly motivated to ensure we achieve our aims.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Wragg and the other passengers have heard plenty of tales of bloodthirsty pirates and they seem particularly fearful of me personally. It seems the name Blackbeard has taken something of a hold here in the colonies since last fall. I want you to herd them into the hold aggressively, but make sure not to bring any harm to anyone. Put everyone in together like a herd of cattle: rich with poor, sailors, servants, and slaves with passengers, men with women and children. There is to be no favored treatment according to class or state of servitude. In fact, I want Wragg and the other men of wealth to feel deeply uncomfortable at being treated no differently than anyone else.”
“Aye, Captain. So it appears you are going to be making a point?”
“You shall soon see what trick I have up my sleeve. Now quick to it and sharp’s the word.”
***
Stede Bonnet studied Thache closely as the pirate commodore waited for the last of the crew members to assemble at the edge of the quarterdeck for his address. Blackbeard wore his trademark tricorn hat, faded crimson jacket with gold lace, waistcoat, muslin blouse, tarred-dungarees, ankle-high black cow-leather seaman’s shoes equipped with heel plates, three brace of pistols hanging in holsters from a sling around his shoulders, and a cutlass in a scabbard hanging from his belt. To Bonnet, the man positively glowed with soft-spoken power and authority, but there was also an undercurrent of worry about him.
From snippets of overheard conversation and the general talk among the men, Bonnet knew, at least partly, the cause of his consternation. With the pirates’ Bahamian base soon to be eliminated and an increased vigilance on the part of the Crown to bring an end to piracy, Edward Thache was in a state of crisis over his future. Bonnet and many of the other pirates in the company felt the same oppressive burden hanging over them, so he was sympathetic. But he was still surprised to see worry on the face of the unflappable Blackbeard. Deeply uncertain over his future, the man was human after all.
Despite the sympathy he felt for him, Bonnet knew that he was in far worse shape than his mentor and that his life as a pirate was a disaster. He had been in a state of depression for weeks, continuing to declare to all who would listen that he wanted to give up piracy. But there was just one problem: he was so ashamed to see the face of any Englishman he knew from his former life on Barbados that he believed he had no alternative but to spend the remainder of his days living incognito in Spain or Portugal. Though Thache tried to encourage him by telling him to take it one day at a time and that things would work out, Bonnet took little solace from his mollifying words. In fact, a part of him despised Blackbeard for encouraging him when he was such a failure as a sea captain and didn’t deserve his support. As Bonnet’s self-loathing increased, he often found himself trying to blame Blackbeard for his problems. Deep down, he privately hated the man for being everything that he was not.
“Gentlemen, I have a proposition for you,” said Thache to open the meeting. “It involves the prisoners we have locked away in the hold of the Crowley. No harm is going to come to them. Their worth lies in the value Governor Johnson and his fellow Carolinians put upon their safe return to the city. In short, I plan to use these people as ransom. In fact, it is to acquire something very important.
“Most of ye have been aware of the health situation of our fleet for some time now with regard to the pox. Having been at sea nearly continuously for more than a year, it is no secret that intimate encounters in remote places of questionable hygiene have condemned us to an epidemic of the disease. The time has come that we must do something about it. Unfortunately, the medicines and devices we need to remedy the company’s ill effects have not been available to us for some time. We were able to secure some medical supplies from Jonathan Bernard’s sloops when we were near Belize, but we ran out and weren’t able to find any supplies in Nassau. However, we believe they will have what we need here in Charles Town. So my plan is to get it for us.”
“So your intention is to use the prisoners in the Crowley as ransom for medicine?” asked Israel Hands.
“Aye. I propose we make use of Samuel Wragg and the other leading citizens of Charles Town we have captured in exchange for the list of medicines and apparatus our doctors have drawn up. The doctors indicate the situation is urgent and we cannot lose a moment longer. Some of the men with the affliction are getting worse by the day. They need our help and they need it now.”
“So that’s what we’re doing in Charles Town—we’re here to get medicine to treat the damned
pox?” grumbled a crew member. “That’s why we be here?”
Bonnet saw the frustration on Thache’s face. “No, that’s not why we’re here,” responded Thache tartly. “We’re here to take plunder just like always. But this time, part of that plunder includes important medical supplies to be used for the welfare of those who have been afflicted. So what do you say, men?”
Bonnet stepped forward. “So your plan is to send a boat into Charles Town to see the governor and demand the medicine in return for the captives?”
“Aye, that is what I propose.”
“And if the town refuses, are you willing to threaten to bring harm to the captives, but also to sail into Charles Town, sink all the ships there, and perhaps attack the town itself? Because without that imminent threat, I don’t see how we can expect to have success.”
“Point taken, Major Bonnet. I have every intention of making sure the threat is believable, but do not plan on torturing or killing anyone to do so.”
“Aye, we can’t be harming ship passengers,” said William Howard. “But the threat will have to be real enough to make the governor squirm.”
“Who will we send in the boat to deliver the ransom demand?” asked Caesar.
“Whoever it is,” said John Martin, who had rejoined the company in Nassau after serving as Hornigold’s quartermaster, “there should be at least one of the passengers with them so the townspeople can verify that their citizens are safe.”
Blackbeard- The Birth of America Page 28