Blackbeard

by Craig Cabell

  As they drew closer Maynard finally raised the King’s Colours so Blackbeard knew who he was dealing with.

  Captain Johnson tells us that Maynard kept up a barrage of small-arms fire at the pirates. They kept up a running fight, the gap between them getting smaller and smaller. Suddenly, ‘Teach’s sloop ran aground.’ He’d run into a sand bar and beached. Now, unable to move, Blackbeard became the sitting target. Yet, there is some discrepancy about who really beached: whether it was Blackbeard’s sloop or Maynard’s, or if they both beached. It is more than likely that they both beached at some point during the engagement. We will assume that Blackbeard went aground first and Maynard, seeing the danger of also running aground, barked out orders to the remaining men above decks to throw all the ballast and water casks overboard to lighten the load and lift the vessel higher in the water.

  At roughly this point, Captain Johnson’s narrative along with other sources includes a heated verbal exchange between Blackbeard and Maynard, which starts with Blackbeard’s challenge for the identity of his assailant. There are different versions of this exchange, depending on which source you read. For example, Maynard reported the exchange as follows: ‘At our first salutation he [Blackbeard] drank Damnation to me and my Men, who he stil’d Cowardly Puppies, saying, He would neither give nor take Quarter.’

  Captain Johnson’s version of the exchange, far more verbose, is below:

  Damn you for villains, who are you? And whence came you? The Lieutenant made him Answer, You may see by our Colours we are no Pyrates. Blackbeard bid him send his Boat on board, that he might see who he was; but Mr Maynard replied this; I cannot spare my Boat, but I will come aboard of you as soon as I can, with my Sloop. Upon this, Blackbeard took a Glass of Liquour, and drank to him with these Words: Damnation seize my Soul if I give you Quarters, or take any from you. In Answer to which, Mr Maynard told him that he expected no Quarter from him, nor should he give him any.

  Johnson claims that the two vessels were half a gunshot away when the verbal exchange took place, which would be less than 100 yards away, probably closer.

  The record of this verbal exchange can be found in Johnson’s narrative, from the account of the battle in the Boston News Letter which refers to the conversation but not in as much detail, as well as from Maynard’s report of the action. Remembering that Johnson’s account was written some years after Blackbeard’s death, he may have used the report from the Boston News Letter and embellished it for his readers; he may also have used Maynard’s report if he had access to it. However, Alexander Spotswood also mentioned this in his letter of 22 December 1718 to the Council of Trade and Plantations and the account published in the news letter may not have reached him by then. Indeed, he may have received his information from Maynard:

  As soon as he perceived the King’s men intended to board him, he took up a bowl of liquor and calling out to the Officers of the other sloops, drank Damnation to anyone that should give or ask quarter ...228

  According to Captain Johnson, Blackbeard managed to get his sloop floating again ‘as Maynard’s sloops were rowing towards him’. Presumably, Blackbeard had done what Maynard did and ordered everything not immediately essential to the battle be thrown overboard. There is also the possibility that the tide had lifted the sloop from the sand bar.

  As the two sloops neared each other now side-on, Blackbeard fired a broadside ‘with all Manner of small shot’. According to the Boston News Letter Blackbeard had ten guns, four on either side, and a lighter swivel gun in the bow with one possibly in the stern. The account continues: ‘At that point Blackbeard opened fire. Teach begun and fired some small Guns, loaded with Swan shot, spick Nails, and pieces of old Iron, in upon Maynard, which killed six of his Men and wounded ten.’229

  Most of the time, a cannon will fire a single ball that might punch a hole in the side of a vessel and kill a few people as it passed through a lower deck, or if the gunner is really lucky, it might bring down a mast. However, from the descriptions and the after-effects, we know that something different was used. Sometimes a gunner would load into the cannon what at the time was called a swan-shot. This was a particularly nasty type of ammunition and was designed for causing maximum death and injury to people rather than damage to the structure of vessels. It consisted mainly of jagged strips of old iron and clusters of nails.

  Blasts of these shots from the cannons sprayed slivers of metal across the attacking sloops, spreading the carnage over a wider area than would have been achieved by balls alone. This cascade of sharp strips of metal ripped through the heads and upper bodies of the attackers. The Boston News Letter counts six men dead and a further ten wounded, while Captain Johnson’s narrative counts the casualties as twenty killed and wounded on Maynard’s sloop and nine on the Ranger. This number includes Mister Hyde, the commander and the next two men in the chain of command, which meant the Ranger now had no-one at her helm and she was drifting away from the fight. One more broadside from the pirates would finish the expedition completely.

  Captain Johnson states it was at this point that Maynard sent the rest of the men below decks to join the ones already waiting: ‘The lieutenant, finding his own ship had way, and would soon be on board of Teach, he ordered all his men down, for fear of another broadside.’ The Boston News Letter account states that Maynard ‘ordered all the rest of his Men to go down in the Hold: himself, Abraham Demelt of New York and a third at the Helm stayed above deck’.

  The broadside had effectively cut Maynard’s force by between 30 and 50 per cent. The deck of the Jane was littered with bodies and the wounded that were unable to move. Blood flowed over the deck, making it slippery and sticky to walk on.

  Despite the losses, this broadside and the after-effects may have been an advantage for Maynard. We’ve seen that he ordered the rest of his men still intact below decks, leaving only himself and two others above decks with the dead and the wounded. Captain Johnson tells us that this was to prevent further casualties, and perhaps there may have been an element of that but it is also possible that this was part of Maynard’s plan to lure Blackbeard onto his vessel and then bring up the rest of the men from below to the fight.

  The battle was entering its final phase.

  Captain Johnson states that Blackbeard’s sloop ‘fell broadside to the shore’, which could mean that she had run aground. This could have been down to navigational error, or musket fire from Maynard’s vessel could have cut the New Adventure’s jib sheet. It could even have been the result of the recoil from the firing of the cannon that pushed the sloop onto the sand bar, as some sources claim.

  Johnson also implies that it was Maynard who, even after the devastating broadside, continued to row towards Blackbeard’s vessel. This is the opposite of what Konstam tells us in his book. He states that Blackbeard steered his vessel towards Maynard’s ship, presumably to finish her off. This was his chance to be victorious. Whether he had seen the men that were left standing after the broadside go below deck is debatable. He may have and considered them walking wounded. At that range there would have been smoke from the cannon fire and from the musket fire from his crews. Either way, the ships ended up with their sides touching.

  At this point in the battle, Captain Johnson states that Blackbeard’s men tossed hand grenades (grenadoes) across onto the Jane. Modern grenades contain explosives and strips of metal with the casing designed to split into tiny fragments on explosion, and these older versions were much the same. The naval grenades were usually hollowed-out iron balls, each with a hole bored through the casing with gunpowder inside. A fuse soaked in saltpetre and usually made of cord was pushed through the hole and the fuse was then lit by a match. Others were made of bottles and filled with a combination of pellets, pieces of lead and gunpowder. As in the naval version, the fuse was pushed into the gunpowder and when lit the holder had a few seconds to throw the weapon before it exploded, sending the contents, including shards of glass, flying in all directions. The effect would be devas
tating enough, but on the deck of a boat filled with people the result would have been horrendous. Had Maynard not ordered the bulk of the crew below, the grenades would have ended the mission then and there because Maynard would have lost so many men that he couldn’t have continued.

  Blackbeard could clearly see the deck littered with bodies of the dead and wounded with only Maynard, Demelt and Butler left standing. One by one the grenades exploded, creating a thick cloud of black smoke that hung over the deck. Luckily none of the grenades fell through the open hatches into the midst of the waiting men below. If they had it would have been carnage.

  At this point we must make an assumption. We know that before the broadside, Maynard had ordered the bulk of his crew below decks to be ready to rush up and attack the pirates when they boarded the Jane. This is in virtually every account of Blackbeard. It also must have been done when the Jane was far enough away for Blackbeard to see it. We also know that just after the broadside, Maynard ordered those men still fit below decks as well, according to the account in the Boston News Letter. We have to assume that Blackbeard didn’t see this as the smoke from the cannon fire might have been obscuring his vision, or he saw it and felt it didn’t matter because there were so many Royal Navy crew either dead or wounded on the Jane that he didn’t think the remaining few would pose a problem.

  With the smoke from the grenades lying thickly over the deck of the Jane (and possibly even the New Adventure as the ships were side by side), Johnson tells us that ‘Blackbeard seeing there were few or no hands aboard told his men that they were all “knocked on the head, except three or four and therefore,” says he, “let’s jump on board and cut them to pieces.”’

  In its account of the action the Boston News Letter states that Blackbeard grabbed the Jane’s foresheet in order to pull the two ships together. Grappling hooks from the New Adventure were thrown over and the lines made fast, pulling the two ships side by side – their beams touching. Calling to his men Blackbeard led fourteen pirates across onto the bow of Maynard’s sloop. The close-quarter fighting had begun.230

  If the popular image of Blackbeard is anywhere near the truth, he would not, on this occasion, have had the chance to equip his hat with those slow-burning fuses. Yet without them he must still have been an imposing figure; one that could have made even the most battle-hardened veteran like Maynard feel a slight twinge of terror. The pirate, with his crew alongside him, bore down on the three resolute but soon to be dead crewmen of the Jane.

  Suddenly Maynard called to the men below. There were two ladders leading down into the hold and so the well-armed, unharmed crew that had been hiding below rushed on deck to engage the pirates, completely surprising them. They had little choice but to fight.

  Both sides fought ferociously using whatever close-quarter weapon they had; from cutlasses, axes, knives, pikes and hatchets to pistols, and whatever else they could find. The men from the holds certainly would have used the time they had to load firearms. However, they would have been able to fire only one shot each before they needed to reload, and more than likely, that one shot would have been used the second they emerged – rendering their pistols useless except for use as clubs. It was a vicious fight to the death and all the while the bodies of those already fallen were still spilling their blood across the decks.

  If the details in the accounts are accurate it is likely that no sawdust had been distributed across the deck of the Jane to soak up the blood. Instead it was still flowing out of severed limbs and all the other wounds, and those left standing were fighting and slipping on the bloody wood.

  Imagine the scene. The main deck of a sloop is typically only about 20 feet long and about 15 feet wide. The deck would have been littered with ropes, open hatches, ladders and other paraphernalia, plus a growing number of bodies. Indeed, the hatch covers had been removed to enable the crew below to swarm up onto the deck and engage the pirates, so it is very likely that some men fell to their death through those open hatchways. Smoke from the grenades and close pistol-firing would still be lingering in the air as the men fought in that small confined space, tripping over bodies and sliding on the blood, fighting viciously, never knowing whether someone was behind them ready to drive a blade through their backs. This was no clean battle and there was only one rule: to win at all costs.

  Not all the pirates had jumped across onto the Jane. There were still another ten or so on the New Adventure who, seeing how the battle was going, could have joined their comrades but for one thing. While the fighting had been taking place on the Jane, the Ranger had managed to come alongside the New Adventure and her men poured onto the decks of the pirate ship, engaging the remaining pirates. ‘The sloop Ranger came up, and attacked the men that remained in Blackbeard’s sloop, with equal bravery,’ Johnson wrote. The scales had tipped against the pirates.

  Below the deck of the New Adventure, one of the crew stood alone. In his hand was a lighted fuse. In front of him was a barrel of gunpowder. Blackbeard had ordered this man, known only as Black Caesar, to set the fuse to the powder and blow up the ship as Johnson tells us:

  Teach had little or no hope of escaping and therefore had posted a resolute fellow, a Negro whom he had brought up, with a lighted match in the powder room with commands to blow up when he should give him orders, which was as soon as the lieutenant and his men could have entered.

  The explosion would not only have obliterated the New Adventure and everyone on it, but also the attacking sloops and everyone on them. It was a last-ditch suicide attempt that never occurred.

  The accounts of how this man was stopped differ. One source claims it was the men boarding the ship from the Ranger that stopped the pirate just in time, while Johnson states that when Caesar ‘found how it went with Blackbeard, he could hardly be persuaded from the rash action by two prisoners that were then in the hold of the ship’. Another suggestion is that Samuel Odell, the merchantman who was still on the sloop and hiding from the battle he wanted nothing to do with, stopped the pirate. Since he was the only one on board the sloop to be acquitted at the subsequent trial, this seems feasible. Yet, all the sources say that even though Odell was simply caught up in the fighting and was an innocent bystander, he received around seventy wounds and recovered from them all!231

  Back on board the Jane, the fighting was intense. The two captains faced each other in a classic scenario. The accounts from the Boston News Letter and from Johnson’s narrative provide us with details of the final moments. Metal crashed on metal as Maynard and Blackbeard fought with swords. Maynard lunged at Blackbeard and his sword smashed against Blackbeard’s cartridge box. The blade broke and Maynard stumbled backwards. He grabbed his pistol and as he was cocking it Blackbeard moved in for the kill. His blade caught Maynard with a blow, but only managed to damage the lieutenant’s fingers. Maynard managed to let off a shot from his pistol, which struck Blackbeard but failed to bring him down. Abraham Demelt joined the fight, swinging his sword at the pirate and ‘gave him a terrible wound in the neck and throat’.

  Blackbeard remained standing, blood pouring from his wound: ‘He stood his ground and fought with great fury, till he received five-and-twenty wounds, five of them by shot.’232

  The Boston News Letter tells us a Highlander from among Maynard’s men stepped up and

  engaged Teach with his broad sword who gave Teach a cut in the neck. Teach saying well done lad; The Highlander replied, If it be not well done, I’ll do it better. With that he gave him a second stroke which cut off his head, laying it flat on his shoulder.

  In the thick of a close-quarter battle, with swords sweeping in all directions, men falling at your feet, where any wrong movement or moment’s delay spelled disaster and death, is it really likely that a pirate, or anyone, would feel obliged to verbalise congratulations to a man who had just struck him a near fatal blow across the neck? Also, depending where on the neck the cut landed, would that same person even be capable of saying anything? If this Highlander had, in fact, cu
t off the pirate’s head in this manner, then surely his name would in some way be recorded.233 However, in Johnson’s account, he does not mention the Highlander.

  Of course, it is very likely these last few seconds of Blackbeard’s life were recorded with a degree of embellishment and speculative drama created by the author of the account in the newspaper, in the same way that today’s papers embellish, stretch and sometimes ignore the truth.

  Once their captain had fallen, the rest of the pirates lost the will to fight and surrendered.

  Blackbeard was finally dead. Now it was time to turn to the casualties and here again there are discrepancies as to the actual number of dead and wounded. The Boston News Letter in its account states that ‘Teach’s men being about 20, and three or four blacks were all killed in the Ingagement ...’ The same account refers to a letter written by Maynard quoting the loss at thirty-five killed and wounded; a significant number of the men he took with him on the expedition.234

  Johnson states that nine pirates died, including Blackbeard, and fourteen were taken prisoner. He provides the names of these individuals as well.235

  Then there is the figure from Spotswood who wrote that

  Tach, with nine of his crew were [sic] killed, and three white men and six negroes were taken alive but all much wounded. The loss of the King’s men is very considerable for the number, their being ten killed in the action, and four and twenty wounded of whom one is since dead of his wounds.236