Blackbeard

by Craig Cabell

  Hornigold’s end is unclear. Most historians agree that his ship was wrecked and that he drowned in the wreckage, but whether that was through negligence or the effects of drink or was down to a storm or other causes is not known, nor is the date or location of the wreck known.

  Israel Hands’ fate is also unclear. He’d been the second-in-command for Blackbeard and at one point was put in command of the sloop Adventure. He was not involved in the battle that killed Blackbeard but was arrested in Bath Town on charges of piracy. He was released after he had testified against his pirate brothers, which testimony Spotswood used to build a case that incriminated Tobias Knight and Charles Eden as being in collusion with Blackbeard. Most of the information we have of him comes from Captain Johnson. In the Israel Hands affair it is Johnson who details the incident where Blackbeard shoots Hands in the knee, permanently damaging him:

  Blackbeard without any provocation privately draws out a small pair of pistols and cocks them under the table, which, being perceived by the man, he withdrew and went on deck, leaving Hands, the pilot, and the captain together. When the pistols were ready, he blew out the candle, and crossing his hand, discharged them at his company: Hands, the master, was shot through the knee and lamed for life; the other pistol did no execution. Being asked the meaning of this, he only answered, by damning them, that if he did not now and then kill one of them, they would forget who he was.246

  Assuming that this story is correct, it then adds weight to the account of Hands ending his days as a beggar, since with such a damaged knee he would have had a great deal of difficulty finding any work, even as a pirate. The name of Israel Hands has since been immortalised in the book Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

  In 1710 Edward Moseley took up the post of Surveyor General of North Carolina and in 1715 he became Colonial Treasurer. His involvement in the Blackbeard case came shortly after the pirate’s death when Moseley stormed into Eden’s office to look for evidence linking Eden with Blackbeard as more than a casual acquaintance. He failed to find anything and was arrested for his treachery. Through the colonial attorney Governor Eden had Moseley banned from public service and the man did not return until many years later.

  Woodes Rogers ended the scourge of piracy on New Providence almost exclusively with local resources and with very little assistance from outside. He publicised a mass execution of pirates to ram home the point that anyone who refused the King’s Pardon for piracy and continued plundering vessels for their own profit would be hunted down and hung.247

  Shortly after Blackbeard’s death Spain went to war with England and Rogers was still getting to grips with maintaining order where previously there had been none. He divided his time between organising the colony’s defences and ridding it of piracy, something that with war now a reality, it could do without:

  As soon as the fort is finished and all the guns mounted, which I hope will be done before the Christmas holy days are over, I will then do the best I can to make examples of some of them [pirates].248

  Black Caesar, the man who was captured while attempting to blow up the pirate sloop, was hung with the others accused alongside him. He is referred to by Spotswood, although not by name, in a letter to the Council of Trade and Plantations:

  His [Blackbeard’s] orders were to blow up his own vessel if he should happen to be overcome, and a negro was ready to set fire to the powder, had he not been luckily prevented by a planter forced on board the night before and who lay in the hold of the sloop during the action of the pyrates.249

  Stede Bonnet was betrayed by Blackbeard and turned to piracy after accepting the King’s Pardon. He sailed into the estuary of Cape Fear River to careen the very leaky Royal James, and to wait out the hurricane season. Here he was attacked by a naval expedition, led by Colonel William Rhett. The pirate was defeated and arrested. Bonnet was hung for piracy, committed after he received his pardon, on 10 December 1718. Ironically, this took place in Charles Town, the port that Blackbeard had blockaded and ransomed, when Bonnet was aboard the pirate’s flagship only seven months earlier.250

  David Herriot, Captain of the Adventure when it was seized by Blackbeard, was also captured and charged as a pirate. His defence that he had been forced into the life of piracy fell on deaf ears of the court and he was sentenced to be hung. However, he tried to escape and was killed by soldiers who were hunting him on Sullivan’s Island.

  What then of Governor Charles Eden and Tobias Knight? It is around them that the charges of collusion with Blackbeard revolve. Spotswood is the one man most influential in propagating these charges, but at the time of writing there is no concrete documentary proof of these allegations. Eden was never found guilty of abusing his political position.

  The evidence available is circumstantial. For example, there is the supposed wedding between Blackbeard and Mary Ormond over which Eden presided. Then there is the fact that Blackbeard approached Governor Eden to accept the King’s Pardon, which according to Johnson he went on to ignore. There were the hogsheads of sugar that Blackbeard was supposed to have given him as a gift, and then there was the inquiry that Eden presided over concerning giving Blackbeard legal ownership of the sloop New Adventure. In addition, there was the inquiry convened by both Eden and Knight that gave Blackbeard the rights to the French vessel, and then the subsequent order to burn the vessel which also came from Eden.

  Regarding the wedding, it is only Johnson who relates this event in his narrative where he states that Blackbeard, after sleeping with his new bride, gave her to some of his friends for their pleasure. Johnson also states the pirate had thirteen other wives before he married Ormond: ‘And this I have been informed, made Teach’s fourteenth wife, whereof about a dozen might be still living.’

  We can assume that Blackbeard, like most pirates, probably had a few mistresses in various ports and we have indicated that he very likely had a mistress in Bath Town who lived with him. However, there is no evidence to support Johnson’s claims of fourteen wives, just as there is no evidence at the time of writing that suggests this woman’s name was Mary Ormond. As for the poor girl’s fate, the whole incident comes from Johnson’s narrative and so may be suspect. This account could have been invented by Johnson to spice up a pause in Blackbeard’s life and to spice up his character. Yet, on this point we leave you with this thought. If the shooting incident is true, then having some of his pirate friends abuse his wife would be perfectly in keeping with Blackbeard’s behaviour. We leave you to decide.

  Even if this marriage did happen and Eden did preside over the ceremony, it does not point to his collusion with Blackbeard. It merely illustrates the fact that they knew each other.

  The question of why Blackbeard approached Eden and none of the other colonial governors to accept the King’s Pardon has been discussed earlier. His choices were limited. However, as Johnson tells us he continued his piracy after accepting the pardon, it does not point to Eden being in collusion. In his narrative, Johnson points out that the vessels being plundered in the Ocracoke Inlet by Blackbeard belonged to traders who wanted something to be done:

  The sloops trading up and down this river, being so frequently pillaged by Blackbeard, consulted with the traders and some of the best of the planters, what course to take; they saw plainly it would be in vain to make any application to the Governor of North Carolina to whom it properly belonged to find some redress.

  So these traders and planters turned to Spotswood for help. One of Spotswood’s claims against Eden was that the North Carolina Governor turned a blind eye to Blackbeard’s renewed pirating ways after he’d accepted the pardon, which is supported by the statement above. However, there was no proven evidence at the time that indicated Blackbeard had carried out piracy in North Carolina waters or in any other part of North Carolina jurisdiction.

  Unlike some of her wealthy neighbours, North Carolina had neither the financial resources nor the military muscle available to catch Blackbeard in the act of committing piracy and to st
op him, once and for all. As far as Eden was concerned there was no evidence that Blackbeard had ignored the pardon and was committing acts of piracy, so he saw no reason to go after a man, who was, in the eyes of North Carolina law, a reformed character.

  The charges of collusion were also levelled at Tobias Knight. As the Secretary of the Colony and Chief Justice for North Carolina, Knight was essentially second in the batting order after Eden. Eden claimed that the hogsheads of sugar found in his possession were his legal share of salvaged cargo from Blackbeard. Knight admitted to knowing about these hogsheads and the sixty hogsheads he had in his barn which also came from Blackbeard. Knight admitted to having the hogsheads of sugar in his possession which he claimed were not his but that he was keeping them in store ‘at the request of the said Thatche, only till a more Convenient store could be procured by the Governor for the whole’.251

  The letter from Knight to Blackbeard, found amongst the pirate’s papers and warning him of an impending attack, is probably the most solid evidence there is against Knight. However, in his case Knight managed a robust defence that ended with him being acquitted and he died shortly afterwards. Again, Johnson links Eden and Knight with Blackbeard when he discusses the same letter:

  But notwithstanding this caution, Blackbeard had information of the design from his Excellency of the province and his secretary, Mr Knight, wrote him a letter particularly concerning it intimating that he had sent him four of his men, which were all he could meet with, in or about town, and so bid him be upon his guard.

  Johnson adds a further link to build the theory of collusion with Blackbeard when he states that after the battle at Ocracoke was over the Royal Navy men ‘found several letters and written papers, which discovered the correspondence between Governor Eden, the secretary and collector, and also some traders at New York, and Blackbeard’. Johnson goes on to say that Blackbeard had enough of a regard for his friends that he would have

  destroyed these papers before the action, in order to hinder them from falling into such hands, where the discovery would be of no use, either to the interest or reputation of these fine gentlemen if it had not been his fixed resolution to have blown up together, when he found no possibility of escape.

  To make these claims, Johnson must have used a wide variety of sources, from the Boston News Letter, Israel Hands’ story, other pirates and victims of Blackbeard, and Spotswood’s letters to which he may have gained access through the Council of Trade and Plantations.

  Yet, in 1726, when the fourth edition of his book came out, Johnson wrote a retraction, changing his mind about Eden’s alleged collusion with Blackbeard. He wrote:

  I have been informed since, by very good hands, that Mr. Eden always behaved, as far as he had the power, in a manner suitable to his post, and bore the character of a good governor and an honest man.

  He goes on to say that he was ‘at a loss to know what acts of Piracy he had committed after this surrender to the Proclamation’. He is referring here to Blackbeard. Johnson continues in his retraction that the French ship was ‘lawfully condemned’ then, with regard to the complaints of the planters against Blackbeard, he states:

  If he had committed any depredations amongst the planters, as they seemed to complain of, they were not upon the high sea, but either in the river, or onshore, and could not come within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty, nor under any laws of Piracy.

  Finally, Johnson turns to Eden’s character and states that there ‘did not appear from any Writings or Letters found in Blackbeard’s Sloop, or from any other Evidence whatsoever, that the said Governor was concerned at all in any malpractice’.

  This retraction then makes the entire expedition to get Blackbeard completely illegal and the reasons behind it, that the planters and traders complained of Blackbeard’s actions, spurious. Spotswood went after the pirate on the grounds of his acts of piracy but as we can see there is no evidence to support these claims under Admiralty law. Spotswood was in the wrong.252

  Just two days after the death of Blackbeard, Spotswood issued the proclamation that offered a reward for anyone who could bring the pirates to justice. It was not until 1722 when the political wrangling that had been the hallmark of Spotswood’s time in office came to an end when he and his council reached an agreement of detente. Spotswood was replaced that same year and retired into his estate in Virginia, which measured about 80,000 acres. It became known as Spotsylvania, and here he owned a number of iron furnaces. On a brief return to London he married, before returning to the colonies, where he died in 1740 survived by his widow and four children.

  When Spotswood issued his order that all pirates, pardoned or otherwise, who entered into Virginia had to register with the authorities, William Howard, Blackbeard’s former quartermaster was one of the first to fall victim to this proclamation. Abandoned by Blackbeard at Topsail Inlet he was arrested on the spot, placed in chains and left to languish in the hold of a ship while his trial was prepared. Spotswood ignored the fact that Howard had not committed any acts of piracy since his break with Blackbeard, claiming that Howard’s time to accept the King’s Pardon had expired. However, the man escaped the gallows in the same way that Israel Hands had. While awaiting his execution a new proclamation arrived that extended the date of the pardon for acts of piracy to 23 July 1718, and since he had been marooned by Blackbeard he’d not committed any acts of piracy, he accepted the pardon and was freed. No further acts of piracy could be attributed to him. After this lucky reprieve nothing more was ever heard of William Howard again.

  Chapter 18

  Legacy

  ... one of his [Blackbeard’s] men asked him in case anything

  should happen to him in the engagement with the sloops,

  whether his wife knew where he had buried his money?

  He answered ‘That nobody but himself and the Devil

  knew where it was, and the longest liver should take all.’253

  Captain Charles Johnson

  This, then, is Blackbeard’s story. The hunt to find the truth has shown us the facts of his life but left a mystery about the man himself. In just over two years he managed to carve out a career in piracy that has endured throughout the centuries after his spectacular death. Perhaps it is the manner of his dying that fascinates us. Unlike so many other pirates captured and tried for piracy, he did not end his days thrashing and dangling from the end of a rope. He did not die in mysterious circumstances like his mentor, Benjamin Hornigold. He did not die of disease, like so many other sailors of the time. Instead, he died fighting and not just by a pistol shot or by a single cut of the sword but by many cuts and many shots. He died in a vicious, no-holds-barred ruthless fight for survival which he lost.

  His actions as a pirate are common knowledge, as is the way he died but his early life and his origins are surrounded in mystery. He was known by a number of names: Edward Teach, Thatch, Tach, Tache and so on. Indeed, it is highly likely that Edward Teach was not his name at all. No-one really knows who his parents were and until there is definite proof of what his surname really was, any trace of his parentage is impossible.

  Captain Johnson tells us he had fourteen wives or, more likely, mistresses in various places but who these women were and whether he fathered any children by these women remains unknown. In a letter referred to earlier in the book, Governor Johnson of South Carolina wrote that he believed Blackbeard had a wife and children in London. However, like the other mysteries surrounding him, who they were and what happened to them is not known. Indeed, on occasion letters from people claiming to be descendants of some of Blackbeard’s men and of the pirate captain himself are received at the North Carolina Maritime Museum, recognised as being one of the leading authorities on Blackbeard. However much people claim they are Blackbeard’s descendants, until we have concrete proof of his real surname these claims cannot be verified.

  The mystery of Blackbeard is how has he endured over all the other pirates of his day? He was not the most prolific pi
rate during the ‘Golden Age of Piracy’. Charles Vane, for example, and Bartholomew Roberts plundered far more ships than Blackbeard. Indeed, he was not known as the king of the pirates; that was a title that fell to Bartholomew Roberts. Blackbeard didn’t command vast numbers of pirates as others did. Yet, these names do not trip off the tongue as Blackbeard’s does. Nor are they as well-known, or infamous if you will. Most people, certainly in the UK and North America, have heard of the pirate known as Blackbeard. Indeed, he is probably the only pirate ever heard of by people who have no interest in piracy.

  There are other mysteries surrounding Blackbeard. The location of his skull is one of them. After the head had been hung up at Hampton Harbour it disappeared. One legend has it that the skull was used as a drinking chalice, though who would use this gruesome cup does not bear thinking about. Other legends lay claim to its location but it would be very difficult to determine if any of these claims were correct. As we don’t have any DNA of Blackbeard and don’t even know his real name, trying to discover if a particular skull that someone claims is his would be close to impossible.

  Legend also states that Blackbeard buried some of his treasure, and people have been searching for it for years. The location of this treasure, like the location of his skull, is another of the many mysteries in the Blackbeard affair. No treasure has ever been found but since he could not have spent all of it during the last few months he was in North Carolina before his death then, if it does exist, it must be somewhere.