Under the Black Flag

by David Cordingly

  With the rising tide, and with the help of much heaving and pulling from his men, Maynard’s two sloops floated free and began to row toward the Adventure. As they approached, Blackbeard fired a broadside from his guns, which he had loaded with swan shot, nails, and pieces of old iron. The effect was devastating. In Maynard’s words, “Mr. Hyde was unfortunately killed, and five of his Men wounded in the little sloop, which having nobody to command her, fell astern and did not come up to assist me till the Action was almost over.”9 According to the more detailed account in the Boston News Letter, six men were killed and ten wounded by the broadside.

  Maynard pressed on in the Jane and succeeded in shooting away the Adventure’s jib and fore-halyards and forcing the vessel ashore. He ordered all except two of his men to hide in the hold with their weapons at the ready while he made his final approach. As the Jane came alongside his ship, Blackbeard naturally assumed his guns had killed most of her crew and decided to board Maynard’s ship with ten of his pirates. They clambered aboard, and as they did so, the sailors emerged from hiding. The most complete account of what happened, next appears in the Boston News Letter:

  Maynard and Teach themselves begun the fight with their swords, Maynard making a thrust, the point of his sword went against Teach’s cartridge box, and bended it to the hilt. Teach broke the guard of it, and wounded Maynard’s fingers but did not disable him, whereupon he jumped back and threw away his sword and fired his pistol which wounded Teach. Demelt struck in between them with his sword and cut Teach’s face pretty much; in the interim both companies engaged in Maynard’s sloop, one of Maynard’s men being a Highlander, engaged Teach with his broad sword, who gave Teach a cut on 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.10

  According to Maynard, Blackbeard fell “with five shot in him and 20 dismal cuts in several parts of his body.”11 Like Rasputin, that other bearded monster of history, he seemed to defy death until the highlander’s fatal slash with his broadsword. It is not surprising to find that local legend has it that when Blackbeard’s body was thrown overboard, the headless corpse swam around the sloop several times.

  The death of the pirate captain did not immediately signal the end of the battle. All the accounts suggest that the remaining pirates put up a desperate fight. By the time the Ranger came alongside with the rest of the attacking party, the decks were running with blood and strewn with dead and dying men. There are differing accounts of the final casualty list. Captain Brand reported to the Admiralty that eleven seamen were killed (two from the Lyme and nine from the Pearl) and more than twenty were wounded. Some of the pirates jumped overboard and were killed in the water. One body was only discovered several days later because of the number of birds hovering overhead. The final death toll of the pirates varies between nine and twelve, with nine badly wounded men taken prisoner.

  The casualties might have been higher because Blackbeard had instructed one of the blacks in his crew to set light to the gunpowder store and blow up the pirate ship if the lieutenant and his men boarded the vessel. Fortunately, two men from a trading sloop who had been drinking with Blackbeard the previous night were hiding below during the fight, and they prevented the black from carrying out his orders.

  Maynard kept Blackbeard’s head and slung it below the bowsprit of his sloop. The display of the gruesome trophy in this manner was very much in the spirit of an age when the heads of traitors were impaled on spears over the gateway to London Bridge and the corpses of criminals suspended in prominent places as a warning to others. Maynard also needed the head as proof that he had killed the notorious pirate, and could claim the reward. A similar action was reported in the London Journal on April 22, 1727: the head of Nicholas Brown, “a notorious pirate,” was brought in to Jamaica by Captain Drudge, “a reward of £500 having been promised by the Government there for the taking him.”

  After the battle Maynard sailed across the sound to Bath Town to get help for the wounded. Some weeks later he set sail in the pirate sloop Adventure, accompanied by the hired sloop Jane. He headed north for Virginia to rejoin his ship HMS Pearl and to report the success of his mission to Captain Gordon, his commanding officer. On January 3, 1719, the two sloops sailed up the James River toward Williamsburg. It was a fine winter’s day with a light wind ruffling the surface of the water. As he dropped anchor opposite HMS Pearl, Maynard ordered his men to fire a nine-gun salute. As the warship’s great guns fired an answering salute, her crew could clearly see the bearded head of the most wanted pirate on the American coast hanging below the bowsprit of the pirate sloop. Later that day, in the column of his logbook headed “Remarkable Occurencies &c,” Maynard noted in the matter-of-fact language expected of naval officers:

  Little wind & fair weather this day I anchored here from N Carolina in the Adventure Sloop Edward Thache formerly Master (a Pyrat) whose head I hung Under the Bowsprete of the Said Sloop in order to present it to ye Colony of Virginia & ye goods & Effects of the Said Pyrat I Deliver’d to my Commanders Disposal.12

  Because of his fearsome reputation, the death of Blackbeard and the subsequent trial and execution of the remnants of his crew were regarded as a major coup in the war against the pirates. For the British authorities, it was as significant in propaganda terms as the trial and hanging of Captain Kidd back in 1701.

  Blackbeard’s last stand at Ocracoke Inlet became a pirate legend, with the fight between Lieutenant Maynard and the awesome figure of Blackbeard on the deck of a ship depicted as a classic confrontation between the forces of good and evil. The newspapers of the day reported the battle in some detail, and Captain Johnson’s General History of the Pirates included a vivid account which has provided the raw material for numerous books on piracy, and has inspired several plays, ballads, and films. Eighty years after Blackbeard’s death a melodrama by James Cross entitled Blackbeard, or the Captive Princess was first performed on the London stage; it was a popular favorite for many years. Described as “A serio-comic ballet of action, in two acts,” the scenario consisted often pages of songs and detailed stage directions. It opened at the Royal Circus in Lambeth on Easter Monday 1798 and was repeated for a hundred nights for the rest of the season. The story was based on the historical accounts of Blackbeard’s last days, but took considerable liberties with the characters involved and with the locations. The love interest was supplied by the introduction of a beautiful princess borrowed from the story of Henry Avery, and the production was enlivened by complicated scenic effects, numerous rousing songs, and the noises of fifes, drums, pistol shots, and cannon fire.

  The first scene takes place in the pirate’s cabin, where Blackbeard and some of his men are carousing. Blackbeard’s black servant Caesar spies a sail on the horizon through his telescope, and the crew prepare for action. The ship is taken and two captives are brought belowdecks. The first is Ismene, a Mogul Princess, and the second is her lover, Abdallah. The action moves to the waterfront on the island of Madagascar, where Blackbeard’s wife, Orra, is awaiting the pirates’ return. A black boy sings a ballad, there is a slave dance, and then Blackbeard comes ashore from his state barge accompanied by the captive Princess, who is now the object of his lust. In a room in Blackbeard’s fort, Orra accuses Ismene of stealing her husband’s affection, but the Princess declares that she detests the pirate. Orra arranges for them both to escape. The scene changes to the West Indies, where the two women are being pursued along a track by Blackbeard and Caesar. Orra is stabbed to death by Blackbeard, and Caesar fights and wounds Abdallah. Back on board the pirate ship Revenge, Blackbeard is attempting to ravish the Princess Ismene, but he is interrupted first by the ghost of Orra and then by the news that an enemy is in sight. Blackbeard learns that “The Enemy is British and will Die or Conquer.” Down in the powder magazine, Caesar is preparing to blow up the ship but is prevented by the combined efforts of Ismene a
nd Abdallah. In the final scene Lieutenant Maynard’s ship, the Pearl, is alongside the pirate ship. There is a fight between Maynard and Blackbeard. Maynard is wounded, but Abdallah enters and overcomes Blackbeard, who throws himself into the sea. The pirates surrender, Princess Ismene and Abdallah embrace, and the curtain falls to shouted “Huzzas of victory.”

  The play was frequently revived and adapted during the course of the nineteenth century. No doubt much of its popularity was due to its maritime theme and its patriotic songs, which delighted a British audience during those anxious years when Nelson and the navy seemed the only defense against Napoleon and a French invasion. The play’s triumphal ending reminded the London audience that British sailors would always overcome the enemies of Great Britain. A version of the play became one of the most popular scenes for the Pollock’s Toy Theatre, and can still be bought today.13 As for the village of Ocracoke in North Carolina, the story of Blackbeard has proved a useful tourist attraction. Visitors to the island will find an inn called Blackbeard’s Lodge, a pirate souvenir shop called Teach’s Hole, and the Jolly Roger Pub.

  Pirate activity reached a peak in the years around 1720: from Boston to Barbados, the reports were the same. A letter from Governor Johnson of South Carolina to London in May 1718 expressed a view that was common throughout the colonics: “The unspeakable calamity this poor province suffers from pirates obliges me to inform your Lordships of it in order that his Majesty may know it and be induced to afford us the assistance of a frigate or two to cruise hereabouts upon them for we are continually alarmed and our ships taken to the utter ruin of our trade.”14 Lieutenant General Mathew reported from the island of St. Kitts in September 1720 that the pirates “were actually coming into Basse Terre Road” and burning ships under the very guns of the battery.15

  “I think the pirates daily increase, taking and plundering most ships and vessels that are bound to this island,”16 wrote the Commander in Chief of Jamaica in December 1717. He warned that no ships bound for Great Britain dared to stir without the protection of a convoy. Governor Shute of Boston put it bluntly: “the pirates still continue to rove these seas, and if a sufficient force is not sent to drive them off our trade must stop.”17

  It has been estimated that there were between fifteen hundred and two thousand pirates operating in the Caribbean and North American waters around this time.18 The average pirate ship had a crew of around eighty men, so that there must have been between fifteen and twenty-five pirate ships cruising the area. At first sight this seems a tiny number to cause such alarm and to threaten the trade of the colonies. But it has to be remembered that the islands and coasts which were their hunting grounds were sparsely populated and extremely vulnerable to determined raids by heavily armed ships. The population of Port Royal, Jamaica, in 1700 was around three thousand; New York was a city of eighteen thousand people, and Charleston had around five thousand. The entire population of Newfoundland at this time was no more than two thousand.19 As we have already seen, the majority of merchant ships sailing in and out of these and other colonial ports had crews of ten to twenty men and were rarely armed with more than eight or ten small guns. Two pirate ships armed with a total of fifty guns had the firepower of a small army, and were invincible against any force less than a naval warship.

  The authorities in London were well aware of the piracy problem, and indeed had taken some steps to tackle piracy and some of the worst abuses of privateering. But wars in Europe inevitably had a higher priority than piratical raids in the colonies. Until the Treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1713 and settled the long-standing struggle between Britain and France, the Lords of the Admiralty had more pressing calls on the ships of the Royal Navy. However, a series of measures were taken between 1700 and 1720 which were to prove remarkably effective. One of the most surprising aspects of the great age of piracy is how suddenly the pirate threat collapsed. From the peak of two thousand pirates in 1720, the numbers dropped to around one thousand in 1723, and by 1726 there were no more than two hundred.20 The incidence of pirate attacks declined from between forty and fifty in 1718 to half a dozen in 1726.

  The problem was tackled in a number of ways: by the introduction of legislation; by issuing pardons to pirates in the hope that they would abandon their lives of crime; by stepping up naval patrols in the worst affected areas; by promising rewards for the capture of pirates, and licensing private ships to attack and capture pirates; and by the trial and execution of captured pirates. Some of these measures were more effective than others, but the combined effect of all of them was to eliminate piracy as a serious threat to trade in the Atlantic and the Caribbean.

  Until 1700 the legal procedure for dealing with captured pirates was governed by an Act passed by Parliament in 1536, “for the punishment of pirates and robbers of the sea.”21 This decreed that all cases of piracy on the high seas or in any harbor or river over which the Lord High Admiral had jurisdiction must be heard before the Admiral and three or four common law judges appointed by the Lord Chancellor. This meant that piracy was no longer subject to the rules of civil law but came under the jurisdiction of the High Court of the Admiralty. The problem for the colonial governors was that the captured pirates must be brought to London to be tried before the Court of Oyer and Terminer sitting in the Old Bailey. The occasional hanging of a bunch of pirates on the Thames at Execution Dock provided an entertaining spectacle for the inhabitants of Wapping and Rotherhithe, but had a minimal effect on the crew of a pirate ship anchored off the coast of Africa or cruising the Bahamas under the heat of the Caribbean sun.

  The breakthrough came with the “Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Piracy” of 1700. This ended the requirement that pirates must be returned to England for trial and enabled Vice-Admiralty Courts overseas to hold trials. It authorized the use of the death penalty, and stipulated that those found guilty must be executed on or near the sea. Seamen who resisted pirate attack were to be rewarded by receiving a percentage of the cargo they had saved.

  The Act provided the legislative machinery, but it was not immediately followed by a spate of executions because the pirates had to be caught before a trial could be set up. One of the first trials to take place outside England was the result of a pirate captain and his crew returning to the very harbor from which they had seized a ship during a mutiny. In May 1704 John Quelch sailed into Marblehead in Massachusetts after several months of plundering shipping along the coast of Brazil. A few days later Quelch and twenty-five pirates were arrested and imprisoned in the jail at Boston. The trial began on June 13 before a Court of Admiralty under the presidency of Joseph Dudley, Captain General and Governor-in-Chief of the provinces of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire.22 It was held in the Town House in Boston at the top end of the street now called State Street. Quelch and six of his crew were sentenced to death. The date of execution for the condemned men was set for Friday, June 20, and in the intervening period the pirates were subjected to a barrage of sermons and prayers and exhortations from the Reverend Cotton Mather.

  On the day of execution the pirates were taken in procession from the prison to the waterfront, accompanied by the Provost Marshal, the town constables, and forty musketeers. The gallows had been erected on the shore near Hudson’s Point, so the pirates were rowed across the harbor in a boat with the chaplain. A description of the final scene was recorded by Judge Sewell in his diary:

  When I came to see how the river was covered with people, I was amazed. Some say there were 100 boats.… When the scaffold was hoisted to a due height, the seven malefactors went up: Mr. Mather prayed for them, standing upon the boat. Ropes were all fastened to the gallows (save King who was reprieved). When the scaffold was let to sink, there was such a screech of the women that my wife heard it sitting in our entry next the orchard, and was much surprised at it; yet the wind was sou-west, our house a full mile from the place.23

  Thirteen of Quelch’s crew were reprieved and subsequently pardoned. This was a pattern which was oft
en repeated. After the grim formalities of a pirate trial the court often reprieved some of the accused men, even if they were found guilty. The younger members of the crew, who might be boys of fifteen and sixteen, were the most likely to be pardoned.

  The granting of pardons to pirates on the loose was one of the measures designed to curb piracy. On September 5, 1717, King George I issued a royal proclamation which declared that any pirates who surrendered themselves to the authorities within a limited time “should have His most gracious Pardon.”24 The proclamation was sent out to the governors in the West Indies and the American colonies, who then had the responsibility of contacting the pirates. The first reactions to the proclamation were encouraging. Governor Bennett of Bermuda dispatched a sloop to the pirates in Providence and the news was accepted “with great joy” by the three hundred pirates gathered there. Most agreed that they would surrender themselves to the Governor. Captain Jennings and seven other pirates duly arrived in Bermuda and gave themselves up. They were issued with a form of certificate devised by Bennett.25

  Governor Peter Heywood of Jamaica sent out two ships which contacted Hornigold and one or two of his consorts. The pirates sent the following letter in reply: “This is to acquaint your Excellency that wee have mett with Capt Cook who hath brought us the wellcome Tydings of an Act of Grace from his Majesty King George which wee embrace and return his Majesty our hearty thanks for the same. God save the King.”26

  Captain Woodes Rogers, who arrived in Nassau as Governor in July 1718, had some success with the pardons. According to Johnson’s General History of the Pirates, all the pirates “at this colony of rogues” submitted and received certificates of pardon except Captain Vane and his crew. The pirates must still have been coming in six months later, because in January 1719 Woodes Rogers informed Secretary Craggs in London that Captain Congon, who commanded two pirate ships, had offered to surrender and “embrace H. M. gracious pardon.”27