Blackbeard- The Birth of America

by Samuel Marquis

  All the same, Bonnet often felt inferior in Thache’s presence. At times, he couldn’t help but feel like a de facto prisoner aboard his own sloop. In the past week, he had lobbied Thache several times to return the command of the Revenge back to him, but the pirate commodore had told him that the timing wasn’t right. He claimed that the men wouldn’t stand for it and maintained that only once they had taken a ship-of-force as a prize would the crew be amenable to a restructuring of the command. Bonnet knew he was right, but that didn’t take away the sting of still being looked upon as a pariah. Thache recommended he be patient and said that he would stand firmly behind him when the time was right. But Bonnet wasn’t sure he trusted him to stay true to his word despite his hospitable treatment to date. He felt a growing sense of agitation at being demoted and playing second fiddle, which was exacerbated by Bonnet’s feelings of impotence and self-loathing.

  Feeling glum, he gazed off at the ocean and the edge of the horizon beyond. It was an expanse so vast that he lost himself staring off into it, the sensation of smallness magnified by the endless pale blue sky and his own feelings of impotence. Damnit, he thought miserably. How have I let myself come to ruin like this, a captive on my own bloody ship? Is this God’s cruel doing, just as he took Allamby and Father and Mother from me at a young age? Can I ever go back to my old life, or am I consigned to die at the end of a rope? Would my family even take me back after what I have put them through?

  A cry from the lookout pulled him from his reverie. A sail had been spotted to the east on the horizon, and it was heading in their direction.

  “Lively it is, mates!” shouted Thache from the quarterdeck. “This may be the one!”

  Feeling a jolt of excitement, Bonnet strode quickly over to him and Israel Hands at the helm. While Thache issued further commands to the sailing master and his bosun and the crew shaked out the main and crowded on sail, Bonnet took a moment to peer through his glass at the approaching ship. During the course of the next hour, as the Revenge maneuvered eastward along its intercepting path, the vessel grew bigger and bigger through his glass until he could make out many of her details. The ship was a massive brigantine—over two hundred tons, he estimated—with more than a dozen cannon and flying French colors. She looked formidable and yet…and yet something about her wasn’t quite right. Somehow she seemed defenseless. And then he saw what it was: with only perhaps twenty-five crewmen visible on deck, the vessel contained only half the number of hands needed to sail such a large vessel while at the same time operating her guns. Which meant that she was totally vulnerable. He looked at Thache and could see the same dawning realization going through his mind. So where was the rest of the crew? Had something happened to them? Or were they hiding down below waiting to make a fight?

  “Helm quarter to larboard, Mr. Hands! Let’s take a closer look at her!”

  “Aye, Captain!”

  Soon the Revenge closed within cannon range of the French vessel with the eight-gun Curacoan sloop taken from Captain Goelet to leeward. The twelve-gun sloop seized from Captain Sipkins was further to the north and out of view and would not take part in the chase or boarding if it came to that.

  They drew within two hundred yards, the sheets snapping in the wind and more than a hundred armed pirates crowding the starboard rail.

  “She’s an undermanned slaver, gents—just ripe for the plucking though she be heavily armed,” declared Blackbeard to his eager crew. “All hands, hoist the black flag and crowd the rails! Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Howard, guns and muskets when you are ready! Let’s see if she intends to put up a fight!”

  “Aye, Captain! Prepare to fire, men!”

  Peering through his spyglass at the massive French slave ship, Bonnet felt the excitement of imminent battle coursing through his veins as the guns ran out of their ports, the decks jammed with musketeers, and the Jolly Roger flew up the mainmast. The flag was not his personal pirate emblem—a skull flanked by a heart, a dagger, and surmounting a single bone—but rather Blackbeard’s standard displaying a skeleton holding an hourglass with a blood-tipped spear and a bleeding heart next to it. For some reason this bothered him, and he couldn’t help but wonder when he would get his ship and his personal flag back.

  In the next instant, puffs of smoke arose along the length of the Revenge as she unleashed a full volley of cannon at the French vessel, which Bonnet would later learn was named La Concorde. He watched as the cannonballs splashed in the water and flew over the deck, followed swiftly by a salvo of musket balls. The French captain tenaciously stayed his course and tried to rally his crewmen, but they were heavily outgunned and appeared to be in no condition to fight the pirates. The second volley of cannon and musketry sapped the last modicum of resistance from the Frenchmen and Bonnet saw the captain order his ship’s colors struck. The La Concorde’s helmsman swung the brigantine into the wind and she drifted slowly to a halt in surrender. The pirate crews aboard the Revenge and eight-gun sloop captained by Richards raised their weapons and let out a raucous cheer.

  Bonnet stepped up to Thache and held out his hand. “Well done, Captain. It appears you’ve acquired your new flagship. She’s quite a beauty.”

  “Aye, Major, she is at that, and with twenty new guns she will be as formidable as any man-of-war in the Atlantic,” came the hearty reply as they shook hands. “But this day does not auger well only for me, my good man, it is a triumphant day for us all. Especially the new captain of the Revenge.”

  “The new captain of the Revenge?”

  “You, Major Bonnet. Like a phoenix you have arisen from the ashes and are once again in command of your fine ship. Or at least once we’ve refitted this French slaver and turned her into a proper pirate-of-war. I believe this is cause for celebration, is it not?”

  Bonnet felt his whole body seize up with the exhilaration of redemption. “Thank you, Captain! Sweet merciful heaven, thank you!” he gushed, clasping the towering Blackbeard with both of his plump hands with the giddiness of a schoolboy. “You don’t know what this means to me!”

  “Every man in God’s creation deserves a second chance, Captain Bonnet—every man. I wish you the best of luck. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to have a word with our French guests. I do believe they have quite a story to tell.”

  CHAPTER 28

  ONE HUNDRED MILES SOUTHEAST OF MARTINIQUE

  NOVEMBER 17, 1717

  AS HE AND CAPTAIN PIERRE DOSSET OF LA CONCORDE took their seats in his great cabin with a trifle of sherry in hand, Thache knew he had finally found the perfect flagship. La Concorde was a massive, swift, powerful vessel of well over two hundred tons, with a strong oaken hull and enough gun ports to accommodate up to forty cannon. With such a potent ship-of-force, he and his flotilla could cause more mayhem than the rest of the old Flying Gang put together. All the French brigantine required was a bit of refitting and a good pirate name. Once she was properly outfitted, not even the Royal Navy frigate HMS Scarborough or sixth-rate Lyme said to have arrived recently in Virginia would dare challenge her upon the high seas.

  “You did well to surrender without a fight,” said Thache graciously to begin the conference, speaking in rusty but adequate French. “Because of this, I offer my full assurance that you will be treated fairly.”

  The Frenchman looked skeptical, but dipped his head in acknowledgment. Thache felt badly for him: the man had dark rings around his eyes, his cheeks were gaunt, and he looked like he hadn’t slept and had eaten very little in the past week. From the looks of him and his men, it was obvious that Dosset, his officers, and crew had been through quite an ordeal in crossing the Atlantic. He was curious to know the details and could only imagine the miserable state of the poor human cargo shackled belowdecks.

  “Who is the owner of ye ship?” was his first question.

  “It does not belong to me and I own no interest in it. It is owned by Monsieur Rene Montaudoin, based in Nantes and one of the most prominent merchants in all of France. He is going to be very an
gry at me for being captured.”

  “What port did you sail out of and what happened to your crew?” he then asked Dosset. “I can tell you have had a most difficult journey.”

  “I sailed from Nantes in late March, carrying seventy-five officers and crewmen, to the port of Whydah on Africa’s Bight of Benin. I arrived there in early July. En route we were crippled by a pair of storms and lost a crewman and our anchor. In Africa, we traded our goods of cotton prints and took on a cargo of more than five hundred captive Africans. We set sail again in mid-September with Martinique as our destination. We have been at sea the past eight weeks, but the hardships of the Middle Passage have taken a toll on everyone: the Africans and my French crew. I have thus far lost sixty-one slaves and sixteen crewmen to the diseases we picked up in Africa, and more are dying daily. Thirty-six of my men are presently sick with scurvy and the bloody flux, and unfortunately my doctors have been unable to do much for them. It has been such a miserable journey that I believed it couldn’t get any worse. Then I saw your two pirate sloops approaching from the west and I realized I was wrong.”

  “Mauvaise rencontre.”

  Dosset smiled wearily. “Oui, it has been a most bad encounter.”

  Thache nodded sympathetically and they fell into silence. From growing up on a West Indian plantation, he knew the trials and tribulations of the slave trade from both the perspective of the slaveholders and the slaves. The system revolted him, but he knew that it was part of the very fabric of life in an ever-expanding colonial New World. The leading merchants in Britain, France, Denmark, and other nations involved in the triangular slave trade would sail from European ports loaded with trade goods and make their way to the west coast of Africa. There, the captain and his officers would purchase a cargo of enslaved Africans rounded up from nearby and distant villages to be transported to the Americas. The subsequent trans-Atlantic voyage, known as the Middle Passage, would take up to two months to complete and typically ten to twenty percent of the slaves would perish en route from disease, starvation, or suicide. The surviving African prisoners were most often sold at the British West Indian islands of Barbados and Jamaica or the French islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint Domingue, where they served as laborers in the sugarcane fields. Emptied of their human cargo, the slavers would then take on new freight, usually sugar and cocoa, and return to European ports, thereby renewing the brutal and highly profitable cycle of enslavement and overseas commerce.

  Thache posed another question. “If you had had a full crew, would you have put up a fight?”

  Dosset nodded in the affirmative. “Unfortunately, we could not run out our guns and man our sails at the same time.”

  “For a moment, you thought about bluffing your way out, didn’t you?”

  “No, I knew I could never get away with it. Because I increased my cargo capacity for this journey to account for one hundred extra slaves, I was only able to mount sixteen guns. Even with three-quarters of my regular crew, I would have had to go up against your twenty guns with no more than three or four of my cannon. All you would have had to do then was board me and it would have been over in a matter of minutes.”

  “Ye made the right choice.”

  “J’espere—I hope so. What are your plans for me, my ship, and my cargo?”

  “I’m going to be on the level with you. I’m taking your ship and probably a half dozen of your most useful crewmen, plus the handful that will be only too glad to join me to get away from this diseased vessel. I’m also going to seize most, but not all, of your provisions as well as some portion of the Africans. But I’m afraid I haven’t made my final decision with regard to the number of slaves yet. You see, so much depends on you.”

  “On me?”

  “Yes, on you. For instance, whether you and your officers tell us where you have hidden all of your gold dust, silver coin, and other valuables. You see, my crewmen are a very determined lot. They become, quite literally, enraged like wild animals if they think a prisoner is keeping items of a precious nature from them. So of course, that always puts me in a quandary.”

  “A quandary?”

  “A quandary on whether or not to stop them from becoming violent if you and your crew do not tell them the truth. They’ll know if you’re lying or not, and I’m afraid I can’t stop them from taking out their vengeance upon you if they believe you haven’t been fully forthcoming. Does that answer your question, Captain?”

  Dosset’s face had visibly paled and he said nothing.

  Thache stroked one of the braids of his long black beard and smiled reassuringly. He had indeed gotten his message across, but he decided to make it even clearer.

  “As long as you are completely honest with us and willingly hand over everything of value, you have nothing to worry about. Me and my crew will treat you like absolute gentlemen, I can assure you.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Believe me, you don’t want to do that, Captain Dosset. As I’ve warned you in good faith, I cannot control my men. My authority ended when I seized your vessel.”

  The Frenchman’s lips trembled ever so slightly. “Where are you going to take us?”

  “I was thinking of the remote island of Bequia.”

  “Bequia?”

  He smiled graciously again. “Aye, the Island of the Clouds as the Arawak Indians call it.”

  “Mais oui, I know of Bequia. I can see why you would choose that island to refit your pirate fleet. It is a quiet place and out of the way.”

  Thache nodded. In fact, the hilly forested island with a large protected anchorage located nine miles southeast of St. Vincent was the perfect pirate hideaway. He and his men were unlikely to be pursued by the authorities there, for unlike most of the surrounding islands, St. Vincent and Bequia were not controlled by Europeans, but by the mixed-race descendants of Carib Indians and the African survivors of the 1635 wreck of two slave ships. These people, the Garifuna, had tenaciously defended their land from European invaders in their Carib-style war canoes, but they had no problem with pirates and smugglers who resisted the authority of the ruling powers. In fact, Thache was counting on them being quite pleased to see that he and his burgeoning pirate navy had stopped a French slave ship from reaching its final destination.

  “I am glad you approve of my choice, Captain Dosset. Because you and your crew are going to be our humble guests for the next week or so.”

  The Frenchman’s face fell. “Your guests?”

  “Our most humble guests. You see, you and those poor slaves you have cooped up in your hold are going to help me and my crew outfit my new flagship. When we’re done with her, she’s going to be quite bonnie. Quite bonnie indeed.”

  And with that, he gave the defeated Frenchman a devilish wink.

  CHAPTER 29

  NEVIS ISLAND, LEEWARD ISLANDS

  NOVEMBER 29, 1717

  “HOW IS HE?” asked Quartermaster William Howard.

  “The captain is still very sick,” replied Caesar, who had been acting as Thache’s personal steward since the captain had refitted La Concorde into his new flagship, which he had rebelliously named Queen Anne’s Revenge after the last monarch of the Stuart line. “The doctors have confined him to his cabin.”

  “When can I see him?”

  “They said to wait for two hours,” replied Caesar. “That’s when I’ll make him eat some breakfast if he can hold it down. But for now he needs to rest.”

  “Aye, we’ll let him sleep until then, but not a moment longer,” said Howard. “We need to make a decision as to whether to enter Nevis Harbor. The men want to know his mind.”

  “Don’t worry, ye can see him then. He just needs a couple more hours rest. He is very sick, sicker than we all thought.”

  “Aye, I’ll be back in a couple of hours then,” said Howard, and he stepped down from the quarterdeck and disappeared down the companionway.

  With dawn having just broken, Caesar went to the starboard railing of the new massive ship-of
-war and stared at the luxuriantly verdant island of Nevis, the second most important island in Great Britain’s’ Leeward Islands colony. He was worried about his captain. Thache was a tough one all right, but whatever disease had decimated the captured French slaver had now afflicted Blackbeard and was running rampant through the crew. More than a dozen men had come down with a bad case of the fever passed on from the African slaves chained belowdecks and the sick Frenchmen aboard La Concorde. After seizing the French slaver twelve days earlier and sailing to the remote island of Bequia, the pirates spent a solid week converting the brigantine into a powerful pirate-of-war. Securing the French prize inside the quiet confines of Admiralty Bay on the west side of the island, they released the French crew and most of the slaves onshore and proceeded to refit the brigantine with bristling cannon, turning her into a menacing twenty-eight-gun pirate flagship. It was during the refitting that the pirate crew had come into close contact with the sickly Africans and Frenchmen, and now Thache and a number of the men had come down with the fever.

  During the refitting, Blackbeard directly oversaw the transfer of his personal effects from the Revenge to La Concorde, along with the cannon and supplies from Richards’ forty-ton sloop, and much of the pirate company. Though many of his officers and crewmen were opposed to it, Thache had Stede Bonnet reinstated as captain of the Revenge as he had promised he would. The Barbadian gentleman pirate had finally recovered fully from his battle wounds and, despite his continuing lack of maritime expertise, he was given a crew of over fifty men.

  The three-vessel fleet—with Thache as overall commodore and captain of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, Bonnet reinstated as captain of the Revenge, and Richards in command of the twelve-gun sloop seized from Captain Sipkins off the Delaware Capes—had sailed northward though the night from Montserrat after several days of taking prizes in the Windward Islands to the south. Thache had ordered a course for Nevis Harbor, the main anchorage on the island’s western shore. But Howard and the other officers in the growing pirate fleet wanted to know the plan once they reached Nevis. As for the long-term objective of the piratical voyage, Thache had proposed to the company that they sweep the 1,400-mile island chain from end to end, raiding ships and harbors alike until they reached the northernmost islands of the Windward Passage, where they might snare a Spanish galleon carrying the payroll to Cuba. His officers and crew had readily agreed. The expanding pirate flotilla would hop from island to island, stripping prizes of valuables as if they were walking through a store and taking what they wanted from the shelves.