Blackbeard- The Birth of America

by Samuel Marquis

  Just as Blackbeard had expected, the gentleman pirate’s face lit up and he suddenly looked like a new man. “I’m in command of the Revenge?”

  “Aye, we are partners and sail as consorts once again. And as our first act reunited, I intend to seek the royal pardon from Governor Eden, and I suggest you do the same.”

  “But are we eligible for the King’s most gracious pardon? It was my understanding that the offer only applied to those who had committed no crimes after January 5 of this year. So doesn’t that mean that we would be hanged for our actions in the Gulf of Honduras and off the Charles Town bar?”

  “Technically, you’re correct. King George’s act of grace extends only to those acts of piracy committed before January 5. Our attacks on the Protestant Caesar and the Adventure in the Bay of Honduras, as well as our actions at Charles Town, would under a strict reading fall outside the terms of the pardon. But the reality of the situation is that proprietary and colonial governors retain the legal ability to waive this clause and to extend immunity up to the moment a pirate surrenders.”

  “So Eden has the right to waive the timing clause?”

  “Aye, and that’s what opens the door for us to obtain privateering commissions on behalf of the Danes in St. Thomas.” In fact, Thache was counting on it. The King of Denmark—one of Britain’s minor allies in the War of Spanish Succession—was still at war with Spain and the Governor on St. Thomas, Denmark’s’ principal Caribbean colony, was granting commissions to captains and their crews willing to restrict their pirating to Spanish prizes. Thache and many of the men in his inner circle were planning on seeking the Danish commissions so they could wipe the slate clean.

  “So your goal is for us to take advantage of King George’s recent offer of pardon and then sail to St. Thomas to obtain privateering commissions. Will Governor Eden really go along with this?”

  “A simple gift of some portion of our accrued plunder should enable the governor to put aside his scruples and issue the appropriate pardons.”

  “So I am to set a course from Topsail Inlet to the governor’s home on the Pamlico River to obtain pardons for me and my men.”

  “Yes, and in the meantime I will stay here at Topsail Inlet and supervise the salvage of the Queen Anne’s Revenge and Adventure. I’ll make sure we have gotten everything off the ships for the company.”

  “But aren’t you going to take the King’s pardon?”

  “I’ll follow in two or three days’ time, but I have to finish up here first. Once we have the pardons in hand, we can set a course for St. Thomas under a new privateering partnership on behalf of the Danish governor.”

  “What ship shall I sail to Bath?”

  “We’ll secure a sloop for you in Fish Town, or you’ll take the longboat. The draught of the Revenge is too deep and I’ll be busy refitting her here.”

  “And what gifts am I to bear for Governor Eden?”

  “Drums of sugar and molasses, and perhaps a few special private gifts.”

  They heard shouting voices on the deck. Thache looked out the window to see men moving the wrecked ship’s cargo to the Revenge and Spanish sloop.

  “And you’re confident Governor Eden is a man we can do business with?”

  “I believe so. I’ve met him and his secretary, Tobias Knight, on two prior occasions. Their colony is poor and they need all the commerce they can get. We are going to have to put our trust in them.”

  It was a lie, he knew, but Bonnet didn’t seem to suspect anything was amiss. The truth was he had little desire to offer himself up to the governor of North Carolina until he knew how flexible Eden might be. He needed someone to act as a guinea pig, and the perfect candidate was standing in front of him.

  “With the Queen Anne’s Revenge a wreck,” he said to Bonnet, “we have little chance of holding our own against a determined attack by the Royal Navy in retaliation for Charles Town. The pardons will nullify their authority over us.”

  “But why do I have to go to Bath? Why can’t you go?”

  “Because I have to stay behind to make the two ships ready for sail, and you must prove to your crew that you are worthy of their loyalty. You will get the Revenge back just as I have said once I’ve completed the salvage work.”

  “And what makes you think my men will now follow me?”

  “They will follow you once they know you are going to secure pardons for them and a letter of marque from the Danish governor in St. Thomas. War is likely to break out between Britain and Spain any day now so you may not even need to go to St. Thomas, but that is where it stands now. Your seamen will be loyal to you if they know you are looking out for their welfare.”

  Suddenly, the ship shuddered violently and heeled even further on its side. The two men stumbled but did not fall and stepped from the cabin.

  “We have to get off this ship,” said Blackbeard, gazing out at the scene of chaos. But first I have to make sure we’ve recovered as much as we can.”

  The Queen Anne’s Revenge was being pounded by the waves now as she lay canted at a precarious angle along the shallow sandy bottom. Her back was broken, her hull staved, her decks awash with every incoming wave. The pirates were retrieving the last remaining items of value or usefulness from the reeling brigantine, including clothing, tar and pitch, hammocks, sailcloth, rigging, cordage, tackle, tools, and cooking utensils. They had already recovered all the livestock, medicine and surgical equipment, casks of food, gunpowder, lead shot, small cannon, navigational instruments, charts, spyglasses, and gold, silver, and jewels. What they would leave behind would be only the unwanted detritus of their past two years on the account: a couple dozen heavy cannon, spare anchors, tons of ballast stone, bronze bells, excess pewter plates, empty ceramic and glass bottles, cannon balls, barrel staves and hoops, and the captain’s soiled “seat of ease.”

  With the sailors, the slaves, and the most important provisions stowed away on the Revenge and Spanish sloop, the two grounded vessels were abandoned and the two remaining ships made their way into Fish Town harbor. There, Thache addressed the full crew, laid out a plan of action, and swiftly followed through with it while there was still daylight. The first step was to transfer all the plunder onto the Spanish sloop. When this was done, Thache had Bonnet gather the bulk of his old crew and embark with them to Bath Town in a sloop supplied by the local Fish Town fishing and whaling community, whom the Barbadian pirate paid in gold dust. The remainder of his crew were ordered to set the Revenge to rights and prepare her for a voyage to the West Indies to coincide with Bonnet’s return from Bath. Thache selected forty of his men to crew the small sloop, using her to transfer stores and men from ship to shore. Thirty of these pirates were his chosen men, the force he elected to keep with him while he abandoned the rest; the ten others were crew members he and his inner circle believed they could trust and would be able to count on moving forward, though they were not privy to the conspiracy.

  By midafternoon, Thache was presiding over the outfitting of the two remaining ships while Bonnet and forty of his men were sailing northward through the inland waterways leading toward Pamlico Sound to secure the governor’s pardon. Their holds were filled with barrels of sugar and molasses to offer as a customs payment. However, this was only the first stage of Blackbeard’s plan, and he wasted no time laying the groundwork for the great betrayal that would follow. With the plunder on board the small Spanish sloop and whatever stores could be crammed aboard her, he was ready to make his move.

  No sooner had Bonnet left than Thache and his conspirators drew their weapons and placed their two hundred fifty remaining shipmates under house arrest. Most of them were given a prodigious quantity of rum and left to their own devices on the beach, while sixteen particularly troublesome freebooters—men who had made Thache’s life miserable during their winter voyage into the Spanish Main—and David Herriot, the Adventure’s former captain, were marooned on Bogue Banks, a sandy uninhabited island three miles from the mainland. Blackbeard and his r
emaining contingent—forty white men and sixty blacks, ten of whom were pirates to go along with fifty African slaves to be traded or sold as property—clambered aboard the Spanish sloop and departed, taking the company’s rich communal plunder with them.

  When Stede Bonnet returned with his pardon three days later, the Revenge was waiting for him in Fish Town, but the treasure and Spanish sloop were gone. He soon rescued the Bogue Banks castaways and vowed to avenge himself on his onetime teacher Blackbeard. But he would never find him and they had seen one another for the last time.

  With the deception carried to fruition, Blackbeard sailed first northward to Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks to take on water at the Old Watering Hole, taking the outer passage around the barrier islands rather than the shallow inner sound, and then west across Pamlico Sound to Bath to obtain his own pardon. As Bonnet was sailing back to Fish Town, his heavily bearded nemesis had been just on the other side of the barrier islands, headed in the opposite direction. About the time Bonnet discovered his treachery, Blackbeard and his much-reduced retinue of forty seamen was making his way up a wide tidal creek leading to North Carolina’s unassuming capital. He was no longer in command of a powerful pirate flotilla, but rather a single seventy-ton sloop armed with only a half dozen four-pound cannon, two three pounders, and a pair of swivel guns.

  For Edward Thache of Spanish Town, it was like going back in time to his early, simpler days as a merchantman-privateer, and it made him think of warm summer afternoons in the arms of his beloved Margaret of Marcus Hook. But what he felt most of all was guilt.

  After all, despite the fact that what he had just done was necessary to ensure the survival of himself and his key men under the Crown’s new anti-piracy order, it was pure treachery. And the brethren of the coast he had left behind—men with whom he had once sailed, fought, drank, taken rich prizes, and shared laughter—would curse his name for the rest of their lives.

  PART 5

  RETIREMENT OF A KIND

  CHAPTER 41

  GOVERNOR’S PALACE

  WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA

  JUNE 24, 1718

  SEATED AT HIS MASSIVE MAHOGANY DESK, Spotswood looked over the letter he had just finished preparing for the Board of Trade. He wore a pair of reading glasses with silk ribbons fastened to the lenses and looped with separate ribbons around his ears. In the fourteen-page missive, which was shorter than most of his long-winded letters, he had done what he so often did: he highlighted all of his brilliant accomplishments during his tenure in office, with particular emphasis upon his recent triumphs, while at the same time providing a detailed indictment of his many enemies.

  In this particular letter, he reserved his greatest criticism for his primary nemesis, Philip Ludwell, and the seven other men on the Governor’s Council who were firmly opposed to him—whom he derisively referred to as the “Eight.” They had openly refused his olive branch by electing not to attend his May 28 party celebrating the fifty-eighth birthday of King George I—and he was still smarting over the rebuke. Instead, Ludwell had thrown his own gala that night at the House of Burgesses, an event of inspired debauchery attended by not only him and his fellow dissenters but a large number of townspeople gleefully rebellious to the Crown. Spotswood considered it a slap in his face and an overt act of sneering contempt for Mother England.

  Wearing his reading glasses, he perused the brief description of the event he was providing the Board of Trade then handed the letter across the desk to his friend and éminence grise, Robert Beverley, for his thoughts. The letter read:

  “An invitation to my house after this reconciliation was slighted by them, and an entertainment with all the freedom and civility I could give, has not prevailed with one of the Eight to make me ye common compliment of a visit, nay, when in order to the solemnizing His Majesty’s birthday [May 28, 1718], I gave a public entertainment at my house, all gentlemen that would come were admitted; these eight counselors would neither come to my house or go to the play which was acted on that occasion, but got together all the turbulent and disaffected Burgesses, had an entertainment of their own in the Burgesses’ House and invited all ye mob to a bonfire, where they were plentifully supplied with liquors to drink the same healths without, as their M’rs did within, which were chiefly those of the Council and their associated Burgesses, without taking any notice of the Governor, than if there had been none upon the place.”

  When Beverley was finished reading the paragraph, he looked up at Spotswood, who was finishing powdering his wig behind his desk. “You’ve got to let this go, Alexander, or you’ll drive yourself crazy,” he said to his friend. “I know it won’t be easy, but you must do it. You can’t go on like this.”

  “But how can I patch things up when they continue to slander and provoke me? I ask you, have you ever known of any governor of Virginia to keep up, by his constant way of living, the honor and dignity of his majesty’s government so greatly as I have done?”

  “I know you’ve done a lot. I’m just wondering if a softer touch might—”

  “And have you ever before in this colony seen our sovereign’s birthday celebrated with so much magnificence as in my time and at my expense?”

  “No, I have not, but that is not the point. These men—both in the Council and in the House of Burgesses—are bitterly opposed to you. They will not quit until they have seen you dragged kicking and screaming from your Palace.”

  “It is not a palace.”

  “To them it is. Look, eight of the twelve members of your very own Council are against you on every issue that confronts the legislature. The Ludwell-Blair faction will not go away. In fact, they are getting stronger every day.”

  “So I must roll over like a dog and capitulate, is that it? Even when they scorn me by ignoring an open invitation to my party?”

  “It was a celebration of the King’s birthday. They are as opposed to the King—or at least this particular German-speaking king—as they are you. They made it a point by sticking it to you both.”

  “That is treason.”

  “Maybe in Britain, but we are in America.”

  “America?” he sniffed, wrinkling his noise distastefully. “I am growing increasingly tired of hearing that seditious term bandied about.”

  “Yes well, you’d better get used to it. As Ludwell and his gang have made clear, these so-called ‘Americans’ are growing in power every day. Ludwell, Blair, and their followers are part of this nascent cadre of independent-minded rebels—and so is this Blackbeard who recently held Charles Town hostage.”

  “You’re talking about this Edward Thache the common pirate?”

  “Like Ludwell, Blackbeard and his sea rogues see themselves as patriots fighting the excesses of the Crown. They see themselves as Robin Hood figures.”

  “Robin Hood and his Merry Men? Surely, you jest.”

  “No, my brother Harry spoke to one of the captured ship captains. He spent hours aboard Thache’s vessel. He said that Blackbeard’s men spoke of their allegiance to Black Sam Bellamy, whose seamen were hung in Boston. They claim that they are all brethren of the coast and Robin Hood’s men fighting the tyranny of the Crown, and it was because of this that they would burn all ships they took from Boston since it was her people that sent Bellamy’s men to the gallows.”

  “Good heavens, where do they come with these falsehoods? They are but murderous thieves and brigands, the enemies of all civilization.”

  “That’s not how they see themselves. They see themselves as Ludwell and his gang see themselves: as American patriots fighting the Crown and the world’s mercantile system, which they view as unfair. They are out for their own profit first and foremost, but they are also in open rebellion with the status quo.”

  “Well, at least you and I can agree on one thing: they need to be stopped.”

  “My brother Harry says that Thache has been spotted on the Outer Banks and in Pamlico Sound. He wrecked his forty-gun flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, on a sandbar in O
ld Topsail Inlet and is reported to now sail a much smaller Spanish sloop with only eight guns.”

  “Are you saying that this scourge Blackbeard has taken up residence in our weak proprietary sister colony to the south?”

  “I don’t know what he’s up to. Perhaps he plans on retiring from piracy altogether. He wouldn’t be the first reformed pirate. As we both know, Providence, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston are full of them. They now have wives, families, and servants—and, Bible and sword, they even pay taxes!”

  “That’s a myth. Once a pirate, always a pirate. Their rate of recidivism must be the highest of any profession.”

  “I don’t know about that. My brother says that many reform.”

  “Come now, Robert, we both know that pirates are untrustworthy, as are these so-called ‘Americans’ who secretly support them and buy their ill-gotten goods. The proprietors’ governments of the Bahamas and Carolinas certainly cannot be trusted to offer legitimate pardon to men of such low principle. They must be continually watched, restrained from carrying arms, and kept from associating in too great numbers, lest they should seize upon some vessel and betake themselves again to their old trade as soon as their money is spent.”

  “I don’t know about that. I think many pirates believe in God and want to be reformed in accordance with Christian principles.”

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree on that score. Now what do you think Blackbeard is doing in North Carolina?”

  “As I said, I don’t know. But he does seem to be establishing connections in the colony. For what purpose I don’t know. Harry says that he likely sailed there before when he was in the merchant service and knows Pamlico Sound.”