A moment later, as the last of Lieutenant Baker’s men were hiding belowdecks and the two converging vessels closed upon one another, the smoke began to clear. Maynard, Demelt, and Butler stood at the helm, guiding the Jane and waiting to see if Thache would take the bait and attempt to board her. Watching with a combination of dread and excitement as the gap between the two vessels closed, he whispered down to Lieutenant Baker and his men to hold steady. A moment later, Blackbeard’s grappling hooks hit their target and dug in like the claws of an eagle and then, in a slow-motion but violent ballet, the Jane and the Adventure collided with one another. Several hand-made grenadoes—powder- and shot-filled case bottles ignited by fuses—broke across the deck and exploded among the wounded, maimed, and dead, eliciting howls and shrieks of agony from the living, one or two of whom went silent from the blasts.
Then, with a new smoke cloud hovering above the Jane, there was a terrible, excruciating silence.
It was then Maynard felt a bead of sweat trickle down his cheek. God of sweet merciful heaven, I do hope this works, he prayed, as he gazed through the smoky haze at the towering, bearded figure cloaked in red hovering off his bow, clutching a pistol in one hand and a gleaming steel cutlass in the other.
CHAPTER 68
OCRACOKE
NOVEMBER 22, 1718
AS THE TWO VESSELS CLOSED THE DISTANCE between them to forty yards, Thache surveyed the crippled enemy through the smoke-filled haze and confidently barked out orders to his officers and crew.
“Come alongside her, Mr. Gibbons! Prepare to board, men!”
Though he couldn’t see precisely how many had been killed in the broadside, the shotgun-like blast of swan and partridge shot had been extremely deadly at such close range and he had witnessed more than a dozen men knocked to the deck. Now as the smoke lifted, he could see that the deck was indeed covered with a large number of bodies. There also appeared to be a clump of officers and crew members still huddled around the wheel at the stern of the ship. In preparation for boarding, he would have his men toss in a few of their improvised hand grenades they had made by stuffing gunpowder, musket balls, and bits of old iron into empty rum bottles. That should finish them off. But if it didn’t and somehow he was driven back and the enemy prevailed, he would most certainly not allow his men to be taken captive and be subjected to the same miserable fate as Stede Bonnet and his crew. With that in mind, it was time to implement his backup plan.
He pulled Caesar to the side. “In less than two minutes, I am going to lead a boarding party onto that enemy sloop,” he said in a solemn but urgent voice. “I am hereby entrusting you with an important mission because it is you—above all others, Caesar—that I trust to successfully carry it out.”
“Aye, Captain, what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to stay aboard the Adventure and—”
“What? But I am in the boarding party!”
“Just listen, lad. What I am entrusting you with is the most important task of all. Be that plain enough?”
“All right, what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to blow our powder stores below decks in the event we are captured.”
“You want me to blow up the ship?”
“We have talked about just such an eventuality many times before, and the whole crew has always been in agreement that it is better to die as free men upon our own swords than to hang from the King’s rope. There shall be no hangman’s hempen halter for me and my men, and I want you to make sure of it if things should go badly and we are somehow whipped in the next few minutes. I don’t expect it to be so but I want to be prepared.”
“Aye, Captain, we have long talked about this possibility, but I dare say I never thought the day would come. But I shall do my duty as a loyal crew member. It is you who set me free, and it is you to whom I owe these past two and a half years of freedom as a seaman and not a slave.”
“Don’t do it for me—do it for the company, Caesar. As I said, I trust you the most to carry this out if our defeat looks imminent.”
“It pleases me that you put your trust in me. Where do you want me to hide out?”
“If you stand on deck at the companionway, you can see which way the battle goes. That’s where I want you to stand. Then, if somehow when we board the enemy should prevail, you are to quickly proceed belowdecks and blow us all to kingdom come.”
“I have matches and will take care of it.”
He patted him on the back. “I know you will. That is why I have chosen you, Caesar. You are my best all-around seamen and a free man—and I want you forever to be a free man.”
“Thanks to you I am. Whatever happens, you are my captain forever and I shall never forget you.”
“And I shall never forget you, lad. You have served me well and made this old salt proud. Good luck to you and a fair wind. Now go!”
When Caesar dashed off, Thache turned back towards the enemy vessel. The two ships were closing fast. He looked at his men: it would be a boarding party of ten men including himself. They were armed with pistols, cutlasses, grenadoes, boarding axes, and half-pikes, and if the hand-to-hand fighting became particularly violent they all had at least one knife and could wield their belaying pins as improvised clubs in a desperate pinch.
“Prepare to board! Grenadiers light your fuses!”
The vessels were nearly upon one another now. With the smoke dissipating, he scanned the deck. It would be a fight with no holds barred, fought in a confined space with nowhere to run or hide. He estimated the deck of the British sloop between the main hatch and the bow to be no more than twenty feet long, and tapered from fifteen feet wide amidships to just a single wooden stempost beneath the bowsprit. The deck itself also contained the capstan, a small covered hatch, and what appeared to be at least a dozen fallen figures. As the smoke continued to thin out in the light breeze, he could see that several of the enemy were not dead, but incapacitated and writhing on the deck from their crippling wounds. What he found surprising was that the lieutenant in the blue uniform seemed to be shrugging off his casualties and continuing to have his helmsman close on him and the Adventure. Did the naval officer perhaps have some trick up his sleeve?
“Yellow has never been a pirates’ color, men! Give no quarter and expect none in return! Either we win or we die!”
The men waved their guns and blades of forged, curved steel and roared like lions. “Aye! Aye!”
“Hands, grapnels at the ready! Prepare to board!”
His heart thundered in his chest as the gap between the vessels closed to twenty feet, ten feet, five feet, then—impact! Just before the two vessels contacted one another, iron grappling hooks flew through the air, clanked across the bulwarks of the enemy vessel, and were pulled taut. With the bows of the two sloops now touching, the grappling hooks firmly lashed the two sloops together, making sure it would be a fight to the finish.
The pirates threw several hand-lit grenadoes onto the deck. Thache heard screams as the powder- and shot-filled bottles blew up, spewing out lethal balls and shards of iron casing in all directions and penetrating human flesh and bone. Then, with the smoke from the grenadoes still swirling over the open deck, the ship went surprisingly silent except for the low moans of the wounded. Thache looked at his heavily armed men: they stood along the bow, their bodies arched with eagerness and ready to spring into action. There were no longer signs of a hangover on any of the faces.
He carefully scanned the deck of the enemy vessel. Through the smoky haze, he saw only three or four men: the naval officer in the blue jacket, his helmsman, and one or two others in seaman’s dress. Clustered like sheep at the helm at the stern of the craft, they looked to be an insignificant group, pesky flies to be swatted away. On the deck before them lay a dozen or so badly wounded men amid the detritus of the broadside and grenado attacks. Smoke continued to swirl over the decks, from the grenadoes and from musket and pistol fire as the pirates who remained on the Adventure took aim and popped off
rounds at the small knot of British sailors to stern. Gazing out at what appeared to be a vanquished enemy, to Blackbeard victory looked certain.
“Boarders away! They appear to have all been knocked in the head but three or four of them!”
“Let’s jump on board and cut them to pieces!” exhorted Thomas Miller.
Again, the pirates roared with confidence, like lions. Thache waved his arm forward and the boarding party of ten men including himself jumped onto the bulwarks and started for the forecastle, howling and firing at anything that moved. As he dashed forward at the head of the boarding party, Thache looked to the stern of the ship, but the Royal Navy men hiding at the helm had disappeared. Damn, where have they skulked away to? Have they taken refuge belowdecks? He and his men quickly swarmed the smoke-filled deck amidships, maneuvering around the dead and wounded. Those who begged for quarter were graciously given it, despite Thache’s bold claim to the contrary. He saw sprawled corpses and mangled limbs. He saw disgorged blood coagulating in pools and forming into small meandering rivulets that drained out the scuppers and into the turquoise waters of Pamlico Sound, tincturing the sea with blood around the vessel. Looking around at the carnage, he cursed.
By the devil’s teeth, I didn’t want this damned fight. So many lives lost and all for nothing.
“Something’s not right, Captain,” whispered Philip Morton as the smoke drifted off. “Not but a few minutes ago, I had thirty-odd men on this deck in the sights of me cannon. But where have they all gone?”
Indeed, Thache had felt something was amiss, too, as he had begun to tally the total number of dead and wounded in his head and the numbers didn’t add up to the numbers he had observed on deck through his spyglass. The boarding had been unopposed and all too easy, as if the British had wanted them to come aboard and had a surprise waiting for them, perhaps a hidden swivel gun filled with swan shot or a bucketful of grenadoes of their own.
And then—a mere thirty seconds after he had boarded the ship—his worst fears were confirmed.
He saw the officer in the blue jacket jump up from the quarterdeck and yell a command to his men belowdecks.
“Aloft to repel the boarders! For King and Country, strike them down!”
Suddenly, a dozen of the King’s men clambered up from a pair of ladders built into the sloop’s hold, armed with pistols, muskets, and cutlasses and screaming battle cries at the tops of their lungs. The men pouring out of the companionway took his men up front by total surprise, and the deck swiftly turned to a confused tangle of bodies fighting hand to hand. Blackbeard instantly saw what was happening and yelled out commands to rally his astonished men.
“Stand fast and give it to them, lads! Show them your lead and steel!” he cried, exhorting his crew not to back down despite their sudden change in fortune.
Wheeling towards the advancing squadron, the pirates opened fire, but they were a split-second too late and were quickly dispatched or dispersed across the deck. The three boarders up front were shot down at point-blank range, turning the advantage instantly to the British. Thache couldn’t believe his eyes: what had seemed to be a sure victory had, in a fraction of an instant, turned into a life or death struggle in hand-to-hand combat. Even worse, he was in the blink of an eye outnumbered two to one by the enemy. There was no way out of the fight: it would be a battle for survival where surrender was not an option and he was greatly outnumbered. Especially given that his crew aboard the Adventure was preoccupied with the other naval vessel, which had regained its sails and was working its way towards the pirate ship.
He looked at the British lieutenant. Now he could see his opponent up close. The officer clutched a pistol in his hand and was striding towards him with a determined expression on his face as he shouted out encouragement to his men. He was older than Thache, in his mid- to late-thirties with thick side-whiskers that ran down both cheeks and terminated just before the jawline.
You clever son of a rum puncheon! You’ve outfoxed me, you have! But I’ll cleave your skull asunder before this battle is through!
A British seaman with a bloody chin fired his pistol at him, but missed. He shot the man in the stomach with one of his six pistols. The man fell to the deck with a grunt. Thache tossed aside his smoking gun and grabbed another loaded pistol from his leather bandolier holster. Each flintlock pistol was good for only a single shot and he had but five loaded firearms left so he had to make every shot count.
“Brave up now, lads! Let’s show these British bastards what we’re made of! Shoot them down and pin them to the mainmast with your cutlasses!”
The lieutenant came towards him, pistol pointed at his chest. They opened fire upon one another at five paces.
But Thache’s bullet missed his target and he was hit. It was only a grazing wound at his midriff, but it still burnt like hell. He glared flints at his adversary.
“Lieutenant Maynard at your service! As I have told you, Blackbeard, it is you I have come for and no other!”
“Damn you for a villain, sir! When my sword is through with you, I promise to see your entrails dangle from my foreyard!”
He withdrew his cutlass from its leather scabbard and threw his second, now- useless pistol at the officer, striking him in the gut. Maynard emitted a grunt as he was hit and heaved his own pistol at Thache. But the throw was high and the pirate captain simply ducked and stepped towards him, sword in hand. Maynard withdrew his own blade and the two adversaries closed on one another quickly as the hand-to-hand battle swirled around them on the deck, like a violent ballet.
He swung his large cutlass with ferocity at the naval lieutenant, who at the last second was able to dart to his left to avoid a murderous blow.
Maynard then made a thrust, the point of his sword poking into Thache’s cartridge box, made of leather and lined with thin wood, and bending it to the hilt. In response, the pirate broke the sword’s guard and made a quick slash at the officer’s sword hand, hoping to disable him and end the fight right there. The slash found the target, but it was only a glancing blow at the top of Maynard’s right hand between the thumb and forefinger. But it was enough to disable him momentarily, and the officer now looked fearful and struggled to pull out his second flintlock pistol lodged in the naval sash about his waist. Meanwhile, all around the two combatants, men fought, skidded, and fell upon the blood-slicked deck amidst the bang and smoke of pistols, the clashing of swords, and the shrieks of the wounded.
Thache closed in on Maynard with his gleaming cutlass high in the air and ready to slash down in a cruel arc. But at the last second the officer recovered his composure, pulled out his pistol, and opened fire. The bullet caught Thache in the upper shoulder, luckily missing his heart and lungs, but the force of the shot drove him backwards into one of his own men and he almost went down. He took a step forward towards the now-fumbling Maynard, who was struggling to throw away his spent pistol and raise his cutlass.
It was then the pirate was shot a third time by a young Royal Navy seaman with a tarred queue, this time in the left arm. It was another non-lethal wound, but he knew his three injuries together would soon wear him down. He charged Maynard, intent on striking him dead quickly to sap the spirit of his men and win the day. But his opponent proved a skilled and well-trained swordsman and he was unable to quickly dispatch him. Their forged-steel cutlasses clanged against one another as they pirouetted about the ship, grappling for advantage and struggling to strike the death blow, the Royal Navy officer and the notorious pirate captain whose name was now well known in the New World and on the grimy streets of London, thrusting and parrying in a hand-to-hand battle for the ages.
But as they fought, Blackbeard could tell that already—in the mere two minutes that had passed since he and his men had boarded—the battle was slipping away from him. His men were falling all around him and there was no one to replace them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Garret Gibbons go down, his shirt and jacket smoldering from a point-blank-range pistol shot. He saw Phil
ip Morton get run through with a cutlass, groan heavily, collapse onto the deck, and go still. Then he himself was driven backwards by a gunshot, his fourth, followed quickly by a burning sensation along his ribcage.
My God, I’ve been hit again? Damn if I can take any more!
He staggered for a moment, feeling the collective pain of all his wounds as the deck around him erupted in a confused melee. Bodies flew past in a blur. Bursts of flintlock pistol fire echoed across Pamlico Sound as the blood from the scuppers turned the shimmering aquamarine waters a diluted red. Primitive-sounding screams and grunts added to the orchestra of violence as the two sides—one a motley crew of pirates, the other a highly disciplined military unit—battled in close quarters.
Despite his four bullet wounds, Blackbeard attacked Maynard with fury, knocking him to the deck with the flat end of his cutlass. He followed up by punching him in the face with the crossguard, drawing blood from the lieutenant’s left nostril. As he raised his arm to deliver a blow with the sharp edge of his sword, he was knocked hard from behind by one of his own men. It was Thomas Miller, who had been shot in the face and driven backwards into him.
What the blazes, now my bloody quartermaster has fallen? This is a disaster.
He and Maynard went at it again, thrusting and slashing but doing little damage. But Thache could feel the traumatic blood loss kicking in and knew he wouldn’t be able to last much longer. The twenty-foot-long, fifteen-foot-wide space between the main hatch and the bow was now completely slick with blood and littered with bodies. With their superior numbers, firepower, and training, and having benefitted from the element of surprise, the British were winning the battle and driving the Adventure’s crew back. As the pirates retreated back towards the bow, their casualties mounted and Blackbeard found himself isolated, allowing Maynard’s men to move around behind him.
But the British naval officer, too, was bleeding and vulnerable, and Blackbeard moved in to administer the coup de grâce. He struck a powerful blow, snapping off Maynard’s sword blade near its hilt. A blow of such terrific force would ordinarily have knocked the weapon from his hands, but Maynard still gripped the sword tightly as if his very life depended on it. Hurling the broken hilt at his adversary, he stepped back to cock his pistol. At the same instant, Blackbeard moved in for the finishing blow with his cutlass. But just as he swung his cutlass aloft, he saw a flash of shiny steel in his peripheral vision—one of the King’s men suddenly materializing to his right. A huge red-haired seaman stepped forward and delivered a terrible wound to his neck and throat and Thache’s cutlass, raised for the finishing blow, swerved as it came down and merely grazed the knuckles of Maynard, cutting them only slightly. Thache stumbled but did not fall as blood sprayed from the horrible wound, spattering the blood-drenched deck.
Blackbeard- The Birth of America Page 51
