Blackbeard- The Birth of America

by Samuel Marquis

  The route proved to be a circuitous one, turning down several Charles Town streets so the assembled crowd could see him pass. Young boys in rags followed the cart, thrusting morbidly curious faces up at him. Some spectators jeered and spat upon him, but there were many colonists who cheered him on. For a brief instant, Bonnet felt emboldened by these Americans who regarded pirates not as villains and ruffians but as cultural heroes, romantic figures, contributors to colonial trade at fair prices, and challengers to imperial British rule. He had seen many such people in the courtroom during his trial and heard their whispers of encouragement outside his prison cell, for there were many who did not want him to hang. But overall, they were a minority to those who supported the Crown. A moment later, the city’s gate was opened and the crowd followed the cart over the Vanderhorst Creek bridge and along the outer wall towards the marshy area of White Point. After crossing the bridge over the tidal creek, Bonnet caught his first glimpse of the noose hanging from the crossbeam of the wooden gallows.

  Whatever composure and fortitude he had displayed during his trial now abandoned him. Gone were the silken shirts and cravats of the gentleman “man of letters” and the blown kisses from the ladies in the courtroom. He knew that he now appeared as a dingy, worn-out, quaking figure in a pitiful hanging cart. A mixture of words of support and mostly leering insults came from the crowd. A well-heeled gentleman stepped forward next to the moving cart with an engraved silver flask and gave him a jolt of rum to help dull his senses.

  Arriving at the place of execution, the cart was positioned directly beneath the square-framed gallows. His public hanging was timed to coincide with the low tide. In accordance with Admiralty law, pirates were buried in shallow, unmarked graves in the mud just above the low-water mark. He could see his own shallow grave dug into the mud flat, knowing it lay next to the twenty-nine men from his crew and nineteen others recently hung for piracy during the course of the previous few weeks. Banished to the in-between world that was neither land or sea, he knew his spirit would find no peace as the tides washed over his grave for all eternity. No headstone or marker could be placed on his grave, so no mourners could ever visit or lay flowers in tribute.

  Once the cart was positioned beneath the wooden frame, the noose was left to dangle next to him but was not yet placed around his neck. A naval representative stood at the foot of the gallows carrying a silver oar—the symbol of the British Admiralty. As the preacher began his prayer for the dying and harangue against the evils of piracy, a little girl ran up to the cart and thrust a bouquet of wild posies into his manacled hands. Her mother yanked her back and scolded her, but the gesture gave Bonnet a momentary feeling of happiness, making him remember back to the best moments he had shared with his own children that he had left behind on Barbados.

  The preacher resumed his stern lecture, admonishing both Bonnet and the crowd concerning the dangers of piracy to the established order under British rule in the Americas. He droned on for more than five minutes with his execution sermon, a meditation on terror with God presented as “the king of terrors” and hence the source of all social discipline, and pirates relinquished to the status of fierce and forbidding villains and blood-lusting monsters bent on destroying the social order. Stede Bonnet and men like him, he declared, were the bane of not only ministers, royal officials, and the merchant and ruling classes, but to all of mankind. As pirates sought to commit crimes against mercantile property and disrupt the social order, they needed to be eradicated like rats. It was, therefore, the civic duty of every citizen here in South Carolina, indeed throughout the New World, to protect property, to punish those who resisted its law, to take vengeance against those they considered their enemies, and to instill fear in sailors who might wish to become pirates. This they should do in the name of God Almighty.

  At the end of his tirade, the preacher asked Bonnet if he had anything to say, giving the condemned the opportunity to address the crowd. The gathered throng became quiet, eagerly awaiting his last words. The hope from the preacher was that the gentleman pirate who had left behind a world of opulent wealth to go on the account would stand penitently before the crowd, warn those gathered to watch the execution on the evils of piracy, instruct them to obey their parents and superiors and not to curse, drink, whore, or profane the Lord’s day, and acknowledge the justice of the proceedings against him. But Bonnet did not ask for forgiveness, did not praise the authorities, did not affirm the values of Christianity, as he was supposed to do. Nor did he publicly rebel and rail against the injustice of it all to his captors. Instead, when the preacher was finished, the usually eloquent Bonnet was unable to form any words at all. Mouth dry as a kiln, he opened his lips to speak, but no words came out.

  The crowd waited. They, too, were expecting the usual Christianly repentance or word of warning to the men in the crowd on the folly of becoming a pirate. Or possibly a few unrepentant remarks to ignite controversy. But it was not to be. An excruciating silence hung over the somber tidal flat, and Bonnet’s entire body trembled as if with ague. He opened his mouth a second time, but again no words came. Now the people let out a roar of contempt and disappointment. To hear a condemned man’s last words before he died was one of the most thrilling parts of a hanging, but all the plantation-owner-turned-pirate would do was sit in the cart, shaking, unable to speak a word. Street urchins shouted insults and hurled pieces of discarded food at him, hoping to get some response. None came.

  A gesture from the Admiralty official was all that was necessary for him to be pushed from the cart into space, but still he could not bring himself to utter a word. Feeling an overpowering sense of regret, he stared up numbly at the heavy noose silhouetted against a periwinkle South Carolina sky.

  The Admiralty officer gave the signal for the noose to be placed around his neck and the hanging to commence. Now, finally, he found his voice.

  “Dear Lord, what have I done? What have I done?”

  With words finally uttered, he drew a mental image of the small headstone that marked the grave of his son Allamby in St. Michael’s churchyard on Barbados. The life-shattering loss of his firstborn son was the event that had precipitated his running away from his life on the British island to become a pirate, which, in turn, had led him to today’s terrible death on the gallows of White Point. Then he thought of Blackbeard. Word had reached Charles Town several days ago of the epic sea battle at Ocracoke two and a half weeks earlier between the pirate commodore and the British Royal Navy, and when Bonnet had first heard the news he had wished that was the way he could go, with his pistols belching fire and cutlass swinging. But there was no escaping his prison cell. A part of him was still angry at Blackbeard for his deception at Old Topsail Inlet when the pirate captain had deliberately grounded the Queen Anne’s Revenge and broken up the companies. But he knew he could not blame the man for his own terrible fate.

  Thache had been treacherous, true, but he had also gone out of his way to teach him how to sail, use the astrolab, and lead a boarding party—in short, how to be a sea captain—and the man had graciously allowed him to use his personal cabin. Time and again, the wily pirate leader had put up with his eccentricities and his ignominious defeats in battle. It was only when Blackbeard’s own crew had pushed for Bonnet’s removal as captain that the pirate commander had reluctantly agreed to replace him with first-mate Richards. No, he couldn’t blame Blackbeard for his troubles, though he still smarted over having been duped at Old Topsail. But even then, Blackbeard was the one who had instructed him to obtain pardons for himself and his men from Governor Eden. Bonnet knew that if he had simply followed Blackbeard’s order and sailed south to St. Thomas and secured his privateering commission from the colonial governor, he wouldn’t be standing here before the gallows today. No, he could not hold Blackbeard accountable for his misery, for it was not Blackbeard’s actions that had set into motion the events that brought him to today’s noose—they were of his own making and that of his insistent crew.


  With the noose tightened around his neck by the hangman, he blurted out, “Dear Lord, what have I done?” one last time before he heard the crack of a whip on the horse’s rump. The cart jolted out from under him and Stede Bonnet the gentleman pirate stepped into eternity. The fall from the cart was not enough to break his neck though, so with a searing collar of pain around his throat, he felt himself hanging in mid-air and suffocating as he twitched and struggled.

  As he writhed in torment, there were seconds when the past streamed through Bonnet’s brain. He thought of strolls on the beach with his children, horse rides through verdant tropical fields, sharing a cool rum punch on the veranda of his fine plantation home, and to the good times with his family before he had become a broken man from Allamby’s death and his wife’s domineering cruelty. After several minutes with still no sign of death, a pair of Blackbeard’s pirates who had taken the King’s pardon rushed forward and pulled hard on his legs to expedite the process and end his misery. His last earthly thought as he was in the midst of his death throes was of Allamby. His former life in Carlisle Bay as a Barbadian planter seemed like a lifetime ago, but he could see the boy’s proud visage as if it were clear as day.

  I love you my son. I love you and I am so sorry. Then he made the same apology to his other children—Edward, Stede Jr., and baby Mary—but not to his wife. He would never apologize to her for it was Mary more than anyone else that had driven him to escape his plantation on Barbados for a life of piracy.

  Even after his death convulsions ceased, his manacled hands clutched the tiny bouquet of wildflowers. Then the fingers relaxed and the handful of posies fell to the ground. The little girl who had given them to him escaped her mother’s grasp, dashed in quickly to scoop up the bouquet, and melted back into the crowd with tears in her eyes.

  The “Gentleman Pirate” was no more. His body would be left hanging on the White Point mudflat between the low- and high-tide water line for four days as a warning to other pirates.

  A warning of British terror to the rebellious Americans.

  CHAPTER 71

  GOVERNOR’S PALACE

  WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA

  JANUARY 10, 1719

  “MAY I PRESENT TO YOU, GOVERNOR, the head of Blackbeard the pirate.”

  Alexander Spotswood gave a gentlemanly bow of approval to the dashing Lieutenant Maynard, and his senior commander, Captain George Gordon of the HMS Pearl, before turning his attention to the severed head of the notorious pirate he had fantasized about destroying for the past six months. As if presenting a grand show room, Maynard held up the rotting, thickly bearded head for the governor and his guest Robert Beverley to see. Though it was a grisly sight and instantly permeated his opulent office with a foul odor of decay, Spotswood couldn’t help but feel triumphant. He had won after all, had emerged victorious and defeated the villainous robber of the high seas that had been hogging the spotlight; and, in the process, he had removed the barbarous and inhumane wretch and his band of cutthroats once and for all as a threat to Virginia’s commerce. The mission into North Carolina had been a success, by thunder, and he had won!

  “Well done, Lieutenant Maynard—well done indeed!” he declared ebulliently.

  The British naval officer, long since recovered from his cutlass wounds, bowed chivalrously. “Thank you, Governor. It is an honor to have served you on this punitive expedition.”

  Spotswood glanced at Robert Beverley to gauge his reaction to the trophy, but he wrinkled his nose in disapproval. The governor wished his political associate, friend, and mentor would share in his jubilation, but the sight of the decomposing appendage appeared to have made him queasy. Sensing his discomfort, Maynard placed the trophy back in its protective, scented container. Throughout most of the journey to Williamsburg, the lieutenant had kept the head wrapped and stored in the airtight container, which had limited the decomposition and reduced the horrible odor to some extent. Though Spotswood found the trophy revolting, he was quite happy to see the gruesome figure of his arch-enemy’s bloody, rotting head. He had once been an army officer and had seen his share of gore, and he was too thrilled by the success of the mission and his victory over his long-time adversary to care much about the rancid smell.

  After the battle at Ocracoke, a mop-up operation with Captain Brand in Bath, and delays due to foul winter weather, Lieutenant Maynard had arrived six days earlier to Kiquotan Roads. With him, he had fifteen suspected pirates from Ocracoke and Bath shackled in his hold and Thache’s head slung from the bowsprit of the captured Adventure to present to the colony of Virginia. With the pirate captain’s grisly head swinging to-and-fro, Maynard formally saluted Captain Gordon and His Majesty’s Pearl with a nine-gun salute, receiving the like number in return, and then sailed up the James River to the landing at the road to Williamsburg. From there, the fifteen suspected pirates and their captain’s rotting head were delivered to Virginia’s capital city—the prisoners going to the gaol and the head to the Governor’s Palace along with Maynard and Gordon.

  Spotswood said, “Captain Brand has reported to me about your amazing battle. But I must confess I would enjoy hearing about it in your own words.”

  Maynard proceeded to do just that, with what the governor suspected was only minor embellishment.

  “And your casualties?”

  “Twelve dead, twenty-two badly wounded, and five lightly wounded, including myself.”

  Now Spotswood looked to the senior commander, making sure that Gordon felt included despite the fact that he had been stationed on the James River throughout the fight and had not taken part in it. “Captain Gordon, can you tell me the total number of pirate dead and number of prisoners you have brought from North Carolina for trial?”

  “The pirates suffered ten killed in action,” replied Gordon, looking to Maynard for confirmation as he spoke. “Nine survivors were taken as prisoners at Ocracoke, six black men and three white, and six were arrested and taken into custody in Bath.”

  “That is correct,” confirmed Maynard. “Several of them have, of course, loudly proclaimed their innocence. But I should think that only a handful fall into that category. One of them, Samuel Odell, claims to be a trader who merely visited the ship for some sort of celebration the night before the attack.”

  “Proclaims his innocence when he consorts with pirates, does he?” sniffed Spotswood. “Well, we’ll just have to see about that when we take the depositions from the pirates in preparation for trial. We shall have to closely examine specifically who took up arms against you and your men, shan’t we? I should think that would decide the prisoners’ fates. In any case, I must commend you, gentlemen, on a job well done,” he added, making sure to thank them both this time, even though only Maynard had engaged the pirates in battle. “You two have done this colony a great service.”

  “Thank you, Governor,” said Gordon and Maynard together.

  He looked again at the senior officer. “And what, Captain Gordon, is the total haul seized from the pirates. What I mean to say is what will you and Lieutenant Maynard be delivering to me as His Majesty’s representative here in Virginia on behalf of the King? I am, of course, referring to all piratically-taken gold dust, goods, coin, objects, and other materials recovered from the pirate sloop Adventure and from Governor Eden and Tobias Knight in Bath Town. Can you please give me an accurate accounting, sir?”

  “Yes, I can. On Ocracoke Island, we recovered ten casks of sugar and one hundred forty bags of cocoa. They were stored beneath a tarred-canvas sail erected as a tent on the shore near the Old Watering Hole. With respect to Governor Eden and Mr. Knight, we seized sixty hogsheads of sugar from the governor’s storehouse in town and another twenty located at Knight’s out on the plantation by the river. Plus we have the Adventure itself, a fine Spanish sloop. Governor Eden also handed over six slaves he acquired from the pirates. We estimate the total value of Thache’s plunder to be approximately two thousand five hundred pounds, including the vessel.”

  “That�
��s all that was recovered? There was no treasure to speak of?”

  Gordon looked at Maynard. “There may be some other odds and ends, but I don’t think they’re worth very much,” said the lieutenant. “In any event, the complete inventory of recovered supplies are aboard Thache’s sloop, awaiting shipment to Williamsburg.”

  Spotswood was skeptical there wasn’t more, but wasn’t about to challenge them on it. He had expected the great Blackbeard to have a vast treasure of silver and gold. “So be it,” he said laconically.

  Lieutenant Maynard then surprised both the governor and his senior commander Gordon with his next words. “When do you think we can expect to receive our reward, Governor?” he asked.

  Spotswood’s eyebrows went up. “Reward?”

  “The reward you promised us for killing and capturing Blackbeard and his crew.”

  “Oh yes, the reward.”

  “My men are counting on it, sir. They suffered terribly in the fight. I lost more than half my men as casualties and you promised that we would be promptly paid.”

  “They are not your men, Lieutenant,” pointed out Captain Gordon. “They serve under Captain Brand and I, as we are the captains of the Lyme and Pearl.”