Blackbeard- The Birth of America

by Samuel Marquis

  As this book has set out to illustrate based on the latest research on the man, the myth, the legend—he was, to some extent, an amalgamation of all these stereotypes. Ultimately, he was a complex and mysterious figure, and most certainly no caricature like Treasure Island’s Long John Silver or Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean fame. He was brilliant, bold, daring, successful, generous to his family, and beloved by his crew, yes, but he could also be ruthless, treacherous, and violent towards those who threatened him (such as Israel Hands) or didn’t fit into his plans (such as Stede Bonnet and the members of his crew he abandoned at Old Topsail Inlet). And let’s not forget he was a pirate. As Benerson Little states: “it’s hard not to be violent in a violent trade, and we should not forget that even the threat of force is a form of violence.” Furthermore, there is no doubt that in the last six months of Blackbeard’s life he was lonely, disillusioned, deeply torn concerning his chosen path in life and what to do about his future, and he no longer commanded the weight he once had with his greatly reduced crew. Most of all, he was a man of contrasts, which I believe arose from the internal conflict he felt inside. On the one hand, he was a man of legitimacy as the son of a wealthy plantation-owner from Jamaica and as a Royal Navy officer and privateer on behalf of the British Crown. On the other, he was a non-holds-barred outlaw taking the vessels of all nations, a Robin-Hood-like figure and American patriot fighting against British domination and the Atlantic mercantile system that favored the 1% of his day. As Kevin Duffus, author of The Last Days of Black Beard the Pirate, has said, “He was a paradox in a paradoxical age.”

  But again in the words of Duffus, “Who, truly, was Blackbeard, and from whence did he come?” This work of historical fiction has attempted to answer that question based upon a detailed synthesis of available historical records and the research findings from Blackbeard experts David Moore of the Queen Anne’s Revenge project, Bialuschewski, Duffus, and Little referenced above, and Colin Woodard, Angus Konstam, Baylus Brooks, David Cordingly, Marcus Rediker, and others cited in the references following this “Afterword.” The last two decades have yielded a treasure trove of information that has radically altered the Blackbeard narrative, based upon deed, marriage, and death records, court transcripts, and first- and second-hand accounts in British, French, Jamaican, and North and South American archives. This information has been incorporated in detail into this historical work.

  We now know, for instance, with a reasonable degree of certainty, that Edward Thache was born not far from Bristol, England, to an upper-middle-class, landowning family around 1687, but that he moved to Jamaica at a young age. According to maritime historian Baylus Brooks, author of Blackbeard Reconsidered: Mist’s Piracy, Thache’s Genealogy and Quest for Blackbeard: The True Story of Edward Thache and His World, genealogical research has demonstrated that “Edward Thache of Gloucestershire and/or Bristol, possible grandson of Anglican minister Thomas Thache of Sapperton, was…Blackbeard the pirate” and that he and “his family lived in Spanish Town, St. Catherine’s Parish, Jamaica” by around 1690. Additional records from British archives compiled by Brooks reveal that Thache served in the British Royal Navy, likely as an officer or similar elevated position befitting his social standing, aboard the HMS Windsor commanded by Rear Admiral William Whetstone, a relative of Stede Bonnet. Thache’s father Edward was buried in Spanish Town, Jamaica, on November 16, 1706, and a deed of his father’s inheritance to his step-mother Lucretia, dated December 10, 1706, shows that he served on the Windsor at that time. He was listed in the ship’s pay book as joining that vessel on April 12, 1706, on the southern coast of England, and, according to Brooks, he likely served on the vessel past June 30, 1708, the date the pay book ends. Benerson Little believes that the Brooks hypothesis that Blackbeard “was born in Jamaica of a well-off family, was formally educated, and had served aboard the HMS Windsor” has merit, but the theory has only been recently put forward and remains to be formally accepted by the majority of Blackbeard scholars.

  The link to Jamaica has long been put forward by historians, beginning with Johnson (Mist), who claimed in the first edition of A General History (published in May 1724) that Thache was “born in Jamaica” and in the second edition (December 1724) that he was “a Bristol man born, but had sailed some time out of Jamaica in privateers, in the late French war.” However, there is not a single primary document that describes any of Edward Thache’s service as an officer or privateer during Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713), or as a possible merchant ship officer or privateer following the war. However, reliable secondary sources have Thache sailing as a first-mate merchantman out of the ports of Jamaica and Philadelphia following the war before he became a pirate.

  Many previous scholars have stated that Thache was born into and nurtured in a world of at least modest privilege with ample educational opportunities. In his 1974 biography Blackbeard the Pirate, author and law professor Robert E. Lee maintained that Thache was “born into an intelligent, respectable, well-to-do family” and was “an educated man” on account of his ability to read and write (he corresponded with merchants and Tobias Knight), his nautical skills (to captain a ship he would have required rigorous training in mathematics and navigation), and his social grace (he was as at ease with governors and other high-ranking officials as he was common seamen). Supporting evidence is provided by his records at sea prior to his becoming a pirate, indicating that he held greater status than his male peers and had accumulated wealth. According to Brooks, he had a larger sea chest and payed more for stowing it than his peers, and he “joined Windsor of his own free will as a skilled merchant and was not pressed or forced to join as often happened with common sailors, many of whom never had experience at sea. He was specially noted as ‘Barbados Merchant,’ indicating that he had served on this vessel and was probably trained in mathematics; he could navigate.” During the Golden Age of Piracy, captaining a large vessel such as a sloop or brigantine was a skill typically possessed only by those with some degree of wealth who had received a liberal education. As Brooks states, “the only people capable of navigating ships were the educated, usually wealthy men who could afford the necessary training in mathematics…such as Henry Jennings from Bermuda, Edward Thache of Spanish Town, [and] Richard Tookerman of South Carolina.”

  As many researchers have suggested, Blackbeard likely began his piratical career in late 1715 or early 1716 in response to an epic event that was the decisive factor that launched the Golden Age of Piracy. On July 30, 1715, a hurricane destroyed ten Spanish vessels headed to Spain through the Florida Straits. The sinking of the massive treasure fleet aroused the entire Atlantic community, and even the squeaky clean Alexander Spotswood wanted in on the action. As Brooks states, “‘Fishing’ wrecks was a common activity all along the American coast, including the American West Indies.” There is a strong likelihood that Thache participated in, or led as captain, one of the small salvage parties from colonial America that appeared off the coast of Florida during the winter of 1716, to collect the “14,000,000 pesos in silver, and significant quantities of gold” that had been spilled out of the Spanish treasure galleons wrecked in the hurricane the previous summer. Spanish authorities estimated that near the end of January 1716, nearly a dozen English vessels were anchored over the wrecks, and many of these treasure hunters were young men who had heard about the Spanish gold from published accounts in the Boston News-Letter. As Duffus makes clear, they were simply looking for adventure and the chance to collect a vast and easy fortune by scavenging Florida’s beaches and shallow waters, and then returning home to a hero’s welcome. According to Brooks, Edward Thache joined either Jamaican privateer Henry Jennings or his rival Benjamin Hornigold to fish these ten wrecks, and he did so with a barely legal commission “signed by the governor of Jamaica” that was “disputed by both Spain and the Crown until that governor was finally removed.” Brooks further states that by the spring of 1717, “Thache and other ex-privateers, expelled by new Crown a
uthorities from Port Royal, had been observed on New Providence, an island in a neglected proprietary colony called the Bahamas, owned by six of the eight Lords Proprietors of Carolina.” So began Thache’s transition from legitimate privateer-seaman to prowling sea rover, and it was only a matter of time before he became the fearsome Blackbeard the pirate, taking British, French, and Spanish prizes with equal enthusiasm and alacrity.

  Three important questions have nagged Blackbeard scholars for three hundred years: when did Thache attain his own command, what was the name of his first vessel he captained, and what was the relationship between him and Benjamin Hornigold during his early days of piracy? Based upon new research by Brooks, Blackbeard: The Birth of America takes a stand on these critical questions by breaking from Johnson-Mist and the traditional narrative. In the book, I have Thache captaining, as a legally-sanctioned privateer, a vessel called the Margaret (a fictional name in tribute to his Swedish lover from Marcus Hook) in which he owns a substantial interest. This is the vessel that I have him sailing in to the Florida wrecks as part of the Henry Jennings expedition in late December 1715. My basis for this is I agree with Brooks that Thache was “likely independent, working for himself, and financed by his family” considering his experience in the British Royal Navy and his social station as a Jamaican upper-middle-class gentleman. Brooks further states that, “There were many Jamaican ships involved with the wrecks and not all of them have been identified” and Thache was likely commissioned by Governor Hamilton since he “certainly had the experience and his family’s financial and logistical support.”

  Regarding the Hornigold as “teacher” and Thache as “pupil” narrative that has permeated virtually every study of Blackbeard, the relationship between the two men in the novel is based largely upon the new Brooks paradigm, which argues that in 1716 and 1717 the two sailed in consort on occasion as equal partners in piratical ventures. Previous historians have claimed that Thatch was Hornigold’s pirate “pupil,” but the only source for this is A General History. Johnson (Mist) wrote that despite Thache’s “uncommon boldness and personal courage, he was never raised to any command, till he went a-pyrating, which I think was at the latter end of the year 1716, when Capt. Benjamin Hornigold put him into a sloop that he had made prize of, and with whom he continued in consortship.” According to the deposition of Henry Timberlake, Thache and Hornigold had equally matched sloops of ninety tons each in December 1716 when Hornigold in the Delight and Thache in command of an unnamed sloop seized Timberlake’s Lamb as a prize near Hispaniola. This is the first known reference to a vessel captained by the future Blackbeard, and he is revealed by Timberlake as sailing under his own independent command as an equal consort with Hornigold, not under him as his first-mate or other high-ranking pirate officer. As Brooks states, “Thache never needed a teacher. He was the most experienced mariner of recorded pirates” and the traditional Hornigold as “master” and Thache as “pupil” narrative is based upon “Johnson-Mist’s story of Hornigold and Thache” which “utilized this as a literary device for his tale of Blackbeard.” This author agrees and has written of the Thache and Hornigold relationship as one of equals and occasional consorts.

  With respect to the provenance of Thache’s 8-gun sloop that he used to plunder Timberlake’s Lamb, Allen Bernard, the quartermaster of Jennings’s Barsheba, testified that he saw Hornigold in his vessel sailing with a French sloop as a consort around April 8, 1716 off the bar near Bahia Honda. According to Brooks, Hornigold’s vessel was the Benjamin and the French sloop was the Mary of Rochelle, which “may have been the unnamed 8-gun vessel captained by Edward Thache with 90 crew, mentioned by Henry Timberlake in the taking of his vessel Lamb” six months later in December 1716. In the absence of contradictory information, in the novel I have Thache giving up his Jamaican privateering vessel Margaret (a fictional vessel) to the captured French captain and taking over the Mary of Rochelle and then later renaming her the Margaret for his true love.

  That Thache had an intimate relationship with a beautiful Swedish woman named Margaret of Marcus Hook and had a close connection to the city of Philadelphia where she lived has been well-established by Duffus and other researchers, although the sources are secondary. The house where she lived and where the two cavorted is reportedly a 16-by-20-foot, sawn plank house on Discord Lane, located on the western shores of the Delaware River fifteen miles below the city of Brotherly Love, as described in the book. The details of their relationship are not known, but would have taken place in the time frame of 1713-1715 following the end of the war when he “sailed as mate out of Philadelphia” and in the fall of 1717 and summer of 1718 when he was known to have been in Philadelphia. These are the times when I have the two lovers together in the novel.

  The unusual relationship between Thache and Stede Bonnet has always intrigued Blackbeard scholars—and been a source of puzzlement. Bonnet will forever be remembered as the most incompetent freebooter in the Golden Age of Piracy, perhaps all time, and his bumbling pirate career has to rank as one of the worst midlife crises in history. In the spring of 1717, the retired British militia major and owner of a profitable sugar plantation on Barbados abandoned his wife, children, estate, and fortune, built and outfitted a sloop at his own expense, and turned to piracy on the high seas. Though his crew and fellow freebooters judged him to be an inept captain, Bonnet’s adventures earned him the nickname the “Gentleman Pirate,” and today his legend figures prominently in the annals of pirate history. But why did a man who seemed to have everything give it all up for a life of crime? More importantly, why did Blackbeard treat him with kid gloves until the day he deceived him at Old Topsail Inlet? It is a mystery that has perplexed Blackbeard aficionados for three hundred years.

  With the recent revelation that Thache was raised on a Jamaican plantation to a prominent family, it should come as no surprise that Blackbeard tolerated Bonnet’s idiosyncrasies due to their similar upper-middle-class backgrounds and the fact they may have been acquaintances prior to their September 1717 meeting in Nassau. Blackbeard not only welcomed the clumsy Bonnet, he even allowed “him to remain on board and heal from his wounds while enjoying his library” and sleeping in the “commodious and coveted great cabin in the aft portion of his sloop.” Thache was willing to accommodate, train, and shoulder the Barbadian planter’s day-to-day shipboard duties because in return he became captain of a vessel superior to his and he and Bonnet, as the scions of wealthy Caribbean plantation owners, had a shared upbringing and could relate to one another. They also may also have known one another as Thache was posted in Barbados during his British Royal Navy career aboard Admiral Whetstone’s flagship HMS Windsor, and Bonnet was the grandson of the admiral’s first cousin.

  Duffus maintains that “if Black Beard had been completely unfamiliar with Bonnet and became acquainted with him for the first time in the late-summer of 1717 at Nassau, he would have had little motivation for accommodating Bonnet’s ineptitude and eccentricities, even if he were ‘borrowing’ the Barbadian’s own sloop for a piratical cruise.” This author agrees. As Brooks ponders rhetorically, “why did the ‘vicious’ and ‘wicked’ pirate not just take the vessel from the less experienced man?” The explanation for Blackbeard’s uncharacteristic patience for Bonnet is that the backgrounds of both Thache and Bonnet have more in common than history has previously suggested and they were likely acquaintances prior to their first recorded meeting in the fall of 1717, as presented in the novel.

  With regard to Blackbeard’s purported cruelty, violent disposition, and murderous nature, there is not one iota of evidence to support the Thache-as-Edward-Low narrative. Unlike Low, who tortured and killed his victims in ways that would make Hannibal Lecter squirm, Thache typically showed his victims respect and let them down easily after taking their ships as prizes, giving them vessels in trade, food and provisions, and even receipts for merchandise. In an age when violence was commonplace, he did no more harm to captured ship captains than to detain them f
or a brief period of time. As Bialuschewski states: “I haven’t seen one single piece of evidence that Blackbeard ever used violence against anyone.” Colin Woodard, author of The Republic of Pirates: Being the True Account and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down, concludes plainly, “Blackbeard was remarkably judicious in his use of force. In the dozens of eyewitness accounts of his victims, there is not a single instance in which he killed anyone prior to his final, fatal battle with the Royal Navy.” In his book Blackbeard: America’s Most Notorious Pirate, maritime historian Angus Konstam points out that, “While Blackbeard fought at least one close-quarters boarding action off Ocracoke in November 1718, there is no evidence that he ever had to cross swords with anyone else during his career. This didn’t mean that he was unwilling to test his mettle in combat, but rather that he was highly successful at what he did. Put simply, he managed to overpower his victims without having to resort to fighting. He was gifted in all the other skills a pirate captain needed, and therefore knew where to find his prey, how to approach them, and above all, how to intimidate them into submission.” Peter Leeson, author of The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates agrees: “[U]ntil Blackbeard’s final battle…the world’s most notorious and fearsome pirate hadn’t so much as killed a single man. Apparently he didn’t need to.”