Blackbeard

by Craig Cabell

  Sarah’s successor, Abigail Masham, was a confidante who had been planted by the Tories into Anne’s closest circle. She was a cousin to the Tory, Robert Harley who later became the Earl of Oxford; and in 1708, Harley also lost favour with the Queen. She then admitted the Whigs into her administration while leading Tories tried to plot the succession of Anne’s exiled Catholic brother James, the Old Pretender to the throne. Anne was having none of it and ensured that Protestant succession would take place through the Lord Treasurer, Charles Talbot, and the Duke of Shrewsbury who presided over the accession of the Prince of Hanover, George Louis, crowned George I, who reigned from 1714 to 1727.

  During these years, Blackbeard rose to prominence. As we have seen from earlier chapters the conventional wisdom is that Teach was from Bristol. That said, his early life must have been dominated by the bustling seaport. Located at the joining of the Avon and Frome rivers, Bristol is about 8 miles from the Bristol Channel and the open sea. The city is unique for having the docks right in the heart of the city. At the time when Teach was a young man, the thriving Bristol port owed its prosperity to the sea trade that many explorers, adventurers and privateers had opened up with foreign countries. Indeed, in the fifteenth century the Society of Merchant Adventurers was organised in Bristol and by 1500 the Society collected port dues and regulated all of the city’s foreign trade. The discovery of America increased the prosperity of the city dramatically as the slave trade grew. The merchants of Bristol constructed ships to carry African slaves to the West Indies and America in return for a wide variety of items such as sugar.

  Bristol merchants had financed several voyages to the newly-discovered America in a bid to find a short route to Asia by sailing westward across the Atlantic. These rich merchants began financing voyages of discovery by adventurers such as John and Sebastian Cabot. Many other voyages from this area of England were launched as people came from all over the country to find their fame and fortune in adventures far across the seas. William Hawkins and his son John, who came from Plymouth, were among this group of intrepid seafarers seeking the New World and all the riches it could offer.

  However, it was pirates or privateers like Francis Drake, arguably the original and most famous privateer and pirate, who helped to make England rich. Drake’s exploits and his close friendship with Queen Elizabeth I turned him into a household name, making him one of the most famous of all seafarers. In 1577, Drake had sailed from Plymouth on his round-the-world voyage of plundering. Philip Gosse, in his History of Piracy, states that Drake returned with a fortune from his expedition in 1580 and that Queen Elizabeth ordered the royal barge be rowed down the Thames so that she could ‘knight the master thief of the known world on the deck of his Golden Hind’.60

  Gosse also states that Queen Elizabeth was severe with pirates operating in English waters but was much more lenient with English pirates operating in foreign seas. She shut her eyes or turned her back on their exploits as the hostility between Spain and England increased. While England was at peace with the world, piracy, principally against Spain, was done in secret with Elizabeth’s encouragement. These nefarious activities brought wealth into the country and helped to create a race of very tough and able seafarers who, in England’s hour of need, took on the might of the Spanish fleet and defeated it, bringing about that nation’s ultimate downfall and making England ‘the proud mistress of the seas’.61

  Drake’s exploits could not have been lost on Teach who, as a young boy growing up in Bristol would very likely have had a youth dominated by tall tales of the sea. It is highly likely that he pored over any journals or books about the voyages and adventures of Drake and others like him whenever he could. As we have already seen we know that Teach was an educated man for he could read and write, so for those who were educated there was ample literature from sailors, privateers and others who had embarked on various adventures around the world. For example, in 1582 Richard Hakluyt published his Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America and seven years later his best work, Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation was published. In 1679 Bucaniers of America by A.O. Esquemeling was published in Amsterdam and the English translation was published in London in 1684. William Dampier, who had already circumnavigated the globe, published the first volume of his Voyages in 1697, with further volumes appearing in 1699 and 1707. Also, in 1709 John Lawson’s A New Voyage to Carolina was published. So it is clear that there was ample reading matter that probably made the young and impressionable Teach keen to make his mark, to seek adventure, fame and fortune.

  Yet, did he go to sea because he had no choice, or because it was the best choice, or because he just drifted into it? There were choices and it seems most likely that he made the choice to follow in the steps of all those other sailors before him, especially if he lived in Bristol and if his family was already involved in the seafaring trade in some way. The influence of adventures on the high seas and lure of the sea would have been very strong indeed.

  So what was life on the high seas like during the time of Blackbeard?

  The published works by the seafarers and adventurers of the day that were available to Teach would have romanticised life to some degree, but the reality was that life at sea was hard. The film industry paints a far more glorious picture of life on an early eighteenth-century vessel than was actually the case, and there was very little difference in the quality of life between sailors serving their country and those serving themselves. In fact, in some cases, those in the Royal Navy suffered more.

  On board pirate ships a captain was never placed in command by a higher authority. Unlike the Royal Navy which had rules, regulations and traditions, pirates were literally their own bosses, hence the often higher living standards. While the Royal Navy had a rank structure which meant that ratings did what lieutenants ordered, lieutenants did what commanders ordered, commanders did what captains ordered, captains did what admirals ordered and ultimately, admirals did what the government and monarch, through the Admiralty, ordered, pirates did none of these things.

  Despite the apparent lawless nature of life on a pirate vessel compared to a military vessel, pirates did have codes: a list of ethics that everyone on board had to abide by. These covered the very basic provisions, such as discipline, each individual’s share of the ‘treasures’ taken and compensation when a crew member was injured. Some codes were far more detailed and were not far removed from standard corporation contracts we may see today. The more detailed ones covered discipline, shares and compensation, gambling, drinking, curfews on board, theft between the crew, clothing, rewards for scaling another vessel first and therefore being at higher risk of death, keeping weapons fit for their purpose, women on board (although in exceptional cases women were a part of the crew), voting status on whether to attack a vessel, desertion, in-crew fighting, work of musicians on board and perceived cowardice. Clearly, some pirate captains were keen to run a vessel almost as efficient as their Royal Navy counterparts.

  However, as far as Blackbeard is concerned we do not have detailed evidence of what code or ethics were aboard his ships but we must assume that he had instilled some, if not just to prevent total anarchy on board. While much is known about Teach’s feared reputation as the pirate Blackbeard, in order to build the reputation within his crew he must have instilled some form of crude and cruel discipline aboard his ship.62

  Like most other pirates, Blackbeard did not advertise his presence when approaching a prize. The famous black flag with the skull and crossbones was rarely flown. Instead, most pirate captains would use a ruse that many privateers used which was flying the flag of a friendly or neutral country to lure their unsuspecting prey into a false sense of security and make it easier to board the ship and capture it. This was common practice amongst privateers, and to some degree naval vessels hunting for both pirates and enemy ships. If you could draw close to your prey before the trick was realised, it simplified the chase.63

  Quite o
ften though, pirate activities did involve a great deal of chasing. These chases could last for hours, depending on how determined the prey was to escape. The chase would begin with the pirate lookout, perched high up in the crow’s nest, sighting the sails of a ship on the horizon and the pirate captain then deciding to give chase. The target then had a massive head start. Several miles of open sea separated the ships and it was up to the skills of the pirate crew and the speed of their vessel to catch up with the intended target. To gain the advantage of speed, pirates often stripped down their ships, ripping out anything that would add weight and slow them down. In this respect, Blackbeard was no exception.

  Chapter 5

  The New Pirate Captain

  Though he had often distinguished himself for

  his uncommon boldness and personal courage, he was

  never raised to any command till he went a-pirating ...

  when Captain Benjamin Hornigold put him into

  a sloop that he had made a prize of.64

  Captain Charles Johnson, 1724

  The ship most associated with Blackbeard is the Queen Anne’ s Revenge. This did not mark the start of his career in piracy, nor did it mark the end, but some of his major exploits were conducted while he commanded this ship. Its eventual demise has created one of the lasting mysteries of his career.

  Before he took command of that ship, he served under the guidance of the man who was his mentor – Benjamin Hornigold. ‘Blackbeard the onetime privateer had become Blackbeard the notorious pirate and the transformation was largely due to the leading pirate captain of the time.’65 Benjamin Hornigold may not have been the first person that Blackbeard served under but, according to most sources he was certainly the most influential. He was the one who gave Blackbeard his first command, so he must have recognised the talent and ability of his protégé.

  Little is known about Hornigold except that he was an Englishman and was a privateer fighting in the War of Spanish Succession (‘Queen Anne’s War’). Konstam suggests that Hornigold may have come from Norfolk as Hornigold was and still is a common surname in that county. Norfolk has two main ports, King’s Lynn and Great Yarmouth which were both important fishing ports and centres of coastal trade between Britain and the rest of Europe. He maintains that it is likely that Hornigold started his seafaring career in one of these ports, even though they faced Europe instead of the Atlantic which limited their importance as long-range international trading ports.

  So it is likely that Hornigold made his way to London to start his oceangoing career. Though the War of Spanish Succession was fought between European nations, much of the fighting took place off the coast of North America.66

  There is no record as to how Hornigold got to the Bahamas but by the time Blackbeard arrived he was already a pirate having been a privateer in the war and refusing to give up the fight against the French and Spanish when the war ended in 1713. Johnson gives us the date of 1716 when Blackbeard was sailing with Hornigold so the latter must have arrived around the end of the war.

  Now Konstam suggests that in the first account of pirates operating from the Bahamas they were using small boats and not the large ships such as the ones that Blackbeard later captured. Through Captain Johnson we know that Hornigold was commanding a 30-gun vessel by 1717 probably known as the Ranger. It is highly likely that Hornigold’s ship was probably the largest in the harbour at Nassau on New Providence Island.67

  In reality privateering is the legalised version of piracy. The difference is that piracy is theft for personal gain when the victim is anyone, while privateering is theft for the gain of whichever government or monarch issued the warrant, or Letters of Marque, to steal from its enemies at the time. Privateering was far more prevalent in wartime than during periods of peace since the warrants often specified ships of certain nationalities that were fair game. However, like piracy, the crews were not paid by anything other than a share of the spoils.68

  By March 1717, Blackbeard and Hornigold were sailing in tandem. Captain Johnson writes that

  in the spring of the year 1717 Teach and Hornigold sailed from Providence, for the Main of America, and took in their way a billop from Havana, with one hundred and twenty barrels of flour, as also a sloop from Bermuda, Thurber, master, from whom they took only some gallons of wine and then let him go.

  Also around this time, they captured a sloop and Hornigold put Teach in command of it.69

  At the time, Hornigold would have been the top pirate in the Bahamas; a pirate king highly involved in the running of the community in Nassau. One of the earliest official records of Blackbeard being mentioned comes from Captain Mathew Musson (Munthe according to some historians). By this time, Blackbeard was one of several operating from New Providence and had clearly taken command of a vessel:

  ... five pirates made ye harbour of Providence their place of rendezvous ... Hornigold, a sloop with 10 guns and about 80 men; Jennings, a sloop with 10 guns and 100 men; Burgiss, a sloop with 8 guns and about 80 men; White, in a small vessell [sic] with 30 men and small armes [sic]; Thatch, a sloop 6 gunns [sic] and about 70 men.70

  The above report tells us that Blackbeard was in command of his own ship, albeit still in the company of Hornigold. We can’t be sure what this ship was. Some accounts believe it to be the Revenge. We go with this because it is known from other later documents that Blackbeard was in command of this vessel fairly early on. This ship, a sloop, was formerly under the command of the pirate Stede Bonnet.71

  However, there is some discrepancy around the dates when Hornigold and Blackbeard parted. Johnson states that it was sometime in late November 1717 that they separated. However, we have some documentation that might suggest their parting was earlier. One of the documents we can look at is the charge brought against Blackbeard’s former quartermaster, William Howard, by none other than Governor Spotswood of Virginia.

  Howard did together with his Associates and Confederates on or about the 29th day of September in the year Aforesaid (1717), in an Hostile manner with force and Arms on the high seas near Cape Charles in this Colony (Virginia) within the Jurisdiction of the Admiralty of this Court attack & force a Sloop Called the Betty of Virginia belonging to the Subjects of our said Lord the King, and the said Sloop did then and there Rob and plunder of Certain Pipes of Madera Wine and other Goods and Merchandizes and thereafter the said William Howard did Sink and destroy the said Sloop with the remaining Part of the Cargo.

  In this charge against Howard, Blackbeard is named specifically stating that he did ‘in the year of our Lord 1717 Join and Associate himself with one Edward Tach and other Wicked and dissolute persons’. In the same charge, the sloop is also named ‘and with them did combine to fit out in Hostile manner a Certain Sloop or Vessel Called the Revenge to commit Piracies and depredations upon the High Seas’.72

  From this document it would seem that Blackbeard was operating alone when he met the Betty which would have been sometime in September 1717. Hornigold isn’t mentioned anywhere in the charges against Howard and if the two pirates had still been operating together he would most likely have been mentioned at some point as he was, to all intents and purposes, still a highly influential pirate. It may be that he is included as one of those ‘dissolute persons’.

  Perhaps the key document here is a report that was in the November edition of the Boston News Letter filed in Philadelphia on 24 October 1717 that stated a certain Captain Codd had been taken ‘12 days since off our Cape by a Pirate Sloop called Revenge, of 12 Guns, 150 Men, Commanded by one Teach, who Formerly Sailed Mate out of this Port’.73

  This report confirms that by October 1717 Blackbeard was sailing alone. However, as with any historical trail there are discrepancies and the key one here is the time and date that Blackbeard met Stede Bonnet.

  Major Stede Bonnet was something of an oddity in the circle of piracy. He had been a gentleman and a landowner, having at one time been in possession of some property in Barbados. As a land-lover, he knew very little
about sailing a ship or commanding a crew, features that made him susceptible to a takeover bid by the more capable and determined Blackbeard.74

  He was known as the gentleman pirate, but this seems to be more in keeping with his habit of walking the deck of the ship in his morning suit, and then returning to his onboard library, than to his exploits at sea.75

  Bonnet had been a wealthy landowner in Barbados. Born in St Michael’s Parish in 1688, he inherited the family estates (sugar plantations), was made a major in the militia and married a neighbour’s daughter. All of this he gave up at the age of 29 and turned to piracy, something he knew nothing about. Johnson tries to come up with a reason as to why Bonnet did this in his account of the man:

  He was afterwards rather pitied than condemned, by those that were acquainted with him, believing that this humour of going a-pirating, proceeded from a disorder of his mind, which had been too visible to him, some time before this wicked undertaking, and which is said to have been occasioned by some discomforts he found in a married state.

  Bonnet also broke with pirate tradition and bought his vessel. While other pirates used ships they had stolen to rob other ships, Bonnet chose to part with money for his vessel. Some historians even believe that he paid his crew a regular wage rather than rely on the standard form of remuneration, that being shares of the spoils of plunders. At a time when many national navies were too bankrupt to pay their sailors a regular wage, this, if true, not only made him unique in piracy, but also made him almost unique in the maritime world.

  The November edition of the Boston News Letter stated that Captain Codd had been taken by Blackbeard commanding the 12-gun sloop Revenge – Bonnet’s ship that he’d paid for – but it doesn’t stop there. The same edition had another three reports of piratical acts carried out in the month of October.