Blackbeard (1718): The Pirate's Last Stand at Ocracoke Inlet

Blackbeard, the English pirate usually known as Edward Teach, was killed on 22 November 1718 at Ocracoke Inlet on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. A Royal Navy boarding party led by Lieutenant Robert Maynard, sent by the governor of Virginia, cornered him in his sloop and killed him in a brutal hand-to-hand fight. His death in battle, after barely two years as a pirate captain, made him the most famous figure of the Golden Age of Piracy.

Background: the Golden Age of Piracy

Piracy in the Caribbean and along the North American coast surged after the War of the Spanish Succession ended in 1713–1714. Thousands of sailors and privateers lost their wartime work, while trade in sugar, slaves and manufactured goods kept valuable cargoes moving. The wreck of the Spanish 1715 treasure fleet off Florida drew adventurers who soon turned to raiding ships.

The port of Nassau on New Providence in the Bahamas, then without effective government, became a base for these men. Historians often date the most intense phase of this piracy to roughly 1716–1726.

Early career

Little is known about Teach before 1716. Bristol is the traditional birthplace and around 1680 the usual estimate of his birth, but neither is certain. Some researchers have argued from records that he belonged to a Thache family in Jamaica. He probably served as a sailor or privateer during the war.

By 1716 he was sailing under the Nassau pirate Benjamin Hornigold, who gave him command of a captured sloop. When Hornigold, reluctant to attack British ships, was voted out by his crew in 1717, Teach struck out on his own.

In late 1717 Teach was joined by Stede Bonnet, a wealthy Barbados landowner turned inexperienced pirate. On 28 November 1717, near Martinique, Teach captured the French slave ship La Concorde. He renamed it Queen Anne’s Revenge and armed it with around 40 guns, making it one of the most powerful pirate ships of its day.

The image of Blackbeard

Teach cultivated fear. According to Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates, published in 1724, he wore a long black beard twisted into braids. The same account says he carried several pistols across his chest and tucked slow-burning fuses under his hat in battle so that smoke wreathed his face.

The book is a vivid but not wholly reliable source, and some details may be embellished. Still, contemporary reports agree that Blackbeard’s reputation was a weapon. Most crews surrendered without resistance, and there is little evidence that he killed anyone before his final battle.

1718: Charleston, shipwreck and pardon

The blockade of Charleston

In May 1718 Blackbeard’s flotilla, by then four vessels and a few hundred men, blockaded the harbour of Charleston, South Carolina, for about a week. The pirates seized several ships and took passengers hostage, among them the prominent councillor Samuel Wragg and his young son. In return for the hostages Blackbeard demanded a chest of medicines. The colony paid, and the hostages were released, reportedly stripped of their fine clothes.

Queen Anne’s Revenge and the pardon

In June 1718, entering Beaufort Inlet in North Carolina, the Queen Anne’s Revenge ran aground and was abandoned, along with one of the sloops. Many historians suspect Teach did this on purpose to break up his large company and keep more of the loot for a smaller crew. He marooned some men and left Bonnet behind; Bonnet was captured later that year and hanged at Charleston in December 1718.

Teach then went to Bath, North Carolina, and accepted a royal pardon from Governor Charles Eden under the King’s Act of Grace, which offered pardons to pirates who surrendered. He soon returned to raiding, and his presence in the inlets of North Carolina alarmed neighbouring colonies.

The battle at Ocracoke

Alexander Spotswood, lieutenant governor of Virginia, decided to act on his own authority, without consulting North Carolina. He hired two small sloops, the Jane and the Ranger, and manned them with sailors from the Royal Navy ships HMS Pearl and HMS Lyme under Lieutenant Robert Maynard. A land force went overland to Bath.

At dawn on 22 November 1718 Maynard’s sloops approached Blackbeard’s ship, the Adventure, anchored at Ocracoke Inlet. Both sides ran aground in the shallow water at different times. A broadside from the pirates killed or wounded many on the Ranger, and Maynard ordered most of his men below deck on the Jane. When Blackbeard’s crew boarded, thinking the fight won, Maynard’s men rushed up from the hold.

In the struggle that followed Blackbeard was killed. According to Johnson’s General History, his body bore five gunshot wounds and about twenty cuts. Figures differ in the sources, but roughly ten pirates and about ten of Maynard’s men were killed, with many more wounded. Maynard had Blackbeard’s head hung from the bowsprit of his sloop.

The fight was over within minutes, but its human cost was high for such a small engagement. Maynard stayed at Ocracoke for several days to tend his wounded before sailing to Bath, where the land force had already seized goods and arrested men linked to Blackbeard. Virginia had offered rewards for the capture of pirates, including £100 for Blackbeard himself, and the goods seized from the pirates were later sold as prize.

By the numbers

Aftermath and legacy

The surviving pirates were tried at Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1719, and most were hanged. Israel Hands, Blackbeard’s former sailing master, who was not at the battle, testified and was spared. Spotswood’s raid into another colony caused a political row with North Carolina, and Maynard’s crew waited years for their prize money.

Blackbeard’s death was part of a wider crackdown. In 1718 Woodes Rogers arrived in Nassau as governor of the Bahamas and drove out or pardoned most of its pirates, and by the late 1720s the Golden Age of Piracy was largely over.

In 1996 divers found a wreck at Beaufort Inlet that has since been identified as the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Its cannon, anchors and thousands of artefacts are conserved and displayed in North Carolina. Blackbeard himself became a stock character in novels, films and folklore, often with legends of buried treasure that have no basis in evidence.

Timeline

• 1716: Teach is serving under the Nassau pirate Benjamin Hornigold.
• 1717, 28 November: Teach captures La Concorde and renames it Queen Anne’s Revenge.
• 1718, May: Blackbeard blockades Charleston, South Carolina, for about a week.
• 1718, June: Queen Anne’s Revenge runs aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina.
• 1718, June: Teach accepts a royal pardon from Governor Charles Eden.
• 1718, 22 November: Blackbeard is killed by Maynard’s men at Ocracoke Inlet.
• 1718, December: Stede Bonnet is hanged at Charleston.
• 1719, March: Captured members of Blackbeard’s crew are tried at Williamsburg.
• 1996, November: The wreck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge is discovered.

Why it matters

Blackbeard’s career and death capture the peak and sudden end of the Golden Age of Piracy. His story shows how British colonial governments, once peace returned, turned naval force against the pirates who had flourished in its aftermath, and how a short, mostly bloodless career could become one of history’s most enduring legends.