During the first days of November the men of the Pearl and the Lyme readied themselves for action. First there were the two sloops to prepare, and then the naval contingent of the invasion force. Boats must have been ferrying between the four vessels for most of that weekend, and the scene would have been one of bustle and disciplined activity. Captain Brand and his 100 armed sailors were given all the arms and provisions they needed, and meanwhile the two Virginia trading sloops, Ranger and Jane, which had come down from Jamestown on the James River had also brought the second half of Captain Brand’s force – the 100 men of the Virginia militia. The old settlement of Jamestown served as the harbour for Williamsburg, as the colony’s capital lay a few miles north of the James River. Williamsburg is where the militia were mustered and equipped.
Having been transported downriver the militia were landed at Portsmouth on the southern shore of the James River, while the senior officers went on board the Pearl to meet Captain Brand. Once the planned route of the march was mapped out the officers rejoined their men, while Brand and his naval contingent were ferried ashore to join them. Final preparations for the march would have been made there, and then with Brand in the lead, accompanied by local guides, the force would move off to the south-west, following the small dirt track that skirted the edge of the grimly named Dismal Swamp.
Back on board the Lyme, Lieutenant Maynard had finished the last entry in his journal before his two sloops set sail. It read:
Mod[erate] gales & fair weather. This day I rec’d from Captain Gordon an order to command 60 men out of his Majesty’s ships Pearl & Lyme, on board two small sloops, in order to destroy some pyrates, who resided in N. Carolina. This day weigh’d & sail’d hence with ye sloops under my command, having on board provisio of all species, with arms & ammunition suitable for ye occasion.
The Southern Outer banks and Pamlico Sound, North Carolina Colony, 1718.
This was an understatement. Although the sloops carried no cannon, the men were armed with a full arsenal of muskets, pistols, cutlasses, boarding pikes, boarding axes, daggers and grenadoes (grenades). As none of the men apart from the two officers wore any uniform they would have looked little different from the pirates they were being sent to attack.
What Maynard didn’t record was that the original civilian crews of the two sloops remained on board them – or at least their masters did, and some of their crew. In 1721, when Captain Gordon of the Lyme recalled these preparations he noted that the two masters stayed aboard their vessels, and their crews made up ‘a twelfth part of the whole number of men that went with them’. That meant that as well as his 56 seamen, two pilots and a midshipman, Maynard’s force also included two civilian masters, and at least two other civilian seamen in each sloop. No doubt the vessels’ owners wanted to make sure that their craft were returned intact.
As an added incentive, Governor Spotswood ensured that the Virginia legislature offered a bounty. Just before the sloops set sail Spotswood wrote to Captain Gordon, and laid out the terms of the arrangement. Sailors were perfectly used to receiving prize money when they captured an enemy ship in time of war, or in an anti-piracy action of this kind. The sailors would still receive a share of this reward if they captured Blackbeard’s sloop, the Adventure, but now they would also get an added bonus based on the number of pirates they killed or captured.
The agreement read: ‘For Edward Teach, commonly called Captain Teach or Blackbeard, one hundred pounds. For every other commander of a pyrate ship, sloop or vessel, forty pounds. For every Lieutenant, Master or Quartermaster, Boatswain or Carpenter twenty pounds. For every other inferior officer fifteen pounds, and for every private man taken on board such ship, sloop or vessel ten pounds.’ This would have made the sailors even more eager for the fight that lay ahead of them.
Lieutenant Robert Maynard was an experienced naval officer, and as his small force got under way he must have contemplated what lay ahead. We don’t know much about his early career, but he was born in Kent in 1683 or 1684, joined the Royal Navy as a teenager, and was serving as a midshipman when the War of the Spanish Succession broke out in 1701. He may well have been present at the capture of Gibraltar in 1704, and he certainly participated in the subsequent naval campaign fought out in the Mediterranean. He gained his commission as a lieutenant in Portsmouth on 14 January 1707, and two years later he appears in the naval records as the third lieutenant of the third-rate ship-of-the-line HMS Bedford, of 70 guns. At the time the Bedford formed part of the Channel Fleet, and in 1708 it saw action off Dunkirk before being despatched to the Mediterranean, where it joined the British fleet operating off the coast of Catalonia.
As naval careers go, Robert Maynard’s progress up the promotion ladder was slow. This suggests he was an officer who lacked the patronage of a senior officer, or the family connections that could speed his advance through the service. His brother Thomas also joined the navy, and his progress was just as sluggish. However, by November 1718 the 35-year-old Robert Maynard was the first lieutenant of HMS Pearl, and therefore Captain Brand’s second-in-command. He was seen as an extremely competent officer, and capable of commanding the frigate if his captain was absent from it. After his battle with Blackbeard Maynard’s reputation was assured, and like his brother he ended his service career with the rank of captain, albeit as a master and commander – a captain who commanded a small warship, but who lacked full ‘post captain’ status.
Captain Johnson said of Teach that ‘In time of action he wore a sling over his shoulders with three brace of pistols hanging in holsters, and stuck lighted matches under his hat, which, appearing on each side of his face, made him altogether such a figure that imagination cannot form any idea of a fury from hell to look more frightful’.
In the evening watch (i.e. between 6pm and midnight) on Sunday 17 November the Ranger and the Jane parted company with the two frigates, and slipped out of the Kecoughtan anchorage. That first night they only travelled 20 nautical miles – a journey of less than three hours, given the fresh but weakening south-easterly winds reported in the Pearl’s log book that evening. They dropped anchor in the lee of Cape Henry shortly before midnight, and spent the night riding at anchor in Lynnhaven Bay. They were at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, and beyond the cape a mile to the west lay the rolling swell of the Atlantic.
When dawn broke the crews of the Ranger and the Jane ate breakfast, raised their anchors and headed out to sea, past the flat expanse of Cape Henry. The motion of the ships changed, as they were now heading at right angles to the swell, and virtually into the wind. This meant that progress would have been slow – the sloops were barely able to make five or six knots as they worked their way past what is now Virginia Beach. Maynard would also have ordered his two ships to separate. He didn’t want the pirates to escape past him, and so he wanted his lookouts to be able to cover as large an area as they possibly could.
The standard procedure at this period was for a force of small ships to spread out, so that their lookouts could cover as wide an area of sea as possible. In ideal visibility a masthead lookout on a small sloop might be able to see an approaching ship from about 20 nautical miles away. However, the visibility that week wasn’t particularly good – the logs of the ships in Kecoughtan reported rain showers. This meant that Maynard’s men would have been lucky to see as far as 10 nautical miles. He would, therefore, have kept one sloop within 5 nautical miles of the coast, so they could spot any activity on the shore, and the other sloop would be stationed abreast of it, but further out to sea, just within visibility range. That meant that the two vessels could spot any ships approaching them within 20–25 nautical miles of the coast.
According to Maynard’s report he managed to stop several coastal trading ships as he followed the coast as it fell away towards the south-south-east. From the master of one of these vessels, which had recently left Pamlico Sound, he learned that Blackbeard was no longer in Bath Town, but was on board the sloop Adventure, which was anchored in the lee of Ocracoke Island, on its western side. That meant that in a few days’ time Maynard and his men faced the likelihood of a naval battle, fought out in the shallow waters and among the shifting sandbars found on that side of the island. While the pilots on both of his sloops knew the way through Ocracoke Inlet and the main channels of Pamlico Sound, Blackbeard and his men would have the advantage of local knowledge when it came to the waters off Ocracoke.
The voyage south took almost four days, with progress slowed by the fresh southerly wind and the rough, lumpy seas. Still, Maynard had taken these conditions into account when he made his plans, and so he arrived off Ocracoke Island when it was dark, a few hours after dusk fell on the evening of Thursday 21 November. There was an ebb tide, which meant that an attack that evening was all but impossible, as the two sloops would have to fight against the flood as they worked their way into Ocracoke Sound.
After consulting his pilot William Butler, Maynard decided to launch his attack shortly after dawn the following morning. No doubt he discussed the plan with Midshipman Hyde, and with his senior non-commissioned officers. Using a telescope Maynard could see the tips of the mast of what must be Blackbeard’s sloop as it lay at anchor beyond the low-lying sand dunes that covered much of Ocracoke Island. He was unsure of it, but he suspected there might be another vessel anchored there too. This meant that the news passed on to him by the passing trading vessel’s master was correct – Blackbeard and his sloop were at Ocracoke rather than at Bath Town. That in turn meant that the following morning Maynard and his men would be doing battle with the pirates.
The modern town of Ocracoke lies on the spur on the western or inner side of Ocracoke Island, in an area which, in 1718, was a mass of reed beds and marshy ground. In this view looking north, Teach’s landing place lay on the far side of the tree-covered spur.
Ocracoke Island was shaped a bit like a human thigh bone – a femur. The island was about 15 miles long, with a rounded headland at each end, resembling the head and neck of the femur. This long thin island lay on a north-east to south-westerly axis, with its easterly side facing the Atlantic Ocean, and the western coast bordering the more sheltered waters of Pamlico Sound. In the femur there is a protuberance called the greater trochanter, which sticks out slightly from the rest of the bone. This resembles the small triangular part of the island that protrudes slightly into Pamlico Sound, on the western side of the island. This is the place where the town of Ocracoke stands today. In November 1718 there was nothing on the whole island except sand dunes, marram grass, scrub and low trees. Blackbeard’s sloop was anchored close to this triangle of land, less than 2 nautical miles from the southern tip of the island.
Maynard heaved to a mile or two off this southern tip, close to the seaward approaches to Ocracoke Inlet, which formed the main shipping channel between the Atlantic and Pamlico Sound. He posted lookouts to watch for any sign of activity on the shore or on the pirate sloop. They would also have been told to keep an eye out to sea as well, as Maynard wanted to make sure that no ships would arrive unexpectedly during the night. These could easily rouse the pirates, or even warn them that the navy was about to attack them.
The wind-ruffled waters of Pamlico Sound, viewed from the western shoreline of Ocracoke Island. In the distance the trees on the western spur of the island can be seen, hiding Ocracoke town, which lies beyond them. Thatch’s Hole lies off to the left of this viewpoint.
Ocracoke Inlet ran between Ocracoke Island to the north and Beacon Island to the south. The pirates’ landing place on the island is marked here as Thatch’s Hole. This chart also shows the dangerous sandbars that surrounded the narrow channel.
It was fortunate that Blackbeard hadn’t posted any lookouts on the shore. If he had they would have surely spotted the two sloops, anchored in deep water a mile or so away to the south-east. The fact that the pirates were taken completely by surprise suggests that Blackbeard hadn’t bothered to take this basic precaution. Just as importantly, he hadn’t taken the equally important precautionary measures of keeping his sloop ready for action, with powder and shot placed close to her eight guns, and cutlasses, pistols, grenadoes and boarding axes close at hand, in case the pirates were taken unawares. Either Teach had become complacent after so many months of relative inactivity or else he was unable to convince his hard-drinking crew to take such duties seriously.
They were certainly drinking heavily that night. While Maynard’s men were having a cold meal of beef and ship’s biscuits washed down with spirit, beyond the far side of the island Blackbeard was entertaining a handful of guests. A small trading craft was anchored close to the Adventure, in the lee of Ocracoke Island, and at least two of her crew were on board the pirate sloop, drinking rum with Blackbeard and his crew. The same two unfortunate seamen were still on board the vessel when Maynard launched his attack the following morning. In his account of Edward Teach, Captain Johnson claims that Blackbeard entertained the sloop’s master and three of her crew that evening. If this was true then by the end of the evening two of them were too drunk to make it back to their own ship.
During his time in these waters the Adventure and her crew had become a familiar sight to local coastal traders and fishermen, and this sort of fraternization was probably a regular occurrence. The small trading sloop had sailed from Bath Town that morning, and as well as her normal cargo – if she carried any – she bore a letter for Teach, written by Tobias Knight, Governor Eden’s deputy. The next day the letter fell into the hands of Lieutenant Maynard, who in turn passed it on to his captain and then to Governor Spotswood. It is worth quoting this intriguing document in full:
My dear friend,
If this finds you yet in harbour I would have you make the best of your way up as soon as possible your affairs will let you. I have something more to say to you than at present I can write. The bearer will tell you the end our Indian warr, and Ganet can tell you in part what I have to say to you, so referr you in some measure to him.
I really think these three men are heartily sorry at their difference with you, and will be very willing to ask your pardon. I may advice, be ffreinds again, [as] its better than falling out among our selves.
I expect the Governor this night or tomorrow, who I believe would be likewise glad to see you before you goe – I have not the time to add save my healthy respects to you, and am your real friend and servant,
T. Knight
Clearly Tobias Knight had some important news to pass on to Blackbeard, but was unwilling to put it in a letter. It is entirely possible that Knight had received word that the governor of Virginia was planning to attack Bath Town, and consequently he sent a trusted advisor – Mr Ganet – to bring the pirate the news. The suggestion that he and Blackbeard had a falling out may indicate that Ganet was once a member of Blackbeard’s crew, or that there had been some local disagreement, which Knight was eager to resolve. Tobias Knight’s letter is deliberately ambiguous, but it certainly demonstrates that Knight and Teach were friends, and that Blackbeard was planning to leave the colony for a while – possibly on another pirate cruise.
In any case it seems unlikely that this letter of warning – if indeed it was one – included any indication that a naval force was on its way to attack the pirates. The sudden arrival of Maynard’s sloops the following morning came as a complete surprise to Blackbeard and his men.
This armed sloop, anchored off Boston Light in 1729, is similar in size and appearance to Blackbeard’s vessel Adventure. The only real difference was that in the Adventure, as in most pirate vessels, the quarterdeck would have been lowered, to provide a clear fighting area fore and aft.
This purely naval engagement was fought in the narrow navigable channel to the west of Ocracoke Island, a waterway bordered on the western side by a long line of sandbanks and shallows. Having arrived off the island the previous evening, Maynard was surprised to see Blackbeard’s sloop the Adventure at anchor on the far side of the island. He decided to launch a dawn attack, hoping to catch the pirates by surprise. Lieutenant Maynard’s two ships, the Jane and the Ranger, lacked any armament, and as Blackbeard’s sloop Adventure was known to carry eight guns Maynard was also eager to close the range as quickly as possible.
As dawn broke (5.30am) Jane and Ranger were riding at anchor, approximately 1 nautical mile to seaward of the southern tip of Ocracoke Island, near the entrance to Ocracoke Inlet. After a cold breakfast the two crews recovered their anchors and prepared for battle. At approximately 6.30am they got under way, proceeding towards the inlet in line astern, with the Jane in the lead. The wind was light, from the south-west, and the sea was calm.
This reconstruction of the engagement is based upon an appraisal of all available sources. Where these are unclear or contradictory, the sailing performance of the vessels and local conditions have been used to determine the most likely course of action by the various participants. The vessels have been illustrated at a much bigger size than the scale would suggest, in order to make the distinction between the ships clearer, and their alignments more evident.
EVENTS1 7.00am. The Jane crews her small longboat, which rows ahead of the two sloops; the longboat’s crew take depth soundings using a sounding lead. The Ranger tows her own longboat astern of her. In this fashion Maynard’s force slowly enters Ocracoke Inlet.
2 7.30am. The Jane’s longboat rounds the southern tip of Ocracoke Island, and minutes later she is spotted by a pirate lookout on board the Adventure. Minutes later the two British sloops also round the point. Maynard also sights the Adventure lying at anchor in front of the western spur of Ocracoke Island; another civilian sloop is seen at anchor to the west of her.
3 7.35am. The longboat is fired upon by the Adventure. At this point Maynard recovers the Jane’s boat crew, and tows the longboat astern of his vessel. This done, the sloops continue up the narrow channel leading towards Teach’s anchorage, with the Ranger forming up on the port beam of the Jane.
4 8.00am. Blackbeard severs the anchor cable of the Adventure and raises sail. His sloop swings around to the north, and it begins heading directly away from her unidentified pursuers. The trading sloop remains at anchor throughout the ensuing battle. To close the range as fast as possible the two British sloops augment their sails with sweeps (oars).
5 8.20am. Blackbeard turns the head of the Adventure towards the landing place (now known as Thatch’s Hole), in an attempt to lure the British sloops on to a sandbar which runs parallel to the shore. The Jane and the Ranger continue to close the distance between them and their quarry. By this stage Maynard has unfurled the Union flag from his masthead, so Blackbeard knows his opponents are in the service of the British Crown.
6 8.25am. After trading insults with Maynard, Blackbeard fires a starboard broadside at the British ships at point-blank range. Midshipman Hyde of the Ranger is killed, as is the man at her whipstaff. The Jane is also swept by grapeshot, and several of her crew are killed or wounded. Blackbeard then turns the Adventure away from the beach.
7 8.30am. The Adventure fires a port broadside at the Ranger; badly hit, the Ranger veers to port and runs aground on a shoal.
8 8.35am. Blackbeard’s sloop temporarily runs aground, and Maynard manoeuvres the Jane so that the pirates are unable to fire another broadside at her. The two crews exchange small-arms fire, while Maynard waits for the Ranger to rejoin the fight.
9 8.40am. Having freed his sloop from the sandbar, Blackbeard steers the Adventure towards the Jane. He can only see a handful of men on her deck, and he plans to finish the enemy off by boarding Maynard’s vessel. The port bow of the Adventure makes contact with the starboard bow of the Jane, and Blackbeard and over half his crew jump aboard the British sloop, after launching a salvo of grenadoes on to her deck. Maynard orders the men he has hidden in the hold to swarm up out of the hold and join in the fight. Blackbeard and his men now find themselves outnumbered, as a brutal hand-to-hand fight begins, fought out on the forward deck of the Jane.
10 9.00am. The lines securing the Adventure to the Jane are severed, and the pirate sloop drifts away from the smaller vessel. Blackbeard’s outnumbered crew are forced back towards the bow of the Jane, and in the fighting Blackbeard is wounded, and then killed. Seeing their captain fall, the remainder of his boarding party either surrender or jump overboard, where after begging for quarter they are recovered from the water and taken prisoner.
11 9.05am. The Ranger, having now freed herself from the sandbar, manoeuvres alongside the starboard side of the Adventure. Her crew quickly overpower the ten pirates who have remained on board. As the Jane manoeuvres alongside the Adventure’s port side a pirate attempting to blow up the Adventure is overpowered, and the battle comes to an end.
Although this naval gun depicted in John Sellar’s The Sea Gunner (1691) is a 12-pounder, and therefore a much larger weapon than the guns mounted on Blackbeard’s sloop Adventure, the proportions and appearance of the gun and the carriage would have been similar.
That night the Adventure only had a skeleton crew aboard. Blackbeard’s first mate Israel Hands was in Bath Town, with 24 of the pirate crew. That left just Blackbeard and 25 men aboard the sloop. That, though, was more than the number he brought with him from Topsail Inlet, which suggests that he had been recruiting since he arrived in Bath Town, or possibly that a number of Blackbeard’s former shipmates had arrived in the area, had forgiven Teach for abandoning them, and had rejoined his crew. This may well account for the bad feeling between Blackbeard and Ganet mentioned in Knight’s letter, and why the traders were so willing to consort with the pirates that evening. Others of his original crew might also have drifted away after Blackbeard accepted the pardon, as they felt the life of a law-abiding seaman held little appeal for them. In any case, when dawn broke the pirates would find themselves outnumbered by more than two to one.
The log books of the Pearl and the Lyme reveal that in the mouth of the James River dawn on Friday 22 November ushered in a grey overcast day, with almost no wind, and the lumpy seas of the past few days had given way to calm ones. We can assume that 120 nautical miles to the south the morning was a similar one, as Lieutenant Maynard claims as much in his report. Dawn came at around 6.30am that morning. The British sailors had been roused an hour before, and had eaten a cold but hearty breakfast. Just like the evening before, no cooking fires were lit for fear the smoke might be seen by the pirates. Maynard would then have passed the order to his men to prepare for battle. Almost certainly there was nothing much to do – there were no guns to run out, and the crews of the two sloops had effectively been ready for action since the previous evening. Similarly, however hard they might have tried, many of Maynard’s 60 crewmen would have had trouble sleeping during the night, as they knew that in the morning they could well be fighting for their very lives.
Both of the two British sloops were towing a small ship’s boat behind them, probably 18ft four-oared longboats. Maynard ordered one of these to be crewed, and for it to take station ahead of the two sloops. His intention was to creep into Ocracoke Inlet, with the longboat leading the way. Its five-man crew were equipped with a sounding line, and they would take soundings as the procession of ships entered the narrow twisting channel. It was now 7.00am, and for the next half an hour the force moved quietly onward. The water in the main channel was approximately 6 fathoms (36ft) deep at low water, and the sloops drew less than 8ft. However, on either side of the channel were sandbars and shoals, whose position shifted with every storm. Maynard was right to be cautious – to have one of his sloops run aground at this stage would have spelt disaster.
In this dramatic depiction by Howard Pyle of Blackbeard’s last fight, the pirate can be seen locked in his duel with Lieutenant Maynard. Although it is historically inaccurate – for instance, pirates never wore headscarves – it vividly captures the brutal nature of the fighting.
The Adventure lay at anchor off the southern edge of the flat triangular spur on the island where the little town and harbour of Ocracoke stands today. On the far side of the spur lay the landing place the pirates used when they wanted to go ashore, or to refill their water casks from the island’s spring. The southern tip of the island was 2 miles away, at the end of a relatively deep channel, which ran between the island on one side and a long sandbank on the other. It must have been about 7.30am when the small longboat first rounded the headland, and was spotted by the pirates. They would also have seen the two masts of Maynard’s ships, rising from beyond the low-lying headland, and moving slowly forwards into the entrance to the channel.
As there was an incoming tide the bows of the Adventure were pointing south, directly towards the approaching enemy. It was claimed that Blackbeard fired off one of his guns as a warning shot, but given the direction his sloop was facing that would have been difficult. The pirate sloop carried eight main guns, with four guns to each broadside. These would have been facing the wrong way when the longboat came in sight, so a shot from them wouldn’t have scared anybody. However, while Maynard’s report lists eight guns on board, a copy of it published in the British Gazette listed nine guns. While one of these could have been a small swivel gun, if the ninth gun existed it would have been carried as a bow chaser, mounted in the forecastle of the pirate sloop. In any event it was probably the pirate master gunner, Philip Morton, who fired this first shot, at about 7.35am.
If this warning shot was fired by a 4-pounder gun, then it barely had the range to reach the longboat. If a larger 6-pounder was used then the shot could easily have whistled over the heads of the longboat crew. Whatever the size of shot the pirates used, an impressive waterspout would have been created, and the boat’s crew would certainly have got the message. If they came closer the next shot would be both in range and on target. It was just as likely, though, that Morton fired a swivel gun. The longboat crew would have heard the shot, and realized the pirates had spotted them. A swivel gun was a light anti-personnel weapon, about the same size as a modern machine gun. It was quick to load and easy to aim and fire – you simply pointed the gun at the enemy using an iron ‘tiller’ or handle, and clapped a piece of burning slow-match into the touch-hole of the powder chamber.
These swivel guns were mounted on the ship’s rail – in this case probably on the forecastle or quarterdeck – and they were loaded with either scrap metal or musket balls. They had a range of about 60 yards, and if fired in the last moments before a boarding action could be very deadly. At this range though, they were merely a noisy way of warning the boat crew off.
In the early 18th century Ocracoke Island was typical of the barrier islands of the Outer Banks – long, thin and devoid of habitation. It was covered in sand dunes, marram grass and scrub, with some reed beds on its inner side, facing Pamlico Sound.
This is a reconstruction of Blackbeard’s personal version of the pirate ‘Jolly Roger’, which he flew when he chased a potential prize. It served as a warning of the dangers of resisting his attack. Pirates frequently made use of skeletons as well as skulls and crossed bones.
At this time the pirates had no idea who these newcomers were. Morton had fired the traditional shot across the bows, and now Blackbeard and his crew watched and waited, to see what would happen next. The two sloops then emerged from behind the headland, and lingered there for a few moments as Maynard took the boat crew back on board, then towed the small craft astern of him. At this point the Jane was ahead of the Ranger, and for a professional naval crew the whole process of recovering the crew would have taken no more than a couple of minutes. It was therefore about 7.40am.
Blackbeard and his men would have peered in vain for any flag. In the age of fighting sail it was normal for warships to unfurl their colours before they opened fire, but it was perfectly acceptable to hide your identity until the last moment. In many cases captains flew false colours, to keep their enemy guessing. Any trick that helped to delay the enemy opening fire was considered fair game. In this battle, neither Maynard nor Hyde raised their Union flags to the masthead until they were in musket range – within 150 yards of the pirates.
When the two sloops continued to close the distance Blackbeard was forced to take action. Given the wind and tidal conditions that morning it would take Maynard around 20 minutes to reach the Adventure. This didn’t give the pirates enough time to recover their anchor, even though the sloop lay in just 36ft of water. The anchor was firmly embedded in the sand-covered bottom, with around 70ft of cable laid out. To man the capstan and winch in the thick rope anchor cable would simply have taken too long – the pirates would still be manning the capstan when the sloop reached them.
Blackbeard adopted a much simpler solution – he cut the cable. This sounds drastic, but as an experienced seamen Teach was probably ready for this sort of eventuality. He would have had a marker buoy ready, which he would have secured to the remains of the anchor cable. Once the oncoming sloops had been dealt with he would then be able to come back and recover the anchor. When the cable was cut the Adventure would have swung round into the wind until she was facing the island. She would also have drifted slightly to port, away from the approaching sloops. Then, a minute or two later the pirates would have raised their two sails, and the head of the Adventure would have turned to port, spinning past the spur of the island until it was facing towards the sandbanks of Pamlico Sound. Somewhere close by was the trading sloop, which remained resolutely at anchor as the pirates slipped past them.
At this point Blackbeard had a decision to make. He could have taken advantage of both his shallow draught and local knowledge, and threaded his way through the sandbar into Pamlico Sound. There were other small channels through the barrier islands, and the Adventure could well have slipped through one of them to reach the safety of the Atlantic. Once there he would probably have been able to evade his pursuers and escape. Blackbeard might have considered this option, but it wasn’t in his nature to run from a fight. He therefore decided to fight the attackers, regardless of the odds or who they might be. This, he would have realized, would be a fight to the death, with no quarter asked for or given. From what we know of Teach he would have relished the prospect.
Blackbeard had one big advantage over his two opponents. Not only was the Adventure larger than the Jane and the Ranger, she was also armed with guns. Given the width of the channel, Maynard’s two sloops had little option but to sail straight towards the pirate vessel. Blackbeard planned to let rip with a full broadside at close range, and then keep pounding away with his guns. Once he had weakened both of the attacking sloops he could then come alongside them one at a time, and board them at cutlass-point. Edward Teach, the most notorious pirate in the Americas, would emerge victorious or die in the attempt.
Philip Morton would have made sure that the pirate sloop’s battery of main guns were primed and loaded. In some cases this could have been done a few days before, and the guns could be double-shotted or even triple-shotted, for maximum effect. The gunner would have left them this way as a precaution, with covers over the gun muzzles and lead patches over the touch-holes to keep the powder dry. Even then, the guns would still have to be wormed out once a week, and the powder replaced, just to make sure. This was a standard precaution in merchant ships when sailing through dangerous waters, or in a warship expecting imminent action. One of the guns recovered from the wreck of Queen Anne’s Revenge was loaded in this fashion, so the pirates certainly used their guns this way when they wanted to.
This though, required a level of discipline and commitment that probably didn’t exist on board the smaller pirate vessel. If that was the case Morton would have spent the next 15 minutes or so frantically supervising the loading of his guns, and generally preparing them for the battle ahead. Unfortunately we don’t even know exactly how big these guns were. A naval sloop of the period – the Royal Navy called them ‘cutters’ – would have typically carried eight 3-pounders. Each barrel would have been produced from cast iron, and would have been 5ft 6in long, mounted on a small four-wheeled carriage with solid wooden trucks or wheels. Each barrel would have weighed 7 cwt (784lb), which if well mounted would have been light enough to be crewed by four men.
However, Blackbeard’s old flagship Queen Anne’s Revenge carried a range of guns, including 4-pounders and 6-pounders, the latter having 8ft-long barrels and weighing 22 cwt (2,464lb) apiece. Normally guns of this size weren’t carried in sloops, as the guns would have been so heavy they would have impaired the sailing qualities of the ship, and the recoil would place too great a strain on the ship’s timbers when they were fired. Like most pirates Teach probably didn’t care too much about the strain on his vessel’s hull. After all, he could easily capture another ship. However, he did consider speed to be important, and while he might conceivably have included one or two 6-pounders in his main battery, the chances were the sloop was armed with smaller 3- or 4-pounder weapons.
Both Teach and Morton knew that the effective range of a 4-pounder was about 1,000 yards, or half a nautical mile. Maximum range would have been double that – the official maximum range at 10 degrees of elevation was given as 1,920 yards. This, though, was all theoretical. What the pirates wanted was to wait until the range was so close they couldn’t miss. That meant holding fire until the enemy got within half of the effective range – less than 500 yards. At that range the pirates’ guns – let’s assume they were 4-pounders – would have been highly effective. They would have been especially so as the two naval ships were approaching the Adventure at right angles, so the pirate shot would have been passing down the length of the naval vessel. This – a ‘raking shot’ – would have been devastating, as the 3in-diameter iron ball would have smashed into the bow of one of the vessels, and then passed down its entire length, mangling anything that lay in its path – masts, superstructure or sailors.
Strangely, Blackbeard didn’t fire at this range, but waited until the sloops came much closer. The gunnery tables of the period list the ‘point blank’ range of the 4-pounder as 120 yards. It seems as if Morton had loaded at least some of his guns with grapeshot rather than solid round shot. Grapeshot consisted of musket balls and scrap metal put into cloth bags that disintegrated when fired, scattering their contents, a bit like a larger version of the charge loaded into swivel guns. The effective range of grapeshot fired from a 4-pounder was under 250 yards, as these were anti-personnel charges. The devastation caused when the Adventure finally unleashed her broadside suggests that Morton had chosen to use grape. At point-blank range these musket balls and scraps of metal would scythe through the men lining the bulwarks of the enemy ship, cutting them down as if they’d been fired at by a company of musket-armed soldiers. It was the perfect tool for this kind of grisly work.
While the pirates were preparing their guns and getting their sloop under way, Maynard’s two craft were closing the range as quickly as they could. After all, they were sailing directly into the guns of the pirate ship, and a raking shot at this stage could have ended the battle before it began. It would have taken them 15 minutes to get within 500 yards of the Adventure, and by this time the pirates were on the move, slipping around the spur of Ocracoke Island towards the landing place beyond it.
While many of the accounts claim that Maynard sent part of his crew below decks during the battle, it makes much more sense if this happened before they closed with the pirates. That way the men would have been hidden from sight, and would enjoy some protection from incoming shot. Maynard reported that the hatch covers were removed and extra ladders were fitted, which suggests this was a ploy he had planned carefully, rather than a spur of the moment idea. Once he came alongside the Adventure these hidden men could race up the ladders and take the pirates by surprise. If it was all part of Maynard’s plan he would have hidden all but a dozen of the men before they came close enough for individuals to be seen.
In this detail from the popular painting by J. L. G. Ferris entitled ‘The Capture of the Pirate Blackbeard, 1718’, the two rival captains are shown locked in their own private duel, while a British seaman – presumably Abraham Demelt – is shown with his cutlass poised, ready to slash Blackbeard across the face and neck.
Maynard remained on deck, as did the pilot and the helmsman, who stood beside the whipstaff – the steering tiller that operated the Jane’s rudder. Maynard would have stood next to him, to whisper orders during the approach. Midshipman Hyde would have taken up the same position aboard the Ranger. Captain Johnson also claims that Maynard’s men used their oars or sweeps to speed their progress in these light airs. This made perfect sense, as the aim was to close the deadly gap in front of the Adventure’s guns in as short a time as possible. Sweeps would have been rigged, and at least eight of the crew would have been on hand to operate them on each vessel, to augment the power of the sails.
Soon the distance between the two sides had closed to within 150 yards. This was when Maynard gave the order to unfurl the Union flags carried at the masthead of both craft. By showing his colours he was making sure that the pirates knew exactly who he was. The newspapers reported that Blackbeard responded by unfurling his own pirate flag, but in all probability he didn’t bother. His own version of the ‘Jolly Roger’ was a skeleton holding a spear, having just pierced a red heart. This was a flag designed to intimidate a merchant captain, not to fly in battle. While it might have been romantic to assume this flag was flown during Blackbeard’s last fight, nobody who was there at the time ever mentioned it. Besides, Maynard’s men weren’t likely to be intimidated, and knew perfectly well who was in the sloop that lay ahead of them.
The Adventure had turned away from her pursuers, and was now heading back towards the shore of the island, with Blackbeard himself steering. His quartermaster, Thomas Miller, noticed that they were fast approaching the landing place – the small inlet now known as Teach’s Hole where the pirates landed to refill their water barrels from a nearby spring. He tried to warn Blackbeard that the water was shoaling fast, and if he held his course they would run aground. Blackbeard merely pushed him roughly aside and sent him sprawling across the deck. He was entering these shallow waters deliberately, as he knew that a sandbar lay parallel to the beach, and he planned to lure his pursuers on to it, turning away into deeper water at the last minute. Then he could stand off from them and fire his guns into the stationary hulls. The range continued to close, but Blackbeard kept his nerve, and held his course.
By now the Adventure and the Jane were well within 100 yards of each other. The exchange that followed was quoted by Maynard in his report: ‘At our first salutation he [Blackbeard] drank damnation to me and my men, whom he sti’led cowardly puppies, saying he would neither give nor take quarter’. This bears a ring of truth to it – the gap between the vessels was closing fast, Blackbeard had one eye on the approaching sandbar, and neither he nor Maynard seemed the type to have engaged in excessive talking. This didn’t stop the brief exchange being augmented by the newspapers, and by Captain Johnson in his bestselling book. According to him, the exchange went like this:
Blackbeard hailed him in his rude manner: ‘Damn you for villains, who are you, and whence do you come?’ The Lieutenant make him answer; ‘You may see from our colours we are no pyrates.’ Blackbeard bid him send his boat on board, that he may see who he was, but Mr. Maynard reply’d thus: ‘I cannot spare my boat, but I will come aboard you as soon as I can with my sloop.’ Upon this Blackbeard took a glass of liquor & drank him with these words; ‘Damnation seize my soul if I give you quarter, or take any from you.’ In answer to which, Mr. Maynard told him that he expected no quarter from him, nor should he give him any.
This was a colourful fabrication, but even the exchange recounted by Maynard was dramatic enough, given the circumstances. The exchange was probably even briefer than it might otherwise have been, as seconds later Blackbeard opened fire.
In this depiction of Blackbeard used to illustrate the third edition of Captain Johnson’s General History of Pyrates, Teach is shown sporting a fur cap – a common form of headgear worn by mariners of this period in inclement weather.
After the verbal exchange, Blackbeard pushed the whipstaff over and the Adventure heeled round, away from the fast-approaching sandbar. As the pirate sloop spun round her starboard battery of guns could finally bear on the British sloops, which by this stage were probably less than 100 yards away. The four little guns poured their broadside into the enemy, their weight of fire no doubt augmented by at least a couple of swivel guns, and probably musket fire for good measure. The pirates seem to have split their fire, as both of the naval sloops were hit by a blast of grapeshot. At that range it was almost impossible to miss.
In his after-action report, Maynard wrote: ‘Immediately we engaged, and Mr. Hyde was unfortunately kill’d, and five of his men wounded in the little sloop, which, having nobody to command her, fell astern, and did not come up to assist me until the action was almost over’. He was understating the case. Here is how the Boston News Letter described the broadside:
Then Lieutenant Maynard told his men that they knew what they had to do, and could not escape the pirates’ hands if they had a mind, but must either fight or be killed. At that point Blackbeard opened fire. Teach begun and fired some small guns loaded with swan shot [grapeshot], spick nails, and pieces of old iron, in upon Maynard, which killed six of his men and wounded ten.
In his account Captain Johnson claimed that on board the Jane 20 of her crew were killed or wounded by the discharge, plus a further nine on the Ranger, including Mr Hyde, who was killed instantly. As Maynard only had 32 men on board the Jane, not counting the civilians, this accounted for almost half of his total force. The newspaper account seems more accurate, but still, if Maynard hid men below decks, then the claim is that this blast would have killed or incapacitated almost everyone who remained on deck. Maynard himself was lucky to have avoided being hit.
This, though, was probably an exaggeration. In his version of his subordinate’s action, Captain Gordon reported to the Admiralty that during the battle ‘the Pearl sloop [Jane] had killed and died of their wounds nine, my sloop [Ranger] had two killed, in both sloops there were upwards of twenty wounded’. Although he seems to have mixed up the two vessels, this official death toll was much lower than the one claimed in the press and by Johnson. If we accept that the nine casualties were inflicted on the Ranger rather than the Jane, then this ties in with the other accounts, particularly Maynard’s own report. The lower casualty rate on the Jane also accords with Maynard’s version, and with the way events unfolded over the next few minutes. We can therefore assume that while the Ranger was hit badly, the Jane escaped with relatively few casualties, largely as many of her crew were hiding below decks.
On the Ranger Maynard said that Midshipman Hyde was killed by the pirate broadside, and Johnson claims another eight crewmen fell with him – a tally borne out (with the proviso that he confused the two sloops) by Captain Brand. As the Ranger was crewed by 24 sailors from HMS Lyme, plus the midshipman and about four civilians, this was a very telling hit. In an instant, Maynard had lost anything between a third and a half of his entire force. Another similar broadside would be crippling, and would probably leave him with too few men to continue the fight. What is particularly impressive is the way the captain and crew of the Jane shrugged off their casualties, and continued to close with the enemy.
While the Jane was still giving chase, the pirate broadside effectively put the Ranger out of action. Not only was Midshipman Hyde killed, but it seems his senior ratings or petty officers fell as well, as Maynard described the smaller craft as having ‘no-body to command her’. The helmsman was also cut down, and as a result the Ranger veered off course, and promptly ran aground on a sandbar. She would remain there for several crucial minutes, before the remainder of her crew could rally themselves, and work their ship back into the channel.
This is where the various accounts begin to differ. Captain Johnson claimed that Blackbeard’s sloop also ran aground, and that Maynard then anchored within ‘half a gunshot’ of the pirates. Meanwhile his crew began lightening the vessel – throwing overboard anything they could to reduce the draught of their ship, so it could cross the shallows to reach the Adventure, which was now either aground on, or on the far side of, a sandbar. This makes little sense. It is highly unlikely that Maynard would have anchored within 50 yards of an enemy ship armed with guns, when his own vessel lacked any ordnance whatsoever. That would merely invite another crippling broadside fired at point-blank range. Also, Maynard made no mention of dropping anchor in his own report. While the Ranger and possibly also the Jane and the Adventure might have temporarily run aground, there is no hard evidence that Maynard did anything other than try to close with the enemy.
Another mystery surrounds the timing of Maynard’s decision to hide a portion of his crew in the hold. The Boston News Letter claims that after the broadside, ‘Lieutenant Maynard ordered all the rest of his men to go down in the hold. Himself, Abraham Demelt of New York and a third at the helm stayed above deck.’ Captain Johnson – contradicting his own claim about coming to anchor – wrote that ‘The lieutenant, finding his own ship had way, and would soon be on board of Teach, he ordered all his men down, for fear of another broadside’. None of this makes much sense. The whole point of hiding a portion of his crew was to surprise the pirates when the two ships came alongside each other. At this range any men on deck would have been clearly visible. Also, if we accept the relatively low casualty rate on board the Jane, then this also suggests that Maynard hid his men long before Blackbeard and his crew could see what was happening on the decks of the British sloop.
The claim that the Adventure ran aground is also open to doubt. The British Gazetteer quoted Maynard as saying that ‘Continuing the fight, it being perfect calm, I shot away Teach’s jib, and his fore halliards, forcing him ashoar’. This was nigh on impossible, as the Jane didn’t carry any ordnance. While he might have cut the Adventure’s jib-sheet halliards with small-arms fire, or even a light swivel gun, this is unlikely. Besides, Maynard makes no mention of this in his report. The assumption is therefore that this was merely a quote added to spice up the newspaper’s story. Several accounts suggest that the Adventure temporarily ran aground, but the reason for this is unclear. It might have been because her rigging was severed, because Blackbeard steered the wrong course, or possibly the recoil nudged her ashore as a result of firing a full broadside. Whatever the reason it seems that Blackbeard’s sloop, the small Ranger and possibly also the Jane were stuck in the shallows.
It was now a race to see which of these three would free themselves first. The tide was still coming in, and so with each passing minute the water level was rising. This may have been why Maynard was said to have lightened his ship. However, to do so he would probably have had to call his men up from the hold, and therefore lose the element of surprise. It seems he didn’t do this. This meant that either the Jane was still under way, or else if she did stick on the sandbar, Maynard was confident that the incoming tide would set his vessel free. It makes more sense that the panic to lighten ship would have taken place on the Adventure rather than the Jane.
This too fits in with the story about anchoring. Rather than dropping anchor, if the Jane was the only sloop capable of moving, then Maynard would have heaved to somewhere out of reach of the stranded Adventure’s guns, and the men left on deck would have opened fire with muskets and pistols. It was the cautious thing to do – an approach that must have appealed to Maynard. He could try to whittle down the number of men on Blackbeard’s sloop, while keeping his own men under cover. The pirates would have been even more exposed if the Adventure was leaning over facing the British sloop, as the angle of her decks would have meant the bulwarks provided less cover than usual. This approach also bought a little more time for Maynard, who needed the support of the battered Ranger before he could risk boarding the pirate vessel.
Unfortunately for Maynard the Adventure was the first of the ships to free herself. To Blackbeard the Jane must have looked like an easy target. Very few men could be seen on her decks, and at least two of these were wounded. He still had the best part of 25 men at his disposal, and it looked as though they wouldn’t have any problem overwhelming the Jane’s crew. Blackbeard could then turn his attention to the stricken Ranger. So far the battle had been going extremely well for the pirate captain. This, though, was the moment when he made his fatal mistake. Once the Adventure freed herself from the sandbar he could have manoeuvred the sloop round so that her guns could bear on the Jane. Then, after firing another broadside or two he could move alongside her, throw grenadoes on to her decks and then board her through the smoke. Teach must have been supremely over-confident, as instead of firing on his opponent he threw caution to the wind and set a course directly towards her.
The battle now entered its final phase. While up to now things had been going Teach’s way, Maynard’s plan was working. Blackbeard’s sloop was approaching, and he still held his trump card – the body of well-armed sailors hiding in the hold of his small ship. He probably hoped he could surprise the initial wave of pirates, and then sever the boarding lines keeping the two vessels together. This would allow him to finish off Blackbeard and his boarders before turning his attention to the rest of the pirate crew. It was an excellent plan, but with the Ranger out of the fight Maynard needed to make the most of this surprise counter-attack.
As the Adventure came alongside the Jane Blackbeard ordered his men to throw a volley of grenadoes on to the enemy decks. A grenadoe was the forerunner of a modern grenade. It consisted of an empty cast-iron sphere the size of a round shot, filled with gunpowder. A rudimentary fuse was used to ignite the charge, and at the right moment these weapons could be thrown on to the decks of an enemy ship, where they would explode, scattering pieces of the iron casing in all directions. Archaeological evidence has shown that similar projectiles could be made using empty glass or stoneware bottles, and these more rudimentary projectiles would be just as deadly as their purpose-built counterparts. Fortunately for Maynard none of the grenadoes were lobbed into the open hatch of the hold where most of his men were hidden.
Grappling hooks locked the two sloops together, making sure this would be a fight to the finish. It seems the bows of the ships were touching, and this was where the pirates were standing, ready to spring into action. As the smoke from the grenadoes still swirled over the Jane’s open deck, Blackbeard was heard to call out to his men that the enemy were ‘all knocked on the head, except three or four ... let’s jump on board and cut them to pieces’. With this Blackbeard and ten of his men jumped on to the Jane’s bulwarks, and then on to her forecastle.
The handful of defenders he saw – Robert Maynard, Abraham Demelt, the pilot William Butler and possibly one or two other British seamen – must have looked an insignificant group clustered on the deck of the Jane. Other wounded seamen – at least two, and possibly more – lay on the deck in front of them, amid the detritus of the grenado attack. Smoke would also have been swirling over the decks, from the grenadoes and from musket and pistol fire as the pirates who remained on the Adventure took aim at the small knot of British sailors. To Blackbeard, victory must have looked a certainty. Then, Maynard gave the signal for his men to race up the ladders from the hold.
In an instant the odds had changed. The sailors would have been yelling and shouting, and firing pistols at the pirates as they emerged from hiding. Here the accounts get confused again. Maynard, quoted in the British Gazette, said that Captain Teach attacked him with ten men, ‘but [the] twelve men I left there fought like heroes, sword in hand’. In his version Captain Johnson claims Maynard commanded 12 men, and Blackbeard had 14. This all hinges on the number of casualties inflicted by Blackbeard’s broadside. If Maynard lost ten men, then he would still be left with 25 crewmen, including the pilot and two or three Virginia traders.
This probably meant that the dozen men he mentioned were the number on deck at the time the pirates launched their attack. That left a similar number to race up from the hold. All the accounts agree that Blackbeard attacked with 10–14 men, leaving the rest on board the Adventure to protect the sloop, and to pour small-arms fire into the knot of defenders on the Jane. That means this battle – essentially the most important anti-piracy action of the period – was fought by just two dozen men per side. Both captains had already yelled out that they planned to offer no quarter – no chance for the enemy to surrender. All of these men – pirates, British seamen or Virginians – knew that they had to win or die.
Edward Teach typically armed himself with several pairs of pistols and a cutlass. Others were armed with whatever they were issued with or had within reach – pistols, cutlasses, boarding axes and half-pikes. Everyone had at least one knife, and belaying pins could be wielded as improvised clubs. If there were no weapons left the combatants would kick, punch and bite. This was a fight with no holds barred, fought out in a very confined space. The deck on the Jane between the main hatch and the bow was just 20ft long, and tapered from 15ft wide amidships to just a single wooden stempost beneath the bowsprit. The deck itself also contained the capstan, a small covered hatch and probably several bodies. The ferocious hand-to-hand fight that followed must have been a brutal and horrific experience.
According to Captain Johnson, ‘Blackbeard and the lieutenant fired the first pistol at each other, by which the pirate received a wound’. The two men would have discarded their pistols – probably by throwing them at their opponent – and they then drew their swords. Both men had more than one pistol, but these were single-shot weapons, and it took too long to cock and fire one when your opponent was cutting at you with a sword. Blackbeard was known for his physical strength, as well as for his terrifying appearance and almost psychopathic ferocity. Others would have shied away from him, but Maynard deliberately sought out the pirate captain. This was to be a duel to the death. The Boston News Letter described their fight:
Maynard and Teach themselves begun [sic] the fight with their swords, Maynard making a thrust, the point of his sword went against Teach’s cartridge box, and bended it to the hilt. Teach broke the guard of it, and wounded Maynard’s fingers but did not disable him, whereupon he jumped back and threw away his sword and fired his [second] pistol, which wounded Teach.
This depiction of Blackbeard’s last fight was used to illustrate a 19th-century edition of Captain Johnson’s account of him. It shows Teach fighting his duel with Maynard, and the crew of the Jane emerging from their hiding place in the sloop’s hold.
Teach had now been shot twice, but seemed to show no sign of being slowed down. Maynard was now wounded too, and the pirate captain would have closed in for the kill as Maynard discarded his second pistol, and tried to grab another sword from the deck.
While the two captains had been fighting their own private duel the melee swirled around them. The British sailors had a significant advantage over their opponents, as unlike the pirates they had trained for this. Regular cutlass practice, small-arms training and swordsmanship classes had honed them into men that could be relied on in a fight. That meant they had a qualitative edge over the pirates, most of whom came from merchant ships, and rarely practised with their weapons. Gradually the pirates were pushed back towards the Jane’s bow, and as men fell the decks became sticky with blood, or sailors stumbled over their dead or wounded companions. This, though, meant that Blackbeard’s men who had begun the battle beside him had been pushed back, and the two duellists were now isolated from the main fight.
This also meant that Maynard’s men were now able to move behind the pirate captain. For Maynard this meant that he no longer had to fight Blackbeard on his own. Blackbeard knew Maynard was faltering, and raised his cutlass to deliver a killing blow. Then, according to Captain Johnson’s version of events, ‘one of Maynard’s men gave him [Blackbeard] a terrible wound in the neck and throat’. According to the Boston News Letter the assailant was the British sailor with the Dutch name from New York, Abraham Demelt (or DeMelt). The paper claimed that ‘Demelt stuck in between then [them] with his sword, and cut Teach’s face pretty much [badly]’. Blackbeard had now been badly wounded, and his face and neck would have been covered in blood, adding to his demonic appearance.
This historic marker located in Bath, NC, celebrates the association between the pirate captain and the town. During his stay there Teach rented a house a few miles outside Bath Town, on the southern side of Back Creek, while his men lodged in the town’s ‘ordinaries’ or taverns.
Still he remained standing, swinging his cutlass to keep his two assailants at bay. Now, as the tide of battle turned, other British sailors turned their attention to the pirate captain. Still, as Johnson put it, ‘He stood his ground and fought with great fury, ‘till he received five and twenty wounds, five of them by shot’. Blackbeard’s final moments are recounted in the Boston News Letter: ‘One of Maynard’s men being a Highlander, engaged Teach with his broadsword, who gave Teach a wound in the neck, Teach saying well done lad. The Highlander replied If it be not well done I’ll do it better. With that he gave him a second stroke, which cut off his head, laying it flat on his shoulder.’
Captain Johnson’s version is much less dramatic, and much more plausible. He recounts how Teach held off all his attackers for a short while – probably less than a minute – as they shot and hacked at him from all sides. Gradually, though, his strength faded from loss of blood, and ‘At length, as he was cocking another pistol, having fired several before, he fell down dead’. Maynard merely reported that he had fought Teach and he had been killed, but his lack of detail is typical of after-action service reports from this period. However it happened, Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, the most notorious pirate in the Americas, now lay dead at the feet of Lieutenant Maynard.
With their leader gone the fight went out of the remaining pirates. Of the 14 or so pirates who boarded the Jane, eight of them had been killed or badly wounded. The remainder either surrendered or jumped overboard, and called out for quarter. During the fight the grappling hooks binding the Adventure and the Jane together had been severed, probably as the Jane’s crew didn’t want the remaining pirates to join the fight. They were allowed to surrender and were duly hauled back on board the blood-soaked deck of the Jane. There they were kept under guard, and left to patch their wounds as best they could. Both prisoners and captors knew that before long all of these pirates would be facing the gallows.
The whole fight had probably lasted around ten minutes, from the moment the pirates boarded the Jane until the last of them surrendered. For those involved, the fighting would have seemed to last an eternity. It was only now that Lieutenant Maynard was able to look about him, and see what was happening beyond the deck of his sloop. The Adventure had drifted apart from the Jane, so presumably the grappling lines had been cut. While the melee was going on the remainder of the Ranger’s crew had refloated their craft, and steered it towards the Adventure. There can’t have been more than a dozen unwounded men on board the smaller of the two British craft, but when the two ships touched they threw themselves at the ten pirates on board their own sloop. As Captain Johnson put it, ‘The sloop Ranger came up, and attacked the men that remained in Blackbeard’s sloop, with equal bravery, ’till they likewise cried for quarter’.
The small settlement of Bath Town is shown on Bath Creek, just above where it flows into the Pamlico River, in this detail of an early 18th-century map of the North Carolina colony. Maynard’s original orders were to blockade the river where it enters Pamlico Sound.
The Jane now appeared, having covered the intervening few yards to come alongside the unengaged port side of the Adventure. The Ranger already lay along her port side. The crew of the Ranger were busy disarming the pirates, and it was at that moment that a last casualty was suffered by Maynard’s force. In his report to the Admiralty, Captain Gordon of the Lyme reported that ‘taking him by mistake for one of the pirates’, a sailor from the Jane shot and killed one of the Ranger’s crew – a seaman from HMS Lyme. Despite this unfortunate accident the pirates were duly taken prisoner, and the British sailors began exploring Blackbeard’s sloop, to see if any more of them were hiding below decks.
This was when the last incident of the battle took place. One of Blackbeard’s crew was a pirate known as Black Caesar. He was a former slave, and according to Florida legend he and several other West Africans were shipwrecked on the Florida Keys, and took to piracy in order to survive. They used dugout canoes to attack passing ships, and eventually they reached New Providence. There Caesar joined Blackbeard’s crew. In his account of the battle Captain Johnson claimed that Blackbeard ‘posted a resolute fellow, a Negro, who he had brought up, with a lighted match in the powder room with commands to blow up when he should give him orders’.
Black Caesar stayed below decks during the battle, and when he felt the battle was lost he tried to ignite the powder trail leading to the powder store. Fortunately for everyone on board he was overpowered by the two civilians from the Carolinian trading sloop who had been sleeping off their excesses of the night before. They had wisely stayed in the hold when the Adventure sailed into battle, and their quick thinking almost certainly averted a disaster. The aftermath of a battle can be a dispiriting time for victors and vanquished alike. Many had seen close friends cut down, others had been wounded, and those who survived were wondering how they escaped with their lives. Maynard ordered the British wounded to be seen to, and had his wounded hand dressed. While this was going on he would have tallied up the cost of the action.
Blackbeard’s severed head, hanging from the tip of the Jane’s bowsprit. This grisly trophy adorned the sloop as it anchored in Bath Creek, when it entered the James River, and when it put in to Jamestown. The skull now forms part of the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA.
Blackbeard’s last fight off Ocracoke, 22 November 1718
On the morning of Friday 22 November Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the Royal Navy led his two small sloops into action against Blackbeard’s well-armed vessel, the Adventure. As the two forces closed Blackbeard fired a broadside into Maynard’s vessels, and the smaller of the two – the Ranger – was forced aground on a sandbar. Maynard continued to close with the Adventure in his sloop the Jane, but Blackbeard decided to board the British vessel before her consort could rejoin the fight. He manoeuvred the Adventure so that it came into contact with the Jane’s bow, then after lobbing a salvo of grenadoes (grenades) on board Blackbeard and 14 men jumped on board the British craft.
This is the scene depicted here. As Maynard had hidden the larger part of his 35-man crew in the Jane’s hold, Blackbeard presumed the defenders were hopelessly outnumbered. Only Maynard and a handful of defenders stood waiting for them on the Jane’s deck. As Blackbeard swung aboard, Maynard’s men surged up from below decks, and joined in the fight. This tipped the balance in favour of the British sailors, and so Blackbeard found himself fighting for his life. During this period there was little or no difference between the dress of pirates or Royal Naval sailors. Both wore whatever they wanted. It is worth noting that many of the features we now associate with pirate dress, such as headscarves and sashes, were late 19th-century inventions. Instead, the men wore the same garb as other seamen of the period. Maynard was the exception, and he is depicted here in the uniform of an officer of the Royal Navy.
In a letter he wrote three weeks after the battle, Maynard said that on board the Jane eight of his men had been killed outright, and 18 more had been wounded. As he only started with 35 men and three civilians under his command this was a high butcher’s bill – almost two-thirds of his crew. Maynard’s superior claimed that nine men had been killed from the Pearl – the men crewing the Jane – while two more from the Lyme had died – the men from the Ranger. The extra fatality may well have been a sailor who succumbed to his wounds, as Brand’s report was written after Maynard’s letter. Brand added that there were over 20 wounded in both British sloops, while Governor Spotswood later raised the total to ‘no less than 12 killed and 22 wounded’. That means that over half of Maynard’s force became casualties.
As for the pirates, Blackbeard began the battle with 25 men under his command. By the end of the fighting he and his quartermaster, Thomas Miller, were dead, together with the gunner Philip Morton, the boatswain, the carpenter and four others, a total of nine dead. Captain Gordon of the Lyme wrote to the Admiralty saying that ‘Teach and five or six of his men were killed’, while Spotswood claimed that Blackbeard and nine others were killed, and added that one prisoner subsequently died of his wounds. That left 15 more pirates as prisoners, some of whom were badly wounded. Caring for these enemy wounded would have been a low priority. The sailors earned the same bounty from Governor Spotswood whether their prisoners were brought back dead or alive.
Maynard spent three more days anchored off Ocracoke. He buried his dead at sea, then had the wounded tended, the sloops repaired, and had the blood swabbed off their decks. He sent the trading sloop off to Bath Town with a letter for Captain Brand, outlining what had happened, and his men scoured Ocracoke for any more pirates who had escaped. He found one man hiding in the reeds, betrayed by the ducks hovering overhead. This done, he ordered Blackbeard’s head to be hung from the bowsprit of the Jane. If the pirate hadn’t been decapitated before the battle, it was done now, and the rest of his corpse was unceremoniously dumped over the side. After all, only the head was needed in order to claim the £100 bounty. With this grisly trophy leading the way the three sloops raised anchor, and before setting a course towards Virginia Maynard headed to Bath Town, to report to his superior in person. From there he would return to Virginia, where the prisoners could expect a public trial and execution, and the sailors could look forward to a heroes’ welcome.
While Lieutenant Maynard had been working his way southwards toward Ocracoke, Captain Brand’s expedition had been marching south towards Bath Town. It set out for North Carolina on the evening of 17 November, while back in Williamsburg Governor Spotswood was frantically trying to establish a legal case for what was effectively an invasion of a neighbouring state. They marched through what is now Suffolk County, Virginia, skirting the northern and western edges of the extensive marshy area known as the Dismal Swamp. They crossed the boundary into the North Carolina colony somewhere near the present-day town of Whaleyville, Virginia. From there a trail ran southwards.
Before they reached Bath Town they had to cross Albemarle Sound. The sound ran westward from the Outer Banks, before curving northwards to become the Chowan River. If they crossed the river, Brand’s men would be faced with another river barring their path – the Roanoke. There the Broadneck Swamp and other marshy wooded ground lined the river for 40 miles, until it finally entered Albemarle Sound. To avoid this would entail a major detour to the west. The Virginian column would then have to find the road running south to Bath Town from the nascent settlement near Governor Eden’s plantation that in 1722 became Edenton. In 1718 it was known simply as ‘the towne on Queen Anne’s Creek’. Although it predated Bath Town, this northern settlement was slightly smaller, with less than a dozen buildings, including a half-built courthouse.
Although this engraving depicts the execution of ‘the gentleman pirate’ Stede Bonnet in Charles Town, the scene would have been similar to other pirate executions. The difference in Williamsburg was that the pirates were hanged from trees lining the road to the colony’s main port of Jamestown.
Fortunately, Captain Brand had a useful ally. Edward Moseley was an ardent political opponent of Governor Eden, and one of the wealthiest landowners in the North Carolina colony. He was also a lawyer of considerable repute, and an honorary colonel in the colony’s militia. He had a house in Bath Town and another in the future Edenton, and it was from this second house that he rode out to meet Captain Brand a few miles to the north, in the northern part of Chowan County. Months before he had written to Governor Spotswood to complain about Eden’s association with Teach, and during the ensuing correspondence Moseley offered to help Spotswood rid North Carolina of the pirate. In the process he might be able to oust Eden from the governorship. So, some 10 miles north of Queen Anne’s Creek, Moseley and his companion Colonel Moore of the North Carolina militia waited for Brand’s column to appear.
This was a crucial development, as Spotswood could argue that he entered North Carolina on the invitation of some of its leading citizens. It also meant that Brand could avoid the swampy Roanoke River, and head straight for Queen Anne’s Creek, knowing that Moseley had already arranged for ferry boats to transport his force across Pamlico Sound. On 21 November Colonel Brand wrote a letter to the Admiralty, claiming his force was now within 50 miles of Bath Town. This places him in Northern Chowan, where Moseley was waiting for him.
Bath Creek today, viewed from the southern edge of Bath, NC, close to Back Creek. This is where Blackbeard anchored the Adventure during his visits to the settlement. Governor Eden’s plantation lay a mile inland, beyond the far (western) shore of the creek.
Although Frank Schoonover’s depiction of Blackbeard’s men entering Charles Town in 1718 is hopelessly inaccurate, it could just as easily depict the entrance of Brand’s men into Bath Town several months later.
That evening the Virginian column crossed Pamlico Sound, as Colonel Moore’s militia guarded the crossing points to prevent word of the invasion reaching Bath Town. The Queen Anne’s Creek settlement lay on the north bank of Pamlico Sound, and travellers to Bath Town usually took the ferry to the southern bank, close to where the Albemarle Sound bridge crosses today. This meant that at the very moment when Lieutenant Maynard was fighting his duel with Blackbeard, Captain Brand’s column was still 35 miles to the north of Bath Town, at the start of a long day’s march.
Of course the original plan was for Maynard to bottle up Blackbeard’s adventure in the Pamlico River. If the pirate captain hadn’t been at Ocracoke Maynard would have followed his orders, and by the evening of 22 November – the day of the battle – he would have been in place, a few miles downriver from Bath Creek. When Brand appeared two days later the pirates would be caught between the two forces. Without any means of communicating with Maynard, Brand assumed that his march would end in a battle in the streets of Bath Town.
From Pamlico Sound Brand marched south, skirting the western side of two lakes and passing through a landscape of woodland and streams. By 10pm on the evening of Saturday 23 November he was somewhere near the northern end of Bath Creek, and just 3 miles from the town. He inspected his men, checked their weapons, and gave orders for the attack, which would take place the following morning. He had sent Colonel Moore ahead on a reconnaissance, and that evening the North Carolinian reported back, saying that although Teach wasn’t in the town, he was expected to arrive there at ‘every minute’.
At dawn the following morning Governor Eden was woken up by men banging on his plantation house door. Brand was establishing his legal credentials. He presented Eden with a letter from Spotswood, and informed him he was ordered to hunt down any pirates he encountered. Eden was outraged, but powerless. This was a military coup de main, and with his own militia siding with Brand there was little he could do. Eden’s plantation was on the west side of Bath Creek. Brand rejoined his main column to the north of Bath Town, and in mid-morning they marched into the small settlement.
In November 1718 Bath Town was little more than a village – a collection of just a few dozen houses, with around 100 non-piratical inhabitants. It lay on the eastern side of the creek, while a second smaller inlet known as Back Creek marked the southern boundary of the settlement. It boasted a mill, a small shipyard, a church and a few taverns, plus several warehouses located along the banks of the creek. Brand marched in from the north, and quickly cordoned off the town. The inhabitants came out to see what was happening, but while they might have been infuriated by this Virginian invasion, they were reassured by the sight of the handful of North Carolina militia and their officers.
What followed was something of an anti-climax. After all this marching there was almost no fighting – at least none that was mentioned in the official reports. No doubt a few pirates tried to escape, or to offer resistance, but they were soon captured or overpowered. Brand had singled out the taverns (known as ‘ordinaries’) for special attention, as he suspected this was where any pirates would be housed. Six pirates were rounded up, including Blackbeard’s first mate Israel Hands. They were duly placed in irons, as Brand stood on the banks of Bath Creek, wondering where Blackbeard could be. After questioning some of the townspeople he learned that the Adventure was lying off Ocracoke. Word from Maynard had still not reached him, so that Sunday evening – 24 November – he sent two dugout canoes down the Pamlico River, crewed by his sailors and local guides. Two days later they returned, with news that Blackbeard had been killed, the Adventure captured, and the two British sloops were preparing to return to Virginia.
The local trading sloop which had lain next to Blackbeard’s vessel off Ocracoke, and which Maynard had despatched after the action, reached Bath Town the following morning – 25 November – and it carried Maynard’s brief account of his victory. Brand was delighted. Although his raid hadn’t gone exactly according to plan, it had proved a spectacular success. Blackbeard and several of his men had been killed, the rest were about to be shipped back to Virginia to stand trial, and the pirate threat had been crushed. All in all it was a highly satisfactory conclusion to a daring operation.
Naturally Governor Eden didn’t share Captain Brand’s delight. Over the next few days Brand’s men scoured the area for any pirates who might have escaped, and seized goods he believed belonged to Blackbeard. Captain Johnson described the haul as ‘25 hogsheads of sugar, 11 tierces [barrels] and 145 bags of cocoa, a barrel of indigo, and a bale of cotton’. Most damning of all was the storage of goods taken from the French prizes in Tobias Knight’s own barn. While all this didn’t sound like much, most of what Blackbeard had plundered from his most recent victims had already been converted into money, and divided among his crew. Most of it had then been squandered in the Bath Town ‘ordinaries’. What remained of this personal plunder was no doubt quietly taken by the victors. When the haul was sold, along with the sloop Adventure, the total income came to £2,238. This more than paid for the cost of staging the raid, the rewards paid out to the sailors, and the prize money awarded to Brand, Gordon and Maynard.
This, of course, wasn’t the end of the story. What followed was one of the most bitter legal wrangles in American colonial history, as Eden, Spotswood and their supporters and detractors argued their cases in court. A bold and daring raid which had been won with cold steel and pistol balls ended in an equally bitter contest, fought out with ink, quill and paper. For the pirates, though, the aftermath of the operation would be altogether more draconian.
The pirate hunters’ entry into Bath Town, 1718
On the morning of Sunday 24 November Captain Ellis Brand’s column approached Bath Town from the north, on the trail that led northwards to the Queen Anne’s Creek settlement. His force of approximately 200 men consisted of British sailors from the frigates HMS Pearl and HMS Lyme, and a contingent of Virginia militia, supplied by Governor Spotswood of the Virginia colony. The citizens of Bath Town were taken completely by surprise, and while some protested against what amounted to an invasion of the North Carolina colony by neighbouring Virginia, others were assuaged by the presence of King’s officers of the Royal Navy, and by officers of the North Carolina militia, led by Colonel Edward Moseley.
In this scene Captain Brand can be seen dressed in the full-dress coat of a post captain in the Royal Navy, while his men wear the non-uniform garb of British sailors of the period, augmented by warm clothing and their weapons – an assortment of muskets, pistols and cutlasses drawn from the ships’ stores. Brand is accompanied by officers of the Virginia and North Carolina militias – both wore the same red-coated uniform, but like the sailors the militiamen themselves weren’t issued with a uniform during this period. The townspeople of Bath Town are dressed in their typical Sunday garb, and watch or offer protest as the column enters their town, and begins rounding up anyone suspected of being a pirate. During this operation six pirates were arrested in Bath Town, including Blackbeard’s first mate Israel Hands.
