Blackbeard the Pirate Was Killed in Battle
On this day · 22 November 1718
The most feared pirate of the Golden Age met a bloody end in the shallow waters off North Carolina's Outer Banks.
On November 22, 1718, the pirate known as Blackbeard was killed in a close-quarters battle at Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina. Born Edward Teach, he had terrorized shipping along the American coast and the Caribbean, cultivating a fearsome image by lighting slow-burning fuses in his beard during combat.
The governor of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood, dispatched two small Royal Navy sloops carrying roughly 60 men under Lieutenant Robert Maynard to hunt him down. Approaching from the sound side at dawn, Maynard’s force lured the pirates into a vicious melee.
Maynard’s men found Blackbeard’s body marked by five gunshot wounds and some twenty cuts.
Blackbeard fell after a wound to the throat. To claim his bounty and prove the kill, Maynard severed the pirate’s head and reportedly hung it from the bowsprit as he sailed back to Virginia. His death effectively closed one of the most notorious chapters of the Golden Age of Piracy.
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