Blackbeard was killed in 1718, five months after a pardon
On this day · 22 November 1718
Virginia's Royal Navy raid that killed Blackbeard came five months after he had sworn loyalty to the Crown in North Carolina.
Blackbeard was killed on 22 November 1718 at Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina, by about 60 Royal Navy men under Lieutenant Robert Maynard, sent from Virginia, five months after he had accepted a royal pardon in North Carolina.
His career as a pirate captain probably lasted only about two years. In late 1717 he captured the French slave ship La Concorde, a ship that had been used to carry 1,265 enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, and renamed it Queen Anne’s Revenge. In mid-1718 he blockaded Charleston, holding prisoners until the town sent him a chest of medicine, then ran the flagship aground near present-day Beaufort.
Why did Virginia attack a pardoned pirate?
Because, its government argued, he had not really retired. In 1717 the Crown offered pardons to pirates who swore loyalty and gave up raiding, and in June 1718 Blackbeard and about 30 men reached Bath, the colony’s capital, and took the oath. North Carolina was willing to shelter him. Virginia and South Carolina, claiming he was still attacking ships, authorised armed raids into their neighbour’s territory. Governor Alexander Spotswood’s expedition took five days to reach Ocracoke and came at him from the sound side.
Maynard kept many of his men hidden below deck on the sloop Jane. When the pirates boarded, the sailors rushed up and the fight turned hand to hand. Blackbeard died of a wound to the throat; the sailors estimated five pistol wounds and twenty stab wounds. His head hung from Maynard’s bowsprit on the way to Virginia and was then set on a pike at Hampton Roads as a warning. Fifteen of his men were tried and six executed.
Was his name really Edward Teach?
Nobody knows for certain. Records give variations of Thatch or Teach; a deposition by the former captain of his sloop Adventure calls him “Thatch”. In 2015 historian Baylus Brooks traced the family of an Edward Thache, a respected resident of Spanish Town, Jamaica, as a possible match.
The wreck of Queen Anne’s Revenge was found near Beaufort Inlet in 1996 and belongs to the State of North Carolina.
Sources & references
5 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 3 independent sources.
