Bonnet again to the Front
It must not be supposed that the late commander of the _Revenge_
continued to be satisfied, as he sat in the cabin of Blackbeard's vessel
and made the entries of the day's sailing and various performances. He
obeyed the orders of his usurping partner because he was obliged to do
so, but he did not hate Blackbeard any the less because he had to keep
quiet about it. He accompanied his pirate chief on various cruises,
among which was the famous expedition to the harbor of Charles Town
where Blackbeard traded Mr. Wragg and his companions for medicines.
Having a very fine fleet under him, Blackbeard did a very successful
business for some time, but feeling that he had earned enough for the
present, and that it was time for him to take one of his vacations, he
put into an inlet in North Carolina, where he disbanded his crew. So
long as he was on shore spending his money and having a good time, he
did not want to have a lot of men about him who would look to him to
support them when they had spent their portion of the spoils. Having no
further use for Bonnet, he dismissed him also, and did not object to his
resuming possession of his own vessel. If the green pirate chose to go
to sea again and perhaps drown himself and his crew, it was a matter of
no concern to Blackbeard.
But this was a matter of very great concern to Stede Bonnet, and he
proceeded to prove that there were certain branches of the piratical
business in which he was an adept, and second to none of his
fellow-practitioners. He wished to go pirating again, and saw a way of
doing this which he thought would be far superior to any of the common
methods. It was about this time that King George of England, very
desirous of breaking up piracy, issued a proclamation in which he
promised pardon to any pirate who would appear before the proper
authorities, renounce his evil practices, and take an oath of
allegiance. It also happened that very soon after this proclamation had
been issued, England went to war with Spain. Being a man who kept
himself posted in the news of the world, so far as it was possible,
Bonnet saw in the present state of affairs a very good chance for him to
play the part of a wolf in sheep's clothing, and he proceeded to begin
his new piratical career by renouncing piracy. So leaving the _Revenge_
in the inlet, he journeyed overland to Bath; there he signed pledges,
took oaths, and did everything that was necessary to change himself from
a pirate captain to a respectable commander of a duly authorized British
privateer. Returning to his vessel with all the papers in his pocket
necessary to prove that he was a loyal and law-abiding subject of Great
Britain, he took out regular clearance papers for St. Thomas, which was
a British naval station, and where he declared he was going in order to
obtain a commission as a privateer.
Now the wily Bonnet had everything he wanted except a crew. Of course it
would not do for him, in his present respectable capacity, to go about
enlisting unemployed pirates, but at this point fortune again favored
him; he knew of a desert island not very far away where Blackbeard, at
the end of his last cruise, had marooned a large party of his men. This
heartless pirate had not wanted to take all of his followers into port,
because they might prove troublesome and expensive to him, and so he had
put a number of them on this island, to live or die as the case might
be. Bonnet went over to this island, and finding the greater part of
these men still surviving, he offered to take them to St. Thomas in his
vessel if they would agree to work the ship to port. This proposition
was of course joyfully accepted, and very soon the _Revenge_ was manned
with a complete crew of competent desperadoes.
All these operations took a good deal of time, and, at last, when
everything was ready for Bonnet to start out on his piratical cruise, he
received information which caused him to change his mind, and to set
forth on an errand of a very different kind. He had supposed that
Blackbeard, whom he had never forgiven for the shameful and treacherous
manner in which he had treated him, was still on shore enjoying himself,
but he was told by the captain of a small trading vessel that the old
pirate was preparing for another cruise, and that he was then in
Ocracoke Inlet. Now Bonnet folded his arms and stamped his feet upon the
quarter-deck. The time had come for him to show that the name of his
vessel meant something. Never before had he had an opportunity for
revenging himself on anybody, but now that hour had arrived. He would
revenge himself upon Blackbeard!
The implacable Bonnet sailed out to sea in a truly warlike frame of
mind. He was not going forth to prey upon unresisting merchantmen; he
was on his way to punish a black-hearted pirate, a faithless scoundrel,
who had not only acted knavishly toward the world in general, but had
behaved most disloyally and disrespectfully toward a fellow pirate
chief. If he could once run the _Revenge_ alongside the ship of the
perfidious Blackbeard, he would show him what a green hand could do.
When Bonnet reached Ocracoke Inlet, he was deeply disappointed to find
that Blackbeard had left that harbor, but he did not give up the
pursuit. He made hot chase after the vessel of his pirate enemy, keeping
a sharp lookout in hopes of discovering some signs of him. If the
enraged Bonnet could have met the ferocious Blackbeard face to face,
there might have been a combat which would have relieved the world of
two atrocious villains, and Captain Maynard would have been deprived of
the honor of having slain the most famous pirate of the day.
Bonnet was a good soldier and a brave man, and although he could not
sail a ship, he understood the use of the sword even better, perhaps,
than Blackbeard, and there is good reason to believe that if the two
ships had come together, their respective crews would have allowed their
captains to fight out their private quarrel without interference, for
pirates delight in a bloody spectacle, and this would have been to them
a rare diversion of the kind.
But Bonnet never overtook Blackbeard, and the great combat between the
rival pirates did not take place. After vainly searching for a
considerable time for a trace or sight of Blackbeard, the baffled Bonnet
gave up the pursuit and turned his mind to other objects. The first
thing he did was to change the name of his vessel; if he could not be
revenged, he would not sail in the _Revenge_. Casting about in his mind
for a good name, he decided to call her the _Royal James_. Having no
intention of respecting his oaths or of keeping his promises, he thought
that, as he was going to be disloyal, he might as well be as disloyal as
he could, and so he gave his ship the name assumed by the son of James
the Second, who was a pretender to the throne, and was then in France
plotting against the English government.
The next thing he did was to change his own name, for he thought this
would make matters better for him if he should be captured after
entering upon his new criminal career. So he called himself Captain
Thomas, by which name he was afterwards known.
When these preliminaries had been arranged, he gathered his crew
together and announced that instead of going to St. Thomas to get a
commission as a privateer, he had determined to keep on in his old
manner of life, and that he wished them to understand that not only was
he a pirate captain, but that they were a pirate crew. Many of the men
were very much surprised at this announcement, for they had thought it a
very natural thing for the green-hand Bonnet to give up pirating after
he had been so thoroughly snubbed by Blackbeard, and they had not
supposed that he would ever think again of sailing under a black flag.
However, the crew's opinion of the green-hand captain had been a good
deal changed. In his various cruises he had learned a good deal about
navigation, and could now give very fair orders, and his furious pursuit
of Blackbeard had also given him a reputation for reckless bravery which
he had not enjoyed before. A man who was chafing and fuming for a chance
of a hand-to-hand conflict with the greatest pirate of the day must be a
pretty good sort of a fellow from their point of view. Moreover, their
strutting and stalking captain, so recently balked of his dark revenge,
was a very savage-looking man, and it would not be pleasant either to
try to persuade him to give up his piratical intention, or to decline to
join him in carrying it out; so the whole of the crew, minor officers
and men, changed their minds about going to St. Thomas, and agreed to
hoist the skull and cross-bones, and to follow Captain Bonnet wherever
he might lead.
Bonnet now cruised about in grand style and took some prizes on the
Virginia coast, and then went up into Delaware Bay, where he captured
such ships as he wanted, and acted generally in the most domineering and
insolent fashion. Once, when he stopped near the town of Lewes, in order
to send some prisoners ashore, he sent a message to the officers of the
town to the effect that if they interfered with his men when they came
ashore, he would open fire upon the town with his cannon, and blow every
house into splinters. Of course the citizens, having no way of defending
themselves, were obliged to allow the pirates to come on shore and
depart unmolested.
Then after this the blustering captain captured two valuable sloops, and
wishing to take them along with him without the trouble of transferring
their cargoes to his own vessel, he left their crews on board, and
ordered them to follow him wherever he went. Some days after that, when
one of the vessels seemed to be sailing at too great a distance, Bonnet
quickly let her captain know that he was not a man to be trifled with,
and sent him the message that if he did not keep close to the _Royal
James_, he would fire into him and sink him to the bottom.
After a time Bonnet put into a North Carolina port in order to repair
the _Royal James_, which was becoming very leaky, and seeing no
immediate legitimate way of getting planks and beams enough with which
to make the necessary repairs, he captured a small sloop belonging in
the neighborhood, and broke it up in order to get the material he needed
to make his own vessel seaworthy.
Now the people of the North Carolina coast very seldom interfered with
pirates, as we have seen, and it is likely that Bonnet might have
stayed in port as long as he pleased, and repaired and refitted his
vessel without molestation if he had bought and paid for the planks and
timber he required. But when it came to boldly seizing their property,
that was too much even for the people of the region, and complaints of
Bonnet's behavior spread from settlement to settlement, and it very soon
became known all down the coast that there was a pirate in North
Carolina who was committing depredations there and was preparing to set
out on a fresh cruise.
When these tidings came to Charles Town, the citizens were thrown into
great agitation. It had not been long since Blackbeard had visited their
harbor, and had treated them with such brutal insolence, and there were
bold spirits in the town who declared that if any effort by them could
prevent another visitation of the pirates, that effort should be made.
There was no naval force in the harbor which could be sent out to meet
the pirates, who were coming down the coast; but Mr. William Rhett, a
private gentleman of position in the place, went to the Governor and
offered to fit out, at his own expense, an expedition for the purpose of
turning away from their city the danger which threatened it.