The vicinity where Blackbeard made his establishment was well chosen
for his job. When one knew the channels between the low, sandy islands
which lay all about the inlet one could run in and careen the ship, lay
by and swagger alongshore, and when one got ready to abjure his oath
and swing off on the plundering account again, one could intercept two
lines of commerce,--the coastwise from New England to the West Indies
and the provinces, and that from the provinces to the north, to the
West Indies and to the mother country. Blackbeard knew his business.
It should be explained that our whiskery hero was a sort of admiral,
for he commanded not only his own ship, but he was attended by three
auxiliary sloops, one of which--the _Revenge_--belonged to the peculiar
and picturesque Major Stede Bonnet.
What did these ships look like? Well, the old British Navy had five
classes of men-of-war, rated on the number of guns; Blackbeard’s own
ship, the attorney general on a later occasion said, was equal to a
fifth-class man-of-war; that is, he mounted forty guns, ranged on two
decks, carrying a complement of some one hundred and forty or fifty
men when his articles were full. She was about twenty feet in the beam
and a little more than a hundred feet long; rigged with square sails
and capable of good speed.
The sloops, a general term for a variety of small ships, fought
only ten guns, though the man-power was not proportionate, fifty or
sixty men sometimes being crowded aboard. Shipbuilding was to wait
generations for the start of the impetus which carried it to its
culmination in the early nineteenth century.
Nobody knows just what turned Major Bonnet to pirating. Some say he had
so much domestic misery that he simply felt he would have to chaw up
something or somebody; others, that the works in his brains had slipped
a little out of gear.
It could hardly have been money, for Bonnet was a well-to-do planter
of Barbados, where his civic spirit had been so keen that he had
earned the military title of major in service against the enemies of
that colony. Perhaps he had been reading the _Diamond Dick_ stories of
that era, and was so fired by them as to forget his middle years, his
decorous manners, his respectable standing, and craved for a taste of
real life.
However that may have been, he bought a sloop, christened her
romantically the _Revenge_, and, under the usual pretense of going
privateering, picked up the right gang and put to sea in the late
summer of 1717. He knew nothing about the sea except that under
certain circumstances it would drown one.
His crew were quick to see that their commander was no sailorman. His
pretense at seamanship provoked their great-mouthed grins and deriding
whispers and nods. He was driven to hide behind his mate, who really
worked the ship; and to the end of his career, which lasted just about
one year, he employed usually a sailing master. But his courage, his
hard temper, his resolution kept his feet on the quarter-deck and
forced a respect that his landlubberliness denied him.
That is, he wrung a deference from all but old Blackbeard. Bonnet fell
in with him in August, 1717, and they made it up to sail together.
The bearded bear, however, soon saw that his partner was no skipper,
and, growling and contemptuous, he summarily removed Bonnet from his
own deck and articled him in an inferior position on Blackbeard’s
craft, putting one Richards, a bad egg but a good sailor, in Bonnet’s
place. This was a collar that galled the neck of Bonnet.
All the ships came in to Ocracoke about the same time; but Bonnet and a
large number of men disdained to palter with the Act of Grace, and lay
about the settlement waiting for Blackbeard to get over his whim and
down to business.
The days ashore passed in debauch. Here the softer side of Blackbeard’s
character is shown in his affectionate devotion to fourteen wives,--as
he called them. With them he was most playful and kittenish. He loved
to make these ladies laugh by blowing out the candles with his pistols;
or sometimes, crossing his arms, a weapon in each hand, he would
fire promiscuously about the room, whereupon the most merry play of
hide-and-seek was enjoyed by all the company, wives and visitors alike,
when those who could not get under the table quickly enough would catch
bullets in the funniest places,--like behind the ear or just above the
heart. Everybody looked forward to these evenings.
V
Spring came on Ocracoke, and the adventure sap stirred in Blackbeard’s
veins. He stood it until the end of May, then tore his oath in two,
kicked the Act of Grace in the face, flung the skull and crossbones
to his masthead and sailed off for Charles Town, his minion sloops
dancing and bobbing on the waves beside him. He was going shopping, if
you please, for medical supplies, a great necessity by reason of his
fleet’s method of living and working. He was going to honor Charles
Town with his patronage.
While this happy surprise for the little colonial seaport was coming
around the sea-washed bulk of Cape Fear, a Mr. Wragg and a Mr. Marks,
on board a merchantman, were slipping across the Charles Town bar,
bound for England. Both were prominent local gentlemen, Mr. Wragg being
nothing less than an assemblyman. There were several other passengers
on the list, while in the ship’s chest were seven thousand five hundred
dollars in broad gold coins and pieces-of-eight.
Mr. Marks stood at the stern of the ship and looked a long time at the
old town as it dropped away behind them.
“Neighbor Wragg,” said he with a gently melancholic sigh, “it will be
many a day before we tread the streets of Charles Town again.”
Mr. Wragg squeezed his friend’s hand sympathetically.
“Only a twelvemonth perhaps,” he suggested. “Take courage, Marks.”
They were both poor guessers. Instead of twelve months it was less than
twelve days a good deal when Mr. Marks again looked his fellow citizens
in the eye and face-to-face. If somebody had told his fortune at cards
that night he might have truthfully said that a dark man was coming
across the water to see him.
“Do you see what I see?” asked the captain of the mate next day, as the
gray light of morning was turning all the waters to the look of molten
slate. The mate gazed northward.
“I count four of ’em,” he said slowly. “Looks like they’re coming right
for us.”
They were. Very soon a shot whistled over the nightcap of Mr. Marks,
who had thrust his head from his cabin with that sense of something
amiss peculiar to shipboard.
“Heave back the tops’ls,” growled the master.
The sails flatted down, and the ship came to. She was quickly circled
by Blackbeard’s fleet. The skull grinned amiably at them as the black
flag stood out tautly in the wind. Somebody shouted something from the
pirate ships; and the merchant captain ordered the boat lowered, and
with two of the crew to row him set off for the marauding flagship.
“I’ve been pirated in these waters twenty times,” grumbled the captain,
steering with an oar, “so I know what they want.”
The pirates wanted everything. They put a prize crew over on the
captured brig. Mr. Marks was paged.
“Mistah Blackbeard’s compliments, suh,” grinned a big black fellow,
looking coy in a hat made of a twisted red silk handkerchief, “and if
you be Mistah Marks, suh, will you be so ’bliging as to step over to
his ship.”
Mr. Marks, with pallid face, looked pathetically at Mr. Wragg, whose
sympathy was again subjected to a heavy sight draft.
“Why didn’t he send for you, Wragg?” he complained unheroically.
“You’re a councilor--you’ve got the precedence.”
Mr. Wragg patted him on the shoulder encouragingly.
“I’ll advise your family, Marks, if anything happens,” he said kindly;
“but I’m sure it won’t.”
He felt pretty sure it would.
All stood in for Charles Town. Mr. Wragg once or twice thought he saw
Mark’s hand waving at him from Blackbeard’s ship, where he and the
merchant captain were detained. Or was it poor Mark’s nightcap tossed
in a dreadful struggle with the villains? Who could tell?
Captors and captives lay at the bar; and Blackbeard sent the longboat
off to town, carrying Mr. Marks under guard of Richards and half a
dozen nasty rascals. The astonishment of the town was unwordable when
it saw the respectable Marks in company so dreadful.
But when they heard what Mr. Marks had to tell them their astonishment
turned to fighting wrath. For Blackbeard ordered four hundred pounds’
worth of medical supplies delivered to Richards or, first, Mr. Marks
would be shot on the spot; second, Mr. Wragg’s head and those of all
the other passengers would arrive by the next boat; third, the pride of
the province, Charles Town itself, would be blown from its foundations.
Governor Johnson was a strong man, and his council were strong men; but
here was a puzzle for them. Sixteen years before this they had beaten
off the French invaders with a courage that is notable in the history
of municipalities; but now the gun was right straight at them, and it
looked like hands up.
Things were stirring about in Blackbeard’s fleet as well as in the
town. Especially when two days went by and no word came over to the bar
from Richards or Marks. On the evening of that day, Blackbeard, steeped
in rum, lined his hostages along the deck and raved and thrust his
awful beard into their faces and generally behaved in a most ungenteel
manner.
“Shake your heads, my pretty landlubbers,” he bellowed; “shake ’em
while they’re on your necks, for if Richards don’t come back in the
mornin’ your heads will go to town at noon.”
The wretched part of it was that the ruffian meant what he said.
A messenger came from Richards, however, in the morning, and so
reprieved Mr. Wragg and his fellows for a few hours more. The messenger
stated that in going from the bar to town the boat in which Marks was
being taken capsized and there had been no end of trouble and delay in
getting ashore. Further that the provincial council had been called
together and were debating Blackbeard’s proposition.
Another day or so of strain and another silence from the town. Again
Blackbeard stamped about and waved his cutlass and carried on as any
obstreperous and brutal drunk might be apt to do. Oh, for a king’s ship
to happen along as chucker-out! But king’s ships, like the night watch,
are generally anywhere but where they’re needed.
Blackbeard filed the frightened hostages forth again. This time he
had the machinery of their destruction ready,--a huge black, his
great-muscled right arm bare to the shoulder, his hand hefting a bright
cutlass. Blackbeard, perched on a keg of powder, beckoned to his
captives in mocking solicitude.
“Step up, pretties,” he leered, “and get your hair cut.”
This was no opera, comic or otherwise. It was a situation to be met,
and immediately. One whom history does not remember spoke up. “Cap’n
Blackbeard,” said he, talking for his life, “we’ve decided if you’ll
be so good as to let us, to join with you if you’re going to take the
town. We’ll help you. They’ve betrayed us for a few pills and powders,
so we owe them nothing.”
“Spoke like a man,” said Blackbeard. “You’re proper men; you’ll be real
cocks of the old game. Heave the anchor and shot the guns--the tide
will be right in an hour.”
Perhaps this was not a heroic subterfuge; but let those judge who have
been hostages, helpless in the hands of such a desperado. It saved the
lives of a number of folk. For ere the tide lifted them over the bar
the longboat returned with Richards, the pirate boatmen and great piles
of all sorts of medicines. The town had capitulated. There would come
another day, it properly figured, and its wisdom was justified by the
event.
Blackbeard left the merchant brig and its passengers rocking at the
bar, but by an unfortunate oversight he sailed off with the ship’s
chest containing the gold coins and the pieces-of-eight.
Partnership was dissolved soon after leaving Charles Town. Blackbeard
had already apparently decided to abdicate the cocked hat of an
admiral and assume the subordinate rank of a captain. He planned to
concentrate his power in his one vessel.
So without concern he returned the dissatisfied Bonnet to the _Revenge_
and recalled Richards and the hardiest members of the _Revenge’s_
personnel, leaving Bonnet with half a dozen hands of indifferent
expertness to work the sloop.
That accounted for one of his three tenders. The second he resolved to
abandon at Topsail Inlet, on his way to Ocracoke. This he effected in
the regular Blackbeard fashion by ordering it driven ashore at Topsail
Inlet and wrecked. Her crew might make what escape they could from
the mess. They could not argue with the forty muzzles of his guns, so
crack went the sloop’s hull upon the rocks, while Blackbeard lay by and
laughed at the men struggling in the surf.
These unfortunates at once went to work saving the sloop’s food and
powder, which hard labor was no sooner ended than Blackbeard stood in
and came ashore in the boat. He took all the salvaged stores and every
first-class seaman among the men and left, leaving nearly a score of
his late followers destitute and marooned on a wild and isolated beach.
In this way Blackbeard paid for faithfulness.
The castaways had nothing to do but huddle about the sand and hope for
help. It did not occur to them to go back into the wilderness behind
them, perhaps because, as sailors, they would not trust themselves to
any but their wonted environment, perhaps also for the reason that the
unsettled interior promised them even scantier succor than the wide sea
before them, on which a coastwise ship might possibly be attracted by
their signals. So they lay around listening to the _creak-creak-creak_
of the occasional sea gull, the thumping and swirling of the inrushing
waves and the cracking of the ship’s gear and planking.
Before serious privation befell them, however, the hoped-for sail
fluttered out of the horizon. They took the shirts from their backs and
hopped vehemently up and down the beach and flew to the headlands in a
frenzy of inarticulate appeal.
Joy unspeakable; they saw the topsails heaved back and the ship come
to! Saved! The men massed at the very edge of the water and stared hard
at the boat which now put off and came swinging in toward them.
“If it ain’t Major Bonnet!”
There was a kind of pleasure in the way they said this as the boat’s
crew could be identified. They had never expected that the commander
of the old _Revenge_ could ever have looked so good to them. A dozen
welcoming hands pulled at the bow of his boat when it grated on the
sand.
“A dirty deal, boys,” said the major; “a dirty deal to leave ye all
like this--all governors of a maroon island.”
That was a loved witticism of the major; marooning with him was always
to be invested with the dignity of governor of the maroon sand-spit.
He had quite a turn for pleasantry. He chuckled, and then got down to
business.
“Getting to the point, my lads,” he continued, “let us leave this
outlaw life which has brought us nothing but grief. Come with me to St.
Thomas in the Indies, and we’ll get a privateering commission there
against the Spanish dogs, and show ’em the kind of metal that is in a
British cutlass.”
He put a punch into his proposition by explaining, sympathetically but
firmly, that if they refused his offer he would be quite obliged to
sail away and leave them still in the governorship of Topsail Inlet.
Nobody wanted that distinction, and the marooned left in boatloads for
Bonnet’s ship. As they came under her bows they marked that the name
_Revenge_ had been painted out, and in its place were the words, _Royal
James_, being the major’s compliment to the Pretender and a vivid
indication of the major’s politics.
The tide crept in and washed the last heel mold out of the sands of
Topsail Inlet, where the gulls were left to peck speculatively at the
protruding nails and tangled cordage of the battered ship, the while
they wondered at the ways of that queer creature, Man.
Commons were lean on the _Royal James_. When the rescued pirates found
that there was not very much to eat on the ship, the first gush of joy
at their deliverance sloughed off quickly.
“Ye see, men,” Bonnet explained, “the pantry is pretty low. The first
job of a sailorman is to eat, so we may have to stop somebody on our
way to St. Thomas and beg a bite.”
A very reasonable suggestion.
“Somebody” appeared before the cruise was very old. He showed no
concern, however, to answer their hail but jammed up into the wind and
sped away. That was certainly no proper sea courtesy.
To teach the rude fellows a lesson in manners, the _Royal James_ swung
behind and followed fast, and as pursuit was quite in her line she soon
pulled down the fleeing traveler and with a shot across his bow brought
him to with a bang. Bonnet shoved alongside and soon stuffed his hold
and his men with quarters of beef and barrels of rum.
That was a fair start. All waist belts were comfortably tight; drooping
corners of lips went up and the old zest for piracy swelled and rippled
like a flood tide in the veins of the men of the _Royal James_. So when
with a grin the captain sped the black flag up the lines the general
contentment was not grievously shaken.
Two Bermuda-bound ships were pulled in the day following the first
capture, and the day after that they picked up a fourth. The tally of
takes now began to run up smartly. Inside of a week five ships were
looted, from which a number of recruits were made, including negroes
who were delegated to the pumps and the menial jobs with the status of
slaves, and whose signs to the sloop’s articles were not invited.
Here is a typical haul from one craft: Twenty-six hogsheads and
three barrels of rum, valued at fifteen hundred dollars; twenty-five
hogsheads of molasses, worth seven or eight hundred dollars; three
barrels of sugar, value one hundred and fifty dollars; cotton, indigo,
wire cable of varying values, a small amount of French and Spanish
coins, one pair of silver buckles and one silver watch. Thus, you see,
the boys cleaned up systematically from the hold to the captain’s
waistcoat pocket.
They peddled their merchandise alongshore, where the business, though
more risky than in a happier day, was still keen. They grabbed vessels
on the high seas or at anchor in way ports. One captured in the latter
situation was the _Francis_, and here is her mate, Mr. Killing, who
is anxious to tell us himself just how it all happened. Proceed, Mr.
Killing.
“The 31st of July (1718) between nine and ten of the clock, we came to
an anchor about fourteen fathom of water.... In about half an hour’s
time I perceived something like a canoo: So they came nearer. I said,
here is a canoo a-coming; I wish they be friends. I haled them and
asked them whence they came? They said captain Thomas Richards from
St. Thomas’s....
“They asked me from whence we came? I told them from Antegoa. They
said we were welcome.” (Pirates certainly loved their little joke!) “I
said they were welcome, as far as I knew.” (Which you observe was not
very far. A man of careful statement, this Mr. Killing.) “So I ordered
the men to hand down a rope to them. So soon as they came on board
they clapped their hands to their cutlasses; and I said we are taken.
So they cursed and swore for a light. I ordered our people to get a
light as soon as possible....
“When they came into the cabin the first thing they begun with was the
pineapples, which they cut down with their cutlasses. They asked me if
I would not come and eat along with them? I told them I had but little
stomach to eat. They asked me why I looked so melancholy? I told them
I looked as well as I could--” (Before we smile at the worthy mate let
us wonder a moment how we would have looked in the same fix.)
“They asked me what liquor I had on board. I told them some rum
and sugar. So they made bowls of punch and went to drinking the
Pretender’s health, and hoped to see him king of the English nation--”
(This was doubtless the result of Major Bonnet’s treasonable
propaganda. Here was an incipient navy for the Pretender had he only
known it.) “They then sung a song or two. The next morning ... they
hoisted out several hogsheads of molasses and several hogsheads of
rum. In the after part of the day two of Bonnet’s men were ordered to
the mast to be whipt....
“Then Robert Tucker came to me, and told me I must go along with them.
I told him I was not fit for their turn, neither were my inclinations
that way. After that Major Bonnet himself came to me, and told me I
must either go on a maroon shore” (no doubt with his usual little jest
about the governorship) “or go along with them, for he designed to
take the sloop (_Francis_) with him.
“That evening between eight and nine we were ordered to set sail, but
whither I knew not. So we sailed out that night, and I being weary
with fatigue, went to sleep; and whether it was with a design or not I
can not tell, but we fell to leeward of the _Revenge_ (_Royal James_);
and in the morning Major Bonnet took the speaking trumpet, and told
us if we did not keep closer he would fire in upon us and sink us. So
then we proceeded on our voyage till we came to Cape Fear.”
Thank you, Mr. Mate; you have given us an interesting and living
picture of just how these wretches went about their dirty work.