REMEMBERING
BLACKBEARD THE PIRATE
Dr. Mark Hopkins (former president of Anderson University and syndicated columnist) and Elva Martin contributed to this article published in newspapers Nov. 23, 2018
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| Blackbeard battling for his life with Lt. Maynard's crew Nov. 22, 1718, off Ocracoke Island, NC |
Blackbeard
was born Edward Teach and won his nickname by his long beard and flowing black
locks. He was a skillful navigator and a
feared naval tactician. Newspapers up
and down the coast of the Colonies carried the exploits of this most famous of
American pirates. “Who was this upstart who
could attack American coastal cities and ships at sea and disappear without a
trace?” Stories and poems were written
about him, the invisible and invincible pirate.
Mothers frightened their children with the bare mention of his
name. By the early years of the 18th
century Blackbeard had become the best known and most feared of all the rogues
of the high seas.
Perhaps Blackbeard’s
best known incursion into U.S. history was in May of 1718 when he sailed his
fleet of pirate ships into Charleston Harbor.
He blockaded the harbor, captured and plundered nine ships and took
several hostages including a member of the South Carolina Legislature. He held the prisoners for ransom which the
city gladly paid to get back their citizens and to see the stern of his ship,
Queen Ann’s Revenge, sailing away.
Blackbeard
left Charleston Harbor gloating over the fact that not only had he taken the
most valuable loot of his career, he had, as one writer put it, “reduced to
total submission the proud people of South Carolina without firing a single
shot.”
What
Blackbeard and his cohorts did not count on was that in the South, revenge
rides hard on the heels of humiliation.
History records that the courts of Charleston in November of that same
year hanged a total of 49 pirates. The
pride of South Carolina was certainly restored in great measure by these
successes against piracy.
Blackbeard, however, was not among those executed in Charleston.
Blackbeard, however, was not among those executed in Charleston.
The
ruthless pirate met his demise just a few months later when the governor of
Virginia dispatched a small fleet to Blackbeard’s stronghold on Ocracoke Island
on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. After a
fierce battle, Blackbeard and many of his men were killed or captured.
Lt. Robert
Maynard, commander of the Virginia contingent, executed Blackbeard on the deck
of his ship. He chopped off Blackbeard’s
head and attached it to his mast. Legend
has it that when they threw Blackbeard’s body over, it swam around the boat
seven times before sinking. The specter
of Blackbeard’s head hanging on the mast of Maynard’s ship made quite a sensation
when Maynard sailed his ship into the harbor at Norfolk.
Pirates
were the scourge of the high seas in the Western Hemisphere from the late 1600s
until the Revolutionary War in the late 1770s. Pirates, or privateers as they came to be
called, joined the fight for freedom and were a major factor in the war with
Great Britain.
The story
of Blackbeard the Pirate is still told in fictional stories. Several movies have been made about his
exploits. He is memorialized even today
on the stage at Myrtle Beach South Carolina where former Anderson, SC resident,
Stan Wood, played the villain for several years in Dolly
Parton’s Pirates Voyage Show.
The life
of Edward Teach, Blackbeard the Pirate, is not one that we celebrate but it is
worthy of note that he met his fate three hundred years ago this week. There has been none like him since.
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Blessings,
Elva
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