OFH Throwback- Episode #90- How Bad Was Blackbeard? (Part II)

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Hello, and welcome to this very special throwback edition of Our Fake History.

Today, I'm throwing you back to season 4 and episode 90, How Bad Was Blackbeard?

Part 2.

I re-released part 1 of this series a week ago with a brand new introduction.

So if you haven't heard that, you may want to go back and check out part 1 of the re-release before you dig into this one.

Now one of the reasons I've been re-releasing these Blackbeard episodes is because it's summertime when these are coming out and the pirate shows always make for good summer listening.

I also like the idea that comes up in this episode that Blackbeard was just a guy that had two really wild summers.

It's amazing how short Blackbeard's career as a pirate actually was.

So with that in mind, I want all my OFH fans to go out there and have themselves a Blackbeard summer while there's still time.

Get your friends together, commandeer a ship, and rob a small town for syphilis medication.

You'll never forget it.

Now, in revisiting this episode from 2019,

I was reminded about that particular time in my life.

When this episode came out, my wife and I had just recently welcomed our first child, and a bit of that chaos, I think, rubs off on this episode.

You might notice that the sound quality is slightly different on part two of this Blackbeard series.

That's because I had to record it at the school that I was working at at the time.

So in 2019, I was still working full-time as a high school teacher.

I had to record this podcast in a little closet at that school between invigilating exams during our high school exam period.

You'll notice that there's a bit more echo on my voice in this episode.

And if you're listening really close at one point, you can hear some people talking in the hall.

So as a result, there's kind of a looseness, dare I say a sloppiness to this episode that speaks to when it was made.

Now, hopefully that looseness doesn't get in the way of your enjoyment, because these Blackbeard stories I think are some of the best I've ever explored on the show.

But before we get into it, I should say there are some things that I do on on this recording that I would not do if I was recording it today.

One, I play very fast and loose with the terms ships and boats.

Generally speaking, a ship is a large ocean-going vessel, whereas a boat is a smaller vessel used for inland waters or a smaller vessel deployed by a ship.

A ship may carry a number of boats.

In this episode, I'm almost always talking about vessels that should be categorized as ships.

Sometimes I call these ships boats.

If I was making this episode again, I would try to be more consistent because I know that's the kind of thing that drives people crazy, especially if they've got some experience at sea.

Another thing that I know drives people crazy is my penchant to mispronounce place names.

Well, I really wrecked one on this episode.

A very important place in the history of Blackbeard is Okra Coke Island off the coast of North Carolina.

That's Okra Coke Island and not Orocoke Island.

I say Orocoke a number of times in this episode.

That should be Okra Coke.

My apologies to the good people of North Carolina.

I would also like to point out that this episode has some discussion of sexual assault.

If you're listening with younger listeners or that's a topic you do not want to hear about, then please be advised.

All in all, I think this is still a very entertaining episode of Our Fake History, despite its many quirks.

I'd love to hear how you think it held up.

So please enjoy the show and don't forget to have yourself a Blackbeard summer.

There's a story that one time while at sea, Blackbeard went on a day-long drinking binge.

After getting suitably tuned up on rum or Madeira wine, the pirate called out to his crew and said, Come, let us make a hell of our own and try how long we could bear it.

What did he mean by make a hell of our own?

Well,

what he did was have his crew fill pots full of brimstone in the ship's hold, set them on fire, and then close the hatches.

The result was a smoky, foul-smelling sauna that Blackbeard dared his crew to try try and withstand.

According to legend, not a single one of the hard-bitten pirates could outlast Blackbeard in the new shipboard hell.

He apparently exited the hold long after everyone else had fled and then dressed down his crew for not being as tough as their captain.

Blackbeard liked his personal hell, and he was a little disappointed that the rest of the crew wasn't as at home in in the smoky dungeon.

And they called themselves pirates.

Then, of course, there was the tale that one time at sea, during a particularly long cruise, a routine head count revealed that an extra person was on board Blackbeard's ship.

Stowaways were basically unheard of on pirate ships, so who was this mystery crewman?

Then, just as mysteriously as he arrived, the extra man seemingly disappeared.

It was whispered amongst the crew that the Phantom Sailor had actually been the devil himself.

Apparently, Blackbeard had made a deal with Satan that got him a couple days of hard labor from the original fallen angel.

Then there's the story that one night Blackbeard was up late drinking with one of his most trusted mates, Israel Hands, and another drunken crew member.

While they were carrying on, Blackbeard very quietly drew pistols underneath the table they were drinking at.

The unnamed drinking buddy noticed this and apparently took the opportunity to quietly back out of the cabin.

Hans, on the other hand, was completely oblivious to all of this and kept drinking like everything was normal.

At that moment, Blackbeard blew out the candle on the table, cocked the pistols, and fired them under the table.

A musket ball tore through Israel Hand's knee, hobbling the pirate for the rest of his life.

When the howling pirate asked his captain, why,

why had he shot him for no apparent reason?

Blackbeard is said to have replied that if he didn't shoot a pirate every now and then, the crew might forget who he was.

Oh,

that's cold.

Sorry, buddy, I had to shoot you.

Otherwise, the rest of these lowlives might not respect me.

These stories paint the picture of someone who was more monster than man.

He was someone who felt more at home in hell than out in the fresh air.

This was a man who could count on the devil to be a deckhand.

He was erratic, violent, and willing to maim a trusted comrade just to keep his crew on their toes.

The only problem is, there's a good chance that all of these stories are not true.

They all come from the same source, Captain Charles Johnson's General History of the Pirates, published in 1724.

And while this book is generally considered to be accurate, the mysterious Captain Johnson, whose identity remains hidden to this day, was known to exaggerate, embroider the facts, and print rumors and tall tales.

The three tales of depravity I just told you are all tagged on to the very end of Johnson's chapter about Blackbeard.

After his more or less accurate accounting of Blackbeard's movements and robberies, which can sometimes read like a list of ships' names, Johnson then tosses in these stories to add some color.

He prefaces these little tales by saying,

If he had the look of a fury, his humours and passions were suitable to it.

We shall relate two or three more of his extravagancies, which we omitted in the body of his history, by which it will appear to what a pitch of wickedness human nature may arrive if its passions are not checked.

End quote.

In this little passage, I think Johnson gives the game away a little bit.

He tells us he's going to tell us some particularly salacious stories that he thought he should keep separate from the main history.

This almost seems to suggest that he even knew that these were not as reliably sourced stories as the material he included in what he calls the body of his history.

He also tells us that he is recounting these tales so that we may know how bad human nature can become if, quote, its passions are not checked.

In other words, he's saying that he needs to tell us this stuff so we might be morally edified.

Here's some scandalous tales of bad behavior that might hopefully scare the reader straight.

It's as if he's saying, don't get too carried away with your party hard lifestyle, or else before long, you'll be hanging out in brimstone saunas and shooting your friends.

It's unclear if this little bit of moralizing was meant to give the author a little plausible deniability for telling tales of bad behavior.

If ever confronted by prudes who thought he was peddling smut, he could just say, I was only telling these stories so people would know what not to do.

Whether that line was meant to give the stories context or was meant to cover his tale, it still casts more than a little doubt on those stories.

The way I read it, the author seems to be winking at us and saying, here's something a little special.

Maybe it's true, maybe it's not.

The fact that these stories also appear in no other sources beyond Captain Johnson also hurts their credibility.

Some authors, like Kevin Duffis, have argued that because these stories are not reinforced by primary sources, they should be dismissed as myths.

Duffis is even skeptical of the famous description of Blackbeard with the flaming slow matches sticking out of his hat.

No one other than Captain Johnson seems to mention this spooky bit of costuming.

We have depositions and reports from a handful of people who were robbed by Blackbeard, and while some mention his long black beard, no one mentions the ominous cloud of smoke coming from matches in his hair.

According to Duffis, Captain Johnson may have made up this famous detail.

But as I mentioned in the last episode, most pirate historians are actually a bit more charitable to Captain Johnson.

He was clearly a guy who loved a good story and wasn't afraid to pepper his text with some titillating details.

But most historians don't believe he invented the more salacious tales that he told in his history.

Historians like Angus Constam and David Cordingley think that Johnson only wrote what was reported to him by sailors and former pirates.

It's their opinion that these Blackbeard stories were part of the pirates' lore before Johnson put them to paper.

Constam goes so far as to argue that these stories, while probably not true, may have been circulated and encouraged by Blackbeard himself.

He makes the point that intimidation was essential to the craft of piracy.

Pirates were more successful if they could take ships without a struggle.

High seas battles meant casualties, injuries, and potential damage to a ship, the kind of stuff that could make a crew turn on their captain.

An effective pirate needed to get ships to surrender without firing a shot.

A terrifying reputation went a long way to do that.

If you had heard that Blackbeard was a living devil who shot people for fun, you were more likely to surrender to him without a fight.

For this reason, the smoking matches look is actually kind of believable.

Blackbeard was all about theatrics.

The mythology may have been his own creation.

I mean, potentially, we don't have proof of that, but maybe.

It went with the demonic look.

It went with the black flags.

It was all just a part of doing business.

Ironically, there is no evidence that Blackbeard ever killed anyone.

That is, until his climatic final battle.

After raiding boats, he usually let vessels go on their way, unless the boat was too nice to not keep a surprise.

When he took prisoners, he didn't torture them.

Some other pirates like Charles Vane were notorious for making a game out of tormenting captured sailors.

But Blackbeard never did that.

When he captured a boat that was transporting slaves, he sometimes gave the enslaved men an opportunity to join his crew.

Now, I'm definitely not saying that Blackbeard was some paradigm of virtue and a forward-thinking campaigner for human rights.

But for a guy who's often called a cutthroat, he didn't actually cut many throats.

He didn't gain his terrifying reputation because he committed real murders.

His reputation came from looking scary,

doing creepy, hellish things, and having a crew staffed by the Prince of Darkness.

The spooky stories meant that he rarely had to draw a sword or fire a pistol.

But was Blackbeard's image really just pure theatrics, a collection of ghost stories and clever costumes?

Or did this guy actually earn some of his notorious reputation?

There must be some real history behind this larger-than-life persona.

Well, let's find out today on our fake history.

Episode number 90, How Bad Was Blackbeard, Part 2.

Hello, and welcome to Our Fake History.

My name is Sebastian Major, and this is the podcast that explores historical myths and tries to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story that it simply must be told.

Today we are concluding our look at Blackbeard, history's best-known pirate.

As you've probably already realized, this is part two of what is going to be a two-part series.

So if you've not listened to part one, then you should probably go back and give that a listen now.

You're going to want that context to get the most out of today's show.

So go back, listen to part one if you have not already done that.

Back in part one, we explored Blackbeard's murky origins.

We looked at the fact that everything from the pirate's hometown to his real name are still a bit of a mystery.

The commonly held belief that Blackbeard was actually a man named Edward Teach from Bristol, England, isn't really based on much solid documentary evidence.

We also explored how the end of the War of Spanish Succession led formerly legitimate maritime mercenaries known as privateers to turn pirate, creating a boom in maritime robberies during the early 1700s.

Finally, we looked at Blackbeard's relationship with other famous pirates like his mentor Benjamin Hornegold and the hapless gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet.

Now,

one of the many things that amazes me about Blackbeard is how short his entire career was.

If we believe Captain Charles Johnson, then Blackbeard started as a pirate sometime in late 1716, and he was dead by November of 1718.

That is a hot two-year period where Blackbeard rockets from complete obscurity to the world's most recognizable pirate.

This was not a guy who was marauding for decades, steadily building a demonic reputation.

This was a guy who had two crazy summers.

Even the boat that is most prominently associated with Blackbeard, the souped-up French guinea man known as the Queen Anne's Revenge, was only sailed by the pirate for a matter of months.

Now there is a very very good chance that if Blackbeard's story had not been told with such panache by Captain Charles Johnson, the pirate may have vanished from public memory almost as quickly as he arrived.

So what really put Blackbeard on the map?

Well, when we last left the old sea dog, he had just captured the boat that would become his iconic flagship.

Let's tune back in with Blackbeard's story and see what he got up to with the newly refitted Queen Anne's Revenge.

And let's see if we can figure out why this guy became so famous.

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The most audacious bit of piracy ever pulled off by Blackbeard has to be his 1718 blockade of Charlestown, South Carolina.

And yes, before you give me a hard time about pronunciation, I know that these days people call it Charleston, but back in the 1700s, it was Charlestown.

Two words, Charlestown.

Anyway, by the late spring of 1718, Blackbeard was commanding an impressive little fleet of pirate ships.

After using Stede Bonnet's old sloop, the Revenge, to corner a French slave ship, he had his new prize outfitted with over 30 guns and redubbed it the Queen Anne's Revenge.

He then set off on a cruise around the Bay of Honduras, eventually doubling back through the Caribbean on his way to the eastern seaboard of North America.

Along the way, Blackbeard and his crew plundered dozens of boats and commandeered a couple others.

While in the Bay of Honduras, Blackbeard cornered a fast Jamaican sloop called the Adventure, and through his typical combination of intimidation and persuasion, convinced the captain, a man named Captain Harriet, and his entire crew to join his pirate fleet.

By the time Blackbeard was in North American waters, the fleet consisted of Queen Anne's Revenge, the Adventure, Steve Bonnet's old revenge, and a fourth sloop that the sources fail to name.

This meant that there were close to 300 pirates being commanded by Blackbeard in the early months of 1718, which, in the history of Atlantic piracy, is pretty impressive.

Holding together a pirate crew was a tricky proposition in the best of times.

It may come as a bit of a surprise, but pirate ships were actually quite democratic.

Questions like where the boat would sail, who it would attack, when it would put into port were decisions that were often put to votes.

Pirate captains were elected by their crews.

If a captain was seen as weak or ineffective, he was usually replaced.

To stay in command of a pirate fleet, you needed to deliver a steady stream of booty.

And, as many have noted, you needed to keep the crew drunk.

Running out of booze could be the cause of a mutiny.

And for the most part, Blackbeard was quite effective at this.

Over the course of four or five months, from when he first broke away from Benjamin Hornegold to when his fleet arrived off the coast of South Carolina, Blackbeard rarely experienced a dry spell when it came to plunder.

Men followed him because he delivered.

However, a bigger crew meant that more prizes than ever were necessary.

So, Blackbeard devised a plan to make a big score fast.

And that is when he set his eyes on Charlestown.

In 1718, Charlestown was a perfect target for a group of well-armed pirates.

The port was still small, even by colonial standards, but in recent years, a boom in the colony's rice production had turned the city into an economic up-and-comer.

This meant that the boat traffic was increasing.

Rice was being shipped out in greater and greater quantities.

The expanding rice plantations were also demanding more and more slaves.

This meant that the slave ships were now routinely making a northern stop in the town to unload the brutalized people who had been pressed into slavery.

The economic boom also meant that the local Charlestown merchants were becoming wealthier and were demanding more fancy European goods, which of course had to be delivered by sea.

In other words, Charlestown was just big enough to be an attractive hunting ground.

However, unfortunately for the people of South Carolina, it was still considered too small and relatively unimportant to be assigned a full-time Royal Navy guard boat.

New York City and the major ports in Virginia were protected by fully staffed British Navy warships that could make quick work of any boat commanded by a pirate, even a boat as well-armed as the Queen Anne's Revenge.

Charlestown had no such protection.

A well-armed pirate fleet could easily hold the city hostage.

And that is exactly what Blackbeard did.

In May of 1718, Blackbeard's fleet of four boats positioned themselves just outside the Charlestown harbor.

The entrance to the harbor was obstructed by a large sandbar, often called the Charlestown Bar, through which there were just a few navigable channels.

Blackbeard's fleet set up just outside of the Charlestown Bar, well beyond the range of the city's small coastal defenses.

The few cannon that were in the town were positioned to fire on any boat invading the harbor.

But Blackbeard knew that he didn't even need to go into the harbor.

Instead, he sat beyond the bar for about 10 days and captured any ship foolish enough to try and leave Charlestown.

In a week and a half, Blackbeard had stopped and ransacked nine different boats, stripping them of most movable wealth and booze, but usually leaving heavy cargo like loads of rice.

Pirates liked booty that was quickly converted into cash.

Stealing rice meant that you would have to find someone who would buy big quantities of it on the black market.

It was possible, but it was a hassle.

The pirates stole cash, clothes, weapons, jewelry, precious metals, books, navigation equipment, indigo, and all the booze you had on board.

But they usually let you keep your boxes of rice or dried tobacco.

Over the course of the blockade, Captain Charles Johnson's estimated that the pirate fleet stole the equivalent of 1,800 pounds, that's pounds sterling, worth of booty.

Now, that might not sound like a lot, but in today's cash, that would translate into the equivalent of $400,000 American.

Not too bad for 10 days' work.

But Blackbeard's master stroke came after he stopped a ship leaving Charlestown called the Crowley.

The Crowley was valuable not because of the treasure in its hold, but because of its influential passengers.

On board the Crowley were a handful of prominent Charlestonians, including a man named Samuel Ragg, a wealthy local merchant and a member of the Province of Carolina Council.

This meant that Blackbeard now had a well-known local politician as a hostage.

This gave him some incredible leverage over the city of Charlestown.

With his hostages safely locked up, Blackbeard sent a small delegation of pirates on shore to parlay with the local authorities.

Blackbeard's demand was simple.

He wanted a chest filled with 400 pounds worth of medical supplies or medicines as the sources put it.

Now, again, that's 400 pounds as in money, not 400 pounds as in weight.

Either the town turned over the chest of medicines or Blackbeard would kill the hostages, including the venerable Mr.

Rag.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

Medicines?

That doesn't seem like a typical pirate ransom.

Why didn't he ask for gold or jewels?

Why medicine?

Captain Johnson is completely matter-of-fact about this request and his telling of the story.

He doesn't offer a word of explanation, which to me is so weird.

I mean, in the 1700s, would people have really been like, oh yeah, the pirates wanted medicine.

Of course they wanted medicine.

I don't know.

That seems odd to me.

Thankfully, the more recent Blackbeard biographers have tried to bring some clarity to this moment.

For instance, Angus Constam has speculated that Blackbeard would not have demanded these medicines unless they were sorely needed by his crew.

He goes on to suggest that it was quite possible that a large number of Blackbeard's crew had become severely ill, making medicine and medical supplies more valuable than gold.

Constam suggests that perhaps some of his men had contracted the vicious yellow fever while on the Gulf of Honduras, sometimes called the Mosquito Coast.

But that isn't as likely as another contender, syphilis.

Yellow fever can be as brutal as Ebola when it goes untreated.

Blackbeard's fleet seems just a little too effective to be dealing with that kind of illness.

Syphilis, on the other hand, was quite common among pirates who were no strangers to anonymous sex.

Someone in the early stages of syphilis would still be able to fulfill their duties as a crewman.

However, men in the painful second stage of the disease would be dying for a treatment, which at the time was a syringe filled with mercury administered directly to the junk.

This theory has been supported by the fact that this type of syringe, still containing traces of mercury, was recently recovered from a wreck presumed to be that of the Queen Anne's Revenge.

So if that wreck is in fact Blackbeard's, then we can assume that someone on board was getting syphilis treatments.

This little bit of context helps the trunk of medicines make a bit more sense as a ransom.

Blackbeard clearly didn't want to press his luck with Charlestown.

Ask for too much loot, and the townspeople could delay while trying to gather it, making him vulnerable to a potential relief effort from the British Navy.

Medicine was a relatively cheap ransom and something his crew clearly needed because they may all have had venereal disease.

Either way, the people of Charlestown paid up.

Blackbeard got his chest of medicines, the hostages were released, released, and the pirate fleet finally weighed anchor and ended their blockade of the town.

The pirates had made off with a decent haul.

The only problem was he now had to split it between some 300 pirates.

$400,000 split 300 ways all of a sudden becomes pretty measly.

Blackbeard knew that he either needed to get more booty or lose some pirates.

His plan to maximize his profits after the Charlestown Hall may be one of the most wonderfully greasy moves in pirate history.

So, how exactly did the pirate solve his little problem?

Well, let's find out.

The pirate move to beat all pirate moves began just a few days after Blackbeard left the Charlestown harbor on June 10th, 1718.

On that day, the Queen Anne's Revenge ran aground on a sandbar near Beaufort Inlet off the coast of North Carolina.

Now, at first, Blackbeard played this off like it was an accident and had the commander of the Adventure, our old pal Israel Hans, attempt to pull him off the sandbar with a length of rope.

This plan was a disaster and also led to the adventure being grounded and badly damaged.

Now, this type of sloppy seamanship was weirdly out of character for Blackbeard.

He was not the kind of guy who damaged his ship by running into sandbars.

But here's the thing.

This wasn't an accident.

Multiple sources tell us that chronically damaging the Queen Anne's revenge had always been part of Blackbeard's larger plan.

So, why would one willingly destroy what may have been the most fearsome pirate ship ever to sail the Atlantic?

Angus Constam suggests that after Charlestown, Blackbeard saw the boat as a bit of a liability.

The Queen Anne's Revenge was conspicuous, easily identified, and despite her impressive firepower, was no match for a proper British warship.

Ditching the Queen Anne's Revenge still took some guts.

Boats like that don't come around every day.

But this was clearly part of a much larger plan, a plan that Israel Hands was probably in on when he ran the adventure ashore in his ill-fated, or perhaps fake, rescue attempt.

You see, by this time, Blackbeard had clearly gotten wind of a massive new development in the politics of piracy.

Back in the Bahamas, Blackbeard's old mentor, Benjamin Hornegold, had just played host to the colony's new governor, the former privateer, turned pirate hunter, Woods Rogers.

Along with his new post, Governor Rogers was given the explicit mission of ridding the colony and the Caribbean at large of pirates.

To achieve this, the British used both carrots and sticks to get the desired results.

The carrot was a general amnesty for all pirates who surrendered themselves to a British governor before September 5th of 1718.

Any crimes committed before the issuing of the decree would be forgiven.

And even if you committed a few crimes after, there was an understanding that a governor could pardon you of all of those as well, if he was an amenable governor.

The only catch was that you, the pirate, had to retire from piracy permanently.

Anyone still out there engaging in piracy after September 5th could be expected to be hunted down by Woods Rogers or other colony officials, killed in battle, or tried and hung for piracy.

This presented an interesting opportunity for many former pirates.

Remember when I told you that Benjamin Hornegold got out of piracy at the exact right moment?

Well, since he was an early adopter of this pardon, he was able to remake himself as a fully respectable citizen.

He even started hunting pirates under the auspices of Governor Woods Rogers.

This royal decree of pirate amnesty gives us some important context for Blackbeard's next move.

With the Queen Anne's revenge and the adventure both beached and in need of some serious repairs, Blackbeard made a proposal to his old friend, the gentleman pirate, Steed Bonnet.

As you might remember, Steed Bonnet was still Blackbeard's quote-unquote guest aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge at this time, but mostly he just sadly walked the deck in his PJs.

With half the fleet beached, Blackbeard basically said to Steed Bonnet, Look, Steed, I know you haven't been into this whole pirate thing for at least a few months now.

Maybe you should take a handful of your most trusted men, head to shore, and try and get a pardon from the governor of North Carolina.

For Steve Bonnet, this must have seemed like sweet relief.

He just might get out of piracy with his life after all.

But according to Angus Constam, poor Steed was just another pawn in Blackbeard's game.

Constam believes that Blackbeard was just using Bonnet as a bit of a guinea pig here.

Blackbeard was pretty sure that he wouldn't get much leeway from a man like Woods Rogers.

And he definitely could not count on a pardon from the Governor of South Carolina.

I mean, we all remember what just happened at Charlestown.

The Governor of Virginia was also known to be a hard liner when it came to piracy.

Blackbeard, and by extension, Bonnet, had committed some pretty serious acts of piracy after the issuing of the original Decree of Amnesty.

I mean the whole blockade of Charlestown had been post-decree.

However, the governor of North Carolina might just be easier to negotiate with than the more hardline governors nearby.

If Stede Bonnet could get an amnesty from the governor of North Carolina, Maybe Blackbeard could too.

So Bonnet left the fleet behind at Beaufort Inlet, made his way to Bathtown, North Carolina, found his way into an audience with the governor, and sure enough, he was granted an amnesty.

Bonnet and his men were given a full pardon for all of their acts of piracy.

He must have been overjoyed.

But that joy must have immediately evaporated when he got back to Beaufort Inlet, where he expected to find Blackbeard and hopefully two repaired ships.

Instead, he found the Adventure and the Queen Anne's Revenge still beached and stripped of anything valuable.

His own boat, the Revenge, was still floating, but it had been similarly ransacked, stripped of her sails, rigging, and anything else deemed deemed useful.

He also found 250 angry pirates cursing the name of their former captain.

What he didn't find was Blackbeard.

In the two weeks that Bonnet had been away, Blackbeard had everything of value loaded into the famously unnamed sloop in the fleet.

He had the pirates clean out the other ships and put everything on that one unassuming little sloop.

Then, one day, when the majority of the crew were either drunk or otherwise preoccupied on shore, Blackbeard and about 40 of his most trusted men weighed anchor and sailed away with

everything.

All the booty from Charlestown went with them.

Blackbeard may have lost his two best boats, but he ditched about 250 pirates looking for a cut of the treasure.

He also now had the opportunity to quietly slip into North Carolina and get a pardon for all of his dastardly deeds.

It's hard to roll into harbor in the Queen Anne's revenge, if you know what I mean.

At the end of the day, Blackbeard's plan was so simple.

Load the least suspicious boat in the fleet with all the loot, distract the pirates, and then make a run for it.

It was so audacious that it worked perfectly.

Now, in case you're wondering, all of these double-crossed pirates didn't just take this lying down.

When Stede Bonnet got back to Beaufort, these marooned pirates basically forced him to mount an expedition of revenge.

But by the time they got organized and put to sea, Blackbeard had long since slipped away.

For his part, Bonnet would return to a life of piracy, despite the fact that he was never very good at it.

Eventually, he would be caught and hung for his crimes.

Sorry, Steed, turns out that those who live by the sword die by the sword.

As for Blackbeard, he wasn't quite ready to accept that fate.

For his next trick, he was going to try and go straight.

So let's see how that turned out.

In 1718, the governor of North Carolina was a man by the name of Charles Eden.

Like most powerful men in the colony, Eden was a wealthy plantation owner.

Now at the time, North Carolina was slightly less developed than its neighboring colonies, so there weren't even proper government buildings there yet.

This meant that government business was usually conducted in one of Governor Eden's personal residences.

It should perhaps then come as no surprise that many of the governor's actions have the air of sleazy backroom deals made between conspirators.

In other words, this guy was exactly Blackbeard's kind of guy.

In late June of 1718, after evading Stede Bonnet and his crew of vengeful double-crossed pirates, Blackbeard and the last of his loyal crew made it to Bath, North Carolina, where they promptly surrendered to Governor Eden.

Now, Eden was amazingly lenient with the pirate.

Not only did he forgive him of his post-decree crimes, he let him settle in Bath, gave him an official title to his stolen sloop that Blackbeard convinced him was a prize of war, and even gave him permission to sail to St.

Thomas in hopes of getting a letter of mark from the Dutch government and going straight as a privateer.

In the summer of 1718, Blackbeard split his time between the town of Bath and the inner channel of Orocoke Island, known as Orocoke Inlet, where the pirate liked to anchor his sloop.

This little anchorage off Orocoke would become one of the pirates' most notorious hangouts.

He was known to host wild parties there in Orocoke Inlet and rub elbows with other famous pirates like Charles Vane and Calico Jack while they were passing through the area.

Orocoke would also eventually become the site of Blackbeard's infamous last stand, but more on that in a minute.

It was during this brief period when Blackbeard had officially gone straight that we get one of the more nasty stories about him.

Captain Charles Johnson reports that while he was living in Bathtown, Blackbeard managed to get married to a young woman who was only sixteen years old.

According to Johnson, Governor Eden himself performed the ceremony.

Now this marriage was scandalous for a number of reasons.

Firstly, because Blackbeard apparently had 13 other wives scattered around the Atlantic, because, you know, of course he was a polygamist.

But that's not the worst part of the story.

Captain Johnson tells us, quote, while his sloop lay in Orocoke Inlet, and he ashore at a plantation where his wife lived, with whom, after he had lain all night, it was his custom to invite five or six of his brutal companions to come ashore, and he would force her to prostitute herself to all of them, one after another, before his face.

So

this is pretty brutal.

Honestly, of all the Blackbeard stories, this is the one I find the most upsetting.

Having his crew gang rape this girl for a laugh.

It's obviously disgusting.

But this story is about as reliable as the tale of the devil serving aboard his ship.

There's no documentation that can be found that Blackbeard was married in North Carolina, let alone married by the governor himself.

The 14 wives thing also seems to be pure rumor.

Even Captain Johnson admits that it was something he was quote-unquote told.

Some have speculated that the wives thing may have been in reference to all the casual female companions that Blackbeard brought on the boat, but even that is pure conjecture.

So did this brutal sexual assault actually take place?

Well, there's no way to know for sure.

But if Blackbeard was married, he left absolutely no record of it behind.

Now, even though this story probably isn't true, it does illustrate the perceived closeness between Blackbeard and Governor Eden, the alleged officiant at his wedding.

Indeed, Eden would eventually be accused of not only sheltering Blackbeard, but personally profiting off of his crimes.

You see, even though Blackbeard promised to give up piracy, he may have only done so for like a few weeks, if he ever did it at all.

By late August, Blackbeard was definitely back robbing ships along the eastern seaboard.

But now he seemed to be doing it with the tacit blessing of Governor Eden.

Around that time, Blackbeard plundered and commandeered two French ships.

He then took took them back to his hideout at Orocoke, but they were eventually discovered by the North Carolinian officials.

When questioned, Blackbeard's excuse for having the boats was that he found them floating derelict in the ocean.

I love that.

It's like the ultimate high school thug response.

Hey, uh, where'd you get all these stolen Rolexes?

Oh, uh, I uh found them.

Right.

A tribunal was held in North Carolina to get to the bottom of the issue.

And what do you know?

The judge, one Tobias Knight, accepted Blackbeard's very shady story.

Yeah, he just found the boats.

Nothing to see here.

Knight then awarded the twenty hogsheads of sugar that made up the ship's cargo to himself and Governor Eden.

Everything else on board was given over to Blackbeard and his men.

Now, if you think this sounds suspicious, then you're not the only one.

It wouldn't be long before a number of prominent North Carolinians would accuse Governor Eden and Tobias Knight of both actively colluding with Blackbeard.

While Eden's guilt was never entirely proved, many have speculated that Blackbeard and the governor had some type of agreement.

The governor would let Blackbeard lurk in Orocoke Inlet and would turn a blind eye to his piracy so long as he got a cut of whatever was plundered.

Now to be fair, there is no hard proof of this kind of quid pro quo arrangement, but the very sketchy tribunal over the French ships has had people speculating ever since.

On top of that, you have the fact that all of the neighboring colonial governors still saw Blackbeard as a wanted criminal, even after Governor Eden officially pardoned him.

Ultimately, it would be the governor of Virginia who finally took decisive action to stop the pirate.

The Virginia governor was a man by the name of Alexander Spotswood, and he was basically the polar opposite of the pirate-tolerant Governor Eden.

Spotswood's colony had been disrupted by the arrival of many of Blackbeard's marooned former crewmen.

Now, even though Spotswood didn't really have the legal right to prosecute pirates who had committed crimes outside of his jurisdiction, he claimed that the emergency presented by Edward Teach in North Carolina gave him special extra judicial powers.

So, Spotswood put together a force of pirate hunters.

Part of the force would approach Bath by land and would include a number of well-known North Carolinians, so it didn't look like the colony was being invaded by Virginians.

Then there was the naval force.

A certain Lieutenant Robert Maynard was given the command of two commandeered sloops and a crew of 57 men from the Royal Navy to capture Blackbeard, dead or alive.

The colonial government in Virginia even sweetened the deal by placing a new bounty on Blackbeard's head.

This bounty was notably larger than what the crown typically offered for pirates.

So the governor meant business.

On his journey south, Maynard learned from boats he stopped along the way that Blackbeard was currently anchored in his favorite haunt on the inner side of Orocoke Island.

Now, given that these were particularly shallow waters, this hampered Maynard's options for how he could attack the pirate.

He would need his boats to be light, so they would be less likely to be grounded on the area's countless sandbars.

This meant no heavy cannon could be on board.

The British officers needed to take Blackbeard with just hand weapons.

Our sources tell us that Maynard and his two sloops arrived at the northern entrance of the Orocoke Inlet on the evening of November 21, 1718.

There, Maynard remained hidden from view and sent a few small boats in to do some reconnaissance.

He learned that Blackbeard was indeed anchored in the channel, and he seemed to be hosting another one of his infamous parties.

From there, Maynard's plan was simple.

He would wait to attack until dawn, when hopefully the pirates would be hung over, surprised, and slow to respond.

The next morning, Maynard launched his attack.

Now, the details of this battle are somewhat blurry, and they vary from source to source.

We have Maynard's version of events, and we also have a version that appears in Captain Johnson's history.

But here's what we know.

Maynard did catch the pirates unaware, but the surprise didn't last long.

Blackbeard quickly cut anchor and tried to escape.

Then the accounts get confused.

Either Blackbeard ran aground on a sandbar, or both of Maynard's boats ran aground on a sandbar, or maybe all of the boats ran aground on different sandbars.

The order of all of this is unclear, but it seems like over the course of the confrontation, all of the boats were grounded at one point or another.

Now, eventually, the boats did get within shouting distance of one another, and Maynard tells us that he spotted Blackbeard, who screamed at the young lieutenant.

Maynard tells us,

At our first salutation, Blackbeard drank damnation to me and my men, whom he styled sniveling puppies, saying he would neither give nor take quarter.

End quote.

That's kind of awesome.

Calling full-grown men sniveling puppies is the best thing ever.

The next time you scream at someone in traffic, do me a favor and call them a sniveling puppy.

Now we also know that Blackbeard did manage to unleash a massive volley of cannon fire that broadsided Maynard's main boat and seriously damaged the vessel.

But Maynard, who himself had been a privateer at one point, clearly had a few tricks up his sleeve.

His move was to play more hurt than he actually was.

While Blackbeard's cannon had legitimately killed a number of his crewmen, Maynard used the smoke and clamor of the attack to hide his surviving crew below deck.

We're told that Blackbeard saw a clear deck and a wounded ship and thought that the time was right to board it and hopefully capture it.

The pirates clamoured aboard Maynard's ship with grappling hooks.

Just when they thought they had the young Navy officer cornered, Maynard gave the signal and what was left of his crew burst out of their hiding place below deck and completely caught the pirates by surprise.

What followed was a wild melee between the pirates and the navy crewmen.

Even though the navymen had sustained some losses, they had the pirates outnumbered, and soon the battle turned in their direction.

Now we're told that Maynard and Blackbeard actually found each other in the Fracas and engaged in hand-to-hand combat.

We're told that the men both fired pistols at each other from point-blank range.

Maynard managed to connect with Blackbeard and Blackbeard, well, unfortunately for him, he missed.

Then the men drew swords and proceeded to duel.

Now, in one version of this story, Blackbeard is said to have broken Maynard's sword with his mighty cutlass.

But despite this momentary upper hand, it wasn't long before Maynard's crew closed in on Blackbeard.

We're told that another crewman eventually got close enough to jump on Blackbeard's back and stab him fatally.

Now, you know I love a story of a dramatic final battle, but the hand-to-hand combat really sets off alarm bells for me.

I mean, super cinematic moments like this where the main hero and the main villain find each other in the heat of battle and face off just very rarely happen.

But here's the thing.

All the sources seem to agree that this fight did take place.

The dramatic detail of the broken sword doesn't always appear, but the Maynard Blackbeard face-off really was a real thing.

Even though it feels like it should be a total myth.

I love it when those things are real.

That's awesome.

In his final summation of the conflict, Maynard reported that before he was finally killed, Blackbeard had been shot five times and had been cut over 20.

And this was in an official report to the Admiralty, so it's probably true.

That means Blackbeard was legitimately super tough.

But it wasn't enough to save him.

To add insult to injury, Maynard then decapitated the pirate and hung his distinctive bearded head from the bowsprit of his ship.

Ironically, this was the kind of gruesome theatricality that Blackbeard himself might have appreciated.

Now, there's also a little story that after Blackbeard was decapitated, the crew threw his body overboard, only to watch it swim around the boat three times before it eventually sunk to the bottom of the briny deep.

Now, as much as that story is awesome, it is definitely just a legend.

It appears in zero historical sources from the period.

Even Captain Charles Johnson, who loves a good scandalous story, doesn't include that one.

So,

in the end, end,

how bad was Blackbeard?

Was he the most successful pirate?

Well,

no.

He did manage to make off with some serious loot in his day, but men like Blackbart Roberts technically made more money at the job.

Was he the most violent pirate?

No,

definitely not.

Before his final battle with Maynard, there's no proof that Blackbeard ever killed anyone.

He certainly threatened a lot of violence in his day, but verifiable reports of real violence are surprisingly few.

The worst stories about him, whether it's grinning while his teenage bride was raped, or arbitrarily maiming a friend to look tough in front of a crew, are not corroborated by any sources beyond Captain Johnson's history.

That means we can't totally trust them.

So Blackbeard was probably not as bad as his demonic reputation would have us believe.

However, he was one of the most clever and devious pirates ever to fly the black flag.

Hustling a rich pirate poser out of a boat, blockading an entire city until they gave you syphilis medication, marooning 250 people so you could get a healthier cut of the booty, and cutting a deal with a shady governor.

Well, this is some classic pirate behavior.

So while Blackbeard was not the most successful or most violent pirate, he may have been the most piratey pirate.

The legend that was spread by Captain Charles Johnson only served to solidify that in our collective imagination.

And if you don't believe me, well,

you're a sniveling puppy.

Okay,

that's all for this week.

Join us again in two weeks' time when we will explore another historical myth.

Before we go this week, I just want to remind everyone that I am going to be appearing live at the Collingwood Museum in Collingwood, Ontario on Saturday, June 22nd at 7 p.m.

You can still get tickets to that event.

Go to my Facebook page, facebook.com/slash our fake history or my Twitter feed at OurfakeHistory and click on the link that is pinned to the top of those pages.

Hopefully I see a bunch of you there at that event.

Afterwards, feel free to come up and say hello and chat.

It's always nice to meet people that listen to the show.

It's really cool.

The voting for the upcoming merch is now closed.

So those of you who are patrons who voted on the images you wanted to see on upcoming t-shirts and mugs that will be available very soon.

The voting is now closed.

The number one image, surprisingly, was the Trojan horse question mark image from way back in season one?

That's a cool one, but honestly, I'm surprised that that one was

number one, number one with a bullet, too.

Really blew the other ones out of the water.

But I'll be showing you guys what the top 10 images were over the next few days on social media.

And then very soon, hopefully, we will have some merch available for purchase.

Speaking of Patreon, I need to give a shout out to the following people.

Big ups to Nathan Richardson, to Noor Kittenh, to Imran Demerci,

to Ashley Dowden,

to Jessica Kenney, to Joel,

to James Astley, to Donald Roberts, to Peter Shamrock, to Heather Eileen Weiss,

to Ashley, and to Kareem Shama.

All of you lovely people have decided to pledge $5

or more every month on Patreon.

So you know what that means?

You're beautiful human beings.

Thank you so, so much for your support.

Thank you to everyone supporting at the $1 level, everyone supporting at the $3 level, everyone who writes me nice messages, everyone that writes reviews on Apple Podcasts or other podcasting apps where you can write reviews.

Thanks to everyone that listens, likes the show, recommends it to their friends.

Just thanks a lot.

I couldn't do this if it was not for you lovely people.

So thank you again.

If you want to get in touch with me, you can always send me an email at ourfakehistory at gmail.com.

You can hit me up on Twitter at Ourfake History, or you can go to the Facebook page, that's facebook.com/slash our fakehistory, and start following along there.

The theme music for the show comes to us from Dirty Church.

You can check out Dirty Church at dirtychurch.bandcamp.com.

And all the other music that you heard on the show today was written and recorded by me.

My name is Sebastian Major.

And remember, just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't real.

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