Return to Book Page. Preview — Blackbeard by Paul Boone. In , the mystery of ancient evil was still very much alive. Witches plagued the shadowed and troubled corners of the world.
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Winged beasts reportedly burnt down cities from their dominion in the sky. Monsters sank ships and stole entire fortunes while devouring people whole. Evil was everywhere as devils and demons playfully tortured mankind in an era where humanity str In , the mystery of ancient evil was still very much alive. Evil was everywhere as devils and demons playfully tortured mankind in an era where humanity struggled to survive. One such devil of the dark wrought so much terror upon the colonized Americas that his name alone would haunt the minds of men for generations to come.
Yet very little was actually recorded about the one they called Blackbeard, thus leaving the horrors of his legacy up to interpretation. What was Blackbeard actually like? Was he truly a master of the dark arts as some claimed? Or did his fearsome reputation simply replace the man with the myth? What about the rest of the world? How did they view Blackbeard? And more importantly, how would he come to view himself? From the eyes of ship captains and brothel owners to pirate commanders and the mind of Blackbeard, relive this tantalizing tale based on true events as author Paul Boone immerses his readers in a world forgotten so long ago.
Kindle Edition , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Blackbeard , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Apr 27, Kevin Bowser rated it liked it. I don't think I have ever read a pirate book before. But I think I will again. Not so much because this one was super fantastic. It was good but not great. Definitely not super fantastic. However the setting and the characters were very fascinating and I could see where this would be fertile ground for many writers.
Aug 10, Victoria L. Trifu McKinney rated it really liked it Shelves: I think this book is a very good indication of what great things are to come from Paul Boone.
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His writing is descriptive as well as full of action. For a further review, see my website: Jul 09, Cindy Woods rated it did not like it. Extremely boring This is so dry I could barely finish reading it. It is worse than most high school history tomes. The writing is choppy and hard to follow. I would not recommend this one to another reader. Feb 25, Peter Cornell rated it it was ok. Probably shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht , he moved there from Jamaica, and, along with most privateers once involved in the war, became involved in piracy.
Possibly about , he joined the crew of Captain Benjamin Hornigold , a renowned pirate who operated from New Providence's safe waters. In Hornigold placed Teach in charge of a sloop he had taken as a prize. Teach and his quartermaster, William Howard, [nb 1] may at this time have struggled to control their crews.
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It was during this cruise with Hornigold that the earliest known report of Teach was made, in which he is recorded as a pirate in his own right, in command of a large crew. In a report made by a Captain Mathew Munthe on an anti-piracy patrol for North Carolina, "Thatch" was described as operating "a sloop 6 gunns [ sic ] and about 70 men".
The pirates' flotilla now consisted of three ships; Teach on Revenge , Teach's old sloop and Hornigold's Ranger. By October, another vessel had been captured and added to the small fleet. As a former British privateer, Hornigold attacked only his old enemies, but for his crew, the sight of British vessels filled with valuable cargo passing by unharmed became too much, and at some point toward the end of he was demoted. Whether Teach had any involvement in this decision is unknown, [16] but Hornigold quickly retired from piracy.
He took Ranger and one of the sloops, leaving Teach with Revenge and the remaining sloop. They each fired a broadside across its bulwarks, killing several of its crew, and forcing its captain to surrender. Teach and his crews sailed the vessel south along Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to Bequia , where they disembarked her crew and cargo, and converted the ship for their own use.
Teach may have recruited some of their slaves, but the remainder were left on the island and were later recaptured by the returning crew of Mauvaise Rencontre. By this time Teach had placed his lieutenant Richards in command of Bonnet's Revenge. After a lengthy engagement, he forced the large and well-armed merchant ship to surrender.
He ordered her to move closer to the shore, disembarked her crew and emptied her cargo holds, and then burned and sank the vessel. Her captain, Henry Bostock, and crew, remained Teach's prisoners for about eight hours, and were forced to watch as their sloop was ransacked. Bostock, who had been held aboard Queen Anne's Revenge , was returned unharmed to Margaret and was allowed to leave with his crew.
Bostock's deposition details Teach's command of two vessels: The captain believed that the larger ship carried valuable gold dust, silver plate, and "a very fine cup" supposedly taken from the commander of Great Allen. Bostock also claimed that Teach had questioned him about the movements of local ships [nb 3] , but also that he had seemed unsurprised when Bostock told him of an expected royal pardon from London for all pirates.
Bostock's deposition describes Teach as a "tall spare man with a very black beard which he wore very long". It is the first recorded account of Teach's appearance and is the source of his cognomen, Blackbeard. Johnson described him as "such a figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a fury from hell to look more frightful.
He wore knee-length boots and dark clothing, topped with a wide hat and sometimes a long coat of brightly coloured silk or velvet. Johnson also described Teach in times of battle as wearing "a sling over his shoulders, with three brace of pistols, hanging in holsters like bandoliers; and stuck lighted matches Slow match under his hat", [28] [nb 4] the latter apparently to emphasise the fearsome appearance he wished to present to his enemies. Teach's movements between late and early are not known.
He and Bonnet were probably responsible for an attack off Sint Eustatius in December Although no confirmation exists that these two ships were controlled by Teach and Bonnet, author Angus Konstam believes it very likely they were.
In March , while taking on water at Turneffe Island east of Belize , both ships spotted the Jamaican logwood cutting sloop Adventure making for the harbour. She was stopped and her captain, Harriot , invited to join the pirates. Harriot and his crew accepted the invitation, and Teach sent over a crew to sail Adventure making Israel Hands the captain. His fleet then sailed to Grand Cayman where they captured a "small turtler".
They then sailed to the wrecks of the Spanish fleet , off the eastern coast of Florida. There Teach disembarked the crew of the captured Spanish sloop, before proceeding north to the port of Charles Town, South Carolina, attacking three vessels along the way.
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By May , Teach had awarded himself the rank of Commodore and was at the height of his power. All vessels entering or leaving the port were stopped, and as the town had no guard ship , [43] its pilot boat was the first to be captured. Over the next five or six days about nine vessels were stopped and ransacked as they attempted to sail past Charles Town Bar , where Teach's fleet was anchored.
One such ship, headed for London with a group of prominent Charles Town citizens which included Samuel Wragg a member of the Council of the Province of Carolina , was the Crowley. Her passengers were questioned about the vessels still in port and then locked below decks for about half a day. Teach informed the prisoners that his fleet required medical supplies from the colonial government of South Carolina, and that if none were forthcoming, all prisoners would be executed, their heads sent to the Governor and all captured ships burnt.
Wragg agreed to Teach's demands, and a Mr. Marks and two pirates were given two days to collect the drugs. Teach moved his fleet, and the captured ships, to within about five or six leagues from land. Three days later a messenger, sent by Marks, returned to the fleet; Marks's boat had capsized and delayed their arrival in Charles Town.
Teach granted a reprieve of two days, but still the party did not return. He then called a meeting of his fellow sailors and moved eight ships into the harbour, causing panic within the town. When Marks finally returned to the fleet, he explained what had happened. On his arrival he had presented the pirates' demands to the Governor and the drugs had been quickly gathered, but the two pirates sent to escort him had proved difficult to find; they had been busy drinking with friends and were finally discovered, drunk.
Teach kept to his side of the bargain and released the captured ships and his prisoners—albeit relieved of their valuables, including the fine clothing some had worn. Teach's flotilla sailed northward along the Atlantic coast and into Topsail Inlet commonly known as Beaufort Inlet , off the coast of North Carolina.
There they intended to careen their ships to scrape their hulls, but on 10 June, the Queen Anne's Revenge ran aground on a sandbar, cracking her main-mast and severely damaging many of her timbers. Teach ordered several sloops to throw ropes across the flagship in an attempt to free her. A sloop commanded by Israel Hands of Adventure also ran aground, and both vessels appeared to be damaged beyond repair, [47] leaving only Revenge and the captured Spanish sloop. Teach had at some stage learnt of the offer of a royal pardon and probably confided in Bonnet his willingness to accept it.
Although in theory this left Bonnet and Teach at risk of being hanged for their actions at Charles Town Bar, most authorities could waive such conditions. Teach thought that Governor Charles Eden was a man he could trust, but to make sure, he waited to see what would happen to another captain. He then travelled back to Beaufort Inlet to collect the Revenge and the remainder of his crew, intending to sail to Saint Thomas Island to receive a commission.
Unfortunately for him, Teach had stripped the vessel of its valuables and provisions, and had marooned its crew; Bonnet set out for revenge, but was unable to find him. All but four were tried and hanged in Charles Town. The author Robert Lee surmised that Teach and Hands intentionally ran the ships aground to reduce the fleet's crew complement, increasing their share of the spoils.
During the trial of Bonnet's crew, Revenge ' s boatswain Ignatius Pell testified that "the ship was run ashore and lost, which Thatch [Teach] caused to be done. He suggested that Bonnet do the same, and as war between the Quadruple Alliance of and Spain was threatening, to consider taking a privateer's commission from England. Lee suggests that Teach also offered Bonnet the return of his ship Revenge.
It was prudent therefore for Teach not to linger for too long, although wrecking the ship was a somewhat extreme measure. He may have done this to stifle any protest they made, if they guessed their captain's plans. Bonnet rescued them two days later. During July and August he travelled between his base in the town and his sloop off Ocracoke. Johnson's account states that he married the daughter of a local plantation owner, although there is no supporting evidence for this.
Eden gave Teach permission to sail to St Thomas to seek a commission as a privateer a useful way of removing bored and troublesome pirates from the small settlement , and Teach was given official title to his remaining sloop, which he renamed Adventure. By the end of August he had returned to piracy, and in the same month the Governor of Pennsylvania issued a warrant for his arrest, but by then Teach was probably operating in Delaware Bay , some distance away.
He took two French ships leaving the Caribbean, moved one crew across to the other, and sailed the remaining ship back to Ocracoke. Ocracoke Inlet was Teach's favourite anchorage. It was a perfect vantage point from which to view ships travelling between the various settlements of northeast Carolina, and it was from there that Teach first spotted the approaching ship of Charles Vane , another English pirate.
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Several months earlier Vane had rejected the pardon brought by Woodes Rogers and escaped the men-of-war the English captain brought with him to Nassau. He had also been pursued by Teach's old commander, Benjamin Hornigold, who was by then a pirate hunter. As it spread throughout the neighbouring colonies, the news of Teach and Vane's impromptu party worried the Governor of Pennsylvania enough to send out two sloops to capture the pirates.
As head of a Crown colony , Spotswood viewed the proprietary colony of North Carolina with contempt; he had little faith in the ability of the Carolinians to control the pirates, who he suspected would be back to their old ways, disrupting Virginian commerce, as soon as their money ran out. Spotswood learnt that William Howard, the former quartermaster of Queen Anne's Revenge , was in the area, and believing that he might know of Teach's whereabouts had the pirate and his two slaves arrested.
Spotswood's council claimed that Teach's presence was a crisis and that under a statute of William III , the governor was entitled to try Howard without a jury. The charges referred to several acts of piracy supposedly committed after the pardon's cut-off date, in "a sloop belonging to ye subjects of the King of Spain", but ignored the fact that they took place outside Spotswood's jurisdiction and in a vessel then legally owned. Another charge cited two attacks, one of which was the capture of a slave ship off Charles Town Bar, from which one of Howard's slaves was presumed to have come.
Spotswood had obtained from Howard valuable information on Teach's whereabouts, [65] and he planned to send his forces across the border into North Carolina to capture him. He also wrote to the Lords of Trade , suggesting that the Crown might benefit financially from Teach's capture. Spotswood personally financed the operation, possibly believing that Teach had fabulous treasures hidden away. Lieutenant Robert Maynard of HMS Pearl was given command of two commandeered sloops, to approach the town from the sea. Maynard and the detachment from HMS Pearl took the larger of the two vessels and named her Jane ; the rest took Ranger , commanded by one of Maynard's officers, a Mister Hyde.
Some from the two ships' civilian crews remained aboard. Included in Brand's force were several North Carolinians, including Colonel Moore and Captain Jeremiah Vail, sent to put down any local objection to the presence of foreign soldiers. Moore went into the town to see if Teach was there, reporting back that he was not, but that the pirate was expected at "every minute. They returned two days later and reported on what eventually transpired.
He stopped all traffic from entering the inlet—preventing any warning of his presence—and posted a lookout on both sloops to ensure that Teach could not escape to sea. Johnson reported that the pirate had "no more than twenty-five men on board" and that he "gave out to all the vessels that he spoke with that he had forty". At daybreak, preceded by a small boat taking soundings , Maynard's two sloops entered the channel.
The small craft was quickly spotted by Adventure and fired at as soon as it was within range of her guns. While the boat made a quick retreat to the Jane , Teach cut the Adventure ' s anchor cable. His crew hoisted the sails and the Adventure manoeuvred to point her starboard guns toward Maynard's sloops, which were slowly closing the gap. Adventure then turned toward the beach of Ocracoke Island, heading for a narrow channel.
Johnson claimed that there was an exchange of small-arms fire following which Adventure ran aground on a sandbar , and Maynard anchored and then lightened his ship to pass over the obstacle. Another version claimed that Jane and Ranger ran aground, although Maynard made no mention of this in his log.
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Reported exchange of views between Teach and Maynard [78] [nb 11]. What is certain though is that Adventure turned her guns on the two ships and fired. The broadside was devastating; in an instant, Maynard had lost as much as a third of his forces. Hyde was dead and his second and third officers either dead or seriously injured.
His sloop was so badly damaged that it played no further role in the attack. In the aftermath of Teach's overwhelming attack, Jane and Ranger may also have been grounded; the battle would have become a race to see who could float their ship first. The lieutenant had kept many of his men below deck and in anticipation of being boarded told them to prepare for close fighting. Teach watched as the gap between the vessels closed, and ordered his men to be ready.
Blackbeard: To Live by the Drink, to Die by the Sword
The two vessels contacted one another as the Adventure ' s grappling hooks hit their target and several grenades, made from powder and shot-filled bottles and ignited by fuses, broke across the sloop's deck. As the smoke cleared, Teach led his men aboard, buoyant at the sight of Maynard's apparently empty ship, his men firing at the small group formed by the lieutenant and his men at the stern. The rest of Maynard's men then burst from the hold, shouting and firing. The plan to surprise Teach and his crew worked; the pirates were apparently taken aback at the assault.
Teach rallied his men and the two groups fought across the deck, which was already slick with blood from those killed or injured by Teach's broadside. Maynard and Teach fired their flintlocks at each other, then threw them away. Teach drew his cutlass and managed to break Maynard's sword. Against superior training and a slight advantage in numbers, the pirates were pushed back toward the bow, allowing the Jane ' s crew to surround Maynard and Teach, who was by then completely isolated.