Empire: World History - 196. Blackbeard’s Reign of Terror

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

“At our first salutation he drank damnation to me and my men who styled cowardly puppies saying he would neither give nor take quarter…” By the end of November 1717 Blackbeard had become one of the most feared pirates of his age. Having declared war upon the British empire in revenge for his imprisoned brethren in Boston, he reigned down violence and destruction upon the eastern seaboard of North America, disrupting trade and causing havoc. By 1718 he had a devastating fleet of some six ships, helmed by his own flagship and one of the most famous pirate vessels of all time: the Queen Anne’s Revenge, a former French slaver. Finally, after blockading Charleston in exchange for a mere box of medicine, the British navy decided to take decisive action and hunt Blackbeard down. The man they sent for the job was  Lieutenant Robert Maynard, who finally found his terrifying foe anchored on an island off North Carolina. Taking Blackbeard’s pirates by surprise, a bloody battle ensued that would see a legendary pirate duel to the death… Join William and Anita as they discuss Blackbeard’s terrifying reign of fear, the climax of his cataclysmic career, his downfall, and the astounding duel that would seal his bloody fate… To buy William's book: https://coles-books.co.uk/the-golden-road-by-william-dalrymple-signed-edition To buy David's book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Suppressing-Piracy-Early-Eighteenth-Century-ebook/dp/B0917NM46Y/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter. Sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Dead men tell no tales. Ah, but they do tell tales. So says I, Blackbeard. Dead men tell no tales. Take heed, wretched curs. Your fight is sealed. We're getting into this.

Gosh, should we do fake pirate accents? Ha ha! Ha! Ha! Hello! And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arn. And me, William Durimpole. Yeah, here we are.

Can I just say, we started off with Blackbeard as a disembodied voice on Pirates of the Caribbean, just in case you were wondering where that epic drama came from. Only the purest historical sources here on Empire. No, we're continuing on from the last episode, where we discussed the early life. and career of Edward Thatch, otherwise known as Edward Teach, because of a typo we learned, Blackbeard, as he later became known, the most feared pirate of his time. And we're delighted to be joined again by historian and specialists in all things pirity to discuss the height of rain and terror.

Big drum roll in your best pirate accent gone. David Wilson. Thank you very much. Does it make your toes curl, David, does it? You would thank I'd be used to it by now. Sorry. I can only say sorry. Look, in the last episode, we were talking about the golden age of pirates,

and that was the 17th and 18th centuries, where pirates were capitalising on the rise of trading companies. Like the East India Company, and it is the enemy in Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah, exactly like the East India Company. So let's sort of hold hands with where we left off, and we'd sort of left you around about April 1717, where Blackbeard's close friend and pirate comrade had died when his ship was caught by a storm.

and sunk. I mean, first of all, let me just double-check with our fact-checking Zah. Any of that, not-bollocks? Does the need to make that all up? No, that was great, actually, not bullocks at all. So in April 1717, you have the Ouida. So the Wida is captain by, at this point, Samuel Bellamy, who was another pirate who had been operating in New Providence, but he had captured the slaving vessel, the Wida, as it passed through the Windward Passage on the way to the Bahamas. And it was a large vessel that he armed with guns and had room for more crew members and room for more cargo and for more plunder as well. So it was this substantial prize, one of the biggest pirate vessels of the time, the WADA. And what happened to the enslaved cargo? It's a good question. So we're not

sure when it comes to the Wida itself. We don't know what happened to the enslaved cargo, but what would tend to happen is either the pirates would hand the enslaved cargo back to the slavers themselves. Oh no, really? Yeah, so although we have this image of pirates sort of freeing enslaved persons. Exactly, and sort of colourblind pirate crews that are a kind of measure of multi-ethnic heaven. No, all rubbish, yeah. Unfortunately, all rubbish, yeah. So there were definitely black pirates. There were definitely free black mariners on board pirate vessels, but they were just as likely to be enslaved labourers as well. Just as I was throughout the Atlantic world, there was free black mariners and enslaved labourers on board vessels. But also handing back your cargo to the slaver, that is

just, I'm not liking them at all very much. Blackbird is the same as we'll come to. Okay, well, the weeder then it's wrecked by a storm, it sinks. And all of those on board, I mean, it's thanks to Governor's chute of Massachusetts, are they fished out of the water or just plucked off the wreck, or what happens to the pirates that he captures? Most on board the weeder actually die, so in the shipwreck itself, most die, including Samuel Bellamy, but there's another vessel alongside them, the Mary Ann, and a few of those crew members survive.

There's seven in total who survive, and they're quickly captured and taken to Boston and imprisoned there. There's a quote, under strong guard and sufficiently bound from county to county sheriff to sheriff. So these are high security risks, these guys. And also, I mean, you know, the image that's painted is of these beleaguered pirates who've survived the death of their comrades. They're put in prison cages and they are destined for the noose. And this news reaches Blackbeard and he is furious. How dare you treat my pirate brothers like this?

And it sets a light up under him. Exactly. So what seems to happen from this point on is that, That's really does start to terrorise the eastern seaboard at this point. Really, in response, it seems to this attack, to this execution of pirates in Boston, because it's either, this is a sort of pirate brethren, who doesn't want sort of them to be executed, but actually I think it's more, this is what happens if you capture us and you execute us, this is what's going to happen, is that we will terrorise the coast.

So you take one of ours, we'll take ten of yours, kind of thing. Exactly. And what they also start to do, which is even worse than just taking the vessels and attacking these mariners, is they take the property of these merchants, particularly from Boston, and they just start to turn it overboard. So anything they don't want,

they just start to dump it into the ocean. So there'd be a completely ruin in these voyages as well. So they're hitting them where it hurts. So, I mean, Boston is not, as we know from tea parties, if you're, you know, they don't take this kind of thing lying down. Is there not a response from New England? Yeah, so these six pirates who are captured, well, the seven captured,

but six of them are found guilty and executed, not too long thereafter. But also, Boston starts to become. one of these more prominent anti-piracy ports, and they do start to outfit even their own vessels to go out and try to hunt pirates and to try to capture any who are operating nearby. Is there an awareness that New Providence is the centre of the Hornets Nest, so to speak, that all these vessels are operating out of this archipelago? It's really well known.

So by this point, everyone knows what's happened to New Providence. Everyone knows that this is now a pirate nest. The problem is that no one has the strength of the resources to attack it. They're all extremely scared of going up against these pirates because they do. have large vessels, large cannons and large crews. So no one can quite coordinate against them. And they have the reputation for being nutters as well. So people are slightly scared of taking them on. The well cultivated mutter image. So in response, this is the bit I like best, in response to the execution of the crew, Blackbeard declares war on the British Empire. Go for it,

David. Tell us what happens next. Yeah, so he declares war on at least the eastern seaboard. And they do start to terrorise this region. They take lots of vessels. They're dumping property into the water. They're even burning vessels as well. So any vessels they don't want, they start to burn some of them as well, setting them a light. And they do this for a good few months. But then it gets

to winter time and no one wants to be on the eastern seaboard in winter. So they go back to the Caribbean and start to terrorise the Caribbean at this point in time. I love it. They go back for a sunny winter break in the Bahamas. No, no, it's not a break because they're going to do some more terrorising where it's warmer, where they can wear the short sleeve.

as opposed to the anorak. You know, the dumping the stuff over the side, I love this story. You know, there's one merchant aboard one of the ships that Blackbeard's taken. And he just stands there and watches as about £1,000 worth of his personal cargo. It's tipped over the side. And he's begging, please, no, not that box. No, leave me that.

Oh, God, not that box. And finally. Beggs to be allowed to keep enough cloth to make just one suit of clothes. Yes, just that. And you know what? And Blackbeard looks at him and goes, nah. And just tips it all over. throws the last bolt of textiles overboard.

Yeah. And when you think that prior to this point when he was operating with Hornagolds, they were actually quite, I'm going to say nice, but they were more sort of pleasant pirates, let's say, they would take goods from merchant vessels, but often they would leave a lot of the cargo

with these individuals as well. So no more Robin Hood. Exactly. No more nice blackbeard. Okay, so they've gone off of their summer, not vacation, but summer pillaging, sunny and clients.

Is the reason that they are so hard to catch, because everybody wants to catch them, everybody hates their guts at this point, is that they never stay more than 48 hours in a single place. You know, there is that discipline among the pirates that you are always moving, and if you're always moving, they can't catch you. Exactly. So they do move up the coast to the eastern seaboard of them in the gate. So further north, they will then start to move elsewhere

because you can't stay in the same place for too long, because that's when people find you. And this is when all of the survivors' reports start coming back as well to the press, I guess, because they don't kill everybody. You know, the poor man with no suit to wear. I don't think he dies because he lives to tell that story. But he's only one of 15 vessels that he captures that year. I mean, it's quite a successful hit rate. Yeah, exactly.

And what's interesting is they don't actually, they don't murder very many people. So there's a lot of violence against these individuals, but they don't ever go quite as far as murder. They try to stop that. Because again, it's just another sort of capital crime that they could be punished for. So you've got sort of traumatised sea captains

pouring into New York, Boston, Philadelphia, telling their tales, and presumably agitating for a proper response. Exactly. So you start to get a lot of people. pressure coming into the governors about, you know, you have to respond to pirates, you have to respond to these attacks, which they can do, but they can only do it in a reactive way. So pirates attack for 48 hours, and then they send out an anti-piracy voyage against

these individuals. But they're already away. They're already up to the next colony. There is, you know, sort of among these interesting reports of what was done, these tales of woes, as William put it, you know, you've got the unimaginatively named Captain Peter Peters, who talks about how, you know, when Blackbeard's pirates took his ship. They stole 27 bottles of his Madeira. They hacked away his mask and then let him run a ground. And there was something in that. You know, you take my wine and you take my mast.

What a bunch of bastards. You know, it's like, I love the order of woe that he expresses. It's very, very funny. But it's kind of effective strategy just cut down the mast and they can't get anywhere. So you can sort of continue to attack for a while before the news gets back to port that you're nearby. So you're not killing someone. You're not likely to be down for murder, but you're stopping them coming after you or raising the alarm. Exactly, yes. You need to kind of stop the news circulating too fast.

Yeah. Was Blackbird leading a flotilla of pirate ships? Or is he doing all of this just on one ship? Yes, how many ships are on this raid now? Really, it's mostly just Thatch and Bonnet at this point in time. So you've got two vessels. Thatch and Bonnet sounds like a sort of comedy double act, doesn't it? So it's two Edwardian ladies telling jokes by a piano. At the Edinburgh Fringe of August. But yeah, they have a sort of small two vessels that they are operating with. at this point in time.

Okay, so they're back to the Caribbean. And now the next chapter in the Blackbeard story is, I suppose you could title it La Concorde, which is the name of a slave ship, which is sailing to trade with the African princes of Benin. How does this ship matter to Blackbeard's mythology and story? This is really where his name starts to get made because it becomes one of the largest flagships in the pirate fleet overall.

So really what Blackbeard wants at this point in time, is a larger vessel, the sort of a flagship for his fleet. And what he's looking for is a slaving vessel, because these are much larger vessels than anything else that's operating in this region. But they're also quite fast vessels because they are for slaving voyages. So they lie in way off the eastern coast of the Caribbean, waiting for vessels to return from West Africa to the Caribbean. What year is this now?

This is in late 1717. Oh, really, really active year for BlackBerry, yeah. Okay. Yeah, very active year. So late 1717, he is operating off the coast of the Eastern Caribbean, and the Lacongorde arrives. Now, this is a slaving vessel, which is owned by a merchant, by a French merchant in Nantes,

which becomes the pre-eminent port of the French slave trade later on. It has already been on two slaving voyages to West Africa, then sailing enslaved persons in Martinique and San Boming, modern-day Haiti. But this is its third voyage, and it has purchased 516 enslaved persons at Wieder on the, West African coast and that includes men, women and children. And in November they arrive off the coast of the lesser Antilles of the eastern Caribbean. And it's here that they encounter Blackbeard's and Bonnet. Who are in two ships or have they got a fleet at this point? The account says that Blackbeard

has two vessels at this point, one of 12 cannon and 120 men and the other of eight cannon and 30 men. So two vessels that are quite easily able to overcome the slaving vessel because also at this point the crew on the slaven vessel are sick with scurvy and dysentery and are unable to defend the vessel. So they take it relatively easily, to be honest. However, after they take this Lacan card, they then give the French one of their vessels and again they transfer the majority of enslaved persons on board this vessel. And so the French captain is able to sail to Martinique and then sell the enslaved persons there still. So here's your cargo, we're only interested in the ship.

and, you know, these poor, poor people who have been kept in hideous conditions under decks carry on with their ordeal. I don't like pirates. I used to think I did like pirates. I don't like pirates at all. Okay, so, right, he's got his whopping great battleship, Lac Encore.

Does he carry on calling it, Lac Encore? Does he keep the name, or does he rename it? No, this one gets renamed to the Queen Anne's Revenge, which becomes sort of Blackbeard's iconic ship. He's quite cinematic himself. I mean, he's aware of his sort of image, isn't he? Exactly. He knows what he's doing,

He knows why he's calling it the Queen Anne's revenge. He knows that that will capture the imagination of others. Is that anything to do with the Jacobites? And we've talked about the Jacobites a lot in the recent past. You know, the last Stuart Monarch. Are they paying homage to her, or is that just a name plucked out of a pirate hat? It's definitely a play on this Jacobite era. So the reason they call it is some historians we claim is because they do have these

jacobite tendencies and some might have that. But he's an Englishman. He's from Bristol, supposedly from Bristol. Hence the Western accent, though. Exactly. Well, this is by a question. I actually think that really what they're doing is they are trying to capture the imagination. They call it the Queen And revenge because they know it will basically get on the right side of annoying people like the Royal Navy, like the Crown. I think there's a bit of humour in it as well, to be honest, so it will become notorious. But I do think there's a wee bit of humour in these pirates calling their vessels, things like the Queen And revenge or the King James. There's also maybe an element of pragmatism whereby if they can pretend, or at least claim that they are rebelling against King George I'm first and sort of on behalf of the stewards, then they can claim some form of legitimacy, sort of flying a flag of convenience, if you will, but it doesn't ever work out that way. And I do think it is just a cheek, basically.

So, I mean, getting the Queen Anne's revenge, hitherto known as Lac Concorde, does it make him the most already flexing pirate in the Caribbean, or are there bigger pirates than him at this time? No, at this time, now that the Wieda has been shipwrecked, this is definitely one of the largest vessels of the time. Right, okay. So with that and itself, I'm guessing, will attract more crew and more people who want to be under your Jolly Roger. Is he flying the Jolly Roger? We said that the Jolly Roger was an actual thing, but is he flying it or does it matter to other pirates? He's definitely flying some sort of black flag, really, in the record what comes up is they say they're flying either a black flag or a death's head, so some sort of skull icon. But we don't actually know, again, what the flag looks like, but we know it's black and we know it has a skull on it. For all the demythologising, I'm impressed by how much of the legend actually is there in the reality of this.

There's always a kernel of truth at these things. I love the way you still insist on fishing in the Book of Depp. I like it. It's good. It's good. Okay, so look, as we were saying, you become more popular. People want to be with you if you're successful. And by 1718, Blackbeard has a flotella of about six ships under his command, with the magnificent Queen Anne's revenge leading this flotilla. Is that enough to set up a up a blockade because I mean if you really want the big money what you do is you blockade a port and you extort for you know as much as you can till the pipsqueak so in this point exactly he arise back in the north american coast with the queen anne revenge now and he immediately blockades

charleston and south carolina right which is the biggest port of all isn't it it mean he's going for the jackpot straight away it's one of the larger ports and certainly one of the most undefended as well on the coast so they don't actually have a royal naval vessel in this port either So it's quite a strategic choice also. Okay, well, let's take a break there. Join us after the break where we find out what happens after the blockade. Welcome back. Well, we are now reaching the climax of Blackbeard's incredible story,

which, as I said before, is far closer to the truth than anyone might have imagined. It's extraordinary. Yes, Pirates of the Caribbean, fact. That's right. Oh, no. David's going to regret coming on here. let's have a look at the Blackbird legend already. Will people up and down the coast all have heard of him?

Is he in every newspaper or is it just reports of attacks and is there a name behind them? By this time there are starting to be the sort of the elements of the myth are starting to develop. You can see that he has becoming quite notorious in the written records, particularly in newspapers. He will become more notorious with his next attacks in North America. But certainly merchants would have known of him and some governors as well. So more around the sea-faring elite, I think his name was starting to become more known. And as we said, he actually now has, what, six ships? It's somewhere between a flotilla and a fleet now.

Yeah, exactly. So he's got multiple vessels and around 400 men on these vessels as well. So a significant fleet and a significant crew. But it also means, presumably, if you've got 400 men, you have 400 mouths to feed, you need to keep the tempo up. There's no question of him going back and backing down. And also, you've been at sea for a long time, and people get sick at sea.

You're not having fruit and veg. As we know, flour is a really expensive commodity because you don't have that. You know, growing on their little archipelago, pirate archipelago. You haven't got crop farming. Okay, so, I mean, let's go back to the blockade. 1718, Blackbeard and four ships sail up to Charleston. He arrives in the harbour, fires on the city with all his ships.

And then in what is considered to be one of the kind of bravest and boldest acts for his career, he sets up a formal blockade. David, take us from there. Exactly. So he sets up this blockade of Charosan not allowing any vessels to come in or out without him basically raiding these vessels. But it actually comes back to Anita's point on having that many crew members and then trying to take care of them and trying to have the supplies to be able to have that many men.

Because what he's really doing with this blockade is he wants to demand a chest of medicines for his crew. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Because you know, you'd think if you blockade a pause, you know, this is really doing. just me speaking, gold, jewels, you know, doubloons, pieces of eight. And Charleston is famously a rich port. It's a fantastically rich southern plantation place. Yeah, exactly. But he doesn't, he just won chest of medicine. That's really all he asks for. So it shows you a little bit about the desperation of these figures as well. Even though Blackbeard is formidable at this point in time, he still has to blockade this port just to get access to this chest of medicines,

which shows how desperately must have been for this medicine. What kind of medicines are we talking about in 1718? What's he after? Unfortunately, we don't know exactly what it is he gets, but it will be some sort of medicine to respond to scurvy, to dysentery, to typhus, actually in his wreck, so we'll come to the fact that the vessel gets wreck. But in the wreck, they have now surfaced that wreck, and one of the artefacts they also found was a urethro syringe. So I'll leave that for your imagination. Wait a minute, no, we're going to go into that on Empire Podcast, a urethro syringe.

It's something rather appalling that goes up the bloke's hoo-ha. isn't it, to unblock and allow you to pee? Is that what it's for or for infections or something? To administer the mercury to cure syphilis. Oh. Yeah. So they've all got syphilis. That's what it is. That's what it is. I've come across this a lot in my 18th century readings and everyone is taking mercury and having to rub this thing into them. Rubbed or inject it up? You rub. Well, no, this is an injection.

The ones in India are rubbing themselves with. And this isn't just the pirates. I've been reading the diaries of Mount Stuart Elfinston, who says, established. Richman, a character as any, and in Hyderabad, he gets a terrific case of the clap. And he describes in great detail his symptoms and his treatment. But isn't the treatment going to kill you? Well, we know that more than they did. We know that Mercury gives you mercury poisoning. But they might have known it when they died.

We can see that it has an effect on the clap. On the infection. Okay. We dwell on that far too much and far too long. I'm sorry about that. Sorry, not sorry. It figures so prominently in 18th century letters. if you read any man's letters or journals Mercury

will turn up sooner or later at this period. Okay, so they're demanding the medicine. So Governor Robert Johnson of Charleston, he says yes, and does he throw in a couple of lemons for the scurvy as well? I mean, you know, or do they just go with the very bare minimum? It seems like they really go with the bare minimum of the chest of medicines, but what Blackbeard says is that if you don't give me this, he threatens to burn all of the ships in the harbour,

but also to kill all of the captives he has as well. So it shows you the desperation for that chest of medicines. on the flip side of that, Johnson isn't able to really do anything about this. He has to exchange this chest of medicines. He doesn't have a choice because he has no way to combat Blackbeard's blockades. Is there a feeling that he's sold himself cheap that he could have asked for half of the tax revenues of South Carolina? Am I imagining this or is he a bit of a crap pirate?

You said it, not me. The people that we know about are all the pirates that got caught and executed. Well, it's not leap ahead yet because he's still at large, but he's clutching his... Clutching his bits. clutching his lempset and clutching his bits and clutching his aspirin and he's off again. Okay, so then where now does his mercury-addled crew go next? So they don't go very far. They actually move from South Carolina up to North Carolina,

and then Blackbeard runs the Queen Anne's Revenge at Ground at Beaufort Inlet. And it's thought that he does this intentionally. It's unsure how intentional this is, but at this point it seems like Blackbeard's ready to break up the crew. and apparently what happens here is he breaks with Bonnet and most of Bonnet's crew and actually only a small portion of Blackbeard's crew around 29 plus him then leave with most of the plunder as well. So again with this large flotilla they'd already been operating elsewhere in the Caribbean and South America.

So they seem to have made some ritches and then decided actually now was the time to cheat them out of the crew. So one of the ways that I read that they made some money before, you know, he gives up and runs his ship aground, is that they do this sort of toll collection from North Carolina. They take over an inlet and they say, right, you know, if anyone wants to pass here, you're going to have to give us some money to go past. I mean, how long does that last or not really very long at all? So it's only a few days where they do have this blockade. But while that's happening, they are taking vessels in and out

and seizing the goods from those vessels. So they will gather a lot of plunder from those as well. And David, give us an impression of the crews. Are they all near Duels from the Bahamas? Are they people that have been captured and somehow made their peace with their captors? Who are these people? Is he ruling by fear, or is it a sort of democracy of rogues?

What's going on? It's an interesting mix of all of the above. So there are some members of his crew who are the sort of diehard pirates, the volunteer pirates, who make up the core part of his crew, and who are really in it for the riches, but also following Blackbeard as well, following his command. But there's also a lot of other individuals who have been forced on board, who have been forced recruits.

When they take a merchant vessel, they'll force a few of the crew to join the pirate vessel just to help the day-to-day running of the ships. So there's a bit of a mix of these core voluntary pirates and then some more forced pirates and then some people in between who sort of move from being forced to becoming more voluntary. But from what you've told us, David, it doesn't sound like there's any great strategy. He's not trying to build up a fleet or conquer somewhere or become the king of the Caribbean. Where's the plan, David? Yeah.

Where's the plan here? It's a really good question. And where does the plan? So once he takes this slave and basically, he has operated and elsewhere. it seems like he's made his riches in the areas that we don't really know because we don't have a lot of records of it. But when he blockades Charleston, that really is his last great act as a sort of captain of this flotilla. So it seemed like that was what he was leading up to, was to attack Charleston to take the currency and then leave. Okay.

And does it look when he runs his vessel ashore and he breaks up the flotilla and presumably pays off everyone that needs to be paid off? Is there any sense that he wants now to, you know, change his identity, shave his beard and become a thoroughly respectable geography teacher. By a nice estate of the West Coast to Scotland or something. Yeah. It seems like that might be the case, actually. So what happens is in North Carolina, Blackbeard arrives in Bath, the capital of North Carolina, and takes a pardon. So at this point in time, King George I has offered a pardon to all pirates. Between September 1717 and September 1718, they offer this pardon basically is a means to try to deter these pirates now

to get them back into the fold. They can't seem to hunt them down. So instead, they offer them a general pardon if they come into port and accept her. So Blackbeard does that in North Carolina with 20 of his crew. What month are we talking about that? June 1718. Okay, but later, he's back at it. Don't we find him on now he's on the adventure? Because he's, you know, sunk Queen Anne's revenge.

And he again goes back to North Carolina. But he's, you know, answered in kind because the people of Carolina are so sick and tired of him. And they don't trust that he's gone away for good that they beg. They beg the lieutenant Robert M. Maynard to hunt him down. They don't believe the pardon's worth of paper it's written on. They don't believe he's given up his wave, even though he's proved himself to be rather a crap pirate.

And so Maynard goes to hunting and tries to hunt him down. Exactly. So, yeah, so when Blackbeard arrives in North Carolina, he does take the pardon, but he does continue his piratical life regardless. That's having your cake and eat it worse than Boris Johnson. Well, exactly. And he actually, he is colluding. It seems like he's colluding at least with the Chief Justice and the Collector of the Customs in North Carolina. So there's politicians involved here as well.

surprise, surprise. What happens here though is when Blackbeard goes out, once again, he says he's got out on a trading voyage. He actually leaves with little tradable cargo, so that's already questionable. But he says he's going on a trading expedition and he returns with a vessel laden with sugar and other goods that he claims is found as a wreck. It fell off the back of a lorry. Exactly. Orriss governor. You'll never guess what? I bumped into a galley and no one wanted it. It's just sitting there. Unsurprisingly later on it turns out it's a friendship that he's piratically taken and seized and brings it back to North Carolina.

But this does get to Virginia. The news starts to circulate to Virginia because there are merchants in the public in North Carolina are sick of this and they are being treated horribly by Blackbeard and his crew, it seems. So they write to Virginia and request support and request that the Navy stationed in Virginia come to their rescue. So, David, take us to November 1718. the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, Alexander Spottiswood, dispatches this naval force that you've talked about, under Lieutenant Robert Maynard. And his job is to hunt Blackbeard down. Blackbeard has appeared with all his sugar that he found off the back of the lorry.

And he's on the adventure. And on the 21st of November, he anchors off an island off North Carolina. Now tell us what happens. So in November 1718, two sloop set sail from Virginia. under the command of these naval officers, so the first lieutenant of the HMS peril, Robert Maynard, is in charge, and they are directing to a place called Ocracoke Inlet, which is where Blackbeard is stationed at this point in time,

is where they have reports that Blackbeard is operating from. At the same time, however, the naval captain, Ellis Brand, travels over land to Bath, just in case Blackbeard's in Bath instead, so they sort of do a two-pronged attack here. But these two slopes then enter into the area around Ocrecocke, Island. I now have an account actually written by Robert Maynard that was printed in one of the newspapers that explains what happened. If it's okay, if I read that out. Yes, please, too.

So this is the kind of the moment the Piccutor agency finally called a Butch Cassidy. Exactly it. So Maynard writes, I attacked him at Ocracoke in North Carolina when he had on board 21 men and nine guns mounted. At our first salutation, he drank damnation to me and my men, whom he styled cowardly puppies, saying he would neither give nor take, take quarter. That's the attitude. We love it. Go on. Immediately we engaged and one of our captains was unfortunately killed as well as five of his men who were wounded. That means that one of the slips then sort of falls off. In the meantime continuing the fight at being a perfect calm, I shot away Teaches Gibb, forcing him ashore.

This is Maynard. I boarded his slip and had 20 men killed and wounded. Immediately thereupon, he entered me with 10 men. But 12 stout men I left there fought like heroes sword in hand and they killed every one of them that entered without the loss of one man on their side. In the whole I had eight men killed and 18 wounded. We killed 12 besides Blackbeard who fell with five shot in him and 20 dismal cuts in several parts of his body. And Maynod then goes on to say,

I should never have taken him if I had not got him in such a hole whence he could not get out, for we had no guns on board so that the engagement on our side was the more bloody and desperate. That's amazing that they didn't have guns. I mean, that surprises me. You'd think, you know, you've been sent out, you've been charged with getting a deadly pirate. Here, have some toothpicks.

The least you could do is bring along some firearms. Yeah, well, why were they not armed? Yeah. So they were unable to send the naval vessels themselves that were stationed at Virginia because they were too large to get into Ocrococke Island. So instead, Spotswood outfits these two vessels with the naval commanders on board, and basically they don't have time to also mount guns. Oh, God.

So they just have to send them out. But you can kind of see the desperation in Maynard's letter. Yeah. I think you can tell he's probably a... a little bit annoyed about the fact he's been sent out with no guns to attack this individual. Well, I would be too. It's ridiculous. Yeah. And David, just to give our nation the glory it deserves, the final blow comes from a Scots Highlander who decapitated Blackbeard with a powerful swing of his sword.

That's more like it. There's the final moment of the film. Yeah, so apparently, yeah, Scottish Highlander on board, Maynard's vessel, he attacks Blackbeard with his broadsword and cuts off his head. It's a broadsword. It's a Claymour. It's better still. It's a claymour. Yeah. It's supposedly a, Claymore. God, I want to make this film now. Love it. What happens to his heed? Do they pick it up and mount it on a spike or something? I mean, they did that sort of thing in those days, didn't they? This is quite interesting, is that Mayard also says, I have cut Blackbeard's head off, which I have

put on my bow sprit in order to carry it to Virginia. So they hang it off the front of the ship. Oh, so it's just dangling there like a fairy dice on a Ford Cortina? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So they arrived back in Virginia, victorious with this, yeah, this head hanging from the vessel. God, these are tough times. It's true. Okay. And is it a hero's welcome and are people just sort of thronging the street saying Blackbeard's dead? Thank God, Blackbeard's dead.

Yeah, what happens in Virginia when they land? There's a lot of celebration and the naval captains are also very celebratory. And then news of this feat gets circulated throughout the empire back in London as well because what they really want to show is that if you're a pirate, this is what happens. Because actually it's quite rare that the Navy ever engaged pirates and capture them in this way. So because it's such a spectacle, they want to share that information and to distribute it, to circulate it as much as possible. So I read that they then, after sort of, you know, parading the head around,

that it goes on what was the equivalent of eBay at the time, and it's auctioned off. I mean, is that true? That it was auctioned off. And I think what, £100 to anyone who wanted to buy? I mean, this is all just Aaron nonsense. We have no record of this. What's interesting is actually the Virginian House of Burgesses, which is like their houses of commons, they provide a reward for anyone who would bring them Blackbeard's head for £100,

so I think that's where that's taken from. That's where it's conflated to. So it wasn't actually the bloodied head of Blackbeats had sold off by an enterprising naval... Maybe it's what they're saying, I know, okay. Not quite bad, but I think they do mount it on a spike, though, when they bring it back to Virginia, so they do put it on display. And how quickly does the myth of Blackbeard grow into the one we've all grown up with?

How quickly did he become the archetypal pirate? I think it's really from this point on, so that you can see that, because this account is circulated so widely. Actually, this is where Blackbeard's name gets made. This is where we start to really see people talk about Blackbeard and to remember Blackbeard because of the fact that he gets caught in this spectacle. This is where his name starts to get made.

And then you get Charles Johnson 1724, the general history of the pirates. What's that? That's another six years later. Another six years later, but he takes this story and just runs with it. And we're left with this kind of, you know, legacy. If I don't kill a man every now and then they forget who I am, where's that from, William? That is from Pirates Caribbean, Stranger Tides. It is the Book of Depp. Okay.

Yes, that's right. The world according to Depp. Poor David's going to have a coronary if you carry up to do that. You can't see this, but his face is in his hands. This is a man that spent his whole life unmuddying the water. We've just put our wellie boot in there and stirred it all up. I know. So look, it's the end of Blackbeard.

Is that the end of the golden age of the Pirates? This is it. After this, people just think, I don't do it because, you know, you turn into a hood or No, it carries on for a bit, doesn't it? It carries on for at least another six years after this point. So although this is quite the spectacle, actually Blackbeard's death, and shortly thereafter, there's also an anti-piracy voyage against Steve Bonnet, so he also gets captured that executed.

But then you get this new movement of other pirates who start to move to the West African coast, to the Indian Ocean, and to Brazil. The last place where you have pirates still carrying on is the South Seas, isn't it? You still get quite a lot going up the coast and ambushing vessels coming out of Goa and so on, right up until the 1740s. Am I right about that? Yeah, so although we talk about the Golden Age of Piracy ending in 1726 when the sort of Surge of Atlantic Piracy ends,

with Blackbeard and all these sort of characters when that ends, but piracy continues well into the 19th century, to be honest. There's lots of surges of piracy thereafter. We just don't seem to romanticise them in the same way. Yeah, no, good. I'm glad we don't. Hey, you mentioned before that they'd found the Queen Anne's revenge. Have they raised it, or are they diving around the wreck? Tell us that story.

So they've found the Queen Anne's revenge off the coast of North Carolina in the 1990s, and they've been slowly but surely excavating it. And I believe they have raised it as well now in the more recent decades. But what's really interesting about this, it's pitched as a pirate vessel. So really they keep talking about the Queen Anne's Revenge as being Blackbeard's vessel, and that's where all the intrigue comes from. But it was first and foremost a slaving vessel. So really we should be looking at it in that sense as well,

because a lot of the artefacts found on board are also related to the slave trade. And I think they are doing more work on that now as well. I just say that the legend continues in Reunion. And I mentioned about putting this bottle of rum on the grave of Labus, which means, of course, the buzzard in French. And the reason that he is still immortalised is that when in 1730 he was captured by a slave-trading bounty hunter, he was brought back to reunion, sentenced to death. And on the scaffold, he made a speech which immortalized him for life. As the noose was placed around his neck, he scattered a bundle of parchment among the crowd.

The maps, he said, indicated exactly where on Reunion his treasure lay buried. But first, the finder would have to unite all the different maps and crack the code. To this day, the treasure has never been found, despite adventurous coming to Reunion to search for it for 250 years. It's a great story. And such is the legend that to this day in Reunion, if you want a child or you have a child, have a problem conceiving, women come to the grave of Labus. He's still regarded this figure of sort of virility and the sort of symbol of passion, actually. And you go to the grave and it is alive with offering cigarettes, bottles of vodka, bottles of rum. And it's one of the main religions

in reunion that the locals there still very much regard Labus as a figure who is around in some form and can intervene in their lives. Can I ask the very obvious question? What were you after, Dar and Paul. It all went well right for me, thanks. Golden Road doing great. I'm sure there's literally no connection. But it is literally the case that he found one million pounds worth of Indian gems, Labus, and they've never been found.

And you still have French treasure hunters going for it today. That was a great story. Well, look, I mean, if you've got a spare hour, you know what you could do then. This has been an absolute delight. David Wilson, thank you very, very much for joining us. That's it from our mini-series on Blackbeard. But do join us again. Until the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnann.

And goodbye from me, William Duremple.