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Gallery · Blackbeard · Room 5 of 7

The Killing at Ocracoke

Curator's note

The end of the most famous pirate in the Atlantic world entered the public record as a paragraph of shipping news. There was no indictment, no arraignment and no verdict, so there is no trial return to exhibit. What there is instead is a newspaper.

Under a Rhode Island dateline of 20 February 1719, the paper reported the action: Lieutenant Maynard closing with the pirate sloop, the fight coming to close quarters on deck, Maynard wounding him with a pistol shot, a Highlander among the party cutting off his head with a second stroke, the body thrown overboard and the head brought away on the bowsprit. The account calls him Capt. Teach.

The substance of the Boston News-Letter's account of the death, under its Rhode Island dateline of 20 February 1719. The wording above is the Archive's; the sequence and the details are the newspaper's.

The fight took place at Ocracoke Inlet on 22 November 1718 Old Style, which is 3 December 1718 by the modern calendar. He was beheaded in the action, and his head hung from the bowsprit; its later display on a pole at the place now called Blackbeard's Point is a tradition.

Schematic of the action at Ocracoke Inlet. Two hired Virginia sloops, the Ranger and a second the later accounts call the Jane, neither of them a King's ship, are shown approaching the inlet where Thache's sloop lies. Below, three report boxes are set side by side: Maynard reports eight of his own men and twelve pirates; Brand reports ten pirates and eleven of the men; Spotswood reports ten pirates and ten of the men. A note records that the casualty spread is carried as a range rather than a figure, and is very likely, and that the substantive Spotswood account is CO 5/1318 No. 61 rather than No. 59.
Three official reports of the same twenty minutes, set side by side rather than reconciled. Geography schematic, not a survey chart Very likely
  • The two vessels that carried the attacking party were sloops hired at Virginia. Neither was a King's ship. The paper of the time names only the Ranger; the second is called the Jane in the later accounts.
  • Maynard, the officer who led the party, reported eight of his own men and twelve pirates.
  • Brand, reporting from the land party, gave ten pirates and eleven of the men.
  • Spotswood, the governor who sent them, gave ten pirates and ten of the men.
  • The figures are carried as a range, and is very likely. No report is treated as the true one.
  • The substantive Spotswood account is CO 5/1318 No. 61. The reference No. 59 is often given and is wrong.

Two facts about the operation sit oddly beside each other and both are in the record. Alexander Spotswood, Governor of Virginia, fitted out the expedition and paid for the sloops. Blackbeard was living in North Carolina, under another governor's jurisdiction, holding a pardon from him. Armed men were sent across a colonial border to kill a man in another colony, and the killing was done before any question of trying him could arise.

Virginia's assembly passed its reward act on 24 November 1718, two days after the fight, setting a hundred pounds on his head. The news of the death had not yet reached Williamsburg, so the price was fixed on a man already dead.

The crew taken alive in the action were carried to Virginia and tried at Williamsburg on 12 March 1719. That trial is the nearest the whole affair came to a court, and its record does not survive; what is known of it comes from other people's references to it.