The ArchivesEventsThe Ocracoke Fight
The Ocracoke Fight
The action at Ocracoke Inlet, 22 November 1718 (old style; 3 December new style), in which Blackbeard was killed by a Royal Navy party under Lieutenant Robert Maynard, sent from Virginia by Governor Alexander Spotswood.
From22 November 1718Also writtenDeath of Blackbeard; Battle of Ocracoke
No contemporary image of the action at Ocracoke survives; the fight is exhibited here through the paper record alone.
The fight at Ocracoke was a Virginia operation carried out in North Carolina's water, and that is part of why it happened the way it did. Governor Alexander Spotswood had no authority over Blackbeard, who had been pardoned in the neighbouring colony and was living, more or less openly, near Bath. Spotswood moved on him anyway. He hired two shallow-draught sloops, which a modern reconstruction names as the Jane and the Ranger, put them under Lieutenant Robert Maynard of HMS Pearl with about sixty men, fifty-five on the calendar of Spotswood's own dispatch, and sent them south.1
Maynard's sloops slipped out of the Chesapeake on 17 November 1718 and reached the Outer Banks on the 21st. The action came the next morning, Saturday 22 November 1718 old style, which is 3 December by the modern calendar.1
It was close and it was quick. Maynard had kept most of his men below deck; when Thache's crew boarded a sloop that looked all but empty, the hidden men came up into a hand-to-hand fight on the open deck. Thache and Maynard fired at each other, and Thache went down in the press. His body was found afterwards to bear five shot and about twenty cuts. He was beheaded in the action, and Maynard hung the head from his bowsprit for the sail back to Virginia, the proof a reward would need.2
The three men who reported the day counted the dead differently. Maynard gave eight of his own killed and twelve of the pirates; Brand gave ten pirates and eleven of Maynard's men; Spotswood gave ten and ten. Blackbeard fell with about nine of his men.3
The reward arrived after the fact. Virginia's Act to Encourage the Apprehending and Destroying of Pyrates, which put a hundred pounds on Blackbeard's head, passed on 24 November 1718, two days after he was already dead. The news had not yet reached Williamsburg. His captured crew were carried back to Virginia and tried at Williamsburg on 12 March 1719. Israel Hands, his sailing master, was pardoned; Samuel Odell was released as no true member of the company; fourteen men were condemned and hanged. That trial is the securest thing we have on the fate of the company, and no primary court record of it survives, which leaves the best-documented reckoning in the whole case resting on correspondence and later report.4,5
The core of the day is documentary: the date, the place, Maynard, the death, the beheading, the head on the bowsprit, all carried by Spotswood's dispatch of 22 December 1718 (The National Archives, CO 5/1318, No. 61) and by a Boston News-Letter account that reached New England in February 1719. Most of the theatre later hung on it, the defiant exchange of words before the boarding and the run of pistol shots Thache is supposed to have shrugged off before falling, is Johnson's, from the General History, Vol. 1 (1724), written six years after the event.6
What the evidence does not settle
Casualty totals
- Casualty totals at Ocracoke vary between the three reportsConfirmed
The Williamsburg trial record
- Whether a primary court record survives for the Williamsburg crew trialLikely
Naval originals at Kew
- The Maynard and ADM 1 originals remain unlocated at KewVery likely
Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.
Sources for this record
Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.
- The Ocracoke fight took place on 22 November 1718 (old style; 3 December new style), when a force under Lt Robert Maynard, sent by Gov. Spotswood in the hired sloops Jane and Ranger with about sixty men, fifty-five on the calendar of Spotswood's dispatch and fifty-seven in a later reference count, engaged Thache. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Colonial correspondence and secondary: Spotswood's dispatch (CO 5/1318 No.61); Duffus reconstruction of the sloops and complement
- Thache's body bore five pistol shots and about twenty cuts; he was decapitated in the fight and his head hung from the bowsprit of Maynard's sloop. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Naval report and period print: Maynard's examination and the Boston News-Letter account
- Ocracoke casualty totals differ by report and are given as a range across the three named accounts. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Colonial and naval reports: Maynard, 8 of his men and 12 pirates; Brand, 10 pirates and 11 of Maynard's men; Spotswood, ten and ten; Thache fell with about nine of his crew
- Virginia's reward act offering a hundred pounds for Blackbeard passed on 24 November 1718, two days after he was already dead at Ocracoke. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Secondary (institutional): Colonial Williamsburg on the Act to Encourage the Apprehending and Destroying of Pyrates; the lag shows the news had not reached Williamsburg
- Thache's captured crew were tried at Williamsburg on 12 March 1719, where Israel Hands was pardoned, Samuel Odell released and fourteen men executed; no surviving primary court record has been located. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Secondary and correspondence: QAR and secondary accounts of the trial outcome; the missing court record is flagged as the largest documentary gap
- The substantive Spotswood account of Ocracoke is carried in CO 5/1318 No.61 (i to vi); No.59 is his separate political letter to the Earl of Orkney. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Colonial correspondence (calendared): CSP Colonial vol.30, December 1718 items 799 (No.59) and 800 (No.61)