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One year: 1718
The pardon, the governor, the blockade, the wreck, the trial and the killing, in twelve records.
No single year holds more of the story than 1718. A royal pardon was on the table with a deadline in September. A new governor sailed for Nassau to enforce it. Blackbeard closed the approaches to Charles Town, lost his flagship on a bar in North Carolina, took the pardon and went back to sea. Stede Bonnet was tried and hanged at Charles Town, and Blackbeard was killed at Ocracoke less than three weeks before him. This trail takes the year in order and lets the records set the dates.
- 1 Event The Act of Grace, the King's Pardon (1717 to 1718) The terms first: who could surrender, to whom, by when, and what was offered for those who would not.
- 2 Place Nassau / New Providence The harbour the pardon was aimed at; keep the island and the town apart as you read.
- 3 Event Woodes Rogers Takes Nassau (1718) The week the fleet came in, the fireship, and the hangings that December. Notice that the day itself is not settled.
- 4 Person Woodes Rogers The man sent to do it, a privateer turned governor, and what he had done before.
- 5 Event Blackbeard's Blockade of Charles Town (1718) A week off Charles Town in May, hostages held for a chest of medicines.
- 6 Place Charles Town (Charleston) The town that was blockaded in May and became a place of execution by December.
- 7 Event The Grounding of the Queen Anne's Revenge (1718) The flagship lost on the bar: read the two accounts of whether it was an accident.
- 8 Place Beaufort Inlet (Topsail Inlet) The inlet, under its older name, and the wreck site that would be identified nearly three centuries later.
- 9 Event The Trial and Hanging of Stede Bonnet (1718) Bonnet's capture, escape, recapture and trial, and the hangings at White Point a month before his own.
- 10 Event The Ocracoke Fight Ocracoke, 22 November: who sent the party, who led it, and the two calendars that date it.
- 11 Person Edward Thache (Blackbeard) The man at the centre of the year, never tried, and how much of him rests on one book of 1724.
- 12 Theme Pirate Pardons Step back to the instrument the year turned on: the pardon, what it was and what it was not.
At the end of the trail
By the end of 1718 the pardon had been taken by a great many and broken by some of the best known. Was the year a success for the Crown's policy, a failure, or both at once?