by Marianne
Ruane
Some pirates who
managed to escape disease died a quicker death at the hands of authorities.
William Kidd was captured in Boston and convicted of piracy, then sent to
England to be hanged in 1701. While his first noose broke, landing him on the
ground dazed but unharmed, the second attempt was successful. His body was
tarred and hung in a gibbet over the River Thames as a warning to other pirates
to change their ways. A gibbet, iron bands in the shape of a human form
designed to hold a corpse together, was generally left hanging for several
years until the body completely decomposed. The only complete gibbet in America
is on display in Philadelphia. It was made for the pirate Thomas Wilkinson, but
because he received a reprieve from hanging, the gibbet was never used. It hung
in the Walnut Street Prison and then Moyamensing Prison as a warning to
prisoners (wasn’t it already too late?) and eventually made its way to the
Atwater Kent Museum.
Blackbeard (also
known as Edward Teach) is another pirate with a colorful history and
ignominious end. He was a large man, very tall, with crazy black hair and a
long beard braided and tied in colored ribbons. Historians believe he may not
have killed anyone while plundering – he was so frightening that everyone
simply surrendered.
“[He] would
strike terror into the hearts of his victims, according to some early accounts,
by weaving wicks laced with gunpowder into his hair, and lighting them during
battle.”1 If seeing a big bear of a man who was on
fire didn’t suitably scare the sailors under attack, his no-nonsense
approach would. “If a victim
did not voluntarily offer up a diamond ring, Blackbeard chopped it off, finger
and all. This nearly always impressed the victim, who could be counted on to
impress all to whom he related his experience. These tactics also saved time,
but their most important function was to help spread the word that, while
Blackbeard could be merciful to those who cooperated, woe to those who did
not.”2
Most pirates did
not have wives. Some notable exceptions are Stede Bonnet who became a pirate to
escape his nagging wife; Henry Morgan and William Kidd who had wives and
children, and John Criss of Ireland who left behind three wives when he died.
Blackbeard married a young woman, a relative of Governor Eden of North Carolina,
who was his fourteenth wife, with at least ten of the others still living. An
account by Captain Charles Johnson in A
General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates
claimed, "…[H]e married a young creature of about sixteen years of age . .
. and this I have been informed, made Teach's fourteenth wife . . . with whom
after he had lain all night, it was his custom to invite five or six of his brutal
companions to come ashore, and he would force her to prostitute herself to them
all, one after another, before his face."3
Blackbeard
was killed in a bloody battle with pirate hunter Robert Maynard who was
commissioned by the Governor of Virgina, Alexander Spotswood. According to the Boston
News Letter, “Maynard and Teach…begin the fight with their swords, Maynard
making a thrust, the point of his sword went against Teach’s cartridge box, and
bended it to the hilt. Teach broke the guard…and wounded Maynard’s fingers but
did not disable him, whereupon he jumped back and threw away his sword and
fired his pistol which wounded Teach…one of Maynard’s men being a Highlander,
engaged Teach with his broad sword, who gave Teach a cut on the neck, Teach
saying well done lad; the Highlander replied, If it be not well done, I’ll do
it better. With that he gave him a second stroke, which cutt off his head,
laying it flat on his shoulder.”4 Blackbeard
did not die easily; he was shot five times and stabbed more than twenty times. His
head was placed on the mast of the ship as a trophy and later hung from a pike
in Bath, NC. Legend has it that when his headless body was thrown overboard, it
swam around the ship three times before sinking.
So
where is the alleged ghost of Blackbeard to look for his head? “Afterwards,
when his head was taken down, his head was made into the bottom part of a very
large punch bowl, called the infant,
which was long used as a drinking vessel at the Raleigh tavern in
Williamsburg.”5 There is
a silver-plated skull bowl that may or may not be Blackbeard’s head in the
collection of the Peabody-Essex museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Until ghost and
head are reunited, treasure hunters still have a chance.
-- more by the author can be found at www.marianneruane.com
Sources:
Edward “Blackbeard” Teach (thepirateking.com)
Edward “Blackbeard” Teach (squidoo.com)
A Short History of the City of Philadelphia: From its Foundation to the Present Time, Susan Coolidge, Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1887.
Ocracoke Newsletter (Village Craftsmen)
Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in Olden Time, John Fanning Watson, Applewood Books, 2009.
1 Edward “Blackbeard” Teach (thepirateking.com)↩
2 Pirates and Privateers: Friends and Enemies, from Lee, Robert E. Blackbeard the Pirate. John F. Blair, 2002.↩
3 Edward “Blackbeard” Teach (squidoo.com)↩
4 Pirates and Privateers: Friends and Enemies, from Cordingly, David. Under the Black Flag. New York: Random House, 1995.↩
5 Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in Olden Time, John Fanning Watson, Applewood Books, 2009.↩
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