Legendary Pirate

Visitors to the Public Gaol in Williamsburg are often told that its most notorious inmates were members of Blackbeard’s pirate crew — which is entirely true. But other stories about Blackbeard that have circulated for centuries are myths, or at least unsubstantiated.

Blackbeard himself deserves credit for some of the stories. He recognized that a reputation for being ruthless would make it more likely that the ships he attacked would quickly surrender — and more likely that his own crew would follow his orders. He once shot a crew member, Israel Hands, through the knee, explaining “that if he did not now and then kill one of them, they would forget who he was.”

That story was recounted by Capt. Charles Johnson, author of A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates. The book first appeared in 1724. It is unclear what ship, if any, Johnson captained, and literary historians have debated the actual identity of the author. Whoever Johnson was, he knew a lot about pirates, including Blackbeard, and he was not above inventing some colorful details. Of Blackbeard, whose real name was Edward Teach, Johnson wrote, “[He] assumed the Cognomen...from that large Quantity of Hair, which, like a frightful Meteor, covered his whole Face, and frightened America more than any Comet that has appeared there a long Time.”

“This Beard was black, which he suffered to grow of an extravagant Length,” Johnson continued. “He wore a Sling over his Shoulders, with three brace of Pistols, hanging in Holsters like Bandaliers; and stuck lighted Matches under his Hat, which appearing on each Side of his Face, his Eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a Figure, that Imagination cannot form an Idea of a Fury, from Hell, to look more frightful.”

In 1718, Virginia’s Gov. Alexander Spotswood sent Lt. Robert Maynard to hunt down the pirate. Maynard’s ships found Blackbeard anchored off North Carolina near Ocracoke Island. On the morning of Nov. 22, Maynard attacked, and he and his men shot and killed Blackbeard. Maynard himself then cut off Blackbeard’s head. One legend has it that Blackbeard’s body was thrown overboard, and the headless corpse swam around the ship.

More substantiated, albeit still gruesome, is that Maynard had Blackbeard’s head hung from the bow of his ship as he sailed up the James River. Maynard recorded in his log that he had hung the head “Under the Bowsprete...in order to present it to ye Colony of Virginia.”

What next happened to the skull is the basis of more colorful stories. According to John F. Watson, who first published his reminiscences in 1830, “His skull was made into the bottom part of a very large punch bowl...which was long used as a drinking vessel at the Raleigh tavern at Williamsburg. It was enlarged with silver, or silver plated; and I have seen those whose forefathers have spoken of their drinking punch from it.”

The skull also turned up as a drinking vessel on Ocracoke Island, near where Blackbeard was killed. A North Carolina judge, Charles Harry Whedbee, recalled visiting the island in the early 1930s as a law student. He was admitted to a secret gathering because a friend knew the password: “Death to Spotswood.” Once inside, Whedbee reported, everyone drank from the cup.

Angus Konstam, author of a 2006 biography of Blackbeard, claimed to have seen the skull at a 1998 exhibit at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. Konstam noted that the museum director conceded there was no way to authenticate the object. Still, Konstam also noted that historians of various civilizations recorded instances of skulls being made into drinking vessels, and it would have been an appropriate end for a pirate who liked his rum.

At the exhibit’s opening reception, Konstam quietly raised his glass of rum and Coke and toasted the skull. “Somehow it felt reassuring,” he wrote, “that a layer of reinforced plate glass lay between us.”

Stories of buried treasure were tied to Blackbeard, as well as to many other pirates. In 1727, Benjamin Franklin noted the “odd humor of digging for money, through a belief that much has been hid by pirates.” Franklin complained, “You can hardly walk half a mile out of the town on any side, without observing several pits dug with that design, and perhaps some lately opened.” By 1876, Mark Twain would write in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: “There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.”

Stories placed Blackbeard’s supposedly buried treasure up and down the coast. Johnson again deserves part of the credit. According to Johnson, the night before Blackbeard was killed, as he waited to battle two ships, the pirate captain sat up drinking with his men. One asked whether Blackbeard’s wife knew where he had buried his money. Blackbeard’s answer, Johnson wrote, was that “no Body but himself and the Devil, knew where it was.”

Some conjecture on a likely spot for Blackbeard’s treasure centered, not surprisingly, on Blackbeard Island. The barrier island is located off the coast of Georgia and is now a National Wildlife Refuge. No treasure was found there or elsewhere, probably because Blackbeard and his crew were more likely to spend treasure than to bury it. The site’s website reminds visitors that artifact hunting is a federal violation.

More than a dozen members of Blackbeard’s crew captured by Maynard’s men remained in the Williamsburg gaol for more than three months. Johnson reported that all were hanged except for two. One of those was Israel Hands, who survived being shot by Blackbeard and whose trial is the basis for To Hang a Pirate, an evening program that debuted in Williamsburg about 20 years ago and remains popular.

The play was written by historian Carson Hudson and has been revised a number of times, most recently by Colonial Williamsburg’s Benton Parker, Megan Sirak and David Catanese. Catanese is also the play’s director.

The records of Hands’ trial have been lost, and the playwrights have admittedly taken some poetic license. But a good deal of the dialogue is drawn from 18th-century sources, including indictments of other pirates, an extant letter from Maynard and laws pertaining to pirates.

One aspect of the play that can deviate from the historical record is the verdict. The play’s audience participates in the trial, including deciding whether Hands is guilty. The real Hands was found guilty, though he was later pardoned because he agreed to testify against his fellow pirates. In the play, defendant Hands is found guilty about 90% of the time.

Audience participation is undeniably part of the fun, and the latest revisions make the play even more immersive.

“To Hang a Pirate works so well because our audience knows about Blackbeard, about pirates,” Catanese said. “But they don’t know what happened next, and now they get to experience it.” 

• David Cordingly, Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates (Random House, 2006). An informative and entertaining survey of pirates in fact and fiction.
• Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates (Lyons Press, 2010, originally published in 1724). Johnson’s identity has been a subject of much debate among literary historians. For a long time, many believed Johnson was Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe. That theory was largely discredited in 1988 by two Defoe scholars, P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens. The Lyons Press edition of Johnson’s book includes an introduction and commentary by David Cordingly.
• Angus Konstam, Blackbeard: America’s Most Notorious Pirate (Wiley, 2007). A fine biography of the actual, not mythical, pirate written by a former naval officer and historian.