USA TODAY International Edition
N.C. finds tourism gold from Blackbeard’s ghost
OCRACOKE, N.C. – Say “Blackbeard” and what comes to mind may be a blood-thirsty pirate so unhinged that he tied firecrackers to his facial hair and lit them for yucks and jollies. North Carolina begs to differ.
Along the mainland and on the Outer Banks, some view him as a gifted mariner, law-skirting entrepreneur, swashbuckling antihero and – if nothing else – a source of tourism gold because of the annual pirate festivals sparked by his notoriety.
He is considered a native son: Blackbeard kind of lived and worked in North Carolina and certainly died in the shallow waters off Ocracoke Island on Nov. 22, 1718, when his head was cut off during a battle with out-of-state authorities.
The 300th anniversary of the pirate’s demise is being marked with events from educational displays and symposia to wakes.
Upping Blackbeard’s allure is the ongoing flow of items from his abandoned flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, discovered in 1996 some 60 miles down the coast. The sunken wreckage found off Beaufort Inlet has yielded thousands of Blackbeard-era objects. But like that buccaneer’s life, question marks far outnumber facts and doubloons.
Arrgh-uments over his past
Little is known about the pirate until he burst into colonial headlines two years before his demise. Small wonder the most current and comprehensive book about him is “The Last Days of Black Beard the Pirate.”
According to author Kevin Duffus, Blackbeard’s given name may have been Edward Teach, Thatch or Beard, and he may have been born in England, Scotland, Philadelphia or the Carolinas. Duffus postulates that Edward Beard left the settlement of Bath, North Carolina, around 1709 for Philadelphia to be a sailor. He may have become a privateer – licensed by the crown to prey on ships from colonial rivals Spain and France. Edward apparently fell in with pirates. As someone who could navigate, he rose through ranks of pirates who operated out of Jamaica and the Bahamas.
According to Duffus, by 1717 Blackbeard captained a pirate fleet led by his six-cannon sloop and a crew of 70. He paired with Stede Bonnet, “The Gentleman Pirate,” and led desperados on heists from Panama to Delaware. What put Blackbeard over the top was his fleet’s blockading of Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1718, until locals complied with the pirates’ demands for medical supplies.
Blackbeard headed north, a successful CEO of sorts who knew his ships needed repair and who was aware the British government was actively hunting pirates, while also offering blanket pardons to those who surrendered. Near Beaufort Inlet, he downsized – running his Queen Anne’s Revenge flagship aground on a sandbar June 10 and leaving roughly 375 crewmen marooned in shallow water. He and a handpicked group of 100 continued north to Pamlico Sound.
Blackbeard sailed to Bath, the capital of the colony, where Gov. Charles Eden and colonial Secretary Tobias Knight had shady dealings with pirates. Blackbeard procured pardons from Eden and spent some months at Bath while his ship was anchored on Ocracoke.
Blackbeard intended to head to the Bahamas. But Virginia’s governor dispatched ships to Ocracoke that pinned Blackbeard’s sloop into a shallow-water hand-to-hand battle the pirates lost.
In the pirate’s wake
Here’s where to follow the Blackbeard story.
❚ Bath is a village just off U.S. 264 and on the Pamlico River. Billboards tout Bath as “North Carolina’s First City,” but the oldest extant buildings date to after Blackbeard’s time. Benches on the parkland offer photo ops.
❚ Beaufort is a vacation-oriented community facing Beaufort Inlet, the passage through the Outer Banks to the sandbar where in 1996 a private salvage firm located the submerged remains of Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge.
The North Carolina Maritime Museum covers coastal ecology and more, but the 300-plus Blackbeard items are the draw. The consortium investigating the wreck takes its finds to the QAR Conservation Lab, where free tours are offered monthly on the first Tuesday.
This month, the museum unveiled an 850-square-foot room for the Blackbeard tricentennial that includes 150 more QAR items and a hologram video of Blackbeard telling his story.
The hologram features Carl Cannon, who heads an area “crew” of re-enactors and who organizes Beaufort’s annual Pirate Invasion festival, Sept. 19-20 this year. The museum’s Blackbeard 300 events continue through Nov. 10.
Cannon’s cousin is museum exhibits curator Michael Carraway, who oversees the QAR items on display.
Iron and pewter objects predominate, as they have been protected in a hard lime-sand coating over centuries underwater.
So where’s the treasure?
Ocracoke Island is owned by the National Park Service – except for the 4square-mile village of Ocracoke, whose bay has been a haven for mariners since colonial times. It’s a quaint resort destination for pleasure-boaters and for vacationers who reach it only by ferry.
Southeast of town, you can see the shallow bay where a desperate Blackbeard cut his anchor and raised his sails in hopes a breeze could carry his crew to the sea and away from navy ships closing in.
High ground now owned by the Nature Conservancy nearby offers a great view. Paths through the thick Springer’s Point underbrush also lead to a covered well where old-time mariners went for hard-to-find fresh water. It is a place Blackbeard and his crew frequented, according to Chip Stevens.
He and his wife, Helena, own Blackbeard’s Lodge in Ocracoke. They run the 1936 hotel as a B&B.
Used to fielding questions about Blackbeard’s missing treasure, Stevens points out that “Booty was more often hijacked cargo – finished goods, wine and slaves – that could easily be resold, no questions asked.” He agrees with author Duffus that pirates were more likely to share gold with relatives than bury it in chests.