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The Golden Age of Piracy’s Most Terrifying Pirates

Khalid Elhassan March 7, 2025 16 min

Piracy - A Tortuga buccaneer — A Tortuga buccaneer. Wikimedia

8. A Terrifying Pirate’s Dramatic End

Piracy - Capture of the Pirate Blackbeard, by Jean Leome Ferris — Capture of the Pirate Blackbeard, by Jean Leome Ferris. Wikimedia

In 1718, Blackbeard accepted a royal pardon offered to those who agreed to quit piracy. However, earning an honest living did not agree with him, so he changed his mind soon thereafter, reneged, and resumed his piratical ways. Virginia’s governor then ordered an expedition to hunt him down, led by a Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the Royal Navy. Maynard tracked Blackbeard with two sloops, and found him on November 22^nd, 1718, at anchor on the inner side of Oracoke Island, off North Carolina. Most of Blackbeard’s men were ashore, so he found himself severely outnumbered when Maynard’s expedition hove into view. Nonetheless, the notorious pirate refused to surrender and put up a ferocious fight during which he was shot five times and received more than twenty sword cuts, before he finally went down on the deck of his ship.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.