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The Real Pirates of the Caribbean

Khalid Elhassan January 7, 2020 32 min

7. Queen Anne’s Revenge

Blackbeard’s final battle, by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris. Neatorama

Hornigold retired from piracy in 1717, but Blackbeard continued independently on his own. Soon thereafter, he seized a French ship, remodeled and equipped it with 40 cannons, renamed her Queen Anne’s Revenge, and made her his flagship. He then formed a pirate alliance, and used it to commit his most notorious act: a successful blockade of Charleston, South Carolina, holding the city hostage until he was paid a ransom.

Blackbeard accepted a royal pardon in 1718, but soon reneged and returned to piracy. So Virginia’s governor ordered an expedition to hunt him down. Led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard, the expedition tracked Blackbeard, and found him on November 22^nd, 1718, anchored at Oracoke Island, off North Carolina. Blackbeard was outnumbered, as most of his men were ashore at the time, but he refused to surrender. He put up a fierce fight before he finally went down on the deck of his ship, after taking five bullets and over twenty sword cuts.

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.