Of the many pirates who ravaged the coast of North Carolina during the early years of the eighteenth century, by far the most fearsome was Blackbeard. He had been born in England with a name such as Edward Teach or Thatch or Thach, but because of his grizzly hair the color of midnight, he soon was appropriately nicknamed Blackbeard. Sometimes to make himself even more horrible, he would attach slow-burning fuses to some ragged tuft of his inky beard to give the impression he was about to blow up. Not even heavy-armored men-o’war¹ awed him, but when the odds became too great, he would retreat, through a shallow North Carolina inlet² and hide behind the sandbanks.

Governor Charles Eden was so cowed by this scurvy³ villain that he let him roam at will along the coast. Tradition says the privateer⁴ even gave the governor some of his booty.⁵ Most of his treasures the pirate buried at one place or another on the shore. At his house in the town of Bath, Blackbeard settled briefly with his thirteenth wife, but he was restless and soon was back at sea, raiding vessels from Virginia and South Carolina. When Governor Eden couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do anything to stop him, the governor of Virginia sent Lieutenant Robert Maynard to catch the corsair.⁶

At Ocracoke⁷ before daylight on November 22, 1718, they met: Maynard’s sloop⁸ and Blackbeard’s Adventure. The two ships touched, and vicious Blackbeard jumped aboard the sloop and faced the lieutenant. Maynard drew blood first with a bullet right through the pirate’s body, but, the freebooter⁹ fought on. Finally, with a mighty swish of his sword, Maynard severed Blackbeard’s head from his trunk. The head dropped into the water and circled the ship three times, crying out, “O crow, Cock! O crow, Cock!” The crowing of a cock signaled the coming of morning, and Blackbeard wanted enough light to find his body. But it was too late. Maynard’s men counted twenty-five wounds in the pirate. They retrieved the head, swung it to the bowsprit¹⁰ of Maynard’s ship, and sailed from the island.