Blackbeard

When Allie woke the next morning, the outdoor decor was dark, windy, and gloomy - A low-lying mist covered the entire harbor, obscuring from view the forts and any ship that might dare sail in those conditions. The aroma of salt was stronger than usual in the air- Allie inhaled deeply before she sat down to drink her coffee. Mary O’Toole had warned her that the weather was getting bad out when she brought her coffee up. “A storms a brewing for sure,” said Mary. Allie did not mind the rain, but…

Queen Anne’s Revenge In November 1996 researchers working with Intersal Inc. found a mound of cannon, anchors, and ballast stones off the coast of Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. What the researchers discovered Queen Anne’s Revenge, the flagship of Blackbeard, real name Edward Teach (Wilde-Ramsing:2006). The ship, which sank in 1718, was not professional excavated by archaeologists till 1997 when the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources (NCDCR) to control of the site. The site has…

The biggest difficulty historians face in relying heavily on the trial reports is their varying form and content. Although the 1700 Piracy Act required registers to keep minutes of the proceedings, like much of everything surrounding piracy law, there were no specifics on what that meant. It is clear from the collection of these trials that the point of the recorder was not to capture every word uttered in court. Depending on the court the narrative changes between first and third person, and…

As there are inherent flaws with legislation in historical analysis, so too are there issues with these trial reports. The most obvious concern is that we must rely on the competence and impartiality of court registers which at times was questionable. William Norris, the register of the vice-Admiralty court of Jamaica, recorded little defense for John Rackam and his crew, noting their response to the judge’s inquiries was that “they had no Witnesses, That they had never committed any Acts of…

12 July 1726. Had this been a typical Tuesday Morning, a Boston resident could have taken a stroll down cobbled King’s Street, perhaps picking up a copy of this week’s Boston News-Letter, on their way to the merchant shops at the Long Wharf. Once there, they could have gazed at dozens of deep sea vessels going about their trade in the Boston Harbor, or headed into Crown’s Coffee-House to hear the latest news from throughout the Atlantic told by sea hardened sailors. However, this particular…

Very few people today, perhaps those who have stared death in the face and lived to tell the tale, can possibly comprehend what it would have been like to stand on the gallows at high tide as the executioner fashioned a noose around the pirate’s neck; the last significant act before his final voyage, a short drop and a quick stop. The evolution of the English political and legal processes that delivered the defiant Captain Fly and hundreds of others of his generation to their final destination,…