9 Chapter 8 The Death of Blackbeard

Chapter 8 The Death of Blackbeard Ships on the North Carolina coast reported seeing Blackbeard and his crew camped on Ocracoke Island. It would be tricky to reach the camp. The pirates had anchored their small ship, the Adventure, down a very narrow channel of water. The large Royal Navy ships could not sail near the island without hitting bottom. Captain Ellis Brand of HMS Pearl put Lieutenant Robert Maynard in charge of the

attack. (HMS stands for His Majesty's Ship. "His Majesty," in this case, refers to England's King George I.) Maynard hired two smaller ships, the Ranger and the Jane. They were lighter and would be able to navigate in the shallow water. Brand told Maynard and his crew that there was a hundred-pound reward for Blackbeard (about $20,000 today) as well as smaller amounts to be paid for other captured pirates. Earning that reward would be very dangerous, however. Maynard hired two local men as pilots. They knew the channels and sandbars very well. The pilots would help the sailors aboard the Ranger and the Jane make it to the small bay near Blackbeard's camp on Ocracoke.

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On the cloudy morning of November 22, 1718, the two ships sailed toward Blackbeard's anchored ship. Blackbeard and his men had been drinking until early that morning. He was probably still asleep. But when a lookout spotted the navy ships, Blackbeard and his men rallied to action. The Ranger and the Jane fast approached the Adventure. When they were only a few hundred yards from the pirates, Maynard's ships unfurled their flags—Union Jacks, the symbol of Great Britain. The pirates knew for sure that they were being hunted by the British Royal Navy.

Maynard called over the water for the pirates to surrender. He said later that Blackbeard yelled back and insulted his men. The dreaded pirate called Maynard and his men "cowardly puppies" and said he would "neither give nor take quarter." Quarter can mean one-fourth of something or it can mean mercy. Blackbeard used it to mean he would neither give any mercy to nor expect any mercy from his attackers. Blackbeard backed up his words by firing a broadside at the two navy ships. The cannons were loaded with iron balls, nails, and scrap iron. The red-hot pieces of metal tore into the navy ships. With one blast, more than twenty men out of only

fifty-seven crew members were killed or wounded on the Jane and the Ranger. Maynard was on board the Jane. He saw that many of his men were injured or dead. His small ships had no cannons to fire back. They had left them behind so the ships would be light enough to reach Blackbeard. To save his men from another broadside, he sent many of them down into the hold, below the deck of the ship. Blackbeard steered his ship toward the Jane. He thought most of Maynard's men were dead, and that he could storm and capture the ship. As they got nearer, Blackbeard's men threw grenadoes that exploded on the deck of the Jane. (A grenado was a small explosive that could be thrown at a target, similar to a hand grenade.) When the sides of the two ships banged together, the pirates threw metal hooks over the Jane's rails. The ropes attached to the hooks tied the two ships together. Blackbeard led the way across onto the Jane. He was wearing his pistols