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[Narrator] Of all the captains who sailed during the Golden Age of Piracy, few were as feared as Blackbeard. [Professor] When you think of Blackbeard, you just think of this towering man with a huge black beard and brace of pistols inspiring terror. [Narrator] Blackbeard spent his career at sea building a powerful notoriety for merciless violence. [Historian] A lot of his reputation was built on his image. [Narrator] He takes the helm of the Queen Anne's Revenge, transforming it into one of the world's most infamous pirate ships and fills it with a brutal and bloodthirsty crew.
[Historian] He was happy to go around plundering ships, taking treasure, evading capture, doing some really quite daring things. [Narrator] Could his fearsome image have been carefully fashioned by the man himself? Or by a Royal Navy desperate to portray him as a worthy adversary? Blackbeard's short career triggers drastic change and marks the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of Piracy.
[Hannah Cusworth] One of the really fascinating things about Blackbeard is that we actually really don't know that much about his beginnings. There are lots of kind of myths and ideas. With a lot of these pirates, we are never going to necessarily know. [Narrator] Before he became one of the most notorious outlaws in America, Blackbeard was a common sailor named Edward Teach who is believed to have been born in 1680 in Bristol, England.
Like many others at the time, growing up in a port town, he joins a merchant vessel at a young age and then serves as a privateer in a career that takes him across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. [David Wilson] From 1716, piracy is really operating from New Providence in the Bahamas. There is a group of pirate crews operating from there which at this point didn't really have any form of governance, so the pirates utilized it as a key outpost. [Charles Ewan] It was a good time to be a pirate because there wasn't a lot of real military or governmental power in the Caribbean or the southeastern US or any of the colonies at that time. So, you didn't have a large naval presence,
so you could be a successful pirate. Piracy flourishes where there are weak governmental structures. [Narrator] Edward Teach has found himself aboard one of the numerous privateering ships of the Caribbean. His captain is Benjamin Hornigold, who preys on Spanish shipping throughout the Atlantic. [Ewan] It's important to know the difference between being a privateer and being a pirate. Hornigold had a license to prey on Spanish shipping. Then, when hostilities cease, that goes away, and you become a pirate.
[Narrator] Benjamin Hornigold is the unofficial pirate king of Nassau in the Bahamas, a lawless settlement ruled not by European empires but by a brotherhood of cutthroat pirates. The island becomes his base for a series of raids. Edward Teach, now in his late 30s, rises through the ranks, becoming ever more valuable to Hornigold's crew, but his ambitions are starting to outgrow his captain. He adopts a fearsome new nickname: Blackbeard. [Wilson] Benjamin Hornigold wants to continue just attacking the Spanish, and then members of his crew want to continue and attack anyone that they come across.
[Ewan] Blackbeard said, "I think we can really increase our wealth if we go after everybody," and is able to convince the majority of the crew that is the way to go. That's how he becomes the lead pirate, if you will, of this small flotilla. [Narrator] When Hornigold refuses to attack a vulnerable group of British merchantmen, there's a mutiny. Blackbeard and the crew depose Hornigold as captain and strike out on their own. Now Blackbeard is in charge, any vessel is fair game, those belonging to fellow countrymen and even rival pirates. He wants them all.
A tempting prize sails into view. It's a well-armed 10-gun sloop named The Revenge, led by 29-year-old Stede Bonnet, a wealthy gentleman pirate. [Kevin Dawson] Stede Bonnet was a Barbadian sugar planter who was actually wealthy. And for some reason he decides to become a pirate. And so unlike other pirates who steal their ships, who capture their ships, Bonnet ends up buying a ship. He hires a crew, he goes off to the coast of North America. He has some success at capturing merchant ships off the North American coast, but he has no maritime skill.
[Narrator] To embark on ambitious raids, Blackbeard needs to build his fleet and crew by any means possible. Blackbeard sees an opportunity to take advantage of Bonnet's naivety and persuades him into a partnership. Bonnet believes he is the captain of his ship, but, in reality, he's little more than a prisoner, a pawn, to build Blackbeard's pirate fleet and give his growing army the firepower to attack bigger, bolder targets. [Ewan] After Blackbeard takes over, we see that he terrorizes the Caribbean. [Wilson] From there, he then moves to the North American coast and he's one of the first individuals that starts operating off the coast of North America.
What they're attacking is mostly English shipping. [Narrator] Blackbeard spots an opportunity to plunder the British colonies dotted along the eastern coast of North America. There's only one problem. If threatened, the colonists can summon the mighty Royal Navy for protection. Blackbeard and his crew will never have a fighting force strong enough to challenge the British Crown. However, the cunning captain has already begun cultivating his own image, allowing tales to spread of a supernatural, immortal, unstoppable pirate in league with the devil.
It's the greatest, most powerful weapon in Blackbeard's arsenal: terror. [Wilson] So pirates at this point are employing fear as a weapon, and part of that is by making yourself recognizable, by ensuring that people know who you are and your sort of notoriety. [Margarette Lincoln] When they were chasing merchant ships, he would put lighted matches, which were essentially lengths of rope that you would set a cannon alight with, into his hat so that he did really look like the devil incarnate. [Wilson] His victims, they were often tortured to reveal where their sort of stashes of treasure are. They're tortured to reveal more information of other vessels that might be nearby.
[Narrator] Blackbeard's horrifying legend swells as he sails from the Caribbean to North America, terrifying stories from survivors spreading through the colonies. His plan is working. Those who cross his path almost always opt for a swift surrender over a violent death at the hand of the devil's pirate. But now he's using the same tactics to rule over his own crew, controlling them with fear and theatrics, with little regard for their lives. [Ewan] He says, let us make a hell ourselves by lighting pots of brimstone and putting them in the hold and staying in there with the sulfur burning until they couldn't stand it anymore
and see which of us could last the longest. [Lincoln] One drunken bout, Blackbeard loaded his pistol and fired at random under a table where he and two others were playing cards, and he kneecapped his second in command, Isaac Hands, who was lame for the rest of his life. [Narrator] Fear has become Blackbeard's greatest ally. By October 1717, Blackbeard takes control of Stede Bonnet's ship, The Revenge, and plunders his way from Nassau to the coast of North America.
He sails as far north as Virginia, Philadelphia and New York, attacking and seizing ships as he goes. In a two-week spree, he captures 15 vessels, ransacking their valuables and dumping everything else into the sea. His men dismantle and sink some of the ill-gotten ships. His plan has worked; Blackbeard is now the most infamous pirate in America. But Blackbeard is only getting started. Although they're strong enough to tackle merchant and fishing vessels, to take on the Royal Navy frigates patrolling these waters, he needs a formidable ship. As they continue south towards the Caribbean,
where transatlantic shipping lanes converge, he spots the ideal prize: a huge 250-ton French slave ship named La Concorde. [Wilson] Pirates often targeted these larger slaving vessels because they were so large, which meant they could have larger manpower on board. But they could also mount more cannons on board as well, which meant they had more firepower and they could attack bigger and more lucrative prizes. [Narrator] Blackbeard closes in. When La Concorde's crew recognize their attacker, they surrender immediately.
Blackbeard seizes control of their vast ship, crew and its cargo of almost 500 enslaved Africans. [Ewan] The point is that you didn't want to have a big battle with the ship you were trying to take. You wanted to scare it. When you came in contact with a vessel that you wanted to capture, you would have your cannons all run out, and then you would pull up a skull and crossbones or a skeleton with an hourglass saying your time is up. You wanted to scare them into just giving up. That way you didn't have to fight or damage the vessel,
and you could take all their stuff relatively unharmed. [Narrator] Blackbeard takes his new prize, La Concorde, to Bequia, a secluded island in the Grenadines. Here he sets to work adapting the former slave ship for all-out war. He names her the Queen Anne's Revenge, the pride of his fleet. [Ewan] Queen Anne's Revenge was a bit over 100 feet long, 30 feet wide, had several decks.
We think it had at least 40 cannon. [Lincoln] And that he used this ship as part of a big fleet that he was building up. At which point he called himself a commodore. [Narrator] Blackbeard now has control of seven heavily armed ships. He's building his vast pirate army and has established his reputation in a matter of months as the world's most dangerous pirate. [Narrator] To operate the Queen Anne's Revenge, Blackbeard needs more men. He turns to the captured crew of La Concorde, forces the strongest 61 enslaved Africans and 10 French captives to join his crew and banishes the rest.
[Mark Hanna] During this time period, a large percentage of the crews were forced men, they did not want to be on these ships. So how do you force someone on board a ship? What do you do when you attack another vessel? That creates a really tricky problem for someone like Blackbeard, because he might have a majority of his crew don't really want to be there and he needs them to fight. So one way of doing this is to get them to sign some sort of document. What they're typically known as, articles. And the articles could be rules of how to live.
A lot of historians have depicted pirate articles as being very forward-looking, brilliant ways of getting societies to sort of come together. But in fact, you could see it the opposite. Pirate articles could be perceived instead as ways of getting a forced crew member to fight. Because if you sign your name on those articles, it means legally you've said that you are joining this crew, and if you're captured by the Royal Navy, you'll be executed. You signed your name to that document saying you're part of Blackbeard's crew. That means that, no matter how happy you are to be part of the crew or not, you better fight or die.
[Lincoln] By this period, the crew was highly diverse. [Mélanie Lamotte] Probably a majority of pirates sailing across the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic were not white European men. A lot of them were actually African or of African ancestry in this time period. Some of them were formerly enslaved. Others were actually marooned slaves, so basically they had run away from their plantation. I have read that a significant proportion of Blackbeard's crew was actually Black. [Narrator] History speaks of a pirate on Blackbeard's crew who goes by the name Black Caesar.
[Cusworth] We definitely know that there was a Black person called Caesar who was with Blackbeard. That is in the historical record. It seems like it's actually maybe a conglomeration of a lot of different Black pirates from across that time period. So sometimes we have him in Florida, sometimes we-- he's described as having this kind of harem of women on some island. He's described as then having an alliance with Blackbeard. What is really fascinating for me about Black Caesar, it's clear that at this time being a Black pirate wasn't incredibly rare, and that we have a huge number of different people
whose lives and stories have all come together into this larger-than-life character of Black Caesar. [Narrator] To Blackbeard it doesn't matter where his pirates come from, so long as they're able, strong and fierce. Within a single year he has assembled the wildest men at sea and transformed them into a pirate army ferocious enough to operate in the same seas as the mighty Royal Navy. Months of raiding in tropical waters and fortifying their ships has taken its toll on Blackbeard's growing crew. Life at sea is treacherous.
[Lincoln] They did suffer ill health. They did suffer malnutrition. They did suffer a life where they were exposed to the elements and to shipwreck and running out of supplies. This is one of the things that you don't really think about on pirate voyages, how awful it must have been. [Narrator] For a pirate on the open oceans, the hunt for food, water and other supplies can eclipse their appetite for silver and gold. Blackbeard and his crew are suffering-- hungry, thirsty, and riddled with disease from the brothels of Nassau. They're in dire need of medical supplies.
[Wilson] Whereas the pirates of the 17th century would have been able to sail to colonial ports that supported them and gain access to these supplies, the pirates of the 18th century are now isolated from those markets, from those colonial ports. So they have to find more inventive ways to gain access to the supplies they need. [Narrator] Desperate for medical supplies, Blackbeard and his ailing crew are about to embark on their most daring mission yet. They set sail for South Carolina, a rapidly expanding British colony on the American East Coast. Their target: the well-stocked, developing port city of Charles Town.
It's heavily fortified, with walls making the city impenetrable by land, but it's vulnerable to a blockade by sea. With the Queen Anne's Revenge leading his mighty flotilla, Blackbeard and his men are strong enough to wreak havoc, but the captain hopes his devilish reputation will lead the city to give in without a fight. Pirates sail through the narrow mouth of the harbor, making it impossible for anyone to enter or exit the port. This is a nightmare for a port city reliant on trade. Blackbeard's plan is designed to get the governor's attention.
[Wilson] Blackbeard blockades this harbor for around one to two weeks, taking all vessels that are trying to come in and trying to get out. [Narrator] Strategically positioned, Blackbeard draws a net around Charles Town harbor. Boats immediately begin to fall into his trap. He captures his first ship before it can raise the alarm. He seizes another five vessels, taking their passengers as prisoners.
[shouting] [Ewan] He has the most formidable naval force in the vicinity. His Queen Anne's Revenge had 40 cannon, his smaller vessels probably had 10 to 12 cannon a piece. He captures some of the more prominent citizens. He demands ransom from the port. [Narrator] Blackbeard has a powerful bargaining chip-- many of these captives are wealthy residents of Charles Town. [Wilson] What he's really wanting is an exchange of prisoners that he's taken for medical supplies. [Narrator] If the governor fails to provide them, he threatens to execute all 80 hostages, sink every last ship in the harbor and even attack the town itself.
[Lincoln] And he sent two of his crew off to Charleston with the list of medicines to get the chest. [Narrator] Several long days pass. Blackbeard still hasn't received a response. He prepares to attack the city and murder the hostages. [Lincoln] Two crew members he sent off to Charleston immediately got drunk. So although citizens rustled up the medicines as fast as they could to send out, they couldn't find the two drunken crew members to go back with them.
And they knew they couldn't just send the chest, because Blackbeard would think it was a trap. [Narrator] Eventually the drunken crew members are located, and the medicine is delivered. Blackbeard calls off his assault on Charles Town and releases the hostages, but not before stealing their valuables. Nobody has been injured or killed. But for an entire week, one of the wealthiest ports in North America has been brought to a total standstill by the fearsome reputation of a single man. His plan has worked flawlessly. [Wilson] It shows what impact even a small number of pirates, even a small number of pirate vessels, can cause for colonial shipping throughout the Americas.
[Narrator] Blackbeard slips away, his legend spreading across the East Coast. [Wilson] At this point, because of the way the colonial governments worked, there were individual colonial governments per colony, so they're all responding in their own ways to these attacks. Sometimes they collaborate, sometimes they don't, but what that means is that the responses to these individuals is pretty fragmented and detached depending on when and where they're operating.
[Ewan] And it doesn't get under control until the merchants go to the Crown and say, look, you are losing a lot of tax money, a lot of revenue. And that's really what gets the government to kind of step in and declare a war on pirates. [Narrator] Blackbeard must move on from South Carolina quickly. Whilst the blockade of Charles Town was a great success for Blackbeard, its repercussions will make the future harder, not only for him, but for every pirate. [Lincoln] There was a huge movement to clean up the islands, the Bahamas and piracy. [Narrator] Blackbeard has nowhere to hide.
Even his former base, the lawless city of Nassau, is no longer safe. The new governor, Woodes Rogers, is a formidable pirate hunter, sent by the British Crown with a mission to clean up the island and capture outlaws like Blackbeard. [Lincoln] Pirate hunter Woodes Rogers, who had himself been a privateer, got a commission to do this. He arranged that he would get some kind of payment for putting down piracy in this pirate lair. [Ewan] One of the ways they try to stop this is by saying, look, if we catch you, you're dead. It's a death sentence if you're convicted of piracy.
We'll put your body in a cage and we'll hang it out in front of a harbor to show what happens to pirates. If you give up being a pirate, we will give you amnesty; we'll forgive all your past transgressions. Clean slate. You can move forward. [Lincoln] Then he went armed with a pardon so that anybody, any pirate who gave himself up would be pardoned, get the royal pardon. And then he used the pirates who surrendered, effectively, to chase other pirates. [Narrator] Blackbeard has escaped Charles Town, and without the safety of Nassau, he scours the East Coast, seeking a new hideout. But then his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, suddenly runs aground.
It is completely destroyed, just as the pirate hunters are closing in. [Narrator] Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, is stranded, run aground in the shallow sands of the Topsail Inlet on the coast of North Carolina. For almost three centuries little has been known of his fate, following the Charles Town blockade. But in 1996, archaeologists made a remarkable discovery: the wreckage of the Queen Anne's Revenge. [Ewan] They found a number of cannon that were down there, coin weight that had Queen Anne on it. It was clearly from her reign.
It was a couple of years before the archaeologist, before our team, was able to say, yeah, we're pretty sure this is the Queen Anne's Revenge. [Narrator] It is one of only a few confirmed pirate wrecks ever to be found. This incredible discovery offered archaeologists a unique window into Blackbeard's life at sea and an opportunity to see if the tales of old matched their findings. [Lamotte] Thousands of artifacts were actually excavated from this ship. One of those artifacts was actually a book which was a travel narrative written in the early 18th century which could be a confirmation that Blackbeard
was actually educated and that he was literate. [Ewan] The Queen Anne's Revenge is a treasure trove of early 18th century artifacts. There's pewter plates, weights for weighing gold dust. In fact, about 20 grams of gold dust have actually been recovered. We knew that there had been 20 pounds of gold dust on it. We assume that Blackbeard took most of that when he left. Interesting things that distinguishes a pirate ship from, say, a merchant vessel is when we were excavating
in the forward part of the ship where the crew was, you find a lot nicer things than you might expect. There was this crystal stemware. What's a pirate doing with crystalware? They should be drinking out of pewter or, or just out of the bottle. Well, this was stuff that was stolen. There were a number of navigation instruments which kind of helped us identify this as a pirate ship. One of the things that you did when you robbed a ship is you took things of value, and part of that was navigation instruments.
There were medical instruments that were found. One of the things that Blackbeard demanded when he besieged Charleston was a chest of medicine. There was a urethral syringe used for treating venereal disease. It still had traces of mercury that would have been used. There were shackles that were found that we might be able to trace back to when this was a slave ship. It was a slave ship for about seven years; it was only a pirate ship for about six months.
It's unknown how much treasure was actually on the Queen Anne's Revenge when it ran aground. I would imagine that Blackbeard would have taken anything of any real value with him. The question becomes, was it an accidental running aground or did Blackbeard do this on purpose? The archaeology of it suggests that it did run aground, that it wasn't lost in a storm or any other mishap like that. Looking at the surviving parts of the hull suggests that there were a lot of lead patches on there, that the ship was not in terribly good shape, that it was getting pretty leaky from being in the tropical waters.
And Blackbeard had up to 300 pirates under his command. This was a way of sort of reducing his crew size, corporate downsizing, if you will, by running his ship aground, perhaps on purpose, accidentally on purpose. [Wilson] At this point in time, King George I has issued a royal proclamation of pardon for pirates. [Narrator] The offer of a royal pardon is attractive to Blackbeard; his actions have made him a prized target for pirate hunters and the Royal Navy. By choosing to run the Queen Anne's Revenge aground himself, sacrificing his own flagship and most of his pirates, Blackbeard slips away with as much plunder as possible and a smaller, elite crew.
[Wilson] The problem is so large and so vast and so impactful that a pardon is seen as really one of the main ways to deal with piracy. It's expected that if pirates are allowed to return to colonial society without repercussion, then they'll do so, and that will end the pirate threat. [Narrator] Seeking this pardon from South Carolina would be unwise, the governor still reeling from the humiliation of Blackbeard's blockade of Charles Town.
His best bet is Charles Eden, the governor of neighboring North Carolina, one of the poorest colonies in British North America. But Blackbeard must be careful. The offer could be a trap. He sends Stede Bonnet to the town of Bath in North Carolina to claim a pardon as a test of the governor's sincerity. [Ewan] Blackbeard, I think, really is a calculating person. Certainly in it for himself. [Narrator] Bonnet's mission is a success; he secures a pardon for himself.
News soon reaches Blackbeard; the offer is legitimate. But for Bonnet, the good news is short-lived. He returns to find his ship ransacked and his crew marooned. Blackbeard has betrayed him. Blackbeard selected a small group of loyal pirates, took most of the valuables and vanished. Those who remain-- 250 men-- are left stranded with little to survive on. Blackbeard and those lucky enough to join him receive their own pardon from Governor Eden and a commission making them legitimate privateers.
[Hanna] Privateering becomes an acceptable act. It becomes regulated, formally, there's rules that are administered. So that means that plundering at sea is a thing that one can do, but they can do it legally. [Narrator] Blackbeard splits his time between the town of Bath, Ocracoke Island, and the high seas. But it doesn't take long for concerning reports to circulate which suggest the former pirate captain may not be so reformed after all. [Wilson] He seems to be going to traders and taking whatever goods he wants and giving them whatever money he expects to give them. So sort of give them a little bit of money, but not as much as the goods are worth, sort of committing piracy by other means,
basically abusing the traders of that region. [Ewan] For the inhabitants of South Carolina and Virginia, they hated him because preyed on their shipping, but North Carolina was a different story. North Carolina was this backwater between these two vibrant economies in South Carolina and Virginia. So, when Blackbeard shows up with a lot of stolen goods that were available at a decent price, well, of course we liked him. What's not to like? There's someone bringing you goods at a price you can afford. [Wilson] The governor of Virginia, as well as the naval officers in Virginia, are gathering intelligence on Blackbeard.
They know about the blockade of South Carolina. They're not that enthused that right next door is this notorious pirate who may have taken a pardon, but they don't really accept that. One of the naval captains employs agents in North Carolina, basically to keep track of Blackbeard and his movements. [Narrator] Blackbeard is unaware the governor of Virginia has dispatched naval officers to track him down. Blackbeard spots two French merchant ships bound for the Caribbean.
He scans the horizon; there are no witnesses. He cannot resist. Blackbeard captures the merchant ships, crew and cargo, a clear act of piracy. He takes one ship for himself, transfers the prisoners to the second and orders them to sail away. When Blackbeard arrives back in North Carolina, he claims to Governor Eden that the ship was found at sea, drifting aimlessly without a crew, making it a legitimate prize. [Ewan] The governor says, huh? Well, that's pretty amazing. I guess you can sell the cargo and give us our share of it.
[Wilson] There were members of the North Carolina government who seemed to support Blackbeard. [Narrator] With word of Blackbeard's piracy spreading, naval officers from Virginia arrive in Bath, seeking evidence of stolen goods. [Wilson] They find the goods of that vessel within the barn of the chief justice of the colony. So the very person that should be cracking down on piracy has the goods of the pirate stashed in his barn. And it's really from this point on that the Virginian governor and the naval officers start to move against Blackbeard because they see the fact that he is intending to continue piracy.
[Narrator] Blackbeard thrives in his new career as a not-so-secret pirate enjoying the protection of North Carolina's governor as he builds up his base on Ocracoke Island. Blackbeard hosts a raucous celebration for his crew and some visiting merchants. They drink and gorge themselves, unaware that powerful forces in neighboring Virginia are already moving against them. Virginia's governor, outraged by Blackbeard's unrepentant piracy, sends two sloops led by Lieutenant Robert Maynard to invade Blackbeard's hideout.
[Lincoln] Maynard sailed very cautiously up to the mouth of this creek, where he had intelligence that Blackbeard had anchored his ship. [Wilson] What's important is that on these two sloops, there are no mounted cannons, so they are going into this battle purely with small arms, without any ability to fire broadsides into Blackbeard. [Lincoln] Blackbeard, who was already quite drunk by the time that he got news of Maynard's coming, was alerted to the fact and suddenly realized he'd have to shoot it out.
[Wilson] The first sloop starts to sail into Ocracoke Inlet but is then beached. So the second sloop proceeds and is engaged by Blackbeard. [shouting and gunfire] [Lincoln] Maynard's sloop and Blackbeard's ship exchanged fire. And at close range, of course, this was just terrible. A great proportion of Maynard's crew were just mown down. He was very sensible, though; he kept the rest out of sight. [Man] Surrender!
[Ewan] They finally get close enough that they can grapple with one another. [Lincoln] Blackbeard thought that actually he had a clear way, that Maynard didn't have very many men left, and so he jumped onto the ship, and at which point, of course, Maynard's men jumped up, and Blackbeard found that he had many more to fight than he thought he had to. [shouting] [Ewan] The crews fight hand to hand. [shouting] [gunshot] Blackbeard is shot by Maynard but keeps fighting. He suffers 25 sword cuts and shots.
[Lincoln] And he was just about to mow Maynard down when somebody jumped behind him and slit his throat. [shouts echoing] [Wilson] Blackbeard's head is then taken from his body and hanged from the bowsprit of the sloop. [Ewan] Depending on which legend you want to believe, at that point, Blackbeard's body is thrown overboard and it swims around the ship five to seven times. [Narrator] Maynard, an officer of the Royal Navy, has defeated the infamous Blackbeard.
[Narrator] It had only taken two years for Edward Teach to evolve from a common privateer to Blackbeard, the most feared pirate on Earth. But now he's met his bloody fate at the hands of the Royal Navy. So how did his legend continue to grow, his brutal reputation gripping the world's collective imagination for centuries to come? [Wilson] What happens after the battle and after the skirmish is that the accounts of this attack are then printed and widely disseminated in Europe and London and in the Americas, really to show the formidity of the Royal Navy, really to show that if you are a pirate, the Navy will come and hunt you down.
It's to show the successes against piracy. That starts to build up the myth of Blackbeard. [Narrator] The Royal Navy had a lot to gain by encouraging Blackbeard's reputation, building him up as a brutal adversary that only the fiercest naval officers could take down. The more ferocious he sounded, the better the Navy looked for defeating him. [Lincoln] The myth of Blackbeard, which is this huge man, devil-like, that you couldn't really kill, who was able to withstand numerous wounds before he finally keeled over onto the deck.
This could have been done just to big-up Maynard's reputation, because at this point in the pirate wars it was very important that naval officers came out of it looking as heroes. [Wilson] They sort of want Blackbeard to seem like a notorious pirate that they have managed to suppress through the Royal Navy. They're quite lucky to encounter him with such a reduced number of individuals. If they had encountered Blackbeard on the Queen Anne's Revenge, for example, with the 40 cannon and with this full crew,
these two sloops would not have been able to match him at all. It's only the fact that they are able to engage him in this small inlet and catch him by surprise that it seems that they find success. [Narrator] Blackbeard also had known the strength of his own terrifying legend. He'd mastered shock-and-awe tactics which allowed him to spread frightening rumors of his hellish mystical powers, aware that these would haunt God-fearing men. The wilder the tale, the more effective his use of fear. [Ewan] A lot of the lives of pirates was sensationalized, and that's what we get from Blackbeard.
[Cusworth] Often it was about inspiring fear in the heart of your enemy. If you think about pirate ships, they actually didn't always have the best record against the Royal Navy when they actually went head to head, and so it was much more about your kind of image and rumor and reputation. [Ewan] The most interesting things about Blackbeard and his legend is that we have no record of him killing anyone until the final battle. I find that curious. [Wilson] He tortures individuals, he does attack them, he does seem quite brutal in doing so. There was no real justifications for what he was doing. But really I don't think he's any more brutal
than any of the other pirates at this point in time. [Ewan] I think he certainly was self-serving and had an agenda to enrich himself. If you could help him do that, like the governor of North Carolina, well, then, that was great. [Cusworth] People are very interested in Blackbeard's tales because of this romantic side of it, of the adventure, of the drama, and people are really drawn to those kind of stories, and I think for all of those reasons he is that kind of quintessential pirate. [gunshot] [Narrator] Blackbeard's piratical career may have been short-lived, but his name carries weight to this day, his legacy steering the myth that pirates were mystical beings,
spreading the fallacy that sailors could be cursed at sea. Blackbeard understood the power of fear; he built his reputation on it. But when the Royal Navy finally defeated him, they used the same stories to prove their strength, bolstering their own image. In doing so, they verified legend, securing Blackbeard's legacy. [Ewan] You wanted to be as terrifying as you could, just made you more successful. I'm sure had Blackbeard had been alive, he would have reveled in it. [Narrator] In only two years, Blackbeard had stirred enough chaos throughout the Caribbean and the Americas to push the Royal Navy to secure their waters, forcing other pirates to look east,
across the Atlantic to unprotected shores.
