VICape Fear! When a “naval historian” tells us that the battle at Cape Fear was merely a matter of a few shots and a surrender, he not only understates the fact, but beclouds the due glory of a company of heroic men. Mr. S. C. Hughson, whose patient accuracy has given the complete story to the world, not only describes a serious engagement but shows that the result was so open a question that the pirates, during the fight, beckoned with their hats to their opponents in mock invitation to board and take them, in full confidence of victory.Cape Fear is on Smith Island, at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, on the coast of North Carolina, and between Charleston and Ocracoke Inlet. At New Inlet, where the river swims into the sea, it divides what are now called Brunswick and Hanover Counties. Shoal waters and sandy islets make the work of navigation here uncertain.Major Bonnet had made his sea-nest in this region, his knowledge of the channels and depths protecting his comings and goings. In this place he could repair and refit his ship as well as set up a sort of market for the purveying to the localfolk his varied plunder. For the coastwise pirate, as distinguished from the pirate of the Kidd and Quelch school, was simply a smuggler who stole his wares, and if you hyphenate him thus, smuggler-pirate, you can separate him from the typical smuggler who acquires his contraband lawfully in a cheaper market to run it past the customs to a dearer market.It was to Cape Fear, then, that Bonnet came in the beginning of August with his ship and two captive sloops, one of them being theFrancis, and it was here that toward the end of the next month Justice presented her bill to him at the point of a cannon.Colonel Rhett, of Charlestown, was the agent of Justice in this instance. Not long after Blackbeard had held up Charles Town for a quantity of pills and plasters, as we have noticed, another rascal tried the same trick but could not make it work. This fellow’s name was Vane, sometimes called Vaughan, and quite a bad actor in his own way.Of all the citizens who sharply resented these piratical impertinences, Colonel Rhett, a noted colonist, took it most to heart. On his own initiative he fitted out as sloops-of-war two ships, theHenry, on which he himself sailed, and theSea Nymph, which he manned with many “gentlemen of the town, animated with the same principle of zeal and honor for our public safety, and the preservation of our trade.”Heartily seconded by Governor Johnson of South Carolina, who unlike Governor Eden of North Carolina was a terror to pirates, Rhett’s little fleet put out in pursuit of Vane; for Vane, seeing that his plans had slipped, decided that he had better also slip. He slipped so effectively that Rhett never came up with him.Since leaving Topsail Inlet with his recruits Bonnet had taken no less than thirteen vessels, and word of this pirate had come to Charles Town while Rhett was outfitting. Missing Vane, Rhett “and the rest of the gentlemen were resolved not to return without doing some service to their country, and therefore went in quest of a pirate they had heard lay at Cape Fear.” There they certainly found their opportunity of doing a public service and most commendably appropriated that opportunity.At evening on September 26 theHenryand theSea Nymphcame to Smith Island while daylight enough was left to show them the topmasts of the pirate above a spit of land behind which theRoyal Jameslay. They threw their anchors into the mud of the inlet and waited for morning. At dusk three boatloads of armed men came out of the river and coolly reconnoitered. Major Bonnet had spotted Colonel Rhett.All that night of late summer the Charles Town gentlemen could make out the threats and persuasions of Bonnet and his officers driving on the efforts of their crew in making ready for themorrow’s deadly debate, which Bonnet, rather than surrendering, evidently chose to maintain. The tide brimmed up the river from the Atlantic and was sucked back again to those vast waters, yet it lulled no one to sleep on any of the ships.All night the wind-blown torches and lanterns lit the work of the pirates; all night the glare of them flickered and jumped beyond the bump of land which separated the besiegers and the besieged. The pirate sloop was like a warrior unbuckled and relaxing in his tent, expecting no hostile surprise. Her deck was disorderly with bits of cargo; barrels of rum, quarters of beef, hogsheads of molasses, all to be cleared off for the free action of the guns. Her gear, too, was probably at odds and ends in course of repair.The work of weeks had now to be punched up into the fleet hours of one night, for when the dawn should come theRoyal Jamesmust be a warrior harnessed and prepared. All night the men of theHenryand theSea Nymphlay at watch.Sun-up began the day of fate. Beyond the headlands which sheer above the river, the east was bannered with yellow and purple and rose-pink; a strong breeze blew directly from the land. The sails of theRoyal Jameswent up with the sun, the blocks and tackle creaking like a flock of hungry gulls; the chains rattled with the hoisting of the anchor.Bonnet had to fight two to one. His chance—andit was an approved method of pirate strategy—was to get to open water and battle on the run, broadsiding one or the other of his enemies but never permitting both to get at him at once.The major had become quite a sailor now. He gathered all his men on theRoyal Jamesand left the two captured sloops with only Mr. Killing and the other prisoners on board of them. The refusal of these latter to aid him in his fight with Rhett was allowed to pass without punishment.“Here they come!”Beyond the hummock the Charles Town men could see the masts of the pirate, fully freighted with sail, running swiftly toward the point. Bonnet was making a break for the sea.Rhett’s ships quivered with action. As theRoyal Jamesthrust her bowsprit into sight, theHenryand theSea Nymphcrowded down on either of her quarters.They made it in time; Bonnet, dodging, was elbowed into the shore. If the channel had been deep there, he might still have made it; but the channel was shallow, and his ship thudded into the sandy bottom, and there she lay, with her full suit of canvas tugging at the sticks until they promised to snap.Rhett grinned and swung about, but he could not make it sharply enough, and his satisfaction waned with the bump of his ship into the same bottom that gripped his enemy. TheSeaNymph, also turning, likewise found herself hard and fast ashore.Here then was the situation. TheHenrywas grounded on the pirate’s bow within pistol shot; theSea Nymphstruck the sand out of range, and there she stayed for the greater part of the fight, a spectator of the struggle, unable to bear a part or give any help to theHenry.And Rhett’s flagship needed help. When she hit she slanted, but in the same direction as the pirate had tilted, with the result, of course, that she presented her unprotected deck squarely to Bonnet’s broadsides, while the latter’s position offered more of his hull and less of his deck to Rhett’s ordnance.For all of that, the South Carolinians gave the Barbados gentleman all their ten guns at once with a smart peppering of small-arm fire. Bonnet roared back with all of his pieces, smashing theHenry’sdeckwork and reddening her scuppers. The Charles Town boys who stood by the guns on that open, inclined deck of that Saturday morning, never letting the fight flag for a moment, certainly passed the supreme physical test one hundred per cent to the good.But there was to be another deciding element of the contest than cannon balls, musketry or cutlasses. The tide, which was now turning and flooding in, would award the victory. For whichever ship righted herself first must have the critical advantage.The opponents must have known this from the first, and, of course, the benefit of the tide being uncertain, each desperately strove to finish the other and thus leave no chance to the arbitrament of Nature. The mud flats disappeared beneath the oncoming waters; the lower islands sank from sight; the battling ships jerked now and then with the powerful tug of the stream at their hulls, and with the rising of the river crammed more shot into the hot guns till the smoke burned the eyelids of the fighters red, and ten good men lay in the shocked attitudes of death on theHenry’sdecks, and eighteen wounded groaned in her hold. Seven of Bonnet’s crew had signed on with the real skull-and-bones flag.The tide came swirling in. High noon gave place to afternoon; the moment of decision was at hand. One or other of the ships would gain her keel in a few minutes. Which would it be?It was theHenry. Bonnet, who had fought supremely, saw with vehement despair the yards of his enemy tilting up, while he himself lay in the sand inert and helpless. He rushed with his pistol cocked to the magazine of powder thus to make the grand finish, but his men threw themselves upon him to restrain his rash and horrible act, while one of them jumped in the shrouds and waved the white flag of the conquered.Rhett boarded and chained up some thirty men, including their leader, and after repairingtheHenryset out for home. The public service had been rendered—by the tide.Charles Town went wild with excitement, though not exactly in the way they mean who keep this tired phrase in currency. When Rhett came in laden with pirate prisoners and convoying theRoyal Jamesand the two sloops captured by that ship, theFortuneand theFrancis, he was the hero of one faction in town and the villain of the other.Friends of piracy in general and the personal acquaintances of the enchained pirates in particular shared a common indignation. They must have been numerous, for they promised to liberate the prisoners or burn the city to the foundation blocks. Bonnet, as was fitting for a gentleman who happened to be a criminal, was locked up in the residence of the marshal, while the baser fellows were thrown into the watch-house, there being no jail in the town at that time.The fashion of the port went out to look at the ships. TheHenrywas all knocked about, while theRoyal James—whose name had been immediately changed back toRevengeby a proper patriotic gesture—had not much more than a chipped hull.If the ships had not grounded as they did Bonnet would have been against overwhelming odds. TheHenryhad eight guns and seventy men; theSea Nymphhad the same number ofcannon and sixty men. Bonnet fought with ten guns and about fifty men.But the sticking of the ships had made his chance more even, for in that situation he commanded two more guns than did Rhett, and the latter’s slight excess of men was more than canceled by the bad slant of his deck, with its consequent openness to the enemy’s cannonade.Before the trouble in town could blaze into tumult, the pirates were put to trial in the Vice-Admiralty Court, presided over by Judge Trott. Bonnet, however, did not stand among them; by bribing with a free palm he had escaped and was at that moment fleeing up the coast in a small boat, to the great scandal of all lovers of good government.The trial was brief and characteristic of the times. The defendants, without counsel as was usual, feebly pleaded that Bonnet had deceived them at Topsail Inlet into sailing with him. Ignatius Pell, boatswain of theRoyal James, turned state’s evidence, and other witnesses were Mr. Killing, whom we have quoted, and the captain of theFrancisand the captain of theFortune.There could not be a doubt of their guilt and in that age not a doubt of their fate; they were sentenced to be hanged by a judge who preached at and denounced them in the vigorous fashion of the Elizabethan courts. In less than one week all but three or four who had proved compulsoryservice were executed at old White Point, near the present beautiful promenade.One cheerful ray lightened the black misery of their situation: Stede Bonnet was recaptured. “He was the great ringleader of them,” said the prosecuting attorney, “who had seduced many poor, ignorant men to follow his course of living, and ruined many poor wretches; some of whom lately suffered, who with their last breath expressed a great satisfaction at the prisoner’s (Bonnet) being apprehended, and charged the ruin of themselves and loss of their lives entirely upon him.”Colonel Rhett had again been the fate of Major Bonnet. After Bonnet’s flight from the marshal’s home, Rhett went after him and ran him down on a little island near the city. Heriot, sometime shipmaster for the major, was shot in the short scrimmage, and his employer again brought to Charles Town in manacles.They tried Stede Bonnet in the same court and the same fashion and with the same evidence as they had his crew. He was tried on two indictments, one for taking theFrancisand the other for taking theFortune.To both he pleaded not guilty and was first tried on the affair of theFrancis. He stood up for himself in good shape; but the facts, as well as the court, crushed him. He claimed, as Captain Kidd had claimed some years before in a similar fix, that a mutinous crew drove himprotesting into these criminal courses. He explained that the only piracy he had ever been in was when with Captain Thatch. One wonders how much the mutinous crew, as alleged, had to exert themselves to persuade an old Blackbeard man to steal a fat ship or two.A curious little circumstance comes up in this trial. Pell, the boatswain, in answer to a question, said Bonnet was in command of the ship, “but the quartermaster had more power than he,” adding that the quartermaster took charge of the loot and sometimes divided it. One wonders if the crew did not have a great deal more to say about things than would be supposed, tolerating Bonnet as a business manager.Bonnet might have come down as a somewhat romantic person, but the nerve he had always shown, even in his trial, broke at the last; and when on December 18 he was hanged in the same place as his followers had been, he was almost senseless from fear. Thus in a miserable huddle he left a stage on which he had not been too modest, on which he had even swaggered.This is all the story of one summer. The blockade of Charles Town by Blackbeard had happened in May of 1718, and December of the same year saw the end of Stede Bonnet. And to Bonnet, as to his men, there came a spark of joy before he went to the rope—and that was the news that his old superior, Blackbeard, had died upon the cutlass on November 22.
Cape Fear! When a “naval historian” tells us that the battle at Cape Fear was merely a matter of a few shots and a surrender, he not only understates the fact, but beclouds the due glory of a company of heroic men. Mr. S. C. Hughson, whose patient accuracy has given the complete story to the world, not only describes a serious engagement but shows that the result was so open a question that the pirates, during the fight, beckoned with their hats to their opponents in mock invitation to board and take them, in full confidence of victory.
Cape Fear is on Smith Island, at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, on the coast of North Carolina, and between Charleston and Ocracoke Inlet. At New Inlet, where the river swims into the sea, it divides what are now called Brunswick and Hanover Counties. Shoal waters and sandy islets make the work of navigation here uncertain.
Major Bonnet had made his sea-nest in this region, his knowledge of the channels and depths protecting his comings and goings. In this place he could repair and refit his ship as well as set up a sort of market for the purveying to the localfolk his varied plunder. For the coastwise pirate, as distinguished from the pirate of the Kidd and Quelch school, was simply a smuggler who stole his wares, and if you hyphenate him thus, smuggler-pirate, you can separate him from the typical smuggler who acquires his contraband lawfully in a cheaper market to run it past the customs to a dearer market.
It was to Cape Fear, then, that Bonnet came in the beginning of August with his ship and two captive sloops, one of them being theFrancis, and it was here that toward the end of the next month Justice presented her bill to him at the point of a cannon.
Colonel Rhett, of Charlestown, was the agent of Justice in this instance. Not long after Blackbeard had held up Charles Town for a quantity of pills and plasters, as we have noticed, another rascal tried the same trick but could not make it work. This fellow’s name was Vane, sometimes called Vaughan, and quite a bad actor in his own way.
Of all the citizens who sharply resented these piratical impertinences, Colonel Rhett, a noted colonist, took it most to heart. On his own initiative he fitted out as sloops-of-war two ships, theHenry, on which he himself sailed, and theSea Nymph, which he manned with many “gentlemen of the town, animated with the same principle of zeal and honor for our public safety, and the preservation of our trade.”
Heartily seconded by Governor Johnson of South Carolina, who unlike Governor Eden of North Carolina was a terror to pirates, Rhett’s little fleet put out in pursuit of Vane; for Vane, seeing that his plans had slipped, decided that he had better also slip. He slipped so effectively that Rhett never came up with him.
Since leaving Topsail Inlet with his recruits Bonnet had taken no less than thirteen vessels, and word of this pirate had come to Charles Town while Rhett was outfitting. Missing Vane, Rhett “and the rest of the gentlemen were resolved not to return without doing some service to their country, and therefore went in quest of a pirate they had heard lay at Cape Fear.” There they certainly found their opportunity of doing a public service and most commendably appropriated that opportunity.
At evening on September 26 theHenryand theSea Nymphcame to Smith Island while daylight enough was left to show them the topmasts of the pirate above a spit of land behind which theRoyal Jameslay. They threw their anchors into the mud of the inlet and waited for morning. At dusk three boatloads of armed men came out of the river and coolly reconnoitered. Major Bonnet had spotted Colonel Rhett.
All that night of late summer the Charles Town gentlemen could make out the threats and persuasions of Bonnet and his officers driving on the efforts of their crew in making ready for themorrow’s deadly debate, which Bonnet, rather than surrendering, evidently chose to maintain. The tide brimmed up the river from the Atlantic and was sucked back again to those vast waters, yet it lulled no one to sleep on any of the ships.
All night the wind-blown torches and lanterns lit the work of the pirates; all night the glare of them flickered and jumped beyond the bump of land which separated the besiegers and the besieged. The pirate sloop was like a warrior unbuckled and relaxing in his tent, expecting no hostile surprise. Her deck was disorderly with bits of cargo; barrels of rum, quarters of beef, hogsheads of molasses, all to be cleared off for the free action of the guns. Her gear, too, was probably at odds and ends in course of repair.
The work of weeks had now to be punched up into the fleet hours of one night, for when the dawn should come theRoyal Jamesmust be a warrior harnessed and prepared. All night the men of theHenryand theSea Nymphlay at watch.
Sun-up began the day of fate. Beyond the headlands which sheer above the river, the east was bannered with yellow and purple and rose-pink; a strong breeze blew directly from the land. The sails of theRoyal Jameswent up with the sun, the blocks and tackle creaking like a flock of hungry gulls; the chains rattled with the hoisting of the anchor.
Bonnet had to fight two to one. His chance—andit was an approved method of pirate strategy—was to get to open water and battle on the run, broadsiding one or the other of his enemies but never permitting both to get at him at once.
The major had become quite a sailor now. He gathered all his men on theRoyal Jamesand left the two captured sloops with only Mr. Killing and the other prisoners on board of them. The refusal of these latter to aid him in his fight with Rhett was allowed to pass without punishment.
“Here they come!”
Beyond the hummock the Charles Town men could see the masts of the pirate, fully freighted with sail, running swiftly toward the point. Bonnet was making a break for the sea.
Rhett’s ships quivered with action. As theRoyal Jamesthrust her bowsprit into sight, theHenryand theSea Nymphcrowded down on either of her quarters.
They made it in time; Bonnet, dodging, was elbowed into the shore. If the channel had been deep there, he might still have made it; but the channel was shallow, and his ship thudded into the sandy bottom, and there she lay, with her full suit of canvas tugging at the sticks until they promised to snap.
Rhett grinned and swung about, but he could not make it sharply enough, and his satisfaction waned with the bump of his ship into the same bottom that gripped his enemy. TheSeaNymph, also turning, likewise found herself hard and fast ashore.
Here then was the situation. TheHenrywas grounded on the pirate’s bow within pistol shot; theSea Nymphstruck the sand out of range, and there she stayed for the greater part of the fight, a spectator of the struggle, unable to bear a part or give any help to theHenry.
And Rhett’s flagship needed help. When she hit she slanted, but in the same direction as the pirate had tilted, with the result, of course, that she presented her unprotected deck squarely to Bonnet’s broadsides, while the latter’s position offered more of his hull and less of his deck to Rhett’s ordnance.
For all of that, the South Carolinians gave the Barbados gentleman all their ten guns at once with a smart peppering of small-arm fire. Bonnet roared back with all of his pieces, smashing theHenry’sdeckwork and reddening her scuppers. The Charles Town boys who stood by the guns on that open, inclined deck of that Saturday morning, never letting the fight flag for a moment, certainly passed the supreme physical test one hundred per cent to the good.
But there was to be another deciding element of the contest than cannon balls, musketry or cutlasses. The tide, which was now turning and flooding in, would award the victory. For whichever ship righted herself first must have the critical advantage.
The opponents must have known this from the first, and, of course, the benefit of the tide being uncertain, each desperately strove to finish the other and thus leave no chance to the arbitrament of Nature. The mud flats disappeared beneath the oncoming waters; the lower islands sank from sight; the battling ships jerked now and then with the powerful tug of the stream at their hulls, and with the rising of the river crammed more shot into the hot guns till the smoke burned the eyelids of the fighters red, and ten good men lay in the shocked attitudes of death on theHenry’sdecks, and eighteen wounded groaned in her hold. Seven of Bonnet’s crew had signed on with the real skull-and-bones flag.
The tide came swirling in. High noon gave place to afternoon; the moment of decision was at hand. One or other of the ships would gain her keel in a few minutes. Which would it be?
It was theHenry. Bonnet, who had fought supremely, saw with vehement despair the yards of his enemy tilting up, while he himself lay in the sand inert and helpless. He rushed with his pistol cocked to the magazine of powder thus to make the grand finish, but his men threw themselves upon him to restrain his rash and horrible act, while one of them jumped in the shrouds and waved the white flag of the conquered.
Rhett boarded and chained up some thirty men, including their leader, and after repairingtheHenryset out for home. The public service had been rendered—by the tide.
Charles Town went wild with excitement, though not exactly in the way they mean who keep this tired phrase in currency. When Rhett came in laden with pirate prisoners and convoying theRoyal Jamesand the two sloops captured by that ship, theFortuneand theFrancis, he was the hero of one faction in town and the villain of the other.
Friends of piracy in general and the personal acquaintances of the enchained pirates in particular shared a common indignation. They must have been numerous, for they promised to liberate the prisoners or burn the city to the foundation blocks. Bonnet, as was fitting for a gentleman who happened to be a criminal, was locked up in the residence of the marshal, while the baser fellows were thrown into the watch-house, there being no jail in the town at that time.
The fashion of the port went out to look at the ships. TheHenrywas all knocked about, while theRoyal James—whose name had been immediately changed back toRevengeby a proper patriotic gesture—had not much more than a chipped hull.
If the ships had not grounded as they did Bonnet would have been against overwhelming odds. TheHenryhad eight guns and seventy men; theSea Nymphhad the same number ofcannon and sixty men. Bonnet fought with ten guns and about fifty men.
But the sticking of the ships had made his chance more even, for in that situation he commanded two more guns than did Rhett, and the latter’s slight excess of men was more than canceled by the bad slant of his deck, with its consequent openness to the enemy’s cannonade.
Before the trouble in town could blaze into tumult, the pirates were put to trial in the Vice-Admiralty Court, presided over by Judge Trott. Bonnet, however, did not stand among them; by bribing with a free palm he had escaped and was at that moment fleeing up the coast in a small boat, to the great scandal of all lovers of good government.
The trial was brief and characteristic of the times. The defendants, without counsel as was usual, feebly pleaded that Bonnet had deceived them at Topsail Inlet into sailing with him. Ignatius Pell, boatswain of theRoyal James, turned state’s evidence, and other witnesses were Mr. Killing, whom we have quoted, and the captain of theFrancisand the captain of theFortune.
There could not be a doubt of their guilt and in that age not a doubt of their fate; they were sentenced to be hanged by a judge who preached at and denounced them in the vigorous fashion of the Elizabethan courts. In less than one week all but three or four who had proved compulsoryservice were executed at old White Point, near the present beautiful promenade.
One cheerful ray lightened the black misery of their situation: Stede Bonnet was recaptured. “He was the great ringleader of them,” said the prosecuting attorney, “who had seduced many poor, ignorant men to follow his course of living, and ruined many poor wretches; some of whom lately suffered, who with their last breath expressed a great satisfaction at the prisoner’s (Bonnet) being apprehended, and charged the ruin of themselves and loss of their lives entirely upon him.”
Colonel Rhett had again been the fate of Major Bonnet. After Bonnet’s flight from the marshal’s home, Rhett went after him and ran him down on a little island near the city. Heriot, sometime shipmaster for the major, was shot in the short scrimmage, and his employer again brought to Charles Town in manacles.
They tried Stede Bonnet in the same court and the same fashion and with the same evidence as they had his crew. He was tried on two indictments, one for taking theFrancisand the other for taking theFortune.
To both he pleaded not guilty and was first tried on the affair of theFrancis. He stood up for himself in good shape; but the facts, as well as the court, crushed him. He claimed, as Captain Kidd had claimed some years before in a similar fix, that a mutinous crew drove himprotesting into these criminal courses. He explained that the only piracy he had ever been in was when with Captain Thatch. One wonders how much the mutinous crew, as alleged, had to exert themselves to persuade an old Blackbeard man to steal a fat ship or two.
A curious little circumstance comes up in this trial. Pell, the boatswain, in answer to a question, said Bonnet was in command of the ship, “but the quartermaster had more power than he,” adding that the quartermaster took charge of the loot and sometimes divided it. One wonders if the crew did not have a great deal more to say about things than would be supposed, tolerating Bonnet as a business manager.
Bonnet might have come down as a somewhat romantic person, but the nerve he had always shown, even in his trial, broke at the last; and when on December 18 he was hanged in the same place as his followers had been, he was almost senseless from fear. Thus in a miserable huddle he left a stage on which he had not been too modest, on which he had even swaggered.
This is all the story of one summer. The blockade of Charles Town by Blackbeard had happened in May of 1718, and December of the same year saw the end of Stede Bonnet. And to Bonnet, as to his men, there came a spark of joy before he went to the rope—and that was the news that his old superior, Blackbeard, had died upon the cutlass on November 22.