Ahoy, mateys! You know that while we’re plunderin’ the scourges of the seven seas, we couldn’t leave out our pirate brethern, Blackbeard!

It’s generally accepted, (amongst those who are countin’), that Blackbeard never outright murdered anyone, it’s also generally accepted that in the last few months of his life, he made some shocking decisions that showed a dark and “practical” side.

First, he abandoned his crew. Or, most of them. Including Stede Bonnet. Aye, Blackbeard’s flagship was stuck in a sandbar, and he had to abandon her. That left him down a HUGE ship and left him with much smaller ones. Blackbeard had to make a decision, and that decision was to leave most of his crew ashore.

If leaving your pirate brethern ashore wasn’t bad enough, then hold my grog. Right around this same time, Blackbeard allegedly shot his crew member, Israel Hands, in the leg while they were having a drink together in Blackbeard’s cabin.

What did Blackbeard have to say about that? Well, when Israel Hands demanded to know why his captain had shot him for no reason at all, Blackbeard simply leaned back, took another drink, and said:

“If I don’t now and then give a rogue a blow, I forget myself.”

Aye. That was Blackbeard’s idea of keeping discipline. A reminder to his men that fear was the glue that held a pirate crew together — and he was the one who decided when to apply it.

Hands survived, but the message was clear: Blackbeard wasn’t just a terror to his enemies. He was a storm brewing inside his own cabin, unpredictable as a squall and twice as dangerous.

And all this happened in the final months of his life — the same months when he abandoned his crew, cut ties with Bonnet, and sailed into the Carolina coast like a man courting doom. Whatever changed in him, it turned the most theatrical pirate on the seas into something darker, sharper, and far more practical.

Blackbeard had one more lesson to teach — and he delivered it with powder and steel at Ocracoke.

Lieutenant Robert Maynard came for him at dawn, two sloops against the most feared pirate in the Carolinas. Blackbeard met them head‑on, roaring like a man who’d already decided how his legend would end. He boarded Maynard’s sloop himself, cutlass in hand, pistols strapped across his chest, smoke curling from his beard like the devil’s own breath.

The fight was brutal and close enough to smell the powder on each other’s coats. Blackbeard took five musket balls and over twenty sword cuts, and still he fought on — swinging, cursing, laughing, refusing to fall. It took a final blow across the throat to bring him down, and even then the men swore his body kept moving, unwilling to accept the end.

Maynard had Blackbeard’s head hung from his bowsprit as proof, but every sailor knows the truth: a man like that doesn’t die so easily. Some say his spirit still stalks the waters off Ocracoke, searching for the Queen Anne’s Revenge… and for the crew he left behind.

But mark me well, mateys — Blackbeard wasn’t the only terror stalking the Carolina coast. If ye think this tale was fierce, then brace your timbers. For rising right behind him was a pirate who feared neither king nor gallows, a man whose rage burned hotter than any fuse Blackbeard ever braided into his beard.

Next up in our Scourge of the Seven Seas… Charles Vane.

Aye — the fury of Nassau is about to take the stage.

Til next time, Fair Winds!

To the ghosts that guide us, the storms that test us, and the gold that waits for those who dare — may our ink never run dry and our courage never fade. Raise your tankards, mates… for the sea still remembers our names.