Battle of Cape Fear River

By the autumn of 1718 the merchants of Charleston had had enough. Their shipping had been throttled that spring by Blackbeard's blockade, and pirate sloops still lurked in the inlets to the north. Governor Robert Johnson of South Carolina commissioned Colonel William Rhett, a wealthy and combative planter, to fit out an expedition and clear them away.

The wrong pirate

Rhett took two sloops — the Henry and the Sea Nymph — with around 130 men between them, and sailed in search of Charles Vane, who was reported to be operating nearby. Instead, working up the Cape Fear River, he found a different quarry: Stede Bonnet, sailing under the alias "Captain Thomas" in the sloop he had renamed the Royal James, hauled up to careen and refit.

Aground

The action that followed on 27 September was decided as much by the river as by gunnery. As the two sides maneuvered to engage, the falling tide ran all three sloops hard aground on the shoals — Bonnet's Royal James heeled toward Rhett's vessels, and Rhett's two sloops grounded within musket-shot of her. For some five hours the crews lay stranded, unable to close or withdraw, trading fire across the mud while they waited for the water to return.

The geometry favored Rhett. As the tide rose, his Henry floated free first and worked into a position to rake the Royal James before Bonnet could bring his own guns to bear. Outnumbered and out of options, Bonnet struck his colors and surrendered.

To the gallows

Rhett carried Bonnet and his crew back to Charleston. Bonnet later escaped confinement but was recaptured, tried before Judge Nicholas Trott, and hanged at White Point on 10 December 1718. The engagement in the river was one of the few pirate captures of the age decided by a formal, colony-sponsored naval expedition rather than by a Royal Navy warship.

Related: Stede Bonnet · Blackbeard · Charles Vane