Adventure · The Flying Gang

After the loss of the Queen Anne's Revenge at Beaufort Inlet in June 1718, Edward Teach did not go to sea in another towering man-of-war. He kept a single sloop — the Adventure — and it suited the new shape of his life. She was small, fast, and drew little water: the ideal vessel for slipping through the shoals and shallow sounds of the North Carolina coast, where the deep-draft warships that hunted pirates could not easily follow.

The right ship for the shallows

The great strength of Queen Anne's Revenge — her forty guns — had also been her curse. She ate provisions, needed a large crew, and could not enter the inlets where a pirate might careen his hull or hide from pursuit. The Adventure, by contrast, mounted only a handful of guns and carried perhaps two dozen men. Teach used her for short cruises out of Bath, returning with goods that the colonial authorities proved willing to overlook.

Ocracoke

On the morning of 22 November 1718, the Adventure lay in the shallows off Ocracoke Island when Lieutenant Robert Maynard's two hired sloops came for her. Teach cut his anchor cable and opened with a heavy broadside of small shot that raked one of Maynard's vessels and killed her commander. But Maynard had hidden most of his men below deck; when Teach boarded, thinking the sloop nearly emptied of defenders, they poured up the hatches and overwhelmed him.

Teach died on that deck after — by Maynard's count — five musket balls and twenty cuts. The Adventure was taken, and Blackbeard's head was lashed to the bowsprit of the victor's sloop for the voyage back to Virginia.