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November 17, 2018 20 mins

Today we revisit our 2013 episode on Stede Bonnet, who left his family in 1717 and became a pirate. Despite having no seafaring experience, Bonnet's brief career as a pirate was eventful, including a stint aboard Blackbeard's ship and raids along the Atlantic coast of North America.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello everyone. It is Saturday, and today's episode is going
back to It's an episode about a man who suddenly
turned to piracy after a life of education and privilege.
It's Steve Bonnett, whose story intersects with black Beard, which
makes him pretty interesting, and whose career as a pirate
was relatively short. The day this episode comes out is

(00:24):
also the three hundred anniversary of his being put on
trial for piracy. So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you missed
in History class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm from and I'm Tracy V. Wilson,

(00:47):
and today we're gonna talk about something that's come up
on the podcast before, which is piracy. But we're going
to talk about a pirate that doesn't always get a
lot of play in history and retellings. Uh. It's Steve
Bonnet who was often referred to as the gentleman pirate. Right.
This is a pirate that that I have heard about
because I grew up in North Carolina. And if you

(01:07):
grow up in North Carolina, often you hear a lot
about pirates. Yeah, and he his career, you know, intersected
with North Carolina many times, and so he has often
heard about there and in some of the nautical museums there.
But it's like the further inland you get from North Carolina,
the less unless you hear about him. Uh. He had

(01:28):
a very short career in piracy, and it was really
out of character for him. He was a retired military
man even though he was quite young, and then he
sort of seemingly suddenly left his family to pursue this
life of piracy. And historians have theorized about what caused this.
Some say it could have actually been a midlife crisis

(01:49):
of some sort. Uh, it could have been the result
of financial issues. It could have been brought about by
a mental break. Uh. And what's really interesting is it
his story is actually tied to Blackbeard, but Bonnet is
often left out of the accounts of it of blackbeards happenings,
or he's just sort of mentioned in passing. But he

(02:09):
is really fascinating because he had this educated demeanor and
he was very stylish, and it earned him this nickname
the Gentleman Pirate. Bonnett was born in sixteen eighty in Barbados.
His great grandfather was one of Barbados's first English settlers,
and he was actually orphaned as a child. Even though
he was born to a good family, he was not

(02:31):
without uh, you know, difficulty. But he inherited a four
d acre estate that was managed for him by a
guardian until he reached adulthood. He married Mary Alamby, who
was also from a wealthy plantation family, in seventeen o nine,
so that was when he was about twenty one, and
he retired from military life to run a sugar plantation

(02:54):
in Barbados. And he spent a little less than a
decade after leaving the military kind of making a go
at family life and you know, running the plantation. But
that was all he could handle, apparently. In a General
History of the Pirates from their first rise and settlement
of the Island of Providence to the present time, which

(03:14):
was written by Captain Charles Johnson and sometimes attributed to
Daniel Dafoe and first published in sev it is written
of Bonnet he had the least temptation of any man
to follow such a course of life. From the condition
of his circumstances. It was very surprising to everyone to
hear of the major's enterprise in the island where he

(03:36):
lived and he and as he was generally esteemed and
honored before he broke out into open acts of piracy,
for he was afterwards rather pitied than condemned. So at
the time, during the seventeen teens, it really was not
unheard of for people to turn to piracy in desperation
or in a bid to fight the establishment and the

(03:58):
growing gap between the rich and the poor, or But
Bonnett was an educated man from a good family, so
it initially does seem kind of incongruous to think of
him in those terms, But there are some clues about
why he actually may have changed the course of his life.
Some historians have suggested that he was probably a supporter
of James Stewart as King of England and felt a

(04:21):
sense of rebellion against the German born George the First,
so Jacobite politics may have played a part in that
decision in his decision to become a pirate. And it's
also worth noting that Bonnet borrowed about seventeen hundred pounds,
which is the equivalent of roughly four hundred thousand dollars today,
around seventeen seventeen, so it's possible that he was having

(04:43):
financial troubles or that the plantation wasn't going well although
it's also possible he wanted the money to start his
pirate enterprise. Nobody's going to loan your money to start
a pirate business. He didn't tell people that's what he
was doing. On a more sad note, his firstborn son
died as a baby, some believed to have catalyzed a
mental break. He was also said to have experienced some

(05:06):
quote discomforts he found in a married state. So, in
other words, some historians theorized that he was nagged so
much that he ran away to be a pirate. So
his start in the world of piracy is really unusual.
He actually had his ship, which he called Revenge, built
and outfitted with cannons at a local Barbados shipyard, and

(05:28):
he started that around seventeen sixteen. Colin Woodard, who is
the author of the book The Republic of Pirates, posits
that Bonnet likely told people the ship was intended for
a legitimate privateering plan. And I know to some people
privateering and piracy have sort of become a little bit interchangeable,

(05:48):
but there is a nuance of difference there. So just
in case you do not know, the distinction is that
privateers are acting on behalf of a governing nation, while
pirates don't really answer to anybody, but their methods are
virtually identical in many cases, which has kind of fueled
the confusion of the interchangeability of those words. In any case,

(06:08):
instead of contracting with the government, Bonnet made a nighttime
departure on the ship Revenge in April of seventeen seventeen,
and under cover of night he had he headed toward
North America, calling himself Captain Edwards. And this is a
good time to mention that Bonnet had no knowledge about seafaring.
He was really sort of a land lover, uh, And

(06:31):
so it's unusual and bizarre. It just kind of feeds
that whole image of him as one of those like,
why why did you do this? You're making a really
rash decision, even though he clearly had planned ahead to
some degree. Well. And it's also unusual and that most
pirates would start their career as in piracy by commandeering
another vessel. They would steal somebody else's ship, but he

(06:54):
went and built one, financed and paid for everything himself
or maybe with this loan from before. Yeah, And he
first headed for the Virginia coast and he actually successfully
took several ships, but it's probably the seventy men on
his crew that really should get the credit for that

(07:16):
initial success, because some of them were pretty experienced pirates,
and it's unlikely that he really uh had much in
the way of leadership skills since he didn't know seafaring
and had never been pirating before. The revenge then headed
to New York and took a sloop that had been

(07:37):
headed for the West Indies, and they landed a group
of men at Gardeners Island, which you may remember from
our Goody Garlic episode where they actually bought provisions instead
of stealing them. Yeah, so and again kind of fuels
that image of him as something of a gentleman that
he's like, no, let's go buy things instead of, uh,
just plundering for what we need. But beginning in August

(08:01):
of that same year, so we're still in seventeen seventeen,
Captain Edwards and the Revengeance crew attacked a number of
vessels near the Charleston Harbor. But after their exploits, they
are culminated in setting fire to a sloop in a
North Carolina inlet, which he apparently did become a fan
of setting fire to ships after he had taken them,
Bonnet and his crew kind of couldn't decide what they

(08:22):
wanted to do for their next course of action, and
they eventually made their way south to Honduras, which is
where black Beard enters the Tail. Because Bonnet wasn't really
experienced in maritime affairs, he would usually yield to others,
so when he fell into company with Edward Teach, also
known as black Beard, while he was in Honduras, the

(08:45):
experienced and hardened Teach easily became the alpha male in
their relationship. Yeah, Bonnet's crew joined Blackbeards and Bonnet kind
of became a superfluous figure rather rapidly. Bonnet had been
recovering from injuries at the time after a bad encounter
with a Spanish warship, and he also lost some of
his crew, and he apparently agreed to this situation thinking

(09:09):
it was a temporary setup, like, oh, you'll just handle
things while I'm not feeling well. Right, black Beard had
something else in mine. He saw Bonnet's weakness and decided
to seize command of the Revenge. Bonnet spent his time
on black beard ship without anything to do, while Blackbeard's
first mate ran the Revenge and while the relationships seemed

(09:29):
to be friendly enough, Bonnet realized he was basically a captive,
and he became, you know, kind of depressed and melancholy.
He openly told the crew that he was unhappy and
that he had tired of the pirate life and that
he would really like to start a new life in
Spain or Portugal because he would be quote ashamed to
see the face of any Englishman. Again. I just I

(09:51):
have to interject here that if I were being held
prisoner on black beard ship, I don't know that I
would go around saying that I was fired at the
pirate life openly to people. Yeah, but accounts kind of
painted as though he was sort of endeared to the men,
and this didn't make them think any less of him,
like they almost sort of loved him more for it

(10:12):
in the various tellings of it. So whether that's true
or not, I don't know, but I thought it was interesting. Uh.
And while these two were sailing quote together, but I
mean they were technically in the same place, but not
really partners. Uh. This is when black Beard actually took
the frigate La Concorde and then re christened it to
be Queen Anne's Revenge, which is his famous flagship. On

(10:35):
June tenth, seventeen eighteen, the Queen Ann's Revenge ran aground
at Top Sale Inlet, which is now known as Beaufort Inlet.
And there's actually some debate over whether this was accidental
or if Teach was trying to break up the four
men under him. Uh, he kind of recognized that the
winds were changing for pirates and that maybe running in

(10:57):
a big pack was not smart. But again this is
a matter of some historical debate. Uh. Teach was an
accomplished sailor, so it would be a little unusual for
him to be caught off guard and run aground. But
at the same time, anything's possible, So I just feel
like we should have that aside. So while the Queen
Han's Revenge is run aground, Bonnet went to Bath, North Carolina.

(11:20):
He wanted to take a pardon that had been offered
by the King. The King's Proclamation had come out on
September fifth, seventeen seventeen, and stated that pirates surrendering two
authorities quote, should have his most gracious pardon. But when
Bonnet returned to the ships, he found that Teach had
stripped the Revenge and abandoned more than two dozen crew

(11:42):
members on a small island. The stranded crew members had
believed they were doomed to die, so it's likely that
Bonnet's arrival was really quite welcome. So at this point,
having accepted the pardon, bonnets slate was clean, he invited
all the abandoned men to join him, refitted the Revenge,
and renamed it the Royal James. His plan was to

(12:03):
sail to St. Thomas and seek out a privateering commission,
but they never made it to St. Thomas. No, the
crew that he had invited to join him, we're all
on board with this privateering plan. But as they were
preparing to set sail, a boat that had come up
against them, just meaning adjacent to them, that to sell
apples and cider to the men, actually informed them that

(12:24):
black Beard and a small crew of eighteen or twenty
men were at Okra Cooke Inlets. They were having a
big party, which is famous in its own right. So
that's the black Beard side of the story. Uh. But
Bonnet immediately acted upon this information and went in pursuit
of Teach because he was still kind of smarting from
the way things went down. After four days of looking

(12:45):
for Teach with no success, they instead headed not to St. Thomas,
but to Virginia. So it seems that his resolve to
go legit was not really that strong, no, And in
July oh seventeen eighteen, they actually took provisions, which they
were desperate for from another ship that they encountered, but
they didn't want the actively recorded as piracy, so in

(13:06):
return they gave quote eight or ten casks of rice
and an old cable in lieu thereofs So they kind
of were like, we want to make this fair, even
though we kind of rated you, but we're not pirates.
We just need stuff. Next, the major, who was now
going by the name Captain Thomas, and his crew encountered
a sloop off of Cape Henry and looted her for liquor.

(13:29):
Bonnet sent eight men over to the sloop, theoretically to
take care of the ship, but maybe to make some
kind of a deal, but they joined that crew and
sailed away with them. And at this point, somewhere around
this time, Bonnet just sort of threw all caution to
the wind and went head first back into a life
of piracy. He really abandoned that whole concept of privateering,

(13:49):
and the Royal James then made its way up and
down the Atlantic coast, taking him plundering vessel after vessel.
At the end of July seventeen eighteen, Bonnet had sailed
to the Cape Beer River, where he and his crew
found themselves stuck for repairs. The Royal James was terribly

(14:13):
leaky and it needed to be fixed to remain seaworthy,
so it sat for nearly two months while the work
was done, which is a long time for a boat
to just sit there, especially when it is a boat
full of criminals. Uh So, when word reached the Council
of South Carolina that a pirate sloop was careen in
Cape Fear, Colonel William Rhett set out to find and

(14:35):
capture Bonnet, and Rhett had under his command two ships,
the Henry and the Sea Nymph. On September eighteen, Rhet's
two sloops ran aground while headed up the Cape Beer River.
While they were getting back on float, Bonnet's pirates found them,
and the crew manned three canoes to take the ships.
The pirates didn't know who they were attempting to take,

(14:56):
but realized quickly and turned around to deliver a report
to on it, and Bonnet was incensed by this. Uh
that night he penned the letter to the Governor of
Carolina that said, if those two sloops had been sent
against him by that governor, and if Bonnet got clear
of those two sloops, he was going to burn and
destroy every single vessel coming and going out of South Carolina.

(15:17):
He's basically like, you better hope you win this, because
if you don't and I find out you were actually
behind it, I'm basically going to ruin your life. The
next day, September eighteen, a battle ensued that lasted four hours.
At one point, both Rhet's ships and bonnet ship were
run aground in the shallow water as they tried to maneuver,
and there was trash talking from the pirates to the

(15:39):
colonel's cruise. Both ships were horribly damaged. It was really
everything that you would expect to see in a Hollywood
blockbuster about pirates. But eventually Rhett's sloop was the first
to float, and as his command was about to deliver
the finishing blow to the pirate ship, Bonnet sent up
a flag of truce and his crew surrendered themselves as prisoners,

(15:59):
so all that trash talking got real quiet, and they
all surrendered. The Henry lost ten men and had fourteen wounded,
and the Senimph lost two men and had four wounded.
Two of those five died from their wounds not long after.
Colonel Rhett then set sail from Cape Fear with his
captives on September and he arrived in what was called

(16:20):
Charlestown at the time but as Charleston now on October three.
And on October five, the Bonnet's crew was placed in
a watch house that was guarded by the militia because
there wasn't an actual prison that could hold them. Bonnet
entered the custody of the Marshal at his house, and
two other crew members were eventually moved to the Marshall's
house just a few days later. They were determined to

(16:43):
be important in terms of evidence and testimony for the trial.
On octobery, Bonnet and one of the other men, he
was named Harriet, escaped. The third man, a Boson, refused
to go with them. Rumors of incompetency and bribe in
relation to the escape immediately started to circulate. The governor

(17:04):
offered a reward of seven hundred pounds to the person
who captured the fugitives, and it turned out that Colonel
Rhett Uh, who was pursuing them in addition to other
people after the reward, was the one that recaptured Bonnet,
and Harriet was actually killed during the pursuit. He was
shot on October. Trials of the crew began in Charlestown

(17:24):
before Judge Trot. All but four were found guilty and
sentenced to death, and on Saturday, November eighth, seventeen eighteen,
the guilty men were all executed at White Point, which
is near Charleston. But on November ten, Steve Bonnets trial began.
It lasted two days and he was found guilty. He
attempted to shift some of the blame to Blackbeard, but

(17:46):
that was really futile. It was obvious that he had
willingly participated in a lot of these activities. In the
Lord Chief Justice's speech pronouncing bonnets sentence, he said, while
talllying the major's many acts of pirus, not to mention
the many acts of piracy you committed before, for which
if your pardon from man was never so authentic, yet

(18:08):
you must expect to answer for them before God. His
speech goes on for many, many pages of the seventeen
quote General History of Pirates, which you can read online
because we will link to it in our show notes.
Uh yeah. Also in the chief Justice is speech, there
is a lot of talk about not only was he
a pirate, but he was also a murderer, and it

(18:31):
was a lot of the wrath of God is coming
for you. He was so incensed that this man had
been pardoned and then went back to this life and
did a lot of horrible things. He really was uh
not short of breath when it came to condemnation in
that speech. And Bonnet was executed by hanging on December
tenth of seventeen eighteen, and he was only thirty at

(18:52):
that point, and he had spent less than two years
living the life of a pirate. So after his what
may have been a mental break, he kind of burned
it out. He just gunned it and then was no
more so he kind of did the live fast, die
young thing in the sevres right in my imagination, I
feel like he was going for Han solo and wound

(19:13):
up as too bias fume k Yeah, but still sort
of oddly beloved, which is the interesting part. Of it
kind of oddly beloved to bias fume K, that's true.
It all makes sense. So yeah, that is the story
of Steve Bonnet, which is a brief but fascinating life
as a pirate. Yeah, kind of from the almost a

(19:35):
pretender's perspective, since he kind of buys his way into
that world. Right, I feel like it's the eighteenth century
version of buying a shiny sports car and then going
on a cross country spree of crime. Yeah. And as
I said at the top of the podcast, there are
historians who have likened it to his midlife crisis, but
hopefully you know, most midlife crises don't end quite so dramatically.

(20:00):
But now I wanted to talk about the history of
midlife crises because that seems to me like a very
modern invention to bestow upon a pirate. I concur but
we can put them on the list for future podcast. Yes,
thank you so much for joining us on this Saturday.
If you have heard an email address or a Facebook

(20:23):
you are l or something similar over the course of
today's episode, since it is from the archive that might
be out of date now, you can email us at
History Podcast at how stuff works dot com and You
can find us all over social media at missed in History,
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
Google podcast, the I Heart Radio app, and wherever else

(20:43):
you listen to podcasts. For more on this and thousands
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