Wilbo Chases After Pirates; Pirates Have An Almost Three Century Headstart

I was dwelling in prime Blackbeard country, and I followed up on the history while I was there. The war party that captured Blackbeard, dead and not alive alas, set sail from the Hampton Roads, where the James River empties into the Chesapeake Bay and where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic. Norfolk is the center city of the seven cities that make up the Hampton Roads.

Lieutenant Robert Maynard and his crew found Blackbeard in retirement, fully pardoned by the Royal Governor of North Carolina, dwelling on Ocracoke Island, ensconced on the southern end of that thirteen mile long spit of sand. Blackbeard might have been retired, but he had encamped himself with a commanding position on the Ocracoke Inlet, the channel between Ocracoke Island and Portsmouth Island where all the shipping traffic for upper North Carolina had to pass. Surely Blackbeard had a backup plan should his retirement fund of stolen gold dwindle; he could just start charging a pirate's toll to pass through the inlet. Undoubtedly, Blackbeard's positioning on the Ocracoke Inlet probably motivated Royal Governor of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood, to put a one-hundred pound price on Blackbeard's head. And when Lieutenant Maynard brought Blackbeard's head back to the James River, he got no bonus from Governor Spotswood, despite losing half a dozen men in battle.

Maynard and his ships required 10 days to travel the 200 hundred mile journey from the James River to Ocracoke. It's a lot simpler to reach Ocracoke Island now, an afternoon's journey by car over two causeways and a half-hour ferry trip, free of charge, aboard a ship operated by the state of North Carolina. I drove there about three weekends ago, an easy drive of four hours along US 12, the main thoroughfare of the Outer Banks.

After I deboarded the ferry at the north island landing, I was stunned by the otherworldly splendor of the cordgrass seamarshes on the sound side of the island and the hallucinatory grandeur of the sand dunes of Ocracoke's sea beaches. I was envious of the beach cruising trucks with front bumper racks for fishing poles, ice coolers and tackleboxes, driven by crackers making enough money from fishing to live on Ocracoke and drink beer when the night fell. I didn't dare drive my two-wheeler out on the sand because it takes four-wheel drive to make progress even on hard sand, and surely my automotive club wouldn't cover a tow when I wasn't driving on the road. Driving on the beach is a lost pursuit anyways; the federal park people have been trying to shut down the custom because it disturbs resting birds and nesting sea turtles, and in many places, such as the upper reaches of Bodie Island close to Virginia Beach, only a few grandfathered drivers are permitted to still commute to work along the beach strand.

Ocracoke is almost a tamed island. All the wild ponies are sequestered in a ranchland on the northern reach of island, enough room to run and breed, but land encircled by a ten foot high wooden fence that allows tourists to see the ponies. An inner ring of fencing keeps the ponies away from the tourists. It might be unfortunate for horses to no longer have the run of the island; however, the pen keeps horses from deadly collisions with car traffic on the blacktop artery that runs along the island's long axis. In the main town, parking is precious, and by the Ocracoke Lighthouse, the parking for visitors is limited to fifteen minutes. There's a few tourist trap museums and gift shoppes that cater to the pirate enthusiast, but the only real trace of Blackbeard left on the island is a historical marker dedicated to not Blackbeard's memory, but Blackbeard's slayer, Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the Royal Navy. It stands near the ferry docks on the south end of the island, where one can return to one of two swampy North Carolina landings on western Pamlico sound, either Swanquarter, North Carolina or Cedar Island, North Carolina. It isn't far from Teach's Hole, a small bay where Maynard's ships engaged Blackbeard's single boat in a seabattle.

Fortunately, the occasional tourist will dress up in pirate clothes for his day on the island, but he usually looks more like Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. I said hello to one of these modern day buccaneers marching up a wooden plank sidewalk when I was leaving the Back Porch restaurant. I saw him again, this time with his girlfriend, up on the bridge of the ferry as the North Carolina ship made its way in the dark to the docks of Hatteras, a super bright spotlight searching the waters for obstructions or new sandbars.

Wilbo Ain't Afraid of No Dead Pirates, Three Hundred Years Gone !