Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina. Blackbeard was killed here in 1718. In 1750, the Lloyd brothers stole a huge treasure belonging to the Spanish galleon, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. This piracy exceeded anything the bearded brute ever did.

His air of intimidation extended to his own crew. Just before he was killed at Ocracoke, Blackbeard had sat down to some drinking with some of his crew. He secretly pulled out two pistols under the table, blew out the candle, crossed the pistols and fired, hitting his master, Israel Hands, in the knee and maimed him for life. When asked why he did it his response was to say that if he did not now and then kill one of them, they would forget who he was. That wound may have been responsible for Hands being ashore at Bath when Blackbeard was killed. He was later pardoned. Had he been hanged or killed with Blackbeard, Robert Louis Stevenson would probably not have borrowed his character for Treasure Island. He was killed by Jim Hawkins at Treasure Island.

Johnson says that he had fourteen wives, the last was a girl of sixteen he married in North Carolina. It is hard to say how much of this is true because Johnson is the only source for this. In 1717, Governor John Hamilton of Antigua stated that he had a wife and children in London.

Blackbeard was so successful in perfecting his image of a fearsome pirate that he has become known in modern times as one of the most successful pirates of his time when in fact others like Bartholomew Roberts and Edward Low exceeded him in plunder and barbarity.

As for his treasure, if any, Blackbeard proclaimed “That no-body but himself and the Devil, knew where it was, and the longest liver should take all.”

Blackbeard was killed on November 17, 1718, at Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina, at his anchorage now known as Teach’s Hole. Thirty-two years later at this same location, Owen Lloyd would succeed in stealing 52 chests of treasure from a Spanish galleon, thus inspiring one of the greatest adventure stories of all time, Treasure Island.