Ships

After blockading Charleston Harbor in 1718, Blackbeard's four ship flotilla sailed northward towards Ockracoke Inlet, NC where he met his demise. This view from Bald Head Island has the flotilla passing by offshore.

"What do you do with a drunken sailor", a sea shanty that comes to mind as pirates in a recently captured prize flounder among Caribbean shoals, sampling the alcohol discovered among the stores found in the hold. The rovers are not seriously drunk, yet - for they are not quite "two sheets to the wind".

Sometimes flight is wiser than fight. Approaching darkness provides opportunity to escape and lick ones wounds as long as rudder, masts, yards, sails and rigging can survive a dash to safety till darkness falls. An encounter at sea was an unknown factor, a vessel might be friend or foe, or foe pretending to be friend.

Originally a slave trading vessel, the ship rigged galley, Whydah, was captured in the Bahamas by pirate Black Sam Bellamy. The hold contained gold silver, ivory, sugar, indigo and rum, and perhaps, a ruby the size of a hen's egg. A cruise northward, plundering ships, ended in the spring of 1717, when, laden with treasure, she broke up on a lee shore during a storm off Cape Cod.