3 for 300: Common Blackbeard Myths

By Leonard Lanier, Collections Assistant

Three hundred years ago, Blackbeard came to a sudden and violent end along the North Carolina coast. Over the centuries, numerous myths sprouted and took root about him. To commemorate three hundred years of pirate lore, here are three myths and the real history behind them.

He married Mary Ormand

Residents of Bath take great pride that the pirate took a bloom of their female youth as his bride. Exactly why the town thinks so highly of this claim remains a good question. According to the pirate’s principal 18th century biographer, Blackbeard had the “Custom to invite five or six of his brutal Companions to come ashore, and he would force her to prostitute herself to them all, one after another, before his Face.” The sole contemporary evidence of Blackbeard marrying a Carolina girl comes from a letter sent to Virginia authorities by one of the Royal Navy captains who destroyed the pirate’s operation. Exactly how the commander acquired his information is unknown, though it possibly slipped from the lips of one of Blackbeard’s imprisoned crewmembers. Even then, while he mentions the marriage, the captain does not provide a name. Local legend in Bath claims the unfortunate woman was Mary Ormand, scion of a prominent landowning family. Land records, however, indicate that the first Ormand arrived in Beaufort County about 1735, seventeen years after Blackbeard’s death.

Fictional portrayal of Blackbeard and his “wife” from the 1977 production of Blackbeard: Knight of the Black Flag in Bath.

Courtesy of Special Collections, J.Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University.

The boast that “Blackbeard Lived Here” is the North Carolina equivalent of “George Washington Slept Here” (although the state makes several of those claims too). Period accounts reveal that Blackbeard arrived along the Carolina coast in June 1718. He was dead by November. By their very nature, pirates, like most outlaws, are transients. They cannot afford to stay in one place too long. During his brief life as a privateer and pirate, which historians gathered lasted roughly ten years, he visited numerous places, but other than possibly Jamaica, he did not live anywhere. He certainly made several calls on colonial officials in Bath, but no documentary evidence exists of Blackbeard owning property there. He and other pirates used Ocracoke as a base, but even members of his crew described their dwellings there as a temporary “camp.” During his sojourn in North Carolina, Blackbeard spent most of his time doing what pirates do best—sailing the ocean and capturing booty.

His Head Became a Skull Cup

Between 1966 and 1989, a municipal court judge in Greenville, Charles Harry Whedbee, published several collections of coastal North Carolina folklore. In his final volume, he relayed a fantastic tale involving secret societies, death rituals, and Blackbeard’s skull. While an undergraduate at UNC-Chapel Hill, Whedbee purportedly partic ipated in a clandestine meeting held on Ocracoke in “Blackbeard’s Castle” (the lack of stone in Eastern North Carolina apparently did not faze his imagination). The event culminated with each man taking a sip from a silver-plated skull with the inscription “Deth to Spotswoode.” Since its publication thirty years ago, Whedbee’s story led numerous people to try and track down “Blackbeard’s Skull Cup.” A cup in the shape of a skull at the Peabody Essex Museum attracted attention in the 1990s until a pirate enthusiast revealed the cup’s “silver” decoration as radiator paint. All contemporary accounts indicate that after removing Blackbeard’s head, Royal Navy lieutenant Robert Maynard hosted the skull on his sloop’s bowsprit. Upon its return to Virginia, affixed to a wooden stake, Blackbeard’s cranium stood watch along the shores of Hampton Roads, a warning to all pirates not to mess with the Old Dominion. No period evidence suggests that the skull ever became a drinking cup.

Old Brick House. Blackbeard’s alleged home in Pasquotank County.

Courtesy of the Museum of the Albemarle collection.