Is it the anger of hell or him?

It's late May of 17 18, and good people in Charlestown, South Carolina are making a scene. Nearly 20,000 residents of this newly-built walled city fought fiercely with Yamahi, Crick and other Indian tribes who were angry about the expansion of rice plantations. Now, this

Parked outside their port entrance and blocked all traffic, it was a fleet of four ships. Three of them are medium-sized sloops. But the fourth ship, Queen Anne's Revenge, is a real pirate ship. This 80-foot-long square crane has three tall masts and a quarter-high deck at the stern. Dozens of cannons dangerously pierced its muzzle, and the deck was crowded with about 150 crew members. On the deck, a big man with a long black beard swore. Edward Dickey, nicknamed Blackbeard, hijacked the city. He and his gang of more than 400 people robbed several ships and captured the crew and passengers, including some of Charlestown's most famous citizens. His request? Send a box of medicine, or he will send the prisoner's head to burn.

Shortly after they were caught, the pirates drove the prisoners out of Queen Anne's Revenge and locked them in the darkness of a captured ship. The prisoners huddled together and listened in horror to the pirates' footsteps on the wooden deck above, firmly believing that their return would show that they were killed by machetes, pistols or thrown into drinks. A few hours later, the hatch was opened and the prisoners were pulled back to the deck. Then, in a way more suitable for CEO to hold impromptu business meetings than bloodthirsty lunatics, Tiki called a delegation of prisoners into his hut to avenge Queen Anne. He calmly explained that they were taken off the ship so that the pirates could call a "general committee" to decide their next move.

This is a strange deviation from the expected chaos and murder script. This episode and other episodes have raised questions about the role of Blackbeard. Blackbeard may not be the evil killer in the public imagination. The reality is much more complicated. He is a master of psychological warfare and intimidation, a charming and dramatic figure, a shrewd outlaw, and perhaps not a murderer until the end. It seems that coastal North Carolina people have long known this. They regard him as a national hero. He put a hot poker in the eyes of their arrogant British overlord.

Within a week, the medicine box was delivered in time, and the prisoners were sent back without any harm except pride. The governor of South Carolina later wrote in an angry letter to London that the pirates took off their gorgeous down jackets and they "almost landed". Dicky's fleet successfully broke down and sailed north. But less than a week later, Revenge of Queen Anne ran aground on a sandbar near the entrance of Beaufort Bay in North Carolina today. Less than six months later, in Oakcock Bay south of Cape Hatteras, British Navy Captain Robert Maynard ordered the bowsprit of a sloop to hang Tiki's beheading rudely. The Governor of Virginia Colony sent him to the waters of North Carolina. Blackbeard and his crew, especially the tobacco planter near Williamsburg, Virginia and the British colonial agent, and their colleagues who planted rice in Charlestown, southern Virginia. The death of Blackbeard must be good news for British investors in Bristol and London. They were fed up with the harassment of three profitable trading posts: guns, textiles and other relatively cheap commodities were exchanged for slaves in Africa and then sold to colonies and the West Indies in exchange for sugar, rum, tobacco, rice and other commodities.

The extinction of black beard is unknown However, in the waterside area between Virginia and South Carolina, there are few white immigrants, so it is difficult to piece together North America, a place that will one day become a bee in North Carolina. Along its entire coast is a long and narrow barrier island, separated by an entrance that moves like a squirrel. As there is no deep-water port, this is a backward economy. Most of these people are fishermen and farmers. On the barrier island, there are also sunken ships. It doesn't bother them that plantation owners in Virginia and South Carolina look down on them.

When the noose in other colonies tightened, the noose in North Carolina remained slack. Edward teach is quite comfortable behind his barrier island. He slipped to the back of Ocracoke Island, dug a hole (this section is still called "Dicky Cave" in today's nautical charts), and went through the shallow Pamlico Sound to Bath, which is the only town in this area. There, he sells mouth-watering goods at a price far below the tax inflation in Britain, and chats with residents, perhaps even the governor himself. According to some sources, he married a local woman. In short, Edward Dickie is inseparable from the history of the region.

After his death, he became more and more famous. In Boston, Ben Franklin, a teenager, wrote a "sailor's song about teaching (or blackbeard) pirates", and he sold copies on the street. A letter from Virginia described Maynard and Dicky's bloody battle in Auckland. It was published in a newspaper in London. Only six years later, on 1724, a masterpiece entitled The Most Notorious History of Pilates Robbery and Murder was published in London, detailing the achievements of teachers and contemporaries. The fact has overlapped with the myth: when Blackbeard approached the sailor at night, he hid a slow-burning fuse under his hat to make him look like a devil (maybe); Blackbeard has 14 wives (unlikely); Blackbeard's headless body swam several laps upstream of the sloop in Oklahoma Bay before sinking. Where is the legendary flagship of Blackbeard? "Now it seems that the sunken ship of Queen Anne's Revenge may be Blackbeard's revenge on this slightly unusual colony that sheltered him. 1996165438+1October, a small organization called Intersal, Inc. was responsible for finding and excavating historical shipwrecks. Mike Daniel, the organization's director of field operations, found her or a boat like her in shallow water off Beaufort Inlet. Phil masters, the president of Intersal, originally planned to search for the wreckage of a Spanish ship full of gold, but he knew that Blackbeard's ship was there because he had talked with archaeologist David Moore, an authority in edward teach.

After investigating a pile of ballast stones 30×20 feet long, Bucket and Daniel picked up a branch that looked like a huge shell in 20 feet of water. He called Moore. "Dave," he said, "I'm sitting on a lot of cannons. I think I found your boat." If there is poetic justice in the world, it is the flagship of blackbeard found in the coastal waters of North Carolina. This has nothing to do with the treasure. According to eyewitnesses, Dicky deliberately ran aground the ship, and actually ran aground some of his crew, reducing the size of his huge pirate company and deleting everything of value. The discovery of this sunken ship will not make anyone a millionaire. On the contrary, this sunken ship will represent an extraordinary cultural treasure, a batch of handicrafts from pirates, and many people in North Carolina regard it as an honorary ancestor.

Edward Dickie may have been born in England. According to historical records, during Queen Anne's War (1702- 1703), he cut off his sailing teeth on a British privateer in Jamaica. Privatization of ships is only a part of the law; In fact, they got permission from Britain to take French and Spanish ships and keep some things they found. 17 13 years, major European countries declared peace, and this arrangement changed. 1000 more than one privateer lost his job.

So it became illegal to teach hundreds of people. Dick sailed with his mentor Benjamin Honeygold for some time. Like other pirates, they followed the snowbird to investigate 5,000 historical shipwrecks in the state.

But this shipwreck is the most serious. Even if it is not Blackbeard, it is still the oldest sunken ship investigated in this state. At the headquarters in Qatar, a former scallop processing factory turned from the idyllic Beaufort waterfront, and two cannons, connected to the Sears battery charger, lay in their barrels like patients and received life support. They are carrying out desalination in electrolytic cells for five years. Nearby shelves are full of small objects: gray boards, one of which has a hole that looks like a bullet hole; Plastic bags filled with gravel; A set of brass partitions cleaned by the administrator may be in his hand. Another UAU protection laboratory near Wilmington, North Carolina, is full of hundreds of items, many of which are placed in their own small bathtubs.

Not surprisingly, the QAR team has been conducting magnetometer surveys at the shipwreck site recently, looking for more cannons and other iron products buried in the sand instead of bringing more cultural relics. It only takes 20 minutes by boat. In the protected waters, ten minutes of scenery can pass through the big shrimp tied to the dock and the low roof of beaufort, ten minutes of rocks and undulating inlets. This is a geographical hourglass, and the shallow and wide deep bay shakes hands with the ocean through a narrow opening.

Barrier island in North Carolina is only a few hundred yards wide in some places, and the entrance through them enables cautious rowers to sail back and forth between the ocean and the sheltered Deep Bay, which lies between barrier island and the mainland. This broken sand belt, known as the Bund, extends from the Virginia line to the sea at Cape Hatteras, where there is a deadly offshore shoal, and then extends southwest to Cape Hope; Oklahoma Island extends along this line. Another sand arc, Beaufort Bay, extends along the coastline from the observation deck in the southwest corner to the Cape of Fear. Coupled with the changes in tides, winds and geographical environment, it is no wonder that pirates will come here. The barrier island in North Carolina is equivalent to a maze of narrow canyons in the southwest, where different kinds of criminals often hide.

Crossing any entrance, including Beaufort Bay, is a long journey. Julep Gillman Bryan, the captain of the 24-foot-long submarine "Fast Dragon" in the United Arab Emirates, usually wedges himself into the water, with his feet against the bulkhead and his back against the seat, and the ship climbs up and down trembling in the 5-foot-high waves. Imagine pirates sailing in a bad environment without an engine, hundreds of yards of canvas and a 200-ton ship, and people will appreciate their sailing skills.

For most of June, it was one of four diving boats, and they sailed with the magnetometer survey. On the days when the water at the scene is not too rough, the ship is moored at the mooring and the diver begins to work. In the hazy distance in the north, Blackbeard looked at the water tower, which is the highest landmark on the low-lying coastline. Some divers collect rubble while others draw sketches. David Moore, coordinator of marine archaeology project at Beaufort Marine Museum in North Carolina, was seconded to QAR project. He will spend a day underwater, drawing a detail in front of a pile of rigging on the ship. As a man's bear, he leaned against his chest with a waterproof drawing board and fell off the boat with a splash.

In the water, two divers swam in the grid above the sunken ship with magnetometer sensors, stopping every two and a half feet to record readings. This sensor is similar to a stainless steel tube and is fixed on the inverted PVC terrace with adhesive tape. It will generate more than 200 readings in the whole station and then process them on the computer. These readings may give more gun positions. In the next excavation in June+10, 5438, they will investigate a larger area, hoping to find more cannons buried underground; Or, better yet, a military clock called Concord. The team members believe that they will find the evidence they are looking for.

As divers continue to piece together the mystery of the shipwreck, historians have been doing the same thing as historical records. A diver of the QAR team is also a professional athlete. He is a retired historian, Lindley Butler. Butler said, "The great thing about this sunken ship and Vader is that they are the reality of all myths." Everyone has the image of a pirate in errol flynn's movies, but Tiki and other pirates of this era don't want to fire. They tried to avoid a naval battle. Tiki used all means to intimidate him, and he created his own image. In the end, this made him get what he wanted. "Generally speaking, when taking a boat, he will put a gun at the bow of the predetermined prize-a warning, and then raise the national flag. Usually this is enough. Even the bravest captain of a merchant ship would be scared to surrender at once by a glance at the terrible black beard, his rough and well-prepared crew, the cannons in every port and the black flag flying on the mast. Those fools who resisted attracted more gunfire and grenades made of bottles full of gunpowder, bullets and lead.

Moore said that several warnings, a raised flag, a lot of shouting and finally surrender were basically teaching people how to win Concorde. We know this because the captain of Concorde 17 19 returned to France and reported the fighting situation in detail. He also said that Tiki gave him a sloop so that he could reload slave goods and continue his journey.

Just like the hostage in Charlestown Port, the experience was not so bad, and the captain didn't live to tell him. This leads to personality problems. Historians from North Carolina, such as Butler and Moore, have different views on Blackbeard, which is quite different from that of that time. Well, that's self-study and English. Tiki's motivation: The worse he looks, the better his business will be. The motivation of the British is that the uglier pirates are, the more reason to hang them. North Carolina people have the same memory of black beard. Although some people speak ill of him, they think he is a kinder and gentler pirate. For example, according to local legend, Robert E. Lee, a former law professor in North Carolina, wrote that Tiki's contact with women "few pirates will respect women or girls more ... he will not let a girl offer him drinks; He is more willing to provide drinks for girls. " This is quite different from the story circulated in the Tiki era, and in the whole history, Moore has repeatedly taught his wife who was engaged in prostitution with other crew members in North Carolina.

In order to find the true doctrine, Moore looked up all available historical records. Although they often contradict each other, everyone has his own agenda, many of which are surprising. In addition to the general history, it also includes the trial testimony of captured pirates with black beard; Eyewitness testimony of the captain of the robbed ship; A letter from an angry British official to London; The record of British patrol boats leaving Virginia.

An amazing discovery involved a fierce battle, which was recorded in the general history. In this battle, it is said that the teacher defeated a 28-gun British ship, the scarborough, shortly after the revenge of Queen Anne. This battle never seems to have happened. Moore checked the ship's log book in the British Public Archives and found that there was no mention of the incident. What is even more surprising is Moore's other observation: "Blackbeard cultivated the appearance of a' hell demon', but we didn't find any evidence that he killed a man before fighting with Captain Maynard."

The General History describes in detail the appearance of this "devil of hell". Its description, some of which were confirmed by witnesses at that time, surpassed anything that could be invented in Hollywood: "... Captain Dicky, your Herod inferred the concept of black beard from that pile of hair, which covered his whole face like a terrible meteor ... The beard was black, and he endured it for a long time ... He was used to winding it with ribbons and a small tail ... There were lighted matches under his hat. His eyes are naturally fierce and wild, which makes him completely such a character. I can't imagine an angry idea. It looks even more terrible from hell, and 40 guns are also quite terrible.

Although he caused fear among the crew he met, he was greeted by a different mood on the other side of the Atlantic. "Pirates not only rob property," Lindley Butler said, "they also insult the British hierarchy and class-based social structure. Butler refers to the way pirates organized themselves, which was more radical at that time. They elect the captain, helmsman and other crew members; " Conduct "general consultation" on itinerary and strategy (for example, a meeting on Queen Anne's revenge held in Charlestown Port), and all crew members take part in voting; Established a fair way to distribute prizes (for example, everyone except the captain can share one prize and have two prizes). This piracy code was written by the terms signed by each crew member when he joined the company. For example, in the article "The Crew of Pirate bartholomew Roberts", every detail of life on board is involved; There are rules for resolving disputes ("no beating on board, but everyone's quarrel will end on the shore, with swords and pistols"); Gambling ("no one plays cards or rolls dice for money"); Because he was injured in the battle ("If ... anyone loses a leg or becomes a cripple ... he will get $800"), the British historian David sincerely pointed out in Black Flag that, unlike the royal navy, merchant ships or any other institutions in 17 and 18 centuries, "the pirate group is ... democracy. "

Another insult to the British may be some pirate ships, which may include teachers, including black people who are members of the company. During the battle in Cork Bay, Oakland, Tiki told a man named Caesar that he was one of the black people on board, and if Maynard seemed to win, he should light the sloop. Butler and Moore said that the teacher is unlikely to give this task to anyone except a crew member.

15 pirates were arrested and tried by Captain Maynard in Williamsburg, Virginia, but unfortunately, the interrogation record was lost, probably during the Civil War. However, as we all know, in Williamsburg, a decision must be made whether to treat the five black defendants as slaves or try them as pirates. Pirates. Finally 13 people were found guilty and hanged.

Of course, self-study failed the trial; 17165438+1October 2 1 early in the morning, Maynard died in a calm morning after two dhows slipped into Oakcock Bay, where the professor and his crew opened their eyes on a carnival night. If it is true, Dicky never killed anyone before this battle, which is an interesting idea, although people will never be sure that he is here to make up for it.

Dickie has about 20 people, and Maynard has more than three times. But Maynard only has small arms, machetes and pistols, and Tiki's sloop adventure has nine lances. Maynard's sloop ran aground when Dickie and his crew led the expedition into a winding channel. When Maynard's men frantically rescued them, Dickie's voice roared on the water. "When we saluted for the first time," Maynard later reported, "he gave me and my people cursed wine and called them timid puppies." Once floating, Maynard's sloop went to the advertisement.