But for their Frocks, Gents!

Oh dearest reader, prithee set down and hast thy smelling salts close at hand. As we near the second anniversary of the sinking of old Tetch up Carolina way, it is a reminder that yond is not all as it appears.

On valorous authority we hath learned from Master Kevin Duffus, who didst overhear in a coffee house this bite of battle observation. The gent was eager to report the conversation as heard.

The fabled sloop Adventure

Twas the morn of December 3, 1718, and already fast in to the season of early winter storms off the Carolina coast. Indeed ice wast seen already chunking. The shore was full of half consumed plunder, sugar and cocoa and rum and old Teach's crew was moving slow. Wherefore were those gents so late in Ocracoke when most their fellow plunderers be back in the warm seas of the West Indies?

And the most impossible question, how didst on this Saturday morning battle, the fusty pirate who kneweth these waters like the back of his hand, be pinned in the Adventure by the armed naval forces under Lt. Capt. Robert Maynard?

Master Duffus didst hear this morsel. "Old Teach and his men did not know these ships were Royal Navy." Maynard did learn from a trading sloop that the Adventure was aground on the sound's shoals, inland, between two rivers. Maynard hired two merchant sloops, the Jane and the Rodger, to navigate inland waters. 

Captain Robert Maynard "in colors"

But here's the rub, coequal at hailing distance with the glint o the cutlass visible, twas not certain who was yelling "It is thee we want and we shall hast thee dead or alive.” Our man Duffus continued in a fevered tumble of words, "Maynard’s men were dressed just like pirates, who in turn, dressed just like merchant sailors. Quite common in the day. By their attire, they all mostly looked alike, although pirates hadst bigger wardrobes, as most of it was stolen."

"At the endeth of an hourlong, slow moving series of sailing maneuvers," the gent hath continued with an ever increasing pitch and volume of words in the retelling, "and gunfire amidst dense billows of smoke hath followed by six minutes of furious hand-to-hand melee, 10 pirates, including Blackbeard, did lie dead on the deck of the sloop Jane while Maynard and eleven of his Royal Navy sailors, all wounded and out of breath, stood over the bodies."

At this point we all did need a stout hot tea and desired the speed of words from Master Duffus might sloweth to an understandable rate. That did not. But to our most wondrous delight that gent hath set the full details to parchment. Seeketh this esteemed publisher for part the first of Master Duffus' serial and and hold your breath for part the second!

Reports from Master Kevin Duffus

 

A recollection of Captain Edward Teach