Charleston’s Pirates | Most Feared Pirates In Charleston History

Posted: 04.19.2025 | Updated: 04.22.2025

Cannon, musket, kidnap, ransom, extortion, and high drama! This may seem like a collection of buzzwords for a flimsy Netflix series pitch. Still, they are in fact all real elements from a time when the Caribbean and Charleston, SC were inextricably linked by a common scourge: pirates.

Shiver your timbers on a Charleston Ghost Tour with Charleston Terrors. 

Did Pirates Attack Charleston?

For roughly seven decades, from 1650 to 1720, thousands of Pirates roamed the high seas. One particular plundering patch was the Caribbean. Heavy traffic trade routes from the islands meant that heavily laden cargo vessels were to Pirates what the Wilderbeast is to the Cheetah-slow, cumbersome, and ripe prey. Pirates were the more agile and deadly predators of the high seas. 

Where there was cargo to plunder, there were pirates. Charleston had more than its fair share of these dastardly swashbucklers. All of whom enjoyed the comforts and easy pickings of the port city with traders bound for Carolina. 

The authorities of the time wrote laws to punish these swashbucklers. Pirates could be hung on nearby Shute’s Folly island, their bodies would be left hanging from the gallows. This chilling warning let other Captains sailing by with ill intent know of their fate. 

Here are some of the bad, bold, and brave buccaneers, who kept Charleston in fear.

• Anne Bonny
• Stede Bonnet
• Edward Teach (Blackbeard)

Anne Bonny

Anne Bonny is said to have been born in Cork, Ireland. However, the details of her early life are speculative at best. Captain Charles Johnson’s 1724 book A General History Of The Pyrates offers the only real account of Anne Bonny’s origins, with little to no evidence to back it up. Nevertheless, his account has held through the ages and is retold today. 

The illegitimate daughter of a lawyer, William Cormac, and his servant, Bonny, it is said, and her father emigrated to Charleston, Carolina. Bonny enraged her father by marrying a poor local sailor, James Bonny, thus earning the name that would be burned into history. 

Her father rejected his reportedly fiery-tempered daughter’s choice of husband. Then the young couple fled to Nassau, which was a viper’s nest of pirates and skullduggery. It is here that the tempestuous Anne would meet pirate John Rackham.

In the summer of 1720, Bonny, her new love Rackham, and Mary Read, stole the sloop ‘William’ anchored in Nassau harbour. This wayward group set about attacking merchant vessels for months off the West Indies. Bonny was very much a central figure of this venture, noted for her cursing, pistols, and blade.

The Noose Tightens

On September 5th, 1720, Governor Rogers issued a proclamation calling for the immediate arrest of Rackham and his crew with both Bonny and Mary Read listed. This demand was even published in The Boston Gazette. This Lady Of Piracy became a mythical figure and captured people’s imaginations.

Later, the following month, Rackham and his crew were attacked by a vessel under commission by the Governor of Jamaica. The ensuing battle was brief as the ‘William’ was notably outmatched.

Rackham and his crew were captured and tried for piracy. The trial was short as the outcome was predictable, with Rackham hanged. 

Mary Read and Bonny claimed to be pregnant which saved them from the gallows. But, at least in Read’s case, not from death. She died in prison in April 1721. Anne Bonny’s fate remains a mystery. 

There is intriguing evidence to suggest she was released from prison only to die in Jamaica in 1733. Her brief career as a bona-fide Charleston female pirate was trailblazing, with a host of ladies of piracy that followed. Her legacy would be far clearer than her life and death. 

Stede Bonnet

The Gentleman Pirate. Stede Bonnet, born in 1688, is as famous for his piracy and plundering as he is for his curiosity. His standing as an Englishman from a wealthy landowning family on the island of Barbados immediately separated him from the mill pirate.

Bonnet had inherited his family’s estate after his father died in 1694. In 1717, it is said that Bonnet decided to turn to a life of piracy to recapture his youth. Others have suggested it was an effort to escape a failing marriage.

With unabashed swagger, Bonnet contracted the building of a sloop. ‘The Revenge’ was fitted with 10 guns before slipping out of Carlisle Bay, Barbados, in the darkness and into history with truly prolific and daring acts of piracy to follow. Following this period of criminal enterprise, Bonnet cast his eyes homeward.

The return to Nassau would prove pivotal. On the homeward journey, Bonnet, badly injured in an exchange with a Spanish warship, encountered the infamous pirate Blackbeard. This meeting began a friendship that would leave no vessel safe on the water. 

Numerous vessels were captured and looted. The following month, Captain Blackbeard, with Bonnet still recovering, would take the French slave ship ‘La Concorde.’ Blackbeard chose to rename the vessel ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’. Shortly thereafter, Bonnet resumed command of The Revenge, and the pair separated. 

Blackbeard’s Betrayal

In the spring of 1718, their paths would cross again, with Blackbeard betraying Bonnet. Blackbeard held Bonnet captive, placing a crewman in charge of The Revenge. Intriguingly, Blackbeard eventually let Bonnet regain command of The Revenge.

Bonnet’s subsequent efforts to leave his life of crime ended upon the revelation that Blackbeard’s betrayal had extended to stealing much-needed supplies and food. 

After repairing and restocking, Bonnet had decided to wait out the hurricane season in the Cape Fear River. By August’s end, news of this moored vessel had reached Charleston. The Governor of South Carolina authorized vessels and 130 militia to take Stede Bonnet and his men.

The Battle of Cape River would rage for most of September 27, 1718. But, the fog of war and a changing tide played against Bonnet and his men. 

Despite a courageous effort, Bonnet and his crew surrendered with their fate sealed. Despite an escape, recapture, and even a civil uprising supporting the Gentleman Pirate, Bonnet and his men would swing for their crimes on December 10th, 1718. Their bodies were buried in marshland, below the waterline and with no marker.

Edward Teach (a.k.a. Blackbeard)

This self-styled ‘Devil Incarnate’ used a bright mind and sense of dastardly purpose to strike fear into those he wished to conquer. This almost spectral figure is said to have tied lit fuses into his hat so that enemies would cower before him upon seeing his foreboding beard surrounded by a shroud of smoke. 

Born in Bristol in 1680, this English pirate would terrorize the West Indies and Britain’s North America. So mythical is his tale that even his given name is debated. It has been suggested that Edward Teach was a false name he used to cloud his identity further and obscure himself from the authorities’ view.

This shrewd, nefarious, and reportedly well-educated character is thought to have arrived in Jamaica on a slave ship in the final years of the 17th century. Blackbeard distinguished himself as a daring and courageous sort on privateer vessels during the War of the Spanish Succession. 

Blackbeard began his piracy career in a place that was to most a wretched hive of scum and villainy. To pirates, however, New Providence Island was an oasis, a safe haven of sorts. The coastal waters proved too shallow for British naval vessels to threaten their plans and the den of debaucherous criminality.

Receiving his first command from notorious pirate Benjamin Horgold, Blackbeard was given a stolen sloop in 1716. Hornigold and Teach set about launching a tidal wave of fear across the seas. Edward Teach soon became an infamous name on the lips of merchant sea captains.

Charleston Blockade

With 40 cannon and 300 men aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge, Blackbeard’s exploits and those of his madeira-soaked crew became the stuff of legend.

The perception of this fearsome figure was heightened further with his defeat of a British man-of-war. Perhaps, Blackbeard’s most notorious act, however, was to blockade the entire port city of Charleston. 

Having given himself the rank of Commodore and now in command of a fleet of vessels, Teach took his formidable flotilla to bear on Charleston harbour. In May 1718, Blackbeard’s armada plundered nearly every vessel in Charleston with speed and ferocity.

By the time the Charleston authorities were even aware of the impending threat, Teach had plundered 10 vessels, stealing their cargo and, most importantly, kidnapping high-ranking city officials. 

One such captured official was Samuel Wragg, a member of the Council of the province of Carolina. The crew of the Queen Anne’s Revenge was plagued by syphilis, with Blackbeard himself possibly among the afflicted. 

Blackbeard demanded medical supplies from the colonial government. If these supplies were not given, all prisoners would be executed, their severed heads sent to the Governor, and all captured ships burned. 

The city caved. In typical Edward Teach fashion, he used his fearsome acts to get what he wanted without loss of life. All prisoners were released. Receiving the medicine was hampered, however, by the two crew members sent to retrieve the goods, absconding and getting drunk with friends. 

Blackbeard’s sharp mind was finally defeated by a British naval captain in his final battle. In November 1718, the authorities’ pursuit of Blackbeard ended when Captain Maynard sent all his crew below decks during an exchange of fire.

Believing the crew dead, Blackbeard boarded the vessel only to be met by raging hand-to-hand combat. 

Haunted Charleston

Blackbeard’s demise would be as hard to achieve as his pursuit had been long. Captain Maynard described Blackbeard succumbing to at least five musket rounds and 20 sword wounds. Maynard hung Edward Teach’s severed head from a mast as a trophy. The man would die long before the legend. 

Learn about Charleston’s enduring love affair with the tyrants of the water on a Charleston Ghost Tour.

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Sources:

• https://www.barbadoscarolinas.org/stede-bonnet-gentleman-pirate
• https://carolinamarinegroup.com/the-pirates-that-charleston-encountered
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anne-Bonny
• https://www.worldhistory.org/Golden_Age_of_Piracy