♪ ♪
Tonight, a pirate treasure
worth millions.
Blackbeard looted dozens of ships
and was able to walk away scot free.
And it’s still missing, despite centuries of searching.
We know where he attacked ships,
where he hung out, where he stopped for a time,
but in none of these places
has Blackbeard’s treasure been found.
Now, we unearth the top theories
around this legendary orb.
Blackbeard goes from public enemy number one
to best friends with the governor overnight.
All of Blackbeard’s treasure
now it’s somewhere at the bottom of the ocean.
Many of Blackbeard’s former crew members
believed that Blackbeard had made a deal with the devil.
What really became of Blackbeard’s lost treasure,
and where could it be?
♪ ♪
LAURENCE FISHBURNE: November 21st, 1996,
Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina,
a dive team led by historian
Phil Masters is attempting to find
a lost, centuries old treasure.
MAN ON RADIO: Diver to surface. Diver to surface.
MATT ALBERS: The dive team is looking
for a very specific pirate ship,
which may have been the most notorious
pirate vessel of all time.
LAURENCE: The ship is called the "Queen Anne’s Revenge,"
and it was helmed by the notorious pirate Blackbeard.
DR. REBECCA SIMON: Blackbeard is probably
the most famous pirate ever to live,
even though his actual pirate career
was quite short in comparison to others.
He was most active between 1717 and 1718,
during the golden age of piracy.
Blackbeard is one of the best known figures
of colonial American history.
But today, 300 years later,
we really don’t know much about his identity,
origins, or even motivations for becoming a pirate.
REBECCA: There’s a lot of questions and mysteries
about Blackbeard’s background,
the first of which is his own name.
There’s a few different accounts
that spell it differently.
In the majority of the official records,
his name was written as Edward Thatch,
uh, which has since become Teach.
Other people said he was a Captain Drummond.
Somebody interpreted the wording in a later document
to believe that his last name was Kentish.
The fact is, there were many pirates
who actually went by aliases.
So his identity and his real name
are very much in doubt today.
LAURENCE: Much like his name,
Blackbeard’s early life is unknown.
The first time we hear about Blackbeard
is about 1716, and this is when he was
sailing under the pirate Benjamin Hornigold,
and Blackbeard was Hornigold’s protégé
and became Hornigold’s second in command.
LAURENCE: Less than a year later, Hornigold promotes
Blackbeard to captain of a small sloop in his fleet,
with a crew of 70 men.
How does a man become the captain of a sloop?
First of all, he almost certainly
would have been better educated
than most of the men that he was with.
He was able to read and write.
He was able to navigate.
These were not characteristics that were common
among most men at that time.
REBECCA: Benjamin Hornigold and Blackbeard,
the two of them as pirates, are sailing up and down
the American Eastern seaboard.
They were wreaking havoc against a lot of merchant ships,
and they’re especially active
between the Carolinas and down to Cuba,
and that’s because there’s a lot
of major trading routes.
They’re looking for things they can sell,
like textiles, spices, different types of alcohol,
such as wine and rum,
anything they could sell at a high price.
And coming out of the Caribbean,
where so much of this is being traded,
it’s ripe for the picking.
LAURENCE: Despite their success, Blackbeard and Hornigold
are soon at odds with each other.
MATT: Blackbeard and Benjamin Hornigold
had some philosophical differences
about how to conduct piracy
and really what it meant to be a pirate.
Benjamin Hornigold, specifically,
did not want to attack British shipping.
But, of course, that means that his men
lost out on lots and lots of plunder.
It upset a lot of the men in Hornigold’s crew.
REBECCA: Blackbeard, on the other hand,
he’s more gung-ho.
He wants to rob any ship,
he’s indiscriminate about who he attacks,
and so he wants more of that freedom
to be able to really hit other ships hard.
LAURENCE: By 1717, Hornigold is forced to retire,
and Blackbeard is declared head of the fleet.
He immediately sets out to make a name for himself.
PATRICK HINDS: Blackbeard projects
this fearsome image, right?
He’s this big, bold person.
He wears dark clothes, he’s got the dark crazy hair,
the big black beard.
The whole point was to be terrifying.
REBECCA: Blackbeard knew he was gaining a reputation
very quickly because of his looks,
and he began to capitalize on it in a way.
If you’re a sailor or a Navy man
and you see this crazy man coming at you,
you are gonna give up your ship right away.
LAURENCE: By late November, 1717, Blackbeard commands
three ships with nearly 200 crewmen,
including the "Queen Anne’s Revenge".
MATT: At the height of Blackbeard’s power,
he had more men, more guns and more ships
than any other pirate captain sailing.
So with this heavily armed fleet of ships
that he has, including his flagship,
the "Queen Anne’s Revenge,"
Blackbeard is basically unstoppable.
LAURENCE: During this period, Blackbeard was
an amazingly successful pirate.
COLIN WOODARD: He’s captured, you know, dozens of vessels
as they were approaching major east coast ports
and is raiding almost all the shipping
trying to go in and out of the Caribbean.
KEVIN P. DUFFUS: In late May and early June,
Blackbeard eventually makes his way north,
and blockades the port of Charleston.
He besieges the harbor of Charleston for a week.
Ships coming in and out, he would intercept them.
He--he actually holds Charleston for--for ransom,
and they pay it.
LAURENCE: Blackbeard’s success doesn’t go unnoticed.
REBECCA: Blackbeard is becoming a lot more famous,
which means a lot more authorities are starting
to look for him in various places.
COLIN: At the time, the pirates were that powerful,
that numerous and that dangerous.
So the king had decided the only way
to defeat the pirates was to divide and conquer them.
LAURENCE: Or, in the case of Blackbeard,
to send a privateer named Woodes Rogers to capture him.
KEVIN: When Blackbeard was blockading
the port of Charleston, one of the residents
informed him that Woods Rogers had departed England
and was on his way to the Bahamas
to become the governor to break up this pirate republic
that had been established.
DR. CHARLES EWEN: I think Blackbeard knew
Woods Rogers was after him,
and so he goes up at Topsail Inlet,
which is today Beaufort Inlet,
presumably to fight a well-armed enemy,
and he hits a shoal and runs aground.
LAURENCE: Another of Blackbeard’s ships,
the "Adventure", comes to his aid,
but it’s too late.
CHARLES: This is pretty bad for Blackbeard.
It is more than likely most of the loot,
most of the real valuable goods,
especially if it’s Blackbeard’s flagship,
were stored on the "Queen Anne’s Revenge."
PATRICK: At this point, Blackbeard’s treasure
is estimated to be tens of millions of dollars.
His own ledger reads about twelve and a half,
but it’s incomplete, suggesting that there’s
possibly more where that came from.
REBECCA: So this leads to the question...
What happened to the treasure?
The most logical place to look would be
at its last known location, on his ship,
the "Queen Anne’s Revenge."
LAURENCE: Despite knowing the general location
of the wreck, no one is able to find
the "Queen Anne’s Revenge."
Once the ship is abandoned,
it probably wouldn’t take long
for it to start falling apart.
It was already in pretty bad shape,
and it’s relatively warm water,
so any wood that’s exposed
is going to be eaten by the teredo shipworms.
And I would say within a year you might not see
much of it above water,
and, within ten years,
you wouldn’t even know it was there.
LAURENCE: Then, in 1987,
obsessed treasure hunter Phil Masters
starts a new mission to find Blackbeard’s flagship.
PATRICK: Phil Masters has had success in this inlet before,
finding other treasure wrecks.
And since we know that Blackbeard’s ship
went down in around the same spot,
Masters assumes this is a good place to look for it.
LAURENCE: Finally, on November 21st, 1996,
he located it.
This discovery is a huge deal.
It makes international news.
It’s been 278 years that people have been looking for this ship,
so discovering it means we might actually
have some insight into the treasure
that Blackbeard actually had.
LAURENCE: The excavation efforts start in 1997.
CHARLES: Once the--the wreck was found,
then it was up to the archaeologist
to come in, grid off the whole area,
and to tediously go through each square that had
been marked off, dredging the sand up
and running it through screen after screen.
LAURENCE: Soon, they begin bringing up incredible objects.
MAN OVER RADIO: This is amazing.
There’s just stuff everywhere.
CHARLES: We’re finding all kinds of weaponry.
At least 40 cannons, uh, 20 have been pulled up.
We found grenades, medical instruments,
side plates for guns,
the plates that they ate off.
It’s a treasure trove of that time period.
LAURENCE: What they don’t find is Blackbeard’s treasure.
So even though there’s no gold doubloons
or jeweled cups or anything like that,
it is a treasure of historical artifacts.
LAURENCE: Still, the team believes
they’re on the right track.
KEVIN: There has been a small amount
of gold dust or small nuggets
of gold that have
been recovered archaeologically
from the wreck of the "Queen Anne’s Revenge."
And there may still yet be
a chest of gold or silver or jewels.
CHARLES: The archeology on the "Queen Anne’s Revenge"
has recovered roughly half
of what we--we think is down there,
but it’s going to take a while to get it done.
If Blackbeard had the large amount of valuables
and loot and plunder, doesn’t appear to have
been left on the "Queen Anne’s Revenge."
But would Blackbeard take off
and leave the treasure behind?
I don’t think that makes sense.
LAURENCE: When notorious pirate Blackbeard crashes off
the coast of modern-day North Carolina
in June 1718, a mystery begins.
REBECCA: So what happens to all of Blackbeard’s treasure?
This is one of the really big mysteries
about him, because we really have no idea.
The most logical place for Blackbeard’s treasure
would be its last known place,
which, of course, was on his ship,
the "Queen Anne’s Revenge."
CHARLES: When the announcement came
that the "Queen Anne’s Revenge"
had been located, it was huge.
Everybody’s interested in Blackbeard’s Flagship.
LAURENCE: Unfortunately, no hoard is found
amid the wreckage of the "Queen Anne’s Revenge."
But evidence suggests Blackbeard’s vessel
didn’t sink immediately after running aground.
That gave Blackbeard about a week to ten days
to get everybody off the "Queen Anne’s Revenge,"
and then he could put a salvage crew aboard
so that they could recover anything of value
that they wanted to retain.
KEVIN: Could Blackbeard have moved his loot?
Of course, in 1718 there were no banks.
There were no place to--to put your money,
uh, or your gold if you had accumulated it.
And it absolutely makes sense
that it might have been hidden somewhere,
hoping that they would be able to go back and retrieve it.
LAURENCE: Shortly after wrecking his ship,
Blackbeard surrenders,
taking advantage of a new legal policy.
COLIN: The pirates were that dangerous.
There were so many of them that the King
was willing to issue a pardon
that would absolve any pirate who took it
from all of their crimes, and they would be able
to keep their treasure
and go peacefully into retirement.
LAURENCE: On September 5th, 1717, England’s King George I
makes a royal decree.
The terms are, "If you stop plundering
and turn yourself in, we’ll stop hunting you."
And many pirates take him up on the deal.
Generally, if a pirate is going
to get captured, they will be put on trial
and they will hang.
That is almost guaranteed.
So a pardon will allow a pirate
to survive and also keep their goods.
PATRICK: It takes Blackbeard a while to come around,
but once he wrecks his flagship,
the "Queen Anne’s Revenge," he decides the pardon
is the best option.
LAURENCE: Once he officially retires,
Blackbeard moves to Bath, North Carolina.
While the "Queen Anne’s Revenge" is unsalvageable,
he’s allowed to keep his smaller ship,
The "Adventure," for his own personal use.
KEVIN: Blackbeard arrived in Bath in July of 1718
and bought a fine house
where he would host these grand parties
and invite his neighbors and the plantation owners.
REBECCA: He lives at a place called Plum Point,
oddly enough, right next door to the Governor, Charles Eden.
LAURENCE: The house hasn’t survived,
but the site makes headlines in 1928.
It was around Christmas time of 1928,
and all of a sudden,
newspapers all across the country
were reporting that Blackbeard’s famous pirate treasure
had been found.
♪ ♪
The story is originally attributed to two fur trappers.
North Carolina at that time was
very overgrown, a real wilderness.
It would have been perfect for fur trapping.
REBECCA: The fur trappers came upon a hole
that was about eight feet deep,
covered with lots of trees and branches and leaves,
that sort of thing.
They go down to investigate,
and they discover down at the very bottom
there’s this brick vault sitting there.
At first, the fur trappers think
this might have been part of a foundation,
but then, upon closer inspection,
they saw that the bricks were a lot of different
shapes and sizes, suggesting that they were hand-made.
MATT: And they’d been stuck together with a lot of mortar,
more than would be used for a house.
And in that mortar, there was an indentation,
the remnants of what very much looked
like an old sea chest.
The trappers thought about, "Who would need
to bury a chest here in such a great hurry?"
I mean, Blackbeard is really the only choice.
LAURENCE: But the sea chest is gone.
The trappers estimate the chest
would have been about 40 inches wide
and 30 inches deep.
The trunk itself would have been a large wooden object.
It would have had a heavy lid on it,
and it probably would have belonged
to Blackbeard or maybe one of the other sailors
on his ships, because every sailor,
including a pirate, had their own personalized trunk
where they could keep their own special goods and treasure.
LAURENCE: Searching nearby, the trappers find more clues.
MATT: Right next to the hole, these two fur trappers
found a tripod and a pulley, but they also found
an indentation in the sand that appeared
to run right down to the beach.
And, in fact, the fur trappers did describe
that they had seen footprints,
and they had seen some disturbed earth
and disturbed foliage.
It could have been that the fur trappers
may have just missed the people
who had taken the trunk away.
LAURENCE: Unfortunately, the trail of evidence
stops at the water.
This raises so many questions.
Was this Blackbeard’s long lost treasure?
Who dug the hole? What did they find?
Where did they take what they found?
But, to me, the biggest question of all is,
how did these people know where to dig?
By 1928, people had been digging
all over this property for hundreds of years,
and this didn’t seem like a lucky find.
They dug one hole, and they seemed to have
brought the exact right tools they would
have needed to dig this hole.
MATT: People in this region passed down
all sorts of stories about Blackbeard.
Maybe someone actually had some information
about where he had hidden his treasure.
And then, on the other hand, maybe Blackbeard decided
to leave a treasure map behind.
Maybe, in this case,
X actually did mark the spot.
PATRICK: The trappers were unnamed.
Obviously, the thieves are unnamed.
We don’t have any more information about this hole
other than from this one newspaper article.
REBECCA: And it’s led some people to wonder
if these fur trappers were even real,
or was it something that the newspaper decided
to print for fun in order to get sales,
maybe capitalize on a local legend.
So this also creates an even larger mystery
behind what was going on in 1928
around Blackbeard’s former home.
LAURENCE: If the story is fiction,
it may have a well-known inspiration.
KEVIN: Well, certainly, Robert Lewis Stevenson
had a great impact on the public’s perception
and interest in pirate treasure
with the publication of--of "Treasure Island."
We all think that all pirates bury their treasure,
but actually, there is almost no record
of any pirate burying treasures.
But no matter how much I have learned
about piracy, when I think pirates,
I think of buried treasure,
I think of peg legs, I think of hooks.
LAURENCE: Other theorists believe the trapper’s tale
is partially true.
It’s certainly possible that Blackbeard buried some treasure.
What’s unlikely is that he buried
all of his treasure in one spot.
It’s more likely that he would have
spread it out over multiple locations.
Blackbeard would do this to reduce risk
or just because it’s more practical to have
a little bit in a lot of different places.
MATT: A single chest, 30X40 inches,
can hold a lot of loot, right?
You know, you’ve got silver and gold,
but it’s not nearly enough
to hold everything the Blackbeard had.
PATRICK: There’s definitely more treasure out there.
And it seems like if somebody was able
to find this treasure, other people might be
able to find the rest.
LAURENCE: During his two year reign of terror
along the Atlantic coast, virtually no port is
safe from Blackbeard and his pirate crew.
Blackbeard’s most famous territory was the Bahamas,
the Virgin Islands, and the Carolinas.
But there’s evidence to suggest
he went as far south as South America
and as far north as New Hampshire.
If we’re trying to think of different places
that Blackbeard may have buried his treasure,
there are loads of different possibilities.
PATRICK: People think that Blackbeard traveled
around with all of his treasures, and I think
we get this idea from movies
like "The Goonies" and "Treasure Island,"
where there’s just piles of gold and jewels,
but if you think about it, that’s not practical.
KEVIN: Part of the problem with this is
gold is very, very heavy.
A box that’s 2X2X2 would be eight cubic feet of gold,
would actually weigh about 9,500 pounds.
PATRICK: He needed his ships to be light
so he could attack other ships
and avoid being attacked himself.
He needed to make room for his men
and for supplies and for weaponry.
And we know even that when he would
attack other ships, he wouldn’t take everything.
He would pick and choose what he wanted
and leave the rest.
If Blackbeard is really successful
in several of his captures and had a huge haul of loot,
odds are he’s going somewhere safe to offload it.
LAURENCE: According to historian Robert Cahill, it could
be a place no one would ever think to look.
MATT: In 1980, Robert Cahill published
a book called "Pirates and Lost Treasures."
In that book, he suggests that while
most people were looking for Blackbeard’s treasure
in the Caribbean or along the coast of Carolina,
he thinks that Blackbeard may have hidden
some of his treasure about 600 miles further to the north,
as far north as the coasts of Maine
and New Hampshire, where we find a series
of islands called the Isles of Shoals.
CHARLES: The Isles of Shoals are what they sound like.
They’re rocky shoals jutting out of the water
between New Hampshire and Maine.
It was mainly used with the cod fisheries,
but there were folks that also
dabbled in piracy as well.
So you had a lot of illicit behavior going on.
PATRICK: Cahill focuses on the Isle of Shoals because,
as a local historian,
he’s found accounts of Blackbeard and his crew
frequenting a tavern on the islands.
It’s amazing how many places have been suggested
for Blackbeard’s treasure,
but the Isle of Shoals makes more sense
than some of the others because it’s one
of those places that matches
sort of what the pirates were looking for
in a lair or a hideout.
The kind of place where you might lay low.
Maybe nobody will notice you.
Maybe you can offload treasures.
REBECCA: The Isle of Shoals are made up of three islands,
and in the middle is this dumbbell-shaped Lunging Island.
And this is referred to as the Pirate Bank.
And the reason for this is because its location
is really safe, sandwiched in between these other islands.
It’s got very rocky coastlines,
and it’s the perfect place to go if you need to hide
yourself, your ship, or offload goods,
because it’s unlikely people will be able
to either find it or sail in there safely.
LAURENCE: Over the years, several teams
of scientists and treasure hunters
search Lunging Island.
It’s rumored that in Blackbeard’s time,
there was a cave on the eastern end
of this island, and if that’s true,
it would have been a perfect place for Blackbeard
to hide his treasure.
But, today, that cave is not there.
MATT: According to Prudy Randall,
who owns the only house on the island,
she believes that the cave may have been hidden away
after centuries of shifting sands and tides.
Randall says that shortly after World War II,
a plane from the American government flew overhead
and spotted the cave using sonar.
A few years later, a man from a quarrying company
came out and did some tests, indicating that a cave
may exist under the rock.
But it appears there was no further follow up
to either of these two investigations.
LAURENCE: In 2001, a team from Hager-richter Geoscience
picks up the search.
Their first order of business is to use
a ground-penetrating radar to look for evidence
of a cave or really anything buried underneath the ground.
Ground penetrating radar doesn’t take
the place of digging, but it does make
your digging a lot more efficient.
LAURENCE: Unfortunately, their initial findings
are inconclusive.
But that doesn’t stop them.
They hire a big barge-mounted drill
from Rockland, Maine, and they dig
a bunch of test holes into the rock.
But they only find more rock.
The chance of finding a single collapsed cave
is really one in a million.
It’s a needle in a haystack situation.
Like many treasure hunters,
eventually you run out of time and money,
and then if you’re not getting any return,
you have to pull the plug.
LAURENCE: Some suggest the Geoscience team
is looking on the wrong island.
Just because Blackbeard drank on Lunging Island
doesn’t mean he buried his treasure there.
I mean, wouldn’t it make more sense for him
to pick one of the other Isles of Shoals,
where there would be more secrecy?
MATT: Cahill believes that Blackbeard may have
a connection to other islands in the chain.
According to legend, after he retired in 1718,
Blackbeard married a woman in North Carolina.
It was the governor, Eden,
that oversaw the ceremony.
Then he spent his honeymoon on an island
called Smuttynose.
Maybe the trip up north for the honeymoon
was also a chance to get some stash,
spending money for the new couple.
There’s one other island in the Isle of Shoals
that makes an interesting contender.
Though there’s no evidence of buried treasure
on Smuttynose or Lunging Islands,
Star Island does have a history of pirate plunder.
MATT: John Quelch was a pirate about ten years
before Blackbeard was really active.
He oversaw a mutiny on board his merchant ship,
and then the crew elected him to be their captain.
They sailed down to the coast of Brazil,
where he captured nine or ten pirate ships,
and made a good amount of money.
At that point, they sailed north
up to Star Island, where, reportedly,
he buried some of his treasure.
Now, this was just a myth, a story.
Nobody really knew about this
until the 1800s.
Then some people found gold inside a wall,
and thanks to the dates on those coins,
they believe that it may have been Quelch’s gold.
LAURENCE: Could Blackbeard’s treasure also be hidden here?
There’s so many legends and possible locations,
but the Isles of Shoals
has been one of the most persistent ones.
The problem is that the Isle of Shoals
are solid granite rocks,
so this doesn’t make a lot of sense
as a place to secure your valuables.
It would make a very bad safety deposit box.
It’s really hard to dig holes there.
You need miners to help you do it.
CHARLES: These pirates, I mean, they’re sailors.
They’re not engineers.
Well, let’s remember what the technology
in the XVIII century was like.
It’s nowhere near what we have.
I suppose you could use black powder,
but to do any effective blasting,
you really gotta know what you’re doing.
And the idea of these pirates
could somehow secrete this vast treasure
someplace that we can’t find now.
I find that difficult to believe.
LAURENCE: Still, the legend of Blackbeard’s treasure
remains tied to these islands for centuries.
And some locals say he left something else behind as well.
Legend has it he left his wife there
to guard the treasure, and he would come back and visit.
He would come and go and come and go,
and one day, he never came back.
And the locals say her ghost haunts the isles to this day.
CHARLES: I just would have to think
there’s gotta be a better way to hide your treasure.
But, again, if Blackbeard’s treasure
is found on the Isle of Shoals,
I will be the first one to say how wrong I was
in believing that this would never happen.
In the search for Blackbeard’s treasure,
many hunters focus on his whereabouts
during retirement.
But the pirate’s retirement is a matter of a few mere weeks.
Before long, he’s back on the high seas
and in a new ship.
You might ask yourself, why was this fearsome pirate,
who stole millions of dollars, looted dozens of ships,
blockaded entire towns, able to walk away scot free?
To understand that, you have to look
at the overall political situation
in Europe in the early 1700s.
LAURENCE: During this era,
European powers are competing to control
the astonishing wealth of the New World.
CHARLES: You had a lot of commerce going on.
These colonies are being exploited
and there is a lot of raw material
coming out of those colonies.
You had colonial Americans sending out material
to Europe, and you have the Spanish colonies
in the Caribbean and Mexico
and South America shipping out a lot
of gold and silver back across to--to Europe.
LAURENCE: When Europe moves into armed conflict,
leaders hurry to enlist men like Blackbeard
to seize their enemies’ loot.
He and many others enroll as privateers.
What’s the difference between privateering and piracy?
Well, a privateer was somebody who was
given permission to be a maritime mercenary
by their king or queen or government.
REBECCA: They have a contract called a letter of marque,
which basically states you are fighting against ships
from these specific countries,
and in payment, they were allowed
to keep 80% of all the goods
they could steal and the other 20%
goes back to the government.
Essentially, Blackbeard was given permission
to go out and attack enemy shipping,
and they could keep a portion of the plunder.
LAURENCE: North Carolina’s Governor, Charles Eden,
allows Blackbeard to take his remaining ship,
the "Adventure," and return to a life on the sea.
But within weeks,
he sheds his privateer status
and begins attacking English vessels.
Blackbeard is once again a pirate.
When Blackbeard decides to leave North Carolina
in August of 1718,
he knows he’s probably not going back.
He’s decided to go back to a life of piracy,
despite having taken the pardon.
It might be that at this point he feels like
he has nothing to lose and he probably
figures he might as well go back to piracy
and do everything he can before
he’s inevitably going to get caught.
When you look at the story of the big empty hole
on Plum Point, you have to wonder, is it possible
Blackbeard dug up the treasure himself?
I mean, we know he was going back and forth
between his home in Bath and the boat,
so is it possible that he was getting
the treasure and loading up the ship himself?
♪ ♪
LAURENCE: Whatever survives from his original haul,
Blackbeard wastes no time
adding to his fortune.
REBECCA: Almost immediately, he captures
two French ships, and in the meantime,
news of his exploits going back into piracy
have traveled around the Caribbean
and the American colonies as well.
LAURENCE: Frustrated, the Governor of Virginia
decides to take matters into his own hands.
REBECCA: Now, Alexander Spotswood,
he has made it his mission as a governor
to eradicate piracy in any way whatsoever.
KEVIN: In the letters of Alexander Spotswood,
he states that he’s very concerned
that this pirate Blackbeard has established himself
a base at Ocracoke Island.
Obviously, having pirates or a pirate base
just south of there would, uh, be a direct threat
to the trade of Virginia.
So he’s going to start putting plans
into motion to stop Blackbeard at all costs.
Governor Spotswood decides to commission
Lieutenant Robert Maynard in order to try
to take down Blackbeard.
He gives him 57 men and two ships
and is instructed, "Capture Blackbeard, dead or alive."
LAURENCE: Five days after departing
from Kecoughtan, Virginia, Maynard’s fleet
confronts Blackbeard’s at Ocracoke Inlet.
Blackbeard and Maynard face off and Blackbeard
immediately fires a cannon into Maynard’s ships,
obliterating one of them.
During this gunfire,
Maynard lost a number of his men
and the air filled with clouds of smoke.
It became very confusing.
It was hard for either of the vessels
to see each other. They were basically adrift.
Blackbeard gets off another broadside. Again, mayhem.
He mows down more of the Royal Navy sailors
and they jump on board, ready to seize control.
And that’s when Lieutenant Maynard
unleashes his great surprise.
REBECCA: Maynard’s men are all hiding below deck.
And so when Blackbeard and his crew come on,
Lieutenant Maynard’s men rush up to the deck
and this massive bloodbath of a battle ensues.
Blackbeard is wounded.
He’s stabbed in the leg by one of Maynard’s men.
And, reportedly, Blackbeard shouts,
"Well done, lad," after he’s been stabbed.
And in that moment, Robert Maynard sees
his opportunity and he takes his sword
and he beheads Blackbeard on the ship,
killing him once and for all.
LAURENCE: Maynard returns to Virginia and places
Blackbeard’s head on a spike
at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay.
A head is a fine trophy, but Maynard came back
without Blackbeard’s ship or any gold.
So the question is, what became of Blackbeard’s ship
and the treasure that was possibly on it?
LAURENCE: The "Adventure" remains missing to this day,
and its absence may provide a clue to what happened.
REBECCA: One of the theories is that one of Blackbeard’s
most trusted crew members, Caesar,
actually had plans to scuttle the ship,
meaning to destroy it, before anybody
could actually go capture it.
The idea is it’s better to have all the treasure
fall down into the sea, rather than let any of it
go into Maynards’ or any other authorities’ hands.
MATT: Of course, it could have been Maynard himself.
It was common practice at the time,
after defeating an enemy, to burn their ship.
Maybe Maynard didn’t search the ship properly,
and that would mean that all of Blackbeard’s treasure,
what he had dug up from Plum Point,
now it’s somewhere at the bottom of the ocean.
LAURENCE: If the treasure remains on the "Adventure,"
there’s still hope for its recovery.
This might be our single best chance
to find Blackbeard’s treasure.
If we can find the wreck of the "Adventure,"
we know it’s the last place that he was,
and there was probably some plunder on there.
In 1989, the same company
that found the "Queen Anne’s Revenge"
gets a permit from the state of North Carolina
to salvage the "Adventure," if they can find it.
So far, they have not.
But the wreckage is still out there.
Somebody’s probably gonna find it eventually.
And if they do, who knows?
Maybe they’ll get rich.
♪ ♪
LAURENCE: Perhaps no other figure
features more prominently
in the story of Blackbeard
than North Carolina Governor Charles Eden.
Blackbeard was in need of the King’s pardon,
but had committed acts of piracy
after the deadline stipulated by the pardon.
South Carolina would not have been happy.
Since he had besieged Charleston and Virginia,
they sure didn’t like him.
I think his options were pretty limited at that point.
REBECCA: So Blackbeard goes to Governor Charles Eden
because he knows that Governor Eden
tends to have decent relationships with pirates.
We don’t know if the two men knew each other beforehand,
but after Blackbeard receives the pardon,
their relationship takes a strange turn.
Blackbeard’s house is right next door to Governor Eden’s.
There are even reports that there was a tunnel
dug between the Governor’s house and Blackbeard’s.
When Blackbeard marries a woman named Mary Ormond,
it’s the Governor who oversees the ceremony.
Blackbeard and Eden seem to be very good friends.
What is the reason for this?
Does Eden think he can rehabilitate Blackbeard?
Is Eden star-struck by the guy
or is something else going on?
LAURENCE: One of the most comprehensive histories
of North Carolina
comes from Dr. Hugh Williamson, published in 1812.
REBECCA: According to Hugh Williamson,
Governor Eden is very charismatic,
he’s charming, he’s intelligent.
However, he is also sort of covered
in this cloud of disgrace,
and this is because of his assumed association
with one of the most notorious pirates of all time.
Blackbeard goes from being public enemy number one
to best friends with the Governor overnight.
History tells us that usually only happens
when there’s a payoff.
♪ ♪
LAURENCE: In other words,
Blackbeard’s hard-earned treasure
might have been given in exchange for his freedom.
One of the basic conditions
of the pardon was that you had to turn yourself in
by September 5th, 1718,
but you were only pardoned for the crimes
that you committed before January 5th of 1718,
nothing after.
But, of course, Blackbeard committed loads of crimes
after January 5th.
LAURENCE: Including his well-known blockade
of Charleston in May of 1718,
which should have been punishable by death.
So why wasn’t it?
Blackbeard had amassed
millions of dollars worth of goods and treasure,
and it’s very likely he brought all of this into North Carolina,
and gave a huge chunk of it to the Governor.
LAURENCE: Did Blackbeard use his wealth to buy his own pardon?
When Blackbeard turned himself in in June,
he should have been killed, but he wasn’t.
And maybe this explains why.
And why Blackbeard’s treasure’s never been found.
Because he gave it up. I mean,
if it’s your money or your life, what are you gonna do?
LAURENCE: And the bribes may not have stopped there.
MATT: At one point, Blackbeard returns
to North Carolina with a French ship
called the "Rose Emelye."
But he tells the Governor...
that he just found this ship perfectly seaworthy,
filled with plunder, and with not a sole aboard.
At a Vice Admiralty hearing, with the Governor present,
Blackbeard is awarded the rights to this French vessel.
Whether or not the Governor believed Blackbeard’s story,
how gullible do we think he is?
More likely, he was getting to keep
a little piece of the treasure himself.
LAURENCE: If Eden did accept Blackbeard’s treasure
as a bribe, what did he do with it?
Edward Mosley was a rival of Governor Charles Eden,
and when Mosley kind of caught whiff
of what Charles Eden was doing with Blackbeard,
he definitely wanted to use that against him.
REBECCA: He outright accused the Governor
of deliberately colluding with a pirate
for bad purposes, not to help the community,
but just to help himself.
In retaliation, Governor Eden arrests Mosley,
fines him £100,
and bars him from ever holding
any sort of public office for the next three years.
However, after Blackbeard’s death in battle,
a letter was found that vindicates Mosley,
proving that everything Mosley was accusing
Governor Eden of doing was true.
LAURENCE: The letter is written to Blackbeard
from Tobias Knight,
Eden’s secretary of the Governor’s council.
In the letter to Blackbeard in Ocracoke,
Governor Eden wants to set up a meeting,
the purpose of which was not known.
After Blackbeard is killed, they actually
find a whole bunch of his pirate plunder
from the last phase of his career
in Tobias Knight’s barn, hidden under a pile of hay,
which didn’t look very good.
REBECCA: The Governor of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood,
really wants to get involved in this.
He wants to arrest Governor Eden, Tobias Knight,
and everybody responsible of working with Blackbeard.
The problem is, being the Governor of Virginia
means he has absolutely no legal jurisdiction
within North Carolina, so there’s nothing he can do.
Eden spends the next few years trying to get
what he feels he deserves from Governor Spotswood.
LAURENCE: Eden claims Spotswood’s Virginian sailors
illegally invaded North Carolina
to apprehend Blackbeard and that any plunder
captured on the mission belongs to him.
Eden dies in 1722.
In his will, Eden leaves his fortune,
which might be Blackbeard’s fortune,
to Spotswood’s political rivals.
MATT: That same year, Governor Spotswood
was ousted from power.
This might be Blackbeard’s last act of revenge
against the man who was
most responsible for seeing him killed.
LAURENCE: For 300 years,
scholars and treasure hunters alike
have been trying to solve the mystery
behind Blackbeard’s missing treasure.
COLIN: We know a lot about Blackbeard’s movements
throughout his pirate career,
where he attacked ships, where he hung out,
where he stopped for a time.
But in none of these places
has Blackbeard’s treasure been found.
LAURENCE: Some theorists believe
Blackbeard’s first biography may tell us why.
REBECCA: Captain Charles Johnson is the author of a book
called "A General History of the Pirates,"
which was published in 1724,
and it was a smash hit almost immediately,
because it’s basically a large collection
of pirate biographies,
all of whom are of the most famous pirates
out of the golden age of piracy.
No one has really been able to identify
who Captain Charles Johnson was,
and some authors have said
that he was actually a pirate himself.
So we have him as a fairly reliable source.
Johnson interviewed a number
of Blackbeard’s former crewman for his book
and they told him, uh... kind of a wild tale.
REBECCA: According to Blackbeard’s crew,
one day they noticed a stowaway.
They had no idea who he is,
they have no idea how he got there
or even how long he’d been with them.
PATRICK: Even more mysterious, he disappears
just days after he arrives.
They haven’t docked anywhere. He just vanishes.
LAURENCE: The crew believe this is no ordinary stowaway.
The crew says Blackbeard knows he’s being hunted,
and that he’s likely to die in the next few days.
They are convinced that stowaway is the devil himself.
This may sound like a silly idea,
but the crew doesn’t pull this out of nowhere.
Blackbeard does exhibit some very strange behavior
on his final voyage.
REBECCA: It was like his mind wasn’t fully there.
He’d been saying things about how he’d been
working with the devil.
It’s like Blackbeard knew his death was coming,
and it was causing a sort of madness
that nobody could explain.
One of the examples of the madness
that Blackbeard’s crew spoke about
was how Blackbeard took three members of his crew,
locked them into the hold and set it on fire.
When he does this, he says,
"Let us make a hell of our own
and see how long we can bear it."
The men hold out as long as they can,
but they cry out under the intense heat
and the suffocating conditions.
Shortly after that, some of the crew
asked Blackbeard if his wife knew
where any of his treasure may have been hidden.
Blackbeard told them, "Nobody but myself
and the devil know where it is."
PATRICK: After the disappearing stranger,
the unusual rituals and the comment
about the devil, the crew is convinced
that Blackbeard has made a deal with the devil
to hide the treasure.
Not figuratively, literally.
LAURENCE: According to Johnson’s book,
Blackbeard is killed
the day after the alleged brimstone ritual.
Look, devil or not, the crew believed
Blackbeard had a large amount of treasure
hidden somewhere besides his boat.
And I think that that night,
Blackbeard confirmed it.
Now, this story is very likely embellished.
It makes for good entertainment.
It really feeds on the rumors about Blackbeard,
the legends about Blackbeard that are coming out
even while he’s alive.
PATRICK: Blackbeard is an eccentric,
and he’s been through a lot,
and he likes to put on a show.
Whether the devil story is true or not,
it doesn’t surprise me that towards the end
of his life, Blackbeard has become unhinged.
My suspicion is that Blackbeard
didn’t really have
a massive treasure cache at the end of his career.
REBECCA: Blackbeard had offloaded a lot of it.
He had sold many of the goods.
He had gathered more, sold more.
KEVIN: What treasure there was, probably
ended up in the families of the crew members
that Blackbeard had sailed with.
COLIN: But I think for legend makers,
it was irresistible to have the great pirate
also have a great treasure.
I just think it didn’t happen that way,
just because Blackbeard was... unlucky.
PATRICK: Who knows? Blackbeard was
the greatest pirate of his time,
and the treasure’s gotta be somewhere.
I believe it’s out there.
Although the location of Blackbeard’s
supposed treasure remains unknown,
the man’s life itself has proven quite lucrative.
It’s estimated that the many books, films,
and adaptations of his story have earned over $2 billion.
Not bad for two years of work as a pirate.
I’m Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History’s Greatest Mysteries."