Friday

                         Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“The last gasp of a dying nation is tolerance.”

                           Aristotle

Here is a short biography of a pirate that traveled the North and South Carolina coast. There are people in Greenville that can trace their ancestry to this buccaneer.

                                Stede Bonnet

This is a story of a well heeled Englishman of culture that became a pirate because of a woman. Stede Bonnet was born on Barbados in 1688 the son of a wealthy plantation owner. I do not know what his farm products were but in those days Barbados was famous for sugar and rum. Stede inherited the estate after his father’s death in 1694. In 1709 he married a woman of means named Mary Allamby also of Barbados. After several years of Mary’s bitching and in spite of having three children and also in spite of he not having but the most rudimentary sailing skills, in 1717 Stede decided to take up piracy. He bought a 30 ton sloop, names it The Revenge, probably because of his bad experience with his wife and outfitted it with 10 guns and hired a pirate crew of 30 and gave them a salary. This was unheard of in the pirating arena, most other pirates allowed their crewmen to share in whatever booty was captured. Stede headed for the American east coast and is successful in capturing and looting several ships but then he ran across a Spanish man-of-war and a sharp battle ensued. Stede and company are forced to withdraw after suffering several killed and many severely wounded including Stede. Stede ordered his ship to Nassau in the Bahamas, a well known refuge for pirates. It was there that he met two pirates named John Hornigold and Edward Teach, also known as “Blackbeard”. Stede was not getting any better so he turned over command of his ship to Blackbeard and out they went to the American coast looking for prey with Stede as a guest of Blackbeard. As y'all may have heard the name of Blackbeard’s flagship was Queen Anne’s Revenge. Blackbeard probably named his ship that as a slap at the king of England at the time. Stede had a meeting with the Governor of North Carolina who offered him a pardon if he would go “privateering” against Spanish shipping that was coming back from Mexico and Central America laden to the scuppers with gold captured from the Aztecs, Maya and Inca and give the Governor half of everything he captured. By now Stede had healed well enough to take command of his own ship and he and Blackbeard parted company. Stede wanted to go pirating again but he also did not want to lose his pardon from the North Carolina so he decided to use the alias of “Captain Thomas” and renamed his ship The Royal James and went pirating again. The good Governor offered Blackbeard a similar deal whereby Blackbeard could use Okacroke inlet and Bath, North Carolina in particular as a secure home base but in return he must give the governor half of his booty. Stede’s ship was leaking badly and needed careening. This meant the ship was leaned over to one side and the seams on the bottom were re-packed to stop the leaks. To do this they needed shallow and calm water. Stede chose the shallow and calm estuary of the Cape Fear River, North Carolina. In the mean time the Governor of South Carolina had got fed up with Stede and Blackbeard attacking nearly every ship departing Charleston, South Carolina harbor and sent a hired militia led by Colonel Robert Rhett to put a stop to it. Rhett caught Stede in the Cape Fear estuary while still careening. There was a battle for several hours but the pirates were surrounded by a force of superior numbers and ships and were forced to surrender. Stede and company were brought to Charleston and put on trial along with another pirate named Richard Worley and his crew. Somehow Stede escaped but not before promising the South Carolina Governor that he would cut off his arm and legs to prevent him from ever pirating again. The Governor did not buy it and sent a search party out looking for Stede. Stede had hired two slaves that had access to a boat to take him and his sailing master to safety. The four were cornered on Sullivan’s Island (the home of one of my my favorite watering hole, Poe’s Tavern) and the two slaves were killed and Stede and his sailing master were brought back to Charleston to be tried before Judge Nicholas Trott. The Trott family was famous in South Carolina history and was mentioned in my essay on the history of Daniel Island. Judge Trott gave no quarter and sentenced Stede and his crew plus Richard Worley and his crew to death by hanging. The whole crowd was indeed hanged at “White’s Point” which is today the southernmost point of the Charleston, South Carolina peninsula, better known as “The Battery”. The whole bunch was “buried” on the southern shore of James Island “at low tide”. We know what this means. They were left for the crabs and sharks to devour. By the way, after Blackbeard made his deal with the Governor of North Carolina, the Governor of Virginia knew that every ship entering or leaving the Chesapeake Bay was at risk so he sent a militia hunting for Blackbeard. They cornered Blackbeard on Okacroke Island, North Carolina and after a savage hand-to-hand fight Blackbeard was eventually killed and beheaded. Thus essentially ended pirating in the Carolinas but it still flourished elsewhere as long as Spanish ship were hauling all that gold back to Spain via the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Straits, the Bahamas and the American east coast.

        This Date in History  August 11

1998 Earlier 14 year old Mitchell Johnson and 12 year old Andrew Golden decide to do something exciting. So they stole Mitchell Johnson family’s van and several firearms from Andrew Golden’s grandfather and then they went to the Jonesboro, Arkansas Middle School where they were students. They ducked inside and set off a fire alarm and then head for the nearby woods and wait until the school empties onto the grounds. Then these two little monsters open fire and kill 4 students and one teacher and wound 34 others. They break and run through the woods headed for the van but they were intercepted by the police and arrested. On this date they were convicted of murder but because of their age, Arkansas law forbade children that age to be put in prison with adults and they cannot be held in a juvenile facility after they are 18 years old. These two boys were put into a juvenile facility until they were 18 and then released. These two men are walking the streets as free men as we speak. But the state of Arkansas has passed laws now that allow penalties to transverse from a juvenile facility to an adult prison. About a year later 13 are killed at the Columbine Colorado High School. What’s up with all of that?

1980 On this date nurse Carol Bundy confessed her attachment with a serial killer named Douglas Clark. Clark picked up most of his victims on Sunset Strip and he became known as the “Sunset Slayer”. Clark was known on the strip as the king of the one night stands until he met Carol Bundy. Carol was interested in hearing about all the women he had killed and how he did it and finally she participated in some of his murders and even killed a few on her own. One of Clark’s favorite pastimes was to behead his female victims and bring the head to Carol so she could put make-up on it. She blurted out to one of her old boy friends about what she and Clark had been doing and then realized that she would have to kill him to protect Clark so she pulled out a knife and stabbed him numerous times killing him. She finally confessed to her fellow nurses what she had been doing and they called the cops. She and Clark went on trial and were convicted in spite of Carol claiming that Clark did it all but the jury did not buy it. They sentenced Douglas Clark to death and Carol Bundy received 52 years to life. We need to go back to the medieval times to determine punishment for animals such as these.

               Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow