DATE: Tuesday, March 4, 1997                TAG: 9703040318

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A12  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   66 lines

FEROCITY HELPED ENGLISH PIRATE'S REIGN OF TERROR IN MID-ATLANTIC

He locked his own sailors below deck and filled the ship's hold with sulphur just to make them suffer.

He shot his first mate in the kneecap to show who was boss.

He hijacked scores of ships - some solely to steal barrels of rum.

And before he went into battle, this fierce captain tied fuses in his waist-long black beard and set them on fire so that his whole face seemed surrounded by smoke when he boarded victims' boats.

Blackbeard was one of the most feared pirates on the high seas.

His reign over the Atlantic lasted three years, but his reputation has spanned three centuries. And the booty he amassed off North Carolina has never been found.

But officials think they have found Blackbeard's ship, Queen Anne's Revenge, off Beaufort.

``I wish they'd drag it up here and put it in our yard,'' said Jim Beach, manager of Queen Anne's Revenge Restaurant in Wanchese. The family named their eatery after the ship ``just because it sounded so romantic - and because Blackbeard hung out in this area.''

Born Edward Teach in 1680 to a wealthy family in Bristol, England, Blackbeard joined a group of Jamaica-bound sailors fighting Queen Anne's War in the early 1700s, one of a string of conflicts for empire between France and Britain. He was a privateer - sanctioned by the government to capture enemy ships.

After the war, Blackbeard kept plundering for his own profit. He stole a sloop, gathered a crew of 70 and in less than a year ruled the Atlantic and Caribbean.

When he moved his operations to North Carolina in 1718, Blackbeard commanded four vessels and 400 pirates. At least 25 ships had succumbed to his pillaging.

``Blackbeard, to me, was the first great practitioner of psychological warfare,'' said Phil Masters, whose company Intersal helped find the pirate ship. ``He created a menacing image. He talked with everyone he met about being in league with the devil, that he was the devil's brother.''

That image - more than his deeds, historians say - helped Blackbeard earn his reputation. Records do not show that the pirate killed anyone until British warships trapped him off Ocracoke during his last battle. But sailors whose ships the pirate plundered told tales of his evil attacks and terrifying visage.

``A lot of piracy, at the time, was image,'' said George Roberson, owner of Ocracoke's Blackbeard museum. ``They liked being fierce. But they liked being feared even more.''

Early in 1718, Blackbeard sailed into Ocracoke Inlet, left his boat anchored in a channel now called Teach's Hole, and took a smaller sloop inland to Bath. There, North Carolina Gov. Charles Eden performed a marriage ceremony for the pirate and his 16-year-old bride.

Worried that Blackbeard would create a pirate colony on the Outer Banks - and concerned that their governor was in cahoots with the corrupt captain - North Carolina colonists called on Virginia Gov. Alexander Spotswood for help.

After dark on Nov. 21, 1718, English Navy Lt. Robert Maynard slipped into Ocracoke Inlet with two ships Spotswood had commissioned and attacked at daybreak.

The two crews exchanged shots. Smoke obscured the pirates' view. In the confusion, Maynard sent his men below deck.

Blackbeard boarded the enemy ship. Sailors sprung from below, surprising the pirates. At least 18 men were killed in the ensuing battle, including Blackbeard, who fell after five bullets and 20 stab wounds pierced his body.

Maynard carried Blackbeard's head to Virginia. The Outer Banks' golden age of piracy ended. But no one ever got Blackbeard's gold.

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