Benjamin Hornigold: Blackbeard’s mentor and pirate hunter

Who was Benjamin Hornigold?

Benjamin Hornigold was one of the leading pirate captains of Nassau from about 1713, a little before the game’s era, until the end of 1717. His name is spelled several ways in the records, including Horngold and Hornygold.

We know almost nothing about his early life. No record of his birth or home town has been found, and stories that he came from Norfolk in England are guesses. Many writers say he was a privateer (a private sailor licensed to attack enemy ships in wartime) during the war that ended in 1713. That is likely, since so many privateers turned pirate when peace came, but no paper proving it has survived.

How did Hornigold become a pirate?

Hornigold first appears around 1713 and 1714, among Bahamas men who raided Spanish shipping off Cuba and Florida. They used periaguas, large open boats rowed or sailed close to shore, and small sloops. With two partners he is said to have taken two Cuban vessels carrying about 46,000 pieces of eight, the Spanish silver coins of the day.

By 1716 he was one of the most powerful men on New Providence. Sworn statements sent to England that year say that when the island’s deputy governor, Thomas Walker, arrested a fellow raider named Daniel Stillwell, Hornigold freed him and threatened to burn Walker’s house. According to one witness, he boasted that “all pirates were under his protection”. In 1716 he sailed into Nassau in a Jamaican sloop, the Mary, which he later sent back to her owners.

By July 1717 a merchant captain reported five pirate captains using Nassau as their meeting place. He listed Hornigold with a sloop of 10 guns and about 80 men.

Why did Hornigold refuse to attack English ships?

In 1716 the Nassau pirates told witnesses they took only French and Spanish ships and would leave English ones alone unless attacked. Hornigold seems to have meant it. Robbing your own country’s ships made a pirate an enemy of every English colony, and most of these men still thought of themselves as English sailors carrying on the old war against Spain.

His crew did not all agree. In 1716 the young captains Sam Bellamy and Paulsgrave Williams joined his company. At a trial in Boston in 1717, a pirate named John Brown said the men voted Bellamy captain by a large majority because Hornigold would not take and plunder English vessels. Hornigold left with 26 loyal men in a captured sloop. Most historians date this split to the summer of 1716. Bellamy went on to become Black Sam Bellamy.

Was Hornigold Blackbeard’s mentor?

Yes, as far as the evidence goes. A 1724 book, A General History of the Pyrates by “Captain Charles Johnson”, says Edward Thatch, later called Blackbeard, served under Hornigold, who gave him command of a captured sloop. The same book says the two sailed from Nassau together in the spring of 1717. By July 1717 the merchant captain’s report already listed “Thatch” as a captain in his own right, with 6 guns and about 70 men.

In the autumn of 1717 Hornigold, Thatch and Stede Bonnet cruised the American coast and the Caribbean together. By then the flotilla was taking English colonial ships, so it is not clear how far Hornigold kept to his old rule. Sometime in 1717 his crew pushed him aside once more (accounts differ on exactly when), and he went back to Nassau in his sloop, the Ranger. Thatch sailed on and soon captured the French ship that became the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

Why did Hornigold take the King’s pardon?

On 5 September 1717 King George I offered a pardon to any pirate who surrendered. Captain Vincent Pearse brought the news to Nassau in the warship HMS Phoenix on 23 February 1718. From about 26 February, 209 men took certificates of pardon, and Hornigold was among the first and best known of them. He and another captain, Thomas Nichols, persuaded Pearse to release Charles Vane, whom Pearse had captured, as a sign of goodwill. Vane soon proved he had no intention of giving up.

Hornigold’s reasons are not recorded. By then he had already lost command of two crews, and a pardon offered a way back to an ordinary life.

How did Hornigold become a pirate hunter?

Woodes Rogers arrived as royal governor of the Bahamas in July 1718. He sent Hornigold out in a sloop to watch Vane’s ships. Hornigold disappeared for about three weeks, and Rogers feared he had gone back to piracy. Instead he came home with a Nassau sloop that had been trading with Vane, and Rogers wrote that he had proved honest.

His biggest catch came later that year. John Auger and other men who had taken the pardon seized trading sloops fitted out at Nassau and turned pirate again. Hornigold and John Cockram, another former pirate, tracked them down and brought back 13 men, three of whom died of their wounds. At a trial in Nassau in December 1718, most of them were condemned and hanged; one, George Rounsivell, was spared at the last moment. Rogers wrote that this gave Hornigold a chance to clear his bad name, and that even in his pirate days most people had spoken well of his generosity.

How did Benjamin Hornigold die?

Rogers sent him on a voyage to open trade with the Spanish colonies. According to the 1724 book, his ship was wrecked on rocks far from land and Hornigold died, while five of his men escaped in a canoe. No date, reef or place was recorded. Most writers put his death in late 1719; some say 1720.