Stede Bonnet: the real “gentleman pirate”

Who was Stede Bonnet?

Stede Bonnet was born on the English island of Barbados and christened there on 29 July 1688. His father died when he was a small child and left him a sugar estate, which a guardian ran until he was old enough. In 1709 he married Mary Allamby, and they had three children; one of them died young.

Bonnet was educated as a gentleman and held the rank of major in the island’s militia, a part-time defence force, though there is no record of him fighting in a war. He had little or no experience of the sea. That background, so unlike the poor sailors who made up most pirate crews, is why he became known as “the gentleman pirate”.

Why did Stede Bonnet become a pirate?

Nobody knows for certain. The 1724 book A General History of the Pyrates, by an author calling himself Captain Charles Johnson, blamed “a disorder in his mind” and hinted that an unhappy marriage was behind it. That is one writer’s guess, not a proven fact.

Modern historians have suggested other reasons. Bonnet had borrowed about £1,700, a large debt. He may have been grieving for his dead son, and the historian Colin Woodard has suggested he may have sympathised with the Jacobites, who wanted to replace King George I. Perhaps several of these were true at once.

Did Stede Bonnet really buy his pirate ship?

Yes. In the spring of 1717 he had a sloop built or bought for himself, which was very unusual: most pirates stole their ships. He named her the Revenge and armed her with ten guns. He then hired more than 70 men and paid them wages, instead of the usual pirate system of sharing out the loot.

During 1717 he took ships off Virginia, the Carolinas, New York and New England, and later that year he reached Nassau in the Bahamas.

Were Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard friends?

Not really. At Nassau, Bonnet met Edward Thatch, better known as Blackbeard, who took charge of the Revenge while Bonnet recovered from his wounds; some accounts say they first met later, in the Bay of Honduras. In early 1718, in the Bay of Honduras, Blackbeard put one of his own men in command of Bonnet’s sloop and kept Bonnet aboard his big ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, more like a guest who could not leave than a partner. Bonnet’s crew seem to have preferred Blackbeard’s leadership.

Bonnet was still with him in May 1718, when Blackbeard blockaded Charles Town for about a week and demanded a chest of medicines. Around 10 June 1718 the Queen Anne’s Revenge ran aground at Topsail Inlet, now Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. Blackbeard sailed off with the loot and left a group of men stranded on a sandbar; accounts give between about 16 and 25. Bonnet rescued them.

Did Stede Bonnet take the King’s pardon?

He did. King George I had offered a pardon, called the Act of Grace, to pirates who gave up by a set date. Bonnet went to the town of Bath and received it from North Carolina’s governor, Charles Eden. He was also allowed to sail to the island of St Thomas to seek a privateer’s commission, a licence to attack enemy Spanish ships.

Instead, by July 1718 he was a pirate again. He renamed his sloop the Royal James, called himself “Captain Thomas” and, according to the South Carolina Encyclopedia, took about thirteen ships off Virginia and in Delaware Bay in two months.

How was Stede Bonnet captured?

The Royal James leaked badly, so Bonnet took her into the Cape Fear River in North Carolina for repairs. South Carolina’s governor, Robert Johnson, had sent Colonel William Rhett out with two armed sloops, the Henry and the Sea Nymph, to hunt another pirate, Charles Vane. Instead Rhett found Bonnet, arriving at dusk on 26 September 1718.

The battle on 27 September lasted five or six hours: the 1724 book says nearly five, while most modern historians say about six. All three sloops ran aground on the sandbars, and the rising tide floated Rhett’s ships off first. The same book reports 12 of Rhett’s men killed and 18 wounded, and 7 pirates killed and 5 wounded. Bonnet surrendered, and Rhett brought 36 prisoners to Charles Town in early October.

What happened to Stede Bonnet at his trial?

On 24 October 1718 Bonnet escaped from the house where he was held, with his sailing master, David Herriot. They were tracked down on Sullivan’s Island by Rhett’s men. Herriot was killed, Bonnet surrendered, and he was back in Charles Town by 6 November.

The Vice-Admiralty court, a court for crimes at sea, sat from 28 October to 12 November under Judge Nicholas Trott. Of Bonnet’s crew, 33 were tried, 4 were found not guilty and 29 were sentenced to death on 6 November. One man, Ignatius Pell, gave evidence against the others. Bonnet was tried from 10 November, found guilty of taking the sloop Francis, and sentenced on 12 November.

When and where was Stede Bonnet hanged?

His crew were hanged first, on 8 November 1718, at White Point, at the tip of the town’s peninsula. The official trial record, printed in London in 1719, names 22 men hanged that day; what happened to the other seven of the 29 condemned is not recorded.

Bonnet wrote to Governor Johnson begging for mercy and promising to change his life. Some townspeople felt sorry for him, but the governor refused. Bonnet was hanged at White Point on 10 December 1718, more than four weeks after his men. Accounts say he carried a small bunch of flowers and was so distressed he had to be held up. Today a granite marker from 1943, in White Point Garden on the Battery in Charleston, remembers the hangings.

In 2022 a television comedy, Our Flag Means Death, brought Bonnet new fame, but its story is invented.