Blackbeard’s Pirate Jamboree is scheduled for Oct. 31 & Nov. 1, 2025, at the Berkley Manor grounds and barn. See details here.
By Kevin Duffus
Blackbeard’s head.
It is one of the handful of reasons why he became America’s most famous pirate soon after his death.
He was not notorious for how many years he plundered ships on the high seas; not for how successful or wealthy he was; not for how many wives and girlfriends he had. That fame came later.
Blackbeard became a household name in the 18th century for how he had been gruesomely decapitated in his final fight, how his headless corpse purportedly did laps around his sloop ADVENTURE after it was tossed overboard, and how his head was reported to have been impaled upon a pike staff and displayed to visitors at Hampton, Virginia.
Take away his unique nickname, his out-of-fashion beard, and his spectacular downfall here at Ocracoke and Blackbeard would have just been your run-of-the-mill, garden-variety pirate.
You know the story: After the battle on Nov. 22, 1718, Royal Navy lieutenant Robert Maynard snatched Blackbeard’s head by its hair and strung it up so that it would hang from the bowsprit of his sloop as a sort of “hood ornament” for shock value when he sailed into the pirate’s home port of Bath.
No doubt it worked.
You see, even though the notorious arch-pirate Blackbeard was dead, his severed head with its blood-caked beard and hair, taut leathery skin, and contemptuous frozen grin, was not done striking terror in the hearts of its beholders.
The sight may no longer have caused dread for his victims, but it did strike horror and grief for those who were once his friends, admirers and townsfolk.
Later it was said that his skull was turned into a silver-plated drinking cup used in secret rituals in an old house at Springer’s Point at Ocracoke or at the Raleigh Tavern at Williamsburg.
But how much of the story is true?
Find out at the Ocracoke Blackbeard Pirate Jamboree at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 1, when I present my thoroughly researched program “Blackbeard’s Head” at the Berkley Barn.
The event showcases colonial life in the 1700s with a living history encampment and the Battle of Ocracoke on Friday, Oct. 31, and Saturday, Nov. 1, on the Berkley Manor grounds.
Editor’s note: Duffus also will do an interview on WOVV 90.1 FM Friday at 11:30 a.m. when he will talk about the festival and about the Fresnel light of the Hatteras Lighthouse and his new book The Inventor Reginald Fessenden and the Origins of American Radio on North Carolina’s Outer Banks,
He will sign this new book and “The Last Days of Black Beard the Pirate,” at Books to be Red at noon.
This story was correct to say that Duffus will be at Books to be Red at noon on Oct. 31.
