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Stede Bonnet (c. 1688 – December 10, 1718) was an early 18th-century Barbadian pirate, sometimes called "the gentleman pirate" because he was a moderately wealthy landowner before turning to a life of crime. Bonnet was born into a wealthy English family on the island of Barbados, and inherited the family estate after his father's death in 1694. In 1709, he married Mary Allamby, and engaged in some level of militia service. Because of marital problems, and despite his lack of sailing experience, Bonnet decided to turn to piracy in the summer of 1717. He bought a sailing vessel, named it Revenge , and traveled with his paid crew along the Eastern Seaboard of what is now the United States, capturing other vessels and burning other Barbadian ships.
Bonnet set sail for Nassau, Bahamas, but he was seriously wounded en route during an encounter with a Spanish warship. After arriving in Nassau, Bonnet met Edward Teach, the infamous pirate Blackbeard. Incapable of leading his crew, Bonnet temporarily ceded his ship's command to Blackbeard. Before separating in December 1717, Blackbeard and Bonnet plundered and captured merchant ships along the East Coast. After Bonnet failed to capture the Protestant Caesar , his crew abandoned him to join Blackbeard aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge . Bonnet stayed on Blackbeard's ship as a guest, and did not command a crew again until summer 1718, when he was pardoned by North Carolina governor Charles Eden and received clearance to go privateering against Spanish shipping. Bonnet was tempted to resume his piracy, but did not want to lose his pardon, so he adopted the alias "Captain Thomas" and changed his ship's name to Royal James . He had returned to piracy by July 1718.
In August 1718, Bonnet anchored the Royal James on an estuary of the Cape Fear River to repair and careen the ship. In late August and September, Colonel William Rhett, with the authorization of South Carolina governor Robert Johnson, led a naval expedition against pirates on the river. Rhett and Bonnet's men fought each other for hours, but the outnumbered pirates ultimately surrendered. Rhett arrested the pirates and brought them to Charleston in early October. Bonnet escaped on October 24, but was recaptured on Sullivan's Island. On November 10, Bonnet was brought to trial and charged with two acts of piracy. Judge Nicholas Trott sentenced Bonnet to death. Bonnet wrote to Governor Johnson to ask for clemency, but Johnson endorsed the judge's decision, and Bonnet was hanged in Charleston on December 10, 1718.
Pre-criminal life
Bonnet is believed to have been born in 1688, as he was christened at Christ Church parish on July 29, 1688. His parents, Edward and Sarah Bonnet, owned an estate of over 400 acres (1.6 km 2 ) southeast of Bridgetown, which was bequeathed to Bonnet upon his father's death in 1694. It is not known where Bonnet received his education, but many who knew him described him as bookish, and Judge Nicholas Trott alluded to Bonnet's liberal education when sentencing him. Bonnet married Mary Allamby in Bridgetown on November 21, 1709. They had three sons—Allamby, Edward, and Stede—and a daughter, Mary. Allamby died before 1715, while the other children survived to see their father abandon them for piracy. Edward's granddaughter, Anne Thomasine Clarke, was the wife of General Robert Haynes, for 36 years Speaker of the Assembly of Barbados.
In A General History of the Pyrates , Charles Johnson wrote that Bonnet was driven to piracy by Mary's nagging and "iscomforts he found in a married State." Details of Bonnet's military service are unclear, but he held the rank of major in the Barbados militia. The rank was probably due to his land holdings, since deterring slave revolts was an important function of the militia. Bonnet's militia service coincided with the War of the Spanish Succession, but there is no record that he took part in the fighting.
Early career as a pirate
During the spring of 1717, Stede Bonnet decided to become a pirate, despite having no knowledge of shipboard life. He bought a sixty-ton sloop, which he equipped with six guns and named the Revenge . This was unusual, as most pirates seized their ships by mutiny or boarding, or else converted a privateer vessel to a pirate ship. Bonnet enlisted a crew of more than seventy men. He relied on his quartermaster and officer for their knowledge of sailing, and as a result, he was not highly respected by his crew. In another break from tradition, Bonnet paid his crew wages, not shares of plunder as most pirates did. Royal Navy intelligence reported that he departed Carlisle Bay, Barbados under cover of darkness.
Bonnet's initial cruise took him to the coast of Virginia near the entrance of the Chesapeake Bay, where he captured and plundered four vessels, and burned the Barbadian ship Turbet to keep news of his crimes from his home island. He then sailed north to New York, taking two more ships, and picking up naval supplies and releasing captives at Gardiners Island. By August 1717, Bonnet had returned to the Carolinas, where he attacked two more ships, a brigantine from Boston and a Barbadian sloop. He stripped the brigantine, but brought the cargo-filled Barbadian sloop to an inlet off North Carolina to use for careening and repairing the Revenge . After the Barbadian sloop's tackle was used to careen the Revenge , the ship was dismantled for timber, and the remains were then burned. In September 1717, Bonnet set course for Nassau, which was then an infamous pirate den on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas. En route , he encountered, fought, and escaped from a Spanish man of war. The Revenge was badly damaged, Bonnet was seriously wounded, and half the crew of the sloop was lost in the encounter. Putting in at Nassau, Bonnet replaced his casualties and refitted the Revenge, increasing the sloop's armament to twelve guns.
Collaboration with Blackbeard
While at Nassau, Bonnet met Captain Benjamin Hornigold and Edward Teach for the first time; Teach, better known as Blackbeard, played a large role in the remainder of Bonnet's life. Disabled by his wounds, Bonnet temporarily ceded command of the Revenge to Blackbeard, but remained aboard as a guest of the more experienced pirate captain. Blackbeard and Bonnet weighed anchor and sailed northward to Delaware Bay, where they plundered eleven ships. On September 29, 1717, the Revenge , captained by Blackbeard, plundered the sloop Betty , which had a cargo full of Madeira wine. Captain Codd, whose merchant ship was taken on October 12, described Bonnet as walking the deck in his nightshirt, lacking any command and still unwell from his wounds. The Revenge later captured and looted the Spofford and Sea Nymph , which were leaving Philadelphia. On October 22, the Revenge stopped and robbed the Robert and Good Intent of their supplies.
Blackbeard and Bonnet left Delaware Bay and returned to the Caribbean in November, where they successfully continued their piracy. On November 17, a 200-ton ship named the Concorde was attacked by two pirate craft nearly 100 miles (160 km) away from the island of Martinique. The lieutenant on board described the pirate vessels as one having 12 guns and 120 men and the other having eight guns and 30 men. The crew of the Concorde put up a fight, but surrendered after the pirates bombarded them with "two volleys of cannons and musketry." Blackbeard took the Concorde and sailed south into the Grenadines, where he renamed the ship Queen Anne's Revenge , possibly as an insult to King George I of Great Britain. Some time after December 19, Bonnet and Blackbeard separated. Bonnet now sailed into the western Caribbean. In March 1718, he encountered the 400-ton merchant vessel Protestant Caesar off Honduras. The ship escaped him, and his frustrated crew became restive. When Bonnet encountered Blackbeard again shortly afterward, Bonnet's crew deserted him to join Blackbeard. Blackbeard put a henchman named Richards in command of the Revenge . Bonnet, surprised that his colleague had betrayed him, found himself as a guest aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge . Bonnet confided in a few loyal crew members that he was ready to give up his criminal life if he could exile himself in Spain or Portugal. Bonnet would not exercise command again until the summer of 1718.
Under Captain Richards, the Revenge captured a Jamaican sloop, the Adventure , captained by David Herriot. Herriot joined the pirates, and Blackbeard now possessed three ships. Bonnet accompanied Blackbeard to South Carolina, where Blackbeard's four vessels blockaded the port of Charleston in the late spring of 1718. Needing a place to rest and refit their vessels, Blackbeard and Bonnet headed north to Topsail Inlet, where the Queen Anne's Revenge ran aground and was lost. Leaving the remaining three vessels at Topsail Inlet, Blackbeard and Bonnet went ashore and journeyed to Bath, which was then capital of North Carolina. Once there, both men accepted pardons from Governor Charles Eden under King George's Act of Grace, putatively on condition of their renouncing piracy forever. While Blackbeard quietly returned to Topsail Inlet, Bonnet stayed in Bath to get a "clearance" to take the Revenge to Denmark's Caribbean colony of St. Thomas, where he planned to buy a letter of marque and go privateering against Spanish shipping. Eden granted Bonnet this clearance.
Resumption of pirate command
Bonnet returned to Tops
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