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 29 September 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 12 October, 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 22 October, 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 17 November, 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 19 December, 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.
Read more about this topic: Stede Bonnet