Pirates, ghost towns and shipwrecks

Pirates, ghost towns and shipwrecks

August 13, 2006  By Bill Rozday

Special to The News-PostIt rises like a green tent with a domed roof, its fabric a dense weave of live oak branches. Occasionally a clear puncture admits the bright light reflecting off Pamlico Sound, but the rising foundation of sand remains invisible.
This tent of forested land was once the campsite of Blackbeard, the famous pirate.–A temporary home, as all were for pirates, it still stands after nearly 300 years, the modest dimensions of the wind-trimmed trees belying their antiquity.

Cedar, wood of canvas-and-pole tents, holds up this bluff as well, eastern red cedar facing down the offshore winds just as its counterpart western red cedar confronts the coastal climate of the Pacific.– Centuries old, the cedars stand there with limbs that look like the arms or legs of the famous people who slept and laughed here under them.

Blackbeard, an Englishman formally named Edward Teach, relaxed under these trees in a summit of noted pirates convened in November 1718, not realizing this was his last encampment.–Known throughout the Caribbean and Southeast coasts, Teach’s name circulated in government circles as well and led the governor of Virginia to send a detachment of sailors to confront him.–Just offshore, he died in a sword-and-pistol battle that killed some 20 other pirates and sailors.