When folks talk about the pirates who once haunted the waters off the North Carolina coast, they always jump straight to Blackbeard. Everybody knows his name.
But what about Stede Bonnet?
Most folks have forgotten him—the Gentleman Pirate—one of the strangest and most fascinating characters to ever fly the black flag.
I think about him every time I find myself in Southport. It’s hard not to. Right there off East Moore Street stands a brick memorial marking the spot where Bonnet hid out during the Battle of the Sandbars—a fight that ended his short, chaotic career.
Do y’all know about Stede Bonnet?
He’s the only pirate in history known to have bought his own ship and hired his own crew. Born in Bridgetown, Barbados, Bonnet inherited a wealthy plantation when he was just six years old. He grew up educated, respectable, and restless. He served in the local militia, married Mary Allamby in 1709, and had four children.
But by 1717, whether driven by boredom, pride, or a bad marriage, Bonnet shocked everyone by walking away from it all. He paid cash for a ten-gun sloop he named Revenge, hired seventy men at regular wages, and set sail from Carlisle Bay without so much as a goodbye to his family.
He had money, charm, and ideas—but no clue how to actually sail. His officers handled the navigation while Bonnet kept to his books, earning him the nickname “The Gentleman Pirate.” He forbade swearing on board and tried to run his ship like a business, not a band of cutthroats.
His first few raids off Virginia and Long Island didn’t amount to much. Then a Spanish warship near Nassau tore into Revenge, killing half his men and leaving Bonnet badly wounded. That’s where he crossed paths with the infamous Edward Teach—better known as Blackbeard.
While Bonnet healed, Blackbeard took command of Revenge, and the two pirates joined forces. They raided up and down the coast, even blockading Charleston in May of 1718. But Blackbeard was never one for partnership. By summer, he’d stranded Bonnet at Topsail Inlet, stolen his loot, and sailed away.
Bonnet limped into Bath, North Carolina, and accepted the King’s pardon, promising to give up piracy for good. But it didn’t last. Under the alias “Captain Thomas,” he refitted his ship—now called the Royal James—and went right back to plundering. By August 1718, he’d taken eleven more vessels off the Delaware coast before retreating to the Cape Fear River for repairs.
That’s where the end began.
South Carolina’s Governor Robert Johnson sent Colonel William Rhett north with two armed sloops—the Henry and the Sea Nymph—and about 130 men to hunt Bonnet down. At dawn on September 27, 1718, the two fleets met in the shallow, shifting mouth of the Cape Fear River near what’s now Bald Head Island.
Both sides ran aground at low tide, trapping themselves in the sand.
For five brutal hours, they traded cannon fire at point-blank range. Bonnet had more guns, but his crew fired wildly—some refused to fight altogether.
Rhett’s men, disciplined and determined, held steady. When the tide rose and freed his flagship first, Rhett turned broadside and raked Royal James with fire. By early afternoon, Bonnet’s men had had enough. Ten pirates lay dead, twenty wounded. Rhett lost two men.
The Gentleman Pirate’s luck had run out.
Rhett hauled Bonnet and his surviving crew back to Charleston in chains. On October 24, Bonnet escaped jail and made it as far as Sullivan’s Island before being captured again two days later.
He stood trial in November before Chief Justice Nicholas Trott, claiming his men had mutinied and forced him to return to piracy. The court didn’t buy it.
On December 10, 1718, Stede Bonnet was hanged at White Point (now the Battery), his body left in chains as a warning to others. His crew had already been executed in batches that November.
Bonnet may have met his end in Charleston, but his presence still lingers in the waters off Bald Head Island and Southport. Stand on the shore, gaze out at the water, and it’s easy to picture his sloop waiting in the shallows, sails tattered, hope slipping away with the tide.
Stede Bonnet wasn’t just a pirate—he was a man caught between two worlds: a gentleman who traded comfort for chaos, a dreamer undone by his own daring.
A North Carolina tragedy as much as a legend.
