Black Sails Season 3 puts out to sea.
We collect the bounty on the worst pirate ever, Stede Bonnet.
Pirates were men who came up the hard way.
Stede Bonnet began life as part of a very successful family.
The Bonnet clan was many and influential.
Stede was born in 1688, christened at Christ Church Parish, and received an excellent education.
When his father died, he in inherited a plantation of over 400 acres at the age of 16.
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He married well and sired three sons and a daughter.
There is no record of him taking part in any actual fighting.
And yet, in the spring of 1717, he decided give it all up to become a pirate.
In an era when divorce was not possible, it seems that this could actually have been a reason.
Yet I also wonder if it could have been issues of homosexuality.
His unusual decision brought about unusual preparations.
Bonnet took a different tack.
He simply had a ship built.
To the shipbuilders and any casual inquirers he gave out that he was building a privateer.
Revenge was simply the most common name for a pirate ship.
He had filled his cabin with a vast numbers of books, and spent his days reading.
This did not earn him the respect of his men.
He became so sure of himself that he eventually commanded his men to attack a Spanish Man-o-War.
Bonnet, his crew, and his ship were all badly damaged.
Shaken and hurt, Bonnet ordered his ship to the pirate port of Nassau.
It was here he met Blackbeard.
Blackbeard took the Revenge on a spree that captured ships from Delaware to Martinique.
Eventually Blackbeard used his new command to capture a far larger vessel.
The French shipLa Concordewas quickly re-fitted as a pirate ship and re-named theQueen Annes Revenge.
For a time, Bonnet and Blackbeard parted company.
It wasnt real pirating, but at last his upper-class background was coming in handy.
Bonnet was once again reduced to a passenger aboard his own ship.
At this point, Stede Bonnet seems to have lost it.
He ditched his pardon and went back to pirating, this time in earnest.
He did, however, make some effort to maintain the pardon he had bought so dearly.
He renamed theRevengetheRoyal James, and began calling himself Captain Thomas as an alias.
He never saw Blackbeard again, but he had at last begun to act like a pirate captain.
He seized two small vessels and brought them with him, as his ship was beginning to leak.
He commanded the sailors of his two captured sloops to clean and repair theRoyal James.
This took nearly two months, and involved cannibalizing one of the captured ships.
Once Bonnets presence in the area was known, Colonel William Rhett was dispatched to capture him.
The ensuing engagement was named The Battle of Cape Fear.
But the battle was ultimately determined by the tide.
This presented a problem for the town of Charlestown.
Pirates were scum, and were held in the common jail until trail.
Bonnet was a gentleman.
They ran aground, and were re-captured.
Civil unrest in the colony rose to a fever-pitch.
On November 10th, 1718, Bonnets trial began.
His men had already been convicted and sentenced to hang.
He was sentenced to hang.
At this point, Bonnetdidlose it.
Many people were moved to pity by a man utterly deranged by terror.
