What Did Blackbeard Want From a Whole City?

In May 1718 Blackbeard parked his fleet, led by the Queen Anne’s Revenge, outside the harbour of Charles Town, South Carolina. Over five or six days he stopped about nine ships trying to come in or get out. On one of them, the Crowley, were some of the city’s leading citizens, including council member Samuel Wragg and his young son.
He sent two pirates and one prisoner ashore with his demand and two days to answer. Their boat capsized, so he gave them two more days. When nothing came back, he brought eight ships into the harbour and the town panicked, while his messengers were found drinking with friends in town. The ransom he wanted was not gold but a chest of medicine. He released the prisoners, after taking their valuables and fine clothes.
Nobody recorded why he wanted it. But the wreck of his flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge (found off Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in 1996), held a clue: a pewter urethral syringe that chemical analysis shows once held mercury, the period treatment for syphilis.

Sources: Wikipedia, “Blackbeard” (citing Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates, 1724; Robert E. Lee, Blackbeard the Pirate; Angus Konstam); Live Science, “Blackbeard’s Booty: Pirate Ship Yields Medical Supplies” (2015); Archaeology magazine, “Medicine on the High Seas” (2015).

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