Blackbeard's Point Traditional Geocache
GrandpaGene: Construction wins
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(small)
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This is a replacement cache for "It's Amazing" which is being moved to a more secure location in the near future. Be careful - lots of college students with time on their hand to figure out what you are doing are in eye contact with you. In a series of events about as confusing as the defeat of Blackbeard, Paine12 is FTF. Congratulations.
Located on property hard to access via land today is Blackbeard's Point, a Hampton landmark since November, 1718 where the severed head of Blackbeard the Pirate remained displayed until it rotted away.
So who was Blackbeard? He was born Edward Teach in 1680 and at some point became a crewman on an English privateer during Queen Anne's War. After the war he fell in with pirates and soon became a captain. He armed a captured French merchantman with 40 guns and renamed the ship THE QUEEN ANNE'S REVENGE which became the nucleus of a small pirate fleet which harassed the western Atlantic and Caribbean, often operating out of the sounds of North Carolina. Teach became known as "Blackbeard" from his flowing black beard and infamous for lacing slow fuzes in his hat and beard when boarding a ship for capture. However he is not known to have killed any surrendered prisoners and treated his crews well. There is some story that the governor of the North Carolina colony gave Blackbeard haven in response to part of the pirates' loot.
In any event, he received a royal pardon, but then broke it and went back to piracy, especially around the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, which maddened Governor Spotswood of Virginia who eventually sent a small naval force commanded by Lieutenant Robeert Maynard to capture or kill Blackbeard and his crew.
The pirates were found in a sound behind the Outer Banks. At first Blackbeard's crew appeared the winners as Royal Navy casualties were high. But Lt. Maynard hid most of his crew below decks so that when the pirates boarded, intent on capturing or killing the few men near the helm, they were surprised by a hoard of outflanking sailors. Blackbeard attacked Maynard, but was killed. his body revealed five gunshot wounds and about 20 cuts. The victors cut off his head, hanged it from the bowsprit, and threw his body into the water. The surviving 16 pirates were taken back to Virginia to stand trial for piracy. Of them, 14 were hanged in Williamsburg while two were aquitted. Blackbeard's head got placed on a point of land about 0.20 miles north of here, jutting into the Hampton River as a warning.
Parking is available a little over .10 mile from the cache in the parking lot at the traffic light.
This is a 2014 Hidey Award Nominee for Best Historic Cache.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)