Blackbeard Blockades Charleston, SC! 


May 22, 1718:  With a flotilla made up of the Queen Anne's Revenge, Adventure, Revenge and a small Spanish sloop [Adventure II] captured off Florida, Blackbeard blockades Charles Towne (Charleston), a wealthy South Carolina port. The pirates plunder merchant ships and seize the passengers and crew of the Crowley, a 178 ton ship bound for London carrying barrels of pitch, tar and rice. Some of Charleston's most prominent citizens are on board the Crowley. After Royal Gov. Robert Johnson meets Thach's demand for a chest of medicine and some 4000 pieces of eight valued at £1000, Blackbeard releases some 80 nearly naked hostages and sails up the coast for North Carolina and a date with destiny. Medical artifacts from that medicine chest recovered from the wreck site of the Queen Anne Revenge include; a urethral syringe used to treat syphilis, pump clysters to pump fluid into the rectum, a porringer which may have been used in bloodletting treatments, and a cast brass apothecary mortar and pestle used in preparing medicine. Representative image. WATCH APOTHECARY MORTAR VIDEO

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