Benjamin Franklin, Pirate Balladeer

Benjamin Franklin wrote “The Taking of Teach the Pirate,” a ballad, while he was working at his brother James’s print shop in Boston, the spot where you are currently standing. The ballad that Franklin wrote describes the final fight of the pirate Edward Teach or Blackbeard, and it provides a historical connection between Benjamin Franklin, a notable Founding Father of America and the piracy that infested the Atlantic during the eighteenth century. This ballad reveals how ballads were news sources in the eighteenth century: ballads were often used to spread news and, because of their catchiness as songs, were extremely popular and easy to digest for townsfolk who were not literate. “The Taking of Teach the Pirate” also gives an important glimpse into Benjamin Franklin’s life—and perhaps, the lives of many men living on the East Coast who had dreams of going out to sea to find wealth and notoriety.

Benjamin Franklin, in his Autobiography, noted that as a child he “had a strong Inclination for the Sea.”[1] In Boston he was exposed to all sorts of sailors, fishermen, and other seamen: “living near the Water… [he] learnt early to swim well, and to manage Boats,” and “[he] was generally a Leader among the Boys, and sometimes led them into Scrapes.”[2] Franklin’s troublesome ways were certainly the attitude necessary to leave “civilized” society for a life aboard a ship. As he grew older, he “still had a Hankering for the Sea,” and in order to “prevent the apprehended Effect of such an Inclination,” his father had Ben “bound to [his] brother” at the print shop.[3]

As a bound apprentice, Ben had to pocket his “Inclination for the Sea.” He participated in printing and even writing for The New-England Courant¸ which was a “lively journal” that “expressed strong opinions on religion, politics, free speech.”[4] James “put [Franklin] on composing two occasional Ballads at the newspaper.”[5] One of these ballads was “The Taking of Teach the Pirate,” which James “sent [Ben] about the town to sell.”[6] It seems that Franklin could not so easily forget about his seafaring dreams.

While the wording of the ballad is formed like a story, thereby making it more attractive to the average reader, the information in it is accurate. The ballad mentions that Teach was sailing around “Carolina” when the final fight happened, and Teach was “slain inside Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina.”[7]Additionally, Lieutenant Maynard was the person responsible for defeating Teach and his crew: Franklin recognizes him as “Valiant Maynard.” Meanwhile, Teach is portrayed in the ballad as a drunk and “unsteady” to his “Lady.”[8] This no doubt contributes to the portrayal of pirates today as drunken womanizers. At the end of the ballad, after the fight, Franklin writes that “Teach’s Head was made a Cover, To the Jack Staff of the Ship,”[9] which agrees with many eighteenth-century and modern accounts: “Blackbeard’s head was strung up from his bowsprit,” according to a current historian,[10] and a journal entry from Lieutenant Maynard confirms the same.[11]

What was so important about Teach that Franklin was assigned to write a ballad about him? Blackbeard had an “infamous reputation,” which he earned by fighting the Royal Navy along the New England coastline.[12] Blackbeard also pillaged islands off the coast of the Caribbean islands, “leaving fear and destruction in his wake.”[13] In sum, Teach was a vicious pirate who, like his other piratical contemporaries, “captivated the public imagination” through accounts in the Boston News-Letter, which circulated throughout the colonies.[14] Teach, ultimately, was a pirate whose well-known adventures had a lasting effect on trade and public opinion.

Given that Franklin says he aspired to be a seaman when he was a kid, we can see this ballad as a way for him to incorporate his dreams of the high seas into his job at his brother’s printing shop. If his father had not constrained him to working at James Franklin’s printing press, would our famous Founding Father have turned out differently? Would he have become a successor to the fearsome Blackbeard?

— Kirby Assaf

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[1] Franklin 939.
[2] Franklin 939.
[3] Franklin 942.
[4] The Massachusetts Historical Society provides a helpful glimpse of Ben Franklin’s writing career, including details about the New-England Courant, at www.masshist.org /online/silence_dogood/.
[5] Franklin 942.
[6] Franklin would have learned about the death of Edward Teach through local newspapers and word of mouth. Thomas Leonard, a writer at The New England Quarterly in 1999, looked into the information behind the ballad as well as the usefulness of the ballad as a form of news. According to Leonard, Franklin most likely would have gotten his information from The Boston News-Letter, which was a prominent local paper. They knew this is where Franklin got his information because of the descriptive information in the ballad. The ballad accounts how there were fifty men serving under Maynard, and sixteen were lost in the fight. While many different newspapers around the times would have had information that may have been incorrect, Leonard notes that by looking into the numbers in newspapers that would have been available to the Franklins at the time, the only newspaper that matches would have been the Boston News-Letter, which would have indeed described the fight with the numbers fifty and sixteen (Leonard 449). Therefore, we can assume that Benjamin would have gotten his news from the local Boston News-Letter.
[7] Cooke 305.
[8] Leonard 446.
[9] Leonard 447.
[10] Woodard.
[11] Cooke 306.
[12] Woodard.
[13] Woodard.
[14] Woodard.

Pictured: Benjamin Franklin (Engraved by H.B. Hall from a painting by J.A. Duplessis). Blackbeard from A General History of Pyrates (London, 1724).

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