Springer's Point Nature Preserve

This maritime forest preserve on Ocracoke Island was Blackbeard's favorite anchorage and party spot. The pirate camped here with his crew before his death in 1718. A trail through live oaks leads to Teach's Hole, where the infamous battle occurred.

Springer's Point is a 120-acre coastal nature preserve on Ocracoke Island, where ancient live oaks draped in Spanish moss overlook Pamlico Sound and the inlet where one of history's most notorious pirates met his end. In the early 1700s, Edward Teach -- better known as Blackbeard -- used the sheltered waters around Ocracoke as a base of operations, raiding well-stocked cargo ships from a position where his crew could remain relatively anonymous and undetected while enjoying the beach life between plunders.

In October of 1718, Blackbeard hosted what may have been the largest gathering of pirates ever held in the American colonies. At Springer's Point, pirate captains Israel Hands, Charles Vane, Robert Deal, and John Rackham assembled with their motley crews for a days-long celebration. Rum flowed freely. Hogs and cattle were butchered and barbecued on the open beach. The men drank, sang, danced, and feasted in what amounted to an open-air pirate convention on the shores of Ocracoke. It would be one of the last great gatherings of the Golden Age of Piracy.

Just weeks later, on November 22, 1718, the British Royal Navy closed in on the pirate paradise. Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the HMS Pearl cornered Blackbeard in a bloody offshore battle at a channel now known as Teach's Hole. According to historical accounts, Blackbeard sustained five gunshot wounds and twenty sword cuts before finally falling. Maynard severed the pirate's head and hung it from the bowsprit of his sloop as proof of the kill. Legend holds that Blackbeard's headless body was thrown overboard and swam several times around the ship before sinking beneath the dark water.

According to local tradition, the pirate's spirit never left these shores. Visitors to Springer's Point report encountering a large, bearded figure in tattered seafarer's garb who appears and vanishes like smoke in the early morning mist along the beach. More than one person has described feeling the unmistakable presence of Blackbeard himself, searching in vain for his severed head. Paranormal investigators who have explored the preserve have documented orbs of light in photographs taken among the live oaks, and some visitors report hearing faint sounds of revelry drifting from the woods -- as though the pirate gathering of October 1718 replays itself on certain nights when the wind is right.

Today Springer's Point is managed by the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust and is open to the public via a half-mile trail through the maritime forest. Visitors come for the ancient trees, the birding, and the views of the inlet. Some come hoping to glimpse the ghost of the pirate king who partied on this beach more than three hundred years ago and, according to legend, has never truly departed.