It was all too much for Virginia's Governor Alexander Spotswood to bear. When rumors reached him that pirates were building a fort at Ocracoke, Spotswood sent both a land and sea expedition to hunt down Blackbeard.

Near sunset on November 21, Lt. Robert Maynard, commanding two sloops and 60 men, found Teach anchored at Ocracoke. With the King's pardon in hand and only 20 pirates aboard, Blackbeard showed little concern, drinking heavily with a local trader deep into the night. His crew, sensing trouble, asked him where the booty was buried. Only the devil and he knew where it was, he reportedly barked, "and the longest Liver should take all." Despite 300 years of hunting, no treasure has ever been found.

At sunrise Maynard sailed right for him, Union Jacks flying, and the pirate's blood began to boil. "Damn you for villains, who are you? And from whence come you?" he is said to have bellowed at Maynard, who supposedly coolly replied: "You may see by our colors we are no pirates!" Blackbeard then raised his drink, called them "cowardly puppies," and swore his final oath: "Damnation seize my Soul if I give you Quarters, or take any from you!"

"I expect no quarter from you, nor shall I give any!" Maynard shot back.

No one knows what actually happened in the melee that followed. But according to published accounts, Blackbeard unleashed a crippling broadside from his cannon that killed or wounded nearly half of Maynard's men. Knowing he had no hope of capturing the pirate ship, Maynard ordered his remaining men below to lure the pirates on board. Blackbeard fell for the ruse. He and his crew hurled homemade grenades onto the sloop and rushed aboard.

Maynard's men swarmed out of the hatches. Blackbeard went straight for Maynard, the two men firing pistols at the same time. The pirate's shot rang wide, but Maynard hit Teach square in the chest. Still, the pirate fought on, landing a cutlass blow so fierce it broke Maynard's sword. Just then, the pirate was staggered by a sword blow to his neck from behind. He pulled his last pistol but was too weak to fire. Blackbeard collapsed on deck, in the end having been shot five times and stabbed more than 20.

Maynard cut off Blackbeard's head, hung it from his bowsprit, and tossed the corpse into the water, where locals say it can be seen to this day on certain moonlit nights, searching for its head. That head, which Johnson wrote "frightened America more than any Comet," Maynard took back to his base at Hampton and stuck on a pike there. Thus the town's modern festival.