lieutenant on board described the pirate vessels as one having 12 guns and 120 men and the other having eight guns and 30 men. The crew of the Concorde put up a fight, but surrendered after the pirates bombarded them with "two volleys of cannons and musketry". Blackbeard took the Concorde and sailed south into the Grenadines, where he renamed the ship Queen Anne's Revenge, possibly as an insult to King George I. Some time after 19 December, Bonnet and Blackbeard separated. Bonnet sailed into the western Caribbean. In March 1718, he encountered the 400-ton merchant vessel Protestant Caesar off Honduras. The ship escaped him, and his frustrated crew became restive. When Bonnet encountered Blackbeard again shortly afterwards, Bonnet's crew deserted him to join Blackbeard. Blackbeard put a henchman named Richards in command of the Revenge. Bonnet, surprised that his colleague had betrayed him, found himself as a guest aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge. Bonnet confided in a few loyal crew members that he was ready to give up his criminal life if he could exile himself in Spain or Portugal. Bonnet would not exercise command again until the summer of 1718. Under Captain Richards, the Revenge captured a Jamaican sloop, the Adventure, captained by David Herriot. Herriot joined the pirates, and Blackbeard possessed three ships. Bonnet accompanied Blackbeard to South Carolina, where Blackbeard's four vessels blockaded the port of Charles Town in the late spring of 1718. Needing a place to rest and refit their vessels, Blackbeard and Bonnet headed north to Topsail Island, where the Queen Anne's Revenge ran aground and was lost. Leaving the remaining three vessels at Topsail Island, Blackbeard and Bonnet went ashore and journeyed to Bath, which was the capital of North Carolina. Once there, both men accepted pardons from Governor Charles Eden under King George's Act of Grace, putatively on condition of their renouncing piracy forever. While Blackbeard quietly returned to Topsail Island, Bonnet stayed in Bath to get a "clearance" to take the Revenge to Denmark's Caribbean colony of St. Thomas, where he planned to buy a letter of marque and go privateering against Spanish shipping. Eden granted Bonnet this clearance. Resumption of pirate command Bonnet returned to Topsail Island to find that Blackbeard had beached the majority of their former crew, robbed the Revenge and two other vessels of the squadron of most of their supplies, and sailed away for parts