After Bonnet failed to capture the Protestant Caesar, his crew abandoned him to join Blackbeard aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge.

Bonnet was tempted to resume his piracy but did not want to lose his pardon, so he adopted the alias "Captain Thomas" and changed his ship's name to Royal James.

In late August and September, Colonel William Rhett, with the authorization of South Carolina's governor Robert Johnson, led a naval expedition against pirates on the river.

[8] In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, historian Robert C. Ritchie suggests that Bonnet was driven to piracy to escape his bad marriage, or to "recapture his more adventurous youth".

[2][12] After staying at anchor for several days, telling inquirers that he was going to use the Revenge for island trading, Bonnet departed Carlisle Bay, Barbados, under the cover of darkness.

[13] Bonnet's initial cruise took him to the coast of the Colony of Virginia, near the entrance of the Chesapeake Bay, where he captured and plundered four vessels, and burned the Barbadian ship Turbes to keep news of his crimes from his home island.

[14] He sailed north to New York City, taking two more ships, and picking up naval supplies and releasing captives at Gardiners Island.

Finding that New York was a less profitable hunting ground, by August Bonnet had returned to the Carolinas, where he attacked two more ships, a brigantine from Boston and a Barbadian sloop.

[19] Captain Codd, whose merchant ship was taken on 12 October, described Bonnet as walking the deck in his nightshirt, lacking any command and still unwell from his wounds.

[20] On 17 November Blackbeard captured the French slave ship La Concorde which he took as his own, naming her Queen Anne's Revenge.

[25][24] Calling Bonnet on board his own ship, Blackbeard essentially imprisoned him, suggesting that as a gentleman he would prefer a life of leisure to that of command.

[26] Needing a place to rest and refit his vessels, Blackbeard headed north to Topsail Island, where the Queen Anne's Revenge ran aground and was lost in June.

[17] Leaving the remaining 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.

[26][28] While Blackbeard quietly returned to Topsail Island, Bonnet stayed in Bath to get a "clearance" to sail 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.

[9][29] Bonnet returned to Topsail Island to find that Blackbeard had sunk several of his pirate ships, taken all the loot, and robbed the Revenge and two other vessels of the squadron of most of their supplies, before sailing away.

[29] Although Bonnet apparently never discarded his hopes of reaching St. Thomas and getting his letter of marque, Blackbeard had stolen the food and supplies he and his men needed to subsist.

[31] Hoping to preserve his pardon while returning to his pirate ways, Bonnet adopted the alias "Captain Thomas" and changed the Revenge's name to the Royal James.

Bonnet sailed the ship to Cape Fear River, a well-known pirate rendezvous, to undertake repairs which were estimated to require two months of work.

[37][39] After a false start due to the appearance of another pirate ship near Charles Town, Rhett arrived at the mouth of the Cape Fear River on 26 September with two eight-gun sloops, the Henry and the Sea Nymph, and a force of 130 militia men.

At daybreak, on 27 September 1718, Bonnet set sail toward Rhett's force, and all three sloops opened fire, initiating the Battle of Cape Fear River.

[44] Nevertheless, some of the prisoners who had been forced to join the pirate crew refused to fire on Rhett's men, and one narrowly escaped death at Bonnet's hands in the confusion of the engagement.

[45][46][47] The battle was ultimately decided when the rising tide lifted Rhett's sloops free while temporarily leaving the Royal James stranded.

[49] Bonnet and Herriot, accompanied by a slave and a Native American who wanted to become pirates, obtained a boat and made for the north shore of Charles Town Harbour, but foul winds and lack of supplies forced the four of them onto Sullivan's Island.

[51] While awaiting trial, some sort of civil uprising in his support took place within the city, an event authorities would later describe as having nearly resulted in the burning of the town and the overthrow of the government.

[52] The Vice-Admiralty judge Nicholas Trott sat in judgment on Bonnet's crew and sentenced most of them to hang on 5 November, with Pell turning King's evidence against his fellow pirates.

[54] Bonnet's visibly disintegrating mind moved many Carolinians to pity, particularly the female population, and London papers later reported that the governor delayed his execution seven times.

[65] The detailed record of his trial, however, makes no mention of this method of execution, and the historian Hugh F. Rankin argues that the idea is a modern fabrication.

[66] Marcus Rediker, Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, agrees that pirates were unlikely to make captives walk the plank, preferring either bloodless assaults or far more violent methods of murder.

[71] The period comedy television series Our Flag Means Death, created by David Jenkins, stars Rhys Darby as Bonnet and Taika Waititi as Blackbeard.