Blackbeard's Lost Head - Barrett Schmanska

In 1718, Blackbeard's decapitated head was hung on the banks of the Hampton River, in Hampton, Virginia. It was an official British Navy posting ostensibly meant as a message to those involved in high seas thievery that they, too, will meet the same fate.

The severed head swung freely for several years until one day it disappeared, its whereabouts becoming the stuff of legend.

In 2025, former FBI agent Dodge Chee Jones is sifting through the estate of a deceased friend on the Port Gamble S'Klallam Reservation in Puget Sound when he stumbles on a 1920 letter from a long dead Native attending Hampton Institute. Originally founded exclusively for African American students, Native Americans also attended the school in the early twentieth century.

The intriguing letter explains that Blackbeard's lost head is boxed comfortably and secretly in the basement of the school museum, leaving its whereabouts indisputable, at least in 1920. But is it still there? Instinct, prompted by a childhood memory, tells Dodge that it isn't, and while a cross-country trip to Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) confirms his intuition, the trip nevertheless provides a bounty of clues that all point back to Puget Sound Indian Country, where Blackbeard's long-lost head is surely hiding.