During the winter of 1717-1718, the QAR and Revenge cruised the Caribbean, taking prizes. Along the way, Blackbeard decided to keep two more smaller captured vessels. When he sailed northward up the American coast in the spring of 1718, he was in command of four vessels and over 300 pirates.

Blackbeard's reign of terror climaxed in a week-long blockade of the port of Charleston, S.C. in late May 1718. One week later, the QAR was lost at Beaufort Inlet. One of the smaller vessels in Blackbeard's flotilla, the ten-gun sloop Adventure, was lost the same day while trying to assist the stranded flagship.

Before leaving Beaufort Inlet, Blackbeard marooned about 25 disgruntled pirates on a deserted sandbar, stripped Bonnet's sloop the Revenge of her provisions, and absconded with much of the accumulated booty aboard another smaller vessel. Bonnet rescued the marooned men and, with them, resumed his lawless ways aboard the Revenge, which he re-named the Royal James.

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