Otway Burns: The Scourge of John Bull
North Carolina
This town in the North Carolina mountains is named for a sailor who terrorized British shipping during the War of eighteen twelve. Otway Burns was born in Onslow County in seventeen seventy-five and went to sea young. When war came, he took command of the privateer Snap Dragon and spent the war raiding British merchant vessels.
He is remembered as the Scourge of John Bull, and he took numerous prizes. After the war he served in the North Carolina legislature and built a modest life on land. He died in Portsmouth in eighteen fifty.
The mountain town that bears his name chose well. Out here in the highlands, far from the sea that made him famous, his statue still stands in the Burnsville town square.
