Eᴅᴡᴀʀᴅ Tᴇᴀᴄʜ

Pɪʀᴀᴛᴇs: Eᴅᴡᴀʀᴅ Tᴇᴀᴄʜ - Bʟᴀᴄᴋʙᴇᴀʀᴅ

The beginning of the life of Blackbeard is shrouded in mystery – although thought to have been born and raised in Bristol, other schools of thought have suggested that Teach was born in Jamaica.  It is also unknown if ‘Teach’ was the true family name of this man.  An unconfirmed source suggests he might, in fact, have been named Edward Drummond, and in later documents he has also been referred to as Edward Thatch.  Nevertheless, when he began his career on the high seas, sailing from Jamaica aboard a privateer during the War of the Spanish Succession, he was using the name Edward Teach, or a variation thereof.

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701 – 1714) brought many men to the sea, and plenty of sailors became pirates at its end.  Piracy meant that they could continue their profitable and relatively undisciplined life, much preferring this route to that which they might find in the merchant navy or Royal Navy.  This was Edward Teach’s choice, and in 1716 he joined the crew of Benjamin Hornigold.  Hornigold was a skilled and ruthless Bahama pirate, and Teach so impressed him with his own aggression that within months of him joining Hornigold’s crew, Teach was in charge of a captured sloop.  Hornigold and Teach terrorised the western Atlantic, and in 1717 took theConcorde.  This English built, 20 gun, 300 ton ship had been seized by the French in 1711, but now Teach was granted her command by Hornigold.  He renamed her, and the Concorde became one of the most famous pirate ships in history – the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

Hornigold retired, taking advantage of an amnesty offered to former privateers by the British Government.  Teach was no longer under his command, and began a two year campaign of piracy which left him with a reputation for cruelty.  He fought a running duel with the HMS Scarborough, which, by adding another twenty guns to the Queen Anne’s Revenge, he bested, although this particular conflict added to his notoriety no end.  He then went on to plunder at least eighteen ships in six months.

Teach cultivated the image of Blackbeard the Pirate in this period.  There are no verified accounts of his murderous ways, and it is thought that he prevailed against his enemies by fear alone.  This was certainly helped by his fearsome appearance.  Blackbeard took to weaving slow burning fuses into his famous black beard when going into battle, creating clouds of smoke around his scowling visage.  He fought with not one but multiple swords, guns and knives, and the sight of the demonic looking pirate, armed to the teeth, would certainly have terrified many of his opponents.

He was also given to be a colourful character in contemporary media.  Newspaper portrayals included a story of Blackbeard shooting his first mate, so that his crewmen wouldn’t ‘forget who he was’.  He was a notorious womaniser, as can be seen from this excerpt from Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates:
“Before he sailed upon his adventures, he married a young creature of about sixteen years of age . . . and this I have been informed, made Teach's fourteenth wife . . . with whom after he had lain all night, it was his custom to invite five or six of his brutal companions to come ashore, and he would force her to prostitute herself to them all, one after another, before his face.”

Blackbeard’s demise was brought about by the Governor of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood.  Putting a price of £100 on Blackbeard’s head, he also financed an expedition south by land and sea to expose what he suspected what a collaboration between Blackbeard and Governor Charles Eden, who had granted Blackbeard a formal pardon  in August 1718.  At North Carolina’s Ocracoke inlet on the 22nd November 1718, Blackbeard and his pirate crew of only a reported nineteen men on the Adventurewas engaged by Lieutenant Robert Maynard, commanding two sloops and fifty four men.  Blackbeard had vowed to give no quarter, nor seek it, and died fighting.  Teach was reportedly shot five times and stabbed more than twenty, although this has not been verified.  He was certainly decapitated, however, following a death due to loss of blood. 

True to the legend Teach himself had created, myths about Blackbeard’s death immediately surfaced, including that his headless corpse swam between two and seven times around theAdventure before sinking.  Teach’s head was hung from Maynard’s bowsprit, and later from a pike at Bath, North Carolina.