Edward Teach

Lore & Background

Teach captured a French slave ship known as La Concorde, renamed her Queen Anne's Revenge, equipped her with 40 guns, and crewed her with over 300 men. His nickname derived from his thick black beard and menacing appearance. He was reported to have tied lit fuses (slow matches) under his hat to frighten his enemies. He formed an alliance of pirates and blockaded the port of Charles Town, South Carolina, ransoming its inhabitants.

He then ran Queen Anne's Revenge aground on a sandbar near Beaufort, North Carolina. He parted company with Stede Bonnet and settled in Bath, North Carolina, historically known as Bath Town, where he accepted a royal pardon. However, he was soon back at sea, where he attracted the attention of Alexander Spotswood, the governor of Virginia. Spotswood arranged for a party of soldiers and sailors to capture him.

On 22 November 1718, following a ferocious battle at Ocracoke, Teach and several of his crew were killed by a small force of sailors led by Lieutenant Robert Maynard.

Reader's Guide

Teach was a shrewd and calculating leader who spurned the use of violence, relying instead on his fearsome image to elicit the response that he desired from those whom he robbed. He was romanticised after his death and became the inspiration for an archetypal pirate in works of fiction across many genres. Little is known about Blackbeard's early life. It is commonly believed that at the time of his death he was between 35 and 40 years old and thus born around 1680.

In contemporary records his name is most often given as Blackbeard, Edward Thatch or Edward Teach. The latter is most often used because it is the form used in the dispatches of North America's only newspaper at the time, The Boston News-Letter, but primary sources written by people who had actually met the pirate all refer to him as 'Thatch' or variations thereof. Several spellings of his surname exist: Thatch, Thach, Thache, Thack, Tack, Thatche, and Theach.