Blackbeard or Marshall D. Teach Edward Teach (c.1680-1718) is one of the most infamous pirates to have ever lived.
Known for his fearsome image and daring acts on land and sea throughout the West Indies and along the North American East coast, his legacy has been the inspiration for many depictions of pirates throughout history.
Blackbeard’s early life
Little is known of Edward Teach before his rise to Pirate captain. It is thought he began his life at sea as a British privateer in the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713). Here, he would have plundered Spanish ships in the West Indies for the British government.
After the war, his privateering turned to piracy under the instruction of Captain Benjamin Hornigold. Rising through the ranks due to his naval skill, Teach soon became a captain in his own right.
Blackbeard’s ship
Around 1716, Captain Hornigold placed Teach in command of a captured sloop and a year later, Teach took control of a frigate, possibly a 1710 Bristol built ship named Concord. It is thought Concord was stolen by French privateers who used as a slave ship and renamed it, La Concorde. Finally, it came into the possession of Teach, who renamed the ship Queen Anne’s Revenge. This became his flagship vessel.
While the ship was only in use for a year, Teach sailed to the Caribbean and captured multiple ships, building his flotilla and fortune. Few could compete with him and the Queen Anne’s Revenge which boasted 40 guns and a crew of 300.
In 1718, Blackbeard scuttled the ship near Charleston, North Carolina and moved his crew onto a smaller sloop, named the Adventure.
In 1996, the remains of the Queen Anne's Revenge were discovered offshore of Atlantic Beach in North Carolina. The ship was identified by a series of coins bearing Queen Anne's bust (1702-1714) and her successor, King George I.
After over ten years of excavations and underwater archaeological digs, the divers have now recovered more than 250,000 artifacts from the ship. These findings included huge cannons from all over Europe, from Sweden, England and France. Many of these items can now be found at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.
Blackbeard’s appearance
Teach inspired fear in those who came face to face with his daunting appearance. With an enormous black beard reaching his waist, Teach reportedly lit fuses in his long hair giving him a crazed and frightening appearance.
Stories of his misdeeds spread and fact and fiction blended into one. Tales of torturing prisoners, even turning on his own crew with no warning were rife and provided the pirate captain with an excellent method of maintaining order. This added to the image of terror and strengthened his position with both his crew and enemies.
His flag depicted a skeleton stabbing a heart with its spear and toasting the Devil with a glass in the other hand. It showed the danger that Blackbeard brought and his alliance with the Devil. This was another technique used to instill fear into his enemies and to let them know just who was attacking them.
Where did Blackbeard live?
In January 1718, Teach formed a base on Ocracoke Island just off North Carolina, on the eastern seaboard of the United States, then known as the British Colonies.
From here, he continued his acts of piracy such as bribing the local Governor Charles Eden for a royal pardon and gaining the title ‘privateer’ to provide a legal backing to his actions.
Blackbeard rise to fame
In possibly his most brazen act, Teach used his flotilla to blockade the port of Charlestown in the province of South Carolina. Over the course of a week, nine vessels were stopped and plundered as they attempted to sail out of the harbour, where Teach's fleet was moored.
Teach informed some of his prisoners that his fleet required medical supplies from the colonial government of South Carolina and that if none were provided, all would be beheaded and their ships burned.
Two pirates and a prisoner were sent to the town but when they did not return he moved eight ships into the harbour, causing panic and looting within the town. Shortly after his supplies were delivered and the prisoners released, after reportedly being robbed of all worthy possessions.
This siege represents the height of Teach’s notoriety, not just as a skilled captain but a fierce leader who was not confined to the sea and would maraud where he pleased. Exploits such as these made Teach was one of the most commonly reported pirates in the news and in the print of his age.
How did Blackbeard die?
Edward Teach died on the 22nd November 1718.
His exploits had become too bold and he had angered Alexander Spotswood, the governor of Virginia. Spotswood assembled a private pirate-hunters to overpower Blackbeard’s forces. The main pirate hunting ships were the HMS Pearl and HMS Lyme under the command of Lieutenant Robert Maynard.
Upon locating Teach and his pirates on Ocracoke Island, Maynard blocked all exits and entered the inlet hoping to surprise Teach and his crew.
However, Teach spotted the ships and cut his anchor, attacking the ships outright with his cannons and destroying a third of the force in seconds.
When the ships closed in, grappling hooks, smoke, and explosive grenades were thrown, and the pirates boarded the ship. Maynard had prepared for this eventuality by hiding the majority of his troops below deck and ambushing the pirate boarders. The ambush proved a success and the pirates were overwhelmed.
Teach and Maynard are reported to have fought man to man with pistol and swords. Teach was eventually wounded by one of Maynard’s soldiers and overwhelmed by the rest of the crew.
After the battle, it was noted Edward Teach had been shot at least five times and received over twenty blade wounds, making it difficult to tell what was the felling blow. The head of the infamous Blackbeard was hung from the mast, and all but two of the captured pirates were eventually hanged.
'Little wind & fair weather, this day I anchored here from North Carolina in the Adventure Sloop Edward Thache formerly Master (a Pyrat) whose head I hung Under the Bowsprete of the Said Sloop in order to present it to ye Colony of Virginia & ye goods and Effects of the said Pyrat I delivered to my Commanders Dispersal.
- Lieutenant Maynard's log entry from 3 January 1719
Blackbeard’s legacy
Teach, and his exploits have become the stuff off lore inspiring books, films and even amusement park rides.
Much of what is known about him can be sourced to Charles Johnson’s ‘A General Historie of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates’. In this book, Johnson outlines many of the earliest known biographies of famous pirates.
His book first introduced the name of the pirate flag the ‘Jolly Roger’, pirates with buried treasure and the idea of them missing legs or with eyepatches.
Johnson’s book directly inspired works such as J.M Barrie’s ‘Peter Pan’ and Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’. Stevenson even directly lifted the name of one of Blackbeard’s crew, Israel Hands and used this in his novel.
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Just saw people in r/soccer recommending Blowback season 3 and calling out US imperialism against the DPRK :kim-drip:
:kim-drip-too-hard:
speaking of, here's a google drive with all of season 3 plus the 10 bonus episodes, for the comrades who can't pay for it :kim-peace:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WSE-G3x7QBc9ZFmh20AFGn5Nq7oBsJYN
New Megathread Nerds!!! :posting: :germany-cool:
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I came very close to being in a major car accident, people are fucking insane when driving now.
i was in a cross walk and a car stopped for me but then the car behind them sped around while i was still on the opposite side of the street, I wanted them to die
got called a Game Freak shill this morning for suggesting Pokemon games might be shit because of poor working conditions :brainworms: :brainworms: :brainworms: :brainworms: :brainworms: :brainworms:
What has neoliberal education done to people you ask? Well, my sister in graduate school said that me researching the downfall of urbanization and blaming car manufacturers and FDR’s new deal is “pointed research” because I didn’t take into account the other side (GM’s goal in destroying street trolleys) is social desirability bias
In a world that made sense, we wouldn’t have to listen to the car manufacturers’ side because privatization would be nonexistent ✨
Lmfao
the most objective, emperical truths, just happen to be the ones that uphold the regime of capital. funny how often it works like that
10 accounts IP banned from :reddit-logo: at once for making pro China comments in r/worldnews. Very normal, not run by deranged feds website.
You got two versions of MAGA hell on reddit, worldnews which is Red MAGA and politics which is Blue MAGA.
Those are the only two subs that will get your IP banned. Although I wouldn't be surprised if r/anarchism mods are the reason this time.
You can get around it by signing up and logging in with a VPN and after a few months it doesn't seem to matter. It's just incredibly bullshit when I have users following me into subs and switching accounts to get around my block and harass me, but make a few comments about the CIA in bootlicker subs and poof.
Reading about the dude who stopped the gunman at the drag show. Of course police tackled him, handcuffed him, and threw him in the back of a cop car, while he was trying to render medical aid to other victims. Pigs are so fuckin useless.
Someone tried showing Matt Walsh to a Nationalist group chat and their response was, "This white piglet is clearly a soft closet gay. He should be hanged and castrated with the queers he obsesses over and secretly loves."
They're always a lovely group of guys
I was doing some light reading about how the New Deal Coalition was strangled by neoliberals and racists, completely dying out in the '80s/'90s. And it's just hammered home to me how much it must have sucked to be a leftist in the '90s. Not that New Deal-ism was ever socialism, at least it was actually of the working class to a degree. It must have been easier to mobilize off the back of that than the middle class/professional class politics that have followed after. To go from the the spirit of the '60s and the '70s, which I'm sure were also quite grim but at least seemed to contain some hope that a better world was possible, to the complete sidelining of leftists and the utter defeat of trade unions in the 80s, the neutralization of the Black power movement, coupled with the liberalization of China and the collapse of the USSR, must have been devastating. The end of history indeed. No wonder the US thought it had won the game of empire.
They won the game of empire for sure, it took 30 years of them massively fucking up for things to look somewhat less certain for the mayo empire.
This is your periodic reminder to watch Black Sails. It is so fucking good.
They paint the world full of shadows... and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reasons, their judgments.
It’s like 10am I’ve been up for 30 minutes and I’m already done I want to cry lmao
:wat: MFW I see another weirdo being super weird in the org group chat