Blackbeard, Scourge Of The Sea

It's the 17th century, just off the coast of British North Carolina.
The crimes of pirate legend Edward Teach have finally caught up to him.
Steaming towards his grounded ship is Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the British Royal Navy in
command of three vessels.
With Teach only having one ship against Maynard's three, and with only a skeleton crew of twenty
five people on board, the chance of victory was almost nil, but Edward Teach was never
one to run from a fight.
Maynard's ships close in on him, and Teach yells to his men to arm themselves and ready
the cannons.
His men feverishly rush to find whatever weapons have been left on, but as most of the crew
are inland, all that can be found are a few rusty cutlasses and ancient pistols.
Even so, more fearful of the wrath of their captain than of death, they obey the order
and aim the ship's cannons on Maynard's vessels.
Maynard's ship pulls in close, and with all the dignity of the Royal Navy, he calls out
to Teach to surrender.
As Teach listens faintly to the ludicrous request, he feels the slightest change in
the wind, and screams out to his men to hoist the sails.
The sails catch in the wind, and Teach's ship steadily pivots on the spot until it
is parallel to Maynard's vessel.
Maynard realizes what was coming, but it was too late.
Taking a deep swig of rum, Teach swallows and roars back at Maynard, damnation seize
my soul if I give you quarters, or take any from you.
And with this, gives his men a signal to open fire.
All the ship's cannons, now perfectly positioned, unleash a devastating broadside on Maynard's
crew, killing 20 of his men instantly and ripping the boat apart.
What do you think of those 3 to 1 odds now?
This is the story of the short and turbulent life of Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard,
Scourge of the Seas.
Edward Teach was probably born in Bristol, England, around 1680.
We really have no definite details.
Even his real name might not be correct, with many sources referring to him as Edward Thatch.
He could read and write, so likely had a middle-class upbringing, and he also may have served as
a privateer for the British Navy during the American theatre of the Spanish Succession
War.
Which would make a lot of sense, because being a privateer was much like piracy, except against
a specific enemy.
As the age of exploration began in Europe, the world powers began to set up colonies
on distant islands, keen to monopolize the island's resources, be that sugar, spices,
or slaves.
Over the age, sea trade became exceptionally profitable, and the lure of easy riches attracted
some, hmm, less than desirable specimens around the area of the Bahamas.
These men began to refer to themselves as the Brethren of the Coast, gee I can just
imagine the disgust on the face of British Admiralty when they heard about that name.
From all corners of the globe came people, mostly men, dreaming of an easy life on the
high seas, easy riches, easy booze, and easy women.
The port of New Providence, now part of modern Bahamas, was well placed between the shipping
lanes of Europe and the Americas, and came to be a kind of global truck stop for anyone
going back and forth.
So naturally, this is where the Brethren would hang out.
Stuck on a tiny spit of land in the middle of the ocean, old world allegiances to kings
or queens seemed more distant and pointless, as men realized it would be more profitable
to recruit and base themselves here.
Helping this was the shallow bays leading into New Providence, meaning larger ships
favoured by great powers would have difficulty docking their ships without getting stuck.
As the infamy of New Providence spread, the population of Nassau, the largest settlement
on the island and today's capital, began to swell.
Nassau became a place where anyone down on their luck could make a living, provided they
didn't mind getting their hands dirty and weren't too caught up in morals.
Taverns and makeshift brothels stretched from coast to coast across the island.
Despite New Providence being technically a Spanish and French colony, since the Succession
War, the two great powers had neither the manpower or willpower to enforce this.
And from this sort of murky power vacuum stepped Benjamin Hornigold, the self-proclaimed king
of the New Pirate Republic.
Like many other privateers, Teach found himself jobless after the Succession War and had wound
up languishing in New Providence indefinitely.
One booze-filled evening, Teach was drinking in a tavern on New Providence and ended up
drinking with Hornigold.
Hornigold took an immediate liking to Teach, apparently impressed with his marksmanship,
willingness to fight hand-to-hand and his quote, thirst for blood.
Hornigold began to pass on information to Teach about upcoming raids, and Teach considered
him somewhat of a mentor.
With Teach back on the ropes and without being hamstrung by the rules of being a privateer,
he gained a dreadful reputation among the brethren in New Providence.
He loved to terrify others and had an almost superhuman tolerance of alcohol, particularly
rum, never once having passed out from drunkenness.
After a large night on the town, he was said to have emptied the gunpowder from both of
his pistols into a glass full of rum, lit the rum on fire and chugged it down in one
gulp, his dark black eyes unwavering as he downed the brew.
Teach seemed to enjoy the limelight and relied on his reputation of terror to get what he
wanted.
Him and his entourage were seen regularly swaggering around New Providence, mindlessly
drunk and always violent.
To compliment his fearsome reputation, he starred himself in a way as to stand out from
the crowd.
He sported a long black beard that sprawled down from his cheekbones to his chest.
His eyes were said to be very dark, almost black and framed by dark bushy eyebrows.
He wore a tricorn hat, yep that's the one you see in the pirate movies, and for effect
he would light slow burning matches attached to the corners of the hat so his face would
glow menacingly in dimly lit taverns.
Wherever he went, he always carried with him three pistols that were slung diagonally across
his chest.
He usually wore all black shirt and trousers, and over the top of this, wore a long colourful
cloak with cuffs pulled up to the elbows.
In case you haven't noticed, many of the stereotypes of what a pirate looks like today
are based directly on Teach, or Blackbeard as he was now starting to be known.
We don't know too much about the mischief Captain Hornigold and Blackbeard initially
got up to.
In 1716 Hornigold, after a successful capture of a larger ship, gave his old ship to Blackbeard.
And this was the first confirmed time we know of Blackbeard as the captain of a vessel.
The boat that he received was what's known as a sloop, a smallish single mast ship.
It was equipped with six medium sized guns and had a crew of 70.
Some sources say that it was around this time that the iconic Jolly Roger, that's the
skull with crossbones flag, was raised above the mast for the very first time.
Sources are spotty, but timing would make sense, as the Jolly Roger, or its variations,
started to appear on ships around New Providence in 1710.
It's interesting to note just how many variations there are of the skull and crossbones.
I'll be putting a few of them on our Instagram and Facebook page, including the specific
flag that Blackbeard himself sailed under, a white devil spearing a red bleeding heart.
Hornigold and Teach were natural partners.
For the next year or so, they made themselves rich with plunder.
Their small vessels were very nimble, and they would scour the ocean in search of isolated
or poorly guarded ships.
Hornigold's only rule was not to attack English ships.
Despite the war being over, he seemed to cling to some sort of moral standard around privateering,
much to the grumblings of his crew who were unhappy about missing easy plunder.
When they approached a vessel, if surrender was not given, or even if there was the slightest
hesitation, they would open fire, in which case their crew would usually surrender quickly.
The plunder of the vessels ranged hugely.
Gold dust, wine, flour, rum, jewels – the surprise of what the vessel contained probably
added to the element of excitement.
Usually, once plunder was taken, the crew were left on their boat, but if Teach or Hornigold
were short on sailors, they would invite men from the crew to join them and take some of
the plunder.
The results were mixed.
Much of the plunder captured during this time is still unaccounted for, fueling rumours
about Blackbeard's treasure that still continue to this day.
I'll be putting a few of these up on our socials.
Check them out, they're an interesting read.
After the capture of a lucrative French vessel, the Concorde, Captain Hornigold was satisfied
with his profits and gave up the pirating life.
The two men said goodbye and were never to meet again.
This was somewhat lucky, as Hornigold was to become a famous pirate hunter, and Teach
was not about to give up his lifestyle any time soon.
Teach took charge of the captured Concorde.
It sported an impressive forty guns, the largest ship Teach had ever had control of.
After a paint job and a quick clean-up, it sailed menacingly out of New Providence as
Queen Anne's Revenge.
The name sheds some light on Blackbeard's strange, quasi-loyalty to the British crown.
Even though he was not as strict in his avoidance of British ships as Hornigold was, there was
still obviously some elements of patriotism among him and his crew.
Blackbeard's image travelled ahead of him on the seas.
His flag was well-known, and merchant ships knew that they needed to surrender immediately,
they would get no mercy otherwise.
Rumours swirled in the surrounding ports that Blackbeard was not human, and was in fact
the devil himself, again usually leading to a quick surrender.
Over his pirating career, his carefully cultivated image won as much, if not more, engagements
than violence did.
Teach was also very in tune with the tides, and despite being obscenely drunk during most
engagements, he was very perceptive to changes in the wind.
The tales of his exploits had even reached the shores of England, where Hornigold, now
an established pirate hunter, began bragging that he had trained him.
But make no mistake, he was still more than ready for a slaughter, should the need arise.
And before long, it did.
The thirty-canon British man of war, Scarsborough, would be the one to test the mettle of Blackbeard.
The Scarsborough were sent out from Barbados with the direct objective to capture or sink
the Queen Anne's revenge.
A man of war was a class of warship, and would have been better armed and more durable than
any of the ships Blackbeard had encountered.
Realising he could not take or sink the Scarsborough with brute force, Teach made use of his ship's
smaller size and pretended to flee from the Scarsborough, knowing it would follow him.
Once the ship got close enough, he would pepper it with cannon fire.
While Teach's cannons were not powerful enough to sink it, he repeated the shoot-and-run
tactics all day, causing serious damage.
After chasing into the night, Teach managed to swing the Queen Anne's revenge around
and broadside the Scarsborough.
This was the final straw, and the crippled ship gave up chase and returned to port for
repairs.
Chillingly, Teach would have known that the ship had no treasure, and he would never have
been able to board it.
Why didn't he just run?
There's limited sources for what life was like on Teach's ship.
I'm going to assume that anyone that served with him was either too drunk or too traumatised
to remember much of their experience.
Nevertheless, here's some of the stories we have from Teach's crew.
Take them with a grain of salt.
The most widely circulated story goes like this.
Teach, after what we can assume was a big night on the Grog, was in his cabin with two
of his fellow commanders, Israel Hands and another unnamed man.
The three of them were sitting at a small table.
Without warning, Teach drew both pistols and pointed them under the table, cocked them,
and then blew out the candles.
He fired both pistols.
One shot crippled Israel Hands, maiming him for life, and the other misfired.
When asked by his crew why he did this, he responded darkly with,
So no one will forget who I am.
Another story has him inviting some crew members to join him in a small cabin below deck.
Teach said to them, Come, let us make a hell and see how long we can stand it.
In the small enclosed cabin, he lit numerous pots of brimstone and gunpowder alight.
The choking fumes quickly filled the cabin, and the crew coughing and vomiting crawled
to the door, begging Blackbeard to let them out.
Laughing maniacally, Blackbeard finally opened the door and the men poured out.
Even after the crew left, he stayed in there for several minutes after, laughing hysterically
and suffering no ill effects from the fumes.
It's hard to say whether these stories actually occurred, but if Blackbeard heard them, he
would have encouraged them.
The more deranged and twisted his public image was, the better it was for him.
Blackbeard's captain's log gives us more insight to what a quote unquote standard day
was like on one of his vessels.
Such a day, rum all out, our company somewhat sober, a damned confusion amongst us, rogues
are plotting, talks of separation, so I looked for a sharp prize and took one with a great
deal of liquor on board, so I kept the company hot, damned hot, then things went well again.
From this, we can see that Blackbeard's primary concern was keeping the plunder flowing
and the crew drunk and pliable, rather than say, shooting out their kneecaps or trying
to suffocate them.
Blackbeard's reputation for both plunder and ruthlessness drew many to him.
Before long, he had to impose a formal command structure on his small navy of ships.
His new flagship, the Adventure, was captured somewhat diplomatically from another pirate.
Stead Bonnet was new to piracy, and the rumour was that he had taken to the career to escape
his nagging wife.
Teach met Bonnet on New Providence and the two became friends.
But after a few days sailing together, Teach heard nothing but complaints about Bonnet
from his crewman.
Bonnet was not a popular captain, likely this due to being his inexperience.
A bloodless coup took place and Bonnet's impressive ship, the Adventure, became Teach's
new flagship.
Without a seemed understanding of this, perhaps he realised he wasn't too much of a captain
either, and was happy taking a subservient role to Teach.
At this point, Blackbeard had three ships under his command.
If you were expecting more, remember, it required a large crew to man these vessels.
The crew needed to be numerous, skilled and trustworthy.
There was no sense in commandeering a poorly armed, ex-merchant ship and entrusting it
to a bunch of ruffians from the bars, it would be more trouble than it's worth.
Once a ship was relieved of any valuables, generally the boat and its crew were free
to leave.
That being said, there was one account of Teach burning a captured ship due to his hatred
of the captain.
He had no way of knowing this at the time, but this would be the high-water mark of his
pirating career.
And he thought that it was about time he and his crew, which now numbered around 400 men,
had earned a break.
The crew docked on one of the Caribbean islands and had themselves one hell of a party.
Coming into land was not just a mood booster for the crew, it was a necessity.
Fresh water and vegetables were able to be restocked, the crew could taste fresh meat
and blow off some steam.
After months upon months on the high seas, most just wanted to relax, lounging around,
hunting, fishing, gambling, singing or dancing.
But some of the crew would be more productive, by taming pirates and teaching them to swear.
So much like us.
Well being aside, or perhaps not, pirates would also take the opportunity to fraternize
with any local women they could find.
Blackbeard was excessive in this, even for a pirate.
Over the course of his life he is said to have had over 14 quote unquote wives.
We have very little information on who these women were, but they did not seem to be one
night stands.
The marriage ceremonies usually took place on one of his ships and were conducted by
one of the crew members.
And for a few, er, blissful days, one lucky woman got the whole Blackbeard experience,
sulfur and all.
Whether or not these women knew the fleeting nature of the relationship is unknown, though
I reckon they would have had an idea.
So Blackbeard had his fleet, but what would he do with it?
If you were thinking something bold, you'd be right.
The Port of Charleston was a trading port on the east coast of America.
Blackbeard decided he was going to blockade it, because why not?
He stopped all traffic going in and out of the port, relieving ships of their valuables
as a sort of toll in order to pass in and out of the town.
The townsfolk politely, but firmly, demanded he leave.
Blackbeard's request in the town was suspiciously simple.
A large trunk of various medicines.
I say it's suspicious, as he had the entire town hostage and they had nothing but a militia
to fight him with.
He was in a position to ask for virtually anything.
There's speculation that his crew were in need of medicine, but it's not recorded
why.
Another theory is that Blackbeard had picked up syphilis from his latest wife he met on
the Caribbean.
It's not a long shot, really.
If he lived his private life like his public life, fast and loose, it would be hard to
imagine Blackbeard pausing mid-way to insist they use protection.
You know, because it's a responsible thing to do.
After taking some high profile hostages from the town, Blackbeard sent some of his crew
ashore to gather the medicines, demanding that they be back by the end of the day.
When they didn't return in time, Blackbeard threatened several times to execute the hostages,
but after a few days, the pirates rowed back to the ships, medicine chest in hand.
They had apparently been shipwrecked on the way to the harbour, and once rescued they
just got drunk in town and decided to return a bit late.
There's record of the good people of Charleston furious at the audacity of two pirates drinking
themselves into a stupor while they scrambled to find all the medicines Blackbeard requested.
True to his word, after receiving the medicine chest, he left the waters of Charleston.
By the time the blockade was lifted, he and his crew had plundered about seven vessels.
While the raid on Charleston cemented his place as a pirate legend, it had obviously
increased the heat on him as well.
The British, Spanish and French were all now searching for him.
Knowing this, Blackbeard announced to his crew that he was disbanding his little navy
in order to take advantage of a general pardon that was being offered for pirates by the
British crown.
With seemingly little regard for the majority of his crew, except for a few close friends,
he planned to make off with the majority of the booty he had stolen, but needed a way
to sneak it away from the crew without them knowing.
An ingenious game of musical chairs ensued, with Blackbeard cleverly deceiving almost
everyone.
By accidentally grounding one of his ships on a sandbar, it gave him precedent to swap
the majority of the crew onto different ships.
While the crew moved from one ship to another, Blackbeard ensured all the loot was on the
ship he was on, and left a good majority of the crew stranded on the tiny sandbar along
with the wrecked ship.
After this, the mediocre Captain Bonnet was awarded his old ship back, but upon taking
infantry he found it completely stripped of all booty.
Of course, by the time he realized this, Blackbeard and his skeleton crew had slipped away.
Bonnet swore revenge on him, but he and Blackbeard were leagues apart, both in skill and in distance.
He would never get his revenge, in fact he would be hung a few years later.
Blackbeard and his crew arrived in Bath, today North Carolina, in June 1718 and accepted
the royal pardon.
That was that.
Edward Teach settled there, raised a family, paid his taxes, and died at the ripe old age
of 92, with many grandchildren, reveling in tall tales of his youth.
Come on.
With his crimes expunged, Blackbeard really did seem to have tried hard not to revert
back to his old ways.
He was somewhat of a local celebrity, and was part of the elite.
He threw lavish parties which would talk of the town, and in his free time liked to set
sail off the coast just to get a taste of the crisp sea air, although many times he
returned he came back with a cabin full of luxury goods that he couldn't explain.
As far as towns go, Bath was probably one of the worst places for an ex-pirate trying
to mend his ways.
The colony was not placed under direct jurisdiction of the crown, so there was a high level of
local autonomy.
Pirates and the goods from pirates flowed easily through the town.
Before long, Blackbeard's small-scale robberies in the high seas had devolved back into full-scale
pirating, and it did not go unnoticed.
Blackbeard did his best to keep up the pretense of retirement.
Upon plundering a French vessel, he applied for the salvage reward, citing that he had
found the vessel floating abandoned at sea.
To the governor of Bath, who received a cut of the salvage, this made perfect sense.
But once other officials became interested in the story, Blackbeard quickly requested
and received permission to sink the ship, claiming it was leaky and unstable, sending
any evidence of his crime to the depths.
Poor old Blackbeard just could not keep a low profile, and later on in that year held
a large party on Orocoque Island to celebrate the arrival of a pirate friend.
Like all his other parties, this one was a big hit, but having so many notorious pirates
colluding in one space tended to start rumours, and gossip began to spread about how the pirates
were planning to fortify the island and turn it into a stronghold.
Enter Alexander Spotswood, the governor of Virginia.
Spotswood was a career politician and had made his name serving in the Spanish Succession
War and after regulating trade with Native Americans.
Spotswood had some political adversaries in Virginia, and with the Native Americans subdued
for the time being, he needed a propaganda victory, and he had Blackbeard in his sights.
The first victim of Spotswood's crackdown was Blackbeard's old quartermaster, William
Howard.
Howard was picked up and arrested in one of the taverns he was known to frequent, and
although he escaped the hangman's noose, Spotswood had a taste for pirate blood and
Blackbeard was next.
Spotswood spent all his time and energy drumming up a crusade, specifically directed at Blackbeard.
All acts of piracy off the coast of Bath were attributed to him, whether they were true
or not.
He even went as far to write to British Parliament in order to secure funds for the capture of
Blackbeard.
Next, a proclamation was issued, and a bounty was placed on Blackbeard's crew, 100 pounds
for the capture and killing of Blackbeard and lesser amounts for his crew, depending
on rank.
Whether or not he believed the rumours of Blackbeard's treasure, Spotswood was sure
to spread them, hoping to spur the townsfolk into a kind of treasure-fuelled frenzy.
And so it was, in the afternoon of November 17, 1718, two well-armed sloops with a crew
of 58 men were led by Lieutenant Maynard out of the Hampton Harbour.
After poking around at Bath, it didn't take long to find the whereabouts of Blackbeard.
His iconic ship was spotted just off the coast of Ocracoke Island.
Blackbeard's crew was greatly reduced.
He was semi-retired, there wasn't too much of an incentive to be part of his crew anymore,
and he only had around 25 men with him.
These 25 were not seasoned veterans of his campaigns earlier, they were likely galley
boys or similar, hired for menial maintenance on the ship.
Apparently Blackbeard had knowledge that there was a force out looking for him, but disregarded
the information, as rumours like this were all too common nowadays.
Maynard approached Blackbeard's ship cautiously.
He was wary of grounding himself in the shallows, and instead sent a small rowboat to chart
the course.
Teach watched the boat come closer and closer to him, and still unsure what to make of the
adventure, peppered the rowboat with small arms fire, and it quickly scurried back.
His intention is now clear, Maynard hoisted the Union Jack and closed in on Blackbeard,
the two captains close enough to yell the following exchange.
Damn you, villains, who are you and from whence you come?
You may see by our colours that we are no pirates, Maynard replied.
Send your boat on board so that I might see who you are, demanded Blackbeard.
I cannot spare my boat, but I will come abroad as soon as I can with my sloop, Maynard shot
back.
Blackbeard, glass of liquor in hand, toasted to the enemy's ships.
May damnation seize my soul if I give you any quarter, or take any from you.
And the battle was on.
Teach cut his anchor and careened his vessel forward, steering into a shallow inlet in
between two sandbars.
His quartermaster tried to warn him of the dangers of doing this, but he was knocked
aside.
Teach knew what he was doing.
As the smaller ships skimmed through the shallow inlets, the two larger ships attempted to
follow and crunched into the inlet.
Deftly swinging his ship around, Teach unleashed a devastating point blank broadside of all
of his eight cannons against the immobile target, killing twenty and wounding nine.
The vessel itself was so badly damaged that it was unable to take part in the rest of
the battle.
Seeing the carnage roared upon his other ship, Maynard frantically jettisoned all excess
weight on his remaining ship in an attempt to dislodge it from the sandbar.
When it was finally free, Maynard cleverly ordered the majority of his crew to arm themselves
and wait below deck, hoping Blackbeard would board them.
He was right, Blackbeard fell for it.
Lobbing a few homemade shrapnel grenades and a few smoke bombs onto the deck, Teach saw
the reduced crew and roared to his men, quote, they are all knocked on the head, but three
or four, board her and cut them to pieces.
By all accounts Blackbeard was first on the deck with about ten of his crew following,
hooting loudly and firing at anything that moved.
Once they were committed, Maynard's men burst from below deck and a chaotic melee
ensued.
Before long the decks were slicked with such an excess of blood that on some parts of the
ship it was difficult to stand without slipping.
The moans of the dying and the cracks of the pistol rang out against a twang of steel on
steel.
In the middle of the carnage, Blackbeard found Maynard, and in a scene that sounds like something
directly out of Pirates of the Caribbean, both men drew their pistols, but Blackbeard
missed his mark, while Maynard's bullet buried itself deep into Teach's chest.
Seemingly unaffected by this, Blackbeard drew his cutlass and bore down on Maynard.
While Maynard skilfully parried the blows, one of his crewmen came at Teach from the
side, slashing open his neck.
With blood gushing from the wound, Teach roared and fought on, but the wounds were taking
their toll.
Struggling to stand, Teach was finally brought down, the blow likely coming from another
one of Maynard's men, who struck the dying pirate from the side.
Incredibly, it was later discovered he had been shot five times and sustained twenty
different wounds.
With the immortal captain now lying dead on the deck, the fighting died down and the remainder
of his crew surrendered.
One of Maynard's men described the aftermath of the battle, saying that the sea was tinted
with blood around the ship.
Below deck on Teach's ship, he had left a surprise for Maynard.
He instructed one of the crew members, next to a huge cache of explosives, to light the
fuse if they had heard that he had died.
But at the last minute, two of Maynard's crew had managed to wrestle the fuse away
from the man.
Blackbeard's head was cut off by Maynard and fixed to the mast of his ship, as a grisly
trophy, as well as proof that the deed was finally done.
According to legend, once his headless body was thrown overboard, it swum three times
around Maynard's ship before finally sinking into what is today known as Teach's hole.
Maynard and his crew would successfully claim the bounty on Teach's head, but was frustrated
to learn that 400 pounds would be split among two other vessels that had been commissioned
to find Blackbeard.
He saw great injustice that it was his crew that had been fighting for their lives were
getting the same rewards as those who had not even come into contact with Blackbeard.
So what can we say about Edward Teach, or Edward Thatch, or whatever his real name was?
He was not a hero, obviously, and I know that associating with the Bahamas was drawing a
long bow, considering the minimal time he spent there.
Over the course of this podcast, there are many countries that do not have written history,
particularly island nations.
By putting up Blackbeard to represent the Bahamas, I'm not saying the Bahamas does
not have its fair share of national heroes.
Pompey, the ex-slave who lit the sparks of rebellion, was a consideration for this episode,
but with only scraps of information on him, it would have made for a two minute episode
max.
I always try to present someone who is both interesting and has an association to the
country.
In this case, the association is minimal at best.
Hopefully you understand.
On that note, this is our tenth episode.
I hope you've enjoyed listening to them as much as I've enjoyed recording them.
I would certainly appreciate you telling your friends or just coming along for the ride
on our newly created Instagram or Facebook account.
Really, word of mouth is the only way a podcast grows.
But back to Blackbeard for now.
The man left a legacy that would inspire the pirate stereotype forevermore, and he did
this in just over two years.
He let his reputation work for him and seemed to revel in the fear it caused among pirates
and civilians alike.
I think his brief retirement is interesting, and if he had not gone out with a bang, he
probably would have ended up being hung, as he just couldn't seem to help himself and
seemed to blow through his money as soon as he acquired it.
Which brings me to my next point, Blackbeard's famous treasure.
Treasure hunters today still scour the primary sources for clues on where he had buried it.
The places he had known to frequent in Bath have been dug up and continue to be dug up
even today.
So does it exist?
It's a boring answer, but I would say no.
Teach never seemed to plan for retirement.
Money was spent as soon as he got it.
If there was treasure hidden, I think he would have dug it up himself.
Overall it's worth remembering Teach was a pirate, and a pretty ruthless one.
He double-crossed most of his crew and had no hesitation thieving from anyone.
And even after accepting a pardon, he was unable to maintain a respectable and legal
lifestyle.
But hey, I wouldn't have minded going to one of those wild parties he threw.
I'll take us out today with an extract of a poem about Teach's capture, written in
the late 1800s.
Teach replied unto Maynard, You know quarter here shall see,
But be hanged on the main yard, You and all your company.
Maynard said I none desire Of such knaves as thee and thine.
None I'll give, Teach then replied.
My boys, give me a glass of wine.
He took the glass and drank damnation Unto Maynard and his crew,
To himself and the generation, Then the glass away he threw.
Brave Maynard was resolved to have him, Though he had cannons nine or ten.
Teach abroadside quickly gave him, Killing sixteen valiant men.
Maynard boarded him and to it, They fell with sword and pistol too.
They had courage and did show it, Killing of the pirate's crew.
Teach and Maynard on the quarter, Fought it out most manfully.
But so did cut him shorter, Losing his head he there did die.