41 Fun Facts About Blackbeard

Blackbeard's legend rests on a 1724 book by 'Captain Charles Johnson', a name long suspected to hide which novelist?

Daniel Defoe was named as the real author in 1932 and credited for decades, though many scholars now doubt it and point instead to the publisher Nathaniel Mist.

What was the name of Blackbeard's 40-gun flagship?

Queen Anne's Revenge had been the French slave ship La Concorde; Blackbeard armed her with 40 guns, yet he kept her little more than six months before she was wrecked on a sandbar.

What was Blackbeard reported to have tied under his hat to frighten enemies?

Lit fuses: the slow-burning cords wreathed his face in smoke, so that, a 1724 history said, no fury from hell could look more frightful.

On which Bahamian island, home to Nassau, did Blackbeard and his fellow pirates make their base?

New Providence: Britain had lost its grip on the colony during the war, and from its harbour the pirates could pounce on the shipping lanes of the Florida Strait and slip home again.

Under which pirate captain did Blackbeard first serve before commanding his own sloop?

Benjamin Hornigold would not attack British ships, so his crew voted him out of command; he took the King's pardon and ended up hunting pirates for the governor of the Bahamas.

Blackbeard is usually said to have come from which English port?

Bristol is the traditional answer, but no record proves it: pirates hid their real names to spare their families, so even the surname Teach may have been an alias.

Which 'gentleman pirate', a wealthy Barbados planter, saw Blackbeard take over command of his sloop?

Stede Bonnet had bought his sloop and paid his crew wages, unheard of among pirates, but he knew so little of the sea that Blackbeard was soon running his ship for him.

A journal attributed to Blackbeard records 'a damned confusion' and talk of mutiny when his crew ran out of what?

Rum: the entry, quoted in a 1724 pirate history, says the captain went looking for a prize, took one loaded with liquor and kept the company 'hot, damned hot' until all was well again.

The royal pardon that Blackbeard accepted in 1718 was offered to pirates in the name of which king?

George I offered to forgive any pirate who surrendered to a governor by September 1718; Blackbeard took the deal in June and was plundering French ships again by August.

How did Blackbeard reportedly wear his beard?

Braided into pigtails with coloured ribbons is how a 1724 history paints him; the one captive who described him at first hand said only that he was a tall, spare man with a very black beard worn very long.

What did Blackbeard rely on, rather than violence, to make ships surrender?

His terrifying image did the work: in dozens of victims' accounts there is not one case of him killing anyone before his last battle, a restraint the monster legend has buried.

Blackbeard's sailing master Israel Hands shares his name with a pirate in which classic novel?

Treasure Island: Stevenson borrowed the name for the Hispaniola's coxswain; the real Hands missed the last battle, lamed, by a 1724 account, when Blackbeard shot him through the knee.

What rank did Blackbeard award himself by May 1718, at the height of his power?

Commodore: by then he led a flotilla of several vessels and hundreds of men, strong enough to seal off the busiest port in the southern colonies for nearly a week.

What did Blackbeard demand as ransom when he blockaded Charles Town in 1718?

Medical supplies: he threatened to send the hostages' heads to the governor, yet once the chest of medicines arrived he let every prisoner go unharmed.

Where did Blackbeard's flagship run aground on a sandbar in June 1718?

Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, then called Topsail Inlet: a captive swore Blackbeard wrecked her on purpose to shed surplus crew, though the diver who found her thinks she was simply too big for the channel.

Which governor granted Blackbeard a royal pardon at Bath, North Carolina, in June 1718?

Charles Eden later took a share of a French cargo that Blackbeard swore he had found adrift, and a letter found on the dead pirate left the governor accused of collusion, though nothing was proved.

The 1724 General History claims the teenage bride Blackbeard married in North Carolina was his what?

Fourteenth wife, the book says, with about a dozen of the others still living; nothing else on record supports the count, which did its part in turning a pirate into a monster.

What became of the 'gentleman pirate' after Blackbeard stripped his ship and marooned his crew?

Hanged for piracy: he went straight back to raiding under a false name, was captured at the Cape Fear River and went to the gallows in Charles Town within three weeks of Blackbeard's own death.

What did Blackbeard rename his last sloop after receiving official title to it?

Adventure came with his pardon: the governor gave him legal title to the sloop, and by August he was back at sea in her, seizing two French ships and passing one off as a derelict.

Which fellow pirate joined Blackbeard for a days-long party on Ocracoke Island in 1718?

Charles Vane had just refused the King's pardon and slipped past the warships at Nassau; news of the two crews carousing together so alarmed colonial governors that one sent sloops to hunt them.

Which colonial governor hired the sloops and sent the expedition that killed Blackbeard?

Alexander Spotswood of Virginia had no legal authority to invade North Carolina, and may have believed Blackbeard had fabulous treasure hidden away.

In which 2013 video game does Blackbeard fight alongside the pirate hero Edward Kenway?

Assassin's Creed IV, subtitled Black Flag, sets its hero among the real pirates of Nassau, with Blackbeard as an ally who dies fighting the British, as he did in life.

What trick did Maynard use to surprise Blackbeard's boarding party?

He hid most of his men below deck after a broadside had killed or wounded about twenty of them; seeing a near-empty sloop, Blackbeard boarded, and the sailors burst from the hold.

What did Blackbeard do to Maynard's cutlass during their duel?

Broke it at the hilt: Maynard stepped back to ready another shot and Blackbeard was swinging the killing blow when a sailor slashed the pirate's throat, so the lieutenant escaped with cut fingers.

How many times had Blackbeard been shot when Maynard examined his body?

Five: Maynard reported that the pirate fell 'with five shot in him, and 20 dismal cuts', and an early history adds that he dropped while readying yet another shot.

What did Maynard do with Blackbeard's head?

Hung it from his sloop's bowsprit: the head was Maynard's proof for claiming the reward, and it later stood on a pole by the water as a warning to other pirates.

What was Blackbeard's loot found to consist of when it was auctioned after his death?

Sugar, cocoa, indigo and cotton, most of it from a French ship taken that August: the fabled treasure hoard has never been found and probably never existed.

Tobias Knight, tried and cleared of colluding with Blackbeard, held which North Carolina office?

Chief justice: a letter from Knight lay on the dead pirate's body and plundered cargo sat in his barn, yet the governor's council acquitted him; he died within months.

Where were the surviving members of Blackbeard's crew tried in March 1719?

The trial was held in Williamsburg, Virginia's capital, in March 1719; fourteen of the sixteen were hanged and left in gibbets along what became Gallows Road.

Blackbeard's fabled hoard was never found; which pirate really did bury treasure, on Gardiners Island?

William Kidd left part of his loot on the island, off Long Island, hoping to bargain with it; the ploy failed, and he was sent to London and hanged in 1701.

Which pirate, credited with capturing over 400 ships, was far more successful than Blackbeard?

Bartholomew Roberts began as a captive: forced to join the pirates who took his ship in 1719, he was elected their captain within six weeks and went on to seize more than 400 vessels.

According to a North Carolina folk tale, what was made from Blackbeard's skull?

A silver drinking chalice, the tale goes: the skull was plated in silver, and a North Carolina judge claimed he had drunk from the cup one night in the 1930s.

Which actor's exaggerated West Country accent as Blackbeard the Pirate (1952) is credited with creating the stereotypical 'pirate voice'?

Robert Newton was a West Country native himself, and simply exaggerated his own accent into the pirate voice.

Who played Blackbeard in the 2022 series Our Flag Means Death?

Taika Waititi plays a Blackbeard bored by his own fearsome legend, in a comedy that turns the real partnership between the pirate and a wealthy amateur into a slow-burning romance.

In battle Blackbeard wore a sling across his shoulders that held several of which weapon?

Pistols, three brace of them hanging in holsters like bandoliers, in a 1724 portrait that has him die in his last fight while cocking one more.

A 2020 Supreme Court case over videos of Blackbeard's shipwreck ruled that states are shielded from lawsuits over what?

Copyright infringement: videographer Frederick Allen sued North Carolina for posting his footage of the wreck, but in Allen v. Cooper every justice agreed the state could not be made to pay.

Which former privateer arrived in the Bahamas as governor in 1718 and ended the pirate republic there?

Woodes Rogers had already sailed round the world as a privateer, rescuing the castaway Alexander Selkirk, widely thought to have inspired Robinson Crusoe; as governor he brought the King's pardon and warships to back it.

Which actor played Blackbeard as the villain of a 2011 Disney pirate sequel?

Ian McShane had once been considered for Davy Jones, the part Bill Nighy took; in On Stranger Tides his Blackbeard races Jack Sparrow to the Fountain of Youth.

Paper scraps found inside a cannon from Blackbeard's wreck came from a 1712 book of what kind?

A voyage narrative: Edward Cooke's account of a privateering trip round the world, the one that rescued the castaway thought to have inspired Robinson Crusoe; the pages were probably torn out as wadding.

Which instrument from Blackbeard's flagship wreck was found with traces of mercury inside?

A urethral syringe: mercury was then the standard treatment for syphilis, so the little pewter instrument is a blunt record of what ailed some of the crew.

From which island had Blackbeard sailed as a privateer before he turned pirate in the Bahamas?

Jamaica: its privateers lost their licence to plunder when the long war with France and Spain ended in 1713, and many, Blackbeard apparently among them, simply carried on without one.