Daniel Defoe (of ¡§Robinson Crusoe¡¨ fame) wrote one of the earliest accounts of Blackbeard. Describing a bear of a man with a monstrous beard that reached from just below his eyes down to his belly, Blackbeard would twist the ends into small tails and decorate them with small ribbons. While attacking a helpless victim, Defoe says that Blackbeard would stick slow burning fuses, called ¡§matches¡¨ under his tri-cornered hat. When lit, the smoke would swirl around his head, giving him the appearance ¡§of a Fury from Hell.¡¨ To complete the fierce persona, Blackbeard usually carried a cutlass in a wide leather belt and three pairs of pistols in a bandoleer across his chest.
Widely thought insane by his contemporaries, Blackbeard enjoyed humiliating his men and once was said to have forced a captive to eat his own ears! In his short two year career, Blackbeard almost single-handedly created the modern Hollywood model of a Pirate: bloodthirsty, reckless, brave, and crazed in battle. Drunk with wine, women, and song while in port.
It is not known where he was from, Defoe says he was born Edward Drummond in Bristol. Others say Jamaica or Virginia. Whatever his origin, Teach (or Thatch) is know to have served on a Privateer (a pirate hired by a government at war to prey on it¡¦s opponent¡¦s shipping) during the War of Spanish Succession and, apparently attracted to that lifestyle, made his way to Nassau sometime in 1715 and enlisted in the crew of a pirate captain named Benjamin Hornigold. Under Hornigold, Blackbeard¡¦s courage and skill at sailing earned him command of a sloop in the small fleet Hornigold was leading in raids along the American coast. Late in 1717, Hornigold¡¦s fleet captured a 26 gun French ship named ¡§Concorde.¡¨ Hornigold gave the ship to his favorite lieutenant, Blackbeard. Blackbeard returned to Nassau and mounted 40 guns on the ¡§Concorde¡¨ and renamed her ¡§Queen Anne¡¦s Revenge¡¨ (QAR). Within weeks of leaving Nassau, the QAR took her first victim, an English vessel the ¡§Great Allen.¡¨ Blackbeard plundered the ¡§Great Allen,¡¨ marooned her crew and set the ship ablaze. When the Royal Navy learned of the ¡§Great Allen¡¦s¡¨ loss, the 30 gun frigate ¡§Scarborough¡¨ set out from Barbados to find the QAR. Sighting Blackbeard¡¦s ship several days later, the ¡§Scarborough¡¨ expected the pirate to either flee or strike it¡¦s colors (surrender). Instead, Blackbeard swung into action. After several hours of battle the ¡§Scarborough,¡¨ battered and outgunned, broke of the action and sailed back to Barbados in disgrace. When word spread of Blackbeard¡¦s victory of a ship of the RN, his name became well known throughout the Caribbean.
