Blackbeard: The most feared pirate

Blackbeard is my favorite pirates out of all pirates. Blackbeard was one of the most feared pirates of all time. His name derived from his thick black beard. He is considered one of the most notorious of the sea robbers. Before he turned to piracy he served as a privateer during the Queen Anne's war. He plagued shipping lanes off North America and the Caribbean in the early 18th century. This era which he did his work was called the Golden Age of Piracy.

After his privateer life he settled on the Bahamian Island of New Providence, a base for captain, Benjamin Hornigold. Hornigold placed Blackbeard in command of a sloop that he had captured, and these two ended up engaging in numerous acts of piracy.

Hornigold retired in 1717 taking two of his ships with him. Nevertheless, later in the fall of 1717 Blackbeard and his pirates made their way to the Eastern Caribbean. Their they caught the ship, the French Slave ship La Concorde. He kept this as his flagship and renamed it Queen Anne's Revenge.

With the Queens revenge one thing Blackbeard and his crew did was terrorize Charleston in 1718. They blockaded the port of the city for nearly a week. The pirates seized several ships attempting to enter or leave the port and detained the crew. Holding them as hostages for ransom. Shortly after leaving Charleston the QAR was abandoned and lost. 

Blackbeard's piratical career came to an end six months later at Ocracoke Inlet on the North Carolina coast. There he encountered an armed contingent sent by Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood and led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard. In a desperate battle aboard Maynard's sloop, Blackbeard and a number of his fellow pirates were killed. Maynard returned to Virginia with the surviving pirates and the grim trophy of Blackbeard's severed head hanging from the sloop's bowsprit.

In a nut shell, throughout Blackbeard's journey he traveled and became in charge of a ship. Cruised the Caribbean taking prizes and adding to his fleet. Blackbeard was romanticized after his death and became an inspiration for an archetypal pirate in works of fiction i n many genres. However, Blackbeard was a 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. Blackbeard will always be seen as one of the most notorious sea robbers.

https://www.qaronline.org/history/blackbeard