OFH Throwback - Episode #89 - How Bad Was Blackbeard? (Part I)

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Hello, and welcome to this very special throwback edition of Our Fake History.

This week, I am throwing throwing you back to season 4 and episode 89.

How bad was Blackbeard?

Part 1.

Now, as that title suggests, this is going to be a two-part throwback series.

So, to catch part two of that throwback, then please tune in next week when I will drop part two with an all-new introduction like the one you're hearing right now.

So, why have I returned to this series on Blackbeard?

Well, the main reason is that I think it's a pretty good series.

I have a real fondness for pirate stories, and so I've gone back to the pirate well a number of times over the years on this podcast.

I like to use these throwback episodes to highlight what we do well on this show.

And I think this two-parter on Blackbeard is a perfect example of what our fake history is supposed to be.

So if someone's curious about the podcast, they want to give it a shot, maybe recommend the Blackbeard series.

I think it's a nice way in.

The other reason I wanted to come back to this series is it gives me a chance to make a correction.

Back in March of 2024, we celebrated this podcast's 200th episode.

And for the occasion, I took calls from the listeners and answered questions.

Now, that was dangerous because some of you had really in-depth questions that required some in-depth research.

And the nature of that show was such that I couldn't really get too deep on any of the topics.

But as you might remember, one listener asked a question about pirates, and he told a story about his dad creating a fake treasure map for him when he was a kid and going on this big treasure hunt with his family.

I was so charmed by his story that I I had to include his call on the show, even though his question called for a bit more research than I was really prepared to do.

He wanted to know whether or not pirate treasure maps were real.

Were there any bona fide examples of a pirate creating a map that led to treasure?

Now, based on my reading and a little cursory research that I did for that episode, I said on the podcast that no, pirate treasure maps were basically a work of fiction.

Based on my reading, it seemed like the whole idea of a pirate's treasure map where X marked the spot was an invention of Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island.

In fact, many of the most beloved pirate tropes can trace their origin back to Robert Louis Stevenson and his extremely popular book.

But it turns out I spoke too soon.

A listener out there sent me this email, and I'm just going to quote from it verbatim.

Listener Brent wrote me, quote, Hey, Sebastian, I honestly write this with a bit of hesitation.

I usually defer to you to set the record straight with history facts, but I felt compelled.

There is really only one topic I can speak on with any real authority, and that is the golden age of piracy.

I've been hooked on reading every book and primary source I can get my hands on.

Guess it's just a hobby.

I'm not a professional historian, but I have pored over the works of many professionals and I have some freakish ability to remember facts about pirates, but at the same time forget what I had for breakfast.

Tell me about it, brother.

This brings me to my comment.

There was a question on, is there any truth behind pirate treasure maps?

You were right on much of what you said.

Treasure Island has been a major influence on those myths and stories.

But there is in fact real documented evidence for treasure maps and buried treasure in the golden age of piracy.

Here are a few examples we know to be true because of physical evidence and contemporary sources.

Captain Kidd famously buried treasure on Gardner's Island in New York.

There was even a strong belief that he left a map with his wife Sarah.

This belief was so strong that the authorities even arrested her to find it.

In the end, they couldn't hold her, and they found the treasure anyway.

Well, at least all they knew about.

Captain Morgan was also known to have buried a massive amount of gold and silver in Panama.

He was also supposed to have had a map to come back and get it, which he never did.

The most infamous example is from the French pirate Olivier Levasseur, the buzzard, who left behind a cipher telling where his treasure was.

To this day, many have tried to break it.

Whether that cipher actually leads to anything is up for debate, but it was certainly real.

My point is, there is a grain of truth to pirate treasure maps and buried treasure.

Robert Louis Stevenson most certainly read the history of the pirates from Captain Charles Johnson to get many of his ideas.

Sorry to be a know-it-all, but it's just my passion.

End quote.

Thanks again for sending that along, Brent.

I really enjoyed reading that email, and I was happy to learn that pirate treasure was, in fact, real.

I'm glad I finally had a chance to make that correction on the show.

In that email, Brent made reference to Captain Charles Johnson, the man behind one of the most influential histories on pirates ever written.

As you will hear, he is our main source when it comes to Blackbeard.

But as I say many times on this episode, he's not always the most reliable source.

I get into it in a lot more detail on the show, so let's not waste any more time.

So, without further ado, here is episode 89: How Bad Was Blackbeard?

Part 1.

Check your feed again next week to hear part two

In the spring of 1717, a rich sugar planter from the island of Barbados had a bit of a midlife crisis.

Well, actually, it was more of a quarter-life crisis.

The man's name was Stede Bonnet.

He was the 29-year-old university-educated son of a well-to-do Barbadian planter.

Bonnet had inherited a massive 400-acre estate on the island in 1694, along with a sizable fortune.

He could have easily settled into the comfortable life of an 18th-century sugar mogul, but for some reason, that wasn't enough for old Stede Bonnet.

A year out from his 30th birthday, Bonnet decided to drastically change his life.

You see, Stede didn't want to be the bookish son of privilege that he'd basically been up to that point, nor did he want to be a husband and a father.

Apparently, he didn't much like his wife.

He also didn't seem too interested in his three young children, because in 1717, he would abandon them all.

He didn't want to be a family man.

Oh, no.

Stede Bonnet wanted to be a pirate.

The only trouble was he had no boat, no sailing experience, and generally no idea what it took to make high seas robbery a career.

Piracy was usually the province of the lower classes.

People usually got into the game because they needed the money.

These were men and sometimes women who had little more than the nautical skills they'd picked up after years working on merchant ships or during stints in the Navy or as fishermen.

For them, piracy was a more lucrative, if dangerous, way to make your living at sea.

Stede Bonnet, on the other hand, didn't need the money.

Now, no one's exactly sure why he shipped to sea.

Some have speculated that maybe this was the result of a mental illness.

But others seem to think that he was just bored.

He liked the romance and adventure associated with the pirate life.

In other words, he liked the myth of piracy.

So, Stede Bonnet paid for a brand new boat to be built for his exciting new life on the high seas.

It was an impressive 60-ton sloop outfitted with 10 guns that Bonnet christened the Revenge, the most piratey-sounding name he could think think of.

He then hired a crew of seasoned pirates and even promised to pay them a steady wage for their work.

Finally, Bonnet even designed his own pirate flag, a black field featuring a skull with a horizontal bone underneath it, a dagger to the left, and a heart to the right.

This, of course, represented the scales of pirate justice.

Now,

all of this was deeply unpirate.

Pirates didn't have fancy new boats commissioned for them when they wanted to go a pirating.

They stole their boats, or mutinied and took control of formerly legit vessels.

Also, pirate ships didn't usually pay wages.

The typical compensation for a pirate was a cut of whatever was plundered.

Pirating for wages was unusually genteel.

Stede Bonnet was like the rich kid who went to a mall and bought a $300 pair of ripped jeans and a Misfits t-shirt from Hot Topic, and then came to school the next day and said, Look at me, guys, I'm totally punk.

He's the guy with the fancy skateboard who just carries it around.

In other words, the guy was a bit of a poser, and the real pirates could smell it on him a mile away.

Now to be fair, once Stede Bonnet got himself a crew, he did engage in some honest to goodness piracy.

On his first cruise, he plundered four ships outside of Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.

Then he took two more vessels near the harbor of New York City.

But even then, he seemed more concerned about his bad reputation than most pirates.

For instance, anytime the Revenge plundered a boat from his home island of Barbados, he would have his men burn it.

According to some sources, he had this done because he was worried that people back home might learn about his pirate life and think less of him for it.

No boat headed for the Barbados could be allowed to return with the news that the formerly respectable Stede Bonnet was now robbing people on the high seas.

Now, when I say that Stede Bonnet captured these boats, what I really mean is that the men hired by Stede Bonnet captured these boats.

Since Bonnet knew nothing about sailing, his quartermaster and first officer basically ran the ship.

So as you might expect, his crew of hardened pirates didn't really respect him.

The fact that he paid a steady wage, even when plunder was lean, was basically the only thing that kept his crew from starting a mutiny and taking the revenge for themselves.

I mean, this guy wore powdered wigs while at sea, so, I mean, I think that speaks for itself.

The little loyalty he had earned from his crew pretty much evaporated after a disastrous encounter with a Spanish man of war in the late summer of 1717.

Put simply, the revenge was outgunned by a warship that she should never have have engaged with in the first place.

Bonnet and his crew just barely managed to escape, but not before the Revenge took some serious punishment, and Bonnet himself was severely wounded.

From there, the so-called gentleman pirate and his damaged sloop limped into the port of Nassau on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas.

In 1717, Nassau was notorious as a den of pirates.

If you were someone robbing boats in the Americas in the early 18th century, you eventually found yourself in Nassau.

It was there, in 1717, that what may have been one of the best hustles in history went down.

You see, in Nassau, Stede Bonnet met a man who was no stranger to the pirate life.

He had recently made a name for himself commanding a ship for the famous pirate Captain Benjamin Hornegold.

The friendly stranger went by the name Edward Teach.

Or maybe it was Edward Thatch

or Thatcher or Tatch.

Or maybe it was Edward Drummond.

You see, it turns out we don't exactly know what this fellow's real name was.

Like many pirates, he went by a number of aliases, but history would come to know him by his most notorious nickname, Blackbeard.

Now, the sources aren't exactly clear as to how Blackbeard managed this, but we're told that somehow the old pirate, quote-unquote, persuaded Stede Bonnet to put him, Blackbeard, in command of of the Revenge.

Of course, Stede Bonnet would be allowed to stay aboard and make sure the revenge was well attended to, but all the real pirating?

Well, Blackbeard would take care of that.

Now, this is one of those conversations I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for.

I really want to know exactly how this persuasion went down.

Was this just a straight-up kidnapping?

Or was Blackbeard the kind of grifter who could separate a rich man from a nice boat with a little smooth small talk and a couple shots of rum?

What's clear is that after that meeting, Blackbeard was now the new de facto captain of the Revenge.

Except here's the thing.

This meeting in Nassau may have never actually taken place.

While this is the commonly reported story of Blackbeard and Bonnet's first meeting, it doesn't line up with all the facts present in the historical record.

Blackbeard's most thorough biographer, Angus Constam, has pointed out that the timeline for this meeting in Nassau doesn't make sense when you consider evidence of both Blackbeard and Bonnet's movements from court records and contemporary newspaper reports.

Constam argues that for the timeline to make sense, there's no way these two men met while at port.

They had to have met while on the high seas,

which means that it's more likely that Blackbeard simply took Bonnet's boat from him.

Constam thinks that the story of the battle with the man of war and the genteel conversation at port were all invented after the fact to help Bonnet save face.

It just sounds better when you say, oh, my boat was damaged and I was wounded after an encounter with a fearsome Spanish man of war, and then I let Blackbeard take over, as opposed to what Constum thinks really happened, which was basically just a stick-up.

Nevertheless, Blackbeard did seem to keep Bonnet around as a bit of a mascot.

One of the merchant boats plundered by the Revenge while it was under Blackbeard's control was captained by a man named Captain Cod.

Codd would later report to a newspaper in Boston that he saw Bonnet during the attack.

The gentleman pirate was apparently absentmindedly wandering the deck, flipping through the pages of an old book, issuing no commands, and most embarrassingly, he was only wearing his night shirt.

Believe it or not, Stede Bonnet's story doesn't end there, wandering the deck in his PJs while real pirates engage in some proper larceny all around him.

Now, as it turns out, this was just the beginning of what would be a tumultuous and sometimes treacherous relationship with Blackbeard.

You see, Stede Bonnet's life seems to be the ultimate example of pirate mythology colliding headlong with pirate reality.

The adventure and romance associated with the pirate life deluded Stede Bonnet into thinking that he could do it, and furthermore, that it would be fun.

But the reality was much different.

What's interesting about Blackbeard's early relationship with Bonnet is that he created a situation where Bonnet could keep living the fantasy while more ruthless men did the work of high seas robbery.

One of the things that makes Blackbeard such a fascinating figure is that he seemed to have an acute understanding of both the pirate reality and the pirate myth.

He would very cleverly use the myth to make himself a more effective pirate.

Blackbeard seems to have understood that image mattered.

If you went around wearing powdered wigs and calling yourself the gentleman pirate, odds were you were going to get rolled.

By contrast, Blackbeard's earliest biographers would present him as a practically demonic figure.

According to these reports, he was the devil on earth, engaging in all sorts of arbitrary violence and sadistic behavior.

He was a man without a soul who strode into battle through a cloud of smoke.

But the question we need to ask was: how much of this was just an act?

Was his demonic reputation earned, or was it a carefully cultivated image?

Furthermore, if the Blackbeard image was a creation, then who created it?

Did he turn himself into the ultimate boogeyman of the seas?

Or can we thank the early historians of pirate life for his monstrous reputation?

Well,

let's find out today on our fake history.

One, two, three,

Episode number 89, How Bad Was Blackbeard, Part 1.

Hello, and welcome to Our Fake History.

My name is Sebastian Major, and this is the podcast that explores historical myths and tries to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story that it simply must be told.

This week, we are turning our attention to one of history's best-known pirates, the notorious Blackbeard.

But before we get started today, I want to remind everyone that I am going to be appearing live in Collingwood, Ontario at the Collingwood Museum on June 22nd, 2019.

So if you're listening to this right when it comes out, and if you live close to Collingwood, Ontario, think about coming out and hearing my talk on podcasting, public history, and of course, historical myths.

You can get tickets by going to the Facebook group.

That's facebook.com/slash our fakehistory or to my Twitter page at our fake history and clicking on the link pinned to the top of both of those pages.

I also want to let everyone know that we are very close to having a new line of our fake history merchandise.

Yes, there will be t-shirts, mugs, and all sorts of other fun stuff featuring the excellent episode art created by Frank Fiorentino.

Right now, patrons have the ability to vote for the art that they want to be on the merch.

The 10 most popular images will will appear on t-shirts and all the rest.

So if you are a patron, someone that supports on Patreon, you should head to patreon.com slash our fake history right now and click on the link for the survey for the merch art.

Now, if you want to get in on this voting and you're not a patron, well, There's one thing you got to do, and that's go to Patreon and start supporting at any level, and you can jump jump in on this voting.

Okay, this merch is going to be available to everyone, to the whole wide world, to anyone that wants to buy it, but only the patrons get to vote on the images.

So go check it out.

Okay,

back to today's topic.

There are few better known pirates than the notorious Captain Blackbeard.

In many ways, he is the archetypal pirate.

The pirates of fiction, be they the salty dogs of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, the cartoonish villains of Peter Pan, or the modern swashbucklers in the never-ending Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, have all in some way been inspired by the real-life exploits of the man often called Edward Teach.

When anyone dresses up like a pirate, they are kind of dressing up like Blackbeard.

All you have to do is read the most famous description of the man to see where a million pirate tropes get their start.

This is how Blackbeard was described in 1724.

Quote, Captain Teach assumed the cognomen Blackbeard from that large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole face and frightened America more than any comet that has appeared there in a long time.

This beard was black, which he suffered to grow of an extravagant length.

He was accustomed to twist it with ribbons.

In time of action he wore a sling over his shoulders with three brace of pistols hanging in holsters like bandoliers, and stuck lighted matches under his hat, which appearing on each side of his face, his eyes, naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a fury from hell to look more frightful.

End quote.

Cool.

I mean, a dude with a massive black beard wearing six pistols on his front with burning matches or fuses hanging from his hair.

I mean, ladies and gentlemen, that is officially badass.

However, I think the common understanding of who Blackbeard was doesn't go much beyond that description.

People know he was a pirate, people know the look, but unless you live in the Carolinas, the Bahamas, or Bristol, England, where Blackbeard is a big part of local legend, you may not know much else about him.

But as you might expect, legends are often all you get when you start looking for details about the life of this famous pirate.

His terrifying, bloodthirsty image has given birth to dozens of tall tales that circulate in his old haunts.

But these stories have also wormed their way into the few historical sources we have concerning the life and crimes of Blackbeard.

When trying to piece together the life of the pirate, historians only have a few pieces of evidence they can rely on.

First, there are the primary sources from Blackbeard's tenure as an outlaw.

These are court documents from the trials of Blackbeard's crewmen and other contemporary pirates, newspaper articles reporting on his exploits as they happened, and various official documents produced by the colonial governments he was known to terrorize.

These primary sources can give us the who, what, where, and and when of Blackbeard's most well-known exploits, but they often lack flavor.

They are mostly dry catalogs of what boat was robbed where.

The only other source we have for Blackbeard's life comes from one of the most famous pieces of pirate history ever produced.

This was Captain Charles Johnson's General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates.

Great title.

Published in 1724, this book offered a brief history of all the Atlantic's worst cutthroats, including Black Bart Roberts, Calico Jack, Anne Bonney, Mary Reed, Stede Bonnet, and of course, Blackbeard.

The book was a massive bestseller.

The first edition apparently sold out within a few months of publication, which led to a second edition and a sequel that included tales of landlocked highwaymen and other robbers.

It turns out, true crime has always been a super popular genre.

Captain Johnson's general history helped solidify the idea of the quote-unquote golden age of piracy in the public imagination.

This was an era liberally extending from the mid-1650s to the early 1720s in the Caribbean and the eastern seaboard of North America.

However, it seems like the most intense period of pirate activity actually took place between the years of 1713 and 1720, right at the end of the so-called Golden Age.

So this was a relatively short, albeit dramatic historical moment.

Captain Johnson's history came out just a few years after this era came to its close and did much to preserve it in public memory.

When you imagine a pirate, you're actually picturing a very specific time and place in history.

I mean, think of a pirate.

Is he wearing a long coat, a three-corner hat?

Does he have a matchlock pistol?

All of these things place him squarely in the early 1700s.

I mean, even if he didn't know it.

Captain Johnson's entry on Blackbeard is the only source from the era that attempts to tell the whole life story of the pirate, complete with a number of salacious details and spooky legends that strain credulity.

Most of what we know about Blackbeard comes from Captain Johnson.

So we need to ask, how reliable is this guy?

Well, that is a matter of some serious historical debate.

The first issue is that we have no idea who this Captain Johnson actually was.

There's no record anywhere from this period, beyond the book itself, that attests to the existence of a Captain Charles Johnson.

So basically, this guy is a ghost.

Or, more correctly, the name Captain Johnson is just a pen name.

So, who was the man behind the name?

Well, there are a handful of theories.

Some think he was the contemporary London playwright, also named Charles Johnson, who simply slapped the title captain in front of his name to give himself some maritime cred.

The playwright Charles Johnson also wrote a play about pirates, so, you know, there's that.

Others have proposed that the book's publisher, Charles Rivington, may have been the true author.

But many, including David Cordingley, one of the most widely respected pirate historians, have pointed out that whoever wrote the general history of pirates clearly had extensive first-hand knowledge of life at sea.

In other words, it was probably written by a sailor.

Some have even speculated that the real Charles Johnson may have even been a pirate.

Both Johnson, the playwright, and Rivington, the book publisher, had been lifelong landlubbers who rarely left London, let alone went to sea.

So, they seem unlikely.

In 1934, the historian John R.

Moore made a very convincing case that Captain Charles Johnson was actually the famous novelist Daniel Defoe.

Defoe was the author who brought us the survival classic Robinson Caruso.

Defoe's novels and the articles that he wrote for London papers at the time demonstrate that the man had a strong knowledge of the maritime world and a certain sensational style of writing that seems eerily similar to that in the general history of pirates.

A contemporary novelist who was known for writing swashbuckling adventures seems like a pretty darn good fit.

John Moore's argument was actually so convincing at the time that many libraries actually relabeled the general history as a work by Defoe.

Your local library might still be doing this, so uh check it out.

But in 1988, the scholars P.

N.

Furbank and W.

R.

Owen essentially demolished this argument by pointing out that there was no solid documentary evidence linking Dafoe to Charles Johnson.

Furthermore, they carefully went through the text and pointed out a number of key discrepancies between the general history and Dafoe's works.

Since then, the pirate history community has largely rejected Dafoe as the author of the general history.

So what does this all mean?

Well, it means that the author of the general history of pirates is still a mystery.

This raises the question, should we trust what this mystery man tells us about history's most notorious pirates?

Well, the answer to that question seems to be mostly

kinda.

Believe it or not, most historians seem to think that Johnson is mostly trustworthy.

David Cordingley has pointed out that historical research has proven that most of the events related by Captain Johnson, even many that were assumed to be imaginary, actually

did happen.

He seems to have gathered much of his information from diaries, official reports, and interviews with first-hand witnesses.

However, Cordingley also points out that whoever Captain Johnson was, he also had a flair for the dramatic.

There are a number of instances in the book where he seems to have taken some artistic license.

For instance, like the ancient historians, he often invents speeches or dialogue between figures he couldn't have possibly known about.

He also likes to print salacious rumors and supernatural legends along with his more verifiable facts.

Now, this is certainly true when it comes to Blackbeard.

In the dozen or so pages that Johnson devotes to Blackbeard, he mixes a very sober report of ships captured and booty plundered with titillating tales of pirate debauchery and hell on Earth.

This makes it tricky to get a clear idea of who Blackbeard really was.

Blackbeard biographer Angus Constam has written that using Captain Johnson as your starting place for an examination of Blackbeard is like building a home on shifting sands.

As you may have already guessed, that colorful description that I read you earlier is straight from the pages of Captain Johnson.

He doesn't pull his punches when he compares the pirate to a fury from hell.

But is that characterization actually fair?

Well,

let's look at the few solid facts we have about Blackbeard's life and see what we can say for sure.

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Captain Johnson begins his chapter on Blackbeard by telling us that he was a Bristol man, born Edward Teach.

Now, right off the top, both of these fairly innocuous sounding facts might actually be incorrect.

First, let's start with his name.

You might have noticed that throughout this episode, I've been using the nickname Blackbeard instead of the name Edward Teach.

And that's because we don't have much strong evidence that that was his real name.

Throughout his career as a pirate, Blackbeard is rarely referred to by the name Edward Teach in official documents.

Instead, he's called Captain Thatch or Tatch

or Thatcher and only very occasionally Teach.

Now, on its own, this isn't really a big deal.

As many of you know, spelling, especially the spelling of proper names, was still deeply inconsistent in this era.

It was extremely common for someone's name to appear with a radically different spelling on different documents.

In other words, Thatches became teaches all the time.

But here's the tricky thing.

None of these names, Thatch, Teach, Thatch, or even Thatcher, seem to have been used in Bristol around the time Blackbeard was growing up.

We know this because in 1698, when Blackbeard would have been a teenager, the authorities in Bristol conducted a census of all inhabitants of the bustling port town.

In that census, there is no one listed with a name even close to Teach, or Thatch, or Thatcher.

No one.

That means not only does Blackbeard not appear in the census, but neither does anyone in his family.

So this means that either Blackbeard's real name wasn't Edward Teach,

or Blackbeard wasn't from Bristol, England.

Or maybe both.

Now, I don't want to rob the good people of Bristol of one of their most celebrated native sons.

So, let's just say that Edward Teach was most likely an alias.

This would not have been unusual for an outlaw like Blackbeard.

But of course, it makes him really hard to track down in the historical record.

Angus Constom tells us that in Bristol, there's actually a pretty robust local mythology around Blackbeard's childhood.

It's rumored that he grew up in the community of Redcliffe, a rough and tumble district near the docks where the families of seafarers, merchants, and privateers made their homes.

The story, which, by the way, isn't substantiated by any hard evidence, is that Blackbeard's father was a privateer.

These were the seamen who had been legitimized by the Crown to rob and plunder any ship at sea flying an enemy flag.

Privateers were basically state-sanctioned pirates who carried documents called letters of mark.

These protected them from prosecution so long as they turned 20% of their plunder over to the crown.

Issuing letters of mark was a cheap and easy way to engage in naval warfare without having to drastically beef up your navy.

The story goes that Blackbeard's dad was a privateer who fought in one of England's many wars with the Dutch.

Sometime in the late 1600s, Blackbeard's father died, most likely while at sea.

Back in Bristol, Blackbeard's mother didn't grieve for for too long and soon took up with a new man.

Unfortunately for the young Blackbeard, his new stepfather was an abusive drunk who was fond of beating the boy.

This came to a head one day when the old man tried to beat the now teenaged Blackbeard.

We're told that the pirate-to-be turned the tables on the old man, grabbed the stick his stepfather was using as a weapon, and proceeded to dole out a beating of his own.

He beat the man so soundly that we're told he was barely alive by the time young Blackbeard was finished.

In Bristol legend, this is the inciting incident in Blackbeard's life of crime.

We're told that after the beating was over, the lad was worried that the law would come for him.

So he headed down to the docks, put to sea, and never looked back.

Now this is is a great story.

It's tempting to want to believe it, especially because it fits with the image of Blackbeard created by Captain Johnson.

Weird stories of random acts of violence would make up much of the flavor of Johnson's account.

But this story, like all the tales of arbitrary cruelty in the general history, tend to have no source.

That's not to say that Blackbeard wasn't a violent man.

It's just that many of the more dramatic moments of violence appear in hard-to-substantiate legends and not in, say, court records.

So keep that in mind as we move forward.

Now, there is basically no information about Blackbeard's early life before he becomes a pirate.

The first time he is mentioned in any document or historical source is in 1717,

and at that time he is already being named as the captain of a pirate ship, albeit identified as Captain Thatch.

Before that point, we simply have to take Captain Johnson's word for his whereabouts.

Sometime in the early 1700s, Blackbeard made his way to the Caribbean, where he worked as a privateer in a conflict Captain Johnson calls the French War, but is more commonly known as the War of Spanish Succession, Succession, or sometimes Queen Anne's War.

This was a conflict ostensibly over who the new king of Spain would be after the old king died without an heir.

Would it be a member of the Habsburg family who had controlled the country for nearly two centuries, or would it instead be a member of the Bourbon family, the ruling family of France?

You know, Louis XIV, the Sun King?

Well, he was a Bourbon.

The British were allied with the Habsburgs against the French and their Bourbon Spanish allies.

While this was nominally a war about the European balance of power, a huge part of the conflict was actually about the colonial possessions of all of these nations.

Britain saw an opportunity to nibble away at the colonial empires of both the French and the Spanish.

To this end, they encouraged privateering with a new enthusiasm.

Letters of marque were issued in huge numbers.

Then, to really incentivize privateers to disrupt French and Spanish trade, the British issued a proclamation that they would forego the traditional royal fifth.

Now, privateers were no longer required to turn over 20% of their plunder to the British crown.

As you might expect, privateering boomed.

Privateers could now raid French and Bourbon Spanish vessels with impunity and keep 100% of what they stole.

For the British, this was a very cost-effective means of waging war at sea.

So long as you had a war.

In peacetime, this became a little problematic.

You see, in 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, which ended hostilities between the British, French, and Spanish.

So now, all these British privateers were basically out of work.

So just like that, with the swish of a quill, the British basically created a piracy crisis in the Caribbean.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering why the privateers didn't just transition into some peaceful maritime occupation, like becoming a merchantman or a fisherman.

To be sure, some did.

But part of the problem was that privateer ships were essentially lean, fast warships.

They didn't have a ton of room for cargo, so they didn't easily transform into tubby merchant ships.

Also, the privateers themselves had a very specific skill set, which was battle on the high seas.

They weren't really fishermen.

Besides, the profits earned from either fishing or trading were tiny compared to what the privateers were used to when plundering was at its height.

So if the privateers could no longer maraud legally, many of them decided to do it illegally.

Union jacks were taken down and jolly Rogers were hoisted up.

Once a crew decided to go pirate, there was really no going back.

They were now living outside the law.

If the captain didn't like it, the solution was simple.

Maroon him and elect a new captain.

This is what really gave the world the golden age of piracy.

The weird legalization of robbery, followed by its hasty recriminalization.

These were the historical circumstances that created Blackbeard.

So now that the Caribbean was teeming with pirates, what did our man do next?

Well, let's find out.

According to Captain Charles Johnson, Blackbeard probably got his start in piracy in late 1716 after he met a certain Captain Benjamin Hornegold.

Hornegold is probably the most important pirate that you have never heard of.

By all accounts, this guy was the chairman of the board, in the pirate world anyway.

He was a former privateer who had one of the most successful runs of piracy after the Treaty of Utrecht.

Hornegold commanded an unusual amount of respect in the pirate community.

At the time, the Bahamas, and specifically the island of New Providence, had become a popular haunt for pirates.

This was basically because the island didn't really belong to any of the colonial powers.

Well, that's not exactly true.

Despite the fact that the British wrested the islands from the Spanish a few decades earlier, no colonial authorities had bothered making it to the island by the early 18th century.

In other words, there was no government there in the early 1700s.

Nassau, the capital of the island, was a lawless frontier town populated only by pirates, the people who traded with pirates, and the people who sold liquor and sex to pirates.

In this wild environment, Benjamin Hornegold was one of the few figures who seemed to wield any type of authority.

A few years after meeting Blackbeard, he would even manage to organize the pirates of Nassau into a military-style honor guard that would meet the colony's new governor.

Whipping a mob of unruly pirates on shore leave into shape took a certain type of person.

This was Blackbeard's pirate mentor.

We're told by Captain Johnson that upon meeting Blackbeard in Nassau in the fall of 1716, Hornegold almost immediately gave him command of one of his ships.

Now, Blackbeard biographer Angus Constam points out that this was highly unlikely.

Pirates, or any seafarers for that matter, didn't simply elevate untested strangers to positions of command.

Before anyone got to command a ship, Hornegold would have needed to see them in action.

As such, Constant believes that Blackbeard and Hornegold met much earlier than 1716.

They may have become acquainted as early as 1713 when scores of former privateers were first considering the pirate life.

Nevertheless, it's clear that by 1717, Blackbeard was cruising alongside Hornegold and robbing boats as part of his pirate fleet.

It's at this time that he first makes his appearance in a source other than Captain Johnson.

A certain Captain Moonth, who was making anti-piracy patrols along the North Carolina coast, recorded that a figure he called Captain Thatch commanded, quote, a sloop, six guns, and about 70 men, end quote.

Now,

the timelines on all of this get a little murky, but it's assumed that at this time, Blackbeard was still working under Benjamin Hornegold.

Hornegold seems to have commanded three ships in a small pirate fleet, of which Blackbeard was just one commander.

However, the nature of their arrangement is open to some debate.

Some have argued that Blackbeard may have never really been subordinate to Hornegold, and he may have been more like a partner in crime.

Captain Munf's report seems to list Blackbeard as a pirate captain in his own right.

So, you know, who knows?

What is clear is that sometime in the summer of 1717, Benjamin Hornegold was relieved of command, and he essentially retires from the pirate life.

After that point, Blackbeard seems to be the new captain of this pirate fleet.

So what happened here?

Well, the story we get is that Benjamin Hornegold operated with a very strict code of ethics.

Remember, he had started his career as a privateer during the Queen Anne's War.

During the war, it was perfectly legal to plunder French and Bourbon Spanish vessels.

But when the war ended, Hornegold just continued on like he hadn't gotten the news about the peace treaty.

He just kept robbing French and Spanish ships, but he swore he would never harass a vessel flying the Union Jack.

He may be a pirate, but he was also a British patriot.

Or, at least that's how he presented himself.

He had no problem messing with foreigners, but he was too much of a gentleman to rob his countrymen.

Now, many historians are very skeptical of this, as there is some evidence that Hornegold plundered ships of all nationalities, including his own.

Nevertheless, this is the reason given for the great falling out between Hornegold and Blackbeard.

Apparently, Hornegold's crew were getting tired of watching ships loaded with booty, flying the Union Jack, sail off into the distance.

Their captain's patriotism was getting in the way of of some honest plunder.

So, as often happened on pirate ships, the captain was replaced.

The crew were clearly looking for a commander with no qualms about attacking British ships, or any ship for that matter.

They needed someone who was a little less sentimental, a little more cold-blooded, and a bit more honest about what piracy actually was.

Now, we don't know much about how how this transition of command went down,

but it doesn't seem to have been a violent mutiny.

Hornegold seems to have commanded enough respect that he was allowed to peacefully return to the Bahamas.

He wasn't killed, he wasn't marooned.

The pirate crew simply told him to walk away, or in this case, sail away.

and the seasoned pirate knew when to cut bait.

So he sailed away on his flagship the Ranger and left Blackbeard with the rest of the fleet.

As circumstance would have it, he happened to get out of piracy at the exact right time, but we'll get to that later.

Now, it was right around this time when command of the fleet was transitioning when Blackbeard bumped in to our old friend, Steed Bonnet, and took control of his custom-built pirate ship, the Revenge.

It was with the Revenge that Blackbeard really started to make a name for himself as a pirate to be reckoned with.

Reports of his attacks started to spread throughout the Caribbean and North American colonies.

It was at this time that Captain Cod famously caught a glimpse of Stede Bonnet in his PJs while being raided by Blackbeard's pirates.

But the final piece of the puzzle came in November of 1717, when the pirates were marauding off the coast of the island of St.

Vincent.

Blackbeard's small fleet, led by the Revenge, surrounded a large French slave ship known as the Concorde.

After firing a few well-aimed volleys at the ship's bulwark, the ship's captain surrendered.

But Blackbeard wasn't just interested in raiding this ship.

Oh no, this ship was a little too nice for catch and release.

He was going to keep this one.

The ship was of a make known as a guineaman, which were usually used for transporting slaves from Africa.

But for Blackbeard, it would become a warship.

It was outfitted with anywhere between 32 and 40 guns, depending on which source you believe.

To give you some perspective, Stede Bonnet's Revenge, which was considered an effective little pirate ship, had ten guns.

Blackbeard rechristened the boat the Queen Anne's Revenge, because every pirate ship needs to have revenge in its name.

Now he had his flagship, and he was ready to make some real trouble for the North American coast.

Charles Johnson once compared Blackbeard to a frightful meteor.

Well,

colonial America had no idea what was about to hit it.

Okay,

that's all for this week.

Join us in two weeks' time when we will continue our series on Blackbeard.

Before we go this week, I want to give a really big shout out to Mark Chrysler and his podcast, The Constant, a history of getting things wrong.

At the beginning of the show today, you may have noticed that it wasn't me speaking, but another voice.

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It's been a while since I've listened to a history podcast that I really love.

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