Born: c. 1680
Died: November 22, 1718
AKA: Edward Tach, Tash, Tatch, Thatch, Drummond
Blackbeard was a legend in his own time. Born in England, he plundered (robbed) ships traveling to and from the American colonies—as well as vessels in the Caribbean. Although his reign of terror lasted only two years, he became one of the best-known sea robbers in all of history.
Edward Teach was probably born somewhere near Bristol, England. Little is known of his early life—except that he went to sea as a young man. As a privateer (legalized pirate) during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713), he plundered ships in the West Indies. When the war ended in 1713, he turned to piracy, like many other former privateers.
By 1716, Teach was serving under the command of Benjamin Thornigold, a pirate captain. On Thornigold’s ship, he sailed from the pirate colony of New Providence in the West Indies to the American mainland. The pirates captured a number of ships, whose cargo ranged from flour and wine to silk and gold bullion (gold still in raw or unrefined form). In 1717, after the pirate crew attacked a large merchant ship headed for the French island of Martinique, Teach took over as the captured vessel’s captain.
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