Edward Teach, and Most People

¶ … Edward Teach, and most people will not react. However, say this person's nickname, "Blackbeard," and people have a very different reaction. Ironically, although this pirate was evil incarnate with no second thoughts about killing, he is often idolized like other pirates. What makes pirates so popular, despite the fact that they do not have many redeeming qualities -- a desired sense of adventure, rebellion and nostalgia.

Captain Teach was born in Bristol, England, and learned his trade with privateers in the East Indies during the old French war. About the latter part of 1716, a privateering captain, Benjamin Hornigold, put Teach in command of a recently captured sloop and his future was started. It did not take long to move from a privateer to a pirate status. Not only did he make this change, but he also urged his old captain to join with him. This led to a series of bold and lawless adventures that made his name so infamous, taking the name Blackbeard from that large quantity of hair that frightened so many people more than anything else. He wore a sling over his shoulders, with three braces of pistols and stuck lighted matches under his hat. This made him look all the more fierce and wild (Johnson & Pyle 29).

One of the reasons that pirates have a mixed reputation is that they were sometimes useful. The authorities who governed the Caribbean colonies, for example, asked pirates to act against Britain's French and Spanish colonial rivals, with the government secretly pocketing a share of the pirates' booty. However, from the start Blackbeard would not play that game. When his partner Ben Hornigold accepted an amnesty from the British Crown in 1717 and left the Jolly Roger life for good, Blackbeard assumed leadership of the handsome, 20-gun former French vessel called La Concorde, renamed it the Queen Anne's Revenge after the recent reigning English monarch, added another 20 guns and made it his flagship for the rest of his career as a pirate (Jones).

Then he moved quickly ahead to get as much as he could from the Caribbean's lucrative merchant trade, taking some 45 ships and spilling a great deal of blood. Despite his violent reputation and savage looks, he would be merciful to his victims if, and only if, they waved the white flag without a fight. Any resistance, however, and their ships would be burned. The unlucky survivors would be marooned on a faraway deserted island to starve. However, this made the wrong people unhappy (Jones).

After his flotilla of four vessels and 300 pirates boldly blockaded the port of Charleston in South Carolina for an entire week in May 1718, the British authorities belatedly moved against him. Blackbeard's old pirate friend called Bonnet (who he had also wronged) was seized and hanged by the authorities, so he decided he better be careful. He reached a deal with Charles Eden, Governor of North Carolina, to scuttle the Queen Anne's Revenge and quit piracy in return for a pardon (Jones). For a short time, he gave in to the landlubber's life. He married his 14th wife and began drinking away the profits of his illicit career.

However, he could keep away from the sea and gathered his old crew to plot further acts of piracy. Alexander Spotswood, Governor of Virginia, saw an opportunity get one leg up on his rival, Governor Eden, and win favor from the government by ridding the Caribbean of its most notorious pirate forever. He sent a Royal Navy squadron in pursuit and cornered him in Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina, on November 22, 1718. Not surprising, Blackbeard put up a fight. He took hits from five musket balls and more than 20 sword slashes before dying. Spotswood cut his off and took it away as the ultimate trophy.

What was the reason why Blackbeard was so bloodthirsty? Was he just born mean, like some people are? or, did something happen to him to change his ways?

A crew has been studying a boat found at Beaufort Inlet off the coast of North Carolina that is believed to be Blackbeard's pirate flagship, which has been sitting in the briny deep for over 300 years. The hope was that they would not bring up the ghosts along with the boat (Daily Mail).

Once when he was drunk, Blackbeard was said to have yelled to his crew, "Come, let us make a Hell of our own, and try how long we can bear it!" They all gathered in the dark of the ship's hold; closed the hatches, filled several pots with sulphur crystals and set them alight. The hold filled with sulphurous fumes. One after the other, the crew, gasping and choking, scrambled up the hatchway into the fresh air. Blackbeard, of course, was said to be the only one who stood among the fires. When he came up, he snarled at them, "Damn ye, ye yellow-bellied sapsuckers! I'm a better man than all ye milksops put together!" (Daily Mail)

Before a battle, he normally tied slow-burning cannon fuses under his fur hat. These were made of hemp cord and dipped in a solution of saltpetre and lime, which enveloped his face in smoke. No wonder adversaries believed him to be the devil incarnate. Now, they may have an answer to this bizarre behavior. When divers at Beaufort Inlet began excavating and recovering artifacts, they came up with plenty of wine bottles, platters, grenades and even specks of gold. In addition, they found a pewter syringe, 61/4in long, with a curved funnel tip containing traces of mercury. It was painfully used to administer mercury into the penis for the treatment of venereal diseases.

Did Blackbeard have syphilis? The hope is to find the medicine chest with the rest of supplies, which may provide some more answers. This is only one of four boats that went down, so it may have been brought to another one.

It is nearly absolute that this was one of Blackbeard's boats, since the bronze bell, one of the first items brought to the surface, is inscribed with the date 1709, and the name IHS Maria. Historians theorize the foot-tall bell was taken from a captured vessel or a plundered port town. Pewter dishes made by London pewterer George Hammond date to the early 1700s. Two onion-shaped English wine bottles are circa 1714, which is the time of Queen Anne's Revenge.

Not all pirates were as bad as Blackbeard, but they were not the most ethical and nonviolent men around. Why are people so fascinated today, besides that Johnny Depp is onboard the ship? One reason may be the desire for rebellion, in this case, against the government. The songwriters Gilbert and Sullivan put it this way in the Pirates of Penzance when the Pirate King compares himself favorably to actual monarchs. "Many a king on a first-class throne / if he wants to call his crown his own / Must manage somehow to get through / More dirty work than ever I do."

Nostalgia may be another reason for the popularity of such bad guys as blackbeard, says Erin Mackie, senior lecturer and program director of English in the School of Culture, Literature, and Society at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Nostalgia might be one to feel the effects of historical complicity and continuity. "Even as it laments an irrevocable past, nostalgia evokes and so revives the past, or a desirable version of that past, in the here and now. Figured as an object of desire, the past enshrined by nostalgia memorializes, in the shape of this figuration, complicities it seeks to contain or evade."