Edward Teach c. 1680–1718

Also known as Blackbeard, Edward Thatch

Edward Teach, also known as Edward Thatch and as Blackbeard, was an English pirate. He was born about 1680 and died on 22 November 1718. He operated in the West Indies and along the eastern coast of Britain's North American colonies. Little is known of his early life. He may have served on privateers during Queen Anne's War, and around 1716 he joined Benjamin Hornigold at New Providence. He captured the French slave ship La Concorde, renamed her Queen Anne's Revenge, armed her with forty guns, and crewed her with more than three hundred men. The name Blackbeard came from his thick black beard, and reports said he tied lit slow matches under his hat. The North Carolina Queen Anne's Revenge Project says that ship was his flagship, that the wreck was found in 1996, and that the State of North Carolina administers the site off Beaufort, where it ran aground in 1718. The portrait is a black-and-white copy of a 1736 engraving by Joseph Nicholls, cut by Basire, from A General History of the Pyrates. The print is in the public domain. It is an eighteenth-century image, not a portrait made from life. Wikidata is Q213518.

Existence span c. 1680–1718