Richard Stanbery

Blackbeard. Thats right. The Buccaneer.

But what do we really know of him? Was "Teach" a variation of the name "Thatch". One early account mentions that his surname was really Drummond.

From what we know of Blackbeard, what clues are there to his real identity from the old sources...or the way that he behaved? Was he shrewd like Augustus, or reckless like Custer?

What can we guess as to his early life and true identity? And...there is also this. Where does he fit into history, from a psychological point of view?

General Michael Collins

From the very little I know I'd say reckless is an understatement. The boarding action in his final engagement would illustrate that point.

Salah

I've read that he was a Welshman from a port city. I've also read that he had a reputation for leniency in how he treated his captives, prefering the use of terror or bribery over violence.

Nick

Unless you were his wife. Blackbeard would force her to have sex with five or six chosen crewmen
A general history of the pyrates - Google Books

skizzerflake

Having vacationed in the Outer Banks many times and read the various local publications on BB, I don't have any faith in the details of stories about him because everybody has much more interest in him as a character than as a historic fact. That said, one of the things I seem to always get between the lines is that Teach was a master of his own image. The actual verified body count of victims isn't very large, but all the stories grew as his reputation did.

All that brutality stuff, fuses in the beard, etc seem to be bluffs that he constructed so his crews would NOT really HAVE to fight. A lot of his conquests happened with very little actual fighting, especially the notorious sack of Charleston SC. After all, the usual pirate agreement was that a captain was "elected" based on bringing in profit and that most pirates intended to leave the business at some point, hopefully alive, so they could enjoy their share of the booty. A captain with a fearful, satanic reputation would make all that seem more likely. Blackbeard's reputation, however, may have undone him and, in the end, an unimpressive force of Brit navy captured and beheaded him in the Ocracoke harbor. The charming little beach town of Ocracoke, NC spends a lot of its tourist promotional money keeping the legend of Blackbeard fearsome.

Richard Stanbery

Do you think that he may have had some connections that knew his real identity? Connections in the colonial governments, perhaps?

skizzerflake

Jeezey peezey, are suggesting that government officials ever have deals with organized crime figures? Perish the thought. I'm not sure about Blackbeard's pirates, but the pirates of the early colonial Chesapeake often didn't have deals with the local government...they were the local government. The British colonial authorities back in the larger towns had little more power than a big wig when it came to enforcing shipping laws.

Their main threat would have been to call in the British navy, but that would take many months or even years and the pirates could just melt into the countryside or become privateers in the next sanctioned conflict. For the most part, they were not seizing ships full of gold and jewels like they do in movies, but they stole more utilitarian commodities like sail cloth, rope, slaves (some of whom joined the pirates) or anything else they could use.

I would be surprised if a high profile pirate like Blackbeard didn't have relations with some government officials who may well pay tribute to avoid unpleasantness. That was SOP around North Africa and the Mediterranean well into the 19th century.

Richard Stanbery

I didnt know that the Chesapeake pirates were on the "in" as for local government goes. Tell me more? Did the 18th century pirates of the Chesapeake get info about a valuable cargo (from the authorities) and then go out and hit a ship, take the goods to shore, and have it laundered or re-sold under "legitimate" papers?

I saw a movie about Jean Lafitte once where that was alluded to. But then Charleton Heston (Andrew Jackson) led the navy down and bombarded thier hangouts. And then he still talked LaFitte into joining up to fight the British.

skizzerflake

They weren't in with a local government so much as there really was no government as we would think of it. Back in St Mary's or Jamestown, there was a legally sanctioned group that considered themselves to be authority, but those islands and peninsulas were so isolated and distant (by 17th century standards) that government was pretty much a fiction, and only effective to the extent that now and again, some form of "military" shows up now and again to claim to be in charge.

As such, people tended to govern their own little corner of the world. Even the people officially "in charge" (they guys with the big wigs) didn't know with any precision when ships were to come or where they were at any given moment; piracy was a matter of exploiting an opportunity when somebody came by. Most of it was pretty low level stuff since there no gold-laden Spanish Galleons coming into the Chesapeake, but stealing a shipment of Tobacco would allow them to re-sell the sot-weed and generate a sort of local economy.

Richard Stanbery

Yes, tobacco was as good as gold then.
No doubt, it would have went through a clearing house port cities, like Port Royal (before it sank).

BTW, I have my suspicions that a great deal of the cutlery, cooking ware, axes, spades, various tools as well as weapons and munitions and diverse sorts of consumer goods that were to sold to settlers going inland may have, well, have a checkered past? The frontier was moving inland in the 17th century. And the settlers needed more stuff than could be locally produced.

Or the Indians? What better market to get rid of stuff in, than in the back woods? I wonder if the pirates of the day ever traded directly with the Indians?