But few had attempted to trace Blackbeard’s family tree. Still others insist he was from North Carolina or Philadelphia. No one knows the year of his birth or even its location some claim Bristol, in western England others point to Jamaica. “The real story of Blackbeard has gone untold for centuries,” says Baylus Brooks, a Florida-based maritime historian and genealogist.Įven the most basic biographical details about Blackbeard have been hotly disputed.
These representations further embellished a legend that long ago overwhelmed historical truth. He even had an encounter with Jack Sparrow in the 2011 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. In 2006, he garnered his own miniseries detailing his search for Captain Kidd’s treasure. A half-dozen films centered on his exploits followed, and he emerged as the quintessential cinematic pirate. Blackbeard gained new notoriety in the mid-20th century, when the 1952 movie Blackbeard the Pirate proved popular. The fearsome buccaneer never scared Hollywood producers, however.
Blackbeard’s head was stuck on a piling off Hampton, Virginia, as a warning to other lawbreakers. This pirate, according to a British account written a half-dozen years after his death, “frightened America more than any comet that has appeared there a long time.” But Blackbeard vanished abruptly when a British naval expedition personally funded by Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood ambushed him and most of his men in a bloody battle off Ocracoke Island on November 22, 1718. Lighted matches made his luxurious beard smoke “like a frightful meteor.” Reports circulated of a large man with “fierce and wild” eyes who kept a brace of three pistols on a holster across his chest and a tall fur cap on his head. In his day, merchants whispered his name in fright. Only in the past few years have genealogists, historians and archaeologists, thanks to a combination of hard work and good luck, unearthed surprising clues that reveal the man behind the legend, one that Blackbeard himself helped spawn. Since his head was separated from his body 300 years ago this month, Edward Teach (or Thache), also known as Blackbeard the pirate, has served as the archetype of the bloodthirsty rogues who once roamed Caribbean and Atlantic coastal waters. North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy Stock Photo
An illustration of Blackbeard, the famed pirate
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