Teach captured a French merchant vessel, renamed her Queen Anne's Revenge, and equipped her with 40 guns. Their numbers were boosted by the addition to their fleet of two more ships, one of which was commanded by Stede Bonnet, but toward the end of 1717 Hornigold retired from piracy, taking two vessels with him. Hornigold placed him in command of a sloop he had captured, and the two engaged in numerous acts of piracy. He may have been a sailor on privateer ships during Queen Anne's War before settling on the Bahamian island of New Providence, a base for Captain Benjamin Hornigold, whose crew Teach joined sometime around 1716. Although little is known about his early life, he was probably born in Bristol, England.

Blackbeard (c. 1736 engraving used to illustrate Johnson's General History)Įdward Teach (also Edward Thatch, c.1680-22 November 1718), better known as Blackbeard, was a notorious English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of the American colonies.

Hms providence pirates of the caribbean