Blackbeard Blackbeard Edward Teach or Edward Thatch ( – 22 November 1718), better known as Blackbeard, was an English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of Britain's North American colonies. Little is known about his early life, but 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 around 1716. Hornigold placed him in command of a sloop that he had captured, and the two engaged in numerous acts of piracy. Their numbers were
William Fox (pirate) to be reclaimed but by a halter.” The next appearance of Fox is aboard the former East Indiaman "Cassandra", which had been captured in the Indian Ocean by Edward England. After England was deposed from his command it was captained by Olivier Levasseur, who then traded it to England’s associate Richard Taylor. Fox may have crossed the Atlantic with Porter and joined them on the return trip: Porter was known to be in the vicinity at the time, meeting with Bartholomew Roberts alongside fellow pirate Richard Tookerman. Taylor, Fox, and others had sailed back to the Caribbean and petitioned the