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
Henry Strangways (pirate) Henry Strangways (pirate) Henry Strangways (died 1562), also sometimes known as Strangwish, was an English "Gentleman Pirate" who attacked Spanish and other shipping. He was repeatedly imprisoned, and pardoned by highly placed friends, during his approximately eight-year piratical career, from about 1552 to 1560. His portrait painted by a fellow prisoner, Gerlach Flicke, resides today in the National Portrait Gallery in London. Strangways was born in Dorset to a well-known family of good standing, thus he is sometimes referred to as a "Gentleman Pirate". Strangways began his career as a pirate in 1552–53, plying the Irish Sea for plunder. There