Lieutenant Richards (pirate) Lieutenant Richards (pirate) Lieutenant Richards (fl. 1718, first name unknown, possibly Thomas) was a pirate active in the Caribbean and off the Carolinas. He is best known for sailing alongside Blackbeard (Edward Teach / Thatch). Richards was part of Edward Teach’s crew while they sailed with Benjamin Hornigold and later aboard the "Queen Anne’s Revenge". Near the Carolinas in early 1717 Teach met up with pirate Stede Bonnet in his 10-gun 60-ton sloop "Revenge". Bonnet was a wealthy landowner from Barbados who knew little of seafaring or piracy; at Teach’s suggestion (and the request of Bonnet’s disgruntled crew) Bonnet came
Pirate Round and attacked ships loaded with the exotic products of India. . . . which came to be known as the Pirate Round.". Jenifer G. Marx writes that "Ambitious sea outlaws began to leave for the East on what became known as the Pirate Round: a route that, for some thirty years beginning in 1690, linked ports in the Caribbean and the North American colonies with Madagascar." English piracy in the Indian Ocean goes back at least to King James I, but for most of the 17th century the Spanish Empire was the principal target of English pirates. The Pirate Round