Blackbeard is a pirate, terror of the east coast of Florida, called “the lord of the pirates”. He is recorded as dying in 1718, yet gained a spectral quality and is said to keep raiding from a bone ship crewed by zombies.
| Type | Character |
| Spanish entry | Barba Negra |
Description
He has a black beard and a black feather, carries a cutlass and a good pistol, and has the “thousand-yard stare”. He flies “like a vampire”, and his figure can be passed through. He resists common steel; wounded, he does not bleed: “it’s like a carcass”. Threads from his hands hook into another body and leave it “half dead”.
Activity
He burns cities and bombards ports; he attacked the port of Antigua with cannons, with “the vile and scandalous ones”, his hired killers. Among pirates “the Blackbeard authority” is invoked, an authority of pact as much as of war.
The ship. It seems made of bone (“not a Black Pearl ship”), about eighty feet long, with sails fifty to sixty feet high and his flag at the masthead. A boatswain and zombie sailors in black are aboard. It was named, hesitantly (“I think”), the Queen Anne’s Revenge, and called “a ship a corde: not just any little boat”.
The lair. Blackbeard’s cave, also called the Kraken’s cave, lies half a day overland from the temple along the coast, or is reached by water. Its mouth is at sea level, with rock above for landing; inside, secret doors hide the treasure. An important chest to be recovered passed through it.
Death
He is recorded as dying in 1718 at sea off North Carolina. In his last years he “gained a spectral quality”, and “some say” he still robs though dead. An uncertain speaker: “I killed him, but in the end everyone makes a pact”.
Relationships
- His fiancée, a virgin, may have been the last victim of Juan Jerez (a companion’s conjecture).
- He broke the heart of “one of the greatest of the sea”.
- His name appears beside Mamushka, unexplained.
Open questions
- What is he (specter, vampire-like, hollow carcass, construct), and what are the threads?
- What does the chest hold, and why does it matter?
- Does “a corde” name a ship type? Is Queen Anne’s Revenge the bone ship?
- Who is “aunt Blackbeard, the woman”?
- Are the Kraken’s cave and the lair one space? Is the upper rock an entrance?
- How far does his authority reach, and who makes the final pact?