Robert E. Lee Meets Blackbeard Quiz

Answer: Circa 1680

Despite the fact that many pirates tried to hide the details of their lives before becoming buccaneers, their approximate ages were not that hard to determine from witnessed accounts of their actions as well as from whatever evidence was available of their pasts.

Answer: No one really knows

"Teach, Thatch, Thach, Thache, Thack, Tack, Thatche, and Theach" show up as spellings for Blackbeard's surname in records according to Robert E. Lee's "Blackbeard the Pirate: A Reappraisal of His Life and Times." Pirates often abandoned the names they had before they joined up especially if they came from prominent families as it seems that Blackbeard probably did from his ability to befriend and have correspondence with men like Tobias Knight, Chief Justice and Secretary of the Province of North Carolina.

Drummond shows up as one of the names advanced by Robert E. Lee for Blackbeard's real surname.

Answer: Bristol

Bristol was a very important English port. The Society of Merchant Adventurers came into existence in the 1400s. This society regulated foreign trade and collected port duties. The Bristol merchants built slave ships. The pirate ships, though, made many English rich including many of the merchants of Bristol.

In 1708, the Bristol merchants sanctioned pirates under the command of Captain Woodes Rogers.

Answer: Robinson Crusoe

Selkirk had asked his captain to leave him on the island as he thought the ship he had been given by this captain would soon sink and he did not want to go down with it. He was put on the Pacific island of Juan Fernández off the coast of South America.

He was there for more than four years. Captain Woodes Rogers found him and describes this is his book "A Cruising Voyage Around the World." Captain Woodes Rogers' success as a pirate and then a pirate hunter had quite an impact on Blackbeard.

Answer: Prize Act of 1708

According to Robert E. Lee in his seminal book about Blackbeard "Blackbeard the Pirate: A Reappraisal of His life and Times," Parliament passed an Act in 1708 that gave the loot taken from captured ships to the vessel's investors, captain and crew. Before this the Crown had taken at times as much as a fifth of the plunder.

This Act created quite an incentive for men like Blackbeard to become pirates or continue with this pursuit.

Answer: Queen Anne's War

Queen Anne's War was the name given to the North American theater of the War of the Spanish Succession about who would succeed Spanish King Charles II. It is not clear if Blackbeard took part in this war but it is very likely they he did given the money that could be earned from privateering of enemy vessels. The false answers are other American colonial wars.

Answer: Captain Benjamin Hornigold

Blackbeard became a member of Captain Benjamin Hornigold's crew around late 1716. Hornigold was the most respected and feared pirate at this time in the West Indies. Blackbeard even managed to command his own sloop which he had captured after heavy fighting. He put six cannons and seventy men aboard her.

Stacy Keach plays the character Captain Benjamin Hornigold to Angus MacFayden's Blackbeard in the 2006 film "Blackbeard".

Answer: French guineaman

Captains Hornigold and his subordinate, Captain Blackbeard, in two sloops fired from two different sides on the French slaver "Concord" and essentially cleared the deck of living sailors. They then easily boarded this ship after the remaining men below decks came out to surrender. Blackbeard won this ship as Captain Hornigold retired from piracy, accepting a pardon offered to pirates who swore to give up piracy.

Answer: green sea turtles

The pirates of the West Indies like Blackbeard enjoyed green turtle soup laced with sherry wine. This was a staple of many pirates and probably played a big part in the attraction of the West Indies to pirates. Green sea turtles could also be kept on board in the hold for extended periods.

Answer: 15

Blackbeard was often the center of attention in many of the taverns he frequented and seemed to offer little or no resistance to a woman he found alluring. He had one formalized wedding in North Carolina and may have also had a wife in London. He also had thirteen wives from ceremonies done on board his ships.

Answer: King George I

A September 5, 1717 Proclamation of the King of Britain offered pirates who surrendered by September 5, 1718 a pardon for all acts of piracy committed before January 15, 1718. Blackbeard probably took up this pardon in January 1718 but soon grew tired of the settled life and went back to piracy in early March, 1718.

Answer: His wife's nagging

Stede Bonnet built his own pirate ship a sloop and manned it with hired men. By most accounts he seemed like quite a milquetoast-- a sheep in sheep's clothing except for one example of courage pushed to stupidity. This was when he showed the rare audacity of taking on a Spanish man-of-war and getting badly injured as well having half his men killed.

Answer: Captain Blackbeard

Roaring with laughter, Blackbeard summoned Captain Stede Bonnet onto his ship "the Queen Anne's Revenge". After quizzing Bonnet though over the next few days, Blackbeard soon realized that Bonnet was not fit to captain a pirate ship and soon had talked the retired army officer/landowner turned pirate into leading a life of leisure on board Blackbeard's various pirate ships.

Answer: Belize

Captain Blackbeard and Captain Bonnet anchored their sloops at Turneffe Island off the coast of now Belize to take on fresh water. They surprised "The Adventure" which had just turned into the harbor to also take on fresh water. The Captain of "The Adventure" David Harriot surrendered his ship and its men to the pirates. Harriot was soon invited by Blackbeard to add his men to Blackbeard's growing fleet.

He accepted.

Answer: Yes

The men of the five ships took to small boats and abandoned their ships to Blackbeard and his fleet.

The major ship of those facing Blackbeard's flotilla was "The Protestant Caesar" from Boston. Many pirates were up in arms because of the trial and subsequent hanging of some of their fellow brethren from Boston. These men had been survivors of a wreck of "Black Sam", Bellamy's ship off Cape Cod. "Black Sam" Bellamy and Blackbeard were rumored to have partied together in the West Indies.

Answer: Commodore, Charleston

Blackbeard set himself up to collect booty from the traffic coming in and out of the busiest port in the Southern Colonies. This was at Charleston, SC. He stopped the pilot boat and then the "Crowley". The "Crowley" proved to be a very rich prize as it often ferried the high society of Charleston to and from London.

Answer: Governor Charles Eden of North Carolina

Blackbeard may have been on friendly terms with North Carolina governor Charles Eden. He had turned himself into Eden and then double-crossed most of his crew after he had deliberately run his flagship "Queen Anne's Revenge" aground at Beaufort Inlet.

He also had his First Mate Israel Hands run his sloop ashore. He then marooned a group of twenty five of his followers while forty other of his men left with the booty on another ship, "The Adventure".

Answer: Governor Charles Eden

Blackbeard never courted Governor Eden's daughter as Eden died childless in 1722. The rumor was that Blackbeard in a rage had murdered the true love of Eden's daughter by cutting off his hands and then dumping his body in the sea. The heartbroken daughter then died from grief at the loss of her beloved.

The reality, however, was that Eden did have a stepdaughter who married four times. Robert E. Lee gives no indication that Blackbeard ever showed any interest in marrying Eden's stepdaughter.

Answer: Governor Charles Eden of North Carolina

Robert E. Lee in "Blackbeard the Pirate: A Reappraisal of His Life and Times" rejects the idea that this shows that Governor Eden and Blackbeard were close friends who were often in cahoots. Marriages were often performed by Governors or other Members of his Council. Lee also points out that there were no ministers or missionaries present in all of Bath County in June of 1718. Legend has it that the woman Blackbeard married was named Mary Ormond and that he soon abandoned her to retake up piracy.

Answer: Philadelphia, PA

Blackbeard was not in Philadelphia for long before Governor William Keith of Pennsylvania issued a warrant for his arrest on August 11, 1718. Governor Keith also managed to raise enough money to finance two sloops to hunt down Blackbeard under the command of Captains Raymond and Taylor. Blackbeard certainly caught the attention of Philadelphians as a young Benjamin Franklin wrote a song about him.

Answer: Yes

Blackbeard was a master at creating an image of a pirate that would be feared greatly by his victims who sometimes included his own men. One night after drinking with two other men, Blackbeard drew out a brace of pistols. One of the men knew what was probably going to happen and left the cabin. Blackbeard then blew out the candle and sat down at the table with his first mate Israel Hands.

He then put these pistols under the table, crossed them, and pulled the triggers. One pistol misfired. The other fired and put a slug into the knee of Israel Hands.

Answer: Yes

Lieutenant Maynard checked out Blackbeard's body after his death at the Battle of Ocracoke Inlet. The pirate had five pistol wounds and twenty severe cuts on various parts of his body including a gash given to him from behind while he was battling with Lieutenant Maynard.

Some of the sailors on Maynard were said to have seen Blackbeard's body swim around the boat after his body had been decapitated. His head was kept on Maynard's sloop, suspended from the ship's bowsprit.

Answer: Yes

According to Robert E. Lee in his book on Blackbeard, Lieutenant Maynard took about 90 pounds worth of treasure from Blackbeard's ship and shared it with friends. Lee also attests that he could find no praise for Maynard in the letters of Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood who had sent Maynard on the mission to capture or kill Blackbeard.

Answer: Yes

Israel Hands had been in Bath, North Carolina at the time of the Battle of Ocracoke Inlet and had given testimony against the fourteen other pirates at trial in Virginia after the Virginian campaign against North Carolinian based pirates. Samuel Odell had fought in the Battle of Ocracoke Inlet but had been a drinking buddy of Blackbeard and had no other connection to the pirates than drinking with them.

He had also received seventy wounds in the Orcacoke battle merely for being in the wrong place and the wrong time. Hands and Odell were pardoned, but the rest were hanged and some of their bodies were also displayed in the harbor and remaining there for months, maybe years.

Answer: Blackbeard: Terror at Sea

Blackbeard has been the subject of many books and movies some of which Robert E. Lee in his book "Blackbeard the Pirate: A Reappraisal of His Life and Times" was probably trying to correct with publishing his book in 1974. One of the better of the movies produced long after 1974 is the 2006 James Purefoy film "Blackbeard: Terror at Sea." Purefoy plays Blackbeard.

The false answers are other movies featuring Blackbeard as a character even if they seem to have very little to do with the actual historical man.