Edward Teach aka Blackbeard

Blackbeard was one of the worlds most notorious Pirates. Little is known about his early life. He is reported to have served as a privateer during Queen Anne's War (1701 - 1714), and turned to piracy sometime after the war's conclusion. His ship was called the Queen Anne's Revenge some artifacts from his ship are still around till this day. Sometime in 1716, Teach moved the source of his operations from Jamaica to New Providence in the Bahamas. He served an apprenticeship under Captain Benjamin Hornigold, who was the fiercest and ablest of all pirates regularly operating out of the island of New Providence. Jointly they captured and looted a number of large merchant vessels. Having amassed a sizeable fortune and recognizing that the profitable days of piracy were nearing an end, Hornigold in early 1718 retired from piracy and took up the honest life of a planter on New Providence. He took full advantage of the king's pardon when Woodes Rogers came to Nassau on 27 July 1718 as the newly appointed governor of the Bahamas Islands.

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Some of the many punishments that pirates had to face were some of the most cruel and extreme. These punishments were often carried out to those Pirates that disobeyed the Pirate codes. Some of the main pirate punishments included Keelhauling, Marooning , Dunking, Flogging , tied to the mast, and Slavery. When a pirate was Marooned he was  left to die without water and food on uninhabitable islands. Pirates were given, however, means to commit suicide, being left with a knife or pistol to put an end to the torture of marooning. Keelhauling was when A rope was tied beneath the belly of the ship and the offending pirate would be tied to the rope and hauled underwater, dragging underneath the pirate ship. The ship’s hull, covered in sharp barnacles, would cut like razors making for a very slow and painful death. Dunking was when A pirate was attached to a wooden beam and dunked into the water repeatedly. When performed during a ceremony, this was seen as an honor, when performed as a punishment, you would be sure that the dunking was a lot harder and deeper. And then flogging was when was perhaps the most common form of punishment for mild indiscretions upon ships, although it was less common on pirate ships because it was associated with the discipline enforced onboard naval vessels.

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When I went back in time to hang out with Anne Bonny and Mary Read it was a very interesting experience. They were both ferocious females and very tough. They didn't tolerate any nonsense from anybody. Female pirates came from a tough background they were from a society that didn't view women as much of humans. They had to dress up as men just to survive on a Pirate ship some of the women would often get raped and prostituted out to the crew members by the captain if caught. Even crew members would be punished for bringing women on ships. But some of the most notorious female Pirates included Ching Shih, Sadie the Goat , and Jeanne de Clisson.

As we see in the chapters Plundering the treasure ports and Sir Henry Morgan we see two pirate lords who raid the high seas and look for treasure to steal we that Sir Francis Drake raided a mule train in central America and came away with a treasure of about 12 million pounds when he captured a Spanish ship in Cacafuego. Sir Francis Drake also came away with a 68 million pound reward worth of treasure. Sir Henry Morgan had a similar story he ransomed the city to the president of Panama for gold and silver worth 250,000 pesos, in 1688 he led the capture of portobello by using the residents there as human shields, he also became the admiral for the brethren of the coast when he was 32 years of age. In Chapter 2 of Buccaneers and Pirates we see that its different from the two readings in under the black flag because in Buccaneers and Pirates we see that it highlights who Buccaneers were at sea and the fact that they opened their schools in the Caribbean sea. But the two books were similar because they both talked about the life of Sir Francis Drake and his endeavors with the Buccaneers.