Blackbeard
Blackbeard was the most notorious and feared pirate in the history of piracy and his reign of terror throughout the colonies and the Caribbean is the stuff of legend. Standing well over six feet tall and built like a damned tree, Blackbeard was a fierce and determined pirate that was more than capable of beating the living shit out of anyone that pissed him off and pretty much anyone else who was stupid enough to get in his way.
Little is known about Blackbeard's past. It is believed that his real name was Edward Teach and that he was born in Bristol, England around 1680, but most of that is merely speculation. What is known about him is that he got his start serving as a British privateer under the command of the pirate Benjamin Hornigold, battling the French in Queen Anne's War (also known as the War of Spanish Succession). During this time he made a reputation for himself as being super awesome. While scouring the Caribbean waters looking for asses to kick, Hornigold's ships came upon a 300-ton French slave ship, Le Concorde. Being the awesome pirates that they were, Hornigold's crew stormed the ship and after a brief battle managed to take control of it. Hornigold was totally pumped about taking command of such a huge ship but thought that it was probably in his best interest to take advantage of the pirate amnesty that European countries were now offering so he wouldn't get hanged from the neck like a chump, and he retired from piracy and left Le Concorde under the command of Blackbeard, who was of course the biggest badass in his crew.
Blackbeard decided that the 300-ton ship was not as totally X-treme as it could be, so he outfitted it with forty cannon and recruited a crew of three hundred badass toothless, hook-handed, peg-legged, face-punching pirates to run it and renamed it Queen Anne's Revenge, which was a way more awesome name than Le Concorde. Eventually Blackbeard managed to add three more shallow-bottomed sloop ships to his fleet and he was ready to sail the seas and cut some throats.
Blackbeard and his crew earned notoriety by plundering any vessels that they came across while sailing the seas of the Caribbean. If he raised his jolly roger and the other ship had the good sense to surrender without a fight, Blackbeard would just sack the ship and let everyone go free. However, if they were dumb enough to fire a broadside at him Blackbeard would raid the ship, loot it, sink it and kill everyone on board. In 1717 he became famous among pirate circles for defeating the British 30 gun Man-o-war H.M.S. Scarborough in a naval duel, sinking the H.M.S. Great Allen and capturing the British vessel Adventure to serve in his pirate fleet.
Blackbeard's badassitude extended far beyond his just his pirate profession. As I mentioned before, he was freaking huge, plus he had a hugeass black beard that he took his pirate name from. Whenever he would go into battle he would place slow-burning hemp ropes under his hat and woven into his beard and would light the ends on fire so that he looked like an insano-bot madman whose head was on fire. He was heavily armed, carrying six fully-loaded pistols on three bandoliers across his chest, several knives at various locations and his huge-ass cutlass which was enough to bust heads on its own. Basically, he ruled.
read on...
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/blackbeard.html
relating to pirates...(thank you Tiger for sending me link)
Cuz everyone know's Blackbeard was pretty BadAss as well!!
Archaeologists lifted a 300-year-old cannon from the pirate Blackbeard's ship off the coast of North Carolina today.
The eight-foot-long cannon was covered in sand and ocean debris called "concretion," which will take archaeologists and students at East Carolina University as many as eight years to crack through before getting to the metal cannon, according to Jennifer Woodward, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, which oversees the project.
watch on:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/blackbeards...ry?id=14818314