A three hundred-ton vessel, originally named Concord,…
December 1717 CE
A three hundred-ton vessel, originally named Concord, a frigate built in England in 1710, had been captured by the French one year later.
The ship had been modified to hold more cargo, including slaves, and renamed La Concorde de Nantes.
Sailing as a slave ship, she had been captured by the pirate Captain Benjamin Hornigold on November 28, 1717, near the island of Martinique.
Hornigold turns her over to one of his men—Edward Teach, later known as Blackbeard—and makes him her captain.
Teach's first mate, Christopher Blackwood (known as Blackbeard's Claw), is feared as a ferocious fighter and leads many of Blackbeard's boarding parties.
Blackbeard makes La Concorde into his flagship, adding cannons and renaming her Queen Anne's Revenge.
The name may come from the War of the Spanish Succession, known in the Americas as Queen Anne's War, in which Blackbeard had served in the Royal Navy, or possibly from sympathy for Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch.
Blackbeard sails this ship from the west coast of Africa to the Caribbean, attacking British, Dutch and Portuguese merchant ships along the way.