The Crazy Tale of Black Beard the Pirate

Howdy folks the photo above is one that I took at sunset last night,
I'm no photographer but I think it's a decent one of that building
Thunderhead.

I was reading about Black Beard the pirate because I like the subject
about these crazy guys(and gals)so I thought I'd share a few things
about him and some parts of his "career" were actually brilliant!

The way he got into piracy was by working his way up, he hired on as
a mate for another pirate named Benjamin Hornigold who was
himself a well known pirate.

Black Beard proved himself to be a hard worker and skilled tactician
and in a few years Hornigold put him in charge of a second ship
which accompanied his main pirate ship. Then later when Hornigold
retired from his pirating career he gave Black Beard his main ship.

[haha! how would you like to have that on your resume? Say, what
did you do before you worked here? "Oh I was a murdering thug who
killed, plundered and ravaged at will!"]

Black Beard quickly traded up by capturing a French slave ship which
he named Queen Annes Revenge, it was a very large ship with 16
canons already but he installed 24 more canons which made it very
threatening and lethal.

By the way that ship was full of slaves at the time and he took them
and the crew to shore and dropped them off which, as crazy as he
was...this was pretty rational behavior for him.

It's interesting that even though he was only out on the High Seas for
2 years wrecking havoc, he was by far the most feared and most
famous pirate that ever lived.

He did this by marketing himself as the baddest, most scary, evil
person that anyone ever wanted to meet up with. And in many ways
that was true, it just depending on the actions of the victims.

If a ship under assault by his crew totally surrendered to him then he
would be merciful and just steal their stuff and possibly their ship but
if they resisted then he would kill everyone and probably sink their
ship as well to make an example of them.

This was a smart business strategy on his part because if the other
ship surrendered that meant less damages to the goods and less
chances of him losing members of his crew.

Not that he loved his crew but they were a necessity to him of course.
Sometimes when he got drunk or when they all got drunk when
celebrating a big capture he would shoot one of his men just to show
them who was boss.

His crazy behavior was enhanced by his appearance too. He was very
tall for that era and large with broad shoulders and had long hair and
a very long beard which he braided. He wore a large black coat with
a wide sash which held at least 3 pistols and he wore 2 swords.

When he got ready for battle he wore all black and wove hemp and
slow-burning fuses into his beard and hair and tied bright red ribbons
on his beard. So he would present a very imposing, evil looking site
with all that smoke pouring out around him and people were terrified
of him!

source:wikipedia common

I don't mean to write a book here so I'll close and continue later so
we can find out what in the world happened to this guy, did he retire
and go into private business? he had the smarts and marketing savvy
that's for sure.

Thanks so much for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy Texas
the gentleman redneck

ps- you might just be a redneck if:

the gas cap on your car is a rag!