Blackbeard, America's Most Notorious Pirate

Blackbeard, America's Most Notorious Pirate, Angus Konstam, New Jersey, 2006

Blackbeard is by turns a feared name in the annals of history for his explosively deadly and cruel reputation...and bumbling picture of ineptitude in features such as Disney's Blackbeard's Ghost (1968) in which he is incompetent and distinctly not frightening as he seeks primarily to get drunk.

As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Konstam did a large amount of research. He uses A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724) by Captain Charles Johnson as his baseline text but mixes with it documents such as depositions of ship captains after they were attacked by Blackbeard.

From the very beginning Konstan shows the divided nature of his feelings towards the work. On the one hand, he freely admits that Johnson was knowledgeable and accurate...then virtually every time he mentions Johnson in the remainder of the book it is an attempt to prove Johnson wrong about some point or other.

He also falls prey to a common malady suffered by many historians when delving into murky periods when what happened...and when...are not completely clear. He hedges his bets over who Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, was, where his career started, when it started, and with whom. He repeatedly will make claims as to what happened...then completely undermine them. In very few pages he manages to remove any confidence the reader might have in either his purity of purpose or his command of the facts.

He also tends to take up a new thread, follow it for a while, then return to the original thread. The result is a herky-jerky trip that can leave the reader confused and disoriented as various pirate captains are executed then return to have more of their history discussed.

His portrayal of Blackbeard himself is remarkably kind. Konstam is clearly a big fan of Blackbeard. If Blackbeard ever tortured or killed anyone, Konstam has no intention of revealing this information. The picture that emerges is of a man who looks mean but the worst thing he does is a short blockade of Charleston Harbor in which nobody is physically harmed and Blackbeard scores but little treasure.

One wonders, if Blackbeard was so kind and benevolent, why his name became synonymous with cruelty and murder for so long a time. While Konstam argues this image was deliberately cultivated by Blackbeard so he would not have to actually kill anyone, one must think that somewhere something happened to cause Blackbeard to be feared.

Konstam proves to not only have a great admiration for Blackbeard but also a very low tolerance for the activities of Governor Spotswood of Virginia, the man responsible for ending Blackbeard's career. The tone of the book makes it clear that Spotswood is the villain of the piece and Blackbeard is almost an innocent bystander.

For all that, there are some very positive things about this book. In passing we learn a great deal about how many and how often black slaves on ships taken by pirates became pirates themselves. This is a volume of history that needs further pursuit and a book on black pirates would be a great service to those interested in broadening the scope of history that is covered.

Overall, Konstam is an enjoyable enough read once you get past the equivocations and romanticized view he presents of Blackbeard. True pirate aficionados should definitely take a look.