Was the infamous pirate flagship Queen Anne’s Revenge actually a former slave ship?

Nature · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Before it became the terror of the Caribbean under Blackbeard, the ship known as Queen Anne’s Revenge had a vastly different life. Originally a French vessel called La Concorde, it spent years as a privateer and a slave ship before being captured and transformed into a legendary pirate flagship.

The ship’s history is a complex tapestry of 18th-century maritime commerce and conflict. First appearing in records in 1710, the vessel was likely constructed by French shipwrights. Under the ownership of merchant René Montaudoin, it served as a privateer during Queen Anne’s War, a conflict that saw European powers authorize private vessels to seize enemy contraband. When the war concluded, the ship transitioned into the transatlantic slave trade, completing documented voyages in 1713, 1715, and 1717.

In November 1717, the pirate Benjamin Hornigold captured the vessel near Martinique and handed it to his apprentice, Edward Teach—the notorious Blackbeard. Blackbeard renamed the ship Queen Anne’s Revenge, possibly to honor the last Stuart monarch or to signal his own loyalties. He significantly increased the ship’s firepower, adding over a dozen cannons to the 300-ton vessel. For about seven months, he used it to raid ships and even blockade Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1718, demanding medicine as ransom for hostages.

The ship’s end came shortly after the Charleston blockade when it ran aground on a sandbar near Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. While some accounts suggest the grounding was a deliberate tactic by Blackbeard to split his crew, the ship was abandoned and left to the sea for over 150 years. Its rediscovery in 1996 by a private firm led to the recovery of over 400,000 artifacts, including cannons, tools, and gold dust. These findings, along with French-style construction markings, have solidified the wreck's identity as the infamous pirate flagship.

The legacy of Queen Anne’s Revenge remains a subject of intense historical study. Because Blackbeard’s career was often documented by those he terrorized, many reports of his crew size and weaponry are considered exaggerated. Today, the site serves as a vital archaeological window into the era of piracy, revealing the reality behind the myths of a vessel that moved from state-sanctioned privateering to the brutal reality of the slave trade and, finally, to the height of pirate notoriety.

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