Quote:
Originally Posted by Taltarzac725
Blackbeard's flotilla included another ship with Revenge as a name. This was that of Stedt Bonnet. Bonnet was a plantation owner and a bit of a fat dandy. He bought his ship and its 70 man crew from his own money rather than working his way up in someone else's crew like most pirates. Rumor was that it was his wife's constant nagging had drove him to piracy. He brought a potted tobacco plant, a walrus ivory smoking pipe, a very fine suit and topped it all off with a powered wig to his ship. Unfortunately, his personality did not meet his dreams of being a pirate captain. Bonnet's crew elected to give his ship's captaincy over to Blackbeard. He had encountered his elder Blackbeard accidentally at sea who had greeted him with the words "A Brother of the Coast: Come on up topside, Captain!" This mutual respect between the two captains did not last long as you will see. Biography of Pirate Stede Bonnet - Major Stede Bonnet Profile |
Blackbeard needed to
rearm his flotilla's ships because of the fury of many Puritan and other religious figures towards pirates after they saw the Wrath of God in the nor'eastern that sunk
Whyday Gally and
Mary Anne on April 26, 1717. This arms race as he saw it would give him more
leeway to
tangle with larger ships and not receive the
awful beating that Captain Stedt Bonnet had taken after his rash decision to take on a Spanish man-of-war. This was Bonnet's hubris alone as he did this before meeting Blackbeard and had lost many men and been very badly wounded himself while doing so. Blackbeard was a very educated man and was reading a lot of military history looking for ideas on new weapons to use and came up with a crude grenade as well as stuffing his cannons with many more missiles than just cannon balls.
http://io9.com/5811109/blackbeard-te...-iron-missiles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whydah_Gally http://www.angelfire.com/realm3/cari...man_o_war.html http://voices.yahoo.com/tour-queen-a...10.html?cat=16