Queen Anne's Revenge

"Good news, gentlemen. This is not Blackbeard's ship. This is not the Queen Anne's Revenge&mdash;" "This be the Queen Anne's Revenge, right enough." "How do you know?" "I've seen the name, on the back of the ship."

- Jack Sparrow and Scrum

The Queen Anne's Revenge (formerly known as Concord and La Concorde de Nantes) was a legendary ship mostly known to be captained by the notorious pirate Edward Teach, mostly known as Blackbeard.

The Concord
She was built in England in 1710 and named Concord. At first she served as merchant ship but she was captured by French privateers a year later. Following some modifications, she was eventually sold to Spain. In 1713 she was returned to France and again underwent a transformation. She was eventually sold to Rene Montaudoin, a French merchant who refitted her as a slave ship and renamed La Concorde de Nantes.

La Concorde de Nantes
La Concorde left Nantes on March 24, 1717. The ship was armed with sixteen cannons and had a crew of seventy-five. On July 8, La Concorde arrived at the port of Judas, on the coast of West Africa. There they took on a cargo of 516 captive Africans. The captain and officers also obtained about twenty pounds of gold dust for their own account. La Concorde took nearly eight weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean and the hardships of the notorious Middle Passage took their toll on both the Africans and the French crew. By the time they reached the Caribbean, sixty-one slaves and sixteen crewmen had perished.

After crossing the Atlantic, and only 100 miles from Martinique, the French ship encountered two pirate sloops, one with 120 men and twelve cannons, and the other with thirty men and eight cannons. The pirates were led by none other than Blackbeard, a notorious pirate captain. With the French crew already reduced by sixteen fatalities and another thirty-six seriously ill from scurvy and dysentery, the French were powerless to resist. After the pirates fired two volleys at La Concorde, Captain Dosset surrendered the ship.

The pirates took La Concorde to the island of Bequia in the Grenadines where the French crew and the enslaved Africans were put ashore. While the pirates searched La Concorde, the French cabin boy, Louis Arot, informed them of the gold dust that was aboard. The pirates searched the French officers and crew and seized the gold. The cabin boy and three of his fellow French crewmen voluntarily joined the pirates, and ten others were taken by force including a pilot, three surgeons, two carpenters, two sailors, and the cook. Blackbeard and his crew decided to keep La Concorde and left the French the smaller of the two pirate sloops. The French gave their new and much smaller vessel the appropriate name Mauvaise Rencontre (Bad Encounter) and, in two trips, succeeded in transporting the remaining Africans from Bequia to Martinique. Soon, Blackbeard doubled the number of the ship's guns and renamed her the Queen Anne's Revenge, in honor of Queen Anne of Great Britain.

The Queen Anne's Revenge


Leaving Bequia in late November, Blackbeard with his new ship cruised the Caribbean taking prizes and adding to his fleet. From the Grenadines, Blackbeard sailed north along the Lesser Antilles plundering ships near St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Nevis, and Antigua, and by early December he had arrived off the eastern end of Puerto Rico. From there, the pirates were headed to Samana Bay in Hispaniola. By April 1718 the pirates were off the Turneffe Islands in the Bay of Honduras. It was there that Blackbeard captured the sloop Adventure, forcing the sloop's captain, David Herriot, to join him. Sailing east once again, the pirates passed near the Cayman Islands and captured a Spanish sloop off Cuba that they also added to their flotilla. Turning north, they sailed through the Bahamas and proceeded up the North American coast. In May 1718, the pirates arrived off Charles Town in South Carolina, with the Queen Anne's Revenge and three smaller sloops.

Blockade of Charles Town
In perhaps the most brazen act of his piratical career, Blackbeard blockaded the port of Charles Town for nearly a week. The pirates seized several ships attempting to enter or leave the port and detained the crew and passengers of one ship, the Crowley, as prisoners. As ransom for the hostages, Blackbeard demanded that the pirates be given a chest of medicine. The medicines eventually delivered, the captives were released, and the pirates continued their journey up the coast. Before they departed, the pirates also plundered all valuables from the captured ships.

Grounded
In June 1718, Blackbeard's fleet attempted to enter Old Topsail Inlet in North Carolina. During that attempt, the Queen Anne's Revenge grounded on the ocean bar and was abandoned. Blackbeard then disbanded his fleet except for the Adventure and twenty men. But Blackbeard later saved the Queen Anne's Revenge, and she served as his flagship during his search for the Fountain of Youth. Throughout his search, he added more cannons onboard the ship and some zombies to the crew. During one of Blackbeard's raids, on a remote island, a missionary named Philip Swift was captured and taken prisoner aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge.

Search for the Fountain of Youth
"I thought I should give you fair warning: we're taking the ship." "Desgraciado!" "It's nothing personal!" "Sparrow ven aqui o te arranco la cabeza!" "You might be better off if you just..." "Ya!" [shoves sword into door] "...stay out of it."

- Jack Sparrow and Angelica

Several years after the War Against Piracy, Blackbeard sent Angelica to London to find Jack Sparrow, a pirate captain who had knowledge of how to get to the Fountain. After Jack escaped from King George's palace, Angelica forced him aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge. They sailed for the Caribbean, but King George sent after them the HMS Providence, captained by Hector Barbossa, Jack's old nemesis, now a privateer in the service of England.

At some point during the journey, Jack Sparrow attempted to raise a mutiny aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge. However, Blackbeard used his sword and his voodoo powers to crush the mutiny relatively easy. A few days after the attempted mutiny, Blackbeard led the Queen Anne's Revenge to Whitecap Bay, where he and some of the crewmen attempted to capture a mermaid.



Design and appearance
The Queen Anne's Revenge is a three-masted frigate. Her stern is decorated in red and gold colors. Her figurehead resembles a skeleton which is identical to the one which appears on Blackbeard's first pirate flag. The bow and the stern castle are also decorated with numerous miniature skeletons.

Unlike the Black Pearl, the Queen Anne's Revenge has a spritsail topmast at the end of the bowsprit. The ship's sails are painted red, but they are dirty and tattered from long use and many battles.

Behind the scenes

 * In real-world history, the Queen Anne's Revenge was armed with forty cannons but she wasn't saved from the sand bar in 1718. She was stripped of Blackbeard's pirate plunder and abandoned, shortly before Blackbeard's death.
 * The Queen Anne's Revenge is portrayed by the Sunset, which previously portrayed the Black Pearl in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. In 2010, the Sunset was redesigned to portray the Queen Anne's Revenge in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
 * The Queen Anne's Revenge appears briefly in Tim Powers' novel, On Stranger Tides, which was used as the basis for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. She has no active role in the novel.
 * The Queen Anne's Revenge is the first historical ship that appears in POTC film series.

Appearances

 * Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides