Queen Anne's Revenge

"The ship is ours!"

- Jack Sparrow

The Queen Anne's Revenge (formerly known as Concord and La Concorde de Nantes) was a ship of a notorious pirate Edward Teach, also known as "Blackbeard".

A merchant ship
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 left Nantes on March 24, 1717. The ship was armed with sixteen cannons and had a crew of seventyfive. 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 increased the number of the ship's guns and renamed her the Queen Anne's Revenge, in honor of Queen Anne of Great Britain.

A pirate ship
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.

In June 1718, Blackbeard's fleet attempted to enter Old Topsail Inlet in North Carolina. During that attempt, the Queen Anne's Revenge and the sloop Adventure grounded on the ocean bar and were abandoned. But Blackbeard later saved the Queen Anne's Revenge, and she served as his flagship during his search for the Fountain of Youth.

The search for the Fountain of Youth
After the War against piracy, Blackbeard sailed for London, to find Jack Sparrow, a pirate captain who possessed a unique compass along with a map which had the exact location of the Fountain. When Jack rejected King George's offer to lead his men to the Fountain, and escaped from his palace, he was found by Angelica, Blackbeard's daughter, who forced him aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge. They sailed for the Caribbean, but King George sent after them the fastest frigate of the British Royal Navy, the HMS Providence, captained by none other than Hector Barbossa, Jack's old nemesis, now a privateer in the service of England.

Design and appearance
The Queen Anne's Revenge is a three-masted galleon. Her stern is decorated in red and gold colors. Unlike the Black Pearl, she has a spritsail topmast at the end of the bowsprit. Her figurehead resembles a skeleton which is identical to the one which appears on Blackbeard's pirate flag. The bow and the stern castle are also decorated with numerous miniature skeletons.

Behind the scenes

 * 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.
 * In real-world history, the Queen Anne's Revenge wasn't saved from the sand bar. She was stripped of pirate plunder and abandoned.
 * 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