Blackbeard's lawless career lasted only a few years, but his fearsome reputation has long outlived him. Thought to have been a native of England, he was using the name Edward Teach (or Thatch) when he began his pirating sometime after 1713 as a crewman aboard a Jamaican sloop commanded by the pirate Benjamin Hornigold. In 1716 Hornigold appointed Teach to command a captured vessel. By mid-1717 the two, sailing in concert, were among the most feared pirates of their day. In November 1717, in the eastern Caribbean, Hornigold and Teach took a 26-gun, richly laden French "guineyman" called the Concorde (research indicated she had originally been built in Great Britain). Hornigold subsequently decided to accept the British Crown's recent offer of a general amnesty and retire as a pirate. Teach rejected a pardon, decided to make the Concorde his flagship, increased her armament to 40 guns, and renamed her Queen Anne's Revenge or (QAR).

Shortly thereafter, the QAR encountered another vessel flying the black flag. She was the ten-gun pirate sloop Revenge from Barbados, commanded by Stede Bonnet, "The Gentleman Pirate." Bonnet had been an educated and wealthy landowner before turning to piracy. After inviting the Revenge to sail along with the QAR, Blackbeard soon realized that Bonnet was a poor leader and an incompetent sailor. He appointed another pirate to command Revenge, and forced Bonnet to become a "guest" aboard QAR, where he remained, a virtual prisoner, until she wrecked six months later.

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