Message #140774

[Bianca]

Blackbeard's Legacy



Moore, the North Carolina Maritime Museum curator, said he's often asked why Blackbeard is still remembered when other pirates have been forgotten.

"My stock answer is that it's the nickname," Moore said. "Blackbeard. That's easily remembered."

Parry, the London author, said that Blackbeard died a prestigious death, which helped secure his place in history.

"He wasn't killed by a jealous husband," Parry said. "He was killed by the Royal Navy."

Cherry, the actor who impersonates Blackbeard, said the pirate is remembered because he knew how to market himself.

"He created an image that scared the daylights out of people," he said.

That image conveyed the assumption that Blackbeard was a murderer. But, Moore said, while Blackbeard probably was "inhumane" and even "barbarous," he probably did not routinely kill people.

Blackbeard's reputation as a killer "was all done with smoke and mirrors," Cherry said.

It's also unlikely that Blackbeard buried any of his ill-gotten loot.

"He probably spent it," Parry said.

Tales of pirates' ghosts and buried treasure are "great entertainment," he said.

"I love the stories. They're great over a beer."

But Blackbeard was "a man of great excesses" and a determined hedonist who wasn't likely to plan for the future by saving his money.

"Pirates didn't believe in the future," Parry said. "They had a two- to three-year life expectancy."



North Carolina writer Willie Drye is the author of Storm of the Century: The Labor Day hurricane of 1935, published by National Geographic.