For many of us, pirates first arrived through adventure books, treasure maps, and old Hollywood swashbucklers. They wore tricorn hats, barked orders from the deck, and seemed to live somewhere between history and pure invention. That is part of why they have lasted so long in popular culture. Real pirates were often violent sea raiders, but over time their stories were polished into legend, retold until fact and folklore began to blur together. Historians still trace many of the best-known names to the so-called Golden Age of Piracy, especially in the Caribbean, the Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean. One note before we begin: John Rackham and Calico Jack Rackham were the same man, so he appears here once.
#1: Blackbeard (Edward Teach) – Fearsome Caribbean captain.
No pirate has a stronger entrance than Blackbeard. Even his nickname sounds designed for a campfire tale, and the image attached to him only made it stronger: a large, imposing captain who reportedly put slow-burning fuses in his beard to look even more frightening before battle. Born Edward Teach, or possibly Thatch, he operated in the Caribbean and along the Atlantic coast of North America before being killed off Ocracoke in 1718. The man became folklore almost immediately, which explains why Blackbeard still feels larger than life more than three centuries later.
