Blackbeard understood reputation better than any admiral. By the spring of 1718 he’d forged a flotilla in the Bahamas and Carolinas, sailing the captured French slaver La Concorde—reborn as Queen Anne’s Revenge—with tenders in company. He cultivated terror as a uniform: slow-match wicks smoldering under his hat and in his beard; multiple pistols cross-belted; grenades and powder-flasks at hand. Prisoners later swore the smoke made him look unearthly. In May 1718, he sealed Charleston with his sq