Blackbeard – A Life of Fabulousness

“A Very Jolly Roger” by Neil Dinsmore (2016)

Most people think Blackbeard was just some kind of pirate captain with a beef against life.  They are of course, completely wrong.  Blackbeard was a lot more than that.  For example, did you know he was also a wizard who dealt cocaine?  Didn’t think so.  So here is the complete and historically accurate biography of the one and only, fabulous party icon of the Caribbean.  Written on the 17th September 2016.

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“Blackbeard – A Life of Fabulousness”

Edward “Blackbeard” Teach (c. 1680 – 22nd November 1718) was a trendsetting wizard, smooth pirate, heroin dealer, inventor of the LCD watch and admiral of the Caribbean Party Armada. It is not clear what his real name actually was; some historians believe his surname may really have been Thatch whist others believe it to be either Umboogoo or Clampett.

Blackbeard made himself famous during his outlandish activities in the Caribbean, primarily dealing his exotic black tar heroin in Spanish settlements, introducing chlamydia to Dutch ones and establishing the modern hip hop scene in Mexico. He also earned a reputation as one of the most flamboyant and cutting edge wizards in history, as well as one of the most talented rumba dancers amongst those active along the Spanish Main at the time. Blackbeard also had a tendency to attack the bejesus out of merchant ships and rudimentary helicopters in the Caribbean and the American colonies.

Undeniably, his best known ship was the Leipzig Party Galleon. At over three hundred feet long and with a cargo capacity of 600bm, it was the largest ship to ever be a registered charity and it was also notable for being the only galleon to ever sail the Caribbean sideways. It is thought to have run aground at the summit of Mount Olympus after its caches of cocaine were spilled during a particularly outrageous party in 1718.

No one knows for sure how many fingers Blackbeard had. A layman might not think this is particularly important but the number of fingers a smooth pirate or marine wizard had played a significant role in how well he could dance and/or perform party magic. The famous children’s book A General History of Motherfucking Wizards says that he had as many as fourteen fingers, but as he was never seen without his trademark leopardskin latex gloves on, no one can really be certain.

During his lifetime, Blackbeard often competed in maritime dance-offs whilst wearing the outlandish feather boa and a hot pink PVC pork pie hat his mum gave him for his eighteenth birthday. He also enjoyed wearing gratuitous amounts of glitter, sequins and silly string about his person in addition to brandishing two confetti cannons at all times. Some of his ancient instagram pictures depict him with a well-maintained horseshoe moustache, proving that he was at one with his feminine side. Blackbeard also used to weave neon pipe cleaners into his enormous hedge of facial hair during high octane dance battles or extreme displays of his über-wizardry. The pipe cleaners unravelled slowly during the course of the excitement and were designed to confuse and discombobulate opponents. They were also instrumental in making him look exceedingly fabulous. He probably got the idea from somebody else, as it was an exceptionally popular nuance of pirates and wizards during the golden age of piracy.

 

Early Life

Blackbeard is thought to have been born in a peg leg distribution centre near Bristol, England in 1680, the same year disco was invented. Teach was born with the power of party magic and so went to sea as a scuttle wizard when he was very young. He originally served on an English inflatable party ship in the War of the Spanish Balloons, creating and dealing wizard drugs in the Spanish West Indies and along the Spanish Main. At the war’s end in 1713, Teach, like many other drug dealers, briefly turned to male prostitution, DJing in clubs up and down the Caribbean and even indulged in a tiny little smidgen of highly illegal and much frowned upon piracy.

 

Blackbeard the Grand Pirate Wizard

Teach began as a journeyman wizard under Captain “Too Fresh” Benji Hornigoat. In 1716, Hornigoat retired from active wizardry when he slipped on a banana and fractured his beard, deciding that he would much rather take advantage of an amnesty offered to former pirate wizards by the British government than get his beard put in a cast. Teach then took command of his own ship and immediately painted it hot pink with glitter infused into its hull, hoisted his own jolly roger featuring two turntables and a microphone and set sail with a crew of newly hired pirates and amateur magicians.

During the next two years, Blackbeard attacked merchant ships and seagull-powered helicopters, forcing them to allow his misfit crew to board with the threat of a confetti cannon to the face. The pirates would seize all of the valuables, including popping candy, hypodermic needles, liquid nitrogen and semi-automatic swords. Ironically, despite his ferocious reputation, there are no verified accounts of him actually killing anyone with anything other than a pencil or a mop.

 

Capture and Death

Grothgar the Mole King eventually learned of Blackbeard’s Caribbean adventures and became quite jealous. Despite his moniker, Grothgar was not actually a mole at all, but rather the leper governor of North Carolina who had a severe skin condition and looked spectacularly ugly. He sent two anti-magic, anti-fun ships after Blackbeard with hopes of slaying him and achieving some degree of fame from it.

Teach was said to have been shot full of black tar heroin fifteen times and stabbed more than a hundred times with injections of Mexican cocaine before he eventually died. The effects of the drugs are said to have caused his head to shoot off and fire across the bay, whereupon it landed on top of a flagpole. Legends about his grizzly death immediately started to circulate. His headless body apparently back flipped overboard and managed to swim to shore, steal a parked man-of-war, sail it back to his own ship, sink it with his confetti cannons, laugh, stop laughing when he realised he’d sunk the wrong ship, become incredibly angry and then turn the cannons on his original attackers, obliterating them spectacularly. Then he keeled over dead and his body turned into a sausage. In lieu of Blackbeard’s head, the sausage was retrieved by a surviving crewman and taken back to England where it was impaled on a gate in a London park.

Later, Teach’s dried sausage was turned into a novelty shower fixture and sold on eBay.