This is a biography of a 200-ton frigate whose peak fame lasted less than a year. Built around 1710 as the French privateer La Concorde, the ship was converted into a slaver operating out of Nantes before Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, captured it near Martinique on November 28, 1717, armed it with up to 40 cannons and renamed it the Queen Anne's Revenge. We explore the two theories behind that name, why a lumbering frigate suited a crew of 300, and the brazen 1718 blockade of Charleston harbor.

Weeks later the ship ran aground at Topsail Inlet, North Carolina, and we weigh the accident narrative against the theory that Teach deliberately wrecked it to downsize his crew and keep the loot. The wreck was found in 1996 and confirmed in 2011, yielding over 300,000 artifacts, mismatched Swedish and English cannons, a French-marked ste ...