Blackbeard, aka Edward Teach, earned a centuries-spanning reputation as the most dastardly sea-devil of them all. Yet, writes Pat Kinsella, he may have been one of the kindest – or rather, less villainous – pirates of them all
William Howard, who purchased Ocracoke Island back in 1759, had the same name as a notorious pirate who, decades earlier, was Capt. Benjamin Hornigold’s quartermaster and sailed with Blackbeard, but was this mere coincidence or were they one and the same?