Queen Anne's Revenge was a frigate used as a flagship by the famed pirate Blackbeard from 1717 to 1718 during the Golden Age of Piracy. The ship was launched by the British Royal Navy in 1710 as the Concord, serving as a 200-ton merchant vessel. In 1711, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the Concord was captured by the French Navy and renamed La Concorde de Nantes, and it was used as a slave ship. On 28 November 1717, the pirate captain Benjamin Hornigold captured her off Martinique and made his protege Edward Thatch its new captain. Thatch renamed the ship "Queen Anne's Revenge" in honor of Queen Anne, the British monarch who had lost the ship to France during the Spanish succession war (and who had also employed "Blackbeard" as a privateer). Blackbeard made Queen Anne's Revenge his flagship, adding 40 cannon to the ship. The ship took part in pirating in the Caribbean Sea and West Africa, taking numerous prizes from Great Britain, the United Provinces, and Portugal. In May 1718, after blockading Charleston, South Carolina, Blackbeard decided to go into retirement, so he beached the ship at Beaufort inlet in North Carolina. Its crew members were either transferred to the smaller ship Adventure or picked up by Stede Bonnet's ship and pressed into his crew.
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