Despite the fact that nothing is known about his life, Blackbeard is arguably the most famous pirate in history. The majority of the information we have about him and other pirates of his age comes from "A General History of the Pyrates", a 1724 book written by Capt. Charles Johnson.

According to the book, Blackbeard was born Edward Thatch in Bristol, England, and participated in the War of the Spanish Succession as a privateer (1701 to 1714). He started engaging in piracy in 1716, using his ship, the "Queen Anne's Revenge," near the coastlines of South Carolina and Virginia. According to historian and writer Colin Woodard, Blackbeard took use of his feared reputation in these areas. Woodard previously told All About History magazine, "He did his best to develop a terrifying image and reputation, which encouraged his opponents to submit without a struggle."

According to the 1724 tale, Thatch's enormous beard "reached up to his eyes," and while engaged in combat, he carried "three brace of pistols, hanging in holsters like Bandoliers; and put blazing matches under his cap" in order to cover himself in a foreboding shroud of smoke. According to the National Park Service, Blackbeard was slain in November 1718 after his ship was ambushed by Royal Navy officers close to Ocracoke Island in North Carolina.

One of the most famous pirates of all time was a woman named Ching Shih, occasionally known as Zheng Yi Sao or Cheng I Sao. According to a case study by the University of Oxford's Global History of Capitalism project, Shih Shih, who was born into poverty as Shih Yang in Guangzhou, China, in the late 18th century, worked as a sex worker until she wed a pirate named Ching I in 1801 and adopted the name Ching Shih, which meant "the wife of Ching."

According to a 1981 article by Dian Murray in the journal Historical Reflections, the two started uniting power over the area's competing pirate groups into a confederation. Ching passed away in 1807, and his wife Shih assumed sole command of the pirate alliance. Murray claims that Shih established control over the pirates by strategic alliances and a stringent set of regulations. "The rules were strict. Anyone found issuing his own orders or disregarding those of a superior was decapitated right away "Murray composed.

Shih, also known as the "Pirate Queen," commanded a fleet of 1,200 ships with a crew of roughly 70,000 pirates at the height of her dominance. In 1810, Shih dismantled the confederation and worked out a favorable surrender arrangement with the Chinese government. The pirates were not only absolved of their crimes, but some of them were also permitted to keep their ships and enlist in the Chinese military. According to Murray, some even held positions in the government.

Captain Kidd, a ruthless hardcore pirate who commanded one of the most well-known pirate ships, was a privateer tasked with ridding New York and the West Indies of pirates. However, a shift in the situation put him in danger of a mutiny by his crew. Due to a lack of other options, he committed the first brutal act of his career as a pirate by killing someone, and he never looked back. His most audacious deed was to plunder the Indian Malabar Coast and a treasure ship that was nearly twice the size of his own.

An English captain was in charge of a French ship that Kidd had taken as a prize. The political atmosphere in England turned against him in this case despite the fact that the Crown had appointed him as a privateer for this trip. Some contemporary historians, like Sir Cornelius Neale Dalton, claimed that his image as a pirate was unfair and that he was actually operating as a privateer. Kidd's version of his conduct was backed by records discovered in London court papers from the early 20th century.

He was the target of the first live hunt that was recorded in the Atlantic region. He begged for pardon, but his luck had run out. He sailed to Boston, where he was detained by Sir Richard Bellomony, the governor of New England, and sent back to England in 1700. His execution date was May 23, 1701. He was hanged twice, which made his death terrible. He had to be hanged twice since the first rope snapped mid-hang.

To some, Sir Francis Drake was a noble figure, while to others, he was a renegade sailor. According to the BBC, Drake, who was born in Devon, England, approximately 1540, was the first Englishman to sail around the world. But this achievement was more of a result of his intention to raid Spanish ships than a deliberate exploration.

According to Elaine Murphy, an associate professor of marine and naval history at the university in England, the stealing of Spanish ships was legal from an English perspective, but to the Spanish, Drake was a threatening pirate they called "El Draque." Drake shared his wealth with Queen Elizabeth I, by whom he was knighted, and returned from his circumnavigation with a lot of loot. The Spanish Armada, a group of Spanish ships that attempted to remove the queen in 1588, was fought by him as a prominent naval leader.

Drake's role in slavery further tarnishes his legacy. According to Murphy, he made several expeditions to Guinea and Sierra Leone with his cousin, naval commander Sir John Hawkins, and helped establish the English slave trade in Africa by enslaving up to 1,400 Africans. In 1596, Drake perished from illness off the coast of Panama.

Even though Samuel Bellamy only lived to the age of 28, he left a lasting impression. According to the New England Historical Society, Bellamy, who was most likely born in Devon at the end of the 17th century, started working aboard ships when he was 13 years old at the start of the War of the Spanish Succession and subsequently rose to the rank of pirate captain.

Bellamy was a pirate who seized 53 ships, including the Whydah Gally, a slave ship laden with valuables including gold and silver. In 1716, the Whydah Gally departed from England carrying 312 slaves from the west coast of Africa to Jamaica. The ship was empty of slaves and loaded with profits when Bellamy boarded it as it made its way back to England, according to the Field Museum in Chicago.

Forbes stated in 2008 that he was probably the highest-earning pirate of all time. According to Forbes, the total value of the loot he seized would have been around $120 million in 2008. Bellamy made the Whydah Gally his flagship in 1717, but the same year, a storm claimed him along with it.

Because he used black wigs that were tied back with a black ribbon, he was known as "Black Sam" Bellamy. By robbing the rich, Bellamy also marketed himself as the "Robin Hood of the Sea." The New England Historical Society claims that he treated his crew men equally, ruled his ship democratically, and spared the lives of prisoners.

Welsh pirate Bartholomew Roberts, sometimes known as "Black Bart," was a tall, dashing man who wore colorful clothing in the 18th century. According to the Royal Museums Greenwich in London, he started off working on commercial ships before switching careers to become a pirate and eventually becoming elected captain of his own ship and crew.

Throughout his life, Roberts boarded almost 400 ships, some of which sailed in the Caribbean and off the coast of Africa. He frequently captured slave ships and forced the captains to return them in exchange for cash. According to the World History Encyclopedia, when one such slave captain objected, Roberts allegedly set fire to their ship, trapping 80 slaves within.

According to the Royal Museums Greenwich, Black Bart's misdeeds came to an end in 1722 when he was murdered by the British Royal Navy off the coast of Gabon in West Central Africa while his crew mates were too inebriated to defend the ship. The largest pirate trial ever held resulted in the hanging of 52 members of his crew, according to the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Two renowned female pirates as dangerous as, if not more so than, their male counterparts were Anne Bonny (or Bonney) and Mary Read. According to the Royal Museums Greenwich, Bonny, the daughter of a plantation owner, was born in Ireland in 1698 before relocating to South Carolina (opens in new tab). In the early 1700s, Anne abandoned her home and set out for the Caribbean. She began pirating while posing as a male on the ship of pardoned buccaneer Calico Jack Rackham. When the ship Read, a London native, was working on was taken over by Rackham, she joined the crew while still dressing as a man.

Read and Bonny grew close and enjoyed plundering the waters together. They fought with a machete in one hand and a pistol in the other while wearing coats and long pants. According to Smithsonian Magazine, a victim of their piracy claimed that they were quite active on the ship and "wiling to do anything" (opens in new tab). When Rackham's ship and crew were apprehended off the coast of Jamaica in 1720 and tried, Bonny and Read were spared the hangman's noose because they were both expecting children. Read passed away from a fever while incarcerated, but Bonny lived. She was escorted back to South Carolina by her father after being released from prison, where she remained until the age of 84.

The list of names of most famous pirates of all time would be incomplete without mentioning Calico Jack Rackham.

When he resisted the ship's captain's decision to launch an attack that appeared to be a mistake, the quartermaster eventually rose to the position of captain. This was the first indication of his future in both leadership and piracy. Later on, he turned his ship into one of the most well-known pirate ships in history. He was well-known for his iconic Jolly Roger Flag, which featured a skull and two crossed swords, as well as for having Mary Read and Anne Bonny, two female pirates, as members of his crew.

In 1719, he received forgiveness for his prior acts of piracy. He nevertheless proceeded to sea and took a 12-gun sloop from the Bahamas' port of Nassau. Only two of the woman pirates who have ever operated in the Caribbean were among his twelve followers. One of them was Mary Read, who assumed a man's identity and trained as a pirate, while the other was Anne Bonny, who left her husband to be with Captain Jack. They perished in 1720 after colliding with a ship carrying pirate hunters.

Welsh sailor Howell Davis was a pirate. His 11-month pirate career—which spanned from 11 July 1718 to 19 June 1719—was cut short by an ambush and his death. The Cadogan, Buck, Saint James, and Rover were his ships. Davis seized 15 well-known French and English ships.

Davis, a cunning and charming man, tricked the commander of a Royal African Company slave fort in the Gambia by pretending to be a genuine privateer. At a welcome supper, Davis kidnapped the commander, held him for ransom, and made 2,000 pounds in gold.

By hoisting a black pirate flag from a different sizable but lightly armed ship he had previously captured, he once captured a more formidable French vessel. As soon as she saw she was outgunned, the French ship capitulated.

He attempted to kidnap the governor of the Portuguese island of Prncipe, but the governor was able to see through his pretense of being a Royal Navy pirate hunter. Davis was welcomed to stop into the fort for a wine glass. On June 19, 1719, the pirates were ambushed en route, and Davis was killed by gunfire. He was replaced by Bartholomew Roberts, who later that evening stormed the island in vengeance.