Blackbeard was not always so mean. Dorothy Hudson can attest to that. She met him on the docks at Charleston. He wasn't like other seamen. He was educated, thoughtful and colorful. He was no Blackbeard then, but relatively cleancut.

He was a man in desperate need of adventure. The schools of England had not sufficed, the long ocean voyage, the exotic ports: all were trifles in his bored, cynical mind.