Although it was fairly common for pirate captains to sail in consort (alongside each other), the circumstances surrounding Bonnet and Blackbeard’s sailing together were unique.

Before meeting Bonnet, Blackbeard sailed as part of the “Flying Gang,” a group of pirates with several now well-known pirates of the Golden Age - pirate OGs Benjamin Hornigold & Henry Jennings, Blackbeard (Edward Thatch/Teach), Charles Vane, “Calico” Jack Rackham (who sailed with female pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonnet), “Black” Sam Bellamy and Paulsgrave Williams (friends who sailed together).

The Bonnet/Blackbeard relationship is fascinating, and no contemporaneous accounts from the Golden Age offer much in the way of answers. No known contemporary accounts exist outlining the early exchanges between Bonnet and Thatch .

The lack of primary documentation has led to significant speculation about the relationship between the two, including that the relationship was romantic (more on that in a minute).

Did Bonnet and Thatch know each other, either personally or by reputation, when Bonnet arrived in Nassau? Were Bonnet and Thatch related? Why would Thatch, a pirate experiencing some success early in his career, team up with Bonnet? Did the two share intellectual curiosities?

These questions, at least for now, remain unanswered.

As I provide in my Bonnet biography, The Life and Tryals of the Gentleman Pirate, Major Stede Bonnet, the most likely reason Bonnet and Thatch connected was the opportunity to take advantage of complementary strengths and assets. Bonnet had a vessel superior to that of Thatch, but lacked the skill set to captain and sail the ship. Thatch, on the other hand, needed a vessel with more firepower and had the charisma and second-chair experience to take control of a larger sloop.

And, the mutual trade arguably worked well for both and the two spent a year and a half together growing a flotilla, plundering ships and towns, blockading Charleston, etc etc.

Homosexuality on pirate ships during the Golden Age is not particularly well documented. In my research related to Bonnet’s life, I found no evidence of a romantic relationship between Bonnet and the embellished stories of the time show Blackbeard as a hyper-heterosexual (14 wives, syphillis, etc) and no sexual references related to Bonnet (other than the fact he had four children with his wife in Barbados, Mary Allamby, who he abandoned to become a pirate).

With that said, the are a few books on homosexuality among pirates. The most well known is probably “Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean,” but despite the admittedly catchy title, I did not find the research particularly convincing.

Finally, I’d be remiss not to point out the concept of “matelotage”.

Many pirates (particularly buccaneers of the pre-Golden Age) were bachelors with no wives or children. Many of these buccaneers participated in the matelotage, a non-compulsory form of civil union. In the matelotage (from which the pirate-speak “mate” or “matey” may have been derived) a buccaneer had a “chosen and declared comrade, between whom property was in common[,]” including plunder, food and women.

If one mate died, the surviving comrade inherited all of his property.

For most, these unions were more fraternal or economic than lustful or loving (although certain matelotage would undoubtedly include sexual relationships).