What was the name of Blackbeard’s second-in-command aboard Queen Anne’s Revenge?

Israel Hands was Blackbeard’s second-in-command aboard Queen Anne’s Revenge.

Hands was an experienced sailor who served under Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, during the early eighteenth century. Contemporary and later accounts identify him as a senior officer in Blackbeard’s crew and associate him with the flagship Queen Anne’s Revenge.

Hands became especially famous through Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, where Israel Hands appears as a fictional pirate. The literary character helped preserve the name, but Stevenson’s story is not a historical account of Hands’s career.

Historical records indicate that Hands survived Blackbeard’s final battle in 1718. He later gave evidence about Blackbeard’s activities in exchange for a pardon. That testimony is one reason historians know more about the pirate network around Blackbeard than about many lesser-known crew members.