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A Hat Worth Boarding For
May 22, 2026 at 11:53 AM
Clarified that this is a readable lore collectible (not a wearable hat or quest), added intro and lore notes tying Hornigold, Blackbeard and the Brethren together, added wikilinks,
A Hat Worth Boarding For is a readable lore collectible in Windrose, one of the buried-chest journal notes left across the islands. It is a flavor item rather than a wearable hat or a quest objective: the title refers to a story inside the note, not to a piece of headgear you can equip. The page is written as an entry from the diary of the traveler Alexandre Exquemelin, who recounts how Benjamin Hornigold, the founder of the Brethren of the Coast, once took a Spanish captain's wide-brimmed hat as the prize of a daring boarding.
In all my misadventures on these lost islands, I haven't seen a single ship of the Brethren of the Coast, only their wrecks, washed ashore by the sea. Blackbeard's pirates, on the other hand, are everywhere.
In the old days, the head of the Brethren, Benjamin Hornigold, would have dealt with Teach easily, but these are hard times for him...
His crew loved the story about him robbing the Spanish galleon.
Back when he was a young pirate, Hornigold had his sloop fly the Spanish flag, posing as a merchant to avoid suspicion. After all, what Spaniard would imagine that some puny sloop would dare attack a galleon? Pure madness.
But for Hornigold it was a matter of honor. The galleon's captain had been ordered by the King himself to rid the pirates of Tortuga.
Absorbed in the card game, the Spanish captain paid no heed to the reports of an approaching ship and didn't even post a watch.
That was exactly what Hornigold was counting on. When he struck with his men, the Spaniards panicked and offered no resistance. Hornigold walked away with a fine haul, and the Spanish captain's entire winnings, for by fate's irony the man had been lucky at cards that day. Along with the winnings, Benjamin took his splendid, wide-brimmed hat, remarking that it alone had been worth the boarding.
Thus Hornigold became one of the West Indies' most famous captains, and later the leader of the Brethren of the Coast.
I found a few useful trinkets in the wreckage. Pity it wasn't the hat: I could have used it. But I'll have to travel light from here on. I'll bury the chest again beneath the tree marked with a strip of red cloth. Perhaps I'll come back for it someday.
from the diary of Alexandre Exquemelin, traveler
The note ties three threads of the game's backstory together. It names Benjamin Hornigold as the founder and former leader of the Brethren of the Coast, it sets his rivalry with Teach (Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard) who now dominates the waters, and it explains the Brethren's faded fortunes that the player sees firsthand: their ships appear only as wrecks while Blackbeard's fleet is everywhere. The reference to ridding Tortuga of pirates places the events in the same Caribbean setting the player explores.
The entry is signed by Alexandre Exquemelin, whose other recovered writings appear under Exquemelin's Notes. Like the other diary scraps scattered through the world, this one rewards exploration of shipwrecks and shoreline caches rather than feeding a specific objective.
Property | Value |
|---|---|
Item Type | Lore collectible (Items, Miscellaneous) |
Stack | 20 |
Equippable | No, this is a readable note, not headgear |
Recovered from a buried chest and from wreckage on the islands, in line with the other scattered journal notes. The note's own text describes the author reburying the chest beneath a tree marked with a strip of red cloth, which fits how these collectibles are tucked into the world for explorers to find. Exact spawn points are seeded by world generation, so sweep shipwrecks and shoreline caches rather than relying on a fixed map marker.
