“Virginia was a much more established colony with a much larger economy and population. Virginia’s top political official harbored a deep hatred of pirates, and he feared that Blackbeard and his fellow buccaneers would use North Carolina as a safe haven to terrorize Virginian shipping interests and threaten its lucrative tobacco trade. In the Virginia capital of Williamsburg less than 200 miles to the north, Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood cast a wary eye at his neighboring colony, which he viewed as an unsophisticated backwater with a weak governor. The raid against Blackbeard lacked legal authority. Returning to the North Carolina capital, Blackbeard claimed to have found one of the vessels abandoned at sea and convinced Eden to declare it a wreck, effectively giving the pirate rights to its contents.Ĭaptain Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, a bloodthirsty pirate who had control of the Caribbean Sea in from 1716-1718. Near Bermuda in August 1718, the pirate and his crew captured two French ships laden with cocoa and sugar. No sooner had Eden granted the royal pardon than Blackbeard returned to his high seas treachery. Just weeks after striking fear throughout the American colonies by blockading Charleston, South Carolina, with his four-ship flotilla in May 1718, the pirate traveled up the Atlantic coastline to the North Carolina capital of Bath and pledged to give up his plunderous ways while appealing to Governor Charles Eden for a King’s Pardon. It was only months earlier that Blackbeard had vowed to abandon his life as a sea bandit. Any questions as to the success of his covert mission to subdue one of history’s most notorious pirates were answered at the sight of the pungent trophy dangling from the bowsprit of Maynard’s ship-the severed, decomposing head of Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. On a sunny winter day some three centuries ago, British warships fired their cannons in celebration as Lieutenant Robert Maynard sailed up the James River upon his return to Virginia.
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