Alexander Spotswood
British army officer and colonial official
1676 CE to 1740 CE
Alexander Spotswood (c. 1676 – June 6, 1740) is a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army and a noted Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.
He is noted in Virginia and American history for a number of his projects as Governor, including his exploring beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, his establishing what is perhaps the first colonial iron works, and his negotiating the Treaty of Albany with the Iroquois Nations of New York.
World
The Atlantic Lands
View →Related Events
Showing 10 events out of 20 total
Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spottswood of Virginia has decided to come to the aid of Hyde and has begun organizing a militia.
He dispatches a contingent of Royal Marines, who had been stationed on the Chesapeake in mid-July.
With the arrival of an organized military force, who represent the official power of the crown, Cary's forces disband and Cary himself flees.
Eventually arrested and sent to England for trial, he will be released after a year and will return to live out his life in Bath without further incident.
Virginia's Governor Alexander Spotswood is concerned that the supposedly retired freebooter and his crew are living in nearby North Carolina.
Some of Teach's former crew have already moved into several Virginian seaport towns, prompting Spotswood to issue a proclamation on July 10, requiring all former pirates to make themselves known to the authorities, to give up their arms and to not travel in groups larger than three.
Spotswood, as head of a Crown colony, views the proprietary colony of North Carolina with contempt; he has little faith in the ability of the Carolinians to control the pirates, who he suspects will be back to their old ways, disrupting Virginian commerce, as soon as their money runs out.
Teach has traveled during July and August between his base in the town and his sloop off Ocracoke.
Eden had given Teach permission to sail to St. Thomas to seek a commission as a privateer (a useful way of removing bored and troublesome pirates from the small settlement), and Teach had been given official title to his remaining sloop, which he has renamed Adventure.
By the end of August, he had returned to piracy, and in the same month the Governor of Pennsylvania issues a warrant for his arrest, but by this time Teach is probably operating in Delaware Bay, some distance away.
He takes two French ships leaving the Caribbean, moves one crew across to the other, and sails the remaining ship back to Ocracoke Inlet.
Teach tells Eden in September that he had found the French ship at sea, deserted.
A Vice Admiralty Court is quickly convened, presided over by Tobias Knight and the Collector of Customs.
The ship is judged as a derelict found at sea, and of its cargo twenty hogsheads of sugar are awarded to Knight and sixty to Eden; Teach and his crew are given what remains in the vessel's hold.
Ocracoke Inlet, Teach's favorite anchorage, is a perfect vantage point from which to view ships traveling between the various settlements of northeast Carolina, and it is from there that Teach first spots the approaching ship of Charles Vane, another English pirate.
Vane had several months earlier, rejected the pardon brought by Woodes Rogers and escaped the men-of-war that the English captain had brought with him to Nassau.
He had also been pursued by Teach's old commander, Benjamin Hornigold, who is by now a pirate hunter.
Teach and Vane spend several nights on the southern tip of Ocracoke Island, accompanied by such notorious figures as Israel Hands, Robert Deal and Calico Jack.
Charles Vane has continued practicing piracy on the open seas, amassing a large crew and three ships.
He is so successful, in fact, that Governor Rogers has decided to send out Colonel William Rhett to hunt Vane down.
Meanwhile, he has given command of one of his ships to a fellow pirate by the name of Yeats, and the two pillage and loot vessels that are entering and leaving the port at Charleston, looking to emulate Teach's success.
However, Vane creates division among his crew by refusing to capture several promising vessels, leading Yeats to abscond in the night with a large portion of treasure and one of the captured brigs.
Vane meets up with Teach in October 1718 and enjoys a week-long celebration at Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, with their crews.
He then turns north toward New York.
The news of Teach and Vane's impromptu party, as it spreads throughout the neighboring colonies, worries the Governor of Pennsylvania enough to send out two sloops to capture the pirates.
They are unsuccessful.
Governor Spotswood had meanwhile learned that William Howard, the former quartermaster of Queen Anne's Revenge, is in the area.
Believing that he might know of Teach's whereabouts, he has had the pirate and his two slaves arrested.
Spotswood has no legal authority to have pirates tried, and as a result, Howard's attorney, John Holloway, brings charges against Captain Brand of HMS Lyme, where Howard is imprisoned.
He also sues on Howard's behalf for damages of five hundred pounds, claiming wrongful arrest.
Spotswood's council claims that Teach's presence is a crisis and that under a statute of William III, the governor is entitled to try Howard without a jury.
The charges refer to several acts of piracy supposedly committed after the pardon's cutoff date, in "a sloop belonging to ye subjects of the King of Spain", but ignored the fact that they had taken place outside Spotswood's jurisdiction and in a vessel then legally owned.
Another charge cites two attacks, one of which is the capture of a slave ship off Charleston Bar, from which one of Howard's slaves is presumed to have come.
Howard is sent to await trial before a Court of Vice-Admiralty, on the charge of piracy, but Brand and his colleague, Captain Gordon (of HMS Pearl) refuse to serve with Holloway present.
Incensed, Holloway has no option but to stand down, and is replaced by the Attorney General of Virginia, John Clayton, who Spotswood describes as "an honester man [than Holloway]". (Lee, Robert E. (1974), Blackbeard the Pirate (2002 ed.), North Carolina: John F. Blair.)
Howard is found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but is saved by a commission from London, which directs Spotswood to pardon all acts of piracy committed by surrendering pirates before July 23, 1718.
Spotswood has meanwhile obtained from Howard valuable information on Teach's whereabouts, and he plans to send his forces across the border into North Carolina to capture him.
He gains the support of two men keen to discredit North Carolina's Governor—Edward Moseley and Colonel Maurice Moore.
He also writes to the Lords of Trade, suggesting that the Crown might benefit financially from Teach's capture.
Spotswood personally finances the operation, possibly believing that Teach has fabulous treasures hidden away.
He orders Captains Gordon and Brand of HMS Pearl and HMS Lyme to travel overland to Bath.
Lieutenant Robert Maynard of HMS Pearl is given command of two commandeered sloops, to approach the town from the sea.
An extra incentive for Teach's capture is the offer of a reward from the Assembly of Virginia, over and above any that might be received from the Crown.
Maynard, who takes command of the two armed sloops, has been given fifty-seven men—thirty-three from HMS Pearl and twenty-four from HMS Lyme.
Maynard and the detachment from HMS Pearl take the larger of the two vessels and name her Jane; the rest take Ranger, commanded by one of Maynard's officers, a Mister Hyde.
Some from the two ships' civilian crews remain aboard.
They sail from Kecoughtan, along the James River, on November 17.
The two sloops move slowly, giving Brand's force time to reach Bath.