Alexander Spotswood was born in 1676 in Tangier. For 16 years, Spotswood built a respectable if undistinguished military career. In 1709, Queen Anne chose Spotswood as lieutenant governor of the royal province of Virginia. The appointment set the ambitious man on the path of the financial and social prospects he aspired to.
As Governor, Spotswood was expected to bring order and respectability to the unruly Virginia colony. In this endeavour, he met with some resistance from the colonists. They had become accustomed to making their own laws and developing their own precedents and often clashed with the uptight and by-the-book Spotswood.
Edward “Blackbeard” Thatch
Like most privateers and pirates of the Caribbean (Stede Bonnet perhaps the exception) Edward Thatch was a highly skilled and accomplished sea-raider.
Thatch emerged in the pirate haven of New Providence around 1716, probably from Jamaica. He joined the pirate crew of Captain Benjamin Hornigold and quickly became a trusted lieutenant. The two successfully raided several ships together.
In September 1717, Thatch and Hornigold met Stede Bonnet. Bonnet was a wealthy land-owner turned pirate. Unusually for a pirate, Bonnet had purchased his ship, Revenge (it was in fact already called that when he bought it) and paid his crew a wage. Yet they were unhappy with his command so Bonnet allegedly ‘invited’ Thatch to take control of his ship. Exactly how voluntary this was is the subject of much speculation.
Bonnet and Thatch merrily raided ships along the Virginian coast, until June 1718 when King George I issued his proclamation for pardons for any pirate who turned themselves in by September. Both men decided to accept and received pardons from Governor Eden.
Thatch lasted a mere two months in legitimate life before returning to piracy.
Alexander Spotswood authorised the expedition that captured and executed Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Thatch. He sent Lieutenant Robert Maynard, of HMS Pearl, in search of the notorious pirate. When he found him, a vicious battle ensued. Maynard emerged victorious and Blackbeard’s ‘head I hung Under the Bowsprete of the Said Sloop in order to present it to ye Colony of Virginia.’
Alexander Spotswood left a legacy as a brilliant and stormy governor. At the end of his 12 year term, he feared retaliation from the pirates of the area and insisted he would only travel in a well-armed man-of-war. ‘Those barbarous wretches can be moved to cut off the nose and ears of a Master,’ he wrote. ‘What inhuman treatment must I expect?’
Always with a keen eye for the ladies, Spotswood had remained deliberately single. But on his return to England he quickly married Anne Butler Brayne and became a devoted husband and father of four. After six years, he returned to Virginia and settled in Germanna (Fredericksburg). On a trip to Annapolis he fell ill and died on 7 June 1740 at age 64.