8 Chapter 7 The Hunt Is On

Chapter 7 The Hunt Is On Though Governor Eden was not hunting Blackbeard, and was in fact sharing some of his profits, other governors in the colonies still wanted the pirate's head. William Keith, the governor of Pennsylvania, ordered him arrested . . . if someone could find him. Alexander Spotswood, the governor of Virginia, tried but couldn't locate him. Spotswood was outraged by the capture of the French ships and by Governor Eden's behavior in helping the pirates. "I thought it necessary to put a stop to further progress of the robberies," he wrote.

Only one of Blackbeard's men, William Howard, was captured and arrested by Spotswood's officers. Howard gave up information about where Blackbeard might be. Governor Spotswood ordered two Royal Navy ships to sail to North Carolina with orders to find and capture or kill Blackbeard. Blackbeard, meanwhile, remained in North Carolina. By this time, he had moved out of Bath and spent most of his time in a camp on Ocracoke

Island, one of the barrier islands of North Carolina. Formed mostly of sand, the islands shrink and grow over time as they are battered by waves and tides. Few trees or grasses grow on the dunes, and only seabirds lived there at the time. The wind howls often and the nights can be cold.

Blackbeard's crew would have made camp using ships' sails for tents and cooking over campfires. He was probably aware that British ships were searching for him, but he believed that he had picked a good hiding spot. The narrow inlets around the island would make it hard for large ships to reach him. At the same time, more and more Royal Navy ships were indeed patrolling the waters off the

American mainland and near the British colonies of the Caribbean. The net was closing around the pirates.