Strangely enough, Blackbeard, despite his unattractive face and still more unattractive personality, appears to have been a good deal of a lady-killer, figuratively if not literally, for he managed to win the hearts and hands of fourteen maidens whom he married. History fails to record their subsequent fate or whether Teach devised some speedy form of divorce to suit himself. The fourteenth wife was a “most charming young creature of sixteen,” if we are to believe those who wrote of her at first hand. Blackbeard’s courtships would have made entertaining reading had they been recorded, and it would be interesting to know what there was about him that appealed so strongly to feminine tastes, but chroniclers evidently considered such matters too trivial to record. Of course it would be expected that a man of Edward Teach’s character and attainments would die with his boots on and fighting to the last, and he was not one to disappoint the lover of lurid adventure. In the end he completely fulfilled everything expected of him. So great a menace had he become to shipping, especially to the merchant marine of the British colonies in America, that the powers that were demanded that his activities be brought to a speedy end. Accordingly, the Governor of Virginia, in 1718, posted divers and sundry notices to the effect that forty pounds sterling would be paid as a reward for the capture of any pirate captain, and that Edward Teach, otherwise known as “Blackbeard,” was worth one hundred pounds to the authorities, whether he be brought in dead or alive. In those days such a sum was a small fortune, enough to tempt any brave and hardy soul to have a try for it, but the first to camp on Blackbeard’s trail was Lieutenant Maynard of H. M. S. Pearl. By some means never fully revealed, Maynard learned that the redoubtable pirate was enjoying a brief vacation in a secluded cove near Ocracoke Inlet (North Carolina). Gossip had it that the Governor of Carolina was on far too friendly terms with Teach, and that no small portion of that worthy gentleman’s wealth had found its way into the governor’s pockets, owing to the pirate’s appreciation of being left undisturbed in his chosen haven on the Carolina coast.