Teach, as soon as he received the medicines and his fellow pirates, pillaged the ships of gold and provisions, and then dismissed the prisoners with their vessels.  From the bar of Charleston they sailed to North Carolina.  Teach now began to reflect how he could best secure the spoil, along with some of the crew who were his favorites.  Accordingly, under pretence of cleaning, he ran his vessel on shore, and grounded; then ordered the men in Hands’ sloop to come to his assistance, which they endeavoring to do, also ran aground, and so they were both lost.  Then Teach went into the tender with forty hands, and upon a sandy island, about a league from shore, where there was neither bird no beast, nor herb for their subsistence, he left seventeen of his crew, who must inevitably have perished, had not Major Bonnet received intelligence of their miserable situation, and sent a long-boat for them.  After this barbarous deed.  Teach, with the remainder of his crew, went and surrendered to the governor of North Carolina, retaining all the property which had been acquired by his fleet.

The temporary suspension of the depredations of Black Beard, for so he was now called, did not proceed from a conviction of his former errors, or a determination to reform, but to prepare for future and more extensive exploits.  As governors are but men, and not unfrequently by no means possessed of the most virtuous principles, the gold of Black Beard rendered him comely in the governor’s eyes, and, by his influence, he obtained a legal right to the great ship called “The Queen Anne’s Revenge.”  By order of the governor, a court of vice-admiralty was held at Bath-town, and that vessel was condemned as a lawful prize which he had taken from the Spaniards, though it was a well-known fact that she belonged to English merchants.  Before he entered upon his new adventures, he married a young woman of about sixteen years of age, the governor himself attending the ceremony.  It was reported that this was only his fourteenth wife, about twelve of whom were yet alive; and though this woman was young and amiable, he behaved towards her in a manner so brutal, that it was shocking to all decency and propriety, even among his abandoned crew of pirates.

In his first voyage, Black Beard directed his course to the Bermudas, and meeting with two or three English vessels, emptied them of their stores and other necessaries, and allowed them to proceed.  He also met with two French vessels bound for Martinique, the one light, and the other laden with sugar and cocoa:  he put the men on board the latter into the former, and allowed her to depart.  He brought the freighted vessel into North Carolina, where the governor and Black Beard shared the prizes.  Nor did their audacity and villany stop here.  Teach and some of his abandoned crew waited upon his excellency, and swore that they had seized the French ship at sea, without a soul on board; therefore a court was called,