The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-04-10

forgetting his, ,plunder and his 19 beau tiful wives, Captured on his forays among the islands. Their faces were yelled and they were incarcerated in the castle, and visited from time to time by the pirate after his raids through the Carib' can.
 Tradition does not tell us how long Blackboard occupied the castle on St. Thomas, but he met his death at the hand of lieutenant on an English man-of-war.
 In one of his expeditions he appear ed before the Port of Charleston, S. C., threatened to blockade the port and sink every ship going in or out unless the governor sent him a number of medicine chests. His demand was compiled with, the Governor sending him about $500 worth of medical supplies.
 A few years later, a general amnesty was declared in favor of all pirates and Blackboard surrendered under it's terms and lived ashore for time lay- ing up his squadron of four ships.
 But Blackboard chafed under the restrictions of life on land, and after two years refitted his ships and sailed forth, supposedly under, the protection of the Governor of North Carolina.
 Whether Gov. Eden was actually in league with the pirate was never de- finitely established, but the colonists of that state, found they were unable to get the governor to act in their com p1aints against the renewed raids of the pirate.i Accordingly they called upon Gov. Spottiswoode of Virginia, who sent out two ships under Lieut.. Maynard to clear the seas of the pir- ate.
 This expedition came up with Black beard's raider and engaged him in bat tie at night. Blackboard finding the odds too heavy for him, managed to escape in the darkness.
 In the pursuit one of Lieut.. May nard's ships ran aground Lieut.. May nard kept after the pirate, and as a ruse concealed all his crew below decks except three or four
 Again overriding the pirate craft, he made off as if to avoid battle. Blackboard, noticing the Englishman's evident reluctance to fight, thought Maynard's crew had been killed in the battle the night before. So, boldly al- tering his course, he swept about and ran alongside the man-of-war and made fast.
 AS his cutthroats boarded the ves- sel he realized he had been trapped. A bloody fight ensued on the decks of the man-of-war, in which all but a few of the pirates were killed.
 The Naval lieutenant. picked out Blackboard for his own particular prize, and in a fierce cutlass duel on the quarter-deck the pirate captain J>3 had survived the fray leaped to the deck of their ship. They were pursued by the man-of-warsmen and slain.
 One of the crew, exploring the hold of the pirate, was just in time to shoot down a giant negro who was about to explode the powder magazine, which would have destroyed both ships.
 After scuttling the pirate ship Lieut.. Maynard sailed back to the Virginia port with the ghastly head of the pi- rate chieftain nailed to his bowsprit
 On another eminence almost oppo- site the Blackboard castle on St. Thomas stands another tower that has been named "Bluebeard's Castle" About it cluster similar traditions of pirate occupancy at a later period in the same century.
 Bluebeard was said to have been a Frenchman, known also as Peter the Great"
 In the 17th century, when Spain traded with her colonies on this side of the Atlantic by means of her fleet of galleons, one of these vessels, fly- ing the flag of a Spanish vice admiral. was on the way home laden with great stores of gold and pearls from the west coast of South America.
 Approaching the Danish Ialanda.