This tale must
begin with a disclaimer: Captain Henry Morgan was no
pirate. A rogue
maybe, a
privateer for sure, but the Welshman would have been
gravely offended
if anyone
dared to label him a pirate. While the boundaries between
privateering
and
piracy were some way short of cut and dried in the 17th
century – in
fact, during
times of peace, practitioners of the former often indulged
in the
latter – there
was one important difference between the two professions:
only one was
legal.
A letter
of
marque,
issued by Oliver
Cromwell’s
government, allowed Morgan and his crew of
privateers to carry out attacks on the Spanish pretty much
as they
pleased, so
long as the two nations were at war. While the Spaniards
provided
Morgan with
an enemy, it was the exotic West Indies and not the Bay of
Biscay that
provided
the backdrop for his infamous career, the Spanish having
settled in
Puerto
Rico, Jamaica,
Cuba, and Hispaniola (the island containing the Dominican
Republic and Haiti) in the 16th century. As you’ll read
later, slow
communication between the English court and the privateers
sometimes
made it
difficult to adhere to the on-again/off-again peace
treaties, but
luckily for
Morgan, the two nations were at war for long periods
throughout his
career and
thus his often self-serving attacks were nearly ceaseless.
But we’re getting
ahead
of ourselves. Who exactly was this “Captain Morgan,” the
man often
pictured in
an expensive, bright red-and-gold jacket, with a tricorn
hat perched
upon his
thick mane of jet black hair and a glimmering, silver
cutlass in hand,
whose
neatly-bearded face today promotes the famous brand of rum
that’s sold
around
the world?
Well, Henry
Morgan
was born some time around 1635, in
Llanrhymny or Abergavenny,
Wales, depending on who
you ask. He was the son of local squire Robert Morgan.
And that’s
about
all we know about his early days. Luckily, maritime
historian Dudley
Pope
consulted both British and Spanish archives, and there
remains a full
story of
Morgan’s professional life. Obviously, some details remain
hazy,
though, and
differing accounts may vary. For example, legend has it
that Morgan
found
himself in the English colonial outpost in the Caribbean,
having been
“Barbadosed”
– beaten over the head in Bristol one day, then waking up
on a
westward-bound ship the next. Another version of the tale
is slightly
less
dramatic, claiming he voluntarily signed up with General
Robert
Venables’
troops in 1654, in
Plymouth. An entry in Bristol Apprentice Books showing
“Servants to
Foreign
Plantations” and dated 9 February 1655, details Morgan
being indentured
to
Timothy Townsend of Bristol for three years, and to serve
this time in
Barbados.
So,
whatever the exact
details, there he was, a junior officer in a foreign land
during the
time of
the Commonwealth. Morgan’s career in the Caribbean
actually began in
disastrous
fashion. General Venables, one of Cromwell’s most trusted
men during
the Civil
War and who excelled in the conquest of Ireland, was
trusted with the
rather
ambiguous mission of “‘gaining an interest’ in that part
of the West
Indies in
possession of the Spaniards”, which included many Spanish
strongholds:
San
Juan, Santo Domingo, Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Vera Cruz,
and
Cartagena.
(Haring, 86) After consulting with his Vice-Admiral, Sir
William
Penn (whose
eldest son would give his name to the American state),
Venables set his
sights
on Santo Domingo, but his self-proclaimed “cowardly” army
was defeated
with
embarrassing ease, and what remained of the bruised and
battered troops
headed
to the virtually uninhabited island of Jamaica. Here they
at least
managed to
capture the country’s only town, held by the Spanish, of
course: Santiago
de la
Vega.
This minor
victory
did little to hide the absolute failure of the mission.
Cromwell had
sent an
army to capitalise on the riches of the New World, which
were being
exploited
impressively by their enemy, the Spanish. Backed by a huge
fleet and
around 9,000
men recruited from both England and the West Indies,
defeat at the
hands of the
now enfeebled Spanish empire was not an option. For their
part in
the poor
performance, Venables and Penn were thrown in the Tower
of London
on their
return to England.
Back in
Jamaica,
yellow fever, dysentery, and malaria proved to be as
dangerous
adversaries as
the Spanish, decimating the remaining troops. Luckily for
this story,
amidst
all this death and decay, Henry Morgan survived.
Gradually, first lead
by
Vice-Admiral Goodson and then by Commodore
Myngs, the English began to salvage
the situation through courageous raids on Spanish ports.
Morgan proved
to be a
clever, fearless leader, who learned a lot from Myngs in
particular.
His carefully
planned attacks helped him work his way up the chain of
command,
appearing as
captain of various ships during these raids.
In 1665
Morgan
married his cousin, Mary Elizabeth Morgan, who had
ventured to the West
Indies
the previous summer with her father, Governor Edward
Morgan. Her two
younger
sisters married two of Morgan’s most trusted friends. By
1666 Morgan
had been
made Colonel of the Port Royal Militia, assigned to
supervise the
expansion of
its harbour defences. Taking his spoils from the
successful campaigning
in the
Caribbean, he had become a considerably wealthy man. When
the Dutch
leader of
the Brethren of the Coast, Edward
Mansvelt
(Mansfield, to the English) died on
Tortuga, Morgan was elected to take his place and became
an admiral.
Now the undisputed
king of the buccaneers, Morgan successfully raided Puerto
del
Principe in Cuba,
bringing in 50,000 pieces of eight. His crew, not content
with this
amount because
it was insufficient to repay debts they had accrued back
in Jamaica,
swiftly demanded
a more daring attack. Puerto Bello, the third most
important city in
the
Spanish Main on the north coast of Panama, was to be their
target, but
it was a
risky mission. During the attack
in
Cuba, Morgan’s French and English troops
had fallen out over a dispute between two members of the
crew, one from
either
side. After agreeing to a duel, the Englishman stabbed his
enemy in the
back
before the duel could take place; he was chained and
eventually hanged
on their
return to Jamaica. However, relations were irreparable,
the French
believing
they had been cheated out of their fair share of the loot
from Puerto
del
Principe. Morgan reported that the French “wholly refused
to join us in
that
action, as being too full of danger and difficulty.”
(Marley, 256)
The French
weren’t
far wrong. Most privateers would have conceded defeat, but
Morgan,
unperturbed,
continued with his original fleet of ten ships and only
five hundred
men. A
combination of a rousing speech and surprise night attacks
on two forts
saw
Morgan triumph, taking the third fort without any Spanish
resistance.
He even
held off a counter-attack through a carefully planned
ambush of the
Spanish
fleet in a narrow passage. He and his men inhabited Puerto
Bello for over two
months in 1668, collecting all the wealth they could find
and ransoming
the Spanish
for their safety. Through this ransom alone, they raked in
100,000
pieces of
eight (after initially demanding 350,000), raising the
total earned on
this
daring voyage to over 200,000. Now that
was a fortune.
In October 1668,
Morgan and his crew were off again, this time aiming a
pre-emptive
strike at
Cartagena. Morgan’s superior, Governor
Modyford,
felt the Spanish were
preparing an attack on Jamaica, and that this tactic would
stall the
attack or
even prevent it altogether.
However,
after
setting up base on nearby Cow Island to prepare for the
attack,
disaster struck
in January 1669. Morgan’s prime boat, the frigate HMS
Oxford, exploded. While our fearless
captain was
renowned for
leading something of a charmed life during battles on land,
it is worth
noting
that he was rather unlucky at sea. Apparently, some of his
crew, the
worse for
drink, had lit candles near the gunpowder store. Morgan sat
down to
dinner on
the quarterdeck with the other captains of his flotilla:
Aylett,
Bigford,
Collier, Morris, Thornbury, and Whiting. The ship’s surgeon,
Richard
Browne,
later wrote: “I was eating my dinner with the rest, when the
mainmasts
blew out
and fell upon Captains Aylett, Bigford and others, and
knocked them on
the
head.” (Marley, 258) Out of two
hundred
on board, only six men and four boys survived the blast –
including,
somehow, Captain
Morgan.
So, with a large
chunk of
his 900 to 1,000-strong
army of freebooters now gone, even the ambitious Morgan knew
he was in
no state
to attack one of the main Spanish strongholds. He instead
decided to
target the
harbour town of Maracaibo. This venture proved of little
value, though,
as most
of the inhabitants had fled, and those who were rounded up
provided
little monetary
gain. Sailing farther into the Lagoon of Maracaibo toward
the town of
Gibraltar, Morgan and his crew were again disappointed, as
most
inhabitants had
heard of his coming and already fled. (They may well have
been primed
for defending
their lot, as Jean Davide Nau, also known as Franҫois
l’Olonnais, had conducted the very same raid, along with
famous
freebooter
Michel de Basco, two years earlier.)
It was when Morgan
sailed back to Maracaibo itself that he famously met with
Vice-Admiral
Alonso
de Campos y Espinosa and his three powerful men-o’-war. On 1
May 1669,
an epic
battle took place, which saw another of Morgan’s ingenious
plans come
to
fruition. They sailed a ship towards Campos’ flagship, Magdalena,
as if to board her, but when the Spanish surged over the
bulwarks, they found Morgan’s ship full of wooden dummies
and a
skeleton crew
hastily decamping over the far side. It was a brilliant
trap: the ship
was on
fire and quickly engulfed the Spaniards’ 38-gun ship. Campos
leapt into
the
water and watched Magdalena sink,
while the San Luis fled and, after
being run aground, was deliberately set ablaze to avoid
capture.
Morgan’s
buccaneers managed to capture the third ship, Marquesa.
Admiral Campos
survived,
securing himself in the fort of San Carlos, some way inland.
A
stalemate
ensued. Morgan controlled Maracaibo and all the ships, but
Campos
controlled
the only exit from the lagoon. While the Spanish citizens
were happy to
pay a
ransom of 20,000 pesos to allow Morgan’s exit and save their
city from
being
attacked, Campos steadfastly refused to let him out so
easily.
It was then that
Morgan’s cunning came into its element. He faked a night
attack on San
Carlos.
Boats full of men were shuttled to and fro from ship to
mainland,
making it
appear as if Morgan planned to raid the fort. Campos turned
all his
guns toward
that side of the fort and, as soon as he did so, Morgan
cheekily
slipped out of
the unguarded channel of the lagoon. What Campos hadn’t
realised was
that none
of the buccaneers had actually set foot on the mainland.
They sat up in
the
boats on the way there, and then lay flat to give the
impression of an
empty
boat on the way back.
Morgan arrived
back in Port Royal a hero, while Campos was promptly
deported back to
Spain for
questioning. Eventually, he was cleared and rewarded for his
bravery in
the
battle with the now infamous Captain Morgan.
After this, Morgan
set his sights more on raising his status than plundering
the Spanish.
With his
riches he invested in sugar plantations and soon became
known for his
immense
wealth as well as his infamy.
By 1670 he was at
it again, though, having been made Admiral and
Commander-in-Chief of
all the
ships belonging to Jamaica. With thirty-eight captains under
his
control – English,
French, and Dutch – and 2,000 men, it was the largest
buccaneer venture
ever
mounted. He reconquered Providencia Island at Christmas,
overcame Fort
San
Lorenzo, and headed for his main goal: Panama, the legendary
Spanish
city of
the Indies. Morgan sought to succeed where England’s hero,
Sir Francis
Drake,
had failed many decades before.
In
January 1671,
now with a slightly reduced army of 1,500 men, Morgan began
an epic
seven-day
trek through the jungle towards Panama, and another
300 died due to
the difficult
conditions and lack of provisions. Still, the Spaniards
retreated from
the
marauding hordes. When the buccaneers reached Panama,
Governor Juan
Perez de
Guzman possessed an army of similar size, but his men were
inexperienced, had
few firearms, and no artillery. Their resistance was brave,
at first,
but
short-lived; half of them fled after the first shots were
fired,
leaving around
500 dead. Only fifteen buccaneers had fallen; it seemed
Morgan’s
cutthroat
reputation went before him, and the mere mention of his name
struck
fear into
the hearts of the Spaniards. The city was burned to the
ground, and
Morgan’s
men made off with 400,000 pieces of eight. While this was a
sizeable
amount,
records revealed the men were disappointed because they were
led to
believe the
city, the capital of Spanish America and thus one of the
richest cities
in the world,
would hold untold riches because everything passed through
Panama on
its way
back to Spain. Unbeknownst to Morgan’s crew, all of the
silver gathered
from
the Peruvian mines and the merchants’ fortunes had been
taken to safety
prior
to the attack.
Worse was to
follow. Remember the communication problems alluded to in
the
introduction? Well,
word came to the Caribbean that the attack had actually come
during a
time of
peace, England and Spain having signed a treaty. Despite the
message
having
been received after Morgan set sail on his bloody mission,
Governor
Modyford,
who had sanctioned the attacks, was arrested and immediately
dispatched
to
England. It is thought this was a symbolic gesture to
appease the
Spanish, but
as more and more news reached the Spanish court of Morgan’s
role in the
attacks, there was outrage at his remaining in Jamaica.
Governor
Modyford’s
replacement, Sir
Thomas
Lynch, was reluctant to deport the island’s hero, but
eventually he obeyed and sent Morgan on his way back to
London.
Curiously,
perhaps due to reported “ill health,” which may or may not
have been
genuine, Morgan
never met the same fate as Modyford, imprisonment in the
Tower
of London, but
he did remain a prisoner of the State for some time. During
this
period, he
seemed to enjoy himself more than the average prisoner,
though,
swanning around
the capital, dining at the houses of lords, and regaling
them with
tales of his
exploits. Modyford was incarcerated for two years, but
eventually was
not
charged and allowed to return to his plantations in Jamaica.
In 1672 the
English were at war with the Dutch, and without Morgan,
their fearless
leader,
to guide them, things weren’t going too well in the
Caribbean. King
Charles
II
sought the advice of Morgan, who explained, in writing,
exactly what
should be
done. Impressed with his expertise, the king granted the
infamous
buccaneer a
pardon, knighted him, and then sent him back to his beloved
Jamaica in
1674.
Having reached the
grand old age of forty-five and being a man of great respect
and power,
Morgan became
Deputy Governor of Jamaica, for which he showed great
aptitude. Such a
good
politician was he that he even sued the English publishers
of Alexander
Exquemelin’s
tales about his activities in the Americas. The
English translation
defamed
Morgan and claimed he had never served his full three years
of
indenture, which
called his honour into question. Henry Morgan might have
been a
heavy-drinking,
ruthless, fighting man in a bloody trade, but he was never
the
sadistic,
drunken lout that Exquemelin’s English publishers made out
in the book.
So, far from being
a pirate of yore, Morgan is considered by many to be one of
England’s
finest
exports, a superb military strategist with leadership
qualities to
boot. Spanish
readers may disagree, since he committed terrible
atrocities, including
torture, on their towns and people. He has even been
described as a man
who
“used the clergy as human shields, tortured civilians,
organized
gigantic
looting expeditions in the full knowledge that no state of
war existed
between
the parties, and did not hesitate to put whole populations
to the
sword.”
(Weston)
Let’s just say
that
today Morgan would surely be tried for crimes against
humanity. Like
all good
politicians he grew fat in his “old age,” and on 25 August
1688, he
died in his
fifties of “dropsy” (called oedema
nowadays), basically severe swelling, “the
result of being ‘much given to drinking and staying up too
late,’
according to
his physician.” (Marley, 264) He left behind a personal
estate worth
over
£5,000. He had not borne any children, but the legacy he
left
behind more than
made up for this. Though this was something of a demure end
for a
cutthroat
buccaneer, he was nevertheless celebrated as a hero in
England and
Jamaica and buried
with a twenty-two-gun salute from all the ships in Port
Royal harbour.
For additional
information, Jude and I recommend the following:
Cordingly, David. Under
the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life
Among the Pirates.
Random House, 1995.
Earle, Peter. The
Sack of Panamá: Captain Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean.
Thomas
Dunne, 1981.
Exquemelin,
Alexander O. The Buccaneers of America
translated by Alexis Brown.
Dover, 1969.
Franco. “The
Life and
Times of Sir Henry Morgan,” Franco’s
Cybertemple.
[accessed 19
September 2012].
Guttman, Robert.
“Henry
Morgan:
The Pirate Who Invaded
Panama in 1671,” Military History
October 1991 [accessed at Historynet.com on 19 September
2012].
Haring, Clarence
Henry. The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII
Century.
Methuen
& Co., 1910.
Hickman,
Kennedy. “Privateers
&
Pirates: Admiral
Sir Henry Morgan,” About.com [accessed 19 September
2012].
Kemp, P. K., and
Christopher Lloyd. Brethren of the Coast:
Buccaneers of
the
South Seas. St. Martin’s, 1960.
Little,
Benerson. How
History’s Greatest Pirates Pillaged, Plundered, and Got
Away With It.
Fair
Winds, 2011.
Marley, David F.
“Morgan,
Sir
Henry” in Pirates of the Americas.
ABC-CLIO,
2010,
1:251-264.
Minster,
Christopher. “Captain
Morgan,
Greatest of the
Privateers,” About.com [accessed 19 September 2012].
“San
Salvador,
Cuba and Hispaniola: AD 1492-1493” in History
of
the Caribbean (West Indies)
at History World [accessed 24 September 2012].
“Spanish-English
Rivalry
in the Caribbean, 1498-1670”
at National Humanities Center’s Toolbox Library: Primary
Resources in
U.S.
History & Literature. [accessed 19 September 2012]
Talty, Stephan.
Empire
of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the
Epic Battle for
the
Americas, and the Catastrophe that Ended the Outlaws’
Bloody Reign.
Crown,
2007.
Tortello,
Rebecca. “Henry
Morgan:
The Pirate King,” Pieces of the Past
9
December 2002.
[http://jamaica-gleaner.com/pages/history/story0038.htm
accessed 19 September 2012 -- link no longer active
8/1/2015].
Weston, John. “Henry
Morgan, 1635-1688,” Data Wales
[accessed 19 September 2012].
About
the Author:
Jude Ellery is the
web manager for Fancy Dress Party Ideas,
which sells cheap
pirate fancy dress
online for buccaneers, swashbucklers, pirates, and
privateers. They are
situated
on the south coast of the UK, and recently ordered in
loads of new
pirate
accessories.
Pirates
and Privateers
