Capt. Henry Morgan, the leader of the expedition against Panama, achieved the greatest fame among all these lawless chieftains. Charles II knighted him and made him governor of Jamaica, where he turned upon his late companions and waged a bitter warfare. An early exploit of Morgan was the taking of Puerto Velo, one of the strongest fortresses in New Spain. Surprising the sentry at night he easily captured the outer defences. The prisoners were placed in a room with several barrels of gunpowder and as they were blown into the air the buccaneers assaulted the citadel. The cloisters had been seized and the priests and nuns were forced to climb the scaling ladders before the men, “the religious men and women ceasing not to cry to the governor and beg him to deliver the castle, and so save both his and their lives,” writes Esquemeling. The castle surrendered at last, though “with great loss of the said religious people.” The loot amounted to over 250,000 pieces of eight and much other spoil which was soon squandered at Port Royal, a pirate town in Jamaica that supplied almost unlimited resources for debauchery.
SIR HENRY MORGAN, THE BUCCANEER, BEFORE PANAMA
From an engraving in Johnson’s “General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Pyrates,” etc., London, 1734, in the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Harvard College Library]
The capture of Panama took place in 1671. Morgan’s fleet sailed from Jamaica and with only twelve hundred men he crossed the Isthmus. The Spaniards learned of his coming and carried away or destroyed all food stuffs along the route so that when the buccaneers came in sight of the South Sea, after a nine days’ march, they were nearly famished and in desperate straits. A few days’ rest put them in condition again and with many revengeful oaths they fell upon the defences of the city with irresistible fury. No quarter was given on either side. Soon Panama was in flames. It was four weeks before the fires at last were extinguished and over two hundred great warehouses, seven thousand houses, huge stables that sheltered the horses and mules that transported the golden ingots of the King of Spain, and many other buildings were entirely destroyed. The plunder was immense. On the way back a dispute broke out and when Morgan reached the ships he scuttled all but one and set sail with only his chosen followers. Such treachery was unforgivable and he never afterward led the “Brethren of the Coast.”
Morgan became governor of Jamaica with strict orders to enforce the treaty concluded between England and Spain and relentlessly persecuted those of his late associates who neglected to accept the royal pardon which provided grants of lands to all buccaneers who would abandon the sea and become planters. By proclamation all cruising against Spain was forbidden under severe penalties. Many of the English filibusters accepted the pardon while others became logwood cutters in the Bay of Honduras or raised a black flag and preyed upon the ships of every nation.
The pirate commonwealth at Port Royal was abandoned and such Englishmen as continued to rove joined their French brethren who frequented the island of Tortuga, or crossed the Isthmus and preyed upon the Spanish towns in Peru and the shipping of the Great South Sea. They also captured immense booty at Acapulco where the Spanish ships landed the riches of the Philippines. The peace of Ryswick in 1697 settled the disputes between France and Spain and also sounded the knell of the French filibusters. Before long the buccaneers were absorbed in the population of the various islands in the West Indies and the Spanish galleons again sailed peacefully through the tropic seas.
Another strong influence that led to insecurity on the high seas and eventually to outright piracy was the operation of the English Navigation Acts. European nations were in agreement that the possession of colonies meant the exclusive control of their trade and manufactures. Lord Chatham wrote, “The British Colonists in North America have no right to manufacture so much as a nail for a horse shoe,” and Lord Sheffield went further and said, “The only use of American Colonies, is the monopoly of their consumption, and the carriage of their produce.”[14]
English merchants naturally wished to sell at high prices and to buy colonial raw materials as low as possible and as they were unable to supply a market for all that was produced, the colonies were at a disadvantage in both buying and selling. By the Acts of Navigation certain “enumerated articles” could be marketed only in England. Lumber, salt provisions, grain, rum and other non-enumerated articles might be sold within certain limits but must be transported in English or plantation built vessels of which the owners and three-fourths of the mariners were British subjects. Freight rates also advanced as other nations, notably the Dutch, had previously enjoyed a good share of the carrying trade.
The first Navigation Act was passed in 1647. It was renewed and its provisions enlarged in 1651, 1660, 1663 and later. Before long it was found that these attempts to monopolize the colonial markets resulted in a natural resistance and smuggling began and also an extensive trade with privateers and pirates who brought into all the smaller ports of New England captured merchandise that was sold at prices below the usual market values. Matters went from bad to worse and servants of the Crown frequently combined with the colonists to evade the obnoxious laws. Even the royal governors connived at what was going on. This was particularly true in the colonies south of New England. Colonel Fletcher, the governor of New York, commissioned numerous privateers and received a fee, the equivalent of one hundred dollars per man. These vessels when well away from local jurisdiction became pirates in earnest and ravaged the Red Sea and brought home rich cargoes of East India goods in which the members of the governor’s council obtained their share. Hore, a famous privateer and pirate, was very successful in this trade and Thomas Tew, another freebooter, divided his time between New York, Newport and the Madagascar coast. He was on the black list of the East India Company but Governor Fletcher entertained him at his table and when the Lords of Trade remonstrated, the artful governor replied that he wished to make Captain Tew a sober man and in particular “to reclaime him from a vile habit of swearing,”[15] and as for coming to his table, that was but a common hospitality.
In Rhode Island, the president and four assistants granted these commissions with the condition that the colony was to share in any captures. In 1649, Bluefield or Blauvelt, a Dutch privateersman, brought a prize into Newport, which the governor found was taken during a truce. But there was no man-of-war in the harbor to enforce the law and as the townsfolk wanted to buy the cargo and the sailors wanted the prize money, everybody was satisfied. At a later time Governor Bellomont of New York complained of the Admiralty Court at Newport as too “favourable” to piracies and in Queen Anne’s time, Connecticut and Rhode Island were both complained of because “Her Majesty’s and ye Lord High Admiral’s dues are sunk in condemning prizes.”[16]