Pirates of the Americas

Pirates of the Americas

VOLUME 1: 1650
1685

David F. Marley
Copyright 2010 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Marley, David, 1950-
Pirates of the Americas / David F. Marley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59884-201-2 (hard copy: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-59884-202-9 (e-book)
1. Pirates—America—History—Encyclopedias. 2. America—History, Naval—
Encyclopedias. I. Title.
E18.M45 2010
910.40 5—dc22 2009048318
ISBN: 978-1-59884-201-2
EISBN: 978-1-59884-202-9
14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
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I saw new worlds beneath the water lie,
New people; yea, another sky.
—Thomas Traherne (1637
1674)
 Contents

Volume 1
List of Entries ix
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xix
A Note on Dates xxi
A
Z Entries 1
Documents 417
Chronology 437
Glossary 449
Bibliography 455
Index I-1

Volume 2
List of Entries ix
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xvii
A Note on Dates xix
A
Z Entries 463
Documents 835
Chronology 847
Glossary 851
Bibliography 857
Index I-1

vii
 List of Entries

Abraham’s Cay Avesilla, Alonso de

Account Aviso
Acosta, Gaspar Mateo de Aylett, John
Adam, Captain Azogue
Aernouts, Jurriaen Bab-el-Mandeb
Alarc
on, Juan de Baldridge, Adam
Alford, Lewis Bamfield, John
Allen, Captain Banda del Norte
Allison, Robert Bannister, Joseph
Allword, Captain Barca, Esteban de la
Almiranta Barco luengo or longo


Alvarez, Augustı́n Barlovento, Armada de
Andrade, Alonso Felipe de Barnes, William
Andreis, Bernart Barreda Villegas, Felipe de
Andreson or Andrieszoon, Cornelis Barre’s Tavern
Andrieszoon, Michiel Basque, Michel le
Ansell, John Beare, John Philip
Anstis, Thomas Beauregard, Charles François Le
Apostles Vasseur de Becquel, Captain
Archambaud, Capitaine Beef Island
Armadilla Beeston, Sir William
Arribada Bellamy, Samuel
Artigue, Michel d’, alias ‘‘le Basque’’ Bennett, John
Ash, Isle of Bernanos, Jean, Sieur de
Ashworth, Leigh Bernard, Antoine
Asiento Bernardson, Albert
Astorga, Juan De Bigot
Auger, John Bilbo or bilboes
Augers or Augiers, Chevalier de Billiards

ix
x List of Entries

Billop, Christopher Chivers, Dirck

Binckes, Jacob Cincuentena
Biscayan privateers Clarke, Robert
Blackburne, Lancelot Claverie, Charles de La
Blanco, Augustı́n Clipped money or clippings
Bl
enac, Charles de Courbon, Seigneur ‘‘Clostree,’’ Capitaine
de Romegoux, Comte de Cobham, Nathaniel
Blot, Capitaine Cocket
Blue officers Coffin, Captain
Blunden, Robert Commission port
Bond, George Cooke, Edmond
Bonidel, Capitaine Cooke, John
Bonnet, Stede Cooper, Captain
Boone, John C
ordoba y Z
u~niga, Luis Bartolom
e de
Bot or Botte, Pierre Corneliszoon, Jan
Bourillon, François Corsair
Bouton, Jacques Cl
ement Corso, Juan
Bradish, Joseph Coward, William
Bradley, Joseph Coxon, John
Brand, Bartel Crab Island
Brandenburg privateers Crane, William
Branly, Captain Crijnssen, Abraham
Brasiliano, Rok Cusack, George
Brauns, Koen de Cussy, Pierre-Paul Tarin, Sieur de
Br
eha, Pierre Dampier, William
Breholt, John Darien Colony
Brenningham Daudorus
Brigaut, Nicolas Davis, Captain
Brimacain, George Davis, Edward
Brooks, John Davy, Capitaine
Broome, John Dead Man’s Island
Browne, James Deane, John
Buckingham, Captain Dedenon, Capitaine
Bull, John De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis
Burke, Thomas Boudewijn
Caballero, Andr
es Delacourt, Zachariah
Cachemar
ee Delander, Robert
Cagaway Delbourg, Jean
Callao Delisle, Capitaine
Campos y Espinosa, Alonso de Dempster, Edward
Caper Desenne, Jacques
Capitana Dessaudrays, Capitaine
Careen Devereux, John
Carlile, Charles Dew, George
Cassava Dey, Dennis
Casten, Captain Dockyer, Richard
Castro, Pedro de Dogger
Charte-partie or ‘‘charter party’’ Dotson, Thomas
 List of Entries xi

Doubloon Garcı́a Gal
an, Francisco

D’Oyley, Edward Gerritszoon, Gerrit, alias ‘‘Rock
Dry gripes Brasiliano’’
Dry Tortugas Gobernador de tercio
Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste Gobierno
Ducat Goffe, Christopher
Duchesne, Capitaine Golden Island
Ducking Gonz
alez de Perales, Juan
Duglas, Jean Goodson, William
Duhamel, Capitaine Goody, Captain
Dumesnil, Sieur Graham, Captain
Earring Grammont, ‘‘Chevalier’’ or Sieur de
Eaton, John Gregge, Thomas
Edmunds, John Grenade
Elliott, Stephen Griffin, John
Enfants perdus Griffin, Thomas
Engag
e Grillo, Diego
England, Edward Grogniet, François, alias
Essex, Cornelius ‘‘Cachemar
ee’’
Estr
ees, Jean, Comte and later Duc d’ Grubing, Nathaniel
Evertsen de Jongste or ‘‘the Guardacostas
Youngest,’’ Cornelis, alias ‘‘Kees Guittard, Louis
the Devil’’ Guy, Richard
Evertsen, Jacob Hadsell, Charles
Every, Henry Half-Way Tree
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier Hall, Jacob
Fackman, Jacob Hamilton, Lord Archibald
Fenn, John Hamlin, Jean
Fermı́n de Huidobro, Juan Hamlyn or Hamlin, William
Fernando, Francis Handley, Thomas
Fernando, Luis Hardue or Herdue, Captain
FitzGerald, Philip Harismendy, Louis de
Flibustier Harmenson, John
Flag of truce Harris, Peter (fl. 1671
1680)
Flip Harris, Peter (fl. 1684
1686)
Flota Harris, Thomas
Flute Hawkins, Captain
Flying Gang Hawkins, Thomas
Forban Henley, Thomas
Ford, Anthony Hewetson, Thomas
Forlorn Hicks, Gaspar
Francis, Captain Hispaniola
Franco, Capitaine Hoar or Hore, John
Freebooter Hoces, Esteban de
Gaines, Hugh Holman, William
Galeones Holmes, Sir Robert
Galesio, Francisco Hornigold, Benjamin
Gallion, Captain Howard, Thomas
xii List of Entries

Huidobro, Mateo Alonso de Le Sage, François

Hyne, Captain Lescuyer, Jean
Inch of candle Le Serf, Jean
Indigo Lessone, Capitaine
Interloper Let-pass
Ireland, John Letter of marque
Isla del Muerto Letter of reprisal
Jacobs, Captain Lewis, John
James, John Light money
James, William Lilburne, Robert
Janszoon, Pieter Lilly, Thomas
Jennings, Henry Lisle or Lyle, Captain
Johnson, George Logwood or dyewood
Johnson, Peter Lormel, Capitaine
Jolly Roger Loverell, Captain
Judgment Cliff Low, Edward or ‘‘Ned’’
Kaper Lucas, Jan
Keelhauling Luque, Mateo
Kelley, James Lussan, Ravenau de
Kidd, William Lynch, Sir Thomas
Kilduijvel Machado, Juan
Knight, William Madagascar
La Barca, Esteban de Magott, Thomas
La Buze, Louis Maintenon, Charles François
La Claverie, Charles de d’Angennes, Marquis de
La Garde, Pierre Mal de Siam
Laars Maldonado de Aldana, Antonio
Labat, Jean-Baptiste Malherbe, Abraham
Laguna de T
erminos Mansfield, Edward
Langford, Abraham Manso de Contreras Rodrı́guez de
Laques or Jacques, Captain Mendoza, Andr
es
Larco, Juan de Mar del Sur, Armada del
Lartigue Markham, John
Laurens, Pieter Maroon
Layseca y Alvarado, Antonio de, Maroon Islands
conde de la Laguna de T
erminos Martel, James
League Martien, David
Le Basque, Michel Martı́n, Alonso
Lecat, Jelles de Martin, Christopher
Le Moign, Bernard Martı́nez Freire, Antonio
Le Moyne d’Iberville, Pierre Matross
Lenham, George Mayes, William
L
eog^ane Michele, Biagio
LePain or Pain, Pierre Miguel, Blas
Lepene, Jacques Mitchell, Abraham
Le Picard, Capitaine Modyford, Sir Thomas
Le Roux, Anne Moidore
Leroux or Le Roux, Jean

Montauban or Montauband, Etienne de
 List of Entries xiii

Moreau, Jean Piragua

Moreno Mondrag
on, Blas Pistole
Morgan, Edward Plate fleet
Morgan, Sir Henry Poincy, Philippe Lonvilliers de
Morpain, Pierre Pollet, Diego
Morris, John Pons, Jean
Morro Port Royal
Moseley or Maudsley, Samuel Pouançay, Jacques Nepveu, Sieur de
Mosquito Coast Pound, Thomas
Mum Powell, Henry
Mu~ noz Gadea, Juan Prins, Laurens
Munro, Captain Puerto del Prı́ncipe
Murphy Fitzgerald, John Puerto Real
Murphy, John Punch house
Musson, Matthew Purchase
Myngs, Sir Christopher Purdue, John
Narborough, Sir John Rack
Nau, Jean-David, alias ‘‘Capitaine Rackham, John, alias ‘‘Calico Jack’’
François’’ or ‘‘François l’Olonnais’’ Reijniersen, Claes
Navarro, Baltasar Reiner, George
Neville, Edward Reyes, Andr
es de los
New Providence (Nassau) Reyning, Jan Erasmus
Nichols, Bernard Richier, Isaac
Noland, Richard Risby, James
Norman, Richard Roberts, Bartholomew
Norton, Benjamin Roche, George
Ogeron, Bertrand d’, Sieur de Ruyter, Jan Barendszoon
La Bouere Sainte-Barbe or Santa B
arbara
Orange, Pierre d’ Salmigondis
Outlaw, John Salt Tortuga
Oxe, Robert Salter, Thomas
Paine, Thomas Sample, Robert
Para S
anchez Xim
enez, Jos
e
Partridge Santo y se~na
Patache Sargento mayor
Pednau, Jacques Sawkins, Richard
Pedrero Scott, Lewis
Pennon, Capitaine Scroope or Scroop, Robert
P
erez de Guzm
an y Gonzaga, Juan Searle, Robert
P
erez Machado, Juan Seegar, Edward
Petersen, Jon ‘‘Senolve, Captain’’
Petit, Capitaine Sergeant, Benjamin
Phips, Sir William Sharpe, Bartholomew
Picard, Capitaine Le Shirley, Thomas
Pichelingue Sibata Kempo
Pieces of eight Sir Cloudesley
Pignier, Captain Situados
Pillet, François Skull and crossbones
xiv List of Entries

Skutt, Benjamin Van Klijn, Mozes

Smith, Samuel Vane, Charles
Socarras y Ag€ uero, Benito Van Tuyl, Otto Janszoon
Somers Island Vaughan, John, Third Earl of
South Sea Carberry
Spanish Main Veale, Captain
Speirdyke, Bernard Claesen Ventura Sarra, Juan
Spurre, George Vercoue, Capitaine
Stanley, George Vertpr
e or Vespre, Capitaine
Starr, John Vigneron, Capitaine
State’s or States’ ships Vigot or Bigot, Guillaume
Steadman, Captain Villebon, Jean
Stepney, Robert Vonck, Maerten Jansse
Strong, John Wade, Captain
Subigaray ‘‘Chipi’’ (i.e., Junior), Wafer, Lionel
Joannes de Waggoner
Sunday Keeping Wanton, William
Swan, Charles Waters, Samson
Swart, Adriaen van Diemen Weatherbourne, Francis
Swayne, Peter Weatherhill, James
Taverns Wentworth, John
Teach, Edward Westerband, Laurens
Tennant, Matthew Whetstone, Sir Thomas
Tenths Wild Coast
Tew, Thomas Willems, Jan, alias ‘‘Jantje’’ or
Thatch, Edward, alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ ‘‘Janke’’
Thurston, Humphrey Williams, Maurice
Toccard, Jean Williams, Thomas
Tortille Windsor, Thomas, 7th Baron Windsor
Towers, Captain and 1st Earl of Plymouth
Townley, Francis Woodruffe, Thomas
Trepan Woollerly or Woolerly, Thomas
Tristan, Jean Woolley, Conway
Tryer, Matthew Wright, George
Turtle Wroth, Peter
Valentin, Pierre Yeats, Charles
Van de Veld, Andries Yellows, Captain
Van Hoorn, Nikolaas Zoby, Joseph
 Preface

CRADLE OF PIRACY
Three-and-a-half centuries ago, rovers made a fertile hunting-ground of the West
Indies. Most of its earliest Spanish residents had long since been lured away from
their original Antillean settlements onto the American mainland, attracted by the
vast wealth of the native kingdoms of Mexico and Peru, where rich mines and roll-
ing estates could be won, tended by millions of docile vassals. Private seamen
from other rival nations in Western Europe had consequently been drifting into this
Caribbean vacuum for decades, learning how to resupply ashore amid its scores of
unguarded, lonely inlets and anchorages whenever they mounted raids against
nearby Spanish-American ports during wartime. Some had also returned during the
rare intervals of peace to poach exotic produce or even trade with the local Span-
iards, who—despite angry prohibitions emanating from bankrupt and powerless
Madrid—discreetly welcomed this clandestine traffic.
In the process, such trespassers had become familiar with these torrid coastal
stretches, establishing transient shore camps that private companies eventually
wished to exploit as commercial outposts. By the mid-17th century, small foreign
enclaves were rapidly beginning to multiply throughout the Windward and Lee-
ward Islands, and their ships roamed ever more confidently throughout the archi-
pelagos. First among these early pioneers were the Dutch: shrewd, tough traders
whose West Indische Compagnie dominated early traffic throughout these waters.
Then in December 1654, a major English expedition also arrived, dispatched by
Sir Oliver Cromwell to conquer a new stronghold in the West Indies, in violation
of the uneasy peace prevailing with Spain. Although his Puritan-led army failed
in its attempt to capture Santo Domingo, smaller Jamaica was nonetheless
overrun and retained. Ten years of intermittent warfare ensued, as the enfeebled
Spanish-American administrations in the surrounding region vainly tried to drive

xv
xvi Preface

out this interloper English colony, in turn provoking repeated Jamaican counter-
strikes.
A similar friction soon followed on Hispaniola as well, where French
hunters—known as boucaniers, from their custom of curing meat in extemporized
smokehouses called boucans—probed ever deeper inland from its western and
northern shores to pursue wild cattle and to clear lands for plantations. The few
Spanish inhabitants clustered farther southeast around the City of Santo Domingo
bitterly contested these encroachments, thereby further feeding the surly undertone
that would come to characterize this entire troubled theater. Frequent clashes bred
a distinct class of irregular seaborne mercenaries—privateers or flibustiers—who
made descents on their enemies under any flag of convenience, motivated princi-
pally by personal ambition and a thirst for reprisal. European conflicts also added
to this ceaseless turmoil, hostilities on the far side of the Atlantic being carried
over into the West Indies whenever they erupted.
The free-wheeling Caribbean corsairs often reinterpreted these distant disputes
to suit their own particular purposes, such as when Jamaica’s licensed privateers
flatly refused to attack their country’s nominal Dutch enemies during the Second
Anglo-Dutch War of 1665 to 1667, instead arguing that ‘‘there was more profit
with less hazard’’ to be gotten against the neutral Spaniards, and so confining most
of their subsequent operations against that traditional foe. Their French colleagues
would do much the same, as when Jean-David Nau l’Olonnais swept through the
hapless Laguna de Maracaibo during the summer of 1666, in contravention of the
prevailing peace between Paris and Madrid. Such self-serving attitudes toward duty
even extended to joint operations conducted with royal expeditions sent out from
Europe, making local privateers seem like unreliable auxiliaries, when compared
to the more sternly-disciplined regular troops transported across the ocean.
Soon, these freebooters’ propensity for unauthorized attacks began to exasperate
home governments, as well as the emerging class of merchant traders and planters
in the West Indies themselves, who required peace and stability for their commer-
cial ventures to prosper. This growing intolerance would lead to the arrest of both
Henry Morgan and Governor Sir Thomas Modyford of Jamaica, following the
spectacular peacetime raid which they had launched against Panama in January
1671. Yet the prolonged conflict that ensued between France against Spain and
Holland for the remainder of the 1670s provided ample employment for a whole
new generation of mercenaries, who would continue making assaults even after
peace had been temporarily restored in Europe with the signing of the Treaty of
Nijmegen in the spring of 1679. Three years later, a citizen from the Spanish-
American port of Cartagena would lament that during this supposed ‘‘peace’’:

Trinidad has been robbed once; Margarita and Guayana burnt once and sacked
twice; La Guaira sacked once and its inhabitants sold, the ransom for its
women and children amounting to more than 100,000 pesos, in addition to the
300,000 which [the pirates] seized in the city and other damages. [These
raiders also] entered Puerto Caballos and sacked Valencia, which is more than
twenty leagues inland. Maracaibo has been robbed many times, and in the
 Preface xvii

occupation of 1678, the enemy remained more than six months, reaching Tru-
jillo, which is more than sixteen days’ journey inland . . . and causing such
heavy damage to its farms, that whereas before they provided twenty shiploads
of cacao [a year], today they produce no more than four. The city of Rı́ohacha
has been abandoned, the city and garrison of Santa Marta sacked more than
three times and burnt once, from which its citizens have yet to recover. And
here in Cartagena, which formerly had more than twenty shipowners, today not
a single one remains.

Still worse was to follow, for over the span of the next few years the buccaneers
would attain the zenith of their power under such gifted leaders as Laurens de
Graaf and the Sieur de Grammont, capturing major port-cities such as Veracruz
and Campeche with impunity, as well as penetrating and ravaging the vulnerable
Pacific Ocean.
Yet ironically, these raiders’ very success would also contribute to the begin-
ning of their decline during the second half of the 1680s, as many smaller Span-
ish-American outposts had been abandoned—thereby providing fewer easy targets
for small pirate bands—while large garrisons became concentrated and more heav-
ily fortified. Freebooter assemblies by now attracted so many volunteers, that no
prize except the very richest city could possibly satisfy all of its participants, when
booty had to be split up so many different ways at the conclusion of such a cam-
paign, and worthy targets were now increasingly beyond their grasp. Simple mat-
ters of supply became a constant worry for some pirate commanders, and the
number of safe havens where rovers might dispose of their plunder and make
repairs, grew less available every year. A few rovers, men such as Michiel
Andrieszoon and Jan Willems, even took to traveling as far north as Boston or
Rhode Island to find at least a temporary sanctuary, until this venue too was closed
off to them. The first great flush of Piracy was drawing to a close.
 Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge the generous assistance provided by

Dr. Basil Kingstone and Graham Staffen of the University of Windsor, Ontario,
Canada; M. Raynald Laprise of Quebec City, Canada; M. Roberto Barazzutti of
Paris; Dr. William Autry; Lic. Leonor Ortiz Monasterio, Directrix of the Archivo
General de la Naci
on, Mexico; Dr. Pedro Gonz
alez Garcı́a, Director of the Archivo
General de Indias, Seville; Prof. Joel H. Baer of Macalester College, Saint Paul,
Minnesota; Miguel Laburu Mateo of the Sociedad de Oceanografia de Guip
uzcoa
of San Sebasti
an, Spain; Walter Nebiker of the State of Rhode Island and Provi-
dence Plantations Historical Preservation Commission of Providence, Rhode
Island; Dr. Ronald B. Prud’homme van Reine of the Nederlands Scheepvaartmu-
seum, Amsterdam; Capit
an de Fragata Jorge Ortiz Sotelo of the Instituto de Estu-
dios Hist
orico
Marı́timos of Lima, Peru; Ms. Hendrika Ruger and Ms. Joan
Magee of Windsor, Ontario; Dr. Jean Starr of Edinburgh; M. Christian Pfister of
Dunkerque, France; Dr. Charles T. Gehring of the New Netherland Project of
Albany, New York; and many other countless friends and colleagues who have
helped with this project.

xix
 A Note on Dates

By the 16th century, the Julian calendar—named in honor of its ancient Roman re-
viser, Julius Caesar—had no longer coincided with the seasons or new moons. As
a result, after lengthy studies by the Neapolitan astronomer Aloysius Lilius and
debates among many other scholars, Pope Gregory XIII had issued a bull in March
1582 which declared that a new calendar was to be introduced: in practical terms,
the day following the feast of Saint Francis on October 4, 1582, rather than being
reckoned as October 5, was instead to be designated as October 15, so as to restore
all subsequent equinoxes to their proper cycle.
This shift would be accepted and implemented in most of Italy, Spain, Portugal,
and France (two months later—French dates passing from December 9 to 20
1582), although most of the provinces of The Netherlands and Germany introduced
it as of 1583. Protestant England, however—being opposed to any hint of Catholic
suzerainty—refused to comply. Consequently, from 1582 through 1700 the English
‘‘Old Style’’ Julian calendar would lag 10 days behind the ‘‘New Style’’ Gregorian
calendars by then in common use among the Spanish, French, Dutch, and
Portuguese.
And as a further complication, English calendars would still retain their ancient
observance of New Year as falling on March 24
25, especially in legal or finan-
cial documentation, necessitating a double indication in ordinary correspondence
for any date which happened to fall between January 1 and March 24. For exam-
ple, in a dispatch sent in August 1669 by King Charles II to Sir Thomas Temple,
his Governor for Nova Scotia, it was mentioned that ‘‘His Majesty did by his let-
ters of 8th March 1668/9 signify his final pleasure’’—meaning a previous
communiqu
e, dated that same year on March 8, 1669 (O.S.). Such discrepancies
became even more difficult whenever corresponding from abroad, as when the
English Ambassador William Lockhart wrote a report from the French court
to Secretary of State John Thurloe in London, dated ‘‘Paris, January 27/17,

xxi
xxii A Note on Dates

1656/57’’—having to combine the correct New Style date of January 27, 1657
used in France, with the Old Style date of January 17, 1656 recognized in
England.
Foreign treaties or arrangements would routinely feature double-dates, whenever
dealing with English matters. For instance, the Dutch government at The Hague—
in the immediate aftermath to the Third Anglo-Dutch War—issued a passport
dated on January 8/18, 1675 ‘‘for the Hunter man-of-war, Captain Richard Dicken-
son, which His Majesty of Great Britain is sending to convoy the ships America
and Hercules to Surinam in pursuance of the 5th Article of the Treaty of 9/19 Feb-
ruary 1674,’’ to withdraw its English occupiers.
For purposes of this book, though, all dates have been given in our modern Gre-
gorian Style, unless specifically marked ‘‘(O.S.)’’ to designate the old English
style.
 A

The greatest fear that I perceived possessed the Spaniards in this voyage,
was about the island of Providence, called by them Santa Catarina,
from whence they feared lest some English ships should come out
against them with great strength. They cursed the English in it,
and called the island the den of thieves and pirates.
—Thomas Gage, The English American, 1648

ABRAHAM’S CAY attempt to install an advance trading-

Seventeenth-century name for the
pirate lair known today as Bluefields
in Nicaragua.
During the Hispano-Dutch wars of
the 1620s, the young brothers Abraham
and Willem Albertszoon Blauveldt—
originally from the fishing-village of
Monnikendam near Amsterdam in North
Holland—had prowled the Caribbean
aboard privateers. They subsequently
began helping the new English Puritan
colony that was established as of 1630
on Providence (modern Santa Catalina)
Island. Three years afterward, they were
veteran West Indian hands and piloted
Sussex Camock when he crossed over to
the Central American mainland, to
outpost at Cape Gracias a Dios.
Although this English toehold was
abandoned by June 1635, the Blauveldts
had also reconnoitered farther to its south,
and discovered a wide sheltered anchor-
age at the mouth of what the Spaniards
termed the Escondido or ‘‘Hidden’’ River.
Dense tropical foliage made its contours
almost indistinguishable from out at sea,
no regular traffic passed nearby, and no
Spaniards lived in its vicinity as its natives
were hostile to them, but could be be-
friended. The long spit of land enclosing
this anchorage was also severed from the
mainland by shallow channels at both
ends, and so provided a naturally defensi-
ble position. Both brothers had therefore
sailed together for England less than two

1
2 Abraham’s Cay
years later, in hopes of obtaining support
from the Providence Island Company
Directors to found a new colony there.
Abraham had served his way across the
Atlantic as first mate of the Company ship
Expectation, which dropped anchor in
London’s roadstead by late March 1637.
He appeared before a Company commit-
tee meeting in Brooke House on June 14,
1637 (O.S.), describing his discovery as
‘‘a good harbor, a mile-and-a-half in
breadth at its mouth, that he was two
miles up the main and found the country
overgrown with silk grass, and a river
eight or ten feet deep, and 30 feet broad.’’
Yet the Company—already drained
of funds, and with no returns as yet from
their considerable Antillean invest-
ments, beyond bitter complaints from
starving settlers—did not act on Blau-
veldt’s proposal. Instead, he was offered
40 shillings a month for his services in
January 1638, while his brother Willem
was hired to travel into Holland next
month and buy two pinnaces for the
defense of Providence Island. Although
their subsequent movements remain
sketchy, it would appear as if both dis-
appointed brothers turned to Dutch and
Swedish interests to obtain new com-
missions, especially once the Provi-
dence Island colony was wiped out by a
Spanish fleet in May 1641.
Willem would come to base himself
out of New Amsterdam (modern New
York City) for most of that ensuing dec-
ade, making regular privateering forays
into the West Indies against the Span-
iards, until the Treaty of Westphalia
was at last signed in January 1648 and
peace between both nations gradually
returned. Throughout this same period,
Abraham must have been ensconced in
the harbor which they had jointly dis-
covered on Nicaragua’s steamy eastern
coast, presumably receiving annual
visits from his brother. After the English
conquest of Jamaica, it appears as if
Willem quit New Amsterdam and may
have resumed roving in the West Indies.
According to an English document enti-
tled ‘‘An account of the private ships of
war belonging to Jamaica and Tortudos
in 1663,’’ one of the brothers was appa-
rently still living and operating out
of Cape Gracias a Dios that year with
50 men aboard a 3-gun bark, being
regarded as an English ally.
And the name ‘‘Abraham’s Cay’’
would remain known long thereafter.
For example, a Honduran native named
Juan de la Cruz was captured along
with three companions off Amatique in
the spring of 1666, by 30 French buc-
caneers foraging past its coast aboard
three large boats. De la Cruz later testi-
fied to the Spanish authorities how his
captors had carried them to the Cayo
de Abraham, to incorporate them into
the anchored fleet of Jean-David Nau,
better known as Nau l’Olonnais or le
Capitaine François—the ‘‘French Cap-
tain.’’ De la Cruz’s statement was also
corroborated by Jean Villebon, a de-
serter from this French formation, who
asserted that the pirate ships lay ‘‘at a
cay or island named Abraham’’ prepar-
ing 25 or 30 large boats for a raid
upriver into central Nicaragua.
See also
Nau, Jean-David; Villebon, Jean.
References
British Library, Additional Manuscripts
1140, Folio 10.
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 1
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).

Fernow, Berthold, ed., The Records of New
Amsterdam: From 1653 to 1674 (New
York: Knickerbocker Press, 1897).
Marley, David F., ‘‘La d
esertion du
boucanier breton Jean Villebon au Costa
Rica, 1669,’’ G

en
ealogie et Histoire de
la Cara€ıbe [France] 215 (June 2008),
pp. 5585
5587.
ACCOUNT
During the 17th century, an English
slang expression for working on credit,
against future payment.
In the context of privateering, though,
it meant to serve at sea without wages,
such participants expecting to be rewarded
with a share of booty taken during the
forthcoming enterprise. For example, the
instructions issued by Jamaica’s Governor
Sir Thomas Modyford to Henry Morgan
in July 1670, directing him to raise an
expedition of volunteers against the Span-
iards, included the clause: ‘‘You are to take
notice and advise your fleet and soldiers
that you are on the old pleasing account of
no purchase, no pay, and therefore that all
which is got, shall be divided amongst
them, according to accustomed rules.’’
By the early 18th century, this prac-
tice had become so ingrained among
lawless freebooters that ‘‘roving on the
account’’ had taken on a sinister mean-
ing, having become a synonym for out-
right piracy.
See also
Account (Volume 2); Modyford, Sir
Thomas; Morgan, Sir Henry; Purchase.
Reference
Sir Henry Morgan’s Voyage to Panama,
1670 (London: Thomas Malthus, 1683).
Adam, Captain (fl. 1660) 3
ADAM, CAPTAIN (fl. 1660)
Little-known French commander who
was involved in the sack of the Domini-
can town of Santiago de los Caballeros.
According to the chronicler-priest
Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre, some 400
boucaniers on Tortuga Island (Haiti)—
thirsting to avenge the massacre of a
dozen French captives at nearby Monte
Cristi by the hardhearted commander
of a Spanish warship—decided to unite
and commandeer a recently-arrived mer-
chant frigate from Nantes, under a cap-
tain named Lescouble. These freebooters
then elected Captains Delisle, Adam,
Lormel, and Anne Le Roux as their
leaders, and because a peace treaty had
been concluded only that previous year
between France and Spain, also obtained
a letter-of-reprisal from Tortuga’s nomi-
nal English Governor, Elias Watts.
This expedition set sail from Tor-
tuga on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1660,
crowded aboard Lescouble’s frigate
and three lesser craft. They stole
ashore next evening near Puerto Plata,
and moved stealthily for more than 20
miles up into the Cibao Valley over
the next couple of days, hiding during
the daylight hours and following hid-
den jungle trails by night, so as to take
the town of Santiago de los Caballeros
completely by surprise. Arriving within
striking distance by Good Friday night,
they burst out of the nearby woods
next dawn, March 27, 1660. Some 25
or 30 Spaniards were killed outright
during their initial onslaught, and the
Alcalde Mayor seized in his bed.
Delisle’s and Adam’s men ransacked
the buildings on Easter Sunday, even
stripping the church of its ornaments,
before departing with a number of hos-
tages on Monday, March 29, 1660, to
return to the coast. Several hundred
4 Aernouts, Jurriaen (fl. 1674
1676)
Dominican militia cavalrymen—tradi-
tionally organized into companies of
fifty or cincuenta men apiece, hence
known as cincuentenas—had in the in-
terim rallied from throughout the district,
and prepared an ambush ahead of the
retiring French column. The leading two
buccaneers were killed and a two-hour
firefight ensued before the Dominicans
finally broke. The French had suffered 10
killed and a half-dozen wounded during
this affray, yet their column reached the
sea without being challenged again,
because of even heavier Spanish losses.
After waiting in vain on the coast
for several days for ransoms to be paid
for their hostages, these captives were
released, and Adam and the rest of the
formation sailed away to enjoy their
spoils on Tortuga.
See also
Cincuentena; Delisle, Captain; Le Roux,
Anne; Lormel, Captain.
References
Du Tertre, Jean-Baptiste, Histoire g

en
erale
des Antilles de l’Am
erique habit

ees par
les Français (Fort-de-France, 1973
reedition).
Tejera, Emiliano, ‘‘Gobernadores de la Isla
de Santo Domingo, Siglos XVI
XVII,’’
Boletı´n del Archivo General de la
Naci
on [Dominican Republic] 18,
Number 4 (1941), pp. 359
375.
AERNOUTS, JURRIAEN
(fl. 1674
1676)
Dutch corsair who mounted expedi-
tions from Curaçao against the French
in North America and the Caribbean.
Virtually nothing is known about his
early life. Aernouts’ name would be
often misspelled in non-Dutch sources,
appearing as ‘‘Jurrien Arian’’ in French
documents, as ‘‘Juriaen Arentsen’’ or
‘‘Jurian Aronson’’ in English ones.
He was commissioned early in 1674
during the Third Anglo-Dutch War by
Governor Jan Doncker of Curaçao to
attack English and French interests,
The Netherlands having been at war
against both nations for the past two
years. Aernouts consequently ventured
northward with his frigate Vliegende
Postpaard or ‘‘Flying Post-Horse,’’
arriving at New York by early July
1674. This former Dutch colony had
been reconquered by Cornelis Evert-
sen’s naval expedition that previous
summer, yet Aernouts learned that the
Treaty of Westminster had since been
signed back in Europe. By its terms,
peace had been restored between The
Netherlands and England, so that this
North American province was to be
restored to London. As a result, Aer-
nouts decided to instead attack the
French possessions farther north in
Acadia (present-day Maine and New
Brunswick).
North American Campaign
(August 1674)
While preparing for this enterprise, he
met Captain John Rhoades of Boston,
an experienced pilot who was well-
acquainted with those French settle-
ments. Aernouts consequently enlisted
Rhoades and several other Americans,
weighing to circle around into the Bay
of Fundy and disembark 110 men.
Advancing against the French strong-
hold of Pentago€et (modern Penobscot),
 Aernouts, Jurriaen (fl. 1674
1676) 5

NAVAL UNIFORMS
No uniforms were issued to any European navies until well into the 18th century. Prior to
that time, royal warships were only distinguishable from privateers or merchantmen by
the flags which they flew, and the papers which their Captains carried. In the case of a
massive warship bristling with guns or a squadron sweeping the ocean, there could be
no mistaking the presence of a King’s force. Yet the smaller, individual warships sent to
patrol alone off the coasts of the West Indies or Africa were not so imposing, and often
had been purchased by the Crown from private owners. Such vessels were not readily
distinguishable as royal commands, so had to demand recognition from local authorities.
For example, when the 28-gun royal frigate HMS Hunter of Captain Richard
Dickenson—outward bound across the Atlantic for Suriname and Jamaica—paused
outside the island of Madeira on the morning of April 27, 1674 (O.S.), to refresh
‘‘with water and beverage wine, which the victuallers could not furnish her with in
England,’’ that island’s Portuguese Governor sent out:

. . . word that if the Captain would not enter the King’s ship as a merchantman, and
pay port charges and other duties, he would give him no ‘‘produck’’ (prattick in
margin); but Captain Dickenson refused, and desired him to acquaint the Governor
that he would be gone immediately if he would not grant him ‘‘produck,’’ which the
Governor utterly denied, whereupon they thought it convenient to be gone rather
than comply with an unpractical imposition which might reflect on the King’s honor.

Less than a decade later, William Phips would return home to his native Boston in tem-
porary peacetime command of a loaned Royal Navy vessel, the 18-gun Golden Rose
of Algier, of which he was so proud that he insisted every vessel in the harbor salute
his flag, and was fined £10 by a judge ashore for firing five times at the Samuel and
Thomas of London when it failed to do so. Phips was even admonished ‘‘that every-
body in Boston knew very well what he was and from whence he came, and therefore
desired him not to carry it so loftily among his countrymen.’’
Lack of regular naval uniforms would mean that as late as 1719, the marauding
Howell Davis would visit the Portuguese colony of Principe Island in the Guinea Gulf,
masquerading as a Royal Navy officer seeking to resupply his ships after a cruise
against pirates. And for genuine Captains bereft of their papers through capture or
shipwreck, the lack of uniforms sometimes meant imprisonment or even death.

they easily overwhelmed its 30-man
garrison on August 11, 1674, after a
one-hour firefight. Gov. Jacques de
Chambly was captured with a musket
wound in one arm, and the defenses
thrown down. Aernouts buried two
glass bottles on the site, containing a
copy of his commission and an account
of his conquest. He then ravaged sev-
eral smaller outposts, before entering
the Saint-Jean River and seizing the
secondary French fort at Jemsec. The
Lieutenant-Gov. Joybert de Marson
was also taken, and another pair of
bottles buried. Aernouts renamed the
province ‘‘New Holland’’ and then
retired to Boston.
Before departing to return into the
Antilles, he furthermore appointed
Rhoades as Acting-Governor over the
6 Aernouts, Jurriaen (fl. 1674
1676)
colony on September 11, furnishing
him with two small armed vessels.
(The Massachusetts authorities would
later disavow all knowledge of this
arrangement, claiming Aernouts denied
having granted such patents, adding
that he would not ‘‘make himself re-
sponsible for others’ actions’’.) Rhoades
and his subordinates Cornelis Andreson,
Pieter Roderigo, and the Cornishman
John Williams soon created frictions
with their New England neighbors
by impounding trading vessels and
fishing boats in a misguided attempt
to enforce Dutch jurisdiction. A re-
taliatory force consequently sortied
from Boston under Captain Samuel
Moseley, and captured the two coast-
guard vessels in the Bay of Fundy,
bringing their commanders in to be
tried for piracy at Cambridge (Massa-
chusetts) in April 1675. Although ini-
tially condemned to death for piracy,
Roderigo and the rest were eventually
reprieved.
West Indian Campaign
(Spring 1675)
Meanwhile, Aernouts had returned to the
Caribbean, where he made a descent that
following March 1675 against the French
island of Grenada, along with Jan Eras-
mus Reyning and about 100 other Dutch
raiders. They quickly occupied the
island’s principal fort, yet failed to per-
ceive the arrival of enemy reinforcements,
who besieged them inside and starved
them into submission. Aernouts, Reyning,
and other captives were conveyed to Mar-
tinique aboard the 36-gun, 350-ton royal


warship Emerillon or ‘‘Merlin’’ of Cap-
tain Louis Chadeau, Sieur de La Clochet-
erie, but succeeded in escaping that same
June from the plantation where they were
held by drugging their guards’ wine and
then stealing a piragua.
Seven of these escapees laid in a
course for Curaçao, but nearly died when
their boat was carried westward by winds
and current, depositing them on Cora
Island (in modern Venezuela). The Dutch-
men nonetheless eventually succeeded
in reaching Maracaibo, where they were
briefly incarcerated by the Spaniards,
who—although allied with The Nether-
lands against the French—remained sus-
picious of any such trespassers on their
shores. However, by 1676, Aernouts and
his companions were restored to Curaçao.
See also
Evertsen de Jongste, Cornelis; Reyning, Jan
Erasmus.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of
American Colonial Privateering,
1625
1725 (Toulon: G. Mouton,
1926).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Tuttle, Charles W., Captain Francis
Champernowne: The Dutch Conquest of
Acadie, and Other Historical Papers
(Boston, 1889).
Vrijman, L. C., Dr. David van der Sterre:
Zeer aenmerkelijke reysen door Jan
Erasmus Reyning (Amsterdam: P. N.
van Kampen & Zoon, 1937).
Webster, John C., Cornelis Steenwyck:
Dutch Governor of Acadie (Ottawa:
Canadian Historical Association, 1929).


JUAN DE
ALARCON,
(fl. 1684)
Cuban corsair who destroyed the early
English settlement at Nassau in the
Bahamas.
Despite the peace prevailing in
Europe as the year 1684 was dawning,
the cut-and-thrust of local hostilities
nonetheless persisted throughout the
West Indies. Evidently, Alarc
on—his
surname often garbled by the English
as ‘‘Larco’’—sortied early in that New
Year from Havana with a commission
issued by Governor Jos
e Fern
andez de
C
ordoba, aboard a pair of barcos
luengo bearing more than 200 men.
Proceeding first to Andros Island, his
expedition captured an English wood-
cutting sloop, whose captain, William
Bell, was then compelled to pilot this
pair of raider craft into the main an-
chorage at New Providence Island,
entering unexpectedly via its eastern
channel.
Alarc
on stealthily approached this
passage before dawn on a Saturday
morning, January 19, 1684 (O.S.), and at
3:00 A.M. disembarked 150 men a half-
mile outside of ‘‘Charles Town’’—as
Nassau was then known—ordering the
remainder of his men to sail their barcos
luengo into its harbor and board the six
vessels which could be faintly discerned
riding at anchor. The town’s population
consisted of approximately 400 men ca-
pable of bearing arms (although scarcely
half this number actually owned any
guns), plus perhaps 200 women, a like
number of children, and 200 slaves.
Taken utterly by surprise in the first
faint glimmers of dawn, they were inca-
pable of mounting any effective resis-
tance, the former Governor Robert
Clarke having already been wounded
Alarc
on, Juan De (fl. 1684) 7
and captured during the initial phase of
this Spanish disembarkation.
His successor, Robert Lilburne, fled
from his bedroom in the Wheel of For-
tune Inn directly into the jungle, and
later wrote an account of the ensuing
storm of the town itself:
Juan de Larco with two hundred and
fifty Spaniards came down the harbor
and landed at Captain Clarke’s, half a
mile to east of Charlestown. Captain
Clarke being out of doors near the
waterside, some men in ambush shot
him through the thigh and cut his arms
with a cutlass, and then they marched
away with all haste to the town, firing
into some houses as they went. Mean-
time, the Spaniards boarded a pink in
the harbor, and hearing the sound of
their shot and seeing the flash, I or-
dered a great gun at my door to be
fired, to give the alarm. But before it
could be loaded, the Spaniards were
firing into the house, and I slipped out
of the back door into the garden. A
volley whistled past my head and we
fled to the woods behind the town,
where several women and some men
(but only one of them armed) were al-
ready come. Not knowing what had
happened, we waited till evening.
Meanwhile, Captain William Warren’s
10-gun New England frigate Good
Intent and another vessel had managed
to cut their cables and escape across the
bar, leaving the Spaniards to pillage
the remaining four craft, killing three
sailors—two of them aboard the an-
chored ship of Thomas Lacy. Alarc
on’s
land-column took and sacked the town
proper, loading all their plunder aboard
the largest prize—Lacy’s—before torch-
ing the remaining ships, and then sailing
away by that same evening.
8 Alford, Lewis (fl. 1659)
Governor Lilburne and other fright-
ened survivors did not creep back into
their devastated town until next day,
January 20, 1684 (O.S.), finding it
‘‘miserably plundered.’’ The raiders had
apparently told a few escapees that it
‘‘was a return for Vera Cruz’’—in other
words, revenge for the piratical destruc-
tion inflicted on that Mexican port the
previous summer.
Lilburne would write to Governor
Fern
andez at Havana that same February
1684 to ask whether this attack ‘‘was
done by his order, and he not only justi-
fied it, but threatened further hostility
against the Islands.’’ Indeed, Alarc
on had
in the meantime hastened on to northern
Eleuthera Island to visit a like treatment
on its largest English settlement, before
returning to New Providence a few
weeks later on his homeward leg toward
Cuba to complete the destruction of
Charles Town. Witnesses later com-
plained that he ‘‘burnt all the houses,
murdered the Governor and several more
in cold blood, stripped the rest of the
men naked, and carried away the women,
children, and Negroes to Havana.’’ Terri-
fied and demoralized, some 200 colonists
subsequently sought refuge on Jamaica,
while another 50 from northern Eleu-
thera temporarily resettled at Casco
(Maine), leaving the Bahamas largely
denuded of Englishmen until 1686.
See also
Barco luengo.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
ALFORD, LEWIS (fl. 1659)
English privateer who was mentioned in
the journal of Colonel Edward D’Oyley,
Governor of Jamaica, as having been
issued a ‘‘let-pass’’ on November 7, 1659
(O.S.), to sortie from Port Cagway and
operate against the Spaniards.
See also
Let-pass.
Reference
Pawson, Michael and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
ALLEN, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1659)
English privateer mentioned in the
journal of Colonel Edward D’Oyley,
Governor of Jamaica, as having been
issued a ‘‘let-pass’’ for his ship Thriver
on April 1, 1660 [O.S.], to sortie from
Port Cagway, and operate against the
Spaniards.
Reference
Pawson, Michael and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
ALLISON, ROBERT
(fl. 1679
1699)
English privateer who led John Coxon’s
vanguard into Portobelo, and two de-
cades later piloted the Scottish migrants
to Darien.

In late December 1679 after England
had been at peace for several years, and
France and Spain were winding down
their hostilities in the New World, Alli-
son attended a gathering of privateers at
Port Morant off the southeastern tip of
Jamaica with his 18-ton sloop with-
out guns and 24 men, meeting there
with the barks of Coxon, Cornelius
Essex, and Bartholomew Sharpe, as well
as Thomas Magott’s sloop. All five
commanders agreed to unite under
Coxon’s leadership for an assault
against Spanish Portobelo, despite hav-
ing only the sketchiest authorization for
such a venture.
They quit Port Morant on January
17, 1680, and less than 20 miles out at
sea met the brigantine of the French
flibustier Jean Rose, who also joined
their enterprise. The weather turning
foul, Coxon hailed his vessels to make
for Isla Fuerte, 90 miles south-south-
west of Cartagena on the Spanish
Main. Whosoever got there first was
‘‘to leave a note on the Sandy Point, to
satisfy the rest.’’ Only Essex and
Sharpe failed to keep this rendezvous,
while ‘‘four piraguas and six very
good large canoes’’ were captured at
the nearby San Bernardo or ‘‘Friends’’
Islands, to provide landing craft for the
forthcoming disembarkation.
Essex had meanwhile rejoined the
formation, so that they then steered to-
ward Isla de Pinos, 130 miles east of
Portobelo amid the Archipi
elago de las
Mulatas. Only Coxon’s bark, though,
was able to shoulder through the con-
trary winds and gain this place, the re-
mainder being constrained to put into
Isla de Oro or ‘‘Golden Island,’’ some
miles away. There, the pirates
befriended the local Indians, until
Coxon ordered 250 buccaneers into
Allison, Robert (fl. 1679
1699) 9
their boats to row westward along the
coast, and fall on Portobelo before the
Spaniards could learn of their presence.
Nearing their destination, they came on
‘‘a great ship riding at anchor,’’ which
proved to be that of flibustier Capitaine
Lessone, who added 80 Frenchmen to
the force.
Shortly thereafter, the buccaneers
slipped ashore at Puerto del Escribano
in the Gulf of San Blas, proceeding
afoot to avoid Spanish coastal watch-
ers. They marched for three days
‘‘without any food, and their feet
cut with the rocks for want of shoes,’’
until they at last came on an Indian
village three miles from Portobelo on
the morning of February 7, 1680. A
native boy spotted them and shouted
‘‘¡Ladrones!’’ or ‘‘Thieves!’’, setting off
at a run toward the distant city. Coxon
immediately ordered Allison and his
advance unit—commonly known among
buccaneers as the ‘‘forlorn’’—to hurry
in pursuit. Allison’s men trotted gamely,
but the boy arrived half-an-hour before
them, and raised the alarm. The ap-
proaching pirates could hear a signal-
gun being fired, and ‘‘then certainly
knew that we were decried.’’
Nevertheless, their vanguard swept
in while suffering only five or six
wounded, the startled Spaniards scurry-
ing inside their citadel, leaving the
raiders to ransack Portobelo unopposed
over the next two days. The free-
booters thereupon retired 10 miles
northeastward, entrenching themselves
with their booty and a few prisoners
on a cay half-a-mile offshore from
Bastimentos. Allison was again called
on to perform a singular service, being
sent in a boat to recall the anchored
privateer vessels from farther up the
coast. By the time he returned three
10 Allison, Robert (fl. 1679
1699)
days later, several hundred Spanish
troops had appeared and were firing
on the pirates from the beach, yet
they retreated at the sight of these
reinforcements.
The pirates subsequently blockaded
Portobelo, and by ‘‘keeping very good
watch at topmast head,’’ saw a ship
arriving from Cartagena.
Our ships and sloops weighed and
went out and met her, as she was
standing into Portobelo. Captain
Allison coming up with her first in
his sloop engages her, and Coxon
seconding him claps her aboard and
takes her without loss of any men.
Some Spaniards fell, for they fought
about one hour.
The vessel proved to be a new 90-ton
ship mounting eight guns, furthermore
bearing valuable cargo. A general dis-
tribution of booty was consequently
made, resulting in shares of 100
pieces-of-eight per man. Afterward, the
flotilla retired to careen at Bocas del
Toro (at the northwestern extremity of
present-day Panama), where the priva-
teers also found Captains Richard Saw-
kins and Peter Harris.
Once refitted, all the buccaneers
except the French decided to return to
Golden Island, to have the Darien Indi-
ans guide them across the Isthmus to
attack the Spaniards on their Pacific
flank. Coxon, Allison, Cooke, Harris,
Magott, Sawkins, and Sharpe all an-
chored out of sight, close inshore in a
small cove on Golden Island. A watch
was left aboard each vessel, with orders
to rally to Coxon’s and Harris’—the two
largest—if their ships should be discov-
ered. At 6:00 A.M. on Monday, April 15,
1680, 332 buccaneers went ashore to
traverse the Isthmus; among them were
William Dampier, Basil Ringrose, and
Lionel Wafer, all of whom would later
write accounts of these adventures. How-
ever, Allison and Magott ‘‘being sickly
were unable to march’’ and remained
behind.
The rest of the buccaneers disap-
peared into the jungle, overrunning
the inland town of Santa Marı́a 10
days later, at the confluence of the
Chucunaque and Tuira Rivers. From
there, they pushed on into the Pacific,
although Coxon grew increasingly
reluctant. As a result, by the time the
pirates captured some Spanish coastal
craft and bore down on Panama City,
command had devolved on Harris,
Sawkins, and Sharpe. Coxon returned
to Golden Island with 70 loyal fol-
lowers, and it is possible Allison sailed
away with him, as Coxon was seen pass-
ing Point Negril (Jamaica) in late May
1680 with two smaller vessels, which he
abandoned on being chased.
Darien Expedition
(1698
1699)
Nothing more is known about Allison’s
movements over the next two decades,
until the Scottish ship Unicorn and its
tender Dolphin anchored at Saint
Thomas in the Danish Virgin Islands
on October 11, 1698. They were part
of a larger flotilla conveying 1,200 col-
onists to establish a new commercial
settlement at Darien for the Company
of Scotland; as its leaders were unfa-
miliar with the Spanish Main, they
required a pilot. Directed to a tavern,
they found Allison ‘‘now sadly old,
white haired, and garrulous.’’ Nonethe-
less, he promised to guide them to
their destination, and four days later
they weighed.

Off Crab Island (modern Vieques
Island, due east of Puerto Rico) they
overtook the other three vessels of
their group, and Allison went aboard
the flagship Saint Andrew to direct the
helmsmen. Their ensuing passage
proved slow and arduous, through tor-
rential downpours and muddy seas,
until Allison sensed land was near on
the night of October 26
27. ‘‘About
two o’clock this morning,’’ a passenger
observed, ‘‘we saw with the lightning
black, high stones like land.’’ Dawn
revealed the Nuestra Se~nora de la Popa
heights behind Cartagena.
Two weeks later, the ships reached
Golden Island, and on November 15
the Scots stood into a mainland harbor
which they renamed ‘‘Caledonia Bay.
Allison remained at the new settlement,
which soon succumbed to disease,
isolation, and strife. In late February
1699, he put to sea again as supercargo
of the tender Endeavour, with orders to
guide Captain John Anderson to Jamaica
for provisions. A few days later, they
were driven back by gale winds. It is not
known whether the old privateer sur-
vived the next four months before the
Darien colony was abandoned.
See also
Allison, Robert (Volume 2).
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1989).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Allword, Captain (fl. 1672) 11
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Prebble, John, The Darien Disaster
(London: Secker & Warburg, 1968).
ALLWORD, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1672)
English privateer hired ‘‘to seek a
trade’’ with the Spaniards.
Following the general recall of all pri-
vateering commissions in 1671, in the
heated aftermath to Henry Morgan’s
heavy-handed attack against Panama, the
new Jamaican Governor Sir Thomas
Lynch cast about for means of gainful
employment, for the many rovers left
idled by his dictate and hence prone to
mischief. Allword or Allard was one
such commander, hired in late January
1672 along with John Morris (the Elder)
‘‘at £80 a month’’ to attempt some clan-
destine trade with the Spaniards, as well
as to capture the renegade Dutch rover
‘‘Captain Yellowes’’—Jelles de Lecat—-
who was making a nuisance of himself
as a Spanish guardacosta in the ‘‘Bay of
Campeche’’ or Laguna de T
erminos.
However, an English seafarer named
Richard Browne would later write on
September 28, 1672 (O.S.), to confide to
Sir Joseph Williamson that Morris had
never attempted any such pursuit of this
renegade once in Mexican waters, instead
merely loading his own ship with log-
wood, while Browne had furthermore
heard ‘‘that the other vessel, Captain All-
word, employed by the Governor and
others at £80 per mensem since February
1, sailed for Campeche, and sold their
negroes and other goods at a good price.’’
See also
Guardacostas; Lecat, Jelles de; Lynch, Sir
Thomas; Morris, John.
12 Almiranta
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
ALMIRANTA
Spanish term for a ‘‘vice-flagship.’’
Capitana is the equivalent word for a
flagship, the two often being confused by
foreigners, as they seemingly reversed
the natural hierarchical order, whereby
captains are subordinate to admirals.
However, when these expressions first
gained currency in Medieval Spain, it
was customary for Spanish fleets to be
commanded by a capit
an general, and
the designation almirante was taken from
the Arabic al-amir or ‘‘the emir.’’
To North Europeans, though, ‘‘Ad-
miral’’ only ever meant a senior naval
officer. Thus, for example, when the
buccaneers under John Coxon, Richard
Sawkins, and Bartholomew Sharpe cap-
tured a Spanish flotilla outside Panama
City in early May 1680, they asked their
prisoner Francisco de Peralta:
. . . which was the best sailors. He
told us on his word the [400-ton
Santı´sima] Trinidad was the best in
the South Sea, so we pitched on her
for Admiral [i.e., flagship].
See also
Almiranta (Volume 2).
Reference
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
ANDRESON OR
ANDRIESZOON, CORNELIS
(fl. 1674
1675)
Dutch privateer charged with piracy on
the coast of Maine.
In the summer of 1674, a Dutch
naval expedition out of Curaçao com-
manded by Jurriaen Aernouts conquered
French Acadia, renaming it ‘‘New
Holland.’’ Before returning to the Antil-
les, Aernouts appointed Captain John
Rhoades of Boston as Acting-Governor
for that new Dutch colony, furnishing
him with two small armed vessels for
coast-guard duty: the Edward and
Thomas of Captain Pieter Roderigo,
and shallop Penobscot of Captain
Cornelis Andreson. New Englanders,
long accustomed to trading and fishing
off Acadia, requested permission from
this new administration to continue
doing so, yet were refused. As Eng-
land was neutral in the on-going
Franco-Dutch conflict, though, they
ignored this ban until Roderigo and
Andreson began impounding vessels.
Incensed, the New Englanders retal-
iated by branding these as piratical
acts, and called on the Massachusetts
Council to take strong action. On Febru-
ary 15, 1675 (O.S.), Captain Samuel
Moseley of the ketch Salisbury was
ordered to sortie from Boston and
apprehend the transgressors. Once at
sea, he fell in with a French ship which
was also hunting the Dutch vessels as
enemy privateers, and together they
found the Edward and Thomas and
Penobscot in the Bay of Fundy, lying
with their latest prize, the English bark
Philip of Captain George Manning.
Moseley and his French consort imme-
diately engaged, and once the battle was
joined, Manning turned the Philip’s

guns on Roderigo and Andreson as well,
so that between them all they quickly
battered the Dutch pair into submission.
Moseley then carried the Edward
and Thomas and Penobscot into Boston
on April 2, 1675 (O.S.). Roderigo pro-
duced a commission with three seals in
his defense, and Andreson ‘‘another
without seals for liberty to trade, keep
the country, and sail on the coast.’’
Nonetheless, they were tried for piracy
with four companions at Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and all except Andreson
sentenced to death, although soon par-
doned. During the Indian conflict which
exploded that same summer, known as
‘‘King Philip’s War,’’ Andreson fought
very bravely in defense of the English
colony. A contemporary letter states:
He pursued Philip so hard that he
got his cap and now wears it. The
General, finding him a brave man,
sent him with a command of twelve
men to scout, with orders to return
in three hours on pain of death; he
met 60 Indians hauling their canoes
ashore: he killed 13 and took 8 alive,
and pursued the rest as far as he
could go for swamps, and on his
return burnt all the canoes . . . and a
short time after was sent out on a
like design and brought in twelve
Indians alive and two scalps.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Apostles 13
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Webster, John C., Cornelis Steenwyck:
Dutch Governor of Acadie (Ottawa:
Canadian Historical Association, 1929).
ANSELL, JOHN (fl. 1668)
Minor English commander who partici-
pated with ‘‘Admiral Henry Morgan’’
in his attacks against Cuba and Panama.
Ansell was one of a half-dozen Cap-
tains who appeared at Port Royal with
Morgan on September 7, 1668 (O.S.),
to report before Lieutenant-General Sir
James Modyford about ‘‘their late
expedition on the Spanish coast, with
the reasons of their late attempt on
Porto Principe and Porto Bello [sic].’’
See also
Morgan, Sir Henry.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
APOSTLES
Seventeenth-century military slang for
the charges carried in a bandolier or
cartridge belt, perhaps because they
usually numbered a dozen.
See also
Apostles (Volume 2).
14 Archambaud, Capitaine (fl. 1678
1683)
Reference
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
ARCHAMBAUD,
CAPITAINE
(fl. 1678
1683)
French flibustier who operated off the
Spanish Main.
This commander is believed to have
answered the summons early in 1678
from Vice-Admiral Jean, Comte
d’Estr
ees, for West Indian auxiliaries to
support his planned naval thrust against
the Dutch stronghold of Curaçao. It
is not known whether Archambaud
lost his own vessel in the disastrous
wreck of this fleet amid the Aves
Islands group on the evening of
May 11, 1678, but he did participate
in the subsequent piratical foray led
by the Sieur de Grammont against
the neutral Spaniards around Lake
Maracaibo. Archambaud returned tri-
umphantly from that sweep into
Saint-Domingue by December 1678,
as commander of one of Grammont’s
dozen vessels.
Two-and-a-half years later in early
June 1681, Archambaud was lying at
Springer’s Key in the San Blas Islands
north of Panama with his vessel of
eight guns and 40 men, in the company
of John Coxon, Jan Willems, Jean
Rose, George Wright, and three other
captains. Capitaine Jean Tristan joined
this formation, having rescued John
Cooke’s band of rovers at nearby La
Sound’s Key, after these Englishmen
had returned from raiding in the South
Sea. Among this latter group was the
chronicler William Dampier, who
recorded that after their initial greeting,
he and his companions were disposed
of in the following manner:
Captain Archembo [sic] wanting
men, we that came out of the South
Sea must either sail with him or
remain among the Indians. Indeed,
we found no cause to dislike the
Captain, but his French seamen were
the saddest creatures that ever I was
among; for though we had bad
weather that required many hands
aloft, yet the biggest part of them
never stirred out of their hammocks
but to eat or ease themselves.
The united buccaneer commanders
decided to make a descent on the Cen-
tral American coast, for which they
sailed toward San Andr
es Island to
procure boats. A gale scattered their
formation, and Wright chanced on a
Spanish tartan armed with four pedreros
or ‘‘swivel-guns’’ and 30 men, capturing
it after an hour-long fight and learning
that it was part of a larger armadilla
sent from Cartagena to drive the
pirates away. Cooke, Dampier, and the
other English rovers who had arrived
from the South Sea:
. . . desired Captain Wright to fit up
his prize the tartan and make a man
o’ war of her for us, which he at first
seemed to decline, because he was
settled among the French in His-
paniola, and was very well beloved
both by the Governor of Petit-Go^ave
and all the gentry; and they would
resent it ill that Captain Wright, who
had no occasion of men, should be
so unkind to Capitaine Archembo
[sic] as to seduce his men from him.

Nevertheless, the English insisted, and
Wright relented on condition that they
‘‘should be under his command, as one
ship’s company.’’ Cooke and his com-
rades therefore had their ship, and shortly
thereafter crossed to Bluefields [Abra-
ham’s Cay] on the Mosquito Coast,
where they quit Archambaud’s company.
Early in 1683, more than a year
afterward, this French captain was
known to be operating off the coast of
Saint-Domingue with a ship of ten
guns and 80 men, and may have joined
the celebrated Laurens de Graaf in
some of his actions that same year,
most especially his battle against three
Spanish men-of-war outside Cartagena
at Christmas. Archambaud then seems
to have retired from the sea, possibly
becoming a planter in the vicinity of
Cap-François.
See also
Abraham’s Cay; armadilla; Cooke, John;
Coxon, John; Dampier, William
(Volume 2); De Graaf, Laurens; Estr
ees,
Jean, Comte de; flibustier; Grammont,
Sieur de; South Sea (Volume 2);
Spanish Main; Tristan, Jean (Volume 2);
Willems, Jan (Volume 2); Wright,
George.
References
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
ARMADA DE
BARLOVENTO
See Barlovento, Armada de
Arribada 15
ARMADA DEL MAR
DEL SUR
See Mar del Sur, Armada del
ARMADILLA
Diminutive of the Spanish word ar-
mada, which signifies a fleet of war-
ships; armadilla consequently refers to
a flotilla of smaller vessels.
The term was often misapplied among
the English. For example, when a group
of stranded interlopers surrendered in
May 1680 to Captain Felipe de Barreda
Villegas’ patrol boats in Mexico’s Laguna
de T
erminos, a survivor later related how
these Spaniards ‘‘drove the whole of the
English on board two small armadillas,
where they were immediately clapped in
the hold.’’ In fact, there were only two
small Spanish warships present, together
comprising a single armadilla.
See also
Armadilla (Volume 2); Barreda Villegas’,
Felipe de.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
ARRIBADA
Spanish legal term for any unauthorized
entry into a port, or arrival off a coastline.
Most often it was Spanish masters
who were charged with making arriba-
das, pretending to have been driven
off-course by bad weather or pursuit
by enemies, merely so as to make an
16 Artigue, Michel d’, Alias ‘‘Le Basque’’ (fl. 1657
1668)
unscheduled layover in a port where
their goods might be sold more profit-
ably. Foreign merchantmen were doubly
suspect of such duplicitous designs. For
example, after peace had been reestab-
lished between London and Madrid in
the summer of 1660, endangered English
ships were permitted to seek sanctuary
in Spanish-American harbors, according
to this treaty’s provisions; yet, the
Crown strictly enjoined its New World
officials by royal command issued on
September 13, 1660, to be ‘‘most watch-
ful that the English (using these arriba-
das as a pretext) do not avail themselves
of them to introduce merchandise, which
is most forbidden to them.’’
See also
Arribada (Volume 2).
Reference
Archivo General de la Naci

on (Mexico),
Serie Reales C

edulas (Originales),
Volume 6, Exp. 160, Folios 398
398v.
ARTIGUE, MICHEL D’,
ALIAS ‘‘LE BASQUE’’
(fl. 1657
1668)
Also spelled Artigny. Early flibustier
on Saint-Domingue, of Basque origin.
Like many other pioneer settlers on
Tortuga Island and Haiti, details about
his life remain sketchy, due to a lack
of any written documentation. Even his
exact surname has never been deter-
mined, as he was universally known
among his French colleagues simply as
‘‘Michel le Basque.’’ The most com-
mon modern spelling of his surname in
Spain would likely be Artiga or Arti-
gas, or in France Artigue.
Most of what is known about his
activities stems from second-hand sour-
ces, such as the chronicles of Jean-Bap-
tiste Du Tertre or Alexandre-Olivier
Exquemelin. D’Artigue was first men-
tioned as being part of a buccaneer band
which landed on Cuba in 1657, where
‘‘they slayed a great serpent.’’ Nine years
later, Exquemelin wrote that he was
a man who ‘‘had won so much by
marauding, he no longer went to sea.’’
D’Artigue had even been appointed as
one of Saint-Domingue’s district offi-
cials known as Majors by its private Gov-
ernor Bertrand d’Ogeron, yet nevertheless,
when the rover chieftain Jean-David
Nau—widely acknowledged as le Capi-
taine François or the ‘‘French Captain,’’
designated leader of all flibustiers—began
to prepare an expedition in the spring of
1666 to attack the Spaniards, Le Basque
offered to command its land contingent,
because of his considerable military expe-
rience in Europe.
In fact, he received the official com-
mission to mount this attack from Gov-
ernor d’Ogeron, storming ashore at
Maracaibo in June 1666. Le Basque
seems to have spent the next couple of
years as Nau’s trusted subordinate,
backing him on most of his forays and
ventures along the Central American
coast. One of the few exceptions
occurred when Le Basque assumed
direct command of Nau’s frigate
Dauphin and captured a Spanish ship
off Portobelo in February 1668. It
is believed that D’Artigue may have
perished that same year, while leading
a boat-party up a Central American
river.
See also
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier; Nau, Jean-
David; Ogeron, Bertrand d’.

References
Du Tertre, Jean-Baptiste, Histoire g
en
erale
des Antilles habit

ees par les François
(Paris: Thomas Jolly, 1671).
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’
1944).
Marley, David F., ‘‘Nau l’Olonnais a
Maracaibo: un rapport espagnol, janvier
1667,’’ G
en
ealogie et Histoire de la
Cara€ıbe [France] 217 (September
2008), pp. 5638
5640.
ASH, ISLE OF
English mispronunciation of ^Ile a
Vache—literally, ‘‘Cow Island’’—the
French name for the lonely island off
the southwestern peninsula of Saint-
Domingue or Haiti, long a favorite
pirate haunt.
In one of many instances of this
term’s usage, Captain Joseph Knapman
wrote to a friend how he had lost his
ship Jamaica Merchant:
. . . on the 25th February [1675 O.S.]
on the east side of the Isle of Ash, on
the south side of Hispaniola, within
24 hours’ sail of [Port Royal]. Knows
not what evil genius led him there,
and never was any man more sur-
prised, considering the course they
steered. Saved all the people, and five
or six days after, one Captain Thomas
Rogers, a Jamaica privateer now sail-
ing under the French, carried Sir
Henry Morgan and all the passengers
for Jamaica; but he and his men
stayed behind to save, if possible, His
Asiento 17
Majesty’s stores and the ship’s furni-
ture; and he was obliged to offer them
one-third of what they could save, or
could get them to do nothing.
See also
Ash, Isle of (Volume 2); Morgan, Sir
Henry.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893).
ASIENTO
Any contract to supply the Spanish
Crown or its dependencies with goods
or services; foreigners came to misin-
terpret this word during the 17th cen-
tury as exclusively meaning the supply
of African slaves to Spain’s American
markets.
In reality, the Spanish government
entered into countless asientos every
year for a great diversity of items,
from gunpowder to ships’ biscuits,
leasing each individual contract to the
highest bidder, provided that they were
Spanish subjects. One of the few
exceptions to this latter restriction was
the cruel business of shipping slaves to
its empire, because Spain maintained
no slaving-stations in West Africa—so
that while the titular holder of a slave
asiento might be a Spanish national,
the captives themselves must of neces-
sity be furnished by an international
cartel.
Foreign merchants were very
attracted to this traffic, for beyond its
18 Aviso
obvious profitability, their vessels
could also gain entry into Spanish-
American ports, which would other-
wise be closed to them. Therefore,
exporting slaves offered an even more
lucrative sideline in contraband goods
as well. Soon, the asiento came to be
synonymous abroad with slaving, such
as when Governor Sir Thomas Lynch
of Jamaica learned in February 1684 of
the arrival of a new Venetian factor at
Cartagena, representing the Dutch car-
tel of Baltasar Coymans. ‘‘If we can
get Negroes,’’ the Governor assured his
superiors in London, ‘‘it is very likely
that, let who will have the Assiento
[sic], they will likely come to us.’’
See also
Asiento (Volume 2).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
AVISO
Spanish word for a dispatch vessel or
mail boat, derived from the verb avi-
sar, meaning ‘‘to advise or forewarn.’’
Whenever a fleet was scheduled to
depart a Spanish port, or some other
major event was about to occur, it was
customary to send an aviso ahead to
give advance notice. These were usu-
ally small private vessels hired specifi-
cally for this purpose, and at busy
ports such as Cadiz, Cartagena, or
Veracruz, departures became so regular
as to constitute a semi-official mail
service. Once at sea, these avisos
carried their dispatches in small
wooden chests that were weighted so
they could be thrown overboard at any
threat of capture. Because attacks hap-
pened with such frequency along the
17th-century sea-routes, both Crown
officials and private citizens routinely
wrote their letters in triplicate or even
quadruplicate, sending copies on succes-
sive avisos so as to ensure safe delivery.
In one such instance, the Mexican diarist
Gregorio Martı́n de Guijo recorded in
June 1663 how an aviso arrived off the
coast pursued by English buccaneers, but
‘‘Our Lord was pleased that while flee-
ing from the enemy, it ran aground at
Antigua Veracruz, and so the people and
letters were saved.’’
From the Spanish, this expression
passed directly into English. For exam-
ple, the inhabitants of Jamaica were
alarmed in late May 1678 by news
that a huge French fleet was marshal-
ling in the Windward Isles under Vice-
Admiral Duc d’Estr
ees. Although Eng-
land had been at peace for several
years, the Dutch and Spanish continued
to fight against the French. Fearful that
this vast armada might be intended to
make a descent against Jamaica—
because of some as yet-unknown
policy shift in Europe—Lieutenant-
Gov. Sir Henry Morgan imposed mar-
tial law on the island, closed Port
Royal, and sent the sloop of Captain
Thomas Wigfall to Hispaniola for
intelligence. It returned a few days
later, reporting D’Estr
ees’ force had
been sailing toward Dutch Curaçao,
when it was lost on the Aves Islands.
A relieved Jamaican Council voted
‘‘the advice sloop having returned from
Hispaniola, that she have £20 and Mr.
Wigfall £10 for his particular good
service, and readiness to obey the Gov-
ernor’s orders.’’

A similar use was made in June
1693, the fourth year of King Wil-
liam’s War, when Benjamin Skutt peti-
tioned the Crown in London that:
. . . in consequence of the losses of
West Indian merchants, he may have
a license for his advice boat of 150
tons and 16 guns to sail to and from
Barbados, also a commission for her
as a private man o’ war, and immu-
nity from embargo or press gang.
See also
Aviso (Volume 2).
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 10,
14 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1896
1903).
Guijo, Gregorio M. de, Diario, 1648
1664
(Mexico City: Editorial Porr
ua, 1952).
AYLETT, JOHN
(fl. 1655
1669)
Puritan seaman from New England,
who became a Captain in the Com-
monwealth Navy, and died violently
while dining aboard Henry Morgan’s
flagship.
It is believed that Aylett may have
been born in Colchester, England,
around 1628. Details about his early
life and career are a blank, yet at some
point he must have emigrated to
Boston. We know that the 26-year-old
seafarer was married there on Novem-
ber 21, 1654 (O.S.), to Mary Hawkins,
a daughter of Captain Thomas Haw-
kins, a local shipowner and shipwright.
Aylett, John (fl. 1655
1669) 19
The young couple soon had a daughter,
Mary, born on October 8, 1655 (O.S.).
Tragically, it appears as if both the
young mother and infant died very
shortly thereafter, leaving Aylett dis-
traught. Late that same year, he sold to
William Hudson the shipping establish-
ment, called ‘‘by the name or sign of
Noah’s Ark,’’ that had belonged to his
father-in-law and prepared to relocate
to recently-conquered Jamaica.
Spanish Captivity (1656
1657)
Oliver Cromwell sent special appeals
from London to the Puritan colonists
of New England, requesting their sup-
port for this new Antillean foothold.
The widowed Aylett seems to have
responded personally, by selling his
properties and raising a few recruits, so
as to relocate permanently and start a
new life on Jamaica. Departing Boston
very early in 1656, as Master of the
tiny ketch Providence, Aylett had
scarcely entered those war-torn waters
when he was intercepted by a Spanish
corsair, and carried into Santo Domi-
ngo. On November 4, 1656 (O.S.), he
managed to write the following appeal
directly to ‘‘His Highness Oliver, Lord
Protector of England,’’ which was
smuggled out from that island by a
friend:
Your Highness may be pleased to
take notice that we are here at pres-
ent, a poor parcel of your subjects
which were led by your army,
and myself and company taken in
February last [1656 O.S.], being
laden with provisions and bound for
Jamaica from New England, that are
in great distress and lie under the
burden of many afflictions; and
humbly crave of Your Highness to
20 Aylett, John (fl. 1655
1669)
take some course for our redress, for
we are daily shipped from this port
to the Main and to the Havana, but
for what intent I know not, but I fear
it is a prolonging of our misery,
unless we have some redress from
Your Highness.
Here is a new governor sent from
Spain, which hath been a soldier, for
he intends to fortify this place with
all expedition, but at present he hath
done little, unless he hath sent away
the English. Here hath been since
my coming to the place, several
ships of Flemings from Spain, with
some six hundred soldiers, much
powder and arms, so that they are
well supplied with all necessaries for
war. Here arrived some ten days
since a Dutch frigate from Spain,
only with advise that Your Highness
had a fleet upon the coast of Spain,
so that there were now coming for
these parts; but they intend that what
shipping are bound for Spain, shall
touch at the Canaries for advise, so
that they intend to proceed for Spain
if possible; but if not, I do suppose
they will for Holland, for here is a
very rich ship to depart from hence
in forty days, and that is her
intended voyage; the Dutch standing
by them much, and have promised
to carry them by way of our North
Channel.
They have bought of the Dutch a
frigate that shall carry twelve pieces
of ordinance, a purpose for to keep
betwixt Cuba upon the porte Anec-
kow [?] and this place, which I
heard will do much mischief in the
taking of small vessels that may be
bound for Jamaica. So as I being
one of Your Highness’ faithful
subjects, I have thought it fit to
make bold to write these lines to
give you advise of proceedings here;
and I hope God will in his good time
work my deliverance, so that I may
live to serve you in this good cause
of God’s that Your Highness have
now undertaken, which I do beseech
God to make prosperous. I rest, Your
Highness’ most humble and faithful
servant.
A few months afterward in the
spring of 1657, Aylett somehow con-
trived to regain his freedom, either
through an arranged release or an
escape. He then made his way to
England.
Naval Service (1658
1666)
Almost a year later, Aylett, described
as ‘‘now of London, mariner, formerly
living in New England,’’ appeared
before the High Court of Admiralty in
London on March 22, 1658 (O.S.), and
in a deposition described how he ‘‘was
master and part-owner of a ketch
called the Providence, which in a voy-
age from New England to Jamaica,
was taken by the Spaniards and carried
into San Domingo, where deponent
was held prisoner for twelve months
and better.’’ He also seems to have
received a warm reception from Puri-
tan members of the Commonwealth
government; as a veteran seafarer with
first-hand experience of the Spanish
West Indies, he received a command in
the State’s Navy shortly thereafter.
By mid-June 1658 (O.S.), Aylett
was at Plymouth making the final
preparations to take his new ship

Coventry to sea. This vessel had been
the 28-gun Spanish ship San Miguel,
captured off the Scilly Islands in
February 1658 by the State Ships Con-
stant Warwick and Adventure. Aylett
reached Jamaica aboard his renamed
ship by early September of that same
year, almost immediately sailing with
Coventry to take part with four other
warships in Commodore Christopher
Myngs’ foray against the Spanish
Main, during which both Tol
u and
Santa Marta were torched, before this
squadron regained Cagway toward
year’s end. However, the ensuing year
of service on the Jamaica station evi-
dently did Aylett little good, for his
fellow-Captain William Dalyson would
write by February 22, 1660 (O.S.):
Thinks Captain Aylett, commander
of the Coventry, will be the next to
go home; the General forced to sus-
pend him, but he has since restored
him to his command, who has again
given himself over to debauchery
and drunkenness, and he stands
indicted of burglary for stealing £8
out of a chest, but is not prosecuted
by reason of the alterations in Eng-
land—our court of judicature is put
down.
Captain Cornelius Burrough regretfully
concurred, adding that he was ‘‘almost
ashamed to have Dalyson write home
such stuff about Captain Aylett, and yet
there is just necessity, for he might have
written ten times as much and not
exceeded the truth.’’
Coventry was eventually ordered
surveyed at its anchorage on June 5,
1660 (O.S.), and one week later was
deemed by Captain Abraham Langford
Aylett, John (fl. 1655
1669) 21
as ‘‘defective and unfit for any further
service in the island,’’ so Aylett
departed for England aboard his debili-
tated ship shortly thereafter. He man-
aged to limp into the Irish port of
Kinsale by October, but Coventry suf-
fered considerable more damage in
running aground while exiting Milford,
then driven into Falmouth by a storm,
and was scarcely able to stagger into
Woolwich by late November 1660
(O.S.). With the English monarchy
now restored, the disreputable Aylett
seems to have remained unemployed
over the next few years, until the
Royal Navy was again worked up to
full strength in 1664, just prior to the
outbreak of the Second Anglo-Dutch
War.
Aylett soon rose to command of the
48-gun, 600-ton HMS Portland, but
the fiercely contested Four Days’ Bat-
tle of June 1
4, 1666 (O.S.), ended so
disappointingly for the English, that he
was one of several Captains dismissed
from the Royal Navy ‘‘for want of
courage’’ in its immediate aftermath by
an angry Admiral George Monck,
Duke of Albemarle. Once tempers
cooled, Aylett apparently regained his
rank, ending the war as Captain of the
48-gun HMS Foresight. Three weeks
after the peace treaty had been signed
at Breda, he submitted a petition on
August 10, 1667 (O.S.):
. . . to the King for a grant of the
prize-ship Cazamine [sic?] of 60
tons, now lying at Deptford. His fa-
ther was ruined in the late King’s
service at the siege of Colchester,
and he has served faithfully against
the Dutch, but now on the peace is
left without employment.
22 Azogue
Death As a Privateer
(1668
1669)
No longer a naval officer, Aylett ven-
tured back to Jamaica, where on January
12, 1669, eight English and French
corsair captains met aboard Henry
Morgan’s flagship Oxford, anchored
off ^Ile a Vache at the southwestern tip
of Saint-Domingue, to decide on a
descent against the Spaniards. They
had already been mustering for several
weeks, and so numbered 900 free-
booters. Their strength was such that
the captains agreed to attempt the
great port of Cartagena on the Spanish
Main, after which ‘‘they began on
board the great ship to feast one
another for joy of their new voyage.’’
Morgan and Captains Aylett, Big-
ford, Edward Collier, John Morris the
Elder, John Morris the Younger,
Thornbury, and Whiting all sat down
to dinner on the quarterdeck, while the
men celebrated on the forecastle.
‘‘They drank the health of the King of
England and toasted their good success
and fired off salvoes,’’ as the tropical
darkness fell, until suddenly the Oxford’s
magazine accidentally exploded. Ship’s
surgeon Richard Browne, who sat
toward the foot of the officers’ table
on the same side as Morgan, later
wrote:
I was eating my dinner with the rest,
when the mainmast blew out and fell
upon Captains Aylett, Bigford, and
others, and knocked them on the
head.
Only six men and four boys survived out
of a company of more than 200, includ-
ing the lucky few sitting beside the
Admiral on the quarterdeck.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 1
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1860).
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
Savage, James, A Genealogical Dictionary
of The First Settlers of New England,
Showing Three Generations of Those
Who Came Before 1692, on the Basis of
the Farmer’s Register (Boston: Little,
Brown, and Company, 1860
1862) four
volumes.
Thurloe, John, A Collection of the State
Papers of John Thurloe, Volume 5
(London, 1742).
AZOGUE
Spanish word for mercury or quicksil-
ver, but which also came to be applied
to the ships themselves that conveyed
this heavy liquid across the Atlantic
for the Crown.
Mercury was a vital ingredient for
refining American ores during the 17th
century, being used to separate silver
from other unwanted materials. Peru
had its own source of azogue at Huanca-
velica, but Mexico’s had to be imported
across the ocean from the royal mines
of Almad
en in southwestern Spain.
A pair of merchantmen was usually
hired to perform these transatlantic
runs, being specially selected for their

strength, speed, and soundness, to sail
independently of the annual plate fleets.
Such azogue or ‘‘quicksilver’’ ships
proved valuable prizes, as the cargos
of outgoing vessels were in great
demand throughout all of Spanish
America, while on their return-passages
toward Spain, they also occasionally
conveyed some of the King’s bullion.
The Marı´a was one such vessel, out-
ward bound from Seville with a cargo
of mercury, merchandise, and corre-
spondence, when it was intercepted by
the privateer Captain William Cooper
and carried into Port Royal, Jamaica.
Sir Charles Lyttelton would write on
October 23, 1663 (O.S.), to describe
this incident:
On the 19th instant [October 1663
O.S.], there were brought into port
two Spanish prizes by a captain of a
small vessel, who in fight with the
first so disabled his own ship that he
was forced to quit her and enter the
prize; and when plying on the coast
of Hispaniola fell in with the second,
which—finding that he carried an
English flag on a Spanish vessel—bid
‘‘him amaine for the King of
Spain,’’ but after four hours’ fight,
being cruelly torn and damnified,
at length submitted. This ship is
the Maria of Seville, of 300
tons, carrying 1,000 quintals of
Azogue 23
quicksilver for the King of Spain’s
mines in New Spain, besides wines,
olives, and other goods, which on
account of the loss of the bills of
lading, are not yet known. There
are 70 prisoners, amongst them
some friars, one of whom ‘‘goes
Visitor-General to his order, which
is Mercenarians.’’ The captain and
owner of most of the cargo, Don
Miguel de Valencia, is a person of
quality, and treated with all civility;
and he and a merchant, Joseph de
Castro, will at their own request be
shortly sent to Campeachy [sic].
The letters, which seem much to
aim at attempts upon Jamaica, say
that they cannot despatch a fleet
from Spain before June. The first
prize was worth very little, and the
goods are like to be sold for a
quarter at most of their value, by
reason of the want of money.
See also
Azogue (Volume 2).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1880).
 B

All servants that can, run away and turn pirates,

encouraged by the late successes, and some die.
—Governor Sir Thomas Lynch of Jamaica, February 1684

BAMFIELD, JOHN The Crown official was particularly

(fl. 1665)
English privateer who commanded the
single-gun Mayflower in Colonel
Edward Morgan’s expedition against
Dutch Sint Eustatius and Sab
a, during
the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
This force departed Jamaica in two
divisions, five sail putting out of Port
Royal on April 5, 1665, and Morgan
himself following with another four on
the 28th. There were 650 men in all,
described in a letter by Gov. Sir Thomas
Modyford as:
. . . chiefly reformed privateers, scarce
a planter amongst them, being
resolute fellows and well armed with
fusils [the Spanish word for muskets]
and pistols.
grateful that they would be serving ‘‘at
the old rate of no purchase, no pay, and
it will cost the King nothing consider-
able, some powder and mortar pieces.’’
Their landing was made successfully,
but the Colonel, ‘‘being a corpulent
man,’’ died from heat exertion during
the chase, and his expedition disbanded
shortly thereafter.
References
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica:
Lewis, Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).

25
26 Barlovento, Armada De

BARLOVENTO, to depart for the Americas, by which

time only two of the Dutch-built ves-
ARMADA DE sels remained under Di
ustegui’s com-
mand: the 572-ton flagship San Felipe,
Spanish naval squadron—its name lit-
and 507-ton vice-flagship Nuestra
erally meant ‘‘Windward Fleet’’—which
Se~nora de la Concepci
on. On July 21,
defended the Caribbean against pirates
1667, they set sail from Seville accom-
and smugglers.
panied by the 412-ton Magdalena, plus
The Spaniards had occasionally sta-
the frigates Concepci
on and Nuestra
tioned war-fleets in the Americas as
Se~nora de la Soledad, alias Marquesa
early as the 16th century; yet following
(Marchioness). This Armada also trans-
the English seizure of Jamaica and
ported a large quantity of azogue or
other foreign incursions during the late
‘‘quicksilver’’ for the Mexican mines.
1650s, Madrid felt that a permanent na-
More than 100 of its 963 officers and
val presence in that region would be
men deserted, after being paid during a
required, even in peacetime. As a
stopover at the Canary Islands.
result, the Spanish government sent a
On August 27, 1667, the five ships
special agent to Amsterdam in 1663 to
reached Puerto Rico, from where San
arrange the construction of four new
Felipe and Magdalena proceeded to
galleons to serve in American waters.
Veracruz to deliver their quicksilver,
Poor financing threatened this project’s
while the squadron’s second-in-
completion, until officers’ commissions
command Alonso de Campos retained
were promised to anyone in Spain will-
the other three to patrol the coasts of
ing to advance money. Many of the Ar-
Santo Domingo and southern Cuba. He
mada de Barlovento’s first commanders
captured a single sloop out of Jamaica,
were therefore individuals bent on
before rendezvousing with Di
ustegui at
recouping their investments or other-
Havana in February 1668. The reas-
wise profiting from their service in the
sembled Armada then sailed through the
New World. For example, Agustı́n de
Antilles toward Caracas, before return-
Di
ustegui obtained overall command of
ing to what was supposed to become its
the squadron in return for a loan of
permanent home base of San Juan de
50,000 pesos, plus the use of two of his
Puerto Rico. Judging these port facilities
frigates. Other appointments, such as
inadequate, though, Di
ustegui trans-
those of Flag-Captain Mateo Alonso de
ferred to Havana for repairs. The local
Huidobro or ship’s Captain Antonio de
Spanish-American authorities, for their
Layseca y Alvarado, also resulted from
part, considered the large Armada ships
the loans of lesser sums.
too cumbersome to chase pirates, so that
the flagship and vice-flag were almost
First Fleet (1667
1669) immediately recalled to Spain for duty
in its renewed war against France.
Early in May 1664, the first new gal- Magdalena and the two frigates were to
leon reached Spain from Amsterdam, remain at Santo Domingo, reinforced by
followed a few months later by the local auxiliaries.
remaining three. A long delay ensued This recall order reached the Armada
before the squadron was finally ready at Puerto Rico, and Di
ustegui instantly

set sail for Veracruz to load the King’s
treasure for his return passage to Spain.
Campos and the three smaller ships
meanwhile hovered off Cuba’s Cape San
Antonio, inspecting three English ships
under Captain Francis Stuart, as well as a
Dutch vessel, yet letting all four go
(allegedly in return for bribes). Campos
thereupon retired into Havana, where he
learned that buccaneers had assaulted the
south Cuban port of Trinidad, so that he
sent his newly-acquired frigate Nuestra
Se~nora de los Remedios and Marquesa
to Veracruz for reinforcements. Reme-
dios was wrecked less than 50 miles
from Campeche, but when the survivors
reached Veracruz, they found that
the Mexican Exchequer had purchased
another frigate, the 218-ton San Luis.
Together with Marquesa, this frigate
carried almost 300 reinforcements back
into Havana by 5 January 1669.
In the meantime, Di
ustegui had sailed
for Spain, leaving Campos as senior
Armada commander to handle the news
of Henry Morgan’s attack against Porto-
belo. Campos sortied with Magdalena,
San Luis, and Marquesa, laying in a
course for Puerto Rico, where he heard
of a large freebooter gathering at ^Ile a
Vache. From a Dutch merchantman that
he met in the Mona Passage, Campos
also learned that five French ships from
Martinique were allegedly preparing to
raid Santo Domingo. He therefore back-
tracked, arriving to reinforce its garrison
on March 25, 1669; however, this report
proved to be false, and he was then cor-
rectly informed that more than a dozen
buccaneer sail had passed by Santo
Domingo on their way toward the
Spanish Main. Sailing in their wake, he
heard from another Dutch merchantman
that the enemy was in the Lago de
Maracaibo, so that he arrived outside by
Barlovento, Armada De 27
mid-April 1669. Inside lay Morgan’s
flotilla, busily ransacking the interior.
Campos had his 38-gun flagship Mag-
dalena, the 26-gun frigate San Luis under
his second-in-command Mateo Alonso
de Huidobro, plus the 14-gun sloop Mar-
quesa, manned by a total of 500 men.
Having found that the 11-gun fortress
guarding the Laguna’s entrance had been
devastated, the Admiral decided to
reoccupy it with 40 harquebusiers, repair
six of its guns, and dispatch messengers
inland calling for further assistance from
the local militias. After several days,
Campos also lightened his warships and
passed them over the bar, before sending
a letter to Morgan in Maracaibo, calling
on him to surrender.
Yet although his Armada had trapped
the raiders inside, they were far from sub-
dued. Morgan’s 13 vessels approached
the anchored Spanish squadron on April
25, 1669, and two days later rushed Cam-
pos’ formation at 9:00 A.M. led by a large
Cuban prize flying multiple ensigns,
which bore down on Campos’ Magdalena
and grappled. But when the Spaniards
surged over its bulwarks, they found its
decks lined with wooden dummies and
12 buccaneers hastily decamping over its
far side. The Cuban ship thereupon burst
into flames, engulfing Magdalena and
forcing Campos to leap into the water
along with his panic-stricken crew. Seeing
this terrifying spectacle, De Huidobro’s
smaller San Luis and Marquesa cut their
cables and ran for the shelter of the fort,
pursued by Morgan’s lesser craft. Both
Spanish vessels ran aground and so were
set ablaze by their crews before abandon-
ing ship, although Marquesa was boarded
and saved by the buccaneers.
Despite his victory, though, Morgan
was still unable to get past the fort
because its garrison had been further
28 Barlovento, Armada De

Morgan’s Victory Bar Maracaibo, April 1669.

While Henry Morgan’s buccaneers were ransacking the shorelines of Lake Maracaibo in April
1669, Admiral Campos’ three Armada warships arrived outside its bar (1). They shuttled boat-
parties around to reman its devastated fort (2), then worked their lightened warships carefully
through the channel to trap the raiders inside (3). Morgan appeared and confronted the
Spaniards for two days (4), before launching a devastating strike (5) which destroyed all three
of the Armada’s men-of-war. But Morgan could still not get past its fort, so that he returned to
Maracaibo (6), before returning again at a later date using guile to slip past.

augmented by 70 militiamen from the in-
terior, plus most of the surviving Armada
crews. When the buccaneers attempted a
land-assault on April 28, 1669, this
attack was easily repelled, so that Mor-
gan was obliged to retire back into Mara-
caibo and consider another plan. After
his offer to exchange his Spanish cap-
tives for free passage out to sea was
rebuffed by Campos, Morgan returned to
the bar a few days later and set his boats
busily plying back and forth just out of
sight of the Spanish fort. Believing that
the English were depositing a large force
in anticipation of another assault,
Campos’ garrison manhandled their few
guns into the landward embrasures, and
braced for a nocturnal onslaught. Yet
Morgan had again deceived them, his
boat-movements merely being a feint: no
buccaneers had actually disembarked.
Instead, his ships quietly weighed and
slipped past the Spanish fortress’
unguarded seaward side under cover of
darkness, depositing their prisoners out-
side, before sailing triumphantly away.
Second Fleet (1677
1678)
Following its humiliating annihilation, a
halfhearted attempt to reconstitute the
Armada three years later was deferred
once Spain became embroiled in
another conflict against France. It was
not until late 1676 that the impoverished
Spanish Crown could assemble five
ships for Caribbean duty: the 450-ton
flagship San Jos
e, Santa Rosa Marı´a y
San Pedro de Alc
antara, purchased by
the Governor-designate of Venezuela,
Francisco de Alberr
os, on the under-
standing that it would transport him out
to his destination and be reimbursed out
of local taxes; the 350-ton vice-flagship
Nuestra Se~ nora de Aranzazu y San
Barlovento, Armada De 29
Lorenzo, sold by Antonio de Astina
on condition that he be appointed almir-
ante or second-in-command of the
Armada, and might recoup its value at
Puerto Rico; the 240-ton San Juan, for-
merly the French Dauphine or ‘‘Prin-
cess,’’ which had been captured in the
North Atlantic that previous year, and
was more commonly known as the
Princesa or Francesa; the 200-ton
Nuestra Se~nora del Camino, purchased
from Do~na Gracia de Atocha; and the
200-ton Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje,
alias Mogole~no, bought from Pedro de
Castro.
The flagship San Jos
e sailed from
Cadiz early next year, depositing the
new Venezuelan Governor at Caracas by
July 6, 1677. It remained there while
Francesa, Camino, and Mogole~ no
reached Cartagena a few days later, hav-
ing quit Cadiz on May 26th. Capts. Jos
e
de Arizmendi, Felipe de Di
ustegui, and
Francisco L
opez de G
omara reported
there to their new capit
an general or
Armada commander-in-chief, Antonio
de Quintana, a veteran officer who had
directed Cartagena’s guardacostas for
the past 20 years. Immediately, the trio
was dispatched along with two mer-
chantmen and 500 troops to rescue the
nearby city of Santa Marta, which had
been surprised by a French contingent
under Captains La Garde, Coxon, and
Barnes. Quintana’s flotilla supposedly
bombarded the invaders before being
driven off by a storm, but Spanish
observers charged that the men-of-war
had engaged only reluctantly, because
they were laden with merchandise. By
the time they returned to resume their
attack a few days later, the enemy had
withdrawn, taking the city Governor,
Bishop, and other prominent citizens
with them as hostages.
30 Barlovento, Armada De
The three Armada ships then pro-
ceeded to Portobelo to deliver the King
of Spain’s dispatches (along with their
own wares), retiring much worn into
Cartagena. There were no suitable
repair facilities at that port, though, and
the crews began to fall ill and desert,
not having been paid and receiving only
a daily ration of a ‘‘pound and a half of
cassava and twelve ounces of meat.’’ In
October, the flagship San Jos
e at last
stirred forth from Caracas’ port of La
Guaira, sailing to Santo Domingo and
Campeche, where it deposited the Gov-
ernor-designate of Yucatan, Antonio de
Layseca, before reaching Veracruz. The
vice-flagship Aranzazu also departed
Spain in October 1677, conveying a
quicksilver consignment to Veracruz,
where it joined the flagship. Fear of the
huge French fleets of the Duc d’Estr
ees,
as well as material deficiencies and per-
sonnel losses, kept both Armada units
mostly idle throughout all of 1678.
Cruises of 1679
1681
Early in 1679, the two capital ships at
Veracruz were reinforced by the frigate
Santo Cristo de San Rom
an (the patron
saint of the port of Campeche, where it
had been built), and the 650-ton urca or
‘‘cargo-ship’’ San Juan Bautista, San
Antonio y San Cayetano, which had
been expropriated at Puerto Rico for
trading illegally. The Acting-Mexican
Viceroy then additionally purchased
two 6-gun pataches—San Antonio y las
Animas and Jes
us, Marı´a y Jos
e—to
act as fleet auxiliaries, and recruited
800 men. When word arrived that the
French flibustiers under the ‘‘Chevalier’’
de Grammont had assaulted Maracaibo,
Astina sortied on February 25, 1679,
only to limp into Havana on the last
day of March after being battered by a
storm during his Gulf crossing, which
had dismasted San Antonio y las Ani-
mas and forced it back into Campeche.
A few days later, the annual plate fleet
arrived at the Cuban capital from Carta-
gena, accompanied by Quintana with
Francesa, Camino, and Mogole~ no. The
latter was broken up at the Havana yards
and its crew incorporated into the Ar-
mada flagship, so that on May 14, 1679,
the commander-in-chief led San Jos
e,
Aranzazu, San Juan Bautista, Francesa,
and Camino out to sea. The French
raiders having long since withdrawn
from Maracaibo, Quintana’s mission was
now to deliver the annual situados or
‘‘payrolls’’ for the garrisons at Puerto
Rico and Santo Domingo, then sweep
the coasts of the Main for foreign inter-
lopers. After visiting San Juan de Puerto
Rico, the Armada intercepted a French
sloop out of Petit-Go^ave bearing a cargo
of cacao for Cuba, which was seized;
however, an English sloop encountered a
few days later was released. The French
prize was then sold at Santo Domingo,
and on exiting the Armada captured the
Dutch sloop Tijger with a crew of 18
men, charging them with smuggling.
While cruising the Main, they sighted an
abandoned 80-ton English pink, which
they boarded, proving to be the vessel of
Edmund Cooke (who having been victi-
mized many years before by Spanish
guardacosta Philip FitzGerald, hid
ashore rather than risk mistreatment, and
then angered at the loss of this, his sec-
ond ship, turned pirate).
The Armada reached Caracas’ port of
La Guaira by July 14, 1679, and subse-
quently used it as a base for forays along
that coast including the San Juan
Bautista and Francesa, which almost
captured the Dutch Witte Lam of Pieter

Markus at nearby Puerto Cabello; the
Aranzazu and Camino also sailed to
investigate reports of a buccaneer land-
ing near the Carguao Valley, followed a
few days afterward by Tigre (which had
become incorporated into the Armada),
but fell victim shortly thereafter to
French flibustiers operating under the
Armada deserter Laurens de Graaf.
Quintana’s flotilla then transported
reinforcements to Araya and Coro,
before returning to the coasts of Santo
Domingo and Cuba on patrol. By late
October 1679, the flagship and vice-flag
had reentered Havana for refit, which
proved to be lengthy, as they did not sail
again until June 21, 1680, crossing the
Gulf of Mexico to Veracruz. There,
Quintana resigned command because of
his advanced age, being replaced by
Andr
es de Ochoa y Z
arate. The new
commander sortied on September 13th,
escorting the annual Mexican plate fleet
across to Cuba, and reaching Havana by
October 23rd. The reunited Armada
exited on November 28th, but was driven
back by foul weather, to depart again a
month later and prowl through Nevis,
Saint Christopher, Saint Barth
elemy,
Saint Martin, and Anguilla before visit-
ing Puerto Rico. They then continued for
the Main, being struck by a storm off
Santa Marta and limping into Cartagena
with three damaged ships. Because of
numerous reports of French and English
privateers blockading Portobelo and
crossing the Isthmus of Panama from
Golden Island, a patrol was detached into
that area, yet found nothing. Ochoa’s five
ships weighed on February 19, 1681,
to return to Veracruz, arriving in poor
shape late in May, with only a tiny
fishing-boat as a token prize. The
Camino was broken up and Santo Cristo
de San Rom
an underwent repairs, while
Barlovento, Armada De 31
the other three departed once more on
August 4th to escort a plate fleet across
to Havana, and remained there.
Third Fleet (1682)
Meanwhile, more vessels had been raised
in Europe, so that in spring of 1681 the
350-ton Nuestra Se~ nora de la Soledad,
purchased in Spain and commanded by
Antonio de Olza, put into Santa Marta
with troops, artillery, and ammuni-
tion. After delivering this consignment,
Olza touched at Cartagena, from where
Soledad was detached on May 29, 1681,
to carry dispatches for Havana, then
returned at the end of that year with 350
black slaves from Curaçao to be used
as laborers on Cartagena’s fortifications.
A new capitana and almiranta also
arrived at La Guaira on the last days of
1681, having been built at Amsterdam:
the new flagship was the 650-ton Santo
Cristo de Burgos, and the new vice-flag-
ship the 550-ton Nuestra Se~ nora de la
Concepci
on, both manned by a total of
305 sailors and 413 Marines under a new
commander-in-chief, Juan de Peredo.
They had quit Cadiz on October 16,
1681, with a cargo of quicksilver, paus-
ing at the Canary Islands to take on 800
Spanish soldiers. The latter were depos-
ited at La Guaira and a contingent was
forwarded to Maracaibo aboard a hired
ship, while the two men-of-war contin-
ued toward Cartagena a month later.
Peredo died shortly after arriving, so
that temporary command devolved on
Olza, who delegated Soledad under
Captain Andr
es de Arriola to conduct
the quicksilver to Veracruz, while the
flagship and vice-flag visited Portobelo.
However, Olza also died shortly there-
after, leaving the Armada without a
leader until Ochoa could join.
32 Barlovento, Armada De
He departed Havana on March 25,
1682, with San Jos
e, Aranzazu, San Juan
Bautista, and Santo Cristo de San
Rom
an. (Francesa, which was still being
careened, was to follow under Captain
Manuel Delgado, but when it sailed on
July 8th with the payrolls for Puerto Rico
and Santo Domingo, it fell prey off
Aguada to the pirate De Graaf.) Ochoa
reached Cartagena in May to discover
Peredo was dead, after which he found
Santo Cristo de Burgos and Concepci
on
lying at Portobelo in early June 1682
with their crews very sick and ill-
supplied. He therefore replaced them on
that station with the smaller Aranzazu
and San Juan Bautista, which mustered
only 317 men between them, withdraw-
ing the others into Cartagena.
Ochoa also wished to return to Vera-
cruz, as in the interim he had been
promoted to castellano or ‘‘garrison
commander’’ for its island-fortress of
San Juan de Ul
ua, and his Armada ships
needed refurbishing. He therefore sent
the flagship and vice-flag into Havana
under his second-in-command De
Astina, while he sailed San Jos
e and
Santo Cristo de San Rom
an to Veracruz,
arriving in mid-August. Because of Pere-
do’s and Olza’s untimely deaths, the
Mexican Viceroy persuaded Ochoa to
stay on as Armada commander until
replacements could be sent out from
Spain, and also added two auxiliaries to
the fleet: the 335-ton Nuestra Se~ nora del
Honh
on and a new 8-gun Jes
us, Marı´a y
Jos
e (alias ‘‘Sevillano’’), which had been
launched at Campeche.
Cruise of 1683
Ochoa did not sortie from Veracruz
until March 1683, crossing to Havana,
where he reunited most elements of his
squadron to sail on May 26th with the
flagship Santo Cristo de Burgos, vice-
flag Concepci
on, San Jos
e as gobierno,
Soledad, Sevillano, and Santo Cristo
de San Rom
an, manned by a total of
1,239 officers, Marines, and sailors.
Putting into San Juan de Puerto Rico,
he learned of a French squadron threat-
ening Portobelo. Sevillano and Santo
Cristo de San Rom
an were conse-
quently detached to reinforce Aranzazu
and San Juan Bautista on the Panama-
nian coast, while the rest of the
Armada swept through the Caribbean,
before retiring toward Veracruz.
This was one of the most successful
cruises in the Armada’s history with six
vessels and 110 French and English
prisoners taken. At first, the prizes were
innocuous: the tiny six-man sloop Mar-
garet of William Roberts, supposedly
bound from Curaçao to Bermuda, yet
apprehended off Puerto Rico as a sus-
pected smuggler; the ketch of Peter Carr
intercepted near Santo Domingo while
sailing from New England for Curaçao
with a cargo of dry goods. However, on
August 4, 1683, Ochoa seized the
Proph ete Daniel of Antoine Bernard
and Dauphin of Pierre d’Orange at Lit-
tle Cayman, learning that they had taken
part in a massive pirate assault against
Veracruz. The Spanish prize Nuestra
Se~nora de Regla was also recuperated,
having been set ablaze by its pirate
captors with 90 slaves aboard, who
managed to extinguish the flames. Has-
tening back toward his base, Ochoa
combed the Laguna de T
erminos in
passing, driving off the New Englander
William ‘‘Jualen’’ [Walton? Wallace?],
and capturing five of his men who had
been poaching logwood ashore.
Yet Veracruz lay in ruins by the
time the Armada arrived on August 22,

1683, with one in four of its 6,000
inhabitants having been carried off into
bondage. There was bitterness at this
belated return of the Armada with its
prizes, especially when citizens learned
that they would have to buy back their
own goods at public auction. The
pirate captives were executed, and the
smugglers incarcerated ashore.
Tampico Foray (May 1684)
Demoralized, Ochoa remained at Veracruz
until April 29th of next year, when news
was received of a pirate attack six days
previously against Tampico, 300 miles
farther up the Gulf coast. Part of the Ar-
mada therefore sortied on May 4, 1684,
and four days later caught the frigate Pres-
byter and a small sloop still inside Tampi-
co’s bar, with 104 freebooters aboard. The
original attackers consisted of three frig-
ates and eight sloops that had come from
New Providence in the Bahamas under
Captain John Markham and others, yet
had mostly dispersed by the time Ochoa
arrived. The captives—77 Englishmen
and New Englanders, 26 Dutchmen, and a
Spaniard—included some buccaneers who
had participated in the sack of Veracruz,
so that on returning to base two weeks
later, 13 of these Englishmen and the lone
Spaniard were sentenced to death and
were executed at the Veracruz waterfront
on the morning of June 14th.
Yet despite this isolated victory, the
Armada remained an object of universal
scorn, and in Spain Francisco Garcı́a
Gal
an was proposing that its elephantine
flagship and vice-flag be substituted by
his more nimble Biscayan privateers. San
Jos
e had meanwhile been broken up at
Veracruz, followed shortly thereafter by
Aranzazu at Portobelo. Ochoa did not put
to sea again until April 1685, when he
Barlovento, Armada De 33
escorted two homeward-bound azogues
across to Havana with Santo Cristo de
Burgos, Concepci
on, Honh
on, Sevillano,
and the new tender Santo Cristo y las Ani-
mas. On arriving, he was ordered to the
Spanish Main because of the incursions
of Peter Harris the Younger, François
Grogniet, Jean Rose, and others crossing
the Isthmus of Panama. The Armada
reached Cartagena at the beginning of
June, yet found hostilities well beyond
their reach in the South Sea.
While lying at Cartagena, word
arrived that the pirates Grammont and
De Graaf had captured the Mexican port
of Campeche, and Ochoa was ordered to
intercept and punish them as they with-
drew. He set sail on August 2, 1685, with
his flagship, vice-flag, Soledad, Honh
on,
Sevillano, an auxiliary called Santo
Cristo de Leso, and a supply-pink
recently arrived from Spain. The latter
separated on the second night, so that
Ochoa wasted the next day trying to find
it. Then, Soledad’s mainmast collapsed,
leaving this warship astern; and on the
night of August 5th-6th Santo Cristo de
Leso also became lost. The remainder of
the Armada checked the Cayman Islands
for pirates, before touching at Trujillo
(Honduras) on August 17th. The bucca-
neer lair of Roat
an was inspected but
found uninhabited, before Ochoa
repaired back into Trujillo for fresh pro-
visions, then resumed his course north-
ward on September 8th.
Failure at Alacr
an Reef
(September 1685)
At dawn three days later, five sail
were sighted near Isla Mujeres off the
Yucatan coast, and the Armada gave
chase. Two lagged behind and were cap-
tured, proving to be the corsair Pierre
34 Barnes, William (fl. 1676
1677)
Bot’s 22-gun Nuestra Se~ nora de Regla
and a sloop, which had been dividing the
spoils of Campeche. With them was
De Graaf’s Neptune; De Graaf was the
greatest pirate of his day and the Span-
iards desperately hoped to take him.
They had lost sight of him while securing
the prizes and scuttling the sloop, but
spotted more sails to the northwest at
two o’clock the next afternoon. Ochoa
sent Honh
on and Sevillano to investigate,
which recognized the largest of the ves-
sels as De Graaf’s flagship. Honh
on
shadowed, while Sevillano returned to-
ward the Armada to report. By nightfall,
Honh
on lost contact, and that following
morning made off toward Veracruz. Sev-
illano, however, regained Santo Cristo
de Burgos and Concepci
on, and led them
toward De Graaf. At four o’clock on the
afternoon of September 13th, they spot-
ted him to the east of Alacr
an Reef, and
the two warships gradually closed on the
heavily-laden corsair.
Enjoying both the weather gauge and a
two-to-one superiority, Ochoa joined bat-
tle at dawn on September 14, 1685, de-
spite being so infirm as to be lying under
an awning on his own quarterdeck. De
Graaf fought his ship brilliantly, outma-
neuvering and out-shooting the Spaniards
until nightfall. After dark, the flagship
hailed almirante Astina aboard Con-
cepci
on, to advise him that Ochoa had
been given last rites, so that command of
the Armada was now his. Next morning
revealed that Neptune had slipped to
windward, and as it fled over the horizon,
the battered Armada gave up. Only En-
sign Pedro de Iriarte, prize-master aboard
the Regla, argued in favor of renewing
the pursuit, adding: ‘‘What would be said
of them in Veracruz, and that he wished
to be landed far from port, where the peo-
ple could not see him.’’ But the matter
was decided when the flagship’s weak-
ened superstructure fell overboard.
Ochoa died two days later, and
Astina limped back into Veracruz with
his four vessels on the night of Septem-
ber 28
29, 1685. Having previously
failed to check small nimble corsairs,
the Armada ships had now also shown
themselves incapable of subduing larger
opponents. A series of courts-martial
ensued for Astina and other senior offi-
cers, while the Biscayan privateers were
authorized back in Spain to raise a pri-
vate squadron.
See also
Azogue; Barlovento, Armada de (Volume 2);
De Graaf, Laurens de.
References
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier. The
Buccaneers of America, Trans. Alexis
Brown, with an introduction by Jack
Beeching (London: Penguin, 1969).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables, 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr
ua, 1972).
Rodrı́guez Demorizi, Emilio, Invasi
on
inglesa de 1655; notas adicionales de
Fray Cipriano de Utrera (Ciudad
Trujillo: Montalvo, 1957).
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am
erica Espa~
nola (Madrid:
Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
BARNES, WILLIAM
(fl. 1676
1677)
English privateer who served under
French colors.
 Barreda Villegas, Felipe De (fl. 1680
1685)
Barnes presumably participated in
the Third Anglo-Dutch War, but shifted
allegiance to the French once England
withdrew from these hostilities in the
spring of 1674. As such, he became one
of those captains who embarrassed
London by continuing depredations
against the Spanish and Dutch even
after England’s declaration of peace, pro-
voking diplomatic protests on account of
his nationality. On November 22, 1676
(O.S.), Barnes was identified by Gov. Sir
William Stapleton of the Leeward
Islands as operating a vessel ‘‘with 12
guns and 150 men’’ in those waters.
In June 1677, Barnes joined the
French Capitaine La Garde and John
Coxon in a descent against Santa Marta
on the Spanish Main. This flibustier
force surprised the town at dawn and
took many captives, including its Gover-
nor and Bishop, holding them for ran-
som until a trio of Spanish warships of
the Armada de Barlovento appeared
from Cartagena with 500 soldiers, to
drive them off. The raiders then retired
toward Port Royal, Jamaica, and on July
28, 1677, Sir Thomas Lynch noted:
Five or six French and English pri-
vateers lately come to Jamaica from
taking Santa Marta, Barnes being
one and Coxon expected every hour.
On board the Governor and the
Bishop, and Captain Legarde [sic]
has promised to put them on shore.
The plunder of the town was not
great, money and broken plate [i.e.,
silver] about £20 a man.
Three days later, Coxon entered and
personally escorted the Bishop Dr.
Lucas Fern
andez y Piedrahita and a
Spanish friar into the presence of the
new island Governor, Lord Vaughan.
35
The prelate was nobly housed, and
royal officers sent aboard the bucca-
neer flotilla to attempt ‘‘to procure the
liberty of the [Spanish] Governor and
others, but finding the privateers all
drunk, it was impossible to persuade
them to do anything by fair means.’’
Vaughan therefore ordered the French
to depart, advising Barnes and the
Englishmen that it was now against
the law for them to serve under for-
eign colors. The French were ‘‘damna-
bly enraged’’ at being deprived of
their English consorts, so sailed off
without releasing their captives. Barnes
apparently retired from roving around
this time.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Vols. 9 and 10
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898
1899).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
BARREDA VILLEGAS,
FELIPE DE (fl. 1680
1685)
Spanish officer who defended the La-
guna de T
erminos and Campeche
against pirates.
Born in the Toranzo Valley of the
Santillana Mountains in Santander,
Spain, De Barreda arrived at Cam-
peche in 1655 as a 20-year-old soldier
in the train of Yucat
an’s new provin-
cial Governor, Francisco de Baz
an. De
Barreda was immediately named to
36 Barreda Villegas, Felipe De (fl. 1680
1685)
help oversee the construction of Cam-
peche’s defenses, and next year was
appointed as Ensign of one of its garrison
companies under that city’s Lieutenant-
Governor, Captain Antonio Maldonado
de Aldana. Because De Barreda’s great-
uncle Pedro de la Barreda y Ceballos
was an influential member of the Council
of Indies in Madrid, the young officer
also served as a prosecutor and sheriff in
the small coastal city, and was able to
marry Ana de la Oliva y Vergara, the
daughter of a prominent local figure,
Captain Pedro de la Oliva. Furthermore,
he would even be addressed later in life
by the honorific name of Felipe de la
Barreda y Villegas, although he retained
the simpler form of ‘‘Felipe de Barreda’’
as his signature throughout.
Promoted to infantry captain, he com-
manded a contingent of 25 soldiers during
the unsuccessful defense of Campeche
against the English assault led by Com-
modore Christopher Myngs and Edward
Mansfield in February 1663, retreating
inland after losing a number of his troops.
De Barreda was evidently held blameless
for this loss, though, being retained as
guarda mayor of the devastated city after
the enemy retirement. Then on February
15, 1673, he was appointed by Yucat
an’s
new Gov. Miguel Codornio de Sola to
command the coast-guard frigate Nuestra
Se~nora del Carmen, Santa Teresa de
Jes
us y Santa Rosa, alias the Pescadora,
and over the next year-and-a-half De
Barreda would make seven voyages trans-
porting a total of 692 stone slabs from the
Campeche quarries to Veracruz, for use
on its offshore island-fortress of San Juan
de Ul
ua. On his last voyage, he also
entered Veracruz with a captured foreign
ketch from the Laguna de T
erminos, so
earned a special letter of commendation
from the acting Mexican Viceroy,
Archbishop Payo Enrı́quez de Rivera,
dated December 19, 1674.
Laguna de T
erminos
Campaign (1680)
Another important command occurred
in 1680, after being elected alcalde
ordinario or town magistrate, when the
reinstated Governor of Yucatan Antonio
de Layseca y Alvarado appointed him to
sweep the English logwood cutters from
the nearby Laguna de T
erminos. De la
Barreda sailed with a small flotilla of
piraguas and on February 6th took some
prizes; bolstered by this success, his sec-
ond expedition consisted of a barco
luengo, two piraguas, and 115 men,
which netted a 24-gun merchantman.
Delighted, on April 12th Governor de
Layseca appointed him asteniente de cap-
it

an general or ‘‘Captain-General’s Lieu-
tenant’’ for Campeche, as De la Barreda
prepared a third raid.
At his own expense, he secured half-
ownership of the 24-gun prize and rein-
forced it with two brigantines and six pira-
guas, plus more than 500 troops: 200
mulatto militiamen from the provincial
capital of M
erida, 70 regulars and 16 gun-
ners from the Campeche garrison, plus
240 volunteers. His officers included the
corsair Capts. Pedro de Castro and Juan
Corso, and burst into the Laguna on April
17, 1680. More than 38 craft of all sizes
were seized, along with 163 Baymen, and
numerous Spanish hostages and slaves. De
la Barreda also learned that a force of 240
buccaneers had departed in seven vessels
to waylay the annual cocoa harvest of Ta-
basco and sent a detachment in their pur-
suit. His prisoners and prizes were carried
triumphantly into Campeche, but De la
Barreda himself did not arrive. Ironically,
he had become separated from his
 Barreda Villegas, Felipe De (fl. 1680
1685)
expedition and been captured by English
stragglers. Conveyed to London, he was
allegedly detained in the Tower before
being released. By January 1682, he was
in Madrid reporting to the Crown, and
returned to Campeche next year to resume
his duties. On September 1, 1683, he was
officially promoted to capit

an de mar y
guerra by Yucatan’s Gov. Juan Bruno
T
ellez de Guzm
an, and appointed one of
Campeche’s two alcaldes ordinarios on
January 4, 1684.
Sack of Campeche (July 1685)
Two years later, reports began reaching
De Barreda of a large pirate formation
gathering off the northeastern tip of
Yucatan. Specifically, Captain Crist
obal
Martı́nez de Acevedo arrived with his
coast-guard frigate Nuestra Se~ nora de la
Soledad y San Antonio, to report that his
two-ship convoy had been pursued on the
high seas by hostile craft on May 27,
1685. De Barreda ordered Soledad to
remain in port as a reinforcement for its
garrison, while 25 of its sailors were dele-
gated to man a reconnaissance piragua
and return around the peninsula, along
with 25 soldiers under Baltasar Navarro.
They spotted numerous interlopers prowl-
ing off Cape Catoche and Isla Mujeres,
reporting their sightings to both De la
Barreda and Yucatan’s provincial Gover-
nor, Juan Bruno T
ellez de Guzm
an. The
buccaneer ships included those of
Laurens de Graaf, Sieur de Grammont,
Michiel Andrieszoon, Joseph Bannister,
Jan Willems, and many others, who
unknown to the Spaniards were muster-
ing for a descent against Campeche.
By late June 1685, De Barreda learned
that the enemy were advancing, creeping
past Sisal toward his port. Fortifications
were strengthened, and non-combatants
37
sent inland along with most valuables.
Finally, on the afternoon of July 6, 1685,
the pirate fleet of six large and four small
ships, six sloops, and 17 piraguas hove
into view half a dozen miles offshore. A
landing force of 700 buccaneers took to
the boats and began rowing in toward the
beach, but De Barreda was ready: four
militia companies totaling roughly 200
men exited, and positioned themselves
opposite the intended disembarkation-
point. The surprised pirates put up their
helms, not wishing to wade into the muz-
zles of Spanish infantry. All night they
remained in check by De la Barreda’s
deployment, until they began to draw off
toward their ships the next morning.
Yet this proved to be a feint, as the
freebooters suddenly rushed the outskirts
of the city and stormed ashore before the
defense could react. Several columns bore
down on Campeche, scattering De Barre-
da’s men back into the city. Out in the
harbor, Martı́nez prepared to scuttle Sole-
dad, but instead of boring holes in its bot-
tom as originally planned, the speed of
the enemy advance made him run a trail
of powder into the magazine, and light
the fuse. Soledad exploded with a deafen-
ing blast, collapsing the defenders’ mo-
rale and sending them reeling into their
citadel, while the pirates entered unop-
posed. De Barreda attempted to mount a
counterattack, yet was beaten off into the
countryside with his men; that night he
saw to the safety of his wife and family.
Over the next few days, the raiders
subdued the isolated strong-points within
Campeche, until only the citadel
remained. They began bombarding this
fortress at dawn on July 12, 1685, but at
ten o’clock that morning two relief-
columns of Spanish militiamen appeared
from M
erida de Yucat
an. In the past,
such troops simply had to appear for
38 Barreda Villegas, Felipe De (fl. 1680
1685)
smaller bands of rovers to scuttle back
out to sea, so the overconfident volun-
teers ignored De la Barreda’s call to
assemble at the town of Santa Lucı́a, and
instead rushed piecemeal into battle.
Well-aimed volleys greeted them, from a
freebooter army which stood and fought
from behind Campeche’s ramparts. All
day, the two sides struggled, De Barreda
throwing his troops into the fray only to
have Grammont circle behind the Span-
iards, and catch them between two fires.
The relief force drew off in defeat, leav-
ing the citadel in such despair that it was
abandoned that same night.
His city having fallen, De Barreda
was forced to wait until another expedi-
tion could be dispatched from the provin-
cial capital. More than two weeks later,
he received an order from Governor
T
ellez, directing that all troops be mar-
shaled at Tenab
o, eight leagues outside
Campeche. De la Barreda set out with
his own 46-man company, only to be
captured near Cholul on July 28, 1685,
by two columns of buccaneer horsemen.
The pirates, who had commandeered
mounts from outlying ranches and sent
riders to ravage the countryside, brought
De la Barreda and many other captives
back into Campeche the next day. Their
frustration at finding most of the Span-
iards’ wealth withdrawn led to numerous
instances of cruelty. On August 25th, the
French flibustiers celebrated Louis
XIV’s saint day with fireworks and fes-
tivities, then that following morning
began preparations to decamp. A mes-
sage was sent inland demanding a ran-
som of 80,000 pesos and 400 head of
cattle for Campeche. T
ellez’s reply
arrived a few days later, addressed to De
Barreda. He was forced to read aloud a
sneering rejection of the pirates’ demand,
in which the Governor stated:
. . . they would be given nothing and
might burn down the town, as
[Spain] had ample funds with which
to build or even buy another, and
people with which to repopulate it.
Furious, Grammont had the houses
torched the next dawn; one of the few
to be spared was De Barreda’s, which
lay outside of the city limits and was
occupied by the pirate leaders. The fli-
bustier commander then sent another
missive in which he threatened to mas-
sacre his captives, yet received the
same response. Next day, the unfortu-
nate prisoners were paraded in the
main square, and executions began. Af-
ter half-a-dozen men had been hanged,
De Barreda and other leading citizens:
. . . presented themselves before
‘‘Lorencillo’’ [de Graaf], whom
they knew to be more humane than
the Frenchman, and offered to serve
him for the rest of their lives as
slaves if he saved the rest of the
inhabitants of Campeche. Lorenzo,
after a lengthy discussion with Gram-
mont, ordered a halt to the executions,
and that the remaining prisoners be
carried out to the ships.
Immediately after this incident, all the
pirates evacuated the citadel, having
spiked the guns.
De Barreda was fortunate in that he
was left behind when the raiders eventu-
ally quit Campeche in early September
1685. He was cleared at the subsequent
inquest into the loss of his city two
months later, but apparently retired from
active campaigning. He was last heard
from in 1704, giving his opinion as to
a new projected assault against the
Laguna de T
erminos. He must have died

shortly thereafter, as in January 1705 his
wife petitioned the Crown for a pension.
References


Eugenio Martı́nez, Marı́a Angeles, La
defensa de Tabasco, 1600
1717
(Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
americanos, 1971).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
BARRE’S TAVERN
One of the more genteel establishments
at rollicking Port Royal, Jamaica, noted
for its light refreshments: ‘‘silabubus
[sic], cream tarts and other quelque cho-
ses,’’ according to one satisfied patron.
‘‘Sillabubs’’ or ‘‘syllabubs’’ were
drinks or dishes made by curdling cream
or milk with an admixture of wine, cider,
or some other acid, producing a soft curd
which was then whipped or solidified
with gelatin, to be sweetened or flavored.
The name of this establishment may
actually have been ‘‘Barre’s Tavern,’’
most probably owned or operated by the
family of Charles de La Barre, Gov. Sir
Thomas Lynch’s French secretary.’
See also
Barr
e’s Tavern (Volume 2).
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London, 1898).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Beef Island 39
BASQUE, MICHEL LE
See Artigue, Michel d’
BEAUREGARD, CHARLES
FRANÇOIS LE VASSEUR
DE BECQUEL, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1659
1663)
French privateer commander who was
mentioned under the name ‘‘Bequell’’ in
the journal of Colonel Edward D’Oyley,
Governor of Jamaica, as having been
issued a ‘‘let-pass’’ on December 3,
1659 (O.S.). He is presumably the same
‘‘Captain Buckell’’ listed as command-
ing an 8-gun French frigate with a crew
of 70 men in 1663, being described as
‘‘belonging to Tortuga,’’ yet bearing a
commission from the English authorities
on Jamaica.
Reference
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
BEEF ISLAND
A not uncommon name in the 17th-
century Caribbean, as the quest for
fresh meat was a constant preoccupa-
tion for many rovers.
Mexico
One such ‘‘Beef Island’’ was in fact not
an island at all, but rather a long narrow
strip of land named Xicalango Point,
connected to the Mexican mainland due
west of Isla del Carmen. It encloses the
western portion of the Laguna de
T
erminos, which was then a popular
40 Beeston, Sir William (fl. 1660
Post 1695)
destination for adventurers sortieing
from Jamaica, who referred to it as the
‘‘Bay of Campeche.’’ Some visitors into
this region were cruel marauders who
came to plunder the Spanish coastal
towns; others were relatively honest
merchantmen who came to gather or buy
logwood from the resident poachers or
‘‘Baymen.’’ To all of them, Beef Island
was a particular stretch of low coastline
where, over the years, cattle had rou-
tinely been rustled or slaughtered.
In November 1681, for example,
an Englishman named Jonas Clough
described how a year-and-a-half earlier
he had been aboard one of three New
England sloops, when a Spanish expedi-
tion under Felipe de la Barreda had sud-
denly appeared and ‘‘took two of the
sloops and forced the third ashore on
Beef Island, called by the Spaniards Jica
Lanoga [sic; Xicalango].’’ More than
80 interlopers had remained marooned
there, he added, until they agreed to sur-
render more than a month later. These
Englishmen thought that they had been
promised safe-conduct to the Cayman
Islands or Jamaica, but were instead car-
ried off as prisoners to Mexico City,
where they were harshly treated.
Virgin Islands
Another ‘‘Beef Island’’ was at the east-
ern extreme of Tortola in the Virgin
Islands, which still bears this name
today. Early in 1684, one of pirate
George Bond’s prizes—a Dutch ship
which he had seized at Suriname—was
reportedly recaptured ‘‘at Beef Island,
near Saint Thomas.’’
See also
Beef Island (Volume 2).
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London, 1898).
Gerhard, Peter, The Southeast Frontier of
New Spain (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979).
BEESTON, SIR WILLIAM
(fl. 1660
Post 1695)
English pirate-hunter who became
Governor of Jamaica.
Beeston was born at Tichfield,
Hampshire, England, and apparently
was baptized on December 2, 1636
(O.S.). He was the second son of
William and Elizabeth Beeston. His
elder brother Henry became master of
Winchester School and warden of New
College, Oxford. William emigrated to
Jamaica in May 1660, and little more
than three years later was elected to its
first Council, as a member for Port
Royal. He was made Judge of the
Court of Common Pleas in December
1664, and that following November
1665 was sent by the new Gov. Sir
Thomas Modyford with three ships to
recall a group of privateers, who were
reportedly gathered off Cuba for an
attack against the town of Sancti Spı́ri-
tus. Beeston was to read them ‘‘a proc-
lamation from the King to keep peace
with the Spaniards’’ and recall them
for the defense of Jamaica against the
Dutch, the Second Anglo-Dutch War
having recently erupted back in
Europe; yet after six weeks without
being able to find them, he returned
into Port Royal empty-handed, learning
that the rovers had indeed carried out
their design.
 Beeston, Sir William (fl. 1660
Post 1695)
Modyford’s successor Sir Thomas
Lynch delegated Beeston on a similar
commission six years later: Having
brought out the peace treaty with Spain,
Lynch and Modyford chose ‘‘Major
Beeston and Captain Reid to carry the
articles of peace, &c,’’ to the Spanish
Governor of Cartagena, and bring back
any English prisoners who were incarcer-
ated there. The frigates HMS Assistance
of 40 guns and Welcome of 36 were
placed at Beeston’s disposal, sailing on
July 16, 1671 (O.S.), yet they were
hardly out of sight of Port Royal when
Captain John Hubbart of Assistance fell
ill. He died three days later, being suc-
ceeded in command by Lieutenant John
Wilgress. Cartagena was reached on July
23rd (O.S.), where arrangements were
made for the publication of the treaty
and release of English captives. By Au-
gust 7th (O.S.) Beeston was back in
Jamaica, and five days later witnessed
the arrest of Modyford for his deporta-
tion toward England.
Pirate Hunting (1671
1672)
On December 8, 1671 (O.S.), Wilgress
was dismissed from command of
HMS Assistance for ‘‘wicked, drunken
behavior,’’ being replaced two days later
by Beeston. On December 16th (O.S.)
he set sail for Trinidad (Cuba), returning
into Port Royal by January of next year.
Then, as noted in Beeston’s journal:
January 31, 1672 [O.S.]. The Assis-
tance sailed again to the south cays of
Cuba after privateers and pirates, by
the desire of the Governor of Santiago
[de Cuba]; yet when she came there,
he would not suffer them to have pro-
vision for their money, nor would he
41
let them come into Santiago, though
the captain [Beeston] brought and
delivered him a ship he took from the
privateers (which belonged formerly
to the Spaniards) without any charge;
therefore the 18th of March [O.S.] the
Assistance again returned to Port
Royal.
During this cruise, Beeston had
vainly pursued the renegade privateer
ship Seviliaen of Jelles de Lecat and
Jan Erasmus Reyning near Campeche,
where he had also seized the rogue
ship Charity of Francis Weather-
bourne and the French vessel of Capi-
taine du Mangles, both for committing
‘‘great violence against the Span-
iards.’’ The latter two captains were
tried for piracy and condemned to be
shot to death aboard Assistance a cou-
ple of days after reentering Port
Royal, yet eventually were ordered
deported to England aboard Welcome,
when that frigate departed Jamaica on
April 6, 1672 (O.S.), with Henry Mor-
gan as a prisoner.
Five days afterward, Beeston again
sailed with Assistance, this time ‘‘to
Hispaniola to look for privateers, and
thence to the Havana to fetch away the
[English] prisoners, from whence she
returned [to Jamaica] the 15th of June
[O.S.].’’ Beeston then commanded the
warship on its return passage to Eng-
land, quitting Port Royal on July 10,
1672 (O.S.), with a convoy comprised
of the merchantmen Friesland, Thomas
and Charles, Huntsman, and Endeav-
our. They reached the mouth of the
Thames that October, and shortly there-
after Beeston relinquished his command,
returning to Jamaica the next summer,
perhaps aboard Captain Canning’s 40-
gun frigate HMS Portland, or Captain
42 Beeston, Sir William (fl. 1660
Post 1695)
Gollo’s smaller Thomas and Francis,
both of which entered Port Royal on July
21, 1673 (O.S.).
Subsequent Career
(1673
1702)
Two years later, when Lord Vaughan
reached Jamaica as that island’s new
Governor, Beeston was appointed one
of its Commissioners of the Admiralty
(along with the recently-returned
Lieutenant-Gov. Sir Henry Morgan, and
the latter’s brother-in-law, Colonel Rob-
ert Byndloss). In April 1677, ‘‘Lieuten-
ant-Colonel’’ Beeston was chosen
Speaker of the Jamaican Assembly, and
led the opposition to proposed changes
in its government from London. Differ-
ences with the new Governor, the Earl
of Carlisle, eventually reached such a
point that the Assembly was dissolved
and Beeston, along with the island’s
Chief Justice, Colonel Samuel Long,
were ordered to travel to England and
‘‘answer for their contumacy.’’ Beeston
set sail on July 6, 1680 (O.S.), reaching
London two months afterward—before
either Carlisle or Long, both of whom
had departed fourteen weeks previously.
Together with the Chief Justice, Bees-
ton then filed counter-charges against
the Earl, and after lengthy proceedings
was cleared of any wrongdoing.
In June 1692, Beeston was named
Lieutenant-Governor for Jamaica and
also became a factor for the Royal
African Company, was knighted at
Kensington on October 30th (O.S.), and
set sail from Portsmouth aboard HMS
Ruby on December 19th (O.S.) to return
to Port Royal in mid-March 1693.
Although he had missed the dreadful
earthquake which devastated that harbor
shortly before noon on June 7, 1692
(O.S.), he nonetheless found the island
still suffering from its terrible afteref-
fects, and wrote to a friend: ‘‘By the mor-
tality which yet continues, I have lost all
my family but my wife [Anne] and one
child [their daughter Jane], and have not
one servant left to attend me but my
cook, so it is very uneasy being here.’’
His discomfiture was further increased
by the War of the League of Augsburg or
King William’s War, which left Jamaica
vulnerable to an attack from the French
on Saint-Domingue. The next summer,
Jean-Baptiste Ducasse led a massive
descent on Jamaica, which Beeston
managed to resist, although the French
rampaged unchecked throughout the
southern plantations for the better part of
a month, before retiring. Beeston was
superseded as Governor at the end of
January 1702; he sailed for England by
April 25th (O.S.) and arrived two months
later and died shortly thereafter.
See also
Beeston, Sir William (Volume 2).
References
Dictionary of National Biography
(London, 1885
1900, 63 volumes;
reissued by Oxford University Press,
2004).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
 Bernardson, Albert (fl. 1665) 43

BENNETT, JOHN held three times that number. They

therefore believed that Ferrer had col-
(fl. 1670
1676) luded in this capture, allowing Buen
Jes
us to be carried into Saint-Domingue
English privateer who served in Henry
in April 1675, and ordered his arrest;
Morgan’s sack of Panama.
furthermore, they believed him guilty of
Late in 1670, Bennett joined the buc-
fraud as well on his previous voyage to
caneer fleet gathering at ^Ile a Vache off
Cartagena and Havana for another sit-
southwestern Hispaniola with his tiny
uado. They furthermore lodged a protest
Virgin Queen of 50 tons and 30 men, to
with London pointing out that the Eng-
take part in the expedition against the
lish renegade had run away with his
Spaniards. He must have sailed to Provi-
brigantine from Jamaica, ‘‘had French-
dencia Island and Chagres, then led his
men on board, French commission,
contingent across the Isthmus as part
fought under French colors, had the
of Morgan’s main body. Following
prize condemned and adjudged in French
this attack, little more is heard about
ports.’’ The protest was rejected. Never-
Bennett’s activities, although he pre-
theless, the English would have happily
sumably continued roving during the
detained Bennett, except that chance
Third Anglo-Dutch War of 1672
1674.
intervened. On February 9, 1677 (O.S.),
When England withdrew from the con-
a Jamaican newsletter reported:
federation against The Netherlands,
many West Indian corsairs shifted alle-
Two French vessels lately well
giance to continue privateering.
beaten by a Spanish hulk [sic; urca]
Bennett was one such commander,
in the Gulf of Mexico with the loss
obtaining a commission from Bertrand
of 80 men, Captain Bennett killed in
d’Ogeron, Governor of French Saint-
the engagement.
Domingue, to make war against the Span-
iards. His reputation became such that
he was the principal renegade to whom References
Morgan drafted a letter in March 1675,
offering liberty to all English rovers who Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
returned to Jamaica. This proposal was America and West Indies, Volumes 9, 10
never sent, the Jamaican authorities pre- (London: Her Majest’s Stationery
ferring other measures to recall English Office, 1893
1896).
subjects from foreign service. Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
Meanwhile, Bennett remained busy,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
intercepting the Buen Jes
us de las Almas
Warburg, 1977).
of Master Bernardo Ferrer Espejo, as it
approached the coast of Hispaniola with
46,471 pesos as the annual situado or
‘‘payroll’’ for that island’s garrison. The BERNARDSON, ALBERT
Spanish authorities were highly suspi- (fl. 1665)
cious of this capture, noting that Bennett
only had a small brigantine with 20 men, Privateer who commanded the 6-gun
whereas Ferrer Espejo’s 50-ton frigate Trueman in Colonel Edward Morgan’s
44 Bigot
expedition against Dutch Sint Eustatius
and Saba, during the Second Anglo-
Dutch War.
This force departed Jamaica in two
divisions, five sail putting out of Port
Royal on April 5, 1665, and Morgan
himself following with another four on
the 28th. There were 650 men in all,
described in a letter by Gov. Sir
Thomas Modyford as:
. . . chiefly reformed privateers, scarce
a planter amongst them, being reso-
lute fellows and well armed with
fusils [Spanish word for muskets] and
pistols.
The Crown official was particularly
grateful that they would be serving ‘‘at
the old rate of no purchase, no pay,
and it will cost the King nothing con-
siderable, some powder and mortar
pieces.’’ Their landing was successfully
made, but the Colonel, ‘‘being a corpu-
lent man,’’ died from heat exertion
during the chase, so that his expedition
disbanded shortly thereafter.
References
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
BIGOT
See Vigot, Guillaume
BILBO OR BILBOES
In the 17th century, ‘‘bilbo’’ was appa-
rently a nickname for any rapier or
fine, flexible thrusting-sword, suppos-
edly derived from the name of the
Spanish port of Bilbao, where many
such blades were bought.
‘‘Bilboes,’’ on the other hand,
referred to a long iron bar with shackles,
used to confine the feet of prisoners. For
example, a man named John Yardley
gave a deposition before the President
of the Council of Barbados on the last
day of 1661 (O.S.), complaining of the
brutalities inflicted on him by Captain
Richard Whiting and various seamen of
the anchored 40-gun Royal Navy frigate
HMS Diamond, alleging that while:
Returning from Carlisle Bay to St.
Michael’s on November 5th last
[1661 O.S.], after commemorating
the Gunpowder Treason by pistol fir-
ing, he was on a sudden assaulted
and deprived of his pistol, tripped up,
kicked, and hauled into a boat, which
was then rowed away to the Diamond
frigate, where he was kept in the bil-
boes all that night with one Mr. Hunt.
About 9 or 10 o’clock next morning,
he and Hunt were released. Some of
the Diamond’s men assaulted him
and took away his pistol, and the
Captain kicked him in the boat.
See also
Bilbo (Volume 2).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
 Binckes, Jacob (?
1677) 45

(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery

Office, 1893
1899).

BILLIARDS
Popular 17th-century diversion, particu-
larly in English drinking establishments.
Several taverns at Port Royal,
Jamaica, sported billiards rooms, which
seem to have been situated in the yard or
otherwise removed from the main bar, so
as to minimize frictions. According to a
contemporary report, the ‘‘George’’ tav-
ern, which ‘‘fronted to the old market
place’’ in town, had a special room built
for the game; the same was true at the
‘‘Feathers,’’ whose billiard room was sit-
uated over another room in its yard.

See also
Billiards (Volume 2).
Reference
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
BINCKES, JACOB (?
1677)
Also spelled Benckes. Frisian com-
mander who led two expeditions into
the West Indies.
Binckes was a veteran of the Second
Anglo-Dutch War, having fought in the
Two Day Battle off Dunkirk in 1666,
and the daring Medway raid of the fol-
lowing year. At the outbreak of the
Third Anglo-Dutch War in 1672, he
was given command of the 70-gun
Woerden by the Admiralty of Amster-
dam, fighting in the Battle of Sole Bay,
and off West Kapellen that June aboard
Groot Hollandia. In September, he was
Portrait of the Dutch admiral Jacob
Binckes, by Nicolaes Maes; this officer led
a pair of lucrative privateering forays into
the West Indies, before being killed on
the island of Tobago. (The Metropolitan
Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY)
unjustly accused along with four other
senior officers of having quit the Battle
of Sole Bay, being quickly cleared.
First Caribbean Campaign
(1673)
After this trial, Binckes rejoined Admiral
Michiel de Ruyter at the Texel. The
Anglo-French invasion threat having been
defused and summer campaigning draw-
ing to a close, he was ordered to lead a
small squadron into the West Indies. His
flagship was the two-year-old frigate
Noordhollandt of 46 guns and 210 men,
accompanied by three other men-of-war.
He quit the Texel on December 18, 1672,
and by late May 1673 had taken two
prizes and was blockading Cul-de-Sac
46 Binckes, Jacob (?
1677)
Bay, Martinique. At noon on May 22nd,
he saw four ships approaching, and turned
toward them with French colors displayed,
hoping to lure them nearer. The strangers
immediately hoisted Dutch flags, proving
to be a Zeeland squadron under Cornelis
Evertsen. Having left Vlissingen [Flush-
ing] on an identical mission, they agreed
to join forces and attempted to force the
French harbor that same night, but were
prevented by contrary winds.
Both squadrons then proceeded to
Guadeloupe, seizing the merchantmen
Saint Joseph and Françoise, as well as
the island trader Nouveau France and
Irish merchantman Saint Michael of
Galway, from beneath the Monserrat
batteries. Nevis and St. Kitts were
bombarded, before the former Dutch
island of Sint Eustatius was overrun on
May 29, 1673. Binckes and Evertsen
raided the Virginia coast in mid-July,
reoccupying New York City (formerly
New Netherland) at the end of that month.
Having reinstated Dutch rule, they
detached four ships to raid Newfound-
land, before sailing with their main body
to the Azores and Europe. By the time
they reached neutral Cadiz in December
1673, they had captured a total of 34 Eng-
lish or French prizes during their cruise,
and destroyed at least 150 more. How-
ever, a peace treaty was just being con-
cluded with the English, so that New
York was restored to English domination.
Second Caribbean
Campaign (1676)
Binckes was promoted to Vice-Admiral
of Amsterdam and sent back out to the
West Indies again on March 16, 1676,
with a fleet of three ships-of-the-line of
56 to 44 guns, six frigates of 36 to 24
guns, a fire-ship, and three troop
transports. On May 4, 1676, he dropped
anchor off Cayenne, landing 900 men and
taking Fort Saint-Louis with almost no re-
sistance. Leaving behind a garrison, he
proceeded northward and visited a like
treatment on Marie-Galante, throwing
down its fortifications and carrying off its
French colonists. When he sighted Guade-
loupe on June 16th, he considered its
defenses too strong, so passed it by,
unsuccessfully pursuing a trio of French
vessels. A few days later, he landed 500
men and overran Saint-Martin, killing the
French Governor and seizing 100 slaves.
From there, Binckes continued toward
Tobago, which according to his instruc-
tions he was to fortify, while at the same
time detaching his second-in-command
Pieter Constant to attempt to incite the
boucaniers of Saint-Domingue to revolt
against the high tariffs newly-imposed by
the French West Indies Company.
A French counterattack was not long in
developing; Louis XIV dispatched a large
fleet into the New World under Vice
Admiral Jean, Duc d’Estr
ees. In December
1676, this French officer recaptured Cay-
enne, then pressed on for Martinique,
where he gained intelligence and was
heavily reinforced by numerous flibustiers.
He set sail again on February 12, 1677, for
Tobago, which Binckes had transformed
into a heavily-fortified base, although the
Dutch were outnumbered by 1,700 to
4,000. On the evening of 21 February
1677, the French landed 1,000 soldiers
near Rockly Bay, and sent 14 light vessels
to make a feint against its harbor mouth.
First Battle of Tobago
(March 1677)
D’Estr
ees launched his major assault
on the morning of March 3, 1677.

Fighting was intense both on land and
especially in the harbor, with Binckes
eventually emerging victorious, although
losing 10 of his 13 anchored vessels to
a spreading conflagration (which also
consumed four of the attacking French
men-of-war). Two French vessels were
also captured, and D’Estr
ees was forced
to retreat to Grenada and Martinique
with over 1,000 casualties and by early
July was back in Versailles reporting on
his failure.
The ‘‘Sun King’’ immediately or-
dered his Admiral to return to the West
Indies and complete his mission.
D’Estr
ees therefore departed Brest
on September 27, 1677, with 17
more ships, arriving off Tobago on
December 6th, having destroyed the
Dutch slaving-station of Gor
ee in West
Africa while en route. Binckes’ squad-
ron and garrison had meanwhile not
been reinforced from Holland, being
reduced to less than 500 effectives by
the first battle and ravages of tropical
disease. Binckes’ sole advantage lay in
the torrential weather, yet despite this,
the French quickly threw a contingent
of 1,000 troops ashore and installed
siege artillery, refusing to be drawn
into a suicidal charge like the last time.
The harbor was no longer a considera-
tion, as the Dutch only had two ships
lying there.
Second Battle of Tobago
(December 1677)
On December 12, 1677, the chief
French gunner began firing ranging-
shots against the Dutch fortification,
laying odds that he would blow it up at
the third attempt. Incredibly, the third
round landed within the magazine,
Blackburne, Lancelot (fl. 1681
1683) 47
killing Binckes and 250 defenders with
a mighty blast. The French swarmed
exultantly over the ruins, while Dutch
resolve collapsed, and the island fell.
References
Buchet, Christian, La lutte pour l’espace
cara€be et la façade atlantique de
l’Am
erique centrale et du Sud
(1672
1763) (Paris: Librairie de
l’Inde, 1991).
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert
D., Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia,
SC: University of South Carolina Press,
1988).
BLACKBURNE, LANCELOT
(fl. 1681
1683)
Archbishop of York, who allegedly
served aboard buccaneer ships as a
young man in the West Indies.
Blackburne was educated at West-
minster School, and in 1676 matricu-
lated at Christ Church, Oxford, at the
age of 17. Five years later, shortly after
his ordination, he went to Antigua on a
brief secret mission, the sum of £20
appearing opposite his name in the re-
cord of ‘‘Moneys paid for Secret Serv-
ices’’ for the year 1681. By January
28, 1683 (O.S.), he was back in Eng-
land, receiving his Masters of Arts
degree.
Henceforth, he concentrated on his
Church career, slowly gaining prefer-
ments until he became Archbishop of
York in 1724. This rise, coupled by
political influence, made him the target
of jealous enemies, who repeated many
injurious rumors—the most persistent
being that Blackburne had acted as
48 Bl
enac, Charles De Courbon, Seigneur De Romegoux, Comte De (1622
1696)
chaplain aboard ships engaged in buc-
caneering, and even shared in their
loot. One joke of the day had a bucca-
neer return to England after many
years and ask what had become of his
old chum, only to be told that he was
now Archbishop of York.
Blackburne’s jolly, earthy personal-
ity lent itself to this image. Another
story described how on a visitation to
St. Mary’s, Nottingham, he ordered
pipes with tobacco and liquor brought
into the vestry ‘‘for his refreshment af-
ter the fatigue of confirmation.’’ The
merry old cleric passed away on March
23, 1743 (O.S.), ‘‘at a time of extreme
cold,’’ and was buried at St. Margaret’s,
Westminster, England.
Reference
Dictionary of National Biography (London,
1885
1900, 63 volumes; reissued by
Oxford University Press, 2004).

NAC, CHARLES DE
BLE
COURBON, SEIGNEUR DE
ROMEGOUX, COMTE DE
(1622
1696)
Governor-General of the French Antil-
les, who on several occasions raised
flibustiers for West Indian campaigns.
Bl
enac was born in Saintonge, France,
in 1622, of a noble family. He married his
cousin’s widow Ang
elique de la Roche-
foucauld in 1649, by whom he would
have 11 children. He served the infant
Louis XIV throughout the Fronde rebel-
lions, rising in military rank. In 1669,
Bl
enac transferred to the nascent French
Navy, and commanded the Infante or
‘‘Infanta’’ in the Comte d’Estr
ees’
expedition against the Barbary pirates, as
well as Fort or ‘‘Strong’’ at the 1672 Bat-
tle of Sole Bay. Hot-tempered and quar-
relsome, he was briefly incarcerated the
next year for insulting a superior officer,
yet saw action again against the Dutch
that same August 1673, when he cap-
tained Fortun
e at the Battle of the Texel.
Late in 1676, Bl
enac sailed in
D’Estr
ees’ first Caribbean expedition,
commanding Fendant or ‘‘Sword-
stroke’’ in the unsuccessful assault
against Dutch Tobago. Retreating to
Grenada, the French furthermore
learned of the death of Jean-Charles de
Baas-Castelmore, Governor-General of
the Antilles, so that Bl
enac was tempo-
rarily appointed to succeed him. He
returned to France with D’Estr
ees to
have this nomination confirmed, then
sailed back to Martinique with the
Admiral’s second fleet in autumn 1677,
assuming office that November. Bl
enac
was instrumental in raising a large force
of flibustiers for D’Estr
ees’ subsequent
venture against Curaçao, which ended
in disaster when this force was wrecked
amid the Aves Islands grouping on the
evening of May 11, 1678.
Bl
enac also employed buccaneer
contingents during the War of the
League of Augsburg, especially at its
inception in 1689, when he launched
offensive operations against English St.
Kitts and Dutch Sint Eustatius. His
early successes were soon reversed,
and he was so severely criticized by
subordinates such as Jean-Baptiste
Ducasse that he offered to resign.
Bl
enac returned to France ‘‘on leave’’
aboard Pont d’Or or ‘‘Golden Bridge’’
in 1690, and did not resume his duties
at Martinique until February 16, 1692.
He died at Fort-Royal of lingering
dysentery on the night of June 8—9,

1696, being succeeded by the Marquis
d’Amblimont.
See also
Bl
enac, Charles de Courbon (Volume 2).
Reference
Baudrit, Andr
e, Charles de Courbon,
Comte de Bl
enac, 1622
1696 (Fort de
France: Soci
et
e d’Histoire de la
Martinique, 1967).
BLOT, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1679
1684)
French flibustier and salvor, who oper-
ated out of Saint-Domingue.
This little-known figure was first
mentioned in official records in 1679,
as bearing a privateer commission to
command a 2-gun frigate with a crew
of 44 men. While cruising off Havana,
he apparently joined Pierre Br
eha in a
venture to the Bahamas, where they
captured two Spanish vessels under
Captain Martı́n de Melgar, who was
diving on the wreck of the long-
lost galleon Maravillas. Br
eha and
Blot took over this operation, using
Melgar’s own divers and equipment to
raise 200,000 pesos’ worth of silver
bars. On regaining Saint-Domingue to-
ward the end of that same year with
this treasure, Blot was hastened back
out to the wreck-site by Gov. Jacques
Nepveu, Sieur de Pouançay, aboard the
2-gun, 80-man frigate Trinitaire. Blot
was back working the galleon by April
1680, returning into port that September
for re-supply, before resuming salvage-
work for a third time, with his frigate and
two or three lesser consorts in May 1681.
Blot, Capitaine (fl. 1679
1684) 49
Having evidently exhausted the site,
Blot was next heard of in 1682, capturing
an 8-gun Spanish ship and sailing this
prize to the Cayman Islands, where he
joined forces with Jan ‘‘Jantje’’ Willems.
They in turn ventured to the coast of
Honduras, to participate in Laurens de
Graaf and the Sieur de Grammont’s sub-
sequent sack of Veracruz in May 1683.
On returning to Saint-Domingue, Blot
seemingly served as one of eight Captains
in the stillborn strike ordered against San-
tiago de Cuba in early November 1683,
weighing from Petit-Go^ave, only to see
this expedition disintegrate after the
planter and militia Major Jean Le Goff,
Sieur de Beauregard, attempted to disci-
pline a disgruntled flibustier.
Finally, Blot is known to have weighed
from Petit-Go^ave for the last time in
March 1684, his 8-gun, 90-man vessel
Quagone [sic?] forming part of the five-
ship flotilla which Jean, Sieur de Berna-
nos, would lead against the Spanish Main.
After securing a commission from the
French Governor of Saint Croix, and ally-
ing themselves with a party of Carib auxil-
iaries, this force advanced up Venezuela’s
Orinoco River to seize the newly-com-
pleted Spanish fort of San Francisco de
Asis by May 30, 1684. The flibustiers then
pushed farther upstream to sack the fron-
tier outpost of Santo Tom
e de Guayana,
and held onto Fort San Francisco until
August 1684, before retiring to the islands
of Margarita and Trinidad. Although infor-
mation is uncertain, it appears as if Blot
died sometime during this penetration up
the Orinoco, or shortly thereafter.
See also
Bernanos, Jean, Sieur de (Volume 2);
Br
eha, Pierre; De Graaf, Laurens;
Flibustier; Grammont, Sieur de;
50 Blunden, Robert (fl. 1662
1664)
Pouançay, Jacques Nepveu, Sieur de;
Willems, Jan (Volume 2).
References
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos,
1972).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’
1944).
BLUNDEN, ROBERT
(fl. 1662
1664)
English privateer out of Jamaica.
When the new Governor Lord
Windsor arrived at Port Royal in
August 1662, his instructions included
a suggestion that an attempt be made
to win over the boucaniers of Tortuga
Island, before they could threaten the
burgeoning English colony. The idea
was to make them a discreet overture,
hoping to persuade them to submit to
English rule, yet without openly antag-
onizing the French government. Wind-
sor only remained in office 10 weeks
before returning to England, so that the
matter was left to the Council of
Jamaica, which dispatched Colonel
Samuel Barry and Captain Abraham
Langford on this business, aboard the
privateer vessel Charles of Robert
Blunden.
This trio set sail in January 1663,
crossing to western Santo Domingo, but
on arriving learned that the boucaniers
of Tortuga were quite hostile to such
a notion, and might contest their
approach by force of arms. Blunden
flatly refused to proceed any farther,
and the Charles was redirected—over
Barry’s objections—to the mainland set-
tlement of Petit-Go^ave. Here, a different
band of boucaniers acclaimed Blunden
as their chieftain, even raising the Eng-
lish flag. Langford apparently seconded
Blunden, departing soon after for Eng-
land to petition Charles II for appoint-
ment as Governor of ‘‘Tortuga and the
coasts of Hispaniola.’’ Barry returned to
Jamaica several months later and
reported on this strange conclusion,
which London never approved because
Blunden’s claim would have annoyed
not only the French government, but
also the Spaniards of Santo Domingo.
References
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
BOND, GEORGE
(fl. 1683
1684)
English master turned pirate.
Bond arrived in the West Indies
commanding the Summer Island of
London, but at Saint Thomas in the
Danish Virgin Islands was persuaded
to go a-roving, so that in May 1683 he
was seen fitting out his ship, now
renamed Fortune’s Adventure. He was
abetted with ‘‘spars, sails, and provi-
sions’’ provided by the local Gov.

Adolf Esmit. Bond departed on a
cruise and returned with a Dutch prize,
stopping at the east end of Saint
Thomas to send Esmit word of his ar-
rival. The Governor met Bond at sea,
offering ‘‘his sloop and storehouse [to
offload and hide] the captured goods,’’
plus protection for the rovers.
Soon, Bond’s depredations began to
multiply, one of his captures being the
English merchantman Gideon, which
he sent into Saint Thomas. His prize
crew (all Englishmen) were well
received by the Governor, their booty
being stored in the castle, and the
pirates themselves ‘‘given an ounce of
gold dust a man,’’ presumably as pay-
ment for their plunder. By August 25,
1683, things had become so problemat-
ical that Gov. Sir William Stapleton of
the Leeward Islands sent a letter from
Nevis, informing London that:
Captain Carlile goes this very day to
look for one Cooke and one Bond,
two English pirates fitted from Saint
Thomas. I have furnished him with
men and powder lest he should be
overpowered.
Carlile evidently met with no success, for
two months later—after it was falsely
reported that the great corsair Laurens de
Graaf had been hanged by the Span-
iards—Stapleton was moved to add:
There is now no pirate abroad but
Bond with a small ship and 100
men. He is expected at Saint
Thomas, where Captain Carlile is
ready for him.
Yet the English renegade continued
to evade the Royal Navy; only a few
of his prizes were intercepted. On one
Bonidel, Capitaine (fl. 1659) 51
occasion, Bond apparently purchased a
Dutch ship at Saint Thomas, which
was then seized by a trio of English
privateers sent out in his pursuit. Early
in 1684, another Dutch ship which
Bond had taken off Suriname was
recaptured at Beef Island, east of Tor-
tola. Its English liberators carried it
into Nevis, but were disappointed to
discover that the cargo had already
been offloaded at Saint Thomas.
The Jamaican sloop Fox underwent
an even more complicated ordeal, first
being taken by French flibustiers who
carried it to Saint Croix, where it was
subsequently cut out by Bond, and
brought to Saint Thomas. He made a
gift of it to Esmit, who in turn refused
a Jamaican request to restore the sloop
to its English owners, instead putting a
cargo of timber aboard and dispatching
it to Barbados. On its return passage,
Fox dropped anchor off Saint John’s
Island ‘‘by Captain Hill’s ship, who
seized the sloop and took possession,’’
sailing it into Nevis in June 1684.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers: Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
BONIDEL, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1659)
French privateer commander who was
mentioned in the journal of Colonel
Edward d’Oyley, Governor of Jamaica,
as having been issued a ‘‘let-pass’’ on
November 24, 1659 (O.S.), to sortie
from Port Cagway, and operate against
the Spaniards.
52 Bourillon, François (fl. 1669)

Reference 1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican

Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci

on,’’ 1944).
Pawson, Michael and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975). BRADLEY, JOSEPH
(fl. 1665
1671)
BOURILLON, FRANÇOIS English privateer and estate-owner on
Jamaica, who died storming the Span-
(fl. 1669) ish defenses at Chagres.
The first mention of Bradley’s activ-
French adventurer from Marseilles, who
ities occurred in December 1665, when
according to a memorandum he submit-
he commanded a small craft in Edward
ted in November 1669, had ‘‘made
Mansfield’s illegal sweep through the
many voyages in Spanish America, with
south cays of Cuba, as well as the sei-
the Spaniards and in their service, and
zure of J
ucaro and torching of Sancti
lived many years both in the Islands as
Spı́ritus that same Christmas. Bradley
well as Tierra Firme, always passing
also participated in Mansfield’s failed
himself off as a Spaniard.’’
advance into Costa Rica, which ended
In a rather simplistic proposal for
short of Turrialba in April 1666, oblig-
promoting French expansion overseas,
ing this freebooter force to retreat and
Bourillon suggested that an expedition
instead the next month reconquer Prov-
of 10 large ships and 8,000 troops be
idence or Santa Catarina Island from
sent to Tortuga Island, where it could
the Spaniards. Bradley was also to par-
be augmented by boucaniers. Part of
ticipate in Henry Morgan’s projected
this force would then be deployed to
attack against Cartagena late in 1668,
overrun the Spanish stronghold of San-
but quit his company after the acciden-
tiago de los Caballeros in the interior
tal explosion of the flagship HMS
of eastern Hispaniola, before continu-
Oxford, apparently opting to sail in Jan-
ing overland to meet up with the rest
uary 1669 on an independent French
of this formation, which was to land
cruise against Cuman
a and northeastern
outside of the island’s Spanish capital.
Venezuela.
Once this city fell, ‘‘the same army
Later that same spring of 1669,
and same ships could make a descent
Bradley seems to have steered his
on Cuba,’’ he concluded. This was one
80-man frigate Mayflower into the Gulf
of many half-baked schemes submitted
of Mexico along with the brigantines of
to the French Crown during the 17th
Gerrit Gerritszoon—better known as
century, and there is no indication that
Rok Brasiliano—and Jelles de Lecat, to
it was ever acted on.
campaign against the Spaniards in and
around the Laguna de T
erminos. For two
Reference or three weeks, this trio hovered off the
port of Campeche, without taking any
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica prizes. They then attempted some dis-
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y embarkations along that coast, before
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo, Bradley finally captured a Cuban vessel

laden with flour, so that the raiders could
retire into the Laguna de T
erminos to
rest.
They remained there for two months,
while Brasiliano’s brigantine was being
careened, and De Lecat laid in a cargo
of logwood. At the end of this inter-
lude, Bradley and Brasiliano returned to
blockade Campeche, Mayflower taking
up station directly opposite that port,
while Brasiliano’s brigantine hauled up
close inshore, four leagues to the south-
west off Las Bocas. On December 18,
1669, the Spaniards sortied with three
armed ships, chasing these intruders
away. Brasiliano was shipwrecked on
the north shores of Yucatan, from
where he was later rescued by De
Lecat, transferred aboard Bradley’s
frigate, and returned to Jamaica.
Shortly after arriving home from
this foray to his small Jamaican estate,
reports began to arrive of renewed
depredations by Spanish corsairs in the
West Indies, culminating with a series of
raids against Jamaica itself by Manoel
Rivero Pardal during the summer of
1670. The Jamaican Governor Sir
Thomas Modyford and his Council
therefore decided to organize a retalia-
tory strike under ‘‘Admiral’’ Morgan,
whose enterprise Bradley promptly
joined. When it seemed that the 22-
gun, 120-ton Satisfaction would not
reappear in time to lead this expedi-
tion, Morgan selected Bradley’s 70-ton
Mayflower as his flagship, but at
the very last moment Satisfaction did
return, so that Morgan transferred
aboard it before setting sail from
Port Royal on August 11, 1670, at the
head of a fleet of 11 vessels and 600
men. They ventured toward Cuba on
a brief sweep, before touching at
Tortuga Island to recruit more followers
Bradley, Joseph (fl. 1665
1671) 53
among the French flibustiers, and then
reached the agreed rendezvous off ^Ile a
Vache by September 12th.
In a report written to Lord Arlington
on September 20, 1670 (O.S.), Gover-
nor Modyford mentioned how:
Captain Bradley last week brought
in a Quaker’s vessel commanded by
one Watson, which he recovered
from a Spanish man-of-war thirteen
days after he had taken her, with six
sailors; said Watson, two quaking
preaching-women; and the rest the
man-of-war carried into The Havana,
chased by Bradley within shot of the
Morro Castle.
Bradley played a prominent role in
the subsequent series of conferences
which eventually ratified a decision to
attack Panama, being furthermore
invested with the title of ‘‘Lieutenant
Colonel’’ for this campaign.
Chagres Assault (January 1671)
Toward the end of that year, Morgan’s
huge fleet of 36 vessels and 2,000 bucca-
neers at last got under way, pausing dur-
ing its traverse to recapture tiny
Providencia Island from the Spaniards on
Christmas Day. Three days afterward,
Bradley was sent on ahead of the fleet
with 470 men aboard his own ship,
‘‘Major’’ Richard Norman’s 10-gun
Lilly, and De Lecat’s Seviliaen, to cap-
ture the crucial San Lorenzo Castle at the
mouth of the Chagres River, which was
to be used as the pirates’ advance-base
for their overland march against Panama.
Bradley and his consorts landed within
sight of this fortification at noon on
January 6, 1671, with 400 freebooters
disembarking and approaching ‘‘with
54 Brand, Bartel (fl. 1665
1667)
flags and trumpets’’ to make their initial
assault that afternoon.
The 360 Spanish defenders waited
confidently under their castellano or
‘‘garrison commander,’’ Pedro de
Elizalde y Urs
ua, who had defiantly
written: ‘‘Even if all England were to
come, they would not capture this cas-
tle.’’ Bradley’s first and second charges
were halted by a deadly hail of bullets,
so that as dusk fell, he led his men for-
ward through some gullies, creeping up
to toss grenades and fire-pots inside,
which ignited the wooden stockades.
These fires spread gradually throughout
that night, consuming the defenses and
detonating San Lorenzo’s magazines. In
the darkness, some 150 Spanish soldiers
deserted, yet enough remained to break
Bradley’s first two assaults the next day.
Finally, a contingent of flibustiers
from Tortuga fought their way inside on
the third attempt, swords in hand, so that
a badly-wounded Bradley could hear
them shouting ‘‘Victoire! Victoire!’’
above the din. Elizalde and his remain-
ing 70 defenders fought bravely to the
last man (this commander’s parents later
being rewarded with 1,000 ducats from
the Spanish Crown, for their son’s brave
defense). At least 30 buccaneers had
been killed and another 76 injured dur-
ing these assaults, including Bradley,
who was shot through both legs. Norman
assumed overall command while Brad-
ley convalesced, but five days later, just
as Morgan’s ships hove into view, he
died of his wounds. William Fogg later
summarized Bradley’s activities after the
seizure of Providence Island, as follows:
. . . they sent Captain Bradley with 400
men to take Chagre Castle; where after
nine days he landed. They fired a vol-
ley at the castle, and fell into the trench,
which was twelve foot deep; that night
they fired the castle, which made it so
hot they could not enter, it being of
double palisades and thatch, and lay
under the walls the next day; the third
day they fell on, but were beaten back,
the enemy being 370 men, but they ral-
lied, entered the castle, and put all to
the sword, saving none but slaves and
such as hid themselves. In this conflict
they lost Captain Bradley, Lieutenant
Powell, and 150 men.
See also
Gerritszoon, Gerrit; Lecat, Jelles de;
Mansfield, Edward; Morgan, Sir Henry.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 7
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1889).
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
Vrijman, L. C. Dr. David van der Sterre:
Zeer aenmerkelijke reysen door Jan
Erasmus Reyning. (Amsterdam: P. N.
van Kampen & Zoon, 1937).
BRAND, BARTEL
(fl. 1665
1667)
Flushing privateer who swept the
Caribbean for English prizes during the
Second Anglo-Dutch War.
Little is known about Brand’s early
life or career, his surname also being

spelled in various different records as
Brandt or Brant. He was apparently a
native of the Dutch seaport of Vlissin-
gen or Flushing, and had operated from
the late 1640s to 1654—along with his
brother Leyn—as members of the so-
called Brasilie Directie, a privateering
company which was trying to support
the isolated Dutch outposts in Brazil.
When the Second Anglo-Dutch War
erupted 11 years later, it is possible
that Brand may have made some West
Indian forays: in September 1665, he
was recorded as having jointly cap-
tured and brought in some English
sugar-ships, in consort with his fellow
privateer Capts. Pieter Constant and
Adriaen Tant. Then on August 11,
1666, Brand alone disposed of the
English tobacco-ship Alexander at
Flushing. Such successes must have
encouraged the States-General to com-
mission him for another wintertime
cruise into Caribbean waters, with
orders to return for European service
by next summer.
West Indian Sweep (1667)
On reaching the Lesser Antilles early in
1667, Brand apparently made a few cap-
tures in the Windward Isles, which he
dispatched homeward. This entire archi-
pelago was at that moment in turmoil
because of various major French, Eng-
lish, and Dutch offensives and counter-
offensives, so that the passing of his lone
warship was scarcely noticed. Brand sub-
sequently coasted along the north shores
of Hispaniola, and in early April 1667
visited the allied French base of Tortuga
Island. Its regional Gov. Bertrand
d’Ogeron described Brand’s warship as
‘‘a large vessel mounting 37 guns,’’ add-
ing that the Dutch commander had also
Brand, Bartel (fl. 1665
1667) 55
requested from him a separate commis-
sion to seize Spanish prizes which the
Governor ‘‘felt that I should not refuse,’’
because of his desire to retain such a
powerful ally against the threat of Jamai-
can privateers.
Shortly thereafter, Brand must have
sailed through the Windward Passage
and caught an English pink bound from
Jamaica toward England, aboard which
was traveling the wealthy Jewish
merchant Isaac Cardozo. Off Grand
Cayman Island, the Dutch commander
also re-took the 22-gun Nuestra Se~ nora
del Carmen, originally owned by Juan
N
u~nez Meli
an of Havana, but which
had been previously captured off Cape
Tibur
on by some English privateers,
while on its return-passage from the
City of Santo Domingo.
Brand next circled around the western
tip of Cuba and on Saturday, May 21,
1667, sighted a sail which he lured close
to his flagship by hoisting English col-
ors, and having his trumpeters blow wel-
coming salutes. Once this vessel lay
beneath his guns, though, Brand bel-
lowed across at its captain and crew to
heave to ‘‘for the Prince of Orange and if
not, he would sink them.’’ The stranger
proved to be an English privateer, which
four days earlier had captured the small
frigate of Alberto Bazarra, as he was
returning home into Havana from San
Marcos de Apalache (Florida).
Brand freed Bazarra and the other
Spanish captives held aboard the English
privateer, then steered for Bahı́a Honda—
an open anchorage 35 miles west of
Havana—where a quartet of English ves-
sels was known to be lying at anchor,
smuggling goods ashore for sale to weal-
thy Cubans. The Dutch commander
seized all four, and at that point released
his total of 240 English captives to make
56 Brand, Bartel (fl. 1665
1667)
their best way back to Jamaica aboard an
unarmed Spanish prize, a bark which
had until recently belonged to Captain
Juan Gonz
alez de Carvajal of Havana.
When the despoiled Englishmen
reached Port Royal a few weeks later,
they would apparently misinform Gov.
Sir Thomas Modyford as to the true lo-
cale of their capture, reporting that they
had been taken ‘‘by a stratagem’’ while
lying at the Cayman Islands. Both the
Jamaican Governor and his brother Sir
James Modyford wrote to the Secretary
of State Lord Arlington on July 30,
1667 (O.S.), alleging that the pres-
ence of a Royal Navy frigate in those
waters:
. . . might have saved £40,000 loss
to His Majesty’s subjects, by secur-
ing the five ships taken at the
Caimanos, one whereof the Royal
Company [of Adventurers] was
deeply concerned in, and the Duke
of York himself £3,000.
Brand had meanwhile appeared out-
side the Cuban capital on May 26,
1667, with his flagship and six remain-
ing prizes, sending a launch in toward
its harbor-mouth shortly before noon
with his pilot Kasper [or Jasper]
Boudewijn and the captive Cardozo, to
report on his success in clearing the
Cuban coastline. Both visitors were
housed overnight in the home of Cap-
tain Francisco de Garro y Bolivar, who
the next day reported to the Cuban Gov.
Francisco D
avila Orej
on Gast
on that,
according to what he had learned from
his guests, the waiting Dutch vessel did
indeed seem to be a legitimate States’
warship, and not merely a West India-
man seeking an excuse to enter their
neutral harbor and conduct illicit trade.
Governor D
avila therefore sent Garro
and infantry Captain Ambrosio de Gatica
aboard Brand’s flagship that same May
27, 1667, to offer thanks to the Dutch
commander for his good services, and to
permit him to enter Matanzas Bay farther
east of Havana, so as to re-provision. But
the Spanish officers found Brand vexed
‘‘because the city had not sent him a
golden chain as a gift for what he had
done,’’ nor would he be allowed to profit
by selling his prizes directly back to their
original Cuban owners. Brand nonethe-
less put into Matanzas Bay the next
day and peacefully re-supplied, before
burning his three smallest prizes, and
then standing out to sea again on June
4, 1667.
He must have returned to Zeeland
within the next few weeks, just as the
peace treaty with England was being
signed at Breda, marking an end to the
Second Anglo-Dutch War; for it was
recorded that he sold two of his Eng-
lish prizes at Vlissingen on August 23,
1667, ‘‘a flute-ship and a frigate with
cacao and other goods.’’
See also
Flute; Modyford, Sir Thomas; Ogeron,
Bertrand d’.
References
Binder, Franz, ‘‘Die Zeelandische
Kaperfahrt, 1654
1662,’’ Archief:
Mededelingen van het Koninklijk
Zeeuws Genootschap der Wetenschappen
(1976), pp. 40
92; later re-issued as a
monograph.
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies., Volume 5.
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
 Brandenburg Privateers 57

BRANDENBURG commander Cornelis Reers flying the

Elector’s standard aboard his flagship,
PRIVATEERS renamed Kurprinz or ‘‘Prince Elector.’’
This small force was comprised of
Despite their name, actually Dutch
another three frigates mounting from 32
frigates, commissioned by the Elector
to 16 guns, named Roter L€ owe, Fuchs,
of Brandenburg to raid the Spanish
and Berlin, while the fire-ship Salaman-
West Indies.
der boasted only two, a total of 500 men
The circumstances which led to
serving aboard all these craft. They made
their creation had originated during the
their first capture outside Oostende (Bel-
fighting in the Low Countries of the
gium), a Spanish merchantman bound
1670s, when the bankrupt Spanish gov-
for Cadiz with dry goods, which they
ernment had incurred a considerable
sent back to Brandenburg before travers-
debt with Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector
ing the Atlantic in August, searching for
of the German Duchy of Brandenburg,
further prey in the West Indies.
which it was unable to meet once
At Santa Marta (Colombia), they
peace was concluded with the signing
spotted a galliot and merchant vessel
of the Treaty of Nijmegen late in 1678.
lying inside at anchor and decided to
The ambitious Friedrich Wilhelm, with
employ a cunning ruse: The merchant
budding overseas ambitions of his
ship had originally been the William
own, consequently decided to exact
and Anne of London, which had sailed
restitution by issuing letters-of-reprisal
to Bilbao in Spain and exchanged part
to two unemployed Dutch privateers at
of its English crew for Spaniards, before
Zeeland in the spring of 1679. When
continuing to the Canary Islands, where
the French government learned that
the remainder were replaced by Spanish
these two men-of-war were preparing
seamen—save for the first mate, who
to sail, they objected as they had not
became master, and the ship’s carpenter
finalized their own on-going conflict
Samuel Button of Boston (Massachu-
with the Elector, so that this pair might
setts). Loaded with Canary wine and
also attack French interests. Colbert
brandy, the ship had thereupon cleared
therefore threatened to send the Admi-
for Cartagena on the Spanish Main,
ral Duc d’Estr
ees with a squadron of
entering Santa Marta to take on water,
fourteen vessels ‘‘to seize or sink’’
where it was delayed by the local Gov-
these would-be marauders, thereby
ernor to act as an escort for the galliot,
constraining them to remain in port
which was also bound for Cartagena.
until peace with France was concluded
‘‘After we had been two or three days
at the end of June 1679. By this time,
in the road,’’ Button later declared:
the season was too far advanced to
consider any departure for the New
. . . we espied five ships lying off and
World that year.
on, by the space of two or three days.
Over that ensuing winter of 1679 to
At length they sent in their pinnace
1680, the original pair was reinforced
with Dutch colors to the Governor, to
with two more Dutch frigates and a fire-
get liberty to wood and water, pre-
ship. This flotilla eventually sailed from
tending to be Dutchmen come to clear
K€onigsberg on April 14, 1680, its
the coast of privateers.
58 Brandenburg Privateers
The unsuspecting Spaniards allowed
them into port, yet four or five nights
later, when the William and Anne was
preparing to put to sea on the land breeze,
it was boarded in the darkness. These
mysterious captors secured the Spaniards,
then asked Button if he was the ship’s car-
penter. When he replied in the affirma-
tive, they told him: ‘‘That’s good, you be
an Englishman. That doeth no harm.’’
The ship was slipped out of harbor, and
next morning the prize-master Marsilius
Cock of Salamander gleefully informed
Button that ‘‘they would show me such
colors as I never saw, and then spread
their Brandenburg colors.’’
With the William and Anne and galliot
taken, the Dutch also intercepted a Span-
ish merchantman called Torito, before
arriving at Port Royal, Jamaica, on
December 20, 1680 (O.S.). Acting-Gov.
Sir Henry Morgan allowed them in to
refit, and later reported to London how
these privateers ‘‘urged the Duke [of
Brandenburg’s] alliance with England for
permission to sell their prizes, that by the
produce thereof they might purchase all
necessary refreshments for their present
expedition.’’ Morgan agreed, even allow-
ing William and Anne to join a convoy
assembling for England, as Reers hoped
to return it to Brandenburg. The privateers
remained in Port Royal for a month,
where curiosity-seekers noted the strange
blue uniforms and bonnets of the Elec-
tor’s soldiers. Eventually, Reers set sail
with his four frigates in early February
1681, ‘‘bound eastward to cruise and
search the coast of Hispaniola first,’’ Mor-
gan noted, ‘‘then the [Spanish] Main.’’
Yet luck now abandoned the Dutch, as
few sightings were made, and their sole
prize never reached its destination.
The William and Anne had appar-
ently been renamed Salamander when
the fire-ship of that same name was sold
off at Port Royal, then sailed with the
convoy some weeks after Reers’ depar-
ture. But early in April 1681, Cock put
into ‘‘Piscataqua’’ [New Hampshire],
complaining of leaks and lack of provi-
sions, remaining more than three months
to make repairs. Finally, the English
authorities began to suspect that ‘‘he
intended to sell the said ship and deceive
the Duke,’’ while his crew grew surly at
their prolonged idleness and commensu-
rate lack of pay. Cock ‘‘cruelly beat
twelve of the ship’s company at the cap-
stan and otherwise, as made them weary
of their lives,’’ so that on July 21, 1681,
the Salamander was ordered to Boston to
anchor within range of its harbor guns
and send its sails ashore.
Meanwhile, Reers had returned to Prus-
sia by May 1681, inspiring the Elector to
dispatch other expeditions. That same
summer, a little Brandenburghian estab-
lishment was begun on the West African
coast, and their vessels would continue to
visit the West Indies. Gov. Sir Thomas
Lynch of Jamaica, for example, reported
at the end of June 1684 that ‘‘two or three
pirate [ships] have been lately taken,’’ one
of which claimed to be a Brandenburger,
while in March 1691 three Brandenburg
vessels touched at Nevis, bound for
Danish Saint Thomas.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 11,
13 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899
1903).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).

Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The Great
Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor, Ontario,
Canada: Netherlandic Press, 1993).
BRASILIANO, ROK
See Gerritszoon, Gerrit
BRAUNS, KOEN DE
(fl. 1670
1671)
Little-known Dutch Captain, who
apparently took part in Henry Mor-
gan’s expedition against Panama.
While incarcerated in the Tower
of London to stand trial for illegally
encouraging Jamaica’s privateers against
the Spaniards, Governor Sir Thomas
Modyford presented ‘‘A list of the ships
under the command of Admiral Morgan’’
to the court in December 1671, which
listed ‘‘Coone de Brauns’’ as command-
ing the 6-gun, 60-ton Constant Thomas in
the Panama assault, with a crew of 40
men. This curious name was most likely a
phonetic rendering of Koen de Bruinsz,
itself a contraction for Koenraad de
Bruinszoon (or perhaps Bruining)—Koen
being a common Dutch nickname for
Conrad. Nothing more is known about
this particular Captain’s activities.
See also
Modyford, Sir Thomas; Morgan, Sir Henry.
References
Livingstone, No€el B., Sketch Pedigrees of
Some of the Early Settlers in Jamaica
(Kingston: Educational Supply
Company, 1909).
National Archives [UK], PRO CO 138/1,
f. 105.
Br
eha, Pierre (Fl. 1678
1685) 59
BRE
HA, PIERRE
(fl. 1678
1685)
Wide-ranging French flibustier and sal-
vor, who operated principally out of
Saint-Domingue.
He is believed to have been born at
Vanes in Brittany, about 1650. His sur-
name was to be often misspelled in of-
ficial records as ‘‘Br
ehal,’’ ‘‘Br
eal,’’
‘‘Bhra,’’ ‘‘Braha,’’ ‘‘Brahan,’’ ‘‘Braug-
ham,’’ ‘‘Brea,’’ ‘‘Brouage,’’ etc. He
apparently arrived in the Lesser Antil-
les aboard the 56-gun royal warship
Bourbon, which was wrecked as part
of the fleet of Vice Admiral Jean,
Comte d’Estr
ees, in the Aves Island
grouping off Venezuela on the night of
May 11
12, 1678. Rather than depart
for Petit-Go^ave with the rest of its sur-
vivors, Br
eha attached himself to the
buccaneer flotilla under the Sieur de
Grammont, which mounted a devastat-
ing sweep instead against the neutral
Spaniards in the Laguna de Maracaibo
that same June 1678. Reaching
Saint-Domingue that Christmas with
Grammont’s triumphant flotilla, Br
eha
obtained command of a small bark at
Petit-Go^ave, and made a turtling voyage
to southern Cuba. Attacked and badly
wounded by some Spaniards, he decided
to turn flibustier and seek revenge.
Salvage Operations
(1679
1682)
By the spring of 1679, Br
eha had
become Captain of the 2-gun, 70-man
frigate Saint-François, with which he
sortied to prowl off the Cuban coast.
While hovering outside Havana, he appa-
rently met his fellow-rover Capitaine
Blot, and joined forces for a venture to
60 Br
eha, Pierre (Fl. 1678
1685)
the Bahamas. There they captured two
Spanish vessels under Captain Martı́n de
Melgar, who was diving on the wreck of
the long-lost galleon Maravillas. Br
eha
and Blot took over this operation, using
Melgar’s own divers and equipment to
raise 200,000 pesos’ worth of silver bars.
Br
eha seemingly used his share to buy
property at Petit-Go^ave, and briefly retire
from the sea. A little more than a year
later, though, he weighed once again in
command of a barco luengo named La
Fortune in February 1681, hoping to
meet up with Blot and some other rovers
for an assault on Saint Augustine in
Florida. However, while rounding Cape
San Antonio at the western tip of Cuba in
August 1681, Br
eha was intercepted by
the flibustier chieftain Marquis de Main-
tenon, who relieved him of his commis-
sion and many of his men. As a result,
Br
eha made a second visit in 1682 to the
Maravillas wreck site, from where he put
into the anchorage Nassau late that same
year, to refresh. Learning of another
Spanish shipwreck lying east of Havana,
Br
eha and two English commanders
apparently probed for it in January 1683,
before returning to New Providence.
Saint Augustine Raid (1683)
Br
eha was once more lying in the Baha-
mas by March 1683 with the privateer
vessels of Capts. Conway Wooley, John
Markham, and Jan Corneliszoon (com-
mander of a New York brigantine), pre-
paring to once more attempt ‘‘to fish for
silver from a Spanish wreck,’’ when the
bark Pearl of Thomas Paine arrived. The
latter had a commission from Gov. Sir
Thomas Lynch of Jamaica to hunt
pirates, so that these five Captains con-
spired to unite in a raid against the
nearby Spanish outpost of St. Augustine
in Florida—despite the peace then pre-
vailing with that nation, as well as not
having any other authorization for such a
venture beyond Paine’s commission.
The attackers nonetheless landed on
the Florida coast flying French colors,
yet found the Spaniards forewarned, so
withdrew after merely releasing some
captives which they had brought along
with them, and looting the countryside.
In the official report describing this inci-
dent, written on June 28, 1683, by the
Spanish garrison commander, he referred
to Br
eha as leader of this expedition,
calling him ‘‘Capit
an Braha.’’ The free-
booters returned to New Providence in
the Bahamas, where Gov. Robert Lil-
burne allegedly wished to impound the
two English ships, ‘‘but failed for want
of a force.’’ Br
eha and Paine went
wrecking, and by the time the Governor
manned a large ship that had arrived and
followed them to the wreck site, both
had sailed on their separate ways.
Cuban Blockade (1684)
Meanwhile, Br
eha had returned to
Saint-Domingue, and possibly partici-
pated in Markham’s Tampico raid of
late April 1684. A French document
from that same year lists Br
eha as
commanding the ship Fortune of
14 guns and 100 men, and in early
November 1684—after a renewal of
hostilities between Spain and France—he
was blockading the southern coast
of Cuba along with a pair of sloops.
When his flotilla began to run low on
supplies, Br
eha dispatched his consorts to
impress the services of Jamaican turtlers
in the region. Anthony Griffin, master of
the sloop Prosperous, later declared:

I was leaving the South Cays with
turtle when two sloops, which I had
thought to be English, ordered me to
anchor, and some Frenchmen came
on board and took me prisoner. An-
thony Hawkes of the sloop Elizabeth
was also taken a few hours later, and
we were all carried to Boga Pavil-
lione [?], six leagues off which Cap-
tain Breha [sic] was lying with his
ship. He took all our turtle and
detained us.
Daniel Pindar of the sloop Grey-
hound had already been ‘‘boarded by a
piragua with several men, commanded
by Captain Breha, who cut our cable
and compelled us to catch turtle for
them for several days.’’ The same had
happened a little earlier to Henry
Smith of the Seaflower, while John
Griffin’s True Love had been relieved
of 30 turtles before being released, and
Francis Powell’s Speedwell had man-
aged to escape despite being pursued.
Shortly thereafter, the tiny, 4-gun
Royal Navy warship Bonito appeared
and learned the turtlers’ fate. Gathering
a convoy of seven frightened sloops
around him, Captain Edward Stanley
sailed in search of the raider flagship,
which he described as ‘‘a French priva-
teer of 16 guns and 180 men, com-
manded by one Captain Braugham
[sic].’’ At 9:00 A.M. on November 19,
1684, he found Fortune at anchor with
its prizes, and sent a message across to
Br
eha asking ‘‘why the four sloops
with him did not hoist their English
colors?’’ The flibustier chieftain
boarded Bonito to personally explain
that he had been forced to impress
their services to feed his crews, and
intended to release the sloops. ‘‘He
Br
eha, Pierre (Fl. 1678
1685) 61
promised to end all difference next
morning,’’ Stanley concluded, ‘‘but the
wind blowing fresh in the night, he
hove up anchor and went to sea.’’
Complaint at
Petit-Go^ave (1684)
Less than a month later, Acting-Gov.
Hender Molesworth of Jamaica dis-
patched Captain David Mitchell’s
48-gun HMS Ruby with a complaint to
the French authorities at Petit-Go^ave.
Although mostly concerned with
Willems’ capture of the English sloop
James off Cartagena, he added:
A privateer, Captain Brahan [sic],
belonging to your port, has lately
robbed several of our turtling sloops
to the value of £500. I trust that you
will grant us satisfaction, or give us
leave to take it.
Mitchell arrived off Petit-Go^ave on the
morning of December 16th, sighting
both Willems’ Dauphine and Br
eha’s
Fortune in the roads, as well as other
privateers. He immediately sent his
message ashore, but Gov. Pierre-Paul
Tarin de Cussy was absent, being instead
represented by Captain Boisseau. He
returned a polite answer to the Royal
Navy officer’s submission, saying:
With regard to your complaints
against Captain Br
eha, it is true that
with a ship full of people he met the
frigate commanded by Captain Stan-
ley, and asked him for provisions, of
which he was much in need, and
which Captain Stanley was so good
as to give him. As to the restitution
which you request, I doubt if it can
62 Brenningham
be made, and I do not see that I can
compel it.
Ruby’s master could only acquiesce in
this reinterpretation of events off south-
ern Cuba, and four days later reported
back to Port Royal.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London; Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
BRENNINGHAM
See Brimacain, George
BRIMACAIN, GEORGE
(fl. 1662
1666)
Early Jamaican privateer, whose cap-
tures allowed him to become a suc-
cessful planter.
His difficult surname may suggest
that he was originally Dutch, possibly
born as Joris Breemaken. Many pho-
netic variants of his surname would be
written into the English records over
ensuing years: ‘‘Brimacain,’’ ‘‘Brima-
cam,’’ ‘‘Bremicam,’’ ‘‘Brimicain,’’ or
‘‘Brimicane,’’ while even more garbled
versions have since been produced by
historical researchers and scholars,
such as ‘‘Brenning’’ or even the ‘‘Bren-
ningham’’ (the latter by C. H. Haring
in his Buccaneers in the West Indies).
However spelled, though, the first
notice of this rover’s activities occurred
amid the feverish preparations at
Port Royal to dispatch Commodore
Christopher Myngs’ quick-strike expedi-
tion against Santiago de Cuba. Brimacain
was one of six Captains issued a priva-
teering commission by the newly-arrived
Governor Thomas, Lord Windsor, on
September 18, 1662 (O.S.), and unlike
his colleagues John Bull, Jacob Fack-
man, Robert Searle, John Purdue, and
Abraham Mitchell, Brimacain secured a
10-month license to operate his 6-gun,
70-man frigate Fortune; as opposed to
only the six-month permits which all the
others received.
Doubtless Brimacain weighed shortly
thereafter as part of Myngs’ flotilla, to
participate in the sack and destruction of
Santiago de Cuba. However, Fortune
evidently sortied on an independent
cruise on their triumphal return, so that
he thus missed the subsequent venture
early next year against the Mexican port
of Campeche. For the very day that dis-
tant assault was going forward, Brima-
cain seems to have been before Judge
William Mitchell of Jamaica’s Vice-
Admiralty Court, who on January 30,
1663 (O.S.), ruled that:
. . . having fully and maturely consid-
ered the full process, nature, and mer-
its of the cause, and of all the proofs
therein made, did and doth pronounce
decree-sentence and adjudge the said
ship, Nuestra Se~ nora de la Soledad y
Jes
us Nazareno, her tackle and furni-
ture, and all and singular the goods,
wares, and merchandise taken and
seized in her as aforesaid, to have
been the ship, goods, wares, and mer-
chandise of the subjects of the King of
Spain in America, and they belonged
to such Spanish subjects at the time of
the seizure and surprisal; and that the
same were lawfully surprised by force
and virtue of the said commission,

and according to the true intent and
meaning thereof, and that the same
ought to be decreed and adjudged to
the said Captain George Bremicam
and company, and to the owners, vict-
uallers, officers, mariners, and sol-
diers of the said frigate Fortune.
Later that same summer, Brimacain
obtained a second privateering commis-
sion on July 22, 1663 (O.S.), to cruise
for another 12 months, and finally
secured a third 12-month commission
for his new ship Resolution on February
1, 1664 (O.S.), before apparently ending
his freebooting career on a profitable
note, to settle down as a property-owner.
Privateer Turned Planter
(1666
1677)
Two years later, the planter-dominated
Jamaican Council passed a resolution
on February 22, 1666 (O.S.), enumerat-
ing a dozen reasons why ‘‘it is to the
interest of the island to have letters-of-
marque granted against the Spaniard,’’
the fourth reason given being that:
It hath and will enable many to buy
slaves and settle plantations, as
[John] Harmenson, [Richard] Guy,
Brimacain, and many others, who
have considerable plantations.
Apparently Brimacain by then owned
a sizeable estate in Saint Andrew’s Par-
ish, yet his name was not clearly listed
when the new Royal Governor, Sir
Thomas Modyford, submitted a detailed
census and survey of Jamaica to London
in late September 1670.
The retired privateer was to appear
in official records one last time, after
being tried and found guilty of murder.
Brimacain, George (fl. 1662
1666) 63
However, the circumstances must have
been such that an appeal was addressed
to Charles II in England, and on Au-
gust 8, 1675 (O.S.), the King issued a
warrant from Windsor, instructing his
Solicitor-General that:
Whereas His Majesty has been
informed that Captain George Brimi-
cane of Jamaica, at a Court of King’s
Bench held in that island, was found
guilty of murder and sentence of death
passed upon him; and whereas the
Governor has informed His Majesty
that the Judges having certified him
that the fact could scarcely be
adjudged murder, and having recom-
mended said Captain Brimicane to
mercy, he had reprieved him for His
Majesty’s pleasure; it is His Majesty’s
pleasure that a bill be prepared to pass
the Great Seal, containing a grant of
pardon to said Captain George Brimi-
cane for said murder, and of all penal-
ties and forfeitures by reason thereof.
Apparently this pardon was eventually
received in Jamaica on January 28, 1677
(O.S.).
See also
Bull, John; Fackman, Jacob; Mitchell,
Abraham; Modyford, Sir Thomas;
Myngs, Sir Christopher; Purdue, John;
Searle, Robert; Windsor, Thomas, Lord.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies Volumes 5, 9,
10 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1880
1896).
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic:
Charles II, 1675
76 (London, 1907).
64 Browne, James (fl. 1676
1677)
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Marsden, Reginald G., editor, Documents
Relating to Law and Custom of the Sea
(London: Navy Records Society, 1916),
Volume 2.
National Archives [UK], PRO HCA 49/59,
folios 83
92.
Pawson, Michael and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
BROWNE, JAMES
(fl. 1676
1677)
Scottish privateer hanged for capturing
a Dutch slaver.
Browne left Jamaica in October 1676,
with a crew comprised mostly of ‘‘Eng-
lish, the rest French and Dutch’’ sailors,
plus an old commission issued by the
French Governor of Saint-Domingue,
Bertrand d’Ogeron, which Browne used to
take the Dutch Goude Zon or ‘‘Golden
Sun’’ early in 1677, while it was standing
in Cartagena with a consignment of 200
slaves belonging to the Dutch West Indies
Company. The Dutch master and several
of his crew were killed during this affray.
By May 1677, Browne was once again
off Jamaica, where he landed 150 blacks
‘‘in a remote bay on this island,’’ hoping
to sell them among the planters. Word of
this covert introduction was carried to
Lord Vaughan, Governor at Port Royal,
who although he learned that Browne’s
ship was already gone, nevertheless
ordered the apprehension and interro-
gation of some of the seamen which
he had left behind. Discovering through
them the particular circumstances sur-
rounding Browne’s depredation, Vaughan
sent a frigate which seized about 100
of the slaves ‘‘concealed in several plant-
ers’ hands,’’ as well as Browne and eight
of his crewmembers. The Governor
furthermore apprised the Dutch author-
ities at Curaçao, who filed a complaint
and demanded the return of their slaves.
The English Governor, plagued by
unruly privateers who refused to restrict
their activities, decided to make an object
lesson of Browne. He and his crew were
tried for piracy because their French com-
mission was patently out of date, Gover-
nor d’Ogeron having ‘‘been dead above a
year.’’ The crew was pardoned, but
Browne was condemned to be executed,
so appealed to the Assembly to have the
benefit of the ‘‘Act of Privateers.’’ The
House of Assembly twice sent a commit-
tee to Lord Vaughan to beg a reprieve,
which the Governor refused, ordering the
immediate execution of Browne. Half-
an-hour after he was hanged, the Provost-
Marshal appeared with an order signed by
the Speaker to stop the execution.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 10
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1896).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
BUCKINGHAM, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1679
1680)
English master captured in Mexico’s
Laguna de T
erminos, for attempting to
poach logwood.

Buckingham set sail from London,
England, in 1679 with his ship John of
300 tons, 20 guns, and 70 men, bound
on a trading voyage to the West Indies.
According to his surgeon’s mate,
Lionel Wafer:
. . . when we came to Jamaica, the
season of sugars being not yet come,
the Captain was willing to make a
short voyage in the meanwhile to the
Bay of Campeche, to fetch logwood;
but having no mind to go further
with him, I stayed in Jamaica.
Unfortunately, the Spanish authorities
chose that same time to send an armed
patrol into the Laguna, so that the John
was taken in January 1680 along with
the pink Loyal Farmers of Boston, the
ketch Susan of London, a ship belong-
ing to Hugh Pering of New England,
plus numerous lesser craft. All were
carried into Campeche, from where the
captives were forwarded to Mexico
City to be tried, arriving in early July
1680.
Having long suffered at the hands
of the Baymen, the Spaniards were
not inclined to show any mercy. The
prisoners were therefore condemned
to obrajes, public works from where
they could be hired out as forced
laborers at six pieces of eight per head
(to help defray the costs of their incar-
ceration). Their work was often gruel-
ing, in conditions akin to slavery.
Russell, an English seaman who
managed to escape, later told Wafer
that he last saw ‘‘Captain Buckenham
with a log chained to his leg and a bas-
ket on his back, crying bread about the
streets of Mexico for his master, a
baker.’’
Bull, John (fl. 1662
1663) 65
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr
ua, 1972).
BULL, JOHN
(fl. 1662
1663)
Early English privateer, who operated
out of Jamaica.
Amid the feverish preparations at Port
Royal to dispatch Commodore Christo-
pher Myngs’ quick-strike expedition
against Santiago de Cuba, Bull was one
of six Captains issued a privateering
commission on September 18, 1662
(O.S.), by the recently-arrived Governor
Thomas, Lord Windsor. Like his col-
leagues Jacob Fackman, Robert Searle,
John Purdue, and Abraham Mitchell,
Bull secured a six-month license to rove
with his vessel John and Mary; only
George Brimacam received a 10-month
permit. Doubtless Bull sailed shortly
thereafter as part of Myngs’ flotilla, par-
ticipating in the sack and destruction of
Santiago de Cuba. He may have also
served in the subsequent strike against
the Mexican port of Campeche in Febru-
ary 1663, although no further details
about his activities have been recorded.
It is remotely possible that he may
have been referred to again on January
28, 1667 (O.S.), when it was reported
from the Isle of Wight off southern
England how: ‘‘Last night arrived at
66 Bull, John (fl. 1662
1663)
Cowes the John and Mary of London
from Barbados, laden with sugar and
indigo, who came without meeting any
enemy with about twenty sail, but by
storms they lost each other.’’ Whether
this convoy had in fact been escorted
back across the Atlantic by Bull’s
privateer frigate, or merely by some
other armed vessel with the same
name, cannot today be determined.
See also
Brimacain, George; Fackman, Jacob;
Mitchell, Abraham; Myngs, Sir
Christopher; Purdue, John; Searle,
Robert; Windsor, Thomas, Lord.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1880).
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic:
Charles II, 1666
1667 (London, 1864),
Volume 189.
National Archives [UK], PRO HCA 49/59,
folios 83
92.
 C

The Governor of Trinidad would neither give nor sell them victuals,
but bid Cooke go like a dog and thief.
—From the castaway Master Edmond Cooke’s complaint
against ill-usage off Cuba, March 1674

CABALLERO, ANDRE
S in the ensuing defense of the Spanish

(fl. 1673)
Spanish colonial official victimized by
pirates.
A lawyer, Caballero began his ca-
reer as corregidor or ‘‘municipal mag-
istrate’’ of the city of Salamanca,
Spain, being promoted to its alcalde
mayor or Mayor. As a reward for his
successful tenure, he was given the
overseas title of senior oidor of the
Royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo in
October 1654. He set sail for the New
World accompanied by his wife and
two children on February 13, 1655, in
the train of Governor-designate Bernar-
dino de Meneses Bracamonte 15 days
before the huge English expedition of
Admiral William Penn and General
Robert Venables appeared to mount an
assault. Caballero played a minor role
colony that ended with the invaders’
retreat three weeks later.
Early in 1659, Caballero traveled to
Margarita Island off Venezuela, to con-
duct the official visita or inquiries at the
conclusion of Gov. Pedro de Rojas y
Manrique’s term. However, during Cab-
allero’s absence from Santo Domingo,
he was suspended from office that same
August 1659 under suspicion of having
issued false documents. Three years
later, he was ordered home to Spain as a
prisoner, where he appealed to clear his
name. While preparing his defense,
Caballero was also commissioned by
the Crown in June 1664 to serve for five
years as one of the commercial judges
on the Canary Islands.
Eventually, the slow-moving Spanish
legal system convicted him of the Do-
minican charge, yet with a fine of only

67
68 Cachemar
ee
100 pesos and a year’s suspension from
office. A dozen years having already
elapsed, Caballero appealed in August
1671 for reinstatement, and by that same
November won reappointment to the
Audiencia of Santo Domingo, departing
Cadiz on February 27, 1672. He stopped
at Puerto Rico en route to conduct some
official inquiries, most especially into
the activities of the former Governor of
Cuman
a, Sancho Fern
andez de Angulo.
Once concluded, Caballero took ship
once again in June 1673, to complete his
voyage to Santo Domingo.
Pirate Encounter (1673)
But during this brief passage he ‘‘was
made prisoner by the English, who
took from him his clothes, money, sil-
verware, and a slave that accompanied
him.’’ The freebooters set most of their
victims ashore, yet retained Caballero,
his son Francisco (a cleric), and other
‘‘people of worth,’’ hoping to extort
ransoms for their release. When these
were not forthcoming, they set their
captives ashore at an uninhabited
stretch of coastline near Coro [Vene-
zuela], where the unhappy Spaniards
‘‘underwent great discomfort, hunger,
and nakedness.’’ Eventually, Caballero
and his son reached Coro proper, but
were so weakened by their ordeal that
the father died there on August 30,
1673, ‘‘being buried in a pauper’s
grave.’’
Reference
Rodrı́guez Demorizi, E., Invasi

on inglesa
de 1655; notas adicionales de Fray
Cipriano de Utrera (Ciudad Trujillo:
Montalvo, 1957)

E
CACHEMARE
See Grogniet, François (Volume 2)
CAGAWAY
Also spelled Cagway, Cagua, etc. Eng-
lish distortions of Cayagua, the origi-
nal Carib-Spanish name for Port Royal,
Jamaica.
The first English invaders of 1655
mistook the name of the tip of Palisa-
does Spit for that of the entire cay,
thus translating the name of their new
port as ‘‘Cagaway’’ or ‘‘Cagway.’’ This
was officially changed to ‘‘Port Royal’’
in 1660, in honor of the Restoration of
Charles II to the English throne,
although old hands continued to refer
to it by its original name for quite
some time thereafter. Commodore
Sir Christopher Myngs, for example,
wrote to Governor Lord Windsor on
his return passage from Santiago de
Cuba in late October 1662: ‘‘We are
now in safety in the harbor, on
our return to Cagaway.’’ Robert Searle
had also fitted out a privateering
ship for that same expedition, naming
it Cagway; etc.
References
Dyer, Florence E., ‘‘Captain Christopher
Myngs in the West Indies, 1657
1662,’’
The Mariner’s Mirror, Vol. XVIII
(April 1932), pp. 168
187.
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
 Campos Y Espinosa, Alonso De (fl. 1667
1678)
CAMPOS Y ESPINOSA,
ALONSO DE
(fl. 1667
1678)
Spanish Admiral defeated by Henry
Morgan at the Bar of Maracaibo.
Campos was born in the Canary
Islands on an unknown date in the 1620s,
the son of Admiral Juan de Campos Cer-
vantes. His older brother Gaspar com-
manded a military company in Galicia,
which Alonso joined in 1640, soon being
promoted to ensign. In 1655, he trans-
ferred into the Royal Spanish Navy as an
harquebusier, quickly rising to command
of a patache, then a company of Marines,
followed by a galleon. In 1663, he raised
6,000 pesos toward the construction of
four new galleons in Amsterdam for the
Armada de Barlovento, which won him
appointment as almirante or ‘‘second-in-
command’’ of the fleet. He assumed
command of the 507-ton vice-flagship
Nuestra Se~ nora de la Concepci
on when
it reached Cadiz that following summer,
and saw some action against the French
off Spain, before the Armada sailed
under Agustı́n de Di
ustegui from Seville
for the New World on July 21, 1667.
The five ships reached Puerto Rico
more than a month later, where the flag-
ship and gobierno Magdalena parted
company to convey a cargo of quicksilver
to Veracruz. Campos remained behind to
patrol the coasts of Santo Domingo and
southern Cuba with his vice-flagship,
plus the frigates Concepci
on and Nuestra
Se~nora de la Soledad (alias Marquesa or
‘‘Marchioness’’), before rendezvousing
with Di
ustegui at Havana. During this
sweep, Campos made a single capture: a
sloop sailing from Jamaica to the Laguna
de T
erminos to warn of the Armada’s ar-
rival in Caribbean waters.
69
In February 1668, Campos was
reunited with Di
ustegui at Havana,
and the Armada sailed together
through the Antilles toward Caracas,
before returning to Puerto Rico. The
squadron then transferred to Havana
for repairs and shortly thereafter re-
visited Puerto Rico, where it was lying
when the flagship and vice-flag were
recalled to Spain. Campos was to
remain behind as commander of the
reduced force, now comprised solely
of Magdalena and two frigates.
Di
ustegui meanwhile sailed to Veracruz
to pick up a load of silver bullion before
heading for Spain, while Campos
hovered off Cuba’s Cape San Antonio
inspecting passing ships. He allegedly
detained three English ships under
Captain Francis Stuart, as well as a
Dutch ship, letting all four go in
exchange for bribes. Campos then pro-
ceeded to Havana, where word arrived
of an attack on the southern Cuban
port of Trinidad. Campos sent his
newly-acquired frigate Nuestra Se~ nora
de los Remedios and Marquesa to
Veracruz for reinforcements. Remedios
was wrecked less than 50 miles from
Campeche, but when the survivors
reached Veracruz they found that the
Mexican authorities had purchased
another frigate, the 218-ton San Luis.
Together with Marquesa, this frigate
carried almost 300 reinforcements
back into Havana on January 5, 1669.
Meanwhile, news had been received of
an enemy attack against Portobelo. Cam-
pos sortied with Magdalena, San Luis,
and Marquesa, laying in a course for
Puerto Rico, where he heard of a large
freebooter gathering at ^Ile a Vache. Then,
from a Dutch merchantman which he
met in the Mona Passage, he was told that
five French ships from Martinique were
70 Caper
preparing to raid Santo Domingo, so he
backtracked to reinforce the Spanish
island’s garrison by March 25, 1669. This
report proved to be false, though, until he
was at last correctly advised that more
than a dozen buccaneer sail had passed
by Santo Domingo on their way to the
Spanish Main. Sailing in their wake, he
learned from another Dutch merchantman
that they were in the Lago de Maracaibo,
so that he arrived outside by mid-April.
Inside laid the flotilla of Morgan,
who had landed to ransack the Venezue-
lan interior. Campos reoccupied the fort
guarding the Lake entrance; then several
days later he lightened his warships and
crossed over the bar. The Armada had
thereby trapped the raiders inside, but at
dawn on April 27, 1669, they were
rushed by Morgan, who destroyed
Magdalena with a fire-ship. San Luis of
Mateo Alonso de Huidobro ran aground
attempting to shelter beside the fort, so
was deliberately set ablaze by its crew,
while the 50-ton Soledad was captured
by the buccaneers, who then slipped past
the fort and sailed off in triumph.
The defeated Campos was eventually
exonerated at his court-martial in Spain,
so that in October 1674 he was appointed
as Governor of Puerto Rico. He assumed
office in April 1675, was promoted to
maestre de campothe next year, and in
June 1677 elevated to the Governorship
of Havana, although his Puerto Rican
term still had two years to run. Departing
San Juan for Cuba, Campos disappeared
en route, his ship being lost with all hands.
References
L


opez Cantos, Angel, Historia de Puerto
Rico (1650-1700) (Seville: Escuela de
Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1975).
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
CAPER
See Kaper
CAPITANA
Spanish term for ‘‘flagship.’’
Almiranta is the word for ‘‘vice-flag-
ship,’’ the two often being confused by
foreigners, as they seemingly reverse the
natural order whereby captains are sub-
ordinate to admirals. However, when
these expressions first gained currency
in the language of Medieval Spain, it
was customary for fleets to be com-
manded by a capit
an general, while the
designation almirante was later adapted
from the Arabic al-amir or ‘‘the emir.’’
To northern Europeans, though, ‘‘admi-
ral’’ only ever meant a senior naval
officer.
CAREEN
Expression meaning to tilt a stationary
vessel so as to expose its underside for
cleaning, caulking, or repairs.
The term came from the Latin word
carina, for a ship’s keel. When care-
fully beached, a lightened vessel would
come to rest with its hull exposed as the
tide receded, allowing the crew to scrub
off barnacles and other impediments to
swift sailing, as well to protect against
worms or other forms of wood rot. Dur-
ing such an interlude, the ship would be
highly vulnerable, lying immobile and
tilted, with its guns removed. Pirate

A French vessel being careened around 1670, so as to repair its hull; from the Album de
Colbert. (Service Historique de la Marine, Vincennes, France/The Bridgeman Art Library)
commanders, who seldom enjoyed the
sanctuary of a protected harbor, had to
careen with great caution in isolated
bays. It was while thus occupied on the
northeastern coast of Hispaniola in the
summer of 1686, for example, that Jo-
seph Bannister’s 36-gun Golden Fleece
was destroyed by the Royal Navy, virtu-
ally ending his career.
See also
Careen (Volume 2).
CARLILE, CHARLES
(fl. 1683)
Royal Navy pirate-hunter who ran Jean
Hamlin to ground at Saint Thomas in
the Danish Virgin Islands.
At three o’clock on the afternoon of
August 8, 1683, Carlile—described as
Carlile, Charles (fl. 1683) 71
‘‘a brave discreet young commander’’ by
Gov. Sir William Stapleton of the Eng-
lish Leeward Islands—appeared with
HMS Francis before the port of Saint
Thomas (modern-day Charlotte Amalie),
seeing a large ship inside ‘‘with white
color flying, jack, ensign, and pendant.’’
Although these were the insignia of an
English man-of-war, Carlile knew that
there was no such warship in those
waters, and his pilot confirmed that it
was Trompeuse or ‘‘Trickster,’’ a pirate
frigate of 32 guns and six ‘‘patararoes’’
[sic; pedreros or ‘‘swivel guns’’] which
had been hijacked 10 months previously
by a band of buccaneers under Hamlin,
then sailed all the way to West Africa
and back on a rapacious cruise that had
made it the most infamous raider in the
Caribbean.
Carlile stood into port, but both the
pirate ship and shore-batteries opened
fire, forcing Francis to retreat. He sent
72 Cassava
a boat ashore with a letter requesting
cooperation from the Danish Governor,
Adolf Esmit, a notorious abettor of
pirates, who invited Carlile ashore next
day. The Royal Navy officer demurred,
believing Esmit might be attempting to
buy time for a pirate consort to arrive,
which was ‘‘daily expected.’’ Carlile
therefore took Francis’ pinnace and
another boat into harbor after nightfall
on August 9th, with 14 men. They
exchanged shots with Trompeuse’s
anchor watch, but most of the pirates
had already quit Hamlin’s service with
their booty. The few remaining now
fled ashore, leaving the Royal Navy
boarders to set fire to the frigate before
withdrawing. Carlile and his men lay
on their oars:
. . . to see that none came off [from
shore] to put out the fire. When she
blew up she kindled a great privateer
that lay by, which burned to the
water’s edge.
This second vessel was Bartholo-
mew Sharpe’s Santı´sima Trinidad,
which he had abandoned the previous
year after his return from the South
Sea, and had been converted into a de-
pot for buccaneers.
With the two wrecks left smoldering
within the harbor, Francis got under
way next morning, but had only tacked
about a league to eastward when it
sighted ‘‘a ship aground, a Flemish
vessel of 300 tons, full of good ship’s
stores for the pirates.’’ Carlile’s men
cut down its masts and set it on fire,
‘‘but could not stay long, the people
coming to oppose me.’’ (This may pos-
sibly have been a prize which Hamlin
had seized two months previously
off West Africa, a Flushinger of 20 to
24 guns, that had been given over to
one of his English subordinates mas-
querading under the alias of ‘‘Captain
Morgan.’’ Three months later, it was
reported at Antigua and Barbados ‘‘that
Morgan, the pirate who parted from
Hamlin of Trompeuse, is now in these
parts. He was seen at anchor at Saint
Thomas, where he had taken some
ships and sloops.’’)
Carlile returned to blockade the port
of Saint Thomas, until the weather
changed a few days later and he was
forced to depart, having determined
that Hamlin and his principal confeder-
ates had transferred ‘‘to another part of
the island in an open boat.’’ Retiring to
Nevis, Carile replenished his supplies,
and on August 25th sortied again ‘‘to
look for one Cooke and one Bond, two
English pirates fitted from Saint
Thomas.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
CASSAVA
A slender erect shrub of the spurge
family, native to tropical America and
the West Indies, whose tuberous roots
were harvested in the 17th century to
provide sustenance for slaves and
indentured servants, usually in the form
of bread or tapioca.
Because of this lowly association, it
came to have a negative connotation.
For example, in a letter dated Novem-
ber 19, 1681, the Governor-General of

the French Antilles, the Comte de
Bl
enac, declared:
The manner in which engag
es are
treated is enough to make one trem-
ble; it has to be seen to be believed.
Of 600, not 50 will survive. A settler
treats his engag
e in the following
manner: he usually puts him on a
diet of cassava, water, and three
pounds of stinking beef a week. The
engag
e, who is unaccustomed to
such a life, falls prey to colic, swel-
ling of the legs, fever, and stomach-
ache. The settler believes his money
lost, as the agreed indenture contin-
ues to expire, so no matter how sick,
will beat him to make him work.
From such treatment, emerged many
runaways to swell the ranks of flibust-
iers and who presumably retained a
lifelong distaste of cassava.
Reference
Baudrit, Andr
e, Charles de Courbon,
Comte de Bl
enac, 1622
1696
(Fort de France: Soci
et
e d’Histoire
de la Martinique, 1967).
CASTEN, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1668)
Dutch privateer with a Jamaican com-
mission.
When the Dutch adventurer Jan Eras-
mus Reyning regained his freedom from
the French and reached the Cayman
Islands in 1668, he found ‘‘Captain
Casten of Amsterdam’’ careening his
ship. Reyning joined his company, and
sailed as far as Aruba. Having taken a
Castro, Pedro De (fl. 1676
1685) 73
Spanish prize, Casten then put into
Port Royal to dispose of it, paying the
requisite one-tenth of its value to the
King of England, and one-fifteenth to
the Duke of York.
Reference
Vrijman, L. C., Dr. David van der Sterre:
Zeer aenmerkelijke reysen door Jan
Erasmus Reyning (Amsterdam: P. N.
van Kampen & Zoon, 1937).
CASTRO, PEDRO DE
(fl. 1676
1685)
Spanish captain who became a guarda-
costa in the Gulf of Mexico.
De Castro was apparently first men-
tioned in the summer of 1676, when a
man of this same name sold his 200-ton
frigate Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje
(literally ‘‘Holy Christ of the Fair
Voyage,’’ alias Mogole~ no) to the Crown
in Spain, as one of five vessels which
were to be used to reconstitute the
Armada de Barlovento in the New
World. It is unknown whether De Castro
then traveled to the Americas next year
with this force, perhaps aboard the flag-
ship San Jos
e, Santa Rosa Marı´a y San
Pedro de Alc
antara, which deposited
the Governor-designate for Yucatan,
Antonio de Layseca y Alvarado, at Cam-
peche by November 30, 1677. In any
event, De Castro was soon performing
coast-guard duty out of that port, under
Captain Juan Gonz
alez Moreda.
Initial Captures (1680)
On January 7, 1679, De Castro obtained
his own privateering commission from
74 Castro, Pedro De (fl. 1676
1685)
Governor Layseca in the provincial cap-
ital of M
erida, and began cruising on
his own account. He took part in the
expedition which Captain Felipe de la
Barreda mounted in April 1680 to
sweep English logwood cutters from the
Laguna de T
erminos; then after return-
ing, sailed again in mid-July with his
two piraguas to scour the Yucatan
peninsula as far around as the Bay of
Honduras. Off Cocinas Island, he espied
a large vessel at anchor, then another
small frigate nearby, which he sus-
pected of poaching logwood. Boarding
the smaller vessel at night, he captured
eight or nine Englishmen and marched
inland to destroy their logging camp,
killing two cutters and scattering the
rest, before torching the huts. The larger
ship thereupon surrendered and De
Castro released three Spanish captives,
transferred on board, and burnt the frig-
ate. While putting back out to sea,
he believed that he had too many pris-
oners to guard—some 50 English men,
women, and children—so he deposited
the still ‘‘bellicose’’ captain and eight
hands on a nearby island (suggesting
that this must have been Robert Oxe of
the Laurel, although De Castro had
renamed his prize Le
on Coronado or
‘‘Crowned Lion’’).
When De Castro regained Cam-
peche, he was informed by the pilot-
boat that another large intruder lay at
the Laguna de T
erminos, which had
seized a coaster loaded with salt near
Sisal. De Castro immediately went in
pursuit, and found the 36-gun ship
inside the bar. Unable to penetrate with
the heavy Le
on Coronado, he nonethe-
less persuaded its French captain and
few crewmembers to surrender, learn-
ing that it was Nuestra Se~ nora del
Honh
on, captured by John Coxon’s
flotilla off Portobelo 11 months previ-
ously. Rather than return to Campeche
with these prizes, De Castro decided to
put into Veracruz, sending his lieuten-
ant Juan Corso back in a single pira-
gua to request supplies. The Campeche
authorities were greatly annoyed at this
deviation, so arrested Corso, and sent
50 soldiers aboard a piragua in pursuit.
Meanwhile, De Castro reached Vera-
cruz on October 19, 1680, a day after
Honh
on had anchored outside between
Sacrificios and Blanca Islands under its
prize master. Both ships were examined
by Crown officials; Le
on Coronado was
found to be a brand-new 300-ton vessel
with 40 gun-ports (although only mount-
ing 20 cannon), and reputedly ‘‘built in
Virginia.’’ Honh
on was much the same
size, pierced for 36 guns (although only
mounting 22), ‘‘and well supplied with
arms, powder, cannon balls, grenades,
and other explosives.’’ After a lengthy
inquiry in Mexico City, they were
deemed legitimate prizes, so that De
Castro did not have to pay any Crown
share on their value, in accordance with
the terms of his commission. Further-
more, the Mexican Viceroy appointed
him on March 26, 1681, as ‘‘coast-guard
Captain’’ for the entire Province of
Yucatan, arranging to have his two new
frigates maintained out of public funds.
This arrangement did not last long,
though, as the impoverished port of
Campeche could not meet such heavy
costs, nor were such large vessels
suitable for inshore patrols. Within
a year, Honh
on was transferred to
the Armada de Barlovento, while De
Castro and Corso shifted their opera-
tions to the southern coast of Cuba.
Here, Corso acquired a reputation for
brutality among his English victims,
while De Castro was seldom mentioned,

presumably because he left such rough-
and-tumble work to his lieutenant.
Search for La Salle (1685)
In the spring of 1685, De Castro
was one of the first Spaniards to learn
of a secret new French colony being
established in the Gulf of Mexico
by Ren
e Robert Cavelier, Sieur de
La Salle. Realizing that such an out-
post would be an unwelcome infringe-
ment on Spain’s hegemony, he went
in quest of the settlement, knowing
its destruction would be well received
by the Crown. He and Corso therefore
sailed their galliot to Tuxpan and
Tampico in Mexico that April, hoping
to take on provisions and a pilot
for the uncharted Gulf waters. On May
4, 1685, four days after leaving Tam-
pico on an east-northeasterly heading,
they were driven by a storm close
inshore ‘‘two leagues to windward of
Espı́ritu Santo Bay.’’ While riding out
the weather, they saw signs of white
habitation, and going ashore met a
party of six Indians who informed
them through sign-language that many
people with muskets had preceded
inland.
De Castro led 50 well-armed men
and three Indian guides in search of
the intruders. A day-and-a-half later,
they reached the shores of the Bay
proper, where they saw ‘‘barefoot
tracks in the sand and many broken
casks and bottles.’’ Half-a-dozen
canoes could be distinguished on the
far bank, yet it was impossible to
recognize people at that distance. De
Castro retired to his galliot, and on
May 19th stood out to sea, only to be
driven into another unknown inlet by
Castro, Pedro De (fl. 1676
1685) 75
contrary winds and currents, where he
lost his anchor. Desperate to keep off
the rocks, he put 25 men into the water
to fashion a mooring, then abandoned
them when the wind veered round.
Three days later, he returned in rough
weather to rescue 16 of them, but the
rest had ventured inland to forage for
food. By the time they reappeared, the
surf was too dangerously high, so that
De Castro hailed them to meet his gal-
liot at Apalache Bay, many miles far-
ther along the coast.
This was to be the last time he was
ever seen. The nine men survived their
grueling trek, yet the galliot never
appeared at the rendezvous, having
been lost with all hands. Early in July
1687, it was reported at Mexico City
that two vessels had returned to Vera-
cruz from a reconnaissance along the
Gulf coast, having failed to find any
sign of La Salle. However, they did
‘‘bring back a scarred Spanish boy,
of the Merced district in this City of
Mexico, who was lost with the two
ships of Corso and Castro on those
shores, the others being drowned or
eaten by the Chichimec Indians.’’
References
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr

ua, 1972).
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
Weddle, Robert S., Wilderness Manhunt:
The Spanish Search for La Salle
(Austin: University of Texas Press,
1973).
76 Charte-Partie or ‘‘Charter Party’’
CHARTE-PARTIE OR
‘‘CHARTER PARTY’’
Freebooter covenant, drawn up prior to
a cruise to predetermine the division of
any spoils.
This term was originally a commercial
one, used when two or more merchants
agreed to share a hired vessel. If only a
single individual were involved, the ques-
tion of assigning cargo-space would not
be a pressing concern; yet in the case
of a charte-partie—literally, a ‘‘split
charter’’—each consignor’s portion had
to be carefully allotted. Seventeenth-
century French flibustiers, many of
whom were former merchant sailors,
adopted this expression to their own
needs by agreeing on a proportional dis-
tribution of ‘‘purchase’’ before any cruise,
with special provisos for compensating
the wounded, senior commanders, etc.
Yet this expression was commonly
understood in other contexts as well.
When the damaged 160-ton ship Holy
Ghost limped into Nantasket Bay in
July 1653, during the First Anglo-Dutch
War, the Massachusetts authorities at
first suspected that Captain Robert Har-
ding had illegally carried away a neutral
Spanish vessel from Carlisle Bay in
Barbados, rather than a Dutch belliger-
ent. But after examining Holy Ghost’s
certificate from Amsterdam, ‘‘together
with a charter partie found in the s’d
ship,’’ they ruled it a legitimate prize.
See also
Charte-partie (Volume 2); Flibustier;
Purchase.
Reference
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
CINCUENTENA
Spanish irregular cavalrymen on Santo
Domingo, greatly feared by French
boucaniers.
These riders were all volunteer mili-
tiamen raised in companies of 50—in
Spanish, cincuenta, hence their nick-
name. Originally, they had been organ-
ized to contest the advances of French
boucaniers and settlers pushing in from
the northwestern coastline, and as many
of these horsemen were local Spanish
landowners or their retainers, they
resented such encroachments as land-
grabs. The boucaniers, who often had to
hunt wild cattle singly or in small bands,
dreaded falling into their hands, and told
lurid tales about their cruelty.
CLARKE, ROBERT
(fl. 1681
1684)
English Governor of the Bahamas, dis-
missed for granting letters-of-marque
against the Spaniards in peacetime.
Clarke, a Bahamian settler described
as ‘‘one of Cromwell’s officers,’’ had
been appointed Governor by the colony’s
Lord Proprietors back in England some-
time prior to 1681, after his predecessor
Charles Chillingworth had so provoked
the inhabitants that they ‘‘assembled
tumultuously, seized him, shipped him
off for Jamaica, and lived every man as
he thought best for his pleasure and in-
terest.’’ Despite this seeming autonomy,
the Bahamas actually depended quite
heavily on Jamaica for its survival, so
that when Gov. Sir Thomas Lynch
learned that John Coxon had been

raiding Portobelo and the South Sea—
allegedly with a commission granted by
Clarke—he wrote to the latter to
complain.
Clarke replied in July 1682, explain-
ing that he had never sanctioned such
actions, and citing recent Spanish depre-
dations against two English ships in the
Bahamas, plus the carrying-off of plant-
ers from the southern islands to Cuba as
prisoners. He would therefore continue
authorizing attacks against local Span-
iards, and a New York merchant arriving
at Jamaica in late September 1682
reported that the Bahamians had just
‘‘taken a piragua, a barco luengo,
diverse Indians from Florida and seven-
teen from Cuba, whom they have sold
for slaves.’’ When he learned of these
seizures, Lynch wrote: ‘‘I am more than
ever apprehensive of the consequences
of this folly and rapine.’’ The Crown
having grown increasingly intolerant of
such ventures, Clarke’s commissions
were invalidated and a warrant issued in
London for his arrest. The Lord Proprie-
tors also disavowed him, ordering Clarke
home and replaced with another settler,
Robert Lilburne, late in 1682.
Yet before Clarke could be deported
back to England, the Spaniards took
matters into their own hands. In Janu-
ary 1684, a large force sortied from
Havana and attacked English shipping
off Andros Island, capturing one Wil-
liam Bell to serve as their pilot. Juan
de Larco (?) then led 150 picked men
in two barcos luengos to New Provi-
dence, landing on the eastern end of
the island, and guided by Bell—with a
halter around his neck—marched
against Charles Town, as Nassau was
then called. Clarke and his son Judah
brought some men out to investigate
this commotion, yet were met by musket
fire, in which the former Governor was
Cobham, Nathaniel (fl. 1665) 77
wounded and captured. He died in Span-
ish captivity, allegedly roasted over a spit,
although this tale was likely invented by
the Bahamians to justify their continual
hostilities against the Spaniards.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Craton, Michael, A History of the Bahamas
(London: Collins, 1968).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
‘‘CLOSTREE,’’ CAPITAINE
(fl. 1663)
French flibustier named in an English
document of 1663 as commanding a
9-gun ship with a crew of 68 men, and
holding a commission from the Gover-
nor of Tortuga. This name may have
been merely a pseudonym, perhaps
more properly spelled ‘‘Claustr
e.’’
Reference
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
COBHAM, NATHANIEL
(fl. 1665)
English privateer who commanded the
2-gun Susannah in Colonel Edward
Morgan’s expedition against Dutch
Sint Eustatius and Saba, during the
Second Anglo-Dutch War.
78 Cocket
This force departed Jamaica in two
divisions, five sail putting out of Port
Royal on April 5, 1665, and Morgan
himself following with another four on
April 28th. There were 650 men in all,
described in a letter by Gov. Sir
Thomas Modyford as:
. . . chiefly reformed privateers,
scarce a planter amongst them, being
resolute fellows and well armed with
fusils [Spanish word for muskets]
and pistols.
The Crown official was particularly
pleased that they would be serving ‘‘at
the old rate of no purchase, no pay,
and it will cost the King nothing con-
siderable, some powder and mortar
pieces.’’ Their landing was successfully
made, but the Colonel, ‘‘being a corpu-
lent man,’’ died from heat exertion
during the chase, and his expedition
disbanded shortly thereafter.
References
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
COCKET
A written certificate issued by a
customhouse, confirming that merchan-
dise being transported by a vessel had
been duly registered, and paid the
appropriate duties.
Correct documentation could be cru-
cial for any merchant Master, in dealing
with distant and far-flung authorities.
For example, the licensed Jamaican pri-
vateer John Morris and his 7-gun Virgin
Queen intercepted the pink Blue Dove of
London early in 1664; the rover’s suspi-
cions being aroused because this vessel
had seemingly been steering toward
Cuba when sighted and was ‘‘laden with
ammunition and goods suitable to the
Spanish trade.’’ Morris therefore placed
two or three men aboard, and Virgin
Queen accompanied Blue Dove until it
arrived just outside Cagway, entering for
adjudication.
But when the matter was brought to
trial three or four days later before
Deputy-Governor Sir Charles Littleton,
sitting in his capacity as Judge of Jamai-
ca’s Vice-Admiralty Court, Robert Lord
would later testify how from the pink’s:
. . . bills of lading appeared that they
were bound to Jamaica, their cockets
and dispatches being clear from the
King’s Custom-house at Dover; this
deponent speaking in court to Sir
Charles Littelton (then sitting Judge
of the Court) that he knew the Master
Robert Cooke, and that he lived in
Ratliffe near to him [in London],
which also testifies Captain Isaac
Bowles, commander of the Blackmore
(one of the Royal Company’s ships),
the Governor (Sir Charles Littelton)
did thereupon declare them to be a
free ship, and to have their liberty of
trade as any other ship whatsoever
that was then in the harbor.
A disappointed Morris would complain
that the only profit he got for his effort
was ‘‘an English ensign, and a hogs-
head of strong beer.’’

See also
Cagaway; Cocket (Volume 2); Morris, John.
Reference
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
COFFIN, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1683)
English privateer issued a commission
by Gov. Sir Thomas Lynch of Jamaica
early in 1683, to cruise the leeward or
western portion of that island and clear
it of pirates.
Coffin’s patent was one of many
granted by the Governor around that
time, ostensibly to clear the sea-lanes
of raiders such as Jean Hamlin, but
also to give employment to privateers
idled by the peace, as well as to turn
them against one another. John Coxon,
George Johnson, and Thomas Paine
were among others so designated.
Toward the middle of March 1683,
Coffin, who had sortied in a sloop with
70 men, returned to Port Royal to
report that he had engaged two rogue
privateers. The captain and seven
crew-members of one had been killed,
with 20 others wounded, while the sec-
ond had also been considerably dam-
aged, ‘‘but both got away with oars.’’
Coffin brought in three French prison-
ers, two of whom were executed, while
the third had been a gunner aboard
Hamlin’s notorious Trompeuse or
‘‘Trickster,’’ so was held over for a
later trial.
Cooke, Edmond (fl. 1673
1683) 79
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
COOKE, EDMOND
(fl. 1673
1683)
English master, who after enduring
some rough usage at Spanish hands,
turned corsair.
Cooke was in command of the
130-ton merchant pink Virgin out of
London, when it was intercepted in
May 1673 while homeward-bound from
Jamaica by the Irish-born renegade and
Cuban guardacosta, Philip FitzGerald.
According to a complaint lodged almost
10 months later by Cooke before the
Committee for Trade and Plantations in
London, he had been:
. . . seized off Santa Lucia on Cuba by
Captain Philip Fitzgerald and two
other men-of-war, who demanded
French goods, and then seized the ship
and turned them all into a boat with a
fortnight’s provisions. They were two
months and three days reaching
Jamaica; and the Governor of Trinidad
would neither give nor sell them vict-
uals, but bid Cooke go like a dog and
thief. He had 42 tons of logwood laden
at Jamaica, and the Spaniards said they
had commission to destroy all ships
that had two pounds of logwood in
them. All this proved in the Admiralty.
His vessel had meanwhile been con-
demned in Havana for carrying ‘‘pro-
hibited’’ cargo, i.e., logwood, which its
captor argued could only have been
80 Cooke, Edmond (fl. 1673
1683)
illegally obtained from Spain’s Ameri-
can dominions.
On his return to Europe, Cooke and his
owners instituted a £15,000 lawsuit in the
autumn of 1674 against this illegal sei-
zure, which the Captain pursued at the
court of Madrid. Nine months later, the
aggrieved Englishmen petitioned their
own monarch Charles II for letters of re-
prisal, which were denied to them, and the
case languished for several more years.
Meanwhile, Cooke resumed his sea
career, making another voyage to
Jamaica in 1679, during which he
apparently called at Mexico’s Laguna
de T
erminos for a cargo of logwood;
but while later lying off Aruba, Cooke
saw the Armada de Barlovento bearing
down on him, so that he and his men
abandoned ship and went ashore in
their boats. The Armada seized his ship
and sailed it off, Governor Lord
Carlisle of Jamaica later observing that
the English master and crew preferred:
. . . to sacrifice their ship rather than
fall into the hands of the Spaniards,
by whom they knew so many to
have been ill treated and undone.
This caused Cook [sic] to turn priva-
teer, he never having been so before.
Marooned on Aruba, Cooke and his
crew waited until a Spanish bark
approached, which they rowed out and
seized. Finding it ladened with cacao,
hides, and money, he sailed his prize
to Jamaica, smuggling the cargo ashore
and selling it in October 1679.
Portobelo Attack (1680)
Determined to wreak vengeance on the
Spaniards, Cooke followed an unofficial
expedition which had quit Port Morant,
Jamaica, in January 1680 to attack Porto-
belo. Sailing to the rendezvous-point at
Isla de Pinos, 130 miles east of that port
amid the Archipi
elago de las Mulatas on
Panama’s northern shoreline, Cooke
espied a bark approaching in heavy
weather which proved to be that of the
chief commander, Coxon. The free-
booters were ‘‘glad of his company,’’ the
rest being at Golden Island some miles
away. Coxon therefore detached Cooke
to carry the order for this flotilla to join
up before the Spaniards discovered their
presence. Cooke, new to the business,
almost ruined matters when on his way
across to the main body he met:
. . . a Spanish galliot from Carta-
gena, bound to Portobelo with
Negroes, but there being a dissen-
sion among the company, some
desirous to board him, others not, so
that in fine they lost him. The cur-
rent under shore setting strong to the
eastward and having hard westerly
winds, Captain Cooke could not get
the Golden Islands, but was drove
down into the Bay of Darien.
Despite this setback, Coxon was
able to get 250 buccaneers into boats
and row westward along the coast,
slipping ashore at the Gulf of San Blas,
then proceeding afoot until they sur-
prised Portobelo. The city was ran-
sacked over two days, the freebooters
retiring 10 miles northeastward to be
picked up by their ships. A brief block-
ade ensued, after which a general dis-
tribution of booty was made, resulting
in shares of 100 pieces of eight per
man. The flotilla retired to Bocas del
Toro at the northwestern extremity of
present-day Panama to careen, and
once refitted, the pirates decided to

return to Golden Island ‘‘to travel over-
land to Panama,’’ and attack the Span-
iards on the Pacific side.
Pacific Campaign (1680)
Coxon, Cooke, Robert Allison, Peter
Harris, Thomas Magott, Richard Sawkins,
and Sharpe all anchored close inshore
in a small cove on Golden Island, out
of sight of any Spanish ship which
might chance to pass. An anchor-
watch was left aboard each vessel,
with orders to rally to Coxon’s and
Harris’—the two largest—if they
should be discovered. At six o’clock on
Monday morning, April 15, 1680, 332
buccaneers went ashore and began to
obtain Indian guides to cross the Isthmus.
Ten days later, the pirates came on the
Spanish stockade of Santa Marı́a at the
confluence of the Chucunaque and Tuira
Rivers. Sawkins led a dawn attack which
carried the place.
The buccaneers then pressed on into
the Pacific, capturing Spanish coastal
craft until they had assembled a small
flotilla, with which they bore down on
Panama City. The Spaniards sent out a
hastily-assembled force to offer battle,
which the raiders captured after a
three-hour fight. Coxon’s reluctance to
go any farther resulted in his being
deposed from command, sailing away
on May 5, 1680, with 70 loyal hands
to retrace their steps across the
Isthmus. Sawkins became chief com-
mander aboard the captured Spanish
flagship Santı´sima Trinidad, while
Cooke commanded a bark of about 80
tons, and Sharpe a slightly smaller one.
That very next day, a large Peruvian
ship was intercepted arriving from
Lima, which became Sharpe’s new
Cooke, Edmond (fl. 1673
1683) 81
command. The flotilla thereupon
roamed westward past Coiba Island,
where Sawkins went aboard Cooke’s
bark two days later with 60 men, to
attempt a landing at the town of Reme-
dios. He was killed in the disembarka-
tion with Cooke bringing off the
survivors. On quitting this river-mouth
on May 11th (May 1, 1680 O.S.), the
pirates seized a Spanish bark ladened
with pitch, which Cooke transferred
into and renamed Mayflower.
Rejoining the main body, though, he
found circumstances altered. Sawkins’
death created an upheaval, with 60 of his
followers abandoning the enterprise alto-
gether to sail away in Cooke’s former
bark for the Caribbean. Sharpe was now
promoted principal commander aboard
Trinidad, while Cooke was turned out of
Mayflower by his own crew. The former
merchant-captain had never displayed
the proper touch for privateering, ‘‘and
went on board the great ship [Trinidad]
as a private soldier.’’ Sharpe named his
old friend John Cox, a New Englander,
to command Mayflower in his stead.
Cooke served out the remaining two
years of the voyage in a minor
capacity, apparently roving all up and
down the South American coast, and
may have still been aboard when Trini-
dad eventually rounded the Strait of
Magellan and reached the English
West Indies in late February 1682. At
least one buccaneer noted that a mer-
chant captain they met ‘‘went away
with one Cook, our [sailing] master, to
the Governor of Antigua [to ask] lib-
erty to come in.’’ All the pirates scat-
tered at this point, each according to
his inclinations.
It is said that Cooke’s flag was red
striped with yellow, on which was a
device of a hand and sword.
82 Cooke, John (fl. 1679
1684)
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 7, 9,
11 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1889).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
COOKE, JOHN
(fl. 1679
1684)
English buccaneer who twice raided
the Spaniards in the Pacific Ocean.
Cooke was apparently born on the
West Indian island of St. Kitts, and at
one time served as quartermaster to the
legendary Dutch rover Jan Willems. It
is even claimed that Cooke captured a
Spanish prize, of which he should have
been given command were it not for
the jealousy of Willems’ French fol-
lowers, who marooned Cooke and
his English band on ^Ile a Vache. His
first documented exploit came during
Bartholomew Sharpe’s incursion into
the South Sea, when Cooke led a
splinter-group of some 50 buccaneers
including William Dampier, Edward
Davis, and Lionel Wafer, who parted
company in April 1681 and marched
back across the Isthmus of Panama to
Point San Blas, where they were res-
cued by Capitaine Tristan. Later, Cooke
and some other Englishmen made off
with Tristan’s ship at Dominica, while
the flibustier chieftain was ashore.
About 20 of this group went to Vir-
ginia in July 1682, which is where
Cooke met them next April, having
taken two French ships laden with
wine. He used the profits from this
coup to plan a second raid against
Peru, Cooke and his reunited followers
leaving Chesapeake Bay on August 23,
1683, aboard his 18-gun Revenge, with
a crew of 70 men. It soon became
apparent that this vessel would not
be adequate to round the Horn, so
the buccaneers steered to the West
African coast, where they seized a
36-gun Danish ship off Sierra Leone
in November, renaming it Bachelor’s
Delight. At Sherbro, a little farther along
that same coast, they burnt Revenge so
‘‘she should tell no tales,’’ according to
their pilot William Ambrose Cowley.
Cooke then laid in a course for the Horn,
sighting the Seebald de Weert Islands on
January 28, 1684, as well as ‘‘great
shoals of small lobsters, which colored
the sea in red spots.’’ He passed the Isla
de los Estados (Staten Island) on Febru-
ary 7th, emerging into the Pacific about a
month later.
On March 19, 1684, Bachelor’s
Delight pursued a sail in the vicinity of
Valdivia, Chile, which proved to be
the Nicholas out of London, com-
manded by John Eaton. Although origi-
nally intended as a trade mission,
Eaton’s purpose had quickly degener-
ated into simple plundering, so that the
two rovers decided to join forces. They
repaired to the Juan Fern
andez Islands
for fresh supplies, and on April 8th
headed northward in hopes of surpris-
ing the Peruvian coastal traffic. They
seized a vessel on May 3rd, bearing
timber from Guayaquil toward Lima,
yet from whose crew they learned that
their presence in those waters was al-
ready known. Withdrawing to the
Lobos de Afuera Islands on May 9th to
careen and revise their plans, the buc-
caneers could only muster 108 men
 C
ordoba Y Z
u~niga, Luis Bartolom
e De (ca. 1650
post 1706?)
between them, having many sick,
including Cooke himself. While lying
there, they sighted and pursued three
sail, which they overhauled next day.
They proved to be Spanish supply
ships bearing flour, ‘‘seven or eight
tons of quince marmalade,’’ and other
goods for Panama, which Cooke and
Eaton diverted to the remote Gal
apagos
Islands and unloaded as a reserve sup-
ply. They remained there from May
31st to June 12th, and then proceeded
farther north toward New Spain, hop-
ing news of their depredations had
not yet reached that far. As they
approached the Gulf of Nicoya in pres-
ent-day Costa Rica to raid for beef,
Cooke died, and was succeeded in
command of Bachelor’s Delight by
Edward Davis.
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1989).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
COOPER, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1663)
English privateer who on October 29,
1663, brought two Spanish prizes into
Port Royal, Jamaica. One was the Marı´a
of Seville, a royal azogue ship carrying
1,000 quintals of quicksilver for the
mines of Mexico, besides trade items
such as oil, wine, and olives. A number
83
of prisoners were also included, among
them several friars bound for Campeche
and Veracruz. In a separate document
dated that same year, Cooper’s ship was
described as a frigate of 10 guns, with a
crew of 80 men.
References
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).


CORDOBA Y ZU ~

NIGA,
LUIS BARTOLOME
DE
(ca. 1650
post 1706?)
Spanish Governor of Veracruz during
the pirate invasion of May 1683.
De C
ordoba was born in Veracruz,
when his father Admiral Lorenzo de
C
ordoba y Z
u~niga, Knight of the Order
of Santiago, served as castellano or
‘‘garrison commander’’ for its island-
fortress of San Juan de Ul
ua. After going
abroad to serve the King, Don Luis
returned with his own appointment as
Governor early in 1677. He was consid-
ered the puppet of his older, corrupt
brother-in-law, Diego Ortiz de Largacha,
Knight of the Order of Santiago, whose
unpopularity soon encompassed De
C
ordoba as well. The Governor’s pres-
tige was considerably diminished when
Ortiz de Largacha was extradited to
stand trial in Mexico City in 1681.
At three o’clock on the afternoon of
Monday, May 17, 1683, De C
ordoba
was attending a banquet in Veracruz,
when word arrived of two sails out at
sea. Such arrivals were dealt with by
84 C
ordoba Y Z
u~niga, Luis Bartolom
e De (ca. 1650
post 1706?)
San Juan de Ul
ua’s commander, so
Don Luis resumed his meal; yet on
quitting the banquet hall more than an
hour later, he was approached by ‘‘Don
Juan Morfa’’ [John Murphy] with the
suspicion that they were behaving
oddly by not entering on the prevailing
wind. This opinion was seconded by
the city’s sargento mayor or ‘‘military
commander,’’ Mateo Alonso de Huido-
bro, but dismissed by the Governor.
That evening, De C
ordoba received a
message from nearby Antigua Veracruz
of strange ships out at sea, and San
Juan de Ul
ua’s commander advised
him that the island was being placed
on full alert. The Governor ordered his
own city troops into barracks rather
than their individual billets, yet did not
alert his militia units; moreover, he
ignored the fact that his regulars had
not yet received their monthly allot-
ment of powder and shot. That night, a
false report was brought in of a signal-
flare being fired on San Juan de Ul
ua,
so Don Luis ordered more sentries
posted along the waterfront, then
‘‘wrapped in a cape’’ he visited each of
his separate barracks. Satisfied, he
went back to bed, not realizing that his
inspection had been observed by
pirates from the shadows.
They had infiltrated the city from
the landward side under Laurens de
Graaf and the ‘‘Chevalier’’ de Gram-
mont, preparing to attack at first light.
Gunfire awakened the Governor at
dawn of May 18th, and he scrambled
downstairs with sword and baton to
rally his household company, but they
lacked powder. Outside, Grammont led
two columns of heavily-armed flibu-
stiers against the palace, firing volleys.
Those Spaniards brave enough to form
a line were mown down, the survivors
fleeing back inside to bar the door. De
C
ordoba ran upstairs with his troops,
then emerged onto a balcony to call
for quarter, yet a soldier behind warned
him ‘‘not to do so with a naked blade
in his hand, for he might be killed.’’
Withdrawing hastily, the Governor
tried to dispose of his official papers
by sweeping them off his desk into a
couple of baskets, with orders to hurl
them down the well. His wooden writ-
ing-case with its correspondence was
tossed underneath a rolled awning.
With that, he joined his panic-stricken
men on the rooftop, flinging himself over
the wall to the adjacent private homes.
Soon, the invaders cut off this escape,
but De C
ordoba had disappeared. He hid
for 24 hours in the palace stables with an
injured leg, but was discovered on the
morning of May 19th by an English buc-
caneer—reputedly Captain Spurre—and
the pirates beat him mercilessly. Bloodied,
Don Luis was kept hostage along with
a dozen leading citizens. He offered
ransom, writing a pitiful letter to his
sister Do~na Ana Marı́a (the wife of Ortiz
de Largacha) in Puebla, asking her to
raise the sum. Eventually 150,000 pesos
was paid for all the captives, and Don
Luis was released along with the rest.
He was then arrested on charges of
neglect of duty and cowardice, being
transferred on June 14, 1683, from the
Veracruz jail to San Juan de Ul
ua, vili-
fied by a jeering mob. On August 11th,
he was sentenced to death at his court-
martial, but a year later the Mexican
Viceroy commuted this verdict to ‘‘per-
petual destitution of office and banish-
ment from the Indies, plus ten years
imprisonment in Mamora or some
other African presidio.’’ Outraged peti-
tions were raised in Veracruz, calling
for the execution to be carried out. The

ex-Governor languished on San Juan de
Ul
ua for many years, until finally a royal
c

edula authorized his release in 1706.
References
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The
Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor,
Ontario, Canada: Netherlandic Press,
1993).
CORNELISZOON, JAN
(fl. 1683)
Rover of Dutch descent, who operated
out of New York.
In March 1683, Corneliszoon
was lying at New Providence in the
Bahamas with his brigantine and Cap-
tains Markham, Conway Woolley, and
the French flibustier Br
eha, preparing
to jointly ‘‘fish silver from a Spanish
wreck.’’ However, Captain Thomas
Paine’s bark Pearl of eight guns and
60 men then arrived, with a license
from Gov. Sir Thomas Lynch of
Jamaica to hunt pirates. The five con-
sequently decided to raid the nearby
Spanish outpost of Saint Augustine,
Florida, using Paine’s commission as
authorization, despite the official peace
prevailing with Spain.
They landed flying French colors,
yet found the Spaniards forewarned, so
withdrew after releasing some captives
they had brought, and looting the sur-
rounding countryside. Once back in the
Bahamas, Corneliszoon and Woolley
apparently proceeded directly to the
wreck site, while the other three
Corso, Juan (fl. 1680
1685) 85
reentered New Providence. When Gov.
Robert Lilburne visited the site of the
sunken galleon a few weeks later, he
found all the rovers gone.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
CORSAIR
Synonym for privateer, meaning an
individual or vessel officially licensed
to commit hostilities.
The word is believed to be derived
from the Latin cursus or corsa, for
‘‘course’’ or ‘‘cruise.’’ It remained cur-
rent among many Latin-speaking peo-
ples, particularly the Spanish, even
after the English introduced ‘‘priva-
teer’’ into their language, and the
Dutch adopted kaper into theirs. The
Spaniards retained its classic usage,
referring to privateering or ‘‘sailing on
the account’’ as andar a corso, or a
privateering commission as a patente
de corso.
CORSO, JUAN
(fl. 1680
1685)
Famous Cuban corsair, greatly feared
and hated by his victims.
His real name was apparently
Giovanni Michele, born on Corsica at
a time when that island was governed
by the Republic of Genoa, which was
a satellite of Spain. Therefore, he and
his younger brother Biagio were able
86 Corso, Juan (fl. 1680
1685)
A dashing West Indian corsair, as depicted
by Howard Pyle. (Johnson, Merle [compiled
by]. Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates: Fiction,
Fact & Fancy Concerning the Buccaneers &
Marooners of the Spanish Main, 1921)
to win authorization from Madrid to
emigrate to the New World and take
employment as mercenary privateers.
They were commonly referred to by
the Spaniards under their Hispanicized
names of ‘‘Juan Corso’’ and ‘‘Blas
Miguel Corso.’’ Gov. Sir Thomas
Lynch of Jamaica would lump the two
brothers and all the other guardacostas
of his day as ‘‘Corsicans, Slavonians,
Greeks, mulattoes, a mongrel parcel of
thieves.’’ Certainly Corso was subordi-
nate to the Spaniard Pedro de Castro
throughout his West Indian career,
while Corso’s first mate, Giorgio Nic-
colo (‘‘Jorge Nicol
as’’) was known to
be a native of Venice.
It is possible that Corso took part in
De Castro’s early cruises, but the first
direct reference to his activities occurred
in April 1680, when both sailed in the
expedition which Captain Felipe de la
Barreda led against the English logwood
cutters of the Laguna de T
erminos. After
returning from this highly successful
sweep, De Castro and Corso departed in
mid-July with two piraguas to patrol the
Yucatan coastline as far around as the
Bay of Honduras. Off Cocinas Island,
they espied a large vessel at anchor, then
another small frigate nearby, which they
suspected of poaching logwood, and
captured both. The larger ship was most
likely Robert Oxe’s brand-new Laurel,
renamed Le
on Coronado or ‘‘Crowned
Lion,’’ and carried back toward Cam-
peche. On approaching their home port,
though, De Castro and Corso were
informed that another large intruder lay
at the Laguna de T
erminos, so they im-
mediately went in pursuit and spotted a
36-gun ship inside its bar. Unable to
enter with the heavy Le
on Coronado, De
Castro nonetheless persuaded the enemy
captain to surrender, learning that it was
the ex-Spanish Nuestra Se~ nora del Hon-
h
on, captured 11 months previously off
Portobelo by John Coxon’s flotilla.
Rather than return with these prizes
to Campeche, De Castro decided to put
into Veracruz in October 1680, sending
only Corso back to their base with a
single piragua. Its authorities were
greatly annoyed at this deviation from
usual procedure, arresting Corso and
sending 50 soldiers in De Castro’s pur-
suit aboard a piragua. The dispute was
not resolved until March 1681, when
De Castro’s action was deemed legiti-
mate, and Corso was released. Both
then resumed their coastal patrols
aboard Le
on Coronado and Honh
on,

until the latter became incorporated into
the Armada de Barlovento in 1682, and
the corsairs shifted their operations
across to the southern coast of Cuba.
This proved to be a very active
arena with Spanish residents being
embroiled in a bitter peacetime feud
against the French flibustiers of Saint-
Domingue, as well as English smug-
glers, hunters, and fishermen arriving
from Jamaica. Corso’s name soon
became prominently featured, both
because De Castro left much of the
patrol duties to him, as well as some
captures made by other rovers, which
were erroneously attributed to Corso.
The English, in particular—neutral in
this Franco-Spanish conflict, yet with
many ships plying those waters—
became incensed at his growing number
of depredations. By April 1683, Gover-
nor Lynch of Jamaica was writing to:
. . . the Governor of Havana complain-
ing of the piracies of Juan Corso, and
desiring to know if he owned them;
but neither he nor the Governor of
Santiago de Cuba would ever answer.
This Juan a month since [late June or
early July 1683] took a boat of ours
bound to New Providence [in the
Bahamas]; he has killed diverse of our
people in cold blood. In one case he
cut off a man’s head because he was
sick, and could not row so strongly as
he expected. Barbarities like these and
worse he commits daily.
The Governor also reported that a New
England ketch which had gone turtling
to the ‘‘Salt Tortugas’’ (modern Isla La
Tortuga, off Venezuela) had been seized
by some French corsairs and carried
towards Saint-Domingue, yet intercepted
by Corso before it could arrive. Sailing
Corso, Juan (fl. 1680
1685) 87
his prize into Santiago de Cuba, the
French captives were:
. . . condemned to death as pirates,
but the vessel and the Englishmen
detained. As the French pirates were
marched to execution, the town
mutinied and reprieved them from
fear of the Frenchmen’s revenge,
and paid the Governor 200 pieces-
of-eight in composition. This is the
manner in which they do everything.
A few weeks later, in early August 1683,
Lynch again advised his superiors that it
was Corso:
. . . who by landing off the coast of
Hispaniola and carrying away many
prisoners, slaves, etc., caused the
French government to grant commis-
sions of war, and it is feared that on
the privateers’ return [from the sack
of Veracruz under Laurens de Graaf
and the Sieur de Grammont] they
will destroy Santiago de Cuba, where
Corso shelters himself.
On August 18, 1683 (O.S.), Lynch
once again enumerated his complaints
against the corsair in a letter to the
Spanish Governor of Havana, averring:
This Juan Corso, or some such
villains, have killed Captain Prenar,
pretending to come to trade with
him in a canoe.
He or some others came aboard one
Bodeler and one Wall, when at anchor
in an uninhabited bay, killed both of
them and several men, and carried the
sloops to Santiago de Cuba.
The same surprised Captain Van
den Claus[en] in an uninhabited bay,
and tortured the men to make them
88 Corso, Juan (fl. 1680
1685)
confess that they were trading. The
Governor [of Santiago de Cuba],
bribed by a share, condemned her.
These pirates constantly rack their
prisoners, and the Governors make
no effort to stop it.
Corso having captured an English
boat with four men, killed one with
his own hand because he was sick.
He or others have lately taken a
vessel bound for New Providence
without cargo.
He has often declared that he will
serve us as he served the French, and
threatens to come and take Negroes
from the north side of Jamaica.
Lynch ended his disquisition by telling
the Governor of Havana that if ‘‘you
could receive anybody at Havana, I
could much strengthen my case against
Juan Corso.’’
Early in March 1684, Lynch again
wrote his superiors in London:
It is reported that Juan Corso
attacked a Frenchman with three
‘‘periagos’’ [sic; piraguas] and was
killed, but that the French were
taken and all killed to the number of
100. The Spaniards are said to have
lost as many. This is reported to
have taken place off Havana, Corso
having come from New Providence,
which he had destroyed.
This information was incorrect, as both
Corso and De Castro continued to operate
out of Cuba. In the spring of 1685, they
were among the first Spaniards to learn of
a secret new French colony being estab-
lished in the Gulf of Mexico by Ren
e
Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.
Realizing that Madrid would wel-
come the destruction of this intruder
settlement, they sailed in a galliot to
Tuxpan and Tampico in Mexico that
April, hoping to take on provisions and
a pilot to probe the uncharted Gulf
waters. On May 4, 1685, four days after
leaving Tampico on an east-northeast-
erly heading, they were driven by a
storm close inshore ‘‘two leagues to
windward of Espı́ritu Santo Bay.’’
While riding out the weather, they saw
signs of white habitation, and going
ashore met a party of six Indians who
informed them through sign-language
that many people with muskets had
preceded inland. De Castro led 50 well-
armed men and three Indian guides in
search of the intruders, yet returned
empty-handed a few days later. On
May 19th, he and Corso stood out to
sea, only to be driven into another
unknown inlet by contrary winds and
currents, where they lost their anchor.
Desperate to keep off the rocks, 25 men
were put into the water to fashion a
mooring, then abandoned when the
wind veered round. Three days later,
Corso and De Castro returned in rough
weather to rescue 16, but the rest were
absent foraging inland for food. By the
time they reappeared, the surf was too
dangerous, so they were hailed to meet
the galliot at Apalache Bay, many miles
farther along the coast. The nine men
survived this grueling trek, yet the gal-
liot was never seen again, being lost
with all hands including Juan Corso.
References
Archivo General de la Naci
on [Mexico],
Serie Reales C
edulas (Originales),
Volume 18, Exp. 151, Folios 329
330.
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11

(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr
ua, 1972).
Weddle, Robert S., Wilderness Manhunt:
The Spanish Search for La Salle (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1973).
COXON, JOHN
(fl. 1676
1688)
English privateer who prowled the
West Indies for many years.
The first mention of Coxon’s name
appears to have occurred on August 2,
1676 (O.S.), when Peter Beckford
wrote from Port Royal, Jamaica:
Captain Coxen [sic] about the island
with a French commission. My Lord
[Vaughan, Governor of Jamaica]
uses all possible means to take him,
and proclaimed mercy to all his men
if they delivered their captain up,
who was declared a pirate, but they
refused, so My Lord sent to take
him, but he ran away immediately.
England being then at peace, it was ille-
gal for Jamaican privateers to participate
in the on-going hostilities between France,
Spain, and Holland, yet Coxon was one of
several who ignored this stricture, and in
June 1677 sailed with his French commis-
sion to attack Santa Marta on the Spanish
Main under Capitaine La Garde.
Capture of Santa Marta
(June 1677)
The flibustier force surprised this town
at dawn and took many captives,
Coxon, John (fl. 1676
1688) 89
including its Governor and Bishop,
holding them for ransom until a trio
of Armada de Barlovento warships
appeared from Cartagena with 500 sol-
diers, and drove them off. The raiders
thereupon retired to Port Royal, so that
on July 28, 1677, Sir Thomas Lynch
noted:
Five or six French and English pri-
vateers lately come to Jamaica from
taking Santa Marta, Barnes being
one and Coxon expected every hour.
On board the Governor and the
Bishop, and Captain Legarde [sic]
has promised to put them on shore.
The plunder of the town was not
great, money and broken plate [i.e.,
silver] about £20 a man.
Three days later, Coxon entered
port, and personally escorted the 53-
year-old Bishop Dr. Lucas Fern
andez y
Piedrahita and a Spanish friar into the
presence of the new island Governor,
Lord Vaughan. The prelate was nobly
housed, and English officers went
aboard the buccaneer flotilla to attempt
‘‘to procure the liberty of the [Spanish]
Governor and others, but finding the
privateers all drunk, it was impossible
to persuade them to do anything by fair
means.’’ Vaughan therefore ordered the
French to depart, and officially advised
Coxon and his English followers that it
was illegal for them to continue serv-
ing under foreign colors. The French
were ‘‘damnably enraged’’ at being
deprived of their English companions,
so sailed off without releasing any more
captives. Fern
andez y Piedrahita was
soon after restored to the Spaniards at
Cartagena, and having previously been
appointed to act as Bishop of Panama,
continued to his new see this same year,
90 Coxon, John (fl. 1676
1688)
while his previous Santa Marta diocese
was occupied as of 1678 by Dr. Diego
de Ba~
nos y Sotomayor.
Indigo Seizure
(September 1679)
Coxon soon resumed his activities any-
way, leading a mixed party of English,
French, and other privateers on a foray
into the Bay of Honduras in the
summer of 1679. On September 26th,
they captured a Spanish merchantman
ladened with valuable cargo, and again
approached Jamaica to dispose of it.
By late October, it was being reported
at Port Royal:
There has been lately taken from the
Spaniards by Coxon, Bartholomew
Sharpe, Bothing, and Hawkins [Rich-
ard Sawkins?] with their crew, 500
chests of indigo, a great quantity of ca-
cao, cochineal, tortoise shell, money,
and plate. Much is brought into this
country already, and the rest expected.
The English Governor tried to prevent
its introduction, yet the rovers threatened
that ‘‘they would leave their interest in
Jamaica and sail to Rhode Island or to
the Dutch, where they would be well
entertained.’’ Despite naval patrols, the
goods were smuggled ashore and sold, to
the noticeable benefit of both the island’s
economy and treasury.
Portobelo Campaign
(February 1680)
Coxon then convened an illegal assem-
blage at Port Morant, off the southeastern
tip of Jamaica, which was attended at the
end of December 1679 by the barks of
Capts. Cornelius Essex and Sharpe, as
well as the sloops of Robert Allison and
Thomas Magott, all of whom agreed to
unite under Coxon’s leadership for an
assault against Spanish Portobelo. The au-
thorization for such a venture was very
sketchy, the privateers holding a mixture
of outdated French and English commis-
sions, including ‘‘let-passes’’ from the
new Jamaican Governor Lord Carlisle to
simply ‘‘go into the Bay of Honduras
[modern Belize] to cut logwood.’’ They
quit Port Morant on January 17, 1680,
and less than 20 miles out at sea met the
brigantine of the French flibustier Jean
Rose, who also joined the expedition. The
weather turning bad, Coxon hailed his
vessels to make their best way to Isla
Fuerte, 90 miles south-southwest of Car-
tagena on the Main. Whosoever got there
first was ‘‘to leave a note on the Sandy
Point, to satisfy the rest.’’
Only Essex and Sharpe failed to
keep this rendezvous, after which
Coxon raided the nearby San Bernardo
or ‘‘Friends’’ Islands for landing craft.
He returned three days later with ‘‘four
piraguas and six very good large
canoes,’’ discovering Essex had in the
meantime rejoined. The formation then
proceeded toward Isla de Pinos, 130
miles east of Portobelo amid the Archi-
pi
elago de las Mulatas, although only
Coxon’s bark was able to shoulder
through the contrary winds and gain
this isle, the rest being forced into Isla
de Oro or ‘‘Golden Island’’ some miles
away. There, the pirates befriended the
local Indians, while Coxon learned that
Sharpe had preceded him, and that the
privateer Edmond Cooke had come to
join him, for which he was grateful
because his force ‘‘wanted men.’’
The winds continuing to blow foul,
Coxon took 250 buccaneers into boats

and rowed westward along the coast,
hoping to strike before the Spaniards
could detect his presence. Near his goal,
he came on ‘‘a great ship riding at
anchor,’’ which proved to be that of
the flibustier Capitaine Lessone, who
added 80 Frenchmen to the boat parties.
Shortly thereafter, the buccaneers
slipped ashore in the Gulf of San Blas,
proceeding afoot to avoid the Spanish
coastal-watchers. They marched three
days ‘‘without any food, and their feet
cut with the rocks for want of shoes,’’
until they came on an Indian village
three miles short of Portobelo. A native
spotted them and shouted ‘‘¡Ladrones!’’
or ‘‘Thieves!’’ before setting off at a run
toward the city.
‘‘Good boys,’’ Coxon called to his
men, ‘‘you that are able to run, get into
town before we are descried!’’ The
buccaneers trotted in pursuit, but the
Indian arrived half-an-hour before them
and raised the alarm. Nevertheless, the
vanguard under Allison was able to
sweep in unopposed, the Spaniards
withdrawing inside their citadel in fear,
leaving the raiders to ransack Portobelo
unchallenged over the next two days.
Coxon then retired 10 miles northeast-
ward, entrenching himself with his
booty and a few prisoners on a cay
half-a-mile offshore from Bastimentos,
while Allison sped in a boat to recall
the anchored ships. Three days later,
several hundred Spanish troops ap-
peared and began firing on the pirates
from the beach, yet were unable to
exact vengeance before the vessels
arrived.
Coxon instituted a blockade of Porto-
belo; Sharpe, who in the interim had
reappeared, intercepted a barco luengo
from Cartagena. Three days later Coxon
and Allison combined to take a new
Coxon, John (fl. 1676
1688) 91
90-ton ship of eight guns, which had also
come from Cartagena bearing 30 slaves,
timber, salt, corn, and allegedly 500
pieces of gold in a jar of wine (which
Coxon ‘‘wronged the party of by keeping
it to himself,’’ according to a disgruntled
follower). A general distribution of
booty was subsequently made, resulting
in shares of 100 pieces of eight per man.
Afterward, Coxon’s confederates agreed
to retire to Bocas del Toro at the north-
western extremity of present-day Pan-
ama, ‘‘to make clean our ships, there
being the best place to careen our ships,
by reason there is good store of turtle
and manatee and fish.’’
Coxon found the barco luengo of
Richard Sawkins already there, who in
turn advised him that Captain Peter
Harris was careening at Diego’s Point
on nearby Isla Solarte. Coxon trans-
ferred into his new Spanish prize,
abandoning his old bark. Once refit-
ted, he suggested that the pirates
return to Golden Island and avail
themselves of their friendship with the
Indians ‘‘to travel overland to Pan-
ama,’’ and attack the Spaniards on
their Pacific flank. The English all
agreed, only the French under Lessone
and Rose refusing, preferring to prowl
the Gulf of San Blas again. Thus the
two contingents parted, in true Broth-
erhood fashion.
Pacific Incursion (April 1680)
Coxon, Allison, Cooke, Harris, Magott,
Sawkins, and Sharpe all anchored their
ships close inshore in a small cove
on Golden Island, out of sight of any
Spaniards who might chance to sail
past. An anchor-watch was also left
aboard each, with orders to rally to
92 Coxon, John (fl. 1676
1688)
Coxon’s and Harris’ ships—the two
largest—if any attack should occur. At
six o’clock on Monday morning, April
15, 1680, Coxon led 332 buccaneers
ashore and obtained guides from the
local Indians to cross the Isthmus. Ten
days later, the pirates came on the
Spanish stockade of Santa Marı́a, at
the confluence of the Chucunaque and
Tuira Rivers. This fort had no artillery,
so that Sawkins led a mad rush of buc-
caneers at dawn, which penetrated the
palisades after a heated half-hour
exchange of small-arms’ fire. Seventy
of the 200 Spanish defenders were
killed outright, the rest being massa-
cred later by Indians.
Flushed with their victory, the buc-
caneers pressed on toward the Pacific,
although it was noted how ‘‘our gen-
eral, Captain Coxon, seemed unwilling,
but with much persuasion went.’’ He
apparently felt that they did not pos-
sess sufficient strength to emulate
Henry Morgan’s feat of subduing Pan-
ama City, so should be satisfied with
smaller gains, but his ‘‘people was ea-
ger for more voyage’’ despite the dan-
gers, and other captains assumed the
lead. Once on the Pacific side, the
pirate boats captured an anchored
Spanish bark one night, and Sharpe
went aboard it with 135 men. Next
night, Harris captured a second bark,
and the buccaneers soon had a small
flotilla, with which they bore down on
Panama City. The Spaniards sent out a
hastily-assembled force to do battle,
and the raiders captured it after a
three-hour fight.
By this time, Coxon’s prestige had
become so eroded, that he was deposed.
‘‘Our former admiral not behaving him-
self nobly in time of engagement,’’ a
pirate wrote, ‘‘was something hooted at
by the party, that he immediately went
away to go overland.’’ On May 5,
1680, Coxon quit the campaign with 70
loyal hands in a small bark, retracing
his steps across the Isthmus. Sharpe,
Sawkins, and Cooke remained in com-
mand of the expedition, which began an
epic two-year campaign of terror along
the South American coast.
Cruises (1680
1682)
Meanwhile, Coxon forged back up the
Chucunaque River and regained the
Caribbean, reappearing before Jamaica
a few weeks later. The retiring island
Governor, Carlisle, met with the cor-
sair and 55 men:
. . . off Point Negril on my passage
home. We gave chase with the
Hunter frigate in company for 24
hours, but he outsailed us and we
could not come up with him, but we
took two vessels belonging to him
forsaken by their crews, who were
all aboard his vessel.
The next spring, Coxon was rum-
ored to be calling for another assem-
blage of pirates ‘‘somewhere in the
Gulf of Honduras,’’ perhaps at Roat
an,
and is also known to have raided the
Spanish outpost of Saint Augustine,
Florida. By early June 1681, he was
lying at Springer’s Key in the San Blas
Islands again, with a ship of 10 guns
and 100 men accompanied by Rose,
Jan Willems, George Wright, and four
other captains. They were joined there
by Capitaine Tristan, who had just res-
cued John Cooke’s band of rovers at
nearby La Sound’s Key, fresh from
their South Seas adventures. William

Dampier, who was among the latter
group, recorded how Coxon and the
others were overjoyed to see them,
having ‘‘never heard what became of
us.’’ The whole flotilla then decided to
make a descent on the Central American
coast, for which they sailed toward
San Andr
es Island to procure boats.
Yet a gale scattered the formation,
and an armadilla of a dozen tiny
men-of-war sent from Cartagena drove
others away. Coxon put into Bocas del
Toro to careen, his expedition having
disintegrated.
Jamaican Service (1682
1683)
Apparently tiring of his nomadic exis-
tence, Coxon approached yet another
new Governor of Jamaica, Sir Thomas
Lynch, in May 1682 and showed him his
old commission, issued by Captain-
General Robert Clarke of the Bahamas,
to operate against the Spaniards. Lynch
was appalled, considering this document
a violation of the peace prevailing with
Madrid, yet did not hold the matter
against Coxon personally. Instead, he
wrote reprovingly to Clarke, who replied
on July 16th of that same year:
Captain John Coxon being denied a
commission to take St. Augustine,
Florida, went hence in contempt of
any orders and contrary to law and
custom, carrying away some persons
that are indebted to the inhabitants [of
the Bahamas]. All that he did in land-
ing and plundering on Spanish terri-
tory was done by his own power. I
thought fit to inform you of this, since
I hear he is now at Jamaica.
Lynch was unconvinced, and contin-
ued to put his trust in the veteran
Coxon, John (fl. 1676
1688) 93
privateer. Four months later (Novem-
ber 6, 1682 O.S.), he reported to his
superiors that he had recently sent:
. . . Coxon and two other vessels to
the Bay of Honduras to bring away
our logwood cutters. So far from
doing so, he was in danger of losing
his ship and his life. His men plotted
to take the ship and go privateering,
but he valiantly resisted, killed one or
two with his own hand, forced eleven
overboard and brought three here,
who were condemned last Friday. I
shall order one or two to be hanged
for an example to others and encour-
agement to him. I am hiring him to
convey a Spaniard to Havana.
In February 1683, Lynch again en-
trusted Coxon with a special commis-
sion, dispatching him in search of
Willems, to jointly mount a pursuit of
Jean Hamlin, the French renegade who
had been making captures with the
hijacked vessel Trompeuse or ‘‘Trick-
ster.’’ The Governor was willing to
offer Willems:
. . . (who commands an admirable
sailer), men, victuals, pardon, natu-
ralisation, and £200 in money to him
and Coxon, if he will go after La
Trompeuse.
But the Dutchman was otherwise
engaged, and Coxon did not come up
with him. Instead, on his return passage
toward Port Royal, Coxon met the cor-
sair flagship Saint Nicholas of Nikolaas
van Hoorn and the Sieur de Grammont
to leeward or westward of Jamaica, who
informed him that they were ‘‘trying to
unite all the privateers for an attack on
Veracruz.’’ Although he must have been
94 Coxon, John (fl. 1676
1688)
sorely tempted, Coxon refused and reen-
tered Port Royal by mid-March, subse-
quently learning that the buccaneers had
met with Laurens de Graaf, Michiel
Andrieszoon, George Spurre, Jacob Hall,
Pierre Bot, Antoine Bernard, Pierre
d’Orange, and many others, and made a
spectacular assault on that Mexican port,
obtaining enormous amounts of booty
with almost no casualties. Such a missed
opportunity must have galled him, as
Lynch was noting by November 12th
that ‘‘Coxon is again in rebellion,’’ hav-
ing resumed his old piratical ways.
Renegade (1683
1688)
Nothing more was recorded about
Coxon for more than two years, until
Lieutenant-Gov. Hender Molesworth of
Jamaica reported in late January 1686:
Captain John Coxon, a notorious pri-
vateer, who took advantage of a
clause in the act for restraining and
persuading pirates to return to the
honest life, became weary of it and
reverted to piracy, has wearied again
of that and returned here. His bond
for good behavior, when required,
could not be found, but I have evi-
dence against him and have ordered
him to be apprehended. The place of
trial will be Santiago de la Vega,
where there will be fewer sympa-
thisers among the jury.
The veteran commander apparently
remained as wily as ever, however, for
Molesworth was complaining by mid-
November 1686:
I hear that Coxon is cutting logwood
in the Gulf of Campeche [sic; Laguna
de T
erminos], and has written to his
friends that he has given up privateer-
ing and means to earn an honest liv-
ing. I shall nonetheless send the
proclamation declaring him a pirate
to those parts by first opportunity.
He followed this up by issuing a
warrant on November 24, 1686 (O.S.),
commissioning ‘‘Captains Rich Cubitt
and Conway to apprehend John Coxon,
the pirate, said to be logwood-cutting
in the Bay of Campeche.’’
Even so, Coxon could not be caught,
although when Royal Navy Captain
Thomas Spragge returned to Port Royal
in August 1687 with 71 English prisoners
restored to him by the Spanish Governors
of Campeche and Veracruz, he also
‘‘brought in six French pirates who had
robbed some [Jamaican] vessels, and
eleven of Coxon’s men.’’ The latter were
tried on August 18th, eight being con-
victed after the other three turned inform-
ers. Yet it was not until October 1688 that
Coxon himself and several of his men
finally surrendered to the new Jamaican
Governor, the Duke of Albemarle, who
in turn handed them over to Stephen
Lynch, Sir Robert Holmes’ agent in the
Americas. Coxon’s barco luengo, called
the Dorado (Spanish for the ‘‘Golden
One’’), was taken over ‘‘by one Lisle,
whose company numbered 80 English,
three French, and five Flemings,’’ and was
later seized off ^Ile a Vache by the French
authorities on November 16, 1688.
It is believed that Coxon may have
retired to live ashore on the island of
Roat
an off Honduras, as its principal har-
bor was to remain known for many years
as ‘‘Coxen’s Hole,’’ and local legend
avers that the old pirate continued to be
there until 1697.

References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes
10
13 (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1893
1899).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Jameson, John Franklin, comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Marley, David F., Pirates and Engineers:
Dutch and Flemish Adventurers in New
Spain (1607
1697) (Windsor, Ontario,
Canada: Netherlandic Press, 1992).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
CRAB ISLAND
English name for what is today Vieques
Island, east of Puerto Rico, noted for its
large crabs.
In a letter dated at Nevis on October
28, 1684 (O.S.), Gov. Sir William
Stapleton of the Leeward Islands
described Crab Island as:
. . . the best of all the Virgins, if not bet-
ter than them altogether. It is a small
traject [i.e., distance] of Puerto Rico.
Although occasionally occupied by for-
eigners, the Spaniards were able to retain
ownership over this outpost, thanks
largely to its proximity to Puerto Rico.
Crane, William (fl. 1675) 95
See also
Crab Island (Volume 2).
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Prebble, John, The Darien Disaster
(London: Secker & Warburg, 1968).
CRANE, WILLIAM (fl. 1675)
English privateer who sailed under
French colors.
In the summer of 1675, Crane
approached Captain John Edmunds of
Point Negril on the western extremity of
Jamaica, to ask whether he might safely
come in with his ship, even though he
held a French privateering commission.
Until that previous year, England had
been allied with France in its wars
against the Dutch, although peace had
since been declared by London, and Eng-
lish subjects were now discouraged from
participating in the hostilities. Edmunds
wrote on Crane’s behalf to the recently
returned Sir Henry Morgan, Deputy-
Governor for the island, who replied on
August 25, 1675 (O.S.), that Crane ‘‘will
be very welcome in any harbor.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893).
96 Crijnssen, Abraham (fl. 1667)
CRIJNSSEN, ABRAHAM
(fl. 1667)
Dutch Commodore who led a daring raid
during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
After seizing the English colony of
Suriname on the Wild Coast in February
1667, Crijnssen (or ‘‘Crimson,’’ as the
English called him) led his Zeeland
squadron northward and retook the island
of Sint Eustatius. From there, he appeared
unexpectedly off Chesapeake Bay in the
first days of June, where his four warships
and an 8-gun dogger quickly snapped up
a small Carolina-bound shalloup, plus
another English merchantman. Learning
of a convoy assembling up the James
River to convey the annual tobacco crop
to market in London, Crijnssen hoisted
English colors and followed his captured
shallop in past Point Comfort. English-
speaking crewmembers were used to call
out soundings as the Dutch advanced and
passing vessels were hailed in the same
language, so that everyone they met was
deceived. Three leagues upriver, they
came on the sole Royal Navy vessel on
that station, the 20-year-old, 46-gun frig-
ate HMS Elizabeth, which had just
arrived the previous month from its trans-
Atlantic crossing. It was being repaired
and had a 30-man skeleton crew on board,
so that Crijnssen blasted it with a broad-
side, then boarded, yet could not haul the
warship off, so burned it at its mooring.
The Dutch thereupon reversed course
downriver, seizing everything in their path.
The English attempted to mobilize a
defense, but even after hastily arming a
dozen merchantmen, found the masters
reluctant to match broadsides with Crijns-
sen. The raiders were suffered to burn
half-a-dozen tobacco ships, and man more
than a dozen others before sailing away.
Reference
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert D.,
Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia, SC:
University of South Carolina Press, 1988).
CUSACK, GEORGE
(fl. 1668
1675)
Irish pirate, allegedly intended for the
priesthood, who briefly operated in the
West Indies.
In 1668, Cusack seized the Hopewell
of Tangier and renamed it Valiant Prince,
sailing for the Leeward Islands, where it
was retaken. He and his men were
imprisoned at Barbados, but escaped in a
small boat, then captured the San Josef of
Lisbon. Dubbing it Flying Devil, they
sailed to New England, burnt it, trans-
ferred to small boats, and reached
Virginia, from where they re-crossed the
Atlantic to resume their attacks off the
Irish and English coasts.
Cusack’s final captures were the Robert
and Saint Anne, the latter disposed of at
Aberdeen. Coming down into the Thames
estuary, Cusack was captured off Leigh by
Colonel Kennedy. There exists a small
contemporary quarto entitled The Grand
Pyrate: or, the life and death of Captain
George Cusack, the great sea-robber
(London: Jonathan Edwin, 1676), which
describes his trial at the Old Bailey in Jan-
uary 1675, and subsequent execution.
Reference
Piracy & Privateering, catalog, Volume
Four, National Maritime Museum
Library (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1972).
 D

You are to take notice and advise your fleet and soldiers
that you are on the old pleasing account of no purchase, no pay,
and therefore that all which is got, shall be divided
amongst them, according to accustomed rules.
—From Henry Morgan’s instructions, July 1670

DAVIS, CAPTAIN (fl. 1663)
English privateer described in 1663 as
operating a 6-gun Dutch ship out of
French Tortuga, with a crew of 40 men
and a Portuguese commission.
Reference
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
DEANE, JOHN (fl. 1676)
English privateer who commanded the
Saint David out of Jamaica.
In the spring of 1676, Deane was
accused by John Yardley of having inter-
cepted his merchant ship John Adventure
on the high seas, ‘‘drunk out several pipes
of wine and taken away a cable value
£100,’’ before forcibly carrying this vessel
into Jamaica. When Governor Lord
Vaughan learned of these violations, he
decided to make an example of Deane, as
the Crown had been attempting to curtail
the activities of privateers since the con-
clusion of the Third Anglo-Dutch War
two years previously. Consequently,
Vaughan instructed his Deputy Gov. Sir
Henry Morgan ‘‘to imprison the
offenders,’’ which the latter grudgingly
did. Morgan felt, as did many others,
that Deane’s mischief did not warrant
charging him with piracy. Nevertheless,
the captive was brought before
Vaughan in his capacity of Judge on
April 27, 1676 (O.S.), at which time it
was revealed that he had also fre-
quently sailed ‘‘wearing Dutch, French,

97
98 Dedenon, Capitaine (fl. 1684)
and Spanish colors without lawful com-
mission,’’ so was condemned to death.
This verdict did not sit well with the
public, and the Governor was soon
hearing how ‘‘since the trial Sir Harry
has been so impudent and unfaithful at
the taverns and in his own house, to
speak some things which seemed to
reflect upon my justice, and to vindicate
the pirate.’’ Yet Morgan was not alone
in his opinion, and Vaughan’s resolve
began to waver. Finally, after Deane’s
‘‘great repentance, confession of his
faults, and often petitioning,’’ the Gov-
ernor pardoned him in early October
1676. It was well that he did so, for
within a few weeks a stay of execution
arrived from London, the trial having
been considered ‘‘not warranted by the
laws of this Kingdom.’’ Vaughan was
forced to explain away his original
charges as a mere warning to other pri-
vateers, ending his report: ‘‘so if I was
not right in the law, no great harm is
done, it being very prudential and sea-
sonable at that time to do what I did,
however, I humbly beg your Lordships
particular directions for the future.’’
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
DEDENON, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1684)
French flibustier listed as commanding
the 20-gun Chasseur at Saint-Domingue
in 1684, with a crew of 120 men.
His name is sometimes misspelled
‘‘Dednau,’’ or even ‘‘De Drain.’’
Reference
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
DE GRAAF, LAURENS
CORNELIS BOUDEWIJN
(fl. 1682
1704)
Gifted Dutch seaman, who became the
greatest corsair of his day.
At the height of his powers, he
would be described as tall, blonde, and
handsome, with a spiked Spanish-style
moustache ‘‘which suited him very
well.’’ It was also noted:
He always carries violins and trum-
pets aboard with which to entertain
himself and amuse others, who derive
pleasure from this. He is further dis-
tinguished amongst flibusters by his
courtesy and good taste. Overall he
has won such fame that when it is
known he has arrived at some place,
many come from all around to see
with their own eyes whether ‘‘Lor-
enzo’’ is made like other men.
Various records indicate that he was
born most probably in 1653, in the
Dutch seaport of Dordrecht, its name
often contracted as ‘‘Dor’t’’ or ‘‘Dort.’’
By the age of 21, he had moved to
Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary
Islands, where he married a local
woman named Francisca Petronila de
Guzm
an in 1674. According to Ray-
nald Laprise, De Graaf had also begun
 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704) 99

The small Dutch seaport of Dordrecht or Dor’t, birthplace of the future Caribean rover
Laurens de Graaf, as it appeared about 1650, by Jan van Goyen. (Erich Lessing/Art
Resource, NY)

making voyages to the West Indies or six years—i.e., since 1676
1677

aboard the 30-gun, 300-man merchant-
man San Juan Bautista, San Antonio
de Padua y San Cayetano of Juan Rico
de Moya, but when this vessel reached
Havana on August 13, 1676, both this
Captain and first mate were arrested
for transporting contraband and San
Juan Bautista was impounded.
The unemployed De Graaf, as a
skilled coxswain and gunner, was
pressed aboard another ship, which
soon after fell into buccaneer hands.
Evidently, he decided to join their
ranks, but his name would not be men-
tioned again until September 1682,
when Governor Jacques Nepveu, Sieur
de Pouançay of Saint-Domingue,
reported that De Graaf was a native of
‘‘Doort [sic] in Holland’’ who had been
roving on the account for the past five
‘‘never having wanted to take out a
commission from anyone,’’ nor ‘‘put
into the port of any nation.’’ His rise
as a pirate, the Governor added, had
been: ‘‘From a small bark, he took a
small ship; from this a bigger one,
until at last there came into his power
one of 24 to 28 guns.’’ This was the
ship Tigre, wrested from the Armada
de Barlovento in the autumn of 1679
off the Spanish Main.
By the spring of 1682, De Graaf
had become so notorious a rover that
even a veteran observer such as Act-
ing-Governor Sir Henry Morgan of
Jamaica had described him as ‘‘a great
and mischievous pirate,’’ furthermore
warning Captain Peter Heywood of the
frigate HMS Norwich when he
departed on patrol ‘‘to look out for one
100 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
Laurence . . . who commands a ship of
28 guns and had 200 men on board.’’
As an added precaution, Morgan even
reinforced this Royal Navy warship
with 40 soldiers from the Port Royal
garrison.
Capture of the ‘‘Situados’’
(1682)
De Graaf’s first famous coup came in
July 1682, when the frigate Princesa
of the Armada de Barlovento (formerly
the French Dauphine, commonly called
Francesa by the Spaniards) stood into
the Mona Passage out of the northwest,
bound from Havana under Captain
Manuel Delgado to deliver 120,000
pesos in Peruvian silver as the annual
situados or ‘‘payrolls’’ for the garrisons
of Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo, as
well as sundry other goods. Its decks
a-clutter in anticipation of making
its Puerto Rican landfall at Aguada,
Francesa was surprised by De Graaf’s
Tigre, and during the ensuing battle 50
of its 250-man crew were killed or
wounded. The triumphant chieftain and
his crew, most of them French bouca-
niers, repaired to Saman
a Bay on the
northern shores of Hispaniola with their
prize, where they allegedly ‘‘made 140
shares and shared 700 pieces of eight a
man.’’ The Spanish prisoners and
wounded were transferred to a pink for
their return to Cuba, while Francesa
became De Graaf’s new flagship.
When news of this depredation
reached Santo Domingo, the outraged
Spaniards retaliated by expropriating a
consignment of slaves brought into
port that same November by Nikolaas
Van Hoorn, another Dutch adventurer
with French ties. Furious, Van Hoorn
escaped and in February 1683 obtained
a letter of reprisal from the French
Governor of Petit-Go^ave, to exact
vengeance. In order to recruit free-
booters for his cause, Van Hoorn left
Petit-Go^ave with the Sieur de Gram-
mont, steering toward the pirate haunts
on the Central American coast to find
De Graaf and his Dutch confederate
Michiel Andrieszoon, who were reput-
edly lying there with ‘‘two great ships,
a bark, a sloop . . . and 500 men.’’
The latter, after refurbishing Francesa,
had sailed to Cartagena, but encoun-
tering only small coastal craft had
returned into the Bay of Honduras
where two large Spanish merchant-
men, Nuestra Se~ nora de Consolaci
on
and Nuestra Se~ nora de Regla, lay
temptingly at anchor. The intended
victims were part of the regular traffic
out of Cadiz, who had landed their
cargo some months earlier to be trans-
ported overland to Guatemala. Soon, the
proceeds of sales would be brought
back over the jungle trails, along with
valuable bundles of indigo, to be
stowed aboard the empty vessels. Both
would thereupon weigh for Havana, to
join the Mexican plate fleet on its
homeward leg to the Old World. De
Graaf had therefore cleverly retired to
Bonaco Island to careen his flagship,
waiting for the Spaniards to bring
their treasures aboard.
Instead, he was annoyed to find Van
Hoorn noisily entering the roadstead a
few weeks later, having taken the two
unladened vessels at anchor. De Graaf
consequently departed in anger, but
was overtaken at Roat
an by Grammont
and Van Hoorn. On April 7, 1683, a
huge gathering of pirates met on the
beach and heard them propose an
assault against Veracruz. De Graaf and
 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
his followers agreed, quickly shifting
the pirate fleet to nearby Guanaja Island
for further reinforcements, then scurry-
ing northward around the Yucatan
Peninsula before word of this design
should reach Spanish ears. De Graaf
led the way in the captured Nuestra
Se~nora de Regla and Jan Willems’
Spanish prize, while the main body of
three ships and eight sloops trailed
astern, out of sight.
Sack of Veracruz (May 1683)
On the afternoon of May 17, 1683, De
Graaf’s two advance scout-ships
approached Veracruz, breaking off af-
ter closing within 10 miles, and deter-
mining that the annual plate fleet had
not yet arrived from Spain. The port
lookouts assumed that these two Span-
ish-built craft were merchantmen fear-
ful of navigating the shoals after dark,
so experienced no undue alarm. That
night, De Graaf piloted his two vessels
close inshore, and landed a force of
200 buccaneers. While leading them on
a reconnaissance of the sleeping city,
Grammont and Van Hoorn brought
another 600 ashore farther away, and
stealthily marched to join him.
Veracruz held 6,000 inhabitants, of
whom 300 were regular troops, and
another 400 civilian militiamen; there
were an additional 300 soldiers on the
outlying island fortress of San Juan de
Ul
ua. But its landward stockades were
low and neglected, with sand dunes
drifted up against them, so that the
pirates stole over them and into the
city. At dawn of May 18th, they
attacked, firing indiscriminately so as
to stampede the defenders. Within half-
an-hour, Veracruz was theirs, several
thousand half-dressed captives being
101
herded into the principal church. The
city was ransacked over the next four
days, and numerous prisoners tortured
to reveal their hidden treasures. De
Graaf and Grammont then marched the
bulk of their captives down the coast
and transferred them two miles off-
shore to Sacrificios Island, beyond any
hope of rescue. There, the pirates
began loading their booty, while wait-
ing for the payment of a final ransom
out of Mexico’s interior.
Despite the atrocities they had
endured, the Spaniards regarded De
Graaf as the more humane of the bucca-
neer commanders, which was confirmed
by an incident on Sacrificios. Van
Hoorn, impatient because the ransom
was not forthcoming, decided to send a
dozen captives’ heads ashore. Accord-
ing to Spanish eyewitnesses, De Graaf
arrived from his flagship to prevent this
brutality, and when his countryman
rounded on him with drawn sword, De
Graaf wounded Van Hoorn and sent
him aboard Francesa in chains.
Shortly thereafter, the ransom was
received, and after herding 1,500 blacks
and mulattos aboard as slaves, the pirate
fleet weighed. They encountered the
annual plate fleet just as they were stand-
ing out from the coast, but its com-
mander Admiral Diego Fern
andez de
Zaldı́var deferred combat, so that the
raiders escaped scot-free. De Graaf and
the rest of the formation paused at Coat-
zacoalcos to take on water, before shoul-
dering their way back round Yucatan to
Isla Mujeres, where by late June 1683
they had split their spoils. Each then
went their separate ways, De Graaf and
his followers sailing into the maze of
islands off Cuba’s southern coast to sell
off their goods, and smuggle the profits
onto Jamaica.
102 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
First English Overture
(September 1683)
While lying at ‘‘Petite Goua^ine’’ [sic;
Petit-Go^ave] on September 3rd, De
Graaf wrote a letter in French to Gov.
Sir Thomas Lynch of Jamaica, thanking
him for some small favor and adding:
I beg you to believe me the most
humble of your servants, and to
employ me if there be any place or
occasion in which I can be of service
to you. You will see how I shall try
to employ myself. If by chance I
should go to your coast in quest of
necessities for myself or ship, I beg
that my interests may be protected
and no wrong done me, as I might
do so if the opportunity presented
itself for doing you service.
Lynch recognized that De Graaf was
offering England his allegiance, which
‘‘would be a mighty service to the Span-
iard, for if he pieces with the French they
will go near to attack Cartagena.’’ Such
words proved prophetic, for shortly
thereafter De Graaf and his cohorts did
indeed invest that port on the Spanish
Main. The Lords of Trade and Planta-
tions in London would soon empower
the Jamaican Governor ‘‘to treat with
Laurens the pirate, in order to pardon
him and let him settle on [Jamaica], on
giving security for his good behavior for
the future.’’
Failed Santiago de Cuba Venture
(November 1683)
De Graaf’s offer may have been moti-
vated by the hostile reception which
he and his followers had received on
their return to Saint-Domingue from its
Acting-Governor Franquesnay, who was
angry that they had sold off most of their
booty from Veracruz to Jamaican inter-
ests. Passions had become so aroused,
that an ugly mob of 120 flibustiers had
even marched on his home, threatening
to kill Franquesnay. To defuse this ten-
sion and placate the rovers, the belea-
guered Governor authorized a strike
against Santiago de Cuba in early No-
vember 1683. De Graaf was to exercise
naval command, weighing from Petit-
Go^ave with almost 1,000 men distributed
aboard eight vessels. However, military
command was to be exercised by the
planter and militia Major Jean Le Goff,
Sieur de Beauregard, who shortly after
departure attempted to discipline a
flibustier, so that the buccaneers promptly
mutinied and this expedition disintegrated.
De Graaf and his minions Andrieszoon,
Willems, François Le Sage, and others
instead made for the Main, arriving near
Cartagena by late November 1683.
Battle off Cartagena
(Christmas 1683)
When Gov. Juan de Pando Estrada
learned that the pirates were before his
harbor, he commandeered the 40-gun
private ship San Francisco, 34-gun
Paz, and a 28-gun galliot to chase them
away. This trio exited on December 23,
1683, manned by 800 soldiers and
sailors under the command of Andr
es
de Pez. However, the result was
scarcely as the Governor had envi-
sioned, for the seven smaller pirate
ships swarmed all over his vessels, and
in the confusion San Francisco ran
aground. Paz struck after four hours,
and Willems took the galliot. Ninety
 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
Spaniards were killed, as opposed to
only twenty pirates. De Graaf refloated
San Francisco as his new flagship,
renaming it Fortune (later changed to
Neptune); Andrieszoon received Paz,
dubbing it Mutine or ‘‘Rascal’’; while
Willems was given De Graaf’s old
Francesa or Dauphine.
On December 25th, the triumphant
buccaneers deposited their Spanish
prisoners ashore, along with a message
for the Governor, thanking him for the
Christmas presents. De Graaf then
settled down to blockade the port. In
mid-January 1684, a small convoy
of English slavers arrived escorted by
48-gun HMS Ruby. De Graaf let them
pass, even inviting their officers aboard
for a visit. Among the passengers was
a Dutch trader named Diego Maquet,
who was bearing a letter from De
Graaf’s wife Petronila de Guzm
an on
the Canary Islands, promising him a
pardon if he gave up his piratical career
and rejoined the King of Spain’s serv-
ice. Instead, De Graaf, along with
Andrieszoon and Willems, entered into
an arrangement to buy wine and meat
from Maquet, which significantly was to
be delivered from Port Royal, Jamaica,
to Roat
an.
Second English Overture
(May 1684)
Shortly thereafter, the pirates quit their
blockade, traveling northwestward. En
route, De Graaf spotted a 14-gun Span-
ish vessel and another ship, following
both from a great distance until night-
fall. He quietly closed and boarded the
Spaniard in the dark, seizing it with
only two shots being fired, and finding
it laden with ‘‘quinine and 47 pounds
103
of gold.’’ Next morning, he took its
consort as well, discovering it to be an
English ship which the Spanish had
captured and were carrying to Cuba. De
Graaf restored this vessel to its crew,
and on May 6, 1684, wrote to Lynch
again from ‘‘Saint Philip’s Bay’’ [?]:
I present my humble respects and
hope that your health is good. I have
a few details to give you about a
small English ship laden with sugar,
which I found in the hands of a
Spaniard. I took both ships in the
night, kept the Spaniard and set the
Englishman free. The English cap-
tain told me that the Spaniard was
taking him and his ship into Havana,
but I gave him the ship back without
doing him any harm. I send this
short note only to show you that I
am far from injuring your nation,
but on the contrary, am anxious
always to do it service.
The Jamaican Governor replied some
time later:
I have received your three letters,
and thank you most particularly for
letting the poor Irishman go. I shall
show my gratitude to you when I
have opportunity, for anyone who
treats the English well lays me under
obligation, and I expect no less from
you who hold a patent from the
Most Christian King [i.e., of France].
François Le Sage behaves very dif-
ferently, for he has frequently
injured and insulted our ships, and
has by present report 60 pirates on
board his ship from [Jean Hamlin’s]
La Trompeuse. I shall inform M. de
Cussy of this. While you behave
with such respect to the justice and
104 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
friendship that exist between the
French and English Crowns, I am
always your friend.
The English would eventually be
prepared to offer the rover ‘‘a pardon
for all offences and naturalisation as an
Englishman,’’ provided De Graaf
would swear an oath of allegiance and
buy a plantation on their island. The
Crown authorities were furthermore
willing to ‘‘procure the necessary let-
ters for the safe-conduct of his wife
from the Canaries, provided Laurens
pays the fees and the expenses of the
passage,’’ while the English Ambassa-
dor would secure him a pardon from
the King of Spain.
But in the meantime, De Graaf’s
flotilla had intercepted a Spanish dis-
patch-vessel off the southern coast of
Cuba, bearing news of a renewal of of-
ficial hostilities between Spain and
France (at least partly on account of
his destructive raid against Veracruz).
De Graaf therefore left Andrieszoon
and Willems to blockade Cuba with
his other ships, while he sailed the
14-gun Spanish prize into Petit-Go^ave
to dispose of its cargo and enter French
service.
He apparently remained several
months, during which he was given a
brevet de gr^ ace or honorary commis-
sion. Also during his absence, Andries-
zoon and Willems ransacked the Dutch
West Indiamen Stad Rotterdam and
Elisabeth as they approached Havana
on May 18, 1684, and in July a Span-
ish privateering piragua espied De
Graaf’s Neptune at anchor off Pinos
Island, on the southern Cuban coast.
With part of its crew ashore wooding,
the Spaniards landed and snuck up to
ambush the unwary buccaneers, killing
or capturing all ashore, obliging
Neptune to cut its cables and flee back
out to sea. De Graaf was still at
Petit-Go^ave by mid-November, when
Willems brought in the Jamaican sloop
James for trading with the Spanish, and
its crew noted: ‘‘Laurens the pirate,
who gave Yankey [sic; nickname for
Jan Willems] his commission, took
three barrels of flour from our ship.’’
Cruise to the Spanish Main
(January 1685)
The reason for this appropriation was
that De Graaf was at last about to quit
Petit-Go^ave, setting sail on November
22, 1684, aboard his 14-gun Spanish
prize. Among his 120-man crew was a
new recruit, Ravenau de Lussan, who
has left a record of this voyage. He
described his commander as ‘‘a man of
good character’’ and relative newcomer
to Saint-Domingue, whom he admired
very much. Intending to reunite with
his corsairs off Havana, De Graaf
worked into the Windward Passage,
yet did not clear it until New Year’s
Day 1685. Because of this slow pro-
gress, he instead veered round for the
Main, reaching South America two
weeks later. On the night of January
17th, De Lussan recorded how:
. . . toward the setting moon we
sighted two ships and four small
vessels only a cannon’s shot to
windward. This caused us to come
about and clear our decks for action.
Next morning, one of the small vessels
hailed, to which De Graaf responded that
his was a French ship. Its Spanish lines
made the other commander suspicious,
 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
though, so that the stranger fired a pair
of rounds and ordered De Graaf to heave
to. Thinking that he had blundered into a
Spanish armadilla, De Graaf had two
powder-kegs stove in so as to be able to
blow up his vessel; for such a fate was
preferable ‘‘to falling into the hands of
men who gave no quarter and would
inflict on us hideous tortures, beginning
with the captain.’’ At that moment, one
of the more distant ships signaled, and
the two identified themselves as Neptune
and Mutine, with Andrieszoon in com-
mand. The tartan which had fired was
captained by Jean Rose, who had not
recognized De Graaf’s vessel. He and
two other small French corsairs had
joined Andrieszoon off that coast, along
with an English trader.
Next day, De Graaf ordered the for-
mation toward Curaçao. At two o’clock
that afternoon, while within sight of
Bonaire, they sighted a Flemish ship
out of La Guaira, which they chased
and captured that evening. On January
20, 1685, De Graaf detached one of his
consorts to request permission from the
Governor of Curaçao to buy masts for
his ship, replacing those lost in a storm
off Saint Thomas. This application was
refused and the city gates were closed,
because of Andrieszoon’s and Willems’
ransacking of the two Dutch West
Indiamen the previous year. Neverthe-
less, a couple hundred buccaneers man-
aged to enjoy individual liberties
ashore, until they were driven out ‘‘by
beating drums’’ four days later.
On January 27, 1685, De Graaf set
sail for Cape de la Vela (Venezuela),
arriving three days later to post a look-
out atop its headland, and begin
careening his ships. Meanwhile, Rose
visited Rı́ohacha and attempted to
deceive its Spanish residents that he
105
was a peaceful English trader, to no
avail. Returning empty-handed on
February 8th, the pirates decided to
split up. De Graaf hoped to organize
another major venture such as his
Veracruz raid, yet not everyone was in
accord. The buccaneers therefore redis-
tributed themselves around the vessels
according to their inclinations, after
which Lussan and 87 others sailed
away in the 14-gun prize which had
been brought from Petit-Go^ave. De
Graaf laid in a course for the Gulf of
Honduras aboard Neptune, hoping to
recruit more freebooters for his project.
His fame ensured plenty of willing
spirits, so that a vast assemblage of 22
sail gathered off Cuba’s Pinos Island
in April 1685, including Grammont,
Willems, George Bannister, and Jacob
Evertsen. Yet this mob insisted on a
repeat assault against Veracruz, which
De Graaf patiently explained would not
be caught napping for a second time.
Frustrated, he sailed away to the Mos-
quito Coast, where he was overtaken by
Grammont and the others, and it was
eventually decided to make a descent
on the smaller Mexican port of Cam-
peche. The pirates then shifted to Isla
Mujeres to marshal their strength.
Sack of Campeche (July 1685)
Compared to two years previously, the
attack on Campeche was a clumsy
affair, the buccaneers maintaining ves-
sels off Cape Catoche for more than a
month to advise passing freebooters of
their scheme, yet which also fore-
warned the Spaniards. The preparations
grew so notorious that the Deputy
Governor of Campeche, Felipe de la
Barrera y Villegas, even had time to
106 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
dispatch lookouts and spy-boats up the
coast to give advance warning of their
actual approach. Late in June 1685, a
stream of reports began reaching him
of unidentified vessels creeping ever
closer to his port.
Then, on the afternoon of July 6,
1685, the pirate fleet of six large and
four small ships, six sloops, and 17
piraguas finally appeared half a dozen
miles off Campeche. A landing force
of 700 buccaneers took to the boats
and began rowing in toward shore, yet
the Spaniards were prepared: four mili-
tia companies totaling roughly 200
men exited, and positioned themselves
opposite the intended disembarkation-
point. The surprised pirates therefore
put up their helms, not wishing to
wade ashore into the muzzles of Span-
ish infantry. All night they remained
bobbing on the swell, until next morn-
ing they began to draw off toward their
ships, which were standing in to meet
them. But this proved to be a feint,
and before the Spanish defenders could
react, buccaneers came swarming
ashore at the very outskirts of the city
itself. A hundred formed up behind
Captain Rettechard as the vanguard;
200 joined De Graaf and marched
directly toward the city center; another
200 advanced under Captain Toccard
along a street parallel to De Graaf’s;
and the 200 followed Grammont in an
encircling maneuver.
The Spaniards fell back, while out
in the harbor Captain Crist
obal Martı́-
nez de Acevedo prepared to scuttle
his coast-guard frigate Nuestra Se~nora
de la Soledad y San Antonio, as per
his instructions. Originally, he had
intended to do so by boring holes in its
bottom, yet given the speed of the
invaders’ advance, he now directed his
boatswain to run a trail of powder into
the magazine. From the frigate’s boat,
Martı́nez lit the fuse, and Soledad
exploded with such a deafening blast
that it collapsed the defenders’ morale,
sending them scurrying into their cita-
del while the pirates entered Campeche
uncontested.
Over the next few days, they sub-
dued isolated strong points, until only
the citadel remained. The pirates began
bombarding this fortress at dawn on
July 12, 1685, but at ten o’clock that
same morning, two relief-columns of
Spanish militiamen appeared on the
beach, having been hastened down from
M
erida. In the past, such troops simply
had to appear for smaller bands of
raiders to scurry back out to sea; this
time, though, the freebooters stood
and fought from behind Campeche’s
ramparts, so that the first ranks of Span-
iards went down to well-aimed volleys.
All day the two sides battled, until
Grammont circled behind the Yucatecan
militia and caught them between two
fires. The Spanish relief-force drew
off in dismay, and that night the city
garrison mutinied. As their officers
begged them to remain at their posts
until daybreak, when terms might be
sought, the soldiers replied that ‘‘pirates
keep faith with no one,’’ and threatened
to shoot any officer who got in their way.
By 11 P.M., the citadel was deserted, and
a couple of English prisoners shouted to
the besiegers, who called back asking
that the fort’s artillery be discharged, so
that the buccaneers might advance know-
ing the heavy guns to be empty. Once
done, they poured over the walls, led by
De Graaf and Grammont in person.
The pirates then dispatched riders to
ravage the surrounding countryside,
and remained in undisputed possession
 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
of Campeche for the next two months.
However, as most of the city’s wealth
had been withdrawn because of ample
warnings prior to the assault, little
plunder was found. Captives were
threatened with death if ransoms were
not forthcoming, yet Yucatan’s Gov.
Juan Bruno T
ellez de Guzm
an strictly
prohibited any such payments. Finally,
Grammont had the Spanish prisoners
paraded in the Plaza Mayor late in
August, and began making summary
executions. Six had been hanged when
De la Barreda and other leading citi-
zens approached De Graaf, ‘‘whom
they knew to be more humane than the
Frenchman,’’ and beseeched him to
intercede. After a lengthy discussion
with Grammont, the brutality ceased,
and the pirates evacuated the city after
putting it to the torch.
Battle of Alacr
an Reef
(September 1685)
Pausing briefly at Sisal, the raiders
rounded the Yucatan Peninsula to
their base at Isla Mujeres to divide
their loot. De Graaf then set sail for
Petit-Go^ave with his heavily-laden
Neptune, accompanied by Pierre Bot
in Nuestra Se~nora de Regla, and three
other freebooter vessels. On Septem-
ber 11, 1685, they were sighted by a
powerful contingent of the Armada de
Barlovento under elderly Admiral
Andr
es de Ochoa y Z
arate, who gave
chase. Bot’s Regla and a pirate sloop
fell astern and were captured, the
Spaniards heaving-to to take posses-
sion of these prizes. Next afternoon,
the royal frigate Nuestra Se~nora del
Honh
on sighted De Graaf inside the
Gulf of Mexico, and sent the 8-gun
107
tender Jes
us, Marı´a y Jos
e (alias
Sevillano) beating upwind to advise
Ochoa. The Spanish Admiral did not
locate Neptune again until four
o’clock on the afternoon of September
13th, by which time Honh
on was no
longer in sight. The Spanish flagship
Santo Cristo de Burgos and vice-
flagship Nuestra Se~ nora de la Con-
cepci
on pressed down on their opponent.
Outnumbered and outgunned, De
Graaf frantically tried to gain the
weather gauge by lightening his ship,
yet failed. That night, he tensely
awaited the Spanish onslaught, which
began at dawn of September 14th,
when Santo Cristo bore down and
received De Graaf’s opening broadside.
All day, the three vessels maneuvered
and fired repeatedly on one another,
the Spanish flagship loosing off ‘‘four-
teen full broadsides’’ and countless
individual shots, while Concepci
on
blasted away 1,600 rounds. Yet Nep-
tune continued to dodge any crippling
blow, thanks to the great skill with
which it was handled. De Graaf on
occasion fought both sides of his ship
simultaneously, and supplemented his
cannon-fire with musket volleys, so
that only a couple of his spars were
shot away.
As daylight faded, so did Ochoa’s
will. The aged Spanish Admiral had
begun the day in a canvas chair on his
quarterdeck, and by nightfall was so
enfeebled and delirious as to be admin-
istered last rites. In the darkness, Santo
Cristo hailed Vice Admiral Antonio de
Astina to inform him that he was now
in command, at almost the same time
as De Graaf took the desperate expedi-
ent of jettisoning his artillery and every
other non-essential to gain the wind.
Next morning, the Spaniards found
108 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
themselves to leeward of Neptune, and
began a half-hearted upwind beat as
their opponent clawed away into the
Yucatan Channel. In a rising southeas-
terly wind, Santo Cristo’s weakened
superstructure fell overboard, and Con-
cepci
on heaved to so as to remain by
its damaged consort.
Miraculously, De Graaf had escaped,
dealing the Armada’s pride a shattering
blow. For years, their ponderous war-
ships had been derided as unsuitable for
pursuing nimble corsairs; now, when
they had at last caught a major enemy
exposed on the high seas, their elephan-
tine strength had also been found want-
ing. Ochoa died a few days later, thus
being spared the disgrace of a court-
martial. De Graaf soon resumed his activ-
ities, going ashore at Cuba in December
1685 to rustle cattle and careen his five
vessels, seemingly unfazed by his lucky
escape.
Valladolid Raid (1686)
In the spring of that following year, De
Graaf organized yet another raid, per-
haps motivated by the fact that in
February 1686 more than 100 of his
slaves had been carried off from Saint-
Domingue by the local Spaniards.
Apparently in retaliation, he rallied
freebooters round his flag and led a
flotilla of seven ships into Ascensi
on
Bay (today’s Emiliano Zapata Bay), on
Yucatan’s eastern shores. Five hundred
buccaneers disembarked and marched
inland against the town of Tihosuco,
which was abandoned by its terrified
inhabitants, before being ransacked and
burnt by the raiders. De Graaf then
penetrated deeper toward the city of
Valladolid, while frightened refugees
streamed ahead of his invaders, sowing
panic throughout the countryside. By
the time the buccaneers arrived within
half-a-dozen miles of Valladolid, only
36 Spaniards remained to defend their
city.
Yet suddenly, De Graaf gave the
order to wheel about and return to the
coast. This inexplicable retreat led to a
legend being born in Yucatan, that the
withdrawal had been the work of a
clever mulatto named N
u~nez. Noticing
how the weary refugees littered their
trail with items that they could no lon-
ger carry—and which were snatched
up by the greedy freebooters—N
u~nez
added a fake set of instructions to one
such pile, purporting to be from Luis
de Briaga, military commander for the
province. According to these, the
pirates were to be enticed inland into a
deadly trap.
Whatever the truth behind this tale,
De Graaf had retired to Ascensi
on Bay
by April 1686, soon afterward making
away for Roat
an. By July, Lieutenant-
Governor Hender Molesworth of
Jamaica was reporting: ‘‘Laurens
passed our north coast the other day,
bound for Tortugas, but not in com-
mand [of a French freebooter fleet], as
he himself told the master of one of
our sloops.’’
Cartagena Shipwreck
(Autumn 1686)
This was to be De Graaf’s last major
invasion of Spanish territory, as the
French government was no longer as
tolerant of indiscriminate raids against
Spain’s colonies. However, he did con-
tinue plying the sea, and in the autumn
of 1686 was wrecked off the Spanish
Main. The exact circumstances, as
 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
related to Molesworth that same No-
vember, were that:
Laurens was wrecked off Cartagena
while in pursuit of a small bark, but
nevertheless took her with his boat
and saved his people. It is uncertain
whither he is gone, but certainly my
letter offering him terms has never
come to his hand.
This news was confirmed next summer,
when the Royal Navy frigate Falcon of
Captain Charles Talbot brought in six of
De Graaf’s former English crewmem-
bers from Portobelo, to stand trial in
Jamaica.
Battle with the Biscayans
(May 1687)
At the beginning of that same year of
1687, there arrived in the West Indies
a squadron of Biscayan privateers,
which had been raised in Spain to
combat pirates and interlopers in the
New World. Before departing San
Sebasti
an, its commander Francisco
Garcı́a Gal
an had sworn ‘‘to go in
search of the pirate Lorencillo (‘‘Little
Lawrence,’’ as the Spanish called De
Graaf) before anything else.’’ But
when the lone Biscayan frigate of
Fermı́n de Salaberrı́a at last encoun-
tered the rover off J
ucaro on the south-
ern coast of Cuba in May 1687, it was
promptly driven into the shallows. De
Salaberrı́a found himself aground in
unfamiliar waters and in serious danger
of being captured, when a force of
small Cuban coast-guard vessels hur-
ried out to his rescue. De Graaf turned
on these as well, seizing a schooner
and sinking a piragua, during which
109
fighting numerous Cubans were killed,
wounded, or carried off.
Blas Miguel’s Counter-raid
(August 1687)
Blas Miguel, brother of the deceased
Corsican privateer Juan Corso, ap-
parently intended to avenge this attack.
Despite an uneasy truce prevailing with
the French on Saint-Domingue, Miguel
came gliding into Petit-Go^ave’s road-
stead at daybreak on August 10, 1687.
He had chosen this date with care, as
it is when Saint Lawrence’s day is
celebrated on the Church calendar, so
that he hoped to catch his enemy off-
guard, about to celebrate his feast-day.
Although accompanied by no more
than 85 men in a brigantine and pira-
gua, Miguel stormed ashore and launched
his attack, yet could not find De Graaf
before being surrounded and captured.
The rover was actually present during this
battle, fighting bravely and even wading
out into the surf to slay the corsair left
guarding Miguel’s boat, before the Cuban
captain was taken and broken alive on
the wheel.
^Ile a Vache Stronghold
(September 1687)
Shortly thereafter, the Governor of
Saint-Domingue ordered De Graaf to
sail with 250 flibustiers in two small
vessels to ^Ile a Vache, supposedly to
confirm French dominion over this
island, as De Cussy advised Moles-
worth in a letter. The Jamaican Gover-
nor learned thereby that ‘‘no more of
our ships might be sent to fish nor hunt
on that coast,’’ or else it would be
regarded as a breach of the Treaty of
110 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
Neutrality between the two nations.
Molesworth made inquiries, and was
informed:
. . . that few of our ships do fish
there, and then not for the edible tur-
tle but for the tortoise shell, and
as to hunting, the thing is unknown;
so I issued a proclamation ordering
compliance with Monsieur de Cussy’s
request.
In reality, the French Governor
wanted De Graaf’s presence to scare
treasure-hunters away from an old
Spanish shipwreck recently uncovered
near Cap Carcasse, for which purpose
he also appointed him major or ‘‘royal
adjutant’’ of that quartier. De Graaf
promised ‘‘to acquit himself with the
same zeal and fidelity as he had done
during the ten years he has served
under the French standard,’’ and set
sail on November 30th. The day
before, a small Spanish bark had
arrived at Petit-Go^ave, with proposals
from the President of Santo Domingo
regarding peace. ‘‘One cannot describe
the joy these Spaniards felt when they
learned said Monsieur Laurens would
cease making war on them,’’ De Cussy
later wrote. ‘‘They could not cease
staring at him, being unable to believe
he was made like other men.’’
Treasure-Hunting
Expedition (1689)
Little more than a year later, the
French captured a Spanish captain who
had been sent with an 18-gun ship and
patache to work another ancient wreck
on the Serranilla Bank, 180 miles
south-southwest of Jamaica. De Cussy
therefore proposed that De Graaf visit
this site, for which purpose he
recruited four small vessels and set sail
at the beginning of March 1689. By
the end of April, the new Acting Gov-
ernor of Jamaica, Sir Francis Watson,
was noting: ‘‘A number [of French ves-
sels] under Laurens have left Petit-
Go^ave after a wreck, as they give
out.’’ The English doubted the veracity
of this report, as the War of the
League of Augsburg was just then
breaking out back in Europe, so that
they assumed the corsair chieftain
intended greater mischief.
Yet in fact, De Graaf had departed
before the full scope of hostilities had
become apparent, and remained bliss-
fully unaware of the true state of
affairs in his enforced isolation off the
Serranilla Bank. On his arrival there,
he found the remains of a galleon
being worked by an English salvor,
and after several weeks’ diving with
his own men, De Graaf succeeded in
raising four cannon and three pedreros.
He then sent his largest vessel back to
Saint-Domingue for more supplies and
an additional 15 to 20 divers, but this
vessel became delayed by contrary
winds, so did not return to the site
until two months later. By this time,
De Graaf had been forced to retire to
the southern cays of Cuba to steal pro-
visions, and did not reappear at the
Serranilla Bank until two-and-a-half
months later.
When he learned of the spreading
European conflict, De Graaf began to
tack back toward Saint-Domingue, and
in early November 1689 Watson wrote:
Laurens with a ship and 200 men
touched at Montego Bay the other
day and did no harm, but said that
 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
he would obtain a commission at
Petit-Go^ave and return to plunder
the whole of the north side of the
island. The people are so affrighted
that they have sent their wives and
children to Port Royal.
One month later, the corsair would make
good on this threat.
Jamaican Blockade
(December 1689)
De Graaf returned at the beginning of
December 1689 with some other
French vessels, snapping up 8 or 10 Ja-
maican merchant sloops off the north
coast. His raiders also landed and plun-
dered at least one plantation, generally
sowing panic throughout the island. An
official declaration of war had not yet
been received from London, so the
English defenders were caught by sur-
prise. Trading ships were ordered to
remain in port, while a flotilla was
hastily assembled and sent out under
Captain Edward Spragge of HMS
Drake to drive the flibustiers away, but
to little effect. A second sortie against
De Graaf had to be mounted in early
March 1690, and it was not until the
end of May that the embargo on Jamai-
can shipping was at last lifted.
Engagement off the Caymans
(June 1690)
Nevertheless, De Graaf still remained
in the offing, and when HMS Drake
was deemed unfit for further service,
Jamaica’s armed sloop had to sail
alone to the Cayman Islands as protec-
tion for English turtling-vessels. There,
it had the misfortune to encounter him,
111
and in the words of the new Gov.
William O’Brien, 2nd Earl of Inchiquin:
Laurens, the great pirate of Petit-
Go^ave, engaged the sloop, and the
rest of the [turtling] craft escaped.
The firing was heard continuing till
eleven at night, and as this was a
month since and nothing has been
heard of the sloop, we conclude that
Laurens has taken her, he having
two men against one in his barco
luengo. We have therefore no ships
now except HMS Swan, which is so
bad a sailer that she is little better
than nothing.
De Graaf hurried back to Saint-
Domingue before the middle of June,
as his prisoners had informed him that
the English authorities were proposing
to the Spaniards a joint military opera-
tion against that colony. But De Cussy
discounted this danger, although he did
order De Graaf to transfer from ^Ile a
Vacheto the much larger quartier of
Cap François on the north coast of that
island, ‘‘so as not to risk further a per-
son so zealous in his service in such a
feeble quarter.’’
Disaster at La Limonade
(January 1691)
The French Governor also used his fli-
bustier vessels to transport a small
army to the north shores of Santo
Domingo, from where De Cussy
marched inland to attack the town of
Santiago de los Caballeros. The Span-
iards responded wholly unexpectedly
in January 1691, when a fleet of six
Armada de Barlovento warships under
Admiral Jacinto Lope Gij
on deposited
112 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
2,600 Spanish troops near Cap Fran-
çois, to meet up with another 700
marching overland from Santo Domi-
ngo under maestre de campo Francisco
de Segura Sandoval. The French under
De Cussy decided to meet the invaders
on the open plain called Savane de la
Limonade, despite being outnumbered
three-to-one, for they felt confident
that they could defeat the Spaniards as
of yore.
However, this time they were not
dealing with some surprised Spanish
garrison caught amid their loved ones;
rather it was the reverse. The resultant
Battle of La Limonade of January 21,
1691 (called the ‘‘Victory of S
abana
Real’’ by the Spanish), turned into a
crushing rout, in which as many as 500
Frenchmen died, including De Cussy
and most of his officers. Much to the
attackers’ annoyance, De Graaf was
one of the few survivors who fled into
the hills. The Spaniards then rampaged
unchecked through his new quartier,
before withdrawing in triumph some
weeks afterward.
The French gradually recuperated
their strength under a vigorous new
Governor, Jean-Baptiste Ducasse. As
one of the few remaining royal offi-
cers, De Graaf now attained greater
prominence among his adoptive coun-
trymen, being described in French
records of 1692 as the ‘‘Sieur de
Graffe, lieutenant du Roi (‘‘King’s
Lieutenant’’) for the government of Ile
la Tortue and coast of Saint Dom-
ingue,’’ with residence at Cap François.
As such, De Graaf played a prominent
role in the French deployments of
February
March 1692, when it appeared
that the Spaniards might again overrun
his territory, although they eventually
contented themselves with remaining on
their own side of the frontier. None-
theless, Ducasse noted how ‘‘he is a man
who would fulfill his duty much better in
a ship’’ than on land, going on to advise
the King’s minister Pontchartrain: ‘‘I am
obliged to tell you, Monseigneur, that he
is one of the finest sea officers there is in
Europe and if you should employ him as
such, he will give you ample proofs.’’
Jamaican Raid (June 1694)
Cap François was put on alert again in
1693, yet nothing happened. That fol-
lowing summer, the French launched a
counteroffensive of their own, when
Ducasse and De Graaf led a seaborne
raid against Jamaica. In June 1694,
more than 3,000 flibustiers and seamen
swarmed ashore from Ducasse’s 22
ships to ravage the eastern tip of that
island, before feinting toward Cow Bay
near the Jamaican capital. When the
English marched out to meet them, the
invaders quickly re-embarked and
sailed under De Graaf to Carlisle Bay,
west of Port Royal. He brought his
1,500 men ashore on the night of July
28, 1694, and next day advanced on
the 250 soldiers and 12 artillery-pieces
guarding the town. Holding fire until
they were within point-blank range, the
French then loosed a murderous volley
which drove the English out of their
trenches, and across the river.
English reinforcements arrived from
Port Royal after a desperate overnight
march, preventing an utter defeat. Still,
De Graaf remained in control west of
the river, sending out 500 flibustiers to
strip the adjoining countryside. Such
action proved more difficult than antici-
pated, as each plantation constituted a
miniature fortress, impossible to breach
without artillery. As the French did not
 De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn (fl. 1682
1704)
have any heavy guns ashore, they satis-
fied themselves with whatever they
could carry off. Ducasse rejoined a few
days later, at which point De Graaf
gave the order to withdraw. More than
1,600 slaves were carried away when
the French finally departed the coast on
August 3rd.
Defeat on Saint-Domingue
(June 1695)
Next spring, it was the French who suf-
fered when the expedition of Commo-
dore Robert Wilmot and Colonel Luke
Lillingston arrived to unite with Spanish
Admiral Francisco Cort
es and General
Gil Correoso. On May 24, 1695, this
huge combined force descended on the
north coast of the French colony, where
De Graaf was once more commanding
a small detachment at Cap François.
Heavily outnumbered, he called for
reinforcements from Ducasse in the
south, while continually falling back
before the invading host—much to the
disgust of his French followers, who
watched as their homes and farms went
up in flames.
When the enemy closed in on Cap
François, De Graaf abandoned it with-
out a fight, and the Spaniards even
captured his French wife and two
daughters. The Anglo-Spanish force
then pressed on toward Port de Paix,
which was overrun in July 1695 after a
bungled defense. Satisfied with this
havoc, the enemy withdrew, leaving
the French to exchange heated recrimi-
nations. Blame was leveled at De Graaf
and the commander of Port de Paix; it
was even alleged that the Dutchman
may ‘‘have had some secret under-
standing with the enemy’’ because of
113
his birth, Holland being aligned with
the Anglo-Spanish coalition against
France. Both De Graaf and his French
counterpart were relieved of their
commands, and sent to France to stand
trial. The resultant courts-martial com-
pletely exonerated De Graaf, yet by
the time he returned to Saint-Domingue
the war had concluded, and his prestige
was greatly diminished. His wife, the
former widow Le Long, called ‘‘Marie-
Anne Dieu-le-Veut’’ or ‘‘Marianne
God-Wills-It’’ by the Spaniards, was
not freed from Santo Domingo with
her children until the final prisoner
exchange of October 1698. Thus, when
Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville touched at
Saint-Domingue at the end of that same
year on his way to colonize Louisiana,
the disgraced and penniless De Graaf
agreed to join his expedition.
Emigration to Louisiana (1699)
On a foggy morning in January 1699,
the tiny Spanish settlement at Pensa-
cola, Florida, was startled to discern
five French ships outside its bar, call-
ing for a pilot. The Spanish officer
who went aboard the 58-gun flagship
François was even more perturbed to
recognize D’Iberville’s enormous inter-
preter as ‘‘Lorencillo.’’ When the visi-
tors requested permission to put into
the harbor, this was denied, and next
dawn French boats could be seen tak-
ing soundings in the channel under the
direction of De Graaf. Worried, the
Spanish garrison commander sent out a
protest, and the boats withdrew.
Shortly thereafter, the French flotilla
stood away to the west, establishing their
new colony at what is today Biloxi,
Mississippi. A census taken there on
114 Delacourt, Zachariah (fl. 1663)
May 25, 1700 listed under staff officers:
‘‘Le sieur Graffe, clerk for the King.’’
It is believed that De Graaf was later
to have been one of the original settlers
of Mobile, Alabama, yet apparently
never made this trip, dying sometime
early in 1704.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes
11
13 (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1893
1899).
Crouse, Nellis M., The French Struggle for
the West Indies, 1665
1713 (New York:
Octagon, 1966).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The
Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor,
Ontario, Canada: Netherlandic Press,
1993).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr
ua, 1972).
Weddle, Robert S., Wilderness Manhunt:
The Spanish Search for La Salle (Austin,
TX: University of Texas Press, 1973).
DELACOURT, ZACHARIAH
(fl. 1663)
Minor rover, possibly of French origin,
who obtained a letter-of-reprisal from
the Jamaican authorities in August
1663 to campaign against the Span-
iards with his frigate Bridget.
DELANDER, ROBERT
(fl. 1668
1671)
English buccaneer who served under
Henry Morgan during his attacks
against Portobelo and Panama.
Delander allegedly hated the Span-
iards because, having once sprung his
mast off the Cuban coast, he requested
permission to enter Havana for repairs.
The Spanish Governor agreed, then
seized his ship, sold it, and incarcer-
ated Delander and his crew. He later
participated in the sack of Portobelo
and commanded a chata or small
coasting craft. He was sent ahead of
Morgan’s main body, when the bucca-
neer army marched from San Lorenzo
Castle to mount their final assault
against Panama City in January 1671.
References
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
DELISLE, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1660)
Also spelled De l’Isle. Little-known
French buccaneer, who led an early
sack of the Dominican town of San-
tiago de los Caballeros.
According to the chronicler-priest
Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre, the alleged

motivation behind this raid was the
interception previously of a Dutch ship,
which had been transporting 10 or 12
French passengers away from Tortuga
Island [Haiti] to resettle themselves on
either Saint Kitts, Martinique, or Gua-
deloupe. Only one day out at sea,
though, this neutral vessel was inter-
cepted by a Spanish warship and after
some resistance, the Dutch master was
obliged to surrender his passengers, on
condition that their lives would be
spared. Instead, their captor put into
the nearby harbor of Monte Cristi and
ordered his harquebusiers to execute
the captives by firing-squad, leaving
their fallen bodies as a deterrent to any
other such trespassers into Spanish
realms. Only a Frenchwoman and her
young son were spared, through the
intercession of a kindly priest.
When news of this atrocity reached
Tortuga, its French settlers thirsted for
revenge. An opportunity soon arose
through the chance arrival of a large
merchant frigate from Nantes under a
Captain named Lescouble, providing a
ship of force, so that they decided to
unite and seek revenge. Some 400
mostly French buccaneers gathered and
elected four leaders: Delisle, Adam,
Lormel, and Le Roux. Because a peace
treaty had recently been concluded
back in Europe between France
and Spain, these freebooters moreover
armed themselves with a letter-of-
reprisal obtained from Tortuga’s nomi-
nal English Governor, Elias Watts, and
demanded of Lescouble the use of his
frigate and threatening to otherwise
take it by force.
Delisle’s expedition of ruffians set
sail from Tortuga on Palm Sunday,
March 21, 1660, crowded aboard this
frigate and three lesser coastal craft.
Delisle, Capitaine (fl. 1660) 115
They stole ashore next evening near
Puerto Plata, and moved stealthily for
more than 20 miles up into the Cibao
Valley over the next couple of days,
hiding during daylight hours and fol-
lowing hidden jungle-trails by night, so
as to take the inland town of Santiago
de los Caballeros completely by sur-
prise. Arriving within striking distance
by Good Friday night, they burst out
of the nearby woods next dawn, March
27, 1660. Some 25 or 30 Spaniards
were killed outright during their initial
onslaught, and its Alcalde Mayor
seized in his bed.
Hearing his captors speaking in
French, the Spaniard expressed surprise
at this attack, given the treaty recently
concluded between both nations in
Europe. They gruffly informed him of
their English commission; then they
thoroughly ransacked the town on Easter
Sunday, even stripping the church of its
ornaments. Delisle and his men departed
with a number of hostages on Monday,
March 29, 1660, to return toward the
coast. Several hundred Dominican mili-
tia cavalrymen had in the interim man-
aged to rally from throughout the
district, and prepared an ambush ahead
of the French column. The leading two
buccaneers were shot dead and a two-
hour firefight ensued, before the Domini-
cans finally broke. Delisle had suffered
10 killed and 6 wounded during this
affray, yet his column reached the sea
without being challenged again, because
of even heavier Spanish losses. After
waiting in vain on the coast for several
days for ransoms to be paid for their
hostages, these captives were released
and the French formation sailed home
to Tortuga.
Delisle’s share of this booty appa-
rently made him quite a rich man, so
116 Dempster, Edward (fl. 1667
1669)
that he took passage aboard an English
ship for France, ‘‘to there live at his
ease.’’ Yet Du Tertre concluded his
account by reporting that during this
voyage the English master falsely
accused his buccaneer passenger and
cast him overboard, so as to steal his
riches. And according to the priest, the
rest of his raiders also did not prosper
from their booty—impiously stolen
on an Easter Sunday—so that ‘‘many
of them perished unfortunately.’’
See also
Adam, Capitaine; Cincuentena; Le Roux,
Anne; Lormel, Capitaine.
References
Du Tertre, Jean-Baptiste, Histoire g

en
erale
des Antilles de l’Am
erique habit

ees par
les Français (Fort-de-France, 1973
reedition).
Tejera, Emiliano, ‘‘Gobernadores de la isla
de Santo Domingo, siglos XVI
XVII,’’
Boletı´n del Archivo General de la
Naci
on [Dominican Republic] 18, No. 4
(1941), pp. 359
375.
DEMPSTER, EDWARD
(fl. 1667
1669)
English privateer who in 1668 was in
command of several vessels and 300
men blockading Havana, and afterward
joined Henry Morgan’s expedition
against Maracaibo.
The first mention of Dempster’s activ-
ities had occurred that previous autumn,
when authorized by a commission ‘‘for
taking the ships and goods of His Catho-
lic Majesty or subjects’’ issued by Jamai-
ca’s Governor Sir Thomas Modyford, his
frigate Relief brought into Port Royal the
captured ship Nuestra Se~ nora de la Con-
cepci
on y San Jos
e of Campeche. This
vessel was duly condemned on August
28, 1667 (O.S.), at the inland capital of
Santiago de la Vega, by the Governor’s
brother Sir James Modyford, in his
capacity of Judge of the Vice-Admiralty
Court. Sold to Hender Molesworth
and other investors, Concepci
on was
renamed the Crescent, and sailed for
England with its Spanish cargo still
intact. On arriving there, though—peace
having since been concluded between
London and Madrid—the Spanish
Ambassador requested its return.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1880).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
DESENNE, JACQUES
(fl. 1653
1659)
Huguenot rover from Dieppe, who had
numerous early dealings with the Eng-
lish in the Antilles.
His surname figured in several dif-
ferent variants among the official
records: Desenne, Decenne, De Senne,
De Seine, etc. Apparently he had
proved helpful during the first Crom-
wellian ventures into the West Indies,
as on January 31, 1653 (O.S.), he was
issued a ‘‘Certificate of the services
rendered by Captain Desenne to Eng-
lish ships,’’ and he was granted license
by the Commonwealth to trade with
the English half of Saint Kitts. Back
home in Dieppe by April 1654,

Desenne also participated in the munici-
pal Council meeting where the Catholic
order of the Knights of Malta was issued
letters-patent to govern over that Antil-
lean island’s French half, so that his al-
legiance presumably began to waver.
Shortly after news of the English
conquest of Jamaica had reached
London, the English Council of State
on February 8, 1656 (O.S.), issued a
special warrant ‘‘for James de Senne,
Master of the Bonaventure of Dieppe,
to trade with the English on Jamaica,’’
and in early spring he cleared his
home-port for the West Indies once
more. By July 2, 1656 (O.S.), his ship
was riding at anchor in ‘‘Jamaica
harbor’’—Cagway, renamed Port Royal
a few years later—while Desenne
received special dispensation from both
Admiral William Goodson and General
Edward D’Oyley ‘‘to trade, without
prejudice to the Act for trading.’’
Regaining Europe next year, he person-
ally addressed a petition at Whitehall
in London on October 1, 1657 (O.S.),
to the Lord Protector, Oliver Crom-
well, describing how Captain ‘‘James’’
Desenne had:
. . . been assistant in convoying Eng-
lish ships, and rescuing some of them
from the enemies of the Common-
wealth; and desirous to continue his
trade for Jamaica, has shipped certain
commodities necessary for the inhab-
itants. Prays for licence to trade to
Jamaica without interruption.
His request was granted two weeks after-
ward, and that same December 1657
Desenne was back in Dieppe, recruiting
engag
es for transportation to the new
settlements being founded on Saint-
Domingue (Haiti).
Dey, Dennis (fl. 1683) 117
The last occurrence of his name in Ja-
maican records began in May 1659,
when Desenne purchased the Dutch
prize Nieuw Tuin of Flushing and its
cargo for £400, which had been captured
by Captain Lloyd of the State Ship Dia-
mond. In September 1659, now rearmed
as a privateer and bearing a commission
from Governor D’Oyley, he set sail with
this vessel as his new Bonaventure.
See also
D’Oyley, Edward; Engag

e.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 1
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1860).
DEY, DENNIS (fl. 1683)
One of a trio of privateers—Andries van
de Velde and Laurens Westerband being
the other two—who were commissioned
by Sir William Stapleton, Governor of
the English Leeward Islands, ‘‘to look af-
ter pirates’’ late in 1683. Specifically,
they were to hunt the renegade George
Bond, and learning that he had recently
bought a Dutch ship at Saint Thomas in
the Virgin Islands, went there and seized
it, over the objections of the Danish Gov.
Adolf Esmit. The trio thereupon sailed
their prize back to Nevis.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
118 Dockyer, Richard (fl. 1656)
DOCKYER, RICHARD
(fl. 1656)
English captain commissioned by the
Council of Bermuda to sail for the
Bahamas in 1656, and salvage the re-
mains of a Spanish treasure-galleon
‘‘for the benefit of the Lord Protector
[Sir Oliver Cromwell], the Honorable
[Somers Island] Company, and of the
recoverers that shall adventure therein.’’
The Council had learned of this ship-
wreck from Spanish survivors, who had
been rescued at sea and carried into
Bermuda.
Reference
Crump, Helen J., Colonial Admiralty
Jurisdiction in the Seventeenth Century
(London: Longmans Green, 1931).
DOGGER
Modern term for a type of North Sea
fishing-vessel, usually two-masted and
with a bluff bow, its name derived
from the Dutch word dogger-boot or
‘‘codfish boat.’’
However, it appears that ‘‘dogger’’
may have originally had another conno-
tation as well in 17th-century English,
equivalent to ‘‘tender’’ or an auxiliary
vessel manned out of a larger ship. This
seems to have been the sense intended,
when Vice Admiral William Goodson
wrote to the Commissioners of the Ad-
miralty from Jamaica in late March
1656:
. . . a small vessel called the Red
Horse was taken off Hispaniola by
the Grantham, out of which Captain
Lightfoot took 150 Spanish hides
and put them aboard Vice Admiral
Lawson’s dogger, which he says he
did for supply of the vessel.
Other similar references to this expres-
sion abound, such as when the Earl of
Shaftesbury wrote to his friend Andrew
Percivall in June 1675: ‘‘Two or three
other families called Quakers come in
His Lordship’s dogger, harbingers of a
great number that intend to follow.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893).
DOTSON, THOMAS
(fl. 1673)
Boston privateer who unwittingly pre-
cipitated a confrontation with the Dutch.
On November 3, 1673, during the
closing stages of the Third Anglo-Dutch
War, Dotson chanced on the dismasted
merchantman Expectation stranded near
Nantucket. This vessel had been taken
by the Dutch during their recent recon-
quest of ‘‘New Netherland’’ (modern
New York, New Jersey, and Delaware)
by Cornelis Evertsen, who had then dis-
patched it on September 2nd under
Captain Maerten Jansse Vonck to carry
news of his victory to The Netherlands.
Struck by a storm, Expectation had
been driven aground. Dotson boarded it
from his own tiny brigantine of two to
four guns and 14 to 20 crewmem-
bers, re-floating and sailing it home to
Boston along with its Dutch captain and

crew, who had been lodging ashore
among the inhabitants of Nantucket. This
seizure, although fully warranted by
Dotson’s commission and the ongoing
war against Holland, was nonetheless
unwelcome to the Massachusetts author-
ities, who had thus far refrained from
any overt involvement in the fighting far-
ther to their south.
Meanwhile, Captain Cornelis
Eewoutsen had sortied from New York
with the 6-gun snow Zeehond to aid the
stranded Expectation, and on learning
that it had been carried off by Dotson,
retaliated by capturing four New Eng-
land ketches and taking them into New
York on November 15th. The Dutch
sent these masters and crews to Boston
in an express boat, receiving Vonck and
his men by way of exchange; yet they
refused to restore either the ketches or
their cargos, leading to heightened ten-
sions which culminated with an armed
confrontation at Southold, Connecticut,
in late February 1674.
Reference
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert
D., Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press,
1988).
DOUBLOON
Term for the largest of Spanish gold coins,
derived from the word dobl
on, signifying
an escudo or piece of gold-currency, worth
double the regular face value.
During the 17th century, the dobl
on or
‘‘doubloon’’ was the most valuable gold
coin minted by Spain, although its purity
varied. When the Council of Jamaica was
ordered in November 1671—because
D’Oyley, Edward (1617
1675) 119
of a recent peace-agreement between
London and Madrid—to restore captured
Spanish slaves to Cartagena, a survey
was conducted of all that island’s planta-
tions to identify any Spanish-speaking
captives, although English planters were
also assured that:
. . . it is not intended that one of said
Negroes shall be commanded out of
their hands, without securing to be
paid within two months for every
sound Negro above twelve years, 80
pieces of eight or 20 doubloons; and
under twelve years, the moiety.
The ducado or ‘‘ducat’’ was a lesser
Spanish gold coin worth 11 reales, while
the escudo was worth 10. The silver
pesos or ‘‘pieces of eight’’ struck in the
Americas were infinitely more plentiful,
their name reflecting the fact that each
was worth eight reales.
See also
Doubloon (Volume 2); Ducat; Pieces-of-
Eight.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 7
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1889).
D’OYLEY, EDWARD
(1617
1675)
First Governor of Jamaica, who greatly
encouraged privateering.
D’Oyley was born at Albourne in
Wiltshire, England, and as a young
120 D’Oyley, Edward (1617
1675)
man trained as a lawyer at the Inns of
Court, fighting on the Parliamentary
side during the English Civil War. In
December 1654, he sailed as Lieutenant-
Colonel in William Penn’s and Robert
Venables’ expedition to conquer an
English colony in the West Indies, being
promoted full Colonel next March of
a regiment raised during their layover
at Barbados. After the conquest of
Jamaica, he rose to commander-in-chief
and de facto Governor of the island, as
disease claimed 4,500 of the original
7,000 expeditionary officers and men
within the first year, while many other
leaders fled back to England. The new
colony was left in a precarious state,
beset by Spanish counterattacks, while its
naval defenses shrank to less than 10
warships by 1656.
Nevertheless, D’Oyley was able to
defeat an enemy disembarkation at
Ocho Rios in the autumn of 1657, and
at Rio Nuevo next summer. Still, Eng-
land’s hold remained so tenuous that
D’Oyley began granting commissions to
privateers, both English and foreign, to
keep local Spanish forces off balance.
He furthermore sold government prizes
on easy terms to likely campaigners,
such as when Maurice Williams bought
the Spanish frigate Avispa or ‘‘Wasp’’
for £120 in May 1659, renaming it
Jamaica. D’Oyley also issued Williams
a patent, sold him five cannon from the
State warehouses to help arm his vessel,
and even published a proclamation
allowing Williams to recruit sailors out
of Commodore Christopher Myngs’
flagship, with the words:
. . . that such seamen aboard the
Marston Moor frigate that will go
along with the aforesaid Captain
Maurice Williams, may have liberty
to go on board the said Jamaica frig-
ate at their pleasure.
More importantly still, D’Oyley made
Jamaica a haven for corsairs of all
nationalities, where they might dispose
of their booty, obtain supplies, and effect
repairs in relative safety.
By 1661, his policy had become
almost too successful, for the privateers
refused to restrain their activities even
when the colony was peacefully
expanding, and a tentative peace had
been concluded with the Spaniards back
in Europe. D’Oyley noted that his
attempts to rein in the rovers at this
juncture merely vexed the Jamaican
populace, who had come to ‘‘live only
upon spoil and depredations.’’ His posi-
tion was moreover eroded by the unex-
pected Restoration of Charles II, who
although he briefly confirmed D’Oyley
as Governor of Jamaica, soon super-
seded him with the Royalist, Lord
Windsor. When this new representative
reached Port Royal on August 21, 1662,
he was scarcely civil to his predecessor,
and obliged D’Oyley to sail for England
a month later aboard the Westergate,
notwithstanding the latter’s petition to
remain on the island. D’Oyley was to
live out the remaining 13 years of his
life quietly at St. Martin’s in the Fields,
London, and died about March 1675.
References
Buisseret, David J., ‘‘Edward D’Oyley,
1617
1675,’’ Jamaica Journal (1971),
pp. 6
10.
Dictionary of National Biography
(England), Supplement.
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).

Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
DRY GRIPES
English name for a West Indian ‘‘disease’’
during the 17th century, which was
actually a kind of poisoning induced by
drinking large quantities of rum distilled
in lead pipes.
Reference
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
DRY TORTUGAS
Seventeenth-century English nickname
for the shoals at the western extremity
of the Florida Keys.
According to the buccaneer chroni-
cler William Dampier, turtling was such
a frequent occupation among Caribbean
seafarers, that this particular group of
isles was so called to distinguish it from
the Salt Tortuga off Venezuela, and
the French island of Tortuga (Ile de la
Tortue) off Hispaniola. Quite possibly,
the ‘‘Dry Tortugas’’ got their name
from the sun-drying method employed
in curing meat there, as opposed to the
‘‘Salt Tortuga,’’ which drew on the vast
natural pans of the nearby Araya Penin-
sula opposite Cuman
a.
Reference
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Duchesne, Capitaine (fl. 1680
1689) 121
DUCAT
English name for a Spanish gold coin orig-
inally called a ducado, worth 11 reales.
The dobl
on or ‘‘doubloon’’ was the most
valuable Spanish gold coin, while the
escudo was another worth only 10 reales.
The silver pesos or ‘‘pieces of eight’’
struck in the Americas were infinitely
more plentiful, their name derived from
the fact that each was worth eight reales.
DUCHESNE, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1680
1689)
Flibustier commander almost arrested
by the English authorities while careen-
ing his ship at Lucea, Jamaica.
On November 26, 1685, Lieutenant-
Gov. Hender Molesworth wrote to his
superiors in London:
A week since one Dushean [sic], a
French privateer, was careening in
Porto Lucia [sic] on the north side of
this island. Hearing that many people
were consorting to him, I pressed a
sloop, manned her with [HMS]
Ruby’s men, and sent her to bring the
vessel in, which she did; but the cap-
tain and several men escaped ashore.
Duchesne was subsequently rescued
by the English renegade Joseph Bannister,
who carried his French colleague safely to
Saint-Domingue, while on his own return-
passage from the sack of Campeche.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899).
122 Ducking
DUCKING
Naval punishment, whereby a malefac-
tor was dropped from a great height
into the sea to plunge painfully beneath
the surface, and then bob back up
again like a duck.
A particularly vivid example
occurred in late September 1683, when
HMS Falcon was riding at anchor in
Port Royal, Jamaica, and the cooper of
a nearby merchantman came aboard to
offer to enlist. Captain George Church-
ill of Falcon demurred until he had
first contacted the merchant master,
Francis Mingham, whom he sent for;
yet the latter ‘‘insolently replied that
he would not come, but that he dined
at such and such places, and that
Churchill might come to him.’’ Irked,
the Royal Navy officer entered the
cooper into his ship’s books and sent a
boat to fetch the man’s clothes; yet
Mingham’s mate rebuffed this
approach with such ‘‘ill words and
affronts’’ that Churchill angrily ordered
five merchant sailors impressed as
well. Mingham’s son and the mate of a
nearby merchant vessel thereupon
directed such harsh words against
Churchill’s coxswain, that the Captain
sent back his boat to fetch away Ming-
ham’s mate.
This unfortunate individual was car-
ried aboard Falcon ‘‘and there hoisted
up to the very top of the gunbill,
shamefully exposed as a criminal for
more than an hour, to the derision and
scorn of the ship’s company, in all
readiness to be ducked.’’ At this point,
the mate of the second merchant ship,
William Flood, came aboard to inter-
cede, and was seized in the other’s
stead, being ‘‘hoisted up to the yardarm
and three times ducked, with a gun
fired over his head.’’ When even this
rough usage failed to curb his tongue,
a furious Churchill ordered that he be
given 20 lashes, and set ashore.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
DUGLAS, JEAN
(fl. 1662
1664)
French privateer who roamed the West
Indies in peacetime, with a Portuguese
commission.
On September 20, 1662, Duglas was
lying at Lisbon where he became
empowered by Charles de Bils[?],
holder of a patent which allowed him
‘‘to make war with the enemies of this
Crown of Portugal.’’ The Portuguese
had revolted against Spanish rule more
than two decades previously, and a
state of hostilities still persisted
between both nations, although not
with much intensity. Armed with this
permit, Duglas sailed his 4-gun Saint
John to Spain’s Canary Islands,
remaining there for four or five months
‘‘without taking any prize.’’
Discouraged, he crossed the Atlantic
to the Lesser Antilles, where within a
few days Saint John had a bloody en-
counter with a man-of-war off Martini-
que. Many of his men were killed or
wounded, Duglas himself receiving a
musket round in the arm, forcing him
to retire to the English-held island of

Montserrat. He remained there for most
of 1663, until the Saint John foundered
at anchor.
Duglas thereupon traveled to
Jamaica, where early in 1664 he
bought and armed a frigate, sortieing
once more with his Portuguese com-
mission. After three months’ unevent-
ful cruise, he learned of a sloop called
the Blue Dove, which the privateer
John Morris had carried into Port
Royal on suspicion of intending to
smuggle contraband into Cuba. As the
sloop’s papers indicated that it was
coming from Amsterdam for Jamaica,
Blue Dove was released. However, it
was widely believed that Morris’ sur-
mise was correct that his prize-claim
had been rejected solely because of the
influence of the sloop’s consigners, the
Jewish merchants Isaac Cardozo and
Benjamin Musket.
Lying at the Cayman Islands,
Duglas decided to seize this sloop once
it sailed again—not as a smuggler, but
as a transporter of Spanish cargo,
hence liable to Portuguese capture. His
scheme was doubtless fueled by his
unsuccessful hunting, so that he shifted
to Bluefields Bay at the west end of
Jamaica, anchoring close inshore to
await Blue Dove’s departure. The sloop
quit Port Royal soon afterward, accom-
panied by the merchantman Lucretia
commanded by Captain Charles Had-
sell. As was the usual practice, both
put into Bluefields Bay to take on
wood and water for their upcoming
voyage, and while Hadsell and Captain
Robert Cooke of Blue Dove went
ashore, Duglas visited the Lucretia to
determine whether its crew would
defend their consort. That evening at
seven o’clock, the two masters returned
Duglas, Jean (fl. 1662
1664) 123
aboard, and half-an-hour later Hadsell
beheld Duglas’ bark gliding out on the
land breeze. He hailed to inquire where
the vessel was from, and whither bound;
from Barbados to the Caymans, Duglas
replied. When Hadsell shouted that he
himself was headed for New England,
Duglas mischievously responded that he
would be there before him. ‘‘In what
ship?’’ the bewildered master asked.
No matter what ship, came the omi-
nous reply, and with that Duglas
clapped his helm hard a-starboard
and bore down on Blue Dove, board-
ing in the gloom. Thirty privateersmen
swarmed over its side, firing a ragged
volley which wounded Captain Cooke
in an arm. Blue Dove’s Scottish crew,
outnumbered three-to-one, was driven
below, while its cables were being
cut and sails hoisted. Lucretia’s crew
simultaneously deserted Hadsell, rowing
across to join Duglas, disappearing into
the night.
Three days later, a small English
bark from the Caymans put into Blue-
fields Bay bearing the injured Cooke,
along with his passengers, and a few
loyal hands. All had been transferred
out of Blue Dove off Point Negril,
being given ‘‘some victuals and a case
of spirits’’ for their return toward Port
Royal, yet nothing else. Duglas’ priva-
teers thereupon ‘‘lashed their bark
aboard of the prize and took most of
their things out of her, and let her go
adrift.’’ Afterward, the rover laid in
a course for the Windward Passage
and Old Bahama Channel, steering
Blue Dove northward. Duglas later
averred that his intention had been ‘‘to
sail into Portugal with this, his said
prize, to give knowledge to the King,’’
but called first at New England for
124 Duglas, Jean (fl. 1662
1664)
provisions. The more likely explana-
tion is that he wished to dispose of
the sloop’s West Indian cargo—most
notably its sugar and cocoa—at this
ready market. Blue Dove consequently
appeared before Portsmouth (New
Hampshire) in early July 1664, request-
ing permission to take on water and
‘‘sell some goods for to buy victuals.’’
This was granted, and Duglas further-
more had legal depositions drawn up
from his remaining captives, as to the
nature of their cargo.
He particularly sought to stress that
the Port Royal merchant Isaac Cardozo
had supervised the loading of 30 chests
of azogue or ‘‘quicksilver,’’ which
could only have been Spanish in origin.
This substance was mined in southern
Spain for use in their American colo-
nies, where it was used to refine silver
ores. (It is likely that Cardozo’s con-
signment had been part of a much
larger shipment brought into Jamaica
late in 1663, when the Marı´a had
been intercepted while bound toward
Mexico by Captain Cooper.) The Span-
iards were known to pay handsomely
to retrieve this element, which had
no other large-scale application than
their mining operations, so Blue Dove’s
chests must have been intended as
contraband.
Yet despite Duglas’ intimation, the
Portsmouth authorities soon became
suspicious of his activities, so that a
few weeks later (July 18, 1664 O.S.)
the sloop was seized. Duglas and his
crew were taken to nearby Boston
aboard Blue Dove (now described in
the records as a pink) where they were
incarcerated. Three weeks later, they
were released and given their clothes
back, along with a few score shillings
‘‘to preserve them alive till they can
provide some honest employ for them-
selves.’’ However, the capture at
Bluefields Bay was declared illegal
and the Blue Dove forfeit. Late in
September 1664, the ship’s owner, Sir
William Davidson, Royal Commis-
sioner at Amsterdam, drew up a writ in
London demanding Blue Dove’s return,
saying it had been ‘‘villainously and
roguishly taken by pirates, rovers, and
thieves.’’ By the time this complaint
reached North America, Duglas and his
men had vanished.
References
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Zahedieh, Nuala, ‘‘The Merchants of Port
Royal, Jamaica, and the Spanish
Contraband Trade, 1655
1692,’’
William and Mary Quarterly 43, No.4
(October 1986), pp. 570
593.
 E

The Spaniards hate us, for the multitudes of English

that prey on them here . . .
—In a letter from Governor Sir Thomas Lynch of Jamaica, June 1684

EARRING
Although often associated with pirates
in popular fiction, earrings and other
jewelry were in fact commonplace
among seamen since very early times,
being a simple yet effective means of
carrying personal wealth aboard ship.
The association with pirates may
have become particularly vivid during
the 17th century because of their predi-
lection for the theft of such items, as
well as the incongruity of hard-bitten
rovers wearing such exquisite pieces.
Spanish officials estimated that the
booty carried away from Veracruz in
May 1683 by Laurens de Graaf’s and
the Sieur de Grammont’s raiders con-
sisted of 800,000 pesos in coin,
400,000 in wrought silver, and 200,000
in ‘‘gold chains, charms, jewels, and
pearls.’’
Reference
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The
Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor,
Ontario, Canada: Netherlandic Press,
1993).
EATON, JOHN
(fl. 1683
1686)
English rover who prowled the South
Sea.
Eaton left London during the latter
half of 1683 in command of the private
vessel Nicholas, supposedly bound to
conduct clandestine peacetime trade along
the Pacific coast of South America,
although more likely intending to emu-
late the piratical exploits of Bartholo-
mew Sharpe by plundering hapless
Spaniards. Certainly, Eaton left a trail

125
126 Edmunds, John (fl. 1675)
of destruction during his passage down
the Brazilian coast, raiding the River
Plate and capturing a Portuguese prize,
which subsequently sank in a storm.
At the entrance to the Strait of Magel-
lan he encountered the 16-gun Cygnet
of Charles Swan (with Basil Ringrose
aboard), also out of London on a simi-
lar mission. Both ships rounded the
Horn in company, but became sepa-
rated by bad weather.
On March 19, 1684, the Nicholas
was pursued in the vicinity of Valdivia,
Chile, by another sail, which proved to
be the 36-gun Bachelor’s Delight of
John Cooke (with William Dampier
aboard). Together, they repaired to the
Juan Fern
andez Islands to refresh pro-
visions, and on April 8th steered north-
ward in hopes of surprising the
Peruvian coastal traffic. They seized a
vessel bearing timber from Guayaquil
toward Lima on May 3rd, yet learned
their presence was already known to
the Spaniards. Withdrawing to the
Lobos de Afuera Islands on May 9th to
careen and revise their plans, the 108
remaining buccaneers sighted three
sails passing by, which were pursued
and overhauled next day. They were
Spanish supply-ships bearing flour,
‘‘seven or eight tons of quince marma-
lade,’’ and other goods for Panama,
which Eaton and Cooke sailed to the
remote Gal
apagos Islands to unload.
The rovers remained there from May
31st to June 12th, when they proceeded
farther north for New Spain, hoping
news of their depredations had not yet
penetrated that far. As they approached
Nicoya in Costa Rica to raid for beef,
Cooke died and was succeeded by
Edward Davis. He and Eaton did not
cooperate as well, so that after spending
August 1684 refreshing on the coast of
Mexico, they returned independently to
Peru and anchored off Isla de la Plata (lit-
erally ‘‘Silver Island,’’ also known as
‘‘Drake’s Island’’) on September 21st.
But after failing to win a ransom for two
prizes containing black slaves and a
cargo of sugar off Paita, Eaton finally
struck out across the Pacific where his
crew eventually disbanded. He there-
upon returned to England in 1686.
Reference
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1989).
EDMUNDS, JOHN
(fl. 1675)
Minor English privateer, who contin-
ued operating under a French commis-
sion, even after London had declared
neutrality and withdrawn from the on-
going conflicts between Holland, Spain,
and France.
Shortly after John, Lord Vaughan,
had arrived at Port Royal from Eng-
land as Jamaica’s new Royal Governor
in the spring of 1675—with Sir Henry
Morgan as his Lieutenant-Governor—
all English rovers in the West Indies
were expected to refrain from serv-
ing under foreign flags. Later that
summer, Edmunds put into Port Negril
in western Jamaica and used his friend
William Crane to contact Morgan,
presumably believing that he, an ex-
privateer himself, might prove more
sympathetic to an appeal. Morgan duly
wrote back from Port Royal on August
25, 1675 (O.S.), assuring Edmunds that
‘‘he will be very welcome in any har-
bor, and Mr. Crane, the bearer, will
inform him he shall have as much

privilege as he can in reason expect
from the writer.’’ Whether Edmunds
ever availed himself of this opportunity
or not, is unknown.
See also
Morgan, Sir Henry; Vaughan, John, Lord.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893).
ENGAGE

French indentured servant, brought out
from Europe as a worker for hire in
the Americas.
Although it is generally conceded
that engag
es enjoyed better terms of
service than their English counter-
parts—signing up for only three to four
years’ servitude on average, for exam-
ple, as opposed to seven—it was none-
theless a deeply-resented position which
fed a steady stream of disillusioned
recruits into freebooter ranks. Alexan-
dre-Olivier Exquemelin and Ravenau de
Lussan were only two of many young
adventurers who began their privateer-
ing careers by fleeing ‘‘cruel’’ West In-
dian masters, to go a-roving.
Many became runaways simply
because they despised manual labor,
although there were also frequent in-
stances of ill-usage. The written instruc-
tions issued by Gov. Bertrand d’Ogeron
to the captain of his ship Nativit
e in
August 1665 ‘‘for the preservation of
engag
es and their health,’’ reveals a host
of potential abuses. The transportees
Essex, Cornelius (fl. 1679
1680) 127
were not to be struck by seamen,
D’Ogeron wrote, but only by ‘‘the cap-
tain, pilot, or quarter-master’’; they were
to be allowed ashore once land was
reached, not kept on board where ‘‘sad-
ness might make them fall ill, as I
have often witnessed.’’ They were to be
provided adequate sleeping- and storage-
space during their passage, their belong-
ings being well-protected from sailors
‘‘who are ordinarily very given to thiev-
ing.’’ Fresh food and drink were also to
be supplied, not some ‘‘wretched, rotten
meal’’ which would make them sicken
and die; and they were not to be over-
charged for their provisions.
Reference
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
ESSEX, CORNELIUS
(fl. 1679
1680)
English rover who participated in John
Coxon’s raid against Portobelo.
The first mention of Essex’s name
occurred in early November 1679, when
Governor Lord Carlisle of Jamaica dele-
gated the 28-gun HMS Hunter to patrol
the coasts off that island, and arrest any
rogue privateers attempting to land in-
digo from a depredation made against
the Spaniards in late September by
Coxon and Bartholomew Sharpe in the
Bay of Honduras. The Royal Navy frig-
ate returned a few days later:
. . . with one Cornelius Essex, com-
mander of the Great Dolphin, who
128 Essex, Cornelius (fl. 1679
1680)
was tried with twenty of his men for
riotously comporting themselves and
for plundering Major Jencks of St.
James’ Parish in this island, and two
of them sentenced to death.
Despite this harsh verdict, Essex was
absolved of the more serious charge of
suspected piracy, and released.
Unfazed by his ordeal, Essex
attended an illegal gathering of priva-
teers the following month at Port Mor-
ant, off the southeastern tip of Jamaica.
Besides his own bark, there were pres-
ent the barks of Coxon and Sharpe, as
well as the sloops of Robert Allison
and Thomas Magott. All five agreed to
unite under Coxon’s leadership for an
assault against Spanish Portobelo,
although having little authorization for
such a venture. They quit Port Morant
on January 17, 1680, and less than 20
miles out at sea met the brigantine
of French flibustier Jean Rose, who
also joined the expedition. The weather
turned foul as they made for Isla Fuerte,
90 miles south-southwest of Cartagena
on the Spanish Main. Essex’s bark was
very old and in such poor shape that
it had been ‘‘woolded,’’ or wrapped
around with two hawsers to help keep
its hull intact. Falling behind, he and
Sharpe failed to keep the rendezvous,
although Essex managed to rejoin the
main body at Isla Fuerte a couple of
days later. The formation thereupon
cleared for Isla de Pinos, 130 miles
east of Portobelo in the Archipi
elago
de las Mulatas; Coxon’s vessel was
the only one capable of gaining that
place with the rest being forced into
Isla de Oro or ‘‘Golden Island’’ some
miles away.
There, the pirates befriended the
local Indians, until Coxon ordered 250
buccaneers into boats to row westward
along that coast, so as to fall on Porto-
belo before the Spaniards could learn
of their presence. Nearing their desti-
nation, they came on ‘‘a great ship ri-
ding at anchor,’’ which proved to be
that of flibustier Capitaine Lessone,
who added 80 Frenchmen to this force.
Shortly thereafter, the buccaneers
slipped ashore at Puerto del Escribano
in the Gulf of San Blas, proceeding
afoot to avoid any Spanish coastal
lookouts. They marched for three days,
until they came on an Indian village
three miles short of Portobelo on the
morning of February 7, 1680, where a
native boy spotted them and set off at
a run to warn the distant city.
The footsore buccaneers trotted in
pursuit, yet the boy arrived half-an-
hour before them and raised the alarm.
The approaching pirates could hear the
city signal-gun being fired, but never-
theless swept in, suffering only five or
six wounded while the Spaniards
retreated inside their citadel and left
the raiders to ransack Portobelo
unchallenged over the next two days.
The freebooters then retired 10 miles
northeastward, entrenching themselves
with their booty and a few prisoners on
a cay half-a-mile offshore from Basti-
mentos, from where they were rescued
three days later by their ships.
A brief blockade of Portobelo
ensued, after which a general distribu-
tion of booty was made, resulting in
shares of 100 pieces of eight per man.
The flotilla retired to careen at Bocas
del Toro at the western extremity of
present-day Panama, where the priva-
teers Richard Sawkins and Peter Harris
were found lying. When a general refit
began, Essex decided to simply aban-
don his bark, ‘‘she being so rotten.’’
 Estr
ees, Jean, Comte and Later Duc d’ (fl. 1676
1679)
Henceforth, his name disappears from
the narratives; whether he and his men
were incorporated into another crew
and served in the subsequent incursion
into the South Sea is unknown.
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1989).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 10
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1896).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
ESTRE
ES, JEAN, COMTE
AND LATER DUC D’
(fl. 1676
1679)
French Admiral who commanded sev-
eral expeditions into the West Indies,
reinforcing them with large contingents
of flibustiers.
Early Career
D’Estr
ees was born on November 3,
1624, at Soleure in present-day Swit-
zerland, the son of an ancient family
out of Picardy. He joined the French
army and campaigned in Flanders
from 1644 to 1647, being promoted to
Colonel of the Navarre Regt. He
served under the legendary Cond
e
against the Spaniards at Lens on
August 20, 1648, being promoted to
129
Field Marshal next year. He remained
loyal to the infant Louis XIV during
the revolt known as the ‘‘Fronde of
the Princes,’’ serving under Turenne in
Lorraine during 1652 to 1653, then
once more in Flanders.
D’Estr
ees was promoted to Lieuten-
ant-General in June 1655, but was
imprisoned at Valenciennes next
summer, where he remained until the
conclusion of the Franco-Spanish War
in 1659. It was during this interlude
that he apparently became interested in
nautical studies. When the so-called
‘‘War of Devolution’’ began in the
spring of 1667, D’Estr
ees joined the
French armies invading the Spanish
Netherlands, but soon quarreled with
the senior commander Louvois and
quit the service. Haughty and difficult
with superiors and underlings alike,
D’Estr
ees has been described as ‘‘a
brave man but a bad leader, and worst
subordinate.’’
Naval Service
Transferring to France’s Royal Navy,
D’Estr
ees made his maiden voyage to
the Antilles in 1668. Because of his se-
niority, noble birth, and influential con-
nections, he was promoted to vice-
amiral du Ponant or ‘‘Vice Admiral of
the West’’ in May 1671, sweeping
down the West African coast with
Admiral Abraham Duquesne. On the
outbreak of the Franco-Dutch War in
spring of 1672, D’Estr
ees was given
overall command of the 26 French
ships-of-the-line sent to join the Eng-
lish fleet. He commanded the Allied
van from his 78-gun flagship Sain-
Philippe during the Battle of Sole Bay
on June 6
7, 1672, against the great
Dutch Admiral Michiel de Ruyter. The
130 Estr
ees, Jean, Comte and Later Duc d’ (fl. 1676
1679)
inexperienced French squadron per-
formed poorly, contenting itself with
long-range gun exchanges while the
English and Dutch hammered out a
draw at close quarters, resulting in a
postponement of the projected invasion
of The Netherlands.
D’Estr
ees was again in command of
the French contingent, when the Allies
resumed their offensive that following
summer. He held the center aboard his
flagship Reine at the two Battles of
Schooneveldt or Walcheren on June
7
14, 1673, where the raw French
ships once more acquitted themselves
indifferently, having their line broken
by De Ruyter, and seeing an Allied
disembarkation frustrated. The same
occurred on August 21st, when the
French were driven out of the van at
the Battle of the Texel, having their
line pierced. In no small part because
of D’Estr
ees’ conduct, England made
peace with Holland that coming winter,
forcing the French Navy back into its
ports by 1674.
D’Estr
ees nonetheless retained his
command, not being held entirely cul-
pable for these defeats. He sortied
again two years later, after the Dutch
Admiral Jacob Binckes had sailed to
the West Indies in the spring of 1676
to seize Cayenne, Marie-Galante, and
Saint Martin. In response, Louis XIV
dispatched D’Estr
ees with four 50-gun
ships, four 30- to 40-gun frigates, and
some lesser craft, plus 400 hastily-
raised troops. The Crown provided
these ships and soldiers, while private
investors subscribed funds in an
arrangement called course de compte
et demi (roughly, ‘‘shared-cost’’ or
‘‘joint-venture privateering’’), whereby
both sides agreed to split any prize
money.
D’Estr
ees set sail from Brest on
October 6, 1676, with his flag aboard
the 60-gun Glorieux, pausing for five
days in early November at Cape Verde
to take on provisions. He then appeared
before Cayenne on the afternoon of
December 17th, landing 800 men at
two different spots under cover of
darkness to launch an assault once the
moonlight faded and supported by fire
from his frigates. The 300 Dutch
defenders were overwhelmed with 33
killed and 37 wounded, as opposed to
40 dead and 95 injured among the
French. D’Estr
ees thereupon proceeded
to Martinique, where he was reinforced
by several hundred men raised by the
local Governor, Jean-Charles de Baas-
Castelmore. The French Admiral also
obtained intelligence about Dutch dis-
positions at Tobago.
First Battle of Tobago
(March 1677)
Binckes had transformed the island
into a heavily-fortified base. On the
evening of February 21, 1677,
D’Estr
ees landed 1,000 soldiers near
Rockly Bay, and sent 14 light vessels
ahead to feint against the harbor
mouth. He mounted his major assault
on the morning of March 3, 1677, the
fighting being fierce both on land and
within the harbor. The Dutch emerged
victorious, although losing 10 of their
13 anchored vessels to conflagrations
which raged throughout the harbor, and
also consumed four of the heaviest
French men-of-war. Two French ves-
sels were also captured, so that
D’Estr
ees retired to Grenada and
Martinique with 1,000 losses and was
back in Versailles by early July to
report his failure to his monarch.
 Estr
ees, Jean, Comte and Later Duc d’ (fl. 1676
1679)
Second Battle of Tobago
(December 1677)
The ‘‘Sun King’’ immediately ordered
his Admiral to return to the West In-
dies and complete his mission, so that
D’Estr
ees departed Brest on September
27, 1677, with 17 more ships. He
arrived off Tobago by December 6th,
having paused en route to destroy the
Dutch slaving station of Gor
ee in West
Africa. The weather at Tobago was
rainy, but the French nonetheless threw
a large contingent ashore and installed
siege artillery, refusing to be drawn
into a suicidal charge like the last time.
The Dutch were much reduced by hun-
ger and disease, only two of their ships
remaining in the harbor. On December
12, 1677, the chief French gunner began
firing ranging shots against the Dutch
fortification, laying odds that he would
blow it up at the third attempt. Incredi-
bly, the third round landed squarely
in the magazine, killing Binckes and
250 defenders with a mighty blast. The
French swarmed exultantly over the
ruins, while Dutch resolve collapsed.
Shipwreck on Aves Islands
(May 11, 1678)
Curaçao, the last Dutch outpost in the
West Indies, braced for D’Estr
ees’ inev-
itable assault. On this occasion, though,
fortune smiled on the Dutch, for when
the French expedition of some 18 royal
warships and more than a dozen flibust-
ier craft confidently headed out of St.
Kitts toward Curaçao five months later,
D’Estr
ees chose a course closely paral-
lel to the Spanish Main despite warn-
ings from local pilots that these were
dangerous waters. At 9 P.M. on May
131
11th, one of the Admiral’s flibustier
consorts suddenly began firing musket
shots, followed immediately by a gun,
signaling that the fleet was sailing onto
the reefs surrounding the Aves Islands
group. The warning came too late,
though, as seven ships-of-the-line, three
transports, and three corsair vessels ran
aground and were destroyed, including
D’Estr
ees’s own flagship Terrible, with
a total loss of 500 lives. His forces
thrown away, the Admiral had no choice
but to retire toward Saint-Domingue
with his survivors, further embittered to
see flibustiers openly scavenging among
the wreckage of his fleet. (Rather than
retreat with D’Estr
ees, the rovers pre-
ferred to pursue a project of their own,
subsequently attacking Maracaibo under
their leader the Sieur de Grammont.)
By the time the Admiral departed for
France in early June, the war was vir-
tually ended.
Nevertheless, D’Estr
ees returned
into the West Indies next summer with
another squadron, ostensibly to demand
the return of prisoners from the Span-
ish American authorities at Cartagena
and Havana, although more likely to
reestablish French naval prestige in
the region by showing the flag. The
appearance of his eight men-of-war off
Jamaica on July 18, 1679 caused con-
siderable alarm with Governor Lord
Carlisle ordering the defenses manned,
while its citizenry fled inland; yet one
of D’Estr
ees’s subordinates, the Comte
d’Erveaux, Knight of Malta, merely
came ashore to request permission to
take on water and provisions at Blue-
fields Bay, which was readily granted.
The French squadron then worked its
way through the Greater Antilles,
piloted by the Marquis de Maintenon,
before returning to Europe.
132 Evertsen De Jongste or ‘‘the Youngest,’’ Cornelis, Alias ‘‘Kees the Devil’’ (fl. 1673)

Later Career (1680
1707)

In March 1681, D’Estr
ees’s seniority
ensured that he was promoted to
Marshal of France, and four years later
he was sent to campaign against the
Barbary States in the Mediterranean,
bombarding Tripoli in June 1685 and
securing the release of numerous cap-
tives. Three years later, he performed a
similar service against Algiers, bom-
barding that port in July 1688. He
became a Duke in March 1687, Lieu-
tenant-General of Brittany in 1701, and
died in Paris on May 19, 1707.

References
Buchet, Christian, La lutte pour l’espace
cara€be et la façade atlantique de
l’Am
erique centrale et du Sud
(1672
1763) (Paris: Librairie de l’Inde,
1991).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 10
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1896).
Crouse, Nellis M., The French Struggle for
the West Indies, 1665
1713 (New York:
Octagon, 1966).


Taillemite, Etienne, Dictionnaire des
Marins Français (Paris: Editions
Maritimes et d’Outre-mer, 1982).
EVERTSEN DE JONGSTE
OR ‘‘THE YOUNGEST,’’
CORNELIS, ALIAS ‘‘KEES
THE DEVIL’’ (fl. 1673)
Dutch Commodore who reconquered
Sint Eustatius and New York during
the Third Anglo-Dutch War.
Evertsen came from a proud naval
tradition, being a direct descendant of
The notorious ‘‘Kees the Devil’’ as painted
by Nicolaes Maes in 1680, a few months
after succeeding his deceased cousin
Cornelis Evertsen de Jonge as Vice
Admiral of Zeeland. (Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam)
the first Sea Beggars. Born at the Zee-
land seaport of Vlissingen or Flushing
on November 16, 1642, he was the
second son of what would eventually
be 12 children born to Captain Cornelis
‘‘Kees’’ Evertsen, and his first wife
Johanna Gorcum. (The nickname ‘‘Kees’’
is a common Dutch contraction for
Cornelis.) As his infant son and 14-
year-old nephew shared this exact same
name, Cornelis the father, who would
eventually become Lieutenant-Admiral
of Zeeland, was to become known as
Evertsen de Oude or ‘‘the Elder’’; Cor-
nelis the cousin, who would rise to the
rank of Vice Admiral, was to be called
Evertsen de Jonge or ‘‘the Younger’’;
while the infant Cornelis, destined to
become a Lieutenant-Admiral like his
father, would gain fame as Evertsen de
Jongste or ‘‘the Youngest.’’
 Evertsen De Jongste or ‘‘the Youngest,’’ Cornelis, Alias ‘‘Kees the Devil’’ (fl. 1673)
He would prove so willful and hot-
tempered a child, that he also came to
be known as Keesje de Duivel or ‘‘Lit-
tle Kees the Devil.’’ By the age of 10,
the youngest Evertsen had already
sailed aboard his father’s warship, and
three years later was entered into the
books of Zeeland’s Navy. By 1661,
young Kees was second officer aboard
his father’s flagship Vlissingen, and
when frictions worsened with England
during the winter of 1664
1665, was
given command of the 32-gun privateer
Eendracht.
In February 1665, just prior to the
actual eruption of the Second Anglo-
Dutch War, Evertsen and another Dutch
ship fought a pitched duel against a trio
of British men-of-war, before being
captured. Next month, the diarist John
Evelyn recorded how he had taken the
young captive officer before Charles II,
who ‘‘gave him his hand to kiss, and
restored him his liberty.’’ The English
King’s younger brother James, Duke of
York, who was also present, asked
about a bullet-hole in Evertsen’s hat,
and was impressed when the 23-year-
old Dutchman casually replied ‘‘that he
wished it had gone through his head,
rather than be taken.’’
Restored to Zeeland, Evertsen
fought that same year in the Battle of
Lowestoft, then in June 1666 com-
manded his father’s flagship Walcheren
Name
Swaenenburgh (flag, ex-HMS St. Patrick)
Schaeckerloo
Suriname (ex-English Richard and James)
Zeehond or ‘‘Sea Lion’’ (snow)
Sint Joris (ketch)
Eendracht (victualler)
133
during the Four Days’ Fight, seeing
his parent cut in two by the last shot
fired that first evening by the escaping
HMS Henry of Rear Admiral Sir John
Harman. Then in August 1666, Evertsen
took part in the Battle of Saint James’s
Day, where his uncle was also slain.
And in 1667, Kees had the satisfaction
to serve in Michiel de Ruyter’s bold
Medway raid, which helped to bring an
end to that conflict.
Five years later, Evertsen would
fight the opening battle of the Third
Anglo-Dutch War as well, by defend-
ing the Smyrna convoy against Sir
Robert Holmes before hostilities were
even declared, then commanded Swae-
nenburgh in the Battle of Solebay in
May 1672. Being a Zeelander, he had
been an early supporter and intimate of
Willem II of Orange, so that after the
22-year-old Prince was acclaimed as
Stadthouder that same June 1672, Kees
would start to rise into higher posi-
tions. As the European campaigning
season was winding down with the
onset of that winter, he was dispatched
by the Zeeland Chamber of the West
India Company on an independent pri-
vateering cruise.
West Indian Campaign (1673)
Evertsen quit Flushing on December 5,
1672 with the following ships:
Guns Men Captain
44 186 Evert Evertsen Corneliszoon
30 157 Passchier de Witte
25 158 Evert Evertsen Franszoon
6 22 Daniel Thijssen
6 34 Cornelis Eewoutsen
4 30 Maerten Andriessen
134 Evertsen, Jacob (fl. 1681)
He proceeded to Madeira, the Cana-
ries, and Cape Verde Islands, where in
February 1673 he blundered into an
English force. Realizing that this en-
counter dimmed his hopes of surprising
the anticipated East Indiamen, Evertsen
consequently turned to his alternative
commission, which called for him to
cross the Atlantic into the Caribbean to
reinforce its Dutch colonies, while
attacking Anglo-French interests.
His half-dozen vessels therefore
arrived off Surinam by March 1673,
landing troops and provisions, after
which he chanced to meet an Amster-
dam squadron under Jacob Binckes off
Martinique. Together they rampaged
through the Lesser Antilles, pausing at
Sint Eustatius in June 1673 to remove
it from English control; they then
raided the Virginia coast in mid-July,
being bravely resisted in Chesapeake
Bay by the Royal Navy’s hired vessels
Barnaby and Augustine. No such
defense was mounted when they
reached New York City at the end of
that same month and the city was
quickly occupied. Having reinstalled
Dutch government, Evertsen and
Binckes subsequently detached Captain
Nikolaas Boes with four ships to raid
Newfoundland, later rendezvousing
with the main body at the Azores.
When the two Dutch Commodores
finally reached the neutral port of Ca-
diz in December 1673, they had cap-
tured a total of 34 English and French
prizes, and destroyed at least 150
more. However, Evertsen’s actions did
not meet with approval at The Hague,
which was in the final stages of con-
cluding a peace treaty with the English.
New York was to be restored to Eng-
lish domination, and nothing was said
about the damages which he had
wrought. Unlike Binckes, who was
promoted to ‘‘Vice-Admiral of Amster-
dam’’ and sent back out to fight the
French, Evertsen did not receive
appointment as ‘‘Rear-Admiral of Zee-
land’’ until 1675, nor served again in
this particular conflict.
Later Career
Once peace with France was restored
in 1679, Evertsen was promoted to
Vice-Admiral, then Lieutenant-Admiral
in 1684, and finally Supreme Admiral
of Zeeland in 1688. That autumn, he
served as second-in-command to the
incompetent Lord Torrington in the
fleet that carried William and Mary to
England for the ‘‘Glorious Revolution,’’
and the following summer fought the
French most gallantly at Beachy Head.
Kees the Devil finally retired from sea
command in 1690, and died at Middel-
burg 16 years later on his 64th birthday.
Reference
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert
D., Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia,
SC: University of South Carolina Press,
1988).
EVERTSEN, JACOB
(fl. 1681)
Dutch privateer killed on Sir Henry
Morgan’s orders, for illegally visiting
Jamaica.
On a Saturday night in Port Royal,
January 29, 1681 (O.S.), Morgan was
advised of the arrival off that coast
‘‘of one Captain James Everson [sic],
 Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier (ca. 1645
post 1707)
commander of a sloop, a notorious pri-
vateer,’’ with a brigantine prize that he
had seized. Doubtless, this chance
appearance seemed an ideal opportu-
nity for Morgan to prove the honesty
of his administration to his superiors in
London, as he had often been sus-
pected of collusion with pirates in the
past and was temporarily serving as
Governor because of the death of Sir
Thomas Modyford. He therefore:
. . . secured all the wherries on the
Point and manned a sloop with 24
soldiers and 36 sailors, which at
midnight sailed from hence, and
about [Sunday] noon came up with
him in Bull Bay. Then, letting the
King’s jack fly, they boarded him;
they received three musket shot,
slightly wounding one man, and
returned a volley killing some and
wounding others of the privateers.
Everson and several others jumped
overboard and were shot in the sea
near shore.
The victors brought back the sloop and
26 prisoners, reentering Port Royal by
Monday night. All the captives were Eng-
lish, except for six Spaniards, whom
Morgan forwarded to the authorities at
Cartagena (Evertsen’s 70-man crew was
largely comprised of Englishmen). The
names of those who had slipped ashore
were obtained and warrants issued for
their arrest, while the prisoners were con-
fined aboard HMS Norwich to await trial.
‘‘Such is the encouragement which priva-
teers receive from my favor,’’ Morgan
wrote to the Secretary of State in London.
Evertsen’s survivors were tried at the
Admiralty Court in late March 1681,
most being convicted of piracy and
sentenced to hang. However, Morgan
135
decided ‘‘it not fit to post them to exe-
cution, lest it should scare all others
from returning to their allegiance,’’ so
they were spared. Evertsen’s sloop was
incorporated into the Royal Navy as a
‘‘tender’’ or auxiliary to the Norwich;
Morgan pointed out that it could sound
‘‘dangerous places and is able to pursue
pirates where the frigate cannot go.’’ He
also deemed it useful for carrying mes-
sages ‘‘of such accidents as happen.’’
See also
Evertsen, Jacob (Volume 2).
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
EXQUEMELIN,
ALEXANDRE-OLIVIER
(ca. 1645
post 1707)
Flibustier surgeon who became famous
as a chronicler of buccaneers.
He was apparently born around
1645 at the seaport of Honfleur, in
France’s Baie de la Seine, and raised
as a Huguenot or ‘‘French Protestant.’’
In the spring of 1666, war having just
been declared against England, Exque-
melin prepared to depart France as an
impoverished engag
e or ‘‘indentured
servant,’’ bound for service in the
136 Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier (ca. 1645
post 1707)
Antilles. He set sail from Havre on
May 2, 1666, aboard the West Indian
Company ship Saint-Jean of 28 guns,
which joined a convoy of 30 merchant-
men assembling at Barfleur, then struck
out into the open Atlantic one foggy
morning escorted by the Commodore
François d’Escoubleau, Chevalier de
Sourdis. A relatively uneventful passage
ensued, Barbados, Martinique, Guade-
loupe, and Puerto Rico being sighted
before Tortuga Island was at last
reached on July 7th, lying off the north
coast of Saint-Domingue (modern
Haiti). Here, Exquemelin was sold into
indenture to ‘‘the wickedest rogue in
the whole island,’’ as he later wrote, the
Deputy Governor or ‘‘Lieutenant Gen-
eral.’’ Falling sick a year later, Exque-
melin was in turn resold to a surgeon,
‘‘and when I had served him for a year,
he offered to set me free for 150 pieces
of eight, agreeing to wait for payment
until I had earned the money.’’
Exquemelin seems to have joined
the flibustiers during the late 1660s,
possibly serving under Jean-David Nau
l’Olonnais in 1667 to 1668, for he
compiled a most detailed account of
this leader’s raids against Maracaibo
and Central America. In later writings,
Exquemelin stated that he remained
with the buccaneers ‘‘until the year
1670,’’ although he must have meant
only among the flibustiers of Saint-
Domingue, for he certainly participated
in Henry Morgan’s sack of Panama in
January 1671. Disappointed at the mea-
ger booty from that enterprise, as many
other freebooters were, Exquemelin
returned to Europe some time later,
and by the late 1670s was studying
medicine in Amsterdam.
While there, he wrote an account
of the buccaneers of the West Indies
entitled De Americaensche Zee-
Roovers (Jan ten Hoorn, publisher,
1678), which became a celebrated best-
seller. A German edition appeared in
1679, a Spanish one in 1681, and two
rival English editions in 1684. (Morgan,
who figured prominently in Exquemelin’s
work, sued the latter two publishers for
£10,000 on account of his negative por-
trayal, and succeeded in winning £200
with damages from each, plus a public
apology.)
Little else is definitely known about
the life of Exquemelin, beyond the fact
that he qualified as a doctor with the
Dutch Surgeons’ Guild on October 26,
1679, and 17 years later served aboard
Admiral Bernard de Pointis’ 84-gun
flagship Sceptre, when it set sail from
France in January 1697 to participate
in the sack of Cartagena. Exquemelin
evidently returned from that enterprise,
for it is believed that he was still alive
in France 10 years later.
See also
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier (Volume 2).
References
Camus, Michel Christian, ‘‘Une note
critique a propos d’Exquemelin,’’ Revue
française d’histoire d’outre-mer, Vol.
77, No. 286 (1990), pp. 79
90.
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Piracy and Privateering, catalog,Volume 4
(National Maritime Museum Library.
London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1972).


Taillemite, Etienne, Dictionnaire des
Marins Français (Paris: Editions
Maritimes et d’Outre-mer, 1982).
 F

What compliance can be expected from men so desperate and numerous,

that have no element but the sea, nor trade but privateering?
—Thomas Lynch from Jamaica, May 1664

Commodore Christopher Myngs’ sack of

FACKMAN, JACOB
(fl. 1664
1666)
Jamaican privateer who participated in
raids against New Spain and Central
America.
His curious surname may suggest that
he was originally born Dutch, possibly
as Jakob Fokman. Late in 1664, Fack-
man joined John Morris, David Martien,
Henry Morgan, and Captain Freeman in
mounting a small peacetime expedition
against the Spaniards in the Gulf of Mex-
ico. Strictly speaking, such ventures
were illegal, as the new Gov. Sir Thomas
Modyford had proclaimed as far back as
June 16, 1664 (O.S.), ‘‘that for the future
all acts of hostility against the Spaniards
should cease.’’ However, the privateers
ignored this injunction, later arguing that
‘‘having been out 22 months’’ (i.e., since
Campeche early in 1663), they knew
nothing of the cessation of hostilities
against the Spaniards, so continued oper-
ating under two-year-old commissions
issued by Governor Lord Windsor. This
was an unconvincing excuse, yet perhaps
their real motivation had been reports of
Mateo Alonso de Huidobro’s probes
against the English logwood cutters in
the Laguna de T
erminos in August 1664.
Mexican Raid (Spring 1665)
Morris and Martien were the apparent
leaders of this venture, seconded by the
other three. Together, they mustered
a few vessels and 200 men, departing
Jamaica in January 1665. Rounding
Yucatan, they moved gingerly down the
Gulf coast until arriving opposite Cam-
peche, where one night in mid-February

137
138 Fackman, Jacob (fl. 1664
1666)
they cut out an 8-gun Spanish frigate
from the roads. Sailing this prize past
the Laguna de T
erminos, they anchored
on February 19th before the tiny town
of Santa Marı́a de la Frontera, at the
mouth of the Grijalva River. Some 110
to 120 buccaneers disembarked and
traveled 50 miles upriver through
marshy, winding channels, until they
came within sight of the provincial cap-
ital of Villahermosa de Tabasco. At
four o’clock on the morning of Febru-
ary 24th, they fell on the sleeping city,
capturing most of its inhabitants in their
beds. A general sack ensued, with booty
and captives being loaded aboard a
coaster moored in the river. The raiders
then headed downriver, seizing a second
coaster bearing flour.
Near the river mouth, they discovered
that their anchored ships had been cap-
tured during their absence by a Spanish
naval patrol. Three Spanish frigates and
270 men had been sent out of Campeche
by Lieutenant-Gov. Antonio Maldonado
de Aldana, which sighted the interlopers’
trio of vessels on February 22nd and
boarded them without a fight. A few
Englishmen fled aboard a single vessel,
abandoning their 10-gun flagship and
8-gun prize to the Spaniards. Seven
buccaneers left behind revealed to their
captors that ‘‘Captain Mauricio [sic;
Morris] and David Martin [sic; Martien]’’
had led the bulk of the raiders inland.
Their retreat therefore cut off, the
main body of freebooters released their
remaining hostages and began moving
westward with their two coasters, hoping
to find another river-channel whereby to
escape. On the afternoon of March 17th,
they were overtaken by the Spanish
guardacostas opposite Santa Ana Cay,
this time sailing the privateers’ former
10-gun flagship and 8-gun prize, having
crewed them with 300 volunteer militia-
men from Campeche. Jos
e Aldana, the
Spanish commander, sent a messenger in
a boat to call on the buccaneers to sur-
render, yet they pretended not to under-
stand. When an interpreter approached
shore next morning, the buccaneers
replied that they would not give up with-
out a fight, so that the Spaniards reluc-
tantly disembarked and discovered that
the raiders had entrenched themselves
behind a palisade reinforced with sand-
bags, bristling with seven small cannon.
The Spanish force, mostly comprised of
armed civilians, showed little inclination
for an assault, and were easily repelled
without a single loss inflicted among the
freebooters. Next day, March 19th, the
Spanish ships were found conveniently
run aground, thus allowing the raiders to
exit undisturbed with their two coasters.
Central American Campaign
(Summer 1665)
Fackman and the other privateers pro-
ceeded northward, hugging the coast-
line and capturing smaller boats, as
well as landing occasionally to obtain
supplies. Off Sisal, they looted a vessel
laden with corn, whose crew was alleg-
edly released with a message to the
Governor of Yucatan, vowing to return
and lay waste to the province. They
then rounded the peninsula and trav-
ersed the Bay of Honduras as far
south as Roat
an, where they paused
to take on water. Striking next at
Trujillo (Honduras), they overran this
port and seized a vessel from its roads,
before continuing to Cape Gracias a
Dios and the Mosquito Coast. Native
guides were hired there, and the bucca-
neers continued southward to ‘‘Monkey

Point’’ (modern Punta Mono, Nicaragua),
where they hid their ships before heading
up the San Juan River in lighter boats.
They emerged into the great Lago
de Nicaragua, crossing it stealthily by
traveling at night, thus sneaking up on
Granada and taking it by surprise on
June 29, 1665, when they:
. . . marched undescried into the center
of the city, fired a volley, overturned
18 great guns in the Plaza de Armas,
took the sargento mayor’s [garrison
commander’s] house wherein were all
their arms and ammunition, secured in
the great church 300 of the best men
prisoners, abundance of which were
churchmen, plundered for 16 hours,
discharged all the prisoners, sunk all
the boats, and so came away.
Retracing their course across the lake, at
its southeastern extremity ‘‘they took a
vessel of 100 tons and an island as large
as Barbados, called Lida [sic; Solenti-
name?], which they plundered.’’
Eventually, they regained their
anchored vessels and by the end of
August 1666, William Beeston was
noting in his journal at Port Royal:
Captain Fackman and others arrived
from the taking of the towns of Ta-
basco and Villahermosa, in the Bay of
Mexico, and although there had been
peace with the Spaniards not long
since proclaimed, yet the privateers
went out and in, as if there had been
an actual war, without commission.
References
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Fermı́n De Huidobro, Juan (fl. 1664
) 139


Eugenio Martı́nez, Marı́a Angeles, La
defensa de Tabasco, 1600
1717
(Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
americanos, 1971).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica:
Lewis, Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
FERMÍN DE HUIDOBRO,
JUAN (fl. 1664
)
Venezuelan militia officer, who helped
defend the islands of Trinidad and
Margarita against pirate raids.
Apparently born on Margarita, he was
the son of a Spanish soldier named Luis
Fermı́n, who had settled on that island
and eventually rose to become one of its
alcaldes ordinarios. The earliest mention
of young Juan’s activities, on February
6, 1664, is as an alcalde of the tiny
Spanish capital of San Jos
e de Oru~na on
Trinidad. He was delegated by its Gover-
nor Pedro de Viedma to lead a contin-
gent of troops down to the coast to
protect its principal anchorage (modern
Port-of-Spain). After more than six
months serving at that post, Fermı́n had
traveled to the viceregal capital of
Bogot
a (Colombia).
A few years later, he was selected on
May 24, 1668, to take a militia column
to Tunja, for a forthcoming expedition
which Juan Bautista de Vald
es was pre-
paring to lead into the Guianas. Fermı́n
was furthermore commissioned as an in-
fantry Captain on June 6th, and after
140 Filibuster
completing his mission, requested leave
on October 23, 1668. A mere six days
afterward, he was assigned to carry mes-
sages by sea to Trinidad, and on January
6, 1669, was temporarily installed as that
island’s Lieutenant-Governor and Chief
Justice. He helped repel a piratical
advance against San Jos
e de Oru~na in
March 1669, presumably by a faction of
French flibustiers who had declined to
join Henry Morgan’s expedition against
Maracaibo. This splinter group was led
by Charles Hadsell, who also failed in
his assault against the Venezuelan town
of Cuman
a. When Fermı́n had subse-
quently attempted to sail from Trinidad
to Margarita, though, he was captured by
this French contingent and ‘‘suffered
greatly,’’ before allegedly managing to
make his escape ‘‘at considerable risk to
his life.’’
Four years afterward, while at Margar-
ita in late July 1673, word arrived there
that open war with France was looming
and six privateer sloops were preparing
to sortie from Martinique for a surprise
strike. Fermı́n had therefore volunteered
to carry word of this threat to Trinidad,
and successfully returned to Margarita.
While preparing to sail his ship on a
run to Veracruz, the island Governor
Francisco Mexı́a y Alarc
on ordered him
to make a stopover during his voyage to
deliver provisions to the garrison at San
Juan de Puerto Rico. But a day after exit-
ing from Margarita’s main anchorage at
Pampatar, Fermı́n encountered a ‘‘large
French pirate ship’’ believed to have
been the Jamaican privateer Thomas
Rogers, serving under French colors,
who had battered his vessel so badly that
it limped back into port, and could not
put to sea again. When the privateer flo-
tilla of Charles-François d’Angennes,
Marquis de Maintenon, overran and
sacked Margarita Island in late January
1677, Fermı́n was visiting at the main-
land port of Cuman
a.
See also
Hadsell, Charles; Maintenon, Charles
François d’Angennes, Marquis de.
Reference
Archive of Indies, Indiferente General 127,
Number 83.
FILIBUSTER
See Flibisiter.
FLIBUSTIER
Synonym for privateer or corsair,
meaning a private vessel or individual
licensed to conduct naval warfare.
The commonly-accepted root for
this name is the Dutch word vrijbuiter
or ‘‘freebooter.’’ However, a more
plausible suggestion might be vlie-
booter, the name originally given to
sailors who plied short distances across
the Zuiderzee in very tiny craft, sailing
only as far as the offshore island of
Vlieland, rather than out into the open
ocean. During the Netherlandic strug-
gle for independence from Spain in the
16th century, this term came to be
applied as a form of ridicule to the
small vessels of the Dutch rebels or
Sea-Beggars. They in turn transformed
vliebooter into an expression of pride,
so that by the end of that same cen-
tury, ‘‘flyboat’’ had come to mean any
‘‘fast sailing vessel used for warlike
purposes or voyages of discovery.’’
The word was certainly known in a
similar context during the 17th century.

For example, Gov. Sir Jonathan Atkins
of Barbados wrote on November 14,
1675: ‘‘This day came in a flyboat,
bound to New England to fetch masts
for the King.’’ But it also came to
denote seaborne raiders, particularly
among the French, who rather signifi-
cantly spelled the word as flibustier,
omitting the initial ‘‘i.’’
With the passage of time, this expres-
sion came to imply invaders, war-
mongers, or pirates in general. It also
developed a special meaning in the
United States, where a Congressman
accused a 19th-century opponent of act-
ing as a ‘‘filibuster’’ by halting all busi-
ness through continuous speaking. From
this incident, came the concept of Con-
gressional filibusters—the delay of bills
through long-winded, rambling speeches.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
FITZGERALD, PHILIP
(fl. 1672
1675)
Irish corsair who served the Spaniards
at Havana and Campeche.
FitzGerald was apparently first issued
a local guardacosta commission by the
Havana authorities late in 1672, when
such patents once again began to be
authorized by the Spanish Crown after a
brief hiatus. He operated under the His-
panicized name of ‘‘Felipe Geraldino,’’
and one of his most notorious early cap-
tures was that of Matthew Fox’s Humil-
ity out of London, which he intercepted
FitzGerald, Philip (fl. 1672
1675) 141
and carried into Havana in December
1672. Timothy Stamp and other mem-
bers of this crew were so ill-treated that
they died at FitzGerald’s hands. Another
of his captures that caused a diplomatic
furor around this same time was that of
the 130-ton merchantman Virgin of
London, commanded by Edmond
Cooke, which was seized before Havana
in May 1673 as it was bound from
Jamaica toward England. FitzGerald
bore this prize into port, where it was
condemned for carrying ‘‘prohibited’’
cargo—logwood—which the Spaniards
always assumed came illegally from
their American dominions. After more
than a year of hardships and tribulations,
Cooke succeeded in reaching home and
demanding satisfaction from the govern-
ment in Madrid, which was only grudg-
ingly conceded. He later turned pirate in
retaliation for this abuse, raiding the
Spaniards in the South Sea.
In November 1673, when Spain was
drawn into the Franco-Dutch War on
the side of The Netherlands, FitzGerald
found his scope of activities widened,
being dispatched early the next year by
the Governor of Havana to patrol Mex-
ico’s Laguna de T
erminos. FitzGerald
sailed to Campeche with 80 Spanish
soldiers as reinforcements for his own
150-man crew, capturing two English
vessels en route. By summer, he was
back in Havana, where an English pris-
oner working on its fortifications
claimed to have seen:
Don Philip FitzGerald, commander
of a Spanish man o’ war of 12 guns,
come into the harbor with a New
England bark as prize, whose lading
was only provisions, liquor, and
money; and he had five English tied
ready to hang, two at the main
142 Flota
yardarms, two at the fore yardarms,
and one at the mizzen peak, and
when he came near El Morro castle
he caused them to be turned off, and
they hanged till they were dead, and
FitzGerald and his company shot at
them from the deck of the frigate.
A few days later, FitzGerald visited the
English captives ashore, hoping to
recruit more hands for his ship. He
showed them his commission to take all
English and French vessels, and when
they refused to join him, allegedly
stabbed one to death with his sword.
As England had by then been neu-
tral in the European conflicts for sev-
eral months, FitzGerald’s continuing
depredations against their craft led to
increasing animosity. He became the
most hated corsair in the Caribbean (in
no small part because of the anti-Irish
antipathies prevailing among the Eng-
lish), until finally in October 1675 the
Lords of Trade and Plantations author-
ized their West Indian officials to
‘‘bring in the head of FitzGerald the
Pirate from the Havana.’’ Charles II
also issued a proclamation ‘‘for the dis-
covery and apprehension of Captain
Don Philip Hellen, alias Fitz-gerald,’’
yet there is no evidence that the elu-
sive Irish rover was ever caught.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The
Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor,
Ontario, Canada: Netherlandic Press,
1993).
Piracy and Privateering.
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am

erica Espa~nola (Madrid:
Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
FLOTA
Seventeenth-century Spanish expres-
sion for the annual plate fleets sailing
to and from Veracruz.
The other great convoys were the
galeones which serviced Cartagena
(Colombia) and Panama. As both for-
mations were comprised of fleets of gal-
leons, to avoid confusion when referring
to either one, it had become customary
in Spain and its overseas possessions to
speak of those formations headed for
Veracruz as flotas, and those making for
Cartagena were called the galeones.
FLUTE
A type of 17th-century transport ship,
developed in The Netherlands.
To maximize the volume of bulk-
cargo which could be carried overseas
employing only a minimal crew, Dutch
yards began launching broad-bottomed
vessels with radically tapered upper
works, known as fluyts. This term
passed into the English language as
‘‘flutes,’’ and into French as fl^ utes.
Although boasting ample holds, the nar-
rowness of a flute’s upper decks and
simplicity of their rigging, meant that
they could be handled by relatively
small complements—sometimes a mere
10 to 15 men, making this a highly-effi-
cient means of carrying freight. But nat-
urally, such limited manpower and
cramped deck-space also meant that
they could only mount light armaments,
making them vulnerable to capture.
Consequently, flutes were most often
used as supply-ships during times of war,

with naval escorts. For example, the
French Ambassador in The Netherlands
wrote in October 1673 to advise his
English allies how the Dutch were prepar-
ing an expedition at Middleburg, and had:
. . . agreed with the Deputies of the
particular men to furnish six frigates,
three of 40 guns, one of 36, one of
34, one of 24, and a flute to serve
for a magazine.
See also
Flute (Volume 2).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 7
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1889).
FORBAN
French synonym for ‘‘pirate’’ or law-
less sea-rover, as opposed to a licensed
corsaire or flibustier.
In a report dated May 4, 1681, and
addressed to the King’s chief minister
Jean-Baptiste Colbert by Jacques Nep-
veu, Sieur de Pouançay and Governor
of Saint-Domingue, this colonial offi-
cial justified his decision to allow pri-
vateering sorties against the Spaniards
of Hispaniola to continue—even after
publication of a general peace in
Europe—with the argument: ‘‘It is cer-
tain that if one wishes to prevent these
sort of voyages, they [the flibustiers or
freebooters] will become forbans, and
one could never dispose of them again.’’
See also
Forban (Volume 2).
Forlorn 143
Reference
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo,
Dominican Republic: Editorial
‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
FORLORN
Seventeenth-century English military
slang for any advance unit or van-
guard, the French equivalent being les
enfants perdus—literally, ‘‘the lost
children.’’
When the pirate fleet of Laurens de
Graaf, the ‘‘Chevalier’’ de Grammont, and
Nikolaas Van Hoorn stole on Veracruz on
the night of May 17
18, 1683, a force of
200 picked freebooters first slipped ashore
to reconnoiter the Spanish defenses, before
the main body of 600 additional bucca-
neers disembarked. This advance party
was known as the ‘‘forlorn,’’ as when Gov.
Sir Thomas Lynch of Jamaica later
reported: ‘‘In the action the Spaniards
killed but one man. Some three more, all
English that were of the forlorn, were
killed by the French themselves.’’
In this same sense, the Jamaican pri-
vateer Thomas Rogers apparently com-
manded a small ship called the Forlorn
(meaning the ‘‘vanguard’’) in Henry
Morgan’s 1669 victory at the Bar of
Maracaibo.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
144 Francis, Captain (fl. 1676)
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The
Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor,
Ontario, Canada: Netherlandic Press,
1993).
FRANCIS, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1676)
Mulatto privateer who operated in the
Lesser Antilles.
On November 22, 1676 (O.S.), Gov.
Sir William Stapleton of the English Lee-
ward Islands described Francis as one of a
handful of privateers frequenting those
coasts, in a vessel ‘‘with 12 guns and 60
men.’’ Presumably Francis served under a
foreign commission, for although Eng-
land had been at peace for more than two
years, the French were still at war against
the Dutch and Spanish.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
FREEBOOTER
General term for any individual per-
forming military or naval service with-
out salary, instead serving for plunder
or prize-money alone (a common
arrangement for 17th-century West In-
dian privateers). This word is believed
to be derived from the Dutch vrij-
buiter, which probably entered the
English language during the frequent
wars in the Low Countries of the late
16th and early 17th centuries.
 G

The news of these parts is not very pleasant,

the country being filled with the noyse of pyrats …
—Captain Henry Watson to General Robert Monck, July 1656

GARCÍA GALA
N, References

FRANCISCO
(fl. 1680
1686)
Spanish captain mentioned in French
records as having visited the Cayman
Islands in 1680 with a 40-gun ship,
where he seized a vessel from Nantes
and sent it into Havana for adjudication.
This was possibly an early reference
to Francisco Garcı́a Gal
an, a Gui-
puzcoan sailor from San Sebasti
an who
five years later was given command of
the Biscayan squadron of privateers,
raised to hunt pirates in the West In-
dies. Garcı́a Gal
an died on November
12, 1686, after an ill-considered attack
against the English East Indiaman Cae-
sar off Cape Verde, West Africa.
Garizmendia Arruabarrena, Jos
e,
‘‘Armadores y armadas de Guip
uzcoa
(1689
1692).’’ Boletı´n de Estudios
Hist

oricos de San Sebasti
an (San
Sebasti
an: Biblioteca de la Sociedad
Bascongada de los Amigos del Paı́s,
1985), pp. 259
277.
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
GALEONES
Seventeenth-century Spanish expres-
sion for the annual plate fleets sailing
to and from Cartagena.

145
146 Galesio, Francisco (fl. 1670
1673)
The other great convoys were the
flotas which serviced New Spain. Both
were comprised of fleets of galleons,
so that in order to avoid confusion
whenever referring to either one, it had
become customary in Spain and its
overseas colonies to speak of those for-
mations headed for Cartagena as the
galeones, while those making for Vera-
cruz were called the flotas.
This practice was also observed in
English circles, as when Hender Moles-
worth wrote from Jamaica on July 8,
1672 (O.S.), to complain to Thomas
Duck: ‘‘Yesterday had advice of a ketch
trading at Cartagena with 70 negroes, of
which four were his own, being seized by
the General of the galleons, the goods
burnt in the market place, and the negroes
sold for the King [of Spain]’s account.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 7
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1889).
GALESIO, FRANCISCO
(fl. 1670
1673)
Spanish corsair, slaver, and trader.
Galesio obtained a privateering com-
mission against the English for his ship
San Nicol
as Tolentino on February 5,
1670, from the Governor of Santiago de
Cuba, one of several issued by Spanish-
American authorities around this time.
Queen Regent Mariana of Spain had
inaugurated this aggressive new policy
on April 20th of that previous year, as an
angry reaction to the news of Henry
Morgan’s assault against Portobelo.
There is no indication that Galesio ever
captured any prizes with his license, but
Gov. Mathias Beck of the neutral Dutch
colony of Curaçao obtained a copy, and
forwarded it to Gov. Sir Thomas Mody-
ford of Jamaica as a piece of intelligence.
The Englishman was annoyed to dis-
cover an undeclared war existing with
Spanish corsairs in the West Indies, espe-
cially as Manoel Rivero Pardal then
interpreted his patent so broadly as to
make raids against Jamaica itself. Mody-
ford had spent the previous months
attempting to curtail English hostilities,
even issuing a public proclamation of
peace with the Spaniards at Port Royal on
June 24, 1669, only to learn that circum-
stances had changed. English displeasure
over the granting of Spanish-American
commissions such as Galesio’s would
lead directly to Morgan’s retaliatory
strike against Panama in early 1671.
A year-and-a-half later, Galesio
arrived at the port of Veracruz with a
consignment of slaves in August 1672.
There, he met the Dutch mercenary Jan
Erasmus Reyning, whose ship Seviliaen
had been temporarily impounded by the
Mexican authorities, despite having
Spanish papers. Galesio informed Reyn-
ing that war had broken out back in
Europe between England, France, and
Holland, prompting the Dutchman to sail
off—once his ship was released at the
end of that month—to join the fighting
on behalf of his homeland. Reyning trav-
eled by a roundabout route to Caracas,
where he again met Galesio, and
escorted the Spaniard’s vessel across to
Curaçao early in 1673.
References
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
 Gerritszoon, Gerrit, Alias ‘‘Rock Brasiliano’’ (fl. 1663
1678) 147

Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The

Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor,
Ontario, Canada: Netherlandic Press,
1993).
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am

erica Espa~nola (Madrid:
Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
Vrijman, L. C., Dr. David van der Sterre:
Zeer aenmerkelijke reysen door Jan
Erasmus Reyning (Amsterdam: P. N.
van Kampen & Zoon, 1937).

GALLION, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1664)
Privateer mentioned as having brought
two prizes into Port Royal during the
Second Anglo-Dutch War.
Little more than seven years later, a
warrant was issued on January 2, 1672
(O.S.), ordering the Jamaican Governor
Sir Thomas Modyford to release £1,100
to Sir Charles Lyttleton as the product of
‘‘two Dutch ships [which] were during
the late war taken by one Gallion, a priva-
teer, in November 1664, and condemned
in the Court of Admiralty in Jamaica.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 7
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1889).
GERRITSZOON, GERRIT,
ALIAS ‘‘ROCK BRASILIANO’’
(fl. 1663
1678)
The Dutch-born Jamaican rover Gerrit
Gerritszoon, better known as ‘‘Rock Brasi-
liano,’’ as depicted in an early edition by
Exquemelin. (Exquemelin, Alexandre
Olivier. The buccaneers of America: a
true account of the most remarkable
assaults …, 1893)
the northernmost province of The Nether-
lands, from where his family migrated to
one of the Dutch colonies in Brazil and
there ‘‘lived for a long time.’’ When the
last Dutch outposts surrendered as Portu-
guese forces closed in to reclaim all of
Brazil by spring of 1654, he apparently
made his way to the Lesser Antilles and
then on to Jamaica, probably within a few
years of its conquest by the English expe-
dition sent out by Oliver Cromwell. And
again according to Exquemelin, ‘‘not
knowing what else to do, [Gerritszoon]
joined the buccaneers, who called him
Rock the Brazilian.’’

Dutch-born refugee from Brazil, who re-

settled among the English on Jamaica,
and became a fearsome rover.
According to the chronicler Alexandre-
Olivier Exquemelin, Gerritszoon was
originally from the city of Groningen in
Rise to Captain (1663
1664)
Gerritszoon first shipped out from
Jamaica as a common seaman, apparently
making a couple of privateering forays,
148 Gerritszoon, Gerrit, Alias ‘‘Rock Brasiliano’’ (fl. 1663
1678)

until it is believed that he departed Port Gerritszoon reputedly used this

Royal in January 1663 as one of a hun-
dred hands crammed aboard the 14-gun
frigate Griffin of the Dutch-born merce-
nary Captain Adriaen van Diemen Swart.
This vessel was supposed to serve as
vice-flagship for the expedition which
Commodore Christopher Myngs was
leading into the Gulf of Mexico to assault
Campeche; yet it became separated from
the main body during the two-week tra-
verse, and so missed out on his successful
surprise and sack of that Mexican port.
Rather than return into Port Royal
empty-handed, Swart chose to prowl
along the southern coast of Cuba, but in
March 1663 he made an incautious dis-
embarkation near the River Cauto, where
28 of his men were massacred by a militia
force led from the nearby Spanish town
of Bayamo by Captain Andr
es Cisneros
Estrada. Having sustained heavy losses,
Swart seems to have spent a miserable
year scrounging for food, equipment, and
prizes in those same waters. It was possi-
bly during this difficult period that Ger-
ritszoon, according to Exquemelin:
… became very popular with the
crew. A party of malcontents rallied
to his side and parted company with
their captain, taking a bark, of which
they made Rock the captain.
small craft to capture a rich Spanish
ship in 1664 known as the Sevillana or
‘‘Sevillian,’’ outward-bound from New
Spain:
… with much money on board, and
brought it to Jamaica. Rock acquired
great renown from this exploit.
St. Eustatius Campaign (1665)
Apparently this success vaulted Ger-
ritszoon into a position of leadership
among the privateers. During that ensu-
ing winter, frictions worsened overseas
between the English and Dutch gov-
ernments, until finally Governor Sir
Thomas Modyford of Jamaica author-
ized his own regional offensive next
spring. A flotilla of privateers was gath-
ered under the command of his Deputy-
Governor, Colonel Edward Morgan, and
set sail by April 15, 1665 (O.S.), ‘‘to
fall upon the Dutch fleet trading at St.
Christopher’s, capture Eustatia, Saba,
and Curaçao, and on their homeward
voyage visit the French and English
buccaneers at Hispaniola and Tortuga.’’
Their strength consisted of nine vessels,
with Rock’s name being featured in its
Anglicized form:

Ship Guns Commander

Speaker 18 Maurice Williams

Sevillian 16 Garret Garretson
Saint John 12 John Harman
Pearl 10 Robert Searle
Olive Branch 6 John Outlaw
Trueman 6 Albert Bernardson
Susannah 2 Nathaniel Cobham
Mayflower 1 John Bamfield
Unnamed galliot—Abraham Malarka (or Malarkey)
 Gerritszoon, Gerrit, Alias ‘‘Rock Brasiliano’’ (fl. 1663
1678)
They started the long upwind beat,
pausing off Santo Domingo to buy
supplies, which was refused by the
Spaniards.
Morgan’s formation reached Montser-
rat by July 7, 1665 (O.S.), where some
landing-craft were procured, before run-
ning northwestward shortly thereafter on
the prevailing winds, until coming within
sight of Sint Eustatius. The corpulent
Colonel led a charge of 350 buccaneers
ashore, easily overwhelming the island’s
outnumbered and surprised Dutch garri-
son, although he died of a heart attack
amid the heat and excitement. Gerritszoon
and the other privateers consequently
remained in control of Sint Eustatius, with
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Morgan as
acting Governor. They seized 910 slaves
and considerable booty, renamed the
island ‘‘New Dunkirk,’’ and deported 250
residents to Barbados, before detaching a
single vessel with 70 men under Major
Richard Stevens to occupy adjoining
Sab
a; however, Colonel Morgan’s death
had ended all incentive to attack any fur-
ther Dutch outposts.
Each privateer Captain therefore chose
to disperse and make their own indepen-
dent cruise, Gerritszoon evidently return-
ing to cruise once again in his more
familiar Cuban hunting-grounds. Having
been pursued near there by a Spanish
squadron, he gave a joint declaration
before the Admiralty Court at Port Royal
on January 11, 1666 (O.S.): ‘‘Sam Sherd-
law and Garrett Garretson, alias Rocky,
depose[d] to having been chased by
Spanish men-of-war, one of which was
the Griffin, which formerly belonged to
His Majesty, and was commanded by
Captain Swart.’’
On one of his first cruises, he was
taken prisoner at Campeche and deported
to Spain, although he managed to regain
149
his freedom and return across the
Atlantic to Jamaica.
Detailed accounts of Brasiliano’s
activities begin early in 1668, when
the French flibustier Jean-David Nau
l’Olonnais touched at Jamaica to sell
an 80-ton, 12-gun Spanish brigantine
which he had taken. Brasiliano was in-
stalled as its Captain, with Jelles de
Lescat as his first mate. They ventured
to the Mosquito Coast and joined
Henry Morgan’s attack against Porto-
belo that same July, after which they
participated in another assault against
the Spanish-American port of Cuman
a
(Venezuela). Returning to Port Royal
with a second captured brigantine,
Brasiliano assumed command of this
new vessel, while De Lescat remained
aboard the old one.
Gulf of Mexico Campaign
(1669
1670)
In the spring of 1669, both accompanied
the 80-man frigate Mayflower of Joseph
Bradley into the Gulf of Mexico, to cam-
paign against the Spaniards in and
around the Laguna de T
erminos. Brasi-
liano’s 40-man crew consisted of 34
Dutchmen and six Englishmen, and for
two or three weeks this trio of vessels
hovered off the port of Campeche, with-
out taking any prizes. Forays were there-
fore attempted ashore; Brasiliano lost
two men during a disembarkation at the
town of Lerma before Bradley finally
captured a Cuban vessel laden with
flour, so that the marauders could retire
back into the Laguna de T
erminos to
rest.
They remained there over the next
two months, Brasiliano’s brigantine being
careened, while De Lecat laid in a cargo
150 Gerritszoon, Gerrit, Alias ‘‘Rock Brasiliano’’ (fl. 1663
1678)
of logwood. At the end of this period,
Bradley and Brasiliano returned to block-
ade Campeche once again, the frigate
taking up station directly opposite that
port, while the brigantine hauled up
closer inshore off Las Bocas, four leagues
to its southwest. Here, Brasiliano seized
three fishermen and tortured one, who
revealed that a ship from Veracruz would
soon be bringing ‘‘a new Governor’’ for
the province. (Actually, the oidor and
Licentiate Fructos Delgado was sched-
uled to arrive, having been sent out from
Mexico City as a visitador or ‘‘auditor’’
for the outgoing provincial administra-
tion; a new Governor would not be
appointed from Spain for another year.)
On December 18, 1669, the Span-
iards suddenly sortied with three
armed ships, chasing the intruders
away. Brasiliano became caught in a
stiff norther which forced him to claw
away northeastward, hoping to get
clear of Yucatan. He managed to
round the northwestern tip of its pen-
insula, but was eventually wrecked on
Chicxulub Beach, a thin strip of bar-
rier-sand just east of the present-day
town of Progreso. One of his prisoners
escaped, carrying word to the Spanish
authorities at the provincial capital of
M
erida that the rovers were ashore,
which prompted the immediate dis-
patch of a cavalry patrol to the site.
They found the pirates hastily burying
their artillery, tools, and other heavy
items rescued from their wrecked ves-
sel in the sand and bore down on
them. Brasiliano’s men scattered for
their boat, leaving two behind as they
pulled frantically away from shore.
This pair surrendered to the Span-
iards, who then dug up Brasiliano’s
trove—an ancient bronze cannon
bearing the arms of Spain’s King
Philip II, two bronze pedreros or
‘‘swivel guns,’’ plus 60-odd iron
balls—before returning to Yucatan’s
capital at the end of that same month.
Panama Campaign
(1670
1671)
Meanwhile, Brasiliano and his surviving
crewmembers were rescued by De Lecat,
who transferred them to Bradley’s frig-
ate for their return to Jamaica. Shortly
after arriving on that English island, its
populace became agitated by the grow-
ing depredations being committed by
Spanish corsairs, in particular the nui-
sance raids of Manoel Rivero Pardal
against their coastline. Consequently,
Brasiliano sailed once more with Brad-
ley and De Lecat in August 1670 to join
Morgan’s retaliatory strike against Pan-
ama, which was to first rendezvous at ^Ile
a Vache for supplies and reinforcements.
This corsair fleet then descended on
Providencia Island, overwhelming its
tiny Spanish garrison, before Morgan
sent Bradley and his two cohorts on
ahead to seize San Lorenzo Castle at the
mouth of the Chagres River, as a foot-
hold for a march overland against Pan-
ama City.
Brasiliano and De Lecat were therefore
among the 470 buccaneers who served in
the three ships of this advance force,
which departed Providencia on December
30, 1670. They disembarked a few days
later and successfully stormed the castle,
despite heavy opposition—both Brasi-
liano and Bradley being wounded, the lat-
ter fatally, and the Spanish defenders
ruthlessly massacred. It is believed Brasi-
liano recuperated sufficiently to partici-
pate in Morgan’s subsequent march
across the Isthmus a few weeks afterward,

where in spite of the harsh climatic condi-
tions and shortages of food and water, the
freebooters fought their way into Panama
and held that city for a month. Booty,
though, proved disappointingly meager,
and the raiders furthermore found on their
return to Jamaica that they no longer
enjoyed official sanction, as the new Gov.
Sir Thomas Lynch had arrived and begun
recalling commissions.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America. and West Indies., Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Vrijman, L. C., Dr. David van der Sterre:
Zeer aenmerkelijke reysen door Jan
Erasmus Reyning (Amsterdam: P. N.
van Kampen & Zoon, 1937).
Weddle, Spanish Sea.
GOBERNADOR DE TERCIO
Spanish officer charged with raising and
maintaining the tercio or ‘‘regiment’’
that served as Marines or ship-borne in-
fantry aboard the Armada de Barlovento.
As such, this officer also became de
facto third-in-command for the entire
squadron, subordinate only to the Cap-
it

an General and Almirante, and sailing
aboard his own individual flagship
known as the gobierno. The Spaniards
traditionally maintained large contin-
gents of troops aboard their ships, so
Gobierno 151
gobernador de tercio was an important
position. Unfortunately, it also perpetu-
ated the age-old practice of subordinat-
ing naval officers to their military
counterparts, thus hampering the evolu-
tion of a skilled and independent class
of seagoing commanders, such as the
Dutch and English would do.
Reference
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
GOBIERNO
Name for the warship bearing the
third-in-command of any Spanish naval
formation.
In the Armada de Barlovento, for
example, the overall commander was
the capit
an general serving aboard his
capitana or ‘‘flagship’’; the second-in-
command was the almirante aboard his
almiranta or ‘‘vice-flagship’’; the goberna-
dor de tercio was the third-in-command,
responsible for the military companies
scattered throughout the fleet and flying
his flag aboard his gobierno. Such designa-
tions were also used in other Spanish
squadrons, such as Peru’s Armada del Mar
del Sur, or the privately-raised Biscayan
privateers.
References
Garmendia; P
erez, Mallaı´na.
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
152 Gonz
alez De Perales, Juan (fl. 1665
1666)

LEZ DE PERALES,
GONZA
JUAN (fl. 1665
1666)
Spanish shipowner and master, who
was temporarily pressed into service as
a guardacosta operating out of La
Guaira, the port of Caracas.
Along with his fellow merchant-cap-
tain, Esteban de Hoces, Gonz
alez de Per-
ales was designated to patrol the Spanish
Main by the Governor and Captain-
General of Venezuela, Admiral F
elix
Garci-Gonz
alez de Le
on, Knight of the
Order of Santiago. Their armadilla appa-
rently made several captures, including
the pirate ship Caballero Romano [sic;
possibly the French Chevalier Romain].
However, Gonz
alez is known to have
returned across the Atlantic by 1666
with a valuable cargo to his home-port
of Cadiz, where he sold his ship Nuestra
Se~nora del Rosario.
See also
Armadilla; Guardacostas; Hoces, Esteban
de; Spanish Main.
Reference
Sucre, Luis Alberto, Gobernadores y
capitanes generales de Venezuela
(Caracas: Litografı́a Tecnocolor, 1964).
GOODSON, WILLIAM
(fl. 1655
1656)
Puritan merchant-adventurer who be-
came the first commander-in-chief of
the Jamaican naval station.
Goodson is believed to have been
from Yarmouth, England, and seems to
have traveled to the New World at a
young age, reputedly living at Cartagena
circa 1634, although not long enough to
acquire a perfect knowledge of the
Spanish language. He entered the Pro-
tectorate’s service in 1649, and next
year contracted one of his ships—the
Hopeful Luke of London—to the State,
and in October 1651 was petitioning for
a license to transport shoes to Barbados.
His first direct involvement in the Navy
seems to have occurred in January 1653,
when he was appointed Captain of the
Entrance and took part in the Battle of
Portland against the Dutch. Promoted to
Rear Admiral aboard Rainbow after this
victory, Goodson served in the hard-
fought triumphs off Gabbard Bank and
Scheveningen later that same summer,
for which he and the other flag-officers
received a gold chain and medal.
On the cessation of the First Anglo-
Dutch War in the spring of 1654,
Goodson became Vice Admiral of the
Blue under William Penn. (He was
also a major government contractor,
supplying clothes for the Navy’s sea-
men.) Toward the end of that year, he
was appointed to Paragon, vice-flagship
of the fleet intended to conquer an
English foothold in the West Indies.
This ill-prepared formation of 17
warships and 21 transports left Ports-
mouth on December 24, 1654 (O.S.),
with General Robert Venables sailing
aboard Goodson’s vessel. Barbados
was reached 35 days later, where a
convoy of victuallers awaited and
3,500 volunteers were raised over the
next two months, supplementing the
2,500 soldiers brought out from Eng-
land. Goodson, in addition to his other
duties, was appointed Colonel of ‘‘a
regiment of seamen’’ intended to serve
on land, with Robert Blake’s brother
Benjamin as his Lieutenant-Colonel.

The whole expedition materialized
before Santo Domingo in late April
1655, and while Penn bore down on its
defenses to create a diversion, Goodson
led the bulk of the fleet westward seek-
ing a disembarkation point. Because of
uncertainty regarding shoals, he depos-
ited the army 30 miles away, an
absurdly long distance which contrib-
uted to the defeat of this enterprise.
The troops spent several days strug-
gling back through the jungle, while
the outnumbered Spaniards recovered
from their initial shock and beat off
the enfeebled English assaults, until the
invaders finally withdrew after the loss
of 1,000 men, mostly due to disease.
Goodson served ashore with some
distinction, yet his personal bravery
hardly compensated for his poor strate-
gic judgment. Hoping to salvage some-
thing from this fiasco, the English
turned their attention against smaller
Jamaica, landing unopposed that same
May 1655. Penn immediately prepared
to return to England, leaving Goodson
as overall commander of nine small
men-of-war and four converted victual-
lers, with his flag aboard Torrington.
The main body departed in early July
1655, and a month later Goodson sailed
for the Spanish Main, leaving a few
ships behind to defend Jamaica. He
tacked 450 miles upwind to take, sack,
and burn Santa Marta, although for
scant booty. Moving down the coast to-
ward Cartagena, he discovered his force
was insufficient to attempt this place, so
returned to Jamaica by mid-November
1655 ‘‘to refit and consider of some
other design.’’
Next spring, Goodson again assaulted
the Main, sailing from Jamaica with a
diminished force in late April 1656 to
fall on Rı́ohacha. After devastating that
Goodson, William (fl. 1655
1656) 153
place, he proceeded down the coast to
water at Santa Marta, before once more
anchoring impotently off Cartagena for a
day, then returning to Jamaica by early
June 1656. Unsuccessful attempts fol-
lowed against the Spanish plate fleets,
and by August several of Goodson’s ves-
sels were deemed unfit for duty, includ-
ing his own flagship, so that they were
ordered home while he transferred his
flag to Marston Moor. In January 1657,
he moved into Mathias and sailed for
England, arriving in late April complain-
ing of ill health. His tenure had been
uninspiring, for despite undoubted cour-
age and many logistical problems, Good-
son lacked the flair for independent
command. His successor Christopher
Myngs was to shine by comparison.
Goodson assumed command of a
squadron in the Downs that same
summer of 1657, and continued in im-
portant sea-commands over the next cou-
ple of years, until he fell out of favor
and left the Navy entirely following the
Restoration of Charles II in the spring of
1660. His Roundhead sentiments made
him a suspect in a plot to kill the King
three years later, although nothing ever
came of this charge. Because of his con-
nection with Penn, it is believed that he
was also the father of John Goodson,
‘‘the first English physician that came to
Pennsylvania.’’
References
Dictionary of National Biography
(London, 1885
1900; 63 volumes;
reissued by Oxford University Press,
2004).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
154 Goody, Captain (fl. 1663)
GOODY, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1663)
English privateer from Jamaica, who in
1663 was described as commanding a
pink of six guns and 60 men.
References
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
GRAHAM, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1684
1685)
English corsair mentioned in a letter of
Gov. Sir Thomas Lynch of Jamaica,
dated at Port Royal on June 20, 1684
(O.S.). Speaking of several pirate ves-
sels which had been operating in the
West Indies, the Governor noted:
Many of the men are of this island,
but the chief pirate, Graham, is not.
It is said that they mean to sail for
the South Sea.
This may have been the same Captain
Graham who commanded a shallop with
14 men in 1685, sailing up and down the
coast of Virginia and New England in
company with Captain Veale.
See also
Veale, Captain.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Dow, George F. and Edmonds, John H.;
The Pirates of the New England Coast,
1630
1730 (Salem, MA: Marine
Research Society, 1923 edition
re-issued in 1996 by Dover).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
GRAMMONT,
‘‘CHEVALIER’’ OR SIEUR
DE (fl. 1678
1686)
Greatest of flibustier commanders.
Little is known about Grammont’s
early life, and there is even some doubt
regarding his first name, which has
been variously reported as François,
Michel, or Nicolas. Legend has it that
he was born in Paris around 1650,
although as he was later described by a
man who met him in 1683 as an ‘‘hon-
est old privateer,’’ he may have been
born earlier. The son of a French offi-
cer, Grammont allegedly killed a man
in a duel when he was 14, then ran
away to sea.
He made his way to Saint-
Domingue, where his bravery, quick
wit, and openhandedness soon made
him popular among the hard-bitten
boucaniers. ‘‘He has a particular secret
for winning their hearts,’’ an observer
wrote, ‘‘and insinuating himself into
their spirits.’’ Small, dark, and active,
the ‘‘Chevalier’’ was primarily a land
commander (like his contemporary Sir
Henry Morgan), using ships principally
to reach his military objectives, and
undergoing several wrecks. On the bat-
tlefield, though, he was invincible and
greatly feared for his cruelty to prison-
ers by the Spaniards, who called him
‘‘Agrammont’’ or ‘‘Ram
on.’’
 Grammont, ‘‘Chevalier’’ or Sieur De (fl. 1678
1686)
During France’s wars against Hol-
land and Spain in the 1670s, Gram-
mont rose to prominence among
the flibustiers, and was the leader of
the Saint-Domingue contingent which
sailed as auxiliaries for the Vice-Admi-
ral Comte d’Estr
ees’s expedition
against Curaçao, the last major Dutch
stronghold in the West Indies. This for-
midable French armada quit Martinique
on May 7, 1678, yet four days later
suffered disaster when most of its royal
warships ran aground off Aves Islands.
The Admiral turned back with his few
survivors, but Grammont and the fli-
bustiers decided to mount an alternate
attack of their own.
Maracaibo Campaign (1678)
Leapfrogging past Curaçao, the free-
booters materialized unexpectedly in
the Gulf of Venezuela during the first
days of June 1678, a host 2,000-strong
aboard six large ships, and 13 smaller
ones. Grammont disembarked half his
men and marched along the San Carlos
Peninsula toward the fort guarding its
approaches, whose artillery he knew to
be mostly pointed seaward. The garri-
son commander Francisco P
erez de
Guzm
an was only able to stave off an
immediate assault by stationing 100
harquebusiers outside its walls, yet
heavy guns were then landed from the
buccaneer flotilla, and after a brief
bombardment the Spanish defenders
surrendered. Grammont passed his
smaller ships over the bar, leaving the
six largest to blockade the entrance
while he pressed on for Maracaibo
with the other 13.
The city and its surrounding district
were thrown into panic by this fear-
some incursion, while the ancient and
sickly Governor Jorge Madureira
155
Ferreira, who had only been in office
scarcely a week, was unable to inspire
any confidence in the troops. People
began fleeing in every direction, soon
followed by Madureira himself, who
retired to the inland town of Maicao
with his handful of regulars. Thus,
Grammont occupied Maracaibo largely
unopposed on June 14th, and gave
it over to plunder. A Spanish eye-
witness said of him: ‘‘this French
enemy was so tyrannical that after
taking everything people had, he would
torture them unto death, something
which not even a Turk nor a Moor
would do.’’
Flibustier columns struck out in
pursuit of the Spanish Governor and
other notables, scattering them even
farther afield. On June 28th, Gram-
mont abandoned the gutted remains of
Maracaibo, crossing to the eastern
shores of the Laguna and falling on
Gibraltar. This town, too, was already
quite deserted, and after bombard-
ing its walls, the garrison of only
22 soldiers gave up. Emboldened by
this lack of opposition, Grammont
marched almost 50 miles inland to the
town of Trujillo, defended by a fort
with 350 troops and four artillery-
pieces. Again he prevailed, storming
this fortification from the rear on Sep-
tember 1st, ‘‘by some hills where it
seemed impossible to do so,’’ accord-
ing to one defender. Once more, terri-
fied Spanish citizens crowded the
roads, straggling 75 miles southwest-
ward into M
erida de la Grita to escape
from the rapacious raiders.
Having defeated or dispersed every
Spanish concentration he met, Gram-
mont deliberately retraced his steps to-
ward the Laguna, eventually reentering
Gibraltar. This unfortunate town was
stripped bare, and put to the torch on
September 25th. The invaders then
156 Grammont, ‘‘Chevalier’’ or Sieur De (fl. 1678
1686)
Map G.1 Grammont: Maracaibo, 1678.
N
After overwhelming the fort guarding San
Carlos Bar (1), Grammont pressed on to
Maracaibo (2), plundering it and its district.
His pirate fleet then crossed the Lake and
took Gibraltar (3), pushing inland to storm
the city of Trujillo (4) on September 1, 1678.
After torching Gibraltar, Grammont retraced
his steps—dotted line—and remained in
devastated Maracaibo until early December,
when he departed for Saint-Domingue (5).
remained in undisputed possession of
the entire region till almost the end of
that year, for it was not until December
3, 1678, that Grammont finally sailed
away from the Laguna de Maracaibo,
his ships heavy-laden with booty and
captives. They arrived at Petit-Go^ave
on Christmas Eve, and Grammont was
given a hero’s welcome. The war was
officially winding down in Europe, yet
local hostilities would continue to
smolder for a long time against the
Spaniards in the Americas.
La Guaira Raid (1680)
A year-and-a-half later, Grammont
reappeared off the Spanish Main and
led an exceptionally daring assault
against La Guaira, the port of Caracas.
On the night of June 26, 1680, he
came ashore with a mere 47 followers,
and infiltrated the sleeping city. Next
dawn, its garrison commander and 150
soldiers were taken without a struggle,
and the inhabitants awakened to find
their city occupied during the night.
Grammont and his flibustiers quickly
set about looting, before a relief-force
could arrive.
A small company of Spanish sol-
diers under Captain Juan de Laya Muj-
ica had escaped capture and dispatched
a warning to Caracas, while at the
same time marching around to Pe~n
on
de Maiquetı́a, just outside the port, to
rally its outlying defenders. When
word of the freebooter attack reached
Caracas that same morning, there was
such widespread concern that mule
trains immediately began traveling
inland with the royal treasure and other
valuables. Meanwhile, every able-
bodied militiaman fell in to resist
the invaders, and a large host set off
toward the beleaguered port under
Gov. Francisco de Alberr
o. Before they
could arrive, though, Captain de Laya
 Grammont, ‘‘Chevalier’’ or Sieur De (fl. 1678
1686)
launched his own counterattack,
encouraged by the small number of
flibustiers visible in broad daylight.
Grammont was forced to make a fight-
ing retreat to the beach, during which
he was slashed across the neck with a
machete, nine of his buccaneers were
killed, and several others wounded.
Although repelled, this raid had
been successful in that it produced a
goodly amount of booty and numerous
hostages for the flibustiers, as well as
shaking the Spaniards’ morale by its
breathtaking audacity. Grammont’s
stock soared even higher among the
Brethren of the Coast, and was
scarcely diminished when he subse-
quently lost most of his captives and
profits in a shipwreck off Petit-Go^ave
during a hurricane.
Cuban Blockade (1682)
Considerably less success was enjoyed
when Grammont led a flotilla of eight
pirate vessels along the northern shores
of Cuba in the summer of 1682. After
spending two months vainly hovering
off Hicacos Point east of Matanzas
Bay, hoping to snap up a homeward-
bound Spanish galleon, he was obliged
to retire to Saint-Domingue empty-
handed. His flotilla remained prowling
westward as far as Santa Lucı́a with
ships such as Diligente and Cagone,
commanded by Pierre Bot and Jan
Willems. After careening a pink on
that coast, the force veered round for
the Bahamas, then stemmed the Wind-
ward Passage early in 1683. Bot cap-
tured a Spanish merchantman and set
its survivors ashore at Guant
anamo,
before the whole flotilla headed for
Petit-Go^ave.
157
Meanwhile, a Dutch-born rover
from French Cayenne named Nikolaas
Van Hoorn had been cheated out of a
large consignment of slaves at Santo
Domingo, and fled to the French half
of that island with 20 crewmembers
aboard his ship Saint Nicholas. Gov.
Jacques Nepveu, Sieur de Pouançay,
granted him a letter of reprisal to exact
revenge against Spanish interests and
put him in contact with Grammont,
who agreed to help the rover. He even
lent Van Hoorn his own corvette Col-
bert to recall the flotilla from Cuba,
meeting it just as it was reentering
Petit-Go^ave. Saint Nicholas’ comple-
ment was then increased to more than
300 men with the infusion of Gram-
mont’s followers, and cleared for
Roat
an on the Central American coast
to obtain further reinforcements, for a
projected attack against the main Mexi-
can port of Veracruz.
They paused outside Port Royal on
February 27, 1683, to deliver letters to
the Jamaican authorities, assuring them
that no hostilities were being contem-
plated against English interests. Gov. Sir
Thomas Lynch sent out his French secre-
tary, Charles de la Barr
e, to visit the Saint
Nicholas, who found Grammont nomi-
nally serving as lieutenant under Van
Hoorn, but in fact regarded as captain by
his loyal flibustiers, who furthermore
resented the Dutchman’s ‘‘insolence and
passion.’’ They bore away to westward
and a few days later met Captain John
Coxon, telling him that they were ‘‘trying
to unite all the privateers for an attack on
Veracruz.’’ Then they proceeded into the
Bay of Honduras, where the legendary
Dutch corsair Laurens de Graaf and his
consort Michiel Andrieszoon were
reputed to be with ‘‘two great ships, a
bark, a sloop … and 500 men.’’ As Van
158 Grammont, ‘‘Chevalier’’ or Sieur De (fl. 1678
1686)
Hoorn and Grammont prowled the Bay,
they spotted two Spanish merchantmen
lying at anchor, Nuestra Se~ nora de Con-
solaci

on and Nuestra Se~ nora de Regla,
which they promptly seized. Little did
they realize that De Graaf had been
careening his flagship Dauphine (better
known by its Spanish nickname of Fran-
cesa) at nearby Bonaco Island, patiently
waiting for the Spaniards to bring back
the proceeds from their commercial fair
in Guatemala.
Annoyed at this clumsy intrusion into
his plans, De Graaf made away for
Roat
an, where he was overtaken by
Saint Nicholas with its two prizes. On
April 7, 1683, a huge gathering of buc-
caneers met on the beach to hear of the
proposed assault against Veracruz. This
port had not even been attempted in liv-
ing memory, yet doubters were swayed
when Grammont reputedly declared: ‘‘I
would believe it almost impossible,
except for the experience and valor of
those who hear my words.’’ Heartened,
the freebooters endorsed this plan by a
roar of acclamation, and after pausing at
Guanaja Island to raise more men, a
pirate fleet of five ships and eight lesser
craft stood into the Gulf of Mexico,
bearing 1,300 to 1,400 raiders.
Sack of Veracruz (May 1683)
On the afternoon of May 17, 1683, De
Graaf cunningly reconnoitered the port
with two ships, then led an advance
force of 200 buccaneers ashore under
cover of darkness to infiltrate the city
from its landward side. Grammont and
Van Hoorn landed the main body of
600 men at nearby Punta Gorda some-
time later, following De Graaf’s trail
through the dunes, over Veracruz’s low
stockades, and directly into the darkened
streets. There, the buccaneers silently
redistributed themselves, Grammont per-
sonally assuming command over the cru-
cial column of 80 flibustiers which was
to snuff out Spanish resistance around
the Governor’s palace. The attack com-
menced at 4 A.M., and easily over-
whelmed the startled garrison.
Van Hoorn immediately saw to the
amassing of booty, while Grammont and
De Graaf looked to the city defenses,
anticipating a Spanish counterattack out
of the surrounding district. In a brilliant
stroke, Grammont organized a company
of mounted buccaneers from the stables
within Veracruz. When first light
dawned on May 19, 1683, the second
day of pirate occupation, a large body of
horsemen was revealed drawn up to the
west of the city, to which Grammont
responded by sending out a flying col-
umn of more than 100 mounted flibust-
iers. The Spanish irregular cavalrymen
were astonished to behold heavily-armed
men bearing down on them ‘‘with a flag
and trumpet in regular order,’’ so melted
away without a fight. The buccaneer
riders then followed up their sally by
making a reconnaissance far afield, find-
ing no other Spanish concentrations.
Grammont also played a prominent
role in extorting money from the thou-
sands of unhappy captives within Vera-
cruz. In addition to the wealth already
stolen from their homes and warehouses,
the freebooters demanded that ransoms
be raised in Mexico’s interior to spare
the city and its inhabitants once they
withdrew. In order to inspire the proper
tone of terror in the prisoners’ letters
pleading for help, Grammont made a
grand show of stockpiling wood around
La Merced Church where the captives
 Grammont, ‘‘Chevalier’’ or Sieur De (fl. 1678
1686)
were being held, and loudly calling for the
death by fire of every man, woman, and
child inside. Thanks to these cruel threats,
a sum of 150,000 pesos was agreed.
On May 22, 1683, the raiders evac-
uated Veracruz, Grammont riding his
horse directly into the church to marshal
the 4,000 prisoners into bearers. They
carried massive amounts of booty a mile
down the coast and were transferred off-
shore to Sacrificios Island, beyond any
hope of rescue. A week later, the ran-
soms were paid, and after herding 1,500
blacks and mulattos aboard as slaves,
Grammont and the rest of the pirate flo-
tilla weighed. They encountered the an-
nual plate fleet just as they were standing
out from the coast, but its commander
Admiral Diego Fern
andez de Zaldı́var
deferred combat, so that the raiders
escaped scot-free. They then paused at
Coatzacoalcos to take on water, before
shouldering their way back around Yuca-
tan to Isla Mujeres. There, they com-
pleted dividing the spoils and Van Hoorn
died, having been wounded in a fight
with De Graaf.
By late June 1683, the commanders
began going their separate ways, Gram-
mont sailing the 52-gun Saint Nicholas
(which he was apparently soon to rename
Hardi or ‘‘Audacious’’) toward Tortuga
Island. His progress was greatly hampered
by contrary winds, to such an extent
that his crew and 236 prisoners were in
danger of starving. This problem was
solved by a chance encounter in late July
with the Spanish merchantman Nuestra
Se~nora de la Candelaria out of Havana,
which he detained to rob of its cargo of
flour. Seeing that he still could not beat
upwind to Tortuga, though, Grammont
eventually decided to make for Petit-
Go^ave, releasing Candelaria after having
159
impressed five of its seamen and removed
most of the sails. He also transferred
22 prisoners from Veracruz aboard, and
gave its Captain Luis Bernal a pass ‘‘so
that no other corsair would harm him.’’
Rumors spread throughout the Ca-
ribbean during 1684 of Grammont and
De Graaf uniting for another major
exploit, yet this did not actually occur
until April 1685, when another huge
pirate gathering was held off Isla de
Pinos on Cuba’s southern coast. The
captains could not concur on an objec-
tive, however, a majority insisting on a
repeat assault against Veracruz, while
De Graaf patiently explained that this
city would not be caught napping a sec-
ond time. Finally, the Dutchman sailed
away in frustration to Central America’s
Mosquito Coast, where he was followed
by Grammont and the others, who even-
tually agreed to a descent on the smaller
Mexican port of Campeche.
The pirate host shifted to Isla Mujeres
to gather greater strength, maintaining
vessels off Cape Catoche for more than a
month to advise passing freebooters of
their scheme, but which also forewarned
the Spaniards. These preparations grew
so notorious that the Deputy Governor
of Campeche, Felipe de la Barreda y
Villegas, even had time to dispatch
lookouts and spy-boats up the coast to
give advance warning of their actual
approach. Finally, a steady stream of
reports began reaching him in late June
1685, of unidentified vessels creeping
ever closer to his port.
Sack of Campeche (July 1685)
On the afternoon of July 6, 1685, the
pirate fleet of six large and four small
160 Grammont, ‘‘Chevalier’’ or Sieur De (fl. 1678
1686)
ships, six sloops, and 17 piraguas
appeared half-a-dozen miles off Cam-
peche. A landing force of 700 bucca-
neers took to the boats and began
rowing in toward shore, yet four Span-
ish militia companies totaling roughly
200 men exited, and positioned them-
selves opposite the intended disembar-
kation-point. The surprised pirates
therefore put up their helms and waited
until next morning, when they began to
feint a withdrawal toward their ships.
Before the Spaniards realized it, the
pirate boats sped inshore and disgorged
at the very outskirts of the city itself.
A hundred buccaneers quickly
formed up behind Captain Rettechard
as the vanguard; 200 joined De Graaf
and marched directly toward the city
center; another 200 advanced under
Captain Toccard along a street parallel
to De Graaf’s; and the final 200 fol-
lowed Grammont in an encircling ma-
neuver. The Spaniards fell back, while
out in the harbor Captain Crist
obal
Martı́nez de Acevedo prepared to scut-
tle his coast-guard frigate Nuestra
Se~nora de la Soledad y San Antonio,
as per his instructions. Originally, he
had intended to do so by boring holes
in its bottom, yet given the speed of
the invaders’ advance, he now directed
his boatswain to run a trail of powder
into the magazine. When the fuse was
lit, Soledad exploded with such a deaf-
ening blast that it collapsed the defend-
ers’ morale, sending them scurrying
into their citadel while the pirates
entered Campeche uncontested.
Over the next few days, Grammont
subdued isolated strong-points, until only
the citadel remained. The pirates began
bombarding this fortress at dawn of July
12, 1685, but at ten o’clock that same
morning, two relief-columns of Spanish
militiamen appeared on the beach, having
been hastened down from the provincial
capital of M
erida de Yucat
an. In the past,
such troops simply had to appear for
smaller bands of raiders to scurry back
out to sea; this time, though, Grammont’s
flibustiers stood and fought from behind
Campeche’s ramparts, so that the first
ranks of Spaniards went down to well-
aimed volleys. All day the two sides
battled, until Grammont circled behind
the Yucatecan militia and caught them
between two fires. The Spanish relief-
force drew off in confusion, and that night
the city garrison abandoned their posts.
By 11 P.M., the citadel was deserted, and a
couple of English prisoners shouted to the
besiegers, who called back asking that the
fort’s artillery be discharged, so that the
buccaneers might advance knowing the
heavy guns to be empty. Once done, they
poured over the walls, led by Grammont
and De Graaf in person.
Again, Grammont organized troops of
mounted buccaneers, who were dis-
patched to reconnoiter and ravage the
surrounding countryside as far as 25
miles inland. As at Maracaibo, the
invaders were left in undisputed posses-
sion of the city for the next two months,
yet as most of Campeche’s wealth had
been withdrawn prior to the assault, little
plunder was found. Their frustration led
to numerous instances of cruelty. On Au-
gust 25, 1685, Grammont’s flibustiers
celebrated Louis XIV’s saint day with
fireworks and festivities, and then the
next morning began preparations to
break camp. A message was sent inland
demanding a ransom of 80,000 pesos
and 400 head of cattle to leave Cam-
peche’s gutted buildings intact. Gov.
Juan Bruno T
ellez de Guzm
an’s reply
arrived a few days later, addressed to the
captive De la Barreda. He was forced to
 Grammont, ‘‘Chevalier’’ or Sieur De (fl. 1678
1686)
read aloud a sneering rejection of the
pirates’ demand, in which the provincial
Governor averred:
… they would be given nothing and
might burn down the town, as [Spain]
had ample funds with which to build
or even buy another, and people
enough with which to repopulate it.
Furious, Grammont had the houses
torched the next dawn, then sent another
missive inland threatening the captives
themselves. He received the same
response, so the day afterward paraded
the prisoners in the main square, where
executions began. Six had been hanged
when De la Barreda and other leading
citizens approached De Graaf, ‘‘whom
they knew to be more humane than the
Frenchman,’’ and offered to serve him for
the rest of their lives as slaves if he saved
the rest of the inhabitants of Campeche.
Lorenzo, after a lengthy discussion with
Grammont, ordered a halt to the execu-
tions and that the remaining prisoners be
carried out to the ships. Immediately after
this incident, all the pirates evacuated the
citadel, having spiked the guns.
The raiders quit Campeche in early
September 1685, pausing briefly at Sisal,
before rounding the Yucatan Peninsula to
Isla Mujeres, where they dispersed. Gram-
mont’s Hardi, Nicolas Brigaut’s captured
Spanish galliot, and a sloop sailed to-
gether to Roat
an to careen, after which
Grammont decided to mount an attack
against the tiny Spanish outpost of Saint
Augustine, Florida, perhaps in alliance
with the English settlers of Carolina.
Saint Augustine Raid (1686)
This trio of flibustier vessels worked
its way out into the Atlantic and on
161
April 30, 1686, Brigaut’s galliot flying
false Spanish colors stood in alone to-
ward Matanzas (Florida) to gather
intelligence. Grammont’s flagship and
sloop remained concealed at anchor
farther south, awaiting his scout’s
return; but when Brigaut failed to reap-
pear, Grammont sailed to Matanzas
himself three days later, examining the
shoreline from his quarterdeck. The
galliot had sunk in heavy weather, and
now Grammont was also driven north-
ward by the same storm.
He touched at South Carolina in July
1686, then struck out across the Atlantic
aboard Hardi for West Africa. Off the
Azores, he took a Dutch vessel, which
proved to be the great commander’s last
prize. Grammont’s flagship was lost
shortly thereafter in a storm, with all
hands. More than a year later, a flibustier
captain named Du Marc escaped from a
Spanish prison and reported a rumor to
Gov. Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy of Saint-
Domingue that ‘‘the Sieur de Grammont
has perished with approximately 180
men that were aboard his ship.’’
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The Great
Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor, Ontario,
Canada: Netherlandic Press, 1993).
162 Gregge, Thomas (fl. 1659)

Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos

notables 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr
ua, 1972).
Sucre, Luis Alberto, Gobernadores y
capitanes generales de Venezuela
(Caracas: Litografı́a Tecnocolor, 1964).
Weddle, Robert S., Wilderness Manhunt:
The Spanish Search for La Salle (Austin,
TX: University of Texas Press, 1973).

GREGGE, THOMAS
(fl. 1659)
English privateer mentioned in the jour-
nal of Colonel Edward D’Oyley, Gover-
nor of Jamaica, as having been issued
a ‘‘let-pass’’ for his ship Aime [sic;
Aim
ee?] on September 28, 1659 (O.S.).
A French soldier igniting a hand-grenade,
as shown in the 1686 edition of Collom-
Reference bon’s Art militaire français pour
l’infanterie. (Author’s Collection)
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK: heard three-quarters of a mile away on
Clarendon Press, 1975). San Juan de Ul
ua Island, and caused the
bastion to surrender without a struggle.

GRENADE See also

One of the favorite assault weapons
Grenade (Volume 2).
used by 17th-century pirates.
Oftentimes buccaneers found them-
selves outnumbered, so had to rely on sur-
Reference
prise, mobility, and superior firepower to
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The Great
gain their objectives. Not wishing to be Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor, Ontario,
encumbered with artillery, they substi- Canada: Netherlandic Press, 1993).
tuted hand grenades to sow confusion and
panic among larger enemy concentrations.
For example, the contingent of 40 bucca-
neers which rushed the northern Caleta
GRILLO, DIEGO
Bastion of Veracruz at dawn on May 18, (fl. 1670
1673)
1683, as part of Laurens de Graaf’s and
the Sieur de Grammont’s concerted attack Mulatto corsair originally from Ha-
against that city, tossed grenades through vana, sometimes confused with Diego
its apertures before swarming onto its de los Reyes or ‘‘Diego Lucifer,’’ a
rooftop. The detonations could be plainly much earlier mulatto pirate also from

Cuba, but who operated during the
1630s and 1640s.
After the general amnesty offered to
privateers in 1671 by the new Governor of
Jamaica, Sir Thomas Lynch, Grillo was
mentioned as one (along with Humphrey
Thurston and Jelles de Lecat) who contin-
ued to act as renegades, attacking Spanish
ships and carrying them into his lair at
Tortuga Island, most likely under a French
commission. Grillo apparently com-
manded a vessel mounting 15 guns, and
succeeded in defeating three armed ships
in the Bahama Channel which had been
sent to take him, massacring all the Span-
iards of European birth that he found
among their crews. As late as October
1673, when Mateo Alonso de Huidobro
captured the brigantine of Dutch captain
Jan Lucas outside Mexico’s Laguna de
T
erminos, Grillo was still reportedly oper-
ating in the West Indies, although shortly
thereafter he was caught and hanged.
References
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Weddle, Robert S., Spanish Sea: The Gulf
of Mexico in North America Discovery,
1500
1685 (College Station, TX: Texas
A & M University Press, 1985).
GUARDACOSTAS
Privateers commissioned by Spanish-
American authorities to operate coast-
guard vessels in the West Indies.
For a long time, Spain’s officials in
the New World were restricted from issu-
ing patents in peacetime, yet when pirati-
cal raids, logwood poaching, and foreign
smuggling became too endemic during
the early 1670s, Madrid relented.
Guardacostas 163
Ironically, many of the first and most
successful guardacostas were foreign-
born mercenaries: Philip FitzGerald, who
was based at Havana before transferring
to Campeche; Jelles de Lecat, who pa-
trolled Mexico’s Laguna de T
erminos;
John Philip Beare, who served at Havana
and Puerto Rico; etc. As distinct from
the Armada de Barlovento—a royal
squadron assigned to patrol the entire
Caribbean—guardacostas were usually
authorized to operate only along specific
stretches of shoreline, and returning into
a particular port. This somewhat limited
their activities, although it also meant
that their vessels were usually heavily
manned with fresh crews.
As the Spaniards had been so often
victimized by seaborne raiders, they
took a dim view of any foreign vessels
which they encountered. Legally, they
were not even allowed to enter Spanish-
American ports, so that many honest
merchants and fishermen were way-
laid by guardacostas. Such activities
increased the animosity already being
felt against Spain in the New World. In
early August 1683, for example, Gov.
Sir Thomas Lynch of Jamaica wrote to
his superiors in London, complaining
that the Spaniards had:
… armed some small craft and or-
dered them to take all ships that
have on board any frutos de estas
Indias [‘‘fruits of these Indies’’],
whereby they make all fish that
come to net. They have committed
barbarous cruelties and injustices,
and better cannot be expected, for
they are Corsicans, Slavonians,
Greeks, mulattoes, a mongrel parcel
of thieves and rogues that rob and
murder all that come into their
power, without the least respect to
humanity or common justice.
164 Guy, Richard (fl. 1659
1664)

The guardacostas were unpaid mer- Reference

cenaries, who lived off of their takings.
Colonel Hender Molesworth, as Acting
Governor of Jamaica, has left an
unflattering portrait of one such group
operating off the southeastern coast of
Cuba in 1684:
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).

These galleys and piraguas are GUY, RICHARD

mostly manned by Greeks, but they
are of all nations, rogues culled out (fl. 1659
1664)
for the villainies that they commit.
English military officer, who thanks to
They never hail a ship; and so they
several bountiful cruises as a privateer,
can but master her, she is certain
became a prosperous Jamaican planter
prize. They lurk in the bushes
and Assemblyman.
by the shore, so that they can see
Precise details about his origins or
every passing vessel without being
early life are unknown, except that Guy
seen. When our sloops are at
apparently joined Cromwell’s ‘‘Western
anchor they set them by their com-
Design’’ expedition with a militia contin-
passes in the daytime, and steal on
gent during its layover at Barbados in
them by night with so little noise,
1655, while this force was outward-
that they are aboard before they are
bound to assault Santo Domingo and
discovered.
eventually conquer Jamaica. His rela-
tionship to other members of the Guy
Such captors often colluded with local
family on Barbados has also never been
Spanish judges as well, so as to ensure
fully established. He first came to official
that every vessel which they brought in
notice as Major Richard Guy, in com-
was condemned as a prize. The Spanish
mand of the Guanabo Vale Regiment in
Crown furthermore abetted this policy
northern Jamaica, during its post-con-
by claiming that it was prohibited for
quest fighting against die-hard Spanish
foreign vessels to carry even such items
guerrillas and their Maroon allies. After
as logwood or pieces of eight, which
the defeat of the Mexican reinforcements
they presumed could only have been
landed at Rio Nuevo in May 1658, Guy
obtained illegally from their dominions.
entered into secret negotiations with the
As a result, traders wandering too close
principal Maroon leader, Juan de Bolas,
to Spanish waters became liable to sei-
eventually persuading him to switch alle-
zure, their vessels and cargos being
giance, and help drive the last Spaniards
deemed forfeit if so much as a single
from the island.
Spanish coin or piece of dyewood were
found aboard.
Profits As a Privateer
(1659
1664)
See also
With the military campaigns in Jamai-
Guardacostas (Volume 2). ca’s interior winding down, Guy, who

evidently had some seafaring experi-
ence from his days on Barbados, sort-
ied from Port Cagway with his ship
Hopewell Adventure, armed with a
‘‘let-pass’’ issued by Governor Edward
D’Oyley dated November 24, 1659
(O.S.). Guy enjoyed considerable good
fortune during his first cruise, captur-
ing a Spanish prize in May 1660 with
14,775 pieces-of-eight on board, as
well as another rich vessel next month,
for which he paid ‘‘133 pounds, 9 oun-
ces of bullion’’ as the tenth-part of its
value into the State coffers, after its
adjudication at Port Cagway.
Guy seems to have invested at least
part of these profits into acquiring more
lands on the island, beyond his military
allotment, and which a couple of years
later he would fear losing—as an ap-
pointee left over from the failed Com-
monwealth regime—once the exiled
Stuart monarch had been welcomed back
into London and restored onto the throne
as Charles II. Indeed, one of the very last
orders issued by the sitting Jamaican
Council on July 16, 1662 (O.S.)—a few
weeks before the arrival of the island’s
first Royal Governor—included the fol-
lowing provision:
On petition of Captain [Cornelius]
Burroughs, Robert Nelson, John Cole-
bank, and Humphrey Freeman, or-
dered that they may dispose of the
plantations now in possession of Cap-
tain Rich. Guy, on certain conditions.
However, when Thomas, Lord Windsor,
disembarked less than a month later at
the newly-renamed ‘‘Port Royal’’ to
assume office in the King’s name, it
quickly became apparent that no vindic-
tive measures would be taken against
former Parliamentarians.
Guy, Richard (fl. 1659
1664) 165
In fact, when Windsor discharged
the original Cromwellian veterans with
a generous gratuity and began reorgan-
izing Jamaica’s forces into five militia
regiments, Guy was appointed as one
of six Captains in the new Third Regi-
ment (another fellow-Captain of the
Third being Henry Morgan). An
aggressive new Crown policy was also
instituted against local Spanish inter-
ests, and it seems quite likely that Guy
participated in Commodore Christopher
Myngs’ immediate strike against San-
tiago de Cuba. An undated document
from around this same time featured
Guy’s name as commander of one of
the largest privateers on the island, the
14-gun James, with a crew of 90 men.
It has also been recorded how he had
secured a new privateering commission
by early November 1662, apparently to
sortie in company with Captain Wil-
liam James’ smaller frigate American,
each commander having stood surety
for the other.
It is also assumed that Guy was one
of the many freebooters who participated
in Myngs’ next organized raid against
Campeche in February 1663, after which
these Captains dispersed to pursue their
individual interests, as Lord Windsor
had abruptly left for England, leaving a
vacuum in leadership. Guy reputedly
visited the disputed buccaneer strong-
hold of Tortuga Island (Haiti) in the
spring of 1663, and that same July
helped four other English vessels pillage
a Dutch slaver off the Cayman Islands.
Guy’s last recorded Spanish prize was
brought into Port Royal in April 1664,
two months before a new Royal Gover-
nor, Sir Thomas Modyford, reached
Jamaica from Barbados, and tried to
reverse the open-handed licensing of pri-
vateers. Within two weeks of assuming
166 Guy, Richard (fl. 1659
1664)
office, he proclaimed on June 16, 1664
(O.S.), ‘‘that for the future, all acts of
hostility against the Spaniards should
cease,’’ adding that every English priva-
teer should return into port and surrender
his commission. Guy was apparently one
of the few who actually did so, on a per-
manent basis, forsaking the sea so as to
concentrate on developing his businesses
and plantations.
Later Career (1665
1683)
Guy’s decision was viewed as a good
example by the authorities. When the
planter-dominated Jamaican Council
passed a resolution on February 22,
1666 (O.S.), enumerating a dozen rea-
sons why ‘‘it is to the interest of the
island to have letters-of-marque granted
against the Spaniard,’’ the fourth one
given was that:
It hath and will enable many to buy
slaves and settle plantations, as
[John] Harmenson, Guy, [George]
Brimacain, and many others, who
have considerable plantations.
Yet despite his growing respectability,
when Modyford submitted a census and
survey of Jamaica to London in late Sep-
tember 1670, Guy was listed as a me-
dium landowner, holding 758 acres in
Saint John’s Parish and another 270 in
Saint Catherine’s.
On January 8, 1672 (O.S.), Guy was
one of two representatives elected from
the remote Northside Parish to the
Jamaican Assembly; in May 1673, he
was reelected for Saint Anne and Saint
James’ Parish, and again in February
1674. On April 26, 1675 (O.S.), he
was presented along with Samuel Jenks
as the elected representatives for Saint
James’ Parish before the 32-member
Jamaican Assembly, although Guy him-
self could not be sworn in until two days
later, being absent on business. (He was
also not actually a freeholder of that
particular northern parish, yet was re-
elected two years later, and again in
1679.) Guy was also listed in May
1680 as one of two Justices of the
Peace for Saint Anne’s Parish.
Guy’s Hill in Saint Catherine’s
Parish still bears his name today. Seven
years after his death, his daughter Mary
on July 24, 1690 (O.S.), married the
wealthy lawyer Richard Lloyd, who
would himself be elected to the Jamai-
can Assembly, serve as Judge of its
Vice-Admiralty Court and Chief Justice,
before finally emigrating to England
and being elected to Parliament.
See also
Brimacain, George; Cagaway; D’Oyley,
Edward; Harmenson, John; James,
William; Lecat, Jelles de; Let-pass;
Maroon; Modyford, Sir Thomas; Pieces-
of-eight; Reyning, Jan Erasmus;
Windsor, Lord Thomas.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 5, 7,
9
11 (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1880
1898).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Hayton, David, et al., The History of
Parliament: The House of Commons,
1690
1715 (Cambridge University
Press, 2002).
Pawson, Michael and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
 H

Captain Beeston has orders to burn the ship and

make examples of all these obstinate thieves.
—Jamaican Governor Sir Thomas Lynch’s directive,
prior to an anti-piracy patrol, January 1672

HADSELL, CHARLES Spanish Captivity and Escape

(fl. 1660
1675) (1660
1664)
The first mention of Charles Hadsell
English master, who after three years
occurred on August 29, 1660. After tur-
spent as a Spanish captive, turned to
tling at the Cayman Islands, his pink
roving.
Prosperous out of London was captured
Apparently born about 1618, he may
by the Spanish privateer Santo Cristo de
possibly have been related to Captain
Maracaibo under Captain Juan de Soto.
Henry Hadsell, a prominent Puritan of-
Carried into Santo Domingo for adjudi-
ficer who had served as naval Commis-
cation, Hadsell was confined there until
sioner at Plymouth during the 1650s
news arrived shortly thereafter of a ces-
under Oliver Cromwell’s Common-
sation of hostilities between Spain and
wealth government, and also had exten-
England. He unsuccessfully petitioned
sive business contacts throughout
the Dominican authorities to have his
the West Indies and New England.
vessel and goods restored, before being
On the restoration of the English mon-
transferred in November 1661 to Havana
archy, Henry Hadsell emigrated to
for repatriation toward Europe. A year
New Haven, Connecticut and died there
later, local fighting flared anew when a
in 1667.

167
168 Hall, Jacob (fl. 1683
1684)
Jamaican expedition devastated Santiago
de Cuba, so that Hadsell and five other
English detainees eventually had to steal
a canoe and make their own way to Port
Royal.
In a deposition sworn on January 29,
1664 (O.S.), before Sir Charles Lyttelton,
judge of its Vice-Admiralty Court, Had-
sell recounted his misadventures at the
hands of the Spaniards, presumably with
the aim of establishing a claim for his
lost pink and goods, whose value he esti-
mated at £3,000. He then secured com-
mand of the merchant ship Lucretia,
which along with the Blue Dove of Rob-
ert Cooke, weighed for New England.
During a brief stopover in nearby Blue-
field’s Bay, though, Hadsell saw this
consort captured by the French rover
Jean Douglas. Upon reaching Boston
with Lucretia in late July 1664, Hadsell
testified in court as to the circumstances
of its seizure.
Raider and Smuggler
(1665
1675)
Next year, he returned to Jamaica and
joined the buccaneer flotilla of Edward
Mansfield in its raids against the Span-
iards. Hadsell served as an officer dur-
ing Mansfield’s successful and daring
night-attack in May 1666, against the
island of Providence (or Santa Cata-
lina), during which a mere 200 bucca-
neers captured its fort and Spanish
Governor. Installed as Captain, Hadsell
was left behind with 35 men to hold
the island, while Mansfield sailed to
the mainland with his captives, who
had surrendered on condition that they
would be granted safe-conduct.
Hadsell may have also been the
‘‘Captain Hansel’’ who behaved so cou-
rageously at the taking of Portobelo two
years later, that, after Henry Morgan’s
flagship exploded accidentally off ^Ile a
Vache early in 1669, a detachment of
some 400 men in four ships chose Had-
sell to be their ‘‘Admiral,’’ and
attempted a descent on the town of
Cuman
a in eastern Venezuela. This
attack was a complete failure, the pirates
being driven off ‘‘with great loss and in
great confusion.’’ When the defeated
men arrived back at Jamaica, they found
the rest of Morgan’s men had returned
before them, who ‘‘ceased not to mock
and jeer at them for their ill success at
Comana,’’ adding: ‘‘Let us see what
money you brought from Comana, and if
it be as good silver as that which we
bring from Maracaibo.’’
Hadsell subsequently retired from
privateering, instead becoming active
in smuggling logwood out of the Bay
of Campeche in Mexico. He was last
recorded as arriving at Port Royal in
August 1675, in command of a small
ketch, aboard which William Dampier
would ship out as a hand.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1880).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
HALL, JACOB
(fl. 1683
1684)
English freebooter who took part in the
French peacetime raid against Veracruz.
Early in 1683, a Dutch rover named
Nikolaas Van Hoorn arrived at Saint-

Domingue and obtained a letter of re-
prisal from the French Gov. Jacques
Nepveu, Sieur de Pouançay, because the
Spaniards had impounded a consignment
of slaves which Van Hoorn had deliv-
ered at Santo Domingo. Reinforced with
a heavy contingent of flibustiers com-
manded by the ‘‘Chevalier’’ de Gram-
mont and Jan Willems, Van Hoorn then
set sail into the Bay of Honduras to
recruit further help from such pirate
chieftains as Laurens de Graaf and
Michiel Andrieszoon. Together, they
decided to assault the Mexican port of
Veracruz, but felt that they needed still
more men.
Consequently, the raiders visited Gua-
naja Island and paused briefly off Yuca-
tan’s Cape Catoche to gather greater
strength, at which point Hall and several
other freebooter ships joined the expedi-
tion. The pirate fleet then descended on
the unsuspecting city of Veracruz on the
night of May 17
18, 1683. Its Spanish
inhabitants were surprised in their beds
and the city occupied for four days by
the pirates, during which time it was
ruthlessly ransacked. The freebooters
withdrew back around the Yucatan Pen-
insula, although Hall appears to have
been one of the few to stand away
directly toward the Strait of Florida and
Carolina, rather than the rendezvous at
Isla Mujeres.
When word of this assault reached
Port Royal in early August 1683, Gov.
Sir Thomas Lynch of Jamaica wrote to
his superiors in London, saying that
among the pirate commanders were
‘‘no English, except one [George]
Spurre, and Jacob Hall in a small brig
from Carolina.’’ He later learned that
the latter had proceeded to Carolina:
… where he is free, as all such are;
and therefore call it Puerto Franco
[Spanish for ‘‘free port’’]. The
Hamlin, Jean (fl. 1682
1684) 169
colonists are now full of pirates’
money, and from Boston I hear that
the privateers have brought in
£80,000.
However, the Earl of Craven replied on
May 27, 1684 (O.S.):
On inquiry I learn that one Jacob
Hall did touch there [Carolina] to
wood and water on his way from
Veracruz, but he did not belong to
the place, and had no inhabitants of
Carolina with him. After a very few
days’ stay, he sailed for Virginia.
The Earl added that Hall had served
under Van Hoorn’s French commission,
it not then being known in Carolina that
English privateers were forbidden from
serving under foreign princes, which
‘‘accounts, I conceive, for his not being
secured.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
HAMLIN, JEAN
(fl. 1682
1684)
French pirate who made a 10-month
rampage with his frigate Trompeuse or
‘‘Trickster.’’
First Cruise (1682
1683)
The Trompeuse was a 30-gun French
royal frigate hired for a peacetime
commercial venture by Pierre LePain,
who sailed it into Port Royal (Jamaica)
in January 1682, and decided to
170 Hamlin, Jean (fl. 1682
1684)
remain. Consequently, he prepared the
frigate for return to Europe that
autumn, by loading it with a valuable
consignment of merchandise for Ham-
burg, then dispatching it into the Bay
of Honduras for an additional cargo of
logwood. The ship was surprised off
the Central American coast by two
sloops carrying a band of 120 ‘‘desper-
ate rogues,’’ most of them French, who
commandeered it as their flagship.
They began making captures with
Trompeuse and after seven or eight Eng-
lish losses, Gov. Sir Thomas Lynch of
Jamaica commissioned the privateer
Captain George Johnson to sortie in late
October 1682 to recapture the frigate,
equipping him for this purpose with ‘‘a
ship of 35 or 40 guns and 180 men.’’ Off
Cape Tiburon, Johnson came on an Eng-
lish sloop from Antigua and Tobago that
had been recently robbed by the pirates,
from whose survivors it was learned that
they were talking ‘‘of going to Mona to
intercept Irish and New England ves-
sels.’’ Johnson therefore hurried toward
this Passage, furthermore believing the
Trompeuse to be ‘‘in bad condition and
ready to sink, for they cannot get vict-
uals to enable them to go and careen.’’
Yet this intelligence proved faulty,
for the pirates’ commander Hamlin was
actually still operating around ^Ile a
Vache, the island off the southwestern
tip of French Hispaniola, which Johnson
bypassed. On the morning of January 25,
1683, while this first English pursuer
was searching as far eastward as Puerto
Rico, Trompeuse was almost caught at
anchor when another Jamaican pirate-
hunter, Captain Matthew Tennant of
HMS Guernsey, put into ‘‘Jaqueene’’
(Jacmel, Haiti?). However, the breeze
dying away to a calm, Tennant could not
get near Hamlin ‘‘for want of oars,’’ and
when a wind finally did spring up, it
blew into such a gale that the pirates eas-
ily eluded him, for the Trompeuse could
sail ‘‘three feet to his one.’’
Governor Lynch therefore began
commissioning a growing number of pri-
vateers to bring in Hamlin, including
such experienced men as John Coxon
and Thomas Paine; yet despite their best
efforts, vessels continued to be looted.
The most valuable of 18 ships taken was
the Royal African Company slaver
Thomas and William, of between 20 to
30 guns commanded by Richard North,
which had been traveling from Barbados
toward Jamaica when its crew:
… spied a ship standing towards us,
which coming up ordered Captain
North to strike, hoist out his boat
and come aboard, at the same time
firing a volley of small shot and the
great guns. North answered the fire
but was perplexed, some of the crew
saying that this was an English frig-
ate firing to make him strike his top-
sail yard. Some of the crew hauled
down the colors, while others pres-
ently rehoisted them.
Amid the confusion, North sent over in a
boat his mate, who was clapped into the
hold while this bombardment continued,
until North finally surrendered. Ham-
lin’s pirates thereupon manned the prize,
transferred their prisoners to Trompeuse,
and sailed into a quiet bay on the coast
where they tortured their principal cap-
tives by ‘‘squeezing their thumbs and
privy members in vices, hanging them
up in the brails by their hands tied
behind them; and so found out what
riches they carried.’’
Hamlin looted the Thomas and Wil-
liam of 65 pounds of gold and other

valuable items, including slaves and
skilled seamen, before releasing the
vessel. He then took a small pink from
New England, into which some of
his men transferred, and quit Saint-
Domingue before any more English
men-of-war could find him. Sailing to
Saint Thomas in the Danish Virgin
Islands, he captured a Jamaican sloop
and spoke with a French convoy just
outside its harbor, before sending a
message ashore inquiring whether
Trompeuse might enter. The Governor
was the notorious Adolf Esmit, who
readily acceded to the pirate’s request
and sent out refreshments. Hamlin ‘‘in
return sent him silks and satins, and
arranged with him a private signal.’’
The pirates tallowed their ship and
took on provisions, before setting out
once again with a new pilot for West
Africa. They arrived off Sierra Leone in
May 1683, and began working their way
down its coast, ‘‘generally anchoring at
night.’’ They took a Dutch trader,
exchanging its cargo ashore for gold,
then turning the vessel itself into a fire-
ship. The Trompeuse was now masquer-
ading as a Royal Navy man-of-war, fly-
ing ‘‘the King’s Jack and pendant,’’ so
the next day was able to sail right in on
an anchored vessel, which struck its col-
ors in salute. Hamlin returned the greet-
ing, but after anchoring athwart its bows,
let fly with a full volley and broadside.
The stranger cut its cable and attempted
to escape, yet was soon captured and dis-
covered to be a 20-gun Flushinger ‘‘with
70 pounds of gold on board and abun-
dance of liquor.’’ Hamlin joyfully made
it his consort.
Next, the English vessel Sevenoaks
was sunk, and three ships and a pink
were ransacked in quick succession
near Cape Coast castle (off present-day
Hamlin, Jean (fl. 1682
1684) 171
Ghana). Hamlin then laid in a course
for Accra, but overshot and reached
Ouidah instead, robbing and sinking
some coastal boats. Espying three
Royal African Company ships anch-
ored close inshore, he employed the
same ruse as before, approaching under
Royal Navy colors, then loosing a
broadside. His pirates captured and tor-
tured the crew of the first vessel,
shooting the gunner dead, and flogging
the rest to make them confess where
their gold was hidden. The second was
found abandoned, while the third delib-
erately cut its cable and wrecked on
shore. Hamlin thereupon refitted
his two craft and proceeded to ‘‘Cape
Lopus,’’ where within a few days
he intercepted a large 20-gun Dutch
West Indiaman; and according to an
eyewitness:
She surrendered without resistance,
but had little on board but slaves.
The pirates did not torture the
Dutch, favoring them more than the
English.
The raiders then landed near Cape St.
John’s to divide their booty and part
company. The spoils came to around
‘‘30 pound weight of gold a man,’’ and
the jubilant rovers redistributed them-
selves on the two ships according to in-
clination. Hamlin remained in command
of the Trompeuse with 120 men; an
anonymous Englishman from Jamaica
became captain of another 70 aboard the
consort.
While rounding Cape Lopus again
together in early June 1683, the latter
boarded the Royal African Company
ship Eaglet one evening, obtaining still
more plunder when they ‘‘stretched [its
Captain John] Waffe and his officers,
172 Hamlin, Jean (fl. 1682
1684)
and put screws on their thumbs to
make them confess what gold they
had.’’ Having robbed the Eaglet, the
pirates then warned Waffe to make
shift during the night, lest Hamlin
‘‘take all he had.’’ Determined to dis-
appear back into civilian life, the
rovers refused to reveal their names,
‘‘and punished one of Waffe’s sailor
who asked the pirate captain’s name.’’
(He had apparently adopted the pseu-
donym ‘‘Morgan.’’)
Hamlin chose to sail Trompeuse
back across the Atlantic to Dominica,
where at least 46 of his men voluntar-
ily left him, so that eventually only 16
white men and 22 black slaves
remained aboard when he set out for
Saint Thomas. The blacks rose against
the whites during this crossing, ‘‘but
were beaten back with loss of three
killed.’’ On August 6, 1683, Trompeuse
appeared before Saint Thomas, ‘‘made
the private signal, and was admitted.’’
Hamlin’s booty was stored in the har-
bor castle for safekeeping, and a scant
two days later HMS Francis of Captain
Charles Carlile appeared off the harbor
mouth at three o’clock in the after-
noon, sealing the pirate vessel’s doom.
Although still disguised as a Royal
Navy warship ‘‘with white color flying,
jack, ensign, and pendant,’’ Carlile was
undeceived. When Governor Esmit
showed himself unwilling to cooperate
against Hamlin, the English officer
sent in two boats that following night,
which boarded Trompeuse while the
corsair captain and his men fled
ashore, then set it alight. The frigate
exploded after the victorious English
withdrew; Hamlin and half-a-dozen
companions reputedly escaping from
the harbor castle in an armed boat pro-
vided by Esmit.
Second Cruise (1683
1684)
Within weeks, reports began reaching
the English authorities at Nevis that
Hamlin had bought a sloop from Esmit,
and abandoned the Danish Virgin
Islands. ‘‘It is thought that he is gone to
Petit-Go^ave,’’ Gov. Sir William Staple-
ton of the Leeward Islands wrote,
‘‘where there are enough of that trade
[i.e., piracy] to protect him, and from
thence to Campeche to get some good
ship.’’ It was also known that several of
Hamlin’s followers had remained on
Saint Thomas; John Poynting, master of
an English sloop who visited several
times, claimed to have met them. But of
Hamlin nothing more was heard for sev-
eral months, until he made a spectacular
reappearance, for once again English
intelligence was faulty.
On April 3, 1684, the sloop Three Sis-
ters of Captain John Thomas lay at Tor-
tola, having been dismasted and forced
back after attempting to reach St. Kitts.
‘‘While he lay at anchor, a three-master
vessel came in under a commander sup-
posed to be Hamlin, who boarded the
sloop, plundered it and threatened to kill
[Thomas], telling the Governor of Tor-
tola he would cut him into meat for the
pot.’’ The French corsair, after his Trom-
peuse had been burnt at anchor, had
manned a Dutch frigate lying in the
roads of Saint Thomas, and in Septem-
ber 1683 set out on a cruise to Brazil.
There he took several vessels, including
a large Portuguese prize which he sailed
back to Cayenne. Once more, some of
his people left him there, before Hamlin
continued to Tortola with his prize,
chancing on the Three Sisters. The
raiders remained in possession of the
sloop for a day and a night, then left it in
the roads when Hamlin sailed away to
 Hamlyn or Hamlin, William (fl. 1674
1676)
Saint Thomas. He and the Portuguese
ship arrived shortly thereafter, being
welcomed by Esmit. Meanwhile, the
Three Sisters’ captain reclaimed his
sloop, repaired its mast, and sailed to
Nevis to report the pirate chieftain’s
return into Caribbean waters by the end
of that month.
Within two more months, Governor
Lynch of Jamaica was recording a some-
what garbled version of this report:
Hamlin, captain of La Trompeuse,
got into a ship of 36 guns on the
coast of the Main last month [i.e.,
May 1684], with 60 of his old crew
and as many new men. They call
themselves pirates and their ship La
Nouvelle Trompeuse, and talk of
their old station at Isle des Vaches
[^Ile-a-Vache]. I have consequently
sent to apprise the French Governor
[of Saint-Domingue] and warn our
merchantmen.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
HAMLYN OR HAMLIN,
WILLIAM (fl. 1674
1676)
Adventurer originally born around
1651 in Plymouth, England, who emi-
grated to Antigua and, in December
1674, was pressed with his sloop Betty
by the Deputy-Governor of that island,
Colonel Philip Warner, to carry dis-
patches to nearby Nevis.
173
On his return, Hamlyn had 34 troops
placed aboard Betty by Colonel Warner,
and was ordered to accompany him with
another two ships and 300 men to the
island of Dominica, where they arrived
on Christmas Day 1674 (O.S.). There,
the Colonel met his illegitimate half-
breed brother Thomas Warner, head of
one of the local tribes, and asked him to
assist in a retaliatory strike against some
Indians who had supposedly raided Anti-
gua. This was merely a ruse, though.
Once Thomas’ followers had assembled,
the Colonel ‘‘made them very drunk
with rum, gave a signal,’’ and had them
slaughtered, presumably to eradicate all
traces of his unwanted sibling and
nephews.
To his credit, Hamlyn attempted to
intervene, and even ‘‘took an Indian
boy in his arms to preserve him, but
the child was wounded in his arms and
afterwards killed.’’ On the dispersal of
this ruthless expedition, Hamlyn pro-
ceeded to Barbados and laid a deposi-
tion before Gov. Sir Jonathan Atkins,
who was outraged at Warner’s action.
Aside from its inhumanity, it had cost
the English the loyalty of many native
islanders, ‘‘whose friendship was so
necessary in time of war, to the great
damage of the French.’’
Atkins judged Hamlyn to be ‘‘a seri-
ous and intelligent man of his quality,’’
and duly ordered Warner deposed,
arrested, and forwarded to the Tower of
London in chains to stand trial. Once
these proceedings began, however, a lack
of material witnesses hampered the pros-
ecution, while the Colonel portrayed his
ambush of Dominica’s natives as a legit-
imate tactic of war, and cast aspersions
on the absent Hamlyn. Warner was
therefore acquitted in September 1675
and restored to his offices, having—in
174 Handley, Thomas (fl. 1684)
his own view—‘‘proved Hamlin a per-
jured rogue.’’ This verdict was reinforced
by a report subsequently received from
Atkins’ chief rival, Governor Stapleton
of the Leeward Isles, who justified
Warner’s use of such a ‘‘stratagem to
destroy a skulking heathen enemy,’’ and
stigmatizing Hamlyn as ‘‘a fellow of an
evil life [who] dare not return to Plym-
outh, and has since run away to Jamaica,
and is now master in a Dutch privateer
[England’s recent enemy], and has
chased and fired on an English boat.’’
Stapleton’s resentment against Ham-
lyn led him to file a complaint with
the Governor of Curaçao, accusing the
young renegade of ‘‘stealing 30 odd
Negroes from the English part of St.
Christopher’s, which he did twice, and
other felonious acts.’’ As Hamlyn had
allegedly committed these depredations
while holding a Dutch privateering
commission from Curaçao—but only
to operate against the French—Staple-
ton was delighted to learn in late No-
vember 1676 that he had been ‘‘sent to
Holland in irons’’ to be punished.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
HANDLEY, THOMAS
(fl. 1684)
English privateer commissioned by
Gov. Robert Lilburne in late March
1684, ‘‘for defence of the Bahama
Islands’’ with his frigate Resolution.
This measure was adopted two
months after the devastating Spanish
assault against Charles Town (New
Providence), capital of that colony, and
proved entirely in vain, for the Spaniards
shortly afterward drove the English out
of the archipelago by a summer-long se-
ries of raids.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
HARDUE OR HERDUE,
CAPTAIN (fl. 1663)
Privateer listed in an English document
of 1663 as commanding a 4-gun frigate
(originally a Spanish prize) with a
crew of 40 men, and holding a Jamai-
can commission. Perhaps his name is
misspelled, and should instead be
‘‘Hardee’’ or ‘‘Hardy.’’
References
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
HARMENSON, JOHN
(fl. 1665
1667)
English privateer who commanded the
12-gun Saint John in Colonel Edward
Morgan’s expedition against Dutch
Sint Eustatius and Saba, during the
Second Anglo-Dutch War.

This force departed Jamaica in two
divisions, five sail putting out from
Port Royal on April 5, 1665, and Mor-
gan himself following with another
four on April 28th. There were 650
men in all, described in a letter by
Gov. Sir Thomas Modyford as:
…chiefly reformed privateers, scarce
a planter amongst them, being reso-
lute fellows and well armed with
fusils [Spanish word for muskets]
and pistols.
The Crown official was particularly
pleased that they would be serving ‘‘at
the old rate of no purchase, no pay, and
it will cost the King nothing consider-
able, some powder and mortar pieces.’’
Their landing was successfully made,
yet the Colonel, ‘‘being a corpulent
man,’’ died from heat exertion during
the chase, so that his expedition dis-
banded shortly thereafter.
Two years later, Harman led his
own expedition from Jamaica to recon-
quer the Guianas from the Dutch, not
realizing that hostilities had already
ceased back in Europe, with these terri-
tories being ceded to The Netherlands
under provisions of the Treaty of
Breda. Harman’s squadron fell first on
Cayenne, sacking it, then assaulted
Suriname. Its main defensive work of
Fort Zeelandia was taken after a sav-
age battle, and the entire colony deci-
mated, with most of its mills being
destroyed. It was only then that the
English learned of the prevailing
peace, and while they submitted to its
terms, much pressure was brought to
bear on former English colonists
remaining in Suriname to transfer to
Jamaica. Some resisted, and it was not
until the last group of 500 was shipped
Harris, Peter (fl. 1671
1680) 175
off under Major James Banister that
tranquility was fully restored.
References
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert
D., Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press,
1988).
HARRIS, PETER
(fl. 1671
1680)
English privateer who joined John
Coxon’s pioneering expedition into the
South Sea.
In late November 1679, Governor
Lord Carlisle of Jamaica heard ‘‘of the
capture of a valuable ship of 28 guns,
belonging to the United Provinces, by
one Peter Harris, a privateer ever since
the taking of Panama [by Henry Morgan
more than eight years previously].’’
Doubtless, Harris had been operating
since with a variety of French commis-
sions, that nation having been at war
against both Holland and Spain through-
out this interval; yet these hostilities
were at last winding down, and it was
furthermore now against Jamaican law
for privateers to serve under foreign col-
ors. The Governor therefore dispatched
the 32-gun HMS Success to cruise the
south cays of Cuba for Harris—the news
176 Harris, Peter (fl. 1671
1680)
of his latest depredation being confirmed
a few days after this Royal Navy frig-
ate’s departure, ‘‘by the arrival of eleven
men belonging to the Dutch ship in their
long boat.’’
At first the pursuit went well, Captain
Thomas Johnson of Success intercepting
the brigantine of another renegade, Rich-
ard Sawkins, and sending it into Port
Royal for adjudication. However, on
sighting Harris off the Cuban coast in
the first days of December 1679, the
frigate blundered into shoal waters and
tore its bottom out on a sand bank, Suc-
cess being ‘‘irrecoverably lost,’’ while
Harris made good his escape.
The rover was next heard from in
early March 1680, careening his 150-
ton prize at Diego’s Point on Isla
Solarte, within the maze of islands
known as Bocas del Toro at the north-
western extremity of the present-day
A sea-battle against corsairs, by the Dutch painter Willem van de Velde. (Jupiterimages)
Panamanian Republic. While lying
there, Harris had met the barco luengo
of Sawkins, who had also eluded the
authorities from Jamaica, and was then
further joined by Coxon’s flotilla fresh
from its sack of Portobelo. The raiders
refitted their vessels, then suggested
returning to Golden Island to avail
themselves of their newfound friend-
ship with the local Indians, ‘‘to travel
overland to Panama’’ and attack the
Spaniards on their vulnerable Pacific
flank. Harris agreed to join the expedi-
tion with his 107 men, and on April
2nd the freebooters weighed.
Pacific Incursion (1680)
Coxon, Harris, Sawkins, Robert Allison,
Edmond Cooke, Thomas Magott, and
Bartholomew Sharpe all anchored their

ships close inshore at Golden Island, out
of sight in a small cove. An anchor
watch was left aboard each, with orders
to rally to Coxon’s and Harris’
ships—the two largest—if any attack
should occur. At six o’clock on Monday
morning, April 15, 1680, 332 buccaneers
went ashore and obtained guides to cross
the Isthmus. Ten days later, they came
on the Spanish stockade of Santa Marı́a
at the confluence of the Chucunaque and
Tuira Rivers. This fort had no artillery,
so at dawn Sawkins led a rush of bucca-
neers that penetrated the palisades. Sev-
enty of the 200 Spanish defenders were
killed outright, the rest being massacred
later by the Indians. Flush with their vic-
tory, the buccaneers determined to press
on into the Pacific, although it was noted
‘‘our general, Captain Coxon, seemed
unwilling, but with much persuasion
went.’’
Henceforth, other captains began to
assume the lead, most particularly Saw-
kins, Harris, and Sharpe. Reaching the
Pacific, the pirates traveled westward
along the coast in their river boats, until
they captured an anchored Spanish bark
one night, which Sharpe took command
of with 135 men. Next night, Harris
came on a second:
… in his canoe, and took [it]. She
had on board her about 20 armed
men. They fought about a quarter of
an hour, wounded one of our men.
Soon, the buccaneers had assembled
a small flotilla, with which they bore
down on Panama. The Spaniards sent
out a hastily-mustered force to do bat-
tle, and the raiders engaged it in a
three-hour fight, during which: ‘‘Brave,
valiant Captain Peter Harris was shot
in his canoe through both his legs,
Harris, Peter (fl. 1684
1686) 177
boarding of a great ship.’’ The day
ended with all the Spanish vessels
taken, but Harris was grievously
injured, being transferred aboard the
400-ton Santı´sima Trinidad along with
the other wounded to be tended, as it
now became the buccaneer flagship.
The surgeons removed one of his legs,
but the stump became ‘‘fester’d, so that
it pleased God he died.’’
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1989).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 10
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1896).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
‘‘A Pirate at Port Royal in 1679,’’ The
Mariner’s Mirror, Vol. LVII (1971), pp.
303
305.
Webster, John C., Cornelis Steenwyck:
Dutch Governor of Acadie (Ottawa:
Canadian Historical Association, 1929).
HARRIS, PETER
(fl. 1684
1686)
Nephew of the foregoing, who also led
a buccaneer incursion into the South
Sea.
Toward the end of June 1684, Harris
arrived at Golden Island from the Mos-
quito Coast with 99 men aboard a bark
and two sloops, which he scuttled
178 Harris, Peter (fl. 1684
1686)
before heading inland to attack the
Spaniards. In alliance with 300 Darien
Indians, he fell on the Santa Marı́a
stockade at the confluence of the Chu-
cunaque and Tuira Rivers one dawn,
massacring the defenders and sharing
about 24 ounces of gold dust per man
among his buccaneers, leaving ‘‘the
other gross plunder to the Indians.’’
More importantly, Harris seized a bark
armed with four pedreros or ‘‘swivel
guns,’’ as well as eight large canoes,
which he and his men used to reach
the Pacific Ocean. Off that coast, they
took a trading bark laden with provi-
sions and wine, which they then sailed
to Isla del Rey and snapped up some
pearling vessels. While prowling off
Punta Chame just south of Panama
City, a flotilla of five Spanish barks
suddenly sortied, killing five of Harris’
men in an all-day fight, but eventually
retiring in defeat.
The buccaneers veered westward for
the Gulf of Nicoya in present-day Costa
Rica, intending to secure a larger craft
and knowing that this was ‘‘a place
where the Spaniards built their ships.’’
Within sight of that coast, they came on
a ship at anchor on August 3rd, which
proved to be Charles Swan’s Cygnet of
16 guns, 150 tons, but a relatively small
and unhappy crew. This captain had
originally entered the South Sea as
a merchant trader, not a raider, but
meeting with continual rebuffs from
the Spaniards, his crew now wished to
go a-roving. Confronted with Harris’
much more numerous freebooters, Swan
finally acceded, or else he would have
been left with ‘‘no one to sail the ship.’’
Nonetheless, he insisted on exchanging
part of his cargo for some of the bucca-
neers’ Santa Marı́a gold, seeing that
Cygnet’s owners receive a share in any
prize money. Harris grudgingly agreed,
after which all but one of his prize barks
was set adrift, and the rovers sailed to-
gether to rendezvous with John Cooke’s
36-gun Bachelor’s Delight off Isla de
Plata (Ecuador). Harris and Swan arrived
there on October 2nd, to discover that
Cooke had died and been succeeded by
Edward Davis, who now assumed over-
all command over the flotilla. Between
them, they mustered close to 200 men,
and on October 20th sailed for the South
American mainland.
Paita was assaulted on the morning
of November 3, 1684, but nothing
much of value was found before the
town was put to the torch. The Lobos
Islands were visited next, followed by
an abortive raid against Guayaquil in
early December, which ended when the
pirates’ captive Indian guide escaped
as they were approaching overland. A
few small prizes were taken off that
coast, but Harris and the other rovers
realized that they were too weak for
greater enterprises, so headed north-
ward for Panama in hopes of meeting
other buccaneers crossing the Isthmus.
At the end of December, they captured
an aviso off Gallo Island bound for
Callao, which revealed that the annual
plate fleet had arrived at Portobelo on
November 28th, and the Peruvian sil-
ver ships would soon meet it. The buc-
caneers therefore established a
blockade south of Panama in January
1685, where they were joined over the
next few months by fresh contingents
under Capts. François Grogniet, Fran-
cis Townley, Jean Rose, Pierre le Pic-
ard, and a bark bearing about a dozen
Englishmen separated from William
Knight’s expedition.
Harris and his men were transferred
into this latter vessel, and thus he was

in command of it when a fleet of six
Spanish men-of-war suddenly emerged
from a morning shower off Pacheca
Island on June 7, 1685, catching the
pirates unawares. An indecisive
engagement ensued, after which the
buccaneer forces fell out among them-
selves and separated. Harris attached
himself to Davis, and in 1686 was still
serving as his lieutenant off the South
American coast.
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1989).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
HARRIS, THOMAS
(fl. 1670
1671)
English buccaneer who participated in
raids on Colombia, Nicaragua, and
Panama.
In the summer of 1670, Harris
served along with Captain Ludbury
under the senior rover Laurens Prins,
sailing on a peacetime expedition
against the Spanish Main. In a singu-
larly bold stroke, the flotilla headed up
the Magdalena River in present-day
Colombia, attempting to reach the
inland town of Momp
os, 150 miles
from the sea. This daring attempt was
foiled by a fort which had recently
been erected on an island in that river,
Harris, Thomas (fl. 1670
1671) 179
so the trio was obliged to venture west-
ward in August to the Mosquito Coast,
hoping to find better fortune there.
Despite the fort which had also been
installed on that river after Henry Mor-
gan’s raid five years previously, Prins
and his cohorts ascended the San Juan
River, stole across the Lago de Nicara-
gua, and with only 170 men surprised
the city of Granada. According to a
Spanish account, they angrily ‘‘made
havoc and a thousand destructions,’’
because the city had been so recently
victimized that their plunder only came
to £20 per man. A few weeks later,
they were back in Port Royal, William
Beeston noting in his journal for Octo-
ber 19, 1670 (O.S.): ‘‘Arrived the ships
that had taken Grenada [sic], who were
Captains Prince, Harris, and Ludbury.’’
Jamaica’s Gov. Sir Thomas Modyford
mildly reproved the trio for attacking
Spaniards without commissions, but
thought it prudent not ‘‘to press the
matter too far in this juncture.’’
Instead, he ordered them to join
Morgan’s own expedition, which was
gathering off ^Ile-a-Vache to attack
Panama, ‘‘which they were very ready
to do.’’ Harris incorporated his ship
Mary into Morgan’s fleet late that
same year, and evidently participated
in the subsequent captures of Providen-
cia Island and Chagres, as well as the
epic march overland through Isthmian
jungles in January 1671. The city was
quickly subdued and looted over the
next four weeks, producing a disap-
pointingly small booty, because much
of its wealth had been evacuated prior
to the assault. He then returned to Port
Royal in April 1671, along with Mor-
gan aboard Joseph Bradley’s May-
flower, Prins’ Pearl, and John Morris’
Dolphin.
180 Henley, Thomas (fl. 1683
1685)
References
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
HAWKINS, CAPTAIN
A 17th-century Barbados pirate notori-
ous for his cruelty, which led to his
fighting a duel against one of his crew,
‘‘Red Legs’’ Greaves, who defeated him
and was elected captain in his stead.
Reference
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
HENLEY, THOMAS
(fl. 1683
1685)
English privateer who in 1683 sailed
from Boston ‘‘bound for the Rack,’’
and afterward went to the Red Sea,
where he allegedly plundered Arab and
Malabar ships.
Two years later, he was operating
with a commission from Gov. Robert
Lilburne of the Bahamas, and that
same summer appeared before Ber-
muda with a prize, when the new Gov.
Richard Cony was struggling to impose
royal rule over its recalcitrant colo-
nists. On June 4, 1685 (O.S.), Cony
reported to London:
Captain Henley, a privateer, lately
arrived here in a Dutch ship and as is
reported, landed £3,000 or £4,000
worth of Dutch goods. He was piloted
in by one Zachariah Burrows, but the
country [i.e., inhabitants] would not
permit his ship to come under my
command. I laid hold of Henley, how-
ever, and imprisoned him; but the
country forced me to set him at lib-
erty. My very Council and captains of
militia, though all protesting that they
would bring him under my command,
yet would not, nor would the sheriff
lay his broad arrow [i.e., the symbol
made by his royal stamp] on the
goods he landed, that account might
be given to the King in case the
Dutch should redemand them.
On May 28th (O.S.), while all of this
was transpiring, one Christopher Smith
also attested before the Governor: ‘‘That
it was commonly reported at the Bahama
Islands in April that Thomas Henley and
Christopher Goffe had been proclaimed
pirates at Jamaica.’’ Confirmation soon
followed, specifying that Henley had
been proclaimed at Jamaica, while Goffe
at New England. The hard-pressed offi-
cial was unable to detain either one, and
concluded his account with the words:
It is the intention of the people to
make this island a pirates’ refuge. I
expect two more pirates by what
Henley said, and daily dread the
capture or plunder of the country.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899).
 Huidobro, Mateo Alonso de (fl. 1663
1683)
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
HISPANIOLA
English name for the Antillean island
today shared between the Dominican
Republic and Haiti.
Christopher Columbus originally
gave this island its name, visiting on
his first trans-Atlantic voyage. Having
encountered exotic new flora and fauna
during his passage through the Baha-
mas and along eastern Cuba, the
explorer found the rugged coastline of
this next island reassuring. According
to his son, seeing that it was:
… very large, and that its fields and
trees are like those of Spain and that
in a net that they had made the crew
caught many fish like those of
Spain—that is to say sole, skate,
salmon, shad, dories, gilthead, conger,
sardines, and crabs—the Admiral
decided to give the island a named
related to that of Spain; and so on
Sunday 9 December he called it Isla
Espa~ nola [literally, ‘‘Spanish Island’’].
With the passage of time, the Spaniards
came to shorten this term into plain
Espa~nola when in conversation, from
which it passed into the English lan-
guage in its phonetic equivalent of
‘‘Hispaniola.’’
HOCES, ESTEBAN DE
(fl. 1665
1669)
Spanish guardacosta who operated out
of La Guaira, the port of Caracas.
181
In conjunction with Captain Juan
Gonz
alez de Perales, De Hoces was
designated to patrol the Spanish Main
by the Governor and Captain-General
of Venezuela, Admiral F
elix Garci-
Gonz
alez de Le
on, Knight of the Order
of Santiago. Their armadillas made
numerous captures, including the pirate
ship Caballero Romano [sic?].
Reference
Sucre, Luis Alberto, Gobernadores y
capitanes generales de Venezuela
(Caracas: Litografı́a Tecnocolor, 1964).
HUIDOBRO, MATEO
ALONSO DE
(fl. 1663
1683)
Spanish officer who spent many years
fighting pirates in the Caribbean.
Huidobro (sometimes spelled Huydo-
bro) was already a veteran of more than
10 years’ service, when he was commis-
sioned on May 29, 1657, by the Mexi-
can Viceroy Francisco Fern
andez de la
Cueva y Enrı́quez, Duque de Alburquer-
que, as Captain of one of the new Span-
ish infantry companies being raised to
fight the English invaders of Jamaica.
Huidobro held this rank over the next 20
months, during which he accompanied
the Tercio Mexicano or ‘‘Mexican Regi-
ment’’ in its disastrous landing at Rio
Nuevo in May 1658, and made at least
two voyages bringing supplies across to
its survivors from Santiago de Cuba.
His company was then reformed, and he
was granted leave on January 4, 1659,
to travel home to Spain.
Four years later, Huidobro’s name
was listed as having lent 2,000 pesos to
182 Huidobro, Mateo Alonso de (fl. 1663
1683)
the Spanish Crown in 1663 toward the
construction of four new galleons at Am-
sterdam, destined to reconstitute the
West Indian squadron known as the
Armada de Barlovento or ‘‘Windward
Fleet.’’ As a reward for this contribution,
Huidobro was promised command of the
new 572-ton flagship San Felipe, and
early the next year was in Malaga
recruiting men for its crew. On August
27, 1664, he was officially appointed as
a royal Captain of Marines, and assumed
command of San Felipe by November
12th; yet the Armada did not actually
sail for the New World until July 1667,
nor did its flagship remain in the Carib-
bean any more than a few months before
being ordered back to Spain. Conse-
quently, De Huidobro transferred to the
newly-acquired Armada frigate Nuestra
Se~nora de los Remedios, so he could
remain in the West Indies.
Cruises (1668
1669)
While lying at Havana in the autumn of
1668, word was received of an English
attack against Trinidad (Cuba). De Hui-
dobro was dispatched by Admiral Alonso
de Campos to advise the Mexican Vice-
roy and request reinforcements. Exiting
Havana in September 1668 with his own
frigate and the 50-ton fleet auxiliary
Nuestra Se~ nora de la Soledad (better
known as the Marquesa or ‘‘Marchio-
ness’’), De Huidobro sailed past western
Cuba until his Remedios was wrecked in
a storm ‘‘sixteen leagues’’ from Cam-
peche. Reaching Veracruz, De Huidobro
found that the 218-ton frigate San Luis
had been recently purchased by the
Crown for the Armada, so he assumed
command. Together with Marquesa and
almost 300 troops, he returned into
Havana on January 5, 1669.
Meanwhile, news had been received
of another enemy attack against Porto-
belo, so Campos sortied with Magda-
lena, San Luis, and Marquesa, laying
in a course for Puerto Rico, where they
learned that a large freebooter gather-
ing had recently been held at ^Ile a
Vache. From a Dutch merchantman
encountered in the Mona Passage, a
false report was received of French
preparations to raid Santo Domingo, so
the Spaniards backtracked to that
island on March 25, 1669, to reinforce
its garrison. They were then correctly
advised that more than a dozen bucca-
neer sail had passed by some weeks
previously en route to the Spanish
Main, and following in their wake,
they heard from another Dutch mer-
chantman that the raiders were already
inside the Lago de Maracaibo.
Defeat off Maracaibo
(April 1669)
The Armada vessels stemmed the en-
trance by mid-April, discovering the
flotilla of Henry Morgan still inside,
having landed his men to plunder the
interior. The Spaniards therefore reoc-
cupied the fort guarding its entry, then
several days later lightened their war-
ships and crossed over its bar. The Ar-
mada had trapped the raiders within
the Laguna, but at dawn on April 27,
1669, were rushed by Morgan, who
attacked Campos’ Magdalena with a
fire-ship. De Huidobro’s San Luis had
at first steered to help the flagship, but
when he saw flames shooting up, he
veered instead toward the fortress,
hounded by three enemy privateers.
Although managing to reach the safety
of its guns, San Luis grounded on a
sandbank with the falling tide, so that
 Huidobro, Mateo Alonso de (fl. 1663
1683)
De Huidobro ordered his 140-man
crew to take all their weaponry and
provisions ashore to reinforce the garri-
son. Meanwhile, he and a small party
set the frigate ablaze, to prevent it fall-
ing into enemy hands. The buccaneers
completed their sweep of the Armada
warships by capturing Diego del Bar-
rio’s Marquesa, before slipping trium-
phantly past the fort and back out to
sea a few days afterward.
The defeated and demoralized Span-
iards bought a small barco luengo at
Maracaibo and sailed back to Mexico
with only 56 men, the rest having either
died or deserted. Campos blamed Mar-
quesa’s captain for the entire disaster, so
that Del Barrio made this voyage in
chains. After touching at Campeche for
water, they arrived at Veracruz, where
an official inquiry was convened on Au-
gust 12, 1669, and decided to deport all
the senior officers to Spain aboard that
year’s plate fleet to face a general court-
martial. This eventually returned some
guilty verdicts, but which after a few
years were overturned, so that each man
resumed his career.
Laguna de T
erminos Campaign
(August 1673)
Huidobro was appointed as sargento
mayor or ‘‘garrison commander’’ for
the City of Veracruz, from where he
made several patrols against the Eng-
lish logwood cutters in the Laguna de
T
erminos. After a particularly auda-
cious raid by a small English vessel
into the environs of Coatzacoalcos
(Mexico), in which three native vil-
lages were ransacked and eight Indians
carried off as hostages, the Viceroy
Marqu
es de Mancera ordered De
183
Huidobro to pursue these interlopers
with a frigate and three piraguas. He
overtook the corsairs near Santa Ana
Bar (Tabasco), forcing them to beach
their vessel and set it ablaze, before
disappearing into the jungle.
Yet on his return into Veracruz,
more reports of nuisance raids contin-
ued to arrive, and two enemy ships
were sighted inside the Laguna de
T
erminos. Thus a second, larger enter-
prise was mounted, De Huidobro quit-
ting Veracruz again on August 14,
1673, with three frigates, a sloop, and
300 soldiers from the San Juan de Ul
ua
garrison. This expedition arrived unde-
tected off Xicalango Point (known as
‘‘Beef Island’’ among the English
‘‘Baymen’’), where they were boldly
approached by three piraguas, which
belatedly realizing their danger, sud-
denly veered round to flee into the La-
guna and spread the alarm, while De
Huidobro’s men stormed ashore behind
them. One interloper was killed and
several wounded, while abandoned huts
and boats were set ablaze; however,
the Spanish men-of-war drew too much
water to pass over the bar. A brigan-
tine could be discerned heading deeper
into the lagoon, but De Huidobro had
no other choice but to continue up the
coast toward Campeche. En route, he
chased another piragua manned by a
mixed crew of Englishmen, French-
men, and Indians, but they escaped
when a storm set in.
After visiting Campeche, De Huido-
bro reversed his course back toward
Veracruz, and this time had the good
fortune to intercept the brigantine
which had eluded him, lying outside
the Laguna with a Spanish prize. Its
Dutch captain, Jan Lucas, was carried
back into Veracruz along with his crew
184 Huidobro, Mateo Alonso de (fl. 1663
1683)
and prize, when De Huidobro returned
triumphantly in late October 1673.
Pirate Raid (May 1683)
A decade later, De Huidobro underwent
a much more terrible ordeal at the hands
of the buccaneers. The Mexican port had
not been attacked in more than a century,
but at three o’clock on the afternoon of
May 17, 1683, two sails were seen
approaching from out at sea. De Huido-
bro was attending a banquet along with
Gov. Luis de C
ordoba and other city dig-
nitaries, in anticipation of the appearance
of that year’s plate fleet. Arriving vessels
were traditionally received offshore at
the island fortress of San Juan de Ul
ua,
so there was no immediate call for De
Huidobro’s involvement; but on quitting
the banquet hall more than an hour later,
the Governor and his retinue were
approached by ‘‘Don Juan Morfa’’
(i.e., John Murphy), who expressed a fear
that the pair was behaving suspiciously
because they did not enter, despite hav-
ing a favorable wind.
De Huidobro seconded this opinion,
even getting into an argument with one
of his captains, who downplayed such
apprehensions. But the arrogant young
Governor dismissed the question entirely
by presuming the ships to be merchant-
men from Caracas, who would make
another attempt at first light next morn-
ing. De Huidobro remained uncon-
vinced, and at seven o’clock that same
evening was at the city wharf when a
messenger landed from San Juan de
Ul
ua, reporting that its island garrison
was being placed on full alert. Governor
de C
ordoba grudgingly followed suit,
ordering Veracruz’s 300 city troops into
barracks, although he did not alert its
400 militiamen; worse, he ignored the
fact that De Huidobro’s regulars had not
yet received their monthly allotment of
powder and shot, as he was still uncon-
vinced of any imminent danger.
Yet the two vessels had actually
been Spanish prizes piloted by the
Dutch freebooters Laurens de Graaf
and Jan Willems, who in turn were
serving as advance scouts for a much
larger flibustier formation over the ho-
rizon under the Sieur de Grammont
and Nikolaas van Hoorn. The pirates
circled back and deposited 800 men
near the city that night, infiltrating it
from its landward side under cover of
darkness. At four o’clock on the morn-
ing of May 18, 1683, gunfire erupted
throughout the streets, and the Spanish
garrison was caught utterly by surprise.
De Huidobro rushed to the Governor’s
palace, baton and sword in hand, hop-
ing to rally its guardhouse company.
However, they were almost without
ammunition, so De Huidobro bravely
ordered them to form up with cold
steel only, as twin columns of heavily-
armed flibustiers closed in under
Grammont, firing murderous volleys.
‘‘Ea, sons,’’ De Huidobro bellowed
above the din, ‘‘it only remains for us
to sell ourselves dearly according to
our obligations!’’ Moments later he
was struck, and died before sunrise.
References
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).


Eugenio Martı́nez, Marı́a Angeles, La
defensa de Tabasco, 1600
1717
(Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
americanos, 1971).
 Huidobro, Mateo Alonso de (fl. 1663
1683) 185

Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de

Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The
Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor,
Ontario, Canada: Netherlandic Press,
1993).
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
Weddle, Robert S., Spanish Sea: The Gulf
of Mexico in North American Discovery,
1500
1685 (College Station, TX: Texas
A&M University Press, 1985).
 I

I shall deliver myself to the King’s justice,

and I had rather die than live skulking
like a vagabond for fear of death.
—Captain Charles Swan, writing from the Pacific, April 1685

INCH OF CANDLE References

An expression used to denote—quite Calendar of State Papers, Domestic:

literally—the fixing of a time-limit, by
marking a line on a lit candle.
This ancient practice has been defined
as a ‘‘sale by auction, the duration of the
burning of an inch of candle being allowed
for the bidders.’’ This device was com-
monly employed at the selling of prize
vessels brought into Port Royal, Jamaica.
For example, the well-known privateer
Captain Maurice Williams bought the
Spanish prize Avispa or ‘‘Wasp’’ for £120
in May 1659, ‘‘by inch of candle.’’ In other
words, after proclaiming the highest price,
Williams waited while a candle was lit
and scored an inch from the top; when no
higher bid was received before the flame
burned down past this mark, the ship
legally became his.
Charles II, 1663
1664 (London: Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1862).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1975).
INDIGO
Blue dye produced from the genus Indi-
gofera (Leguminosae) plants, a valuable
crop for the West Indies and Spanish
America during the 17th century.
Once harvested and refined, these
plants produced a bluish-purple powder
which was a coveted commercial dye
in Europe, just as logwood was used
for tinting red colors. The great

187
188 Indigo

A West-Indian indigo factory, illustration from Histoire G
en
erale des Antilles by Jean-
Baptiste Du Tertre, 1667. (Library of Congress)

permanence and rarity of these dyes
meant that they commanded high prices,
so that shipments attracted the attention
of privateers. Maurice Williams brought
a Spanish prize loaded ‘‘with logwood,
indigo, and silver’’ into Port Royal,
Jamaica onNovember 23, 1664 (O.S.),
and 15 years later John Coxon and con-
sorts made an even more spectacular
haul, when they returned with 500 chests
of indigo from a Spanish merchantman
which they had seized as it was loading
in the Bay of Honduras, leaving a like
amount behind to rot on the beach.
Reference
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island
of Jamaica (St. Jago de la
Vega: Lewis, Lunan and
Jones, 1800).
 J

About 1st of May [1671 O.S.] he helped one Captain John Erasmus
to a horse at the house of Richard Guy, to go to Withy Wood,
he having an order from Sir Thomas Modyford to go to the
Caimanos in pursuit of Jylles De Lacade, to bring him
with his ship and company to Jamaica.
—Sir Henry Morgan’s deposition, December 1671

JAMES, WILLIAM That about 90 leagues this side of

(fl. 1660
1663)
English privateer named in the journal
of Colonel Edward D’Oyley, Governor
of Jamaica, as having been issued a
‘‘let-pass’’ for his frigate America or
American on May 16, 1660 (O.S.).
Three years later, James was appa-
rently still in command of the same ves-
sel, described as having six guns and a
crew of 70 men. He evidently sailed as
part of Commodore Christopher Myngs’
expedition against Campeche, exiting
Port Royal with 11 other ships on Janu-
ary 21, 1663. However, James’ frigate
never reached its destination, for some
months later it was reported by Captain
Abraham Mitchell of the Blessing:
Campeche, he met three sail of the
fleet, viz. Captain William James his
ship, sunk in the sea by foul weather,
who was the best ship in the fleet next
the Admiral, and that many of their
men in the fleet were dead.
Notwithstanding such setbacks, Myngs
had succeeded in carrying Campeche,
although James was apparently not pres-
ent to take part in this victory.
Legend has it that James may have
also been the privateer who ‘‘discov-
ered’’ the commercial value of logwood
for the Brethren of the Coast, thereby
inaugurating the poaching of this product
from Mexico’s Laguna de T
erminos and
the Bay of Honduras. According to the
story, a certain ‘‘Captain James’’ carried

189
190 Janszoon, Pieter
off a Spanish prize full of logwood,
being astonished on reaching port at the
high price which his cargo fetched; until
then, he had supposedly ‘‘known so little
of its real value, that he had burned
much of it for fuel on the voyage.’’
When news of this spread, hundreds of
poachers began descending on the Cam-
peche coast, setting up logging camps
and initiating a protracted guerrilla strug-
gle against the local Spaniards.
References
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
JANSZOON, PIETER
See Johnson, Peter
JOHNSON, GEORGE
(fl. 1682
1683)
English privateer sent in pursuit of the
renegade Trompeuse.
Early in 1682, the Huguenot sea cap-
tain Pierre LePain arrived at Port Royal,
Jamaica, requesting citizenship because
of the increasing religious intolerance in
his native France. He brought with him
the French royal frigate Trompeuse or
‘‘Trickster,’’ which—it being peace-
time—he had been able to hire for a
commercial voyage to Cayenne. LePain’s
petition for naturalization being granted,
he prepared to return Trompeuse to
Europe by lading a valuable cargo of
merchandise for Hamburg, then dispatch-
ing the ship across to the Bay of Hondu-
ras for an additional consignment of
logwood. Unfortunately, Trompeuse was
surprised there by some 120 pirates under
the Frenchman Jean Hamlin, who seized
it as their flagship.
When news of this seizure reached
Port Royal in early November 1682,
Gov. Sir Thomas Lynch commis-
sioned George Johnson to set out and
recapture the frigate. He was provided
with a ship of 35 or 40 guns and a
crew of 180 men, plus £100 and pro-
visions, ‘‘all of which has been raised
by merchants and traders here,’’
Lynch later informed his superiors in
London. The Governor furthermore
instructed Johnson that on encounter-
ing Trompeuse, he was to try ‘‘to pre-
serve the ship as the French King’s
property,’’ although privately doubting
whether this could be accomplished,
as the pirate vessel was reportedly
‘‘in bad condition and ready to sink,
for they cannot get victuals to enable
them to go and careen.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
JOHNSON, PETER
(fl. 1661
1672)
Dutch-born rover, who sortied from
Jamaica and roamed during peacetime

as a pirate; he was tried twice and then
executed.
It is possible that he may have origi-
nally arrived at Port Cagway as Master
Pieter Janszoon of the Flemish slaver
Sint Pieter, owned by Martin Van
Rosen of Middleburg, of which ‘‘there
was seizure made in [June] 1661 by
HMS Diamond,’’ and condemned as a
lawful prize along with its cargo. If so,
he may have been detained for a pe-
riod on the island, during which he
made friends and eventually became a
naturalized English subject under the
name of ‘‘Peter Johnson.’’
Lynch submitted a lengthy report
dated January 27, 1672 (O.S.), to Jo-
seph Williamson, mentioning among
many other things how he had lately
received news:
. . . that one P. Johnson, with 90 des-
perate English pirates that lately
took the Spanish frigate he is on, is
now careening in the South Cays of
Cuba, and likewise one of the
French pirates that did the mischief
on Cuba; so orders the Assistance,
America, Lilly, and Floaty pink and
sloop to sail tomorrow, and Captain
Beeston has orders to burn the ship
and make examples of all these
obstinate thieves.
Immediately after his arrival and
the publication of the Peace, one
Captain Peter Johnson went out of
harbour with ten men, and joining
with one Thurston took a new Span-
ish ship, killing the captain and 12
or 14 more; then got about 100 men,
English and French, took some small
vessels, cruised off the Havana, till
chased thence by the Assistance they
went to the north of Cuba; where
Johnson, Peter (fl. 1661
1672) 191
they took a great ship laden with
wines from the Canaries, killing a
Governor, two captains, and eighteen
men. Afterwards hearing the King’s
ships were gone, and growing weary
of the French, Johnson came to this
coast with his share of the prize to
capitulate with Sir Thomas, and
stood for Morant Bay to move Colo-
nel Freeman to intercede for him,
but he was no sooner at anchor than
this gust threw his ship on shore,
when everything was lost but the
captain and men, who were pre-
served for another destiny.
The minutes of the meeting held by
the Council of Jamaica at Santiago de
la Vega on September 27, 1672 (O.S.),
included the following:
On the account given of the acquittal
of one Peter Johnson, a pirate,
because of errors in the indict-
ment—which contained only one
offence, whereas Johnson had com-
mitted diverse piracies since publica-
tion of the peace—ordered that the
Attorney-General forthwith draw
two new indictments, copies to be
delivered to Johnson, that he be pro-
ceeded against according to law.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 5, 7
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1880
1889).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
 K

The General forced to suspend him, but he has since

restored him to his command, who has again given
himself over to debauchery and drunkenness,
and he stands indicted of burglary . . .
—News about naval Captain John Aylett at Jamaica, February 1660

KAPER These Capers being so numerous, do

Dutch word for ‘‘privateer’’ or ‘‘cor-
sair,’’ being a private man-of-war out-
fitted with a government commission
to conduct hostilities.
Just as in English, the word kaper could
be applied both to the privateersmen them-
selves, or to the vessels in which they
served. The term was almost always writ-
ten as ‘‘caper’’ in both French or English.
The London Gazette, for example, in Feb-
ruary 1673 (the second year of the Third
Ango-Dutch War) transcribed various
complaints which had been heard out of
the United Provinces, Dutchmen lament-
ing that they were having difficulty
recruiting men for their states’ fleets,
because of competition from their own
privateers:
make Middleburg and Flissingen [sic;
Vlissingen or Flushing] so dead, and so
unpeopled them of men, that it appears
not how our Fleet can be manned.
The term was so commonplace during
the early and mid-17th century, that it
even came to be applied generally to
other nationalities. During the peaceful
summer of 1667, for example, the Eng-
lish authorities received a report from
two vessels arriving at Plymouth ‘‘that
two of their company were taken off the
Lizard by a French caper, and they
hardly escaped.’’ Five years later, Crown
officials were informed how ‘‘two small
hoys taken near Heligoland by a Scotch
caper’’ had been brought into port. But
as Dutch privateering activity went into
such a marked decline during the last

193
194 Keelhauling
quarter of the 17th century, the term also
gradually faded from use.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic:
Charles II, 1667 and 1672.
Gehring, Charles T. and Schiltkamp, Jacob
A., trans. and eds., Curaçao Papers,
1640
1665, Volume XVII, ‘‘New
Netherland Documents’’ (Interlaken,
NY: Heart of the Lakes Publishing,
1987).
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert D.,
Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1988).
KEELHAULING
A savage form of naval punishment,
even for such a cruel age.
Perhaps the most graphic recorded
instance occurred at the Dutch colony
of Sint Eustatius in June 1673, when
the Zeeland squadron of Commodore
Cornelis Evertsen (also known as
‘‘Kees the Devil’’) arrived to reconquer
that island from the English. Having
secured the settlement after a brief fire-
fight, Evertsen learned that during the
British occupation, three Dutch sailors
had treacherously murdered the former
Governor of that outpost, Jan Symon-
sen de Buck. Determined to make an
example of these men, the Commodore
ordered all three tried within the next
few days, and they were duly found
guilty. The prisoners were thereupon
forced to draw lots, as only one was to
be hanged, the other two being con-
demned to keelhauling, flogging, and
marooning on a desert isle.
On execution day, all three were
paraded to the gallows and had nooses
placed around their necks, yet only one
was actually turned off to die. The
remaining two were then rowed out to
the anchored flagship, where one by one
they were hoisted out to dangle from
their wrists at the tip of its mainyard.
A weighted line was tied to their feet,
the other end being passed under the
hull, and run up to the opposite tip of
the yardarm. An oil-soaked rag was tied
over their mouths and noses to prevent
drowning, after which each was dropped
into the sea and the line hauled in,
tugging each beneath the ship in suffo-
cating agony over its sharp barnacles, to
emerge—barely conscious and upside-
down—on the far side of the vessel. This
exercise was repeated three times for
both men, after which the rest of their
sentences were carried out.
Given such officially-sanctioned bar-
barity, pirates had little trouble devising
their own fiendish tortures for their vic-
tims, and indeed resorted to keelhauling
on more than one occasion.
Reference
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert
D., Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press,
1988).
KILDUIJVEL
Literally ‘‘Kill-Devil,’’ a 17th-century
Dutch euphemism for rum.
For example, when the 30-gun
Schaeckerloo of Captain Passchier de
Witte captured a large English merchant

yawl on May 18, 1673, as it was out-
ward-bound from Barbados toward
Maryland, he gleefully reported to his
superior Commodore Cornelis Evertsen
that it was carrying a cargo of ‘‘kilduijvel
and molasses.’’
Kilduijvel 195
Reference
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert D.,
Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1988).
 L

I have no authority to condemn prizes, and to

let men take ships and plunder them at sea,
is to give them too much latitude.
—Lieutenant-Governor Sir William Beeston of Jamaica, March 22, 1693 (O.S.)

LAARS LA GARDE, PIERRE

Dutch name for a ‘‘cat o’ nine tails,’’ a
whip used to administer floggings
aboard ships. The one used in meting
out punishment aboard Cornelis Evert-
sen’s squadron in 1673 is described as
‘‘a one-yard length of unraveled four-
inch rope, tipped with felt.’’
Reference
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert
D., Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia,
SC: University of South Carolina Press,
1988).
(fl. 1677
1684)
Flibustier who raided the Spanish Main.
In June 1677, during France’s war
against both Holland and Spain, La
Garde led an attack against the Spanish-
American port of Santa Marta, seconded
by the English freebooters John Coxon
and William Barnes. This force surprised
the town at dawn and took many cap-
tives, including its Governor and Bishop,
holding them for ransom until a trio of
Spanish warships of the recently-recon-
stituted Armada de Barlovento appeared
from Cartagena, with 500 soldiers to
drive them off. The raiders thereupon
retired toward Port Royal, Jamaica, and

197
198 Laguna de T
erminos
on July 28, 1677, Sir Thomas Lynch
noted:
Five or six French and English pri-
vateers lately come to Jamaica from
taking Santa Marta, Barnes being
one and Coxon expected every hour.
On board the Governor and the
Bishop, and Captain Legarde [sic]
has promised to put them on shore.
The plunder of the town was not
great, money and broken plate [i.e.,
silver] about £20 a man.
Three days later, Coxon entered and per-
sonally escorted the Bishop, Dr. Lucas
Fern
andez y Piedrahita, and a Spanish
friar into the presence of the Jamaican
Governor, Lord Vaughan. This prelate
was nobly housed, and royal officers
were sent aboard La Garde’s flotilla to
attempt ‘‘to procure the liberty of
the [Spanish] Governor and others, but
finding the privateers all drunk, it was
impossible to persuade them to do any-
thing by fair means.’’ Vaughan therefore
ordered the French to depart, advising
Barnes and the Englishmen that it was
now against the law for them to serve
under foreign colors. La Garde and his
followers were ‘‘damnably enraged’’ at
being thus deprived of their English con-
sorts, and sailed off without releasing
their captives.
Seven years later, La Garde was
listed as still commanding a flibustier
vessel out of Saint-Domingue, the ship
Subtille of two guns and 30 men.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 10
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1896).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am
erica Espa~
nola (Madrid:
Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).

RMINOS
LAGUNA DE TE
Huge shallow bay on the Gulf coast of
Mexico, which became a sanctuary for
sea rovers during the 17th century.
Located amid steamy tropical man-
groves, within easy striking distance of
the Spanish towns of Campeche and
Tabasco, the Laguna became known as
the ‘‘Bay of Campeche’’ to English
interlopers. The first of them had infil-
trated this area as early as 1658,
shortly after the conquest of Jamaica.
They found its region largely uninhab-
ited, the Spaniards never having settled
these torrid backwater inlets, which
they believed to be unhealthy. But
what really attracted foreign trespassers
were the large stands of logwood trees,
whose resin fetched handsome profits
in Europe as a dye for tinting cloth.
(Legend has it the raiders had first
learned of its profitability when a cer-
tain Captain James carried off a Span-
ish prize full of logwood, being
astonished later at the price which this
cargo commanded; until then he had
supposedly ‘‘known so little of its real
value, that he had burned much of it
for fuel on the voyage.’’)

Soon, poachers began streaming into
the Laguna, where hundreds established
themselves ashore, eking out a living as
loggers. They existed much as the bou-
caniers of Saint-Domingue, except
rather than hunt wild cattle for their
livelihood, the Baymen felled and
hauled trees to the coast in anticipation
of selling these to merchant traders who
came to call. Like their French counter-
parts, they were rugged individualists
content to live beyond government rule,
supplementing their sporadic income
with raids on the local Spaniards. Wil-
liam Dampier, who lived for two years
among the English loggers during their
heyday, wrote that:
… they often made sallies out in
small parties amongst the nearest In-
dian towns, where they plundered
and brought away the Indian women
to serve them in their huts, and sent
their husbands to be sold at Jamaica;
besides they had not forgot their old
drinking-bouts, and would still spend
£30 or £40 at a sitting on board the
ships that came hither from Jamaica,
carousing and firing of guns three or
four days together.
References
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Gerhard, Peter, The Southeast Frontier of
New Spain (Princeton University Press,
1979).
LANGFORD, ABRAHAM
(fl. 1659
1682)
English naval officer who almost
became Governor of the French
Langford, Abraham (fl. 1659
1682) 199
boucanier strongholds of Tortuga
Island and Petit-Go^ave.
Langford had been one of the first
settlers at ‘‘Point Cagway,’’ on Palisa-
does spit at the entrance to Jamaica’s
main harbor, where he received a small
plot of land in July 1659. He was appa-
rently the ‘‘Naval Officer’’ for that sta-
tion, a position which called for him to
survey men o’ war ‘‘and report upon
their fitness for doing service in the
island.’’ In the overheated political cli-
mate of those early days, he had no
shortage of enemies, being described in
the Council minutes of August 1661 as
a ‘‘promoter of mutiny.’’
In January 1663, Langford accompa-
nied Colonel Samuel Barry and priva-
teer Captain Robert Blunden in a
peaceable attempt to reduce the bouca-
niers of Tortuga Island to English rule.
The new Jamaican Governor, Lord
Windsor, had brought out specific
instructions from Whitehall, suggesting
an attempt be made to win over these
rugged individualists, although without
provoking a reaction from the French
government. The trio sailed across to
western Santo Domingo aboard Blun-
den’s ship Charles, but on arriving,
learned that the boucaniers of Tortuga
were hostile to any such notion and
might well resist, at which Blunden
flatly refused to proceed with the pro-
ject. Instead, over Barry’s objections,
the delegates visited the mainland
camp of Petit-Go^ave, where a different
band of boucaniers was persuaded to
acclaim Blunden as their chieftain, and
even raised an English flag.
A disapproving Barry returned to
Jamaica several months later, while
Langford sailed for England to peti-
tion Charles II to be appointed Gover-
nor of ‘Tortuga and the coasts of
Hispaniola.’’ This was denied; the
200 Langford, Abraham (fl. 1659
1682)

French fort erected on Tortuga Island, off the northern shores of Haiti, during the early
1650s, providing sanctuary for that region’s earliest buccaneers and rovers. (Du Tertre,
Jean Baptiste. Histoire g
en
erale des Antilles habit
ees par les François, 1667)

opinion on Langford at that time Indies, remaining in minor postings for

being that he:
… speaks no French, nor does he
understand it; he is a man of no wis-
dom, his interest in Jamaica and per-
son is despicable, his fortune forlorn,
his honesty questionable. Fears lest
all his contrivance amounts to no
more than a desire to repay out of
the King’s purse debts he has con-
tracted by his debonair life and
defrauding, as ‘tis said, his princi-
pals. Denies not he is a good seaman
and skilled in those parts, but so opi-
niative he will boast of much more
than he knows.
His dreams of advancement dashed,
Langford sank back into relative obscu-
rity. He apparently returned to the West
the next decade-and-a-half. On August
28, 1682 (O.S.), he again petitioned
the King, explaining that being Clerk of
the Navy Office at Barbados, he had
deputized his son and now wished
him to succeed ‘‘after his own death.’’
Evidently in weak health, Langford died
before anything could be resolved. A
rather tantalizing note appended to his
petition said that the King would
‘‘remember him if he be told this was the
man who prosecuted him with the Guai-
cum powder.’’
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
 Layseca Y Alvarado, Antonio De (fl. 1667
1683)
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
LAQUES OR JACQUES,
CAPTAIN (fl. 1659)
Privateer captain mentioned in the
journal of Colonel Edward d’Oyley,
Governor of Jamaica, as having been
issued a ‘‘let-pass’’ for his bark on
December 31, 1659 (O.S.).
Reference
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
LARCO, JUAN DE
See Alarc

on, Juan de
LAYSECA Y ALVARADO,
ANTONIO DE, CONDE
DE LA LAGUNA DE
TE
RMINOS
(fl. 1667
1683)
Well-connected Spanish naval officer
who became Governor of Yucatan.
Layseca was born in Madrid on Janu-
ary 16, 1638, the son of one of King
Philip IV’s royal secretaries. Little is
known about his early career, although
he apparently saw his first service in
201
the Americas at a very tender age, in
1650. Thirteen years later, he made a
loan to the Spanish Crown toward the
construction of four new warships in
Amsterdam to reconstitute the Armada
de Barlovento in the West Indies, which
contribution won him appointment as
one of these vessels’ future captains. By
the time this Armada sailed from Seville
for the New World in July 1667, Lay-
seca was serving as gobernador de ter-
cio or third-in-command for this entire
force, aboard his 412-ton gobierno called
Magdalena. This vessel and the Armada
flagship both transported a large quantity
of azogue or quicksilver for the Mexican
mines, and after reaching Puerto Rico on
August 27th, proceeded to Veracruz to-
gether while the other three men o’ war
swept the coasts of Santo Domingo and
Cuba under almirante or second-in-
command Alonso de Campos. The Ar-
mada then reassembled at Havana in
February 1668, before patrolling through
the Antilles toward Caracas and return-
ing to what was supposed to become its
permanent home-base of San Juan,
Puerto Rico. Judging these port facilities
to be inadequate, though, they instead
transferred to Havana for repairs.
Shortly thereafter, the flagship and
vice-flag were recalled to Spain for the
renewed war against France. Magdalena
and two smaller frigates were to remain
at Santo Domingo, reinforced by local
auxiliaries. This order reached the
Armada when it was once again lying
at Puerto Rico, and its capit
an general
or commander-in-chief, Augustı́n de
Di
ustegui, immediately set sail for Vera-
cruz to load a shipment of the King’s
bullion, before returning toward Spain.
Campos and the three smaller ships hov-
ered off Cuba’s Cape San Antonio,
inspecting passing vessels before putting
202 Layseca Y Alvarado, Antonio De (fl. 1667
1683)
into Havana. While there, Di
ustegui
touched at that port and made his final
dispositions, before relinquishing com-
mand of the Armada. Layseca was pro-
moted to almirante over Di
ustegui’s
objections. In that capacity he must have
accompanied Campos when Magdalena,
San Luis, and Marquesa sortied to coun-
ter enemy activities.
Maracaibo Campaign
(Spring 1669)
This trio first laid in a course for Puerto
Rico, where it was learned that a large
freebooter gathering had recently been
held at ^Ile a Vache. The men o’ war then
reached Santo Domingo on March 25,
1669, where they learned that more than
a dozen buccaneer sail had passed by for
the Spanish Main some weeks previ-
ously, and so followed in their wake.
The Spanish warships stemmed the en-
trance to the Laguna de Maracaibo by
mid-April 1669, discovering deeper
inside the flotilla of Henry Morgan,
whose men had landed to plunder the in-
terior. At dawn on April 27, 1669, the
Spaniards were rushed by Morgan, who
destroyed Magdalena and Mateo Alonso
de Huidobro’s San Luis, while capturing
the Marquesa. The defeated Spaniards
sailed a small barco luengo back to
Mexico with only 56 men, the rest hav-
ing either died or deserted.
After touching at Campeche for water,
they arrived at Veracruz, where an offi-
cial inquiry was convened on August 12,
1669, and decided to deport all the senior
officers to Spain to stand trial. The subse-
quent courts-martial eventually resulted
in some guilty verdicts, but after a few
years these were overturned, and each
man resumed his career. Campos became
Governor of Puerto Rico in October
1674, and two years later Layseca was
appointed almirante of a new quintet of
warships destined to replace the shattered
Armada.
While lying at Cadiz preparing to
depart, Layseca was then promoted to a
five-year term as Governor of the Mexi-
can province of Yucatan, by a real
c
edula dated November 12, 1676, and
which reached him before the ships had
sailed. He therefore transferred aboard
the 450-ton Armada flagship San Jos
e,
Santa Rosa Marı´a y San Pedro de Alc
an-
tara as a passenger, which was also
transporting the Governor-designate of
Venezuela, Francisco de Alberr
o, Knight
of the Order of Santiago, to his own des-
tination. This vessel quit Cadiz early the
following year, and deposited De
Alberr
o at Caracas on July 6, 1677. After
a lengthy layover, San Jos
e at last stirred
forth from Caracas in October of that
year, touching briefly at Santo Domingo
before depositing Layseca at Campeche
on November 30, 1677. He arrived in the
capital of M
erida de Yucat
an on Decem-
ber 18th to assume office.
Campeche Assault
(Summer 1678)
A scant few months later, the province’s
principal port was seized by pirates.
An hour before daybreak on Sunday,
July 10, 1678, a large group of people
appeared at one of Campeche’s small
landward gates, answered the sentinel’s
challenge, and was allowed to enter.
Rather than native worshipers come to
early morning church services, though,
as the sentry had assumed, these were
actually 160 buccaneers under Captains
George Spurre and Edward Neville,
 Layseca Y Alvarado, Antonio De (fl. 1667
1683)
come to plunder. The attackers
advanced swiftly through the streets,
and once in front of the Lieutenant-
Governor’s residence, ‘‘with a great
shout fired a heavy volley.’’ The garri-
son was taken utterly by surprise, and
virtually every prominent citizen was
captured. They were terrified into pay-
ing ransoms, and their buildings ran-
sacked. Two sloops and eight piraguas
appeared from out at sea, and the free-
booters remained in possession of the
town until evening of Tuesday, July
12th, when they began to withdraw
with their loot. The raiders additionally
carried off three craft and 250 black,
mulatto, and Indian townspeople to sell
as slaves.
Layseca’s response had been slow, as
he did not arrive with a relief-column
until long after the enemy had disap-
peared. This led to angry recriminations
being forwarded to Mexico City, accus-
ing the Governor of incompetence and
other charges. A special prosecutor or
visitador was sent out to investigate, but
who died en route, so that it was not
until February 20, 1679, that a replace-
ment could arrive and suspend Layseca
from office. These inquiries lasted a
year, resulting in exoneration and restitu-
tion to his post as Governor; but Layseca
was anxious to regain his reputation as
well, so he promptly visited Campeche
and delegated the veteran Captain Felipe
de la Barreda y Villegas to begin sweeps
against the English logwood cutters in
the Laguna de T
erminos.
Spanish Counteroffensive
(Spring 1680)
De la Barreda sailed with a small flotilla
of piraguas and on February 6, 1680,
203
took some prizes. Bolstered by this suc-
cess, his second expedition consisted of
a barco luengo, two piraguas, and 115
men, which netted a 24-gun merchant-
man. Delighted, Layseca appointed De
la Barreda as teniente de capit
an general
(‘‘lieutenant commander-in-chief’’) for
Campeche on April 12th, and helped
prepare a third raid. The 24-gun prize
was reinforced with two brigantines and
six piraguas, plus more than 500
troops—200 mulatto militiamen from
M
erida, 70 regulars, and 16 gunners
from the Campeche garrison, plus 240
volunteers, including the corsair captains
Pedro de Castro and Juan Corso, who
burst into the Laguna on February 17th.
More than 38 craft of all sizes were
seized, along with 163 Baymen and
numerous Spanish hostages and slaves.
De la Barreda also learned that a force
of 240 buccaneers had departed in seven
vessels to waylay the annual cocoa har-
vest of Tabasco and sent a detachment
in their pursuit. His prisoners and prizes
were sent triumphantly into Campeche,
but De la Barreda himself did not return.
Ironically, he had become separated
from his expedition and fell into the
hands of English stragglers, who bore
him off as a captive.
Layseca of course was unfazed by the
loss of his champion, instead busily writ-
ing to his superiors in Mexico City and
Spain to claim that the Laguna de
T
erminos had at last been cleared of for-
eign interlopers. This was not entirely
true, but the Baymen had certainly been
dealt some major blows, and the Gover-
nor followed up his advantage by main-
taining regular patrols into the region
with guardacostas such as Baltasar Na-
varro. When Layseca’s term expired in
the summer of 1683, he returned to
Spain and three years later was ennobled
204 Le Basque, Michel
with the title of ‘‘Count of the Laguna
de T
erminos,’’ in honor of his services.
He died in Seville two years later, being
succeeded in the title by his son F
elix
Francisco, product of a union with Josefa
de Alberr

o y Cangas.
References
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The Great
Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor, Ontario,
Canada: Netherlandic Press, 1993).
Rubio Ma~n
e, Jos
e Ignacio, ‘‘Las
jurisdicciones de Yucat
an: la creaci
on
de la plaza de teniente de Rey en
Campeche, a~no de 1744,’’ Boletı´n del
Archivo General de la Naci
on [M
exico],
Segunda Serie, Vol. VII, No. 3
(Jul
Sept. 1966), pp. 549
631.
Rubio Ma~n
e, Jos
e Ignacio, ‘‘Ocupaci

on de
la Isla de T
erminos por los ingleses,
1658
1717,’’ Boletı́n del Archivo
General de la Naci
on [M
exico], Primera
Serie, Vol. XXIV, No. 2 (April
June
1953), pp. 295
330.
Sucre, Luis Alberto, Gobernadores y
capitanes generales de Venezuela
(Caracas: Litografı́a Tecnocolor, 1964).
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
LE BASQUE, MICHEL
See Artigue, Michel d’
LECAT, JELLES DE
(fl. 1668
1672)
Dutch freebooter who served both the
English and Spanish.
De Lecat’s unusual first name prob-
ably indicates a Frisian origin, being
often garbled in the official records of
his day as ‘‘Yallahs,’’ ‘‘Yelles,’’ or
‘‘Yellowes’’ by the English; ‘‘Hels’’ or
‘‘Ycles’’ by the Spaniards. The first
notice of his activities occurred shortly
after the French raider Jean-David Nau
l’Olonnais reached Jamaica in 1668,
bringing in an 80-ton, 12-gun Spanish
brigantine. This was sold, Rok Brasi-
liano being installed as its captain, De
Lecat as first mate. They cruised to
Cartagena and Portobelo on the Span-
ish Main, capturing another Spanish
brigantine before returning to Port
Royal, where Brasiliano took command
of this new vessel, while De Lecat
remained aboard the old one.
Laguna de T
erminos
Campaign (1669)
The two brigantines then ventured into
the Gulf of Mexico in the spring of 1669,
in the company of Joseph Bradley’s pri-
vateer frigate (Mayflower?), to operate
jointly around the Laguna de T
erminos.
Plunder proving scarce, De Lecat began
loading logwood, while Bradley and Bra-
siliano blockaded Campeche. The Span-
iards finally sortied with three armed
ships on December 18, 1669, chasing the
rovers away. A norther wrecked Brasi-
liano on the Yucatan peninsula where
De Lecat rescued him and then trans-
ferred him to Bradley’s frigate for return
to Jamaica. Shortly thereafter, De Lecat
and his mate Jan Erasmus Reyning
seized a Spanish merchantman which they
renamed Seviliaen, scuttling the brigan-
tine to sail this prize back to Port Royal.
On arriving, they found the English
colony in an uproar because of the nui-
sance raids of the Spanish privateer Man-
oel Rivero Pardal. In August 1670, they
sailed as part of Morgan’s retaliatory

strike against Panama, pausing at ^Ile a
Vache for supplies and reinforcements.
From there, the corsair fleet descended
on Providencia Island, overwhelming its
tiny Spanish garrison. Morgan then sent
Bradley on ahead to seize San Lorenzo
castle at the mouth of the Chagres River,
as a base camp for the forthcoming
attack on Panama. De Lecat, Reyning,
and Brasiliano were all part of this
advance force, which disembarked into
heavy opposition, but finally carried the
fort in a bloody assault in which the
Spanish defenders were massacred, and
Bradley fatally wounded.
Sack of Panama (1670
1671)
De Lecat then took part in Morgan’s
epic march across the Isthmus, where
despite hunger, disease, and repeated
jungle ambushes, the freebooters fought
their way into Panama and looted the
city for a month. Retiring to the Atlantic
coast, they were disappointed at the sub-
sequent division of spoils, feeling that
Morgan had cheated them by making
off with the lion’s share. Sailing in his
wake toward Jamaica, De Lecat and
Reyning had a brush with the Cartagena
coastguard vessel Santa Cruz and
another Spanish vessel, before gaining
Montego Bay, where Reyning disem-
barked. He found the political climate
greatly altered, with the new Governor
Sir Thomas Lynch having arrived on
July1, 1671, with the warships Assis-
tance and Welcome, to arrest his pre-
decessor and revoke all anti-Spanish
privateering commissions. Reyning was
asked to bring in the Seviliaen, but when
he met up with De Lecat at their pre-
arranged rendezvous off the Caymans,
they simply sailed away together to
Lecat, Jelles De (fl. 1668
1672) 205
Cuba. There they rustled cattle, until a
trio of Spanish warships exiting Havana
prompted them to cross the Gulf of
Mexico to their old hunting-grounds.
Immediately on reaching the Mexi-
can coast, they seized a small Spanish
coast-guard vessel, De Lecat assuming
command while Reyning captained
the Seviliaen. Shortly thereafter, HMS
Assistance hove into view, having been
detached under William Beeston to
bring in rogue privateers. De Lecat
and Reyning withdrew close inshore,
beyond the reach of their powerful an-
tagonist, so the English sailed to nearby
Campeche to hire shallow-draft vessels
to cut them out of their anchorage. But
the wily Dutchmen frustrated this
scheme by following the frigate into the
Spanish port, whose neutrality offered
protection until the Royal Navy grew
tired of the game and left.
Spanish Service (1671
1672)
Realizing how risky it was to continue
prowling the Caribbean, De Lecat and
Reyning purged their crews of English
seamen, marooning them on the island
of Tris (where they were eventually
rescued by the former privateer Lilly
in January 1672). Meanwhile, the
two Dutchmen struck a deal with the
Campeche authorities and were issued
Spanish commissions. The Spaniards,
desperate to stem the foreign incursions
into that region, but without funds for a
defense, overlooked the rovers’ check-
ered past as they were willing to serve
for prize-money alone. De Lecat and
Reyning, for their part, hunted by the
English, agreed to these terms and fur-
ther cemented the deal by beginning
indoctrination in the Catholic faith.
206 Le Moign, Bernard (fl. 1674
1680)
On their first patrol into the Laguna de
T
erminos, they captured four English ves-
sels, auctioning them off at Campeche.
Soon a routine developed, whereby De
Lecat took care of the rough-and-tumble
aspects of coast-guard duty, while Reyn-
ing remained in port attending to business.
Within a few months they seized 32 prizes,
and at Jamaica the logwood trade declined
because of fears of ‘‘Captain Yellowes.’’
On April 28, 1672, while De Lecat
was patrolling in a captured sloop, Reyn-
ing exited Campeche with the Seviliaen
to transport retiring Governor Fernando
Francisco de Escobedo to Tabasco.
Reyning then contracted a rich cargo of
cacao and dyewood from that port,
departing Tabasco on July 18th. He
reached Veracruz five days later, where
his ship was briefly impounded because
of irregularities regarding its ownership.
While waiting to be released, he learned
from the Spanish slaver and privateer
Francisco Galesio that war had broken
out back in Europe between England,
France, and Holland. Thus, once Sevi-
liaen was cleared in late August 1672,
Reyning hurried back to Campeche in
ballast to pay off his Spanish hands and
reassemble his Dutch crew. The Sevi-
liaen was careened while hoping for De
Lecat to rejoin, but Reyning eventually
left Mexico without him. Nothing more
is known about De Lecat’s activities.
See also
Bradley, Joseph; Brasiliano, Rok; Nau,
Jean-David; Spanish Main.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 7
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Vrijman, L. C., Dr. David van der Sterre:
Zeer aenmerkelijke reysen door Jan
Erasmus Reyning (Amsterdam: P. N.
van Kampen & Zoon, 1937).
Weddle, Robert S., Wilderness Manhunt:
The Spanish Search for La Salle (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1973).
LE MOIGN, BERNARD
(fl. 1674
1680)
French privateer.
In mid-May 1680 (O.S.), Governor
Simon Bradstreet of Massachusetts
informed the Committee for Trade and
Plantations in London:
No privateers or pirates frequent
their coasts; perhaps once in seven
or ten years a prize may be brought
to the harbour; two years since Cap-
tain Bernard Lamoyne, a French-
man, brought a Dutch prize taken on
the coast of Cuba.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 10
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1896).
LEPAIN OR PAIN, PIERRE
(fl. 1682
1684)
Huguenot sea captain who carried a
French royal frigate into Port Royal,
Jamaica, in a misguided attempt to ac-
quire English citizenship.

Late in January 1682, LePain appeared
before Acting Governor Sir Henry Morgan
and the Council of Jamaica, presenting a
petition which described ‘‘the inhuman
treatment of the Protestants in France, of
which he is one,’’ and asking to settle in
Jamaica. His vessel was the royal frigate
Trompeuse (Trickster), which LePain had
hired from the peacetime French navy ‘‘at
five hundred francs a month,’’ for a com-
mercial venture to Cayenne. Aware of
increasing anti-Huguenot sentiments in
France, where Protestants were being
forced to convert to Catholicism, the
Council ‘‘unanimously resolved that he
should be received into the King’s protec-
tion and naturalised, on his engaging to
use his best endeavors to return his ship to
the French King.’’
This latter point proved LePain’s
undoing, for three months later France’s
ambassador complained to Charles II
that the captain had ‘‘disposed of the
ship and cargo,’’ rather than return
these. An order was issued in London
during the summer of 1682 for the arrest
of ‘‘Peter Paine,’’ as he was now styled,
which was enacted at the end of that
same October by the new Jamaican
Governor, Sir Thomas Lynch.
Unfortunately, the Trompeuse’s cargo
of sugar and wine had already been sold
off and the proceeds dispersed, while
the vessel itself had been ‘‘sent to the
Bay of Honduras to load logwood’’ for a
voyage to Hamburg, but been captured
by a band of 120 ‘‘desperate rogues’’
under Jean Hamlin, who turned it into a
formidable pirate vessel. Captain
George Johnson and other privateers
were sent out to recapture it, while the
unfortunate LePain was held over and
stripped of his new English citizenship
in late October 1683, and ordered
deported to Petit-Go^ave.
Le Roux, Anne (fl. 1660) 207
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
LEPENE, JACQUES
(fl. 1659)
French flibustier who in May 1659
bought the prize Nieuwe Tuin (New
Garden) of Flushing for £300 at Port
Royal, Jamaica, along with its cargo of
110 hides and ten barrels of rosin. He
sold the latter back to the ‘‘State’’ (i.e.,
the English government) at £3 per bar-
rel, for which he was paid in cacao
nuts, and renamed the ship Bonaven-
ture. He departed on September 17,
1659 (O.S.), armed with a privateering
commission issued by the English
Governor, Colonel Edward d’Oyley.
Reference
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
LE ROUX, ANNE (fl. 1660)
French commander, involved in the
sack of the Dominican town of San-
tiago de los Caballeros.
According to the chronicler-priest
Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre, 400 boucaniers
on Tortuga Island (Haiti), thirsting to
avenge the massacre of a dozen French
captives at Monte Cristi by the cruel
208 Le Sage, François (fl. 1684)
commander of a Spanish warship, decided
to unite and commandeer a recently-
arrived merchant frigate from Nantes,
under a Captain named Lescouble. These
freebooters then elected Captains Delisle,
Adam, Le Roux, and Lormel as their
leaders, and because a peace treaty had
been signed that previous year between
France and Spain in Europe, also obtained
a letter-of-reprisal from Tortuga’s nomi-
nal English Governor, Elias Watts.
This expedition set sail on Palm Sun-
day, March 21, 1660, crowded aboard
Lescouble’s frigate and three lesser craft.
They stole ashore next evening near
Puerto Plata, and moved stealthily for
more than 20 miles up into the Cibao
Valley over the next couple of days, hid-
ing during the daylight hours and follow-
ing hidden jungle-trails by night, so as to
take the town of Santiago de los Cabal-
leros completely by surprise. Arriving
within striking distance by Good Friday
night, they burst out of the nearby woods
next dawn, March 27, 1660. Some 25 or
30 Spaniards were killed outright during
their initial onslaught, and the Alcalde
Mayor seized in his bed.
Delisle’s and Le Roux’s men ran-
sacked the buildings on Easter Sunday,
even stripping the church of its orna-
ments, before departing with a number
of hostages on Monday, March 29,
1660, to return toward the coast. Several
hundred Dominican militia cavalry-
men—traditionally organized into com-
panies of fifty or cincuenta men apiece,
hence known as cincuentenas—had
meanwhile rallied from throughout the
district, and prepared an ambush ahead
of the retiring French column. The lead-
ing two buccaneers were shot dead and a
two-hour firefight ensued, before the
Dominicans finally broke. The French
had suffered 10 killed and a half-dozen
wounded during this attack, yet their col-
umn reached the sea without being chal-
lenged again, because of even heavier
Spanish losses.
After waiting in vain on the coast
for several days for ransoms to be paid
for their hostages, these captives were
released, and Le Roux and the rest of
this formation sailed home to enjoy
their spoils on Tortuga.
See also
Adam, Captain; Cincuentena; Delisle,
Capitaine; Lormel, Capitaine.
References
Du Tertre, Jean-Baptiste, Histoire g

en
erale
des Antilles de l’Am
erique habit

ees par
les Français (Fort-de-France, 1973
reedition).
Tejera, Emiliano, ‘‘Gobernadores de la isla
de Santo Domingo, siglos XVI
XVII,’’
Boletı´n del Archivo General de la
Naci
on [Dominican Republic] 18,
Number 4 (1941), pp. 359
375.
LE SAGE, FRANÇOIS
(fl. 1684)
French flibustier captain who is listed
in an official government document of
1684 as being in command of the ship
Tigre, of 30 guns and 130 men, at
Saint-Domingue. He may possibly have
been a former lieutenant or confederate
of Laurens de Graaf, as the Tigre had
been the latter’s flagship until the
Dauphine (Princess, more commonly
known as Frances) was taken from the
Spaniards in the autumn of 1682.
Le Sage is also mentioned in a letter
written by Governor Sir Thomas Lynch
of Jamaica, dated August 25, 1684, and

addressed to De Graaf. Having previ-
ously freed a small English merchant-
man captured by the Spanish and being
carried into Cuba, the Governor wrote to
thank the pirate admiral for this kind-
ness. He then added, as if by way of
comparison: ‘‘François Le Sage behaves
very differently, for he has frequently
injured and insulted our ships, and has
by present report 60 pirates on board his
ship taken from La Trompeuse [Trick-
ster].’’ This latter vessel had looted
numerous English merchantmen during
a 10-month rampage under Jean Hamlin,
before being destroyed at anchor in Au-
gust 1683 at Saint Thomas in the Danish
Virgin Islands. Virtually all the pirate
crew had escaped ashore, and were still
being assiduously sought by the English.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
LESCUYER, JEAN (fl. 1685)
French freebooter who died in the
South Sea.
Early in 1685, Lescuyer and his fel-
low captain François Grogniet led a
contingent of 200 French flibustiers and
80 English buccaneers from Golden
Island across the Isthmus of Panama
into the Pacific Ocean, hoping to join
Lescuyer, Jean (fl. 1685) 209
other rovers under Captain Townley,
who had preceded them into those
waters a month earlier, in attacks on the
Spaniards. Commandeering more than
two dozen coastal craft and canoes as
transport, Lescuyer and Grogniet
reached Taboga Island south of Panama
City, where on the night of February13,
1685, they sighted a burning vessel to
the north. The next morning, a force of
English buccaneers under Edward Davis
and Charles Swan appeared, offering to
give the new French arrivals the 90-ton
Santa Rosa which they had recently
captured, while the English contingent
was to be absorbed into Bachelor’s
Delight and Cygnet. (The chronicler
William Dampier, who was sailing
aboard Davis’ flagship, later identified
the two French commanders as ‘‘Cap-
tain Gronet [sic] and Captain Lequie
[sic].’’)
Lescuyer apparently died soon after,
for when another band of mainly
French flibustiers arrived two months
later, its member Ravenau de Lussan
noted how only the Santa Rosa, out of
10 vessels in the pirate fleet, was cap-
tained by a Frenchman, the rest having
English commanders. This ship, he
added, had been given ‘‘to Captain
Grogniet and Lescuier’s [sic] crew,
who had recently lost their captain.’’
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1989).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
210 Lessone, Capitaine (fl. 1680)
LESSONE, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1680)
Flibustier who joined John Coxon’s
assault on Portobelo.
In early February 1680, Lessone was
lying at anchor with his ship in the
Archipi
elago de las Mulatas (or San Blas
Islands) north of Panama, when a large
flotilla of 250 buccaneers appeared in
boats, heading westward to attack the
Spanish-American town of Portobelo.
Lessone added 80 of his crewmen to this
force, which shortly thereafter slipped
ashore at Puerto del Escribano in the
Gulf of San Blas and proceeded afoot
for three days, surprising the Spaniards
the morning of February 7th. After ran-
sacking Portobelo over the next two
days, the raiders retired 10 miles north-
eastward, entrenching themselves with
their booty and a few prisoners on a cay
half a mile offshore from Bastimentos,
until they were rescued by their vessels.
Lessone continued in company with
Coxon and his consorts while they
briefly blockaded Portobelo, made a
general distribution of booty, then retired
to careen at Bocas del Toro (literally
‘‘Bull’s Mouths’’ or ‘‘Entrances of the
Bull,’’ at the northwestern extremity of
present-day Panama). But once refitted,
all the English commanders decided to
return to Golden Island and have the
Darien Indians guide them over the Isth-
mus to attack the Spaniards on the Pa-
cific coast, while Lessone and his
French colleague Jean Rose preferred
remaining in the Caribbean.
Reference
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
LET-PASS
Simplest form of license issued to English
vessels in the West Indies, merely identi-
fying the bearer and requesting that he be
allowed to proceed—i.e., let-past—into a
particular destination (see sidebar).
Privateer captains such as Richard
Guy, William James, and Edward Mans-
field often sortied with no more authori-
zation for their cruises than this simple
license, while the freebooter flotilla of
John Coxon, Cornelius Essex, Bartholo-
mew Sharpe, Robert Allison, and Thomas
Magott—who jointly mounted a violent
peacetime assault on Spanish Portobelo in
March 1680—later attempted to justify
their depredation by a combination of out-
dated French commissions and ‘‘let-
passes’’ from the new Jamaican Governor
Lord Carlisle, ‘‘to go into the Bay of Hon-
duras [modern Belize] to cut logwood.’’
This sort of fraud and misrepresentation
meant that little faith could sometimes be
placed in such documents, while the
Spaniards furthermore objected to even
legitimate ‘‘let-passes’’ being issued to
destinations such as Honduras which they
regarded as lying entirely within their ter-
ritory, hence off-limits to foreigners. As a
result, even relatively honest Captains
such as Robert Oxe might find their passes
contemptuously flung aside when boarded
by Spanish guardacostas, thereby adding
unnecessarily to ill-will on both sides.
See also
Allison, Robert; Coxon, John; Essex,
Cornelius; Guardacostas; Guy, Richard;
James, William; Magott, Thomas;
Mansfield, Edward; Oxe, Robert;
Sharpe, Bartholomew.
 Letter of Reprisal 211

LITTLE BETTY’S LET-PASS

Here below is reproduced a typical handwritten let-pass from the British West Indies,
this particular one issued on April 20, 1680 (O.S.), by Governor Sir Jonathan Atkins
of Barbados to allow ‘‘Capn. John Poyntz to sail from and depart this Island with his
galliot hoy Little Betty, bound for Surinam.’’ During the subsequent voyage, though,
this Captain veered into Port-of-Spain’s anchorage on the Spanish island of Trinidad,
entering with Dutch colors flying from Little Betty’s masthead, to inform its harbor-
authorities that he had come to sell off a small consignment of slaves.
Such transactions were authorized for certain Dutch vessels, but Trinidad’s Spanish
Governor soon became suspicious of the anchored galliot, so ordered it boarded and
searched. On discovering Governor Atkins’s English let-pass, Poyntz was arrested
and his vessel impounded, along with his 17 remaining slaves and 25,000 pesos in
profits. This incriminating document was then appended to his trial-papers, and is
today preserved in the Archives of Indies in Seville under the call-number Audiencia
de Santo Domingo 179, Ramo 1, Number 26, Folio 39.

References canton at the upper corner near the

Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 10,
11 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
LETTER OF MARQUE
Another name for a privateer or corsair
vessel, yet apparently distinct in that
its crew received regular wages ‘‘as
any merchant marine sailors,’’ in addi-
tion to shares from captures, while pri-
vateersmen served for booty alone.
Up until 1701, English merchant and
privateering vessels both flew a Union
Jack ‘‘with a white escutcheon in the
center.’’ This was later changed so that
letters-of-marque and letter-of-reprisal
vessels wore a two-pointed red burgee
flag ‘‘with the Union Jack described in a
staff,’’ while only Royal Navy warships
were allowed to fly the full Union Jack.
See also
Letter of Marque (Volume 2).
Reference
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
LETTER OF REPRISAL
Special type of privateering commission,
issued during peacetime to redress a
wrong, which could not be satisfied
through legal recourse; a letter-of-reprisal
thus allowed the bearer to seek restitution
through the capture of foreign vessels.
For instance, when English merchant
captains such as John Cooke or Joseph
Zohy were unjustifiably detained and
212 Light Money
pillaged by Spanish guardacostas, yet
could not later obtain satisfaction by
appealing to Madrid through proper chan-
nels, they requested ‘‘letters of reprisal’’
from the English government to exact
their own form of compensation, by seiz-
ing and disposing of Spanish ships on the
high seas. Such permits were relatively
rare, and unique in that they did not con-
stitute an official declaration of war, nor
allow the bearer to accumulate more than
a specific amount of prize-money.
LIGHT MONEY
Seventeenth-century English euphemism
for clipped or poor-grade coinage, worth
less than its purported face value. For
example, the minutes of a meeting of the
Lords of Trade and Plantations in London
on February 14, 1683 (O.S.), read: ‘‘The
gentlemen of Jamaica added that light
money may be refused in payments.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
LILBURNE, ROBERT
(fl. 1682
1684)
Governor of New Providence in the
Bahamas at the time of the Spanish
invasions of 1684.
Lilburne, himself a resident of the
Bahamas, had succeeded Robert Clarke
as Governor of the Islands in 1682,
when his predecessor was dismissed
for issuing privateering commissions
against the Spaniards in peacetime. It
was feared that Lilburne would prove
just as bad, only more devious, so a
strong set of instructions was sent out
from London dated October 1683.
Before these could be enacted, how-
ever, the Spaniards attacked the Baha-
mas in retaliation for Thomas Paine’s
landings at nearby St. Augustine, Flor-
ida, and numerous other infractions.
In January 1684, the first of a series
of expeditions from Havana suddenly
descended on the English shipping off
Andros Island, scattering these vessels
and seizing one William Bell to act as
their pilot. The Spaniards then pressed
on to New Providence, disembarking
150 men half-a-mile from Charles Town
(as Nassau was then called), and advanc-
ing on the settlement. Lilburne was
seated in the ‘‘Wheel of Fortune’’ Inn
when he heard the gunfire, and fled into
the woods with most of the inhabitants.
Charles Town was taken almost without
resistance and thoroughly ransacked,
while the lone ship in the harbor, the
frigate Good Intent of 10 guns, fled out
to sea. The raiders departed at dusk,
leaving the frightened citizenry to creep
back and assess the damage.
Other assaults followed, including a
second major descent on Charles Town
by Gaspar de Acosta and Tom
as Ura-
burru a few months later, which con-
vinced many settlers to emigrate. New
Providence would remain uninhabited
until December 1686, when a new group
of English colonists arrived. Lilburne
sent a message to his Spanish counter-
part at Havana, inquiring as to the reason
for these attacks, and was told that it was
because the inhabitants of the Bahamas
were all ‘‘pirates proven.’’

Reference
Craton, Michael, A History of the Bahamas
(London: Collins, 1968).
LOGWOOD OR
DYEWOOD
Dark-red tropical tree native to the West
Indies (Haematoxylum campechanium),
which was harvested to produce a black
or brown dye that became highly prized
in Europe for tinting cloth, because—in
the words of the pirate chronicler Alex-
andre-Olivier Exquemelin—it does ‘‘not
fade like ours.’’
The secret of this product had been
long known to the Indians, who imparted
it to the Spanish shortly after their con-
quest of the Americas. Small local indus-
tries developed, until European traders
began to realize its potential market
overseas. As early as July 7, 1654, the
directors of the Dutch West India Com-
pany in Amsterdam were writing to their
representative on Curaçao, ordering him
‘‘to promote the cutting of dyewood as
much as possible’’ on that island, ‘‘but
paying attention nevertheless that the
young saplings are spared.’’ English
rovers venturing out of Jamaica a few
years later stumbled on large stands in
the uninhabited coastal regions of both
Campeche and Belize, where they set up
their own independent camps and began
cutting trees. The Spanish Crown feared
that these poaching settlements would
eventually develop into full-fledged col-
onies, so sent occasional patrols to
attempt to drive the interlopers out, pro-
voking counterraids by foreign rovers.
Despite such dangers, many peaceful
merchants also visited the outposts, in
Lormel, Capitaine (fl. 1660) 213
hopes of obtaining a potentially valuable
cargo at very low cost (oftentimes saving
money by harvesting the trees with their
own crews, although preferring them al-
ready cut and seasoned). Within a few
decades, the price of a ton of logwood in
Port Royal, Jamaica was £20, although
worth twenty times that much in Lon-
don, England—a powerful temptation
for homeward-bound masters.
References
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Gehring, Charles T. and Schiltkamp, Jacob
A., trans. and eds., Curaçao Papers,
1640
1665, Volume XVII, ‘‘New
Netherland Documents’’ (Interlaken, NY:
Heart of the Lakes Publishing, 1987).
Gerhard, Peter, The Southeast Frontier of
New Spain (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979).
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The
Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor,
Ontario, Canada: Netherlandic Press,
1993).
McJunkin, David M., ‘‘Logwood: An
Inquiry into the Historical Biogeography
of Haematoxylum campechanium L. and
Related Dyewoods of the Neotropics,’’
Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of
California at Los Angeles, 1991.
LORMEL, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1660)
French commander, involved in the
sack of the Dominican town of San-
tiago de los Caballeros.
According to the chronicler-priest
Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre, 400 boucaniers
214 Lucas, Jan (fl. 1668
1673)
of Tortuga Island (Haiti), thirsting
to avenge the massacre of a dozen French
captives at Monte Cristi by the heartless
commander of a Spanish warship, decided
to unite and take over a recently-arrived
merchant frigate from Nantes, under a
Captain named Lescouble. These free-
booters elected Captains Delisle, Adam,
Le Roux, and Lormel as their leaders, and
because a peace treaty had been signed
that previous year between France and
Spain back in Europe, also obtained a let-
ter-of-reprisal from Tortuga’s nominal
English Governor, Elias Watts.
This expedition set sail by Palm Sun-
day, March 21, 1660, distributed aboard
Lescouble’s frigate and three lesser craft.
The raiders stole ashore next evening
near Puerto Plata, and moved stealthily
for more than 20 miles up into the Cibao
Valley over the next couple of days, hid-
ing during the daylight hours and follow-
ing hidden jungle trails by night, so as to
take the town of Santiago de los Cabal-
leros completely by surprise. Arriving
within striking distance by Good Friday
night, they burst out of the nearby woods
at dawn, March 27, 1660.
Some 25 or 30 Spaniards were killed
outright during their initial onslaught, and
the Alcalde Mayor seized in his bed.
Delisle’s and Lormel’s men ransacked the
buildings on Easter Sunday, even strip-
ping the church of its ornaments, before
departing with a number of hostages on
Monday, March 29, 1660, to return to-
ward the coast. Several hundred Domini-
can militia cavalrymen—traditionally
organized into companies of fifty or cin-
cuenta men apiece, hence known as cin-
cuentenas—had meanwhile rallied from
throughout the district, and prepared an
ambush ahead of the retiring French col-
umn. The leading two buccaneers were
shot dead and a two-hour firefight ensued,
before the Dominicans finally broke. The
French had suffered 10 killed and a half-
dozen wounded during this attack, yet
their column reached the sea without
being challenged again, because of even
heavier Spanish losses.
After waiting in vain on the coast
for several days for ransoms to be paid
for their hostages, these captives were
released, and Lormel and the rest of
this formation sailed home to enjoy
their spoils on Tortuga.
See also
Adam, Captain; Cincuentena; Delisle,
Capitaine; Le Roux, Anne.
References
Du Tertre, Jean-Baptiste, Histoire g

en
erale
des Antilles de l’Am
erique habit

ees par
les Français (Fort-de-France, 1973
reedition).
Tejera, Emiliano, ‘‘Gobernadores de la isla
de Santo Domingo, siglos XVI
XVII,’’
Boletı´n del Archivo General de la
Naci
on [Dominican Republic] 18,
Number 4 (1941), pp. 359
375.
LUCAS, JAN
(fl. 1668
1673)
Minor Dutch freebooter who apparently
served under both Nau l’Olonnais and
Henry Morgan.
Lucas was born in Amsterdam around
1644. He first sailed for the New World
in 1661, as a teenaged seaman aboard a
14-gun Zeeland merchantman bound for
St. Kitts. Over the next few years, he
would serve aboard various trading-
vessels plying the Lesser Antilles. By
the summer of 1666, he was seemingly a

crewmember of the merchant convoy
assembling at Barbados, which was then
commandeered by Lord Willoughby to
sail to the relief of St. Kitts, recently
conquered by the French. Yet after over-
running The Saintes instead, this entire
20-ship formation was destroyed by a
hurricane on the night of August 4
5,
1666. Lucas miraculously survived,
being aboard one of only two vessels to
ride out this storm: a flute which stag-
gered heavily-damaged into Montserrat.
When a French counter-expedition
subsequently moved against the hapless
English Leeward Islands in late October
1666, Lucas was evidently delegated to
sail from Nevis for Jamaica aboard the
pink of Captain ‘‘Exterman’’ [?], part of
a small convoy carrying 60 women and
150 slaves to safety. Once all hostilities
ceased, Lucas was dispatched from
Jamaica aboard a sloop, to go and cut
logwood at Cape Catoche. Homeward-
bound with a cargo, this sloop was inter-
cepted off Cuba’s Pinos Island by the
French privateer squadron of Jean-David
Nau l’Olonnais, which consisted of three
medium-sized vessels and four small
ones.
Lucas remained aboard this formation
for nine months as a captive, witnessing
their capture of the 36-gun Spanish
registry-ship San Francisco de Asis at
Santo Tom
as de Castilla (Guatemala), as
well as another medium-sized vessel ‘‘of
twelve pieces and sixteen swivel-guns.’’
When Nau subsequently tried to steer for
Nicaragua, though, both prizes were lost
in what ‘‘the English call Guanabey Cove
and the Spaniards, Almirante Bay.’’ The
French flagship was also wrecked near
Cape Gracias a Dios, and as only three
piraguas remained for all the survivors,
new craft had to be built from the wreck-
age. A boat which they sent toward
Lynch, Sir Thomas (1632
1684) 215
Tortuga Island for help was seized by the
Spaniards at Cape Corrientes (Cuba). The
survivors eventually managed to struggle
along the coast to Bluefields (Nicaragua).
From here, Lucas managed to ship out
aboard an English brigantine loaded with
logwood, and thus returned to Jamaica.
When resentment on that island escalated
against Spanish privateering raids dur-
ing the summer of 1670, a counter-
expedition was prepared. Lucas, now a
veteran West Indian rover, was put in
command of a privateer brigantine by
Captain Cooper. This vessel served as a
patache or auxiliary to Henry Morgan’s
own flagship Satisfaction.
LYNCH, SIR THOMAS
(1632
1684)
Fourth Governor of Jamaica, who labored
tirelessly to restrain its privateers.
Lynch was born in Cranbrook, in
the English County of Kent, and came
to the West Indies as a junior officer
in the Cromwellian expedition sent out
in 1654 under Admiral Sir William
Penn and General Robert Venables. By
1660, he was back in England on fur-
lough, and seems to have adapted well
to the restoration of Charles II to the
throne that same year, despite being an
Old Stander. On November 28, 1660
(O.S.), Lynch petitioned the government
for passage back to Jamaica aboard one
of the King’s ships, describing himself as
a Captain, and in January 1661 was
appointed Provost-Marshal of the island
for life. When Lord Windsor arrived to
inaugurate Royalist rule and admin-
istrative reforms that following year,
Lynch secured appointment as Lieutenant-
Colonel of the newly-created Fifth
216 Lynch, Sir Thomas (1632
1684)
Regiment of militia in December 1662,
and by April 1663 was sworn in as a
member of Jamaica’s first Council.
A year later, he was elected its Presi-
dent, and acted as interim Governor for
two months until Sir Thomas Mody-
ford could transfer from Barbados.
Lynch was also a factor for the Royal
African Company, which meant that
he—unlike Jamaica’s privateers and
planters—hoped to establish peaceful
trade with Spanish America. The first
tentative contacts had been dashed
by Commodore Christopher Myngs’
descents on Santiago de Cuba and
Campeche, which in turn had inspired
such rovers as John Morris and Henry
Morgan to continue their depredations,
despite the official truce with Spain.
‘‘What compliance can be expected
from men so desperate and numerous,’’
Lynch wrote in late May 1664, ‘‘that
have no element but the sea, nor trade
but privateering?’’
Within the first few weeks of Mody-
ford’s administration, however, Lynch
confronted other problems. The new
Governor was soon writing privately to
London to suggest Lynch be created
sheriff rather than marshal, ‘‘for he is a
pretty understanding gentleman and
very useful here; he has an estate, and
would be very well beloved were he
sheriff instead of marshall.’’ But such
changes were not being sought by
Lynch nor many other members of the
Council, and they bristled when Mody-
ford began forcing the issue. Lynch
was dismissed both from the Council
and as Chief Justice of the island,
protesting that the reason was his
‘‘uncourtly humor of speaking plain
and true’’ to Modyford. Nonetheless,
he was obliged to return to England,
something he resented as it had been
his intent to marry, send for his rela-
tions, and make Jamaica his permanent
home.
He spent much of his exile visiting
Spain, where he learned the language
‘‘and to perfect it spent a whole winter
in Salamanca, not talking to foreigners,
learning much about the things of the In-
dies through his own studies and by talk-
ing to merchants and others there and in
Andalusia.’’ Gradually, his reputation
grew with such ministers as the Secre-
tary of State Lord Arlington, who also
believed that England’s best policy
would be to forsake hostilities and de-
velop trade with Spanish America. By
late 1670, this faction was in the ascen-
dant at Whitehall, and Lynch was being
groomed to replace Modyford. He was
knighted on December 3, 1670 (O.S.),
being described as ‘‘of Rixton Hall in
Great Sonkey Lane,’’ and a few days
later married Lady Vere, the daughter of
Sir Edward Herbert and sister of the Earl
of Torrington. By January 1671, Lynch
was designated the new Governor and
naval commander-in-chief for Jamaica,
as well as being secretly issued a royal
warrant to arrest Modyford, on the charge
that he ‘‘hath, contrary to the King’s
express commands, made many depreda-
tions and hostilities against the subjects
of His Majesty’s brother, the Catholic
King.’’
First Term (1671
1675)
Lynch sailed for Jamaica aboard HMS
Assistance and Welcome, officially
entering Port Royal on July 1, 1671
(O.S.). He was greeted with full hon-
ors, and invited to a banquet at Mody-
ford’s house. There, the revocation of
the old Governor’s commission was

read out, and Lynch noted: ‘‘The peo-
ple seemed not much pleased.’’ Mody-
ford’s aggressive policy against the
Spaniards had been quite popular on
the island, Henry Morgan having
recently returned from his spectacular
success at Panama, so that Lynch
feared a backlash against his more
pacific plans. His situation was made
more awkward by a bout of illness,
and the fact he was being generously
accommodated in Modyford’s own
home. Finally, he lured his host aboard
Assistance six weeks later, on the pre-
text he had ‘‘something of import to
him from the King,’’ and informed
Modyford of the arrest warrant. The
latter behaved with great dignity, wish-
ing that he might have been given the
opportunity to show his loyalty ‘‘by his
voluntary submission to His Majesty’s
pleasure,’’ and an embarrassed Lynch
promised him ‘‘his life and estate was
not in danger,’’ but that a show of
sternness was needed to assuage Span-
ish complaints.
Lynch then had to placate the
Jamaica Council and privateers, assur-
ing the latter they would be pardoned
if they returned to Jamaica and submit-
ted. There was no immediate outburst,
but many muttered privately that the
new Governor was ‘‘a trepan’’ (i.e.,
snare or trap) who had ‘‘betrayed the
good general.’’ Modyford departed for
England 10 days later as a prisoner
aboard the Jamaica Merchant, and
rovers such as Jan Erasmus Reyning
and Alexandre-Olivier Exquemelin
began avoiding Jamaica, preferring to
seek service with the French or even
the Spanish. Meanwhile, Madrid had
reacted angrily to the news of Mor-
gan’s raid, and by November 1671 it
was feared that an invasion of Jamaica
Lynch, Sir Thomas (1632
1684) 217
was imminent. At this same time,
Lynch received orders from London to
arrest Morgan, which he was loath to
do for it would further alienate the pri-
vateers, on whom he now relied for the
island’s defense. He therefore decided
to send the freebooter home in such a
manner ‘‘as he shall not be much dis-
gusted,’’ and deferred the actual arrest
because of Morgan’s ill health.
It was not until mid-April 1672 that
the great privateer was conducted
aboard the 36-gun royal frigate Wel-
come of Captain John Keene, along
with the condemned prisoner Captain
Francis Weatherbourne, to sail for Eng-
land with a three-ship convoy. This
was virtually around the same time
as the Third Anglo-Dutch War was
erupting back in Europe, with England
and France ranged against the Nether-
lands. Hostilities against the Protestant
Dutch were not very popular, espe-
cially when the French proved inept
allies, and then went to war against
Spain next year.
All of which resulted in a complete
reversal of policy at Whitehall, with
surprising consequences. On March 5,
1675 (O.S.), the 40-ton privateer Gift
of Captain Thomas Rogers entered Port
Royal with Morgan on board, now
bearing a knighthood and commission
as Lieutenant Governor of the island.
The following day, Lynch resigned and
seven days afterward, his successor
Lord Vaughan arrived aboard the 522-
ton frigate HMS Foresight. By May
24th (O.S.), William Beeston was not-
ing in his journal: ‘‘Sir Thomas Lynch
sailed from Jamaica in the Saint
Thomas, Captain [Joseph] Knapman
commander, and with him Captain
[Hender] Molesworth. Nevertheless,
Lynch was not entirely out of favor,
218 Lynch, Sir Thomas (1632
1684)
carrying dispatches from Vaughan as
to his ‘‘prudent government and con-
duct of affairs.’’
Second Term (1682
1684)
Six years later, Crown policy reversed
again, and once more Lynch’s pro-
Spanish sentiments came into vogue.
Following numerous complaints against
the Jamaican privateers and Morgan,
Charles II opted to appease the Span-
iards by reappointing Lynch to that
post. A confidential report from Lon-
don noted:
The Spanish Ambassador has given
his thanks with great solemnity for
this mark of His [Majesty’s] friend-
ship to the King of Spain, and he
has complimented the ministers like-
wise upon the occasion and it is cer-
tain that as he is satisfied Sir
T. Lynch will be a good Governor
for the satisfaction of the Spaniard,
so he will be a nursing father for the
improvement of that plantation.
Lynch’s new commission was dated July
28, 1681 (O.S.), and by the end of Octo-
ber he and his family had gone aboard
the frigate HMS Sweepstakes of 42 guns.
Winter gales forced this vessel into
Plymouth, and it was not until mid-Feb-
ruary 1682 that the frigate could put to
sea again.
He arrived at Port Royal on May
14th (O.S.) with only his five-year-old
daughter Philadelphia, his wife and 10-
year-old son Charles having been left
behind at Madeira to recuperate from
an illness. That same day, Lynch sent
a letter ashore to Morgan, who was
Acting Governor, informing him that
his commission was cancelled. Finding
the official residence uninhabitable,
Lynch lodged with his old friend Colo-
nel Hender Molesworth, now the Royal
African Company’s chief agent in
Jamaica.
Less than two weeks later, Lynch
convened his first Council meeting and
plunged into business. He found the
island’s clandestine trade in slaves and
other goods to the Spanish Main very
promising:
… were we not undersold by the
great Dutch ships that haunt the
coast of the Main and islands, and
were we not fearful of pirates, which
is the reason why the ships are so
strongly manned. Those and other
expenses and hazards carry away
much of the profit.
As during his previous administration, he
actively discouraged privateering because
of its deleterious effects on commerce,
and hunted pirates ruthlessly.
But Lynch was a sick man, who com-
plained of gout and ‘‘the disorders of my
head,’’ his spirits further receiving a
heavy blow when he learned his wife
and son had both died at Madeira. On
June 24, 1684 (O.S.), he wed Mary
Temple, the 17-year-old sister-in-law of
the Speaker of the Assembly, but did
not live long enough to enjoy his
second marriage. When the pirate Joseph
Bannister was acquitted by a Jamaican
jury, Lynch’s vexation reputedly created
‘‘such disturbance of mind’’ that he died
a week later on August 24, 1684 (O.S.).
His friend Molesworth succeeded him as
interim Governor, burying Lynch the
next day in the church at Spanish
Town, and four years later marrying his
widow.

References
Dictionary Of National Biography
(London, 1885
1900, 63 Volumes);
Issued by Oxford University Press,
2004.
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
Lynch, Sir Thomas (1632
1684) 219
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
 M

Hither our Pirates came, having made a tour of half the Globe,
going about like roaring Lions, seeking whom they might devour,
as the Psalmist says of the Devils.
—Charles Johnson, A General and True History

MAGOTT, THOMAS the brigantine of French flibustier Jean

(fl. 1679
1680)
English privateer who served under
John Coxon at Portobelo.
Late in December 1679—England
having been at peace for several years,
while France and Spain were winding
down their hostilities in the New
World—Magott attended a gathering of
privateers at Port Morant, off the
southeastern tip of Jamaica. Along with
his own sloop of 14 tons and 20 men,
there were the barks of Coxon, Corne-
lis Essex, and Bartholomew Sharpe, as
well as the sloop of Robert Allison.
All five agreed to unite under Coxon’s
leadership for an assault against Span-
ish Portobelo, although having no clear
authorization for such a venture. They
quit Port Morant on January 17, 1680,
and less than 20 miles out at sea met
Rose, who also joined this force. The
weather turning bad, Coxon hailed his
vessels to make toward Isla Fuerte,
90 miles south-southwest of Cartagena
on the Spanish Main. Only Essex and
Sharpe failed to keep the rendezvous,
while Coxon captured ‘‘four piraguas
and six very good large canoes’’ at the
nearby San Bernardo or ‘‘Friends’’
Islands, to provide landing craft for the
forthcoming disembarkation.
Essex had meanwhile rejoined, so
that the formation then steered toward
Isla de Pinos, 130 miles east of Porto-
belo amid the Archipi
elago de las Mula-
tas. Only Coxon’s bark, though, was
able to shoulder through the contrary
winds and gain this place, the remainder
being constrained to put into Isla de
Oro or ‘‘Golden Island,’’ some miles
away. There, the pirates befriended the

221
222 Magott, Thomas (fl. 1679
1680)
local Indians, until Coxon ordered 250
buccaneers into boats to row westward
along the coast, and fall on Portobelo
before the Spaniards could learn of their
presence. Nearing their destination, they
came on ‘‘a great ship riding at
anchor,’’ which proved to be that of fli-
bustier Capitaine Lessone, who added
80 Frenchmen to the force.
Shortly thereafter, the buccaneers
slipped ashore at Puerto del Escribano
in the Gulf of San Blas, proceeding
afoot to avoid Spanish coastal watchers.
They marched for three days ‘‘without
any food, and their feet cut with the
rocks for want of shoes,’’ until at last
they came on an Indian village three
miles short of Portobelo on the morning
of February 7, 1680, where a native boy
spotted them and set off at a run toward
the distant city. Coxon called on his
advance unit (commonly known among
buccaneers as the ‘‘forlorn’’) to hurry
after the Indian before the Spaniards
could mount a defense. The men trotted
gamely, but the boy arrived half-an-
hour before them, and raised the alarm.
The approaching pirates could hear a
signal-gun being fired, and ‘‘then cer-
tainly knew that we were decried.’’
Nevertheless, their vanguard swept
in while suffering only five or six
wounded, the startled Spaniards scurry-
ing inside their citadel, and leaving the
raiders to ransack Portobelo unopposed
over the next two days. The freebooters
retired 10 miles northeastward, entrench-
ing themselves with their booty and a
few prisoners on a cay half-a-mile off-
shore from Bastimentos. Allison was
again called on to perform a singular
service, being sent in a boat to recall the
anchored privateer vessels from farther
up the coast. By the time he returned
three days later, several hundred
Spanish troops had appeared and were
firing on the pirates from the beach, yet
they retreated at the sight of these
reinforcements.
The raiders then mounted a brief
blockade of Portobelo, but after a cou-
ple more captures a general distribution
of booty was made, resulting in shares
of 100 pieces of eight per man. After-
ward the flotilla retired to Bocas del
Toro (literally ‘‘Bull’s Mouths’’ or
‘‘Entrances of the Bull,’’ at the western
extremity of present day Panama) to
careen, where the privateers Richard
Sawkins and Peter Harris were found.
Once refitted, all the pirates except the
French decided to return to Golden
Island and obtain guides from the Indi-
ans ‘‘to travel overland to Panama,’’
and attack the Spaniards on the Pacific
side. Coxon, Magott, Allison, Cooke,
Harris, Sawkins, and Sharpe all anch-
ored close inshore in a small cove on
Golden Island, out of sight of any
Spanish ship which might chance to
pass. An anchor watch was left, and at
six o’clock on Monday morning, April
15, 1680, 332 buccaneers went ashore
to cross the Isthmus.
Yet ‘‘Captain Allison and Captain
Magott being sickly were unable to
march,’’ so remained behind. The rest
of the buccaneers disappeared into the
jungle, and 10 days later took the inland
town of Santa Marı́a, at the confluence
of the Chucunaque and Tuira Rivers.
From there the buccaneers pushed on
into the Pacific, although Coxon proved
hesitant. By the time the expedition
captured some Spanish coastal craft and
bore down on Panama, command had
devolved on Harris, Sawkins, and
Sharpe. Coxon returned with 70 men to
Golden Island, and it is possible Magott
may then have sailed away with him,
 Maintenon, Charles François d’Angennes, Marquis de (fl. 1670
1682)
although nothing more is known about
his movements.
References
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
MAINTENON, CHARLES
FRANÇOIS D’ANGENNES,
MARQUIS DE
(fl. 1670
1682)
French nobleman who became a West
Indian naval officer, rover, smuggler,
slaver, and wealthy plantation-owner.
Maintenon was born at Chartres on
December 5, 1648, the eldest son and
fifth of six children in an ancient but
impoverished family. His father Louis
died when he was only eight, and young
Charles was enrolled as an Ensign in
France’s Royal Navy at Toulon in 1669.
Next year, he sailed for the Antilles as a
subaltern aboard the small royal frigate
Sibylle. He assumed command of this
small warship in 1672, after the death of
its Captain du Lau. When war erupted
that same year against The Netherlands,
Sibylle participated in the expedition
which Governor-General Jean-Charles
de Baas Castelmore led against the
Dutch stronghold of Curaçao early in
1673. Although this assault failed and a
retreat was ordered by March 18, 1673,
Maintenon was detached to carry home
the official messages. After pausing en
route six days later to check in Irois Bay
223
(western Haiti) for illicit traders, Sibylle
regained France before that same year
was out.
While on leave at home, Maintenon
apparently sold his marquisate at
l’Eure-et-Loir in Maine early in 1674
to please Louis XIV, so that the King
might bestow its title on his new favor-
ite mistress, Françoise d’Aubign
e, that
following year. As a reward for this
concession of his family title, Mainte-
non was henceforth to be granted con-
siderable leeway in seeking his fortune
in the New World.
Flibustier Chieftain (1675
1682)
He departed Nantes for the West Indies
again as a privateer late in 1675, when
France was still at war against Holland,
to which had now also been added
Spain. His flag flew aboard the 24-gun
Fontaine d’Or, which was accompanied
by the Toison d’Or under Captain Ber-
nard Le Moigne. Eventually reaching the
port of Petit-Go^ave (Haiti), Maintenon
organized a privateering expedition to
raid the Venezuelan coast during the
winter months of 1676
1677. A news-
letter from neutral Jamaica dated Febru-
ary 19, 1677 read: ‘‘The Marquis de
Maintenon likely to do nothing, although
he has all the French on Hispaniola and
all their vessels ready for a design.’’ In
fact, the new flibustier chieftain had al-
ready led this expedition of 11 vessels of
various sizes on an attack against the
thinly-populated Spanish island of Mar-
garita (Venezuela).
His flotilla had appeared offshore on
January 24, 1677, and dropped anchor
within its Morro Bay by 11:00 P.M.,
using 10 boats to begin disembarking
roughly 600 men. Its forewarned Spanish
224 Maintenon, Charles François d’Angennes, Marquis de (fl. 1670
1682)
Governor, Francisco Mexı́a y Alarc
on,
rode down from Margarita’s capital of
La Asunci
on to view this scene from a
distance, while his island militia was
being mustered—although they were far
too few in number, and too poorly-
armed, to resist Maintenon’s host. At
dawn of January 25th, the French set off
at a brisk pace along the beach to enter
the Margarita Valley, three miles away.
Mexı́a therefore positioned his 50 men
in a roadside redoubt named Portada de
Reinaldos, in hopes of at least delaying
the raiders’ advance. But Maintenon,
guided by Spanish and native captives,
veered around this stronghold, and
pressed on so swiftly toward the island
capital of Asunci
on, that it had to be
abandoned without a fight.
The invaders remained in uncon-
tested control of Asunci
on over the next
eight days, while also sending out forag-
ing columns to pillage outlying farms.
Maintenon finally withdrew when a
French frigate arrived with orders for
his force to join the much larger expedi-
tion being gathered by Admiral Jean,
Comte d’Estr
ees, for an assault against
Dutch-held Tobago. Maintenon’s priva-
teers consequently torched 29 houses in
Margarita’s capital and destroyed its
church-bells, before departing with 44
captives.
On March 2, 1678, Maintenon mar-
ried Catherine Giraud de Poincy, the
beautiful daughter of Louis Giraud,
Sieur du Poyet, a wealthy militia captain
from the island of Saint Christopher.
That same year, Maintenon also com-
manded the 16-gun, 130-ton royal frig-
ate Sorciere (‘‘Sorceress’’), which with
some flibustiers from Tortuga cruised
the coast of Caracas on the Spanish
Main. They ravaged the islands of Mar-
garita and Trinidad, but apparently
gained little plunder, for soon afterward
the fleet scattered. The chronicler Rave-
nau de Lussan later related a lurid tale
about the Marquis’ adventures, to high-
light the ferocity of American natives.
[Maintenon] had taken a prize carry-
ing 14 cannon. On this he embarked
and having been separated from his
warship found himself one day
forced to take on water at Bocas del
Drag
on [between the island of Trini-
dad and Venezuela] on the mainland,
a place inhabited by a tribe similar to
those on Cape Vela. Having brought
his vessel as close in as possible, he
lined up his cannon on deck and
under cover of these, sent his small
boat ashore with 22 armed men to fill
their casks. The savages, who were
hiding near the shore, did not even
give the boat a chance to land, but
jumping suddenly into the sea,
attacked. In spite of the incessant fire
from the ship’s cannon, they pushed
the boat more than 50 feet up on
shore where, after killing them, they
threw them over their backs and
departed. Then they swam out into
deep water to cut the ship’s cables
and so force it to founder, hoping in
the same way to annihilate those on
board. The crew, fortunately, had
time to unfurl their sails and push
out from shore.
On April 24, 1679, peace having been
restored by Paris with both The Nether-
lands and Spain, Maintenon was ap-
pointed as Governor of Marie-Galante,
and that same summer he was also hired
by the Governor-General Comte de
Bl
enac to cruise the Caribbean with
Vice Admiral duc d’Estr
ees, judging
the Marquis to be ‘‘most experienced
 Maintenon, Charles François d’Angennes, Marquis de (fl. 1670
1682)
and very knowledgeable of the places
which Monsieur the Vice Admiral
wishes to visit.’’ On November 2, 1680,
after having again visited France, Main-
tenon was furthermore granted exclu-
sive privilege to trade clandestinely
with the Spaniards in the West Indies
for four years. This permit was backed
by a lettre de cachet under Louis XIV’s
privy seal, instructing French officials
in the New World to impede any trade
missions to the Spanish Main that did
not enjoy the Marquis’ approval. When
informed of this restriction, the Gover-
nor of Saint-Domingue, Jacques Nep-
veu, Sieur de Pouançay, puckishly
observed: ‘‘I do not think that this order
can apply to the flibustiers, as they
never approach Spanish lands to trade.’’
Nevertheless, Maintenon dispatched
Capitaine Tucker to advise John
Coxon, Jean Rose, Jan Willems, and
several other corsairs who were already
operating with French commissions off
the Spanish Main of this new arrange-
ment. Tucker came up with them off
the northeastern shores of Panama and
in the early days of June 1681, the
English and French contingents held a
series of conferences on Springer’s
Key in the San Blas Islands, during
which the pirate chronicler William
Dampier noted:
The French seemed very forward to
go [and attack] any [Spanish] town
that the English could or would pro-
pose, because the Governor of Petit-
Go^ave (from whom the privateers
take commissions) had recommended
a gentleman lately come from France
to be general of the expedition, and
sent word by Captain Tucker, with
whom this gentleman came, that they
should if possible make an attempt
225
on some town before he returned
again. The English when they were
in company with the French seemed
to approve of what the French said,
but never looked on that general to
be fit for the service in hand.
Ironically, Maintenon made a peaceful
visit to Margarita on January 17, 1682.
His ship and a smaller consort dropped
anchor in its main anchorage of Pampa-
tar, informing the acting-island Governor
Juan Fermı́n de Huidobro next day that
he was under French royal orders to
patrol the Caribbean against pirates, and
restore stolen goods. Maintenon returned
some jewels, money, and garments which
he had taken from some flibustiers on
Martinique, who had pillaged them from
a Spanish piragua bearing servants of
the Venezuelan Bishop, Doctor Marcos
de Sobremonte, from Cuman
a toward
La Guaira. Three days later, Maintenon
weighed.
Later Career and Death
(1683
1687)
Eventually tiring of privateer commands,
Maintenon henceforth dabbled in com-
mercial ventures. He had purchased the
‘‘Montagne’’ plantation on Martinique
(once owned by d’Esnambuc), which by
1685 boasted a work-force of 200 slaves.
Maintenon had also been granted a spe-
cial license by the Crown to import 400
African slaves into the French Antilles
every year, to be resold to the Spaniards;
but he openly disposed of them to
French plantation-owners, to the detri-
ment of royal customs revenues. He also
profited from trade in ebony wood, so
much so that as of January 1, 1686, he
made over his governorship of Marie-
Galante (which he had scarcely ever
226 Maldonado de Aldana, Antonio (fl. 1663
1665)
bothered to visit) as a wedding present
for his youngest sister Louise’s new
husband Charles, Chevalier de Auger.
Maintenon often issued passports for
returning merchantmen to call at Dun-
kirk or Holland rather than sail directly
for France, thereby breaking the Crown
monopoly on trade. It is little wonder
that he has been described as ‘‘more of a
flibustier than a marquis.’’ In 1687, he
retired from public life and lived off the
proceeds of his two large plantations on
Martinique, which he maintained with a
work-force of 300 slaves, as well as a
sugar refinery valued at 250,000 livres.
References
Baudrit; Dampier, William, A New Voyage
Round the World (New York: Dover,
1968).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
MALDONADO DE
ALDANA, ANTONIO
(fl. 1663
1665)
Spanish defender of Campeche.
Originally born in the town of
Esparragosa in Extremadura, Spain,
Maldonado emigrated to the Mexican
port of Campeche, where he married
the wealthy widow Juana de Vargas
and settled down. Over the years, he
came to finance numerous expeditions
against pirates along the Gulf coast,
and as a regidor or ‘‘alderman,’’ Gen-
eral Treasurer of the Santa Cruzada or
‘‘Holy Crusade,’’ and an officer in the
local militia, he was charged with the
defense of the city’s tiny inland keep
of Santa Cruz.
Myngs’s and Mansfield’s Raid
(February 1663)
At dawn on February 9, 1663, a cluster
of anchored vessels was sighted three
miles to leeward of Campeche, and its
garrison hastily stood to arms. From his
outpost at Santa Cruz, Maldonado beheld
the advance of Christopher Myngs’s and
Edward Mansfield’s host toward the city
walls, but could not deflect their progress
despite firing off the bulk of his fortress’
scanty supply of ammunition. The Eng-
lish went on to carry Campeche by
storm, Myngs being badly wounded in
the street-fighting. During the night Mal-
donado spiked his artillery and aban-
doned Santa Cruz, and on the morning of
February 10th, and being the only Span-
ish official left free, approached the tri-
umphant invaders under a flag of truce to
discuss terms. He met personally with
Mansfield, and both agreed that the 42
Spanish dead inside the city ‘‘should
be cast into the sea and the [fourteen]
wounded treated, which had not yet
been done,’’ and all fires extinguished.
Maldonado thereupon retreated inland
and observed the invaders’ activities
from a safe distance. On February 17th,
he received a message offering to spare
the city and its prisoners, if the raiders
could draw water from the nearby Lerma
wells. He acceded, and on February 23rd
the enemy fleet finally departed, after
releasing their captives and amassing an
impressive booty.
 Maldonado de Aldana, Antonio (fl. 1663
1665)
Spanish Pursuit (March 1663)
Shortly thereafter word was received that
a smaller landing of approximately 50
buccaneers had been made on the coastal
town of Sisal, 80 miles north of Cam-
peche. This was possibly a laggard ele-
ment from Myngs’s force, and on March
2nd Maldonado was ordered by the Act-
ing Governor of Yucatan to march
to that town’s relief, at the head of
200 Spanish regulars and 600 Indian
auxiliaries. He arrived in time to catch
these intruders still on land, where they
had burnt down a hacienda. An English
officer and seven buccaneers were seized,
while their comrades fled back out to sea.
The prisoners were then brought victori-
ously into Campeche, where they were
incarcerated and interrogated.
Morris and Morgan’s Raid
(February 1665)
Less than two years later, Maldonado
organized another strike against what he
assumed were the logwood cutters of the
Laguna de T
erminos, after a cutting-out
expedition had stolen an 8-gun Spanish
frigate from Campeche’s roads one
night. During the intervening period, his
cousin Rodrigo Flores de Aldana had
assumed office as the new Governor of
Yucatan, and designated Maldonado his
Deputy Governor for Campeche. Three
frigates were assembled and 270 troops
put on board, which set sail on February
20, 1665, under the command of Maldo-
nado’s nephew Jos
e Aldana. Two days
later, he came on three ships anchored
opposite the tiny town of Santa Marı́a de
la Frontera, at the mouth of the Grijalva
River. These only had anchor-watches
left on board, one of which escaped in a
227
single vessel, while seven of their com-
rades remained on the 10-gun flagship
and 8-gun Spanish prize. The prisoners
revealed that their ships were unmanned
because ‘‘Captain Mauricio [sic; John
Morris, Henry Morgan, Freeman, Fack-
man] and David Martien’’ had marched
most of their force inland to sack the
town of Villahermosa de Tabasco.
Surprised, Aldana returned immedi-
ately to Campeche with his prizes, which
were fitted out with 300 men and
replaced the Spanish frigates, sallying
again on March 11th. Near the Laguna
he sighted six people ashore, who proved
to be citizens of Villahermosa released
by the raiders, and who indicated the
enemy had found their retreat cut off, so
continued westward in two captured
river-boats to look for another avenue of
escape. Aldana sailed in their pursuit,
and on the afternoon of March 17th spot-
ted the interlopers on Santa Ana cay.
He sent a messenger close inshore, call-
ing to the English from his launch to sur-
render, but the buccaneers pretended
not to understand. When an interpreter
approached the beach the following
morning, Morris and Martien replied
they would not give up without a fight,
and the Spaniards discovered they had
used the interval to entrench themselves
behind a palisade reinforced with sand-
bags, and bristling with seven small can-
non brought from Villahermosa.
The Spanish troops reluctantly dis-
embarked, but being mostly volunteer
civilian militia, showed little stomach
for the fight, despite outnumbering the
English almost three-to-one. A faint-
hearted assault was made, but repelled
without a single injury among the free-
booters. The next day, March 19th, the
Spanish ships were found mysteriously
run aground, thus allowing the raiders
228 Malherbe, Abraham (fl. 1665
1666)
to exit unchallenged in their two small
boats. Later that same morning, Aldana
found the decrepit Spanish frigate
Patarata wrecked a mile and a half
away, having been dispatched by Mal-
donado with another 100 men under
Captain Carlos Vocardo. The intruders
were nonetheless allowed to make
away undisturbed.
This was the last action Maldonado
seems to have been involved in; his
cousin was soon after deposed as Gover-
nor of Yucatan, and Maldonado no lon-
ger figured in the campaigns against the
pirates. It is believed he may have still
been living in Campeche when George
Spurre attacked on July 10, 1678,
although this is not entirely certain.
References
Calder
on Quijano, Jos
e Ignacio, Historia de
las fortificaciones en Nueva Espa~na
(Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
americanos, 1953).


Eugenio Martı́nez, Marı́a Angeles, La
defensa de Tabasco, 1600
1717
(Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
americanos, 1971).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
MALHERBE, ABRAHAM
(fl. 1665
1666)
French rover from Saint-Domingue who
served among the English of Jamaica,
to whom he was known as ‘‘Malarka’’
or ‘‘Malarkey.’’
Malherbe commanded a 1-gun gal-
liot in Colonel Edward Morgan’s expe-
dition against Dutch Sint Eustatius and
Saba, during the Second Anglo-Dutch
War. This force departed Jamaica in
two divisions, five sail putting out of
Port Royal on April 5, 1665, and Mor-
gan himself following with another
four on April 28th. There were 650
men in all, described in a letter by
Gov. Sir Thomas Modyford as:
. . . chiefly reformed privateers,
scarce a planter amongst them, being
resolute fellows and well armed with
fusils [Spanish word for muskets]
and pistols.
The Crown official was particularly
pleased that they would be serving ‘‘at
the old rate of no purchase, no pay, and
it will cost the King nothing consider-
able, some powder and mortar pieces.’’
Their landing was successfully made,
but the Colonel, ‘‘being a corpulent
man,’’ died from heat exertion during
the chase, and his expedition disbanded
shortly thereafter.
References
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
MANSFIELD, EDWARD
(fl. 1660
1667)
English privateer who commanded some
of the earliest raids against Spanish
America.

Mansfield may be regarded as one of
the first freebooter ‘‘admirals’’ in the
West Indies, a leader capable of rallying
other captains for joint enterprises
against the Spaniards. He was described
in the 1678 book of Alexandre-Olivier
Exquemelin as ‘‘an old buccaneer called
Mansveldt [sic],’’ and listed in the jour-
nal of the Jamaican Governor, Colonel
Edward d’Oyley as having been issued a
‘‘let-pass’’ as early as December 4, 1660
(O.S.), to sortie with his vessel. Mans-
field possibly took part in Commodore
Christopher Myngs’s large-scale assault
against Santiago de Cuba two years later,
and definitely served in that officer’s
raid against the Mexican port of Cam-
peche of early 1663. During this latter
campaign Mansfield led the privateer
contingent, but became de facto com-
mander-in-chief when Myngs was
wounded during the initial assault.
Sack of Campeche (1663)
Encouraged by his success against San-
tiago de Cuba, Myngs had called for
another expedition against the Spaniards
on December 22, 1662, refitting his 40-
gun flagship HMS Centurion and vice-
flagship Griffin (with 14 guns and a crew
of 100 men under the Dutch-born Cap-
tain Adriaen Swart), while the free-
booters once again began to marshal.
Among the latter was Mansfield with his
brigantine of four guns and 60 men,
along with other captains such as Wil-
liam James and many others. Soon a
dozen ships were being made ready and
on Sunday, January 21, 1663, they got
under way from Port Royal. Myngs
quickly rounded Yucatan and worked his
flotilla down into the Gulf of Mexico,
losing contact with Smart’s Griffin and
Mansfield, Edward (fl. 1660
1667) 229
several other privateersmen along the
way. Nonetheless, he pressed on and
skillfully snuck almost 1,000 men ashore
at J
amula beach, four miles west of
Campeche, on the night of February
8
9, 1663 to begin his stealthy overland
advance against the city.
At first light, Spanish lookouts saw the
smaller vessels lying opposite this disem-
barkation point, with two larger ships
riding farther out to sea. They sounded the
alarm, but too late, for the buccaneer army
burst out of the nearby woods at eight
o’clock that morning and rushed the city.
Despite being surprised and heavily out-
numbered, the 150 Campeche militiamen
put up a stout resistance, especially from
their ‘‘strong built stone houses, flat at
top.’’ A bloody firefight ensued, in which
Myngs received serious wounds in his face
and both thighs while leading the charge.
He was carried back aboard Centurion
while Mansfield—given the absence of
Swart—assumed overall command of the
expedition. The Spanish defenders were
eventually subdued after two hours’
heated battle, suffering more than 50 fatal-
ities, as opposed to 30 English invaders
slain. Some 170 Spanish captives were
then rounded up, while many of the city’s
thatched huts went up in flames.
Next morning, the sole remaining
Spanish official, Antonio Maldonado de
Aldana, entered Campeche and agreed to
a truce, in exchange for good treatment
of the prisoners. As he dealt directly
with Mansfield, this raid has gone down
as ‘‘Mansfield’s assault’’ in Spanish his-
tories, the few cryptic references to
Myngs furthermore misidentifying him
as ‘‘Crist
obal Innes [sic].’’ The bucca-
neers under Mansfield thereupon looted
the city and withdrew two weeks later,
on February 23rd, carrying off great
booty and 14 vessels found lying in the
230 Mansfield, Edward (fl. 1660
1667)
harbor, described by a Spanish eye-wit-
ness as ‘‘three of 300 tons, the rest me-
dium or small, and some with valuable
cargo still on board.’’ The heavily-laden
formation slowly beat back around
Yucatan against contrary winds and cur-
rents, until Centurion eventually reached
Port Royal on April 23, 1663, under the
command of flag-captain Thomas Mor-
gan, being followed ‘‘soon after [by] the
rest of the fleet, but straggling, because
coming from leeward every one made
the best of his way.’’
Sancti Spı́ritus Raid
(December 1665)
Two years later, news of the outbreak of
the Second Anglo-Dutch War back in
Europe reached Jamaica, and Mansfield
was one of those who sallied again to
take advantage of these hostilities. How-
ever, most privateers still preferred
attacking their traditional Spanish foe
rather than the Dutch—notwithstanding
the fact Madrid had remained neutral in
the conflict—until finally the new Ja-
maican Governor Sir Thomas Modyford
was obliged to recall them to their duty.
Realizing the rovers would never will-
ingly reenter Port Royal and place them-
selves at the mercy of the Crown, he
convened a rendezvous at Bluefields
Bay off the southwestern shore of
Jamaica for November 1665. Eventually
600 buccaneers answered his summons,
and responded to the Governor’s call for
renewed efforts against the Dutch by
assuring him they were ‘‘very forward to
suppression of that enemy,’’ and accept-
ing instruction for a descent against the
Dutch West Indian colony of Curaçao.
But instead the buccaneers immedi-
ately laid in a course for the south coast
of Cuba, supposedly to obtain provi-
sions for their forthcoming campaign. A
Spanish bark was intercepted and its 22
crewmembers murdered among the
Cayos, after which the rovers reached
the tiny port of Jı́caro around Christ-
mastime. There their demand of ‘‘vict-
uals for their money’’ was allegedly
refused, furnishing them with an excuse
for 200 to 300 men who:
. . . marched 42 miles into the coun-
try, took and fired the town of Santo
Spı́rito [sic; Sancti Spı́ritus], routed a
body of 200 horse[men], carried their
prisoners to their ships, and for their
ransom had 300 fat beeves [i.e., beef-
cattle] sent down [to the coast].
The raiders later justified this depreda-
tion by arguing that some among their
number held old Portuguese commis-
sions (issued by the French Governor
of Tortuga), which authorized such
attacks.
Having thus disposed of their supply
problems, the privateers then chose
Mansfield as their admiral and in mid-
January 1666 reassured an emissary from
the Jamaican Governor that they now
‘‘had much zeal to His Majesty’s service
and a firm resolution to attack Curaçao.’’
But this quickly evaporated again once
they began the long upwind beat toward
that Dutch island, until eventually even
Mansfield’s crew refused to go any fur-
ther, ‘‘averring publicly that there was
more profit with less hazard to be gotten
against the Spaniard, which was their
only interest.’’ Consequently Mansfield
fell away to leeward, and steered his
ships to the buccaneer haunt at Bocas del
Toro (on the northwestern shores of pres-
ent day Panama). There, a fleet of 15
privateer vessels soon gathered, eight

sailing eastward to make a descent on
the town of Nat
a in the Panamanian
province of Veragua, while Mansfield
led the remaining seven westward to-
ward Costa Rica.
Cartago Campaign (April 1666)
Arriving off Portete on April 8, 1666, the
buccaneers were able to capture its
coastal lookout before any alarm could
be carried inland, and anchored their
ships off Punta del Toro. It was Mans-
field’s intent to take the provincial capital
of Cartago by a surprise overland
approach, and he commenced this enter-
prise well by bursting on the nearby town
of Matina at the head of several hundred
men, snapping up all its 35 Spanish citi-
zens. But an Indian called Esteban
Yaperi fled from the smaller hamlet of
Teotique, carrying word of the invasion
to the Costa Rican Governor, maestre de
campo Juan L
opez de Flor. By April
15th, hundreds of militiamen began mus-
tering at the mountain stronghold of Tur-
rialba, ready—although only lightly
armed—to dispute the invaders’ passage.
Mansfield was experiencing even greater
hardships in the jungle, though, as his
men succumbed to hunger and fatigue.
When they encountered some natives
bearing bags of ground wheat, the bucca-
neers fell to fighting among themselves
over this meager prize.
Governor L
opez, heartened by this
report, advanced with his troops and
Mansfield was forced to retreat. By
April 23rd, his survivors had staggered
back aboard their ships at Portete,
‘‘exhausted and dying of hunger,’’ and
shortly thereafter retired to Bocas del
Toro. Here another two ships deserted
Mansfield, and he was left in the
Mansfield, Edward (fl. 1660
1667) 231
unenviable position of being regarded
as a failure both by the mercurial priva-
teers, as well as the King’s officials on
Jamaica. In an effort to vindicate him-
self, Mansfield therefore decided to
mount an attack against the tiny Spanish
garrison on the island of Providencia or
Santa Catalina, which had belonged to
the English more than 20 years earlier.
Capture of Providencia Island
(May 1666)
Mansfield’s two remaining frigates and
three sloops raised this island at noon
on May 25, 1666, gliding down on its
northern coast unobserved that evening,
to drop anchor offshore by 10 o’clock.
Around midnight the moon rose, and
200 buccaneers rowed in through the
reefs by its faint glow: more than 100
Englishmen, 80 Frenchmen from Tor-
tuga, plus Dutch and Portuguese. They
marched across the island rounding up
isolated Spanish residents, and stormed
the lone citadel at first light of May 26th,
without suffering a single loss. Only
eight Spanish soldiers were found asleep
inside, the remaining 62 being scattered
around their civilian billets. Mansfield
granted all the inhabitants quarter, and
the French flibustiers prevented the Eng-
lish from ransacking the church.
Ten days later, Mansfield set sail
again with 170 Spanish captives, whom
he had promised to restore to their com-
patriots. Captain Hadsell was left in
command of the island with 35 priva-
teers and 50 black slaves, until Mans-
field or some other English authority
returned. On June 11, 1666, Mansfield
paused at Punta de Brujas (‘‘Witches
Point’’) on the north coast of Panama,
depositing his prisoners ashore before
standing away for Jamaica.
232 Manso de Contreras Rodrı́guez de Mendoza, Andr
es (fl. late 1650s
early 1660s)
He arrived at Port Royal with just two
ships on June 22nd, and there encountered
a piece of good fortune: three-and-a-half
months previously, Modyford and the
Council had resolved ‘‘that it is the inter-
est and advantage of the island of Jamaica
to have letters of granted against the
Spaniard.’’ Thus although Mansfield had
never been authorized to attack any nation
except the Dutch, he found his seizure of
Providencia now enjoyed a retroactive
veneer of legality. ‘‘I have yet only
reproved him for doing it without order,’’
Modyford wrote the English Secretary of
State Lord Arlington four days later,
‘‘which I should suppose would have
been an acceptable service had he
received command for it.’’
Mysterious Demise (1667)
This operation was to prove the old buc-
caneer’s last; the next year he shifted to
the French of Tortuga Island, after Mody-
ford ceased granting commissions at Port
Royal. Shortly thereafter, Mansfield died,
the exact circumstances being somewhat
disputed. A contemporary English report
indicated that he had been captured by
the Spaniards and carried to Havana,
where he was ‘‘suddenly after put to
death.’’ Spanish historians, on the other
hand, insist that he died at Tortuga in
early 1667, apparently of poison.
References
Crump, Dr. Helen J, Colonial Admiralty
Jurisdiction in the Seventeenth Century
(London: Longmans Green, 1931).
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am

erica Espa~nola (Madrid:
Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
MANSO DE CONTRERAS
RODRÍGUEZ DE
MENDOZA, ANDRE
S
(fl. late
1650s
early 1660s)
Cuban corsair who had good success
fighting against the English, in the
years immediately after the conquest of
Jamaica.
He was born in 1630, the third and
last son of a Spanish officer. Young
Andr
es Manso de Contreras apparently
settled at Remedios, where he married
Antonia Armonı́a Campos Rodrı́guez de
Arciniega in 1653. After a huge English
expedition overran Jamaica a couple of
years later, he became embroiled in
numerous engagements against them. In
one action, he beat off an enemy ship
and patache that had attacked a mer-
chant convoy which he was escorting to
Veracruz, and later enjoyed other suc-
cesses as well.
 Mar del Sur, Armada del 233

MAR DEL SUR, of this ingredient still farther south,

unloading it at Arica in present-day
ARMADA DEL Chile, to be conveyed high up into the
Andes by mule-trains for use in refining
Peruvian squadron based at Callao,
ores at the Potosı́ mines. The anchored
whose principal duty was to conduct
Armada would meanwhile receive that
consignments of silver from Potosı́ to
year’s raw silver output, crude bars
Panama, for export to Spain.
which would be sailed back to Callao
This force—its full name literally
and carried inland to the Lima mint, for
meant ‘‘South Sea Fleet’’—had been
assaying and the striking of coins. Then
created during the late 16th century, as
in May or June, the Armada would
a result of Francis Drake’s incursion into
depart again, this time northward for
the Pacific. It fell under the jurisdiction
Panama with the King’s bullion and an
of the Viceroys of Peru, in their military
accompanying convoy of Peruvian mer-
capacity as Captain-General, and so was
chantmen, travelling to meet the annual
administered through adjutants known as
plate fleet from Spain and conduct busi-
tenientes de capit
an general. Over the
ness. This voyage from Callao to Pan-
intervening decades of peace, this posi-
ama usually only took three weeks, but
tion had become a well-paid sinecure,
the Armada had to remain at anchor until
usually occupied by viceregal relatives.
the commercial fair concluded, after
For example, the fleet which Viceroy
which it faced a slow upwind beat back
Pedro Fern
andez de Castro y Andrade,
toward Callao, normally arriving late in
Conde de Lemus, hastened to dispatch
the year. Sometimes, passengers even
to contain Henry Morgan’s invasion of
disembarked at Paita and traveled the last
Panama in 1671 was, at least nominally,
few hundred miles overland, rather than
under the orders of his seven-year-old
tarry aboard the slow-moving ships.
son, the Marqu
es de Zurria.
Because of the particular nature of
Actual command functions were exer-
their missions, Armada vessels had soon
cised by the Captains of the capitana or
become quite large and cumbersome,
‘‘flagship’’ and almiranta or ‘‘vice-flag-
more like Indiamen than fighting men-of-
ship,’’ who were military officers drawn
war. Their tactics were completely defen-
from the Callao garrison rather than na-
sive as well, relying on the remoteness of
val officers, and addressed as ‘‘General’’
their routes for safety. Some artillery was
or ‘‘Almirante,’’ respectively. The five
often removed from their ships during
companies garrisoning Callao provided
peacetime, so as to accommodate greater
sea-going infantry for the Armada, so
cargos, while senior commanders were
that at any given time, 200 to 300 of
under orders that if approached by enemy
these soldiers could be found aboard the
vessels while bearing the King’s treasure,
warships, on cruises of several months’
they were to defer combat until the silver
duration.
could be set ashore.
Early every year, the Armada would
sail southward from Callao to Chincha,
to load the mercury being extracted from Standing Fleet (1654)
the azogue mines at Huancavelica. It When a new Peruvian Viceroy arrived
would then convey that year’s production to assume office in 1656, he found only
234 Mar del Sur, Armada del
two men-of-war available to the Ar-
mada: its 900-ton vice-flagship Santiago
of 40 guns, in need of extensive repairs,
and the 360-ton San Francisco Solano
of only 20 guns. The former flagship
Jes
us Marı´a de la Limpia Concepci
on,
an enormous vessel of 1,200 tons and 44
guns, had been wrecked on the Chanduy
sand-banks at the mouth of the Guayas
River on October 26, 1654. As a result,
the Viceroy ordered two new galleons
constructed at Guayaquil, each of 825
tons and capable of mounting 32 to 44
cannon apiece. They were completed by
1659 and given the names San Jos
e and
Nuestra Se~ nora de Guadalupe; the San-
tiago was scrapped a few years later and
the aged San Francisco Solano was
reduced to making only the annual Arica
run. Private merchantmen were also fre-
quently hired to supplement the Arma-
da’s duties, such as the San Antonio
which sank off Itata near Concepci
on in
the early 1660s, while bearing the
annual situados or ‘‘payrolls’’ toward
Chile.
After a long period of tranquil cargo-
runs, the rising tide of distant Caribbean
attacks began to sound a note of alarm.
Henry Morgan’s sack of Portobelo in
1668 was the first to re-galvanize the Ar-
mada. When San Jos
e next sailed for
Panama, it mounted 32 guns—ten more
than had become customary—and car-
ried a full complement of 400 men. The
English freebooter then devastated Pan-
ama City itself in 1671, so that the Ar-
mada was used to hastily rush 2,400
reinforcements to the Isthmus. A new
20-gun patache called San Lorenzo was
launched at Guayaquil to replace San
Francisco Solano, and other smaller aux-
iliaries were built as well. In 1675, news
arrived at Callao that an English settle-
ment had been established within the
Strait of Magellan, so that Captain Anto-
nio de Vea and the Biscayan seaman
Pascual de Iriarte were dispatched with
two vessels on September 21, 1675, to
investigate. They found no signs of any
intruder colony, but lost a boat and 17
men when Iriarte’s son attempted to
place a bronze plaque bearing Spain’s
royal crest on those shores. The survivors
returned into Callao on April 20, 1676.
First Major Incursions
(1679
1681)
After yet another brief interlude of
peace, the Spaniards were astonished
when a foreign ship and two launches
suddenly materialized off Callao on Feb-
ruary 13, 1679, capturing a loaded vessel
from its roads. These rovers had worked
their way northward from the Strait, rob-
bing diverse vessels off Chile and Arica,
so that a force of 150 soldiers and 70
harquebusiers were sent out from Callao
under Captain Diego de Frı́as to give
chase. After a brief pursuit, the interlop-
ers released their prize and sailed away.
But in April 1680, John Coxon,
Richard Sawkins, and Bartholomew
Sharpe led a contingent of 332 bucca-
neers across the Isthmus of Panama into
the Pacific, seizing a succession of
coastal craft and instituting a blockade
of Panama City. The acting-Viceroy of
Peru, Archbishop Melchor de Li~n
an y
Cisneros, was unable to dispatch any
Armada warships in relief, as they were
being careened. Instead, he hired pri-
vate vessels and manned them with sai-
lors and troops, so that on July 6, 1680,
the following set sail from Callao:
 the 12-gun Nuestra Se~
nora de la
Concepci
on (flagship), bearing

three companies of regulars, 17
gunners, and 24 seamen;
 the 10-gun Nuestra Se~ nora del
Viaje as vice-flagship, with two
companies of soldiers, 12 gunners,
and 22 sailors;
 the 8-gun San Jos
e as gobierno,
with one company of troops, 12
gunners, and 18 seamen;
 the tender Santa Rosa.
This flotilla was commanded by San-
tiago Pontejos, with Pedro Dı́az Zorrilla
as his almirante.
They ventured northward and paused
at Lobos Island, sending Santa Rosa on
ahead to Paita, to deliver a supply of
ammunition and gain intelligence of the
enemy. Learning that they had not yet
been sighted off that coast, Pontejos
pressed on for Santa Clara Island, again
detaching Santa Rosa into Guayaquil on
a similar mission. His armadilla then
pressed north in similar fashion, care-
fully probing the entire coastline as far
as Panama City, without encountering
the pirates. The flotilla remained on
patrol for another three months, little
realizing that the raiders were operating
farther out to sea. It was San Lorenzo
under Manuel Pantoja which finally dis-
covered the pirates, after initially
returning from Arica into Callao too
late to join the original expedition.
When his vessel was sent south from
Callao once again with the Crown aux-
iliary Santı´sima Trinidad, to take up
station off Pisco, they discovered the
enemy had raided Ilo farther to its
south, which they visited but found no
enemy, so returned to Callao with this
information.
Meanwhile, the hired ship San Juan
de Dios had been dispatched on
Mar del Sur, Armada del 235
February 13, 1681, under Captain Diego
Barrasa to convey the situado to Valdi-
via (Chile). In light of this news of an
enemy attack against Ilo, however, the
Peruvian authorities decided to send
Pontejos’ Concepci
on out a few days
later as well, having since given up its
fruitless search of the Gulf of Panama.
At the same time, the hired ship San
Juan Evangelista and Santa Rosa under
Captain Francisco Salazar Alvarado
were delegated with two armed launches
to carry the situados from Callao to Pan-
ama City and Portobelo, after which they
were to remain off the Gulf of San
Miguel and prevent the pirates from
retracing their steps back into the Carib-
bean. All these dispositions proved to be
for naught when the last buccaneer com-
mander, Sharpe, sailed his prize out of
the Pacific round Cape Horn. With this
danger removed, the flagship San Jos
e
and vice-flagship Guadalupe made their
routine voyage to Panama in 1682 with
the King’s bullion, returning to Callao
by December of that same year.
On arrival, both vessels were found to
be in need of extensive repairs, the
23-year-old San Jos
e lacking its rudder
and its hull seriously eroded by teredo
worms (a common complaint after lying
for several months in the warm waters
off of Panama). However, there were not
enough construction materials available
at Callao for both warships, so that it
was decided to dispatch San Lorenzo to
Guayaquil for an overhaul, after which it
could transport timbers back to Callao
for the completion of San Jos
e and Gua-
dalupe. San Lorenzo set sail on July 26,
1683, but did not return until 11 months
later, having been almost completely
rebuilt in the Ecuadorian yards. Its cargo
of lumber was then used to supplement
the wood which had already been
236 Markham, John (fl. 1683
1684)
expropriated from Lima’s Carmelite
nunnery, so that repairs on the flagship
and vice-flagship could be rushed to
their conclusion on September 23, 1684.
See also
Mar del Sur, Armada del (Volume 2);
Patache; South Sea.
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1989).
P
erez Mallaı́na Bueno, Pablo Emilio, and
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, Armada del
Mar del Sur (Seville: Escuela de
Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1987).
MARKHAM, JOHN
(fl. 1683
1684)
New York privateer who raided the
Spaniards in the West Indies.
In March 1683, Markham was lying
at New Providence in the Bahamas with
Captains Jan Corneliszoon, Conway
Woolley, and the French flibustier Pierre
Br
eha, preparing to go ‘‘fish silver from
a Spanish wreck.’’ Then arrived Captain
Thomas Paine with a license from Gov-
ernor Sir Thomas Lynch of Jamaica to
hunt pirates, so that the five decided to
unite and raid the nearby Spanish out-
post of Saint Augustine, Florida, suppos-
edly using Paine’s commission (although
England and Spain were then officially
at peace). The raiders, in any event, lan-
ded flying French colors but found the
Spaniards forewarned, so withdrew after
releasing some captives that they had
brought with them, and looting the sur-
rounding countryside.
Returning to the Bahamas, Markham,
Paine, and Br
eha reentered New Provi-
dence, while the other two proceeded
directly to the wreck site. Governor Rob-
ert Lilburne allegedly wished to detain
Markham and Paine for violating Eng-
land’s truce with Spain, but could not do
so ‘‘for want of a force.’’ Shortly there-
after the three rovers sailed away to the
site and began working the wreck,
although apparently with limited suc-
cess, for by September 1683 Markham
was back at New Providence, and Paine
bound for Rhode Island.
Some months later, Markham organ-
ized a freebooter force of three frigates
and eight sloops for a descent on the
Mexican port of Tampico. This assault
took place at dawn on Sunday, April 23,
1684; Spanish survivors later related
how ‘‘Captain Juan Marcan [sic] led his
men in an encircling maneuver and firing
musketry at the Spaniards,’’ until other
buccaneers could overrun the town.
Tampico was but an impoverished fish-
ing village, and the raiders announced
that they had come from ‘‘diving on a
wreck in the Mimbres [Bahamas]’’ to
obtain supplies. They then stole ‘‘wheat,
fish, sugar, the church’s ornaments and
its silver, as well as clothing,’’ plus
indulging in their usual wanton destruc-
tion. An English buccaneer named John
Tudor boasted that he had been with
Laurens de Graaf at the sack of Veracruz
the previous year, receiving a full share
of 800 pesos as booty, and then ‘‘burned
down a house and with his companions
drank a barrel of spirits’’ in Tampico.
The unhappy Spanish captives also
noticed that it was Markham who gave
the orders for them to be fed.
He also loaded his plunder quickly
aboard the ships, realizing that it was best
not to tarry. Six days later, news of this

attack reached the Armada de Barlovento
at Veracruz, which sortied on May 4,
1684, and four days later caught the frigate
Presbyter and a small sloop still inside the
Tampico bar, with 104 freebooters on
board. Markham and most of his cohorts
had already departed, but these
laggards—77 Englishmen and New Eng-
landers, 26 Dutchmen, and a Span-
iard—were carried to Veracruz in chains.
Two weeks later, 13 Englishmen and the
lone Spaniard were condemned to death,
these sentences being carried out on
the Veracruz waterfront the morning of
June 14, 1684.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr
ua, 1972).
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
MARTIEN, DAVID
(fl. 1663
1672?)
Rover from The Netherlands, who
served in the West Indies under both
English and French colors.
Martien (or Maarten) appears to have
already been a veteran commander,
who had roamed the Antilles since as
early as 1651. The first official notice
of his activities occurred late in 1663,
when he obtained a Jamaican privateer-
ing commission against the Spaniards
Martien, David (fl. 1663
1672?) 237
for his 25-ton, 43-man bark Charity
from the newly-arrived Governor Thomas,
Lord Windsor. It is unknown whether
he then participated as an auxiliary in
the ensuing descents on Santiago de
Cuba or Campeche.
Late in 1664, though, he joined four
other Jamaican captains to mount a
small peacetime raid against the Span-
iards in the Gulf of Mexico. Strictly
speaking, such ventures were now ille-
gal, as Lord Windsor’s recently-arrived
replacement, Governor Sir Thomas
Modyford, had proclaimed as far back
as June 16, 1664 (O.S.), ‘‘that for the
future all acts of hostility against the
Spaniards should cease,’’ a policy
which had been repeatedly under-
scored. Yet the privateers chose to
ignore this injunction, later arguing
somewhat disingenuously that ‘‘having
been out 22 months (i.e., since participat-
ing in Commodore Christopher Myngs’s
sack of Campeche in early 1663) and
hearing nothing of the cessation of hos-
tilities between the King and the Span-
iards,’’ they had continued operating
under their two-year-old commissions
issued by Windsor.
Mexican Raid (Spring 1665)
John Morris and Martien were the appa-
rent leaders of this venture, seconded
by Captains Thomas Freeman, Jacob
Fackman, and Henry Morgan. Together
they mustered a handful of vessels and
200 men, probably departing Jamaica
by early January 1665. Rounding the
Yucat
an Peninsula, they moved gin-
gerly down its treacherous Gulf coast
until arriving opposite Campeche,
where one night in mid-February 1665
they cut out an 8-gun Spanish frigate
lying in its roads. Then sailing past the
238 Martien, David (fl. 1663
1672?)
Laguna of T
erminos, they came to
anchor on February 19, 1665, before the
tiny hamlet of Santa Marı́a de la Fron-
tera, at the mouth of the Grijalva River.
Some 110 to 120 buccaneers disem-
barked and traveled 50 miles upriver
through the marshy channels, until com-
ing within sight of the provincial capital
of Santa Marı́a de la Victoria de Ta-
basco. At four o’clock on the morning
of February 24, 1665, they fell on the
sleeping city, capturing most of its
inhabitants still in their beds. A general
sack ensued, after which booty and cap-
tives were piled aboard a coaster lying
in the river. The raiders then paused at
nearby Santa Teresa ranch to release
the women captives, retaining the men,
for whom they demanded a ransom of
300 head of cattle. Farther down river
they came on a second coaster with a
cargo of flour, which they also seized.
Nearing the river mouth, though, they
discovered that their waiting ships had
been captured during their absence by a
Spanish naval patrol. Three Spanish frig-
ates and 270 men had been sent out by
Campeche’s Lieutenant-Governor Anto-
nio Maldonado de Aldana, in quest of
the prize previously taken from their
port. This armadilla had sighted the
interlopers’ trio of vessels anchored off
Santa Marı́a de la Frontera on February
22, 1665, boarding the 10-gun flagship
and 8-gun prize without a fight. A few
Englishmen had fled on a single vessel,
abandoning the other two. Seven bucca-
neers had been left behind in the panic,
and revealed to their captors that the
ships had been left unmanned because
‘‘Captain Mauricio [sic; Morris] and
David Martin [sic; Martien]’’ had led the
bulk of the raiders inland.
Their retreat out to sea cut off, the
main body of freebooters released their
remaining hostages and began moving
westward with their two coasters, hop-
ing to find another river channel
whereby to escape. On the afternoon of
March 17, 1665, they were overtaken
by the guardacostas opposite Santa Ana
Cay, this time sailing the privateers’
former 10-gun flagship and 8-gun prize,
having crewed these with 300 volunteer
militiamen from Campeche. Jos
e
Aldana, Spanish commander of this
pursuit force, sent a messenger in a boat
inshore to call on the buccaneers to sur-
render, but they pretended not to under-
stand. When an interpreter approached
shore again next morning, Morris and
Martien replied that they would not give
up without a fight. The Spaniards reluc-
tantly disembarked, discovering the
raiders had used the interval to entrench
themselves behind a palisade reinforced
with sandbags, and bristling with seven
small cannon brought from Santa Marı́a
de la Victoria. The Spanish contingent,
mostly armed civilians, showed little
stomach for an assault and was easily
repelled, without incurring a single loss
among the freebooters. The next day,
March 19, 1665, the Spanish ships were
found to have conveniently run aground
overnight, thereby allowing the raiders
to exit unchallenged aboard their two
coasters.
Central American Campaign
(Summer 1665)
Morris and Martien proceeded northward
hugging the coastline, capturing smaller
boats and making occasional landings to
obtain supplies. Off Sisal they looted a
vessel laden with corn, whose crew they
allegedly released with a message to the
Governor of Yucat
an, vowing to return
and lay waste to his province. They then
 Martien, David (fl. 1663
1672?) 239

Martien Morris, and Morgan’s Granada Campaign, June 1665.

After capturing a Spanish ship at the Honduran port of Trujillo and securing native guides
from Cape Gracias a Dios, Martien and Morris proceeded to Monkey Point (1) to conceal
their vessels. They then ascended the San Juan River in boats and traversed the Lago de
Nicaragua by nocturnal stages, falling on the unsuspecting city of Granada (2). While
withdrawing—dotted line—they also plundered the island of Solentiname (3), before
regaining their anchored ships and sailing away for Jamaica (4).

rounded the Yucat
an Peninsula and trav-
ersed the Bay of Honduras as far down
as Roat
an, where they paused to take on
water. Striking next at Trujillo, a sleepy
Spanish port on the north coast of Hon-
duras, they overran its few dwellings
and seized a vessel lying in its roads,
before continuing to Cape Gracias a
Dios and the Mosquito Coast. Nine
native guides joined them there, sailing
southward to Monkey Point (Punta
Mono, Nicaragua), where the buccaneers
hid their ships in an inlet before heading
up the San Juan River with their lighter
boats.
More than 100 miles and three water-
falls later, they emerged into the great
Lago de Nicaragua. Crossing it by trav-
eling at night and resting during the day,
they snuck up on the provincial capital
240 Martien, David (fl. 1663
1672?)
of Granada and took it by surprise on
June 29, 1665, when they:
. . . marched undescried into the cen-
ter of the city, fired a volley, over-
turned 18 great guns in the Plaza de
Armas, took the sargento mayor [gar-
rison commander’s] house, wherein
were all their arms and ammunition,
secured in the great church 300 of
the best men prisoners, abundance of
which were churchmen, plundered
for 16 hours, discharged all the pris-
oners, sunk all the boats [to prevent
pursuit], and so came away.
Retracing their course across the vast
lake, at its southeastern extremity ‘‘they
took a vessel of 100 tons and an island
as large as Barbados, called Lida [sic;
Solentiname?], which they plundered.’’
The raiders then regained their anchored
vessels and by the end of August 1665,
William Beeston was writing in his jour-
nal at Port Royal: ‘‘Captain Fackman and
others arrived from the taking of the
towns of Tabasco and Villahermosa, in
the Bay of Mexico.’’ They had traveled
almost 3,000 miles in seven months,
assaulting five Spanish towns and under-
going countless lesser engagements.
French Service (1665
1666)
However, Martien did not return to that
English island, for during the intervening
period the Second Anglo-Dutch War had
erupted back in Europe, with Holland and
France ranged against England and Spain.
Therefore, ‘‘being a Dutchman and fear-
ing his entertainment at Jamaica,’’ Mar-
tien had sailed directly to the French
boucanier stronghold of Tortuga Island,
off the northwestern tip of Saint-Dom-
ingue (modern Haiti). His ship, it was
said, still carried some of the Indians
which he had brought away from Nicara-
gua. Sometime prior to November 1665,
he had evidently sailed on to the French
island of Guadeloupe in the Lesser Antil-
les, for it is known that he furnished intel-
ligence to its Governor Claude François
du Lion as to Spanish defenses at
Yucat
an and Honduras.
Martien’s withdrawal appears to have
been shortlived, though, for early next
year it is believed that he may have
assisted Edward Mansfield in his descent
on Costa Rica, as well as in reclaiming
Providencia Island. Governor Modyford
also continued to show that he was will-
ing to recruit freebooters of every nation-
ality for his colony’s defense, so that
by the summer of 1666, Martien—now
commanding a pair of ships with a total
of 160 men—offered to once again return
to English service. At the end of that same
August 1666, Modyford wrote to London:
Had it not been for that seasonable
action [of liberally granting commis-
sions] I could not have kept this
place against French buccaneers,
who would have ruined all the sea-
side plantations, whereas I now draw
from them mainly, and lately David
Marteen [sic], the best man of Tor-
tuga, that has two frigates at sea, had
promised to bring in both.
Later Career (1668
1672)
There exist a few scattered details
about Martien’s remaining career. He
may have participated in Captain Rob-
ert Searle’s peacetime sack of St.
Augustine (Florida) in May 1668, but
seems to have retired from privateering
sometime after that, as his Charity was

reported more than a year-and-a-half
later to be bringing in regular loads of
logwood into Port Royal from the
‘‘Bay of Campeche’’ for sale. When an
aggressive new offensive by Spanish
corsairs that same summer of 1670
sparked a renewed upsurge in Jamaican
privateering, Martien was known to
have taken out a new commission, al-
though there is no record of any cap-
tures which he may have made.
The arrival of the new Jamaican Gov-
ernor Sir Thomas Lynch brought an end to
this offensive, and by December 17, 1671
(O.S.), he was reporting to London that
there were but three privateers still operat-
ing: ‘‘One Captain Diego [Grillo], and
Yhallahs [sic; Jelles de Lescat] and Mar-
tin.’’ Early next year, Beeston captured
the renegade privateer ship Charity (now
operating under Francis Weatherbourne)
at Campeche, describing this vessel as
having ‘‘been formerly Captain David
Martyn’s [sic] man o’ war.’’
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).


Eugenio Martı́nez, Marı́a Angeles, La
defensa de Tabasco, 1600
1717
(Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
americanos, 1971).
Gerhard, Peter, The Southeast Frontier of
New Spain (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
Martin, Christopher (fl. 1673) 241
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am

erica Espa~nola (Madrid:
Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
MARTÍN, ALONSO
(fl. 1684)
Spanish corsair who apparently oper-
ated out of Santo Domingo.
On June 20, 1684 (O.S.), Governor Sir
Thomas Lynch of Jamaica reported to
London: ‘‘Last week a sloop from Nevis
and two of our fishermen were all robbed,
their boats taken by one Alonzo Martin of
Santo Domingo. The Governor [Fran-
cisco de Segura Sandoval] would not con-
demn the sloops, for these rogues [i.e., the
Spanish corsairs] awe and hector them, so
they carried them off to trepan others.
This is what makes our men turn pirates.’’
See also
Lynch, Sir Thomas; Trepan.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
MARTIN, CHRISTOPHER
(fl. 1673)
West Country merchant captain who
defended St. John’s, Newfoundland,
against an attack during the closing
stages of the Third Anglo-Dutch War.
Martin, originally from Cockington
in the County of Devon, had resided in
St. John’s since 1656, and had long
242 Martı́nez Freire, Antonio (fl. 1651
1652)
served as its private ‘‘Vice Admiral.’’
When the great Dutch Admiral Michiel
de Ruyter materialized outside its har-
bor in mid-June 1665, during the Sec-
ond Anglo-Dutch War, his fleet had
entered uncontested to pillage the hap-
less town and anchored shipping over
the next four days, before heading out
across the open Atlantic for home. In
the aftermath of this destructive visit,
Martin had financed the erection of a
small battery at St. John’s harbor en-
trance over the next several years,
mostly at his own expense.
When hostilities were renewed against
The Netherlands during that following
decade, he received word in October 1673
of a powerful Dutch squadron under Cap-
tain Nikolaas Boes attacking the nearby
English fisheries at the Kirkes in Ferryland
Bay. These raiders consisted of three war-
ships mounting 40 guns apiece, plus
another of 36, which had been detached by
Commodore Cornelis Evertsen de Jongste
(‘‘Kees the Devil’’) following his recent
reconquest of New York. Improvising
hastily, Martin stripped the vessel Elias
Andrew, which lay anchored in the roads,
of its six light pieces of ordinance and with
30 men, installed these into his new small
earthen fort guarding the narrowest part of
St. John’s harbor entrance. When the four
Dutch men o’ war bore down menacingly
a few days later, Martin greeted them with
such a brisk fire that Boes assumed the
English port must now be defended in
strength, so veered off to instead sweep
through the Grand Banks fisheries, before
steering out across the Atlantic.
Reference
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert
D., Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1988).
MARTÍNEZ FREIRE,
ANTONIO (fl. 1651
1652)
Basque privateer who made an unau-
thorized visit to Buenos Aires.
Little is known about his early activ-
ities; Martı́nez is first mentioned in the
official minutes of the July 15, 1651,
Treasury meeting held at ‘‘the City of La
Trinidad and Port of Buenos Aires’’—as
the tiny Argentine capital was then
known—as riding at anchor in its harbor,
and being owed 20 pesos for two blank
books which he had sold to the local Ex-
chequer officers to serve as ledgers. Next
spring, the Spanish Crown would send
pointed inquiries from Madrid to his
home-port of San Sebasti
an in Guip
uz-
coa, both in late April and mid-June
1652, demanding to know how Martı́nez
had been allowed to traverse the Atlantic
to make this arribada at Buenos Aires,
seemingly on the strength of his privat-
eering commission alone.
See also
Arribada.
Reference
Archive of Indies (Seville), Audiencia de
Buenos Aires 2, Legajo 6, Folios
70
70v. and 73
73v.
MATROSS
Seventeenth-century English expression
for a gunner’s mate, doubtless derived
from the Dutch word matroos, meaning
a ‘‘sailor.’’

This expression seems to have entered
into common usage and became well
established in England, before being
transposed to the West Indies. For exam-
ple, among the Crown expenses for
defense of the English realm in January
1667, there is mention of a: ‘‘Warrant for
admission of a gunner and matross, addi-
tional to the garrison of Sandown Castle,
Isle of Wight.’’ And in one of many simi-
lar instances in the Americas, the Assem-
bly of Barbados entered into its minutes
for June 1681: ‘‘On the petition of Cap-
tain Samuel Norris, gunner of Hole Fort,
ordered that 5,000 lbs. of Muscovado
[sic] sugar be paid to him, and 3,000 lbs.
to John Chilcott, his matross.’’ Masca-
bado was, and still, is the Spanish term
for unrefined or brown sugar.
See also
Matross (Volume 2).
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic:
Charles II, 1666
67.
MITCHELL, ABRAHAM
(fl. 1662
1663)
Early English privateer operating out
of Jamaica.
Amid the hurried preparations at Port
Royal to dispatch Commodore Christo-
pher Myngs’s quick-strike expedition
against Santiago de Cuba, Mitchell was
one of six Captains issued a privateering
commission on September 18, 1662
(O.S.), by the recently-arrived Governor
Mitchell, Abraham (fl. 1662
1663) 243
Thomas, Lord Windsor. Like his col-
leagues John Bull, Jacob Fackman, John
Purdue, and Robert Searle, Mitchell
secured a six-month license to rove with
his vessel Blessing; only George Brima-
cain received a 10-month permit.
Doubtless Mitchell weighed shortly
thereafter as part of Myngs’s flotilla, to
participate in the sack and destruction of
Santiago de Cuba. However, he seems
to have been one of the privateers who
then sortied again in late 1662 to rove
independently, and so missed the subse-
quent raid led by Myngs against the
Mexican port of Campeche early the
next year. Still, Mitchell came across
some of Myngs’s elements while prowl-
ing the Gulf of Mexico, and returned
into Port Royal by Saturday, February
28, 1663 (O.S.), to report:
That about 90 leagues this side of
Campeche, he met three sail of the
fleet, viz. Captain William James his
ship, sunk in the sea by foul weather,
who was the best ship in the fleet next
the Admiral, and that many of their
men in the fleet were dead.
Mitchell added that the Spaniards at
Campeche had been forewarned of an
English attack, fuelling Jamaican fears
that Myngs’s expedition had fared badly.
However, the next evening, Sunday,
March 1, 1662 (O.S.), word arrived that
Captain Milner Mumford’s ketch had
just reached Macarry Bay, with news
that Myngs had succeeded in carrying
Campeche, and the victorious expedition
would soon be homeward-bound.
See also
Brimacain, George; Bull, John; Fackman,
Jacob; Myngs, Sir Christopher; Purdue,
244 Modyford, Sir Thomas (fl. 1620
1679)
John; Searle, Robert; Windsor, Thomas,
Lord.
References
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
National Archives [UK], PRO HCA 49/59,
folios 83
92.
MODYFORD, SIR THOMAS
(fl. 1620
1679)
First Royalist Governor of Barbados and
second of Jamaica, dismissed from this
latter post for encouraging privateers.
Modyford was probably born about
1620, the first of five sons of a Mayor of
the seaport of Exeter, England. Raised in
comfort, he became a barrister at Lin-
coln’s Inn in London, married Elizabeth
Palmer of Devonshire about 1640 ([by
whom he was to have three children: Eliz-
abeth, Thomas, and Charles), then served
in the Royalist armies during the English
Civil War. In June 1647, toward the latter
stages of that conflict, Modyford took his
family and withdrew to become a planter
on the West Indian island of Barbados,
buying half an estate (500 acres) for
£7,000, and assuming a leading role in that
little community. After the execution of
Charles I, he played a prominent part in
the Royalist resistance to Parliamentary
rule on Barbados, but eventually suc-
cumbed and convinced his regiment to
switch sides, so that the King’s Governor
Lord Willoughby was forced to yield. De-
spite this service, Modyford was never
fully trusted by the new Parliamentarian
rulers, who deprived him of his regimental
command in 1653. He was restored and
also appointed to the Barbados Council af-
ter directly petitioning Cromwell.
Following the Restoration of Charles II
in the spring of 1660, a commission was
issued in London appointing Modyford as
Governor of Barbados, which he enacted
soon after receiving it there in late
June, reestablishing royal rule without dif-
ficulty. However, by that same December
(1660) word had arrived that Willoughby
was to be restored to his former position,
and Modyford might face charges for ‘‘his
treachery in betraying the island to the
usurper, and his persecution of Royalists
ever since.’’ Consequently, he resigned
and remained only as Speaker of the As-
sembly, while awaiting a resolution from
England. He was never charged, thanks to
his influential kinsman George Monck,
Duke of Albemarle, who in February
1664 proposed that Modyford succeed
Lord Windsor as Governor of Jamaica.
This was approved, and Modyford was
instructed to take as many settlers from
Barbados as were willing to accompany
him, and was also created a baronet on
February 18, 1664 (O.S.).
Governor of Jamaica
(1664
1671)
By the end of May 1664, HMS Wester-
gate and the ketch Swallow had arrived
at Port Royal, bearing Modyford’s Lieu-
tenant-Governor, Colonel Edward Mor-
gan, who immediately assumed office
until his superior could appear. The
Blessing of Captain James Gilbert fol-
lowed on June 1, 1664 (O.S.), with 400
people from Barbados, then another 200
came with Modyford himself on June
4th (O.S.) aboard Captain John Stokes’
HMS Marmaduke. The new Governor
forthwith ‘‘caused his commission to be
publicly read,’’ and set about launching
his administration. One of Modyford’s
first acts was to issue a proclamation on

June 16th (O.S.), announcing ‘‘that for
the future all acts of hostility against the
Spaniards should cease,’’ a policy which
was to become increasingly tenuous dur-
ing his years in office. On the one hand,
neither Whitehall nor Jamaica’s com-
mercial traders wished to have petty buc-
caneer raids dictate their relations with
Spain; on the other, planters and ordi-
nary citizens depended on the privateers
for their prosperity and defense, as did
the Crown’s own garrison in times of
war. Thus, Modyford was compelled to
restrain the freebooters’ activities, with-
out openly driving them to seek French,
Dutch, Portuguese, or even Spanish
commissions.
He began in September 1664 by
impounding two rich Spanish prizes
brought in by the veteran Captain Rob-
ert Searle, in part prompted by a recent
letter from the King which reiterated
the prohibition of violence against the
Spaniards, and furthermore ordered
‘‘entire restitution and satisfaction made
to the sufferers.’’ In light of this re-
minder, Modyford and the Jamaican
Council agreed ‘‘that Captain Searle’s
commission be taken from him and his
rudder and sails taken ashore for secu-
rity,’’ while the prizes were returned
intact to Santiago de Cuba. But later,
the Governor discreetly allowed Mau-
rice Williams and Bernard Nichols to
bring in prizes, while privately commu-
nicating to London that the buccaneers
must be allowed to dispose of their cap-
tures as they straggled back in to sur-
render their commissions, ‘‘otherwise
they will be alarmed and go to the
French at Tortuga, and His Majesty will
lose 1,000 or 1,500 stout men.’’ He
added that they might even be tempted
to attack ships bound for Jamaica, as
Captain Munro had already done, ‘‘for
they are desperate people, the greater
Modyford, Sir Thomas (fl. 1620
1679) 245
part having been men o’ war for twenty
years.’’ He concluded on the rather opti-
mistic note that they might instead be
set ‘‘a-planting,’’ and if afterward ‘‘His
Majesty shall think fit to have Tortuga
or Curaçao taken, none will be fitter for
that work than they.’’
This suggestion was shortly put to the
test, for in the spring of 1665 word
arrived of the outbreak of the Second
Anglo-Dutch War back in Europe. With
Modyford’s backing, Lieutenant-Gover-
nor Morgan assembled a force of 10 pri-
vateer vessels and more than 500 men,
leading them in the conquest of Dutch
Sint Eustatia and Saba. However, Mor-
gan died during this assault, and the buc-
caneers then refused to follow his
second-in-command, Colonel Theodore
Cary (‘‘a man of too easy disposition’’
according to Modyford) in a projected
attack against Curaçao. Instead they dis-
persed, preferring to raid their traditional
Spanish foes rather than the Dutch. By
November 1665, Modyford was obliged
to send ‘‘for the leading men of the pri-
vateers,’’ asking them to rendezvous at
Bluefields Bay, where he again proposed
that they sail against Curaçao under
Edward Mansfield. The buccaneers
agreed, but once out of sight of Jamaica
turned on the Spaniards again. Even
Mansfield’s own crew refused to beat
upwind for Curaçao, ‘‘averring publicly
that there was more profit with less haz-
ard to be gotten against the Spaniard,
which was their only interest.’’
Such sentiments were not limited to
the privateersmen, for late in February
1666 the Jamaican Council presented
Modyford with a resolution outlining 12
reasons why it was to the interest of that
colony to grant letters-of-marque against
the Spaniards, claiming ‘‘said commis-
sions did extraordinarily conduce to the
strengthening, preservation, enriching,
246 Modyford, Sir Thomas (fl. 1620
1679)
and advancing the settlement of this
island.’’ Modyford concurred, justifying
this belligerence by the hostility met from
the Spanish Americans, adding: ‘‘it must
be force alone that can cut in sunder that
unneighborly maxim of their government
to deny all access of strangers.’’ After
complaining repeatedly to London about
the depredations of Spanish guardacos-
tas, he was given ‘‘latitude to grant or not
to grant commissions against the Span-
iards,’’ despite the official peace prevail-
ing with that nation in Europe. The
Governor continued to issue licenses even
after the first Treaty of Madrid was signed
in May 1667, motivated in part by the
constant local frictions with the Spanish
Americans, as well as the profits to be had
from that kind of low-grade warfare. He
contrived to appoint his brother James to
replace Edward Morgan as Lieutenant-
Governor and Chief Justice of the Admi-
ralty Court at Port Royal, then commis-
sioned Henry Morgan in February 1668
‘‘to draw together the English privateers’’
and determine whether the Spanish
Americans intended to invade Jamaica.
This threat was supposedly confirmed,
then used to justify Morgan’s descent on
Portobelo, which he seized in late June
1668 and held for ransom. Next spring,
Modyford furnished the 34-gun frigate
HMS Oxford to serve as Morgan’s flag-
ship in his campaign against Maracaibo,
and later welcomed the raiders on their
victorious return. At this point, the li-
censed privateering might have begun to
taper off, for Modyford had once more
been ordered to put an end to hostilities
against the Spaniards, and proclaimed this
throughout the streets of Port Royal on
June 24, 1669 (O.S.). However, the Span-
ish Americans again provided him with a
convenient excuse, when they began issu-
ing commissions of their own to corsairs
such as Manoel Rivero Pardal, who
raided Jamaica in the summer of 1670. In
retaliation, Modyford commissioned
Morgan on July 2nd (O.S.) to gather a
force and ‘‘use his best endeavors to sur-
prise, take, sink, disperse, or destroy the
enemy’s vessels, and in case he finds it
feasible, to land and attack Santiago [de
Cuba] or any other place.’’ Morgan sailed
to ^Ile-a-Vache, off the southwestern tip of
Saint-Domimgue, and spent several
months recruiting men. Meanwhile Mody-
ford was advised that a second Treaty of
Madrid had been signed with the Span-
iards that July, but allegedly could not then
get word to Morgan before his freebooter
host devastated Panama.
Equally significantly, Albemarle had
died in January 1670, thus depriving
Modyford of his patronage and protec-
tion. As a sop to the Spaniards, it had
already been decided to replace Mody-
ford with his old Jamaican rival
Sir Thomas Lynch, who believed in
developing peaceful trade relations
with Spanish America, and who further
was instructed to ‘‘cause the person of
Sir Thomas Modyford to be made pris-
oner and sent home under a strong
guard, [because] he has, contrary to the
King’s express commands, made many
depredations and hostilities against the
subjects of His Majesty’s good brother,
the Catholic King.’’ On July 1, 1671
(O.S.), HMSs Assistance, 40, and Wel-
come, 36, reached Port Royal bearing
Lynch, who immediately read his pat-
ent and the revocation of that of Mody-
ford at a banquet given in his honor at
the latter’s home. ‘‘The people seemed
not much pleased,’’ Lynch noted in a
letter, for Modyford had presided over
a period of considerable growth and
successful military ventures in Jamai-
ca’s history.

Later Career (1671
1679)
Six weeks later, Lynch completed the
second part of his instructions when he
inveigled Modyford aboard Assistance
on the pretext that he had ‘‘something to
import to him from the King,’’and then
arrested him. Modyford learned that his
younger son Charles had already been
detained in the Tower of London against
his father’s good behavior, and reacted
with great dignity to his own detention.
He only objected to the underhanded
method employed, telling Lynch that he
wished he might have been allowed to
show ‘‘his obedience by his voluntary
submission to His Majesty’s pleasure.’’
An embarrassed Lynch assured him that
‘‘his life and estate was not in danger,’’
but there was a need to make a convinc-
ing show of royal displeasure for the
Spaniards’ benefit. On August 22, 1671
(O.S.), Modyford set sail for England, a
prisoner aboard the Jamaica Merchant
of Captain Joseph Knapman.
On his arrival in London that same No-
vember 1671, Modyford was incarcerated
in his son’s cell at the Tower on Novem-
ber 17th (O.S.). Less than a year later, on
August 14, 1672 (O.S.), he was ordered to
have the liberty of the prison, and
remained in relatively easy confinement
for a couple more years, without ever
being brought to trial. When the Crown’s
diplomatic priorities once again changed,
he was released and restored to Jamaica
as Chief Justice for the island in 1675. He
died on September 2, 1679 (O.S.), being
buried in the cathedral at Spanish Town.
References
Dictionary of National Biography (London,
1885
1900, 63 Volumes); Issued by
Oxford University Press, 2004.
Moreau, Jean (fl. 1663
1665) 247
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
Thornton, A.P., ‘‘The Modyfords and
Morgan,’’ Jamaican Historical Review,
Vol. 2 (1952), pp. 36
60.
MOREAU, JEAN
(fl. 1663
1665)
Minor French privateer who operated
with an English commission, until he
was deemed to have turned pirate, and
so was hunted down.
Late in 1663, Moreau apparently
obtained a letter-of-reprisal against the
Spaniards from Jamaica’s Governor
Thomas, Lord Windsor. Two Frenchmen
residing at Port Royal, Jean Grandmai-

Filliot, stood surety for this
son and Elie
license. Yet amid the swelling number
of seizures and counter-seizures plaguing
Caribbean waters a year later, Moreau’s
Saint-Louis was believed by the new
Gov. Sir Thomas Modyford to be one of
several flibustier vessels plying off
Saint-Domingue ‘‘who have plundered a
sloop, a Hamptonman, and a New Eng-
land ketch, and killed a man in cold
blood, the rest being forced to beg their
lives on their knees.’’
248 Morgan, Edward (fl. 1664
1665)
Therefore, Modyford wrote to inform
the Secretary Sir Henry Bennett in Lon-
don on February 20, 1665 (O.S.), how he
had: ‘‘Dispatched on 31st January the
Swallow under Captain [Robert] Ensome
to Cape Tiburon in Hispaniola, to cap-
ture the French pirate Moroe [sic], whose
commission from Lord Windsor having
expired, he has turned pirate.’’ Less than
a fortnight later, on March 1st, the
delighted Jamaican Governor would add:
Captain Ensome has arrived with
Moro’s ship and 12 prisoners, having
after half-an-hour’s fight killed Moro,
Grand Louis, and many of his men. The
12 have been condemned together with
Moro’s ship. Captain Ensome lost but
one man. This is a very considerable
and seasonable piece of service, and
will give a great stop to the villainous
intentions of these revolting pirates.
Modyford included the verdicts passed
on 10 of the dozen surviving French and
Dutch crewmen, for having ransacked
the Prosperous of Hampton: ‘‘John
Peanco and five others to be hanged,
Cornelius Jacobson imprisoned, and
three others acquitted.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1880).
MORGAN, EDWARD
(fl. 1664
1665)
Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, who
died leading an expedition of privateers
against the Dutch in the West Indies.
Edward Morgan was apparently an
older relation of Henry Morgan, although
the exact nature of their relationship has
never been clearly established. Edward
Morgan was born in the village of Llanr-
hymny (today Rhymney), near Tredegar
in Wales. As a young man, he ventured
abroad as a professional soldier of for-
tune sometime around 1624, serving in
the Thirty Years War among the Dutch
in the Low Countries, to whom he was
known as ‘‘Heer van Lanrumnij.’’ He
also saw action in Germany and while
stationed in Westphalia married Anna
Petronilla von Polnitz, daughter of the
Governor of Lippstadt, Baron Hans
Georg von Polnitz, by whom he had
seven children. When the English Civil
War erupted, Edward returned home to
join the Royalist forces and by 1649 had
risen to ‘‘Colonel-General’’ of the King’s
forces in South Wales, under the Earl of
Carberry. Following the defeat and col-
lapse of the Royalist cause, he fled into
exile to his wife’s family estate at Asch-
bach, near Bamberg, Germany.
On the restoration of Charles II to the
throne, an impoverished Edward Morgan
returned to London with his family, and
the newly-crowned monarch bestowed
an income of £300 a year on his faithful
retainer by letters-patent dated October
10, 1662 (O.S.). Although this salary was
not immediately disbursed because of the
chaotic Crown finances, he was then fur-
thermore rewarded by being chosen to
serve as Deputy-Governor of Jamaica in
December 1663, as second to Sir Thomas
Modyford. Given that international ten-
sions were once again rising against the
Dutch, Morgan’s four decades of active
military duty and fluency in Dutch fig-
ured largely in his selection, as it was
felt that he would prove valuable to Mod-
yford—a man with legal training, who

had spent his adult life as a plantation-
owner on Barbados—when hostilities
did eventually erupt. (In a separate set
of instructions sent with Morgan for
Modyford, who was awaiting his Deputy-
Governor’s stopover at Barbados, appears
the sentence: ‘‘Colonel Morgan is particu-
larly recommended to his [Modyford’s]
friendship and good usage.’’)
Morgan was allotted £3,000 from the
Royal Treasury to hire ‘‘carpenters,
masons, and other artificers’’ to build
fortifications on Jamaica, as well as to
buy military stores and ammunition in
England, even before receiving his offi-
cial appointment on January 18, 1664
(O.S.). The Colonel set sail by early
March 1664 with his family, aboard
HMS Westergate and the ketch Swallow,
his eldest daughter Elizabeth dying dur-
ing the ensuing trans-Atlantic crossing.
Two other members of his family also
succumbed after reaching Carlisle Bay at
Barbados on April 21, 1664 (O.S.), alleg-
edly of ‘‘a malign distemper by reason of
the nastiness of the passengers.’’ Morgan
resumed his voyage to Jamaica early
next month, his convoy of new colonists
pausing en route to deliver an official
message to the Spanish Governor at
Santo Domingo, in which it was pro-
posed that the two nations ‘‘forbear all
acts of hostility, but allow each other the
free use of our respective harbors and
the civility of food, water, and provisions
for money.’’ The Spaniard returned a
polite but evasive reply, and on May 18,
1664 (O.S.), Morgan arrived off Jamaica,
entering Port Royal next day and ‘‘as
soon as he came ashore, took the govern-
ment into his hands and dissolved the
Assembly,’’ until Modyford could appear
two weeks later with another 700 trans-
planted Barbadians aboard HMS Marma-
duke and its consort Blessing.
Morgan, Edward (fl. 1664
1665) 249
The new Governor approved of his
subordinate’s energy and craft, writing
to London: ‘‘I find the character of Colo-
nel Morgan short of his worth and am
infinitely obliged to His Majesty for
sending so worthy a person to assist me,
whom I really cherish as my brother.’’ In
addition to his administrative duties, the
Deputy-Governor had moreover received
a new plantation on the island, which he
and his son Charles soon began to clear.
It is not known whether they met their
distant relation, Henry Morgan, around
this same time. Crown policy was
demanding a recall of all Jamaican pri-
vateers, so as to curtail their depreda-
tions against the Spaniards—an activity
in which Henry was deeply embroiled,
so that any public contact might have
proven embarrassing. By 28 June 1664
(O.S.), the new Lieutenant-Governor
was even writing to London in defense
of the rovers, arguing that they ‘‘do not
now hinder the planters at all . . . but are
a great security, and it is very necessary
to continue them till the land is better
settled.’’ Otherwise, he feared that the
numbers of outright pirates would be
very much increased:
. . . by this inhibition of privateers.
There are 14 or 15 sail still abroad
who will not come in unless it be to
lead the enemy in upon us, which is
easily done, they being 2,000 or
3,000, we having not so much forti-
fication as to lodge 100 men.
Henry Morgan slipped away late that
same year of 1664, to mount an unli-
censed raid into the Gulf of Mexico
under the veteran freebooters John Mor-
ris and David Martien.
During his absence, frictions with the
Dutch accelerated overseas, until Charles
250 Morgan, Edward (fl. 1664
1665)
Ship Guns
Sevillian 16
Saint John 12
Pearl 10
Olive Branch 6 John Outlaw
Trueman 6 Albert Bernardson
Susannah 2 Nathaniel Cobham
Mayflower 1 John Bamfield
Unnamed galliot
authorized his brother James, Duke of
York—in his official capacity as High
Admiral of England—on February 2,
1665 (O.S.) ‘‘to grant commissions to the
Governors, Vice Admirals, or others of
His Majesty’s islands and foreign domin-
ions, to empower them to grant commis-
sions to such as they shall think fit, for
taking the ships and goods of [the] States,
their subjects or inhabitants.’’ Even before
this order reached Jamaica, though, Gov-
ernor Modyford had already authorized
his own regional offensive. He reported to
London on April 12, 1665 (O.S.), how:
‘‘The privateers, upon my gentleness
towards them, come in apace and cheer-
fully offer life and fortune to His Maj-
esty’s service.’’ In particular, the rover
Maurice Williams, who had recently
brought in the Spanish prize Santo Cristo
de Burgos for adjudication, was per-
suaded to use his 18-gun Speaker as flag-
ship for an expedition to be headed by
Colonel Morgan. According to Modyford:
Their design is to fall upon the Dutch
fleet trading at St. Christopher’s, cap-
ture Eustatia, Saba, and Curaçao, and
on their homeward voyage visit the
French and English buccaneers at His-
paniola and Tortuga. All this is pre-
pared by the honest privateer
[Williams], at the old rate of ‘‘no pur-
chase no pay,’’ and it will cost the
Commander
Gerrit Gerritszoon
John Harman
Robert Searle
Abraham Malarka (or Malarkey)
King nothing considerable, some pow-
der and mortar pieces.
Morgan drew up his will and wrote to Sec.
Sir Henry Bennett from Spanish Town that
same day of April 12, 1665 (O.S.),
beseeching him that if he should fall, his
six children might ‘‘get that little which is
due to him from the Court.’’ The Colonel’s
wife having since died, he added the omi-
nous rider: ‘‘An abuse to orphans would
call for judgment from Heaven, which
God bless our kingdoms from.’’ Morgan
then set sail three days later aboard Wil-
liams’ Speaker, with three other vessels.
His assembled force would total 650 buc-
caneers aboard his flagship, plus privateer
craft as shown in the table above.
Although the rovers showed scant
enthusiasm for a campaign against the
Dutch, they nevertheless started the
long upwind beat toward this destina-
tion, during which Morgan paused off
Santo Domingo to ask permission to
buy provisions, firewood, and water,
only to be refused by the Spanish.
His expedition reached Montserrat by
July 17, 1665, where Morgan refreshed
and procured some landing-craft, before
running northwestward shortly thereafter
on the prevailing winds. Coming within
sight of Sint Eustatius, Morgan led a
charge of 350 buccaneers ashore, easily
overwhelming its outnumbered and

surprised garrison, although in the words
of his second-in-command, Colonel
Theodore Cary: ‘‘The good old Colonel,
leaping out of the boat and being a corpu-
lent man, got a strain, and his spirit being
great, he pursued overearnestly the enemy
on a hot day, so that he surfeited and sud-
denly died.’’
See also
Gerritszoon, Gerrit; Modyford, Sir Thomas;
Morgan, Sir Henry; Williams, Maurice.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 1,
1660
1667 (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1904).
Crouse, Nellis M., The French Struggle for
the West Indies, 1665
1713 (New York:
Octagon, 1966).
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
MORGAN, SIR HENRY
(fl. 1665
1675)
Greatest of freebooter commanders,
who made his home on Jamaica.
Morgan’s lineage has never been
clearly established. He is believed to
have been born around 1635, at Aberga-
venny or possibly in the manor of
Llanrhymny, near the town of Newport
Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675) 251
(a modern suburb of the Welsh capital
of Cardiff). However, his name does
not feature in the official family-tree of
the noble Morgans of Tredegar Park,
suggesting that perhaps he or his father
had sprung from an illegitimate branch.
When, many years later, Henry would
be brought home from Jamaica to stand
trial in August 1672, the family title-
holder at that time, William Morgan of
Tredegar, referred to the infamous buc-
caneer in a letter as ‘‘a relation and for-
merly a near neighbor.’’ And in Sir
Henry’s own will, read after his death
in 1688, he would acknowledge a sister,
Catherine Lloyd, and ‘‘my ever honour-
able cousin, Mr. Thomas Morgan of
Tredegar,’’ who had inherited the legiti-
mate family title from his father Wil-
liam eight years previously. Yet the
exact relationship of the Jamaican ad-
venturer to the Morgan household has
never been clearly defined, and even his
parentage remains a mystery.
During his youth, Henry was raised
for a military life, noting years later that:
‘‘I left school too young to be a great
proficient in [Admiralty] or other laws,
and have been more used to the pike
than the book.’’ His older relations
Edward and Thomas Morgan had both
served as professional soldiers-of-fortune
in Europe, achieving high ranks on the
Continent during the Thirty Years War.
When the English Civil War erupted in
1642, Edward returned to fight in Mon-
mouthshire for the King, while Thomas
served on the Parliamentary side. After
the Royalist defeat and execution of
Charles I, Edward fled into exile, while
Thomas remained in England and rose
to become a Major-General in the New
Model Army, a trusted subordinate of
Oliver Cromwell. Although almost illit-
erate—able to ‘‘sign his name only with
252 Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675)
Allegedly, a modern reproduction of a
much earlier portrait of teenaged Henry
Morgan, painted shortly before his depar-
ture for the West Indies in 1655. (Tredegar
House, South Wales)
difficulty’’—Thomas Morgan served
with distinction as the second-in-com-
mand of the Flanders expedition in
1657
1658, being described as ‘‘a little,
shrill-voiced, choleric man’’ in action.
However, young Henry and the
other Royalist members of the family
in Wales had apparently been left in
reduced circumstances by the King’s
defeat, so destitute that he had to be
sold into indenture, a shameful fate.
The Bristol Apprentice Books (Servants
to Foreign Plantations) contains the
following entry: ‘‘1655, February 9
[O.S.]. Henry Morgan of Abergavenny,
laborer, bound to Timothy Townsend
of Bristol, cutler, for three years to
serve in Barbados.’’ Morgan would be
so embarrassed of the low status in
which he had held early during his
West Indian life, that almost 30 years
later he would sue the English publish-
ers of the buccaneer chronicler Exque-
meling for, among other things,
affirming that he had served a full term
as an indentured servant on Barbados,
before then regaining his freedom and
taking ‘‘himself to Jamaica, there to
seek new fortunes.’’
Morgan presumably reached Jamaica
sometime late in 1658 or early 1659, but
the first official notice of his activities
occurred a few years later, after Eng-
land’s monarchy had been restored.
When the first Royal Governor Thomas,
Lord Windsor, disbanded the remnants
of the original Cromwellian occupation-
force and reorganized Jamaica’s defense
into five militia regiments in 1662, Mor-
gan had achieved enough wealth and ex-
perience to be appointed a Captain in the
Port Royal Regiment. He also received a
privateering commission for a tiny vessel
lying in the roads and sailed as part of
Commodore Christopher Myngs’s initial
strike against the Spaniards.
Santiago de Cuba Raid
(October 1662)
Myngs’s flotilla quit Port Royal on Oc-
tober 1, 1662, comprised of the 40-gun
HMS Centurion, the 14-gun European
privateer Griffin, and 10 freebooter ves-
sels, bearing a total of 1,300 men.
Slowly rounding Point Negril at the west
end of Jamaica, they arrived off eastern
Cuba and incorporated the corsair ship
of Sir Thomas Whetstone into their num-
ber, as well as seven more Jamaican
stragglers. They then came within
sight of Santiago de Cuba at daybreak
on October 16th, but could not close

because of the faint, erratic breezes.
Finally, late that same afternoon Myngs
decided to steer directly toward land and
by nightfall had put 1,000 men ashore.
Next day, they fought their way into the
town and took possession of the vessels
lying in the harbor, after which they sent
columns in pursuit of the fleeing Span-
iards. Five days later the fortifications
and principal buildings were razed, and
the raiders made off with their booty.
Myngs’s expedition returned trium-
phantly into Port Royal on November
1st, having suffered only six men killed
during this singularly successful cam-
paign, and another 20 due to accidents
or illness.
Encouraged by this easy success, the
privateers reputedly ‘‘all went to sea’’
for more plunder, while Myngs called
for yet another expedition against the
Spanish on December 22, 1662. It is not
known whether Morgan was present in
Port Royal for this second enterprise, but
it seems plausible that he was. Soon a
dozen ships were being made ready and
on Sunday, January 21, 1663, they got
under way for the Mexican port of Cam-
peche. Myngs quickly rounded Yucatan
and worked his flotilla down into the
Gulf of Mexico, losing contact with the
vice-flagship Griffin and several other
privateersmen en route. Nonetheless he
snuck almost 1,000 men ashore four
miles west of Campeche on the night of
February 8
9, 1663, and advanced
against the sleeping city.
At first light, Spanish lookouts saw his
smaller vessels lying opposite this disem-
barkation point, with two larger ships
riding farther out to sea. They sounded
the alarm, but too late, for the buccaneer
army burst out of the nearby woods at
eight o’clock that morning and rushed
Campeche. Despite being surprised and
Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675) 253
heavily outnumbered, the 150 Spanish
militiamen put up a stout resistance, espe-
cially from their ‘‘strong built stone
houses, flat at top.’’ A bloody firefight
ensued, in which Myngs received serious
wounds in his face and both thighs while
leading the charge. He was carried back
aboard Centurion, while the privateer
leader Edward Mansfield assumed overall
command. The defenders were eventually
subdued after two hours’ heated battle,
suffering more than 50 fatalities as
opposed to 30 English invaders slain.
Some 170 Spanish captives were rounded
up, while many of the city’s thatched huts
went up in flames. The attackers then
looted Campeche and withdrew two
weeks later, on February 23, 1663, carry-
ing off great booty and 14 vessels from
the harbor. They slowly beat back around
Yucatan against contrary winds and cur-
rents, until Centurion reached Port Royal
on April 23, 1663, followed ‘‘soon after
[by] the rest of the fleet, but straggling,
because coming from leeward every one
made the best of his way.’’
Morgan and some colleagues later
claimed that they remained at sea roving
continuously over the next 22 months af-
ter this return, which seems highly
unlikely. What is known is that toward
the end of 1664, the veteran Jamaican
commanders John Morris and David
Martien mounted a small peacetime
expedition of their own into the Gulf of
Mexico, seconded by Captains Fackman,
Morgan, and Freeman. Strictly speaking,
such ventures were now illegal, as the
new Gov. Sir Thomas Modyford had
proclaimed ‘‘that for the future all acts
of hostility against the Spaniards should
cease.’’ However, the privateers ignored
this injunction, disingenuously arguing
that they knew nothing of this cessation
of hostilities and so had continued
254 Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675)
operating under their two-year-old com-
missions from Lord Windsor.
Tabasco Raid (Spring 1665)
Together, the five captains mustered a
few vessels and less than 200 men,
departing Jamaica in January 1665. Once
more circling around Yucatan, they
moved down the Gulf coast until oppo-
site Campeche, where one night in mid-
February 1665 they cut out an 8-gun
Spanish frigate from the roads. They
then anchored on February 19th before
the tiny town of Santa Marı́a de la Fron-
tera, at the mouth of the Grijalva River.
Some 110 to 120 buccaneers disem-
barked and traveled 50 miles upriver
through marshy channels, until coming
upon the provincial capital of Villaher-
mosa de Tabasco. At four o’clock in the
morning on February 24th they fell on
this city, capturing most of its inhabi-
tants in their beds. A general sack
ensued, with booty and captives being
loaded aboard a coaster in the river. The
raiders then headed downriver, seizing a
second coaster bearing flour.
Near the river mouth, they discovered
their anchored ships had been captured
during their absence by a Spanish naval
patrol. Three Spanish frigates and 270
men had been sent out from Campeche
by Lieutenant-Governor Antonio Maldo-
nado de Aldana, which sighted the inter-
lopers’ trio on February 22, 1665, and
boarded them without a fight. A single
English vessel fled, abandoning their 10-
gun flagship and 8-gun prize to the
Spaniards. Seven buccaneer captives
revealed that ‘‘Captain Mauricio [sic;
Morris] and David Martin [sic; Mar-
tien]’’ had led the bulk of the raiders
inland. Their retreat cut off, Morgan and
the main body of freebooters released
their hostages and began moving west-
ward with the two coasters, hoping to
find another river channel whereby to
escape. On the afternoon of March 17th,
they were overtaken by the Spanish
guardacostas opposite Santa Ana Cay,
this time with the privateers’ former 10-
gun flagship and 8-gun prize crewed by
300 volunteer militiamen from Cam-
peche. Jos
e Aldana, the Spanish com-
mander, sent a messenger in a boat to
call on the buccaneers to surrender, but
they pretended not to understand him.
When an interpreter approached shore
next morning, the rovers replied they
would not give up without a fight, and
the Spaniards reluctantly disembarked.
They discovered that the raiders had
entrenched themselves behind a palisade
reinforced with sandbags, and bristling
with seven small cannon. The Spanish
force, mostly armed civilians, showed
little stomach for an assault, and were
easily repelled without a single loss
among the freebooters. The next day,
March 19, 1665, the Spanish ships were
found conveniently run aground, thus
allowing the raiders to exit undisturbed.
Central American Campaign
(Summer 1665)
Morgan and the other privateers pro-
ceeded northward along the coast, cap-
turing smaller boats and occasionally
foraging ashore to obtain supplies. Off
Sisal they looted a vessel laden with
corn, whose crew was allegedly released
with a message to the Governor of Yuca-
tan, vowing to return and lay waste the
province. They then rounded Yucatan
and traversed the Bay of Honduras as far
south as Roat
an, where they paused to

take on water. Striking next at Trujillo
(Honduras), they overran this port and
seized a vessel in the roads, before con-
tinuing to Cape Gracias a Dios and the
Mosquito Coast. There native guides
were hired, and the buccaneers contin-
ued southward to Monkey Point (Punta
Mono, Nicaragua), where they hid their
ships before heading up the San Juan
River in lighter boats. They emerged
into the great Lago de Nicaragua, cross-
ing this by traveling at night and sneak-
ing up on Granada, which they took by
surprise on June 29, 1665 when they:
. . . marched undescried into the cen-
ter of the city, fired a volley, over-
turned 18 great guns in the Plaza de
Armas, took the sargento mayor’s [or
garrison commander’s] house,
wherein were all their arms and am-
munition, secured in the great church
300 of the best men prisoners, abun-
dance of which were churchmen,
plundered for 16 hours, discharged all
the prisoners, sunk all the boats [to
prevent pursuit], and so came away.
Retracing their course across the lake, at
the southeastern extremity ‘‘they took a
vessel of 100 tons and an island as large
as Barbados, called Lida [sic; Solenti-
name?], which they plundered.’’
Eventually they regained their an-
chored vessels, so that by the end of Au-
gust 1665, William Beeston was noting
in his journal at Port Royal:
Captain Fackman [sic; Fackman]
and others arrived from the taking of
the towns of Tabasco and Villaher-
mosa, in the bay of Mexico, and
although there had been peace with
the Spaniards not long since pro-
claimed, yet the privateers went out
Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675) 255
and in, as if there had been an actual
war, without commission.
Toward the end of this same year,
Morgan apparently married his cousin
Mary Elizabeth Morgan (who had
come out from England that previous
summer with her father, Lieutenant-
Gov. Edward Morgan), and in February
1666 was promoted to Colonel of the
Port Royal Volunteer Militia and
assigned to supervise the expansion of
its harbor defenses. The chronicler
Alexandre-Olivier Exquemelin later
wrote that Morgan also participated in
Edward Mansfield’s final campaign
against Providencia Island in May
1666, but this appears to have been an
error.
Puerto del Prı́ncipe Raid
(April 1668)
Nevertheless, Morgan did inherit Mans-
field’s mantle as unofficial leader of the
buccaneers, so that late in 1667 during a
period of renewed anti-Spanish fears, he
was commissioned by Modyford ‘‘to
draw together the English privateers and
take prisoners of the Spanish nation,
whereby he might inform of the inten-
tion of that enemy to invade Jamaica.’’
Such an open-ended license meant that
rovers flocked to Morgan’s rendezvous
off the south cays of Cuba, including
John Morris and Edward Collier, as well
as numerous French flibustiers [whose
own country, unlike England, was at
least at war with Spain]. After holding
consultations, Morgan led this formation
of a dozen ships and 700 men into the
Gulf of Ana Marı́a, setting a large party
ashore at dawn on March 28, 1668 at
Florida Beach in the Ensenada de Santa
256 Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675)
Marı́a (today called Santa Cruz del Sur),
to raid the inland town of Puerto del
Prı́ncipe (modern Camag€uey).
Spotted while pushing overland, the
Spaniards attempted to dispute their
advance next dawn with 800 militia
cavalrymen and native lancers, but
these were helpless before the superior
firepower of the buccaneers, who
inflicted several hundred casualties,
including more than 100 deaths, before
carrying Puerto del Prı́ncipe by storm
that same afternoon. Three days of pil-
lage ensued, although the raiders with-
drew by April 1st with only 50,000
pieces of eight, a disappointing sum
when it had to be redistributed among
so many. Nonetheless the Spaniards
also provided 500 head of cattle as ran-
som for their hostages, so that Morgan
left the Cuban coast well supplied and
steered his force toward Cape Gracias a
Dios on the Mosquito Coast (Nicara-
gua). Here the two contingents parted
company, when Morgan suggested a
descent on the Panamanian port of Por-
tobelo. The French, already resentful at
the small purchase obtained at Puerto
del Prı́ncipe, ‘‘wholly refused to join
with us in that action,’’ Morgan later
reported, ‘‘as being too full of danger
and difficulty.’’
Portobelo Raid (July 1668)
With only the four frigates, eight sloops,
and less than 500 men left to him, Mor-
gan sailed down the Central American
coast searching for more recruits, before
anchoring at Bocas del Toro (literally
‘‘Bull’s Mouths’’ or ‘‘Entrances of the
Bull,’’ off the northwestern shores of
Panama). He transferred his men into 23
piraguas and smaller boats, rowing
150 miles eastward in four night-
s—approaching Portobelo from its
unguarded western approaches—until he
arrived in the vicinity of Buenaventura
by the afternoon of July 10, 1668. That
night, his flotilla disgorged its men and
Morgan led them in a swift overland
march, taking the stunned Spanish citi-
zenry by surprise at daybreak on July 11,
1668. An eyewitness described how the
buccaneers fired ‘‘off their guns at every-
thing alive, whites, blacks, even dogs, in
order to spread terror,’’ and so secured
Portobelo without suffering a single loss.
Its 80-man Santiago de la Gloria cit-
adel held out for a couple of hours
longer, until Morgan rounded up a
group of captives including the alcalde
mayor, two friars, several women, and
nuns to act as a human shield for a party
of buccaneers that advanced on the
main gate with torches and axes. The
Spanish defenders reluctantly opened
fire, wounding two friars and killing an
Englishmen, but were unable to prevent
the sappers from reaching their gate.
While thus distracted, another band of
buccaneers used scaling ladders to enter
on the far side of the fortress, planting
‘‘their red flag on the castle walls’’ as
they carried the building. At least 45
Spanish soldiers died in this bloodbath,
and the rest were wounded.
Next morning, Morgan led 200 buc-
caneers across the bay and after a token
resistance, forced the surrender of the 50
Spanish soldiers still holding out in the
San Felipe harbor-castle. This allowed
his ships to anchor in the shelter of the
roads once they arrived from Bocas del
Toro, and at the cost of 18 buccaneer
dead, Portobelo was theirs. Wealthy citi-
zens were tortured to reveal their hidden
riches, and other excesses committed.
On July 14, 1668, Morgan wrote a letter
 Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675) 257

Morgan’s Sack of Portobelo, July 1668.

After approaching stealthily—paddling upwind along the coast out of a westerly direction—to
disembark quietly on the afternoon of July 10, 1668, at Buenaventura (1), Morgan burst on
Portobelo next morning (2). Once its stubborn citadel surrendered, he then crossed its bay and
drove the few defenders out of San Felipe harbor castle (3), allowing his ships to enter the
roads (4) and anchor safely.

in good Spanish to the President of the
Audiencia of Panama on the Pacific side
of the Isthmus, saying:
Tomorrow we plan to burn this city
to the ground and then set sail with
all the guns and munitions from the
castles. With us we will take all our
prisoners . . . and we will show them
the same kindness that the English
prisoners have received in this place.
However, Morgan offered to spare
the city if a ransom of 350,000 pesos
was paid. Acting-President Agustı́n de
Bracamonte, marching to Portobelo’s
relief at the head of 800 Panamanian
militiamen, responded: ‘‘I take you to be
a corsair and I reply that the vassals of
the King of Spain do not make treaties
with inferior persons.’’ Morgan unabash-
edly wrote back:
Although your letter does not deserve
a reply, since you call me a corsair,
nevertheless I write you these few
lines to ask you to come quickly. We
are waiting for you with great plea-
sure and we have powder and ball
with which to receive you. If you do
not come very soon, we will, with the
favor of God and our arms, come and
visit you in Panama. Now it is our
intention to garrison the castles and
258 Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675)
keep them for the King of England,
my master, who since he had a mind
to seize them, has also a mind to keep
them. And since I do not believe that
you have sufficient men to fight with
me tomorrow, I will order all the poor
prisoners to be freed so that they may
go to help you.
Much to his chagrin, Bracamonte’s
army was too weak to assault Morgan’s
positions when he arrived outside Porto-
belo next day, and the Spaniards
remained unhappily bogged down for a
week in the jungle. Finally on July 24,
1668, Bracamonte ordered a retreat,
leaving a subordinate to negotiate the
ransom. This was set at 100,000 pesos
and paid in the first days of August, at
which Morgan loaded up his ships and
sailed away, returning to Port Royal in
triumph by August 27th.
Oxford Explosion (January 1669)
He sortied again in early October 1668,
calling on freebooters to join him at ^Ile a
Vache for another enterprise against the
Spaniards. When the 34-gun loaned frig-
ate HMS Oxford reached Port Royal
shortly thereafter, to be maintained by
Jamaica and used against piracy, Mody-
ford decided to send it as a reinforce-
ment for Morgan ‘‘to face Cartagena.’’
The ship’s captain paused at Port Morant
that November 1668, where he culmi-
nated a dispute with his sailing master
by killing the man and fleeing, so that
the Governor appointed the veteran pri-
vateersman Edward Collier in his place,
and fleshed out the crew to a total of 160
men. This new Captain then sailed on
December 20, 1668, with additional
instructions to detain the 14-gun French
corsair Cerf Volant (‘‘Kite’’) out of La
Rochelle, which had recently plundered
a Virginia merchantman.
On arriving at ^Ile a Vache with the
aggrieved master aboard Oxford as a
witness, Collier found this culprit lying
among Morgan’s flotilla, and so invited
the French captain aboard. Identified
by the Virginian, Capitaine Vivien and
his 45-man crew were arrested, and
sailed back to Port Royal along with
their ship for adjudication. Cerf Volant
was quickly condemned, renamed Sat-
isfaction, and incorporated back into
Morgan’s fleet.
On January 12, 1669 (January 2
O.S.), Morgan and his colleagues
decided that since 900 to 1,000 free-
booters had gathered, their strength was
sufficient to try the great port of Carta-
gena on the Spanish Main, after which
they began a feast to celebrate both their
forthcoming voyage and the New Year.
Captains Aylett, Bigford, Collier, Mor-
ris, Thornbury, and Whiting all sat down
to dinner with Morgan on the quarter-
deck, while seamen caroused on the
forecastle. ‘‘They drank the health of the
King of England and toasted their good
success and fired off salvoes,’’ until sud-
denly the Oxford’s magazine exploded.
Ship’s surgeon Richard Browne, who sat
toward the foot of the officer’s table on
the same side as Morgan, 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.
Only six men and four boys survived the
accident, out of a company of more than
200 that were aboard. Miraculously,
Morgan lived through this blast, but the

loss of so many others ended any pros-
pects for a Cartagena campaign.
Collier departed with Satisfaction to
make an independent cruise against
Campeche, while Morgan transferred
into the 14-gun frigate Lilly and led his
remaining forces eastward, hoping to
raid the lesser targets of Trinidad or
Margarita Islands (Venezuela). But by
the time he reached Saona Island at the
eastern end of Santo Domingo, three
more of his best ships had deserted,
leaving only eight and 500 men. (His
loyal captains were John Morris, Jeff-
ery Pennant, Edward Dempster, Rich-
ard Norman, Richard Dobson, Adam
Brewster, and one other.) It was then
that one of his French followers sug-
gested a repeat of Jean-David Nau
l’Olonnais’s feat of two years earlier,
by raiding the rich yet vulnerable La-
guna de Maracaibo.
Maracaibo Raid (March 1669)
Morgan and the rest of his consorts
agreed, so that after touching at Aruba
a few weeks later to stock up on provi-
sions, the buccaneer fleet stood into
the Gulf of Venezuela. On March 9,
1669, they were nearing the Bar of
Maracaibo, a string of islands and
shoals marking the entrance to the La-
guna proper, when they saw that it had
been fortified since Nau’s foray. A
small 11-gun castle now covered the
channel, so that the freebooters landed
and besieged its defenders. Yet despite
the stout resistance being offered, there
were in fact only one Spanish officer
and eight soldiers within the keep, who
slipped out of the fort that same night,
after leaving a long slow fuse burning
into the magazine. Morgan and an
Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675) 259
assault-column meanwhile inched grad-
ually into the darkened fortress out of
the opposite side, ‘‘amazed to find no
defenders’’ until a search revealed the
fuse, which was extinguished ‘‘about
an inch away from the powder,’’
according to Exquemelin.
After spiking the guns, Morgan’s
ships navigated through the shoals to
Maracaibo, which was abandoned by
its terrified citizenry, despite the garri-
son commander’s insistence that all
militiamen must present themselves
‘‘on pain of their lives as traitors to the
kingdom.’’ But when only 12 men
reported for duty, he, too, took to his
heels. The buccaneers then sent raiding
parties out into the surrounding coun-
tryside ‘‘with complete liberty and no
resistance,’’ rounding up scores of pris-
oners who were brutally tortured to
reveal their riches. After three weeks,
Morgan crossed to the east side of the
Laguna, visiting a like treatment on the
town of Gibraltar. By April 17th, he
was back at Maracaibo with a captured
Cuban merchant ship and five smaller
piraguas from Gibraltar, ready to head
back out to sea again.
Battle of the Bar of Maracaibo
(April 1669)
But while Morgan’s freebooters had
been ransacking the interior, Spain’s
Armada de Barlovento arrived outside
the Laguna, bottling them up inside.
Admiral Alonso de Campos y Espinosa
had with him the 412-ton Magdalena of
38 guns, the 218-ton San Luis of 26
guns, and 50-ton Nuestra Se~ nora de la
Soledad (Our Lady of Solitude, alias
Marquesa or ‘‘Marchioness’’) of 14
guns, all manned by 500 officers, troops,
260 Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675)

Morgan’s defeat of the Armada de Barlovento at the battle of the Bar of Maracaibo in April
1669, as depicted by Exquemelin. (Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier. The buccaneers of
America: a true account of the most remarkable assaults. . . . , 1893)

and sailors. Finding the fortress guarding
its channel devastated, the Spanish
Admiral immediately reoccupied it with
40 harquebusiers, repaired six of the
guns, and then sent messages to the
inland provinces calling for assistance.
After several days, he lightened his war-
ships and brought them in over the bar,
and sent a letter to Morgan calling on
him to surrender, as else he had:
. . . orders to destroy you utterly and
put every man to the sword. This is
my final resolution: take heed, and
be not ungrateful for my kindness. I
have with me valiant soldiers, yearn-
ing to be allowed to revenge the
unrighteous acts you have commit-
ted against the Spanish nation in
America.
When Morgan read this aloud to his fol-
lowers in Maracaibo’s deserted market-
place, they roared back that they would
rather fight to the death than hand over
their spoils, as having risked their lives
for it once, they were willing to do so
again.
After a week’s preparation, Mor-
gan’s 13 vessels sailed from Maracaibo
for the bar, arriving within sight of the
anchored Spaniards on April 25, 1669.
Two days later, they rushed toward the
Armada at nine o’clock in the morning,
led by their large Cuban prize, flying
an admiral’s regalia. It bore down on
Campos’ flagship as if to board, and
indeed grappled; but when the Spanish
surged over the bulwarks they found
its decks lined only with wooden dum-
mies, and a dozen buccaneers hastily

decamping over the far side. Just
then, the Cuban ship burst into flames
and Magdalena became completely
engulfed, forcing Campos to leap into
the water with his panic-stricken men.
Witnessing this terrible spectacle, the
smaller San Luis and Marquesa cut
their cables and ran for the shelter of
the fort’s guns, pursued by an angry
swarm of buccaneer boats. Both Span-
ish vessels ran aground in the shallows
and deliberately set themselves ablaze
to prevent capture, although the latter
was boarded, saved, and refloated by
the buccaneers.
Despite this stunning victory,
though, Morgan’s flotilla could still not
get past the fort. Its garrison had been
heavily reinforced by 70 militiamen
from the interior, as well as most of
the Armada crews. When Morgan
attempted a land assault next day, it
was beaten off with ease, so that his
ships returned to Maracaibo. He pro-
posed a ceasefire and free passage out
to sea in exchange for his Spanish cap-
tives, but this offer was refused by
Campos. But when Morgan then
learned that only six of the fort’s guns
were still functional, he had found his
way. Returning to the bar a few days
later, his boats busily plied back and
forth inshore, seemingly depositing a
large landing-party. The Spaniards,
who had observed this activity from a
distance, manhandled their guns into
position and braced for a nocturnal
assault. But Morgan had again
deceived them, his boat crews merely
hiding men in their bottoms during
return trips, and no one having actually
disembarked. Under cover of darkness,
his ships weighed and slipped past the
fort, depositing their prisoners outside
before sailing off in triumph.
Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675) 261
By May 27, 1669, Morgan was back
in Port Royal, and apparently destined to
retire from roving. During his absence,
Secretary of State Lord Arlington had
once more reiterated the Crown’s direc-
tive against anti-Spanish hostilities,
which was proclaimed throughout
Jamaica by Modyford on June 24th, the
Governor adding that he had been
instructed ‘‘that the subjects of His Cath-
olic Majesty be from now until further
order treated and used as good neighbors
and friends.’’ However, Madrid in the in-
terim had also countered with a more
aggressive policy of its own, authorizing
Spanish-American officials to issue local
commissions against the English. When
the first of these corsairs began making
attacks that following year, Jamaicans
became outraged, especially by the nui-
sance raids of Manoel Rivero Pardal on
their coastal plantations during the
summer of 1670.
By way of retaliation, Modyford met
with the island Council on July 9, 1670,
and passed a unanimous resolution, that
Morgan be commissioned ‘‘to be Admi-
ral and Commander-in-Chief of all the
ships of war belonging to this harbor,’’
drawing them together into one fleet ‘‘to
attack, seize and destroy all the enemy’s
vessels that shall come within his
reach.’’ Morgan set sail from Port Royal
on August 11th, at the head of a fleet
comprised of 11 vessels and 600 men,
his flag flying aboard Satisfaction of 120
tons, now armed with 22 guns. He had
furthermore called for a freebooter gath-
ering at ^Ile a Vache for greater strength,
but first ventured across to the south
coast of Cuba, where he left Morris’
Dolphin on watch before touching at
French Tortuga Island, and therefore not
reaching ^Ile a Vache until September
12th.
262 Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675)
Four days later, Morgan detached
another six vessels under Collier to gather
provisions and ‘‘get prisoners for intelli-
gence’’ on the Spanish Main. These
appeared off Rı́ohacha (Colombia) at
daybreak on October 24, 1670, landing
and marching against the tiny four-gun
fort with such disciplined display that the
Spaniards assumed they were regular
troops out of England. This impression
faded once they drew closer, as the garri-
son included the crew of Rivero Pardal’s
consort Gallardina (which was lying in
the roads), and these men were terrified
of falling into the buccaneers’ hands. The
fort held out a day and a night before sur-
rendering, after which Collier conducted
a pair of executions and tortured captives
for their wealth. ‘‘In cold blood they did
a thousand cursed things,’’ a Spanish eye-
witness noted, before weighing almost
four weeks later with meat, maize, 38
prisoners, Gallardina, and another ship.
Reconquest of Providencia
Island (Christmas 1670)
Meanwhile, Morgan’s fleet had been
scattered by a storm off ^Ile a Vache,
and was slowly regathering its strength.
Morris rejoined with Rivero Pardal’s
San Pedro (alias Fama), which he had
seized after killing that Spanish corsair
off Cuba. Many other captains arrived,
and by the time Morgan weighed on
December 18, 1670, he had 38 vessels
and more than 2,000 English, French,
and Dutch freebooters under his com-
mand, the largest buccaneer enterprise
ever mounted. Their intended target
was Panama, but first Morgan paused
en route to reclaim tiny Providencia
Island, which on two previous occa-
sions had belonged to English settlers.
Early on December 24th, his fleet
appeared before that place, and forced
its Spanish garrison to surrender next
day by sheer weight of numbers.
Morgan then detached three ships
and 470 men (including Rok Brasiliano
and Jan Erasmus Reyning), to sail
ahead of his fleet and seize the fort
guarding the mouth of the Chagres
River, where he intended to land with
his main force and advance across the
Isthmus to Panama. The bulk of his
fleet followed a few days afterward,
coming within sight of Chagres on Jan-
uary 12, 1671, which the buccaneers
had already secured. But as Satisfac-
tion led the rest of the fleet into the
roadstead, it struck a hidden reef and
went down, along with the next four
vessels in line. Ten men were drowned,
but otherwise losses were minimal.
Then after a week spent refurbishing
the fort and installing 300 defenders
under Captain Richard Norman, Mor-
gan pushed upriver with 1,500 men,
seven small ships, and 36 boats.
Sack of Panama (January 1671)
An epic seven-day trek ensued through
the jungles. Although the Spaniards
shrank away before this invading host,
the climate, terrain, and lack of provi-
sions nonetheless proved to be daunting
obstacles. Finally at nine o’clock on the
morning of January 27, 1671, Morgan’s
vanguard breasted a hill and ‘‘saw that
desired place, the South Sea,’’ with a
galleon and several smaller vessels
faintly visible, riding on its waters. To-
ward noon they came on a great plain
filled with cattle, some of which they
slaughtered and paused to eat. Thus
refreshed, they pressed on and that

afternoon sighted the tiled rooftops of
Panama, with a Spanish army drawn up
to bar their path.
Morgan began his final advance at
sunrise on January 28, 1671, with his
remaining 1,200 men marching behind
‘‘red and green banners and flags,
clearly visible to the Spaniards.’’ The
Governor of Panama, Juan P
erez de
Guzm
an, had his own 1,200 militia
infantrymen drawn up in a long line,
six deep, with two militia cavalry com-
panies of 200 riders apiece on each
flank. But his inexperienced troops
had few firearms and no artillery, so
that despite their bravery, they would
prove no match for the better armed
freebooters.
Morgan’s vanguard was advancing
on the Spaniards’s right flank, when
P
erez de Guzm
an’s unwieldy throng
suddenly launched an undisciplined
dash against the buccaneer lines. These
broke the Spanish charge with steady
fusillades, more than 100 militiamen
being killed in the initial volley. This
murderous and one-sided fire, to which
the Panamanians could make scant
reply, broke their spirit and caused
them to flee, leaving 400 to 500 dead
or wounded on the battlefield, as
opposed to only 15 buccaneers. Pan-
ama was occupied, but many of its
buildings were set ablaze as the raiders
entered, and most of its riches had al-
ready been removed to the ships off-
shore. Thus although Morgan was to
remain in undisputed possession of
Panama for the next four weeks, he
found its wealth largely gone. Despite
cruel tortures inflicted by the frustrated
invaders, relatively little more could be
extracted from the city or its outlying
areas, especially when it had to be
redistributed among the large number
Morgan, Sir Henry (fl. 1665
1675) 263
of his followers. When the army finally
marched back to Chagres and made a
division of spoils, they received only
£15 or £18 a head, so that there was
much ugly talk they had been cheated.
Arrest (1672)
Morgan departed Chagres on March
16, 1671, aboard Bradley’s Mayflower,
accompanied by three other vessels. He
reached Port Royal a couple of weeks
later, to find English policy completely
reversed. A new treaty had been signed
with Madrid, so that attacks against the
Spaniards were now most definitely
out of favor. Three months afterward,
HMSs Assistance and Welcome entered
Port Royal with a new Jamaican Gov-
ernor, Sir Thomas Lynch.
Some time later, he informed his
predecessor Modyford that he was to
be arrested, although assuring him that
‘‘his life and estate was not in danger,’’
but that London had merely felt a show
of sternness was needed to assuage
Spanish complaints. A like gesture was
required when news of Morgan’s Pan-
ama raid reached Europe a little while
later, so that in November 1671, Lynch
was ordered to arrest him as well. The
new Governor was loath to do this, for
it would further alienate the privateers
on whom he was relying for the
island’s defense. He therefore decided
to send the Admiral home in such a
manner ‘‘as he shall not be much dis-
gusted,’’ and deferred the actual arrest
because of Morgan’s poor health. It
was not until mid-April 1672 that the
great freebooter was conducted aboard
the 36-gun royal frigate Welcome of
Captain John Keene, to sail for Eng-
land with a three-ship convoy.
264 Morris, John (fl. 1658
1675)
Three months later they arrived at
Spithead, and because Morgan continued
‘‘very sickly,’’ he was not imprisoned on
reaching London in August 1672, but
rather housed at his own expense. The
Third Anglo-Dutch War had already
erupted that spring, with England and
France ranged against The Netherlands.
Hostilities against the Protestant Dutch
were not proving very popular, espe-
cially when the French were revealed as
weak allies at sea and then plunged into
war against Spain as well the next year.
All of which gradually produced another
full-circle change in Whitehall’s poli-
cies, with the most surprising conse-
quences: for instead of being tried,
Morgan was able to use his liberty to meet
the influential 30-year-old Christopher
Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle, who
intervened on his behalf before Charles II.
By the end of July 1673, Morgan’s
position was so improved that he
was asked to submit a memorandum
describing what was needed to ensure
Jamaica’s security. In January 1674,
the Council of Trade and Plantations
decided to recall Lynch and replace
him with the Earl of Carlisle, son of
the Earl of Carberry, with Morgan to
act as his Deputy Governor. Such a
position called for a title, so that in
November 1674 he was knighted, and
next spring set sail for Jamaica.
Lieutenant Governor
(1674
1688)
On March 6, 1674 (O.S.), the 40-ton pri-
vateer Gift of Capt. Thomas Rogers
entered Port Royal harbor, with Morgan
on board. The following day Lynch
resigned, and one week later his succes-
sor arrived aboard the 522-ton frigate
HMS Foresight. For the remaining 14
years of his life, Morgan lived quietly as
a plantation owner, growing fatter and
embroiled in nothing more dangerous
than the cut and thrust of local politics.
He died of dropsy in 1688, the result of
being ‘‘much given to drinking and sit-
ting up late,’’ according to his physician.
He left a personal estate valued at over
£5,000 and several properties, being bur-
ied with a 22-gun salute from all the
ships in Port Royal harbor.
References
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).


Eugenio Martı́nez, Marı́a Angeles, La
defensa de Tabasco, 1600
1717
(Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
americanos, 1971).
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
MORRIS, JOHN
(fl. 1658
1675)
One of the earliest and most active of
English privateers operating out of
Jamaica.

Morris was first mentioned in the
summer of 1658, after Commodore
Christopher Myngs returned to that
island from a raid against the Spanish
Main with three prizes. These were sold
to men who would all prove formidable
corsairs in their day: the largest, of eight
guns and 60 tons, was bought by Robert
Searle and renamed the Cagaway; one of
four guns and 50 tons was purchased by
Dutch-born Laurens Prins, who changed
its name to Pearl; while the third later
became Morris’ Dolphin. It is believed
that Morris may have participated in
Myngs’s attacks against both Santiago de
Cuba and Campeche a few years later,
and in 1663 he was listed as command-
ing a 7-gun brigantine (perhaps the
Virgin Queen) with a crew of 60 men,
and holding a commission from the for-
mer Governor of Jamaica, Lord Windsor.
In January 1664, Morris escorted the
merchant sloop Blue Dove into Port
Royal ‘‘upon suspicion that she was to
trade with the Spaniard as a Hollander
[i.e., conduct clandestine trade with the
Spanish by pretending that it was a ves-
sel of Dutch, rather than English registry,
thus avoiding Jamaican duties].’’ He had
intercepted this vessel with his Virgin
Queen between Hispaniola and Jamaica,
detaining it because the sloop was sail-
ing directly toward Cuba and laden with
‘‘ammunition and goods suitable to the
Spanish trade.’’ The Blue Dove had in
fact cleared Amsterdam and carried
papers declaring its final destination to
be Port Royal, so that it was freed by the
Court of Admiralty because there was no
proof that its master intended to break
any law. Morris later complained he got
nothing for his troubles but ‘‘an English
ensign and a hogshead of strong beer.’’
In June 1664, a new Governor, Sir
Thomas Modyford, reached the island
Morris, John (fl. 1658
1675) 265
and immediately proclaimed ‘‘that for
the future all acts of hostility against the
Spaniards should cease,’’ as the English
Crown hoped to promote a more benign
policy with Spanish America. Yet Mor-
ris and four other privateer captains soon
chose to ignore this injunction, later
arguing, somewhat disingenuously, that
‘‘having been out 22 months [i.e., since
participating in Myngs’s sack of Cam-
peche in early 1663],’’ they had not
known of the cessation of hostilities and
so continued operating under their old
commissions.
Mexican Raid (Spring 1665)
Morris and the Dutch-born David Mar-
tien were the leaders of this new venture,
seconded by Capts. Henry Morgan, Free-
man, and Fackman. Together they mus-
tered a few vessels and 200 men,
departing Jamaica in January 1665.
Rounding Yucatan, they moved gingerly
down the treacherous Gulf coast until
arriving opposite Campeche, where one
night in mid-February 1665 they cut out
an 8-gun Spanish frigate lying in its
roads. Then sailing past the Laguna de
T
erminos, they came to anchor on Feb-
ruary 19th before the tiny town of Santa
Marı́a de la Frontera at the mouth of the
Grijalva River. Some 110 to 120 bucca-
neers disembarked and traveled 50 miles
upriver through the marshy channels,
until coming within sight of the provin-
cial capital of Villahermosa de Tabasco.
At four o’clock in the morning on Febru-
ary 24, 1665, they fell on the sleeping
city, capturing most of the inhabitants in
their beds. A general sack ensued, after
which booty and captives were loaded
aboard a coaster lying in the river.
The raiders then paused at nearby Santa
Teresa ranch to release their women
266 Morris, John (fl. 1658
1675)
captives, retaining the men, for whom
they demanded a ransom of 300 head of
cattle. Farther down the river, they came
on a second coaster bearing flour, which
they also seized.
Nearing the river mouth, they discov-
ered that their waiting ships had been
captured by a Spanish naval patrol.
Three Spanish frigates and 270 men had
been sent out by Campeche’s Lieuten-
ant-Gov. Antonio Maldonado de Aldana,
in quest of the prize seized from that
port. This armadilla had sighted the
interlopers’ trio of vessels anchored off
Santa Marı́a de la Frontera on February
22, 1665, boarding two without a fight.
A few Englishmen fled on the other ves-
sel, abandoning their 10-gun flagship
and 8-gun prize, along with seven bucca-
neers. These had revealed to their captors
that the ships had been left unmanned
because ‘‘Captain Mauricio [sic; Morris]
and David Martin [sic; Martien]’’ had
led the bulk of the raiders inland.
With their retreat cut off, the main body
of freebooters released their remaining
hostages and began moving westward
with their two coasters, hoping to find
another river channel whereby to escape.
On the afternoon of March 17, 1665, they
were overtaken by the guardacostas oppo-
site Santa Ana Cay, this time sailing the
privateers’ former 10-gun flagship and 8-
gun prize (the Spaniards having crewed
these with 300 volunteer militiamen from
Campeche). Jos
e Aldana, the Spanish
commander, sent a messenger in a boat to
call on the buccaneers to surrender, but
they pretended not to understand. When
an interpreter approached shore next
morning, Morris and Martien replied that
they would not give up without a fight,
and the Spaniards reluctantly disem-
barked. They then discovered that the
raiders had used the interval to entrench
themselves behind a palisade reinforced
with sandbags, and bristling with seven
small cannon taken from Villahermosa.
The Spanish force, comprised mostly of
armed civilians, showed little stomach for
an assault, and were easily repelled with-
out incurring a single loss among the free-
booters. The next day, March 19, 1665,
the Spanish ships were found conveniently
run aground, thus allowing the raiders to
exit undisturbed in their two coasters.
Central American Campaign
(Summer 1665)
Morris and Martien proceeded northward
hugging the coastline, capturing smaller
boats and making occasional landings to
obtain supplies. Off Sisal, they looted a
vessel laden with corn, whose crew they
allegedly released with a message to the
Spanish Governor, vowing to return and
lay waste his province. They then
rounded Yucatan and traversed the Bay
of Honduras as far as Roat
an, where they
paused to take on water. Striking next at
Trujillo, on the north coast of Honduras,
they overran this port and seized a vessel
lying in its roads, before continuing to
Cape Gracias a Dios and the Mosquito
Coast. Nine native guides joined them
there, sailing southward to Monkey Point
(Punta Mono, Nicaragua), where the
buccaneers hid their ships before head-
ing up the San Juan River with lighter
boats. More than 100 miles and three
waterfalls later, they emerged into the
great Lago de Nicaragua, crossing it by
nocturnal stages and so sneaking up on
Granada, taking this city by surprise on
June 29, 1665, when they:
. . . marched undescried into the center
of the city, fired a volley, overturned

18 great guns in the Plaza de Armas,
took the sargento mayor’s [garrison
commander’s] house wherein were all
their arms and ammunition, secured in
the great church 300 of the best men
prisoners, abundance of which were
churchmen, plundered for 16 hours,
discharged all the prisoners, sunk all
the boats [to prevent pursuit], and so
came away.
Retracing their course across the lake, at
the southeastern extremity ‘‘they took a
vessel of 100 tons and an island as large
as Barbados, called Lida [sic; Solenti-
name?], which they plundered.’’ Amaz-
ingly, the raiders then regained their
anchored vessels and by the end of Au-
gust 1665, William Beeston was writing
in his journal at Port Royal: ‘‘Captain
Fackman and others arrived from the
taking of the towns of Tabasco and Vil-
lahermosa, in the Bay of Mexico.’’ They
had traveled almost 3,000 miles in
seven months, assaulting five Spanish
towns, and undergoing countless lesser
engagements.
Morgan’s Lieutenant
(1668
1671)
Over the next few years, Morgan would
be elevated to a position of prominence
among the Jamaican privateers, in part
because of his military skills, as well as
his excellent political connections with
Modyford. When the next major sortie
was made from that island in early
1668, Morgan bore a commission from
the Governor styling him as ‘‘General,’’
with instructions to unite the privateers
‘‘and take prisoners of the Spanish
nation, whereby he might inform of the
intention of that enemy to invade
Morris, John (fl. 1658
1675) 267
Jamaica.’’ Because of this patent, veter-
ans such as Morris suddenly found
themselves serving under their former
junior colleague, although apparently
without much resentment. Morris in
particular became a loyal subordinate in
Morgan’s expeditions, starting with the
sack of Portobelo in July 1668, where
he even went over among the Spaniards
as a hostage during the negotiations for
the ransom of that city.
Early the following year, Morris nar-
rowly escaped death. On January 12,
1669, he was one of eight English and
French corsair captains who met aboard
Morgan’s Oxford off ^Ile a Vache to
decide on an enterprise against the Span-
iards. Both Morris and his son of the
same name were aboard, and since 900
freebooters had been mustered, this
strength made the captains agree to try
the great port of Cartagena on the Span-
ish Main, and then they began a feast to
celebrate their voyage. Captains Aylett,
Bigford, Edward Collier, Thornbury, and
Whiting all sat down to dinner with
Morgan and the Morrises on the quarter-
deck, while seamen caroused on the
forecastle. ‘‘They drank the health of the
King of England and toasted their good
success, and fired off salvoes,’’ until sud-
denly the Oxford’s magazine acciden-
tally exploded. Ship’s surgeon Richard
Browne, who sat toward the foot of the
officer’s table on the same side as Mor-
gan, 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.
Only six men including Morgan, Morris,
and four boys survived out of a company
268 Morris, John (fl. 1658
1675)
of more than 200, but not the latter’s
son. Despite his grief, Morris proceeded
to serve in the subsequent campaign
against Maracaibo.
Death of Rivero Pardal
(October 1670)
The following summer, Modyford
attempted to rein in the privateers’ activ-
ities and Morris returned to his planta-
tion, but the Spaniards then began issuing
anti-English commissions of their own.
One such was used by the Cartagena cor-
sair Manoel Rivero Pardal to launch nui-
sance raids on Jamaica itself, which
prompted angry calls for retaliation. Mor-
gan and Morris sortied to organize yet
another strike against the Spaniards, host-
ing an assembly of buccaneers off Hispa-
niola. Meanwhile, foraging parties, one
of these commanded by Morris, were
sent out to gather supplies and intelli-
gence for the forthcoming expedition.
In mid-October 1670, his 10-gun ship
Dolphin with 60 men was forced to put
into a small bay at the east end of Cuba
by a threatening storm. Two hours later,
just before dark, Rivero Pardal sailed in
for this same purpose with his 14-gun
ship San Pedro (alias the Fama), being
delighted to see he had the smaller Ja-
maican ship embayed. Setting men
ashore to cut off any escape, the Span-
iards prepared to attack at dawn.
But it was Morris who moved first the
next morning, bearing down on Fama
with the land breeze, and boarding it at
the first attempt. Rivero was shot through
the neck and killed, his crew panicking
and jumping into the sea, where some
drowned and many others were finished
off by the privateers, with only five Span-
iards being taken alive. Later that month,
the jubilant buccaneers at ^Ile a Vache
beheld Fama being led in, now peacefully
renamed the Lamb. Morris then accompa-
nied Morgan on his successful campaign
to reconquer Providencia Island, capture
Chagres, and march across the Isthmus to
punish Panama. In the final assault, Mor-
ris seconded Laurens Prins in command
of the vanguard, which routed the Spanish
host before Panama’s walls on January
28, 1671.
Later Career (1672
1675)
Following the return of the privateers to
Jamaica, Morris was spared the official
opprobrium which descended on Mody-
ford and Morgan, resulting in both being
sent prisoners to England for persisting
in these hostilities against Spanish Amer-
ica. Morris instead was assigned by the
new Gov. Sir Thomas Lynch ‘‘to take up
the straggling privateers that are to lee-
ward [i.e., westward]’’ of that island,
with the added recommendation that he
was ‘‘a very stout fellow, good pilot, and
we know he will not turn pirate.’’
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies., Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
 Mum 269

1635
1684 (London: Secker & Andreson, Manning turned his guns on

Warburg, 1977). the Dutch vessels as well, and helped
batter them into submission. Moseley
then returned to Boston with his prizes
on April 2, 1675 (O.S.).
MOSELEY OR MAUDSLEY, During the Indian conflict of that
SAMUEL (fl. 1667
1675) same year of 1675 known as ‘‘King
Philip’s War,’’ Moseley formed a vol-
New England privateer from Dorches- unteer company made up of his crews
ter, Massachusetts. and some of the released Dutchmen,
In early life, Moseley was said to called ‘‘Moseley’s privateers.’’
have served at Jamaica and ‘‘in the way
of trade visited other parts of the West
Indies, where the adventurous spirit was
References
excited and schooled, perhaps by Sir
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Henry Morgan and associate bucca- Sailors: The First Century of American
neers, the result of which was his bring- Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
ing home to Boston two prizes.’’ In (Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
1667, Moseley acted as attorney for Webster, John C., Cornelis Steenwyck:
his privateer friend Captain Thomas Dutch Governor of Acadie (Ottawa:
Salter of Port Royal, Jamaica, when a Canadian Historical Association, 1929).
Spanish vessel the latter had taken in the
‘‘Bay of Campeche’’ (i.e., Laguna de
T
erminos) was illegally carried off to
New York by its prize crew. MOSQUITO COAST
During the Third Anglo-Dutch War,
Nickname originally given to the east-
Moseley was given command of the
ern shores of present-day Nicaragua by
ketch Salisbury with a crew of 47 men,
Spanish explorers, and which extends
to patrol the Massachusetts coast in com-
from Cape Gracias a Dios in the Hon-
pany with the ketch Swallow. On Febru-
duran province of Mosquitia in the
ary 15, 1675 (O.S.), he was ordered to
north, all the way down to Monkey
sortie by the Council at Boston, in quest
Point (Punta Mono) in the south. A tor-
of certain Dutch privateers that had cap-
rid stretch of tropical mangroves and
tured the bark Philip with George Man-
inlets, with few natural resources or ar-
ning master, and several other English
able farmland, it remained unsettled by
vessels. He fell in with a French ship
the Spaniards and so became a natural
which was also hunting the Dutchmen,
sanctuary for runaway slaves, rovers,
and soon came on the enemy privateers.
and outlaws.
These were Capts. Pieter Roderigo of
the Edward and Thomas and Cornelis
Andreson of the shallop Penobscot, who
had apparently been joined by Mann- MUM
ing’s Philip, as it was also flying Dutch
colors. However, when Moseley and his A strong ale popular in the 17th cen-
French consort engaged Roderigo and tury, made from wheat and oat malts,
270 Mu~noz Gadea, Juan (fl. 1663
)
and flavored with herbs. Its original
name was Mumme, from Brunswick in
Germany, where it was first developed.
In Dutch, it was called Mom.
Reference
Gehring, Charles T. and Schiltkamp, Jacob
A., Curaçao Papers, 1640
1665,
Volume XVII, ‘‘New Netherland
Documents’’ (Interlaken, NY: Heart of
the Lakes Publishing, 1987).
~
MUNOZ GADEA, JUAN
(fl. 1663
)
Widely-traveled Spanish military offi-
cer, who fought pirates in several parts
of the globe.
Nothing is known about his early life,
beyond the fact that he was born on No-
vember 12, 1634. Finding himself in
Lima’s seaport of Callao, Mu~noz Gadea
enlisted at the age of 15 on January 7,
1650, to serve as a harquebusier in the
remote frontier outposts of Chile. Over
the next eight years, the adventurous
teenager would rise through the ranks of
Ensign, Captain of infantry, light cav-
alry, and lancers, distinguishing himself
during the southern Chilean native upris-
ing of February 1654 when he escorted a
herd of more than 1,000 horses from
Maule through hostile territory, to pro-
vide mounts for the garrison trapped
inside the coastal city of Concepci
on. He
also served as Deputy Corregidor of the
province of Colchagua, before eventu-
ally obtaining leave from the Governor
of Chile on February 19, 1658, to travel
home to Spain.
However, on stopping over at Havana
during his voyage later that same year,
he found that the annual plate fleet had
already sailed for Europe and that his
older brother, Nicol
as Mu~noz de Gadea,
an influential lawyer from the Royal
Council in Madrid, had just arrived to
serve as Cuba’s Lieutenant-Governor.
The youthful Captain therefore altered
his plans. Learning that new regiments
were being raised in Mexico after a dis-
astruous setback against the English
occupiers of Jamaica, Mu~noz Gadea
crossed over to New Spain, and being a
veteran 24-year-old field officer,
received a military commission from the
Viceroy Duque de Alburquerque on Jan-
uary 7, 1659, to raise and train a com-
pany of recruits in the city of Puebla.
When the next Viceroy Conde de Ba~nos
arrived to assume office as of September
1660, he, too, promoted Mu~noz Gadea
to Provost Marshal of all the new com-
panies being marched down from vari-
ous Mexican cities to Veracruz.
Brushes with Pirates
(1663
1673)
A seaborne expedition to reinforce Span-
ish forces in the Antillean theater was
eventually readied, and departed under
maestre de campo Francisco de Leiva
Issasi, with Mu~noz Gadea being
appointed on December 14, 1662, to act
as his second-in-command. But shortly
after sailing early next year aboard the
ship Nuestra Se~nora del Rosario, Mu~noz
Gadea was wrecked off the Cuban coast,
remaining marooned on an offshore cay
with his company of 100 troops, until
they could be rescued from Havana.
Meanwhile, the English Commodore
Christopher Myngs had devastated Cam-
peche with a raid in February 1663, so
that Mu~noz Gadea was ordered to

transfer his company back across the
Gulf into that Mexican port, so as to help
reconstitute its garrison and defenses.
He and his men reached Campeche
by January 1664, and that same October
15th Mu~ noz Gadea was promoted by the
provincial Governor to sargento mayor
and the city’s garrison commander. He
supervised reconstruction of a stronger
version of its elderly San Rom
an Bas-
tion, and maintained a high state of alert,
because of the repeated pirate sightings.
Indeed, when he resigned his post four
years later to travel to Mexico City, the
ship bearing his personal goods was car-
ried off by rovers, so that he reached the
viceregal capital destitute. The Viceroy
Marqu
es de Mancera offered him the
title of alcalde mayor of the small
coastal town of Antigua Veracruz on
November 26, 1668, but rather than re-
sume service along the Gulf Coast,
Mu~ noz Gadea preferred to sail across the
broad Pacific Ocean early next year to
the Philippines.
He served on the Governor’s staff at
Manila until January 18, 1672, when he
obtained license to sail back home to
Spain via Mexico, to claim the inheri-
tance left by the death of his brother Nic-
ol
as. This voyage proved to be perilous,
war having erupted that same spring
between England and Holland, so that
the Dutch ship on which Mu~noz Gadea
was traveling was intercepted and car-
ried into Jamaica, where he remained a
prisoner until forwarded on to London
by Governor Sir Thomas Lyttleton. De-
posited penniless in the English capital
on November 20, 1673, he was able to
gain Cadiz by attaching himself to the
retinure of the Spanish Ambassador in
England, the Marqu
es del Fresno. Next
year, having received his inheritance and
with his 40th birthday looming, Mu~noz
Mu~noz Gadea, Juan (fl. 1663
) 271
Gadea petitioned the Crown on October
12, 1674, to be given a new assignment
in the Americas.
Governor of Margarita (1677
)
After a two-year wait, Mu~noz Gadea
was appointed on November 25, 1676,
as Governor of the Venezuelan island
of Margarita, a sparsely-populated out-
post often beset by enemy raiders. The
war with France was just then entering
its fourth year and his departure from
Seville that same December was ap-
parently delayed by news of a huge
French battle-fleet having also sailed
out for that region under Vice Admiral
Jean, Comte d’Estr
ees. Mu~noz Gadea
would not reach Margarita until late
August 1677, to find that it had been
laid waste earlier that same year by a
privateering descent led by the Marquis
de Maintenon.
Immediately on assuming office,
Mu~noz Gadea had ordered all ports on the
island closed except Pampatar, and
banned all visits by neutral Dutch or Por-
tuguese vessels (on which lonely islanders
depended for their scanty commerce). He
also ignored the wishes of local inhabi-
tants, who wanted to see the ruins of old
Fort San Bernardo replaced above their
capital of Asunci
on by a strong new cas-
tle, instead channeling every available
resource, including more than 2,000 pesos
of his own funds, into strenghthening and
manning Fort San Carlos Borromeo, to
protect Pampatar’s anchorage. He revived
religious observances and antagonized
wealthy landowners.
One such influential citizen, Juan Fer-
mı́n de Huidobro, soon led a movement
that removed the despised Mu~noz Gadea
from office, so that he withdrew to live
272 Munro, Captain (fl. 1664
1665)
with the Franciscan priests. Apparently
in early September 1683, a copy of a pri-
vate letter from the wealthy merchant
Diego de Villatoro in Madrid to a col-
league at Cadiz, Esteban de Alfaro,
reached Margarita and revealed that
Mu~ noz Gadea was about to be exoner-
ated and restored to office. Bitter over
his long suffering, he immediately or-
dered a gun fired and Asunci
on’s citi-
zenry summoned with beating drums, to
announce that he was reassuming his
suspended title of Governor. When Fer-
mı́n returned from the town of Porlamar,
where he had been supervising construc-
tion of a new stone torre
on or guard-
tower, he found himself deposed and a
rival faction running the administration.
Mu~ noz Gadea soon began to heap legal
charges on his hated rival, and exposed
Fermı́n to the same indignities which he
had endured, by embargoing his goods
and properties, so that the latter finally
fled to Santo Domingo and on March 2,
1684, beseeched intervention from its
Royal Audiencia.
This court agreed, decreeing all of
Mu~ noz Gadea’s actions illegal until offi-
cial word of his absolution had arrived
from Spain, and dispatching their lawyer
Gregorio de Mil
an Campusano to tem-
porarily restore Fermı́n into office. Yet
when this emissary’s vessel anchored off
Porlamar on March 30, 1684, he would
be met with hostility. After traveling
into the Valley of Nuestra Se~nora to
announce the purpose of his visit, Mil
an
Campusano was rejected by the town
council and ordered off the island next
day. Maestre de campo Marcos de
Ocampo promptly appeared with 250
armed men, to unceremoniously bun-
dle the lawyer back aboard his ship.
Six-and-a-half months later, a vessel
arrived from the Canary Islands with
confirmation of Mu~noz Gadea’s favor-
able verdict, as well as a royal command
dated March 28, 1684, officially restor-
ing him as Margarita’s Governor.
See also
Estr
ees, Jean, Comte d’; Fermı́n de
Huidobro, Juan; Maintenon, Marquis de.
References
Archive of Indies, Audiencia de Santo
Domingo 65, Ramo 1, Number 25, and
181, Ramo 8, Numbers 25
61.
Indiferente General 124, Number 122.
MUNRO, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1664
1665)
Renegade Jamaican privateer, who
shortly after the installation of Sir
Thomas Modyford as Governor of
Jamaica, ‘‘turned pirate and took the
English merchant ships bound thither.’’
After ransacked vessels began putting
into Port Royal, about December 21,
1664 (O.S.), the Royal Navy’s armed
ketch Swallow was sent out under Cap-
tain Ensom, who met Munro off that
coast, ‘‘fought him, killed many and
took the rest of his men, being thir-
teen,’’ which were carried back into
Jamaica. Munro and his men were then
swiftly tried and condemned, being
hanged at Gallows Point in sight of all
the vessels in the anchorage, where
their bodies remained for several
months, displayed in gibbets.
References
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
 Murphy Fitzgerald, John (fl. 1633
1662)
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977)
MURPHY FITZGERALD,
JOHN (fl. 1633
1662)
Irish adventurer, who began his career
as a buccaneer on Tortuga Island, and
rose to become a Captain in the service
of Spain.
According to Spanish records, he
was born in Glassely in County Kil-
dare, his mother’s surname being Fitz-
gerald. Murphy arrived on Tortuga
Island as a boy-soldier, but deserted to
the Spaniards with some companions
late in 1633, after having killed a man
in a dispute. He thereupon agreed to
lead the Spanish on an expedition to
eliminate his former settlement, being
himself shot in the forehead during
the resultant affray. Such a serious
wound, coupled with his youth, Catho-
lic faith, and an easy Spanish victory,
ensured Murphy’s stay on Santo Dom-
ingo, although never fully trusted.
Within a few years, he nonetheless
became a Captain in the Dominican
militia, and by 1650 was in Madrid
obtaining a knighthood in the Order of
Santiago.
By December 1653, Murphy had
returned to Santo Domingo, where he
served as maestre de campo or second-
in-command of the forces sent to once
again clear the foreigners from Tortuga
Island—this time those living there
under the boucanier chieftain Chevalier
de Fontenay. Murphy performed with
some distinction, leading a crucial
charge of 200 men against Cayenne
which helped ensure the Spanish
273
triumph. However, even after all these
years of service, he was still suspect, it
being rumored that he secretly under-
mined his superiors and took too much
of the spoils for himself. When the vic-
tors withdrew with their prisoners to
Santo Domingo, Murphy was left
behind in command of Tortuga, with a
garrison of 100 men. However, Gover-
nor Juan Francisco Montemayor de
Cuenca soon sent a Spanish officer to
replace him, leery of his ancient con-
nections with pirates, and uneasy to
leave him alone in that stronghold.
Such prejudice became even more
marked after the failed English inva-
sion of Santo Domingo in April
May
1655. Despite having been among the
first defenders to sortie in opposition
to the invaders’ advance, Murphy
received no mention whatsoever in the
official Spanish bulletins announcing
their victory. It is perhaps because of
this that his name no longer figured on
Santo Domingo after 1655, as it is
believed he may have left in disgust at
such political intrigues, to start a new
life elsewhere. His timing may have
proved lucky, for seven years later on
October 30
31 1662, the authorities at
Yucat
an received an extraordinary dep-
osition from a Portuguese captive. He
declared that having been in London
early in 1659, he learned through a
countryman who was a pilot, that Par-
liament was secretly planning a second
attempt against Santo Domingo:
. . . and for this they wished to avail
themselves of an Irishman who had
business dealings in England, and by
means of Don Juan Morfa, maestre
de campo of the city of Santo Domi-
ngo, who was a friend of said Irish-
man, achieve their goal.
274 Murphy, John (fl. 1683)
This unfounded accusation was for-
warded to the King in Madrid, yet evi-
dently never acted on, as Murphy had
long since left that island.
References
Inch
austegui Cabral, Joaquı́n Marino, La
gran expedici
on inglesa contra las
Antillas Mayores (Mexico City: Gr
afica
Panamericana, 1953).
na Batlle, Manuel Arturo, La isla de la
Pe~
Tortuga: plaza de armas, refugio y
seminario de los enemigos de Espa~ na en
Indias (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura
Hisp
anica, 1951).
Rodrı́guez Demorizi, Emilio, Invasi
on
inglesa de 1655; notas adicionales de
Fray Cipriano de Utrera (Ciudad
Trujillo: Montalvo, 1957).
Walsh, Micheline, Spanish Knights of Irish
Origin: Documents from Continental
Archives (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts
Commission, 1960
1970).
MURPHY, JOHN (fl. 1683)
Irishman long settled at Veracruz, who
endured a brutal ordeal at the hands of
Laurens de Graaf and Grammont, dur-
ing their pirate raid.
A well-to-do trader, married and with
a family, Murphy owned a fine two-story
house and numerous slaves in that Mexi-
can port, as well as maintaining its only
mounted militia troop entirely at his own
expense. On a cloudless Monday after-
noon, May 17, 1683, two sail were seen
standing in toward the harbor. Despite
the favorable wind, they did not draw
appreciably closer, so that Murphy
became concerned. When he saw Gover-
nor Don Luis Bartolom
e de C
ordoba y
Z
u~
niga strolling through the Plaza
Mayor with his staff, Murphy hastened
after him and said: ‘‘Sir, those ships can-
not be good ones, for they have been
able to enter, and yet not done so.’’ But
the arrogant young Governor brushed off
the Irishman.
Next morning at daybreak, Vera-
cruz’s streets exploded with volleys of
gunfire. During the night, several hun-
dred pirates had infiltrated the city
under Laurens de Graaf, Grammont,
and Nikolaas Van Hoorn, and in the
dawn launched a series of coordinated
attacks. In addition to military objec-
tives, the raiders targeted major house-
holds such as Murphy’s. From the
darkened street he heard a voice call-
ing to him in English, saying that ‘‘if
he opened up he would be given quar-
ter, but if not his throat would be cut.’’
This was a band of a dozen buccaneers
led by a vengeful English logwood cut-
ter, who had been captured in the
Laguna de T
erminos some years ear-
lier, and had served a spell as convict
laborer in the Irishman’s home.
Yet for all his advanced age, Murphy
had lost none of his fighting spirit, and
began distributing swords and lances to
his fourteen loyal black servants. When
the pirates shot the lock off a small side-
entrance and forged through the gap into
the darkened interior, they blundered
into a deathtrap. The first three were so
savagely hacked to pieces that the rest
ran away in fright. Murphy’s victory
proved short-lived, though, for when he
climbed onto his rooftop to scan the
street, he saw another two-dozen pirates
hastening to the attack. Again he was or-
dered to open up or suffer dire conse-
quences, and this time ‘‘out of fear they
might murder my wife and six children,’’
he obeyed. The enraged buccaneers ram-
paged throughout his home ‘‘destroying
whatever they could’’ after finding their

fallen comrades, and Murphy’s captivity
promised to be a painful one.
At first, he and his family were shut
up inside Veracruz’s principal church,
along with thousands of other captives.
But next morning at eight o’clock,
Wednesday, May 19, 1683, Murphy was
led forth to endure the corsairs’ wrath.
Carried into a jeering mob of buccaneers
in the Plaza Mayor, he ‘‘was received by
Lorencillo [De Graaf] himself.’’ The
Irishman’s hands were bound behind his
back, and he was cruelly hoisted to
swing suspended from them on the pub-
lic scaffold. As he dangled there:
. . . with terrible pain and hurt, they
told him to confess where he had
his money and silver, to which
he responded that those who
had entered his house had taken
everything.
This could not be, his tormentors
insisted, but Murphy gasped out that he
had been left penniless. Even his silver
service, which had been cast down the
well before the looters penetrated his
home, had been retrieved. At this:
Lorencillo slashed him in the head
with his cutlass, opening up a seri-
ous wound, then clubbed him many
times on the body, almost killing
him, before having him cut down
and taken upstairs into the Gover-
nor’s palace, where a pirate surgeon
attended him.
Nor was Murphy’s ordeal over, for after
being patched up, Grammont entered the
prison and ‘‘pointing a carbine’’ in the
Irishman’s face, ordered him to confess
what monies he and his neighbors had.
Again Murphy replied that he had lost
Myngs, Sir Christopher (fl. 1656
1663) 275
everything and did not know his neigh-
bors’ wealth, at which the flibustier
chieftain stormed out angrily.
Other prominent citizens underwent
this same ordeal, until more than a
dozen had joined Murphy in his cell.
They became the principal hostages,
and were the last people released on
Sacrificios Island when the pirates
withdrew two weeks later. Murphy
returned on foot to his gutted home,
finding his wife dead and servants car-
ried off into bondage. As a final blow,
one of his daughters died three weeks
later, and the Irishman was left to pick
up the pieces of a shattered life.
Reference
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The
Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor,
Ontario, Canada: Netherlandic Press,
1993).
MYNGS, SIR
CHRISTOPHER
(fl. 1656
1663)
Adventurous naval officer, who
employed sizeable contingents of free-
booters during his operations while
serving as station-commander at
Jamaica, thereby setting a precedent.
Born into a prosperous Norfolk fam-
ily, Myngs was an experienced fighter by
the time he reached the New World, hav-
ing first gone to sea in colliers and
coastal traders. After joining the Crom-
wellian Navy, his big break had come
when he brought home the 38-gun man
o’ war Elizabeth in May 1653, its captain
having been killed in a duel with a
Dutch ship, while returning from the
276 Myngs, Sir Christopher (fl. 1656
1663)
Mediterranean during the First Anglo-
Dutch War. Myngs was confirmed into
this vacancy, and then in October 1655
was promoted to command of the 54-gun
Marston Moor, recently returned from
the calamitous Jamaican expedition.
Having witnessed great suffering in
the West Indies, Marston Moor’s crew
mutinied on finding itself unpaid and
ordered back to Jamaica. Despite his
popularity, Myngs was forced to
imprison or dismiss many of his men
before shifting the anchorage altogether
from Portsmouth to Spithead, where he
insisted on the remainder being paid,
over the objections of its local Admi-
ralty agent. In November 1655, Mar-
ston Moor sailed to join Vice-Admiral
William Goodson at Jamaica by Janu-
ary 25, 1656. Myngs took part in
Goodson’s descent on Rı́ohacha in
May of that year, which ended disap-
pointingly as little booty was found,
before the squadron returned to
Jamaica in June.
The fledgling colony continued to
suffer because of hunger, slackness,
and internal strife, there being consid-
erable doubt whether London would
even maintain the outpost. Goodson
and Myngs weighed in a vain attempt
to intercept the Spanish treasure-ships
off Havana (which Admiral Stayner
afterward took off Cadiz in September
1656), before passing across to Nevis
to embark 1,400 planters who were
willing to transfer to Jamaica. Having
completed this mission, Goodson and
Myngs then cruised off the island till
early 1657, when the Admiral returned
to England complaining of ill-health.
Myngs followed a month later with a
three-ship convoy, bringing Marston
Moor into Dover by July 1657, after a
brief stopover at the Bahamas during his
crossing to buy 8,560 pounds of turtle-
meat as food for his crew. His men were
paid off and Myngs allowed a leave-
of-absence to get married, but by Decem-
ber 1657 he was back on board, departing
the Downs with three victuallers for
Jamaica. He arrived there on February 20,
1658 (O.S.), having captured the Dutch
merchantmen Charity [Barmhatigheid?]
of Amsterdam, Marie of Medemblik,
John the Baptist [Johannes de Doper?],
Hopewell [Goede Hoop?], the hoy Three
Cranes [Drie Kraanvogels?], and a sixth
unnamed vessel, for illegally trading at
Barbados. He claimed all six as prizes,
but was annoyed when eventually only
one was declared so, the rest being
released on technicalities.
Defense of Jamaica and Early
Seaborne Campaigns (1658)
Myngs was now the senior officer on the
Jamaica station, and thus in command of
the small trio of vessels which discov-
ered four Spanish troop-transports anch-
ored off the north coast of that island on
May 22, 1658, having slipped 550 Mexi-
can soldiers ashore. Returning a month
later with Governor Edward D’Oyley
and heavy reinforcements aboard 10
ships, Myngs was able to land this force,
which then pulverized the invaders in a
pitched battle. The Spanish artillery was
conveyed back to Cagaway (as the island
capital was still called), and installed as
part of its harbor defenses.
Shortly thereafter Myngs sailed on a
counter-raid against the Spanish Main,
assaulting Santa Marta and Tol
u in quick
succession with the loss of only three
men, then intercepting three Spanish
merchantmen bound from Cartagena
to Portobelo. Returning triumphantly to

Jamaica six weeks later, he sold these to
men who would all prove to be formida-
ble corsairs in future: the largest vessel,
of eight guns and 60 tons, was bought by
Robert Searle and renamed the Cagaway;
one of four guns and 50 tons was pur-
chased by the Dutch-born Laurens Prins
and renamed Pearl; while the third later
became John Morris’ Dolphin.
Second Descent Against the
Spanish Main (1659)
Having enjoyed good success on his
first cruise, Myngs’ss frigates Marston
Moor, Hector, Diamond, and Cagaway
were joined by numerous freebooters
for his next raid against the Spanish
Main, which he launched early that fol-
lowing year. In order to surprise differ-
ent targets, Myngs tacked hundreds of
miles further east than he or Goodson
had previously operated—a tactic
which paid handsome dividends when
his formation burst on an unprepared
Cuman
a on April 2, 1659. Spanish
reports indicate that his force consisted
of ‘‘one galleon of the State of Eng-
land with 66 bronze pieces, a frigate
with 24, a sloop with 6, and twelve
small vessels.’’ They disgorged
between 600 and 700 men on the
beach nearest to that city, all armed
with firearms, who brushed aside the
40 Spanish militiamen who attempted
to dispute their traverse of a shallow
stream and seizing of all the high
ground, before overrunning Cuman
a
itself. All buildings were ransacked
over the next 24 hours, and at least 50
torched as the raiders departed.
Myngs then hurriedly weighed and
ran westward before the prevailing
wind, falling on Puerto Cabello before
Myngs, Sir Christopher (fl. 1656
1663) 277
any alarm could be carried overland.
He repeated this tactic a third time,
racing still further west to make a rich
haul at Coro. It is alleged that no less
than 22 chests—and perhaps many
more—were seized from two Dutch
merchantmen flying Spanish colors at
this latter place, each containing 400
pounds of silver ingots belonging to
the King of Spain. Myngs himself
declared there was ‘‘coined [i.e.,
minted] money’’ in the chests to the
value of £50,000, besides bullion; but
when the expedition returned to
Jamaica four months after its depar-
ture, these were open and the author-
ities suspected that a great deal of
silver had been plundered. Myngs did
not deny some looting had occurred,
but dismissed it as customary among
privateersmen. The officials took a
dimmer view, believing Myngs was
‘‘unhinged and out of tune’’ because
the Jamaican Court had refused to con-
demn his earlier Dutch prizes, and
therefore took justice into his own
hands. Governor D’Oyley suspended
him and ordered Marston Moor home,
where Myngs was to stand trial for
defrauding the State.
But on his arrival in England in spring
1660, Myngs found the nation distracted
by the Restoration of Charles II and,
being an early public supporter of the
monarch, he was soon cleared of all
charges, after a sympathetic hearing that
June 1660. By the end of that year he
was restored, but because of many
upheavals did not actually sail for
Jamaica again until late April 1662,
when he conveyed out the new Royal
Governor Thomas, Lord Windsor, in the
46-gun Centurion. Shortly after reaching
Port Royal on August 21, 1662, a more
vigorous line was implemented against
278 Myngs, Sir Christopher (fl. 1656
1663)

Myngs’s Spanish Main Campaign, Spring 1659.

After repeated descents—indicated by the dotted line—against western portions of the Spanish
Main by Commodore Goodson in 1655 to 1656, as well as Myngs himself in 1658, the latter
adopted a more cunning variant for the spring of 1659. Reinforced by a sizeable body of
freebooters, he beat a thousand miles upwind to fall on unsuspecting Cuman
a (1); after
ransacking it, he hastened downwind to visit a like treatment on Puerto Cabello (2) and Coro
(3), before either could receive any warning overland, thereby securing an unusual amount of
booty.

the Spaniards. An uneasy truce had
existed for the past three years,
although Madrid still regarded all for-
eigners in the Americas as interlopers.
To challenge this policy, Windsor had
brought out instructions that allowed
him to issue a proclamation less than one
month later, offering privateering com-
missions and calling on volunteers for a
major operation against the Spaniards.
Within three days 1,300 men had been
mustered (many of them former sol-
diers), and Myngs’s Centurion was
joined by 10 privateering vessels, which
included a tiny craft commanded by a
27-year-old militia captain named Henry
Morgan.
Destruction of Santiago de Cuba
(1662)
Myngs was to lead these freebooters
against Santiago de Cuba, which had
been the Spaniards’ advance base in
their efforts to reconquer Jamaica, and
as a result much loathed by the English.
This flotilla quit Port Royal on October
1, 1662, slowly rounding Point Negril at
the west end of Jamaica in light winds.
Landfall was made east of their Cuban

target, where the advance ship of
recently-arrived Sir Thomas Whetstone
was spotted at anchor in the lee of a cay.
Joining him, Myngs obtained intelli-
gence as to recent Spanish dispositions,
and then decided at a general conference
held on board the Centurion to burst
directly into the enemy harbor, catching
them by surprise. Reinforced by Whet-
stone and seven more Jamaican priva-
teers who belatedly overtook his
expedition, Myngs steered down the
Cuban coast in scanty winds.
They came within sight of the small
San Pedro de la Roca harbor-castle atop
the 200-foot stony headland which
guarded the approaches at daybreak on
October 8, 1662 (O.S.), but could not close
because of the faint, erratic breezes.
Finally, late that same afternoon Myngs
decided to change plans: he would use the
land-breeze which sprang up every eve-
ning to steer directly toward the nearby vil-
lage of Aguadores, two miles east of the
entrance at the mouth of the San Juan
River, and by nightfall had succeeded in
putting 1,000 men ashore. In his own
words:
We decided to land under a platform
two miles to windward of the harbor,
the only place possible to land and
march upon the town on all that rocky
coast. We found no resistance, the
enemy expecting us at the fort and the
people flying before us. Before we
were all landed it was night. We were
forced to advance into a wood, and the
way was so narrow and difficult, and
the night so dark, that our guides had to
go with brands in their hands to beat a
path. By daybreak we reached a planta-
tion by a riverside, some six miles from
our landing and three miles from the
town where being refreshed by water,
Myngs, Sir Christopher (fl. 1656
1663) 279
daylight and a better way, we very
cheerfully advanced for the town, sur-
prising the enemy who hearing our late
landing, did not expect us so soon. At
the entrance of the town the Governor
Don Pedro de Morales, with 200 men
and two pieces of ordinance, stood to
receive us, Don Cristopher [de Issasi
Arnaldo] the old Governor of Jamaica
(and a good friend to the English) with
500 more being his reserve. We soon
beat them from their station and with
the help of Don Christopher, who fairly
ran away, we routed the rest. Having
mastered the town we took possession
of the [seven] vessels in the harbor, and
next day I despatched parties in pursuit
of the enemy and sent orders to the fleet
to attack the harbor, which was success-
fully done, the enemy deserting the
great castle after firing but two
muskets.
Myngs spent the next five days pur-
suing the defeated Spaniards inland,
‘‘which proved not very advantageous,
their riches being drawn off so far we
could not reach it.’’ In frustration the
freebooters razed the town, and Myngs
used 700 barrels of gunpowder from the
magazines to demolish the fortifications
and principal buildings. After five days
of calculated destruction, he reported:
The harbor castle mostly lies level
with the ground. It was built upon a
rocky precipice, the walls on a
mountain side some 60 feet high;
there was in it a chapel and houses
sufficient for a thousand men.
It would take the Spaniards more
than a decade to repair their stronghold
(see sidebar), and meanwhile Myngs
weighed with seven prizes and returned
280 Myngs, Sir Christopher (fl. 1656
1663)

DEVASTATED SANTIAGO
This small Cuban city would take several decades to recuperate from being razed by
the English buccaneer raid of 1662. With little prior overseas traffic or any significant
local production beyond the output of a few copper mines, Santiago had ironically
enjoyed a brief boom when roughly two-thirds of the 1,500 Spaniards and slaves dis-
placed from Jamaica had been re-settled in its environs in 1655. Now, all those gains
would be reversed. As frightened citizens hesitated to rebuild their homes, the econ-
omy was also left crippled because copper production had ceased altogether, the
Crown’s offer of a generous new lease on the mines in 1663 finding no takers. It was
not to be until Pedro de Bayona Villanueva arrived from Spain on June 14, 1664, to
assume office as Governor, accompanied by the military engineer Juan de Siscara
([alternate spelling: Ciscara), that the city falteringly began a recuperation.
Both officers reported that they had found Santiago ‘‘as the enemy left it,’’ flattened
and defenseless, so that a stone citadel christened Fuerte Real de San Francisco or
‘‘Royal Fort of Saint Francis’’ was initiated atop the ruined remnants of the old Franciscan
convent in the city core. Its military value was doubtful, but the reassuring bulk might pro-
vide some measure of comfort, so that property-owners would start to resume residence.
The San Pedro harbor-castle was also repaired and strengthened by the addition of the
Estrella and Santa Catalina Batteries at water-level, although all these projects pro-
ceeded only fitfully because of frequent interruptions in money shipments from Mexico.
Still, the defensive measures were sufficient to deter a small Dutch squadron from braving
the entrance on May 2, 1667, as well as a dozen ships and 700 buccaneers under
Morgan on March 1, 1668.
Over the next few decades, Santiago led an uneasy existence, serving both as an
advance base for Spanish attacks against Jamaica and French-held Saint-Domingue
([modern Haiti), as well as an entrep^ ot for clandestine deals with foreign traders seek-
ing its meats, hides, tobacco, sugar, and dyewoods. An earthquake also rattled the
city in 1675, and the French buccaneer Pierre de Frasquenay tried another surprise
attack on November 9, 1677, disembarking 400 flibustiers at Justicia Inlet to march
inland under cover of darkness, guided by a simpleminded Spanish captive named
Juan Perdomo, who led the raiders by such a meandering path that one column mis-
takenly fired on another in the gloom killing 14 of their own men and revealing their
presence.
A much heavier earthquake damaged the city’s partially-reconstructed defenses and
buildings on February 11, 1679, tempting the Breton corsair Pierre Bart into making
one more disembarkation at nearby Sabana la Mar, which proved abortive. How-
ever, when a buccaneer fleet sacked Veracruz four years later, Santiago’s authorities
were galvanized—despite feeble municipal revenues—into completing San Francisco
citadel and installing 14 artillery-pieces, for fear that their own city might share that
same fate. In December 1686, Madrid also dispatched judge Lic. Tom
as Pizarro
Cort
es to conduct an investigation into the region’s illegal contacts with foreign trad-
ers, temporarily banishing Gov. Gil Correoso Catal
an to Baracoa while these inqui-
ries were held, but accomplishing little as Santiago’s residents were now quite
dependent on smuggling to supplement their livelihoods.
As long ago as January 1664, the Bishop of Cuba, Mexican-born Dr. Juan de
Santo Mathias S
aenz de Ma~ nosca y Murillo, explained to his superiors in Spain that
 Myngs, Sir Christopher (fl. 1656
1663) 281

no ecclesiastical visit had been made throughout the entire length and breadth of his
island diocese in more than 40 years, and he dared not attempt one without a strong
military escort ‘‘because of the risks of being taken prisoner by the English enemy,
who as if he owns this island and the estates of its inhabitants, enters into them and
robs them, and carries them away.’’ It would not be until the autumn of 1673 that an
ecclesiastical visit was at last made as far east as Santiago de Cuba, and which
recorded that the city still contained:

. . . no more than 300 inhabitants, and although its garrison has a nominal strength
of 300 men, usually filled positions do not ascend to 100. The fortification which
exists at the mouth of the port is in ruins and of no use.

to Port Royal on October 21, 1662
(O.S.), where he was elected to the
Council of Jamaica a few days after-
ward. The massive assault had only
cost six men killed in the fighting and
another 20 due to accidents or illness.
Sack of Campeche (1663)
Encouraged by this success, ‘‘the priva-
teers all went to sea for plunder,’’ while
Myngs remained in port and on Decem-
ber 12, 1662 (O.S.), issued a call for
another expedition. The Centurion refit-
ted while freebooters once again began
to marshal. Myngs was joined by Cap-
tains Fackman, William James, Edward
Mansfield, Morgan, Adriaen Swart, and
many others. Soon a dozen ships were
being made ready and on Sunday, Janu-
ary 21, 1663, got under way.
Myngs quickly rounded Yucatan and
worked past uncharted shoals, losing
contact with his vice-flagship and sev-
eral privateersmen. Nonetheless he skill-
fully snuck almost 1,000 men ashore at
J
amula beach, four miles southwest of
Campeche, on the night of February
8
9, 1663, and began his advance on
the sleeping city. At first light the Span-
ish lookouts saw his smaller vessels
lying opposite this disembarkation point,
with two large men o’ war riding farther
out to sea. They sounded the alarm, but
too late, as the freebooter army burst out
of the nearby woods at eight o’clock and
rushed the city. Despite being surprised
and heavily outnumbered, the 150 Cam-
peche militiamen put up a spirited resis-
tance, especially from within their
‘‘strong built stone houses, flat at top.’’
A bloody firefight ensued, in which
Myngs received serious wounds in his
face and both thighs while leading the
charge. He was carried back out to Cen-
turion, while Mansfield assumed overall
command. The Spanish defenders were
eventually subdued after two hours’
heated battle and suffered more than 50
fatalities, as opposed to 30 invaders
slain. Some 170 Spanish captives were
then rounded up, while many of the
city’s thatched huts went up in flames.
Next morning, February 10, 1663,
the only Spanish official still at large,
regidor Antonio Maldonado de Aldana,
entered and agreed to a truce, leaving
the English undisturbed within the gut-
ted and burnt town in exchange for
good treatment of the prisoners. (As he
dealt directly with Myngs’s substitute,
this raid has gone down in Mexican
282 Myngs, Sir Christopher (fl. 1656
1663)
Commodore Christopher Myngs, as portrayed
after the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665; modern
painting based upon the now-lost seventeenth-
century portrait, attributed to Sir Peter Lely.
(National Maritime Museum, London)
history books as ‘‘Mansfield’s assault,’’
the few direct references to Myngs fur-
ther misidentifying him as ‘‘Christo-
pher Innes.’’) But despite his injuries,
Myngs recuperated sufficiently to order
the release of four prominent captives
on February 17, 1663, with a message
to Maldonado offering to spare the city
and release the rest of his prisoners
unharmed, if the raiders could draw
water from the nearby Lerma wells
before departing. He also added his
regrets at not coming personally to
meet his Spanish counterpart ‘‘as he
would have wished,’’ being impeded
by his wounds. The Spaniard acceded
and as a token of good faith, Myngs
released all but six of his most impor-
tant hostages before watering. On Feb-
ruary 23, 1663, his fleet got under
way, carrying off great booty and
fourteen vessels found in the harbor,
which were described by a Spanish
eye-witness as ‘‘three of 300 tons, the
rest medium or small, and some with
valuable cargo still on board.’’
The heavily-laden formation slowly
beat back around the Yucatan Peninsula
against contrary winds and currents, so
that the Centurion did not regain Port
Royal until April 23, 1663, under the
command of its flag-captain, Thomas
Morgan, being followed ‘‘soon after [by]
the rest of the fleet, but straggling,
because coming from leeward every one
made the best of his way.’’ They had
been gone so long that many Jamaicans
had begun to despair. Myngs’ss wounds
required a lengthy convalescence, so that
early in July 1663 he sailed for England
aboard the Centurion.
Later Career (1664
1666)
He received widespread acclaim on his
return home, and when the Second
Anglo-Dutch War threatened in late
1664, was promoted Vice Admiral
under Prince Rupert. Myngs served
bravely at the Battle of Lowestoft in
June 1665, being knighted for his role
in that engagement. After winter
patrols, he commanded the van as Vice
Admiral of the Red aboard HMS Vic-
tory at the brutal ‘‘Four Days Fight’’ of
June 1666, being engulfed by the
Dutch fleet. With the battle raging all
around him, Myngs was shot through
the throat but refused to leave his deck,
remaining upright compressing the
wound with his fingers until a second
bullet passed through his throat, and
lodged in his shoulder. He lingered on
a few days, living long enough to
regain England and die at his home in

Goodman’s Fields, Whitechapel. The
diarist Samuel Pepys would eulogize
him as a ‘‘very stout man, and a man
of great parts, and most excellent
tongue among ordinary men.’’
See also
Cagaway; D’Oyley, Edward; Goodson,
William; James, William; Maldonado de
Aldana, Antonio; Mansfield, Edward;
Morris, John; Prins, Laurens; Searle,
Robert; Spanish Main; Whetstone, Sir
Thomas; Windsor, Thomas, Lord.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series,
Interregnum, 1653
1660 (London: Her
Myngs, Sir Christopher (fl. 1656
1663) 283
Majesty’s Stationery Office,
1879
1886).
Dictionary of National Biography (London,
1885
1900, 63 Volumes); Issued By
Oxford University Press, 2004.
Dyer, Florence E., ‘‘Captain Christopher
Myngs in the West Indies, 1657
1662,’’
The Mariner’s Mirror, Vol. XVIII (April
1932), pp. 168
187.
Eugenio, Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y
corsarios en Veracruz y Campeche
(Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
americanos, 1972).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
Thurloe, John. A Collection of the State
Papers of John Thurloe, Volume 6
(London: 1742).
 N

I was eating my dinner with the rest, when the mainmast blew out
and fell upon Captains Aylett, Bigford, and others,
and knocked them on the head.
—Survivor’s account of the explosion of Henry Morgan’s flagship, January 1669

NAU, JEAN-DAVID, ALIAS Olivier Exquemelin, who, although a con-

‘‘CAPITAINE FRANÇOIS’’
OR ‘‘FRANÇOIS
L’OLONNAIS’’ (fl. 1660s)
Flibustier from Saint-Domingue, who
sacked Maracaibo.
Details are sketchy regarding his life,
as Nau apparently operated from Tortuga
Island, well beyond the early control of
the French West Indies Company, which
was the only official representation in that
area during the 1660s. (A year after his
death, the inhabitants of Tortuga were still
so independent-minded as to fire hun-
dreds of rounds at the private Governor
Bertrand d’Ogeron’s ship, when he
unwisely attempted to extend the Com-
pany monopoly against foreign trade to
that island.) Most of what is known about
Nau stems from the chronicler Alexandre-
temporary, apparently recorded many of
his accounts second-hand, incorporating
some lurid touches, but otherwise few
verifiable facts. Exquemelin further-
more referred to this rover as ‘‘François
l’Olonnais’’ throughout, while other
sources indicate that his real name
was Jean-David Nau, but nicknamed
‘‘l’Olonnais’’ because he was originally
born about 1630 in the port of Les
Sables-d’Olonne in the Vend
ee, France.
Nau supposedly arrived at Saint-
Domingue sometime between 1650 and
1653 as an engag
e or ‘‘indentured ser-
vant,’’ after which he earned his liveli-
hood among the sharp-shooting hunters
known as boucaniers, then became a fli-
bustier or sea-rover. His early campaigns
included cruises to Cuba around 1657,
and also Campeche, where he was once
shipwrecked, yet managed to escape. He

285
286 Nau, Jean-David, Alias ‘‘Capitaine François’’ or ‘‘François l’Olonnais’’ (fl. 1660s)
reputedly had an abiding hatred of Span-
iards and showed them little mercy, com-
mitting barbarous acts of cruelty. By early
1666, his reputation as a flibustier leader
was such that he had been designated as
their unofficial leader, being widely
referred to as le Capitaine François
or the ‘‘French Captain.’’ He was also
appointed Major of the offshore ^Ile de
la Tortue, and was able to muster a
large force to invest the Spanish Main.
Sack of Maracaibo (June 1666)
Nau sortied from Tortuga at the end of
April 1666, with a flotilla of eight tiny
vessels and 660 men, pausing at Bayah
a
on the north coast of Hispaniola for an
additional party of boucaniers and large
stock of provisions. On standing into the
Mona Passage, he sighted a 16-gun Span-
ish vessel which had just departed Puerto
Rico, and so gave chase. The Spaniard
struck to Nau’s 10-gun sloop ‘‘after two
or three hours’ combat,’’ proving to be
bound for Veracruz with a rich consign-
ment of cacao. Nau sent this vessel back
to Tortuga to unload, meanwhile taking
up station with the rest of his flotilla off
Saona Island. While waiting for his first
prize to return, Nau took a second, an
8-gun Spanish ship carrying gunpow-
der and situados or ‘‘payrolls’’ for the
garrisons of Santo Domingo and Cuman
a.
When his first prize returned, Nau
made it his flagship, and felt sufficiently
strengthened to attempt a descent on the
Main, which he had combed that previous
year. His colleague Michel d’Artigue,
universally known as Michel le Basque,
received the official commission for this
venture from Bertrand d’Ogeron, the pri-
vate French Governor at Saint-Domingue,
so that their joint force sailed into the
Gulf of Venezuela by June 1666, disem-
barking their followers near the battery
guarding the Bar of Maracaibo, which
consisted ‘‘of sixteen cannon surrounded
by several gabions or earth-filled wicker
cylinders, with a ramp of earth thrown
against them to shelter the men inside.’’
The buccaneers quickly overran this fee-
ble fortification, and passed their ships
over the Bar into the Laguna. Next day,
they reached Maracaibo, which they
found being hastily abandoned by its
Lietenant-Governor and the last 16 Span-
ish residents, so occupied it uncontested.
During this interlude, buccaneer
patrols were sent out into the outlying
areas to bring in prisoners, a few being
tortured to reveal their riches, with lit-
tle results. Nau and d’Artigue therefore
installed a 30-man garrison and pene-
trated deeper into the Laguna, bypass-
ing the Indian town called Las
Barbacoas and moving on to the town
of Gibraltar, which the Spaniards had
reinforced with several hundred troops
under Gabriel Guerrero de Sandoval,
the inland Governor from M
erida de la
Grita. The flibustiers believed that this
resistance meant the enemy had some-
thing worth guarding, so elected to
mount an assault. Nau led them into
battle with the roar: ‘‘Allons, mes
fr
eres, suivez-moi, et ne faites point les
l^
aches!’’ (‘‘Come on, my brothers, fol-
low me, and let’s have no cowards!’’)
Gibraltar fell after a brutal battle in
which 40 buccaneers were killed and 30
wounded. The Spaniards suffered much
heavier casualties, hundreds of their
dead, including Governor Guerrero,
being loaded onto two old boats by the
invaders, to be towed a mile out into the
Laguna and sunk. The town was ruth-
lessly pillaged over the next month,
after which Nau demanded a ransom of
 Nau, Jean-David, Alias ‘‘Capitaine François’’ or ‘‘François l’Olonnais’’ (fl. 1660s) 287

Distorted map depicting the entrance into Lake Maracaibo, included in the 1686 French
edition of Exquemelin’s Buccaneers of America; north is toward left. (Author’s Collection)

10,000 pesos out of the interior, to leave
its buildings intact. Once paid, the
flibustiers re-crossed the Laguna with
their two additional prizes and extorted
a ransom of 20,000 pesos and 500 head
of cattle to spare that city as well. Nau
finally quit the Laguna two months after
he had entered it, and eight days later
touched at ^Ile a Vache, before continu-
ing on to Gona€ves to divide their spoils.
These were calculated at ‘‘260,000
pieces of eight in ready money, wrought
silver, and jewels,’’ plus another ‘‘100
pieces of eight for every man in linen
and silk goods, as well as other trifles.’’
Roughly 400 freebooters having taken
part in this expedition, they happily dis-
persed with English members departing
for Jamaica. Shortly thereafter, Nau appa-
rently sold one of his prizes—an 80-ton,
12-gun Spanish brigantine—to Gerrit
Gerritszoon (alias ‘‘Rok Brasiliano’’) and
Jelles de Lecat, before finally reentering
Tortuga in triumph a month later.
Central American Campaign
(1667)
Some time later, Nau sortied again
with 700 flibustiers, 300 aboard the
large Spanish prize which he had
brought from Maracaibo. Accompanied
by five smaller craft, he proceeded to
Bayah
a to once more take ‘‘on board
salt meat for their victuals.’’ The buc-
caneers then cruised southern Cuban as
far as the Gulf of Bataban
o, seizing
boats to use in an ascent up the San
Juan River in Nicaragua, as they hoped
to duplicate the feat of John Morris,
David Martien, and Henry Morgan
from two years previously, of sacking
Granada. But when Nau attempted to
288 Nau, Jean-David, Alias ‘‘Capitaine François’’ or ‘‘François l’Olonnais’’ (fl. 1660s)
clear Cape Gracias a Dios on the Mos-
quito Coast, he was prevented by a
lack of wind and drifted along the
north coast of Honduras. Running low
on provisions, he sent foraging-parties
up the Agu
an River, and eventually
prowled as far west as Puerto Cabellos.
Here, according to Exquemelin, he
captured a Spanish merchantman armed
with 24 cannons and 16 pedreros or
‘‘swivel-guns,’’ as well as occupying the
town. He terrified two captives into lead-
ing him inland to the nearest city, San
Pedro Sula, setting off with 300 flibus-
tiers, while leaving the remainder to gar-
rison the tiny port under his Dutch-born
lieutenant, Mozes van Klijn. Less than
10 miles into the jungle, they were way-
laid by a party of Spaniards, and learned
from prisoners that more ambushes had
been prepared. ‘‘Mor’dieu,’’ Nau swore,
‘‘les bougres d’Espagnols me le payer-
ont!’’ (‘‘God’s death, the Spanish black-
guards will pay for this!’’) He gave the
order for his men to give no quarter, for
he believed that the more they killed on
the way, the less resistance they would
find in the city. Despite this, the Span-
iards sprang more ambushes and even
fought off Nau’s initial assault on San
Pedro Sula, before being allowed to
evacuate under flag of truce. The city
and its outlying region were then pillaged
over the next few days, being burnt to
the ground when Nau retired to the coast.
On returning to Puerto Cabellos, he
learned that a wealthy galleon was due to
arrive soon from Spain ‘‘at the Guatemala
river’’ (i.e., Bay of Amatique), so posted
a pair of lookout boats on the southern
shore, before crossing to the western side
of the Gulf of Honduras to careen. Three
months elapsed, until word was finally
received that the galleon had come.
Recalling his scattered forces, Nau
quickly attacked, although the Spaniard
had 42 cannon and 130 men. His 28-gun
flagship and a smaller buccaneer consort
were beaten off, but four boatloads of fli-
bustiers carried the galleon by boarding.
Its booty proved disappointing, however,
as most of the cargo had already been
unloaded and there only remained some
iron, paper, and wine. Discouraged, Nau’s
confederates Van Klijn and Pierre le Pic-
ard decided to quit his company, leaving
him alone with his Maracaibo prize.
Death (1668?)
This vessel proved a heavy sailer, and it
ran aground some time later among the
Pearl Islands, ‘‘twelve leagues east’’ of
Cape Gracias a Dios. Nau and his crew
were forced to live ashore, planting
crops and attempting to build a longboat
from the ship’s remains. When this was
finally completed five or six months
later, it was not big enough to accommo-
date all the survivors, so Nau went with
a group of men to the San Juan River, to
attempt to steal more boats. They were
defeated by the Spaniards and forced to
flee, after which Nau continued into the
Gulf of Darien, determined to obtain
some boats. Here, his small band was
attacked by natives, and according to the
sole survivor, ‘‘L’Olonnais was hacked
to pieces and roasted limb by limb.’’
See also
Artigue, Michel d’; Exquemelin,
Alexandre-Olivier; Gerritszoon, Gerrit;
Lecat, Jelles de; Ogeron, Bertrand d’.
References
Du Tertre, Jean-Baptiste, Histoire g

en

erale
des Antilles habit

ees par les François
(Paris: Thomas Jolly, 1671).

Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
Marley, David F., ‘‘Nau l’Olonnais a
Maracaibo: un rapport espagnol, janvier
1667. G
en

ealogie et Histoire de la
Cara€be [France] 217 (September
2008), pp. 5638
5640.
Sucre, Luis Alberto, Gobernadores y
capitanes generales de Venezuela
(Caracas: Litografı́a Tecnocolor, 1964).
Vrijman, L. C., Dr. David van der Sterre:
Zeer aenmerkelijke reysen door Jan
Erasmus Reyning (Amsterdam: P. N.
van Kampen & Zoon, 1937).
NAVARRO, BALTASAR
(fl. 1681
1685)
Spanish guardacosta who operated out
of Campeche.
Navarro’s activity was first mentioned
in spring 1681, when he commanded a
piragua sent on patrol into Mexico’s
Laguna de T
erminos. The previous year,
a series of Spanish sweeps organized by
Captain Felipe de la Barrera y Villegas
had succeeded in clearing this region of
English trespassers, who had established
themselves ashore many years before to
poach logwood. Campeche’s authorities
wished to maintain this advantage by
dispatching regular patrols to cruise that
shoreline, one such being Navarro’s
boat. He spotted the 12-gun pink of John
Hart lying inside the Laguna in early
April 1681, chasing it away, and
Navarro, Baltasar (fl. 1681
1685) 289
capturing 12 men who had been landed
to fell trees.
Four years later, Navarro performed
much more singular service in defense
of Campeche. Early in June 1685, the
coast-guard frigate Nuestra Se~ nora de
la Soledad y San Antonio hurried into
port with a two-ship convoy, its Cap-
tain Crist
obal Martı́nez de Acevedo
reporting that they had been chased on
May 27th by unidentified vessels.
Rumors had already begun circulating
of a pirate fleet gathering on the far
side of the Yucat
an Peninsula near Isla
Mujeres, and Lieutenant-Governor de
la Barrera decided to act. Soledad was
ordered to anchor beneath the protec-
tion of Campeche’s guns, while 25 of
its crewmembers were transferred
into Navarro’s piragua. A further 25
soldiers were added from the city
garrison, and he was commanded to
proceed to the tiny advance port of
Sisal to reconnoiter for the enemy.
On reaching that place, Navarro was
instructed to round Yucat
an in search of
strange sails. He probed as far as Isla
Mujeres, where he saw a tall ship with
30 guns in the distance. Returning to-
ward Sisal, his boat received a friendly
hail from a sloop opposite Telchac, but
Navarro refused to answer because he
considered it suspicious. Next day, he
sighted more small craft to leeward,
about five miles from land, who with-
drew as his piragua approached, and
joined two large ships and several
smaller vessels farther out at sea.
Alarmed, Navarro hastened toward Sisal
to give warning, and at the entrance to
its harbor he heard from a coaster cap-
tain named Manzano that four more un-
identified vessels were anchored inside
the Gulf of Mexico. Twelve days after
reporting these finds to the authorities at
290 Navarro, Baltasar (fl. 1681
1685)
Sisal, Navarro and his men learned more
than a dozen sail had been sighted off
Champot
on, heading toward Campeche.
At this, his men became agitated, fearing
for their loved ones at home, and insist-
ing on an immediate return. Navarro sent
an urgent request to the Governor of
Yucat
an, who soon authorized him to
quit Sisal.
At four o’clock on the afternoon of
July 9, 1685, Navarro’s piragua arrived
off the northern approaches of Cam-
peche, and set a man ashore at the outly-
ing village of Platanar to make inquiries.
He returned at a run to report that the
pirate fleet of Laurens de Graaf and
Sieur de Grammont had invaded the city
two days earlier, although its citadel still
held out. Lieutenant-Governor de la Bar-
rera, who had been driven out of Cam-
peche during this fighting, now ordered
Navarro’s piragua directly into the roads
to support the fort, whose guns pre-
vented the pirate fleet from anchoring in
the harbor. That night, Navarro rowed
up close to the citadel and hailed its
commander, sargento mayor Gonzalo
Borrallo. In an attempt to disconcert the
freebooters, who were listening, Navarro
shouted across the darkened water that
Yucat
an’s Gov. Juan Bruno T
ellez de
Guzm
an would arrive next day with 800
troops, while Borrallo responded in a
similar vein, loudly asserting that he had
300 troops inside the citadel and no need
of water or supplies.
Next day, Navarro defended the
roads, fending off pirate attempts to
encroach on the harbor, and that night
neared the fort again, from where
Borrallo asked him to make a disem-
barkation the following night to carry
off and refill the citadel’s empty water-
casks. During the night of July 11th,
the piragua was beached and they were
taken aboard, after which Navarro
struck out through the darkness for the
town of Lerma, southwest of the city,
and the nearest spot where he could
safely complete this task. By eight
o’clock on the morning of July 12th it
was done, but Navarro discovered that
three of his seamen had deserted. After
a quick search failed to turn them up,
he struck out toward Campeche. As his
piragua approached the city, he and
the crew could distinctly hear the
boom of heavy artillery, as the pirates
had landed guns from their ships and
had commenced bombarding the cita-
del at dawn.
While gliding past the outskirts, an
Indian hailed and warned the men
aboard the piragua that pirates had
concealed two pieces close ahead,
among the hides ‘‘behind the corner of
the butcher shop,’’ to ambush them.
Navarro scoffed at this report, but his
men refused to take up their oars
again, believing that ‘‘they would be
sunk and slaughtered as they waded
onto the beach’’ because they were
guardacostas, to whom the pirates tra-
ditionally showed no mercy. Navarro
vainly shouted orders, then cajoled his
crew, ‘‘and when some began to
undress to dive into the water, threat-
ened them with a blunderbuss until
they put on their clothes again,’’ yet
could not persuade them to advance.
Instead, they rowed directly in toward
shore and abandoned the piragua, leav-
ing him with only eight men. Navarro
attempted to row back to Lerma with
these few, but the winds and tides were
too much, so that he was forced to
scuttle his craft short of this destination
by evening.
Nevertheless, Navarro persisted with
his efforts, marching toward the city

with the handful of followers left him.
But that same day, a Spanish relief-col-
umn from M
erida de Yucat
an had been
defeated by Grammont, and the citadel’s
defenders deserted their posts that night.
By the time Navarro drew near, resis-
tance had ceased and the enemy was fan-
ning out into the countryside, so that he
made his way inland to the village of
San Diego, where he found his wife and
children among the refugees.
A report arrived there a few days later
that a column of mounted buccaneers
was bearing down on the nearby town of
Zamul
a, and Navarro was one who has-
tened to its aid. In the confusion, he
came on the abandoned icon of Cam-
peche’s patron saint, Santo Cristo de San
Rom
an, which he helped defend until
being shot in one leg. While the jubilant
raiders pressed on to ransack the town,
Navarro was fortunately able to crawl to
a nearby Spanish company, and be car-
ried off. His wound was so severe that it
precluded any further participation in
this campaign.
References
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The Great
Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor, Ontario,
Canada: Netherlandic Press, 1993).
NEVILLE, EDWARD
(fl. 1675
1678)
English privateer who served under
French colors.
When England withdrew from the
war against The Netherlands in early
Neville, Edward (fl. 1675
1678) 291
1674, many of its West Indian corsairs
shifted allegiance to continue privateer-
ing. One such captain was Neville, who
obtained a commission from the French
authorities on Saint Domingue to com-
mit depredations against the Dutch and
Spanish. On March 26, 1675 (O.S.), the
new deputy governor of Jamaica, Sir
Henry Morgan, drafted a letter promis-
ing Neville and his fellow rovers a
friendly reception at Port Royal if they
were to come in and cease their opera-
tions on behalf of foreign countries,
which although legal, were an embar-
rassment to the English Crown. The
retired buccaneer added that he hoped
‘‘their experience of him will give him
the reputation that he intends not to
betray them.’’
This proposal was never sent, though,
as Morgan’s superior, Lord Vaughan,
preferred other measures to recall the
privateers. Thus, Neville was still active
three years later, taking part in George
Spurre’s assault on the Mexican town of
Campeche. On April 10, 1678, Neville
and his sloop lay in company with
Spurre’s frigate before Havana, where
they intercepted the outward bound dis-
patch vessel Toro (Bull) and made it
their new flagship. Sailing across the
Gulf of Mexico to the Laguna de
T
erminos, they recruited additional men
for an attempt on Campeche. Neville’s
sloop accompanied Spurre’s Toro and
eight piraguas up the coast, and on the
night of July 6, 1678, Neville reconnoi-
tered the port alone. At dawn he rejoined
the main body to report that all was
calm. That night, the pirates slipped
ashore.
Before daybreak on Sunday, July 10,
1678, the buccaneers entered the sleep-
ing town and took it by surprise, suffer-
ing no casualties. They held it until the
292 Nichols, Bernard (fl. 1664
1665)
evening of Tuesday, July12th, when they
withdrew with their prizes: the ship San
Antonio, a barco luengo, and a boat, plus
a great deal of booty. They also carried
off 250 blacks, mulattos, and Indians to
be sold as slaves at the Laguna de
T
erminos. That same autumn, William
Beeston noted in his journal at Port
Royal, Jamaica:
18 October 1678 [O.S.]. Arrived
Captain Splure [sic], who with one
Neville about three months since,
and 150 men, had taken Campeche,
and with him a prize; for all of
which he had his pardon, and leave
to come in and spend their plunder.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Eugenio; Interesting Tracts Relating to the
Island of Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega:
Lewis, Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
NICHOLS, BERNARD
(fl. 1664
1665)
Minor English privateer who operated
out of Jamaica.
On November 23, 1664 (O.S.), Wil-
liam Beeston noted in his journal at Port
Royal: ‘‘Bernard Nicholas [sic] brought
in a prize.’’ This was exceptional in that
the new Governor Sir Thomas Modyford
had some months previously issued a
proclamation ‘‘that for the future all acts
of hostility against the Spaniards should
cease,’’ yet Nichols was apparently
allowed to retain this vessel.
On February 20, 1665 (O.S.), the Gov-
ernor himself informed London: ‘‘The
Spanish prizes have been inventoried and
sold, but it is suspected those of Morrice
[sic; Maurice Williams], and Bernard
Nichols have been miserably plundered,
and the interested parties will find but a
slender account in the Admiralty.’’
References
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
NORMAN, RICHARD
(fl. 1669
1671)
English freebooter who operated out of
Jamaica.
In the summer of 1669, Norman
served under Henry Morgan in his cam-
paign against Maracaibo, and a year and
half later sailed in the huge expedition
against Panama. After recapturing tiny
Providencia Island from the Spaniards
on Christmas Day, 1670, Morgan sent
‘‘Lieutenant Colonel’’ Joseph Bradley on
ahead with 470 men aboard three ships
(with Norman as his ‘‘Major’’) to capture
the crucial San Lorenzo castle at the
mouth of the Chagres River, which was
to be used as the pirates’ advance base
for their overland march to the Pacific.
This force landed within sight of that
fortification at noon on January 6, 1671,

and carried it the next day, after repeated
assaults. Bradley was badly wounded
during the final attack, being shot
through both legs, and Norman assumed
overall command.
Five days later, Morgan’s main body
hove into view. Bradley died and Nor-
man was left in charge of Chagres with
540 men, while Morgan crossed the Isth-
mus to attack Panama. During his ab-
sence, Norman set two vessels to
maintain watch along the coast under
Spanish colors, which met a big Spanish
merchantman and chased it into Chagres,
where it was easily caught by Norman.
This proved to be a valuable prize, being
loaded with all kinds of provisions that
the buccaneers sorely needed.
Norman, Richard (fl. 1669
1671) 293
References
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
Vrijman, L. C., Dr. David van der Sterre:
Zeer aenmerkelijke reysen door Jan
Erasmus Reyning (Amsterdam: P. N.
van Kampen & Zoon, 1937).
 O

This French enemy was so tyrannical, that after taking everything

people had, he would torture them unto death, something
which not even a Turk or a Moor would do.
—Spanish survivor of Maracaibo, describing Grammont’s sack in the summer of 1678

OGERON, BERTRAND D’, D’Ogeron lost all his possessions when

SIEUR DE LA BOUE RE
(1613
1676)
Fourth French Governor of Saint-Dom-
ingue, who led its boucaniers to
disaster.
Bertrand d’Ogeron was the third and
last child born to a merchant of this
same name at Rochefort, France, being
baptized on Tuesday, March 19, 1613.
In October 1653, a few months after his
father’s death, D’Ogeron was created
e
cuyer or ‘‘squire’’ and enrolled as a
captain in the Marine Regiment. By
1657, he was in the New World at Marti-
nique, and two years later following the
conclusion of the Franco-Spanish War,
he was discharged and joined some
adventurers on a colonizing expedition
to the west coast of Saint-Domingue.
carried past this destination and ship-
wrecked, after which he managed to
struggle back to France the next year.
While preparing to return to the
Americas in 1662, D’Ogeron, as an
int

eress
e or ‘‘shareholder’’ in one of the
first French West Indian companies, also
laid claim to the Lucayan and Caicos
Islands ‘‘from the 20th to 28th degree
North latitude,’’and then sailed for the
Caribbean with 140 men aboard a 5-gun
ship in July 1663. There, he gathered
and shipped a cargo of tobacco from
Port-a-Margot for the return passage,
and became one of 30 colonists who suc-
cessfully settled on the west coast of
Hispaniola at L
eog^ane (a mispronuncia-
tion of its earlier Spanish name La
Yaguana, which had become garbled
into l’Yaguane in French, then eventu-
ally evolved into ‘‘L
eog^ane’’).

295
296 Ogeron, Bertrand d’, Sieur de La Bouere (1613
1676)
In the spring of 1664, the Compagnie
des Indes Occidentales was created by
the Crown, and in October of that same
year its directors in Paris named
D’Ogeron as Governor of the boucanier
stronghold of Tortuga Island, situated off
the northwestern tip of Saint-Domingue.
Because of the usual delays in trans-
Atlantic communications, D’Ogeron did
not assume this new posting until June 6,
1665, being rather coolly received by the
boucaniers themselves, who resented the
Company’s attempts to monopolize their
trade.
In 1668, D’Ogeron was granted
leave to travel to France for a year on
personal affairs, deputizing his nephew
Jacques Nepveu, Sieur de Pouançay, to
serve during his absence. D’Ogeron
left Paris to return to Saint-Domingue
on Easter weekend of 1669, arriving at
the colony in early autumn. He found
the boucaniers’ resentment against the
Company stronger than ever, and with
extreme difficulty put down a serious
revolt in the spring of 1670. This
uprising exploded when D’Ogeron
sailed from Cul de Sac to Tortuga with
his Irondelle, encountering two Flush-
ing ships of 300 to 400 tons who were
bringing out goods for the boucaniers.
D’Ogeron informed the Dutch captains,
Pieter Constant and Pieter Marck, that
such trade was prohibited, to which
they replied that ‘‘he would have to be
stronger than they to prevent it.’’ When
the boucaniers learned of D’Ogeron’s
threat they mutinied, and fired repeat-
edly on his ship. Order was restored
many months afterward, with the
aid of ships and men sent by the
Governor-General of the Windward
Islands, Jean-Charles de Baas-Castel-
more, plus a general amnesty issued by
the Crown.
Disaster at Puerto Rico (1673)
News of the outbreak of the Franco-
Dutch War reached the Caribbean during
the latter half of 1672, so that De Baas
began organizing an expedition to attack
the Dutch stronghold of Curaçao. He
detached the 50-gun Ecueil or ‘‘Reef’’
and smaller Petite Infante (Little Infanta
or ‘‘Spanish Princess’’) to Saint-Dom-
ingue, with orders for D’Ogeron to raise
a large number of volunteers and join
him off Saint Croix on March 4, 1673.
At least 200 recruits boarded the Petite
Infante at L
eog^ane, half transferring to
the Ecueil at Petit-Go^ave, where another
200 had been mustered. This pair of ships
then rounded M^ole Saint-Nicolas for Tor-
tuga, where they arrived on February
18th and almost immediately got under
way again, with further reinforcements
plus half-a-dozen smaller privateer craft.
The night of February 25
26, 1673,
D’Ogeron’s Ecueil ran aground through
navigational error in the vicinity of Are-
cibo, on the northwest shores of Puerto
Rico. ‘‘More than half the people were
saved,’’ he later wrote, 500 survivors
struggling ashore through the surf. He
sent his lieutenant Brodart and nephew
De Pouançay with a message to the local
Spanish authorities, informing them of
the accident and requesting aid. But the
French had so long victimized the Puerto
Rican coastline that they were regarded
as mortal enemies, despite the fact that
this particular band had arrived purely by
chance, and that Spain was neutral in the
European conflict. Both emissaries were
thrown into jail and a host of militiamen
descended on the French survivors, sub-
duing them after a one-sided clash in
which 10 Puerto Ricans died and 12 were
wounded, as opposed to perhaps 40 to 50
fatalities among D’Ogeron’s group.
 Ogeron, Bertrand d’, Sieur de La Bouere (1613
1676)
Following this outburst, the island
Governor—a hard-bitten, surly veteran
named Gaspar de Arteaga y Aunavidao,
whose foul temper was made worse
by the fact that he was dying from a lin-
gering disease—ordered the Frenchmen
detained, and so informed his Spanish
counterparts at Santo Domingo, who sent
two officials to examine the prisoners.
This done, 460 French captives were
marched to Aguada and then inland to
San Germ
an, where they were settled and
allotted cattle to sustain themselves, all
the while loosely guarded by 60 Spanish
soldiers. (D’Ogeron was apparently not
among this first group, having been tem-
porarily left behind. The chronicler Alex-
andre-Olivier Exquemelin later reported
that D’Ogeron duped his captors by con-
cealing his true identity and feigning mad-
ness, yet the official records show that the
Spaniards knew exactly who he was.)
After several months’ captivity, during
which some of his men slipped away or
were exchanged, and many others suc-
cumbed to sickness or neglect, D’Ogeron
succeeded in escaping (perhaps with the
barber surgeon François La Faverye, as
Exquemelin wrote). The two allegedly
made a daylong walk from the internment
area at Hato de Arriba to the coast, where
they stole a small fishing-boat by murder-
ing its two-man crew and dropping their
bodies into the sea. It took four days to
clear Cape Rojo and reach the French set-
tlement at Saman
a Bay, during which
neither man had anything to eat or drink.
Having already been given up for dead,
‘‘the return of Monsieur d’Ogeron to this
island is a miracle,’’ one contemporary
eye-witness noted.
Diplomatic overtures had been previ-
ously made from Martinique for the
release of both he and his fellow captives,
yet D’Ogeron now insisted on a more
297
impetuous recourse. Despite the peace
prevailing with Spain, he organized a
force of 500 flibustiers at Tortuga, and
sailed for Puerto Rico on October 7,
1673. Pausing at Saman
a for reinforce-
ments, he appeared before Aguada in the
middle of the month and was incorrectly
informed that De Arteaga might consider
an exchange. D’Ogeron therefore plunged
ashore with a landing-party of 300 men
and tried to seize some hostages, march-
ing as far as six miles inland on his third
day, where he was ambushed and lost 17
men before retreating. It is alleged that
the Spaniards lost double this amount and
in their wrath, butchered the French
wounded found laying on the field.
Nor did D’Ogeron’s attack benefit his
men at Hato de Arriba, who suffered for
his temerity. When De Arteaga was
informed of this latest outrage, he ordered
40 prisoners executed and the rest placed
in strict confinement. D’Ogeron cruised
impotently off the coast for the next cou-
ple of months, until word arrived that
France and Spain were at war, dashing
his final hopes. The Spaniards would now
be most unlikely to release their captives
in the West Indies, so that a discouraged
D’Ogeron returned to Tortuga on Decem-
ber 29, 1673, requesting permission to
visit France. He never saw his men again.
By the spring of 1674, scarcely 131 were
still alive, toiling on the fortifications of
San Juan de Puerto Rico. From there, the
survivors were transported in groups to
Havana, to await deportation to Spain.
A curious sequel occurred two years
later, when the Spanish vessel Nuestra
Se~nora del P
opulo was captured by the
French in the Mediterranean, between
Sicily and Italy in the Straits of Messina.
The Spanish captain and two ensigns were
carried to the border between southern
France and Catalu~na, where a message
298 Orange, Pierre d’ (d. 1683)
was dispatched to the Spaniards offering
to exchange them for any of D’Ogeron’s
survivors. The Council of Indies in Madrid
took this offer seriously, sending a circular
dated December 23, 1676, to the Crown
officials at Puerto Rico and Havana, order-
ing that any such captives be forwarded to
Cadiz. The matter languished on account
of the slowness of trans-Atlantic commu-
nications, due to naval blockades.
Meanwhile, the Compagnie des
Indes Occidentales had been disbanded
in 1674, and that following year
D’Ogeron had reached Paris to deter-
mine what his new role might be; but
being ‘‘afflicted by an incurable diar-
rhea [lient
erie],’’ he never got to see
either the King or his minister Colbert
before dying on Friday, January 31,
1676, at the Rue des Maçons or
‘‘Masons’ Street’’ in the Sorbonne.
Two years afterward, Exquemelin’s
book appeared in Amsterdam, its final
chapter dedicated to D’Ogeron’s Puerto
Rican ordeal.
References
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).

ican port of Veracruz.
L

opez Cantos, Angel, Historia de Puerto
Rico, 1650
1700 (Seville: Escuela de
Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1975).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
ORANGE, PIERRE D’
(d. 1683)
French freebooter from Martinique,
who helped sack Veracruz.
D’Orange may have been a descen-
dant of the family which helped found
the French colony of Guadeloupe in
1635. On March 5, 1683, he sailed
from Martinique with the tiny 2-gun
Dauphin or ‘‘Prince,’’ accompanied by
the equally small Proph ete Daniel or
‘‘Prophet Daniel’’ of Antoine Bernard,
intending to go turtling at the Cayman
Islands. But a month after arriving,
they heard of a great pirate assembly
off the Central American coast prepar-
ing to attack the Spaniards, so crossed
to Guanaja Island, and learned that this
peacetime raid was being launched
because a Dutch-born rover named
Nikolaas van Hoorn had been
defrauded of a consignment of slaves
at Santo Domingo, and—being a resi-
dent of Cayenne, conquered five years
previously by France, thus now a sub-
ject of Louis XIV—had procured a let-
ter of reprisal from Jacques Nepveu,
Sieur de Pouançay and Governor of
Saint-Domingue, to exact restitution
from the Spaniards. Van Hoorn had
sortied with the ‘‘Chevalier’’ de Gram-
mont and other buccaneer captains to
recruit at Roat
an, to attempt to mount
a surprise attack against the great Mex-
D’Orange and Bernard joined the
expedition, which eventually swelled
to 13 vessels and perhaps 1,400 men.
Hurrying round the Yucatan Peninsula,
a landing-party of 800 freebooters stole
ashore near Veracruz on the night
of May 17-18, 1683, infiltrating and
attacking the city at dawn. Its Spanish
garrison was quickly subdued and sev-
eral thousand half-dressed citizens
were herded into La Merced Church,
where some would later recall D’Or-
ange as a jailer ‘‘who behaved most
tyrannically, and whom the rest of the

pirates greatly respected.’’ After thor-
oughly ransacking the city over four
days, the raiders withdrew two miles
offshore to Sacrificios Island with their
hostages, transferring vast quantities of
booty aboard their waiting ships. A
fortnight later they weighed, and stag-
gered back around Yucatan to divide
their spoils at Isla Mujeres.
The flotilla thereupon broke up,
D’Orange and Bernard being among the
first to attempt to beat across to Petit-
Go^ave, yet only getting as far the Cay-
mans before the latter fell ill. D’Orange
and his Dauphin persisted, though, gain-
ing the French colony and making a
brief cruise along the north coast of
Cuba before rejoining his consort. On
August 4, 1683, while lying at Little
Cayman, the Armada de Barlovento sud-
denly hove into view and captured both
vessels, the two prizes being carried into
Veracruz three weeks later, and a hear-
ing convened aboard the flagship Santo
Cristo de Burgos. According to Spanish
law, pirate leaders were to be tried at the
scene of their crimes, while followers
were to be deported to serve in the gal-
leys of Spain. Thus, D’Orange remained
in Veracruz when the plate fleet set sail
for Cadiz a few days later, being held
back to be judged in the still-devastated
Mexican port.
At his trial he was asked ‘‘how he,
being a Catholic, could violate temples,
steal icons, and profane holy places,
actions only of heretics,’’ to which he
lamely replied that everyone else had
been doing so. D’Orange was condemned
to death and on November 22, 1683, was
paraded through the streets, as the town
crier shouted: Esta es la justicia que
manda hacer el Rey nuestro se~ nor or
‘‘Behold the justice ordered by the King
our lord!’’ The rover was hanged in the
Outlaw, John (fl. 1665) 299
main square, decapitated, and his head
spiked at the wharf.
References
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The Great
Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor, Ontario,
Canada: Netherlandic Press, 1993).
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am
erica Espa~
nola (Madrid:
Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
OUTLAW, JOHN (fl. 1665)
English privateer who commanded the
ill-named Olive Branch of six guns in
Colonel Edward Morgan’s expedition
against Dutch Sint Eustatius and Saba,
during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
This force departed Jamaica in two
divisions, five sail putting out of Port
Royal on April 5, 1665, and Morgan
himself following with another four on
April 28th. There were 650 men in
all, described in a letter by Gov. Sir
Thomas Modyford as:
. . . chiefly reformed privateers,
scarce a planter amongst them, being
resolute fellows and well armed with
fusils [Spanish word for muskets]
and pistols.
The Crown official was particularly
grateful that they would be serving ‘‘at the
old rate of no purchase, no pay, and it will
cost the King nothing considerable, some
powder and mortar pieces.’’ Their landing
300 Oxe, Robert (fl. 1680)
was successfully made, but the Colonel,
‘‘being a corpulent man,’’ died from heat
exertion during the chase, and his expedi-
tion disbanded shortly thereafter.
References
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
OXE, ROBERT (fl. 1680)
English logwood poacher caught off
Mexico’s Laguna de T
erminos.
On Sunday, May 12, 1680, Oxe
appeared at the mouth of the ‘‘Bay of
Campeche’’ with his ship Laurel of Lon-
don and other vessels, hoping to visit the
English logging establishments and
obtain a cargo of dyewood, before pro-
ceeding north toward Boston. A bark of
about 35 tons which accompanied him
went over the bar to locate a pilot, little
realizing that the Spaniards under Cap-
tain Felipe de la Barrera had recently
swept the entire Lagoon, and were now
maintaining regular patrols into the area.
Next day, Laurel stood in toward the
mouth of the Bay again, yet neither the
bark nor pilot appeared. Instead, a sail
was seen approaching along the coast
that evening, and when Oxe sent his pin-
nace to investigate, discovered it to be a
Spanish frigate, which gave chase.
Oxe immediately fired a gun to
warn the pink Recovery of Captain
James Browne which was with him,
and the two fled into the night. Not
realizing his bark had already been
captured, Oxe returned to the mouth of
the Lagoon with Browne, where they
were again surprised on May 16th by
the same frigate and two more Spanish
men-of-war. Browne and his crew
joined Oxe aboard the Laurel, setting
the pink adrift and fighting the Span-
iards for more than two hours (‘‘four
or five glasses’’), before the latter drew
off to seize the empty Recovery. That
night, Oxe set watering-parties ashore
at the mouth of the nearby San Pedro y
San Pablo River, before resuming his
futile watch off the Lagoon.
Finally, he sailed away to ‘‘the Cays
of Yucatan for water,’’ where one night
he was caught by the Spanish, with most
of his crew ashore. Two of his men were
killed and Oxe himself mauled, the
Spaniards ‘‘hanging him up at the fore
braces several times, beating him with
their cutlasses, and striking him in the
face.’’ When he proffered Governor
Lord Carlisle’s pass to the guardacosta
captain—most likely either Pedro de
Castro or Juan Corso—the latter flung it
away, and boasted Laurel ‘‘was the
twenty-second ship he had taken that
summer.’’ Oxe and eight hands were put
in a canoe with two days’ provisions,
landing on the Turneffe Islands (opposite
present-day Belize City), where they
remained ‘‘fifteen days before any relief
came.’’ By the end of that year, Oxe was
back in Port Royal, complaining of his
mistreatment, but grateful to be alive.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 10,
11 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
 P

Deponent asked him who he was and whence he came,

to which the said Thatch replied he came from Hell,
and he would carry him presently.
—Blackbeard described by one of his victims, September 1718

PAINE, THOMAS was already prospering as a property-

(fl. 1675
1690)
New Englander who roamed the Carib-
bean for many years as a freebooter,
which helped him become a prosperous
citizen of Rhode Island, and defend it
late in life against the French.
Details about Paine’s early life are
rather sketchy. He was supposedly born
around 1632 at Martha’s Vineyard, yet
this latter fact is untrue. Rather, he was
born that year in London, England, to a
Puritan couple: Thomas Paine and Jane
Gallion or Galliou. His father died
shortly thereafter, and the infant’s
mother remarried in 1634 to Thomas
Mayhew, a Puritan widower who was
just then back in the English capital on a
visit. Three years previously, Mayhew
had migrated out to the burgeoning
Massachusetts Bay colony, where he
manager, trader, and shipbuilder. Having
recently become a widower himself, left
with two young sons, the 41-year-old
Mayhew had returned to England on
business in 1634, and so sailed back to
North America accompanied by his new
wife, her nine-year-old daughter Jane,
and her infant son Thomas Paine. Four
more children would be born to this cou-
ple over the ensuing years.
In 1641, when his stepson Thomas
was still a boy, Mayhew secured owner-
ship of Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket,
and the Elizabeth Islands from Sir Ferdi-
nando Gorges and William Alexander,
Earl of Sterling. Mayhew planned on
relocating all his businesses to these new
holdings, so that a groundbreaking party
of 20 families began clearing a settle-
ment next year under the direction of his
eldest son, 21-year-old Thomas Mayhew,

301
302 Paine, Thomas (fl. 1675
1690)
Jr. The senior Mayhew followed with
another large group in 1646, taking up
residence at Great Harbour (modern
Edgartown) as the private Governor for
Martha’s Vineyard. His farming and
whaling enterprises soon began to flour-
ish as well, and his 15-year-old stepson
Thomas Paine apparently made his first
seafaring voyage in 1647.
A few West Indian forays may have
followed, once Jamaica had been con-
quered in 1655 and the Puritan Lord Pro-
tector, Sir Oliver Cromwell, began
encouraging more commerce to and from
England’s North American colonies. Yet
trouble also arose for the family: Mayh-
ew’s eldest son was lost at sea during a
voyage to England two years later, and
after Cromwell’s death and the restora-
tion of the English monarchy in May
1660, New England passed under the
control of James, Duke of York.
Mayhew would spend the next decade
trying to get his Puritan-issued land-titles
recognized. It would not be until 1671
that his original charter was at last rati-
fied, and he was royally reappointed—
along with his new heir, his grandson—as
‘‘joint Lords of the Manor of Tisbury.’’
Thomas Paine’s mother Jane died in
1666; as a stepson he was obviously not
included in any of the Mayhew family
arrangements, so was left to seek his own
livelihood at sea. Legend has it that
Paine’s first voyages into the Caribbean
had included service under such notorious
freebooter commanders as Jean-David
Nau l’Olonnais and Henry Morgan,
although these rumors cannot be con-
firmed. However, as a seasoned and
knowledgeable seafarer, he may well have
secured a post aboard a privateer when the
Third Anglo-Dutch War erupted in the
spring of 1672, pitting England and France
in an alliance against The Netherlands.
French Service (1675
1682)
No details are known about Paine’s
early service, but he evidently contin-
ued to operate as a French privateer
even after England withdrew from
these hostilities two years later, in spite
of the official disapproval expressed by
London against any such mercenary
service under foreign flags. The first
mention of Paine occurred in Decem-
ber 1675, when the renegade Jamaican
freebooter John Bennett gave the
43-year-old New Englander command
of a Spanish prize, which Paine then fit-
ted out as a 14-gun ship named the Saint
David. Next April 1676, while cruis-
ing between Curaçao and Antigua in
the company of two other English
captains—all under a French commis-
sion issued by Gov. Bertrand d’Ogeron
of Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti)—Paine
helped recapture a merchantman from La
Rochelle, which had been intercepted
by a Dutch privateer. The trio then sailed
their capture to Saint Croix, where it
was adjudged a legitimate prize-of-war in
May 1676.
It is possible that Paine next pro-
ceeded with Saint David to the port of
Petit-Go^ave (Haiti), to participate in
the privateering expedition which
Charles François d’Angennes, Marquis
de Maintenon, was organizing to raid
the Venezuelan coast during the winter
months of 1676 to 1677. This force
was subsequently diverted to support
the recently-arrived French Vice Admi-
ral Jean, Comte d’Estr
ees, in his first
assault against the Dutch stronghold on
Tobago in March 1677, which failed.
Paine’s role is unknown in these two
campaigns, as well as in the seizure
that June of Santa Marta (Colombia)
by an independent freebooter force,

and a similar attempt against Santiago
de Cuba in November 1677. Admiral
d’Estr
ees returned from France with a
second royal fleet to defeat the Dutch
on Tobago by mid-December 1677,
and in May 1678 he set sail from Mar-
tinique and St. Kitts to mount yet
another joint enterprise that included
many privateers against the last
remaining Dutch outpost in the West
Indies: Curaçao.
However, this huge French formation
blundered onto the treacherous Aves
Islands grouping off the Venezuelan
coast one evening, suffering great losses.
Whether or not Paine witnessed this dis-
aster, he is known to have revisited the
wreck-site a few months later, to careen
the 6-gun vessel which he now com-
manded. As he later declared, he intended
‘‘to fit himself very well, for here lay
driven on the island masts, yards, tim-
bers, and many things he wanted.’’ Yet
after hauling his ship inside its main
anchorage and beginning to unrig it so
as to careen, Paine was distressed to spot
a 20-gun Dutch warship materialize off-
shore, having been sent from nearby
Curaçao to also salvage among the
French debris. The Dutchmen:
. . . seeing a ship in the harbor and
knowing her to be a French priva-
teer, they thought to take her first
and came within a mile of her, and
began to fire at her, intending to
warp in the next day, for it is very
narrow going in. Captain Pain [sic]
got ashore some of his guns and did
what he could to resist them, though
he did in a manner conclude he must
be taken. But while his men were
thus busied, he spied a Dutch sloop
turning to get into the road, and saw
her at the evening anchor at the west
Paine, Thomas (fl. 1675
1690) 303
end of the island. This gave him
some hope of making his escape,
which he did by sending two canoes
in the night aboard the sloop, who
took her and got considerable pur-
chase in her; and he went away in
her, making a good reprisal and
leaving his own empty ship to the
Dutch man o’ war.
After this lucky escape, Paine oper-
ated for the remainder of 1678 off the
Spanish Main, in consort with his fellow
freebooter Captain William Wright.
Peace had been concluded between
France and The Netherlands that same
August 1678, yet as the separate Treaty
of Nijmegen signed with Spain in Sep-
tember 1678 did not make any mention
of the Americas, fighting was to persist
in the Caribbean.
As a result, Paine captured a small
warship in 1679 from Spain’s permanent
West Indian squadron, known as the
Armada de Barlovento. He also seems to
have become attached to the French fli-
bustier chieftain Grammont, although it
is unknown whether he took part in any
of that leader’s actions off the coasts of
Cuba and Florida around that time.
However, Paine did participate in the
remarkably bold raid which Grammont
led against the Venezuelan port of La
Guaira in late June 1680, a few-score
rovers surprising its garrison and citi-
zenry at dawn, before fighting their way
clear with some booty, against heavy
odds.
It is not known when—or even
whether—Paine returned home to New
England throughout this entire interlude,
perhaps during the seasonal pauses when
hurricanes and weather shifts halted
most West Indian campaigning. Local
tradition at Plymouth (Massachusetts)
304 Paine, Thomas (fl. 1675
1690)
The Old Eastham Windmill, built around
1680, allegedly with profits from Thomas
Paine’s piratical activities in the West In-
dies. Originally erected at Plymouth, Mas-
sachusetts, it was moved in 1793 across
Cape Cod Bay to Eastham, where it is still
operated occasionally as a tourist
attraction. (D. B. King)
maintains that he erected a large wind-
mill there in 1680, presumably financed
from proceeds of his captures as a
French privateer. (This mill was disman-
tled and moved across Cape Cod Bay in
1793 to Eastham, where it still stands
today, and is operated as the historic
‘‘Old Eastham Windmill.’’)
Paine was identified by the pirate
chronicler William Dampier as being
back in the Caribbean by early June
1681, lying at Springer’s Key in the San
Blas Islands off northern Panama with
yet another French commission, in com-
mand of a ship of 10 guns and 100 men,
part of a flotilla comprised of John
Coxon, Jean Rose, Jan Willems, George
Wright, and four other freebooter cap-
tains. Together they decided to make a
descent on a Spanish town along the
Central American coastline, yet first
sailed toward San Andr
es Island to steal
boats for use as landing-craft and mov-
ing up rivers. A gale scattered their for-
mation en route, though, and an
armadilla of a dozen tiny men o’ war
sent from Cartagena further dispersed
these rovers.
Paine must have been one of the cap-
tains blown to leeward, into Bocas del
Toro (a maze of islands off the north-
western shores of present-day Panama).
His ship damaged and the privateering
expedition disintegrated, he apparently
decided to make repairs ashore, during
which he had an unpleasant encounter
with the local natives, for as Dampier
recorded:
. . . having built a tent ashore to put
his goods in while he careened his
ship, and some men lying there with
their arms, in the night the Indians
crept softly into the tent and cut off
the heads of three or four men, and
made their escape; nor was this the
first time they had served the priva-
teers so.
English Service (1682
1683)
By late October 1682, Paine, now 50
years of age, was evidently tiring of his
renegade existence as a French flibustier,
so put into Jamaica to obtain an English
commission, which would prove more
acceptable to the New England author-
ities. His moment was well chosen, for
Jamaica’s Governor Sir Thomas Lynch,
normally no friend to the privateers, was
known to be issuing commissions for the

recapture of the 30-gun frigate Trom-
peuse, which had been seized by a band
of French cutthroats and was committing
depredations against all merchant ship-
ping. Lynch later wrote:
While busy at Port Royal over the
despatch of [George Johnson’s] ves-
sel, one Captain Clarke, a very hon-
est useful man, solicited me about
one Payn [sic], in a bark with 80
men. He told me Payn had never
done the least harm to any and that
if I would allow him to come in, he
would engage to bring in or destroy
these pirates.
The Jamaican Governor therefore agreed,
issuing Paine a commission to ‘‘seize, kill
and destroy pirates,’’ under which license
he worked his way northward into the
Bahamas.
Paine arrived there in March 1683 with
his bark Pearl, described as ‘‘a ship of
eight guns and 60 men.’’ He found at
anchor the privateering vessels of fellow
Captains Conway Wooley, John Mark-
ham, Jan Corneliszoon, and the French fli-
bustier Pierre Br
eha, who were preparing
to go ‘‘fish for silver from a Spanish
wreck.’’ Yet first, the five commanders
decided to mount a raid against the nearby
Spanish outpost of Saint Augustine, Flor-
ida, supposedly authorized by their old
French commissions. They landed flying
French colors, only to find the Spaniards
already forewarned and so withdrew after
merely releasing some Spanish captives
which they had brought along, and looting
the surrounding countryside. (The Spanish
garrison commander later referred to
Paine as ‘‘Tom
as de la Pe~na’’ in his offi-
cial report about this incident.)
Paine, Markham, and Br
eha thereupon
returned to New Providence Island
Paine, Thomas (fl. 1675
1690) 305
(modern Nassau) in the Bahamas, where
Governor Robert Lilburne allegedly
wished to seize the two Englishmen’s
ships for this depredation, ‘‘but failed for
want of a force.’’ The raiders were suf-
fered to depart to the wreck site, which
was being worked by many other vessels,
and Paine may have actually had the
good fortune to raise some treasure (or
possibly used this salvage-work as a con-
venient excuse, for later explaining his il-
licit acquisition of Spanish silver). In any
event, the Bahamanian Governor soon
manned a large ship that had arrived by
chance at his capital of Charles Town,
and went out to the wreck site himself,
only to discover that Paine and his com-
panions had already dispersed. (Within a
few months, the Boston salvor William
Phips would also visit this same site, and
find it largely picked clean.)
Return to Rhode Island
(Autumn 1683)
Several weeks later, Pearl entered New-
port along with Br
eha’s vessel, and a
scandalized Governor Edward Cranfield
of neighboring New Hampshire wrote in
mid-October 1683:
During my stay at Rhode Island two
pirates came in. Pain [sic] was one of
them, with a counterfeit commission
from Sir Thomas Lynch styling him
[i.e., the Jamaican Governor] one of
the gentlemen of the King’s Bed-
chamber, instead of his Privy Cham-
ber, whereby I knew it to be forged.
Colonel Dongan and I asked the gov-
ernment to arrest them, but they
refused.
Pearl was also detained briefly at
Boston early that same December 1683
306 Paine, Thomas (fl. 1675
1690)
‘‘for breach of the Acts of Trade,’’ then
released, for Paine’s papers were indeed
quite legitimate.
Nevertheless, he was specifically
named next year in a circular issued by
King Charles II from Windsor in England
on April 13, 1684 (O.S.), in response to
numerous complaints lodged by the Span-
ish Ambassador that West Indian rovers
were using neutral North American ports
to dispose of their ill-gotten booty, and
plan further depredations. The monarch
therefore instructed all his Royal Gover-
nors to ‘‘permit no succor nor retreat to be
given to any pirates, least of all to Thomas
Pain [sic], who with five vessels under
Breha [sic], a Frenchman, is lately arrived
at Florida.’’ Such rovers were, the King
added, ‘‘a race of evildoers and enemies
of mankind.’’
Based on this new order, Thomas
Thacker, deputy customs collector for
Boston, once again attempted to
impound Paine’s vessel at Newport on
the evening of August 16, 1684 (O.S.),
yet without any better success. There-
fore, he had Paine hauled before Gov-
ernor William Coddington of Rhode
Island next morning, and in the ‘‘pres-
ence of Governor Dongan of New
York and Cranfield of New Hamp-
shire,’’ insisted that the privateer once
again exhibit his Jamaican commission.
Cranfield and the others erroneously
insisted that it was not in ‘‘Sir Thomas
Lynch’s hand, nor were his titles cor-
rectly given, but Governor Coddington
was of other mind,’’ and so found in
Paine’s favor. The deputy customs col-
lector returned into Boston three days
later, angrily complaining that the pri-
vate Rhode Island Governor refused to
‘‘see with eyes like other men.’’
Given this hostile reception, it is pos-
sible that Paine may have returned to
the West Indies with Br
eha, for the
flibustier commander was known to be
operating off southern Cuba again by
early November 1684, accompanied by
a pair of English-looking sloops. And a
Royal Navy officer who visited Petit-
Go^ave on the French island of Saint-
Domingue on December 16
17, 1684,
even reported that: ‘‘I saw in the port
the ships commanded by Captain
Yankey [sic; Jan Willems]; Breha [sic],
Thomas, and Johnson.’’ However,
if true, Paine must have returned once
more to Rhode Island within the next
few years, where he is known to have
settled down and built a fine two-story
house at Jamestown, on an estate called
Cajacet (which still stands today on a
nine-acre plot at 850 East Shore Road).
He married Mary Carr, daughter of
Judge Caleb Carr, who would eventu-
ally become Governor of that private
colony. By 1688, Paine was even being
mentioned as a respectable citizen serv-
ing on a Rhode Island grand-jury.
Battle Off Block Island
(July 1690)
Although now in his late fifties, Paine
had nonetheless lost none of his vigor.
During the winter of 1689 to 1690, offi-
cial word was received of the outbreak in
Europe of the War of the League of
Augsburg—soon to become known in
America as ‘‘King William’s War’’—and
the Rhode Island legislature ordered on
March 3, 1690 (O.S.), that ‘‘the King’s
proclamation of war be forthwith pub-
lished by beat of drum, by the Clerk of
this Assembly in solemn manner, being
against the French.’’ Later that same
summer, a flotilla of French raiders
appeared off the New England coast,

commanded by the veteran Pierre le Pic-
ard (believed to be a former privateering
colleague of Paine from his West Indian
days). Picard led a landing-party ashore
at Block Island on July 12, 1690 (O.S.),
which plundered its inhabitants and seri-
ously mistreated some. News of this dep-
redation quickly reached the mainland,
and warning bonfires were lit ‘‘from
Pawcatuck to Seaconnet,’’ while a sloop
with 34 men was sent out from Newport
next day on a reconnaissance. That fol-
lowing night, the French tried to pene-
trate Newport itself, but drew off when
they were discovered. Three days later,
on July 17, 1690 (O.S.), Governor John
Easton overrode his Quaker sensibilities
and ordered the 10-gun sloop Loyal Stede
of Barbados, which was lying in Newport
roads, impressed into the colonial serv-
ice. (This vessel was named in honor of
Edwin Stede, Lieutenant-Governor of
that West Indian colony.) Some 60 men
were hastily mustered, and Paine was put
in command of this sloop, as well as of a
smaller consort which accompanied him
under Captain John Godfrey.
Three days later, the two craft set out
for Block Island, with an extra contingent
of soldiers crammed aboard. Picard had
meanwhile moved off to attempt an
attack against New London (Connecti-
cut), so that Paine’s force gained Block
Island without sighting their enemy. Next
day, the two New England sloops beat
about offshore, until they beheld the
French formation bearing down on them
that same afternoon of July 21, 1690
(O.S.): one large bark, one large sloop,
and a smaller sloop. Paine retreated so as
to be able to take up a defensive position
in the shallows off Block Island, and
therefore only have to work the guns on
one side of his vessels. The French, mis-
interpreting this flight to mean that they
Paine, Thomas (fl. 1675
1690) 307
were frightened coastal traders, made all
possible sail and ‘‘sent a piragua before
them, full of men, with design to pour in
their small arms [fire] on them and take
them, as their manner was.’’ Unfortu-
nately, Paine’s gunner opened fire too
soon on this leading French vessel, miss-
ing and thus alerting Picard that his oppo-
nents were armed. The piragua sheered
around and its men reboarded the French
ships, before all three resumed their
advance on the New Englanders.
A brisk fire-fight erupted at five
o’clock that same evening of July 21,
1690 (O.S.), lasting until nightfall, during
which the French suffered 14 killed,
including their second-in-command, ‘‘a
very violent, resolute fellow’’ according to
English sources, who was shot in the neck
while drinking a glass of wine and wishing
damnation on the opposition. Paine only
emerged with one dead and six wounded,
and next morning Picard made off. The
two New England sloops pursued, forcing
the French to scuttle a merchantman
which they had captured, by firing ‘‘a great
shot through her bottom.’’ When Paine
reached it, he found this prize already
standing straight up and down, so that
none of its cargo of wine and brandy could
be saved before it slipped beneath the
waves. Paine nonetheless returned trium-
phantly into Newport, where he learned
that reinforcements had since arrived from
Boston under Captain Sugars, who was
sent off after the retiring Picard.
Captain Kidd’s
Confederate (1699)
Two years after this successful defense,
the 60-year-old Paine was appointed as
Captain of a local militia company in
1692, yet saw no more active service
308 Paine, Thomas (fl. 1675
1690)
during King William’s War. Once peace
was restored, he was also admitted as a
freeman of the colony of Rhode Island
in 1698. Having attained such a position,
it was especially surprising when the
next year, at the mature age of 67, he
should become embroiled with the noto-
rious Captain William Kidd, when the
latter returned as a hunted fugitive from
his Red Sea cruise. Presumably the two
men may have known each other long
ago as their rover days in the West In-
dies, although no details of their relation-
ship have survived. In his moment of
desperation, though, Kidd evidently felt
that Paine could be trusted.
In June 1699, his renegade sloop
appeared in Narragansett Bay. The cus-
toms collector from Newport promptly
set out with 30 well-armed men aboard
a boat to try to seize Kidd’s vessel, but
the fugitive Captain knew that he could
not afford to be arrested until he got
into Boston, where he might hope to
be protected by his patron, the Earl of
Bellomont. Kidd therefore fired two
cannon-shots to drive back the collec-
tor’s boat, before continuing up the
bay to drop anchor off Conanicut
Island near Jamestown and summon
aboard his old and trusted friend,
Paine. The latter agreed to safeguard a
considerable amount of Kidd’s cap-
tured gold, despite the very real danger
that the retired freebooter might well
be charged with receiving and conceal-
ing stolen goods, a capital offense.
Kidd thereupon stood back out to sea
and proceeded into Boston to meet his
fate, being arrested there on July 6, 1699
(O.S.), after which a massive search was
instituted by the Crown authorities to find
his scattered caches of treasure. Most were
quickly unearthed, yet Paine’s holding
was overlooked. A few weeks later,
Kidd’s wife Sarah, who was also impris-
oned, wrote the following letter, pleading
for some of the funds entrusted to Paine:
Captain Payen [sic],
After my humble service to yourself
and all our good friends, this cometh
by a trusty friend of mine who can
declare to you of my great grief and
misery here in prison, by who I would
desire you to send me 24 ounces of
gold, and as for all ye rest you have in
your custody, shall desire you for to
keep in your custody, for it is all we
have to support us in time of want, but
I pray you to deliver to the bearer
hereof the above-mentioned sum,
whose name is Andrew Knott.
Months later, during Knott’s own inter-
rogation by the authorities, he would
recall how:
He went to Captain Payne’s house
on Cononicutt Island and received
from Captain Payne 7 bars of gold
weighing 1 3=4 lb., being weighed by
a pair of steelyards. Payne fetched
the gold from out of an inner room
and took Knott’s receipt. Knott saw
no more gold than what Payne
brought out, and upon the road on
his way homeward, the weight of the
gold broke his pocket, and he lost
one of the bars. The other six he
brought to Boston and Capn Kidd’s
servant maiden, Rebecca, came to
Kidd’s house and fetched the gold to
Kidd, who later gave Knott 20
pieces of eight for his journey and
trouble. The journey took 5 days.
Even before Knott himself had been
arrested, Paine had come under suspicion
as well, and so was interviewed for the

first time on September 26, 1699 (O.S.).
He admitted that Kidd had asked him to
hide some money, but claimed that he
had refused, ‘‘alleging my house would
be searched and [that] I could not do it.’’
However, the Earl of Bellomont did not
believe Paine’s account, and so while in
Newport on official business about a
month later, took the opportunity to send
‘‘for one Pain, a pirate that has bought an
estate on Conanicut Island, under the
government of Rhode Island, and has
lived there some years.’’
At first, Paine refused to offer any
sworn statement before Bellomont on
account of his religious scruples, an
accepted practice from staunch Quakers;
but when the Royal Governor threatened
him with jail, he then ‘‘swore that Kidd
had delivered no goods or treasure to
him, but everyone that was present took
notice that his behavior was extremely
disordered and, I fancy, believing as I,
that he did not swear nice truth.’’ Still,
the disbelieving Governor could not
press any charges until Knott’s home in
Boston happened to be searched later as
well, revealing a small trunk with some
East India goods and Sarah Kidd’s letter
addressed to Paine. Bellomont instantly
noted that ‘‘Mrs. Kidd’s injunction to
keep all the rest that was left with him
till further order, was a plain indication
that there was a good deal of treasure
still behind in Paine’s custody.’’
The Governor therefore wrote to sug-
gest to Governor Cranston of Rhode
Island that a search be made of Paine’s
home, yet no treasure was uncovered. By
November 29, 1699 (O.S.), a frustrated
Bellomont was reporting to the Council
of Trade and Plantations in London:
It seems nothing then was found, but
Pain has since produced 18 ounces and
Paine, Thomas (fl. 1675
1690) 309
odd weight of gold, as appears by Gov.
Cranston’s letter, Nov. 25, and pre-
tends ‘twas bestowed on him by Kidd,
hoping that may pass as a salve for the
oath he made. I think ‘tis plain he fore-
swore himself and I am of the opinion
he has a great deal of Kidd’s goods still
in his hands, but he is out of my power
and being in that government [i.e.,
under the jurisdiction of the private-
charter colony of Rhode Island, rather
than in either of the Crown colonies of
Massachusetts or New York], I cannot
compel him to give up the rest.
No charges were ever laid, and no
more treasure discovered—until more
than a century-and-a-half later, when a
stray gold ingot fell out of Paine’s chim-
ney during some renovations. In one final
touch of irony, while Bellomont had been
in Newport on his official business in
September 1699, he had received a peti-
tion signed by 16 leading citizens,
requesting that a parish of the Church of
England be established on Rhode Island.
The signers included at least six former
West Indian rovers: Robert Colly, George
Cutler, Robert Gardiner, James Gillam,
Robert Powell, and Thomas Paine.
Later Career (1700
1715)
Finally in 1708, although he was nearly
76 years of age, Paine embarked on one
final expedition, when he seconded
Major William Wanton in fighting
against the French. Paine was eventu-
ally buried on the grounds of his Con-
anicut house, which still stands today.
See also
Armadilla; Barlovento, Armada de; Careen;
Coxon, John; Estr
ees, Jean, duc d’;
310 Para
Grammont, Chevalier de; Maintenon,
Charles François d’Angennes, Marquis
de; Morgan, Sir Henry; Nau, Jean-
David; Ogeron, Bertrand d’; Phips, Sir
William; Purchase; Willems, Jan;
Wright, George.
References
Bartlett, John R., Records of the Colony of
Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations, in New England, Volume
III (Providence: State Printers, 1858).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Earle, Peter, The Treasure of the
Concepci
on: The Wreck of the
Almiranta (New York: Viking, 1980).
Ritchie, Robert C., Captain Kidd and the
War against the Pirates (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).
PARA
Dutch nickname for Paramaribo, capi-
tal of their South American colony of
Suriname, whose approaches were
guarded by Fort Zeelandia.
Reference
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert D.,
Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1988).
PATACHE
Generic Spanish term used to describe
any smaller vessel which served as a
consort to a larger ship, or a fleet aux-
iliary, rather than a particular type of
craft.
Pataches occurred in every size and
shape throughout the 17th century,
depending on individual circumstances.
See also
Patache (Volume 2).
PEDNAU, JACQUES
(fl. 1680
1685)
Subordinate commander of the French
flibustier chieftains Grammont and
Laurens de Graaf.
Pednau was first mentioned in the
spring of 1680, commanding Grammont’s
auxiliary brigantine Diligent while sailing
from St. Kitts to Saint Croix. It is
believed that Pednau then participated in
Grammont’s remarkably bold strike
against the Venezuelan port of La Guaira
that same June.
PEDRERO
Spanish name for a swivel gun, a wea-
pon which they—unlike their English,
French, or Dutch counterparts—more fre-
quently took into account when assessing
a vessel’s defensive capabilities, espe-
cially aboard a small craft.
These portable weapons afforded
additional protection against boarders or
other hordes of men, although, strictly
 Pedrero 311

RELOCATION OF PANAMA CITY

In the immediate aftermath to Henry Morgan’s brutal attack of January 1671, frightened
Spanish survivors crept back into their capital, to find that only its Augustinian convent
and a few shacks along its northern fringe had escaped the flames. Disease quickly
appeared as well, more than 3,000 of 10,000 inhabitants perishing from these com-
bined ordeals, in addition to another 600 marched off as buccaneer captives. It was not
until eight ships bearing 2,500 Peruvians finally appeared in April 1671, that a few citi-
zens began to consider rebuilding their homes.
Yet once Antonio Fern
andez de C
ordoba y Mendoza, Knight of the Order of Santiago,
arrived as new Audiencia President in mid-January 1672, it was agreed to abandon the
original city altogether and shift five miles southwest, into the shadow of 560-foot Anc
on
Hill, whose protruding La Punta headland could be easily converted into a defensible posi-
tion by erecting ramparts along its narrow breadth, while its flanks would be protected by
encircling reefs. In addition to financing construction of these defenses, the Crown agreed
to increase the permanent garrison from 200 to 500 royal troops, plus 300 seamen. Fresh
water was available from Chorrillo Spring to its west, while the Perico Island anchorage
lay close by, so that cargos would only have to be lightered two miles before being depos-
ited at El Taller beach.
Peruvian merchants donated 40,000 pesos toward this relocation, so that clearance com-
menced within a year. By the time final approval was received from Madrid, it only
remained for Governor Fern
andez to distribute plots to the first 300 residents in a formal cer-
emony celebrated on January 21, 1673. The original city—henceforth known as Panam
a
la Vieja or ‘‘Old Panama’’—only gradually became depopulated, as moving proved expen-
sive for people who had lost everything, while Fern
andez died in the diseased older city on
April 8, 1673, being succeeded by the corrupt oidor or ‘‘justice’’ Luis de Lozada, who
diverted public funds into a palatial private residence for himself, and expropriated plots for
his personal use.
Yet by 1675, the new city still only contained 1,600 residents, a fraction of its for-
mer population. Their transfer proved justified when 330 Caribbean buccaneers
appeared in early May 1680, having followed Oxenham’s old route across the east-
ern Isthmus. Faced with this menace, the residents feverishly tried completing Pana-
ma’s unfinished stone circuit by throwing up earthen ramparts, while sending out a
scratch naval force to do battle; the force was overwhelmed in a three-hour fight, yet
displayed such spirited resistance that the raiders went in search of easier targets.
Four years later, another Jamaican contingent occupied the offshore Pearl Islands,
until chased away in June 1685 by four Peruvian warships and three hired merchant-
men under Lieutenant General Tom
as Palavacino. Marauders would nevertheless con-
tinue to prowl the Pacific for several more years, rendering trade unsafe and Panama
isolated. Such constant alarms would at least galvanize the Panamanians into com-
pleting their city’s granite walls, plus a dry moat and several batteries. Worse still,
though, was the steady decline in trans-Atlantic and South American traffic, so that
commercial fairs could only be held in 1691, 1698, and 1708, rather than annually
as before.
312 Pennon, Capitaine (fl. 1682)
speaking, they did not constitute part of
a ship’s main armament. Thus, the Span-
iards often listed a small vessel’s cannon
and pedreros separately, a practice not
observed by other maritime powers.
For example, on January 27, 1681
(O.S.), Acting Governor Sir Henry
Morgan wrote to the Lords of Trade
and Plantation in London:
Since the beginning of November
last, there has rid at anchor in this
harbor one Captain John Crocker,
commander of a small Spanish ship
of ten guns and eight ‘‘patereras’’
[sic] and a hundred men, licensed by
the Company of Seville to trade in the
American seas for two years. It now
waits for the Royal African Com-
pany’s ships with Negroes, intending
to sail next week to Cartagena.
In such an instance, these swivels would
not only be a welcome defense in the
pirate-infested Caribbean, but also use-
ful against any slave uprising.
The word pedrero itself is derived
from the Spanish word piedra or
‘‘stone,’’ which was the most common
type of ball fired by the earliest guns,
when gunpowder was first introduced
during medieval times.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
PENNON, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1682)
French flibustier who is named in a
letter written by Governor Sir Thomas
Lynch of Jamaica to his counter-part at
Saint-Domingue, Jacques Nepveu, sieur
de Pouançay, complaining about the
peacetime depredations committed by
certain renegades. This communication,
dated October 1682, specifically refers
to the activities of ‘‘Pennon in a Span-
ish bark.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).

REZ DE GUZMA
PE
N Y
GONZAGA, JUAN
(ca. 1618
1675)
President of the Audiencia of Panama
and knight of the Order of Santiago,
who organized the swift reconquest of
Providencia Island after Edward Mans-
field’s attack in 1666, only to then suf-
fer a stinging defeat at the hands of
Henry Morgan when Panama City was
sacked five years later.
P
erez de Guzm
an was born in Seville
around 1618, entering the Royal Spanish
Navy at 20 years of age. He shipped out
on a treasure-fleet bound for the New
World, twice seeing action against the
Dutch off Havana. By 1640, he was back
in Spain, where he was allowed to raise
his own companies of troops, before
making a second trans-Atlantic voyage.
On his next return to Europe, he was
transferred to Milan in command of a
military company, where he remained
from 1643 until 1647. In 1651, he was
again appointed to duty on New World
convoys, and soon began carving a
 P
erez De Guzm
an Y Gonzaga, Juan (ca. 1618
1675)
reputation as a likely candidate for
administrative service in the empire of
the Americas.
On January 19, 1657, P
erez de
Guzm
an was designated as Governor of
Antioquia in New Granada (present-day
Colombia), yet never occupied that post,
instead becoming interim Governor of
Cartagena. He handled the affairs of this
port so well that he was promoted to
maestre de campo and Governor of
Puerto Rico. He assumed the latter office
on August 26, 1661, acquitting himself
with some distinction. Because of this,
he was again promoted when his term
expired three years later, this time to the
Presidency of the vital Audiencia of Pan-
ama and its surrounding province called
‘‘Tierra Firme.’’ On January 11, 1665,
he was installed, and thus had been in
office almost a year-and-a-half when the
Spanish survivors of Mansfield’s assault
on Providencia Island reached San Lor-
enzo castle at the mouth of the Chagres
River in mid-June 1666. P
erez de
Guzm
an reacted quickly, ordering his
subordinate Jos
e S
anchez Xim
enez to
lead an expedition to recapture this
island, before the English could arrange
reinforcements from Jamaica.
But when the galeones reached the
Isthmus that following year of 1667,
bearing the new Viceroy-designate for
Peru, Pedro Antonio de Castro y Portu-
gal, tenth Conde de Lemus, P
erez de
Guzm
an’s fortunes waned. He and the
new Viceroy took an immediate dislike
to each other, after which P
erez de
Guzm
an was accused of defrauding the
royal treasury of some silver bars. Sus-
pended from office and arrested in July
1667, he was transported as a prisoner
to Peru, his duties being assumed on
an interim basis by Agustı́n de Braca-
monte. The Council of Indies quickly
313
exonerated P
erez de Guzm
an in Janu-
ary 1668, but this pardon did not reach
Peru until a year later. Released from
solitary confinement at Callao, he set
sail on February 4, 1669, aboard the
ship Nuestra Se~ nora de la Granada to
reassume office, arriving in Panama
more than two months later.
A year-and-a-half later (January
1671), P
erez de Guzm
an was ill in bed
with ‘‘Saint Anthony’s fire’’ (erysipe-
las, a contagious skin disease caused
by streptococcus, whose symptoms
included boils and high fever), when
news arrived that a trio of buccaneer
vessels under Joseph Bradley had cap-
tured the fortress guarding the mouth
of the Chagres River, on the north side
of the Isthmus. The Governor rose
from his sickbed to mobilize Panama’s
troops, and on January 20th heard that
more raiders had arrived under Morgan
and were advancing upriver. Despite
the large tumor on his right breast and
repeated bleedings by his physician,
P
erez de Guzm
an rode forth with 800
militiamen next day and camped at
Guayabal to await the enemy. They
advanced inexorably, despite the Span-
iards’ hopes of delaying them in the
jungle with ambushes, and on January
24th the Governor awakened to find
two-thirds of his men had deserted.
Retreating into Panama City, he gave
the order for all able-bodied militiamen
to muster at Mata Asnillos, a mile out-
side the city, while the civilians evac-
uated by ship.
On the evening of Tuesday, January
27, 1671, Morgan’s 600-man vanguard
appeared, still carrying the wine that
they had looted at Venta de Cruces
during their march. ‘‘We have nothing
to fear,’’ a Spanish officer commented
to the militiamen around him, ‘‘There
314 P
erez De Guzm
an Y Gonzaga, Juan (ca. 1618
1675)
are no more than 600 drunkards.’’ But
more companies continued to arrive, so
that by next morning double that num-
ber of buccaneers had mustered. Mor-
gan began his advance at sunrise on
January 28th, with ‘‘red and green ban-
ners and flags clearly visible to the
Spaniards who awaited them on the
plain a couple of miles away.’’ P
erez
de Guzm
an had 1,200 militia infantry-
men drawn up in a long line, six deep,
with two militia cavalry companies of
200 riders apiece on both flanks. But
his inexperienced troops had few fire-
arms and no artillery, and the Governor
pinned rather slender hopes on break-
ing the enemy formation by stamped-
ing two great herds of cattle through
their ranks.
Morgan, however, swung round the
Spaniards’ right flank, at which P
erez
de Guzm
an’s unwieldy host launched
an undisciplined dash against the buc-
caneer lines. These received the Span-
ish charge with concentrated fusillades,
more than 100 militiamen being killed
in the first volley. ‘‘Hardly did our
men see some fall dead and others
wounded,’’ P
erez de Guzm
an reported
later, ‘‘but they turned their backs and
fled.’’ He himself rode into the press
with his staff raised high ‘‘like a
mast,’’ hoping to rally his troops, but
this was impossible. His staff shot
from his hand, the Spaniards scattered
pell-mell, leaving 400 to 500 killed
and injured on the field as opposed to
only 15 buccaneers.
P
erez de Guzm
an rode back through
Panama’s city streets, shouting that all
was lost, and buildings were set ablaze
as the raiders entered in hot pursuit.
He himself eventually fled as far as
the town of Nata, 70 miles southwest
of Panama City on the Pacific coast,
where on February 4th he called for
a fresh muster of conscripts. But only
a few hundred volunteers appeared,
not enough to dislodge Morgan, who
was left in undisputed possession
of Panama City and its environs for
four weeks. He then withdrew with
what booty the buccaneers had been
able to extort, leaving P
erez de
Guzm
an to creep back home. He found
the Panamanian capital devastated and
his own house cruelly vandalized,
with beds, mirrors, desks, and priceless
pictures in a smashed heap, and his
personal library of 500 books torn to
pieces.
He was again suspended from office
on October 9, 1671, when the inspector
or visitador Francisco de Marichalar
arrived from Peru to conduct hearings
into the conduct of his government. This
was a routine procedure for any outgoing
official, and P
erez de Guzm
an’s term
had now expired. But the extraordinary
circumstances created by the invasion
led to court-martial proceedings being
instituted against him on November
17th, which lasted until February 20,
1672, when P
erez de Guzm
an was
acquitted. Nevertheless, he was a broken
man and died three years later, after hav-
ing returned to Madrid.
References
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
L


opez Cantos, Angel, Historia de Puerto
Rico (1650
1700) (Seville: Escuela de
Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,

1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am

erica Espa~nola (Madrid:
Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
PETERSEN, JON (fl. 1659)
Privateer from Kolding, Denmark, who
operated with a Jamaican commission.
On November 1, 1659, the Dutch
slaver Sint Jan of Master Adriaen Blaes
van der Veer ran aground ‘‘two hours
before daybreak’’ on the northeast section
of Los Roques, a dangerous group of
Venezuelan cays located 125 miles east
of Curaçao. Ninety West African slaves
were left aboard in the heavy surf, while
the Captain and crew took to an over-
crowded boat. They stopped at Bonaire
to lighten their craft by offloading some
men, and reached Curaçao by November
4th. Its local West India Company offi-
cials provided Blaes van der Veer with
two small vessels to mount a rescue: the
bark Jonge Vogelstruis or ‘‘Young Os-
trich,’’ and the sloop Jonge Bontekoe (lit-
erally ‘‘Young Spotted Cow,’’ but more
properly ‘‘Spotted Calf’’).
This pair set sail from Curaçao sepa-
rately on November 7, 1659, and next
afternoon the Jonge Vogelstruis came
within sight of Bonaire. As they were
approaching, a 4-gun frigate stood out
from shore ‘‘and ordered them to strike,
threatening to fire if they did not do so
at once.’’ The Dutch complied and dis-
covered that this rover was commanded
by Petersen, with 30 ‘‘English, French,
and German’’ crewmembers aboard his
Kastel Fergat. Jonge Vogelstruis’ crew
told him that they were merely visiting
Company personnel on Bonaire, but
Petersen, despite the recent peace treaty
Petersen, Jon (fl. 1659) 315
signed between England and the United
Provinces, put a prize-crew aboard and
ordered them into the roads. On drop-
ping anchor, the bark was immediately
hailed by Blaes van der Veer’s survivors
on shore, asking whether they had al-
ready rescued ‘‘the Negroes who were
left behind on the stranded ship, or
whether they were just on their way.’’
Angry at having almost been deceived
by Jonge Vogelstruis’ lie, Petersen
detained the Dutch, and the next day,
Sunday, November 9, 1659, sent it to
Little Curaçao to recall his lieutenant and
some men whom he had stationed there
to monitor ship movements. They were
aboard a Spanish piragua which they
had taken earlier off La Guaira, and now
abandoned it at anchor to rejoin Petersen.
Once reassembled, Petersen’s privateers
set sail from Bonaire on the evening of
November 10th, taking their captives
with them. They tacked upwind in the
direction of La Guaira, where they spot-
ted a 6-gun Spanish frigate and a pira-
gua, chasing both until their quarry
beached themselves in the shallows.
Petersen thereupon veered over onto the
opposite tack and attempted to reach Los
Roques, but only got as far as Aves
Islands against the currents.
Here, Kastel Fergat dropped anchor,
and Petersen detached 14 privateers
aboard Jonge Vogelstruis to visit the
wrecked Sint Jan. When they approached
it on November 16, 1659, they found that
the sloop Jonge Bontekoe had already
been at Los Roques for four days, and at
one point had even fastened a line to the
remains of the wrecked slaver. However,
because the weather continued rough and
there were so few hands aboard, they had
not proceeded with the rescue ‘‘for fear
of the Negroes,’’ preferring to wait until
their consort arrived. Instead, Petersen’s
316 Petit, Capitaine (fl. 1682
1684)
men subdued these Dutch salvors and
brought 82 adult slaves and two infants
aboard the Bontekoe, sailing them to
Aves to rejoin Petersen. Meanwhile, the
captive Vogelstruis remained at the
wreck site for another day, pillaging
equipment and goods, including ele-
phants’ tusks. After a week’s captivity,
Petersen restored the Bontekoe to the
Dutch, but kept the Vogelstruis. In light
of the peace prevailing between England
and Holland, his actions were entirely
illegal, although he offered to pay for his
captives’ ‘‘services’’ during the salvage,
which was refused. Angry, Petersen
bluntly told his prisoners: ‘‘Don’t mouth
off too much or you shall all leave na-
ked; and don’t make sail until we have
gone.’’ On the evening of November 23,
1659, Kastel Fergat stood off toward the
Spanish Main, and Bontekoe returned to
Curaçao two days later to lodge an offi-
cial protest. The island Governor noted
that Petersen had ‘‘committed similar
acts before this, under improper commis-
sion, and persists therein now as a public
pirate.’’ He wrote to warn Peter Stuyve-
sant in New Amsterdam (modern New
York) about these raiders, especially ‘‘a
certain Peeckelharinck (literally, ‘Pickled
Herring’) who previously sailed with
Captain Beaulieu at the Cape, and now
and then comes into Your Honor’s area
in New Netherland.’’
Petersen was doubtless the same ‘‘Cap-
tain Peterson’’ mentioned in the journal of
Colonel Edward D’Oyley, Governor of
Jamaica, as having been issued a ‘‘let-
pass’’ on December 31, 1659 (O.S.).
References
Gehring, Charles T. and Schiltkamp, Jacob
A., trans. and eds., Curaçao Papers,
1640
1665, Volume XVII, ‘‘New
Netherland Documents’’ (Interlaken,
NY: Heart of the Lakes Publishing,
1987).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
PETIT, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1682
1684)
During the early 1680s, two French
brothers with this surname were known
to be making commercial voyages
from La Rochelle to the Lesser Antil-
les and Saint-Domingue.
Late in 1682, one of the two departed
Martinique aboard their brigantine Deux
Freres, selling part of its cargo of liquors
and wine at Jacmel to the piratical
flibustiers who were careening their ship
Trompeuse. The English authorities being
in pursuit of that renegade vessel, Gover-
nor Sir Thomas Lynch of Jamaica men-
tioned to London in his report of February
22, 1683 (O.S.), how a ‘‘a small French
bark owned by an honest man, Monsieur
Petit, also came in[to Port Royal] from
Guadeloupe; bound for Petit Guavos,’’ to
give information about the renegades’
movements. Lynch then entrusted him
with a letter for the French Governor of
Saint-Domingue, complaining about
these marauders.
It is unknown whether either brother
was the Captain listed in 1684 as being
in command of the privateer Ruze of four
guns and 40 men, which accompanied
Capitaine Jean Bernanos on his cruise to
Venezuela and the Spanish Main.
See also
Bernanos, Jean; Lynch, Sir Thomas;
Spanish Main.

References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
PICHELINGUE
Also spelled pechilingue or pechelingue.
Spanish nickname for any Dutchman, a
term believed to have evolved from a
garbling of the name of the great Zee-
land seaport of Vlissingen or Flushing,
where so many of ships seem to have
sailed for the New World.
PIECES OF EIGHT
English name for the silver coin known
in Spanish as a peso de ocho reales
(literally, a ‘‘peso worth eight reales’’).
These were minted in such vast quan-
tities at both Mexico City and Lima,
Peru, that they came to circulate all
around the world, from Europe as far
away as China. They were a commonly-
accepted form of currency in England’s
colonies, being valued at four-and-a-half
shillings (or ‘‘four shillings sixpence’’)
apiece, although oftentimes clipped or
chopped into eight pieces—from which
the expression ‘‘two bits’’ for a quarter
was derived. On November 19, 1691,
the newly-appointed Governor of Massa-
chusetts, Sir William Phips, wrote to his
friend Increase Mather: ‘‘There is practi-
cally only Spanish money in New Eng-
land, and many of the people have been
cheated by bad money.’’
Pignier, Captain (fl. 1675
1676) 317
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 11,
13 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898
1899).
PIGNIER, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1675
1676)
English freebooter who operated with a
French commission.
When England withdrew from the
war against The Netherlands in early
1674, many of its West Indian corsairs
shifted allegiance to continue privateer-
ing. One such captain was Pignier, who
obtained a patent from the French
authorities on Saint-Domingue against
the Dutch and Spaniards. On March 26,
1675 (O.S.), the newly-appointed Deputy
Governor of Jamaica, Sir Henry Morgan,
drafted a letter promising ‘‘Pryniar’’ [sic]
and his fellow English rovers a friendly
reception at Port Royal if they were to
come in and cease operations, which
although legal, were becoming an
embarrassment to the English Crown.
The retired buccaneer added that he
hoped ‘‘their experience of him will give
him the reputation that he intends not to
betray them.’’
This proposal was never sent, though,
as Morgan’s superior Lord Vaughan pre-
ferred sterner measures for recalling the
privateers. The failure of his approach
can be judged from the fact that more
than a year later, in a letter dated at Port
Royal on June 24, 1676 (O.S.), it was
being mentioned that:
One Pignier, an Englishman with a
French commission near our Island,
318 Piragua
Typical silver ‘‘piece of eight’’ from 1714; such crudely-stamped coins were produced from
Spanish-American mines, and circulated all over the world. (Private Collection/Peter
Newark Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library)
with considerable purchase taken
from the Spaniards, but understand-
ing they [i.e., English privateers
serving under foreign colors] were to
be hanged if our Governor could lay
hold of them, made their way for
Tortugas, where they were assured
of being better treated.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
PIRAGUA
Spanish-American term for any crude
type of coastal craft or seagoing boat.
Originally, piragua appears to have
been the Carib word for ‘‘dugout
canoe,’’ which was made by felling a
soft cotton or cedar tree, then hollowing
it out with fire and axes. Many were
quite large, measuring almost 40 feet in
length and 6 feet in breadth, capable of
traveling swiftly from one island to
another with the aid of simple masts and
numerous paddlers. Following the con-
quest of the Americas, the Spaniards
continued to employ native carpenters in
the construction of these and similar ves-
sels, which they used as cheap port aux-
iliaries or coastal traders.
By the late 17th century, they had
become slightly more refined in their
designs, differing from canoes—
according to the buccaneer surgeon
Lionel Wafer—‘‘as lighters and small
barges do from wherries.’’ The typical
piragua had a shallow draft, no deck-
ing and a single mast, having to hug
the coastline or travel with a larger
ship whenever it put out to sea. Never-
theless, its ability to work nimbly into
any estuary, or land on any beach,
made it highly popular with pirates,
and the West Indian squadrons that
hunted them.

PISTOLE
Generic English term signifying any
foreign gold coin, especially of Spanish
or French manufacture.
The name is believed derived from
the same root as the word ‘‘pistol,’’
originally meaning a small weapon
designed for use with one hand rather
than two (such as the famous poignards
made at Pistoia near Florence in Italy);
in the same sense, ‘‘pistole’’ came to
be applied to any half-crown coin, as
opposed to the full crown.
In early 1684, Captain Matthew Ten-
nant of HMS Ruby traveled to Cartagena
on the Spanish Main, as escort for a slav-
ing convoy. While lying outside the
roads, he was approached by the em-
ployee of a rival slaving consortium, San-
tiago de Castillo, who delivered ‘‘a
present of 2,000 pistoles from him and
from Don Juan Coleman, an Irish priest.’’
When the Spanish authorities learned of
this money being smuggled out of their
port, they demanded its return, but Ten-
nant refused. When he reached Port
Royal, Jamaica a few weeks later, Gov.
Sir Thomas Lynch made him restore the
sum, referring to the amount involved as
both ‘‘pistoles’’ and ‘‘doubloons.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
PLATE FLEET
Convoy sent annually for the King
of Spain’s American plata or ‘‘silver,’’
hence its name.
Plate Fleet 319
Traditionally, two fleets departed
Seville and Cadiz every year, the first
being the Mexican flota, which set sail
early in spring and after touching at the
Canary and Leeward Islands during its
passage (to refresh water and provisions
only), would traverse the Caribbean
directly for Veracruz. The second was
the Panamanian galeones, which got
under way from Spain somewhat later in
the year and after following the
same route across the Atlantic, stood
into Cartagena before making for Porto-
belo (Panama) to meet the rich
merchants who had traversed the Isth-
mus from Peru. Both convoys were
usually comprised of two men-of-war
as capitana or ‘‘flagship’’ and almiranta
or ‘‘vice-flagship,’’ escorting roughly
a dozen large merchant galleons and
some smaller pataches, all bearing
expensive cargos of European manufac-
tured goods.
After celebrating their respective
commercial fairs, the Mexican and Pana-
manian flagships received chests con-
taining the King’s annual silver
production, and the galleons bales of
American wares such as indigo, log-
wood, hides, and cacao. They would
then rendezvous at Havana, sailing
jointly up the coast of Florida and Caro-
lina, before striking out into the Atlantic
toward the Azores and home.
These fleets were usually too large
and powerful to be attacked by West In-
dian privateers, who had to content
themselves with hunting individual gal-
leons such as the pair of ships which
split off from the Mexican convoy every
year to anchor in the Bay of Honduras
and trade overland into Guatemala.
Moreover, the Spaniards operated their
plate fleets cautiously, almost like block-
ade runners, reconnoitering the sea
320 Poincy, Philippe Lonvilliers De (1584
1660)
before putting out from any port, and
delaying their departure if any danger
threatened. For all its slowness and inef-
ficiency, this system seemed to serve
Spain well—at least against piratical
depredations.
References
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr
ua, 1972).
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am
erica Espa~
nola (Madrid:
Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
POINCY, PHILIPPE
LONVILLIERS DE
(1584
1660)
French Knight of the Order of Malta,
who after long service against the
Turks and Protestants in Europe, emi-
grated to Saint Kitts in the Lesser
Antilles, and stoutly defended that
island against the English and Spanish,
as well as extending French influence
on to Tortuga.
Born in Picardy in 1584, Poincy
entered the Knights of Malta at the age
of 21, and served brilliantly aboard the
Order’s galleys against the Turks in
the Mediterranean.
Reference


Taillemite, Etienne, Dictionnaire des
Marins Français (Paris: Editions
Maritimes et d’Outre-mer, 1982).
PONS, JEAN
(fl. 1683
1686)
Flibustier from Martinique, whose
arrest by the Royal Navy heightened
international tensions.
As early as September 28, 1683, Pons
had been issued a commission at Fort
Saint-Pierre by Claude de Roux, Cheva-
lier de Saint Laurent and Acting Gover-
nor-General of the French West Indies,
to operate in the Lesser Antilles. On July
26, 1686, it was renewed by his succes-
sor Comte de Bl
enac, and Pons sailed
from Martinique to Tobago with his
brigantine Françoise, to fish and hunt.
This island had been captured from the
Dutch by the Duc d’Estr
ees almost a
decade earlier during the Franco-Dutch
War, and remained a French possession.
While lying at anchor, there arrived
nearby the frigate HMS Mary Rose of
Captain Temple, to make a peacetime
visit. Some Dutch settlers informed the
Royal Navy officer that Pons had boasted
he held a commission ‘‘to confiscate all
English vessels found in the harbors of
that island,’’ and moreover extended this
authority to the English-claimed Saint
Lucia, Dominica, and Saint Vincent as
well. They added that the French rover
seemed to be ‘‘on some piratical design,
being armed and manned for more than
his ostensible business.’’ These unsub-
stantiated charges were then apparently
confirmed when the Mary Rose’s
pinnace:
. . . was attacked by two or three large
piraguas full of Indians with some
white men among them, who fired
several arrows and killed two men.
The pinnace put them to flight, took
two of the boats, and some of the

Indians. The rest, with the whites,
saved themselves by swimming, but
in the boat were found French arms
and apparel such as Indians do not
wear, also some boxes. Hence the
white men were suspected to belong
to this brigantine.
Consequently, Temple seized Pons’
Françoise, and carried it into Barbados
for adjudication at the end of September
1686. Lieutenant-Gov. Edwyn Stede
believed the Royal Navy captain correct
in his suspicions, but for lack of evi-
dence the flibustiers were released, and
their vessel and goods restored. Stede
nonetheless dispatched a letter to Bl
enac,
asking him to clarify the clause in Pons’
commission prohibiting ‘‘foreign ships
in French anchorages,’’ and also request-
ing that all Frenchmen be recalled from
Saint Lucia, ‘‘for I cannot allow them
to continue there.’’ The Lieutenant-
Governor then dispatched Mary Rose
and other English vessels to cut timber
on Saint Lucia, with the express aim of
maintaining ‘‘our claims and our posses-
sions there.’’
When Françoise returned to Martini-
que one month later, Pons immediately
lodged a formal protest. The Governor-
General in turn availed himself of this
complaint to denounce all of Temple’s
proceedings, replying to Stede on Octo-
ber 24th: ‘‘I thought that I had to deal
with a pirate, and that his credentials
were forged, and but for your last letter I
should think so still.’’ He dismissed the
Lieutenant-Governor’s request for clari-
fication, saying merely: ‘‘You wish to
know which are the French anchorages;
no one has ever asked this before, and
they are well enough known.’’ But the
real thrust of Bl
enac’s letter was
revealed when he wrote:
Pons, Jean (fl. 1683
1686) 321
You say you have orders to retake
Saint Lucia and Dominica; I have
orders to hold them. The matter is
for our masters to decide. You say
you wish to keep the peace between
the two nations; allow me to inform
you that Captain Temple’s proceed-
ings are not best calculated to do so.
That following month, word of Temple’s
descent on Saint Lucia reached Paris, and
the minister De Seignelay informed his
English counterpart Lord Sunderland:
I have laid this extraordinary proceed-
ing before the King [Louis XIV], who
is the more surprised at it since the
Treaty of Neutrality between the two
nations in America is but a year old.
The King is convinced that both the
[Lieutenant Governor of Barbados]
and the [Royal Navy] captain have
acted without orders. As to the prop-
erty of Saint Lucia, it belongs incon-
testably to France.
Throughout the subsequent diplomatic
exchange, the English side was handi-
capped by the unjustified seizure of
Pons’ Françoise, as well as by the fact
that not all the flibustiers’ goods had
been restored as promised, but rather
embezzled by Mary Rose’s officers and
crew. These and many other incidents
eventually contributed to the outbreak of
the War of the League of Augsburg two
years later, becoming known in America
as King William’s War.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899).
322 Port Royal
PORT ROYAL
Principal harbor and town for 17th-
century Jamaica, which gained unde-
served notoriety as a buccaneer lair.
When the Parliamentary expedition of
Admiral William Penn and General
Robert Venables swept down the island’s
southeastern coast in May 1655, it came
within sight of a fine natural harbor,
whose 10 square miles of deep-water an-
chorage were protected from currents and
storms by a slender, two-mile-long spit of
land. A century-and-a-quarter earlier,
Jamaica’s original Spanish colonists had
fanned out from this very harbor—called
Caguaya by native fishermen—to begin
clearing farms on the fertile Liguanea
Plain just to its west, and establish their
capital six to seven miles inland at San-
tiago de la Vega or ‘‘Saint James of the
Plain.’’ Ever since then, Spanish planters
had ferried their harvests back down the
Cobre or ‘‘Copper’’ River for export
aboard the few small ships which called
in what would later become known as
Hunt’s Bay, which lay inside Caguaya’s
protective natural breakwater. The west-
ernmost tip of that land-spit remained
uninhabited, though, known only to the
Spaniards as Cayo Carena or ‘‘Careening
Key.’’
Therefore, at dawn of May 20, 1655,
Penn transferred from his 60-gun flag-
ship Swiftsure aboard the lighter 12-gun
galley Martin, to lead a flotilla of shal-
low-draught vessels inside this vast an-
chorage. Despite grounding a few times
amid its uncharted outer shoals, plus a
brief exchange of shots with the battery
covering its inner roads (soon to be
renamed ‘‘Passage Fort’’), Penn disem-
barked a contingent unopposed at Esqui-
vel by 10:00 A.M., and the next day
pushed inland to occupy Santiago de la
Vega, which forced the outnumbered
Spaniards to sue for terms. Venables
came ashore to announce that Jamaica’s
1,500 inhabitants must depart within a
fortnight, yet not all agreed. The more
defiant instead rallied at the inland town
of Guatibacoa, allying themselves with
the cimarrones or ‘‘renegade black
slaves’’ of the mountainous interior to
mount a guerrilla resistance.
The English invaders meanwhile dis-
gorged several thousand soldiers, who
secured Caguaya Bay and Santiago de la
Vega, which they renamed ‘‘Cagaway’’
and ‘‘Spanish Town’’ respectively. Yet
as they were already suffering from trop-
ical diseases contracted earlier during
their unsuccessful assault against Santo
Domingo, plus a scarcity of provisions,
they soon began dying by the hundreds.
Because of this fearsome outbreak, Penn
hastily weighed for England on June
25th with 20 warships, leaving behind a
dozen under Vice Admiral William
Goodson.
Erection as Cagaway
(1655
1660)
Because of their tenuous toehold on
Jamaica, the dwindling number of healthy
Englishmen decided to start work a couple
of weeks later on a 20-gun, rectangular
sea-castle at the western tip of Caguaya’s
land-spit, a strategic position which would
be less vulnerable to surprise attacks out of
the interior, and help secure this vital an-
chorage. By quarrying limestone out of the
Port Henderson Hills on the mainland op-
posite, a stout new stronghold soon began
to take shape, which was christened
‘‘Fort Cromwell’’ by October 1655. The

old Spanish battery on the western side of
Hunt’s Bay was also strengthened, while
Santiago de la Vega was completely
encircled by a wooden palisade as of that
same November.
Yet most construction efforts remained
concentrated at Cagaway Point, whose
stone citadel was sufficiently complete by
January 1656 to receive a regiment with-
drawn from Spanish Town, despite
the fact that these troops at first had to
bivouac amid the spit’s low scrubland
dunes in 100 tents. Still, the site was
deemed healthier than the island capital
because of its cooling sea-breezes and
sandy subsoil, which prevented stagnant
puddles from forming. A round stone
tower was also begun within Fort Crom-
well’s circuit by March 1656, and as
fears of a Spanish reconquest gradually
faded, thousands of settlers began arriv-
ing from the Leeward Islands to clear
farms on the nearby Liguanea Plain.
Soon, the extemporized huts and
shacks along Cagaway Point gave way to
more permanent structures, development
gaining further impetus after the Com-
monwealth’s acting military Gov. Wil-
liam Brayne noted in July 1657 that he
intended ‘‘all our storehouses and trade
shall be [there], which will soon make it
a flourishing place.’’ A new Governor’s
residence and large State storehouse were
duly erected, while private plots were
surveyed and sold in 60-foot lengths, fac-
ing the inner harbor. Christchurch was
commenced by early January 1658, and a
smithy’s forge next month. By August,
there were at least three rows of houses
lining the Point and as an added defense
against attack, a line of palisades (spelled
‘‘pallisadoes’’) was erected across the
spit’s eastern extremity, radiating out
from a strong gatehouse. An oak-planked
Port Royal 323
courthouse was also added to the emerg-
ing town, while Fort Cromwell increased
its ordinance to 75 guns.
By the time news of the Protector’s
death arrived early in 1659, private land
was already becoming scarce on Cag-
away Point, despite the disadvantages
for residents of having to ferry drinking-
water and fresh food out from the main-
land in canoes. Plantations were also
multiplying across Liguanea Plain; while
trade with England and New England
was fast growing, so that by the summer
of 1660 the town boasted roughly 200
houses—many built of brick—with a
permanent populace of 600 to 700 peo-
ple, not including its military garrison or
the hundreds of transient seafarers.
Transformation into Port Royal
(1661
1691)
In August 1660, reports from London
indicated that the Commonwealth had
collapsed and Charles II had been
restored to the throne, so that Fort Crom-
well was renamed ‘‘Fort Charles,’’ and
Cagaway became ‘‘Port Royal.’’ Jamai-
ca’s first Royal Governor—Thomas, 7th
Baron Windsor de Stanwell—did not
actually arrive to assume office until Au-
gust 1662, being well received as he had
brought out the Cromwellian army’s
back pay, discharging over 1,000 surviv-
ing soldiers with full wages and a gratu-
ity. This official furthermore convened a
legislative assembly at the old capital of
Spanish Town, as well as establishing a
Vice-Admiralty Court so that local cases
would not have to be adjudicated across
the Atlantic. But his most welcome inno-
vation was the issuance of privateer-
ing commissions against the regional
324 Pouançay, Jacques Nepveu, Sieur De (?
1683)
Spaniards, despite the nominal peace
existing with that nation back in Europe.
Aggrieved by the continual threat of
counter-invasion and other hostile acts by
their Spanish-American neighbors, some
1,300 men—many of them discharged
soldiers, including a 27-year-old militia
Captain named Henry Morgan—eagerly
volunteered in September 1662 for a
raid against Santiago de Cuba, led by
Jamaica’s naval commander-in-chief,
Commodore Christopher Myngs. The
easy success of this venture encouraged
the island Council to authorize another
such assault on December 12th of that
same year against Campeche, which also
triumphed. Port Royal was to conse-
quently flourish as a major privateering
base over the ensuing decade, Morgan
emerging as ‘‘Admiral’’ of a host of free-
booters drawn from throughout the West
Indies, leading them on large-scale
descents against Portobelo in 1668,
Maracaibo next year, and Panama in 1671.
The Jamaican port witnessed a com-
mensurate rise in peaceful traffic as
well with more than 200 merchantmen
calling at its anchorage between Janu-
ary 1668 through January 1670, while
Port Royal’s permanent populace grew
by 1673 to ‘‘714 free men, 529 free
women, 426 free children, and 312
slaves’’—1,981 inhabitants spread
among roughly 800 dwellings. Seven
years later, the town’s population had
continued to rise so impressively that it
was estimated to comprise almost
3,000 people: ‘‘. . . a little over 2,000
whites and about 850 blacks. . . .’’
Nevertheless, Spanish Town, which
was smaller still legally remained the
island’s capital, and the plantation-
owners who had come to dominate
Jamaican affairs deplored the excesses
committed by the Port Royal privateers,
whose bellicosity threatened the peaceful
expansion of sugar, cacao, and tobacco
exports. Thanks to the disproportionate
political power wielded by this elite—as
only large landowners were permitted to
sit as representatives in the Assembly or
on the Council—they were able to vote
to curtail buccaneer raids during the early
1670s, while simultaneously encouraging
the importation of African slaves to clear
and operate ever-larger estates on the
island. Such policies not only altered
Jamaica’s demographics—its white pop-
ulace declining from roughly 12,000 peo-
ple in 1680 to 7,000 by 1700, while its
slave population rose from 15,000 to
40,000 during that same interlude—they
furthermore diminished Port Royal’s
importance, as new outlets were created
to export produce more directly.
To add to its woes, Port Royal was
buffeted by a pair of hurricanes in 1683
to 1684, producing extensive flooding
and erosion. Still, it remained Jamaica’s
largest and busiest town, as well as
the region’s principal naval base, its
defenses having been augmented by the
erection of Forts James, Carlisle, and
Rupert, as well as a 16-gun battery
known as ‘‘Morgan’s Line.’’
POUANÇAY, JACQUES
NEPVEU, SIEUR DE
(?
1683)
Fifth French Governor of Tortuga
Island and Saint-Domingue and a great
abettor to its flibustiers.
Pouançay was the eldest of two chil-
dren born to Bertrand d’Ogeron’s older
sister Jeanne, by her husband Thomas
Nepveu. He served for many years as
his uncle’s aide on Saint-Domingue,
 Pouançay, Jacques Nepveu, Sieur De (?
1683) 325

A rare depiction of Port Royal and its shipping in 1687 by John Taylor, a teacher and writer
of mathematics who lived for a while on Jamaica, before returning home to England.
(National Library of Jamaica)

deputizing for him as Governor of that few possibilities of prospering. Because

colony on several occasions, and endur-
ing the 1673 shipwreck on Puerto Rico
by his side. Pouançay was evidently also
in Paris when Ogeron died, being named
as his successor in a commission dated
at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on March 16,
1676. (Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy had
been serving as interim Governor during
both men’s absence in France.)
On assuming office as Governor,
Pouançay attempted to revive the colo-
nial economy ‘‘by giving privateering
commissions, on condition these return
to the island’’ with their spoils, as oth-
erwise he felt that Saint-Domingue had
of the continual frictions between the
French and Spanish colonists, he felt
justified in continuing this aggressive
policy even after peace was declared in
Europe three years later.
At the end of July 1680, an envoy
visited Pouançay from the Spanish
Governor of Santo Domingo, bearing a
copy of the recently-ratified Treaty of
Nijemegen between France and Spain,
as well as a private letter calling for
peace on condition that Pouançay
‘‘restrain and contain the subjects of
France that inhabit Tortuga,’’ prohibit-
ing them from landing on the coasts of
326 Powell, Henry (fl. early 1650s)
Hispaniola. Pouançay rejected this pro-
posal, pointing out that the peace treaty
contained ‘‘no article concerning the
affairs of this government,’’ having
been deliberately crafted like previous
agreements by Madrid to avoid any
mention of French settlements in the
New World. Pouançay said that he was
willing to live in peace with the local
Spaniards, but would place no unrea-
sonable restraints on the movements of
French citizens, who had inhabited
large stretches of Santo Domingo’s
northern and western shores for more
than 40 years.
Privately, Pouançay wrote to his supe-
rior Colbert that he believed the Spanish
offer had been prompted only by the
presence of Vice-Admiral the Duc
d’Estr
ees’s squadron in the West Indies,
which reached Petit-Go^ave in late August
of that same year. The Governor felt that
a profitable smuggling trade could even-
tually be developed with the Spaniards of
Santo Domingo, yet doubted whether
there was any sincerity in this particular
offer of a truce. As proof, he pointed to
the recent capture of a merchantman from
Nantes off the Cayman Islands, taken by
the 40-gun ship of Francisco Gal
an and
sailed into Havana for adjudication.
Consequently, Pouançay was to main-
tain this hard line against the Spaniards,
which gave ample employment to the
1,000 to 1,200 flibustiers who operated
out of Saint-Domingue under such cap-
tains as the Sieur de Grammont, Pierre le
Picard, and Jean Rose. The French col-
ony had a total population of 7,800 peo-
ple, including engag
es and slaves, and
depended on these raiders for their pros-
perity; as in the words of Pouançay,
‘‘What the flibustiers take is employed
here, and their silver passes to France.’’
He was equally disturbed to see corsairs
retiring into ‘‘Jamaica, into some islands
dependent on Curaçao, to the Virginias,
to New England, and the coast of
Florida’’ to dispose of their booty, actively
seeking to entice them to his coast.
Under these circumstances, it was
hardly surprising that Pouançay issued
a letter of reprisal to the Dutch rover
Nikolaas Van Hoorn in early 1683, af-
ter the latter had been cheated out of a
consignment of slaves at Santo Domi-
ngo. The French Governor was con-
vinced that the Spaniards intended to
attack his colony anyway, and believed
such punitive raids kept them divided
and off balance. Van Hoorn used his
commission to mount a massive strike
against Veracruz that May, with the
combined forces of Grammont and
Laurens de Graaf; this was doubtless
more retaliation than Pouançay had in
mind, but he died before any recrimi-
nations could reach him from Paris. On
September 30, 1683, De Cussy was
appointed to succeed him.
References
Crouse, Nellis M., The French Struggle for
the West Indies, 1665
1713 (New York:
Octagon, 1966).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
POWELL, HENRY
(fl. early 1650s)
English seaman, originally from Ratcl-
iff, who prowled the Gulf of Mexico.
On April 26, 1654 (O.S.), the English
Secretary of State John Thurloe was

informed that Powell ‘‘was roving in the
Mexican Gulf from top to bottom, with
his brother, near the space of two years.’’
Evidently, this seafaring experience in
those waters meant that Powell was
being considered for a role in Crom-
well’s forthcoming Western Design.
Reference
Thurloe, John, A Collection of the State
Papers of John Thurloe, Vol. 2 (London,
1742).
PRINS, LAURENS
(fl. 1658
1680)
Dutch corsair who served for many
years among the English of Jamaica,
under the Anglicized name of ‘‘Law-
rence Prince.’’
In the summer of 1658, Commodore
Christopher Myngs returned to that
island from a raid against the Spanish
Main with three prizes, which were all
sold to men who would eventually prove
to be formidable corsairs: the largest, of
eight guns and 60 tons, was bought by
Robert Searle and renamed the Cagway;
one of four guns and 50 tons was pur-
chased by Prins, who changed its name
to Pearl; while the third later became
John Morris’ Dolphin. Six years later,
Prins had become so trusted an English
subject that he was commissioned to
mount an expedition against his former
countrymen on the tiny Dutch West In-
dian outpost of Bonaire.
Bonaire Raid (February 1665)
By late 1664, trade rivalries between
England and The Netherlands had
become so intense that Gov. Sir Thomas
Prins, Laurens (fl. 1658
1680) 327
Modyford of Jamaica felt justified in
issuing local licenses for attacks against
Dutch possessions. One of these was
granted to Prins, who sortied from Port
Royal in command of Searle’s 8-gun frig-
ate Cagway, with a crew of 61 ‘‘mostly
English’’ freebooters. After a long
upwind beat into the Lesser Antilles, he
fell on the unsuspecting settlers of Bon-
aire four hours before daybreak on Febru-
ary 11, 1665. Oblivious of the danger that
had been bearing down on them, they
naturally proved easy prey, and were par-
ticularly outraged to discover the nation-
ality of their captor. Prins openly bragged
that he had been born in Amsterdam,
‘‘and acted with great insolence against
the defenceless people,’’ ordering them
bound, and forcing them to reveal the
whereabouts of their livestock.
The raiders remained on Bonaire for
six days, causing considerable damage
before withdrawing. It is believed that
Prins and his men then also plundered
the galliot Hoop or ‘‘Hope’’ of Jan Pie-
tersz Poppen, removing a native pilot
‘‘in order to guide them in their villain-
ous deeds.’’ When news of these dep-
redations reached Curaçao, an arrest
order was issued by the Dutch West
India Company for both Prins and his
English frigate.
Spanish Main and Nicaragua
Raids (Summer 1670)
Little more was heard of his activities
over the next few years, although Prins
was known to have sold Henry Morgan
his first Jamaican plantation toward the
end of that same decade. In the summer
of 1670, Prins and Captains Harris
and Ludbury took it on themselves to
retaliate for the nuisance raids of the
328 Prins, Laurens (fl. 1658
1680)
Spanish corsair Manoel Rivero Pardal. In
a singularly bold stroke, the Dutchman
led his small flotilla up Colombia’s Mag-
dalena River in an attempt to reach the
important town of Momp
os, 150 miles
from the sea. This daring attempt was
checked by a fort which had recently
been erected on an island in that river.
But the trio then headed westward in
August 1670 to the Mosquito Coast,
hoping to find better fortune. Despite the
fort which had been installed (after Mor-
gan’s raid five years previously), Prins
and his cohorts ascended the San Juan
River, stole across the Lago de Nicara-
gua, and surprised the city of Granada.
According to a Spanish account, Prins
‘‘made havoc and a thousand destruc-
tions,’’ further driving home his demand
for ransom by ‘‘sending the head of a
priest in a basket and saying that he
would deal with the rest of the prisoners
in the same way, unless they gave him
70,000 pesos.’’
A few weeks later, he was back in Port
Royal, William Beeston noting in his
journal for October 19, 1670 (O.S.):
‘‘Arrived the ships that had taken Grenada
[sic], who were Captains Prince, Harris
and Ludbury.’’ Governor Modyford
allegedly reproved the trio for attacking
the Spaniards without commissions, yet
thought it prudent not ‘‘to press the matter
too far in this juncture.’’ Instead, he
ordered them to go join Morgan’s own
retaliatory expedition that was gathering
off ^Ile a Vache, ‘‘which they were very
ready to do.’’
Panama Campaign
(1670
1671)
Prins incorporated his ship Pearl of 10
guns and 50 men into Morgan’s fleet,
and because of his fierce reputation and
friendship with the Admiral, was consid-
ered a senior officer. He served in the
subsequent capture of Providencia Island,
and the advance overland from Chagres
through the Isthmian jungles. When the
1,200-man buccaneer host finally con-
fronted Juan P
erez de Guzm
an’s army
outside the gates of Panama City at day-
break on January 28, 1671, Prins com-
manded Morgan’s 300-man vanguard
with the rank of ‘‘Lieutenant-Colonel,’’
while John Morris served as his ‘‘Major.’’
This unit advanced to a hillock off the
Spaniards’ right flank, and when
the enemy charged, smashed their will
with a murderous fire that killed almost
100 Panamanian militiamen with its
opening volley. The city was quickly cap-
tured and looted over the next four
weeks, producing a disappointingly small
booty, because much of its wealth had
been evacuated prior to the occupation.
Curiously, the Spaniards later reported
that the invaders had ‘‘brought with them
an Englishman, whom they called the
Prince, with intent there to crown him
King of Tierra Firme [i.e., the Spanish
Main].’’
Prins’ Pearl returned to Port Royal
in April 1671, along with Morgan
aboard Joseph Bradley’s Mayflower,
Morris’ Dolphin, and Thomas Harris’
Mary. The Dutchman was spared the
official opprobrium which subsequently
descended on Modyford and Morgan
for these unauthorized hostilities against
Spanish America, and which resulted in
their being sent as prisoners to England
a few months afterward. Instead, Prins
was assigned by the new Gov. Sir
Thomas Lynch as deputy to the Lieu-
tenant Governor, being described as
‘‘one of the great privateers,’’ who fur-
thermore was:

. . . a sober man, very brave, and an
exact pilot. I thought it not amiss for
that reason to employ him, and to let
the Spaniards see the privateers are
subjects to the King’s orders, and
have not all left the island, but take
it as an honor to serve the King in
any capacity.
Prins apparently forsook roving, and
by 1672 had become a considerable land-
owner on the Liguanea Plain, which was
then being opened up for new plantations.
Eight years later, a man named Samuel
Long brought charges in January 1680
against another Jamaican Governor, the
Earl of Carlisle, asserting that among
many other things, he had violated Crown
policy by giving encouragement to
pirates. As proof of this, Long declared:
I have seen one Captain Prince, who
is said to be a proclaimed pirate,
with others said to be privateers,
leading each his woman by the said
Earl as he sat in his coach viewing
affairs; many of the Council and As-
sembly standing by the said Earl,
making some comment on them as
they passed. I perceived he both saw
and knew who they were.
References
Gehring, Charles T., and Schiltkamp, Jacob
A., trans. and eds. Curaçao Papers,
1640
1665.
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Puerto del Prı́ncipe 329
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
PUERTO DEL PRÍNCIPE
Cuban town, whose demoralized citizens
relocated after repeated pirate raids, and
is today resurrected as Camag€uey.
Despite its original name, Puerto del
Prı́ncipe was not a seaport, although it
started out as one. On February 2,
1514, the army of Spanish conquista-
dores invading Cuba from east to west
had constituted a new town dubbed
Santa Marı́a del Puerto del Prı́ncipe
along its north coastline, sited atop a
headland at Guincho Point, which
dominated a vast natural harbor. Yet
this arid setting (on the northeastern
fringes of the modern city of Nuevitas)
and the ensuing plagues of locusts
drove its residents away only two years
later, shifting to a former Indian settle-
ment on the Caonao River banks (near
modern Esmeralda). However, an even
more tempting locale soon beckoned
from deeper inland.
As most Spaniards subsequently left
Cuba to participate in the conquest of
Mexico, cattle-ranching came to be a
principal occupation of those few who
remained behind. The entire small
town was therefore moved once again
in 1528, more than 45 miles inland
from the sea (yet still within the boun-
daries of the vast original municipal-
ity), to a lush valley which had once
been the core of chief Camag€uey’s
native fiefdom. A new site was duly
cleared between the Tı́nima and Hati-
bonico Rivers, while some 20 land-
owners claimed a sprawling network of
330 Puerto Real
outlying ranches. Slowly, the town
evolved, serving as rural hub for this
district. A Franciscan monastery was
erected in 1599, and a Mercedarian
two years afterward. When a fire
claimed most structures in 1616, Puerto
del Prı́ncipe was rebuilt.
Numerous streams and rivers,
known collectively as the Vertientes,
ran down to Cuba’s southern coastline,
providing many outlets for trade. The
few Spanish island traders, though,
were oftentimes supplemented by for-
eign vessels, who anchored discreetly
in unfrequented bays to conduct their
clandestine business, far from official
eyes. Such visitors also rustled cattle,
which were free-ranging, and became
so familiar with the local terrain that
unfortified Puerto del Prı́ncipe proved
to be vulnerable.
Morgan’s Raid (March 1668)
At dawn on March 27, 1668, Henry
Morgan set a large party of buccaneers
ashore at Florida Beach in Santa Marı́a
Cove (today called Santa Cruz del Sur),
to steal overland and attack Puerto del
Prı́ncipe. The Spaniards attempted to
dispute the raiders’ passage next sunrise
with 800 militia cavalrymen and native
spearmen, yet they were helpless
against the buccaneers’ superior fire-
power, which inflicted several hundred
casualties, including more than 100
deaths, before carrying Puerto Prı́ncipe
by storm that same afternoon. Three
days of pillage ensued, although the
raiders withdrew by April 1st with only
50,000 pieces of eight, a disappointing
sum when it had to be redistributed
among so many. The Spaniards eventu-
ally provided 500 additional cattle to
ransom their hostages, so that Morgan
left Cuba well supplied for his planned
assault on Portobelo.
Grammont’s Raid
(February 1679)
On February 21, 1679, an expedition
under Grammont disembarked from three
ships, two brigantines, and four lesser
craft in La Gloria Bay near Guanaja
along the north coast of Cuba, and
advanced overland with 600 flibustiers
against Puerto del Prı́ncipe. The Spanish
priest Francisco Garcer
an chanced to
sight these raiders when they reached La
Matanza, and carried a warning into
Puerto del Prı́ncipe. Its inhabitants fled,
allowing the invaders to enter unopposed,
finding its dwellings mostly empty.
Some 600 Spanish militiamen mean-
while gathered under alcalde mayor
Benito de Ag€uero, challenging the buc-
caneers’ retreat back toward the coast
with their few captives. In a pitched
battle on February 25th in the Cubitas
Range, Grammont was compelled to
extemporize a redoubt, suffering 70
killed before his Dutch-born colleague
Laurens de Graaf could extricate
his contingent, inflicting 67 Spanish
fatalities.
Grammont regained the coast and
took 14 prominent women prisoners
aboard his flotilla, whom the Spaniards
ransomed after 30 days.
PUERTO REAL
Generic Spanish expression meaning
‘‘Port Royal,’’ and which during the
17th century was used by seamen to
describe a large, deep-water anchorage.

Morgan’s men fighting their way into the
inland Cuban town of Puerto del Prı´ncipe,
March 1668; from a later edition by
Exquemelin. (Exquemelin, Alexandre
Olivier. The buccaneers of America: a
true account of the most remarkable
assaults. . . . , 1893)
One famous example would be Puerto
Real de Santa Marı́a, a wide sheltered bay
on the mainland behind the great Atlantic
seaport of Cadiz, which sits at the tip of
its own separate spit of land in southwest-
ern Spain. Less well-known would be
Puerto Real de Mampatare, a deep-water
harbor at the southeastern corner of the
Venezuelan island of Margarita, which is
today known simply as Pampatar.
The favorite buccaneer anchorage
hidden on the southern face of Roat
an
Island also went by this same name; in
mid-March 1684, for instance, Gov.
Pedro de Ponte of Panama wrote to his
colleague Juan Pando de Estrada at
Punch House 331
Cartagena, warning that the pirate leader
Laurens de Graaf had ‘‘in mid-February
been at the island of Roat
an, by another
name Puerto Real.’’ Inside Mexico’s La-
guna de T
erminos on the Gulf Coast, the
so-called ‘‘Bay of Campeche’’ often fre-
quented by foreign logwood cutters or
Baymen, lay yet another deep-water an-
chorage known as Puerto Real.
PUNCH HOUSE
English nickname originally applied to
any low drinking establishment where
‘‘punch’’ or some other such alcoholic
concoction was sold, although also
coming to mean a brothel.
On September 30, 1678 (O.S.), the
Assembly on the West Indian island of
St. Kitts passed ‘‘An act touching tavern-
keepers and rum punch-house keepers,
not to trust any person upon account for
above 200 pounds of sugar, before taking
a note for the same.’’ In other words, as
sugar served as currency on that island,
an inebriated customer was not to be
allowed to run up a high bill, without pro-
viding some confirmation in writing. And
a visitor to 17th-century Port Royal in
Jamaica would describe its punch houses
as haunts of ‘‘such a crew of vile strum-
pets and common prostitutes, that ‘tis
almost impossible to civilize’’ the town.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 10
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1896).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
332 Purchase
PURCHASE
English euphemism for ‘‘booty’’ or
‘‘loot,’’ commonly used among priva-
teers and pirates.
In particular, the phrase ‘‘no pur-
chase, no pay’’ was employed to advise
any prospective recruits for a cruise
that if no prize-money—i.e., ‘‘pur-
chase’’—resulted, there could be no pay
for the men, who otherwise received no
regular wages. These circumstances
made rovers especially eager to tackle
any rich target which they chanced on
at sea, leading to acts both of astonish-
ing bravery and low criminality.
Just as a tempting reward could
draw privateers into almost any hare-
brained venture, the lack of good pros-
pects could also deter them from even
the most necessary enterprise. For
instance, Acting-Governor Hender
Molesworth of Jamaica wished to dis-
patch a small expedition into the south
cays of Cuba late in 1684, to protect
English turtlers against the Spanish and
French corsairs who were waging a bit-
ter struggle in those waters. Despite
the fact that Jamaica depended on this
crucial source of food, Molesworth
found few volunteers forthcoming ‘‘on
the conditions of no purchase no pay,’’
as privateers thought that the elusive
enemy piraguas employed in that
struggle would prove worthless as
prizes.
The Governor therefore entered into
an arrangement with several prominent
Port Royal citizens, who agreed to hire
the privateer sloops, in exchange for a
two-month monopoly over turtling.
Molesworth reported to London that he
had found this ‘‘a cheap and reasonable
demand,’’ adding:
. . . they have their choice of men
(the lowest of whom gets 40 shil-
lings a month), and so can depend
on their crews, whereas if they had
gone upon the first design, as volun-
teers, I should have been in constant
fear of a mutiny, the damned priva-
teering business reigning much in
the minds of those people.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
PURDUE, JOHN
(fl. 1662
1663)
Early English privateer, who operated
out of Jamaica.
Amid the hurried preparations at Port
Royal to dispatch Commodore Christo-
pher Myngs’ quick-strike expedition
against Santiago de Cuba, Purdue was
one of six Captains issued a privateering
commission on September 18, 1662
(O.S.), by the recently-arrived Governor
Thomas, Lord Windsor. Like his col-
leagues John Bull, Jacob Fackman,
Abraham Mitchell, and Robert Searle,
Purdue secured a six-month license to
rove with his 4-gun, 40-man Purdue, a
former Spanish frigate; only George Bri-
macain received a 10-month permit.
Doubtless Purdue weighed shortly
thereafter as part of Myngs’s flotilla,

to participate in the sack and destruc-
tion of Santiago de Cuba. He may
have also served in the subsequent
raid against the Mexican port of
Campeche in February 1663, although
no further details of his activities are
recorded.
See also
Brimacain, George; Bull, John; Fackman,
Jacob; Mitchell, Abraham; Myngs, Sir
Purdue, John (fl. 1662
1663) 333
Christopher; Searle, Robert; Windsor,
Thomas, Lord.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1880).
National Archives [UK], PRO HCA 49/59,
folios 83
92.
 R
There never was a sober fellow,
but what was a rogue.
REIJNIERSEN, CLAES
(fl. 1673)
Dutch privateer who operated out of
Suriname.
On March15, 1673, Reijniersen was
patrolling the eastern reaches of the
Wild Coast, when late that afternoon
he saw the flotilla of Cornelis Evert-
sen (‘‘Kees the Devil’’) approaching
with supplies from Zeeland. Knowing
them to be desperately needed, as Sur-
iname had been cut off from The
Netherlands ever since the wars with
France and England had begun that
previous year, Reijniersen went aboard
Evertsen’s flagship Swaenenburgh and
piloted the formation into its anchor-
age opposite the principal town of
Paramaribo, through a driving tropical
downpour.
335
—Pirate joke, June 1722
Reference
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert
D., Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia,
SC: University of South Carolina Press,
1988).
REYES, ANDRE
S DE LOS
(fl. 1659)
Spanish trader who illegally seized a
neutral Dutch vessel off of Cuba’s
northern coastline, then tried to pass it
off at Campeche as an English prize,
and so was charged with piracy.
De los Reyes was originally a native of
the Port of Santa Marı́a, a suburb of Cadiz.
After exiting from Havana with his
11-man sloop Nuestra Se~ nora de la Con-
cepci

on y San Antonio, apparently during
336 Reyning, Jan Erasmus (fl. 1667
1697)
the early days of 1659, he sighted and
boarded the 80-ton Dutch merchant pink
Hoop or ‘‘Hope’’ of Nikolaas Direcksen,
setting both its master and crew adrift in
their boat. Such a capture was illicit, for
although Spain was at war against Eng-
land, Holland was a non-belligerent. The
outraged Dutchmen consequently landed
and traveled overland to lodge a formal
complaint with the Governor of Havana,
Juan de Salamanca, who issued Direcksen
and his men special passes that same Feb-
ruary 1659, which permitted them to sail
for Seville aboard the annual plate fleet.
Salamanca in the meantime also prepared
messages for all Spanish-American port
authorities, warning them to be on the
lookout for De los Reyes.
This renegade had meanwhile sailed
his capture across the Gulf of Mexico
into the minor port of Campeche, claim-
ing to have bravely intercepted an Eng-
lish pink while it was bound toward
Jamaica. In his deposition, De los Reyes
had excused the lack of any prisoners to
corroborate his statement, by arguing
that his sloop lacked sufficient men to
work both vessels, as well as guard the
detainees. He had therefore been
allowed to sell off his prize and its con-
tents at Campeche for slightly less than
6,000 pesos, as well as his own sloop.
When a ship subsequently arrived
bearing dispatches from Havana, De los
Reyes realized what this portended. He
and his men quickly departed Campeche
for Veracruz, as passengers aboard the


Spanish ship Rosario y las Animas of
Manuel de Urrutia. When the provincial
Governor, Francisco de Baz
an, at his
inland capital of M
erida de Yucat
an,
learned of this renegade’s deceit and
criminality, he immediately issued
orders for his arrest and the search of all
outward-bound vessels. Governor de
Baz
an had been especially displeased to
discover that the Dutch victims claimed
their stolen goods were worth almost
30,000 pesos, most of which must have
been concealed from his customs offi-
cials at Campeche.
Governor de Baz
an therefore had
himself conveyed by sedan-chair down
from his capital, to personally hold
inquests in early April 1659 at Cam-
peche. The very same night that he
arrived, he dispatched a frigate toward
Veracruz with messages for the corregi-
dor of that seaport, as well as the Mexi-
can Viceroy, calling for De los Reyes’
arrest. This fugitive appears to have
been caught some time shortly there-
after and sent back to Cuba, while the
pink and part of its cargo were also
recuperated from their new owners. On
the very last day of 1659, Gov. Matthias
Beck of Curaçao wrote to his Spanish
counterpart at Havana, thanking the
Governor de Salamanca for his success-
ful intervention in this affair, and add-
ing that Hoop and its goods would be
retrieved from the Cuban capital.
Reference
Gehring, Charles T. and Schiltkamp, Jacob
A., Curaçao Papers, 1640
1665,
Volume 17, ‘‘New Netherland
Documents’’ (Interlaken, NY: Heart of
the Lakes Publishing, 1987).
REYNING, JAN ERASMUS
(fl. 1667
1697)
Dutch adventurer who spent more than
a decade roving the West Indies, under
four different flags.
He was born in Vlissingen or Flush-
ing in 1640, the son of a sailor from

Copenhagen. Reyning first went to sea
with his father at the age of 10, and saw
action against both the English and
French in the North Sea. His father was
killed in a naval engagement during the
First Anglo-Dutch War of 1652 to 1654,
and Reyning himself was captured and
imprisoned in Ireland for 18 months
during the Second Anglo-Dutch War of
1665 to 1667. After a brief reunion with
his wife and child, he signed on with a
Middelburg ship bound for Suriname.
Arrival in the New World
(1667)
Once in the Antilles, Reyning was put
ashore with six other men to attempt to
reestablish the Dutch colony at Cayenne,
seized by the French three years previ-
ously. The French in turn had been dispos-
sessed by the English, but soon returned,
carrying Reyning off to Martinique as a
prisoner. He served briefly as boatman
to the retiring Gov. Robert Le Frichot des
Friches, Seigneur de Clodor
e, accompa-
nying him as far as Tortuga Island on
his return passage toward France,
before Reyning deserted and became a
plantation-hand on Saint-Domingue, then
an indentured servant to a boucanier, and
quickly regained his freedom.
Resuming his sea career, Reyning
reached the Cayman Islands sometime in
1668, where he found the Dutch priva-
teer ‘‘Captain Casten of Amsterdam,’’
holder of a Jamaican commission,
careening his ship. Reyning joined his
company, and sailed as far as Aruba on
a cruise. Taking a Spanish prize, they
put into Port Royal to dispose of it, pay-
ing the requisite one-tenth of its value to
the King of England, and one-fifteenth
to the Duke of York. Shortly thereafter,
Reyning, Jan Erasmus (fl. 1667
1697) 337
Jean-David Nau l’Olonnais reached
Jamaica with an 80-ton, 12-gun Spanish
brigantine he had captured, in which
Reyning allegedly bought a share. Rok
Brasiliano was installed as captain, Jelles
de Lecat as first mate. They prowled the
Spanish Main between Cartagena and
Portobelo, seizing another brigantine
before returning to Port Royal, where
Brasiliano took command of the new
vessel, while De Lecat and Reyning
remained aboard the old one.
Laguna de T
erminos Campaign
(1669)
The two brigantines stole into the Gulf
of Mexico in the spring of 1669, accom-
panied by the frigate [Mayflower?] of Jo-
seph Bradley, to begin operations in and
around the Laguna de T
erminos. Plunder
proving scarce, Brasiliano and Reyning
supposedly quarreled and separated. De
Lecat’s vessel began loading dyewood,
while Bradley and Brasiliano blockaded
Campeche. The Spaniards finally sortied
with three armed ships on December 18,
1669, chasing them away. A norther
wrecked Brasiliano and his crew on the
Yucatan Peninsula, from where they
were rescued by De Lecat and Reyning,
who transferred them to Bradley’s frigate
for return to Jamaica. Shortly thereafter,
De Lecat and Reyning seized a Spanish
merchantman which they renamed Sevi-
liaen, scuttling their brigantine and sail-
ing this prize back to Port Royal.
On their arrival, they found the col-
ony in an uproar because of the nui-
sance raids of the Spanish privateer
Manoel Rivero Pardal. In August 1670,
Reyning sailed as part of Henry Mor-
gan’s retaliatory strike against Panama,
pausing first at ^Ile a Vache for supplies
338 Reyning, Jan Erasmus (fl. 1667
1697)
and reinforcements. The corsair fleet
then descended on Providencia Island,
overwhelming its tiny Spanish garrison,
before Morgan sent Bradley on ahead
to seize San Lorenzo Castle at the
mouth of the Chagres River, as a foot-
hold for their approach to Panama.
Reyning, De Lecat, and Brasiliano all
served in this advance force, which
disembarked against heavy opposition.
Reyning’s company was so badly deci-
mated that the wounded Brasiliano
reported to Bradley that they had all
been killed. This was disproved next
dawn, when Reyning’s survivors took
part in the final assault, during which
the Spanish defenders were massacred
and Bradley fatally wounded.
Sack of Panama (1670
1671)
Reyning thereupon led his company on
Morgan’s epic march across the Isthmus,
where despite hunger, disease, and
repeated jungle-ambushes, the free-
booters fought their way into Panama
and looted the city for a month. Retiring
to the Atlantic coast, they were disap-
pointed at the division of spoils, feeling
Morgan cheated them by making off
with the lion’s share. Sailing toward
Jamaica in his wake, Reyning had a
brush with the Cartagena coast-guard
vessel Santa Cruz and another Spanish
vessel, before gaining Montego Bay.
There, he found at anchor the Dutch
merchantman Witte Lam of Zeeland,
which chanced to have his brother-in-
law aboard, with a letter for Reyning.
Nostalgic for his family, Reyning
arranged passage home aboard this ves-
sel, but his piratical minions held such
riotous, drunken celebrations that the
Witte Lam’s master grew scared, and
discreetly slipped away without him.
Reyning thus had no choice but to pro-
ceed to Port Royal.
Here he found the political climate
greatly altered, with the new Gov. Sir
Thomas Lynch having arrived on July
1, 1671, with the warships Assistance
and Welcome, to arrest his predecessor
and revoke all anti-Spanish privateer-
ing commissions. Reyning was asked
to bring in the Seviliaen, but when he
met up with De Lecat at their prear-
ranged rendezvous off the Caymans,
they simply joined forces and sailed
away toward Cuba. There, they rustled
some cattle, but when a trio of Spanish
warships sortied from Havana, the cor-
sairs decided to cross the Gulf of Mex-
ico to their old hunting grounds off the
Laguna de T
erminos. Immediately on
reaching the Mexican coast they seized
a small Spanish coastguard vessel; De
Lecat assumed command of this prize,
while Reyning captained the Seviliaen.
Shortly thereafter, HMS Assistance
hove into view, having been detached
under William Beeston to bring in
rogue privateers. Reyning and De
Lecat withdrew close inshore, beyond
the reach of such a powerful antago-
nist, so the English commander sailed
to nearby Campeche to hire shallow-
draft vessels to cut them out of their
anchorage. But the wily Dutchmen
frustrated this scheme by following the
frigate into port, where the neutrality
of the Spanish harbor offered protec-
tion against capture, until the Royal
Navy grew tired of this game and left.
Spanish Service (1671
1672)
Realizing how risky it was to continue
prowling the Caribbean, Reyning and De

Lecat purged their crews of English sea-
men, marooning them on the island of
Tris, where they were eventually rescued
by the former privateer Lilly in January
1672. Meanwhile, the two Dutchmen
struck a deal with the Campeche author-
ities, and were issued Spanish letters of
marque. The Spaniards, desperate to
stem the foreign incursions throughout
the region, but without funds to mount
an adequate defense, overlooked the
Flushingers’ checkered past, as they
were willing to serve for prize-money
alone. Reyning and De Lecat, hunted by
the English, agreed and further cemented
the deal by initiating indoctrination into
the Catholic faith.
On their first patrol into the Laguna de
T
erminos, they captured four English ves-
sels, auctioning them off at Campeche.
Soon a routine developed, whereby Reyn-
ing remained in port attending to busi-
ness, while De Lecat took care of the
rough-and-tumble aspects of coastguard
duty. Within a few months, they seized
32 prizes, and the logwood trade at
Jamaica declined because of fears of
‘‘Captain Yellowes.’’ On April 28, 1672,
while De Lecat was patrolling in a cap-
tured sloop, Reyning exited Campeche
with the Seviliaen to transport retiring
Gov. Fernando Francisco de Escobedo to
Tabasco. Reyning then hired out the Sevi-
liaen to convey a rich cargo of cacao and
dyewood to Veracruz, departing Tabasco
on July 18th. He reached Veracruz five
days later, where his ship was briefly
impounded because of irregularities
regarding its ownership.
Hostilities with France (1672)
While awaiting adjudication, Reyning
learned from the Spanish slaver and pri-
vateer Francisco Galesio that war had
Reyning, Jan Erasmus (fl. 1667
1697) 339
broken out between England, France,
and Holland back in Europe. Thus, once
the Seviliaen was released in late August
1672, Reyning hurried back to Cam-
peche in ballast to pay off his Spanish
hands and reassemble his Dutch crew.
The Seviliaen was careened while hop-
ing for De Lecat to rejoin, but Reyning
eventually left Mexico without him. Pro-
ceeding past Yucatan toward Cape
Tiburon, the Seviliaen made a few cap-
tures, before going in pursuit of a lone
French sail. It lured them round a head-
land into the large formation which Gov.
Jean-Charles de Baas-Castelmore had
sent from the Windward Islands to raise
flibustiers on Saint-Domingue for an
assault against Curaçao. The wind died
away, and Reyning was forced to aban-
don his prizes and break out the oars to
escape from this superior force. He
allegedly beat off several French board-
ing-parties, before returning to seize two
of their vessels.
On reaching Caracas, Reyning again
met up with Francisco Galesio and
escorted his vessel across to Curaçao
in early 1673. There, Reyning procured
a Dutch privateering commission, and
for the next two years helped maintain
the island by bringing in numerous
French and English prizes. During one
of his cruises, the Seviliaen was
wrecked in a storm off Hispaniola, but
Reyning managed to get his crew
safely ashore and to the Spanish capital
of Santo Domingo. While awaiting
passage from there, he and his men
were supposedly used to man a ship
and chase away a French privateer, for
which the Spanish Governor showed
himself exceedingly grateful. Put
aboard a ship bound for Puerto Rico
and Caracas, the passengers instead or-
dered it directly to Curaçao.
340 Reyning, Jan Erasmus (fl. 1667
1697)
Having lost his half-ownership in the
Seviliaen, Reyning was given a quarter-
share in another Dutch privateer, and
returned to Puerto Rico for food and
water before going on a cruise. The Eng-
lish ship Laurel of Portsmouth was cap-
tured, its captain furious at discovering
how few Dutchmen had defeated him.
Reyning then snuck ashore at English-
occupied St. Eustatius and seized its com-
mander, only to learn that peace had been
declared between Holland and England as
of February 1674. Frustrated in this
design, Reyning left for Curaçao, hijack-
ing 60 slaves on Grenada while en route,
and trading them for indigo at Montserrat.
Surrender at Grenada (1675)
He now concentrated his efforts in the
Lesser Antilles. After numerous smaller
raids and seizures, Reyning joined forces
with Jurriaen Aernouts to attack Grenada
in 1675. The Dutch raiders succeeded in
occupying its fort, but were in turn
besieged inside it by the French, and
starved into submission. On surrendering,
Reyning and Aernouts were carried to


Martinique by the warship Emerillon of
Captain Chadeau de la Clicheterre. Even-
tually, they succeeded in escaping from
the plantation where they were being held
by drugging the guards’ wine and steal-
ing a piragua along with five other men.
They laid in a course for Curaçao, but
nearly died when their boat was carried
westward by the winds and currents,
landing them on Cora Island in present-
day Venezuela. On gaining Maracaibo,
they were briefly incarcerated by the
Spaniards (who although common foes
of the French, remained suspicious of
any foreign trespassers on their territory),
before being restored to Curaçao.
Binckes’ Campaign (1676)
Early the next year, Reyning returned to
Amsterdam, seeing his family again after
a nine-year absence. Shortly thereafter,
he was given command of the tiny, 8-gun
frigate Fortuyn in Admiral Jacob
Binckes’ expedition, which sailed for the
West Indies that March. On May 4, 1676,
they dropped anchor off Cayenne, land-
ing 900 men and taking Fort Saint-Louis
with almost no resistance. Garrisoning
the island, the Dutch then sailed north
and did the same to Marie-Galante,
throwing down its fortifications and car-
rying off its French colonists. When
Binckes sighted Guadeloupe on June
16th, he considered its defenses too
strong and therefore passed by, unsuc-
cessfully pursuing a trio of French ves-
sels. A few days later, he landed 500 men
and overran Saint-Martin, killing the
French Governor and seizing 100 slaves.
From there, part of the expedition
proceeded to Santo Domingo under its
second-in-command Pieter Constant,
pausing at the Spanish half of that island
for water, and seizing a French vessel off
the coast. Reyning was with this contin-
gent, which then rounded to Petit-Go^ave
on the French half of the island, where
Constant attempted to persuade its bou-
caniers to ‘‘throw off the unbearable
yoke’’ of the French West Indies Com-
pany in favor of the more reliable, com-
petitive Dutch. Although dissatisfied
with their own traders, the French set-
tlers nonetheless rejected this offer with
musket fire, so that the Dutch sailed
away after seizing the merchantmen
anchored offshore. Reyning secured one
of these prizes, and even fought a ‘‘duel’’
(i.e., brawl) with another captain over
possession of a drum.

First Battle of Tobago
(March 1677)
As a counter to Binckes’ efforts, the
French government dispatched a large
fleet of its own into the New World,
under Vice Admiral Jean, Duc d’Estr
ees.
Reyning claimed to have captured a
French vessel off Nevis, with letters
revealing that this force was on its way.
In December 1676, D’Estr
ees appeared
and recaptured Cayenne, then pressed on
toward Tobago, which Binckes had
transformed into a heavily-fortified base.
On the evening of February 21, 1677, the
French landed 1,000 soldiers near Rockly
Bay, and sent 14 light vessels on ahead
to make a feint against its harbor mouth.
Reyning’s Fortuyn was one of the Dutch
auxiliaries attacked there, being forced to
retreat into the inner roads when the out-
numbered Binckes wisely refused to strip
his land defenses to reinforce these ships.
Reyning transferred onto land, serving in
the trenches when D’Estr
ees launched
his major assault on the morning of
March 3, 1677.
The fighting was fierce both on land
and in the harbor, with the Dutch
emerging victorious, although losing
10 of their 13 anchored vessels to
spreading conflagrations (which also
consumed four of the heaviest French
men-of-war). Two French vessels were
also captured; Reyning claimed some
of his crew-members were found
aboard the dismasted Pr
ecieux, and
that the French commander-in-chief
had narrowly eluded him in a rowboat.
D’Estr
ees meanwhile retired to Gre-
nada and Martinique with 1,000 losses,
and by early July was back in Ver-
sailles reporting on his failure to Louis
XIV.
Reyning, Jan Erasmus (fl. 1667
1697) 341
Second Battle of Tobago
(December 1677)
The ‘‘Sun King’’ immediately ordered
his Admiral to return to the West Indies,
and complete his mission. D’Estr
ees
departed Brest again on September 27,
1677, with 17 more ships. He arrived off
Tobago on December 6th, having paused
en route to destroy the Dutch slaving-
station of Gor
ee in West Africa. The
tropical weather off Tobago was rainy,
yet despite this the French quickly threw
a large contingent ashore and installed
siege artillery, refusing to be drawn into
a suicidal charge against the Dutch
entrenchments like the last time. The
defenders were much reduced by hunger
and disease, with Reyning serving
aboard the Pr
ecieux, one of only two
ships remaining in the harbor.
On December 12, 1677, the chief
French gunner began firing ranging-
shots against the Dutch fortification, lay-
ing odds he would blow it up at the third
attempt. Incredibly, the third round
landed squarely in the magazine, killing
Binckes and 250 defenders with a
mighty blast. The French swarmed exul-
tantly over the ruins, while Dutch
resolve collapsed. Reyning abandoned
the Pr
ecieux to flee inland on foot, even-
tually escaping the island in a tiny craft,
with a sail made of two oars and a pair
of shirts. It took him ten days to reach
Curaçao, but he was so weakened by
lack of food and water that he could not
work into port, having to sail past to
Aruba.
Rescued and returned to Curaçao,
Reyning helped brace for D’Estr
ees’
inevitable appearance. On this occa-
sion, though, fortune smiled on the
Dutch, for when the French expedition
342 Reyning, Jan Erasmus (fl. 1667
1697)
confidently headed toward Curaçao
five months later, it was shipwrecked
on the Aves Islands group. Hostilities
with France ended shortly thereafter
(August 10, 1678), and Reyning sailed
for Zeeland. He made a return trade
voyage into the West Indies, and was
allegedly even offered a position on
devastated Tobago, as well as in the
Royal Spanish Navy, neither of which
he accepted. Instead, he served on
commercial cruises between Holland
and Spain, on one occasion delivering
a man-of-war built in a Dutch yard to
the Spaniards.
Slaving Voyage (1687
1688)
After a number of years, Reyning
obtained command of the Coymans
Company’s Koning Balthasar, a large
new ship which was to convey a cargo
of slaves from Curaçao to the Spanish
Main, under terms of the asiento or
‘‘Crown monopoly’’ granted in Madrid
to that Dutch firm. Reyning sailed with
his son, picking up a Spanish priest
named Fr. Francisco de Rivas as super-
cargo at Cadiz, of whom he remained
darkly suspicious. The Koning Balthasar
seized a Portuguese slaver off Cuman
a
for violating the trade-monopoly, yet this
prize was released by the corrupt local
authorities, thereby depriving Reyning
and the Coymans Company of one-third
of its value in prize money.
At Curaçao, the Koning Balthasar
took on its consignment of slaves,
depositing a portion of them at Carta-
gena, the rest at Portobelo. By now
convinced that Rivas and the Spaniards
were plotting to seize his vessel, Reyn-
ing slipped out of the roads one dark
night without permission, being fired
on by its harbor defenses. (A few
months later, the Koning Balthasar’s
sister ship Santiago de la Victoria was
impounded and sold by the Spaniards
for smuggling, which persuaded Reyn-
ing that he had narrowly escaped shar-
ing this same fate.) On his return
passage toward Holland, he paused at
Jamaica to refresh his provisions, and
that island’s Governor, the Duke of
Albemarle, related to London on April
5, 1688 (O.S.), how he:
. . . had news of Erasmus, a pirate, at
Bluefield’s Bay, and sent [Royal Navy]
Captains Wright and Monk to take him,
but he had escaped before they came.
Reyning sailed home with 180,000 pesos
in profits aboard, and en route learned
that war had again broken out with
France, so that he also brought in three
French prizes.
Presumably while still lying at Cura-
çao, he had also come into contact with
David van der Sterre, the doctor for the
slave depot on that island. The latter
recorded Reyning’s reminiscences in a
rambling, heroic vein, producing an
almost unreadable book which was pub-
lished in Amsterdam in 1691. Meanwhile,
Reyning had been appointed as a naval
Commander by the Dutch Admiralty two
years earlier, and fought against the
French during the War of the League of
Augsburg or King William’s War. As part
of that conflict, he captained the Drakes-
teyn of 44 guns and 170 men in a fruitless
Anglo-Dutch bombardment of Brest in
1694, losing 49 of his crew, yet being pro-
moted Extraordinaris-Kapitein for his
bravery. More small actions ensued, but
his name only crops up again in 1697,
when he was wintering at Portsmouth
with his ship Nijmegen of 50 guns and
210 men.

Death (February 1697)
From this English port, Reyning
departed on his last voyage, joining
Commodore Rudolph Swaan of the
Vrede to escort a convoy of Dutch mer-
chantmen to Bilbao, Spain. On their ar-
rival there on February 2, 1697, the
harbor-pilot informed them that their
two warships drew too much water to
pass over its bar, and would have to wait
for high tide. Reyning also refused to
have his ship inspected, for which he
was supposed to face charges. Yet two
days later, a sudden storm blew up out
of the Bay of Biscay, parting the Vrede’s
and Nijmegen’s cables, driving them
onto the rocks. More than 400 seamen
perished in this maelstrom, among them
Reyning. His name was soon forgotten
in Holland, but not so on Curaçao, where
local legend maintains that he had left
various treasures buried in caves along
its coastline.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 7, 12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899).
Vrijman, L. C., Dr. David van der Sterre:
Zeer aenmerkelijke reysen door Jan
Erasmus Reyning (Amsterdam: P. N.
van Kampen & Zoon, 1937).
RISBY, JAMES
(fl. 1660
1683)
Long-serving English privateer and
Bayman, who operated out of Jamaica.
Virtually nothing is known about his
birth or early life. Risby apparently
arrived on the island as a junior officer
Risby, James (fl. 1660
1683) 343
in its military contingent, and was first
mentioned in official records when
issued a wartime privateering commis-
sion on October 27, 1660 (O.S.), by
Governor Edward D’Oyley, in his
capacity as ‘‘Commander-in-Chief of
all His Majesty’s forces employed,
both by land and sea, in America.’’
This tersely-worded document read as
follows:
By virtue of a power and authority
to me derived, I do hereby constitute
and appoint you Captain of the frig-
ate called the Betty, authorizing you
in the said frigate, and the soldiers
under your command, to fight, kill,
and take both by sea and land, any
of the King of Spain’s subjects, and
take their ships and goods, and to
appropriate the same to your own
and the ship’s company’s use; being
answerable to me in this place for
the tenth part of such prize and
prizes which shall be by you so
taken, for the use of His Majesty.
Given under my hand and seal at
Point Cagway in the island of
Jamaica, this 27th of October 1660.
Not only Spanish vessels were sub-
ject to seizure. In December 1661,
Risby and his Betty, accompanied by
George Freebourne’s Pearl, contrived
to rob the Dutch merchantman Sint
Pieter of Amsterdam, whose Captain
Henry Hambrouck had obtained per-
mission from the Cuban authorities to
take on wood and water along their
shoreline, so was working his way
down that coast, illegally selling goods
to local inhabitants. Meeting up with
the two privateers, the Englishmen rec-
ommended a spot for the neutral Dutch
vessel to careen, and watched as
344 Ruyter, Jan Barendszoon (fl. 1664)
Hambrouck unloaded to begin this
cumbersome task. As Christmas was
also approaching, the three crews sat
down together sometime later, eating
and drinking on the beach all day, until
the Dutch had become so drunk by
evening, that Risby and Freebourne
seized their goods without opposition.
From October 29 to November 3,
1672 (O.S.), Risby was one of six Eng-
lish Captains—the others being Wil-
liam and John Coxen, Philip Osborne,
John Mitchell, and James Smith—who
gave sworn depositions before Gover-
nor Sir Thomas Lynch of Jamaica,
complaining about the hostilities being
perpetrated off the north coast of
Yucat
an by the turncoat privateer Jelles
de Lecat under his new Spanish com-
mission. Risby and his fellow Captains
explained how:
They have used the trade of log-
wood-cutting for about two-and-a-
half or three years on the coast of
Yucatan, from Boca [de] Conil to
Cape Catoche, and thence to Cozu-
mel, and during that time the Eng-
lish have had and now have huts and
people to the number of 100 or 200
there resident; have never seen any
Spaniards or Indians, nor heard of
any Indians nearer than twelve or
fourteen leagues, or Spaniards nearer
than Rio Lagartos, eighteen leagues
off, where there are guards or look-
outs, and have never met with any
interruption until the pirate Yallahs
[sic; Jelles de Lecat] came about
eight months since and took diverse
vessels. One has also cut wood at
Beef Island [Xicalango] and Suma-
santa, 35 leagues to the westward of
Campeachy; the proprietor of Beef
Island, who comes there at certain
seasons to make hides, has always
given leave to the English to cut
wood; and the Indians there resident
are not subject to the Spaniards.
Four years later, Risby endured another
ordeal at Spanish hands, for on January
12, 1677 (O.S.), Jamaica’s Royal Gover-
nor Lord Vaughan received ‘‘James Ris-
bee’s deposition of his being taken by the
Spaniards and carried to Trinidad [Cuba],
with loss of his vessel and goods.’’
See also
Beef Island; Careen; Coxon, John;
D’Oyley, Edward; Lecat, Jelles de;
Logwood; Lynch, Sir Thomas.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 7, 10
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1889
1896).
Marsden, Reginald G., editor, Documents
Relating to Law and Custom of the Sea
(London: Navy Records Society, 1916),
Volume 2.
Sheridan, Richard B. and McDonald,
Roderick A., editors, West Indies
Accounts: Essays on the History of the
British Caribbean and the Atlantic
Economy (University of the West Indies
Press, 1996).
RUYTER, JAN
BARENDSZOON (fl. 1664)
Dutch privateer who cruised the Antil-
les, just prior to the outbreak of the
Second Anglo-Dutch War.
Around seven o’clock on the eve-
ning of Tuesday, December 23, 1664,
Ruyter gingerly picked his way into
 Ruyter, Jan Barendszoon (fl. 1664) 345

UNDER THE BLOOD-RED FLAG

During the latter half of the 17th century, many privateer commanders seem to have
devised their own personal standards, which were flown to supplement the different
national flags under which each served. Thus for example, witnesses who saw the
Sieur de Grammont’s flibustiers celebrating their capture of Veracruz at dawn of May
18, 1683, noted that they were cheering ‘‘the King of France with white flags and
fleurs-de-lis, and a red one.’’ And the veteran Spanish officers who saw this same
mixed pirate-force march out their devastated prize a few days later, observed that it
was led by ‘‘five French flags, four English, a green and a flowered one’’—the latter
two presumably being individual ensigns.
Red was the preferred background-color for freebooter flags displayed throughout
much of this period, as it added the appropriate touch of menace. Traditionally,
blood-red banners were flown in any battle where no quarter was to be expected or
given, so they suited the buccaneers’ predilection for instilling fear into their foes.
Captain Edmond Cooke, for instance, supposedly flew a red flag striped with yellow
and emblazoned with a white hand and a sword, when he penetrated into the Pacific
Ocean with John Coxon in 1680.
The Spaniards also exhibited similar insignia. When Captain Edward Stanley’s tiny
4-gun Royal Navy warship Bonito was attacked off the southern coast of Cuba by a
guardacosta in November 1684, this enemy galley bore down on him ‘‘flying the
Spanish flag with a red ensign.’’ And when a pirate landing-force under Captains
François Grogniet, Jean Rose, and Francis Townsley began fighting their way back to-
ward their anchored ships on the Pacific coast in May 1686, having sacked the
inland Nicaraguan city of Granada, they found 500 Spanish militiamen barring their
path at the town of Masaya, of whom the chronicler Ravenau de Lussan noted:

They were flying the red flag, thus giving us to understand there would be no quarter.
Upon seeing this, we hauled down our white [French] colors, and exposed a red flag
like theirs.

Inexplicably, pirate flags with black backgrounds became much more prevalent
as of the early 18th century, although red flags never entirely faded from use.

the neutral but forbidden anchorage of
Matanzas Bay on the northern coast of
Cuba, hoping to peacefully bring in his
States’ frigate Sint Suzanna and take
on wood, water, and provisions. He
fired off three guns in the falling dark-
ness as a signal to a companion-vessel
which already lay at anchor inside this
ample harbor, a pink under the Flem-
ish-born ‘‘Enrique de Rivera’’ [Hendrik
van Bank?]. Next morning, both
commanders stepped onto the southern
shoreline of the bay sometime after
10:00 A.M., to meet with a local Span-
ish mill-owner, Juan P
erez Barroto.
Ruyter informed him that he had been
dispatched into the West Indies by the
States-General and East India Company
with this pair of vessels, bearing a pri-
vateering commission to counter
346 Ruyter, Jan Barendszoon (fl. 1664)
increasing English hostilities. He had al-
ready captured an English vessel and
carried it into Curaçao for adjudication,
despite the fact that no war had yet been
officially declared between both nations
back in Europe. The pair of Dutch
commanders offered to buy 30 or 40
hundredweight of biscuits from the neu-
tral Spaniards, but P
erez Barroto
demurred until permission could be
secured from Governor Francisco D
avila
Orej
on Gast
on at Havana.
While both Dutch Captains relaxed
ashore overnight, and even attended
Christmas Mass next morning in Ma-
tanzas’ tiny chapel, a message was being
forwarded to the Cuban capital and
arrived there shortly before 8:00 P.M. on
December 26, 1664. However, the Gov-
ernor ordered the royal treasurer Diego
de Arana Isla next day to immediately
embark for Matanzas aboard a large
launch with a score of soldiers under
Ensign Diego P
erez Bullones, to inquire
into this unauthorized entry. After reach-
ing Matanzas overland and conducting
interrogations of several local residents
on December 29th, the Treasurer arrested
P
erez Barroto next day and seized all
his properties. The two anchored Dutch
vessels were then informed late on
the evening of December 31st that they
must depart, so that Ruyter grudgingly
obeyed on New Year’s Day, 1665.
See also
State’s. Ships.
Reference
Archive of Indies (Seville), Audiencia
de Santo Domingo 104, Ramo 4,
Number 21.
 S

. . . the enemy advanced on all sides, but not in closed ranks,

rather without order, which has always been their way of waging war,
separated from each other by two or three paces, jumping and crouching
and shooting, rushing into our trench at different points simultaneously.


—Governor Juan Alvarez de Avil
es of Guayaquil, describing the
buccaneer assault on his defenses, April 1687

SALTER, THOMAS
(fl. 1667)
English privateer who operated out of
Port Royal, Jamaica.
In 1667, during the closing stages of
the Second Anglo-Dutch War, Salter
captured the Spanish ship Cedar [sic?]
in the Laguna de T
erminos, laden with
a cargo of logwood. He put a seven-
man crew aboard with orders for his
prize-master William Smith, to sail
into Port Royal for adjudication. Smith
and his men, however, absconded with
the vessel to New York, where they
sold it under the name William. When
Salter learned of this, he retained his
friend Samuel Moseley of Massachu-
setts to sue for its recovery.
Reference
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
SALT TORTUGA
English nickname for sun-bleached Isla
Tortuga, an island which lies off the
northern shores of Venezuela.
According to the buccaneer chronicler
William Dampier, turtling was such a
frequent activity among Caribbean sea-
farers that this particular island had
come to be ‘‘so called to distinguish it
from the shoals of Dry Tortuga, near
Cape Florida, and from the isle of Tor-
tuga by Hispaniola.’’ When during the

347
348 S
anchez Xim
enez, Jos
e (?
1666)
early 17th century, Dutch salters had
first discovered and then flocked to
exploit the vast natural salt-pans of the
Araya Peninsula on the nearby South
American mainland, they were eventu-
ally denied access by the erection of a
Spanish fort near its entrance in 1623.
However, these Dutch interlopers had
merely shifted their salting operations to
other nearby sources: Isla Tortuga, the
Unare River mouth, Curaçao, and the
Antillean isle of Saint Martin. The Span-
iards were unable to prevent visits to all
of these disperse sites by the persistent
salters over the ensuing decades. The
name ‘‘Salt Tortuga’’ therefore remained
current long after the Dutch had been
superseded by other foreigners in the
quest for this valuable natural preserva-
tive (although French flibustiers would
more commonly refer to this Venezuelan
island as ‘‘Tortille,’’ as opposed to Tortue
for their famous base off of Haiti).
Ships from as far away as French
Canada and Boston were soon coming
every year to tap this open Venezuelan
resource. A description on the eco-
nomic life of Massachusetts, compiled
in April 1675, mentioned:
Salt they get from Tortudas, not far
from Barbados; it is sold at 10 shil-
lings the hogshead, and is clear and
white as alum, very sharp and much
stronger than ordinary Bay salt.
See also
Dampier, William; Salt Tortuga (Volume 2).
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).

NCHEZ XIME
SA
NEZ,

(?
1666)
JOSE
Spanish soldier who reconquered Prov-
idencia Island from the English, and
then was treacherously murdered by his
own men.
S
anchez was a veteran of ‘‘experience
and courage,’’ who had served 24 years
in Flanders before emigrating to the
West Indies. He attached himself to the
train of Juan P
erez de Guzm
an, follow-
ing his patron from Puerto Rico to Pan-
ama in 1665, where he was appointed
sargento mayor or garrison commander
at Portobelo. Next year, he was entrusted
with command of the expedition sent to
recapture Providencia, which had been
taken by a group of English raiders
under Edward Mansfield.
Reference
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
SAWKINS, RICHARD
(fl. 1677?
1680)
English privateer who died bravely
during John Coxon’s incursion into the
South Sea.
Sawkins may have also participated
in Coxon’s previous raid into the Bay
of Honduras in September 1679, or in
the 1677 sack of Santa Marta on the
Spanish Main. However, the clearest
reference to his activities occurs early

in December 1679, when the 32-gun
frigate HMS Success was dispatched
by Governor Lord Carlisle of Jamaica
to detain the renegade privateer Peter
Harris, off the south Cuba cays.
Shortly after departing Port Royal,
Captain Thomas Johnson of the Suc-
cess encountered Sawkins’ brigantine,
which he captured and sent in for adju-
dication, as suspected of belligerence
against the Spaniards, despite the peace
then prevailing in Europe.
Sawkins was remanded into the cus-
tody of the Provost Marshal, and his
brigantine impounded for the Crown.
Within a few days, word arrived that
the Success had run aground off the
Cuban coast, and Sawkins’ former vessel
cleared with water and supplies for the
survivors. That night Sawkins ‘‘made his
escape in a wherry’’ and sailed after his
brigantine, which lay becalmed to lee-
ward of the island. He boarded and was
able to resume command, standing out to
sea with 36 men. Shortly thereafter, they
sighted a large Spanish ship which they
attacked, but were bloodily repulsed.
Sawkins returned to bury 10 of his men
on the Jamaican coast, and then began a
refit. While doing so, he was spotted by
the 28-gun HMS Hunter, which sent its
pinnace inshore to investigate. Sawkins
roared a warning, then ‘‘powder’d upon
‘em a volley of small shot.’’ The Hunter
retaliated by sending in its accompany-
ing sloop, which engaged the renegade,
but could not subdue him.
The rover was next heard from in
early March 1680, when he appeared at
the maze of islands known as Bocas del
Toro (literally ‘‘Bull’s Mouths’’ or
‘‘Entrances of the Bull,’’ at the north-
western extremity of present-day Pan-
ama) with a 25-ton barco luengo of two
guns and 40 men. There he encountered
Sawkins, Richard (fl. 1677?
1680) 349
Harris, who had also eluded the Jamai-
can authorities, and was further joined
by Coxon’s flotilla, fresh from its sack
of Portobelo. The raiders refitted their
vessels, then suggested returning to
Golden Island to avail themselves of
their newfound friendship with the local
Indians ‘‘to travel overland to Panama,’’
and attack the Spaniards on their vul-
nerable Pacific flank. Sawkins agreed to
join the expedition, and on April 2,
1680, the freebooters weighed.
Pacific Incursion (1680)
Coxon, Sawkins, Harris, Robert Allison,
Edmond Cooke, Thomas Magott, and
Bartholomew Sharpe all anchored their
ships close inshore at Golden Island, out
of sight in a small cove. An anchor watch
was left aboard each, with orders to rally
to Coxon’s and Harris’ ships—the two
largest—if any attack should occur. At
six o’clock on Monday morning, April
15, 1680, 332 buccaneers went ashore
and obtained guides to cross the Isthmus.
Ten days later, they came on the Spanish
stockade of Santa Marı́a at the confluence
of the Chucunaque and Tuira rivers. This
fort had no artillery, so at dawn Sawkins:
. . . runs up to the palisades with two
or three men more, and hauls up two
or three palisades by main strength,
and enters in.
A brisk firefight ensued, Sawkins being
wounded in the head with an arrow, and a
companion shot in the hand, before the
Spaniards surrendered. Seventy of the 200
Spanish defenders were killed outright,
the rest being massacred later by Indians.
Flush with their victory, the buccaneers
determined to press on into the Pacific,
although ‘‘Coxon, seemed unwilling, but
350 Sawkins, Richard (fl. 1677?
1680)
with much persuasion went.’’ Henceforth,
other captains began to assume the lead,
most particularly Sawkins, Harris, and
Sharpe. Reaching the Pacific, the pirates
traveled westward along the coast in their
river-boats, until one night they captured
an anchored Spanish bark, which Sharpe
took command of with 135 men. The next
night, Harris came on a second, and seized
it as well. Soon, the buccaneers had
assembled a small flotilla, with which they
bore down on Panama. The Spaniards sent
out a hastily-mustered force to do battle,
and the raiders overwhelmed it in a three-
hour fight. During this action, Harris was
mortally wounded, and afterward Coxon
decided to retrace his steps to Golden
Island with 70 loyal hands.
The remaining buccaneers elected
Sawkins as admiral, and installed him
aboard the 400-ton Santı´sima Trinidad
as their flagship. On May 6, 1680, a
large ship was intercepted arriving from
Lima, Peru, which became Sharpe’s new
command, while Cooke commanded a
bark of about 80 tons. Sawkins sug-
gested that the flotilla sail southward to
Guayaquil ‘‘before they should have any
knowledge of our coming, but our peo-
ple being headstrong, would have meat
to eat first.’’ The squadron accordingly
roamed westward past Coiba Island,
until two days later Sawkins went aboard
Cooke’s bark with 60 men, to attempt
to forage near the coastal town of
Remedios.
They sailed as far as they could up
the Santa Lucı́a River before anchor-
ing, after which Sawkins led a boat-
party of approximately 45 men farther
upstream. Coming on some stockades,
the pirate chieftain:
. . . landed himself first and went
into the savanna [plain] and saw
abundance of people there. One mulatto
met him, whom Captain Sawkins shot
down.
Retreating to the boats, he asked if the
party were all landed and ready. On being
told that they were, he said: ‘‘Follow me
and do not lie behind, for if I do amiss,
you will all fare the worse for it.’’ He
then advanced with the briskest men, but
was met by a host of mulattos and hunt-
ers bearing lances. One of his followers
recorded Sawkins’s final moments:
He fired his pistol and shot down
one mestizo, the rest [of the van-
guard] firing and loading as fast as
they could, but the Spaniards coming
in upon them so fast that killed Cap-
tain Sawkins and three men more.
They took one alive. We heard him
make a dreadful noise but could not
rescue him, but was forced to retreat
to our canoes and go off as fast
as we could, they coming down so
fast. . . .
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1989).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 10
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1896).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
‘‘A Pirate at Port Royal in 1679,’’ The
Mariner’s Mirror, Vol. LVII (1971),
pp. 303
305.

SCOTT, LEWIS (fl. 1661?)
English buccaneer who made an early
attack on Campeche.
According to De Americaensche Zee-
Roovers of Alexandre-Olivier Exqueme-
lin (first published in Amsterdam in
1678), Scott was the freebooter who pio-
neered large-scale land assaults against
the Spaniards in the Americas, once their
vessels began to become scarce at sea.
Specifically, this book declared that
Scott:
. . . took the town of Campeche,
plundered the place and forced the
citizens to pay ransom before aban-
doning it. After him came [Edward]
Mansfield . . .
As it is known that Mansfield assaulted
that particular Mexican port early in
1663 (as second-in-command to Christo-
pher Myngs), Scott’s action must have
preceded this event—perhaps being the
raid of January 27, 1661, during which
two valuable Spanish merchantmen
were burnt in the Campeche roads, or
one of other earlier assaults.
Some Spanish historians have erro-
neously attributed the attack of July
10, 1678, to Scott, although this was
clearly the handiwork of George Spurre
and Edward Neville, as well as being
too late to be included in Exquemelin’s
book.
References
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Searle, Robert (fl. 1662
1671) 351
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
SEARLE, ROBERT
(fl. 1662
1671)
One of the earliest and most active of
English privateers operating out of
Jamaica.
Nothing is known about his birth or
early life. From what little has been
recorded about Daniel Searle, the Crom-
wellian naval officer and commissioner
who was appointed to act as Governor
of Barbados after that island’s submis-
sion to Commonwealth rule in January
1652, it does not appear as if Robert
Searle was part of his immediate
family—although it is always possible
that he may have been more distantly
related to this Puritan seafarer. The
surname ‘‘Searle’’ was not altogether
uncommon during that era, and was
set down in various spellings, such as
‘‘Serle’’ and other variants in the Eng-
lish records.
Initial Cruises (1662
1663)
The first direct mention of Robert
Searle occurred during preparations for
the dispatch of Commodore Christo-
pher Myngs’s quick-strike expedition
against Santiago de Cuba, when he
was one of six Captains issued a pri-
vateering commission at Port Royal
on September 18, 1662 (O.S.), by the
recently-arrived Governor Thomas, Lord
Windsor. Like his colleagues John Bull,
Jacob Fackman, Abraham Mitchell, and
John Purdue, Searle received a six-month
license to rove with his vessel Biam; only
352 Searle, Robert (fl. 1662
1671)
George Brimacam received a 10-month
permit.
Three days later, Searle weighed as
part of Myngs’s force of 1,300 men
aboard a dozen vessels, who stormed
ashore two-and-a-half weeks afterward
just southeast of their intended target,
and overran Santiago the next day. A
considerable haul of booty was carried
back to Jamaica. It is not known whether
Searle then sortied again immediately
for more plunder, but it seems quite
likely that he also served in Myngs’s
next big raid, against the Mexican port
of Campeche in February 1663.
Detention and Vindication
(1664
1665)
Searle’s activities for that ensuing year
are unknown, although he evidently con-
tinued roving. When Sir Thomas Mody-
ford arrived as Jamaica’s new Royal
Governor early in June 1664, and
announced a Crown recall of all priva-
teers so as to curtail their depredations
against the Spaniards, Searle may have
been one of only three Captains to
actually obey this summons. He soon
had cause to regret bringing in his last
pair of prizes, for a follow-up missive
from King Charles II to Modyford
added: ‘‘His Majesty cannot sufficiently
express his dissatisfaction at the daily
complaints of violence and depredations
done by ships, said to belong to Jamaica,
upon the King of Spain’s subjects.’’
In light of this latest communiqu
e, the
island Council decided to make an exam-
ple, so that on August 19, 1664 (O.S.),
it instructed the three Vice-Admiralty
Court judges at Port Royal that:
On reading the King’s letter of June
15 last, commanding restitution of
captured ships and goods to the Span-
iards: ordered that the ship and bark
brought in by Captain Searles [sic] of
the Port Royal be seized and restored
to that nation, and also all specie that
can be found; that notice thereof be
sent to the Governor of Havana; that
persons making any further attempts
of violence and depredation upon the
Spaniards be looked upon as pirates
and rebels; and that Captain Searles’s
commission be taken from him, and
his rudder and sails taken ashore for
security.
The outbreak of the Second Anglo-
Dutch War next year offered better
prospects, as Searle sailed with the
Pearl in Colonel Edward Morgan’s
expedition against Dutch Sint Eustatius
and Saba. This force departed Jamaica
in two divisions, five sail putting out
of Port Royal on April 5, 1665, and
Colonel Morgan himself following
with another four on April 28th. They
mustered 650 men in all, and were
described in a letter by Modyford as:
. . . chiefly reformed privateers,
scarce a planter amongst them, being
resolute fellows and well armed with
fusils [the Spanish word for mus-
kets] and pistols.
They served ‘‘at the old rate of no pur-
chase, no pay,’’ but although landing
successfully, the Colonel, ‘‘being an-
cient and corpulent,’’ dropped dead from
heat exhaustion. Although this island
and its neighbor Saba were quickly sub-
dued, the English force then disinte-
grated because of lack of booty and
differences over the succession. Most of
the privateers chose to split up and fol-
low their own devices, it being recorded

that Searle, accompanied only by Cap-
tain Steadman and a party of 80 men,
took the Dutch island of Tobago and
destroyed everything that they could not
carry away.
St. Augustine Raid (May 1668)
On Monday morning, May 28, 1668, the
Spanish lookouts manning the watch-
tower on Anastasia Island at the mouth
of Saint Augustine’s harbor, sighted an
approaching vessel and sounded the
alarm. Drums beat the town’s 120-man
garrison to arms, while the ship dropped
anchor a few miles off its entrance.
Expecting the annual supply-ship from
Veracruz, St. Augustine’s harbor-pilot
went out in his launch to guide it safely
into the bay, yet on clambering aboard,
he was instead quietly subdued by Searle
and his rovers. In the town, Governor
Fictional Dutch engraving of Saint Augustine in 1673; the ships are accurately rendered,
but the scenery is imagined. (Dapper, Oliver. Amerika, 1673)
Searle, Robert (fl. 1662
1671) 353
Francisco de la Guerra y de la Vega later
claimed that he was reassured when the
vessel fired the prearranged two shots as
an identifying signal, so that Saint
Augustine’s garrison relaxed. Onlookers
ashore were not even concerned when
the pilot’s launch was seen sounding the
inlet, as this was standard practice prior
to bringing any large vessel through its
silty channel, although some wondered
why no entry was made that afternoon,
when the tide and wind turned favorable.
About 9:00 P.M., a second sighting
was reported from watchtower at Mata-
nzas Inlet, 14 miles farther south. This
second vessel was assumed to be St.
Augustine’s own small frigate, which
had departed for Havana 50 days earlier,
and was now expected back. But as
darkness fell, Searle and more than 100
freebooters slipped into the pilot’s
launch, the Veracruz ship’s boat, plus
two large piraguas which they had
354 Searle, Robert (fl. 1662
1671)
brought, towing along behind them.
They forced the pilot to guide them over
the bar; they then rowed along the west-
ern shoreline of Anastasia Island, intend-
ing to ascend the San Sebastian River
and surprise St. Augustine from its unin-
habited side. Corporal Miguel de Mon-
z
on happened to be fishing in a boat that
warm night, though, and heard the
muffled sound of oars at about 1:00 A.M.
on May 29, 1668, and so immediately
struck out for the wharf. The pirates
raced after him and even shot him twice
as he reached shore, but the alarm was
raised and Monz
on managed to reach
the safety of the fort.
The pirates nonetheless stormed
ashore unchallenged, firing indiscrim-
inately as they moved through the
darkened streets, seizing terrified cap-
tives roused from their beds, and loot-
ing homes. Governor de la Guerra
descended an exterior stairway in his
residence, only to be greeted by a fu-
sillade of musket fire out of the gloom
which cut down his secretary, Miguel
Alonso de Ojeda, so that he bolted
back out a hidden door and ran through
the night toward the stockade, with
freebooters at his heels. The Governor
managed to rally the 33 men on duty
inside this citadel that night, who
exchanged heavy gunfire with Searle’s
attackers for an hour-and-a-half, until
they drew away from its wooden walls.
The defenders had suffered five killed
and a like number wounded, compared
to 11 dead buccaneers and 19 injured.
Still, daybreak of May 29, 1668,
revealed the town in cutthroat hands,
and two other vessels joining the Vera-
cruz ship—the captive St. Augustine
frigate and Searle’s own pirate flagship
Cagway. All three sailed directly into
the bay, past the ineffectual cannonade
from the fort, to anchor just out of
range and begin receiving booty. St.
Augustine’s treasury and royal ware-
houses were systematically looted, its
parish church and Franciscan convent
stripped, the hospital and private
homes pillaged. As goods and prison-
ers were being ferried out to Searle’s
Cagway and Veracruz prize, Governor
de la Guerra ordered artillery Captain
Nicol
as Est
eves de Carmenatis to mount
a sally that afternoon from the citadel,
as more militiamen had since rallied
to its defense. Two companies of 25
men apiece reluctantly emerged between
3:00 and 4:00 P.M., being greeted by
such accurate counter-fire that their
leaders, Adjutant Francisco Ruiz Cani-
zares y Osorio and Ensign Diego Dı́az
Mejı́a, were promptly wounded and De
La Guerra recalled the unhappy soldiery
‘‘so that the enemy would not kill them
as if they were sheep.’’ By about 9:00
P.M., the last 30 pirates rowed back out
to their waiting ships, leaving the bodies
of some 60 dead residents amid the
smoldering ruins.
Next morning, May 30, 1668, Searle
sent a message ashore to the Governor,
offering to exchange his captives—some
70 men, women, and children—for
water, meat, and wood. De la Guerra
accepted, and in return asked for at least
some of flour from the Veracruz ship,
which was desperately needed at St.
Augustine. In a gesture of good faith,
Searle also released all his women
captives. Over the next six days, the
ransom was gradually provided until
finally, on June 5th, all remain-
ing Spanish prisoners were put ashore.
At the last minute, though, Searle
refused to part with any native, black, or
mestizo resident, explaining to the cap-
tive Father Francisco de Sotolongo that

his letter-of-marque from the Governor
of Jamaica permitted him to sell as a
slave anyone who was not a full-blooded
Spaniard. The priest remonstrated that
most of these men were free and that
many had Spanish fathers, but in vain.
The pirates were unmoved, sailing back
out of the bay that same day.
It is not known exactly where Searle
sailed afterward with his booty,
although a couple of years later, it was
being recorded how the rescued Dr.
Woodward ‘‘was carried to the Lee-
ward Isles, where he shipped surgeon
of a privateer, but was cast away 17th
August 1669 [O.S.] in a hurricane at
Nevis,’’ yet another ordeal which the
doctor luckily survived.
When Searle next traveled to Jamaica
two years later, he realized that his Flor-
ida foray would meet with the Gover-
nor’s disapproval, and indeed Modyford
recorded on March 18, 1670 (O.S.):
There arrived also at Port Morant
the Cagway, Captain Searle, with 70
stout men, who hearing that I was
much incensed against him for that
action of St. Augustine, went to
Macarry Bay and there rides out of
[my] command. I will use the best
ways to apprehend him, without
driving his men to despair.
Next month, Searle ventured ashore
and was arrested, being imprisoned in
Port Royal for a second time. However,
the veteran’s luck continued to hold, for
this was the same summer that Manoel
Rivero Pardal and other Spanish cor-
sairs began harassing Jamaica, leading to
Henry Morgan’s retaliatory strike against
Jamaica.
Searle was released to participate in
this campaign, and after the advance
Searle, Robert (fl. 1662
1671) 355
through the jungle and burning of Pan-
ama City, was given command of the
tiny flotilla of commandeered vessels
sent to ransack its offshore islands. At
Taboga, he and his men found a large
store of wine, which by evening they
were well on their way to consuming.
In their drunkenness, they failed to
post lookouts, so did not notice that
the 400-ton Santı´sima Trinidad (Most
Holy Trinity) of Captain Francisco de
Peralta had appeared off that island
from farther out in the Gulf. This gal-
leon had departed Panama earlier,
along with San Felipe Neri, to carry
away the Spaniards’ valuables and
noncombatants before the buccaneer
assault. Unaware that the triumphant
raiders had quickly spread this far out
from the mainland, De Peralta now
sent a seven-man watering-party ashore
for his suffering passengers.
They were captured and brought
before Searle, who questioned them and
thus belatedly discovered the presence
of such a wealthy prize nearby. But by
the time he and his befuddled men were
able to react, De Peralta had become
suspicious at the disappearance of his
watering-party, so that the galleon van-
ished back into the night. When the
main body of buccaneers eventually
learned of this missed opportunity a
few days later, they were outraged. The
chronicler Alexandre-Olivier Exqueme-
lin, even writing several years after the
event, scornfully related how when the
watering-party had been brought before
Searle, the old rover:
. . . had been more inclined to sit
drinking and sporting with a group
of Spanish women he had taken pris-
oner, than to go at once in pursuit of
the treasure ship.
356 Searle, Robert (fl. 1662
1671)

Morgan’s Panama Campaign, 1670
1671.

After seizing Chagres (1), Morgan’s army rowed and marched across the Isthmus through
Venta de Cruces, before defeating the Spanish forces outside Panama City (2). Detachments
were then sent throughout its district, Searle’s narrowly missing the capture of Santı´sima
Trinidad off Taboga Island (3).

See also (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery

Brimacain, George; Bull, John; Fackman,
Jacob; Mitchell, Abraham; Modyford,
Sir Thomas; Myngs, Sir Christopher;
Purdue, John; Spanish Main; Windsor,
Thomas, Lord.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 5, 7
Office, 1880
1889).
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the Caribbean
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007).
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).

Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
National Archives [UK], PRO HCA 49/59,
folios 83
92.
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
‘‘SENOLVE, CAPTAIN’’
(fl. 1663)
Dutch privateer described in an anony-
mous English document entitled
Account of the Private Ships of War
Belonging to Jamaica and Tortugas,
presumably drawn up by its authorities
as hostilities against the local Span-
iards revived early in 1663, as being in
command of three small ships bearing
100 men of Jamaica and 12 guns,
‘‘which have left the island.’’ The
Dutchman’s name appears to be some-
what confused, and may have actually
been a garbled rendering of den Olde,
meaning ‘‘the Elder.’’
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1880).
Pawson, Michael and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
SERGEANT, BENJAMIN
(fl. 1668)
English privateer issued a commission
by Governor Sir Thomas Modyford of
Sharpe, Bartholomew (fl. 1679
1685) 357
Jamaica on October 28, 1668 (O.S.), to
take any Spanish ship which he ‘‘might
encounter below the Tropic of Cancer
in the region of Mexico only, and no
other place.’’ Most likely this docu-
ment was a letter of reprisal, granted in
retaliation for some specific depreda-
tion in those waters.
See also
Letter of Reprisal; Modyford, Sir Thomas.
Reference
 Saint-
Tribout de Morembert, Henri, ‘‘A
Domingue, le Major Bernanos, capitaine
de flibustiers,’’ Connaissance du Monde
78 (1965), pp. 10
19.
SHARPE, BARTHOLOMEW
(fl. 1679
1685)
English buccaneer who raided Porto-
belo and the South Sea.
Sharpe was believed to have been
born in the parish of Stepney, London,
England, about 1650. He became a pri-
vateer during the Second Anglo-Dutch
War (1665
1667), and the chronicler
William Dampier later suggested that he
was one of the buccaneers who plun-
dered the Central American town of
Segovia in 1675. The first definite men-
tion of Sharpe’s activities occurred in
summer of 1679, when he was one of a
mixed band of English, French, and
other privateers who forayed into the
Bay of Honduras. On September 26th,
they captured a Spanish merchantman
laden with a valuable cargo of wine and
indigo, which they hoped to dispose of
at Jamaica. A month later, it was being
reported from Port Royal:
358 Sharpe, Bartholomew (fl. 1679
1685)
There has been lately taken from the
Spaniards by [John] Coxon, Bartholo-
mew Sharpe, Bothing, and Hawkins
[sic; Richard Sawkins?] with their
crew, 500 chests of indigo, a great
quantity of cacao, cochineal, tor-
toiseshell, money and plate. Much is
brought into this country already,
and the rest expected.
Later that same December 1679, Sharpe
attended a gathering of privateers at Port
Morant, off the southeastern tip of
Jamaica, and agreed to sail with Coxon,
Robert Allison, Cornelius Essex, and
Thomas Magott for an assault on Spanish
Portobelo, despite having only the sketch-
iest authorization for such a venture.
These freebooters quit Port Morant on
January 17, 1680, and less than 20 miles
out at sea met the brigantine of Jean
Rose, who also joined the enterprise. Af-
ter surprising and sacking the Spanish
port, a general distribution of booty was
made, after which the flotilla retired to
careen at Bocas del Toro (literally
‘‘Bull’s Mouths’’ or ‘‘Entrances of the
Bull,’’ at the northwestern extremity of
present-day Panama).
Pacific Incursion (1680
1681)
Once refitted, Sharpe and the rest of the
buccaneers decided to return to Golden
Island and have the Darien Indians guide
them over the Isthmus of Panama, to
attack the Spaniards on their Pacific flank.
Coxon, Allison, Edmond Cooke, Peter
Harris, Magott, Richard Sawkins, and
Sharpe all anchored close inshore and at
six o’clock on a Monday morning, April
15, 1680, went ashore with 332 bucca-
neers to penetrate the jungle. (Among
their number were Dampier, Basil Ring-
rose, and Lionel Wafer, all of whom
would later write accounts of these adven-
tures.) The buccaneers overran the Span-
ish outpost of Santa Marı́a 10 days later, at
the confluence of the Chucunaque and
Tuira rivers, and from there pushed on
into the Pacific, although Coxon showed
himself increasingly reluctant. They trav-
eled westward along the coastline in river
boats, until one night they captured an
anchored Spanish bark, which Sharpe
took command of with 135 men. The next
night, Harris came on a second, and seized
it as well. Soon, the buccaneers had
assembled a small flotilla, with which they
bore down on Panama.
The Spaniards sent out a hastily-mus-
tered force to do battle, which the raiders
overwhelmed in a three-hour fight. Dur-
ing this action, Harris was mortally
wounded, and afterward Coxon decided
to retrace his steps to Golden Island with
70 loyal hands. The remaining buccaneers
elected Sawkins as their admiral, and in-
stalled him aboard the 400-ton prize San-
tı´sima Trinidad (Most Blessed Trinity) as
their flagship. On May 6, 1680, a large
ship was intercepted arriving from Lima,
Peru, which became Sharpe’s new com-
mand, while Cooke commanded a bark of
about 80 tons. Sawkins suggested that the
flotilla sail southward to Guayaquil, but
the crews instead wanted to prowl north-
eastward for meat first. The squadron
accordingly roamed past Coiba Island,
until two days later Sawkins went ashore
to attempt to forage near the coastal town
of Remedios, but was killed.
Sharpe now assumed overall com-
mand, although he was not as popular as
his predecessor and saw numerous deser-
tions, eventually ending up—after weari-
some cruising up and down the South
American coast—by being deposed as
admiral in favor of John Watling.
But when the latter was killed in an
 Sharpe, Bartholomew (fl. 1679
1685) 359

Contemporary frontispiece showing Bartholomew Sharpe’s epic route, while exiting the
Pacific around the tip of South America during the winter of 1681
1682. (Exquemelin,
Alexandre-Olivier. The buccaneers of America: a true account of the most remarkable
assaults . . . ., 1893)

ill-conceived assault on Arica in Febru-
ary 1681, the other buccaneers reluc-
tantly restored Sharpe as senior
commander. Another contingent of about
50 buccaneers parted company that same
April 1681 to re-cross the Isthmus under
John Cooke, and Sharpe’s luck finally
improved, taking a few richer prizes.
One was the merchantman Rosario,
bound from Chile toward Panama with
two-dozen people aboard, when accord-
ing to a surviving witness, they:
. . . encountered the ship La Trinidad,
took her for a Spaniard, but found her
to be a pirate. In the first three shots, the
pirates killed the Captain Juan Lopez of
the Rosario, boarded her, took the wine,
silver, and everything of value, and put
the Spaniards to torture to discover if
there were more silver. Then they
turned the vessel adrift with sails cut,
and taking five or six of the crew, depo-
nent among them, sailed for the island
of La Plata, refreshed there for three
days, killed one of the Spaniards,
flogged another, and then sailed to
Payta, where they sent two boats ashore
with thirty-two men. Meeting with re-
sistance, they returned.
360 Sibata, Kempo (fl. 1643
1658)
Eventually, he sailed Trinidad around
Cape Horn that November 1681, and
concluded his voyage at Saint Thomas
in the Danish Virgin Islands by February
1682.
From there, he and his men dis-
persed, Sharpe sailing to England from
Nevis aboard the White Fox of Captain
Charles Howard, reaching Plymouth by
March 25, 1682 (O.S.). He lodged at the
Anchor Inn on Salpeter Bank, it being
noticed that he and his 10 followers had
‘‘several thousands of pounds and sev-
eral portmanteaux of jewels and of gold
and silver, coined and uncoined.’’
Subsequent Career
(1682
1699)
Less than two months later, Sharpe
was arrested on charges of piracy, and
on June 10, 1682 (O.S.), was brought
before the High Court of Admiralty at
Southwark to stand trial. Among the
judges were Sir Robert Holmes and Sir
John Narborough. The charges were
quickly thrown out for lack of material
witnesses, although Sharpe’s extensive
knowledge of Spanish America was
also deemed useful to the Crown, and
so weighed heavily in his favor. That
November 1682, he was even commis-
sioned to command the 4-gun Royal
Navy vessel Bonito, which was to sail
on a semi-official treasure-hunting ex-
pedition to the West Indies, although
he was replaced at the last moment by
Captain Edward Stanley.
Nonetheless, Sharpe returned to the
Caribbean in his own vessel, receiving a
commission from the Governor of Nevis
in January 1684 ‘‘to take and apprehend
savage Indians and pirates.’’ On October
31, 1684 (O.S.), he seized a ship off
Jamaica which he renamed Josiah and in
July 1685 was suspected of taking part in
Laurens de Graaf’s and the Sieur de
Grammont’s sack of Campeche, although
this could never be proven. Sharpe was
tried again for piracy at Nevis at the end of
1686 and yet again on February 12, 1687
(O.S.), being acquitted both times for lack
of evidence. In 1688, he was reportedly
the ‘‘commander’’ of the northernmost of
the Leeward Islands, Anguilla, and by the
summer of 1699 was being confined by
the Danish authorities on Saint Thomas
for unspecified ‘‘misdemeanors.’’
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru: Maritime
Intrusion into the South Sea, 1598
1701
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 10,
11 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Howse, Derek, and Thrower, A Buccaneer’s
Atlas: Basil Ringrose’s South Sea
Waggoner (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Prebble, John, The Darien Disaster
(London: Secker & Warburg, 1968).
Wafer, Lionel, A New Voyage and
Description of the Isthmus of America
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1933).
SIBATA, KEMPO
(fl. 1643
1658)
Alternate spellings are Sibada, Sebada,
or Sabada. Dutch privateer who settled

in Connecticut, and was present at the
English conquest of Jamaica.
Sibata was probably Frisian by birth,
judging by the garbled attempts to Angli-
cize his name, and may have actu-
ally been baptized ‘‘Remco Siebstra’’ or
another such variant. In 1649, he had
been serving on the Dutch privateering
vessel Garse [sic; possibly Gans is
meant, ‘‘Goose’’], when he came to settle
in ‘‘Pequott,’’ today New London, Con-
necticut. Late in April 1653, Sibata was
fined for selling ammunition to the Indi-
ans, and a few days later suffered further
misfortune when his fully-laden bark
was seized at the mouth of the Connecti-
cut River by Captain Edward Hull of the
Rhode Island privateer Swallow [for-
merly Admiral]. Hull had sortied on
receiving news of the outbreak of the
First Anglo-Dutch War back in Europe,
and claimed the bark and its cargo as
legitimate prizes because of Sibata’s
Dutch origins. The latter, of course,
brought suit and succeeded in recuperat-
ing his vessel a few months later,
although not the merchandise, which had
been sold and dispersed by then. On the
strength of Sibata’s complaint, two of
Swallow’s officers were briefly incarcer-
ated when they arrived at Boston on
October 25, 1653 (O.S.).
Less than a year-and-a-half later,
Sibata was lying at the West Indian isle
of Antigua when the expedition of Wil-
liam Penn and Robert Venables anchored
nearby at Barbados, in anticipation of
attacking the Spaniards. Commissioner
Gregory Butler was detached from the
fleet with Marston Moor and Selby to
recruit additional men at the outlying
islands, inviting Sibata ‘‘into the service
of the State’’ along with his ship and
crew. Sibata duly presented himself at the
marshalling area off Saint Christophers,
Sibata, Kempo (fl. 1643
1658) 361
and ‘‘was entertained by General Penn’’
when the main body rejoined on April
17, 1655, being engaged as pilot aboard
the flagship Swiftsure. When Santo Dom-
ingo was sighted a week later, Sibata
transferred aboard Vice Admiral William
Goodson’s Paragon along with Venables,
to land the army. This operation was
botched when the fleet sailed almost 30
miles to westward before depositing its
troops, thus dooming the enterprise.
Having failed to secure Santo Domi-
ngo, the expedition then proceeded to
smaller Jamaica. (Sibata is believed
to have participated in an even earlier
English raid on this same island, under
Captain William Jackson in 1643.) This
time, the landing was successful, and
Jamaica occupied. Sibata then settled
among the English forces, fighting a pro-
tracted guerrilla war against the surviv-
ing Spaniards. On February 14, 1656, he
led 100 soldiers ashore at Great Pedro
Bay from his ship Hunter, hoping to sur-
prise a nearby Spanish encampment.
However, a herdsman spotted them and
raised the alarm, so that only a few cap-
tives could be found in several days’
march to Parottee and back. They never-
theless provided valuable intelligence as
to a projected Spanish relief-force
expected from Cartagena, so that Good-
son sailed on a preemptive strike.
Sibata survived the terrible outbreaks
of disease which decimated Jamaica’s
early colonists, and fought in Colonel
Edward d’Oyley’s final victory over the
Spaniards at Rio Nuevo in summer of
1658. Returning to Port Royal from this
engagement, Sibata requested his offi-
cial retirement from service that same
July 26th, his certificate reading in part:
And now finding old age creep-
ing apace upon him, and urgent
362 Situados
occasions to go for his own country,
has the General’s leave to depart for
England, where he desires to receive
his pay.
To this, d’Oyley added ‘‘Sibada has been
a very diligent and faithful man [who
has] done good service, and hopes he
will find respect suitable.’’
References
Calendar of State Papers: Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Taylor, S. A. G., The Western Design: An
Account of Cromwell’s Expedition to the
Caribbean (London: Solstice
Productions, 1969).
SITUADOS
Payrolls and subsidies dispatched annu-
ally from Mexico and Peru to other, less
wealthy Spanish-American colonies.
The name was derived from the Span-
ish verb situar, which in commercial par-
lance meant to transfer funds. In addition
to the silver bullion sent every year to
Spain aboard the plate fleets, the Excheq-
uer in Madrid had standing orders for
lesser sums to be diverted directly to
coastal garrisons throughout the Carib-
bean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Usually, a
warship from the Armada de Barlovento
called at Veracruz to convey the Mexican
contribution across to Havana, where it
was met by the Peruvian shipment being
brought from Portobelo by the galeones.
The appropriate portion was then dis-
counted and distributed among Cuba’s
officers and men, after which other
predetermined amounts were redirected
in smaller vessels to the frontline out-
posts of Saint Augustine and Pensa-
cola, Florida, while another man o’
war conveyed those of Puerto Rico
and Santo Domingo. The Armada del
Mar del Sur performed a similar func-
tion on the Pacific coast of South
America, conducting payments from
the mint at Lima, Peru, as far south as
Chile and as far north as Panama.
And the Manila galleon which visited
Acapulco every year did the same,
carrying money from the Mexico City
mint as the Philippine situado back on
its homeward passage.
Oftentimes, these payments became
delayed, particularly during the 17th cen-
tury when the Spanish Crown was beset
by bankruptcies, so that unpaid troops
would either desert or riot. For this rea-
son, hired vessels were sometimes
employed, to hasten shipments when
Spanish men o’ war were not available.
Such was the case with the private frigate
Buen Jes
us de las Almas, Bernardo Fer-
rer Espejo master, who was chartered to
convey 46,471 pieces of eight from Ha-
vana to Santo Domingo as that island’s
situado for 1675. His vessel was inter-
cepted by the English rover John Bennett
as it approached Hispaniola, who cap-
tured it and—holding a French commis-
sion—carried his prize into Saint-
Domingue that same April 1675. The
Spanish authorities remained highly sus-
picious of this seizure, noting that Ben-
nett only had a small brigantine with 20
men, while Ferrer Espejo’s 50-ton frigate
held three times that number; which led
them to believe the Spanish captain had
colluded in the capture.

An even more notorious incident
occurred in July 1682, when the 28-gun
royal frigate Princesa (formerly the
French Dauphine or ‘‘Princess,’’ com-
monly called Francesa by the Spaniards)
was captured in the Mona Passage by the
pirate Laurens de Graaf. The Spanish ves-
sel was bound from Havana under Captain
Manuel Delgado to deliver 120,000 pesos
in Peruvian silver as the situados for
Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo, when it
was surprised by De Graaf’s Tigre off
Aguada, Puerto Rico, and 50 of its 250-
man crew killed or wounded in the result-
ant battle. The triumphant corsair and his
crew, most of them French boucaniers,
repaired to Saman
a Bay on the northern
shores of Hispaniola with their prize,
where they allegedly ‘‘made 140 shares
and shared 700 pieces of eight a man.’’
The Spaniards of Santo Domingo
became so incensed when they learned of
the loss of their situado, that they retali-
ated by expropriating a consignment of
slaves brought into their port that same
November 1682 by Nikolaas van Hoorn,
another Dutch adventurer with French
ties. He in turn escaped and in February
1683 obtained a letter of reprisal from
the French Governor of Petit-Go^ave,
leading to a retaliatory raid on Veracruz.
Madrid shortly thereafter altered the
situado distribution-system, so that
henceforth only Mexican silver was to
be sent to the Caribbean outposts of
Cuba, Florida, Santo Domingo, Puerto
Rico, Santa Marta, and Cuman
a, rather
than Peruvian bullion.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Somers Island 363
L


opez Cantos, Angel, Historia de Puerto
Rico, 1650
1700 (Seville: Escuela de
Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1975).
Marley, David F., Pirates and Engineers:
Dutch and Flemish Adventurers in New
Spain (1607
1697) (Windsor, Ontario,
Canada: Netherlandic Press, 1992) and
Sack of Veracruz: The Great Pirate
Raid of 1683 (Windsor, Ontario,
Canada: Netherlandic Press, 1993).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr
ua, 1972).
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am
erica Espa~nola
(Madrid: Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
SMITH, SAMUEL
One-time buccaneer who had served
with the famous Edward Mansfield.
On June 30, 1666, Major Smith was
commissioned by Governor Modyford
of Jamaica to reinforce the troops which
had recaptured Providencia or Santa
Catalina Island from the Spaniards. The
Spanish in turn swiftly reconquered the
island from the English, and Major
Smith was carried off in chains to Pan-
ama, where he was kept in a dungeon
for 17 months.
Reference
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
SOMERS ISLAND
Early English name for Bermuda, some-
times misspelled as ‘‘Summers Island.’’
364 Spanish Main
On February 25, 1675 (O.S.), for
example, Charles II of England replied
to a petition from ‘‘the Governor and
Company of the City of London for
the Plantations of the Somers Islands,
alias Bermuda.’’ The origin of this cu-
rious name dates from the shipwreck
of Sir George Somers’ expedition,
while bound for Virginia.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Crump, Dr. Helen J., Colonial Admiralty
Jurisdiction in the Seventeenth Century
(London: Longmans Green, 1931).
SPANISH MAIN
The northern coasts of present-day Pan-
ama, Colombia, and western Venezuela.
This curious name dates from the ear-
liest 16th century, when the first explor-
ers ventured beyond the Caribbean isles
in search of what they believed to be the
nearby Asian continent. By coincidence,
the first large land-mass that they charted
contiguously proved to be that of north-
ern South America, which these early
pathfinders dubbed Tierra Firme or the
Mainland. Even after further explorations
had revealed it to be but a portion of a
vast new continent, it remained custom-
ary to refer to this particular stretch of
coastline by its original name. From
Spanish, the expression then passed into
English, soon being shortened into the
‘‘Spanish Main’’ and occasionally misap-
plied to the waters lying off that coast,
rather than to the territory itself.
See also
Spanish Main (Volume 2).
SPEIRDYKE, BERNARD
CLAESEN (fl. 1663
1670)
Dutch-born privateer who operated out
of Jamaica.
Speirdyke was very popular among
his English colleagues, being known
affectionately as ‘‘Captain Barnard’’ or
‘‘Captain Bart.’’ The earliest known
reference to his activities occurred on
June 19, 1663, when William Beeston
noted in his journal how ‘‘Captain Bar-
nard Sperdick’’ had set sail from Port
Royal for the Orinoco River on the
Wild Coast, ‘‘with an intent to take St.
Thomas’s.’’ Evidently he was success-
ful, returning with his ships to Jamaica
the following March 16, 1664, to
report that he had plundered the Span-
ish town of Santo Tom
as.
However, Speirdyke is most remem-
bered for the circumstances surrounding
his death. In January 1670, he was dele-
gated by Governor Sir Thomas Mody-
ford to carry letters to the Spanish
authorities on Cuba, ‘‘signifying peace
between the two nations’’ and restoring
some Spanish captives to their country-
men. This conciliatory mission was part
of Modyford’s efforts to restrain the dep-
redations of Jamaican privateers, and es-
tablish better relations with the local
Spaniards. For Speirdyke, it represented
an opportunity to profit from the clan-
destine trade which usually accompanied
such a voyage. He quit Port Royal with
his Mary and Jane, of six guns and 18
men, crossing over to Manzanillo, the
southeastern Cuban port for the province
of Bayamo, where he was at first greeted

with some suspicion. The Spaniards
searched his vessel three times ‘‘fearing
she was a privateer,’’ but once convinced
of his sincerity, allowed him to sell his
goods undisturbed.
The very day that he was quitting the
bay, Speirdyke saw a ship approaching,
which ran up English colors. He brought
the Mary and Jane to, and sent two men
across in a boat to hear the latest news.
As they were going up its side, they
were asked whence their vessel hailed,
and on replying ‘‘Jamaica,’’ were taken
captive. The stranger was the 14-gun
Spanish corsair San Pedro, alias the
Fama, commanded by Manoel Rivero
Pardal. He held a commission to attack
English vessels, and instantly hoisted a
Spanish flag and bore down on Speir-
dyke. ‘‘Defend yourself, dog!’’ Rivero
roared as he closed. ‘‘I come as a punish-
ment for heretics!’’ Fama then loosed a
broadside, and the battle was joined.
A brisk cannonade ensued until dark,
with Speirdyke defending himself well,
despite being outgunned and outnum-
bered. The night was clear, so that he
could not hope to escape, and the follow-
ing day the Spaniards pressed in to board,
having 70 men. Still, a staunch resistance
was made, in which many of Rivero’s
men were killed or wounded before the
Mary and Jane was carried. Five of its
crew lay dead, including Speirdyke him-
self—that ‘‘obstinate, mad heretic,’’ as
Rivero called him. The victorious corsair
then sent nine prisoners back to Port Royal
in their boat, while he sailed the prize to
Cartagena, arriving on March 23, 1670. A
grand fiesta was held to celebrate his tri-
umph, while outrage gripped Jamaica.
The privateers wished to take revenge
for Speirdyke, which Modyford with diffi-
culty defused. But he too resented the na-
ture of his emissary’s death, and when
Spurre, George (fl. 1678
1683) 365
later that summer Rivero raided Jamaica
and posted a notice saying, among other
things, ‘‘I am he that took Captain Barns
[sic] and did carry the prize to Cartagena,’’
the mood was already set for Henry Mor-
gan’s retaliatory strike against Panama.
References
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
SPURRE, GEORGE
(fl. 1678
1683)
English freebooter who sacked Cam-
peche in 1678, then Veracruz five
years later.
Spurre began his West Indian career
sometime during the 1670s, obtaining a
French privateering commission against
the Dutch and Spaniards after England
withdrew from the general European
hostilities. He must have ignored the
many recalls emanating from Jamaica,
so that by the spring of 1678 he was in
command of a corsair frigate with a crew
of 105 men off the Cuban coast, accom-
panied by the sloop of Edward Neville.
On April 10, 1678, they sighted the
Spanish aviso or dispatch vessel Toro
(‘‘Bull’’), Juan de la Requista master,
which had departed Havana that same
366 Spurre, George (fl. 1678
1683)
day for Veracruz. They intercepted and
carried their prize to the Santa Isabel
Cays, where Spurre burnt his frigate and
transferred into the Toro. All the Span-
iards were released at Bahı́a Honda,
except for a coastal pilot whom the buc-
caneers retained.
Spurre and Neville then crossed the
Gulf of Mexico to the Laguna de
T
erminos, capturing the ketch of
Alvaro S
anchez en route. The raiders
spent the next three weeks in the La-
guna, recruiting additional men for an
attempt against Campeche. A Spanish
captive reported that they reached 180
men in total:
. . . the majority of them French and
English and some Spaniards, among
the latter a friar, a mestizo and one
who had been a slave at Campeche.
Captain ‘‘‘Jorge’’’ [‘‘‘de Eslurra,’’’as
Spurre’s name was confusingly ren-
dered into Spanish] said if he had
wished, he could have collected up
to 400 men for the sack.
The buccaneers ventured northeastward
in their two vessels, towing eight pira-
guas. They circled past Campeche and
anchored near Jaina, from where Neville
departed on the night of July 6
7, 1678,
to reconnoiter the port from his sloop.
He rejoined the main body at daybreak,
reporting all was calm.
Sack of Campeche (July 1678)
That evening, 160 pirates slipped ashore,
with instructions to the anchor-watches
left aboard the Toro and sloop to bear
down on Campeche at dawn two days
later. If two smoke-columns were seen,
this would be the signal that the town had
been won and they could enter the roads.
The landing party meanwhile approached
Campeche stealthily from the landward
side, capturing every person that they met.
Some were tortured to reveal the best
access to the town, and an Indian called
Juan ‘‘was tied up and threatened to have
his head cut off by a cutlass which the
pirate captain showed him,’’ agreeing to
lead a nocturnal march which brought the
column to a small city-gate an hour before
daybreak on Sunday, July 10, 1678. The
captive also answered the sentinel’s chal-
lenge, allowing the buccaneers to enter
unrecognized in the gloom.
The attackers then advanced swiftly
toward the central plaza, ignoring the few
early churchgoers attending matins. Once
in front of the Governor’s residence, the
column was again challenged by a sentry,
but this time ‘‘the pirates with a great
shout fired a heavy volley.’’ The garrison
was taken utterly by surprise, only nine
soldiers being on duty instead of the
required 60. (Moreover, the best
troops—mulatto militia—were absent pa-
trolling the countryside.) The sargento
mayor or garrison commander Gonzalo
Borrallo leapt over his back wall in a
nightshirt with his sword, but after being
fired at repeatedly ‘‘from point-blank
range’’ out of the darkness, retreated into
his house, where he was seized. Virtually
every prominent citizen shared this same
fate, the only Spaniards who escaped
being the four-man watch aboard Juan
Ramı́rez’s frigate. They got their vessel
under way and quickly cleared the harbor,
which so infuriated the buccaneers that
they turned on Ramı́rez, whom they held
captive, and savagely hacked him to
death, ‘‘giving him many sword thrusts
and cutting off his nose.’’
Other Spaniards were terrified into
raising ransoms, and every building in
Campeche was ransacked. Toro and

Neville’s sloop appeared on schedule,
two huts being fired down by the
waterfront to signal them to enter. The
freebooters remained in possession of
the town until the evening of Tuesday,
July 12, 1678, when they began to with-
draw their loot. The ship San Antonio, a
barco luengo, and a boat were among
their spoils, as well as considerable
money and foodstuffs. The raiders also
carried off 250 black, mulatto, and In-
dian townspeople to sell as slaves at the
Laguna de T
erminos.
That same autumn, William Beeston
wrote in his journal at Port Royal,
Jamaica:
18 October 1678 [O.S.]. Arrived
Captain Splure [sic] who with one
Neville about three months since,
and 150 men, had taken Campeche,
and with him a prize; for all of
which he had his pardon, and leave
to come in and spend their plunder.
It is possible Spurre then briefly set-
tled down to a peaceable existence, as
in early 1681 a pink headed northwest-
ward from Jamaica encountered ‘‘a
lugger commanded by one Captain
Spargh[?] with a nine-man crew, who
said he had been trading on the Cuban
coast.’’ However, if true, Spurre must
have soon resumed roving, for in early
October 1682, Governor Sir Thomas
Lynch reported that an emissary from
the Spanish Governor of Portobelo
‘‘left his barco luengo at Tuana, a lee-
ward port 25 leagues from Port Royal
and came here in a sloop,’’ because he
had been ‘‘told that one Spurre, an
English pirate with 60 men, was on the
coast.’’ The following year, Spurre
took part in one of the greatest pirate
coups of his era.
Spurre, George (fl. 1678
1683) 367
Sack of Veracruz (May 1683)
Dutch-born Nikolaas van Hoorn
obtained a letter of reprisal from the
French Governor of Saint-Domingue,
Jacques Nepveu, sieur de Pouançay, in
retaliation for the Spaniards having
seized a consignment of his slaves at
Santo Domingo. Reinforced with bou-
caniers commanded by the ‘‘Cheva-
lier’’ de Grammont and Jan Willems,
he then set sail into the Bay of Hondu-
ras to recruit further help from Laurens
de Graaf and Michiel Andrieszoon.
Spurre and his men were among this
freebooter throng, which paused off
Yucatan to gather greater strength before
descending on the unwary city of Vera-
cruz the night of May 17
18, 1683.
As during his previous assault on
Campeche, the Spanish inhabitants
were caught sleeping in their beds, re-
sistance crumbling after a few heavy
volleys. The city Governor Luis
Bartolom
e de C
ordoba disappeared in
the melee, but was found a few days
later hiding in the stables, reputedly by
Spurre himself, who ‘‘with great diffi-
culty saved him from some of the
French who had been prisoners there,
and ill used.’’ Veracruz was occupied
for four days, being utterly ransacked
before the raiders retreated to a cay off
the coast to divide their spoils. The
pirates then sailed back around the
Yucatan Peninsula to their rendezvous
off Isla Mujeres, before dispersing.
When word of this assault reached
Port Royal in early August 1683,
Lynch learned that among the pirate
commanders were ‘‘no English, except
one Spurre, and Jacob Hall in a small
brig from Carolina.’’ Six weeks later,
the Governor gained further information
when he interviewed an ‘‘Englishman
368 Stanley, George (fl. 1683)
that was in the action,’’ to whom he
promised a pardon ‘‘if he brings in
Spurre’s sloop, but I have heard no
more of him or the sloop.’’ Apparently,
the renegade had repaired to French
Saint-Domingue with the rest of the
raiders, so that when Lynch dispatched
Royal Navy Captain James Risby to
Petit-Go^ave at the end of September
with a list of demands, these included
the return of ‘‘Spurre’s shalloup [sic] as
belonging to this island, and the goods
aboard Laurens [de Graaf’s flagship]
that belong to Spurre, as the King
claims them.’’ The sloop at least seems
to have been returned, for there exists
an ‘‘Account of the goods on Spurre’s
sloop’’ dated at Jamaica in mid-Novem-
ber 1683, totaling more than a £1,000.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 9, 11
( London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office; 1893
1899.


Eugenio Martı́nez, Marı́a Angeles, La
defensa de Tabasco, 1600
1717
(Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
americanos, 1971).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan, 1635

1684 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1977).
STANLEY, GEORGE
(fl. 1683)
Master of the Royal African Company
sloop Africa, taken by a Spanish privateer
while returning from delivering dis-
patches to Danish Saint Thomas on
behalf of Sir William Stapleton, Eng-
lish Governor of the Leeward Islands.
According to the report that Stapleton
submitted to London some months later,
dated November 30, 1683 (O.S.), Africa
had been scurrying back to Nevis ‘‘at the
close of the hurricane season,’’ when it
encountered the Spaniard between Tor-
tola and Saint John in the Virgin Islands
chain. Eye witnesses later claimed the
Spaniard fired first, although he denied
doing so; but even if Stanley had let fly
the first round, the Governor judged this
‘‘no crime, for there are so many rogues
upon the sea.’’ Nevertheless, the sloop
was taken and carried into San Juan de
Puerto Rico, from whence Stanley was
eventually deported to Spain.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
STARR, JOHN (fl. 1680)
English procurer, who ‘‘appears to have
operated the largest whorehouse’’ in
Port Royal, Jamaica. According to the
official census of 1680, Starr maintained
an establishment containing 21 ‘‘white
women’’ and two ‘‘black women.’’
Reference
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1975).

STATE’S OR
STATES’ SHIPS
Mid-17th century expressions for Crom-
wellian and Dutch vessels, respectively.
Following the execution of King
Charles I of England and the intro-
duction of Sir Oliver Cromwell’s
Protectorate, the honorific term ‘‘His
Majesty’s Ship’’ was naturally dis-
pensed with, being substituted by
‘‘State’s Ship.’’ For example, Captain
John Wentworth issued a receipt at
Port Cagaway, Jamaica, on April 9,
1658 (O.S.), ‘‘for seven puncheons of
cocoa laden on board the State’s Ship
Paul,’’ which he was to deliver at
London. This term also applied to
other governmental properties as well,
such as the ‘‘State’s Storehouse at
Jamaica,’’ it being the commonly
accepted name for the new administra-
tion. When Captain William Powell
wrote to complain of the deplorable
straits the Protectorate’s soldiers had
been reduced to on Jamaica by October
1656, he declared:
. . . they have had a very sad dis-
pensation, and have wanted that
comfort that the State allowed them.
Most of the provisions sent were
laid on shore and rotted and spoiled,
while many poor souls perished for
want.
Dutch warships, on the other hand—but
not their private vessels—were referred
to by the English as ‘‘States’ Ships’’
throughout the 17th century, because
they sailed under the orders of the
United Provinces’ mutual govern-
ment, the Staten-Generaal or ‘‘States-
General.’’
Stepney, Robert (fl. 1683
1684) 369
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
STEADMAN, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1666)
English buccaneer who with Captain
Robert Searle and a party of only 80
men, took and plundered the Dutch
West Indian island of Tobago in 1666,
during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
Later that same year, when France
entered the conflict on the side of The
Netherlands, Steadman’s vessel became
becalmed off the island of Guadeloupe
and was attacked by a large French
frigate. He and his 100-man crew
fought bravely for two hours, even
attempting to board their larger oppo-
nent, but were eventually overcome.
Reference
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
STEPNEY, ROBERT
(fl. 1683
1684)
English privateer who operated out of
Barbados.
Early in February 1684 (January 23,
1684 O.S.), Stepney was arrested ‘‘on
the complaint of Monsieur de Saint
Laurens, for attacking a French sloop
at sea.’’ Presumably, this was the inci-
dent referred to by the Chevalier in his
370 Swart, Adriaen van Diemen (fl. 1655
1664)
Martinique’s fortified headland of Fort Royal, later renamed Fort-de-France, as sketched by
the French slaver Jean Barbot during a visit in 1679. (The British Library)
letter dated at Fort Royal, Martinique,
on November 13th of that previous year,
when France and England were offi-
cially at peace. In it, he had charged:
. . . that one of your armed barks fired
several musket shots at the crew
of one of our ships at Dominica.
She fired first under French and
then under English colors, and the
master of your bark forced the French
crew to give them some men, and a
canoe to go and take three Caribs
who had come to the shore under
the French flag. I demand satisfaction
for this misuse and insult to the
French flag.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
SWART, ADRIAEN VAN
DIEMEN (fl. 1655
1664)
Dutch rover who served the exiled
English Royalists as a privateer, until
Charles II regained the throne, when
Swart’s loyalty was rewarded with a
posting to Jamaica.
Little is known about this free-
booter’s birth or early life, except that
he was apparently based out of the sea-
port of Ostend in West Flanders (mod-
ern Belgium). He seems to have used
his full name throughout his career,
probably to distinguish himself from
an earlier ‘‘Adriaen Swart,’’ who was
listed as Captain of a warship out of
Vlissingen or Flushing in the 1644
Chronijk van Zeelandt by Jan van Rei-
gersbergh. The unusual surname shared
by both men would today be more
commonly spelled as Zwart, meaning
‘‘Black’’ in Dutch.
Royalist Privateer (1655
1659)
Adriaen van Diemen Swart first fig-
ured in the English records as of Sep-
tember 1655, when it was reported that
he was cruising ‘‘in his new frigate of
18 guns’’ with a privateering commis-
sion issued by the exiled Stuart mon-
arch, hunting vessels of Oliver
Cromwell’s Commonwealth. Although
the land campaigns of the English
Civil War had ceased more than six
years previously with the execution of
 Swart, Adriaen van Diemen (fl. 1655
1664)
King Charles I, some of the dispos-
sessed and dispersed Royalists still
maintained seaborne operations out of
a few neutral harbors on the European
Continent.
Swart was one of 33 such naval
officers, mostly unsalaried English or
foreign-born privateers, who while ‘‘at
sea aboard His Majesty’s fleet’’ on De-
cember 30, 1655 (O.S.), signed an
open Declaration by the Royalists
against the Rebels of England, Con-
cerning Prisoners Taken at Sea, in
which they complained:
. . . that those who usurp the present
power in England, have and do keep
and detain prisoners all such offi-
cers, seamen, and soldiers as they
happen to take of our party, and
especially now lately are not content
to keep them as prisoners of war
(taken in a war most just and lawful
on our parts), as to allow them hope
of exchange, but do use them in like
manner (or worse) as they deal with
felons and other public malefactors
amongst themselves; laying them, or
some of them, bound and in irons in
stinking dungeons, there to poison or
starve them without any competent
allowance to keep them alive; and
most barbarously have sold and sent
away many of those our friends
(free-born subjects to the Crown of
England) for slaves into some of the
foreign plantations under the present
power, and have not spared to give
out and threaten to take away the
lives of some of our friends now in
their hands, in the interim abusing
them with all the most un-Christian
and inhumane cruelties imaginable,
most of them when taken having
conditioned and been promised
371
liberty and all fair quarter, which is
treacherously broken.
As a result, these Royalist commanders
vowed to mete out like punishments by
way of retaliation, and in February 1656
it was recorded that ‘‘Swart and two
others have lately taken three vessels off
Plymouth, Bristol, and Barnstaple.’’ On
March 12, 1656, the Dutch Consul P. V.
Oorschot at the Spanish port of San
Sebasti
an informed his superiors of the
States-General in The Hague, that: ‘‘One
Captain Adriaen Swart of Ostend brought
in here this week an English vessel, com-
ing from the Levant laden with oil and
wines.’’ And next month, the energetic
rover was again spotted on the high seas
in company ‘‘with a Brest man-of-war,’’
bound to scour the Irish coast.
Swart continued to act as a persistent,
albeit oftentimes lonely campaigner over
the next several years, until Cromwell
finally died, the Commonwealth disinte-
grated, and Charles II was welcomed
joyously home to England by May 1660.
A new constitutional arrangement was
approved by Parliament that same Au-
gust, after which the restored monarch
was in a position to reward his most
loyal retainers. A money warrant for
£100 was duly issued on April 26, 1661
(O.S.), ‘‘to Captain Adrian Van Diamon
Swart, as royal bounty for his service.’’
It is possible that the rover was at that
moment absent from England, his frigate
Griffoen (Griffin in English) forming
part of a squadron which Commodore
Robert Holmes had led out of Ports-
mouth that same January 1661 to stake a
claim amid Dutch-controlled West
Africa. After returning into London and
being decommissioned on December 2,
1661 (O.S.), Swart and Griffin were
apparently contracted early next spring
372 Swart, Adriaen van Diemen (fl. 1655
1664)
to serve as an auxiliary for Jamaica’s
new Governor-designate.
Jamaican Service (1662
1663)
An expedition was being prepared to
introduce Crown rule for the first time to
Jamaica, by conveying out Charles’s new
Royal Governor, Thomas, Lord Windsor,
aboard the 46-gun flagship HMS Cen-
turion under Commodore Christopher
Myngs, a veteran West Indian officer
(who was also being restored to his pre-
vious posting, so as to act as its new sta-
tion commander). Windsor appears to
have privately financed or purchased
Swart’s Griffin, so as to have it operate
under his direction. As the Crown offi-
cials in London were uncertain whether
any lingering pro-Commonwealth senti-
ments might hinder the imposition of
monarchical rule over that remote col-
ony, Windsor was to be furnished with
the back-pay and a gratuity for Jamaica’s
1,000 neglected Cromwellian occupiers,
as well as secret permission to inaugurate
a vigorous privateering offensive against
the local Spaniards, so as to employ any
wilder spirits in this diverting pursuit.
Such a policy-shift was known to Myngs,
Swart, and the former Commonwealth
naval officer Sir Thomas Whetstone, all
of whom hoped to play a role as leaders
in these upcoming privateering ventures.
Their convoy set sail in early May
1662, escorted by Centurion and Grif-
fin, and sighted Barbados by July 10,
1662 (O.S.). Windsor disembarked next
day in Carlisle Bay, to spend the next
three weeks recruiting settlers to help
populate Jamaica with civilians, while
Swart was sent on ahead to deliver let-
ters to the Spanish Governors of Puerto
Rico and Santo Domingo, asking them
to admit English ships to trade. Their
anticipated refusals would provide the
excuse for the forthcoming hostilities.
Swart’s Griffin was mentioned in the
journal of William Beeston as entering
Port Royal by July 30, 1662 (O.S.),
bringing news ‘‘that they left the Lord
Windsor at Barbados, who might be
expected to arrive every day.’’ Indeed,
the Governor set sail from Carlisle Bay
with his main convoy on August 1,
1662 (O.S.), reaching Port Royal 10
days later.
By the time he disembarked and
assumed office, privateers were already
being recruited, and some had even put
out to sea under the nominal leadership
of Whetstone. Windsor dispatched
Swart to make a second quick visit to
Puerto Rico, returning shortly there-
after with the Spanish Governors’ writ-
ten rebuffs. At a legislative meeting
held at Jamaica’s new royal capital of
Santiago de la Vega or Spanish Town
on August 20, 1662 (O.S.), the Gover-
nor and his Council deemed these
replies an ‘‘absolute denial of trade,’’
so that ‘‘according to His Majesty’s
instructions to Lord Windsor, a trade
by force or otherwise [shall] be en-
deavored.’’ As a result, it was resolved
on September 12th (O.S.) ‘‘that men be
enlisted for a design by sea with the
Centurion and other vessels,’’ and
eight days afterward Myngs stood out
of Port Royal harbor with his Centu-
rion, Swart’s Griffin, and ten free-
booter vessels, bearing a total of 1,300
men. They slowly rounded Point Negril
at the west end of Jamaica, before rais-
ing eastern Cuba and meeting up with
Whetstone, then being overtaken by a
further seven straggling Jamaican
vessels.
This combined force bore down on
the entrance of Santiago Bay at daybreak
 Swart, Adriaen van Diemen (fl. 1655
1664)
of October 6, 1662 (O.S.), setting 1,000
men ashore nearby to fight their way
into that inland town by next day, and
seizing all vessels anchored in its roads.
Five days later, Santiago’s fortifications
and main edifices were blown, after
which the raiders made a triumphal
return into Port Royal by October 21st
(O.S.). Doubtless Swart participated in
this strike, and cleared to sail again when
Myngs called that same December for a
second expedition against the Spaniards
of Mexico. The anonymous ‘‘Account of
the Private Ships of War Belonging to
Jamaica,’’ drawn up sometime early in
1663, listed 11 frigates and brigantines
‘‘under Sir Thos. Whetstone and Cap-
tains Swart, Gaye,’’ etc.
When the Commodore led this sec-
ond flotilla over the hazy blue horizon
from Jamaica in mid-January 1663,
Swart’s Griffin figured as his vice-flag-
ship, with 100 fighting-men crammed
aboard. But just as Fortune was beck-
oning to the Dutch-born Captain, luck
deserted him. This formation forged a
thousand miles northwestward around
the Yucat
an Peninsula, before groping
south down its low, shoal-lined coast
so as to surprise the unwary port
of Campeche. Sometime during this
two-and-a-half week traverse, though,
Swart and several other privateersmen
lost contact with the main body. They
were therefore not present when
Myngs stealthily landed a body of men
on the night of February 8
9, 1663,
and fell badly wounded as he led the
charge into Campeche next morning.
Given the absence of Swart, the Ja-
maican privateer Edward Mansfield
assumed command of this attack, and
successfully withdrew by February 23,
1663, with great booty and fourteen
prizes. Perhaps Swart met elements of
373
this heavily-engorged formation as it
slowly beat its way back out of the
Gulf of Mexico, and realized his
missed opportunity. Griffin subse-
quently prowled along the south coast
of Cuba instead, where an even worst
calamity befell its luckless commander.
Months later, an Englishman named
John Haines would give the following
deposition before the Admiralty Court
at Port Royal:
About March last [1663], being an in-
habitant amongst the Spaniards, he
heard that a party of English belong-
ing to Captain Swart being landed
near the River Caut [sic; Rı́o Cauto],
a party of men under Andr
es de Cese-
neras [sic; Captain Andr
es Cisneros
Estrada] and Don Alonso de Fonseca
were sent to take them, who having
met with and slain 11 of them, found
17 more in a small wood in a savan-
nah, prepared to defend themselves.
Whereupon the Spaniards, by show-
ing their dead comrades, displaying
their own force, and promising that
they should have fair quarter and be
sent to Santiago on Cuba, and from
thence be shipped to Jamaica, induced
them to lay down their arms; but
in the night killed them all. Has heard
all this from Andr
es Hidalgo, one of
the Spanish party. Has also seen the
bones of the 17 men lying as they
were slain, within a compass of 5
yards square, and has heard that the
magistrates of Baiam [sic; Bayamo]
sent to the Spaniards, not to bring in
one Englishman alive.
After sustaining such heavy losses,
Swart must have felt especially loath to
return to the rejoicing at Port Royal, in
abject defeat. His patron Windsor had
374 Swart, Adriaen van Diemen (fl. 1655
1664)
already departed abruptly for England,
soon to be followed by the convalescent
Myngs, while Mansfield had emerged as
the undisputed champion of the priva-
teers. Swart consequently seems to have
spent a miserable year scrounging for
food, equipment, and prizes in Cuban
waters, although no precise details of his
activities are known. To add to his woes,
it was possible that during this same diffi-
cult interlude a common seaman named
Gerrit Gerritszoon—known as ‘‘Rok
Brasiliano’’ among the English, and
‘‘very popular with the crew’’—rallied a
majority of the disgruntled seamen ‘‘to
his side and parted company with their
captain, taking a bark’’ and sailing off on
their own separate, successful cruise.
Shipwreck and Death (1664)
It was not until Sir Thomas Modyford
arrived from Barbados in early June
1664 to assume office as Jamaica’s next
Royal Governor that Swart at last crept
back into Port Royal. A recall of all pri-
vateers having been proclaimed, the
new Deputy-Governor Colonel Edward
Morgan acidly commented about the
meager response: ‘‘In the Westergate
they took a privateer; another under
Captain Swart has come in voluntarily;
and a third with a Spanish prize; but the
rest he warrants will keep aloof, unless
it be to do us a mischief.’’ Swart wrote
an apologetic letter to his former patron
Windsor on June 26, 1664 (O.S.),
acknowledging receipt of his long-ago
order for a return to England, explain-
ing that since then he had been ‘‘17
months at sea with very bad success,
cables and anchors lost, sails worn, and
was not able to put to sea; now Sir
Thos. Modyford has taken the frigate
for His Majesty’s service.’’
Indeed, the new Jamaican Governor
informed London four days later, how
shortly after his arrival, he had:
Found Captain Swart with the Griffin,
without men and money, and his ves-
sel impossible to go to sea. Has pre-
sumed to fit her up on His Majesty’s
account, and will, if he can get men,
send her to Barbados to carry the
inviting news, and bring down his
wife with the rest of his family.
This decision would have the most tragic
consequences. Griffin set sail on this Bar-
badian mission by the end of July 1664,
bearing the Governor’s eldest son, Major-
General John ‘‘Jack’’ Modyford, and in
company with the larger Westergate and
ketch Swallow. On August 18, 1664
(O.S.), all three were engulfed and driven
deep into the Gulf of Mexico by a heavy
storm, only Swallow emerging intact.
The battered Griffin eventually
drifted helplessly onto the coast of
Florida, Swart and most of his men
dying during this ordeal. Only five sur-
vivors were left to be rescued by the
local Spaniards, who also refloated and
repaired the beached frigate. Early next
year, a worried Governor Modyford
wrote from Jamaica: ‘‘The Swallow
was beaten down into Campeachy Bay
by a storm on August 18 last, in which
it is feared that the Griffin and Wester-
gate have suffered, for they have not
been heard of since.’’ In another letter,
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Lynch com-
mented how he had heard a rumor:
. . . by letters of January 8th [O.S.]
that Sir Thomas Modyford sent his
son Major-General John Modiford in
a small frigate called the Griffin, of
14 or 16 guns, to fetch his lady from

Barbados, and any planters that
would embark for Jamaica. About
the Leeward Islands, the Griffin was
attacked by a Dutch man-of-war,
and was so disabled as to be obliged
to put into the French island of Mar-
tinico [sic; Martinique] for repairs.
The fight is conjectured to have been
in November last, and the Griffin
was daily expected at Barbados.
Lynch concluded that he himself would
‘‘start tomorrow [13 February 1665
O.S.] towards New England, and on his
way will inquire at Havana after the
Griffin, whose loss is one of their great
misfortunes and disappointments.’’
Yet neither its hard-luck Dutch Cap-
tain nor his young passenger, the Gover-
nor’s son, would ever be seen again.
Eerily enough, only the refitted Griffin
would be sighted once more on the high
seas, for at Port Royal on January 11,
1666 (O.S.): ‘‘Sam Sherdlaw and Garrett
Garretson, alias Rocky, depose[d] to
having been chased by Spanish men-of-
war, one of which was the Griffin, which
formerly belonged to His Majesty, and
was commanded by Captain Swart.’’
See also
Beeston, Sir William; Brasiliano, Rok;
Gerritszoon, Gerrit; Lynch, Sir Thomas;
Mansfield, Edward; Modyford, Sir
Thomas; Myngs, Sir Christopher;
Whetstone, Sir Thomas; Windsor,
Thomas, Lord.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office; 1893
1899).
Swayne, Peter (fl. 1660) 375
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic:
Interregnum, 1653
1660, as well as
Charles II, 1663
1664.
Calendar of Treasury Books, Vol.1:
1660
1667 (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office; 1879
1886).
Crump, Dr. Helen J., Colonial Admiralty
Jurisdiction in the Seventeenth Century
(London: Longmans Green, 1931).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1975).
Thurloe, John, A Collection of the State
Papers of John Thurloe, Volume 4
(London, 1742).
SWAYNE, PETER (fl. 1660)
Petty rover who in late January 1660
was confined in Fort Cromwell prison
at Port Royal, Jamaica, charged with
piracy because on:
. . . meeting with a shaloupe [sic] at
sea belonging to Hines of the island
of Barbados, [Swayne] did feloni-
ously rob and plunder the same, and
has disposed and converted the
goods thereout taken to his own use.
Weblinge, the garrison Provost Mar-
shal, had been ordered ‘‘to take the
body of the said Peter Swayne into
your custody and him safely keep in
the tower, until he shall be released or
condemned by law,’’ although it is not
known what the eventual verdict might
have been.
Reference
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1975).
 T

This is a very considerable and seasonable piece of service,

and will give a great stop to the villainous intentions
of these revolting pirates.
—Jamaica’s Governor Sir Thomas Modyford, approving of the capture
of Jean Moreau, 1665

TENNANT, MATTHEW left careening at ‘‘Jaqueene’’ (perhaps

(fl. 1682
1684)
Royal Navy officer who hunted pirates
out of Jamaica.
Tennant was first heard from in late
1682, when the French pirate Jean Ham-
lin and a band of 120 ‘‘desperate rogues’’
seized the frigate Trompeuse (Trickster)
in the Bay of Honduras, cruising east-
ward to intercept merchantmen bound
for Port Royal. They ensconced them-
selves at ^Ile a Vache, on the southwest-
ern arm of French Hispaniola, and the
Jamaican Governor Sir Thomas Lynch
began issuing privateering commissions
to bring in Trompeuse. None was able to
find the renegade until the last day of
1682 (21 December O.S.), when a mer-
chant named Spencer reported having
been looted by the pirates, whom he had
present-day Jacmel, Haiti?).
That same day, Tennant returned to
Port Royal from Santiago de Cuba with
HMS Guernsey, and was immediately or-
dered to sail against Hamlin. He cleared a
few days later and beat to windward, so
that on the morning of January 25, 1683,
Guernsey stemmed the entrance and spot-
ted the pirate frigate at anchor inside. But
the weather then grew so calm the man o’
war could not close with Hamlin ‘‘for want
of oars;’’ and when a wind finally did
spring up, it quickly blew into such a gale
that the freshly-cleaned Trompeuse easily
outdistanced Tennant, for ‘‘the pirate
sailed three feet to his one.’’ Guernsey
returned to Jamaica in early February 1683
to report on this failure, and was angrily or-
dered back into the area by Lynch, as the
rovers were still making captures.

377
378 Tenths
Tennant instead requested permission
to have his ship careened, for without
greater speed he could not hope to over-
take Trompeuse. Lynch testily agreed,
sending:
. . . about twenty carpenters on
board him and plenty of seamen,
and so got her careened in twenty
days, which was more than ever was
done before in this harbor. I gave
him twenty more men and a month’s
provision, hired a satee to wait on
him, and on [February 15, 1683
(O.S.)] he sailed with my positive
orders not to stir from the coast till
the pirate was gone or destroyed.
By the time Guernsey beat back to
Saint-Domingue, Hamlin had long since
disappeared toward Danish Saint Thomas.
Frustrated, Tennant continued eastward
and took on fresh provisions at Puerto
Rico, before patrolling past the Virgin
Islands toward the Spanish Main, without
catching sight of Hamlin. Although he
prowled the West Indies for three months,
he never had the good fortune to meet
any pirates, but on September 3, 1683,
‘‘redeemed eight English captives at Santa
Marta, who were condemned to die that
day,’’ carrying them back to Port Royal.
At the end of that same year (1683),
Tennant was promoted to command the
540-ton HMS Ruby of 48 guns, and
sailed to Cartagena as escort for the
slave asiento ships. Off that Spanish
American port, he met the triumphant
pirate flotilla of Laurens de Graaf, who
along with Michiel Andrieszoon and Jan
Willems had recently captured a trio of
ships sent out to fight them. Tennant
paused to visit with the victors, and later
reported to Lynch ‘‘that Yankey [Wil-
lems] showed him a commission from
the [French] Governor of Petit Go^ave,’’
which was apparently their authorization
for these hostilities.
Tennant himself soon became
embroiled in a dispute of his own between
the two rival Spanish slaving companies
at Cartagena, when he received delivery
of 2,000 doubloons from one of them
aboard Ruby outside the port. This money
had been illegally extracted, but Tennant
refused to hand it back over when the local
authorities discovered the truth and com-
plained. Instead, he still carried it with
him when Ruby returned to Port Royal on
February 13, 1684, escorting the Spanish
slaver Santo Tom
as with 300 blacks on
board.
Lynch said that he had ‘‘been cruelly
enraged with Captain Tennant for his
behavior’’ (which the Governor felt might
jeopardize the growing trade relations
with the Spaniards), and ordered him to
deliver the money ‘‘which he had received
from one Santiago de Castillo, forthwith
to Captain Hender Molesworth.’’ Tennant
grudgingly complied, and Lynch was suf-
ficiently mollified to take no further
action against the Captain, ‘‘for he prom-
ises amendment and I was unwilling to
ruin a young man who is sailor enough.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
TENTHS
In the 17th century, the percentage due
to the King of England from any priva-
teer captures, after being deemed legit-
imate prizes before a court of law.
When the exiled Stuart monarch was
restored to the throne as Charles II in

May 1660, he also appointed his younger
brother James, Duke of York, to the hon-
orary office of Lord High Admiral, enti-
tling the latter to a further fifteen percent
from these same seizures. Therefore,
during the Council of Jamaica’s session
on April 26, 1663 (O.S.), at ‘‘Point
Cagua’’—i.e., the former Point Cagaway
or recently-renamed Port Royal—it or-
dered that ‘‘Mr. Pugh and Captain Mann
bring in an abstract of the tenths and fif-
teenths due to His Majesty [Charles] and
His Royal Highness [James], from the
records of the Admiralty Court.’’
Two-and-a-half years later, the new
Jamaican Governor Sir Thomas Modyford
would write to London on November 16,
1665 (O.S.), complaining of a diplomatic
arrangement which Sir Thomas Lynch
had recently struck with Madrid:
The Spanish prizes have been inven-
toried and sold, but the privateers
plunder them and hide the goods in
holes and creeks, so that the present
orders little avail the Spaniard, but
much prejudice His Majesty and His
Royal Highness in the tenths and fif-
teenths of prizes.
Yet despite such instances of fraud, it was
also reported in England next May 1666
that a ship had appeared off Falmouth
from Jamaica ‘‘laden upon the King’s and
Duke’s account, having £50,000 worth of
gold and plate for the tenths and fifteenths
of prizes taken about those islands.’’
See also
Tenths (Volume 2).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
Thurston, Humphrey (fl. 1670
1672) 379
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
THURSTON, HUMPHREY
(fl. 1670
1672)
English privateer who participated in the
sack of Panama, then afterward turned
rogue.
Thurston was apparently a Jamaican
privateer, who during the brief cessa-
tion of hostilities against the Spaniards
in the summer of 1669 was reduced to
finding a more peaceable employment.
A year later, he was about to sail as
master of the 50-ton merchant sloop
Port Royal, bound into the Laguna de
T
erminos for a cargo of logwood. His
owner, Dr. George Holmes, had no in-
terest in privateering, but Thurston was
caught up in the warlike preparations
being made at Jamaica that summer to
retaliate against the nuisance raids of
the Spanish corsair Manoel Rivero Par-
dal. Consequently, Thurston brought
Port Royal’s strength up to an impres-
sive 12 guns and 55 men before
departing, much more than would be
required on a logging expedition,
and then captured the 8-gun, 50-ton
Spanish vessel Santo Tom
as shortly
after putting out to sea. He transferred
aboard this vessel and renamed it the
Thomas, installing his mate James Del-
liatt as commander of Port Royal, for
which he raised an additional 55 men.
Without returning to Port Royal, both
sloops proceeded directly to Tortuga
Island, and so were among the first to
incorporate themselves into the free-
booter fleet which Morgan was assem-
bling for his campaign against the
Spaniards. Thomas and Port Royal sailed
as part of this force against Providencia
380 Toccard, Jean (fl. 1680
1685)
Island and Chagres, the latter vessel
being one of four which crashed on the
reefs astern of Morgan’s Satisfaction
while entering the roads.
Perhaps because of this loss,
Thurston refused to return to Jamaica
following the sack of Panama in early
1671, preferring to continue roving with
the French flibustiers of Saint-Domingue.
His owner, Dr. Holmes, demanded £300
compensation for his ship from the booty
brought in by Morgan, pointing out that
such payments were authorized by the
raiders’ own charter-party, and the Admi-
ral himself had received £1,000 for the
wreck of Satisfaction. This sum was
apparently paid after the doctor appealed
his case to the Jamaica Council.
Meanwhile, Thurston continued to
prey on Spanish shipping and carry his
prizes into Tortuga, so that by 1672 he
was one of the few remaining priva-
teers—along with the mulatto corsair
Diego Grillo and Dutch-born Jelles de
Lecat—who were still regarded as rene-
gades by the new Jamaican Governor,
Sir Thomas Lynch.
References
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
TOCCARD, JEAN
(fl. 1680
1685)
French flibustier, originally from the
Channel Island of Guernsey, who
repeatedly raided the Mexican coast.
English records identify him as
‘‘Tucker.’’ Details are sketchy regarding
Toccard’s early life, but he apparently
came out from France with the Marquis
de Maintenon toward the end of 1680,
when the latter had been granted exclu-
sive privilege for four years to deal with
Spanish America. Toccard carried this
information into Petit-Go^ave, from
where Governor Jacques Nepveu, Sieur
de Pouançay, in turn dispatched him to
warn Captains John Coxon, Jean Rose,
Jan Willems, and others who were
already operating with French commis-
sions off the Spanish Main. Toccard set
sail with a vessel of six guns and 70
men, and came up with these rovers off
the northeastern shores of Panama.
In the first days of June 1681, bands
of English and French buccaneers held
a series of conferences at Springer’s
Key in the San Blas island-chain, dur-
ing which William Dampier noted:
The French seemed very forward to
go [attack] any [Spanish] town that
the English could or would propose,
because the Governor of Petit-Go^ave
(from whom the privateers take
commissions) had recommended a
gentleman lately come from France
to be general of the expedition, and
sent word by Captain Tucker, with
whom this gentleman came, that
they should if possible make an
attempt on some town before he
returned again. The English when
they were in company with the
French seemed to approve of what
the French said, but never looked on
that general to be fit for the service
in hand.
Eventually, the corsair leaders decided
to make a joint descent on the Central

American coast, for which they weighed
and made toward San Andr
es Island,
hoping to steal boats which they could
use as landing craft. But a gale scattered
the formation, and as they were strug-
gling to regroup, a large Spanish
armadilla appeared from Cartagena to
further disperse this flotilla. Only Cap-
tains Archaimbaud, Toccard, and George
Wright reached San Andr
es Island, and
after waiting there vainly for 10 days, pro-
ceeded to Bluefields Bay on the Mosquito
Coast to search for their consorts. Still not
finding them, Archaimbaud and Toccard
left Wright, making instead for Bocas
del Toro (literally ‘‘Bull’s Mouths’’ or
‘‘Entrances of the Bull,’’) on the north-
western coast of Panama.
Two years later, Toccard evidently
served in Laurens de Graaf and the
Sieur de Grammont’s sack of Veracruz.
When its surviving Spanish authorities
submitted a report to Madrid on
June 18, 1683, describing the assault
which had devastated their city, they
listed the four principal perpetrators as
follows—misspelling each man’s name,
which they had never seen written
down, merely spoken by the foreign
invaders during their four days of brutal
occupation:
Nicol
as Bonor [i.e.; Nikolaas Van
Hoorn], of Dutch nationality, Admi-
ral of the twelve vessels; Captain
Lorenzo [Laurens de Graaf], Flush-
inger; Monsiuir de Agrammont [sic;
Grammont], of French nationality,
Rear Admiral; and Captain Juan
Foxor [Jean Toccard?], of the same
nationality, who is the one who took
Tampico.
Apparently, Toccard had also been
responsible for the landing at the Gulf
Toccard, Jean (fl. 1680
1685) 381
port of Tampico in August 1682, when
some 30 Spanish captives were seized,
and a large quantity of cattle slaughtered.
He had subsequently participated in
the Veracruz attack, which began when
Van Hoorn obtained a letter-of-reprisal
from the French Governor of Saint-
Domingue, Jacques Nepveu, Sieur de
Pouançay, in retaliation for the Spaniards
having seized a consignment of slaves at
Santo Domingo in peacetime. Rein-
forced with boucaniers commanded by
Grammont and Jan Willems, Van Hoorn
set sail into the Bay of Honduras to
recruit further help from De Graaf and
Michiel Andrieszoon. This freebooter
throng, including Toccard, paused off
Yucatan to gather greater strength,
before descending on the unwary city on
the night of May 17
18, 1683. The
inhabitants were caught sleeping in their
beds, resistance crumbling after a few
heavy volleys. Veracruz was ruthlessly
ransacked before the raiders sailed back
around the Yucatan Peninsula to rendez-
vous off Isla Mujeres, then disperse.
Next year, Toccard was listed—
again misspelled under the version
‘‘Joccard’’—as commanding the Iron-
delle of 18 guns and 120 men at Saint-
Domingue. He is known to have played
a leading role in the assault against the
Mexican port of Campeche, once more
serving under De Graaf and Grammont.
Late in June 1685, a pirate fleet of six
large and four small ships, six sloops,
and 17 piraguas rounded Yucatan again
into the Gulf of Mexico. Among its cap-
tains were Andrieszoon, Joseph Bannis-
ter, Willems, and Toccard. This host
materialized a half-dozen miles off
Campeche on the afternoon of July 6th,
and a landing force of 700 buccaneers
took to their boats to row in toward
shore. A company of Spanish troops
382 Tortille
exited the city and stationed themselves
opposite the intended disembarkation
point before they could land, forcing the
raiders to hover offshore that night.
Next morning, their boats stood out to
sea as if withdrawing, before suddenly
bearing down on the outskirts of Cam-
peche itself. Before the startled Spaniards
could react, the buccaneers were ashore,
forming up into four distinct columns:
according to eye-witnesses, Capitaine
Rettechard commanded the vanguard of
100 men, while Grammont led 200 bucca-
neers in an encircling maneuver around
the city. De Graaf marched up Cam-
peche’s principal avenue toward the cen-
tral plaza at the head of another 200,
while Toccard brought a like number
along a parallel street. The pirates swiftly
overran the city, although its citadel held
out for another week. The invaders then
remained in possession over the next two
months, but as most of the Spaniards’
wealth had been withdrawn prior to the
assault, relatively little plunder was
found. Captives were threatened with
death if ransoms were not forthcoming,
but Yucatan’s Gov. Juan Bruno T
ellez de
Guzm
an prohibited any such payments.
Finally, Toccard and the rest of the pirates
abandoned the city late in August 1685,
after putting it to the torch.
References
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr
ua, 1972).
TORTILLE
French nickname for sun-bleached Isla
Tortuga, an island which lies off the
northern shores of Venezuela.
According to the buccaneer chroni-
cler William Dampier, turtling was
such a frequent activity among Carib-
bean seafarers, that this particular
island had come to be called Salt Tor-
tuga among the English ‘‘to distinguish
it from the shoals of Dry Tortuga,
near Cape Florida, and from the isle of
Tortuga by Hispaniola.’’
See also
Salt Tortuga; Tortille (Volume 2).
TOWERS, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1684)
Dutch corsair mentioned in a letter of
Governor Sir Thomas Lynch of Jamaica,
dated June 20, 1684 (O.S.): ‘‘Two or three
pirate [ships] have lately been taken, one
Towers, a Dutchman, of 30 or 40 guns’’
(perhaps ‘‘Touwers’’ or ‘‘Turen’’ was
meant).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
TREPAN
Slang English expression, used as ei-
ther a noun or verb, to denote any
deception intended to ensnare, ambush,
or take by surprise.

Many examples abound. In one early
instance of its usage, an English minister
wrote to a Puritan colleague at Boston on
March 2, 1663 (O.S.), complaining about
the measures being taken to impose the
Act of Uniformity on New England, in
the wake of the recent restoration of
royal rule: ‘‘John Baker, sometime a
planter in New England, had his part in
trepanning men into treason and then
informing against them; he lieth now in
Newgate [Prison].’’ Almost a decade
later, Hender Molesworth would write
from Jamaica to his friend Thomas Duck
in London on July 8, 1672 (O.S.):
Yesterday had advice of a ketch trad-
ing at Cartagena with 70 Negroes, of
which four were his own, being seized
by the General of the galleons, the
goods burnt in the market place, and
the Negroes sold for the King [of
Spain]’s account. This makes them
have apprehensions for Captain Ayler,
who two months since was almost
laden and ready to come away from
Campeachy [sic; Campeche], lest some
of the Spanish fleet may have tre-
panned him. Hears of a Dutchman of
32 guns taken trading near Campeachy
by a surprise, wherein Yellows [Jelles
de Lecat] lately of this port was chief
contriver, and has gained himself no
small reputation among the Spaniards.
See also
Galeones; Lecat, Jelles de; Trepan
(Volume 2).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 5, 7
Turtle 383
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1880
1889).
TURTLE
Along with wild cattle, which were
hunted by the boucaniers, turtle was
the other great source of meat-protein
for those living or traveling through
the West Indies during the 17th and
18th centuries.
In a letter written at Jamaica on
November 15, 1684 (O.S.), Acting Gov-
ernor Hender Molesworth declared that
turtle meat ‘‘is what masters of ships
chiefly feed their men in port, and I
believe that nearly 2,000 people, black
and white, feed on it daily at [Palisa-
does] Point, to say nothing of what is
sent inland.’’ Aside from the fact that
these creatures were plentiful and easily
caught throughout the Caribbean, they
could also be kept alive in a ship’s hold,
thus ensuring freshness in an era when
smoking, salting, or pickling were the
sole means of preservation. In one of
many examples underscoring the impor-
tance of this resource, Captain John
Francis of the 40-gun frigate HMS Dia-
mond reported to the Navy Commis-
sioners on his return home on July 24,
1662 (O.S.) how:
According to orders from Colonel
D’Oyley, Governor of Jamaica, set
sail thence on April 24th to the
Caiman Isles for turtle to victual
home, but coming too soon for it
[i.e., the appearance of large num-
bers of turtles], stayed till May
29th, and then set sail for England,
being forced to take turtle of a
Frenchman at last: arrived this day
in the Downs.
384 Turtle

Because of the widespread extent of Reference

such turtle-hunting throughout the
Antilles, numerous places still bear its Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
name today, usually in Spanish or America and West Indies, Volumes 5, 11
French variants: the Dry Tortugas off (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
the Florida Keys, ^Ile de la Tortue north Office, 1893
1899).
of Haiti, Green Turtle Cay in the Baha-
mas, Isla La Tortuga off Venezuela,
and Tortuguero in Costa Rica, etc.
 V

I must, however, acquaint you that I continue with all my might

to repress the insolencies of the privateers and pirates,
who grow numerous and desperate.
—Sir Henry Morgan to Sir Leoline Jenkins from Jamaica, July 1681

VAN DE VELD, ANDRIES (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery

(fl. 1683)
One of a trio of privateers, along with Den-
nis Dey and Laurens Westerband, who
were commissioned in late 1683 by Sir
William Stapleton, Governor of the English
Leeward Islands, ‘‘to look after pirates.’’
They were sent out specifically to
hunt the English renegade George Bond,
and learning that he had recently bought
a Dutch ship at Saint Thomas in the Vir-
gin Islands, went there and seized it, over
the objections of the Danish Governor
Adolf Esmit. The privateers then sailed
this ship into Nevis.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
Office, 1898).
VAN HOORN, NIKOLAAS
(fl. 1681
1683)
Dutch-born slaver and smuggler, who
became the prime mover behind the
sack of Veracruz.
Little is known about Van Hoorn’s
early career, there being a somewhat
garbled account in both French- and
Spanish-language editions of Exque-
melin that he had served aboard French
privateers against his compatriots in
the North Sea, during the Franco-Dutch
War of 1672 to 1680. Whatever the
case, Van Hoorn certainly moved eas-
ily among the French once he reached
the West Indies, a Spanish eyewitness
describing him as ‘‘Dutch, although he

385
386 Van Hoorn, Nikolaas (fl. 1681
1683)
passes himself off as French.’’ Van
Hoorn was allegedly short and dark,
and there is a legend that he had once
narrowly escaped detention by the
Admiral comte d’Estr
ees, presumably
because of illegal activities.
In October 1681, Van Hoorn left Lon-
don, England, in command of the mer-
chantman Mary and Martha of 400 tons,
40 guns, and a crew of 150 men, ‘‘fifty
of them English.’’ He was supposedly
bound on a trading run to Cadiz, Spain,
accompanied by a smaller vessel of 160
tons, 12 guns, and 23 men owned by the
Governor of Dover Castle, Colonel
Stroude, and captained by one John
Mayne. During this brief crossing, Van
Hoorn was forced into a French port in
the Bay of Biscay by heavy weather,
where 25 of his men—‘‘seeing what a
rogue he was’’—deserted. He then
touched at La Coru~na, before reaching
Cadiz, where further complications
arose: apparently the two vessels had
hoped to surreptitiously obtain licenses
to trade in Spanish America, but these
were not forthcoming. Van Hoorn there-
fore put 36 seamen ashore without pay,
flogged another to death, and then
resorted to even more drastic expedients.
He abandoned two of his merchant
representatives ashore, stole four brass
pedreros or swivel-guns from the Spanish
defenses one night, and next morning
sailed away with the Mary and Martha.
He landed at the Canary Islands to rustle
goats, before continuing to Cape Verde,
where another five of his crew deserted.
Van Hoorn reached the Guinea coast
about March 1682, and began trading his
powder and guns for gold, ‘‘having no
other cargo.’’ He chanced on a Dutch ship
near El Mina, and through plundering it
and scavenging from others, succeeded in
acquiring about 100 slaves. He then led
an armed party ashore ‘‘with great guns’’
to join a tribal war and obtain blacks by
force, returning 28 days later with 600
slaves. Such a foray, as well as his earlier
trading with powder and guns and rob-
bing fellow slavers, were measures nor-
mally shunned by other captains.
Van Hoorn then visited the Portu-
guese station of S~ao Tom
e, stealing a
cannon and two more blacks, before run-
ning across the Atlantic to the French
colony of Cayenne. Here he renamed his
ship St. Nicholas, disposed of some of
his slaves as well as six more disgruntled
English crewmembers, before proceed-
ing to Trinidad. He only had about 300
slaves left, many others having died,
when he was contracted to deliver the re-
mainder to the Spanish island of Santo
Domingo. Van Hoorn arrived there in
late November 1682, but instead of
being allowed to sell his captives, found
his ship and most of its contents
impounded on orders of the local Gover-
nor, Francisco de Segura Sandoval y
Castilla. Spurious charges were laid
against Van Hoorn, but the real reason
for his detention appears to have been
revenge for Laurens de Graaf’s recent
capture of that island’s situados or pay-
rolls. Although entirely innocent in that
affair, Van Hoorn made a convenient
scapegoat.
When the Spanish Governor discov-
ered that Van Hoorn had also stolen
four swivels from Cadiz, he made him
hand these over, and kept him confined
aboard ship beneath the guns of the
harbor fort. The English privateer Cap-
tain George Johnson saw the St. Nicho-
las lying there when he visited Santo
Domingo in pursuit of the pirate Jean
Hamlin, but was prevented from speak-
ing to Van Hoorn by Governor de
Segura. When Van Hoorn complained

to the Spaniards of being cheated, he
was contemptuously advised to go col-
lect from De Graaf. Finally, with only
20 crewmembers and 50 or 60 slaves
left, Van Hoorn escaped one night in
early 1683, outsailing the customs-boat
which was sent out in his pursuit. He
then laid in a course for Petit-Go^ave,
the flibustier capital on the French half
of that same island.
Immediately on his arrival there, he
lodged a complaint with Governor Jac-
ques Nepveu, Sieur de Pouançay,
demanding his assistance to exact restitu-
tion from the Spaniards. This French
official issued a letter of reprisal autho-
rizing Van Hoorn to win compensation
in the time-honored fashion, and put him
in touch with the self-styled ‘‘Chevalier’’
de Grammont, greatest of flibustier com-
manders, who became Van Hoorn’s lieu-
tenant and helped man the depleted St.
Nicholas. Coming at a time when France
and Spain were nominally at peace, Van
Hoorn’s license proved a godsend to
idled freebooters such as Grammont.
Hard-pressed for money as always, the
‘‘Chevalier’’ seized on the offer with
alacrity, even asking Van Hoorn to set
out in the corvette Colbert to recall
his flotilla from the Cuban coast. Just
as this vessel was exiting Petit-Go^ave,
Grammont’s cohorts reappeared, bring-
ing in a Spanish prize. They then all
cleared together, more than 300 strong,
for Roat
an on the Central American
coast to seek further reinforcements.
Van Hoorn and Grammont paused
outside Port Royal on February 27,
1683, to deliver letters from Governor
de Pouançay, assuring the Jamaican
authorities that no hostilities were con-
templated against the English. Governor
Sir Thomas Lynch sent out his French
secretary, Charles de la Barr
e, to visit
Van Hoorn, Nikolaas (fl. 1681
1683) 387
the St. Nicholas. He found Van Hoorn
‘‘so vain that he showed him a number
of bags which he judged to hold six or
eight thousand pieces of eight.’’ High-
strung and unsure of himself, Van Hoorn
tried to impress the visitor with his im-
portance; instead Barr
e came away with
the impression that the French were be-
ginning to ‘‘abhor him for his insolence
and passion,’’ and might well replace
him with the much more popular and
experienced Grammont, ‘‘who is an hon-
est old privateer.’’ Van Hoorn claimed
to be on a pirate-hunting expedition, but
the secretary was not deceived: he noted
that the St. Nicholas was provisioned for
six months and traveling to leeward,
neither of which would have been conso-
nant with such a venture. From deckhands,
Barr
e also learned of the vessel’s English
origins and illegal seizure, which he studi-
ously ignored.
The St. Nicholas bore away to west-
ward, and a few days later met the priva-
teer Captain John Coxon, who was
beating back to Jamaica after a fruitless
search for the pirate Hamlin. Van Hoorn
and Grammont were much more candid
with their fellow corsair, telling him they
were ‘‘trying to unite all the privateers
for an attack on Veracruz.’’ Parting com-
pany, they then proceeded into the Bay
of Honduras, where both De Graaf and
his Dutch lieutenant Michiel Andries-
zoon were reputed to be, along with a
group of freebooters. While Van Hoorn
and Grammont prowled the Bay, they
spotted two Spanish merchantmen lying
at anchor, the Nuestra Se~ nora de Con-
solaci
on and Nuestra Se~ nora de Regla,
which they promptly seized. Little did
they realize that De Graaf had been
patiently careening his flagship Dau-
phine (Princess, also known by its previ-
ous Spanish nickname of Francesa) at
388 Van Hoorn, Nikolaas (fl. 1681
1683)
nearby Bonaco Island, waiting for the
Spaniards to bring their profits back
aboard these empty ships from the great
commercial fair in Guatemala.
Annoyed at this clumsy intrusion into
his plans, De Graaf made away for
Roat
an, where he was soon overtaken by
the St. Nicholas with its two prizes. On
April 7, 1683, a huge gathering met on
the beach to hear Van Hoorn describe his
ill-treatment at the hands of the Spaniards,
read out the letter of reprisal granted him
by Governor de Pouançay, and ask for
their help in exacting vengeance. The
buccaneers were all eagerness, and de-
spite some initial misgivings (and linger-
ing personal animosity from De Graaf),
the plan to assault Veracruz was quickly
endorsed. But with the inclusion of De
Graaf, Van Hoorn’s position became even
more awkward: for he was a rank amateur
with a small following, supposedly com-
manding two hard-bitten campaigners
with their large, loyal contingents.
At first things went splendidly, with
De Graaf leading the pirate fleet to Gua-
naja Island for more men, then swiftly
around the Yucatan peninsula into the
Gulf of Mexico. Thirteen vessels com-
prised the expedition, with perhaps
1,300 to 1,400 freebooters. De Graaf
cunningly reconnoitered the port, then
slipped a landing-party of 800 men into
Veracruz during the night of May
17
18, 1683. At dawn they attacked
with Grammont commanding the critical
column which snuffed out Spanish re-
sistance in the city center. Van Hoorn, a
baton as ‘‘pirate General’’ in his hand,
received the initial sweep of booty in the
Plaza Mayor, then installed himself in
Governor Luis Bartolom
e de C
ordoba y
Z
u~niga’s vacated quarters in the palace.
Much treasure still remained hidden,
though, and it fell to Van Hoorn to extort
it from the Spanish captives, while De
Graaf and Grammont saw to the city
defenses. Late on the afternoon of May
18, 1683, Van Hoorn sent four pirates to
bring the royal accountant Jos
e de Mur-
ueta Otalora into his presence, and
demanded of him in passable Spanish:
‘‘Where were the many millions there
had to be in such a large city, because
all that he had been able to find thus far
did not come to fifty thousand pesos?’’
The prisoner insisted there had been no
time to hide much of anything, and stuck
by this story even when beaten. The next
morning, however, De Graaf and Gram-
mont orchestrated an ugly mob-scene
which terrified the captives into reveal-
ing many hidden riches, netting 80,000
pesos and establishing ransoms for all
the city’s leading personages. Once this
ordeal was ended, Van Hoorn invited
two captive Spanish merchants to lunch
with him in the palace, bragging of his
role in the expedition; but by then it was
becoming increasingly obvious who the
real leaders were.
Three days later, De Graaf ordered a
withdrawal to nearby Sacrificios Island,
and an immense column of 4,000 lad-
ened captives was marched out of the
devastated city under the direction of
Grammont. Once offshore with their
hostages, the pirates were beyond reach
of any Spanish rescue attempts. They
settled down to divide their booty,
and await the arrival of ransoms out of
Mexico’s interior. These were being
deliberately delayed by the Crown author-
ities, so that after waiting almost a week,
Van Hoorn decided to act unilaterally.
He informed his Spanish contacts on
the mainland that he was about to send
them a dozen captives’ heads, and seemed
ready to put this barbarous scheme into
effect when a hastily summoned De Graaf

arrived from his flagship. According to
Spanish eye-witnesses, the pirate admiral
confronted Van Hoorn on the beach and
reproved him that ‘‘it was not right to
behead any surrendered men who had
been granted quarter.’’ Furious at being
balked, Van Hoorn drew his blade
and advanced on his countryman, which
proved a grievous mistake; the enormous
De Graaf promptly drove his own sword
deep into Van Hoorn’s wrist, then kicked
his disabled opponent into the sand. His
wrath now fully aroused, De Graaf bel-
lowed at his men to haul his bloodied
opponent aboard his flagship and clap him
in irons, thus ending any talk of beheading
Spanish captives.
Van Hoorn’s jealous resentment
would seem to lie behind his intemperate
outburst, which then took a fatal twist
when the wound became infected a few
days later. As the engorged pirate fleet
slowly beat back around the Yucatan
peninsula, Van Hoorn’s life ebbed away.
He died off Isla Mujeres on June 24,
1683, his body being rowed ashore and
buried in an unmarked grave near Mexi-
co’s Cape Logrete, where it presumably
lies to this day. Grammont assumed
command of the St. Nicholas, which he
sailed back to Saint-Domingue. In a final
footnote, Governor Lynch of Jamaica
noted a year later: ‘‘Van Hoorn’s son is
dead at Petit-Go^ave, so the French have
divided what he leaves.’’
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Van Klijn, Mozes (fl. 1668) 389
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The
Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor,
Ontario, Canada: Netherlandic Press,
1993).
VAN KLIJN, MOZES
(fl. 1668)
Dutch freebooter who served under
French colors.
Van Klijn appeared as a confederate
to the flibustier chieftain Jean-David
Nau, alias ‘‘l’Olonnais,’’ materializing
off the north coast of Honduras in
1668 among a force of half a dozen
vessels and 700 buccaneers. This expe-
dition had originally been raised at
Tortuga and Bayah
a (Santo Domingo)
for an attempt to ascend the San Juan
River into the Lago de Nicaragua and
assault Granada, but after cruising
southern Cuba as far west as the Gulf
of Bataban
o, had been unable to clear
Cape Gracias a Dios on its southerly
leg. Instead, Nau and his consorts were
obliged to veer westward along Hondu-
ras, sending foragers up the Agu
an
River and eventually reaching Puerto
Cabellos. Here they captured a Spanish
merchantman armed with 24 cannons
and 16 pedreros or swivel-guns, of
which Van Klijn received command.
The town was also occupied, and Nau
decided to use it as a base to march
inland to San Pedro Sula, the nearest
city, with 300 flibustiers. Van Klijn was
left to garrison the tiny port with the
remaining buccaneers, and during Nau’s
absence cruised the coast and captured
some Indian fishermen, from whom it
was learned a wealthy galleon was due
390 Vaughan, John, Third Earl of Carberry (fl. 1675
1678)
to arrive soon from Spain ‘‘at the Guate-
mala river’’ (Bay of Amatique). When
Nau’s contingent returned from the inte-
rior, the whole flotilla proceeded farther
into the Gulf of Honduras, where a pair
of lookout boats was posted on the
southern shore, while the rest crossed to
the western side to conceal themselves
and careen.
Three months elapsed, until word
was finally received that the galleon
had arrived. Reuniting his scattered
forces, Nau quickly attacked, although
the Spaniard had 42 cannon and 130
men. His own 28-gun flagship and Van
Klijn’s smaller vessel were beaten off,
but four boatloads of flibustiers carried
the galleon by boarding. Its booty
proved disappointing, however, as most
of the cargo had already been off-
loaded and there only remained some
iron, paper, and wine. Discouraged,
Van Klijn decided to quit this com-
pany, ‘‘setting his course for Tortuga,
where he intended to cruise [perhaps
the ‘‘Dry Tortuga’’ off Florida].’’
References
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
VAUGHAN, JOHN, THIRD
EARL OF CARBERRY
(fl. 1675
1678)
Fifth Governor of Jamaica, who sought
to restrain its privateers.
Vaughan was born in 1640 in Wales,
and was most probably educated at
home during the closing stages of the
English Civil War. His father had been
a prominent Cavalier general, but made
his peace with Oliver Cromwell’s new
Protectorate once Charles I was exe-
cuted. Vaughan studied at Oxford,
matriculating from Christ Church on
July 23, 1656 (O.S.), and being admit-
ted to the Inner Temple as an 18-year-
old barrister two years later. Following
the restoration of Charles II, Vaughan
was knighted and elected Member of
Parliament for the borough of Car-
marthen in 1661, succeeding to the hon-
orary title of Lord Vaughan when his
older brother Francis died six years
later.
Vaughan was a particularly servile
courtier to the King and also interested
in literature, having become a patron
to John Dryden as early as 1664, and
contributing some prefatory verse to
that poet’s ‘‘Conquest of Granada’’ in
1670 to 1672. In a wholly different
vein, the young nobleman became a
notorious libertine as well, being
described by the diarist Samuel Pepys
as ‘‘one of the lewdest fellows of the
age’’—no mean feat, in Restoration
London.
In April 1674, at the conclusion of
the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Vaughn
was appointed to become the new Gov-
ernor of Jamaica, when the Earl of
Carlisle turned that post down. Henry
Morgan was to serve as his Lieutenant
Governor (having been restored to
favor after a brief detention for the
sack of Panama), although Vaughan
objected to this appointment, but was
eventually overruled. By December of
that same year of 1674, both men were
preparing to depart the Downs, Vaughan
(whose wife had recently died) aboard
HMS Foresight of 40 guns and 522 tons,
 Vaughan, John, Third Earl of Carberry (fl. 1675
1678)
while Morgan would be traveling on the
smaller hired ship Jamaica Merchant.
Distrustful of what his deputy might
do if he arrived first, Vaughan ordered
Morgan ‘‘to keep me in company and in
no case be separated from me but by
stress of weather.’’ Foresight weighed
and departed before Jamaica Merchant,
yet nonetheless when Vaughan entered
Port Royal on March 15, 1675 (O.S.), he
found that Morgan had beaten him by
10 days, despite being shipwrecked.
Governor of Jamaica
(1675
1678)
Vaughan immediately relieved Sir
Thomas Lynch and on April 3, 1675
(O.S.), issued a proclamation offering
amnesty to all of Jamaica’s privateers
if they returned and renounced roving.
This effort proved ineffectual, run-
ning directly counter to the fact that
although England remained at peace,
France was at war with both Holland
and Spain, and all three belligerents
were willing to grant commissions to
any corsair. Vaughan therefore was
annoyed to see Jamaican privateers
such as William Barnes, John Bennett,
John Coxon, William Crane, John
Deane, Edward Neville, George Spurre,
and George Wright continue their depre-
dations under foreign flags, resulting
in doubts as to England’s true neutrality.
Aware that virtually all his prede-
cessors had also suffered in some
degree from their inability to control
the privateers, Vaughan was particu-
larly disillusioned at Morgan’s lack of
influence, which he had assumed
would overawe the rovers. When this
did not occur, he became convinced
that his deputy was conniving behind
391
his back with these renegades, and
wrote to London that ‘‘Sir Henry, con-
trary to his duty and trust, endeavors to
set up privateering, and has obstructed
all my designs and purposes as to those
who do use that curse of life.’’
This false accusation caused a bitter
rift with Morgan, yet did nothing to alle-
viate the Governor’s problem. Moreover,
Vaughan was soon feuding with Jamai-
ca’s Assembly and Council as well,
whom he convened as seldom as possi-
ble so as to avoid being importuned by
their demands. Finally he was compelled
to do so in the spring of 1677, needing
to pass a money bill, but which they
refused to do until other business had
been discussed, leaving a frustrated
Vaughan without funds to run his admin-
istration. Relations worsened when he
condemned the rover James Browne for
plundering a Dutch slaver under French
commission, despite that individual’s
plea that he was exempt under the
Assembly’s ‘‘Act of Privateers.’’ When
this was brought to that body’s attention,
the Speaker William Beeston requested
a stay; Vaughan refused, at which the
Assembly drew up a writ of habeas cor-
pus, directing the execution be delayed
and the island’s Provost Marshal pro-
duce Browne ‘‘notwithstanding any war-
rant issued.’’ Angry, Vaughan ordered
Browne’s immediate hanging as soon as
he learned that the Assembly’s writ was
on its way, then dissolved that body after
a bitter reproof on July 26, 1677 (O.S.).
That same day, a ship arrived from
London with the rumor that ‘‘the Earl
of Carlisle was coming Governor to
Jamaica.’’ This was confirmed later
that autumn, and after passing the min-
imum amount of legislation required
with a reconvened Assembly—one of
his last acts was to cut Morgan’s salary
392 Veale, Captain
from £600 to £300 a year—Vaughan
concentrated exclusively on his per-
sonal affairs. He had used his position
to acquire 7,737 acres of land during
his tenure, all in the parish of Saint
Mary, which made him the island’s
largest landholder. On March 11, 1678
(O.S.), he assembled the surprised
Council and informed them that rather
than wait for his successor, he intended
to depart forthwith, leaving the admin-
istration to his Lieutenant Governor.
Three days later, Vaughan went aboard
Captain Nurse’s ship and sailed for
England.
Later Career (1678
1713)
Vaughan returned to London a wealthy
man, and never again entered public
service. Instead, he built a fine new
home called Gough House at Chelsea,
and distinguished himself as a member
of the Kit-Cat Club. Dryden marked his
patron’s reappearance in the English
capital that August by dedicating to him
the play The Kind Keeper, or Mr. Lim-
berham, even though this was prohib-
ited after only three representations as
being too indecent for the stage.
In 1686, Vaughan succeeded as third
Earl of Carberry when his father Richard
died, and became President of the Royal
Society. His title of Earl became extinct
at Vaughan’s death in 1713, as he only
left a 15-year-old daughter, Anne, de-
spite having married three times.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 9, 10
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office; 1893
1899).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
VEALE, CAPTAIN
A shipmaster suspected of piracy.
On the evening of July 6, 1685
(O.S.), a small ketch hastened into Bos-
ton harbor from New London (Connect-
icut). Next morning, its master John
Prentice appeared before the General
Court, and declared that he had been
chased by a suspected pirate ‘‘until he
had come in sight of the Brewster’s, at
the mouth of the harbor.’’
Prentice deposed that this hostile
sloop had put into his home port on
July 1, 1685 (O.S.), commanded ‘‘by
one Captain Veale, and with him was
one Harvey, who was the merchant on
board.’’ A little later, a Pennsylvania
vessel had also entered New London
under Captain Daniel Staunton, who
immediately ‘‘accused Veale and Har-
vey of piracy committed in Virginia.’’
Yet because the New London magis-
trate was a bit uncertain of his author-
ity, both suspects had quickly set sail
before they could be detained.
When Prentice himself cleared the
harbor mouth shortly thereafter, his
ketch was chased until nightfall by this
rogue sloop and a 14-man shallop under
‘‘one Graham.’’ Although Prentice man-
aged to elude these pirate craft, he
encountered the sloop again three days
later. Long-range gunfire was exchanged
‘‘for about an hour,’’ until a severe thun-
derstorm had allowed the ketch to win

past into Boston. Veale’s and Harvey’s
sloop was last seen bearing away toward
Cape Ann.
References
Dow, George Francis, and Edmonds, John
Henry, The Pirates of the New England
Coast, 1630
1730 (Salem, MA: Marine
Research Society, 1923 edition re-issued
in 1996 by Dover):
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
VENTURA SARRA, JUAN
(fl. 1670)
Minor Catalan privateer who arrived in
Mexico via Tierra Firme and Guatemala.
In late August 1670 he petitioned the
Viceroy of New Spain for a privateering
commission against the enemies of the
Crown ‘‘in service of God our Lord, the
King, and common utility of the com-
merce of Indies.’’ Despite asking to
retain the entire value of any prizes
taken (including the King’s fifth),
Ventura Sarra’s request was initially
approved, although voided in February
1672 when Madrid signed a new Amer-
ican peace accord with England.

OR VESPRE,
VERTPRE
CAPITAINE
French flibustier who in 1684 was
listed as commanding the tiny vessel
Postillion, of two guns and 25 men, at
Saint-Domingue. He may well have
been descended from the longtime
Martinican settler Jean Jaham, Sieur de
Vertpr
e, who had married twice and
Villebon, Jean (fl. 1663
1669) 393
sired eight children, before dying in
1685 at the age of 75.
Reference
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
VIGOT OR BIGOT,
GUILLAUME (fl. 1684)
French rover captured off the Cuban
coast by Spanish guardacostas.
Vigot departed France in January
1684, bound for the West Indian island
of Martinique. His 130-ton ship Con-
corde, of 12 guns and 43 men, was
taken off the south coast of Cuba a
few months later, apparently preparing
to embark on a privateering campaign
because of renewed hostilities back in
Europe between France and Spain. Its
captors later related how Vigot’s ship
was armed with ‘‘39 blunderbusses,
four carbines, 12 cutlasses,’’ and a ton-
and-a-half of gunpowder.
Reference
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche. (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
VILLEBON, JEAN
(fl. 1663
1669)
Rank-and-file boucanier who deserted
to the Spaniards in Costa Rica.
Although not a significant figure, Vil-
lebon’s career nonetheless offers insights
into life among ordinary members of the
394 Vonck, Maerten Jansse (fl. 1673
1674)
Brethren of the Coast. Born around 1644
in the Breton city of Langon, near the
great seaport of Nantes, he had departed
France in July 1663 as an engag
e or
indentured servant in the colonizing
expedition of Bertrand d’Ogeron. Its
5-gun, 140-man flagship had dropped
anchor several weeks later off the north-
western shores of Hispaniola, where
everyone disembarked to found a new
outpost at Port-a-Margot. Villebon had
then spent the next two years planting
and harvesting tobacco for his master,
until his indenture was served.
In May 1667, he had shipped out as a
hand aboard the privateer fleet of Jean-
David Nau, better known as Nau l’Olon-
nais or le Capitaine François—the
‘‘French Captain.’’ This 500-man expe-
dition intended to gain the Mosquito
Coast and raid into Nicaragua, so that af-
ter snapping up three Spanish prizes and
anchoring at Abraham’s Cay (modern
Bluefields), an advance-party of 80 bou-
caniers headed for the San Juan River
mouth aboard eight piraguas, to await
the main force aboard another two-dozen
craft.
Yet Nau’s contingent never appeared,
so that the fleet dispersed and Villebon
sailed aboard five buccaneer vessels for
Bocas del Toro and the Escudo de Vera-
gua (northwestern Panama), to hunt and
cure turtles and manatees. After six
months of heavy labor in intense tropical
heat, his vessel was wrecked. When
Henry Morgan’s squadron reached Bocas
del Toro early in July 1668, a proclama-
tion was read to the boucaniers clustered
ashore to seek additional recruits for the
impending surprise-attack against Porto-
belo. However, Villebon and his 25
companions preferred to limp north-
westward along the coast, crammed
aboard two piraguas. Searching for a
larger ship to join or capture, they
reached Portete—an open anchorage two
miles west of what is today Puerto
Lim
on (Costa Rica)—and rested ashore,
while 16 men raided nearby Matina for
food.
By the time this pair of piraguas
resumed their northerly progression to-
ward the San Juan River, Villebon had
had enough of pirate life. When his
boat was wrecked, two boucaniers
being drowned and the rest recovering
their goods strewn along the beach, the
young Breton quietly proposed to a
Honduran native who had been held as
a slave for two years that they escape
together. When the party continued
walking north along the coast, the pair
lagged behind, then hid in the jungle
See also
Abraham’s Cay; Engag
e; Morgan, Sir
Henry; Nau, Jean-David; Ogeron,
Bertrand d’; Piragua.
Reference
Marley, David F., ‘‘La d
esertion du
boucanier breton Jean Villebon au Costa
Rica, 1669,’’ G
en
ealogie et Histoire de
la Cara€be [France], 215 (June 2008),
pp. 5585
5587.
VONCK, MAERTEN JANSSE
(fl. 1673
1674)
Dutch privateer captain originally from
Middelburg in Zeeland, who operated
out of Suriname during the Third Anglo-
Dutch War; in a bizarre twist of events,
he came to be abandoned aboard
Commodore Cornelis Evertsen’s flag-
ship by his own crew, so was carried

off to take part in the reconquest of
New York.
On April 20, 1673, Vonck returned to
Suriname’s capital of Paramaribo for
resupply, having been blockading the
English island of Barbados with his ship
Goude Poort (Golden Gate). As he
worked his way up the treacherous
channel, he passed the recently arrived
Zeeland squadron of Commodore Evert-
sen, gingerly picking its way back out to
sea. Eleven days later when Vonck
exited, he again encountered the men o’
war anchored outside, taking on the last
of their water. He paused briefly to visit
with his fellow countrymen, before pro-
ceeding toward his station.
Two-and-a-half weeks later, on May
18, 1673, Vonck sighted Evertsen’s
force approaching Barbados, and once
more went aboard the flagship Swae-
nenburgh. This time, however, the
Commodore questioned him closely as
to two soldiers who had deserted from
the naval force, and reputedly found
service with the privateer. Vonck at
first denied this, then under pressure
admitted it might be true. A search
party was sent over to the Goude
Poort, but could not find the missing
men ‘‘as they had hidden themselves
among the kaper’s crew.’’ Now angry,
Evertsen threatened Vonck, who sent a
note across to his mate ordering that
the deserters be surrendered. With
tensions at a breaking point, the Goude
Poort’s crew suddenly rushed Evert-
sen’s emissary, who jumped back into
Vonck, Maerten Jansse (fl. 1673
1674) 395
his boat, leaving four oarsmen on
board. The privateersmen then ‘‘made
as much sail as possible,’’ swiftly out-
distancing the heavier men o’ war.
Thus, Vonck came to be left aboard
Evertsen’s flagship, and took part in the
remainder of the Zeelander’s campaign.
By the time ‘‘New Netherland’’ was
reconquered that autumn (present-day
New York, New Jersey, and Delaware),
the privateer captain had so vindicated
himself that Evertsen put him in com-
mand of the second ship bearing mes-
sages home.
Vonck set sail from New York on Sep-
tember 2, 1673, with the prize Expecta-
tion, a very poor sailer which was
dismasted in a storm and ran aground near
Nantucket. There it was found on Novem-
ber 3rd by the Boston privateer Thomas
Dotson, who boarded, captured, and
refloated it, sailing it away as his prize.
Vonck was exchanged, and on New
Year’s Day 1674 again quit New Nether-
land, this time commanding the ketch
Hope. He succeeded in reaching Holland
by the beginning of March 1675 and for-
warded his messages to The Hague, where
they were received the day before the
peace treaty with England was ratified.
Reference
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert
D., Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press,
1988).
 W

Question: John Houghling, hold up thy hand. How sayest thou?

Answer: Not guilty.
Question: How will you be tried?
Answer: By this honorable court.
Question: You must say ‘‘by God and my country.’’
Answer: By God and my country.
Question: God send thee a good deliverance.
—Swearing-in at the piracy trial of John Houghling,
Virginia, May 13, 1700 (O.S.)

WADE, CAPTAIN (fl. 1660) WAGGONER

English privateer mentioned in the
journal of Colonel Edward D’Oyley,
Governor of Jamaica, as having been
issued a ‘‘let-pass’’ for his ship Sea
Horse on April 4, 1660 (O.S.).
Reference
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Seventeenth-century English term for
any sea atlas, or a book combining sea-
charts and written sailing instructions.
This expression was a corruption of
the name Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer, a
famous Dutch cartographer who in 1584
published the first such printed atlas sys-
tematically assembled in one volume.
Generally known as the Spiegel der Zee-
vaerdt, it was translated into English
four years later as The Mariner’s Mirror.
Such works soon became known in

397
398 Waters, Samson (fl. 1680s)
England as ‘‘waggoners,’’ one notewor-
thy example being the South Sea Wagg-
oner compiled by the buccaneer Basil
Ringrose in 1682, based on captured
Spanish charts from the South Sea.
Reference
Howse, Derek, and Thrower, Norman W.,
eds. A Buccaneer’s Atlas: Basil
Ringrose’s South Sea Waggoner, A Sea
Atlas and Sailing Directions of the
Pacific Coast of the Americas 1682
(Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992).
WATERS, SAMSON
(fl. 1680s)
Minor Massachusetts privateer, who
was sent out in ‘‘Richard Pattershall’s
brigantine’’ in 1685 in a vain attempt
to find the pirates Veale and Graham.
Reference
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
WEATHERBOURNE,
FRANCIS (fl. 1671
1672)
English privateer who turned renegade af-
ter Henry Morgan’s sack of Panama, and
refused to give up roving, even though
the arrival of a new Jamaican Governor,
Sir Thomas Lynch, clearly heralded a re-
versal in Crown policy regarding Spain.
When William Beeston was given
command of HMS Assistance in Decem-
ber 1671 and sent out to bring in rogue
privateers, Weatherbourne became one
of his captures. He was seized near Cam-
peche for committing ‘‘great violence
against the Spaniards,’’ along with his
ship Charity, which was described as
having ‘‘been formerly Captain David
Martyn’s [sic; Martien’s] man o’ war.’’
Carried back into Port Royal, Weather-
bourne was tried for piracy and con-
demned to death, but then deported
to England aboard the 36-gun HMS Wel-
come, the same vessel which was to
transport Morgan as a prisoner to the
Tower of London. This frigate set sail
from Jamaica on April 6, 1672 (O.S.),
reaching Spithead three months later.
References
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica. (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
WENTWORTH, JOHN
(fl. 1653
1665)
English privateer who operated out of
Bermuda, and captured Tortola at the be-
ginning of the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
Wentworth was mentioned as a mem-
ber of the Governor’s Council of Bermuda
for 1653 and 1655, representing the Parish
of Paget. Early in 1657, he commanded
the frigate-galley Martin, and in October
of that same year captained the man-of-
war Paul which carried many new settlers
to Jamaica. In late January 1665, he was in
command of the small frigate Charles,
 Whetstone, Sir Thomas (fl. 1662
1667)
which sailed from Montserrat with a Por-
tuguese commission originally issued to
Captain Robert Downeman.
Wentworth used this permit to hunt
Spanish vessels off Caracas until late
June 1665, when he proceeded to the
island of ‘‘salt Tortuga’’ to careen. While
doing so, he learned that war had broken
out between England and Holland back
in Europe, so laid in a course for the
Windward Isles, hoping to secure an
English commission against the Dutch.
The winds proving contrary, he was
forced to round the west end of Saint Croix
on July 13, 1665, and two days later anch-
ored at St. Annes in the Virgin Islands.
Although not yet legally licensed, Went-
worth decided to attack the nearby Dutch
settlement of Tortola, which one of his
crewmen knew well. He later wrote that
he hoped ‘‘the national war might bear out
my doing so,’’ and on the morning of July
18th landed 36 men and surprised the
Dutch garrison of 130 men and seven
guns, securing the island unopposed. Next
day, Wentworth raised the English flag,
and roughly half the inhabitants swore fe-
alty to Charles II. Later that same day, the
brigantine Hazewind or ‘‘Greyhound’’
belonging to the Dutch Gov. Willem
Houten came in, and was seized.
On July 24th the Dutch official and his
retinue were sent away in a bark, Went-
worth appointing Lieutenant Thomas
Bicknell (or Bignoll) as commandant in
his place. Four days afterward the Charles
sailed for Bermuda, carrying 67 black
slaves and the Hazewind as prizes. It took
Wentworth eight days to reach his destina-
tion, where he justified his actions by argu-
ing that he had news there was ‘‘an open
and national war betwixt His Majesty and
the United States of Holland.’’ After a
lengthy inquiry his capture was adjudged
illegal, and the slaves forfeit to England’s
399
Royal African Company. Wentworth was
not actually issued a Bermudan commis-
sion until October 21, 1665.
Reference
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
WESTERBAND, LAURENS
(fl. 1683)
One of a trio of privateers, along with
Dennis Dey and Andries van de Veld,
commissioned in late 1683 by Sir Wil-
liam Stapleton, Governor of the Eng-
lish Leeward Islands, ‘‘to look after
pirates.’’
They were sent out specifically to
hunt the English renegade George Bond,
and learning that he had recently bought
a Dutch ship at Saint Thomas in the Vir-
gin Islands, went there and seized it,
over the objections of the Danish Gov.
Adolf Esmit. The privateers then sailed
this ship back to Nevis.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
WHETSTONE, SIR
THOMAS (fl. 1662
1667)
Nephew of Oliver Cromwell, who was
reduced from a Commonwealth naval
Commodore into an impoverished
400 Whetstone, Sir Thomas (fl. 1662
1667)
West Indian rover, before dying in
Spanish hands.
His famous uncle had been born into
a very large family, being the only sur-
viving son among 10 children, who had
grown up surrounded by his seven sis-
ters. Catherine Cromwell, the next old-
est sibling to Oliver by two years and
‘‘his best loved sister,’’ later married
Roger Whetstone (also recorded as
Whitstone or Whitestone), who was ‘‘of
Whittlesea in the Isle of Ely’’ in Cam-
bridgeshire. This couple was to spend
much of their early married life in Hol-
land, where her husband had gone to
serve as a mercenary officer, fighting
for the Protestant cause in the Low
Countries. Their first son Henry was
believed to have been born in England,
but the two remaining sons and two
daughters were all born abroad: Thomas
(apparently born around 1631), Richard,
Catherine, and Levina. Little is known
about young Thomas’ formative years,
although at some point he must have
taken to the sea, after his father had
returned with the family to campaign for
Parliament during England’s Civil War.
Commonwealth Naval Career
(1654
1659)
On November 27, 1654 (O.S.), the victo-
rious Oliver Cromwell, now England’s
all-powerful Lord Protector, wrote a let-
ter from his headquarters at Whitehall to
Admiral William Penn, who was busy
making the final preparations to set sail
from Portsmouth for Barbados at the
head of a huge fleet to launch the Antil-
lean offensive, known as the ‘‘Western
Design,’’ which would eventually con-
quer Jamaica. Among other things,
Cromwell said to his Admiral: ‘‘I have
committed my nephew Whitestone to
you, and I desire you to mind him of
good things and to do him good, as you
find he deserves.’’ Historians believe that
this personal note must have referred to
the 23-year-old Thomas Whetstone;
although some have confused him with
the Sailing Master for Penn’s 60-gun
flagship Swiftsure, named John Whetsto-
ne—possibly a relation of Thomas’ fa-
ther, but who would unfortunately die
off the Cuban coast and be buried at sea
in July 1655.
Penn and his fleet had already
departed by Christmas Day 1654 (O.S.),
when on January 15, 1655 (O.S.), the
Protector wrote a second letter to his
Admiral, which read:
I did apprehend and took it as granted
that you would make my nephew
Whitestone your lieutenant in this
expedition, and I acquainted him and
his friends therewith, who did depend
thereupon. But I understand lately that
my nephew is disappointed or at least
delayed of that employment. Truly I
have entertained such good hopes of
the young man from these characters I
have received of him, and that from
yourself, that I should be loath he
should be discouraged or neglected.
And therefore I desire you to put your
kinsman into some other command in
the fleet, and let Whitestone be lieu-
tenant to yourself, according to your
promise to me, it being my desire that
he should continue under your eye
and care. Not doubting of your readi-
ness herein, I commend you to the
grace and protection of God.
It is therefore not clear in what
capacity Thomas Whetstone served in
the ensuing New World adventure. Penn,
 Whetstone, Sir Thomas (fl. 1662
1667)
after a failed assault against Santo Do-
mingo and his successful landing on
Jamaica, quickly sailed his flagship and
the bulk of his fleet home without
orders, reaching Spithead by the evening
of August 31, 1655 (O.S.), only to be
thrown into the Tower of London three
weeks later, to face the Protector’s wrath
for the expedition’s several failures and
his own unauthorized return.
Whetstone most likely returned to
England at that same time aboard Swift-
sure, but as a mere subaltern, naturally
bore no share of this blame. We next
hear of him in November 1655, when
his uncle passed a bill through Parlia-
ment to naturalize him, along with his
brother Richard and two sisters as Eng-
lish subjects, among a group of other
foreign-born applicants. Thomas’ wid-
owed mother Catherine was moreover
married early next year to Colonel John
Jones, a Welsh widower and a staunch
Roundhead Member of Parliament,
cementing a political alliance for Crom-
well. Her new husband settled a hand-
some annual income of £300 on her, to
which her delighted brother Oliver added
another £150. Then on February 7, 1655
(O.S.), the Lord Protector personally pre-
sided over the civil ceremony at White-
hall which married Levina, Catherine’s
daughter and Thomas’ sister, into yet
another such match. And Thomas him-
self, despite his lack of any significant
seniority in the Commonwealth Navy,
was promoted to command of the 38-
gun, 420-ton State frigate Phoenix.
When Phillip Meadows, the Protec-
tor’s special envoy being sent to ratify a
treaty with Portugal, reached Plymouth
next month to take his passage for Lis-
bon, he chose ‘‘Captain Whitstone’s’’
warship and went aboard Phoenix on
Saturday morning, March 8, 1656 (O.S.).
401
This diplomat even wrote to the Sec. of
State, John Thurloe, describing how its
youthful commander had ‘‘immediately
loosed his topsail to give notice to his
men to come aboard, and be in readiness
for their voyage.’’ Having deposited his
passenger at the Portuguese capital by
early April 1656, Whetstone proceeded
with Phoenix to deliver dispatches to the
English blockading-fleet operating off
the Spanish coast under Adms. Robert
Blake and Edward Montagu. His frigate
subsequently made a somewhat slow
return-run into Lisbon, before sailing for
London in company with the frigate
Sapphire, bearing a Portuguese indem-
nity of more than 219,000 pieces-of-
eight into England’s Royal Mint by July
24th (O.S.).
Whetstone then rejoined Admiral
Blake’s blockading-fleet later that same
autumn, and spent most of the winter of
1656 to 1657 on patrol, although Phoe-
nix did not see any major action. Despite
being a good seaman, the young Captain
was resented by many career naval offi-
cers for his rapid elevation through
the ranks, while superiors soon came
to dislike his insolent attitude, due to
his uncle’s backing. Through ill luck,
Whetstone’s frigate was detached into
Lisbon and then ordered home in early
April 1657, so that he missed the cli-
mactic battle of Santa Cruz in the Canary
Islands, where the anticipated Mexican
plate fleet was finally intercepted and
destroyed. Back in London, though, Whet-
stone was nonetheless promoted again to
command of the 52-gun, 770-ton Fairfax,
and that same November (1657) rejoined
the fleet off Portugal, which was now
operating under Blake’s successor, Com-
modore John Stoakes.
A tight blockade of Spain’s Atlantic
approaches no longer being necessary, the
402 Whetstone, Sir Thomas (fl. 1662
1667)
whole formation moved through the Strait
of Gibraltar to scour the western Mediter-
ranean. Immediately on entering those
waters, Stoakes detached his irksome sub-
ordinate Whetstone to cruise between
Malta and Crete, with Fairfax and three
other warships. On January 16, 1658
(O.S.), the State frigate Guinea overtook
the Commodore during his first official
visit at the neutral port of Livorno, to
report that Whetstone had intercepted a
Dutch vessel carrying a cargo of corn
from Cagliari to Valencia (which he
would later sell at Zante for a third of its
true value). No other prizes were taken
over the next three months, and Fairfax
was the only warship to arrive late at
Stoakes’ rendezvous off the Spanish coast
that same April (1658). After another
uneventful two-month sweep, the
reunited State fleet put into the port of
Marseilles, where Stoakes received an
order from Secretary Thurloe to detach
some of his warships for a joint operation
with a French force being assembled at
Toulon under Commodore Jean-Paul de
Saumeur. (Originally born with the sur-
name Samuel, he was much more com-
monly known as the ‘‘Chevalier Paul,’’
having been a Knight of the Order of
Malta for more than two decades.)
Seizing this opportunity to rid himself
again of his problematical subordinate,
Stoakes ‘‘did immediately dispatch Cap-
tain Whetston to Admiral Pol at Tou-
lon,’’ Fairfax soon being followed there
by four more English warships. Yet the
young Captain utterly ruined this
arrangement through his spitefulness,
taking offense over trifles, and even hav-
ing Fairfax careened rather than putting
out to sea under the Chevalier. Whet-
stone also wrote to complain to London,
and Secretary Thurloe returned an
uncharacteristically restrained reply,
given the needless collapse of this joint
venture:
I received yours of the 4/14 July from
Toulon; it came to my hands this
morning, and am very sorry to under-
stand by yours, that you meet with
any disrespect from any of the Cap-
tains of the fleet. I am certain they do
not consult their own interest therein,
nor give any great sign of their affec-
tion and duty to His Highness [i.e.,
Oliver Cromwell], by putting any dis-
honor upon one so nearly related to
him. For my own part, I am a very
ill judge of what is fit to the wear-
ing of the flag, but truly do conceive
that upon such an expedition as
that, wherein the English squadron of
ships was to join with the fleet of
another nation, the flag was so to be
carried that it might appear that the
English were not under their com-
mand, but their equals.
However, that question is now at
an end; for the French having laid
aside their design, there will be no
need of any ships of ours to assist
them. And therefore you are, not-
withstanding any orders received
from Captain Stoakes or any other,
no further to attend upon that serv-
ice, but so to follow such other
orders as you have already received
or shall receive for any other ser-
vice, without looking after the
French. And this I have written to
you immediately, believing mine to
Captain Stoakes will not reach him
so soon, he being, as I understand, at
Tripoli. I cannot further enlarge
now; but if you please to let me
know your condition, I shall not be
wanting to serve you in whatsoever I
am able, and rest
 Whetstone, Sir Thomas (fl. 1662
1667)
Your very affectionate friend and
servant.
22d July/1st August, 1658.
Whetstone put out to sea once more,
sending a single prize taken by one of
his consorts into Marseilles, before
gaining Livorno by September 1658.
When he tried to seize a merchantman
there, though, Fairfax was repelled by
a smaller Dutch warship, so that Whet-
stone reentered Toulon that same Octo-
ber under a cloud.
His uncle Oliver having unexpect-
edly died of pneumonia back in Eng-
land on September 3, 1658 (O.S.), his
patronage and support had abruptly
vanished, so that Stoakes ordered
the arrest of Whetstone for insubordi-
nation and a variety of other charges,
sending him home as a prisoner to face
a court-martial before an Admiralty
Court convened that same December.
Royalist Convert (1659
1662)
The 27-year-old’s prospects as a naval
officer having ended in disgrace, and
amid growing signs that the Puritan
Commonwealth was about to disinte-
grate through internal rivalries and pop-
ular discontent, Whetstone took the
bold step of traveling to Brussels early
in 1659, so as to place himself in the
service of the exiled Stuart prince,
Charles. Despite his family’s close con-
nection to the deceased Cromwell, he
was able to ingratiate himself as
an early supporter of this new patron.
The worldly Charles, a good judge of
men, evidently welcomed Whetstone’s
overture, which was cemented when
he attempted to contact his old naval
commander Montagu in the Baltic
that same spring of 1659, with a royalist
403
proposal. Although Whetstone’s mis-
sion ended in failure, it nonetheless
confirmed his loyalty to Charles.
Opposition to the Commonwealth
finally climaxed in England when Gen-
eral George Monck marched an army
from Scotland into London early in
1660, restoring the old monarchist Par-
liament. The exiled sovereign was then
welcomed home as King Charles II that
same May, and even Whetstone received
a knighthood in the resultant euphoria.
A blanket pardon was granted to almost
all Cromwellian functionaries, and was
passed by Parliament that same August.
Yet unfortunately for Whetstone, one
of the 11 men excepted from this par-
don—known as the ‘‘regicides’’ for their
direct role in Charles I’s execution—was
his own stepfather, Colonel Jones. The lat-
ter was arrested and promptly sentenced to
be hanged, drawn, and quartered at Char-
ing Cross on October 17, 1660 (O.S.), ‘‘for
having had a hand in the murder of his
Prince.’’ And although the fanatical Jones
welcomed this martyrdom, the confisca-
tion of all his properties which accompa-
nied this sentence, left his 63-year-old
wife Catherine homeless and destitute.
By next spring, Whetstone was reduced
to petitioning the King on March 14, 1661
(O.S.), on behalf of his penniless mother,
hoping to win back part of her former
Welsh estates, or at the very least her late
husband’s ‘‘household stuff and her own
wearing apparel, valued at £40.’’ The
Royal Treasurer noted sympathetically
with regard to her personal goods that
‘‘the parcels petitioned for are not of a
greater value than £40, which to the wife
who hath been a loyal person, and her
son Sir Tho. Whitstone, a deserving gent,
may be fit to be granted.’’ The question
of restoring any confiscated lands,
though, would have to be referred to
404 Whetstone, Sir Thomas (fl. 1662
1667)
the King’s younger brother James,
Duke of York, with much dimmer
prospects of success.
Whetstone was awkwardly placed.
His livelihood depended on being a very
recent convert to a King now surrounded
by throngs of long-term loyalists, noble-
men, and many other place-seekers. His
association with the dead Cromwell was
unfavorably recalled by ex-Cavaliers and
Roundheads alike, both of whom
despised him as an opportunistic turn-
coat. Inevitably, Thomas fell so heavily
into debt that he endured the shame of
being incarcerated in Marshalsea Prison.
To his credit, Charles ordered the
release of the friendless Whetstone, and
even gave him £100 in April 1662 ‘‘as
royal bounty for his encouragement in
settling a plantation in the Isle of
Jamaica.’’ Other unfortunates were also
to be deported to the New World at that
same time, to make a new start, yet on
April 28th (O.S.), Charles further wrote a
note to his brother James, directing him
in his capacity as Lord High Admiral of
England to ‘‘make provision for Sir
Thomas Whitstone to transport twelve
planters to Jamaica.’’ A Royal Navy con-
voy was being assembled to convey
Thomas, Lord Windsor, out to that Antil-
lean colony as its first Royal Governor,
aboard HMS Centurion. Whetstone’s
dozen extra men, presumably indentured
servants, who would be transported free
of charge, would potentially prove invalu-
able in clearing and initiating operations
on a new Jamaican plantation.
Privateer and Planter
(1662
1667)
Yet once in the West Indies, Whetstone
first turned privateer, whom Sir
Christopher Myngs met off the Cuban
coast in October 1662 while on his way
to raid Santiago de Cuba. Whetstone’s
ship was sighted anchored in the lee of a
cay, where Myngs’s force joined him,
learning that Whetstone had been operat-
ing off that coast for some time
(although without a commission), with a
largely Indian crew. At a conference
held aboard the flagship HMS Centu-
rion, Whetstone was able to furnish
Myngs with recent intelligence, then
took part in the successful English attack
against that Cuban port a few days later.
In 1663, Whetstone’s name was listed
under ‘‘private ships of war belonging to
Jamaica’’ as being in command of a 7-gun
Spanish prize with a crew of 60 men.
Early in November 1664 (O.S.),
Whetstone played a leading role in the
deposal and arrest of the Speaker of the
Assembly of Jamaica, Samuel Long.
Whetstone exhibited ‘‘Articles of high and
treasonable crimes and misdemeanors’’
before a joint session of the Governor,
Council, and Assembly, arguing that Long
had illegally caused himself to be elected
into that post on May 17
18, 1664 (O.S.),
even after Gov. Sir Charles Littleton’s
departure from that meeting and ignoring
Deputy Gov. Edward Morgan’s calls for a
dissolution. Long had then passed an act
setting up a treasury, with himself in
its charge, thus controlling the King’s
revenues. A warrant for Long’s arrest
was consequently issued to the Provost
Marshal on November 3, 1664 (O.S.).
Capture and Death
(1666
1667)
He afterward became Speaker of the
Jamaican House of Assembly, but in
summer 1666 had the misfortune to be

on Providencia Island when Jos
e S
anchez
Xim
enez’s force arrived to reconquer that
place. Surrendering against superior num-
bers, the English were carried as prisoners
to Portobelo by the end of August 1666,
where the men were put to work on
its fortifications, while Whetstone, the
ex-Providence Island commander Major
Samuel Smith, and an ‘‘honest old sol-
dier’’ named Captain Stanley Stevens
were marched overland to Panama. Their
progression seems to have been a pain-
ful one, becoming the objects of public
wrath, then flung into a dungeon on
reaching Panama City.
In late June 1667, Gov. Juan P
erez de
Guzm
an wrote to the Queen Regent in
Madrid: ‘‘I have the intention that they
[the senior English captives] should never
leave prison, because of the damage that
one or other of them might do to us.’’
Whetstone was specifically singled out,
being described by the Governor as ‘‘a
man of much importance,’’ responsible
for planning ‘‘all the damage done on
these coasts.’’ Stanley furthermore
declared under interrogation that it had
been Whetstone’s ambition to arrange
with ‘‘his friends and wealthy merchants’’
in London to fit out four frigates to attack
the Armada del Mar del Sur of Peru. It
appears Whetstone died during his incar-
ceration, the only survivor of this captiv-
ity being Major Smith.
See also
Careen; Modyford, Sir Thomas; Myngs, Sir
Christopher; State’s or States’ Ships.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office; 1893
1899).
Wild Coast 405
Calendar of Treasury Books, Vol. 1.
Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama: Captain
Morgan and the Battle for the
Caribbean (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2007).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
Thurloe, John, A Collection of the State
Papers of John Thurloe, Vols. 4
7
(London, 1742).
WILD COAST
Stretch of Atlantic shoreline along the
northeastern edge of South America,
running from the Gulf of Paria to the
Amazon River, and home to the leg-
endary El Dorado.
Its name apparently derived from the
fact that this region remained unsettled
long after the rest of the Americas had
begun to become colonized by Euro-
peans, partly because it fell along the
boundary-line between the Spanish and
Portuguese spheres of influence as drawn
up by the 1493 Treaty of Tordesillas, but
mostly because migrants from both Ibe-
rian nations preferred their wealthier
Viceroyalties of Mexico, Peru, and Bra-
zil. Starting during the early 17th cen-
tury, Dutch seamen began establishing
trade settlements along the Wild Coast—
particularly in the Guianas—which they
then used as springboards for ventures
deeper into the Caribbean, driving Spain
almost entirely out of that archipelago.
During the latter decades of the 17th
century, Cuman
a was considered a front-
line garrison by Madrid, holding foreign
406 Williams, Maurice (fl. 1659
1665)
interlopers at bay from spreading into
the Spanish Main, just as Saint Augus-
tine in Florida did for the English settlers
radiating out of the Carolinas. Both
regions were to be frequently visited or
used as havens by privateers and pirates.
Reference
Goslinga, Cornelis CH., The Dutch in the
Caribbean and on the Wild Coast,
1580
1680 (Gainesville: University
of Florida Press, 1971).
WILLIAMS, MAURICE
(fl. 1659
1665)
English privateer who operated out of
Jamaica.
The earliest known mention of Wil-
liams’ activities occurred in May 1659,
when he bought the Spanish prize Abispa
(erroneously rendered as ‘‘Rabba Bispa’’
in English sources, being a misreading of
its Spanish nickname of La Abispa or
‘‘the Wasp’’), which had been brought
into Port Royal by the State frigate Dia-
mond, and was sold by the authorities at
auction. Williams bid £120, renamed it
the Jamaica, and acquired a privateering
commission. To help him fit out his new
vessel, Gov. Edward D’Oyley sold Wil-
liams five cannon from the State store-
house, and issued a proclamation that
allowed him to recruit seamen from the
government frigate Marston Moor.
Five years later, Williams was still
plying the same trade, for on November
23, 1664 (O.S.), William Beeston noted
in his journal at Port Royal that the rover
had that day ‘‘brought in a great prize
with logwood, indigo, and silver.’’ This
was unusual in that the new Gov. Sir
Thomas Modyford has some months pre-
viously announced that ‘‘for the future
all acts of hostility against the Spaniards
should cease,’’ yet Williams was still
allowed to keep this prize. On February
20, 1665 (O.S.), Modyford himself wrote
to London: ‘‘The Spanish prizes have
been inventoried and sold, but it is sus-
pected that those of Morrice [sic; Mau-
rice Williams] and Bernard Nichols have
been miserably plundered, and the inter-
ested parties will find but a slender
account in the Admiralty.’’
That same spring, Williams partici-
pated in a more legitimate venture, when
his 18-gun Speaker served as flagship for
Colonel Edward Morgan’s expedition
against Dutch Sint Eustatius and Saba, on
the English receiving news of the out-
break of the Second Anglo-Dutch War
back in Europe. This force departed
Jamaica in two divisions, five sail putting
out of Port Royal on April 5, 1665, and
Morgan himself following aboard Wil-
liams’ Speaker with another three on
April 28th. They mustered 650 men in
all, and were described in a letter by
Modyford as:
. . . chiefly reformed privateers,
scarce a planter amongst them, being
resolute fellows and well armed with
fusils [Spanish word for muskets]
and pistols.
The Crown official was particularly
pleased that they would be serving ‘‘at
the old rate of no purchase, no pay,
and it will cost the King nothing con-
siderable, some powder and mortar
pieces.’’ Their landing was made suc-
cessfully, but the Colonel, ‘‘being a
corpulent man,’’ died from heat exer-
tion during the chase inland, so that his
expedition disbanded shortly thereafter.
 Windsor, Thomas, 7th Baron Windsor and 1st Earl of Plymouth (fl. 1662)
References
Cruikshank, E. A., The Life of Sir Henry
Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
WINDSOR, THOMAS, 7TH
BARON WINDSOR AND
1ST EARL OF PLYMOUTH
(fl. 1662)
First Royal Governor of Jamaica, who
unleashed a peacetime privateering of-
fensive against its Spanish-American
neighbors, before abruptly quitting his
post.
Born at Kew in Surrey in England as
Thomas Hickman, CA. 1627, he was to be
the only child of Dixie Hickman and
Elizabeth Windsor. In 1641, his maternal
uncle—the retired Rear Admiral Thomas,
Baron Windsor de Stanwell—died child-
less, so that the 15-year-old inherited
his estates the next year, assuming the
joint surname of Hickman-Windsor.
He served as a youthful Cavalier dur-
ing the Civil War, although apparently
without much distinction, despite
being present at the Battle of Naseby.
On the final defeat of the Royalist
forces, he fled to Flanders, but a few
years later returned to England and
posted a surety ‘‘not to do anything
prejudicial’’ against Oliver Cromwell’s
407
Protectorate. Thereafter, Hickman-
Windsor lived quietly in the country-
side, ‘‘absorbed in a fruitless scheme
to render the River Salwarpe naviga-
ble by means of locks, for the benefit
of the salt trade at Droitwich.’’ He
married Anne Saville on May 12,
1656 (O.S.), by whom he would have
a son and two daughters, eccentrically
christening his heir with the very odd
first name of Other, so that eventually
this child would go down in history as
Other Windsor, 2nd Earl of Plymouth.
In June 1660, after the Restoration of
Charles II to the throne, Thomas Hick-
man-Windsor was reinstated to his family
titles, once again becoming 7th Baron
Windsor, in addition to Lord Lieutenant of
Worcestershire. In July 1661, on the rec-
ommendation of the Committee for For-
eign Plantations, Lord Windsor was
appointed to supplant the Cromwellian-era
commander, Colonel Edward D’Oyley, as
Governor of Jamaica, with a salary of
£2,000 a year. Windsor’s task of imposing
Crown rule over that recently-conquered
frontier outpost was considered a challeng-
ing one, so that to negate any lingering
pro-Commonwealth sentiments among its
disgruntled garrison, he was furnished
with the back-pay and a gratuity for the
island’s 1,000 neglected Cromwellian
soldiers, as well as covert permission to
inaugurate a privateering offensive against
the local Spaniards.
Madrid had only grudgingly accepted
the general European peace signed three
years previously, Spain’s ministers
steadfastly refusing to acknowledge any
English claims in the New World, in
hopes of eventually reasserting their
monopoly over the entire continent.
As even innocent English commercial-
traffic was thereby rendered illegal in
Spanish courts, according to this policy,
408 Windsor, Thomas, 7th Baron Windsor and 1st Earl of Plymouth (fl. 1662)
Windsor’s instructions included a spe-
cific charge that if: ‘‘the King of Spain
shall refuse to admit our subjects to trade
with them, you shall in such case
endeavor to procure and settle a trade
with his subjects in those parts by force.’’
It was felt that such a license would
additionally provide gainful employment
for Jamaica’s wilder spirits.
Governor of Jamaica (1662)
Windsor did not actually set sail with his
West Indian convoy until early May
1662, yet despite such a delay—not all
his fault—he was well prepared to carry
out the Privy Council’s instructions, and
quite enlightened regarding the colonists’
needs. He traveled aboard the 46-gun
flagship HMS Centurion of Commodore
Christopher Myngs, a veteran officer
from Commonwealth days, who was now
being restored to his former Jamaica sta-
tion as its new naval commander-in-
chief. Windsor also appears to have been
allowed to privately charter or purchase
the 14-gun frigate Griffin of the Dutch-
born rover, Captain Adriaen van Diemen
Swart, to operate separately as a naval
auxiliary under his supervision. The dis-
graced former Cromwellian naval Com-
modore, Sir Thomas Whetstone, was a
member of this expedition as well,
accompanied by a small group of laborers
to help clear his new Jamaican plantation.
All three of these seafarers—Myngs,
Swart, and Whetstone—were most eager
to secure leadership roles in the forth-
coming privateer offensive against Span-
ish America.
The convoy sighted Barbados by
July 10, 1662 (O.S.), and Windsor dis-
embarked next day in Carlisle Bay, to
spend the next three weeks recruiting
local settlers to help bolster Jamaica’s
meager civilian population. Swart was
meanwhile sent on ahead with his frig-
ate Griffin to deliver messages to the
Spanish Governors of Puerto Rico and
Santo Domingo, asking for permission
for English ships to trade; the antici-
pated refusals would provide the
excuse for hostilities. Griffin then pro-
ceeded to Jamaica, being mentioned in
the journal of William Beeston as
entering Port Royal by July 30, 1662
(O.S.), bringing in the news ‘‘that they
left the Lord Windsor at Barbados,
who might be expected to arrive every
day.’’
The Royal Governor-designate re-
sumed his voyage from Carlisle Bay
with his convoy by August 1, 1662
(O.S.), reaching Port Royal with several
hundred more settlers 10 days later. His
administration started most vigorously,
over one thousand unhappy Cromwellian
soldiers being released from duty with
full wages and a gratuity, their presence
to be gradually supplanted by five volun-
teer militia regiments. Work also acceler-
ated on the harbor fort (renamed Fort
Charles in honor of the King), while 30
acres of land was promised to ‘‘every
person, male or female, being twelve
years old or upwards,’’ who was willing
to become a planter. Windsor selected
the old inland Spanish capital of San-
tiago de la Vega as his official seat
(modern Spanish Town), meeting there
with the already-existing Council as
early as August 20, 1662 (O.S.), to
announce that Griffin had returned from
a second quick visit to Puerto Rico with
the Spanish Governors’ written rebuffs.
As these replies were deemed an ‘‘abso-
lute denial of trade,’’ offensive measures
were prepared: privateering commissions
once more became available ‘‘for the
 Windsor, Thomas, 7th Baron Windsor and 1st Earl of Plymouth (fl. 1662)
subduing of all our enemies by sea and
by land, within and upon the coast of
America.’’
Two weeks later, Windsor further-
more proposed that the lawless French
lair of Tortuga Island (Haiti) ‘‘be
reduced under the English government,
and that two or more of the Council
report what is requisite for settling the
possession of it.’’ On September 5
1662 (O.S.), Colonel William Mitchell
was appointed Chief Judge of a new
Admiralty Court to be established at
Port Royal, with two other Justices
seconding him on its bench. One week
afterward, it was resolved ‘‘that men
be enlisted for a design by sea with the
Centurion and other vessels’’ against
Santiago de Cuba, the advance Spanish
base in their repeated attempts to
reconquer Jamaica. It was also resolved
to buy 20 horses to organize a ceremo-
nial cavalry-troop for the Governor.
Final instructions for Myngs’s expedi-
tion were approved by September 20,
1662 (O.S.), so that shortly after he
stood out of Port Royal harbor with
Centurion, Griffin, and 10 freebooter
vessels bearing a total of 1,300
men—many of them former soldiers,
who did not wish to take up farming or
any other trade. Slowly, this formation
faded from view around Point Negril
at the west end of Jamaica.
They made a triumphal return a
month later, streaming back into harbor
past Windsor’s gaze on October 21,
1662 (O.S.), with a half-dozen prizes and
considerable booty. At a Council meet-
ing celebrated only three days later,
though, the Governor swore in Myngs
and Captain Thomas Fuller as new mem-
bers, ordered that all captives be sent to
Spain by way of England as soon as pos-
sible, and then amazed the assemblage
409
by reading out his ‘‘permission from the
King to depart to England.’’
By October 28, 1662 (O.S.), Sir
Charles Lyttelton was sworn in to rule as
Deputy-Governor in Windsor’s place,
who went aboard the ship Bear and set
sail for England that same day. ‘‘Being
very sick and uneasy,’’ he had appa-
rently decided to go home after scarcely
three months in office, although the real
reason for Windsor’s abrupt departure
may have been financial rather than
medical. He later complained that ‘‘he
came back £2,000 worse off than when
he went out.’’ His apparent abandonment
of royal duties was disapproved on his
arrival in London, where Samuel Pepys
noted in his diary: ‘‘Lord Windsor being
come home from Jamaica unlooked for,
makes us think these young Lords are
not fit to do any service abroad.’’ Wind-
sor’s appointment was officially revoked
in February 1663, and the Barbadian
planter Sir Thomas Modyford was even-
tually ordered to transfer over to Jamaica
to act as his replacement.
Later Career (1663
1687)
Windsor was never to be employed again
by the Crown. His wife Anne died
three years after his return, on March 22,
1666 (O.S.), so that he married Ursula
Widdington two years afterward, by
whom he would have another seven chil-
dren. In 1676, he was made Master of
the Horse to the King’s brother James,
Duke of York, and obtained the cere-
monial title of Governor of Ports-
mouth five years later. Finally, he was
elevated to the peerage as Earl of
Plymouth in December 1682, and died
on November 3, 1687 (O.S.), being bur-
ied at Tardebigg in Worcestershire,
England.
410 Windsor, Thomas, 7th Baron Windsor and 1st Earl of Plymouth (fl. 1662)

Myngs’s Assault Santiago de Cuba, October 1662.

At dawn, Myngs’s fleet attempted to rush Santiago de Cuba’s harbor entrance—dotted

line—only to become becalmed (1). They therefore veered inshore toward the village of
Aguadores by evening, landing 1,000 men at the mouth of the San Juan River (2). Advancing
inland overnight, Myngs defeated a small Spanish army outside Santiago next morning (3),
occupying the city and sending columns after its fleeing citizenry (4). A detachment was also
sent to attack the harbor-castle from its rear (5), which the Spaniards abandoned without a
fight.

References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 5
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1880).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega: Lewis,
Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
WOODRUFFE, THOMAS
(fl. 1670
1689?)
Named in December 1670 as one of the
English Captains for Henry Morgan’s
forthcoming expedition against Panama
and given command of the tiny 12-ton
sloop William, bearing 30 men.
Whether or not it is the same man, a
Master named ‘‘Thomas Woodroffe’’ also
filed a deposition at Port Royal on Febru-
ary 8, 1689 (O.S.), complaining of ‘‘the
plunder of his sloop’’ among the South
Cays of Cuba by the corsair Juan Nicol
as.
See also
Document 8: Morgan’s Fleet at the end of
this volume.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
WOOLLEY, CONWAY
(fl. 1683)
English privateer who operated out of
the Bahamas.
Wright, George (fl. 1675
1682) 411
In March 1683, Woolley was lying at
New Providence along with Captains
Markham, Jan Corneliszoon (command-
ing a brigantine out of New York), and
the French flibustier Br
eha, preparing to
go ‘‘fish silver from a Spanish wreck.’’
There then arrived Captain Thomas
Paine of the bark Pearl, with eight guns,
60 men, and a license from Gov. Sir
Thomas Lynch of Jamaica to hunt
pirates.
The five decided to avail themselves
of Paine’s commission, and raid the
nearby Spanish outpost of Saint Augus-
tine, Florida. They therefore landed
under French colors, but found the Span-
iards alerted, so merely looted the coun-
tryside and withdrew after releasing
some captives whom they had brought
with them.
Returning to the Bahamas, Woolley
and Corneliszoon apparently proceeded
to the Spanish wreck site, while the
other three reentered New Providence.
When Gov. Robert Lilburne visited the
wreck site a few weeks later, he found
all the rovers gone.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
WRIGHT, GEORGE
(fl. 1675
1682)
English privateer who served under
French colors.
When England withdrew from the
war against The Netherlands early in
1674, many of its West Indian corsairs
shifted allegiance to continue privateer-
ing. Wright was one such commander,
obtaining a commission from the French
412 Wright, George (fl. 1675
1682)
authorities on Saint-Domingue to serve
against the Dutch and Spaniards. On
March 26, 1675 (O.S.), the new Deputy
Governor of Jamaica, Sir Henry Morgan,
drafted a letter promising Wright and his
fellow rovers a friendly reception at Port
Royal if they were to come in and cease
their attacks on behalf of France, which
although legitimate, were embarrassing
the English Crown. Morgan furthermore
added that he hoped ‘‘their experience of
him will give him the reputation that he
intends not to betray them,’’ suggesting
Wright may have known Morgan from
his Panama days.
This proposal was never sent, how-
ever, as the Jamaican authorities pre-
ferred other measures to recall English
subjects from foreign service. Wright
continued under French colors, and
in early June 1681 was at Springer’s
Key in the San Blas Islands north of
Panama along with John Coxon, Jan
Willems, Jean Rose, and four other
captains. Wright was sent with his
barco luengo of four guns and 40 men
to gather intelligence at Chagres, for a
possible overland attack against Pan-
ama. He duly captured a piragua laden
with flour, and returned with this prize
and prisoners to report. An hour after
his arrival, the ship of Capitaine Jean
Tristan joined Coxon’s formation,
having rescued John Cooke’s band of
buccaneers at nearby La Sound’s Key
after their adventures in the South Sea.
Among this group was William Dampier,
who noted: ‘‘All the commanders were
aboard of Captain Wright when we came
into the fleet.’’
The buccaneers decided to make a
descent against the Central American
coast, for which they first sailed to San
Andr
es Island to procure boats. A gale
scattered the formation, and Wright
chanced on a Spanish tartan armed
with four pedreros or ‘‘swivel-guns’’
and 30 men, capturing it after an hour-
long fight and learning that it was part
of a larger armadilla sent from Carta-
gena to drive the pirates away. Cooke,
Dampier, and the other English rovers
who had arrived from the South Sea,
and were now serving with Capitaine
Archaimbaud:
. . . desired Captain Wright to fit up
his prize the tartan and make a man
o’ war of her for us, which he at first
seemed to decline, because he was
settled among the French in His-
paniola, and was very well beloved
both by the Governor of Petit-Go^ave
and all the gentry; and they would
resent it ill that Captain Wright, who
had no occasion of men, should be
so unkind to Capitaine Archembo
[sic] as to seduce his men from him.
Nevertheless, when the English insisted,
Wright relented on condition that they
‘‘should be under his command, as one
ship’s company.’’
Ten days later, Wright quit San
Andr
es, as no one other than Archaim-
baud and Capitaine Toccard had reached
the rendezvous. Returning to Bocas del
Toro (on the northwest coast of present-
day Panama), Wright discovered from
Willems that the rest had been scattered
by the Spanish armadilla. The two cap-
tains therefore sailed together to Carta-
gena, seized some boats, then returned to
the San Blas Islands for forage. Captur-
ing some coastal traders laden with
‘‘corn, hog, and fowls,’’ as well as rescu-
ing Lionel Wafer, they repaired near
Darien to careen. They then prowled
past Cartagena, Santa Marta, and Rı́oha-
cha, before reversing course and

intercepting a 12-gun Spanish merchant-
man from Santiago de Cuba, as it
approached the Spanish Main. Wright
burnt his bark and assumed command of
Willems’ ship, in exchange for the
Cuban prize. The buccaneers deposited
their captives at Rı́ohacha, and in mid-
November 1681 made toward Curaçao
to dispose of their cargo of Cuban sugar,
tobacco, ‘‘and 8 or 10 tons of
marmalade.’’
Arriving off that Dutch island:
Captain Wright went ashore to the
Governor [Nikolaas van Liebergen]
and offered him the sale of the
sugar, but the Governor told him he
had a great trade with the Spaniards,
therefore he could not admit us in
there; but if we could go to Saint
Thomas, which is an island and free
port belonging to the Danes and a
sanctuary for privateers, he would
send a sloop with such goods as we
wanted, and money to buy the sugar,
which he would take at a certain
rate; but it was not agreed to.
Instead, Wright and Willems sailed to
Bonaire, where they met a Dutch sloop
recently arrived from Europe with Irish
beef, which they bought in exchange for
some of their cargo. They then visited the
Aves Islands, where Wright careened his
bark, while Willems’ was scrubbed, and
two guns fished from the wreck of the
Duc d’Estr
ees’s fleet. In mid-February
1682, the buccaneers crossed to Los
Roques, where Willems’ vessel was
careened, and 10 tons of sugar sold to a
passing French warship of 36 guns.
In April 1682, they reached the ‘‘Salt
Tortugas’’ Island off Venezuela, then
attempted to tack upwind to Trinidad, but
were driven back to Blanquilla. Ten days
Wroth, Peter (fl. 1660s
1670s) 413
later, they returned to the Salt Tortugas,
where Willems left Wright’s company.
In a quarrelsome mood because of
this inactivity, Wright and his remaining
men raided the coast of Caracas, captur-
ing three barks with assorted goods.
They then repaired to Los Roques, divid-
ing the booty and separating.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 9
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
WROTH, PETER
(fl. 1660s
1670s)
English privateer who operated out of
Barbados during the Second and Third
Anglo-Dutch Wars.
Wroth was the younger brother of
Sir John Wroth of Kent, England, and
emigrated to seek his fortune in the
Lesser Antilles. When news of the
Third Anglo-Dutch War reached Bar-
bados during the latter half of 1672,
Gov. Sir William Stapleton of the Lee-
ward Islands issued him a privateering
commission to go seek ‘‘purchase in
the Dutch plantations of Guiana.’’
Wroth was already familiar with cam-
paigning on the Wild Coast, having
fought in the conquest of Suriname
during the previous conflict.
Therefore, he approached the mouth
of the Suriname River late in March
414 Wroth, Peter (fl. 1660s
1670s)
1673 with his s6-gun, 20-ton sloop Little
Kitt, manned by 30 men. Wroth’s inten-
tion was to obtain supplies by raiding
the turtling camp at Three Creeks, but he
found the waterway blocked up by the
Dutch. However, from conversations
with several colonists, he also learned
that a small Dutch naval squadron had
just arrived with reinforcements, ‘‘which
next spring tide intended to go to Vir-
ginia to do what mischief they could.’’
Realizing that this constituted important
military intelligence, he immediately
departed with a 15-year-old captive
called Jan Madder, pausing at Isakebe
on the Demerara coast to take on
provisions. Having obtained some from
the Carib Indians of the Amecouza
River, he proceeded to Barbados with
his report, which was eventually for-
warded to London, and brought to the
attention of Charles II and the Lords of
the Admiralty.
Reference
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert
D., Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press,
1988).
 Y
Z
This part of the world is full of privateers.
YELLOWS, CAPTAIN
See Lescat, Jelles de
ZOBY, JOSEPH
(fl. 1678
1683)
English merchant-adventurer victimized
by the Spaniards in South America, for
which he sought letters-of-reprisal.
In 1678, Zoby departed on a trading
voyage, allegedly for the West Indies
—although he actually traveled much
farther south, and eventually put into
Rı́o de la Plata ‘‘to victual.’’ There, his
ship was seized for violating Spain’s
trade monopoly and sold off as a legiti-
mate prize. Zoby returned to England
to complain, and even traveled to the
English Embassy in Madrid to seek
restitution from the Spanish Crown,
415
—A letter from Antigua, July 1695
remaining there for many months. His
suit did not prosper despite the support
of the Ambassador; the most galling
incident occurred when his former ship
arrived at the port of San Sebasti
an
from South America, flying Spanish
colors. Zoby again petitioned for its
release, but was denied, leading him to
conclude that ‘‘no justice is to be
looked for from Spain.’’ He therefore
sought letters-of-reprisal from the Eng-
lish government to extract his own
compensation, which were apparently
granted.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
 Documents

DOCUMENT 1.
LETTER-OF-REPRISAL GRANTED TO

THE NEW ENGLANDER, EDWARD GIBBONS,
JANUARY 1651
A bitter rivalry had raged for years between French Acadia’s resident trader and pri-


vate Governor Charles de Saint-Etienne, Seigneur de La Tour, and the royally-
appointed Deputy-Governor Charles de Menou, Seigneur d’Aulnay. Consequently,
when one of La Tour’s ships entered the Bay of Fundy in April 1643 to replenish his
fortified trading-outpost at the mouth of the Saint John River—the richest source of
pelts in that entire region—it found its passage blocked by three of d’Aulnay’s ves-
sels. La Tour therefore slipped out of his besieged outpost, turned his supply ship
around, and sailed to Boston to secure help.
On arriving there, La Tour recruited the assistance of militia Major-General
Edward Gibbons, with four ships and a body of soldiers, against a promise of future
payment. This force easily broke d’Aulnay’s blockade, chased the Deputy-Governor
back into Port-Royal, and burned his property, so that he shortly thereafter fled for
Paris to complain before King Louis. Meanwhile, La Tour resumed his trading busi-
ness, with Gibbons now a full-fledged partner, until d’Aulnay returned from France
in September 1644 with a purchased warship and some hired troops.
Next April 1645, while La Tour was absent visiting Gibbons in Boston, the trad-
ing-outpost was overrun and destroyed. A despondent La Tour retired to Quebec
City, still in Gibbons’ debt. Failing to obtain any satisfaction for his claim, the
Major-General finally resorted to an appeal to London, requesting permission for a

417
418 Documents

private recourse to arms. The Commonwealth ministers duly sent the following
warrant to the Judges of the Admiralty in January 1651:
Whereas Edward Gibbons, residing in New England, hath been much damnified
and suffered great loss by means of one Monsieur De Aulney [sic], a Frenchman,
who hath by force taken and still keepeth in possession a fort or place of trade
with the natives of that country, which was made over to the said Gibbons by
Monsieur Latore [sic] for the satisfying of a debt of about three thousand pounds
sterling: We have granted to the said Edward Gibbons letters-of-marque against
the French, for the obtaining of satisfaction for his said losses so sustained, to-
gether with interest, costs and charges, and other damages as he shall expend for
the recovery thereof; And do hereby authorize you to issue the same by way of
commission under the great seal of the High Court of Admiralty, according to the
articles agreed on by this Council, and remaining with you. Given at the Council
of State at Whitehall, this 30th of January 1650 [1651 O.S.].
This document, one of the earliest letters-of-reprisal authorized for North Amer-
ica, was published in Volume 2 of Reginald G. Marsden’s Documents Relating to
Law and Custom of the Sea, published by the Navy Records Society in 1916.
Source: Letter-of-Reprisal Granted to the New Englander, Edward Gibbons, Janu-
ary 1651. R. G. Marsden (ed.), Documents Relating to the Law and Custom of the
Sea, 2 vols., Navy Records Society Publications vols 49
50 (London: Navy
Records Society, 1915
16), vol. 2.

DOCUMENT 2.
SUSPENSION OF SPANISH

PRIVATEERING COMMISSIONS, MARCH 1655
Bankrupt and enfeebled by decades of economic decline, Madrid’s ministers recog-
nized by the middle of the 17th century their inability to strictly enforce dictates
over their far-flung American empire. Even royal Admirals and plate-fleet
commanders were being suspected of routinely flouting and defrauding the Royal
Exchequer during their annual trans-Atlantic voyages, so that unsupervised forays
by lone Spanish privateers came to be viewed more dimly still, as evinced by the
following royal order—emitted in the name of King Philip IV by his Secretary for
the Council of Indies on March 2, 1655. Given that Portugal had already thrown
off joint rule from Spain 15 years previously, resulting in a state of perpetual yet
inactive warfare between both Crowns, this royal command began by observing:
Experience has shown the great inconveniences and damage which result from
the permits granted to different persons to sally as privateers with their own ships
and other vessels, as under said entitlement and that the rebels of Portugal are
comprehended within it, they venture as far as Brazil—without this being their
intent, rather merely to trade, and so they go straight to the port of Buenos Aires
and others of the Indies, from where they extract silver in unminted bars, cones,
 Documents 419

and rods that have not yet been charged the royal fifth, in this manner draining
that which is covertly being removed without paying my royal fifths at Potos
ı and
other mining centers of those provinces, which are large sums; and they do so by
selling blacks and other goods, which is also prohibited, so that in addition to the
considerable prejudice which results to my Exchequer, the Merchant Guilds of
Seville and Lima also contemplate their own ruin and collapse from decreased rev-
enues out of those provinces.
And my Council of Indies having conferred on this, and consulted with me over
what seems most convenient, taking into account the damage which results by grant-
ing such wide-ranging licenses, as under pretext of going to conduct hostilities
against the Portuguese and other enemies of my Crown, they aver that they may also
reach the coasts of Brazil, at which time they will find an excuse to make an unau-
thorized arrival at the port of Buenos Aires and others of the Indies: I have resolved
that to remedy this, all such privateering licenses be completely banned, so that my
War Council and all others with faculties to issue them, shall refuse to do so and the
door will be entirely closed to this type of permits, as I have commanded.
And in the event that they be not totally prohibited, it is to be specifically stated
in those commissions which are granted, that recipients are not to sail under any pre-
text to the coasts of Brazil or the Indies, and if they should do so, they will be sub-
ject to impoundment and other penalties established under the ordinances of the
Trade of Indies; which I have chosen to apprise you of; and I order and command
you (as I do) that you forthwith publish it in all ports of those coasts, ordering [local]
ministers to impose the inserted resolution on all privateer ships which should arrive,
under whatever pretext, impounding them and whatever goods they might carry, and
condemning them to the other penalties called for in the ordinances of the Trade of
Indies; and by another c
edula of this same date, I have commanded that this order
be published in all the ports of Spain and other convenient spots.
This particular copy was sent, among dozens of other official dispatches, to the
Mexican Viceroy Francisco Fern
andez de la Cueva y Enr
ıquez, Duque de Albu-
rquerque, and is today preserved in Mexico’s Archivo General de la Naci
on, Se-
ries Reales C
edulas (Originales), Volume 5, Expediente 61, Folios 144
145.
Source: Suspension of Spanish Privateering Commissions, March 1655. Archivo
General de la Naci
on de M
exico, Series Reales C

edulas (Originales), Volume 5,
Expediente 61, Folios 144
145.

DOCUMENT 3.
PRIVATEERING COMMISSION AND

INSTRUCTIONS ISSUED BY THE JAMAICAN GOVERNOR
TO GEORGE BRIMACAIN, SEPTEMBER 1662
When the young nobleman Thomas, Lord Windsor, reached Port Cagway as this
island’s first Royal Governor on August 11, 1662 (O.S.), he almost immediately sig-
naled the commencement of a vigorous new privateering offensive against Spanish
420 Documents

America, despite the peace prevailing between both governments back in Europe. A
month of inaugural activities culminated when the Jamaican Council agreed to his
proposal ‘‘that men be enlisted for a design by sea’’ against Santiago de Cuba,
and ships began to fit out in earnest for such an expedition.
Amid feverish preparations in that harbor a few days later, the Governor issued
the following commission and set of instructions to George Brimacain on September
18, 1662 (O.S.), authorizing him to sortie with his 6-gun, 70-man frigate Fortune; as
well as giving similar sets to five other Captains. Both of Brimacain’s documents
are reproduced here below, in their entirety:
Thomas, Lord Windsor, Peer of the Realm of England, Lord Lieutenant of the
County of Worcester, and of the city and county of the same, Governor of Jamaica and
islands thereto adjacent, Commander-in-Chief there of all the forces by sea and land,
and Vice-Admiral to His Royal Highness the Duke of York in the American Seas.

To George Brimacam [sic], greetings:

WHEREAS His Most Sacred Majesty having taken into his serious consideration,
and apprehending that diverse well-affected people of his Kingdom of England
and other his Dominions and Territories have sustained great wrongs, losses, and
damages as well at sea in their ships, goods, wares, and merchandises, being pil-
laged, spoiled, surprised, and taken by the ships and subjects of the King of Spain,
as by diverse unlawful seizures, wrongs, and violences used against both their per-
sons and goods in several ports and on shore in his Dominions in America; and
the Spanish Governor refusing and utterly revoking all commerce and trade, con-
trary to justice and all manner of civil correspondence betwixt prince and prince
and to the lawful nations, to the manifest prejudice and destruction to the trade,
commerce, and navigation of the King, my Master’s, subjects;
THEREFORE know ye that by virtue of authority derived from His Most Excel-
lent Majesty and His Royal Highness the Duke of York, that I do thereby give and
grant unto you, the said George Brimacam, the command of the good ship or frig-
ate called the Fortune, a private man-of-war, which he (the said George Brima-
cam) has armed in a warlike manner, and armed, equipped, and furnished to all
intents and purposes whatsoever;
AND FURTHER know ye that by authority thereof, I do license and authorize
the said Captain George Brimacam to set forth to sea the said ship the Fortune
and therewith to apprehend, take, seize, or surprise, or by force of arms to set
upon, take, and apprehend any of the ships, goods, wares, and merchandises of the
said King of Spain, or any of his subjects whatsoever, upon the high land, open
seas, or any of ports or harbors within the dominions and territories of the said
King of Spain in America, or any other person without license first obtained carry-
ing to them men, ammunitions, or provisions; and the same ships, goods, wares,
and merchandises so taken, do without delay, or any prisoner whatsoever, bring
into the harbor of Point Cagway within this Island of Jamaica, without breach of
bulk or embezzlement of any pays, bills of lading, charter-parties, dockets, or other
documents and writings whatsoever which may concern the said prize, and shall
 Documents 421

not dispose or alter the property thereof until the same be legally adjudged in the
Court of Admiralty here established in Jamaica, the tenths and fifteenths of all
such prizes, or the full value thereof, first duly taken out and paid to such persons
as shall be by me nominated and appointed to the use of the King, my Master, or
His Royal Highness the Duke of York;
And that it shall and may be lawful for any subject of the King, my Master,
whatsoever either in his own person to serve or otherwise to bear charge and
adventure or in any sort further, or to set forward the said enterprise by virtue of
these presents; and that it shall and may be lawful for all persons whatsoever,
being subjects of the King, my Master, or any others, to contract, bargain for, or
buy the said ship or ship’s goods, wares, and merchandises whatsoever perishable
or other lawful cause seeming fit to the judge of the said Court of Admiralty with-
out any danger, hindrance, loss, trouble, or molestation whatsoever provided
always; and it is the true intent and meaning of these presents that you neither do,
permit, or suffer to be done any violence or injury to the ships, goods, wares, and
merchandises presently belonging to the subjects of any prince or state in league
or amity with the King, my Master, to whose aid and assistance I recommend you.
My execution of this commission, whereof you shall enjoy the benefit and the
same continue in full force and virtue for the space of ten months next ensuing the
date hereof, unless I shall for just reasons in the meantime think fit to revoke the
same, whereof you shall have timely notice.
Passed and registered in the said Court of Admiralty, and given under my hand
at Point Cagway, the eighteenth day of September in the fourteenth year of the
reign of Our Sovereign Lord, Charles the Second, by the Grace of God King of
England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc., and Lord of
Jamaica, and in the year of Our Lord 1662.

Windsor
Instructions which are to be observed, performed, fulfilled, and kept by George
Brimacam, commander of the frigate called the Fortune.

1. You shall give all due respect and obedience to such petitions as His Royal
Highness or myself shall give to any vessel at sea, and shall not presume in any
degree to violate or infringe the same.
2. Upon taking any ship or vessel, you shall forthwith cause an inventory to be
taken of all bills of lading and other goods omitted out of such bills, without
breaking of bulk; and you shall deliver a copy of the inventory signed by your-
self and the chief officers of your ship to the judge of Admiralty at Jamaica; and
you shall, as soon as you are possessed of any such ship, seal up decks and not
suffer any bulk to be broken, until adjudication be first obtained.
3. Upon taking any vessel, you shall immediately cause the master and other offi-
cers of the said ship so taken to be examined, touching the design of their voyage,
from whence they came and whether they are bound, with such other questions
as you shall think fit to demand, which examination shall be reduced into writing
422 Documents

and delivered to the judge of the Court of Admiralty here established; and if the
said prize seem doubtful, then you shall keep the said master and other officers
so taken till they be personally all examined by the said judge, if he sees cause.
4. Upon your going on shore in any place whatsoever after the taking of a prize, or
upon your arrival and coming to anchor in the harbor of Point Cagway in
Jamaica, you shall neither suffer seaman or soldier, or any other person whatso-
ever, either of your own ship or belonging to the prize, to come on shore before
they be searched and examined what they carry with them.
5. Upon bringing in a prize into the harbor of Point Cagway in Jamaica, and adju-
dication thereupon obtained, the fifteenths due unto His Majesty’s and the tenths
due unto His Royal Highness the Duke of York, and the just fees of the Court,
shall be first deducted and paid before any particular division be made between
owners, victuallers, and seamen.
6. You shall not suffer any officer, seaman, or soldier whatsoever embezzle, can-
cel, or throw overboard any writing whatsoever found in any ship, and to break
open any packets before they be brought to you; and you shall cause all the said
writings so taken to be delivered to the said judge.
7. You shall not presume to take any commission from any other prince, and if you
shall take any such commission, I do hereby declare that from that time the com-
mission you have received from me, stands revoked and is determined.

Given under my hand at Point Cagway, the eighteenth day of September, in the
year of Our Lord 1662.

Windsor
The originals of these two documents are today held together by the National
Archives of the UK, under the reference call-number: PRO HCA 49/59, f. 92.
Source: Privateering Commission and Instructions Issued by the Jamaican Gover-
nor to George Brimacain, September 1662. Original documents held by The
National Archives, UK. PRO HCA 49/59, f. 92.

DOCUMENT 4.
LORD WINDSOR’S INSTRUCTIONS TO

COMMODORE MYNGS ‘‘TO SETTLE A TRADE BY
FORCE’’ UPON THE SPANIARDS, SEPTEMBER 1662
Two days after the preceding commissions had begun to be issued to Jamaica’s pri-
vateers, the island’s new Royal Governor also compiled the following justification
for the strike which he was launching against Santiago de Cuba, as well as rules to
govern the conduct of that campaign. The illogic behind this new approach, of
attempting ‘‘to settle free commerce and trade with the subjects of the King of
Spain in his dominions in America’’ by a resort to arms, would be echoed by future
generations of rovers:
 Documents 423

His Majesty, out of his royal tenderness and care of his subjects, hath directed me
by his instructions, which I have received, to use all ways and means to settle free
commerce and trade with the subjects of the King of Spain in his dominions in
America, and in obedience to his princely commands I have communicated the
same by a special messenger to the Governors of Porto Rico and St. Domingo,
whose answer expresseth their adherency to their former practices in denying us
traffic, thereby engrossing to themselves the riches of the Indies, contrary to use
and custom of all governments and the laws of nations; all which hath been freely
debated by the Council here upon the 7, 14 [September 1662 O.S.], and additional
instructions given me by His Majesty.
Whereupon it was resolved, in pursuance of the same, that endeavor should be
used to settle a trade by force or otherwise; for which end and purpose, according
to the order you have received, you shall make sail with your frigate [HMS Centu-
rion], the Griffith, and other private frigates of war taken into your assistance,
according to the instructions following:

1. You shall receive into the frigate under your command [HMS Centurion], the
Griffith, and other the private men of war taken for your assistance, all such vol-
unteers, inhabitants of this island of Jamaica, being well armed, who shall will-
ingly victual themselves for such time as the service and design on which you
are commanded may necessarily require.
2. You shall (wind and weather serving) set sail with the frigate under your com-
mand, the Griffith, and other private frigates of war to the neighboring coast of
the King of Spain’s dominions; and there you shall take, seize, and surprise or
otherwise by force destroy all or any of the King of Spain or his subjects’ ships
and vessels, or any others trading with him or carrying men, women, or ammuni-
tion to him without license from His Royal Highness the Duke of York, Lord
High Admiral, or myself.
3. When you are upon the coast of the King of Spain’s dominions, and shall then
find a probable and fit occasion of taking any of his castles, forts, or towns, you
shall call to your assistance and counsel such persons in command with you in
this design as you shall find able and discreet, to advise with in so weighty a
matter; and if upon mature deliberation, it be resolved by you that any the towns
and forts may be easily attempted without eminent hazard to the fleet, you have
hereby power, by virtue of the aforesaid instructions given me by His Majesty,
to subdue, take, and destroy the same by force or otherwise, by which means
possibly other places in the King of Spain’s dominions may be better inclined to
receive the settlement of a trade for His Majesty’s subjects.
4. When you shall have taken any ships or vessels, you are in all things to observe
such customs and rules limited to the King’s men of war in His Majesty’s High
Court of Admiralty, that the said ships and vessels may be the safer brought into
this port to receive sentence and judgment from the Court of Admiralty in
Jamaica. And you are likewise to make it your care to give full directions to the
private men of war, that they and either of them, shall punctually observe their
424 Documents

commands and instructions they have received upon the taking of any ship or
ships by them or any of them.
5. For the better regulating of the soldiers and mariners under your charge, you
shall call court-martials, and to proceed in all things during this expedition
according to the laws of war, life, and limb excepted.
6. You shall make choice of qualified persons of the late army as are now willing
to adventure with you, to be commanders over the volunteer landsmen, and your
order shall be sufficient for them, or either of them, to act or officiate in any of
their respective places you shall see cause to entrust them in.
7. You shall in this affair committed to your charge, have a very circumspect and
wary eye over the Spanish forces by sea or land, that you may the better prevent
their assaults or ambuscadoes, and you are to have due regard lest any treacher-
ous person or persons be in the fleet, that by this conveniency may have oppor-
tunity to betray you; and you shall not with these ships under your command
continue longer forth in this expedition than the space of a calendar month,
unless wind and weather hinder, and the occasion of service (being fair and
encouraging), absolutely require your stay fully to effect and dispatch the same,
for the honor and reputation of the King, our Master, and the advantage of his
subjects in this island.

Forasmuch as all men are mortal and you may die, as well in the time of the voy-
age as the time of action, and that these forces be not left without a due and
orderly conduct, these are in case of your death to authorize and appoint Captain
Thomas Morgan [of HMS Centurion] to command in chief the volunteer landsmen,
and if on shore to command all the forces then landed, and Captain Adrian Van
Diemen Swart [of the privateer Griffith] to command by sea, and from the frigate
Griffith under his command to issue out his orders to the Lieutenant and Master of
His Majesty’s ship Centurion and the commanders of other vessels; and if it so
happen that the said Captain Myngs should die before the time of action, then that
the said Captain Swart return, bringing back in the Centurion, Griffith, and some
other vessels all the volunteer landsmen, and to direct the private men of war to
pursue their commissions and instructions which I have given them.
But if the said Captain Myngs in the time of action shall be disabled by wounds
or otherwise, then the said Captain Morgan shall prosecute the enterprise, yet with
this caution and care, that he pursue the same no farther then the necessity of the
present engagement compels and obligeth him so to do. But that in all things this
diligence be had, both by the said Captain Swart and Captain Morgan, that all their
forces be drawn off and retired to their ships with safety and good order for their
return to this, His Majesty’s island of Jamaica and harbor of Point Cagway. Dated
the 20th of September 1662.
These raiders made a triumphal return into Port Cagway almost precisely one
month later, streaming into its harbor past Windsor’s gaze on October 21, 1662
(O.S.), bringing in a half-dozen prizes and considerable booty. One week after-
ward, the Governor resigned and took ship for England.
 Documents 425

Source: Lord Windsor’s Instructions to Commodore Myngs ‘‘To Settle a Trade by

Force’’ Upon the Spaniards, September 1662. Privateering Commission Issued by
the Exiled English King James II, June 1691. Reginald G. Marsden, compiler and
editor. Documents Relating to the Law and Custom of the Sea. London: Navy
Records Society, 1916, Volume 2, pp. 41
45.

DOCUMENT 5.
RESOLUTION OF THE COUNCIL OF

JAMAICA, IN FAVOR OF CONTINUING TO ISSUE
PRIVATEERING COMMISSIONS AGAINST SPANISH
AMERICA, FEBRUARY 1666
The early foreign outposts in the West Indies relied on buccaneers for more than mere
defense. Being thoroughly familiar with local waters and conditions, they also provided a
significant proportion of all economic life, as a result of their wide-ranging forays. What-
ever vexation might be caused for Crown ministers in distant Europe by their actions,
even during peacetime, regional officials still prized their repeated visits. For example,
when Jamaica’s Governor Sir Thomas Modyford and his younger brother, Major-
General James Modyford, presided over a meeting of its Council at the inland capital of
Santiago de la Vega on February 22, 1666 (O.S.), this was read into the official minutes:
Resolved: that it is to the interest of the island to have letters-of-marque granted
against the Spaniard.

1. Because it furnishes the island with many necessary commodities at easy rates.
2. It replenishes the island with coin, bullion, cocoa, logwood, hides, tallow,
indigo, cochineal, and many other commodities, whereby the men of New
England are invited to bring their provisions, and many merchants to reside at
Port Royal.
3. It helps the poorer planters, by selling provisions to the men-of-war.
4. It hath and will enable many to buy slaves and settle plantations, as Harmen-
son, Guy, Brimacain, and many others who have considerable plantations.
5. It draws down yearly from the Windward Islands many a hundred of English,
French, and Dutch, many of whom turn planters.
6. It is the only means to keep the buccaneers on Hispaniola, Tortugas, and the
South and North Cays of Cuba from being their enemies, and infesting their
sea-side plantations.
7. It is a great security to the island that the men-of-war often intercept Spanish
advices, and give intelligence to the Governor; which they often did in Col.
D’Oyley’s time and since.
8. The said men-of-war bring no small benefit to His Majesty and Royal High-
ness, by the 15ths and 10ths.
426 Documents

9. They keep many able artificers at work in Port Royal and elsewhere, at extraor-
dinary wages.
10. Whatsoever they get, the soberer part bestow in strengthening their old ships,
which in time will grow formidable.
11. They are of great reputation to this island and of terror to the Spaniard, and
keep up a high and military spirit in all the inhabitants.
12. It seems to be the only means to force the Spaniards, in time, to a free trade,
all ways of kindness producing nothing of good neighborhood; for though all
old commissions have been called in and no new ones granted, and many of
their ships restored, yet they continue all acts of hostility, taking our ships and
murdering our people, making them work at their fortifications and then send-
ing them into Spain, and very lately they denied an English fleet bound for the
Dutch colonies wood, water, or provisions.

For which reasons it was unanimously concluded, that the granting of said com-
missions did extraordinarily conduce to the strengthening, preservation, enriching,
and advancing the settlement of this island.
The fleet referred to under this resolution’s twelfth and final heading was the
expedition that the late Lieutenant-Governor Colonel Edward Morgan had led
against the Dutch in April 1665 and that was refused refreshment during its stop-
over at Santo Domingo while beating upwind to attack Sint Eustatius. The docu-
ment is reproduced from the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial America and West
Indies, Volume 5 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1880), p. 358.
Source: Resolution of the Council of Jamaica, In Favor of Continuing to Issue Privateer-
ing Commissions Against Spanish America, February 1666. Calendar of State Papers,
Colonial America and West Indies, Volume 5: 1661
1668 (London, 1880), pp. 358.

DOCUMENT 6.
DISASTER ABOARD THE OXFORD,

JANUARY 1669
Two months after returning into Port Royal from his cruel sack of Portobelo, Henry
Morgan sortied again in early October 1668, calling on freebooters everywhere to
rendezvous with him at Ile- a-Vache (off southwestern Haiti), for yet another semi-
official strike against Spanish America. A small fleet slowly mustered there under
his orders by year’s end, the Captains debating possible options, given their
strength. A decision had finally been reached on the morning of January 2, 1669
(O.S.), to attempt Cartagena, before calamity struck. The surgeon Richard Browne,
one of the few survivors aboard Morgan’s flagship—besides the Admiral himself—-
wrote the following account two-and-a-half weeks later:
Upon the 29th of December 1668/9 [O.S.], His Majesty’s ship Oxford, Captain
Edward Collier commander, came to anchor at the Isle of Vaccous [sic] upon the
 Documents 427

coast of Hispaniola, there being several English frigates (privateers belonging to

Jamaica) and two French men-of-war, one a small one of 4 guns belonging to Tor-
tudos, the other of 18 guns mounted and 6 brass peteraroes (called the Cour Vol-
ant) of Rochelle, Captain La Viven commander. Captain Collier having notice that
La Viven was he that robbed one Mr. Isaac Rush of Virginia, master of the good
ship called the Commonwealth, of twelve barrels of pork, one barrel of butter, and
a barrel of flour, sent his lieutenant to command him aboard, who returned this an-
swer: ‘‘that it was not usual for any Captain of a man-of-war of France to be com-
manded out of his ship.’’
But the next morning early, Captain Collier weighed and came close to him,
intending to board him, but Monsieur Le Vivon perceiving his intention, cried out
a-main, that he would come aboard, and immediately came aboard. And Captain
Collier came to anchor close by his side. Being aboard, Captain Collier demanded
to see his commission. Vivon made several evasions, that he could not know by it,
being stowed out of the way, but at last produced one from Monsieur La Beaufort
to Captain Viven, commander of the ship Cour Volant. But on his taking of Rush’s
provisions, he went under the name of Captain La Roche, belonging to Toulon.
The very next day, Mr. Rush came into the Isle of Vaccus, and came aboard the
Oxford, and then and there did maintain it that he, the said La Rocher alias La
Viven, did rob and take away from him in October last, near the Isle of Vacas in
Hispaniola, twelve barrels of pork, one barrel of butter, one barrel of flour, without
giving him any money, goods, or bill, things being much desired by the said Rush,
but Mr. La Viven refused all and said that if it had been a ship of the King of
England of 24 guns, he would have done the same. Captain Collier being no way
satisfied, but that the said Captain Viven was a pirate and in order to his trial,
brought him with his ship into Jamaica. Captain Collier commanded all the French
aboard the Oxford, which were in number 45; the rest were ashore upon Hispa-
niola a-hunting.
Upon the 2nd of January [1669 O.S.], about 10 o’clock in the morning, there
was a council of war held aboard the Oxford by Admiral Morgan, Captain Collyer,
Captain Pennant, Captain Aylett, Captain Bigford, Captain Morris senior, Captain
Morris junior, Captain Brewer, Captain Thornbery. And about 12 o’clock it ended,
and the Captain ordered to fire 15 guns upon their design to go to attack Cartagena
with these ships they had then, and two or three more they expected, with Mon-
sieur La Viven’s ship, which they had in possession, and all the men they could
make, when we were then with our ship and all, which had 180 odd men, could
not exceed nine hundred.
But about 12 o’clock the scene was altered, for all the Captains being at dinner upon
the quarter-deck and the French Captain also, the Oxford blew up and above 200 men
lost, whereof Captain Aylett, commander of the Lilly, late commander of the Foresight
in England, Captain Bigford, Captain Morris, Captain Thornbery, Captain Whiting
were all the commanders lost. There were but six men and four boys that belonged to
the Oxford saved: Captain Collier; Mr. Thomas Vinner, master; Mr. Richard Norman,
master’s mate; Mr. Richard Browne, surgeon; the cook, and eight more that were
aboard the French prize, some few a-hunting, and others washing their clothes ashore.
428 Documents

It cannot be imagined how this sad accident happened, but suppose the negligence of
the gunner in filling powder to load the guns, who little before were discharged. At the
time of the blowing up the ship, Captain Whiting, the purser, and myself were at dinner
at the binnacle, taking our dinners. The mainmast jumped up out of the ship and fell
upon the starboard quarter, where Captain Aylett, Captain Bigford, and some other
Captains were walking and were all knocked on the head by the mainmast, and Captain
Whiting, who was on my right hand and the purser on my left, and was out-angled in
the awning and so drowned. And thank be to God, I am escaped. I only heard a great
rushing noise, with fire and smoke, and the battlements of the awning being on fire fell
upon me, and immediately I felt the deck give way and was in the water over head and
dived, and presently bore up again and saved myself by getting astride upon the miz-
zenmast. There were not above 20 persons of all sorts of people from other ships and
our own company that were saved, and most of them much hurt. All them that were
upon deck or any part of the ship, were all lost, except those upon the quarter-deck.
Boats coming to save those were upon the wreck, they carried us upon Captain
Viven’s ship, which before we had taken. And upon the 6th of January [1669
O.S.], Captain Collier set sail in her for Jamaica, and the 9th we arrived at
Jamaica, and upon the 18th of January 1668/9 [O.S.], Captain Vivon was tried at
an Admiralty Court in Port Royal before the Honorable Sir James Modyford,
Judge of the Admiralty. Mr. Le Viven was condemned as a pirate, and the ship,
pirate’s goods. After sentence, Mr. Le Viven appealed for his life to His Excel-
lency Sir Thomas Modyford, which was granted him. This day we have news from
the fleet that they are driven to the windward of the Isle of Vacas, alias Ash, upon
Hispaniola, but upon what design not yet known.
Sir, I have no news but that I am,
Your most humble servant,
Rich. Browne.
Port Royal in Jamaica, January 20th, 1668/9 [O.S.]
This original letter is still preserved today by Britain’s National Archives, under
its former call-number of Public Record Office, Colonial Office 1/33, no. 103A.
Source: Browne, Richard. Disaster Aboard the Oxford, Port Royal in Jamaica,
January 20th, 1668/9 [O.S.]. National Archives, UK, Public Office, Colonial
Office, 1/33, no. 103A.

DOCUMENT 7.
COMMISSION AND INSTRUCTIONS

GIVEN TO HENRY MORGAN, TO COMMIT HOSTILITIES
AGAINST THE SPANIARDS IN THE AMERICAS,
JULY 1670
Incensed by the repeated depredations committed by the corsair Manuel Rivero
Pardal, who had been commissioned out of Cartagena to attack English interests,
 Documents 429

the Council on Jamaica passed a resolution in late June 1670 (O.S.) authorizing
Henry Morgan, as ‘‘Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of all the ships of war’’
belonging to Port Royal, to gather together a host of freebooters and ‘‘attack, seize,
and destroy all the enemy’s vessels that shall come within reach.’’ Three weeks
later, Sir Thomas Modyford would draft an even more detailed set of instructions,
to govern the conduct of Morgan’s forthcoming campaign:
Sir Thomas Modyford, Baronet, Governor of His Majesty’s Island of Jamaica,
Commander-in-Chief of all His Majesty’s forces within the said island and in the
islands adjacent, Vice-Admiral to His Royal Highness the Duke of York in the
American Seas

To Admiral Henry Morgan, Esquire, greeting:

Whereas the Queen Regent of Spain hath by her Royal C
edula dated at Madrid the
20th of April 1669, commanded her respective Governors in the Indies to publish
and make war against our Sovereign Lord, the King, in these parts. And whereas
Don Pedro Bayona de Villanueva, Captain-General of the province of Paraguay
and Governor of the city of Santiago de Cuba and its provinces, hath executed the
same and lately in the most hostile and barbarous manner, landed his men on the
north side of this island and entered a small way into the country, firing all the
houses they came at, killing or taking prisoners all the inhabitants they could meet
with; and whereas the rest of the Governors in these parts have granted commis-
sions for executing the like hostility against us, and are diligently gathering forces
together to be sent to Santiago de Cuba, their general rendezvous and place of
magazine, and from thence as the most opportune place to be transported for a
thorough invasion and final conquest (as they hope) of this island.
For the prevention of which their mischievous intentions, in discharge of the
great trust which His Gracious Majesty hath placed in me, I do by virtue of full
power and authority in such cases from His Royal Highness James, Duke of York,
His Majesty’s Lord High Admiral, derived unto me, and out of the great confi-
dence I have in the good conduct, courage, and fidelity of you, the said Henry
Morgan, to be Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of all the ships, barks, and other
vessels now fitted or which hereafter shall be fitted for the public service and
defense of this island, and also of the officers, soldiers, and seamen which are or
shall be put upon the same, requiring you to use your best endeavors to get the
vessels into one body or fleet and to cause them to be well manned, fitted, armed,
and victualled; and by the first opportunity, wind and weather permitting, to put to
sea for the guard and defense of this island, and of all vessels trading to or about
the same; and in order thereunto to use your best endeavors to surprise, take, sink,
disperse, and destroy all the enemy’s ships or vessels which shall come within
your view, and also for preventing the intended invasion against this place.
You are hereby further authorized and required, in the case that you and your
officers in your judgment find it possible or feasible to land and attain the said
town of Santiago de Cuba, or any other place belonging to the enemies where you
shall be informed that magazines and stores for this war are laid up, or where any
430 Documents

rendezvous for their forces to embody are appointed, and there to use your best
endeavors for seizing the said stores and to take, kill, and disperse the said forces.
And all officers, soldiers, and seamen who are or shall be belonging to or
embarked upon the said vessels, are hereby strictly enjoined both by sea and land to
obey you as their Admiral and Commander-in-Chief in all things as becometh them;
and you yourself are to observe and follow all such orders as you shall from time to
time receive from His Most Excellent Majesty, His Royal Highness, or myself
Instructions for Admiral Henry Morgan, Esquire, delivered him the 22nd of July
1670 [O.S.], together with his commission
You will with these instructions receive my commission, which you are
enjoined with all expedition to publish and put in due execution according to the
full extent and import of the same, for the accomplishing whereof you shall have
all the assistance this island can give you.
You are to make known to me what strength you can possibly make, what your wants
may be, that on due calculation of both we may supply you with all possible speed.
You are to take notice and advise your fleet and soldiers that you are on the old
pleasing account of no purchase, no pay, and therefore that all which is got, shall
be divided amongst them according to accustomed rules.
In case you shall find it prudential, as by your commission you are directed to
attain Santiago de Cuba and God blessing you with victory, you are hereby directed in
case you do it without any considerable hazards, to keep and make good the place and
country thereabout, until you have advised me of your success and received my further
orders touching the same, lest your suddenly quitting and their suddenly returning
beget us new work, and put on new charges and hazards for the second defeating
In order to this, you are to proclaim mercy and enjoyment of estates and liberty
of customs to all the Spaniards that will submit and give assurance of their loyalty
to His Majesty, and liberty to all the slaves that will come in, and to such as by
any good service may deserve the same, you are to give notice that their fugitive
masters’ plantations are to be divided amongst them as rewards for the same, and
make them sufficient grants in writing, both for their liberties and estates, reserv-
ing to the Crown of England the fourth part of the produce to be yearly paid, for
the yearly maintenance of such forces as shall defend those parts.
In case you find that course to take approvable effect, you are as much as will
stand with the same, to preserve the sugar-works and canes; but if it otherwise
appear to you that in reason you cannot make good the place for any long time,
and that the Spaniards and slaves are deaf to your proposals, you are then with all
it as a wilderness, putting the men-slaves to the sword, and making the women-
slaves prisoners to be brought hither, and sold for the account of your fleet and
army. Such of the men also that cannot speak Spanish, or any new Negro, you
may preserve for the same account; or if any ships to be present to carry them for
New England or Virginia, you may send them all on the same account.
You are to enquire what usage our prisoners have had, and what quarter hath
been given by the enemy to such of ours as have fallen under their power, and
being well informed, you are to give the same—or rather, as our custom is to
exceed in civility and humanity, endeavoring by all means to make all sorts of
 Documents 431

people sensible of your moderation and good nature, and your inaptitude and
loathing to spill the blood of men:
You have hereby power to execute martial law, according to such military laws
as have been made by me and the laws made by Act of Parliament for the govern-
ment of the fleet which I approve of as fitting for the service, and hereby authorize
you to put them in execution against such as shall offend you, having first pub-
lished the laws unto them, that none may pretend ignorance.
If any ship or ships shall be present which have not any commissions, you are
hereby empowered to grant commissions to them according to the form I have
used, taking security of »1,000 for the performance of the same.
What ships in this expedition you shall keep with you under your command,
and then order and dispose for the best improvement of this service, not suffering
the takers or pretenders to sell them until they come into their commission port.
In regard many things may happen in this action which cannot be by me foreseen
and provided for in these instructions, therefore all such matters are left to your well-
known prudence and conduct, referring to you that are in the place to do therein what
shall be needful. Thus wishing you success, and this island made happy thereby.
I remain your faithful friend and servant,
Thomas Modyford
Morgan weighed on August 1, 1670 (O.S.), leading 600 men out of harbor aboard
11 vessels, his flag flying from Satisfaction. Early next year, his greatly-augmented
force would traverse the Isthmus and sack Panama City, precipitating a crisis with the
Spanish government. These documents were included in the book Sir Henry Morgan’s
Voyage to Panama, 1670, published in London by Thomas Malthus in 1683.
Source: Commission and Instructions Given to Henry Morgan, to Commit Hostil-
ities against the Spaniards in the Americas, July 1670. Malthus, Thomas, ed. Sir
Henry Morgan’s Voyage to Panama, 1670. London: Thomas Malthus, 1683.

DOCUMENT 8.
MORGAN’S FLEET, GATHERED FOR

THE ASSAULT AGAINST PANAMA, DECEMBER 1670
For his brazen venture against Panama, Morgan managed to muster at his Ile- ^ a-
Vache rendezvous a multinational force comprised of 28 English vessels bearing
1,326 men, plus another eight flibustier ships from Tortuga Island and Saint-
Domingue with another 520, for a total strength of 1,846 fighting men, as follows:
The original document is today preserved in Britain’s National Archives, under the
call-sign: PRO CO 138/1, f. 105. It is only known to have ever been published once
before, on pages 103
104 of No€ el B. Livingstone’s Sketch Pedigrees of Some of
the Early Settlers in Jamaica (Kingston: Educational Supply Company, 1909).
Source: Morgan’s Fleet, Gathered for the Assault Against Panama, December
1670. Livingston, No€el B. Sketch Pedigrees of Some of the Early Settlers in
Jamaica. Kingston, Jamaica: Educational Supply, 1909.
432 Documents

Ship Commander Tons Guns Men

English Vessels
Satisfaction, frigate Admiral Henry Morgan 120 22 140
Mary, frigate Thomas Harris 50 12 70
Mayflower Joseph Bradley 70 14 100
Pearl Lawrence Prince 50 12 70
Sevilliaen Jan Erasmus Reyning 80 12 75
Dolphin, frigate John Morris 60 10 60
Lilly, frigate Richard Norman 50 10 50
Port Royal Jelles de Lecat 50 12 55
Gift Thomas Rogers 40 12 60
John of Youghall (Ireland) John Pyne 70 6 60
Thomas Humphrey Thurston 50 8 45
Fortune Richard Ludbury 40 6 40
Constant Thomas Koen de Brauns 60 6 40
Fortune Richard Dobson 25 6 35
Prosperous Henry Wells 16 4 35
Abraham’s Sacrifice, pink Richard Taylor 60 4 30
Virgin Queen John Bennett 15 — 30
Recovery John Shepherd 18 3 30
William, sloop Thomas Woodriffe 12 — 30
Betty, sloop William Curson 12 — 25
Fortune, ketch Clement Symons 40 4 40
Endeavour George Harmenson 25 4 45
Bonadventure Roger Taylor 20 — 25
Prosperous Patrick Dunbar 10 — 16
Endeavour Charles Swan 16 2 30
Lamb, sloop Richard Powell 30 4 30
Fortune Jonas Reekes 16 3 30
Free Gift Roger Kelly 15 4 40
French Vessels
Sainte-Catherine Francois Tr
ebutor 100 14 100
Gallardina, prize Jean Le Gascon 80 10 80
Saint-Jean Diego el Mulato 80 10 80
Saint-Pierre Pierre Hantot ‘‘Le Picard’’ 80 10 90
Diable Volant Dumangle 40 6 50
Cerf, sloop Joseph 25 2 40
Lion, sloop Charles 30 3 40
Sainte-Marie Jean Linaux 30 4 30

DOCUMENT 9.
COMPLAINT BY THE SPANISH

GOVERNOR OF THE VENEZUELAN ISLAND OF
MARGARITA, DENOUNCING THE PAYMENT OF
RANSOMS TO PIRATES, NOVEMBER 1677
In addition to the major threat posed by privateer formations uniting to descend on
hapless Spanish-American cities and commerce, depredations by lone vessels could
 Documents 433

also heighten fears throughout vulnerable coastal regions. On November 22, 1677,
just as official hostilities between Spain and France were entering their fifth year,
the recently-installed Governor Juan Mu~ noz Gadea of the Venezuelan island of
Margarita directed the following dispatch to King Charles II in Madrid:
I cannot put off writing to Your Majesty about an abuse which is spreading along
these coasts, of ransoming Spaniards taken by enemy pirates, and I shall relate two
cases to Your Majesty: In the first, it happened that said enemy took prisoner a cit-
izen of the island of Trinidad named Don Juan Ferm
ın, who arrived with them at a
place called Punta de Piedras and set a man ashore with letters from him,
addressed to his brother-in-law Vicente del Castillo, letting him know where he
was and that his ransom had been set at a certain amount of money, meat, and
fats, which he asked be brought forthwith; which was done, they going promptly
in search of said enemy and handing over to them the said ransom, who released
said Don Juan Ferm
ın.
In the other case, it happened that French enemies took prisoner a citizen of
Cuman
a named Don Sancho Zapata, who asked them to take him to the mainland
and a valley called Puerto Santo, where the French set a man ashore with a letter
from the said Don Sancho, asking [his people] to come to said place and ransom
him; and they instantly left Cuman
a and took 500 pesos for his ransom, plus
another 300 for what he had eaten, and handed the 800 pesos in silver over to the
said Frenchmen, at which point they released the said Don Sancho Zapata.
And with [the payment of] these two ransoms, said enemies are today more eager
to seize captives, rather than goods. I can only assure Your Majesty that under my
government, I shall not consent to [paying ransoms], in case it should happen—
may God not permit it—as my intention is only to serve Your Majesty and give you
an account of everything, so that you may command whatever seems most conven-
ient in this regard.
Ironically, both Juan Ferm
ın de Huidobro and Sancho Zapata de Mendoza
would later take turns serving as interim Governors of Margarita. Mu~ noz Gadea’s
1677 dispatch is preserved in the Archive of Indies at Seville, Audiencia de Santo
Domingo 181, Ramo 8, N
umero 31.
Source: Gadea, Mu~noz. Complaint by the Spanish Governor of the Venezuelan
Island of Margarita, Denouncing the Payment of Ransoms to Pirates, November
1677. Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla, Audiencia de Santo Domingo 181, Ramo
8, N
umero 31.

DOCUMENT 10.
ENGLISH NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT OF

THE SACK OF VERACRUZ, NOVEMBER 1683
The sheer brazenness of the pirate assault on the principal Mexican seaport of
Veracruz in the spring of 1683, where Spanish plate-fleets had traditionally berthed
for more than a century to receive the huge silver consignments sent down from the
Royal Mint and rich trading-houses of the inland capital, created a sensation when
434 Documents

reported in Europe. The audacity and skill displayed by Laurens de Graaf and the
Sieur de Grammont, the buccaneer chieftains who engineered this coup, marked a
breathtaking new high in the power and reach of the West Indian marauders, as
well as a newfound low for Spain. Ensconced deep within the Gulf of Mexico, on a
reef-lined lee shore and further protected by its offshore island-fortress of San Juan
de Ul
ua, Veracruz had never even been attempted by any European navy, much less
captured and pillaged at leisure, as these pirates had done. Therefore, the report
reproduced here below—originally compiled at Jamaica on August 12, 1683 (O.S.),
and published in the Thursday, November 1, 1683 (O.S.), edition of The London
Gazette—must have been read with keen interest:
The 24th of the last month [i.e., 24 July 1683 O.S.], the master of a sloop brought
hither the news of the privateers having taken La Vera Cruz, whereof we have
since these particulars: They rendezvoused at Cape Catoche (the south cape of the
Bay of Mexico) the 7th of April last. They were Van Horne, a Hollander in an
English ship of 50 guns, who was Admiral; Laurence, a Hollander in a prize of 26
guns, Vice-Admiral; Christian, a Hollander in Van Horne’s patach of 40 guns;
Mitchel, a Frenchman in a prize Laurence’s of 26 guns; Yanchy, a Hollander in a
prize of 16 guns; Bloat, a Hollander in a prize of 8 guns; Jacob Hall, a Bermudian,
of 8 guns; Spurre, an Englishman in a sloop of Jamaica; and a barco longo of Lau-
rence’s. These vessels had betwixt 900 and 1,000 men, most French and Dutch,
and some few English. On the 8th of May, they came on the coast of La Vera
Cruz and lay by, and they put the men that were to land on board Yanchy and
Christian, then stood off; the 9th these two ships stood in, and in the night the
Spaniards in the castle and on shore, made fires to pilot them in, taking them to be
two of the flota, so they came to an anchor and landed before one o’clock in the
morning, two miles from the town, 774 men. Van Horne had the body as General,
and was to attack the Plaza, where they expected the Court of Guard [sic: ‘‘guard-
corps,’’ from the Spanish term cuerpo de guardia], but found only four men. Lau-
rence commanded the Forlorn, and with it attempted the two forts, the one of 12,
the other of 8 guns, both closed forts, but they found them open and the sentinels
asleep; so with loss of one man killed by the Spaniards, and three by the mistake
of the French, by break of day they were masters of the forts and town; and had
they, as Laurence advised, sent at the same time two cannons and 50 men, they
had without doubt surprised the castle, which stands in the sea three-quarters of a
mile and has 70 guns mounted. But the Pyrates thinking it more safe and profitable
to plunder the town, set guards at the streets’ ends, and sent parties to break open
the houses, where they found everybody as quiet as their graves, and for three days
they did nothing but break houses, plunder them, and drag the miserable inhabi-
tants to the Cathedral; and though in this time they got abundance of plate, jewels,
etc., and about 350 bags of cochinelle, each containing 150 or 200 pounds as they
say; yet were they not satisfied, but put considerable people to ransom, and threat-
ened to burn the Cathedral and prisoners, which were about 5,700, if they did not
immediately discover all they had; so that the fourth day they got more than the
other three, and had 70,000 pieces-of-eight for the Governor Don Luis de
 Documents 435

Cordova’s ransom, which Spurre found hid among grass in a stable.

The Pyrates feared the flota, which had been two days in sight, consisting of
twelve great ships, and likewise apprehended succors might come to the Spaniards
from [Puebla de] Los Angeles (a city thirty leagues for La Vera Cruz), so they left
the town and carried their prisoners and plunder to a cay where their ships rode,
called Los Sacrificios from a famous Indian temple that was there. Here they
stayed eight days to receive ransoms, and to divide what they got, which they gen-
erally say was about 800 pieces-of-eight a share in plate and money, and they
made about 1,200 shares for men and ships; and Van Horne had about 80 shares
for himself and two ships; and here Laurence and he quarreled and fought, and
Van Horne was wounded in the wrist, nobody thinking it mortal. They all
embarked, and Van Horne proposed to attack the flota and engaged to board the
Admiral [i.e., Spanish flagship], but Laurence would not, and so away they went
with about 1,000 Negroes and Mulattos. About 15 days after, Van Horne died, his
wound having gangrened, and was thrown into the sea off Cape Yucatan, leaving
his son, a youth of ten or twelve years old, they say, to the value of »20,000 on
board, and his lieutenant Grammont took upon him the command of the ship and
intended for Petit Guave. Laurence and the rest have been off of this island
[Jamaica], and are gone to Guantanamo, a port on the south side of Cuba. Spurre
is dead, and 3 or 400 more, and our Governor [Sir Thomas Lynch] is endeavoring
to seize his sloop.
This fulsome account includes a few factual errors, such as the misstatement
regarding the Spanish signal-fires supposedly lit to help pilot in these attackers af-
ter darkness, the impression that the annual plate-fleet hovered within plain sight
of these events for two days, or the elevated number of pirate casualties; other-
wise, it provided an accurate description of events, most likely cobbled together
from various second-hand reports received from the participants themselves.
Source: The London Gazette, ‘‘Account of the Sack of Veracruz,’’ Thursday, 1
November 1683 (O.S.).
 Chronology

Late July Four Spanish warships deposit 450 militiamen on Roat
an, who fight
1650 through its English trenches, yet cannot catch any defenders before
the English melt into the jungle, so that the Spaniards return empty-
handed toward Cuba.
August 1650 A Spanish expedition from Puerto Rico overwhelms the tiny English
settlement on Saint Croix, installing a 60-man garrison. It in turn is
besieged a few weeks later by 160 fighters sent from Saint Kitts by
French Gov.-Gen. Philippe de Lonvilliers de Poincy, surrendering so
that Saint Croix is converted into a French colony.
May 24, In Paris, the Compagnie des Iles ^ d’Am
erique, frustrated by its in-
1651 ability to control St. Kitts, Saint Martin, Saint Croix, and
Saint-Barth
el
emy, sells its private interest to the Order of Malta for
120,000 francs.
May 26, Two-dozen Franco-Dutch raiders under Mathurin Gabaret shoot
1651 their way into the Mexican town of Alvarado, killing 10 residents
and carrying away booty.
Early A squadron of French privateers, piloted by the Spanish turncoat
August 1651 Adm. Pedro V
elez de Medrano, surprises the Venezuelan port of La
Guaira, torching its buildings and making off with some coastal
vessels.
October 25, A Commonwealth squadron under Commodore Sir George Ayscue
1651 arrives off Barbados, having been sent from England to impose Sir
Oliver Cromwell’s new republican government. After a two-month
blockade, a landing-force is permitted ashore by plantation owner,

437
438 Chronology

Colonel Sir Thomas Modyford. Without any more fighting,

Ayscue’s aide Daniel Searle becomes the new Governor on January
21, 1652, after which Montserrat, Nevis, and Saint Kitts also submit
to Parliamentary rule.
January French buccaneers from Hispaniola’s Tortuga Island seize the Cuban
1652 town of Baracoa, burning its buildings and citadel when they with-
draw the following month.
May 28, Some 30 French and English raiders pillage the Mexican Gulf coast
1652 town of Minzapa.
Early The exiled English royalist commander, Prince Rupert of the Rhine,
Summer reaches the West Indies from the Azores, hoping to shore up monar-
1652 chist resolve. But his squadron is so small, he can only cruise without
attempting any assault, until engulfed by a storm near the Virgin
Islands on the evening of September 13th (O.S.). Having lost four
vessels, Rupert eventually steers for France with only his flagship
and two prizes.
Summer Governor-General de Poincy, worried by the growing autonomy of
1652 the Huguenot colony under Francois Le Vasseur on Tortuga Island
[Haiti], dispatches the recently-arrived French naval officer Tim-
ol
eon Hotman, Chevalier de Fontenay, with two vessels to reassert
Company rule. On gaining northern Hispaniola, De Fontenay learns
that Le Vasseur has been murdered, so quickly assumes office as
new Governor. Shortly thereafter, he also begins issuing privateering
licenses against the Spaniards.
Late August Buccaneer raiders from Tortuga Island ravage the Cuban town of
1652. San Juan de los Remedios.
December 4, Four Spanish ships emerge from Santo Domingo with 200 soldiers
1653 and 500 volunteers to eliminate the French buccaneer enclave on
Tortuga Island. They capture a trio of craft off Monte Cristi, before
sighting their objective on February 9, 1654. Gliding past Tortuga’s
main anchorage, the Spaniards land a couple of miles to its west at
Cayonne, marching back to besiege the French fortress. Its defenders
under Governor de Fontenay request terms by February 18th, and
more than 500 inhabitants, including 330 boucaniers, two days later
are allowed to sail away for France aboard a pair of ships, while the
Spaniards install a 100-man garrison.
December A Portuguese fleet appears off Recife, determined to reclaim Brazil
20, 1653 after two-dozen years of Dutch occupation. The city’s besieged
defenders capitulate by January 27, 1654, surrendering not only Re-
cife, but all remaining Dutch outposts in Brazil. Given three months
to depart, several thousand veteran colonists will choose to resettle
in other New World territories such as Guadeloupe, Martinique,
Curacao, and Jamaica, proving invaluable assets.
 Chronology 439

August 24, De Fontenay returns to Tortuga Island with five vessels from Saint
1654 Kitts, hoping to regain his buccaneer stronghold. But after eight
days’ fruitless attacks against its Spanish occupiers, he retires to
Port-a-Margot on Hispaniola’s mainland. Three Spanish ships there-
upon appear from Santo Domingo, so that De Fontenay sails for
France.
January 31, A fleet straggles into Barbados under Admiral William Penn, having
1655 (O.S.) been sent by Cromwell—without any declaration of war—to con-
quer a major new English stronghold in the West Indies. An addi-
tional 5,000 men are raised locally, to supplement the 2,500 troops
brought out from England under General Robert Venables. This
expedition clears for Santo Domingo by March 31st (O.S.).
April 23, Penn and Venables materialize off the city of Santo Domingo, catch-
1655 ing its Spanish garrison completely by surprise. But these invaders
do not disembark until next day, and then 30 miles away, slowly
forging back through the jungle. They are soon so debilitated by
tropical heat and diseases, that after being bloodied around Fort San
Jer

onimo on May 5th, they re-embark and sail away a week later.
May 19, Having instead decided to attack the smaller Spanish island of
1655 Jamaica, Penn and Venables round Point Morant. Next dawn, the
Admiral penetrates its main anchorage of Caguaya (later renamed
Port Royal), advancing six miles inland to overrun its capital of
Santiago de la Vega by May 21st. Some Spaniards agree to abandon
the island altogether, while others fight on as guerrillas, with help
from the cimarrones or ‘‘runaway black slaves’’ of the mountainous
interior. Disease and lack of provisions will also reduce the initial
7,000 English occupiers to 2,500 within the first year.
July 5, 1655 Penn departs for England with his main fleet, appointing Vice Adm.
William Goodson as naval commander on Jamaica, leaving him six
State frigates and six lesser warships.
August 8, The Spanish garrison is withdrawn from the ex-buccaneer base on
1655 Tortuga Island (Haiti). It will be reoccupied the next year by English
and French interlopers under Elias Watts, who secures a commission
from Col. William Brayne, acting military Governor on Jamaica, to
serve as ‘‘Governor’’ of Tortuga.
August 10, Goodson sorties from Cagaway with most of his squadron to attack
1655 the Spanish Main, surprising Santa Marta by October 3rd. After
sacking it and its surrounding farms for 15 days, he prowls past
Cartagena, then regains Jamaica by mid-November. Santa Marta’s
residents will be so traumatized, they will not even try to reconstitute
their city until seven years later.
October 15, In Europe, England officially declares war against Spain.
1655 (O.S.)
440 Chronology

April 25, Goodson once again sallies from Jamaica, with 10 warships. He sur-
1656 prises R
ıohacha in early May, then waters off the gutted remnants of
Santa Marta, capturing a small Spanish ship and leaving three ves-
sels to keep watch outside Cartagena, before arriving back at
Jamaica by June 2nd.
July 21, Goodson weighs for a third time from Jamaica with a pair of war-
1656 ships, joining eight vessels already hovering off western Cuba, in
hopes of intercepting the Spanish treasure-fleet from Veracruz. After
vainly waiting for almost a month, he sails past Havana to water in
Matanzas Bay, then detaches five warships toward England, while
shifting his flag aboard Capt. Christopher Myngs’ Marston Moor.
January Complaining of ill health, Goodson sails for England, followed a
1657 month later by Myngs.
January 6, De Fontenay, former French Governor of Tortuga Island (Haiti),
1658 arrives outside Buenos Aires with his frigate Gaspard and
Renomm
ee under Dutch-born Job Forant, plus the fl^ ute or ‘‘trans-
port’’ Meautrice and two prizes, intending to round the Strait of
Magellan into the South Pacific. However, the sight of 22 Dutch and
English traders anchored off that lightly-defended Argentine port
tempts him into an attack, which fails. Meautrice and Renomm
ee
then desert his expedition, so that De Fontenay proceeds alone to-
ward the Strait, only to be driven back by bad weather. He later
rejoins Forant’s Renomm
ee at Rio de Janeiro.
February Myngs returns from England, as new commander-in-chief for the
20, 1658 Jamaica station. He also brings in six Dutch merchantmen, captured
(O.S.) during his layover at Barbados, for illegal trading. Only one is even-
tually deemed a legitimate prize by Jamaica’s Admiralty Court.
April 1658 Rather than return to France empty-handed, De Fontenay reappears
off Buenos Aires with Gaspard and Forant’s Renomm
ee, blockading
its entrance for three weeks. A trio of large Dutch vessels finally
emerge to fight their way past, killing De Fontenay and capturing
Gaspard, while Renomm
e carries off a single prize.
May 20, Four Spanish transports anchor off north-central Jamaica, depositing
1658 550 sickly Mexican soldiers to wrest this island back from the
English. Two days later, English coast-guard vessels sight these
Spaniards, reporting to Gov. Edward d’Oyley, who himself appears
off R
ıo Nuevo by June 25th with more than 700 soldiers aboard 10
ships under Myngs, easily defeating this counter-invasion.
September Cromwell dies, leaving his Commonwealth leaderless, so that a suc-
3, 1658 cession struggle ensues until the exiled Stuart monarch is restored to
(O.S.) the throne as Charles II 20 months later.
October Having prowled past Cartagena with five warships, Myngs burns
1658 Tol
u, and carries out two prizes. He then circles northeast to
 Chronology 441

disembark at abandoned Santa Marta, foraging inland, before return-

ing into Jamaica after a 10-week cruise, bringing in an additional
three Spanish captures.
Early Janu- Myngs’ four State frigates, plus numerous freebooters, tack hun-
ary 1659 dreds of miles east from Jamaica for another surprise descent on the
Spanish Main. They ransack Cuman
a, before hurrying west to fall on
Puerto Cabello, then repeat this tactic a third time by racing to make
a rich haul at Coro.
At this latter port, Myngs seizes two Dutch merchantmen flying
Spanish colors and loaded with 22 chests—each containing 400
pounds in silver ingots—yet when they are inspected after he regains
Jamaica on April 23rd-24th (O.S.), the chests are found broken open,
so that Commonwealth officials suspect much bullion has been
extracted. Myngs is therefore suspended and Marston Moor ordered
home, for him to stand trial.
April 21, Some 400 French buccaneers under Capitaine Delisle and three other
1660 commanders depart Tortuga Island (Haiti) under a letter-of-reprisal
issued by Governor Watts, to attack the Spanish border-town of San-
tiago de los Caballeros six days later.
Shortly thereafter, Watts packs up his family and sails away for
New England, to make way for a French adventurer named J
er
emie
Deschamps, Chevalier de Moussac et du Rausset, who has reached
Jamaica with letters from both the French and English governments
to act as Governor of Tortuga. Du Rausset soon transfers off Tortuga
to the healthier mainland clearance of Petit Go^ave, leaving his
nephew Fr
ed
eric Deschamps de La Place to govern the offshore buc-
caneer base.
August 11, Thomas, Lord Windsor, reaches Jamaica as its first Royal Governor.
1660 (O.S.) Within days, he will announce a vigorous new privateering offensive
against the Spaniards.
Early 1662 A 30-man Jamaican expedition under Colonel James Arundell lands
on Tortuga Island (Haiti), failing in his bid to displace its French
Governor Deschamps.
September Myngs stands out of Port Royal with 1,300 men aboard his flagship
22, 1662 Centurion, Griffin and 10 freebooter vessels to raid Santiago de
(O.S.) Cuba.
October 18, Myngs’s fleet appears outside the entrance into Santiago Bay, veer-
1662 ing toward Aguadores late that afternoon, to disembark his landing
force at the San Juan River mouth. More than 1,000 men advance
through the darkened woods overnight by torchlight; the next morn-
ing they scatter the city’s 370 defenders. Over the next six days, San-
tiago will be razed and San Pedro de la Roca harbor-castle leveled
by demolition charges, before Myngs weighs with six prizes.
442 Chronology

October 21, Myngs’s expedition returns triumphantly into Port Royal, only to
1662 (O.S.) have Lord Windsor abruptly resign as Governor and depart Jamaica
a week later.
Early The Jamaican privateer Robert Blunden and retired naval Captain
January Abraham Langford depart Port Royal in an unsuccessful attempt to
1663 wean the French boucaniers of Tortuga Island (Haiti) over to Eng-
lish rule and in compliance with instructions from Whitehall.
January 21, Myngs weighs from Port Royal with two warships and 10 privateer
1663 vessels to attack Campeche.
February 9, Having stealthily landed almost 1,000 men the night before, Myngs
1663 storms Campeche, being gravely wounded in overrunning the city.
The privateer commander Edward Mansfield assumes command,
until the invaders depart on February 23rd, carrying away 14 vessels
and much booty.
June 14, Sir Thomas Modyford reaches Port Royal from Barbados as Jamai-
1664 ca’s new Royal Governor, 12 days later proclaiming ‘‘that for the
future all acts of hostility against the Spaniards should cease.’’
September The privateer Robert Searle returns into Port Royal with two rich
1664 Spanish prizes, but in order for Governor Modyford to underscore
his new policy of peaceful co-existence with the Spaniards, these are
restored to Santiago de Cuba, while Searle’s ship is impounded.
November In Paris, Governor du Rausset—imprisoned in the Bastille for offer-
15, 1664 ing to sell Tortuga Island (Haiti) to England that previous
year—instead agrees to make it over to the new Compagnie des
Indes Occidentales. The planter Bertrand d’Ogeron, Sieur de la
Bouere, is appointed in June 1665 as Governor of the 700 to 800
Frenchmen living on Saint-Domingue and Tortuga.
February 2, In London, Charles II authorizes English officials overseas to grant
1665 (O.S.) privateering commissions against Dutch ships and goods.
February The Dutch-born Jamaican subject Laurens Prins, having sortied from
11, 1665 Port Royal in command of Robert Searle’s frigate Cagway with 61
freebooters aboard, falls on the unsuspecting Dutch island of
Bonaire.
February A renegade expedition of 200 Jamaicans under John Morris and
19, 1665 Dutch-born David Martien drops anchor at the Grijalva River mouth,
pushing 50 miles upriver to sack the provincial capital of Villaher-
mosa de Tabasco five days later. Their anchored ships have mean-
while been captured by three Spanish frigates and 270 men sent from
Campeche, so that the raiders have to fight their way back out to sea.
April 28, Acting on the expectation of an imminent rupture with Holland,
1665 Jamaica’s Governor Modyford dispatches his Lieutenant-Governor,
Colonel Edward Morgan, aboard Capt. Maurice Williams’ 18-gun
 Chronology 443

privateer Speaker, to lead a flotilla of nine vessels bearing 650 buc-

caneers in a preemptive strike against the Dutch in the Lesser
Antilles.
April 30, A Dutch battle-fleet under Admiral Michiel de Ruyter sails into
1665 Carlisle Bay on Barbados, bombarding its defenses and destroying
an assembled merchant-convoy.
June 29, After stealthily ascending Nicaragua’s San Juan River, Morris and
1665 Martien sack the inland capital of Granada,
July 17, Colonel Edward Morgan’s Jamaican expedition storms ashore on
1665 Dutch Sint Eustatius, overrunning this island, despite the
commander’s death from a heart-attack. Early next year, his subordi-
nate Captains Searle and Steadman will also raid the Dutch settle-
ments on Tobago, before they surrender to Barbados.
November Because of continual victimization of neutral Spanish-Americans
1665 instead of Dutch enemies by English privateers, Jamaica’s Governor
Modyford convenes a meeting of 600 rovers at Bluefields Bay, in
the vain hope of recalling them to their duty.
January 26, In Europe, Louis XIV declares war against England, joining the on-
1666 going Second Anglo-Dutch War as an ally of The Netherlands.
Early On Jamaica, Modyford bows to popular demand and unilaterally
March 1666 authorizes ‘‘letters of marque against the Spaniard,’’ despite Lon-
don’s peaceful relations with that nation.
March 19, News of the outbreak of Franco-English hostilities reaches
1666 Martinique.
April 8, Mansfield leads several hundred men from seven English buccaneer
1666 ships, five lesser vessels, and two prizes in an unsuccessful invasion
of Costa Rica.
April 22, At news of France’s declaration of war, which has dissolved the non-
1666 aggression pact between Saint Kitts’ English and French residents, as
well as the arrival of 260 Jamaican buccaneers under Lt.-Col.
Thomas Morgan from their occupation of Sint Eustatius, a climactic
battle is fought at Pointe de Sable. The 350 French defenders, out-
numbered four-to-one, decimate Morgan’s force with terrific losses,
leading to a collapse of all other English resistance on Saint Kitts.
May 25, Mansfield appears with his two frigates and three sloops off Spanish-
1666 held Santa Catarina or Providence Island, disembarking more than
100 English and 80 French followers to reconquer it the next day.
June 1666 Like the English, French buccaneers also prefer mounting
attacks against the neutral Spaniards, rather than their national foes.
Jean-David Nau and Michel d’Artigue lead 400 men in a destructive
penetration into the Laguna de Maracaibo, emerging two months
later with great booty.
444 Chronology

August 4, A major expedition gathered by Francis, Lord Willough-

1666 by—Governor-General of the English Windward Islands—is struck
this evening by a hurricane off Guadeloupe, losing almost all its 20
ships and more than 1,000 men.
Late August A counter-expedition of 500 Spaniards under Jos
e S
anchez
1666 Xim
enez, garrison commander at the Panamanian port of Portobelo,
recuperates Providencia Island from Mansfield’s occupiers.
Early A single French bark under Gilles Gaspart of Grenada deposits a tiny
September landing-force on English-held Tobago, tricking its garrison in the
1666 darkness into surrendering.
Late The Dutch privateer Gerart Bogaert arrives at French-held Saint
October Kitts from Curacao and recruits 100 refugee compatriots driven out
1666 of Sint Maarten and Sint Eustatius by the English, plus 50 French
soldiers, setting sail for Sint Eustatius to besiege the remnants of
Thomas Morgan’s Jamaican garrison.
November A French fleet flying false English colors materializes off
4, 1666 Antigua, capturing that island a couple of days later, before also
taking Sint Eustatius. Montserrat furthermore falls by February
1667.
February Zeeland’s Commodore Abraham Crijnssen (known to the English as
26, 1667 ‘‘Captain Crimson’’) appears out of the Atlantic and reclaims Suri-
nam from its English authorities.
May 24, In Europe, peace negotiations are progressing between England,
1667 France, and Holland, when Louis XIV suddenly declares war against
Spain as well. His objective is to uphold his wife Maria Teresa’s
claim to Brabant and other parts of the Spanish Netherlands.
June 11, Homeward bound, Commodore Crijnssen appears off Chesapeake
1667 Bay, launching a devastating strike against the tobacco convoy
assembling up the James River to convey the annual crop to London,
meeting only a feeble Virginian resistance.
July 31, The Treaty of Breda is signed in Europe, signaling peace between
1667 England, France, and Holland. However, it does not mark an end to
Franco-Spanish hostilities.
August 1667 While at anchor after pillaging the Cuban town of San Juan de los
Remedios, Nau l’Olonnais learns that a 10-gun Spanish galliot is
approaching with 90 men, sent from Havana by Cap.-Gen Francisco
D
avila Orej
on y Gast
on to capture him. Instead, the flibustier sneaks
up on it with two boats that same night, surprising the galliot while
its crew is resting off the coast, and allegedly slaughtering everyone
aboard—save one black slave, who is spared to carry word of this
massacre back to Havana.
 Chronology 445

February Buccaneers once again pillage the helpless Cuban town of San Juan
1668 de los Remedios, whose weary citizens petition the Crown for per-
mission to relocate.
March 1, Henry Morgan, commissioned by Jamaica’s Governor Modyford
1668 ‘‘to draw together the English privateers and take prisoners of the
Spanish nation,’’ blockades the entrance into Santiago de Cuba with
a dozen ships and 700 men, before proceeding into the Gulf of Santa
Mar
ıa. His commanders include John Morris and Edward Collier, as
well as numerous French flibustiers.
March 27, Morgan sets a large party ashore at Florida Beach in the Ensenada de
1668 Santa Mar
ıa (today called Santa Cruz del Sur) to raid the inland town
of Puerto del Pr
ıncipe (modern Camag€uey, Cuba).
May 2, 1668 Hostilities between Spain and France officially end, with the signing
of the Treaty of Aachen or Aix-la-Chapelle.
May 28, The Jamaican privateer Robert Searle arrives outside Anastasia
1668 Island, and the next dawn assaults Saint Augustine, Florida.
July 10, Morgan’s flotilla of boats arrives in the vicinity of the Panamanian
1668 harbor of Portobelo and storms it next daybreak.
January 2, While lying off ^Ile a Vache in anticipation of leading 900 to 1,000
1669 (O.S.) freebooters against Cartagena, Morgan’s flagship Oxford explodes
and sinks with almost all hands.
March 9, Morgan arrives outside the Laguna of Maracaibo with his depleted
1669 force, launching a sweep throughout the interior. Barred from exiting
on April 25th by the Armada de Barlovento, he defeats and outwits
that force before sailing away.
Spring 1669 The Jamaican privateer Joseph Bradley raids in the Gulf of Mexico,
along with Dutch-born Rok Brasiliano and Jelles de Lecat.
June 24, Jamaica’s Governor Modyford proclaims the English Crown’s latest
1669 prohibition against anti-Spanish hostilities.
January 3, Governor Pedro de Ulloa of Cartagena issues a privateering commis-
1670 sion to the Portuguese-born rover Manuel Rivero Pardal, who will
repeatedly attack English interests throughout the West Indies.
Early May The lawless boucaniers on Tortuga Island (Haiti), run riot against
1670 restrictions imposed by the French West India Company.
Late Spring The Jamaican privateer Laurens Prins, along with his English col-
1670 leagues Harris and Ludbury, attempt to sail up Colombia’s Magda-
lena River to sack the inland port of Santa Cruz de Momp
os, only to
be checked.
July 9, 1670 Incensed by the Spanish corsair Rivero’s nuisance raids, Gover-
nor Modyford and the Jamaican Council pass a resolution
446 Chronology

commissioning Morgan as ‘‘Admiral and Commander-in-Chief,’’

with orders to retaliate against Spanish interests.
August 17, After ascending the San Juan River, the English privateers Prins,
1670 Harris, and Ludbury seize its new Fort San Carlos de Austria, then
steal across Nicaragua’s lake with 170 men to surprise Granada.
August 1670 Three Spanish ships under Juan Men
endez M
arquez, accompanied
from Saint Augustine by 14 piraguas, arrive outside the new English
settlement of Charleston (South Carolina), in a vain attempt to expel
its colonists.
October 24, Collier’s half-dozen English privateer vessels appear off R
ıohacha,
1670 disembarking a force which captures its tiny fort and anchored Span-
ish corsair Gallardina.
October Off southeastern Cuba, Morris’ 10-gun privateer Dolphin captures
1670 Rivero’s 14-gun Fama.
October 29, The English privateers Prins, Harris, and Ludbury return to Jamaica
1670 from their Central American rampage, being mildly reproved by
Governor Modyford for attacking Spanish America without permis-
sion, and then ordered to join Morgan’s expedition.
December Morgan’s assembled fleet quits ^Ile a Vache to attack Panama, having
18, 1670 swelled to 38 vessels and more than 2,000 English, French, and
Dutch freebooters. En route, they will reconquer Providence or Santa
Catarina Island, a week later.
January 6, Morgan’s vanguard, three ships bearing 400 freebooters under
1671 Joseph Bradley, attacks Fort San Lorenzo guarding the Panamanian
port of Chagres, capturing it despite stout resistance from the 360
defenders.
January 12, Morgan’s main fleet approaches Chagres, his flagship Satisfaction
1671 and another four vessels sinking after striking a reef. Only 10 men
are drowned, though, so that the invasion proceeds.
January 28, After trudging across the Isthmus, Morgan’s buccaneers capture
1671 Panama City.
March 16, With little booty obtained, Morgan hastily departs Chagres aboard
1671 the dead Bradley’s Mayflower, accompanied by three loyal fol-
lowers. He regains Jamaica a couple of weeks later, to find English
policy reversed, a new treaty having recently been concluded with
Madrid, so that attacks against Spanish America are now out of
favor. Three months afterward, a new Royal Governor arrives, Sir
Thomas Lynch, who will arrest both his predecessor Modyford and
Morgan to face trial in London.
July 1671 Commodore Ren
e de Gousabats, Sieur de Villepars, arrives off
Saint-Domingue with two French warships and three frigates, to
restore government rule following its buccaneer revolt.
 Chronology 447

March 28, England inaugurates the Third Anglo-Dutch War, being joined a
1672 week later by France.
March 31, Marauders slip in the Mexican seaport of Campeche, sparking a huge
1672 conflagration at its adjacent San Rom
an shipyard.
Late June Various small islands in the Dutch Antilles are captured by English
1672 and French forces.
December An English force seizes Dutch Tobago.
18, 1672
February San Juan de los Remedios (Cuba) is surprised by buccaneer raiders,
1673 14 women being carried off as hostages.
February Governor d’Ogeron’s 50-gun Ecueil runs aground near Arecibo in
25, 1673 northwestern Puerto Rico, more than 500 men struggling ashore to
be imprisoned by the Spaniards.
March 13, The French Governor-General de Baas mounts an unsuccessful
1673 assault against Dutch Curacao.
March 1673 Zeeland’s Commodore Cornelis Evertsen de Jongste arrives off
Surinam, to raid in the New World.
June 1673 The Cuban-born mulatto buccaneer Diego Grillo, intercepts a
Spanish merchant frigate bound from Havana toward Campeche. A
few days later, 150 Spaniards exit Havana aboard a ship and two
frigates to engage him, but are instead defeated off Nuevitas; Grillo
executing all 20 Peninsular-born Spaniards before releasing the rest.
August 7, Evertsen reoccupies New York City.
1673
Mid-Octo- Governor d’Ogeron, having returned to Saint-Domingue after a har-
ber 1673 rowing escape from Puerto Rico, leads 500 flibustiers from Tortuga
Island to Aguada, in hopes of rescuing his captive men.
October 15, In Europe, France declares war against Spain.
1673
March 6, After winter-long negotiations, the second Treaty of Westminster
1674 is proclaimed, reestablishing peace between Britain and The
Netherlands.
Early July The Dutch corsair Jurriaen Aernouts arrives at New York.
1674
July 20, The Dutch Admiral de Ruyter is defeated in his attack against the
1674 French stronghold of Fort-Royale, Martinique.
December Jamaica’s latest Governor—John, Lord Vaughan—issues another
15, 1675 proclamation reiterating that all English privateers must refrain from
(O.S.) serving under foreign flags, as Britain is at peace. But with France
still at war against both Spain and Holland, thus freely issuing
448 Chronology

commissions, many freebooters will ignore this injunction and con-

tinue roving.
June 30, Some 800 buccaneers attempt to penetrate Costa Rica’s Matina Val-
1676 ley, only to suffer a couple of hundred casualties in a clash at Moin
Beach against 500 Spanish militiamen and 200 native archers under
Gov. Juan Francisco S
aenz V
azquez.
January 23, Eleven privateer vessels under Charles Francois d’Angennes,
1677 Marquis de Maintenon, raid the Venezuelan island of Margarita.
March 7, An Anglo-French buccaneering expedition out of the Laguna de
1677 T
erminos, sacks the Mexican town of Jalpa.
Late June The French privateer Pierre La Garde sacks Santa Marta (Colombia),
1677 backed by English mercenaries under Capts. John Coxon and
William Barnes.
November The French buccaneer Pierre de Frasquenay leads 400 flibustiers in a
9, 1677 failed attack against Santiago de Cuba.
April 1678 The victorious French Admiral Jean, Comte d’Estr
ees, summons fli-
bustiers from as far away as Saint-Domingue (Haiti) to rally at Saint
Kitts for a descent on the last remaining Dutch outpost in the West
Indies: Curacao. Supremely confident, this formation quits its ren-
dezvous by May 7th, comprised of 18 royal warships and more than
a dozen flibustier craft. However, four days later they run aground
on the Aves Island grouping, losing six warships and a like number
of privateer vessels.
June 10, Rather than retreat with D’Estr
ees following this disaster, the
1678 flibustiers prefer an alternate project of their own, attacking the neu-
tral Spaniards in the Laguna de Maracaibo under the veteran Sieur
de Grammont. Some 2,000 freebooters take part in this enterprise,
aboard six large ships and 13 smaller craft.
July 6, 1678 The English buccaneer Capts. George Spurre and Edward Neville,
bearing French commissions, anchor near Jaina with eight piraguas
in tow, attacking the nearby Mexican port of Campeche with 160
freebooters, three days later.
August 10, In Europe, Louis XIV signs the Treaty of Nijmegen, marking an end
1678 to France’s hostilities with The Netherlands.
September France and Spain sign a separate treaty, bringing an end to their
17, 1678 European conflict; yet as this document contains no reference to the
Americas, fighting will continue in the New World.
 Glossary

Abraham’s Cay—name for what is today Bluefields, Nicaragua

Account—an English slang expression for piracy, more commonly used with a verb,
such as going or sailing ‘‘on the account’’
Advice-Boat—another term for a dispatch-vessel, derived from the Spanish word
aviso
Almiranta—a Spanish term for vice-flagship
Apostles—military slang for the 12 charges usually carried in a bandolier or
cartridge-belt
Armada de Barlovento—Spanish naval squadron assigned to patrol the Caribbean
Armadilla—a small flotilla of Spanish warships
Arribada—Spanish legal term for any unauthorized entry into port
Ash, Isle of—English mispronunciation of ^Ile a Vache, the French island off south-
western Haiti
Asiento—in English, the name for the monopoly of supplying African slaves to
Spanish America
Aviso—Spanish word for a dispatch vessel or mail boat
Azogue—Spanish word for quicksilver or mercury, a vital ingredient in refining silver
ores
Bab-el-Mandeb—Arabic name for the narrow strait leading into the Red Sea, the
‘‘Gate of Tears’’
Banda del Norte—Spanish name for the north coast of Hispaniola, inhabited by
French intruders
Barco Luengo or Longo—from the Spanish, a type of galliot or oared sailing-vessel

449
450 Glossary

Bay of Campeche—English name for the Mexican bay, whose real name is the
Laguna de T
erminos
Bilboes—a long iron bar with shackles, used to secure prisoners
Biscayan Privateers—squadron of corsairs raised in northeastern Spain, to combat
pirates and smugglers in the West Indies
Blue Officers—French nickname for non-aristocratic officers of privateer or
merchant vessels, temporarily admitted into the Navy during wartime
Caper—English spelling of the Dutch word kaper, meaning ‘‘privateer’’
Capitana—Spanish term for ‘‘flagship’’
Careen—nautical expression, meaning to tilt a vessel so as to expose its underside for
cleaning or repairs
Cassava—tropical West Indian shrub, whose roots provided sustenance for slaves
and indentured servants
Charter Party—freebooter covenant, drawn up prior to a cruise to determine the di-
vision of spoils
Cincuentena—Spanish militia cavalrymen on Santo Domingo
Clipped Money—coins illegally reduced by filing, shaving, or clipping metal from
around their edges
Cocket—a written certificate issued by a custom-house to a departing ship
Commission Port—the seaport from which a privateer had received his commission,
and where all prizes should be sent
Corsair—synonym for privateer, especially among the Spanish
Crab Island—English name for what is now Vieques Island, east of Puerto Rico
Cross of Burgundy—name for the Spanish flag, a red cross on a white background
Darien Colony—short-lived Scottish settlement in northeastern Panama
Daudorus—Scottish euphemism for a thrashing or beating
Dead Man’s Island—see ‘‘Isla del Muerto’’
Dogger—nautical expression for an auxiliary vessel or ‘‘tender’’
Doubloon—name of the largest Spanish gold coin
Dry Gripes—English nickname for a West Indian malady
Dry Tortugas—English name for the shoals at the west end of the Florida Keys
Ducat—English name for a small Spanish gold coin, worth eleven reales
Ducking—a type of nautical punishment
Enfants Perdus—French military slang for any vanguard unit, or frontline assault-
force
e—French indentured servant
Engag

Flibustier—a synonym for West Indian privateer or corsair, especially among the
French
 Glossary 451

Flag of Truce—in addition to its obvious meaning, also the name applied to any ves-
sel authorized to visit a hostile port during wartime
Flip—English nickname for a mixed alcoholic drink, similar to punch
Flota—Spanish expression for the annual plate-fleets sailing to and from Veracruz
Flute—a type of cargo-ship or transport
Flying Gang—nickname for the toughs who controlled the waterfront at lawless
Nassau, prior to the restoration of Crown rule
Forban—French synonym for ‘‘pirate’’
Forlorn—English military slang for any advance unit or vanguard
Freebooter—individual performing military or naval service without salary, but for
shares of plunder
Galeones—Spanish expression for the annual plate-fleets sailing to and from
Cartagena
Gardens of the Queen—Spanish name for the maze of islands off southern Cuba
Gobernador de Tercio—Spanish officer in command of the Marine Regiment aboard
the Armada de Barlovento
Golden Island—uninhabited pirate base off northeastern Panama, used to stage for-
ays across the Isthmus into the Pacific
Guardacostas—Spanish term for coast-guards
Half-Way Tree—a crossroads in Jamaica, northwest of Kingston
Hispaniola—English name for the island today shared by the Dominican Republic
and Haiti
Hogshead—a large wooden cask
Inch of Candle—method of setting a time-limit, by marking a line upon a lit candle
Indigo—a valuable blue dye produced by certain tropical plants
Interloper—term applied to any unauthorized merchant visitor, regarded as a tres-
passer or smuggler
Isla del Muerto—Spanish name for ‘‘Dead Man’s Island,’’ at least six spots still bear-
ing this grim name today
Jolly Roger—later-day English euphemism for a pirate flag, dating from the Victo-
rian era
Kaper—Dutch word for ‘‘privateer’’
Keelhauling—savage form of nautical punishment
Kilduijvel or Kill-Devil—Dutch euphemism for rum
Laars—Dutch name for a ‘‘cat o’ nine tails’’
League—measurement of distance, roughly equivalent to three miles
Let-Pass—simplest form of ship’s papers, merely identifying a bearer and requesting
that he be allowed to pass
452 Glossary

Letter of Marque—another name for a privateering commission, sometimes mis-

spelled as ‘‘letter of mart’’
Letter of Reprisal—special type of privateering commission, issued during peace-
time to redress a specific wrong
Light Money—English euphemism for clipped or poor-grade coinage
Logwood or Dyewood—dark-red tropical tree, harvested to produce an indelible
black or brown dye
Madagascar—huge island off southeast Africa, which for a few years became a noto-
rious pirate lair
Main—abbreviated form of the Spanish Main, the stretch of mainland coast from
Venezuela to Panama
Mal de Siam—French nickname for yellow fever
Mar del Sur—Spanish name for the ‘‘South Sea,’’ or Pacific Ocean
Maroon—expression meaning to abandon someone on a desolate island
Matross—English expression for a gunner’s mate
Moidore—term originally derived from the Portuguese moeda d’ouro, meaning a fine
‘‘coin of gold’’
Morro—Spanish word for any large harbor-castle or coastal fortification
Mum—strong German ale, made from wheat and oat malts
Para—Dutch nickname for Paramaribo, capital of Suriname
Partridge—English nickname for clusters of small rounds, or grapeshot
Patache—Spanish term for any small consort to a larger ship, or fleet auxiliary
Pedrero—Spanish name for a swivel-gun, misspelled many different ways in English
Pichelingue—Spanish nickname for a Dutchman, believed derived from a garbling of
the name Vlissingen or Flushing
Pieces of Eight—English name for the silver coin known in Spanish as a peso de ocho
reales
Pipe—a large and long wooden barrel
Piragua—Spanish-American term for a crude type of coastal craft or riverboat
Pistole—English nickname for any full-weight Spanish coin, worth more than a pound
Plate Fleet—convoy sent annually for the King of Spain’s American plata or
‘‘silver’’
Puerto Real—generic Spanish expression meaning ‘‘Port Royal,’’ used to designate a
major anchorage
Punch House—English nickname for a low drinking-establishment
Purchase—English euphemism for booty or loot, much used among privateers and
pirates
Rack—a synonym for wreckage in nautical terminology, as in ‘‘rack and ruin’’
 Glossary 453

Round-Robin—pirate practice of signing names in a circle, so that no one would be

more prominent
Sainte-Barbe or Santa Ba
rbara—French and Spanish expression, respectively, for a
powder-room or magazine
Salmigondis—a stew or ragout dish
Salt Tortuga—English nickname for Tortuga Island, off northern Venezuela
Santo y Se~
na—Spanish system of passwords
Sargento Mayor—senior Spanish military rank, such as second-in-command of a
military garrison
Sir Cloudesley—nickname for a punch-drink made of small beer and brandy
Situados—payrolls and subsidies sent annually from Mexico and Peru to Spanish-
American garrisons
Skull and Crossbones—not an expression current during the 17th or early 18th
centuries
Somers Island—early English name for Bermuda
South Sea—original Spanish name for the Pacific Ocean
Spanish Main—the stretch of coastline along northern Panama, Colombia, and
Venezuela
State Ship—designation for vessels of the Cromwellian Navy
States’ Ship—designation for vessels of the Dutch States-General
Sunday Keeping—Puritan religious observance, meaning to refrain from work on the
Sabbath
Tenths—percentage due to the English Crown from any privateer captures
Tortille—French nickname for Tortuga Island, which lies off northern Venezuela
Trepan—slang English expression for a snare or deceptive trap
Waggoner—English term for a sea-atlas, a book combining charts and written
directions
Wild Coast—name of the South American shoreline from the Gulf of Paria to the
Amazon River
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Pirates of the Americas

VOLUME 2: 1686
1725

David F. Marley
 Preface

FALL FROM GRACE AND THE LAST HURRAH

Privateering, which had at long last begun to be brought under some official
restraint in the West Indies, was openly revived during the War of the League of
Augsburg, yet with disappointing results for most of its practitioners. Known in
the Americas as ‘‘King William’s War,’’ this conflict would last from 1689 to
1697 and pit a coalition of England, Holland, and Spain against France. Great
numbers of rovers would be employed on both sides, yet private English and
Dutch men-of-war were prevented from attacking their traditional Spanish targets,
and legitimate prizes soon grew scarce. As for their French counterparts, major
enterprises such as the flibustier invasion of Jamaica in 1694, or Pointis’ and
Ducasse’ supporting role in the sack of Cartagena three years later, netted only
meager rewards when they divided up among the hundreds of freebooters who
served in these royal expeditions as unsalaried auxiliaries.
Instead, the richest hauls were made by small independent ventures, such as
Thomas Tew’s and Henry Every’s lone forays around the world into the Red Sea,
which had nothing to do with the actual course of sanctioned hostilities, yet proved
so profitable that they would spawn dozens of imitators. The high-water mark of
Caribbean roving was clearly past, despite yet another upsurge in activities during
the War of the Spanish Succession or ‘‘Queen Anne’s War,’’ which erupted in
1702 and lasted for a dozen more years. During this struggle, the union between
the French and Spanish Crowns meant that it would have to be the flibustiers in
turn who refrained from attacking Spanish targets, while their interminable quarrel
for domination on Hispaniola finally began to heal. British and Dutch privateers
meanwhile were reduced to supplementing their limited prize-earnings with smug-
gling, blockade-running, or even salvage operations.
xvi Preface

By the time that peace was finally restored in the spring of 1713, the West In-
dies had become increasingly dominated by large plantation-based economies.
Merchant vessels began arriving with ever-more slaves, and departing with ever-
richer cargoes of sugar or tobacco. Unemployed privateers found little room under
this economic system, no longer even being needed as wartime auxiliaries, given
that royal squadrons and garrisons were becoming permanent fixtures and a more
reliable defense throughout this theater. Several hundred of the wilder, idled free-
booters therefore drifted temporarily into the Bahamas, operating out of lawless
Nassau under such renegade leaders as Charles Vane and Benjamin Hornigold,
until they were tamely displaced by the arrival of Woodes Rogers as its new Royal
Governor.
The last great generation of pirates scattered still farther a-field, some disap-
pearing into various bolt-holes such as the Carolinas or Rhode Island, to discreetly
melt back into civilian life. Only a few defiant commanders remained roaming
brazenly at sea, prowling to Africa and Madagascar, then back to Brazil and the
Antilles and up to North America, before all inevitably were hunted down as out-
laws. ‘‘I am a free prince,’’ one such leader—Charles Bellamy—roared at the mas-
ter of a Boston merchant ship that he had captured off South Carolina in 1717,
‘‘and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a
hundred sail of ships at sea, and an army of one hundred thousand men in the
field!’’ Yet such a boast masked a hidden fear, due to the rovers’ declining
strength and menace.
 A

. . . for revenge you may assure yourselves, here and hereafter,

not to expect anything from our hands, but what belongs to a pirate.
—Bartholomew Roberts’s threat to the
Governor of Saint Kitts, 27 September 1720 (O.S.)

ACCOUNT Council in London on August 12, 1716

By the early 18th century, an English
slang expression for piracy, more com-
monly used in conjunction with a verb,
such as in going or sailing ‘‘on the
account.’’
For example, when four merchant
seamen of the galley Eagle complained
to the British Governor of the lonely
South Atlantic island of St. Helena
about their lack of rations during a stop-
over in June 1715, he considered them
such troublemakers that he temporarily
remanded them ‘‘to prison as dangerous
men.’’ Such harsh treatment, against
men who were merely voicing a legiti-
mate grievance during peacetime, was
disapproved of back in England, so that
the East India Company authorities on
St. Helena tried to justify his action, by
writing defensively to their directorial
(O.S.), pointing out how the Honorable
Company Governor in India:
. . . the voyage before, did cause one
of these very men (Hannay) to be
whipped at the sea-gate and out
of Madras, for only proposing to
go upon the account—the word
‘‘account’’ being understood among
sailors, to go a-pirating.
See also
Account (Volume 1).
Reference
Janisch, Hudson R., Extracts from the St.
Helena Records (St. Helena: The
‘‘Guardian’’ Office, 1885).

463
464 Acosta, Gaspar Mateo De (fl. 1683
1686)
ACOSTA, GASPAR MATEO
DE (fl. 1683
1686)
Spanish officer who fought buccaneers
on Hispaniola, the Bahamas, and Cuba,
before finally being promoted to the
governorship of Cuman
a and later of
Maracaibo.
Acosta was born on September 22,
1645, in Santa Cruz de La Palma, capi-
tal of Spain’s Canary Islands. He was
baptized eight days later in its El Sal-
vador church, and his childhood home
still stands today at 26 Calle Real.
His father was a tradesman named
Francisco de Acosta, and his mother
was born in Flanders as Melchora van
de Walle, but who went by the Hispani-
cized name of Melchora de los Reyes.
When Gaspar was only nine years old,
his father was pressed into military
service and sent to Flanders, not to
return home until many years later.
EARLY CAREER
(ca. 1660
1682)
Young Gaspar, on reaching his teenage
years, left Santa Cruz aboard the brig-
antine Ratonero of Manuel Fern
andez
de Lima to seek his fortune in the New
World. Shortly after disembarking at
Havana, Acosta learned that soldiers
were needed on the neighboring island
of Hispaniola, to battle against its
French buccaneer residents. He there-
fore enlisted there as a junior ensign,
distinguishing himself so much over
the ensuing decade that he rose to the
rank of maestre de campo. Acosta’s
prestige also grew so notably that he
could marry the Spanish-born Catalina
Martı́nez de Lerma in Santo Domingo’s
Cathedral on May 18, 1669, and further-
more made a triumphal return to the
Canaries to visit his mother.
Promoted to Captain in the Spanish
royal infantry during the protracted
war against France of the 1670s, as
well as being given command of Fort
San Salvador de la Punta guarding the
entrance into Havana’s harbor, Acosta
by 1680 personally came to own a
large ship—Jes
us Nazareno, Nuestra
Se~nora del Carmen y el Rey San
Fernando—plus various lesser trading
craft, which plied throughout the
Caribbean.
Anti-Piratical Forays
(1683
1686)
Yet even after peace was nominally
restored with France following the
signing of the Treaty of Nijmegen on
September 17, 1678, in Europe, the
cut-and-thrust of local hostilities per-
sisted in the West Indies. After the pi-
ratical rovers Pierre Br
eha, John
Markham, Thomas Paine, Conway
Wooley, and Jan Corneliszoon sallied
from New Providence Island in the
Bahamas to raid the Spanish frontline
outpost of Saint Augustine in March
1683, Acosta led a retaliatory counter-
strike out of Havana that same May.
Raising a force of 200 volunteers with
the help of the Cuban privateer Tom
as
Uraburru, this force sortied aboard a
single piragua and the galliot Nuestra
Se~nora del Rosario to make a surprise
descent on the ramshackle Bahamian
capital of ‘‘Charles Town’’ (modern
Nassau).
Acosta then apparently rounded
eastern Cuba on his return passage, to
take up a new station and patrol its
 Acosta, Gaspar Mateo De (fl. 1683
1686)
southern coastline, for that following
month of June 1683, an English tur-
tling sloop called the Providence of
Master Joseph Crockeyes was pursued
off the south cays of Cuba ‘‘by two
Spanish piraguas under Jean Costeau
[sic; Acosta].’’ Crockeyes was forced
to abandon his sloop, which was car-
ried into Santiago de Cuba as a prize.
Acosta allegedly bragged that ‘‘he
would have killed every man in her or
any other vessel that he found tur-
tling.’’ He apparently continued to op-
erate out of Santiago that summer, for
in August 1683, the merchant sloop
Hereford of Captain ‘‘Boucher Clau-
son’’ [i.e., Van den Clausen] was
approaching Jamaica when it:
. . . was driven by stress of weather
to the Cuban coast, anchored four
leagues to windward of Santiago,
and sent a boat ashore for water, but
made no attempt to trade [i.e., smug-
gle goods ashore to sell]. While I
was at anchor there, came one Juan
de Costa [sic] in a piragua of 50
men, who at once opened fire of
small arms and dangerously
wounded one man. I made no resis-
tance, but they boarded and in spite
of my protests that I had done no
trade, forced me into Santiago,
where the Governor and Juan Costa
detained both sloop and goods, to
the value of £4,000.
Both English vessels had unwittingly
blundered into a full-fledged war zone,
as the local French and Spanish priva-
teers were bitterly contesting control of
these waters. In the very forefront of this
fighting was Acosta, oftentimes con-
fused in contemporary English reports
with Juan Corso, who was also based in
465
Santiago de Cuba around that same
time.
However, next year Acosta evi-
dently transferred his operations almost
300 miles farther west, to the smaller
Cuban port of Trinidad, where in the
late summer of 1684, the sloop of
Derick Cornelison ‘‘was attacked with-
out any warning by Don Juan Balosa
[sic]’’ and carried into Trinidad for
adjudication. The Acting-Governor of
Jamaica, Hender Molesworth, dis-
patched Captain Edward Stanley with
the tiny 4-gun Royal Navy warship
Bonito, to lodge a protest with his
Spanish counterpart. But Stanley ‘‘was
forced by foul weather into a bay
25 leagues short’’ of Trinidad, send-
ing a boat inshore under the King’s
flag on November 16, 1684, to ask
permission to water. It failed to
return, and at six o’clock next morn-
ing, Stanley:
. . . saw a galley rowing close under
the shore and put into a creek about
two miles to eastward of me. I at
once got up sail, but had no sooner
done so than I saw the galley and a
piragua coming under sail and oars,
the galley flying the Spanish flag
with a red ensign, and the piragua
the King’s jack which he had taken
[from] my boat. I fired at the galley
when she came within range, and
she at me, and we were engaged
from 9 to 11, when they got into the
creek where there was not water for
me to follow them.
Acosta subsequently learned that he had
attacked a Royal Navy vessel, and apol-
ogized to Stanley.
It was well that he did, for early in
1686 the pink Swallow of Captain
466 Acosta, Gaspar Mateo De (fl. 1683
1686)
Edward Goffe and sloop Ann of Cap-
tain William Peartree appeared off
Trinidad. Both had been trading in the
Bay of Honduras, and while returning
toward Jamaica, had been carried so
far off to leeward that Goffe sent in a
boat:
. . . asking leave to wood and water,
which was refused. I was therefore
forced to go to the cays ten leagues
from Trinidad for water, whither the
Governor of Trinidad sent two gal-
leys out, one of 40 and one of 85
men, the latter of which, as the mas-
ter confesses, was present at the sack
of New Providence. Both galleys
came up to my ship’s side and with-
out hailing, poured in a volley which
killed two men and wounded five or
six, and then making fast to my
ship’s side, tried to board her. Hav-
ing the sloop’s crew on board we
defended ourselves, and after about
half an hour’s engagement, there
were about 16 Spanish pirates killed
and 38 wounded. The smaller galley
managed to clear herself, but the
larger we captured and brought into
Jamaica.
Acosta was consequently carried into
Port Royal on February 22, 1686, and
within a month was ‘‘found guilty of
piracy for robbing a sloop from
Nevis, and stealing Captain Stanley’s
boat.’’
However, given his rank and reputa-
tion for treating captives humanely, as
well as having apologized to Captain
Stanley ‘‘soon after committing the
fact,’’ Acosta was pardoned. ‘‘I am
since glad that I did so,’’ Molesworth
added, because numerous Spanish Gov-
ernors had written to request his
release. Acosta’s galley, though, was
incorporated into the Royal Navy,
‘‘being very well fitted to clear the
south cays and that part of Cuba from
such enemies as destroy our trade and
fishery.’’
Later Career (1686
1705)
Acosta arrived at Cuman
a by August
15, 1686, to succeed Francisco de
Vivero Galindo as Governor of that
Venezuelan province, as well as garri-
son commander for its nearby coastal
keep of Araya. Two weeks later, four
large piraguas crammed with as many
as 200 French flibustiers were sighted
approaching from less than five miles
away off Punta Arenas at dawn by
native fishermen, to cruise menacingly
off Cuman
a that same afternoon, then
prowling westward over the next three
weeks. In hopes of reviving the econ-
omy of his impoverished, neglected
province, Acosta himself set sail in
August 1688 aboard his newly-
launched coast-guard galliot, accompa-
nied by three boats with divers aboard,
to coast as far eastward as Pampatar
on Margarita Island over the next 20
days and see if the exhausted oyster-
beds had recuperated sufficiently to
revive pearl fishing.
On December 5, 1693, Gaspar del
Hoyo Sol
orzano Aizola y Fonte suc-
ceeded Acosta in office following
Acosta’s promotion to the joint Gover-
norship of Maracaibo and M
erida de la
Grita in western Venezuela. Acosta
assumed these latter offices on October
8, 1694, being now 49 years of age
and suffering from gout. He died in
Havana on November 15, 1705, at 60
years of age.

References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 11,
12 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Craton, Michael, A History of the Bahamas
(London: Collins, 1968).
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am

erica Espa~nola (Madrid:
Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
Weddle, Robert S., Wilderness Manhunt:
The Spanish Search for La Salle
(Austin: University of Texas Press,
1973).
ADVICE BOAT
See Aviso
ALLISON, ROBERT
(fl. 1679
1699)
English privateer who led John Cox-
on’s vanguard into Portobelo, and
almost two decades later piloted a
group of Scottish migrants to settle
Darien on the Isthmus of Panama.
In late December 1679—after England
had been at peace for several years, and
France and Spain were winding down
their mutual hostilities in the New
World—Allison attended a gathering of
privateers at Port Morant off the south-
eastern tip of Jamaica with his 18-ton
sloop of no guns and 24 men, meeting
the barks of Coxon, Cornelius Essex,
and Bartholomew Sharpe, as well as the
sloop of Thomas Magott. All five
commanders agreed to unite under Cox-
on’s leadership for an assault against
Spanish Portobelo, despite having only
the sketchiest authorization for such a
venture.
Allison, Robert (fl. 1679
1699) 467
They quit Port Morant on January
17, 1680, and less than 20 miles out at
sea met the brigantine of French fli-
bustier Jean Rose, who also joined
their enterprise. The weather turning
foul, Coxon hailed his vessels to make
for Isla Fuerte, 90 miles south-south-
west of Cartagena on the Spanish
Main. Whosoever got there first was
‘‘to leave a note on the Sandy Point, to
satisfy the rest.’’ Only Essex and
Sharpe failed to keep the rendezvous,
while ‘‘four piraguas and six very
good large canoes’’ were captured at
the nearby San Bernardo or ‘‘Friends’’
Islands, to provide landing craft for the
forthcoming disembarkation.
Essex had meanwhile rejoined, so
that the formation then steered toward
Isla de Pinos, 130 miles east of Porto-
belo amid the Archipi
elago de las
Mulatas. Only Coxon’s bark, though,
was able to shoulder through the con-
trary winds and gain this place, the re-
mainder being constrained to put into
Isla de Oro or ‘‘Golden Island,’’ some
miles away. There, the pirates
befriended the local Indians, until
Coxon ordered 250 buccaneers into the
boats to row westward along the coast,
to fall on Portobelo before the Span-
iards could learn of their presence.
Nearing their destination, they came on
‘‘a great ship riding at anchor,’’ which
proved to be that of flibustier Capitaine
Lessone, who added 80 Frenchmen to
the force.
Shortly thereafter, the buccaneers
slipped ashore at Puerto del Escribano
in the Gulf of San Blas, proceeding
afoot to avoid Spanish coastal watch-
ers. They marched for three days
‘‘without any food, and their feet cut
with the rocks for want of shoes,’’ until
they at last came on an Indian village
468 Allison, Robert (fl. 1679
1699)
three miles from Portobelo on the
morning of February 7, 1680. A native
boy spotted them and shouted
‘‘¡Ladrones!’’ or ‘Thieves!,’’ setting off
at a run toward the distant city. Coxon
immediately ordered Allison and his
advance unit—commonly known among
buccaneers as the ‘‘forlorn’’—to hurry
in pursuit. Allison’s men trotted gamely,
but the boy arrived half-an-hour before
them, and raised the alarm. The
approaching pirates could hear a signal-
gun being fired, and ‘‘then certainly
knew that we were decried.’’
Nevertheless, their vanguard swept in
while suffering only five or six
wounded, the startled Spaniards scurry-
ing inside their citadel, and leaving the
raiders to ransack Portobelo unopposed
over the next two days. The freebooters
thereupon retired 10 miles northeast-
ward, entrenching themselves with their
booty and a few prisoners on a cay
half-a-mile offshore from Bastimentos.
Allison was again called on to perform
a singular service, being sent in a boat
to recall the anchored privateer vessels
from farther up the coast. By the time
he returned three days later, several
hundred Spanish troops had appeared
and were firing on the pirates from the
beach, yet who retreated at the sight of
these reinforcements.
The pirates subsequently blockaded
Portobelo, and by ‘‘keeping very good
watch at topmast head,’’ saw a ship
arriving from Cartagena.
Our ships and sloops weighed and
went out and met her, as she was
standing into Portobelo. Captain
Allison coming up with her first in
his sloop engages her, and Coxon
seconding him claps her aboard and
takes her without loss of any men.
Some Spaniards fell, for they fought
about one hour.
The vessel proved to be a new 90-ton
ship mounting eight guns, furthermore
bearing valuable cargo. A general distri-
bution of booty was consequently made,
resulting in shares of 100 pieces-of-eight
per man. Afterward, the flotilla retired to
careen at Bocas del Toro (at the north-
western extremity of present-day Pan-
ama), where the privateers also found
Capts. Richard Sawkins and Peter
Harris.
Once refitted, all the buccaneers
except the French decided to return to
Golden Island, to have the Darien Indi-
ans guide them across the Isthmus to
attack the Spaniards on their Pacific
flank. Coxon, Allison, Cooke, Harris,
Magott, Sawkins, and Sharpe all
anchored out of sight, close inshore
in a small cove on Golden Island. A
watch was left aboard each vessel,
with orders to rally to Coxon’s and
Harris’—the two largest—if their ships
should be discovered. At 6:00 A.M. on
Monday, April 15, 1680, 332 bucca-
neers went ashore to traverse the
Isthmus; among their number were
William Dampier, Basil Ringrose, and
Lionel Wafer, all of whom would later
write accounts of these adventures.
However, Allison and Magott ‘‘being
sickly were unable to march,’’
remained behind.
The rest of the buccaneers disap-
peared into the jungle, and 10 days
later overran the inland town of Santa
Marı́a at the confluence of the Chucu-
naque and Tuira Rivers. From there,
they pushed on into the Pacific,
although Coxon grew increasingly
reluctant. As a result, by the time the
pirates captured some Spanish coastal

craft and bore down on Panama City,
command had devolved on Harris,
Sawkins, and Sharpe. Coxon returned
to Golden Island with 70 loyal fol-
lowers, and it is possible Allison sailed
away with him, as Coxon was seen
passing Point Negril (Jamaica) in late
May 1680 with two smaller vessels,
which he abandoned on being chased.
Darien Expedition
(1698
1699)
Nothing more is known about Allison’s
movements over the next two decades,
until the Scottish ship Unicorn and its
tender Dolphin anchored at Saint
Thomas in the Danish Virgin Islands
on October 11, 1698. They were part
of a larger flotilla conveying 1,200 col-
onists to establish a new commercial
settlement at Darien for the Company
of Scotland, and as its leaders were
unfamiliar with the Spanish Main, they
required a pilot. On being directed to a
tavern, they found Allison ‘‘now sadly
old, white haired, and garrulous.’’
Nonetheless, he promised to guide
them to their destination, and four days
later they weighed.
Off Crab Island (modern Vieques
Island, due east of Puerto Rico) they
overtook the other three vessels of
their group, and Allison went aboard
the flagship Saint Andrew to direct the
helmsmen. Their ensuing passage
proved slow and arduous, through tor-
rential downpours and muddy seas,
until Allison sensed land was near on
the night of October 26th-27th. ‘‘About
two o’clock this morning,’’ a passenger
observed, ‘‘we saw with the lightning
black, high stones like land.’’ Dawn
revealed the Nuestra Se~nora de la Popa
heights behind Cartagena.
Almiranta 469
Two weeks later, the ships reached
Golden Island, and on November 15th
the Scots stood into a mainland harbor
which they renamed ‘‘Caledonia Bay.’’
Allison remained at the new settlement,
which soon succumbed to disease, isola-
tion, and strife. In late February 1699,
he put to sea again as supercargo of the
tender Endeavour, with orders to guide
Captain John Anderson to Jamaica for
provisions. A few days later, they were
driven back by gale winds. It is not
known whether the old privateer sur-
vived the next four months, before the
Darien colony was abandoned.
See also
Allison, Robert (Volume 1).
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1990).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Prebble, John, The Darien Disaster
(London: Secker & Warburg, 1968).
ALMIRANTA
Spanish term for a ‘‘vice-flagship.’’
Capitana is the equivalent word for
a flagship, the two often being con-
fused by foreigners, as they seemingly
reversed the usual order whereby
captains are subordinate to admirals.
However, when these expressions first
470

Alvarez, Augustı́n (fl. 1683
1684)
gained currency in Medieval Spain, it
was customary for Spanish fleets to be
commanded by a capit
an general,
while the designation almirante was
adapted from the Arabic term al-amir
or ‘‘the emir.’’
To Northern Europeans, though,
‘‘Admiral’’ only ever meant a senior na-
val officer. Thus when the buccaneers
under John Coxon, Richard Sawkins,
and Bartholomew Sharpe captured a
Spanish flotilla before Panama City in
early May 1680, they asked their pris-
oner Francisco de Peralta:
. . . which was the best sailors. He
told us on his word the [400-ton
Santı´sima] Trinidad was the best in
the South Sea, so we pitched on her
for Admiral [i.e., flagship].
See also
Almiranta (Volume 1).
Reference
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).

LVAREZ, AUGUSTÍN
A ‘‘he spoke too late.’’ The Spanish cor-
(fl. 1683
1684)
Spanish corsair from Havana, who
made his most notorious depredations
off Hispaniola and the Spanish Main.
On June 30, 1683 (O.S.), the Eng-
lish bark of Captain Robert Glover
departed Jamaica on a peacetime voy-
age to Curaçao. Aboard was traveling
the wealthy Jewish merchant Benjamin
Baruch Carvallo, a naturalized English-
man who was fetching his family from
that Dutch island. On passing Santo
Domingo, though, they were inter-


cepted by the barco luengo of Alvarez,
who ‘‘cruelly treated, tortured, and
robbed’’ Baruch until he agreed to pay
a ransom of 22,000 pieces of eight at


Curaçao. Alvarez and his 25 men—16
of whom were Dutch—proceeded
southeastward until they, in turn, were
attacked off Curaçao by another barco
luengo of 50 men. The second Span-


iard tried to board Alvarez’s craft by
grappling, but lost 10 men and its cap-


tain in this attempt; however, Alvarez’s
barco luengo was driven onto the rocks
outside Caracas Baai on Curaçao,
where he and his men continued to
fight until the attackers withdrew.
The Dutch Gov. Joan van Erpecum


learned of these events and Alvarez’s
extortionate demands late that same
August 1683, professing to be ‘‘much
troubled’’ and sending officers to
examine the matter. Eventually, Bar-
uch’s ransom was reduced to 3,500
pieces of eight and paid by his friends,
while Glover’s bark was released.
Baruch then complained bitterly to the
Governor, demanding compensation


from Alvarez for his lost merchandise,
at least; ‘‘but the agreement having
been settled,’’ Van Erpecum opined,
sair was allowed to retain his ill-gotten
gains, while the Dutch official was
later criticized both in Holland and
England for having struck such a deal,


despite holding Alvarez in his power.
The 4-gun HMS Bonito afterward


retrieved Alvarez’s boat and two Span-
iards from Curaçao, bringing them into
Port Royal on February 27, 1684.
There, the corsair was convicted of
 Andrade, Alonso Felipe de (fl. 1704
1717)
piracy in an English court, for he had
also taken ‘‘a New England ketch in
the high seas.’’ Nevertheless, Gov. Sir
Thomas Lynch reprieved Alvarez

because his original commission had
been legitimate, and he also wanted
‘‘to see if his security in Havana will
pay damages.’’
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Goslinga, Cornelis Ch., The Dutch in the
Caribbean and in the Guianas,
1680
1791 (Dover, NH: Van Gorcum,
1985).
ANDRADE, ALONSO
FELIPE DE (fl. 1704
1717)
Spanish military officer who success-
fully reclaimed Mexico’s Laguna de
T
erminos from foreign logwood
cutters.
Andrade was born into a military
family. His father, Ensign Antonio
Miguel de Andrade—a Royal Spanish
Marine officer who had been stationed
at Gibraltar, and had also served
aboard trans-Atlantic plate fleets—was
killed while his son was still only a
teenager. The elder Andrade had been
second-in-command of a Marine com-
pany serving aboard the frigate Nuestra
Se~nora de la Concepci
on de Ibiza,
when it sailed to participate in the
fighting in Italy in July 1683. Home-
ward-bound from that campaign,
escorting the crippled Guipuzcoan flag-
ship San Carlos toward Alicante, Con-
cepci
on had become separated by a
471
storm and was then engaged by two
French frigates within sight of that port
on December 2, 1683. Its magazine
exploded, and the ship went down with
all hands.
Young Alonso had already been en-
rolled on the books of the Army of
Catalonia for a year, and in May 1684
he distinguished himself for bravery
during a French assault against the
besieged Italian city of Gerona. He
served three years in Milan, before his
regiment returned to Catalonia in Sep-
tember 1692. He was promoted to Cap-
tain and ayudante de sargento general
de batalla, as well as being wounded
and briefly captured during further
fighting, before again winning a spe-
cial commendation for his part in the
defense of Barcelona against a French
invasion in June 1697.
When Spain’s newly-crowned Bour-
bon monarch, the French-born teenager
Felipe V, visited Barcelona in 1701, he
appointed Catalonia’s Captain-General
Francisco Fern
andez de la Cueva
Enrı́quez, Duque de Alburquerque, as
his new Viceroy for New Spain.
Andrade also petitioned the King for a
New World posting, as a reward for
his 19 years of loyal service to the
Crown. He was granted the title of
alcalde mayor of the small Mexican
mining-town of San Gregorio Mazapil,
so prepared to sail with his family, as
part of the Viceroy-designate’s retinue.
But given the growing tensions
between the newly-allied Spain and
France against a coalition formed by
England and Holland, Andrade was
furthermore promoted to the rank of
sargento mayor in April 1702, and
given command of half the 2,000 Gali-
cian troops being sent as reinforce-
ments to Havana and Veracruz.
472 Andrade, Alonso Felipe de (fl. 1704
1717)
Early Mexican Service
(1702
1715)
Andrade departed La Coru~na on June
26, 1702, the entire expedition of sol-
diers being aboard eight Spanish trans-
ports, escorted by a half-dozen French
warships under Commodore Jean-Bap-
tiste Ducasse. This convoy evaded
Royal Navy blockaders and reached
San Juan de Puerto Rico safely by
August 8th, pausing to refresh their
water and provisions. Two detached
French warships then escorted the
transports farther westward to leave
one Spanish regiment on Santo Do-
mingo, deposit half of Andrade’s
troops on Cuba to bolster Havana’s
garrison, before gaining Veracruz on
October 7th with Mexico’s new Vice-
roy and Andrade’s own five remaining
companies, a total of 500 soldiers.
Reconquest and Defense of the
Laguna de T
erminos
(1716
1717)
Andrade presided over a war-council at
Campeche on November 28, 1716, his
original instructions having suggested
that he lead his force to the Grijalva
River mouth, to be joined there by an
additional contingent from Tabasco, then
proceed together to eliminate the English
logwood establishments from the Laguna
de T
erminos. However, he and his
commanders agreed to instead send a
sloop to tell the Tabascans to rendezvous
with his waiting flotilla at Campeche,
while a local pilot named Agustı́n de To-
ledo made a stealthy reconnaissance of
the Laguna with his piragua.
Toledo returned to report that its
loggers were apparently aware of an
impending attack, and had been
requesting assistance from other Eng-
lish outposts as far away as Jamaica.
Their strength seemingly consisted of a
20-gun frigate, one of 16 guns, another
of 10, plus numerous lesser vessels.
Andrade consequently decided to has-
ten his departure, meeting the Tabas-
cans en route.
On December 7, 1716, Andrade
exited Campeche with 100 soldiers and
280 volunteers under privateer Captain
Sebasti
an Garcı́a, sailing aboard the
hired frigate Nuestra Se~ nora de la Sol-
edad, two other frigates, a sloop, two
coast-guard galliots under Captain Jos
e
de Le
on, plus a pair of piraguas, to-
ward the English logwood establish-
ments in the Laguna de T
erminos. En
route, his flotilla was joined by another
sloop and two piraguas from Tabasco,
bearing an additional 220 men.
A few days later, the Spaniards cap-
tured a Dutch pink outside the Laguna
entrance, then crossed its bar between
3:00 and 4:00 P.M. on December 11th,
forcing the surrender next day of another
18 foreign frigates, sloops, brigantines,
and minor boats plying inside. Only an
English Captain named Thomas Porter
continued to resist, melting into the jun-
gle with 150 followers, while the rest of
the poachers submitted and were allowed
to leave, for unlike previous raids by the
Spaniards, this time they intended to stay.
On December 15th, De Andrade began
bringing ashore materiel to erect a
redoubt to cover the Laguna entrance,
thereby preventing future access. Soon, a
small fort began taking shape.
See also
Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste.

ANDREIS, BERNART
(fl. 1692)
Captain, perhaps of German, Dutch, or
Flemish origin, who served on English
Jamaica.
On September 19, 1692 (O.S.),
Andreis was appointed by the Jamaican
Council ‘‘to command any sloop or
sloops employed against Nathaniel
Grubing,’’ an English renegade who
had gone over to the French of Saint-
Domingue on the outbreak of the War
of the League of Augsburg (known in
America as King William’s War, or to
history as the Nine Years War), and
led them on harassing raids against
northern Jamaica. There is no evidence
Andreis succeeded in catching this
turncoat, and the Captain was involved
a couple of months later in court-martial
proceedings against some of his
officers.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London; Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
ANDRIESZOON, MICHIEL
(fl. 1683
1686)
Dutch rover who operated out of
French Saint-Domingue, often as a
confederate to Laurens de Graaf.
He was commonly referred to as
‘‘Capitaine Michel’’ or ‘‘l’Andresson’’
by his flibustier followers, and
‘‘Michel’’ or ‘‘Mitchell’’ by the English.
His first recorded activity occurred early
in 1683, when Andrieszoon was lying
Andrieszoon, Michiel (fl. 1683
1686) 473
off the Bay of Honduras with De Graaf.
Six months previously, the Spanish
man-of-war Princesa, nicknamed Fran-
cesa (former French Dauphine or
‘‘Princess’’) had been captured off
Santo Domingo, and was now being
careened at Bonaco Island. The bucca-
neers were joined there in early April by
another band of flibustiers commanded
by Nikolaas Van Hoorn, the ‘‘Cheva-
lier’’ de Grammont, and Jan Willems,
who had come in quest of reinforce-
ments for a major campaign against the
Spaniards. As Van Hoorn had been
cheated out of a large consignment of
slaves at Santo Domingo, the Governor
of Saint-Domingue—Jacques Nepveu,
Sieur de Pouançay—had granted him a
letter-of-reprisal to seek restitution, de-
spite the official peace prevailing with
Spain. De Graaf and Andrieszoon incor-
porated their men and ships into this
expedition, rounding the Yucatan Penin-
sula en masse five weeks later.
Sack of Veracruz (May 1683)
The night of May 17th-18th, 800 buc-
caneers slipped into the sleeping city
of Veracruz and attacked at dawn. The
Spanish garrison and citizenry were
surprised in their beds, every house
being ransacked over the next four
days. The pirates then withdrew off-
shore to Sacrificios Island with 4,000
captives, dividing their booty and
awaiting ransoms out of Mexico’s inte-
rior. Two weeks later, these were paid,
and after herding 1,500 blacks and
mulattos aboard as slaves, the 13 pirate
vessels weighed. Just as they were
standing out from the coast, they
encountered the annual plate fleet,
whose commander Admiral Don Diego
474 Andrieszoon, Michiel (fl. 1683
1686)
Fern
andez de Zaldı́var deferred com-
bat, allowing the raiders to escape.
The buccaneers paused at Coatza-
coalcos to take on water before shoul-
dering their way back around Yucatan
to Isla Mujeres, where they finished
distributing the spoils by late June
1683. Each then went his separate
way, Andrieszoon, Willems, and others
following De Graaf into the maze of
islands off Cuba’s southern coast.
From there, they sold their goods,
smuggling the profits onto Jamaica.
After a few months, the pirate contin-
gent stood away toward the Spanish
Main, arriving near Cartagena by late
November 1683.
Victory at Cartagena
(Christmas 1683)
When the local Spanish Gov. Don Juan
de Pando Estrada learned that these
buccaneers were before his harbor, he
commandeered the 40-gun private mer-
chant ship San Francisco, the 34-gun
Nuestra Se~nora de la Paz, and a 28-gun
galliot to chase them away. This trio
exited on December 23, 1683, manned
by 800 soldiers and sailors under
the command of Don Andr
es de
Pez. The resultant battle was scarcely
as the Spaniards had envisioned, for
the seven smaller pirate ships swarmed
all around the more cumbersome trio,
and in the confusion San Francisco
ran aground. Paz struck after four
hours, and Willems captured the gal-
liot; 90 Spaniards were killed in the
affray, as opposed to only 20 pirates.
The triumphant buccaneers refloated
San Francisco, which De Graaf appro-
priated as his new flagship, renaming
it Fortune; Andrieszoon received
command of Paz, calling it Mutine or
‘‘Rascal’’ in French; while Willems
was given De Graaf’s old Francesa or
Dauphine. On December 25th, the vic-
tors deposited their captives ashore,
then settled down to blockade the port.
In mid-January 1684, a small convoy
of English merchantmen arrived to
deliver a consignment of slaves, and
the pirates let them pass. De Graaf,
Andrieszoon, and Willems also entered
a joint arrangement on January 18th
with a Dutch Jew called Diego Maget
[or Marquet] who was traveling with
the English, in which they agreed to
buy a large quantity of wine and meat.
Significantly, this was to be delivered
from Port Royal, Jamaica, to Roat
an.
Shortly thereafter, the pirates quit
their blockade and headed northwest-
ward, De Graaf capturing a 14-gun
Spanish vessel en route, then touching
at Roat
an with his flotilla, before con-
tinuing to the south coast of Cuba.
There they intercepted a Spanish aviso
or ‘‘dispatch vessel,’’ bearing news that
Spain and France were once again at
war. Realizing that he could now
renew his French privateering commis-
sions, De Graaf left Andrieszoon
and Willems to continue prowling
the Cuban coast, while he sailed his
14-gun Spanish prize into Petit-Go^ave
to obtain new patents.
Violation of the Dutch West
Indiamen (May 1684)
After parting company with their
leader, Andrieszoon and Willems
rounded western Cuba and took up sta-
tion near Havana. On May 18, 1684,
while opposite the tiny hamlet of Santa
Lucı́a, they saw two large vessels

approaching, which they intercepted.
The strangers identified themselves as
the Dutch West Indiamen Stad Rotter-
dam and Elisabeth. Despite Holland’s
neutrality in the conflict, Andrieszoon
led an 80-man boarding party across in
two boats to inspect the West India-
men’s cargos. He discovered that they
had sailed from Cartagena three weeks
earlier, and because of the protection
afforded by Dutch colors, the Span-
iards had shipped a great deal of
money and passengers on board,
including a Bishop. Andrieszoon laid
claim to half the 200,000 pesos and all
Spanish nationals being carried,
removing them over the masters’
objections.
In a heated argument, the West
India commanders allegedly declared
that if they had realized Andrieszoon’s
intent, they would never have allowed
him aboard. The latter supposedly
retorted he was willing to rejoin his
ships and fight it out, winner take all,
but the Dutch masters demurred.
Instead, they reputedly took their
revenge by concealing the money he
had left behind, later claiming that
Andrieszoon had stolen it all.
New England Visit
(August 1684)
From Cuba, the pair of buccaneer ves-
sels worked their way up the Atlantic
Seaboard, and by the end of August
1684, Gov. Edward Cranfield of New
Hampshire reported to London:
Since my last, a French privateer of
35 guns has arrived at Boston. I am
credibly informed that they share
£700 a man. The Bostoners no
Andrieszoon, Michiel (fl. 1683
1686) 475
sooner heard of her off the coast,
than they dispatched a messenger
and pilot to convoy her into port, in
defiance of the King’s proclamation
[of March 1684, prohibiting aid and
abetment to such rovers]. The pirates
are likely to leave the greatest part
of their plate [i.e., silver] behind
them, having bought up most of the
choice goods in Boston. The ship is
now fitting for another expedition.
This was Andrieszoon’s Mutine. Two
days later, the Governor wrote again,
giving further details of it and a second
French privateer, Willems’ Dauphine,
which had appeared off the coast as well.
Spanish escapees from the former had
sought sanctuary in New Hampshire,
‘‘which they shall have and all friend-
ship besides,’’ Cranfield piously
declared. They told him they had been
taken off Cartagena ‘‘by the men who
plundered Veracruz,’’ and identified the
ship refurbishing in Boston’s yards by
its former Spanish name of La Paz,
while the second they identified as the
Francesa (which the Governor misheard
as ‘‘Francis’’). ‘‘They are both extra-
ordinarily rich ships,’’ Cranfield
concluded, ‘‘chiefly through spoil of
the Spaniards, though they have
spared none that they have met at
sea.’’ Once Andrieszoon’s ship had com-
pleted refitting, Willems’ was to be
repaired.
However, a couple of weeks later
the King’s latest proclamation against
piracy was promulgated in Boston,
leading Gov. William Dyre to attempt
to seize:
. . . a privateer of the first magni-
tude, famous in bloodshed and
robberies, called La Trompeuse
476 Andrieszoon, Michiel (fl. 1683
1686)
(commanded by one Michel Andre-
son, Bhra, or Lavanza, a reputed
Frenchman). I have moved for jus-
tice against him but have been
delayed, and much discouraged and
severely threatened by many, and
more especially by one Mr. Samuel
Shrimpton, a merchant of this place,
to have my brains beat out or a stab
for seizing the said ship. He has sup-
plied, succored, countenanced and
encouraged her, and taken her into
his custody and keeping at Nodles
Island, the place and receptacle of
all piratical and uncustomed goods,
also the guns, ammunition and all,
though under seizure by myself for
the King’s use, resolving and boast-
ing to defend the same and fit the
ship out again. He has also received
clandestinely great quantities of their
gold, silver, jewels, and cacao within
the compass of my seizure and
claim.
Dyre was in fact confusing Andrieszoon
with at least two other pirate leaders,
firstly by referring to his ship Mutine or
‘‘Rascal’’ as the Trompeuse or ‘‘Trick-
ster,’’ when this had actually been Jean
Hamlin’s vessel, sunk the previous year
at Saint Thomas in the Danish Virgin
Islands; secondly, by appending the
pseudonym ‘‘Bhra’’ to the Dutchman’s
name, implying he might be Thomas
Paine’s confederate Br
eha, guilty of
helping assault Saint Augustine in 1683.
Dyre went on to list the 198 French,
Scotch, Dutch, English, Spanish, Portu-
guese, black, Indian, mulatto, Swedish,
Irish, Jersey, and New England men who
comprised the Mutine’s crew, and ended
by saying that he was sending ‘‘great
quantities of the piratical plundered
gold’’ to London.
Return to the Spanish Main
(January 1685)
As the Governor anticipated, Andries-
zoon emerged unscathed from this
brief impoundment at Boston, and by
the end of that year was back in the
Antilles. He parted company with Wil-
lems to patrol the Cuban coast with
Mutine and De Graaf’s flagship Nep-
tune (ex-San Francisco, which had
only briefly borne the name Fortune),
while the chief remained busy in Petit-
Go^ave. During the first days of the
new year, Andrieszoon shifted south-
eastward, leading a small flotilla of fli-
bustiers to the Spanish Main, where
De Graaf was to overtake them. Capts.
Jean Rose, Vigneron, La Garde, and an
English trader joined the Mutine and
Neptune in blockading those shores.
The night of January 17th, they espied
a ship, which they challenged next
morning. The response was in French,
but the stranger’s lines were Spanish,
so Rose opened fire. In the growing
dawn, Andrieszoon recognized their
opponent as the 14-gun Spanish prize
captured by De Graaf the previous
year, so realized they were engaging
their commander.
The mistake corrected, De Graaf or-
dered his formation toward Curaçao
next day. At two o’clock that after-
noon, while within sight of Bonaire,
they sighted a Flemish ship out of La
Guaira, which they chased and cap-
tured that evening. On January 20,
1685, De Graaf detached La Garde to
request permission from Gov. Joan van
Erpecum of Curaçao to buy masts for
his ship, replacing those lost in a storm
off Saint Thomas. ‘‘This was flatly
refused and the gates of the city
closed,’’ Ravenau de Lussan later

wrote, because of the sacking of the
two Dutch West Indiamen off Havana
the year before. Nevertheless, a couple
hundred buccaneers managed to slip
ashore in small groups to enjoy liberty,
until they were discovered and driven
out ‘‘by beating drums’’ four days later.
On January 27th, De Graaf set sail
for Cape de la Vela (in present-day
Venezuela), arriving three days later
and posting a lookout on the headland,
while his ships began careening below.
Rose meanwhile sailed down the coast
to Rı́ohacha and attempted to deceive
the Spaniards that he was a peaceful
English trader, but met with no suc-
cess. Returning empty-handed on Feb-
ruary 8th, the pirates decided to split
up: De Graaf wanted to organize
another major venture such as his
Veracruz raid, yet not everyone was in
accord. They therefore redistributed
themselves around the vessels and sep-
arated, De Graaf laying in a course for
the Gulf of Honduras with Neptune,
while Andrieszoon remained off the
Spanish Main with Rose, being spotted
on February 23, 1685 near Palmas
Islands, then putting into Golden Island
four days later.
He and Rose had unsuccessfully
chased a trading vessel from Santiago
de Cuba as it neared Cartagena, and
now required water; but on Golden
Island they found an excited band of
flibustiers preparing to march across
the Isthmus of Panama to attack the
Spaniards in the South Sea. Rose and
his 64 men therefore decided to scuttle
their ship and join this enterprise,
while 118 of Andrieszoon’s crew
also enrolled. With his complement
thus drastically reduced, Andrieszoon
had little choice but to make for
Saint-Domingue.
Andrieszoon, Michiel (fl. 1683
1686) 477
Cuban Operations
(Spring 1685)
On April 24, 1685 (O.S.), Lieutenant-Gov.
Hender Molesworth of Jamaica noted:
Captain Michel, a French privateer,
was recently beaten off by the Span-
iards from Darien with loss of his
prizes. The French continue to issue
commissions against the Spaniard, on
pretence of damage done them by pira-
guas set out from Havana before the
making of the recent truce in Europe.
Andrieszoon quickly resumed his
roving; three weeks after this first let-
ter, Molesworth wrote in a second:
‘‘Michel, the privateer, is gone to the
south cays of Cuba to take three Dutch
ships that are trading there.’’ The cor-
sair unwittingly aided the Jamaicans
when his patrol boats chased a suspi-
cious sloop into a creek, which proved
to be the captive Speedwell of Master
Francis Powell, seized by a Spanish
guardacosta flying false English col-
ors, and fitted out for a counter-raid
against the coastal plantations of
Jamaica—a scheme which was frus-
trated when he drove it ashore.
It is quite probable that Andrieszoon
then took part in De Graaf’s and Gram-
mont’s great enterprise against Cam-
peche, as the pirates were already
gathering on nearby Pinos Island for such
a purpose. They eventually shifted to Isla
Mujeres to fully marshal their strength.
Assault on Campeche
(July 1685)
Hovering off Cape Catoche for more
than a month, the buccaneers advised
passing freebooters of their plan, but
478 Anstis, Thomas (fl. 1721
1723)
also unwittingly alerted the Spaniards.
Late in June, they moved, the pirate
fleet of six large and four small ships,
six sloops, and 17 piraguas materializ-
ing half-a-dozen miles off Campeche
on the afternoon of July 6th. A landing
force of 700 buccaneers rowed in to-
ward shore, and overran the city that
following day. Its citadel held out for a
week, after which the invaders
remained in undisputed possession of
the port for the next two months; yet
as most of the Spaniards’ wealth had
been withdrawn prior to the assault, lit-
tle plunder was found. Captives were
threatened with death if ransoms were
not forthcoming, but Yucatan’s Gov.
Juan Bruno T
ellez de Guzm
an prohib-
ited any such payments. Finally, the
pirates evacuated the city late in Au-
gust, after putting it to the torch.
Protests were duly lodged with the
French Crown, and Gov. Pierre-Paul
Tarin de Cussy of Saint-Domingue felt
compelled to act against some of the
returning flibustiers. In a letter to his
Spanish counterpart at Santo Domingo
dated January 8, 1686, he explained
that the commissions he had previously
issued were to expire as of March 18,
1685, after which the holders might be
regarded as pirates.
In proof of which, having learned
that the one named Michel was
anchored seven leagues from Petit-
Go^ave with a ship of 36 guns and
150 men, I went there myself with a
King’s frigate to disarm them, which
they did; after which, having learned
they wished to carry off said frigate
to become pirates, I had them
arrested and confiscated the said
frigate, prohibiting any flibustier or
settler [habitant] from exiting to go
privateering, under penalty of corpo-
real punishment and confiscation of
their goods.
The Spaniard, Captain-General
Andr
es de Robles, dismissed this as a
hollow gesture, pointing out that ‘‘those
with whom you should make this demon-
stration are Captain Grammont and
Lorenzo [de Graaf], who are the ones
who most infest these seas and lands of
the King my Lord.’’ Indeed, it seems
more than likely that Andrieszoon sim-
ply decided to retire from the sea and set-
tle down on Saint-Domingue at this time,
which allowed the Governor to record
this to his advantage.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Vols. 9
12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The
Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor,
Ontario, Canada: Netherlandic Press,
1993).
ANSTIS, THOMAS
(fl. 1721
1723)
A subordinate of Howell Davis and
Bartholomew Roberts, who operated

independently for a couple of years in
the company of John Fenn, before
finally being murdered by his own
crew.
According to the chronicler Charles
Johnson, Anstis had been a veteran
seafarer who shipped out of Nassau on
New Providence Island in the Bahamas
in 1718 aboard the merchant sloop
Buck, and who shortly thereafter
helped take over that vessel ‘‘with
five other rascals’’ to go ‘‘a-pyrating.’’
The leader of this mutineer band
was Howell Davis, who would eventu-
ally be killed off the West African
coast and succeeded in command by
Bartholomew Roberts, who then led
this pirate flotilla on an extensive run
of pillage.
Independent Command (1721)
Anstis was the leader of a faction
which chose to split off from Roberts
in April 1721, rather than return across
the Atlantic with his flagship toward
Sierra Leone. Anstis preferred to slip
away one night and instead remain
behind to prowl in the West Indies
with his brigantine Good Fortune, and
he and his men may have perpetrated
the brutal sack off the coast of Martini-
que of the ship Irwin of Captain Ross,
which was bringing 600 barrels of beef
from Cork in Ireland. In a violent
frenzy, 21 of these pirates raped and
tossed a woman passenger into the sea
while she was still alive, and cruelly
beat a male passenger in front of his
family when he attempted to intervene.
Then in mid-June 1721, Anstis’
brigantine apparently ‘‘met with one
Captain Maiston [sic; Marston? Maid-
stone?] between Hispaniola and
Jamaica, bound to New York, from
Anstis, Thomas (fl. 1721
1723) 479
which he took all the wearing apparel,
liquors and provisions, and six men.’’A
week later, Anstis also robbed the mer-
chantman Hamilton of Bristol, as
described for the Council of Trade
and Plantations in London toward the
end of that same year by the newly-
installed Bahamian Governor, George
Phenney:
Samuel Pitt (late mate of the Hamil-
ton, a Bristol ship, Joseph Smith
commander) with six of the crew
came in their longboat from the
Havana, having the [Spanish] Gover-
nor’s pass. They were taken the
22nd June last [1721 O.S.] by the
Good Fortune brigantine, Thomas
Anstead [sic] commander and pirate,
having 18 guns, 60 white men and
nineteen Negroes, fourteen leagues
west of Jamaica. The said pirates
forced the second mate and twelve
of Smith’s men to proceed with
them.
Circling around Cuba, Anstis then
careened Good Fortune on an island in
the Bahamas, before resuming his head-
ing northeast toward Bermuda.
During this passage, toward the end
of 1721, he intercepted a fine 24-gun
Bristol slaver named the Morning Star,
bound from Guinea toward Carolina
under Captain James Cochett. A sec-
ond ship was taken shortly thereafter
and its eight guns were removed, so as
to outfit this large slaver with a power-
ful array of 32 cannons and a crew of
100 men, into which Anstis’ gunner
John Fenn was promoted as Captain.
As senior commander, Anstis might
well have assumed command over this
newer and larger ship himself, but the
chronicler Johnson recorded that he
480 Anstis, Thomas (fl. 1721
1723)
‘‘was so in love with his own vessel,
she being an excellent sailer,’’ that he
preferred to remain aboard Good
Fortune.
The pirates now had two good ships
with which to roam on the account, yet
since a large proportion of their crews
had been pressed or forced into serv-
ice, a majority voted some time later
to request a royal pardon, so as to be
able to abandon this nomadic existence
and return into civilian life. Johnson
later recorded their petition as follows:
To His Most Sacred Majesty
George, by the Grace of God of
Great Britain, France, and Ireland,
King, Defender of the Faith, etc.
The humble petition of the Com-
pany now belonging to the Ship
Morning Star and Brigantine Good
Fortune, lying under the ignominious
Name and Denomination of Pyrates.
Humbly sheweth:
That we, Your Majesty’s most
loyal subjects, have at sundry times
been taken by Bartholomew Roberts,
the then Captain of the above vessels
and company, together with another
ship in which we left him; and have
been forced by him and his wicked
accomplices, to enter into and serve
in the said company as pirates, much
contrary to our wills and inclina-
tions. And we your loyal subjects,
utterly abhorring and detesting that
impious way of living, did with a
unanimous consent and contrary to
the knowledge of the said Roberts
and his accomplices, on or about the
18th day of April 1721 [O.S.] leave
and ran away with the aforesaid ship
Morning Star and brigantine Good
Fortune, with no other intent or
meaning than the hopes of obtaining
Your Majesty’s most gracious par-
don. And that we, Your Majesty’s
most loyal subjects, may with more
safety return to our native country
and serve the nation unto which we
belong in our respective capacities,
without fear of being prosecuted by
the injured, whose estates have suf-
fered the said Roberts and his
accomplices during our forcible
detainment by the said company:
We most humbly implore Your
Majesty’s most royal assent, to this
our humble petition.
This document was signed in ‘‘round-
robin’’ fashion, all names being affixed
in a circle so that no one would be more
prominent than any other.
Johnson also indicated in his Gen-
eral History that this petition was sent
directly to England about December
1721 aboard a merchant vessel sailing
out of Jamaica, while the pirates hid
with their ships among the mangrove
swamps of a small uninhabited island
at the western end of Cuba, to await
nine months for an answer. However,
official records indicate that this mis-
sive was actually addressed in June
1722 to the Governor of Jamaica, it
being noted as a:
Petition from the ship’s companies
of the Morning Star ship and Good
Fortune brigantine, 14th June 1722
[O.S.], to Governor Sir Nicholas
Lawes: Taken at sundry times by
Bartholomew Roberts, the then Cap-
tain of the above-said vessels with
another ship, petitioners were forced
by him to serve as pirates, until on
18th April 1721 [O.S.] they ran
away from him with above ships, in
hopes of obtaining His Majesty’s

pardon, etc. Signed in the form of
two round-robins.
It was duly forwarded on to the Council
of Trade and Plantations in London, who
in turn passed it over on December 4,
1722 (O.S.) to the attention of several
prominent West Indian merchants, to
inquire what they ‘‘may have to offer
upon the pirates’ petition.’’ Somewhat
surprisingly, these traders replied on
January 10, 1723 (O.S.):
We have no reason why His Majesty
may not be graciously pleas’d to issue
his Royal Proclamation for their par-
don. Upon this occasion, however, we
think it proper to represent, that in for-
mer proclamations of this nature, it has
been usual to fix a certain day beyond
which no act of piracy shall be par-
don’d by the said proclamation, which
is generally proportion’d to the time by
which the persons concern’d may rea-
sonably be supposed to have notice of
the said proclamation, after which
there is likewise a further day fix’d,
before which all such persons who
mean to take the benefit of His
Majesty’s most gracious pardon, are to
surrender themselves. Some proclama-
tions of this kind have been issued by
His Majesty with very little effect; the
main reason whereof, as we have been
inform’d, hath been that the pirates are
all of them apprehensive that immedi-
ately upon their surrendering them-
selves to any of the Governors of His
Majesty’s plantations in America, all
their effects would be seiz’d; where-
fore although His Majesty cannot by
law give up the property of any per-
sons’ goods piratically taken from
him, yet there is no doubt but that His
Majesty, if he is so graciously
Anstis, Thomas (fl. 1721
1723) 481
dispos’d, may depart from his own
right to any goods found in the posses-
sion of pirates, and may likewise, if the
same shall be thought reasonable, give
orders in the body of the same procla-
mation by which he shall publish his
most gracious pardon to the said
pirates, that none of the Governors of
His Majesty’s plantations do presume
to seize or take possession of any
goods in custody of such pirates as
shall come in upon the said proclama-
tion, which clause in all probability
would be a great inducement to the
pirates to surrender themselves, and
neither His Majesty’s subjects nor any
other person whatsoever would be
thereby debarr’d from recovering their
effects in the hands of the said pirates
by due course of law.
The Council then transferred the petition
once more, to the Attorney-General’s
and Solicitor-General’s offices on
March 8, 1723 (O.S.), so as to request
their legal clarification and opinions.
Yet long before this bureaucratic
procedure could arrive at any decision,
Anstis and his pirates had reemerged
from their hiding-place in August 1722
to resume their old practices. While
still steering southeast away from
Cuba, though, Morning Star ran
aground one evening on a reef in the
Caymans, Fenn and most of his crew-
men escaping onto a nearby island.
Anstis spotted them there next morn-
ing, but no sooner had he taken aboard
Fenn, his carpenter Phillips, and a few
other hands, than the 44-gun HMS
Hector of Captain Ellis Brand and his
hired privateer consort Adventure hove
into view. Anstis barely had time to cut
his cables and run out to sea, hotly
chased by Adventure. This pursuer
482 Anstis, Thomas (fl. 1721
1723)
slowly gained on him, keeping within
gun-shot for several hours, until the
wind died away. The pirates thereupon
manned their sweeps and frantically
rowed Good Fortune out of range, man-
aging to disappear into the night. Mean-
while, Brand had landed an armed party
from Hector on the island, which took
up 40 of Morning Star’s crew without
resistance—this group being glad of the
opportunity to surrender, eventually
being pardoned as they had been
pressed into service, while the hard-core
pirates remained hidden in the woods.
After this close call, Anstis steered his
brigantine southwestward, to seek refuge
on an island near the Bay of Honduras.
En route, he intercepted and destroyed
the sloop of Captain Duffey, obliging
this Master and his men to accompany
the pirates aboard Good Fortune. While
lying off the Honduran island, though,
Duffey rose with four or five other pris-
oners, and got ashore with some arms
and ammunition. When the pirates’ boat
came inshore to gather fresh water, the
watchful Duffey seized this party, and
when Anstis then sent a second boat with
30 armed pirates, Duffey ‘‘gave them
such a warm reception, that they were
glad to return back again.’’
Anstis consequently left the Honduran
coast in December 1722, making a few
more captures while cruising toward
the Bahamas, before eventually circling
southeast and dropping anchor off Tobago
next spring. While most of this dispirited
piratical band was ashore, the 24-gun
HMS Winchelsea of Captain Humphrey
Orme surprised them, prompting many to
flee into the woods. Anstis once again cut
Good Fortune’s cables, and managed to
escape out to sea with only a dozen hands.
Orme seized and carried Fenn, plus eight
other pirates into Antigua as his prisoners
by May 11, 1723 (O.S.), while Brand
remained off Tobago with his Hector to
scour that island for those still hidden.
On June 8, 1723 (O.S.), a satisfied
Governor John Hart was able to report
from Saint Kitts to London how Fenn
had been executed and ‘‘is hung up in
chains on Rat Island,’’ while:
I do not hear of any more pirates in
these seas, except the brigantine Good
Fortune, who has but twelve men on
board her, who run away with that
vessel whilst the rest of her crew were
on the island of Tobago, where His
Majesty’s ship found the pirates.
And not all hands aboard the fugitive
brigantine were willing rovers, either,
so that shortly thereafter a group shot
Anstis while he was lying in his ham-
mock, and clapped his few loyal pirates
into irons. These rebels then sailed
Good Fortune to the neutral Dutch
island of Curaçao, where they delivered
up the former pirate flagship to its
authorities and received pardons, while
Anstis’s last forlorn handful of fol-
lowers were hanged.
See also
Account; Fenn, John; Roberts,
Bartholomew.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 32,
33 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1933
1934).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Journals of the Board of Trade and
Plantations, Volume 4: November

1718—December 1722 (London, 1925),
Journal Book Y.
The Lives and Adventures of Sundry Notorious
Pirates (New York: McBride, 1922).
Seitz, Don Carlos, Gospel, Howard F., and
Wood, Stephen, Under the Black Flag:
Exploits of the Most Notorious Pirates
(Mineola, NY: Courier Dover, 2002).
APOSTLES
Seventeenth-century military slang for
the charges carried in a bandolier or
cartridge belt, perhaps because they
usually numbered a dozen.
See also
Apostles (Volume 1).
Reference
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
ARMADA DE
BARLOVENTO
See Barlovento, Armada de
ARMADA DEL MAR DEL
SUR
See Mar del Sur, Armada del
ARMADILLA
Diminutive of the Spanish word ar-
mada, which signifies a fleet of
Armadilla 483
warships; armadilla consequently
refers to a flotilla of lesser vessels.
For example, two English prisoners
being held at Havana’s Morro Castle
during the War of the Quadruple Alli-
ance against Spain wrote to Governor
Woodes Rogers of the Bahamas on
April 4, 1720 (O.S.), reporting that a
second Cuban strike against his well-
defended capital of Nassau had been
scaled back, in the following manner:
. . . your enemy, which sailed with
an Armadilla from this place 21st
Feb. [1720 O.S.], but did not con-
tinue their resolution of bringing
their large ships because of the many
hands they would require to guard
them, so that must very much lessen
their intended compliment to land,
which their small number would not
admit of.
More than three years later, after peace
had been restored between both nations,
Master John Owen of the sloop Susan-
nah out of Philadelphia, described how
while homeward-bound with a cargo
from Curaçao, he had sighted on July
21, 1723 (O.S.):
. . . a fleet of vessels which he took
for pirates, [so] made sail to escape.
But a sloop coming up with him and
firing great guns, forced him to
strike, etc. The Commodore of this
Spanish squadron, called by them
the Armadilla, ordered him aboard.
His sloop was then plundered and
his register, clearances, and papers
taken from him, and himself carried
into Puerto Rico, where he was not
allowed to go ashore to make his
defense until his sloop was con-
demned and sold.
484 Arribada
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 32,
37 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1933
1937).
ARRIBADA
Spanish legal term for any unauthorized
entry into a port, or arrival off a coastline.
Most often it was Spanish masters
who were charged with making arriba-
das, pretending to have been driven off-
course by bad weather or pursuit by ene-
mies, merely so as to make an unsched-
uled layover in a port where their goods
might be sold more profitably. Foreign
seamen were doubly suspect of such
duplicitous designs: for example, even af-
ter Spain and France had fought together
as allies for eight years against the Eng-
lish and Dutch during Queen Anne’s
War, the French Captain François Renus-
son of Martinique was charged by the
Cuban authorities with making an illegal
arribada into Havana with his slaver
Saint-Charles in 1710, resulting in the
confiscation of both his ship and cargo.
See also
Arribada (Volume 1).
Reference
Archive of Indies (Seville), Escribanı´a de
C

amara de Justicia 55A, single document.
ASH, ISLE OF
English mispronunciation of ^Ile a
Vache [literally, ‘‘Cow Island’’], the
French name for the island lying
off the southwestern tip of Saint-
Domingue (modern Haiti), which had
long been a favorite pirate rendezvous
and lookout-point.
In one of many such instances,
Lieutenant-Governor Hender Moles-
worth of Jamaica wrote on October 4,
1687 (O.S.), how his counterpart at
Saint-Domingue, Governor Pierre-Paul
Tarin de Cussy, had informed him that
‘‘he has orders to settle the Isle of Ash,
otherwise Isla de Vacas, just opposite
their settlement at Hispaniola.’’ Almost
three decades later, Governor Peter
Heywood of Jamaica would also
describe in a letter to the Council of
Trade and Plantations in London, the
swarm of rovers infesting the waters
adjacent to his jurisdiction in late De-
cember 1716, with the words:
There is of these, pirates of all nations:
those to windward are generally Span-
iards, and some few French, but most
mulattos, quarteroons and Negroes,
they lie from the leeward part of the
island of St. John de Porto Rico down
along the south side of Hispaniola;
then on the other side, Hispaniola,
from Cape Nicolas down the north-
west and west of Hispaniola, and upon
the south side to the Isle of Ash.
See also
Ash, Isle of (Volume 1).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial
Series, America and West Indies,
Volumes. 12, 29 (London:
Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).

ASHWORTH, LEIGH
(fl. 1715
1719)
Part-time Jamaican privateer, who was
accused of outright piracy.
Ashworth and his brother Jasper were
apparently minor island-traders operat-
ing out of Port Royal, when a growing
number of reports began to be received
of peacetime piratical attacks late in
1715. Governor Lord Archibald Hamil-
ton responded to this threat with a broad
issuance of privateering commissions,
so as to hunt down such renegade
commanders. Yet honest merchants
would later complain, that while 14
sloops were duly ‘‘mann’d with about
3,000 men to clear those seas . . . the
remedy was worse than the disease.’’
One of the privateers who posted a
surety and purchased such a commis-
sion on November 21, 1715 (O.S.), was
Leigh Ashworth, although he did not
actually depart Port Royal aboard his
sloop Mary until March 1716, pausing
at nearby Bluefields Bay to rendezvous
with his fellow privateers Captains
Henry Jennings, James Carnegie, and
Samuel Liddell. Under the veteran Jen-
nings’ overall command, all four pro-
ceeded together around the western tip
of Cuba, supposedly ‘‘designing for the
wrecks’’ which had been left strewn
temptingly along the east coast of Flor-
ida by the Spanish plate fleet disaster of
that previous summer.
But while coasting around northwest-
ern Cuba, less than 20 miles short of
Bahı́a Honda, this quartet of English
privateers spotted a sloop with a pair of
piraguas pulling suspiciously away
from shore, and whose Master Young
‘‘told Captain Ashworth they were two
maroon piraguas, and had obliged him
Ashworth, Leigh (fl. 1715
1719) 485
to tow them over from the Bay of Hon-
duras.’’ Unconvinced, Jennings’ flotilla
seized Young’s sloop on suspicion of
illegal commerce, then proceeded into
the notorious smuggling haven of Bahı́a
Honda itself, where they also took the
large French merchantman Aimable
Marie out of La Rochelle under Captain
Escoubes, on a similar charge. A cap-
tured Spanish piragua then informed
them that another French ship lay trad-
ing less than 30 miles still farther to the
east, nearer to the Cuban capital, in the
port of Mariel.
Carnegie immediately weighed ‘‘to
seek her, but next morning the piragua,
which had followed him, reported’’
that this second French ship had al-
ready been captured by a pair of pirate
sloops out of the Bahamas under Cap-
tains Benjamin Hornigold and the
Frenchman La Buze. Jennings and
Ashworth sailed in pursuit of these ren-
egades, hoping to catch then off Mariel
still in possession of their prize,
The Marianne of Captain Le Gardeur
was apparently taken by Hornigold and
La Buze at Mariel, where it had paused
while en route toward Louisiana to
deliver some correspondence from the
Governor of Saint-Domingue, the Comte
de Bl
enac. The Aimable Marie of La Ro-
chelle of Captain Escoubes had been
taken earlier in Bahı́a Honda by Jen-
nings’ flotilla, who then furthermore took
the ransacked and abandoned Marianne.
About 22nd April last [1716 O.S.],
Captain Jennings arrived at Provi-
dence and brought in as prize a
French ship mounted with 32 guns,
which he had taken at the Bay of
Hounds [sic; Bahı́a Honda], and
there shared the cargo (which was
very rich, consisting of European
486 Asiento
goods for the Spanish trade) amongst
his men, and then went in the said
ship to the wrecks, where he served
as Commodore and guardship.
With only her bulk cargo still left
aboard, Marie was to be sailed to Port
Royal for official adjudication. Ash-
worth transferred his share of its pil-
laged valuables aboard the sloop
Dolphin, ‘‘and then wrote to Mr. Daniel
Axtell and to his brother Jasper’’ to
prepare them to receive both this prize,
as well as to covertly smuggle ashore
its plundered goods. James Spatcher,
chosen to command this accompanying
sloop, duly slipped ashore and deliv-
ered the letter to Axtell, ‘‘who ordered
the sloop to go from Cowboy to
Pigeon Island, and thence to Manatee
Bay’’—a small, quiet inlet some
14 miles southwest of Kingston—from
where its crew began ferrying ‘‘dry
goods in a canoe from the Dolphin to
Port Royal, Mr. Axtell receiving them
himself into his storehouse at night.’’
See also
Fernando, Francis; Jennings, Henry;
Piragua.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 29
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1930).
ASIENTO
Generic Spanish name for any exclu-
sive contract to supply goods or
services to the Crown, although for-
eigners during the 17th century came
to misinterpret this term narrowly, as
meaning only the supplying of African
slaves to Spain’s American empire.
In reality, Spanish officials entered
into a myriad of asientos every year,
contracting for items as diverse as gun-
powder or ships’ biscuits, granting
each individual lease to the highest
bidder, always provided that they were
Spanish subjects. One of the few
exceptions to this nationality rule was
the cruel business of furnishing slaves,
because Spain maintained no slaving-
stations in West Africa, so that foreign
interests would of necessity have to be
involved. Therefore, while the titular
holder of a slave asiento might be a
Spanish national, the captives them-
selves would have to be provided by
an international cartel.
Such traffic was doubly attractive to
foreign merchants, for beyond its
obvious profitability, their vessels also
gained access into Spanish-American
ports which would otherwise be closed
to them. Thus, transporting slaves
offered a lucrative sideline in large-
scale contraband trade, payable directly
in silver or gold specie. The Dutch
profited handsomely from such con-
tacts over many years, and eventually
had competition from the English, for
whom the term asiento (usually written
as assiento) was only ever synonymous
with slaving. For example, after
England’s Royal African Company had
secured a sub-contract to supply Dutch
representatives (known as ‘‘factors’’)
out of Port Royal, the planter-
dominated Council and Assembly of
Jamaica elevated the following com-
plaint on July 26, 1689 (O.S.), to King
James II:
 Astorga, Juan De (fl. 1689
1723) 487

Before the Assiento was settled here, ASTORGA, JUAN DE

the royal frigates were employed in
convoying shiploads of the choicest
(fl. 1689
1723)
Negroes to the Spaniards. After it
Mexican privateer who fought to re-
was settled, the Negroes were
claim the Laguna de T
erminos from
picked to suit the Spaniards, the
foreign logwood cutters.
factors and their particular friends
As a young militia volunteer growing
still reaping all the benefit, the
up in the vulnerable coastal province of
Dutch factors for the Assiento
Tabasco, Astorga had been deputized as
allowing these gentlemen 35 per
early as December 3, 1689, to subdue
cent; and now it is feared that the
rebellious natives roaming around the
Dutch have quite taken the whole
Usumacinta River’s headwaters. A year-
trade from us.
and-a-half later, he had also been
appointed as royal tax-collector and as-
Despite such sentiments, more than two
sistant alcalde mayor for Chontalpa.
decades later Governor Lord Archibald
Yet it was not until he ventured by sea
Hamilton would express the following
into neighboring Yucat
an a dozen years
opinion to the Council of Trade and
afterward that Astorga, as the head of
Plantations in London, during the final
a group of Tabascan volunteer rein-
year of Queen Anne’s War:
forcements early during Queen Anne’s
War, that Astorga came to the attention
As to improvements by trade, I am
of the Spanish provincial Governor
told the flourishing time of this col-
Martı́n de Urs
ua Arizmendi, Conde de
ony was when the Assiento was set-
Liz
arraga.
tled here; which the French have
Issued a privateering commission to
now the advantage of. If a favorable
patrol the Gulf Coast as of September
opportunity offers (which probably
20, 1707, Astorga had served in vari-
may at the conclusion of peace), I
ous naval capacities; until almost a
cannot doubt but Your Lordships
decade later (December 1716) he sailed
will contribute as much as you can
as second-in-command of 150 Tabas-
to the re-establishment of it here
can volunteers aboard 11 piraguas,
upon a like bottom; the advantage
raised to help Campeche’s sargento
whereof will center in Great Britain.
mayor Alonso Felipe de Andrade re-
claim the Laguna de T
erminos from its
See also longtime foreign occupation by log-
wood cutters. After successfully seizing
Asiento (Volume 1). its main entry-channel, the sargento
mayor then placed Astorga in com-
Reference mand of El Carmen’s small coast-
guard galliot as of February 15, 1717;
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, Governor Juan Jos
e de V
ertiz of
America and West Indies, Volumes 13, Yucat
an then promoted him to com-
26 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery mand an even larger provincial coast-
Office, 1901
1925). guard galliot Nuestra Se~ nora de
488 Auger, John (fl. 1718)
Guadalupe on October 11, 1718.
Astorga remained as Captain of this
vessel, patrolling out of Campeche
until January 10, 1723, when he trav-
eled to Madrid in hopes of further
advancement.
See also
Andrade, Alonso Felipe de; Laguna de
T
erminos; Logwood; Piragua.
Reference
Archive of Indies (Seville), Indiferente
General 141, Number 108.
AUGER, JOHN (fl. 1718)
Reformed Bahamian privateer, who
quickly reverted to piracy.
During the late summer of 1718,
the newly-arrived Governor Woodes
Rogers of the Bahamas entrusted
Auger—an ex-pirate who had embraced
the royal ‘‘act of grace’’ or amnesty for
such criminal acts—with a cargo for a
trading voyage on behalf of that colony.
However, once at sea, Auger and his
men had reverted to their old ways
aboard their sloop Mary. On October 6,
1718 (O.S.), they sighted the Bahamian
sloops Lancaster and Batchelor’s
Adventure off Green Cay, capturing and
pillaging them of ‘‘money and goods, to
the value of 500 pounds.’’ Auger fur-
thermore persuaded many of the captive
crewmen to join them on a piratical
cruise, marooning Captain James Kerr
and several loyal hands as they sailed
away southward from Green Cay.
But while steering toward His-
paniola, they were struck by a hurri-
cane, and so the dismasted Mary was
driven back to desolate Exuma Island.
Governor Rogers had in the meantime
commissioned Captain Benjamin Horni-
gold to sail with three sloops in pursuit
of these renegades, and bring in Auger
to stand trial. Having learned where
the pirates were sheltered, Hornigold
circled past and approached Exuma out
of the south at dusk, giving the impres-
sion that his sloops were a convoy of
Spanish island-traders.
Auger and his pirates consequently
sallied aboard one of their captive
sloops, blundering into Hornigold’s
trap. A dozen were killed outright by
his opening broadside, the rest rounded
and brought into Nassau before the end
of November 1718. Lacking any civil-
ian judicial authority, Rogers tried them
on December 8
10, 1718 (O.S.), under
Admiralty law in the guard-room at Fort
Nassau, in his capacity as Governor.
AUGERS OR AUGIERS,
CHEVALIER DE (fl. 1696)
French naval officer, who was piloted
by the rogue privateer John Phillip
Beare in a strike against La Guaira,
late during King William’s War.
Information about Des Augers’
ancestry, birth, and early life are
unknown. We first hear of him when
he was appointed as an Ensign in
France’s Royal Navy in 1675, and two
years later the young officer was shot
in the jaw during the initial, bloody
attack against the Dutch defenses on
Tobago Island led by Vice Admiral
Jean, Comte d’Estr
ees, in March 1677.
Once recuperated from his injury, and
hostilities having ceased, Des Augers
became an aide-major as of January 3,
1680; and a junior Captain (capitaine
 Augers or Augiers, Chevalier De (fl. 1696)
de fr
egate) in France’s Royal Navy as
of July 21, 1684.
When the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes was announced in October
1685—the ‘‘Sun King’’ Louis XIV hav-
ing decided to ban all Protestant rites
and banish their ministers from French
soil forever—the ‘‘Sieur Desaugers’’
was employed in the subsequent gov-
ernment clamp-down, apparently serv-
ing as a loyal Catholic officer. Being
aide-mayor de la Marine for the seaport
of Rochefort, he was promoted that
same month from command of the cor-
vette Marguerite to the 12-gun, 100-ton
frigate Gaillarde, and directed to patrol
the waters off that harbor with both
warships so as to ensure that no mass
exodus of Huguenots could occur from
France for foreign parts.
Des Augers then became a senior
Captain (capitaine de vaisseau) in the
Navy as of January 10, 1687, and
when fighting flared against The
Netherlands, England, and Spain a cou-
ple of years later, he fought in several
major actions. The defeats suffered by
the main French battle-fleet during the
spring of 1692, prompted the Crown to
alter its naval strategy—away from set-
piece battles, in which it was clearly
overmatched by the English and Dutch,
to instead opt for swift squadron-
sorties and commerce raids. Des
Augers commanded one of the very
earliest of such sallies, when he exited
from Saint-Malo that same summer of
1692 to prowl off Cape Finisterre with
two surviving ships from the recent
disasters at Barfleur and La Hogue
with his own 52-gun, 700-ton flagship
Maure, the 50-gun, 800-ton Mod
er

e of
Captain d’Evry, plus another 48-gun
ship under the veteran commander
Claude, Chevalier de Forbin. This trio
489
spotted an 80-ship convoy off The Liz-
ard and engaged on August 31, 1692,
only to be repelled.
Des Augers nonetheless remained
on patrol off Cape Finisterre for more
than another month, while D’Evry’s
and Forbin’s ships were replaced by
three 28-gun frigates under Captains de
Serpaut, De Vignau, and the Chevalier
d’Amont. This quartet intercepted
another convoy of 22 Dutch wheat-
ships bound from Bilbao into Cadiz,
sinking its 50-gun escort after a fierce
four-hour battle, and carrying four
prizes back into Rochefort. Because of
this triumph, Des Augers was invested
with a knighthood in the newly-created
Order of Saint-Louis on May 8, 1693,
so that he would henceforth become
more commonly known as the ‘‘Cheva-
lier des Augers.’’
West Indian Forays
(1695
1697)
As the sixth year of King William’s War
was just winding down, the Chevalier
made the first of two significant voyages
into the Antilles. Late in the autumn of
1695, as the European campaigning sea-
son was drawing to a close with the
approach of winter, he was given com-
mand of the 44-gun, 750-ton Cheval
Marin, as well as the 36-gun, 300-ton,
Bayonne-built frigates Aigle and Favori,
with orders to depart that same Novem-
ber and transport François-Roger Robert
across the Atlantic to serve as Intendant
at Martinique, as well as troop reinforce-
ments aboard his small squadron. Once
in the Windward Islands, Des Augers
would also, over the course of that ensu-
ing winter, evacuate the French colonists
from Sainte-Croix, and escort a convoy
490 Augers or Augiers, Chevalier De (fl. 1696)
of merchantmen to Sainte-Domingue,
earning high praise from both Robert and
Governor Jean-Baptiste Ducasse. In par-
ticular, the Intendant singled out Des
Augers’ ability to keep his crews healthy
in the warm Antillean theatre, while
favorably contrasting his professional
conduct against other French naval offi-
cers, who found excuses to remain in
port so as to conduct their own private
business or pursue pleasures.
On regaining France in the spring of
1696, Des Augers’s reputation was so
enhanced that he was given command
of an even more powerful squadron
that same July: the 68-gun, 1,100-ton
flagship Bourbon; the 52-gun, 800-ton
Bon; the 36-gun frigates Aigle and
Favori, as well as the 32-gun, 300-ton
Badine; and the 30-gun, 500-ton fl^ ute
Loire. Des Augers’ operational instruc-
tions were apparently drawn up person-
ally by the French Minister of Marine,
Louis de Ph
elypeaux, Comte de
Pontchartrain. On reaching the Lesser
Antilles, he was to immediately detach
a frigate for L
eog^ane with dispatches
for Ducasse, then patrol with the re-
mainder of his squadron off Puerto
Rico, in hopes of intercepting the
Spaniards’ West Indian naval detach-
ment, the Armada de Barlovento. After
that, Des Augers was to tack back
upwind and scour the Venezuelan
coast, before proceeding downwind
again to Sainte-Domingue, where he
might participate in a joint operation in
conjunction with Ducasse, if they could
agree on a strategy. Lastly, Des Augers
was to escort home the annual French
merchant-convoy departing Sainte-
Domingue, cruising briefly for prizes
in the Gulf of Honduras and Bahama
Channel during this passage, to see if
any opportunities might arise.
Clearing from La Rochelle, the
Chevalier reached French-held Grenada
by October 3, 1696, weighing again two
days later with the frigate Aigle recon-
noitering ahead of his main force. It
soon returned to report that the Armada
de Barlovento had already visited
Puerto Rico that previous month, while
the Spanish treasure-fleet remained idle
in Havana, unlikely to depart any time
soon. The Commodore consequently
detached Badine and Loire toward
L
eog^ane, while steering with his four
large warships for the Spanish Main.
Piloted by the renegade English rover
John Philip Beare, who had also served
as a Spanish-American corsair, the
Chevalier des Augers’ four warships
dropped anchor on October 26, 1696, off
the Venezuelan roadstead of La Guaira,
masquerading as the Armada de Barlo-
vento. Next day, they captured the
unwary 40-gun ship Santo Cristo de
Maracaibo of Captain Francisco de
C
ordova, which was serving as the an-
nual Spanish vessel used to resupply and
carry home the produce of Margarita
Island, hence known as the patache de
Margarita. This very rich prize was cut
out before La Guaira’s startled batteries
could react, and sailed to France when
Des Augers returned early next year. On
Tuesday, February 26, 1697, a delighted
Louis informed some of his courtiers at
Versailles that he had previously heard
that:
. . . the Chevalier des Augers, who
commanded a small squadron of his
[i.e., the King’s] ships, had taken a
very rich prize, whose value totaled
eight to ten million; but that today
he has learned the truth of this affair,
which was that the Chevalier des
Augers has taken a Spanish ship,

aboard which were 600,000 pesos
and more than 200,000 e
cus worth of
merchandise. The Chevalier des
Augers had transferred the money
aboard the King’s ships, and left the
merchandise aboard the Spanish ship,
which was being brought along, yet
did not sail as well as ours.
Pleased with his sea-officer’s exploit,
the King added next day that ‘‘by right,
M. l’Amiral was not to have any share in
this capture, but even so, he would give
him the same portion as if to a ship fitted
out by private interests.’’
See also
Beare, John Philip.
References
Archives Nationales (France), Colonel, B
18 and C8A 9, ff. 330
331, as well as
Marine B2 113, ff. 12
22 and Marine
B4 17, ff. 362
367v.
Journal du Philippe de Courcillon, marquis
de Dageneau,Volume 6 (Paris: Firmin
Didot Freres, 1856).
Pritchard, James S., In Search of Empire:
The French in the Americas, 1670
1730
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004).
AVESILLA, ALONSO DE
(fl. 1683)
Spanish renegade who served the
French of Saint-Domingue against his
compatriots.
Avesilla was originally from Saint
Augustine, Florida, but changed sides
for unknown reasons. When the pirate
galliot of Nicolas Brigaut made a
Aviso 491
descent early in May 1686 on Ma-
tanzas, 15 miles south of Saint Augus-
tine, the Spaniards became convinced
that the hand of Avesilla lay behind it.
The raiders ran aground on the bar at the
mouth of the bay, forcing them to aban-
don ship and retreat along the coast, in
hopes of being rescued by their consorts.
The Governor of Saint Augustine sent a
column of troops in pursuit, who over-
took the French in the vicinity of pres-
ent-day Daytona Beach, and massacred
them almost to the last man. One of
three survivors was Brigaut, who was
carried before the Governor for interrog-
ation. When asked if he knew of Ave-
silla, he ‘‘replied that he had known him
well, before his death two and a half
years ago in Petit-Go^ave.’’
Reference
Weddle, Robert S., Wilderness Manhunt:
The Spanish Search for La Salle (Austin,
TX: University of Texas Press, 1973).
AVISO
Spanish word for a dispatch-vessel or
mail-boat, derived from the verb avi-
sar, meaning ‘‘to advise or forewarn.’’
Whenever a fleet was scheduled to
depart, or some other major event was
about to occur, it had long ago become
customary to send out an aviso to give
advance notice. These were usually
small private vessels hired specifically
for this voyage, yet departures became
so regular out of such busy ports as
Cadiz, Cartagena, or Veracruz, as to
constitute a semi-official mail service.
Once at sea, avisos carried their dis-
patches in small wooden chests,
weighted so as to be thrown overboard
492 Azogue

at any threat of capture. Because References

attacks happened with such frequency
during the late 17th and early 18th Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
centuries, both Spanish Crown officials America and West Indies, Volume 14
and private citizens routinely wrote (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
their letters in triplicate or even quad- Office, 1903).
ruplicate, sending copies on successive Collections of the South Carolina
avisos so as to ensure safe delivery. Historical Society, Volume I
(Charleston: Historical Society, 1857).
As many others, this expression had
passed directly into the English lan-
guage. For example, Edward Randolph
concluded a lengthy letter from Char-
AZOGUE
leston in South Carolina to the Earl of
Spanish word for mercury or quicksil-
Bridgewater on March 22, 1699 (O.S.),
ver, but which also came to be applied
with a request:
to the ships that conveyed this product
across the Atlantic for the Crown.
. . . that he may have another vessel
Mercury was a vital ingredient for
drawing less water than the Swift
refining American ores during the 17th
avice-boat, lost by the carelessness
century, being used to separate silver from
of the commander in Virginia last
other unwanted materials. Peru had its
winter, with liberty to have another
own source of azogue at Huancavelica,
coaster well acquainted with the
but Mexico’s had to be imported across
dangerous flats and sands from this
the ocean from the royal mines of
place to New England.
Almad
en in southwestern Spain. A pair of
merchantmen was usually hired to per-
The spelling more usually was ren-
form this duty, being selected for their
dered as ‘‘advice,’’ of which many
strength, speed, and soundness, and sailing
instances abound. In June 1693, as
independently of the annual plate fleets.
King William’s War was entering into
Such azogue or ‘‘quicksilver’’ ships
its fourth year, Benjamin Skutt peti-
proved valuable prizes, as their cargos
tioned the Crown in London that:
were in great demand in Spanish Amer-
ica, and they were also occasionally used
. . . in consequence of the losses of
to convey portions of the King’s bullion
West Indian merchants, he may
on their return-passages toward Spain.
have a license for his advice boat of
The Marı´a was one such vessel, outward
150 tons and 16 guns to sail to and
bound from Seville with a cargo of 1,000
from Barbados, also a commission
quintals of mercury and other merchan-
for her as a private man o’ war, and
dise, when it was intercepted by the pri-
immunity from embargo or press
vateer Captain Cooper and carried into
gang.
Port Royal, Jamaica, in October 1663.

See also See also

Aviso (Volume 1). Azogue (Volume 1).
 B

You sail in merchantmen for 25 shillings a month,

and here you may have seven or eight pounds
a month, if you can take it.
—Pirate appeal to captive crewmen of the merchant
pink Baltimore off Carolina, April 1700

BAB-EL-MANDEB However, the name Bab-el-Mandeb

Arabic name for the narrow strait leading
into the Red Sea, meaning the ‘‘Gate of
Tears’’ because of its difficult navigation.
During the late 17th century such rich
and vulnerable maritime traffic funneled
between Arabia and India through this 20-
mile-wide waterway, it became a favorite
hunting-ground for pirates. For example, a
wealthy English merchant named Henry
Watson—bound toward Bombay with his
trade-goods aboard the ships Ruparrel and
Calicut—later reported how: ‘‘On 15 Au-
gust [1696 O.S.], both ships were taken by
a pirate which came out of the Babs.’’
They were in fact two small freebooter
vessels operating under Captain John
Hoar, who conveyed these prizes into
Aden in expectation of receiving a ran-
som, and burnt them when it was not
forthcoming.
long preceded this 17th-century plague of
piracy, referring instead to its strong cur-
rents and counter-currents, which so often
frustrated seafarers. The strait itself is sub-
divided into two channels by the island of
Perim: the shallow, two-mile-wide east-
ern channel is characterized by a surface
current flowing into the Red Sea, while
the deep, 16-mile-wide western channel
has a strong undercurrent outward.
See also
Hoar, John.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 16
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1905).

493
494 Baldridge, Adam (fl. 1690
1697)
BALDRIDGE, ADAM
(fl. 1690
1697)
Rover who settled on Saint Mary’s
Island off Madagascar off southeastern
Africa, which he transformed into a
haven for passing Red Sea pirates.
According to a deposition which he
gave before Governor Richard, Lord
Bellomont, almost nine years later in
New York City, Baldridge had first
arrived at Saint Mary’s Island on
July 17, 1690 (O.S.), aboard the ship
Fortune, commanded by Richard Con-
yers. Being ‘‘minded to settle among the
Negroes at St. Marie’s with two men
more, they had left Conyers’ ship
on January 7, 1691 (O.S.), after which
Fortune sailed away for Port Dauphin
and was wrecked three-and-a-half
months later, about half its crew being
drowned. I continued with the Negros at
St. Maries and went to War with them.’’
Reference
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
BANDA DEL NORTE
Spanish expression meaning ‘‘Northern
Shoreline,’’ which is how they referred
to the intruder French settlements en-
sconced along the north coast of His-
paniola, home to so many fierce rovers.
For example, when the Ecuadorian
Governor Dionisio de Alsedo y Herrera
described to the Council of Indies in Ma-
drid the penetration of Edward Davis’
36-gun Batchelor’s Delight and 16-gun
Revenge through the Strait of Magellan
in 1684, he noted how this Englishman
had then employed his force:
. . . to make several prizes and so
put together a fleet of eleven vessels,
which he armed and manned with
people from Jamaica and flibustiers
from the Banda del Norte, who had
passed over and were taken aboard
via the well-known narrows and easy
landing-spot of Dari
en.
See also
Darien Colony; Davis, Edward; Flibustier.
Reference
Alsedo y Herrera, Dionisio de, Compendio
hist

orico de la provincia, partidos,
ciudades, astilleros, rı´os y puerto de
Guayaquil en las costas de la Mar del
Sur (Madrid: Manuel Fern
andez, 1741).
BANNISTER, JOSEPH
(fl. 1680
1687)
English sea-captain turned pirate.
Bannister was first mentioned while
lying in Port Royal roads on March
23, 1680 (O.S.), when the log of the
28-gun HMS Hunter recorded:
At six this morning the Golden
Fleece of 30 guns, Captain Bannister
commander, overset at an anchor in
the harbor, no current nor wind, but
her men going over her side to scrape
her, made a sally that the guns and
other weight aloft gave way at once.
The captain saved himself out of the
mizzen shrouds; the purser, gunner,

and doctor, with five others and a
Negro, were drowned.
Helped by Hunter, Bannister refloated
his ship, and next spring was again bring-
ing passengers into port.
However, his notoriety dates from
June 11, 1684, when out of financial
hardship he ‘‘ran away’’ with Golden
Fleece, supposedly bound for New
England, but instead assembling a crew
out of sloops about Jamaica—115 of
‘‘the veriest rogues in these Indies,’’
according to the outraged Gov. Sir
Thomas Lynch, who furthermore believed
that Bannister had procured a French pri-
vateering commission, despite such an act
being prohibited to English subjects.
Lynch wrote to his counterpart Pierre-Paul
Tarrin de Cussy, Governor of Saint-Dom-
ingue, beseeching him ‘‘to give none to
Bannister, Coxon, or any other English-
man.’’ Within less than two months,
Bannister was caught when the 48-gun
HMS Ruby and 4-gun Bonito visited the
Cayman Islands, accompanied by a
barco luengo. They found the Golden
Fleece close inshore with its crew tur-
tling, easily securing all hands.
The night of August 25, 1684, the
prize was brought back into Port
Royal, and an Admiralty Court soon
convened. ‘‘We conclude they’ll be
found guilty of piracy,’’ Lynch wrote
to his superiors. Bannister was charged
with securing a commission at Saint-
Domingue, it being then a felony under
Jamaican law ‘‘for any person to serve
under any foreign prince or state,’’ as a
means of restricting privateer activities;
yet although he had approached the
French Governor for just such a patent,
this had been denied to him. Bannister
was therefore accused of unlawfully
attacking Spaniards irregardless, as two
Bannister, Joseph (fl. 1680
1687) 495
from a captured canoe had been found
aboard his Golden Fleece; yet Bannis-
ter contrived to borrow money and pay
off these two prisoners, who swore
‘‘backward and forward’’ in court that
they had not been held against their
will, so that the trial ended with all
charges being dropped.
Lynch was a sick man, and his vexa-
tion at this verdict created ‘‘such distur-
bance of mind’’ that a week later, he
died. His successor, Lieutenant-Gov.
Hender Molesworth, attempted to per-
suade the jury to reconsider its decision,
but making no headway, bound Bannis-
ter ‘‘over in good security’’ until another
court could be convened. He was espe-
cially galled to hear that Bannister had
‘‘threatened Captain David Mitchell [of
HMS Ruby] with an action for damages,
as though he were the honestest man in
the world.’’
Meanwhile, Bannister fitted out
Golden Fleece with ‘‘another master
and sent the ship to London, but without
profit; then he was in treaty with the
Spaniards, but without success.’’ These
failures compounded Bannister’s finan-
cial woes, leading him to rush the har-
bor mouth ‘‘in a desperate, resolute
manner’’ one dark night in early Febru-
ary 1685. The land batteries reacted
slowly because of ‘‘carelessness of the
sentries and darkness of the night,’’
only managing to strike Golden Fleece
three times. Bannister had allegedly
placed about 50 men in his hold, with
‘‘plugs of all sizes wherewith to stop
any breach.’’ Furious, Molesworth sent
the tiny Bonito in pursuit, which found
itself ‘‘unable to do more against a ship
of her size and strength’’ than fire a few
warning rounds, then send Bannister a
note saying that he would be treated as
a pirate unless he returned. Bannister
496 Bannister, Joseph (fl. 1680
1687)
replied that he had ‘‘done no piratical
act as yet and intended to do none, but
his design was for the Bay of Honduras
for logwood.’’
This assertion was disproved three
months later, when Mitchell saw
Bannister’s ship lying among a huge
throng of freebooters off ^Ile a Vache.
The corsair gathering included the
‘‘Chevalier’’ de Grammont, Laurens de
Graaf, and Jan Willems, whose collec-
tive strength intimidated even Ruby’s
commander. Mitchell visited Gram-
mont and asked that Bannister be
arrested for serving under a foreign
commission, but the flibustier com-
mander insisted that the English rene-
gade had not entered French service,
and Mitchell ‘‘thought it best not to
insist further.’’ The freebooters were
actually assembling for a raid against
the Mexican port of Campeche, and by
early June had transferred to the Yuca-
tan coast to finalize their arrangements.
It is almost certain that Bannister was
among the pirates who appeared before
Campeche on the afternoon of July 6,
1685, overrunning the city next day.
Such was the raiders’ strength that they
remained in undisputed possession
until early September, by which time
Campeche had been stripped bare.
Booty was disappointing among so
many, and the ships worked their way
back around Yucatan to Isla Mujeres
before dispersing.
Bannister continued upwind, being
sighted to leeward of Jamaica in late
November 1685. As Ruby was being
careened, Mitchell hired two sloops
and manned them from his own crew,
but Golden Fleece had disappeared
northeastward by the time they sortied.
On January 20, 1686, Governor de
Cussy wrote to his Spanish opposite
number at Santo Domingo: ‘‘I have
been advised one named Bannister has
arrived at Petit-Go^ave, with a ship of
36 guns.’’ The French official prom-
ised to disarm this vessel, or at least
prevent it from sailing under French
colors, although the Spaniard remained
skeptical. Soon, Bannister was operat-
ing out of Saman
a Bay, snapping up
prizes in the Mona Passage.
When news of his activity reached
Jamaica in May 1686, Molesworth sent
out Captain Charles Talbot’s HMS
Falcon and Captain Thomas Spragge’s
HMS Drake, who had supplanted Ruby
on that station. The two caught Bannis-
ter on July 4, 1686, as he was prepar-
ing to careen in a deep bay along with
a small prize. The corsair had mounted
two batteries ashore and gave the Eng-
lish frigates a hostile reception, but they
fought in as close as the water would
allow, sinking and beating ‘‘almost to
pieces the buccaneer’s ships.’’ Drake suf-
fered 13 killed and wounded, Falcon 10,
in an exchange which only ended when
the attackers ran out of ammunition.
Returning to Port Royal in early July,
Talbot and Spragge were censured for
not having utterly destroyed Bannister.
They therefore rearmed and went back
to Saman
a Bay, where they discovered
the renegade had torched his shattered
Golden Fleece and then sailed away in
his prize. (Five months later, the treas-
ure hunter Sir William Phips came
upon the remains, describing it as ‘‘a
wreck in four fathom water, and burnt
down to her gun-deck, judging her to
be a ship about 400 tons. Likewise
found two or three iron shot which had
ye broad arrow upon them’’—the dis-
tinctive device of the Royal Navy.)
Bannister apparently fled under an
assumed name to the Mosquito Coast

with some followers, but a few months
later was captured by Spragge. Bearing
specific instructions from Molesworth,
the Royal Navy Captain sailed back into
Port Royal on January 28, 1687 (O.S.),
with the corpses of Bannister and his
lieutenants dangling from Drake’s yard-
arms. The delighted Governor declared
this to be ‘‘a spectacle of great satisfac-
tion to all good people, and of terror to
the favorers of pirates.’’
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Earle, Peter, The Treasure of the
Concepci
on: The Wreck of the Almiranta
(New York: Viking, 1980).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
BARCA, ESTEBAN DE LA
See La Barca, Esteban de
BARCO LUENGO OR
LONGO
Spanish expression, which when trans-
lated literally means ‘‘long boat,’’ yet
in fact referred to a specific type of
galliot or oared sailing vessel.
Barlovento, Armada De 497
Because of their shallow draft and
their combined means of propulsion,
they were ideally suited for service
among the shallow West Indian shore-
lines. The Santiago was one such ves-
sel, having been launched at Anoeta
outside San Sebasti
an in Spain in May
1686, specifically to accompany the
Biscayan privateers to the New World.
It measured roughly 51 feet [28 codos]
along its keel, and 16-and-a-half feet in
breadth; it was pierced for 32 sweeps,
rated at 30 tons, and bore a crew of 53
men. Significantly, it was most often
described as a galera or ‘‘galley’’ in the
subsequent records of that expedition.
The proliferation of barcos luengos
in the Americas led to this expression
entering the English language, with
many different spellings.
References
Garmendia Arruabarrena, Jos
e, ‘‘Armadores
y armadas de Guip
uzcoa, 1689
1692,’’
Boletı´n de Estudios Hist
oricos de San
Sebasti
an (San Sebasti
an: Biblioteca de
la Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos
del Paı́s, 1985), pp. 259
277.
Laburu Mateo, Miguel, Breve vocabulario
que contiene t
erminos empleados en
documentos marı´timos antiguos (San
Sebasti
an: Departamento de Cultura y
Turismo, Diputaci
on Foral de
Gipuzkoa, 1990).
BARLOVENTO,
ARMADA DE
Spanish naval squadron—its name liter-
ally meant ‘‘Windward Fleet’’—which
defended the Caribbean against pirates
and smugglers.
498 Barlovento, Armada De
Search for La Salle and Other
Cruises (1685
1687)
From Pierre Bot and other prisoners, the
Spanish authorities learned that a French
colonizing expedition under Ren
e Robert
Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, had settled
the previous year on the northern shores
of the Gulf of Mexico. Alarmed at this
impingement on their territory, they
detached the chief pilot of Soledad, Juan
Enrı́quez Barroto, and Antonio Romero
of Concepci
on to make a reconnaissance
from Havana. They therefore sailed from
Veracruz on November 21, 1685, aboard
Gaspar de Acosta’s Nuestra Se~ nora del
Carmen, reaching the Cuban capital
on December 3rd, where they hired a
small frigate and explored the Gulf
Coast, returning to Veracruz on March
13, 1686, without having sighted any
settlement.
Meanwhile, the Armada courts-martial
had been held, and although Astina had
been condemned to a two-year suspen-
sion of duties, he nonetheless remained in
command of the Armada for lack of a
substitute. The Soledad and Honh
on had
been sold off, while Sevillano sank at
anchor during a norther. Captain Benito
Alonso Barroso made a sally with the
prize-ship Regla, now incorporated into
the Armada, to capture a smuggler
with an English and Dutch crew off Coat-
zacoalcos in April 1686. Then, Astina
sortied on May 6th with his flagship,
vice-flag, and Regla to escort the quick-
silver-ship Santa Teresa across to
Havana. Having completed this mission,
he searched the Laguna de T
erminos, Isla
Mujeres, Guanaja, Utila, and Roat
an,
returning to Veracruz more than four
months later ‘‘mortified at not having
found enemies with which to have
encounters.’’ A lengthy refit ensued, fur-
ther delayed when Captain Francisco
L
opez de G
omara’s pink sent to Havana
for spars, sank in a storm.
A second exploratory expedition
was also organized with two specially-
constructed piraguas, Nuestra Se~ nora
del Rosario commanded by Captain
Martı́n de Rivas, and Nuestra Se~ nora
de la Esperanza under Pedro de Iriarte.
In addition to these two officers, the
Armada furnished 130 crewmen for the
craft, which departed Veracruz in
search of La Salle on Christmas Day
1686. The remaining men rioted in
May 1687, angered by their lack of
pay, enforced idleness, and the arrival
at Veracruz of rival Biscayan priva-
teers. Some 200 Armada sailors and
Marines consequently deserted en
masse, and the remaining mutineers
were put down with three fatalities. To
keep the men occupied, the flagship,
Regla, and tender Santo Cristo de Leso
put out on June 14, 1687, carrying sit-
uados for Havana, Puerto Rico, and
Santo Domingo under Captain Andr
es
de Arriola, as Astina’s suspension from
duties now took effect. (He spent it
commanding one of the Pacific gal-
leons which plied between Acapulco
and Manila, making the fastest crossing
in history.) The Santo Cristo de San
Rom
an and a patache also departed
under Captains L
opez de G
omara and
Andr
es de Pez, as a third exploratory
expedition toward the Mississippi.
Fourth Fleet (1687
1689)
In mid-September 1687, there arrived at
Veracruz the new Armada commander-
in-chief Jacinto Lope Gij
on, escorting
the annual plate fleet from Spain with

his 300-ton frigates San Jos
e (alias
Marabuto) and San Nicol
as. After a few
local forays, he sailed again on June 29,
1688, convoying the plate fleet across
to Havana with his flagship Santo
Cristo de Burgos, vice-flag Marabuto,
San Nicol
as as gobierno under his son
Sebasti
an Gij
on, Regla commanded by
Arriola, the auxiliary Santo Cristo de
San Rom
an, and two piraguas. They
reached the Cuban port 40 days later,
where they paused briefly, before con-
tinuing to Aguada at Puerto Rico with
the situados. Here, Gij
on fell into a dis-
pute with Gov. Gaspar Martı́nez de
Andino, refusing to help drive some for-
eign interlopers from Vieques Island.
Instead, he set sail for Santo Domingo
on September 29, 1688, anchoring in
Ocoa Bay while Regla and Santo Cristo
de San Rom
an entered to deliver the
situados.
The Armada then cleared for the
Main, arriving off Santa Marta, and
then learned of a Dutch intruder near
that coast. Arriola captured this vessel
of 250 tons and 24 guns, and incorpo-
rated it into the squadron with the
name San Francisco Xavier. After
touching at Cartagena, Gij
on joined the
annual galeones at Portobelo. In the
latter days of 1688, his warships pa-
trolled off Golden and Santa Catalina
Islands, finding them uninhabited
except for a small ketch, which was
captured, at the latter place. The Ar-
mada then returned to Veracruz in
early January 1689, where it underwent
a lengthy overhaul. Santo Cristo de
Burgos, Regla, and Santo Cristo de
Leso were all retired, leaving Marabuto
as flagship, with San Nicol
as, San
Francisco Xavier, and Santo Cristo de
San Rom
an.
Barlovento, Armada De 499
Gij
on did not sortie again until July
30, 1689, by which time news of the
outbreak of the War of the League of
Augsburg had reached New Spain. He
convoyed two quicksilver ships across
to Havana, afterward proceeding to
San Juan de Puerto Rico to deliver sit-
uados. Arriving on November 9th, he
was again enjoined to clear Vieques
Island, for which he detached the men-
of-war of Sebasti
an and Pedro de
Astina to make a reconnaissance. They
found only abandoned huts, which they
torched before the Armada called at
Santo Domingo with the remaining sit-
uados, then prowled the southern
Cuban coast from Cape Cruz past the
Cayman Islands to Cape Catoche. After
passing Campeche, they returned into
Veracruz in early February 1690.
First Saint-Domingue
Campaign (1690
1691)
The new 140-ton Nuestra Se~ nora de la
Concepci
on, built at Campeche, was
incorporated into the Armada, and
Gij
on put to sea once more on July 19,
1690. His flagship Marabuto was fol-
lowed by the vice-flag San Francisco
Xavier under L
opez de G
omara, San
Nicol
as of Bartolom
e Villar, Con-
cepci
on commanded by Sebasti
an
Gij
on, and Santo Cristo de San Rom
an,
with a total complement of 827 men.
The squadron accompanied the out-
ward-bound Spanish plate fleet across
to Havana, and then proceeded to
Puerto Rico with situados.
On November 9, 1690, Gij
on reached
Santo Domingo with a French prize of
16 guns, to find the inhabitants in an
uproar. An army under Pierre-Paul
500 Barlovento, Armada De
Tarrin de Cussy, Governor of the French
half of the island, had recently occupied
the inland town of Santiago de los Cabal-
leros. Faced with this crisis, the Span-
iards were galvanized into action. A host
of volunteers had been already mustered,
and 2,600 trooped aboard the Armada
vessels. They departed on December
21st, circling eastward round the island
while another Spanish army advanced
overland. Both contingents met near
Manzanillo Bay, and were confronted af-
ter landing by De Cussy with inferior
numbers. At the Battle of La Limonade
on January 21, 1691, the invaders won a
resounding victory, killing the French
Governor and more than 400 followers,
against only 47 Spanish dead. The
attackers then rampaged throughout the
island, making off with 130 slaves and
two vessels from Saint-Malo of 28 and
24 guns, while burning several more.
Flushed with this victory, the Armada
returned to Veracruz on March 10, 1691.
Cruises (1691
1693)
Gij
on retired at this juncture, being
then 70 years of age, and was tempo-
rarily replaced by Antonio de Astina,
who had completed his two-year sus-
pension from duty. After a refit, Astina
sortied on August 16, 1691, escorting a
plate fleet across to Havana. Arriving
on September 6th, he continued to
Puerto Rico with situados and then
departed San Juan on October 16th for
Santo Domingo. Another expedition
was being contemplated against French
Saint-Domingue, yet failed to material-
ize. Astina remained at anchor there
until April 1692, when he sailed down
the Cuban coast, and reached Veracruz
on the last day of May. The Armada
was now in desperate need of an over-
haul, so one of the Saint-Malo prizes
(renamed Nuestra Se~ nora de Atocha y
Santo Tom
as) was sent to the Cam-
peche yards, while other vessels were
repaired at Veracruz.
On October 19, 1692, Astina sailed
with San Nicol
as, Concepci
on, and
Santo Cristo de San Rom
an for Havana,
bearing the annual situados. He arrived
a month later, and on November 24th,
while in port, his ships were damaged
by a hurricane. He departed for Puerto
Rico in December, remaining at San
Juan all of January 1693, then contin-
ued to Santo Domingo, anchoring in
Ocoa Bay while Santo Cristo de San
Rom
an stood into the capital with the
payrolls. While waiting, Astina learned
of a Dutch smuggler in the Macorı́s
River, so sent Concepci
on under Cap-
tain Tom
as de Torres with a sloop and
two launches to intercept. The interloper
put up a stout resistance, and was con-
sumed in flames along with Con-
cepci
on, 49 Zeeland sailors perishing
during this action. The Spaniards were
only able to raise eight guns from the
wreckage of both vessels.
Astina sailed to Santa Marta on the
Main, then entered Cartagena on March
14, 1693. He made a sweep toward Por-
tobelo, seizing a French piragua with
seven crewmen before returning to Car-
tagena. He quit the Main for Cape
Catoche and Campeche, reentering Vera-
cruz on May 8th. During his absence, he
had been superseded, and the Armada
reconstituted.
Fifth Fleet (1693
1694)
On October 23, 1692, four days after
Astina’s departure, Francisco de Vivero

Galindo had arrived in New Spain with
the plate fleet, to assume the post of
new Armada commander-in-chief. The
local authorities assembled a force by
purchasing the 450-ton, South Ameri-
can-built Santo Cristo de Maracaibo
and Mexican-built Nuestra Se~ nora de
Guadalupe (alias Tocoluta), both part
of that year’s plate fleet, to serve with
the Armada. Vivero sailed on July 14,
1693, with his flag aboard Maracaibo
and San Nicol
as as vice-flag, accompa-
nied by Guadalupe, Atocha, and Santo
Cristo de San Rom
an.
His mission was to convoy the
homeward-bound plate fleet, as well as
deliver situados to Puerto Rico and
Santo Domingo, then join a combined
Anglo-Spanish assault against French
Saint-Domingue. Reaching Havana on
August 11, 1693, he continued toward
Puerto Rico, but was struck by a hurri-
cane in early September while travers-
ing the Old Bahama Channel. Atocha
and Santo Cristo de San Rom
an were
lost, the remaining three limping into
San Juan badly damaged. After repairs,
Vivero hastened to Santo Domingo,
only to learn that the anticipated union
with an English expedition had been can-
celled, because the latter had returned to
Europe after failing to overrun Martini-
que. Vivero therefore proceeded to the
Main, making several small captures
between Cartagena and Portobelo, before
returning to Veracruz on April 14, 1694.
Second Saint-Domingue
Campaign (1695)
Over the next several months, both
Vivero and Astina fell sick, dying early
the next year. Therefore, when the three
Barlovento, Armada De 501
Armada ships next put to sea in January
1695, they were commanded by Francisco
Cort
es. He deposited a situado at Havana
and then reconnoitered at Danish Saint
Thomas in the Virgin Islands before
putting into Puerto Rico. Crossing to
Santo Domingo, he joined up with two-
dozen vessels and almost 1,000 troops
brought out from England by Colonel
Luke Lillingston and Commodore
Robert Wilmot. A large Spanish contin-
gent from Santo Domingo had also
assembled, so that on May 15, 1695, this
huge force descended on Cap François
(modern Cap-Ha€tien), pushing aside the
heavily-outnumbered French defenders.
One month later, the invaders had fought
their way to Port de Paix, besieging
its garrison until July 15th, when they
were annihilated. After leveling the town,
the English and Spanish withdrew on
July 27th.
Cort
es’s trio of Armada warships
carried the Spanish wounded back
along the northern shore as far as Gua-
naxibez, before depositing them ashore,
and running downwind to Cuba.
After patrolling its southern coast, the
Armada touched at Cape Catoche and
Tabasco, before reentering Veracruz on
September 2, 1695. There, they found
three new men-of-war awaiting: Santı´-
sima Trinidad y Nuestra Se~ nora de
Atocha, of 56 guns and 500 tons, built
at Campeche; Nuestra Se~ nora del
Rosario y Santiago, of 42 guns and
450 tons, launched at Alvarado; and
Natividad de Nuestro Se~ nor Jesucristo
(literally, ‘‘Nativity of Our Lord Jesus
Christ’’), a Dutch prize so named
because it had been captured off Carta-
gena on Christmas Day 1692, and was
now converted into the Armada’s urca
or ‘‘store-ship.’’
502 Barlovento, Armada De
Defeat before Santo
Domingo (1697)
The Armada soon received new senior
officers as well, when Andr
es de Pez and
Guillermo Murphy arrived on September
28, 1695, aboard the plate fleet, the for-
mer to serve as commander-in-chief and
the second as almirante. After a lengthy
delay, the Armada finally sailed on Au-
gust 4, 1696, consisting of Trinidad (flag)
of 56 guns and 350 men; Maracaibo of
46 guns and 250 men; Rosario of 42 guns
and 240 men; Guadalupe of 26 guns and
130 men; and the recently-launched
Jes
us, Marı´a y Jos
e of 22 guns and 100
men. These vessels escorted the 26 sail of
two plate fleets across to Havana, arriv-
ing on August 25th. Traditionally, the Ar-
mada was to remain in company with
any plate fleet until it entered the Strait of
Florida on its homeward leg, yet after a
long layover, Pez decided to exit alone.
Consequently, he quit Havana on No-
vember 11, 1696, standing toward Puerto
Rico and arriving by December 15th. On
December 29th, the Armada departed for
Santo Domingo, en route intercepting the
French merchantmen Saint Louis and
Am
ericaine. Then, four large sail were
sighted off Caucedo Point on the morn-
ing of January 6, 1697, so that the
Armada bore down on the wind. The
strangers hoisted English and Dutch col-
ors, and after sending an officer aboard
to make an inspection, Pez proceeded on
his voyage. However, he had been duped,
these ships actually being the French
royal warships Bourbon of 58 guns, Bon
of 52, Favorite of 36, and Badine or
‘‘Playful’’ of 24. They stole down on his
formation that night with the weather
gauge, so that the Armada scattered in
panic. Pez made directly for Cuba, while
Murphy’s Maracaibo was captured,
Guadalupe and Jes
us Marı´a fled inshore,
and Francisco Buitr
on’s Rosario headed
for Santa Marta. Pez returned to Vera-
cruz on April 5, 1697, having failed to
deliver all his situados or reach the Main.
Almost a year later, he sailed again,
peace having meanwhile been reestab-
lished in Europe. Therefore, he left Vera-
cruz on May 28, 1698, with Trinidad,
Rosario, Guadalupe, and the 6-gun sloop
San Jos
e y las Animas, with a total of 670
men, to escort another plate fleet across
to Havana. He remained in the Cuban
capital most of July, before conducting
the plate fleet out into the Strait, and
intercepting a small English brigantine
which he carried into Santiago. From
there, his Armada reconnoitered Saint
Thomas, before making a lengthy layover
in San Juan de Puerto Rico. The Armada
then visited Santo Domingo before head-
ing for the Main, calling at Margarita,
Araya, Cuman
a, La Guaira, Rı́ohacha,
and Santa Marta (where a small sloop
was seized), before reaching Cartagena.
Dari
en Campaign (1699)
After his arrival, Pez received intelligence
of a new Scottish settlement at Dari
en. Af-
ter attempting to reinforce the Armada at
Cartagena, he sailed for Portobelo, which
he reached on January 16, 1699. Con-
vinced that his four warships were inad-
equate for a seaborne assault, he instead
proposed leading 500 men over the Isth-
mus to Panama, to form the nucleus of a
land attack. This plan was agreed to by
the President of Panama, Pedro Luis Enrı́-
quez, Conde de Canillas de Torneros, who
added two companies of regulars to the
expedition. Pez and his men left Panama

on March 9th, gathering volunteers as
they advanced; yet the jungle trails grew
increasingly difficult, particularly when
rains set in, so that progress halted two
leagues short of their objective.
Pez was hurried in his retreat by
rumors of an English squadron approach-
ing Portobelo, where he had left the
Armada careening its vessels. This threat
never materialized, but he had lost
90 men through desertion, and another
80 to illness. Despite being ordered by
Canillas to remain at anchor, Pez instead
chose to sail to Cartagena that summer,
arriving late in July. News was then
received that the Scots had abandoned
Dari
en because of disease, so he was free
to return to Veracruz. On reaching New
Spain on August 24, 1699, however, Pez
found that he was to be tried along with
Murphy for the loss of Rosario. Both
were duly incarcerated on San Juan de
Ul
ua to await transportation to Spain,
while Buitr
on assumed temporary com-
mand over the Armada’s remnants.
See also
Barlovento, Armada de (Volume 1).
References
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America. Translated from
the Dutch by Alexis Brown, with an
introduction by Jack Beeching (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Prebble, John, The Darien Disaster
(London: Secker & Warburg, 1968).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables, 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr
ua, 1972).
Rodrı́guez Demorizi, Emilio, Invasi

on
inglesa de 1655: notas adicionales de
Barre’s Tavern 503
Fray Cipriano de Utrera (Ciudad
Trujillo: Montalvo, 1957).
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am

erica Espa~nola (Madrid:
Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
Weddle, Robert S., Wilderness Manhunt:
The Spanish Search for La Salle (Austin,
TX: University of Texas Press, 1973).
BARRE’S TAVERN
One of the more genteel establishments
at rollicking Port Royal, Jamaica, noted
for its light refreshments: ‘‘silabubus
[sic], cream tarts and other quelque cho-
ses,’’ according to one satisfied patron.
(‘‘Sillabubs’’ or ‘‘syllabubs’’ were drinks
or dishes made by curdling cream or
milk with an admixture of wine, cider, or
some other acid, producing a soft curd
which was then whipped or solidified
with gelatin, to be sweetened or fla-
vored.) The name of this establishment
may actually have been ‘‘Barr
e’s Tav-
ern,’’ perhaps owned or operated by the
family of Charles de la Barr
e, Gov. Sir
Thomas Lynch’s French secretary.
See also
Barre’s Tavern (Volume 1).
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
504 Beare, John Philip (fl. 1684
1697)
BEARE, JOHN PHILIP
(fl. 1684
1697)
English mercenary who served under
three different flags in the West Indies.
English Service (1684
1687)
Beare was first heard from in early
October 1684, when he obtained a pri-
vateering commission from Gov. Sir
William Stapleton of the Leeward
Islands, and shortly thereafter put into
neutral Willemstad at Curaçao with his
sloop Betty, where he found the Span-
ish privateer Manuel Rodrı́guez riding
at anchor. Knowing this corsair to be
wanted for having seized the Royal
African Company sloop Africa between
Tortola and Saint John in the Virgin
Islands, Beare applied to the Dutch
Gov. Joan van Erpecum for permission
to detain Rodrı́guez and his ship,
which was refused. Beare therefore
stood out of the harbor, but so slowly
as to allow the Spaniard to overhaul
him and be overpowered. All the Span-
ish crew was set ashore, except one
man who ‘‘was kept to condemn the
prize’’ (i.e., testify at its adjudication
before an English court).
However, Beare then made the mis-
take of going ashore at the town of
Sint Kruis at the western tip of that
same island, where he was detained on
orders of the outraged Van Erpecum.
Betty’s first mate, Henry Cock, went
ashore to exhibit Beare’s commission,
yet was also held for two days. On the
mate’s release, Beare ‘‘sent orders
secretly to the ship to sail to Nevis’’
and acquaint Stapleton of his predica-
ment, which Cock eventually suc-
ceeded in doing by late December
1684. Stapleton dispatched the frigate
HMS Guernsey of Captain Matthew
Tennant in mid-January of next year
to demand Beare’s release, arguing that
he bore ‘‘my commission to pursue
pirates and Indians.’’
Beare was not heard of again until a
year-and-a-half later, when he returned
to Nevis after having traveled to Eng-
land. On his westward passage, Betty,
which was bearing stores, sprung a
leak near Scilly, obliging Beare to
complete the Atlantic crossing with the
small frigate James. On entering Char-
lestown ‘‘with the King’s colors fly-
ing,’’ he was challenged to his right to
wear such insignia by Captain George
St. Loe of HMS Dartmouth. Beare pre-
sented his old patent before the Coun-
cil, and explained the circumstances of
his transfer to another vessel. A new
commission was promptly granted him
on July 17, 1686, over St. Loe’s objec-
tions, and Beare sortied in pursuit of a
Spanish corsair of about 20 to 30 guns
and 150 mulattos, which had raided the
English settlements on Tortola that
April. The ringleader was apparently
an English doctor who had formerly
been Beare’s surgeon.
Although he failed to come up with
this renegade, Beare was attacked while
cruising the Virgin Islands by the Span-
ish vessel Nuestra Se~ nora de la Sole-
dad. Turning the tables on his assailant,
Beare captured the Spanish ship and
carried it into Nevis at the end of Octo-
ber, where it was condemned as a legiti-
mate prize late in January 1687. Beare
thereupon fitted out his new vessel and
departed toward Saint Thomas, fol-
lowed shortly thereafter by a vengeful
St. Loe, who had returned from arrest-
ing Bartholomew Sharpe and travel-
ing to New England, and who still

considered Beare guilty of piracy. The
Council of Nevis disagreed, yet reluc-
tantly authorized the Royal Navy offi-
cer to take away Beare’s commission if
they should meet, which he did. Perhaps
as a result of this incident, Beare trans-
ferred his allegiance to the Spaniards at
Havana. One of his crewmembers later
reported how: ‘‘The Englishmen then
refused to sail with him, but Beare
embarked about 70 Spaniards, put it to
the choice of the English to go with
him, or go to prison.’’
Spanish Service (1687
1695)
On August 18, 1687, Lieutenant-Gov.
Hender Molesworth of Jamaica in-
formed his superiors in London:
We hear that one Captain Bear, who
formerly held a commission from
Sir William Stapleton, is turned
pirate and has robbed several of our
fleet that sailed from hence. He took
£1,000 from a New England man,
besides what he took from the Lon-
doners and other ships bound for Ire-
land, and has chosen his station so
that no ships from hence can pass
without discovery by him.
In addition to regarding Beare as a turn-
coat, Molesworth was prejudiced against
his Catholicism, for this was an era when
religious tensions were once again grow-
ing in England. He added spitefully that
he had heard from Campeche:
. . . that Bear was married at Havana
and gave himself out as a faithful
subject of the King of Spain. I have
therefore sent Captain [Thomas]
Spragge [of HMS Drake] to Havana
to demand him as a pirate and an
Beare, John Philip (fl. 1684
1697) 505
English subject. He gave out that his
wife was a noblewoman who ran
away with him, and they actually
fired the guns of the castle as a sa-
lute to her, while the Governor and
most of the chief men of the town
were present at the wedding. The
nobleman’s daughter is a strumpet
that he used to carry with him
in man’s apparel, and is the daugh-
ter of a rum-punch-woman of Port
Royal. I have hopes that he may be
surrendered to me, or at any rate not
allowed to take his ship to sea again.
Such expectations were quickly dashed,
as the Spaniards were well pleased with
their new guardacosta, whom they knew
by the Hispanicized name of ‘‘Juan
Felipe de Vera.’’
In addition to this initial round of
captures, Beare also sailed to the sal-
vage of a Spanish galleon that summer
(allegedly one lost off Key Largo,
Florida, although possibly Sir William
Phips’ rich find north of Hispaniola).
For this voyage, he recruited some
English captives from the Havana jail,
including the carpenter of the frigate
Dark Wanderer, named Ralph Wilkin-
son. During the voyage, Wilkinson
informed Beare of a mysterious French
settlement on the shores of the Gulf of
Mexico, recently established by La
Salle. Beare gave a formal statement
of this discovery to the Acting Gover-
nor of Havana, Andr
es de Mu~nibe, im-
mediately on his return to that port on
August 29, 1687. Two years later,
Beare was still being consulted from
Madrid as to this intelligence report.
In the spring of 1688, he was report-
edly at Veracruz, and in the last days
of that year evidently participated in a
major Spanish effort to sweep foreign
506 Beare, John Philip (fl. 1684
1697)
settlers from the islands of Anguilla
and Vieques. More than one eyewit-
ness reported that Beare was among
the English, Irish, French, Turk,
mulatto, and black rovers who com-
prised this force. After the outbreak of
the War of the League of Augsburg
next year, Beare’s frigate departed Ha-
vana in 1690 on an 11-month cruise.
Putting into San Juan de Puerto Rico
for five weeks, he was delegated by
Gov. Gaspar de Arredondo to locate
the Armada de Barlovento, which was
expected on that island with the annual
situados or payrolls. Beare reached San
Juan again in early November 1691
with this force, and a few days later
was once more ordered to sea by De
Arredondo, to convey dispatches to
Spain. The rover set sail at ten o’clock
on the night of November 26th, a cir-
cumstance which unwittingly contrib-
uted to the mutiny of the Puerto Rican
garrison, for the impoverished soldiery,
not having been paid in many months,
suspected that this nocturnal departure
signaled the expropriation of a large
part of their pay, and which the Gover-
nor was covertly removing from the
island. These fears were seemingly
confirmed when a portion of their pay
was issued on December 5th, amount-
ing to a paltry 40 pesos per man. The
troops rebelled, and when De Arre-
dondo called out the militia reserve,
the latter refused to act against the
mutineers. Eventually, Franciscan friars
persuaded the soldiers to return to duty
on Christmas Day 1691.
Meanwhile, Beare continued to Spain,
unaware of the chaos left in his wake.
Reaching Sanl
ucar de Barrameda outside
Seville early next year, he remained in
Spain for several months. On June 5,
1692, he was granted a royal privateering
commission for all of Spanish America,
then sailed with his frigate San Jos
e y
San Diego as part of that year’s Mexican
plate fleet, reentering San Juan de Puerto
Rico by early 1693. Over the next two
years, he made several cruises throughout
the Caribbean as an aviso or ‘‘dispatch-
vessel,’’ until two boxes were confiscated
from his ship following a voyage to
Cartagena. They were labeled as contain-
ing books, yet actually held expensive
bolts of contraband cloth. Although nei-
ther belonged to Beare, he felt that he
would nonetheless be held accountable.
Therefore, when his ship was sud-
denly ordered to sortie from San Juan in
March 1695 to chase away an enemy pri-
vateer, he sailed a mere dozen leagues
out to sea before informing his Spanish
passengers that he was quitting Spain’s
service to join the French. On setting
them ashore on the Puerto Rican coast,
he furthermore added ‘‘that before fall-
ing into the power of the Spanish
Exchequer, he preferred deserting.’’
French Service (1695
1697)
On May 1, 1695, Gov. Jean-Baptiste
Ducasse of Saint-Domingue wrote:
I have learned one named Jean de
Wer [sic], English by nationality,
captain of a coastguard vessel for
Santo Domingo, coming from New
Spain has put into the port of Saint
Croix, where he has requested asy-
lum saying he wishes to serve the
King his master [presumably James
II of England, exiled in Paris], of
which he has apprised Monsieur le
Comte de Bl
enac.
Knowing that a large Anglo-Spanish
force was assembling on Santo Domingo

to attack his colony, Ducasse urgently
requested that Beare be sent to him, so
as to use his knowledge of the enemy
camp. Yet before Beare could be dis-
patched, Saint-Domingue was overrun
by this invading host, so that Bl
enac
retained his services. It was not until the
end of 1695 that Beare reached the dev-
astated French island, and gave Ducasse
a detailed report of Spanish strengths.
The Governor was so impressed that he
dispatched Beare to France in late March
1696, with a letter of recommendation to
the Minister Pontchartrain which read:
. . . he has a complete knowledge of
the town [of Santo Domingo] and
the way of taking it; he has given
me a map and underscored there are
more men on that island than I
believed; his belief is the Spaniards
can muster 3,000 men. He is travel-
ing aboard the ship of Monsieur
Dessangiers, and will have the honor
of presenting [the map] and giving
you a memorial for an attack, and
the best season for making it; he has
a very extensive knowledge of all
the ports of Indies and enterprises
one can mount here.
Apparently Beare also found favor with
the royal minister, for late in 1697 he
returned to the West Indies and led an
assault against Caracas’ port of La Guaira
with four French vessels, surprising its
Spanish garrison, who believed that this
approaching formation was the Armada
de Barlovento arriving from Cuman
a.
Beare’s raid wreaked a good deal of
havoc, destroying the patache which the
Spaniards used to communicate with
their offshore outpost of Margarita. This
was one of the very last actions of the
war, and of Beare’s career.
Beef Island 507
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes.
11
13 (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1893
1899).
L


opez Cantos, Angel, Historia de Puerto
Rico (1650
1700) (Seville: Escuela de
Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1975).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
Marley, David F., Pirates and Engineers:
Dutch and Flemish Adventurers in New
Spain (1607
1697) (Windsor, Ontario,
Canada: Netherlandic Press, 1992).
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
Weddle, Robert S., Wilderness Manhunt:
The Spanish Search for La Salle (Austin,
TX: University of Texas Press, 1973).
BEEF ISLAND
A not uncommon name in the 17th-cen-
tury Caribbean, as the procuring of meat
was a constant quest for many rovers.
Mexico
One such ‘‘Beef Island’’ was in fact
not an island at all, but rather a long
narrow strip of land named Xicalango
Point, connected to the Mexican main-
land due west of Isla del Carmen. It
encloses the western portion of the
Laguna de T
erminos, which was then
a popular destination for adventurers
from Jamaica, who referred to it as the
‘‘Bay of Campeche.’’ Some visitors
were cruel raiders come to plunder the
Spanish coastal towns, others relatively
508 Beeston, Sir William (1636
post 1702?)
honest merchantmen come to buy log-
wood from the resident poachers or
‘‘Baymen.’’ To all of them, Beef Island
was a particular stretch of low coast-
line where over the years, cattle had
been rustled or slaughtered.
In November 1681, for example,
an Englishman named Jonas Clough
described how a year-and-a-half earlier he
had been aboard one of three New Eng-
land sloops, when a Spanish expedition
under Felipe de la Barreda had suddenly
appeared and ‘‘took two of the sloops and
forced the third ashore on Beef Island,
called by the Spaniards Jica Lanoga [sic;
Xicalango].’’ More than 80 interlopers
remained marooned there, he added, until
they agreed to surrender more than a
month later. The Englishmen thought that
they had been promised safe-conduct to
the Cayman Islands or Jamaica, but were
carried off as prisoners to Mexico City,
where they were harshly treated.
Virgin Islands
Another ‘‘Beef Island’’ was at the east-
ern extreme of Tortola in the Virgin
Islands, which still bears this name
today. While on an inspection tour from
his headquarters in the Leeward Islands
through these sparsely-populated and
pirate-infested waters in mid-November
1717 (O.S.), Governor Walter Hamilton
described the resources available on Tor-
tola, then laconically added: ‘‘another lit-
tle island called Beef Island lies just
joining to it, the channel not above a
mile broad, only fit for boats to go
through; has but two families upon it.’’
See also
Beef Island (Volume 1).
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 30
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1908).
Gerhard, Peter, The Southeast Frontier of
New Spain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1979).
BEESTON, SIR WILLIAM
(1636
post 1702?)
English pirate-hunter who became
Governor of Jamaica.
Beeston was born at Tichfield,
Hampshire, England, and apparently
was baptized on December 2, 1636
(O.S.). He was the second son of Wil-
liam and Elizabeth Beeston. His elder
brother Henry grew up to become a
Doctor of Law, Master of Winchester
School, and Warden of New College at
Oxford University from 1679 to 1701.
William emigrated to Jamaica in May
1660, and little more than three years
later was elected to its first Council, as
a member for Port Royal. He was
made Judge of the Court of Common
Pleas by December 1664, and that fol-
lowing November 1665 was sent by
the new Gov. Sir Thomas Modyford
with three ships to recall a group of
privateers, who were reportedly gath-
ered off Cuba for an attack against the
town of Sancti Spı́ritus. Beeston was to
read them ‘‘a proclamation from the
King to keep peace with the Span-
iards’’ and recall them for the defense
of Jamaica against the Dutch, the Sec-
ond Anglo-Dutch War having recently
erupted back in Europe; yet after six
weeks without being able to find them,
 Beeston, Sir William (1636
post 1702?)
he returned into Port Royal empty-
handed, learning that the rovers had
indeed carried out their design.
Modyford’s successor Sir Thomas
Lynch delegated Beeston on a similar
commission six years later: Having
brought out the peace treaty with Spain,
Lynch and Modyford chose ‘‘Major
Beeston and Captain Reid to carry the
articles of peace, &c,’’ to the Spanish
Governor of Cartagena, and bring back
any English prisoners who were incar-
cerated there. The frigates HMS Assis-
tance of 40 guns and Welcome of 36
were placed at Beeston’s disposal, sail-
ing on July 16, 1671 (O.S.), yet they
were hardly out of sight of Port Royal
when Captain John Hubbart of Assis-
tance fell ill. He died three days later,
being succeeded in command by Lieu-
tenant John Wilgress. Cartagena was
reached on July 23rd (O.S.), where
arrangements were made for the publi-
cation of the treaty and release of Eng-
lish captives. By August 7th (O.S.)
Beeston was back in Jamaica, and five
days later witnessed the arrest of Mody-
ford for his deportation to England.
Pirate Hunting (1671
1672)
On December 8, 1671 (O.S.), Wilgress
was dismissed from command of HMS
Assistance for ‘‘wicked, drunken behav-
ior,’’ being replaced two days later by
Beeston. On December 16th (O.S.) he
set sail for Trinidad (Cuba), returning
into Port Royal by January of next year.
Then, as noted in Beeston’s journal:
January 31, 1672 [O.S.]. The Assis-
tance sailed again to the south cays
of Cuba after privateers and pirates,
by the desire of the Governor of San-
tiago [de Cuba]; yet when she came
509
there, he would not suffer them to
have provision for their money, nor
would he let them come into San-
tiago, though the captain [Beeston]
brought and delivered him a ship
he took from the privateers (which
belonged formerly to the Spaniards)
without any charge; therefore the
18th of March [O.S.] the Assistance
again returned to Port Royal.
During this cruise, Beeston had vainly
pursued the renegade privateer ship Sevi-
liaen of Jelles de Lecat and Jan Erasmus
Reyning near Campeche, where he had
also seized the rogue ship Charity of
Francis Weatherbourne and the French
vessel of Capitaine du Mangles, both for
committing ‘‘great violence against the
Spaniards.’’ The latter two captains were
tried for piracy and condemned to be shot
to death aboard Assistance a couple of
days after reentering Port Royal, yet
eventually were ordered deported to Eng-
land aboard Welcome, when that frigate
departed Jamaica on April 6, 1672 (O.S.),
with Henry Morgan as a prisoner.
Five days afterward, Beeston again
sailed with Assistance, this time ‘‘to
Hispaniola to look for privateers, and
thence to the Havana to fetch away
the [English] prisoners, from whence
she returned [to Jamaica] the 15th of
June [O.S.].’’ Beeston then commanded
the warship on its return passage to
England, quitting Port Royal on July
10, 1672 (O.S.), with a convoy com-
prised of the merchantmen Friesland,
Thomas and Charles, Huntsman, and
Endeavour. They reached the mouth of
the Thames that October, and shortly
thereafter Beeston relinquished his
command, returning to Jamaica next
summer, perhaps aboard Captain Can-
ning’s 40-gun frigate HMS Portland,
510 Beeston, Sir William (1636
post 1702?)
or Captain Gollop’s smaller Thomas
and Francis, both of which entered
Port Royal on July 21, 1673 (O.S.).
Subsequent Career
(1673
1702)
Two years later, when Lord Vaughan
reached Jamaica as that island’s new
Governor, Beeston was appointed one
of its Commissioners of the Admiralty
(along with the recently-returned Lieu-
tenant-Gov. Sir Henry Morgan, and the
latter’s brother-in-law, Colonel Robert
Byndloss). In April 1677, ‘‘Lieutenant-
Colonel’’ Beeston was chosen Speaker
of the Jamaican Assembly, and led the
opposition to proposed changes in its
government from London. Differences
with the new Governor, the Earl of
Carlisle, eventually reached such a pass
that the Assembly was dissolved and
Beeston, along with the island’s Chief
Justice, Colonel Samuel Long, were or-
dered to travel to England and ‘‘answer
for their contumacy.’’ Beeston set sail
on July 6, 1680 (O.S.), reaching London
two months afterward—before either
Carlisle or Long, both of whom had
departed 14 weeks previously. Together
with the Chief Justice, Beeston then
filed counter-charges against the Earl,
and after lengthy proceedings was
cleared of any wrongdoing.
In June of 1692, Beeston was named
Lieutenant-Governor for Jamaica and
also became a factor for the Royal Afri-
can Company, was knighted at Kensing-
ton on October 30th (O.S.), and set sail
from Portsmouth aboard HMS Ruby on
December 19th (O.S.) to return to Port
Royal by mid-March 1693. Although he
had missed the dreadful earthquake
which devastated that harbor shortly
before noon on June 7, 1692 (O.S.), he
nonetheless found the island still suffer-
ing from its terrible aftereffects, and
wrote to a friend: ‘‘By the mortality
which yet continues, I have lost all my
family but my wife [Anne] and one child
[their daughter Jane], and have not one
servant left to attend me but my cook, so
it is very uneasy being here.’’ His dis-
comfiture was further increased by the
War of the League of Augsburg or King
William’s War, which left Jamaica vul-
nerable to an attack from the French on
Saint-Domingue. The next summer, Jean-
Baptiste Ducasse in fact led a massive
descent on Jamaica, which Beeston man-
aged to resist, although the French ram-
paged unchecked throughout the southern
plantations for the better part of a month,
before retiring. Beeston was superseded
as Governor at the end of January 1702,
sailing for England by April 25th (O.S.)
and arriving two months later, where he
died shortly thereafter.
See also
Beeston, Sir William (Volume 1).
References
Dictionary of National Biography (London,
1885
1900, 63 volumes; reissued by
Oxford University Press, 2004).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica:
Lewis, Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Pope, Dudley, Harry Morgan’s Way: The
Biography of Sir Henry Morgan,
1635
1684 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1977).
 Bellamy, Samuel (fl. 1716
1717) 511

BELLAMY, SAMUEL Jennings, before joining the crew of

his rival Benjamin Hornigold.
(fl. 1716
1717) Bellamy and Williams probably set
sail from Nassau in March 1716,
Short-lived pirate Captain, who
aboard Hornigold’s 10-gun Mary Anne
enjoyed a spectacular string of cap-
(or Marianne). It sailed in company
tures, before sinking off Cape Cod
with the French Postillon of Captain
with his famed galley Whydah.
Louis La Buze, roughly 140 men being
It is believed by some that he may
distributed aboard both sloops. Early
have been born in the parish of Hitti-
next month, they seized a large foreign
sleigh near the great English seaport of
merchantman at anchor in the Cuban
Plymouth in Devonshire, the youngest
port of Mariel, robbing it of everything
of three boys and three girls of Stephen
of value over the span of a week,
Bellamy and Elizabeth Pain. If true,
before abandoning their ransacked
his mother died in childbirth and was
prize at the approach of Jennings’ pri-
buried on February 23, 1689 (O.S.),
vateering flotilla. Both pirate sloops
while the infant Samuel was baptized
then continued around the western tip
that same March 18th. Other reports,
of Cuba, intercepting a pair of Spanish
however, suggest that he was born in
brigantines off Cape Corrientes, loaded
London. He most likely went to sea at
with cacao from Maracaibo. Their
an early age, and perhaps served in the
crews were set ashore, and these prizes
West Indies during Queen Anne’s War.
burnt. The pirates next coasted along
Long-held New England legend has
Cuba’s southwestern shoreline to Isla
it that after these hostilities ceased in
de Pinos (modern Isla de la Juventud),
the spring of 1713, young Sam traveled
where they careened and cleaned their
to the town of Eastham on Cape Cod,
hulls of barnacles. Finally, the rover
where he fell in love with Maria Hal-
pair weighed again by late May 1716,
lett. Her parents refused permission for
to call at Saint-Domingue (modern
her to marry this penniless seafarer,
Haiti).
though, so that when word arrived that
an entire Spanish plate fleet had been
wrecked on the Florida coast in July Cruise (1716
1717)
1715, Bellamy and his friend Paul Wil-
liams sailed down the Atlantic Sea- While lying at anchor off this French
board, in hopes of raising a fortune colony, though, Mary Anne’s com-
from amid its scattered debris. Yet sal- mander was voted out of office in
vage work proved difficult and other favor of Bellamy, ‘‘upon a difference
dangers lurked in those treacherous arising amongst the English pirates
sparkling waters as well, where the because Hornygold refused to take and
strong preyed on the weak, and pirates plunder English vessels.’’ Later writers
openly prowled. By late that same year such as Charles Johnson and Philip
of 1715, both young friends had ended Gosse would extol Bellamy’s gifts as
up at the lawless, open port of Nassau, an orator and leader of men, which
having apparently had some contact would seem to be corroborated by this
with the privateer Captain Henry incident. Pirate captains were known to
512 Bellamy, Samuel (fl. 1716
1717)
be voted out of their ships, yet it none-
theless took a charismatic figure to
supplant any commander who was not
openly incompetent or unlucky. Bell-
amy remained aboard Mary Anne with
90 men and his loyal friend Williams as
quartermaster, while Hornigold slipped
away with only 26 hands, aboard a
smaller prize sloop.
The next notice of Bellamy’s activ-
ities did not occur until well into the
autumn of 1716, when he and La Buze
fell on a merchant convoy in the Virgin
Islands. Abijah Savage, commander of
one of these victims—the sloop Bonetta
out of Antigua—later testified that:
On 9th November [1716, O.S.],
between St. Thomas and St. Croix,
he was overhauled and plundered by
two pirate sloops, who also took a
French ship and six sail of small
vessels, keeping the French ship
[which was carrying fish and flour
from Canada], etc. One, called the
Mary Anne, was commanded by
Samuel Bellamy, who declared him-
self to be an Englishman born in
London; and the other, the Postil-
lion, by Louis de Boure [sic; La
Buze], a Frenchman, who had his
sloop chiefly navigated with men of
that nation. Each sloop was mounted
with 8 guns, and had betwixt 80 or
90 men. The Mary Anne was chiefly
navigated with Englishmen. Depo-
nent was detained at St. Croix. The
pirates only wanted provisions, and
a ship to make a voyage.
John Kenney, commander of another
vessel which managed to escape,
declared that one of the pirate pursuers
got so close that he and his crew ‘‘gave
them three cheers in English, in hopes
to discover by their voice what country
they were of, to which they made no
answer, but continued to give them
chase,’’ before a breeze sprang up and
they got clear. A worried Governor
Walter Hamilton wrote from Antigua
to inform the Council of Trade and
Plantations in London that his unpa-
trolled seas were ‘‘pester’d with that
vermin of pirates, and still no man of
war arrived, by which I am not only
confined, but the trading vessels to and
from these islands much endanger’d.’’
On December 14, 1716 (O.S.), the
Governor added that he had just learned
how Bellamy and La Buze ‘‘are come
up to Windward, and have taken two
French sloops under our neighboring
island of Guadeloupe.’’ The two rogue
commanders also ran down a pair of
merchantmen in the vicinity of the
Dutch island of Sab
a, a large black flag
being brazenly displayed aboard Bell-
amy’s sloop, emblazoned with ‘‘a
Death’s Head and Bones a-cross’’ (see
sidebar). After being seized, the larger
of these two merchantmen, the Sultana
of Captain James Richards, was cut
down into the swifter configuration of a
galley and more heavily armed, so as to
become Bellamy’s new flagship, while
his friend Williams assumed command
over Mary Anne.
The pirates apparently then shifted
south out of these exhausted hunting-
grounds, and on December 19, 1716
(O.S.), about nine leagues east of Blan-
quilla Island off the Venezuelan coast,
took the Bristol ship St. Michael of
Master James Williams, which was bear-
ing provisions from Ireland for Jamaica.
The trio of pirate vessels—Bellamy’s
Sultana, La Buze’s Postillon, and Paul
Williams’s Mary Anne—next visited the
Testigos, to repair and refit on this
 Bellamy, Samuel (fl. 1716
1717) 513

UNDER THE BLACK FLAG

While on an inspection tour westward from Antigua and Nevis in the Leeward
Islands, Governor Walter Hamilton had reached as far as Saint Thomas in the Virgin
Islands when he learned in mid-November 1717 (O.S.) that a little British sloop had
escaped through its shoal waters from a pirate ship, which had chased and fired three
guns at its intended victim—‘‘the first under British colors, which he [the marauder
Captain] lowered, and then hoisted a white ensign with the figure of a dead man
spread in it.’’ Hamilton consequently went in search of this renegade ship, allegedly
armed with ‘‘about 18 or 20 guns,’’ but could not catch sight of it, having apparently
veered up under the north side of Saint Thomas.

One of Bartholomew Roberts’s alleged black pirate-flags, displaying him standing

astride ‘‘A Barbadian’s Head’’ and ‘‘A Martinican’s Head.’’ (Author’s Collection)

lonely, sun-bleached Venezuelan island Haiti. However, a heavy gale caused

grouping. A muster held there on January
9, 1717 (O.S.), indicated that there were
now 210 men serving aboard all three
vessels, more seamen having been pressed
or volunteered from captured prizes.
Shortly thereafter, the pirate flotilla
steered northwestward to scour the
Windward Passage between Cuba and
La Buze to become separated, while
driving Bellamy and Williams back
into their former anchorage at St.
Croix. Although the English pair
resumed their original heading for the
Windward Passage by February 1717,
their brief reappearance in the Leeward
Islands nonetheless stirred a renewed
514 Bellamy, Samuel (fl. 1716
1717)
ripple of fear. Governor Hamilton of
Antigua would later confide to the
Council of Trade and Plantations in
London that:
On 24th March [1717 O.S.], here
arrived a small man of war to attend
this station, in which I embarked the
2nd April and have visited the islands
of Nevis, St. Christophers, and
Montserrat. I would have gone to the
Virgin Islands, but had an account
that the pirate ship and sloop com-
manded by Bellamy, of which I gave
your Lordships an account in my for-
mer, were still amongst these islands
and the aforesaid man of war (the 24-
gun frigate Seaford) being such a
small bauble, and the Captain
acquainting me that if it blew any-
thing hard, he could hardly carry any
of his guns out so as to make use of
them, for these reasons and these
only, I durst not venture down, so that
I am not able to give your Lordships
any further account of those islands.
It was not until the more courageous
Captain Benjamin Candler of HMS Win-
chelsea made a sweep through the Virgin
Islands in May 1717, that the authorities
learned the fearsome pirates had long
since departed. This Royal Navy Captain
reported how he found only a few skulk-
ing residents who: ‘‘When we came, they
hid themselves in the rocks, one Ham a
notorious villain living on Beef Island
was on board of Bellame the Pirate when
he was here, and as soon as they fired a
gun at Virgin Gorda, he betook himself
to a Bermuda boat he has and his
negroes, and lurked about the creeks and
islands until we were gone.’’
For indeed, Bellamy and Williams
had entered the Windward Passage by
late February 1717, where one dawn
they sighted a large ship under easy
sail, to which they gave chase. It was
the 18-gun, 50-man, 300-ton slaver
Whydah of Captain Lawrence Prince,
homeward bound out of Jamaica. Hav-
ing just delivered its second consign-
ment of slaves from the Guinea coast,
the two-year-old Whydah was sailing
for London with a rich haul of money,
African elephant tusks, gold dust, West
Indian sugar, indigo, and ‘‘Jesuits’
bark’’ (cinchona, from which quinine
is made). It took the pirates three days
to overhaul the slaver, and when they
finally did, Prince surrendered almost
without firing a shot.
Bellamy and Williams sailed their
fine big prize to Long Island in the
nearby Bahamian archipelago, to drop
anchor and ransack it at leisure. Because
of Whydah’s size and fine sailing qual-
ities, the pirate chieftain decided to
make it his new flagship, increasing its
armament to 28 guns. Prince was given
Sultana by way of compensation, and
allowed to load whatever merchandise
the pirates did not want. Bellamy picked
ten or twelve men from among the slav-
er’s crew, and even gave Prince £20 in
gold and silver ‘‘to bear his charges,’’
before setting the unfortunate Master
free. It was little enough, considering
that Whydah’s cargo was estimated at
£20,000 in value, £9,000 being in ready
currency. With 180 pirates now man-
ning both vessels, they exultantly
counted up this booty—in true Brethren
fashion—in Bellamy’s main cabin, 50
pounds apiece being put into bags as
each man’s share. This money was
stowed ‘‘in chests between decks, with-
out any guard,’’ when Whydah and
Mary Anne weighed next day for the
Virginia Capes.

En route up the Atlantic Seaboard, the
pirates intercepted an English vessel car-
rying a cargo of French sugar and indigo,
which they let go. Off the Virginia coast,
they took three ships and a snow, one
Scottish ship out of Barbados proving so
leaky that its crew was transferred
aboard the snow, before sinking. This
snow was then retained with a prize-crew
aboard, to serve as part of Bellamy’s
pirate flotilla, while the other two mer-
chantmen were plundered and released.
A huge storm then boiled up out of the
northwest, engulfing the formation as
night fell. Amid the howling darkness,
with thunderclaps crashing overhead,
Bellamy swore to raise his men’s spirits
that: ‘‘he was sorry he could not run out
his guns to return the salute, meaning the
thunder, that he fancied the gods had got
drunk over their tipple, and were gone
together by the ears.’’
After four days of pounding, the
weather finally eased and the pirate ves-
sels emerged damaged, yet still afloat.
They limped toward Carolina to repair
Whydah, which had lost two of its three
masts and was leaking, yet as the wind
continued to shift around farther out of
the south, Bellamy laid in a new course
for Rhode Island. While sailing, they
intercepted a Boston-owned sloop under
Captain Beer, who was ordered aboard
Whydah while his vessel was being plun-
dered. Bellamy and Williams intended to
then restore his vessel, but the pirate
company voted instead to sink it. ‘‘Damn
my blood,’’ Bellamy swore, as he
informed the unfortunate Master, ‘‘I’m
sorry they won’t let you have your sloop
again, for I scorn to do anyone a mis-
chief, when it is not for my advantage.’’
The pirate chieftain then gave vent
to a harangue, which the chronicler
Charles Johnson later made famous as
Bellamy, Samuel (fl. 1716
1717) 515
an explanation for many pirates’ moti-
vations, by recording it in his History.
Supposedly, Bellamy shouted at Beer:
Though, damn ye, you are a sneaking
puppy, and so are all those who will
submit to be governed by laws which
rich men have made for their own se-
curity, for the cowardly whelps have
not the courage otherwise to defend
what they get by their knavery; but
damn ye altogether! Damn them for
a pack of crafty rascals, and you,
who serve them, for a parcel of hen-
hearted numbskulls. They vilify us,
the scoundrels do, when there is only
this difference: they rob the poor
under the cover of law, forsooth, and
we plunder the rich under the protec-
tion of our own courage. Had you
not better make [i.e., become] one of
us, then sneak after the asses of these
villains for employment?
When the Master replied that he dared
not break the laws of God and man, the
pirate snorted:
You are a devilish conscience rascal,
damn ye! I am a free prince, and I
have as much authority to make war
on the whole world, as he who has a
hundred sail of ships at sea, and an
army of 100,000 men in the field, and
this my conscience tells me. But there
is no arguing with such sniveling pup-
pies, who allow superiors to kick them
about deck at pleasure, and pin their
faith upon a pimp of a parson—a
squab, who neither practices nor
believes what he puts upon the
chuckle-headed fools he preaches to!
Beer consequently watched as his sloop
slid beneath the waves, and some time
516 Bellamy, Samuel (fl. 1716
1717)
afterward was set ashore on Block
Island, not regaining his home at New-
port until May 1, 1717 (O.S.)—four days
after Bellamy and most of his pirate
crew had already died.
Shipwreck and Death
(April 1717)
The pirate formation continued to press
northward, and on April 17, 1717
(O.S.), Master Andrew Turbett of the
merchantman Agnes of Glasgow,
declared that his vessel:
. . . was taken and sunk by a pirate,
Samuel Bellamy, five leagues off
Cape Charles, 7th April. On the
same day, they took the Ann galley
of Glasgow and the Endeavor pink
of Brighthelmstone, and on the 12th
a ship belonging to Leith, all bound
for Virginia. The greatest part of the
pirate’s crew, natives of Great Brit-
ain and Ireland, and 25 Negroes
taken out of a Guinea ship. They
declared they intended to cruise for
10 days off Delaware Bay, and 10
days more off Long Island, in order
to intercept some vessels from Phila-
delphia and New York, bound with
provisions to the West Indies. They
then designed to careen their ship at
Green Island, to the eastward of
Cape Sable. They expect several
others to follow them to the coast of
Virginia, and said there were 10 sail
of them in all about the West Indies
and the coast of America.
Yet Bellamy veered course again
to appear off Cape Cod by the morning
of April 26, 1717 (O.S.), where he inter-
cepted a small pink bound from Nantas-
ket toward New York City—the 53rd
and final victim of his career. Seven
pirates clambered aboard ‘‘armed with
their musquets, pistols, and cutlashes’’ to
serve as the pink’s prize-crew, while its
Master and five hands were transferred
aboard the jury-rigged Whydah. Learning
that some Madeira wine was among its
cargo, Bellamy sent across four pirates,
but they could not extract any crates
from the pink’s cramped hold.
Bellamy’s formation continued on its
north-northwesterly heading, until run-
ning into dense fog that same evening.
After darkness fell, a heavy rain also
began, and the seas rose. The crippled
pirate flagship had blundered into a dan-
gerous position, the rising winds and
waves driving it remorselessly to its
doom on Cape Cod. Whydah struck a
sandbar stern first, a quarter-mile off-
shore from the modern town of Well-
fleet, and was beaten to pieces. Of the
146 men aboard, only two survived that
horrific night: a pressed Welsh carpen-
ter named Thomas Davis, and a Moskito
Indian taken from the Central American
coast by the name of John Julian. Pre-
sumably, Bellamy may have lain among
the 102 battered, unidentifiable corpses
retrieved from the debris strewn over
four miles of beach next morning.
And as one final epithet, a delighted
Gov. Peter Heywood of Jamaica wrote
to London on July 3, 1717 (O.S.), to
say that since his last letter: ‘‘. . . no
account of pyrates from any part, only
the agreeable news we have had from
New England, of Bellamy with his ship
and company’s perishing on ye shoals
off of Cape Cod.’’
See also
Careen; Hornigold, Benjamin; La Buze,
Louis.
 Bernanos, Jean, Sieur De (fl. 1684
1695)
Reference
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
BERNANOS, JEAN, SIEUR
DE (fl. 1684
1695)
French flibustier who took part in the
assault against Jamaica, and died
defending Saint-Domingue.
Bernanos was born in Metz, Lorraine,
France, on March 6, 1648, the son of a
butcher. His last name was apparently
derived from that of his great-grand-
father, a Spanish soldier who had settled
in that region a century earlier, after
serving in the armies of the Emperor
Charles V. It is not known precisely
when Jean Bernanos arrived in the New
World, but he was apparently already a
cavalry Captain by the time he emi-
grated, sometime during the 1670s.
Flibustier Commander
(1679
1684)
He was first mentioned as a minor buc-
caneer leader in 1679, Basil Ringrose
later declaring that he attempted a joint
descent that year—his French free-
booters allied with some Kuna war-
riors—against the small Panamanian
town of Chepo. Bernanos also played a
subordinate part in John Coxon’s sack
of Portobelo in February 1680, before
prowling off the Panamanian coast,
meeting up with his compatriot Jean
Rose, and refusing to join the first
English penetration across the Isthmus
into the South Sea.
517
Bernanos’ first independent command
occurred in March 1684, when he
departed Petit-Go^ave aboard his 6-gun,
60-man vessel at the head of a five-ship
flotilla including Capitaines Blot, Rose,
François Grogniet, and Vigneron. They
secured a privateering commission from
the French Governor of Saint Croix,
and with a party of Carib auxiliaries
advanced up Venezuela’s Orinoco River,
to seize the newly-completed Spanish
fort of San Francisco de Asis by May
30, 1684, which guarded the approaches
to the frontier outpost of Santo Tom
e de
Guayana farther upstream. Bernanos’s
flibustiers also sacked that town and held
onto Fort San Francisco until August
1684, before retiring to patrol off the
islands of Margarita and Trinidad.
Planter and Militia Officer
(1685
1694)
On regaining Saint-Domingue late in
1684, Bernanos apparently married
Marguerite Bastard shortly thereafter at
the town of Port-de-Paix opposite Tor-
tuga Island; he had at least three chil-
dren with her. He also settled down as
an estate-owner, yet nonetheless main-
tained an active role in the island mili-
tia, such as when—at the head of 15
armed men—he accompanied the
Crown official Jacques de Pardieu,
Sieur de Franquesnay, aboard the royal
warship Marin in October 1687, to
arrest a pirate vessel recently returned
from Guinea in West Africa, being
rewarded with it as his prize.
Two years later, after the War of the
League of Augsburg or King William’s
War erupted against England, Spain, and
The Netherlands, Bernanos secured a
privateering commission in September
518 Bernanos, Jean, Sieur De (fl. 1684
1695)
1689 to sortie on a cruise. He returned
early next year and was lying at anchor
at Cap-François on July 16, 1690, when
the island Governor Pierre-Paul Tarin de
Cussy passed through on his way to
attack the advance Spanish frontier-
town of Santiago de los Caballeros; this
Governor reported later how he had
found:
. . . the flibustiers awaiting him to
obtain a commission; they were
headed by Capitaine Bernanos, and
their intention was to go take San-
tiago de Cuba.
Bernanos’s patent was duly renewed and
he sortied that same September 1690,
yet there is no record of any attack
attempted against that Cuban port, only
a few English vessels taken at sea.
Following the death of De Cussy
and the devastating Spanish invasion
of 1691, his successor Jean-Baptiste
Ducasse sent Bernanos on a reconnais-
sance of Jamaica, taking 100 flibustiers
aboard Capitaine Damon’s Emport
e up to carry aboard, and their bread
(Intemperate) in July 1692, who set
sail with orders to:
. . . reconnoiter the enemy, and in
case they have attacked any quarter,
or were anchored off any roads, to
land about 100 flibustiers under the
command of Bernanos and make ev-
ery effort to take them. In the event
nothing is found, they are enjoined
to cruise past the coasts of Jamaica
and push on [around Cuba] into the
Bahama Channel, trying to capture
ships.
However, Damon and Bernanos returned
the next month empty-handed.
On July 11, 1693, Bernanos was
appointed brevet major of Port-de-Paix,
and the next summer took part in the
large-scale operation led against Jamaica
by Ducasse and Laurens de Graaf. For
this expedition, Bernanos and his men
sailed aboard the 54-gun royal flagship
T
em
eraire (Fearless), commanded by
the Chevalier de Rollon, which dropped
anchor along with the main invasion-
fleet on June 27, 1694, in Cow Bay, 15
miles east of Port Royal. Four days later
with ‘‘the wind blowing very hard,’’
T
em
eraire dragged its anchors and with
another vessel was driven downwind
into Bluefields Bay, where Bernanos led
60 flibustiers ashore to seize a plantation.
A unit of Jamaican militia appeared and
a skirmish ensued, so that De Rol-
lon—hearing the small-arms’ fire from
on board—ordered a round shot over the
flibustiers’ heads as a signal. At this:
. . . they ran aboard in such haste
that they left their meat they had
killed, and some cattle they had tied
and salt, and sailed away as soon as
they could get up their anchors.
T
em
eraire could not find the French
fleet again, so stood away for Petit-
Go^ave. Learning that Ducasse was still
at Port Morant, De Rollon made a gal-
lant attempt to rejoin his commander,
yet the outbreak of an epidemic forced
him back into L
eog^ane, where almost
half of his crew expired.
Death (1695)
The next spring, a huge Anglo-Spanish
fleet appeared off northern Saint-
Domingue in late May 1695, and deposited

a considerable army ashore. Ducasse had
already hurried Bernanos back north with
100 followers to defend his home-base of
Port-de-Paix, with orders to assist De
Graaf, who was serving as lieutenant du
roi or ‘‘King’s Lieutenant’’ at nearby Cap-
François. When the latter called for help,
Bernanos marched on May 18, 1695, with
130 men and reached him three days later,
although his assistance proved too little to
check the advancing enemy host. The out-
numbered French were compelled to aban-
don Cap-François, falling back toward
Port-de-Paix, which the English warships
reached by June 13, 1695.
Wishing to beset its defenders
before they could mount an organized
resistance, the Royal Navy set 400 to
500 men ashore at nearby Saint-Louis,
driving Bernanos’ men back inside the
walls, until the combined Anglo-Span-
ish army arrived overland on June 25,
1695. Faced with overwhelming odds,
the besieged garrison finally decided to
evacuate, although not without consid-
erable dissent. Their attempt to break
out two hours before dawn on July 15,
1695, was betrayed to the English, who
ambushed Bernanos’ heavily-burdened
column—hampered by 150 terrified
women and children—in the darkness.
They disintegrated into chaos, some
calling for an about-face back into
Port-de-Paix, others to cut their way
through. Bernanos allegedly attempted
to rally the men in van by roaring:
‘‘They are but dogs, we shall easily
run them through!’’ But it was he who
fell, pierced through the body three
times. It is said that he expired while
stretching out his hand toward another
dying officer, the Chevalier de Paty,
and was later eulogized as ‘‘the bravest
man there ever was in the colony.’’
Bernard, Antoine (fl. 1683) 519
References
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Tribout de Morembert, Henri, ‘‘A  Saint-
Domingue, le Major Bernanos, capitaine
de flibustiers,’’ Connaissance du Monde
78 (1965), pp. 10
19.
BERNARD, ANTOINE
(fl. 1683)
French flibustier who took part in the
sack of Veracruz.
On March 5, 1683, Bernard sailed from
Martinique aboard his tiny 2-gun Proph ete
Daniel, accompanied by the equally small
Dauphin of Pierre d’Orange. They
intended to go turtling on the Cayman
Islands, but a month later heard of a great
pirate gathering off the Central American
coast. Crossing to Guanaja Island, they
learned of a Dutch rover named Nikolaas
van Hoorn being defrauded of a consign-
ment of slaves at Santo Domingo, and—as
a French subject—obtaining a letter of
reprisal from Jacques Nepveu, Sieur de
Pouançay and Governor of Saint-Dom-
ingue, to exact restitution. Van Hoorn had
sortied with the Sieur de Grammont and
other flibustier commanders to recruit at
Roat
an, for a descent against the Mexican
port of Veracruz.
Bernard and D’Orange joined this
expedition, which eventually swelled to
13 vessels and roughly 1,400 men.
Rounding Yucatan, a landing party of
800 freebooters slipped ashore near Vera-
cruz on the night of May 17
18, 1683,
infiltrating the city and attacking at dawn.
The garrison was quickly overwhelmed,
and after four days of sack and pillage,
the raiders withdrew two miles offshore
520 Bilbo or Bilboes
to Sacrificios Island with several thou-
sand hostages and vast quantities of
booty. A fortnight later they weighed,
and staggered back around Yucatan to
divide their spoils at Isla Mujeres.
The flotilla then broke up; Bernard
and D’Orange were among the first to
attempt to beat across toward Petit-
Go^ave on Saint-Domingue, although
Proph ete Daniel only got as far as the
Cayman Islands before Bernard fell ill.
He recuperated, but on August 4, 1683,
was still lying with D’Orange’s Dau-
phin at Little Cayman, when the Ar-
mada de Barlovento suddenly appeared
and captured both. The Spanish report
described Proph ete Daniel as a 35-ton
sloop ‘‘with a crew of 17 men, two
guns, two swivel guns, a blunderbuss,
two carbines, three cutlasses, 80
pounds of gunpowder, and 30 tons of
cheese;’’ however, it is quite probable
that more had already been pilfered by
the light-fingered Armada sailors.
The prisoners were carried into Vera-
cruz three weeks later with other prizes,
and a hearing convened aboard Andr
es
de Ochoa y Z
arate’s flagship Santo
Cristo de Burgos. Spanish law decreed
that pirate leaders were to be tried at
the scene of their crimes, while minions
were to be deported to Spain. It is
therefore likely that Bernard remained
in Veracruz when the plate fleet sailed
for Cadiz a few days later, to face judg-
ment in the still-devastated Mexican
port. Most probably he was executed on
November 22, 1683, when his associate
D’Orange is known to have died.
References
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The Great
Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor, Ontario,
Canada: Netherlandic Press, 1993).
S
aiz Cidoncha, Carlos, Historia de la
piraterı´a en Am
erica Espa~
nola (Madrid:
Editorial San Martı́n, 1985).
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, La Armada de
Barlovento (Seville: Escuela de Estudios
Hispano-americanos, 1981).
BILBO OR BILBOES
In the 17th century, ‘‘bilbo’’ was a nick-
name for any rapier or fine sword,
apparently derived from the name of
the Spanish port of Bilbao, where many
such blades were bought. ‘‘Bilboes,’’ on
the other hand, referred to a long iron
bar with shackles used to confine the
feet of prisoners.
In the summer of 1686, for example, a
coastal trader named Samuel Woodward
complained of the harsh treatment which
he had received off Maryland from Cap-
tain John Crofts of the Royal Navy ketch
Deptford. This officer, he said:
. . . had insulted him, called him into
his cabin, boxed him severely, and
ordered him to be put into bilboes.
He remained in irons for an hour
and a half, during which time his
[Woodward’s] ketch was searched,
but nothing irregular found.
See also
Bilbo (Volume 1).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899).

BILLIARDS
Popular 17th-century diversion, particu-
larly in English drinking establishments.
Several taverns at Port Royal,
Jamaica, sported billiards rooms, which
seem to have been situated in the yard
or otherwise removed from the main bar,
so as to minimize frictions. According to
a contemporary report, the ‘‘George’’
tavern, which ‘‘fronted to the old market
place’’ in town, had a special room built
for the game; the same was true at the
‘‘Feathers,’’ whose billiard room was sit-
uated over another room in its yard.
See also
Billiards (Volume 1).
Reference
Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
BILLOP, CHRISTOPHER
(fl. 1682
1684)
Royal Navy captain who commanded
the ketch Quaker at Nevis, and was
accused of fraud.
Governor Sir William Stapleton said
of Billop that since coming out from Eng-
land, he had ‘‘acted more like a merchant,
and sometimes more like a piratical one,’’
than as a King’s officer. When a merchant
ship bound from La Rochelle to Antigua
was intercepted in peacetime off Nevis, it
was rumored that Billop did not release
the Frenchman until he was allowed ‘‘to
keep the things he took from her.’’
But more blatant still was his very last
coup in the Indies, when on June 15,
Billop, Christopher (fl. 1682
1684) 521
1682, a vessel ‘‘was seen tacking off and
on’’ toward Nevis, before finally steering
away toward Dutch Sint Eustatius. Billop
set off in pursuit, and ‘‘upon firing a shot
across her forefoot, to his great surprise
found his fire returned.’’ He therefore
blasted the stranger with a broadside and
boarded, discovering it to be the Provi-
dence of London, with one dead and six
wounded among its crew. The master
George Nanton confessed that he had no
license to trade in the New World, but
was coming out from Africa as an inter-
loper with 215 slaves aboard, plus
roughly a ton each of ivory (‘‘elephants’
teeth’’), copper, and redwood. This
engagement took place within plain view
of everybody in Nevis’ capital of Charles-
town, who then saw the ketch stand away
toward the French half of St. Kitts with
its prize. When Billop returned five days
later, the only merchandise left aboard
Providence were 96 slaves, a dozen
of them suffering from smallpox. He
was therefore charged with embezzling
Charles II’s bounty by profiting from
this contraband, and when the verdict
appeared to go against him, refused to set
foot ashore. The island Council described
him to the Lords of Trade and Plantations
in London as ‘‘one of the worse men we
ever saw in the King’s service, and the
most unfit to continue in it.’’
On July 16, 1682, Governor Staple-
ton sent the Provost Marshal aboard
Billop’s ship, who promised to present
himself next day; yet that following
morn he was already hull down, sailing
away to England. Charges followed
him across the Atlantic, yet he was
able to prolong the dispute by launch-
ing a countersuit of his own, alleging
that the Providence had been adjudged
a legal prize, after which the ‘‘Negroes
and other goods he [had been] sending
522 Biscayan Privateers
to New York were illegally seized.’’
His naval career ended, Billop moved
to New York, where late in 1686 he
was allowed to establish ‘‘a ferry upon
the southwest side of Staten Island,’’
and became that island’s Surveyor.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 11,
12 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898
1899).
BISCAYAN PRIVATEERS
A squadron of corsairs raised in north-
eastern Spain to combat pirates and
smugglers in the New World.
With the Armada de Barlovento
unable to cope with peacetime hostil-
ities in the Caribbean, Madrid accepted
a proposal from some Guipuzcoan mer-
chants on November 6, 1685, to raise a
private force of five frigates in return
for certain trade concessions. Ships and
Basque crewmembers were assembled
at the port of San Sebasti
an, and their
Commodore Francisco Garcı́a Gal
an
vowed in a letter to King Charles II that
on reaching the West Indies, he would
‘‘first of all seek out the pirate Loren-
cillo [de Graaf].’’ On August 23, 1686,
the following vessels set sail:
Ship
Nuestra Se~
nora del Rosario y las Animas (flag)
San Nicol

as de Bari (vice-flag)
Nuestra Se~
nora de la Concepci
on (gobierno)
San Antonio (patache)
Santiago (32-oar galliot)
Garcı́a Gal
an’s second-in-command
was Francisco de Aguirre, his gober-
nador or third-in-command Miguel de
Vergara, with Jos
e de Leoz y Echalar,
Martı́n P
erez de Landeche, Sebasti
an
Pis
on, Silvestre Soler, and Fermı́n de
Salaberrı́a as individual ship-captains.
This formation, known collectively as
the Vizcaı´no [Biscayan] or Guip
uzcoa
squadron, was poorly equipped, its two
capital ships being old and useless,
‘‘more intended for carrying French
cloths and trading with these in the In-
dies than doing harm to the enemy,’’
according to an observer. The vessels
touched at the Canary Islands before
departing Lanzarote on October 30th,
with an additional 70 men.
At dawn on November 10, 1686, they
sighted a large ship towing a prize near
Cape Verde off West Africa, and closed
with their standard—‘‘the cross of Bor-
go~na’’—prominently displayed. The
stranger proved to be the English East
Indiaman Caesar, which refused to sa-
lute the Biscayan flag, even when a sig-
nal-gun was fired to draw attention to it.
San Nicol
as therefore crashed a broad-
side at the Indiaman, who responded
with such a withering counter-fire that
twelve Biscayans were killed and many
others wounded in the exchange, includ-
ing Garcı́a Gal
an. He died two days
afterward, and the chastened formation
straggled on across the Atlantic.
Guns Tons Men
34 250 180
24 200 142
? 140 66
? 60 36
? 30 53

Once in Caribbean waters, the small
frigate of Fermı́n de Salaberrı́a parted
company to convey dispatches to Cuba
and New Spain, while the rest of the
formation cruised past the islands of
Trinidad and Margarita. Off the Salt
Tortugas (present-day Tortuga Island,
Venezuela) they plundered the 100-ton
sloop Relief of London, then seized the
Bermuda sloop Speedwell. The latter
and its 18 crewmembers were carried
early in March 1687 into La Guaira,
the port of Caracas, to be sold. Shortly
thereafter, the Biscayans also found the
Jamaican sloop Phoenix of Captain
John Jennings stranded on a beach, and
took it into Cartagena. The English
authorities were outraged at this ‘‘most
inhuman treatment’’ of their island
traders.
Meanwhile, De Salaberrı́a’s vessel
reached Havana in early March 1687
and Veracruz by mid-April, unwit-
tingly contributing to a mutiny by the
crews of the Armada de Barlovento six
weeks later, on account of the arrival
in the West Indies of this competitive
flotilla. By then, De Salaberrı́a had
sailed again, only to face an even more
hostile reception off J
ucaro, on the
southern coast of Cuba. While attempt-
ing to rejoin his squadron on the Span-
ish Main, he encountered the pirate
flagship of De Graaf, which chased
him into the shallows. Soon, De Sala-
berrı́a found himself aground in unfa-
miliar waters, in danger of being
captured. A force of small Cuban
coast-guard vessels hurried out to his
rescue, which De Graaf turned on as
well, seizing a schooner and sinking a
piragua. (During this fighting, the
brother of the Cuban corsair Blas
Miguel died, which would lead the lat-
ter to seek revenge against the pirate.)
Biscayan Privateers 523
Having survived this ordeal, De Sal-
aberrı́a completed his passage, and the
reunited Biscayan squadron then trav-
eled northeastward through the Carib-
bean in two contingents. One group
reached Veracruz early in July 1687,
followed by Captain Jos
e Leoz’s flag-
ship Rosario and a consort, which
arrived at midday on July 24th. An
inspection revealed all to be in poor
condition, with little possibility of
repair. Mexican officials were author-
ized to return any unfit vessels to
Spain, or incorporate them into the Ar-
mada de Barlovento, or assign them to
coast-guard duty off Santo Domingo.
No one was very happy to see them:
Spanish-American officials resented
the Biscayans’ autonomy and divisive
presence, while foreign authorities sus-
pected that their commission would be
used to justify attacks against peaceable
merchants or fishermen. Already by the
end of August 1687, Lieutenant-Gov.
Hender Molesworth of Jamaica was writ-
ing his superiors: ‘‘I have heard a great
deal more than I can yet prove of these
Biscayers, so that they deserve to be
called to account for it.’’ At virtually the
same time, Spanish officials in Madrid
were growing uneasy at the lack of any
news from the squadron since it had quit
the Canaries.
Early in 1688, the Biscayan flotilla
departed Veracruz to roam westward,
intercepting the bark Dragon of Roger
Whitfield as it was bound from Jamaica
toward New York, sending it into San-
tiago de Cuba for adjudication. Richard
Whiffin’s pink was also taken and car-
ried into Santo Domingo, where its crew
was soon released, but the Biscayans
then apparently left a contingent behind
to establish themselves on the island as
local guardacostas. On May 1, 1688,
524 Blackbeard
Gov. Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy of
Saint-Domingue learned that they had
taken two French barks, one loaded with
foodstuffs and the other bearing ‘‘twelve
or thirteen flibustiers of the crew of the
[Chevalier de] Saint Laurens, who were
going to trade among the islands.’’ Five
of these men managed to escape
to Puerto Rico, which the Guipuzcoans
also visited that summer, after raiding
the French establishments at Saman
a
Bay. In September 1688, the Biscayans
heard rumors that 300 French, English,
and Danish buccaneers were occupying
Vieques Island, yet found that place
uninhabited when they made a recon-
naissance in January 1689. A second raid
in December led by Captain John Philip
Beare produced a number of prisoners,
mostly harmless settlers.
English wrath over real or imagined
depredations by the squadron had led
to a royal warrant being drawn up in
London at the end of 1688, authorizing
the Governor of Jamaica to employ
Royal Navy warships ‘‘to suppress the
Biscayans who prey upon British
trade.’’ This was never signed, as the
Glorious Revolution intervened and
sent James II into exile, followed next
year by the outbreak of the War of the
League of Augsburg or King William’s
War in which England, Spain, and
Holland fought together against France.
Allegations of Biscayan assaults against
foreign vessels continued to be received,
although it is unlikely many were ac-
tually perpetrated by the now-enfeebled
force. Its commander Francisco de
Aguirre was in Havana by November
1690, homeward bound with the rem-
nants of his staff. Most crewmembers
had chosen to remain in the Americas,
and by 1692 the Biscayan squadron was
officially disbanded.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 12,
13 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1908).
Garmendia Arruabarrena, Jos
e, ‘‘Armadores
y armadas de Guip
uzcoa (1689
1692),’’
Boletı´n de Estudios Hist
oricos de San
Sebasti
an (San Sebasti
an: Biblioteca de
la Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos
del Paı́s, 1985), pp. 259
277.
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
L


opez Cantos, Angel, Historia de Puerto
Rico (1650
1700) (Seville: Escuela de
Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1975).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables, 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr
ua, 1972).
BLACKBEARD
See Thatch, Edward
BLANCO, AUGUSTÍN
(fl. 1718
1725)
Spanish corsair who operated for many
years out of the Cuban port of Baracoa.
On September 14, 1722 (O.S.), the
newly-installed Bahamian Governor
George Phenney wrote from Nassau on
New Providence Island to inform the
Council of Trade and Plantations in Lon-
don on how he had found the local situa-
tion on his arrival, including the news that:
. . . Augustino Blanco of Baracoa, a
Spanish pirate, having landed and
 Blanco, Augustı́n (fl. 1718
1725) 525

YOUNG BEN FRANKLIN’S ODE ON PIRACY

When news of Blackbeard’s death at the hands of Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the
Royal Navy was published in Boston newspapers in late February 1719 (O.S.), it
apparently inspired 13-year-old Benjamin Franklin to pen a broadside ballad about
this event. Drawn to the sea from his very earliest days, the young lad had been
apprenticed only that previous year to his uncle James Franklin, who was a printer.
Although unattributed, the ballad which appeared next month under the title of A Sailor
Song on the Taking of Teach or Blackbeard the Pirate, is believed to have been Ben
Franklin’s very first piece of writing. Indeed, its 57 lines brim over with youthful exuberance:

Have you heard of Teach the rover,

And his knavery on the Main,
How of gold he was a lover,
How he lov’d all ill-got gain?
When the Act of Grace appeared,
Captain Teach with all his men,
Unto Carolina steered,
Where they kindly us’d him, then,
There he marry’d to a Lady,
And gave her five hundred Pound,
But to her he proved unsteady,
For he soon marched off the ground,
And returned, as I tell you,
To his robbery as before,
Burning, sinking ships of value,
Filling them with purple gore.

Printed on a single side of large sheets known as ‘‘broadsides,’’ this ballad was intended
to be sold as sheet-music and sung as entertainment, most likely to the melody of the then-
popular tune What is Greater Joy and Pleasure. No original copy has survived to our
day, only various later versions of this, the illustrious Ben Franklin’s earliest work.

plunder’d the inhabitants of Cat them down, and am in great hopes

Island, I sent a sloop well manned
and armed to get an account of
them; but they missing him, he had
the impudence to return again with
two sloops, and last week he was
met with by two of our sloops, and
forc’d one of his ashore with sixteen
persons in her, nine of whom they
took, one an English and another a
Scotch renegado. The rest got ashore
at Little Island, and I have sent up a
sloop with a detachment to fetch
of securing the old pirate himself, he
being in an heavy piragua built out
of his other sloop which was
wrecked, with about 20 hands with
them, one of his Lieutenants with
the rest of his crew being return’d to
Baracao in a prize sloop, but I hope
by the next opportunity I shall be
able to give Your Lordships an
account of this barbarous fellow,
who has been a terror to these
Islands these twenty or thirty years.
526 Bl
enac, Charles De Courbon, Seigneur De Romegoux, Comte De (1622
1696)
In all, 11 of Blanco’s captured crewmen
would be brought into New Providence to
stand trial for piracy on October 11, 1722
(O.S.), five being condemned to the gal-
lows, and the rest reprieved—including
the renegade Englishman.
Three years later, complaints were
still being filed against Blanco. Don
Dionisio Martı́nez de la Vega, the new
Spanish Governor at Havana, responded
on June 5, 1725, to a protest lodged by
Governor Phenney by forwarding it on
to his subordinate at Santiago de Cuba,
Governor Carlos de Suere. The Baha-
mian complainant Richard Thomson
traveled in person to:
Santiago de Cuba to demand satisfac-
tion for a late robbery done by Augus-
tino Branco [sic], who had the
Governor Don Carlos de Suere’s com-
mission. The said Governor promised
him justice, and he commenced a suit.
But after tarrying for four months, de-
ponent found that by their continual
adjournments he would get no repara-
tion or justice and departed, Gibson
Dalziel [the Royal African Com-
pany’s agent] conveying to him seven
of his Negroes which were in his pos-
session as factor. The Governor and
his secretary kept each of them one
Negro. Deponent also brought away
Thomas Balthasar, native of Puerto
del Principe, who had been enticed to
sail with Branco, but refused to join in
his villainies.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 33,
35 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1934
1936).

NAC, CHARLES DE
BLE
COURBON, SEIGNEUR DE
ROMEGOUX, COMTE DE
(1622
1696)
Governor-General of the French Antil-
les, who on several occasions raised
flibustiers for West Indian campaigns.
Bl
enac was born in Saintonge,
France in 1622, of a noble family. He
married his cousin’s widow Ang
elique
de la Rochefoucauld in 1649, by whom
he had 11 children. He served the infant
Louis XIV throughout the Fronde rebel-
lions, rising in military rank. In 1669,
Bl
enac transferred to the nascent French
Navy, and commanded the Infante or
‘‘Infanta’’ in the Comte d’Estr
ees’ expe-
dition against the Barbary pirates, as
well as Fort or ‘‘Strong’’ at the 1672
Battle of Sole Bay. Hot-tempered and
quarrelsome, he was briefly incarcer-
ated next year for insulting a superior
officer, yet again saw action against the
Dutch that August, when he captained
Fortun
e at the Battle of the Texel.
Late in 1676, Bl
enac sailed in
D’Estr
ees’ first Caribbean expedition,
commanding Fendant or ‘‘Sword-stroke’’
in the unsuccessful assault against Dutch
Tobago. Retreating to Grenada, the
French furthermore learned of the death
of Jean-Charles de Baas-Castelmore,
Governor-General of the Antilles, so that
Bl
enac was temporarily appointed to suc-
ceed him. He returned to France with
D’Estr
ees to have this nomination con-
firmed, then sailed back to Martinique
with the Admiral’s second fleet in autumn
1677, assuming office that November.
Bl
enac was instrumental in raising a large
force of flibustiers for D’Estr
ees’ subse-
quent venture against Curaçao, which

ended in disaster when this force was
wrecked amid the Aves Islands grouping
on the evening of May 11, 1678.
Bl
enac also employed buccaneer con-
tingents during the War of the League of
Augsburg, especially at its inception in
1689, when he launched offensive opera-
tions against English St. Kitts and Dutch
Sint Eustatius. His early successes were
soon reversed, and he was so severely
criticized by subordinates such as Jean-
Baptiste Ducasse that he offered to re-
sign. Bl
enac returned to France ‘‘on
leave’’ aboard Pont d’Or (‘‘Golden
Bridge’’) in 1690, and did not resume
his duties at Martinique until February
16, 1692. He died at Fort-Royal of lin-
gering dysentery on the night of June
8
9, 1696, being succeeded by Thomas
Claude Renart, Marquis d’Amblimont.
See also
Bl
enac, Charles de Courbon (Volume 1).
Reference
Baudrit, Andr
e, Charles de Courbon,
Comte de Bl
enac, 1622
1696 (Fort
de France: Soci
et
e d’Histoire de la
Martinique, 1967).
BLUE OFFICERS
In French, officiers bleus, a nickname
given to non-aristocratic privateer or
merchant captains admitted temporarily
during wartime.
Such appointments into the officer
ranks of France’s Royal Navy were usu-
ally unpaid and transitory, although in
some cases they did lead to permanent
placements. Many high-born officers of
Bonnet, Stede (fl. 1717
1718) 527
the Grand Corps, though—the so-called
rouges or ‘‘reds’’—resented such intru-
sions into their traditional preserve.
Legend has it that this nickname derived
from the all-blue uniforms required of
the commoner officers, so as to distin-
guish them from garde officers, yet this
myth has now been debunked.
An example of this vernacular term in
use, among many, would occur on Sep-
tember 15, 1694, when, after a reverse in
an attack against Ferryland (Newfound-
land), Captain Du Vignau filed official
complaints against his Basque subordi-
nates ‘‘d’Etchevery of Bidart, blue En-
sign, and Pepito d’Aspicouette, blue
Lieutenant.’’ The practice of wartime
admissions of such commoner officers
had largely died out by 1715, although it
was to be revived by the Premier Duc de
Choiseul in 1764, on a better-regulated
and paid basis—yet still resented by the
haughty rouges.
References
Aman, Jacques, Les officiers bleus dans la
marine française au XVIIIeme si
ecle
(Geneva, Switzerland: Du Centre,
1976).
Hayet, Armand, ‘‘Officiers rouges, officiers
bleus,’’ Revue maritime [France] (April
1960).
BONNET, STEDE
(fl. 1717
1718)
A most peculiar pirate, having been
raised a gentleman, yet who eventually
swung from a rope like his confederates.
He was born into a wealthy and long-
established English family on Barbados
528 Bonnet, Stede (fl. 1717
1718)
in 1688, probably a few days prior to his
christening at Christ Church Parish that
same July 29th (O.S.). His parents,
Edward and Sarah Bonnet, owned a fine
estate of more than 400 acres southeast
of Bridgetown, which was bequeathed to
the six-year-old Stede on his father’s
death in 1694. It is not known where or
how the young orphan received his edu-
cation, but many would later describe
him as bookish, and Judge Nicholas Trott
even alluded to Bonnet’s literacy on sen-
tencing him. At the age of 21, Bonnet
married Mary Allamby in Bridgetown on
November 21, 1709 (O.S.), by whom he
would have three sons: Allamby,
Edward, and Stede, Jr., as well as a
daughter Mary; their eldest son died
prior to 1715.
As a sizeable landowner, Bonnet
held the rank of Major in the island mi-
litia, although details of his military
service during Queen Anne’s War are
unknown, and there is no evidence of
any active campaigning. Given this
background, why the 28-year-old plan-
tation-owner and married father of three
toddlers would choose to go a-privateer-
ing four years after these hostilities had
ceased, remains a mystery. His acquain-
tances attributed this decision to ‘‘a dis-
order of his mind,’’ while the chronicler
Charles Johnson alleged that it was due
to his wife’s nagging and the ‘‘discom-
forts he found in a married state.’’
Initial Cruise
(Spring
Summer 1717)
Whatever Bonnet’s motivation, he had
a 60-ton sloop built, armed it with six
guns, and named it the Revenge. He
also hired a crew of perhaps as many as
125 men, agreeing to pay them regular
wages—as aboard a letter-of-marque
ship during wartime—rather than shares
of plunder. Yet being unfamiliar with
navigation or seamanship, he would
have to rely on a sailing master and
quartermaster to work his vessel, dimin-
ishing his prestige among the crew.
Despite such disadvantages, Bonnet
slipped out of Carlisle Bay under cover
of darkness in April 1717, steering to-
ward British North America. Materializ-
ing off the Virginia coast, he intercepted
four vessels within the first few days
near the entrance to Chesapeake Bay—
Anne of Glasgow, Endeavour from Bris-
tol, Young of Leith—while burning the
fourth, the Barbadian ship Turbet, so as
to keep news of his criminal activity
from reaching his home-island. Bonnet
then sailed Revenge still farther north to
New York, where he took two more
ships, purchased some supplies, and
released his captives on Gardiners
Island. Returning southward to the Caro-
linas by early August 1717, he pillaged a
brigantine out of Boston and carried a
heavy-ladened Barbadian sloop under
Master Joseph Palmer into a lonely inlet
near Cape Fear in North Carolina, dis-
mantling it to use its timber in repairing
his vessel. Once Revenge was ready to
put out to sea again, the remnants of this
prize were burnt.
By late August 1717, Bonnet laid in
a course for Nassau in the Bahamas,
which had become an infamous pirate
base and home-port to such brazen
rovers as Captain Benjamin Hornigold.
Yet en route, Bonnet encountered and
engaged a Spanish warship, emerging
badly wounded and with almost two-
score casualties aboard Revenge, before
managing to win free. On limping into
that Bahamian refuge, its pirate rulers
quickly repaired and increased his

sloop’s armament to 12 guns, replen-
ished its crew numbers to well over
100 hands, and temporarily installed
Edward Thatch as Captain, while Bon-
net recuperated in his cabin.
Blackbeard’s Subordinate
(September 1717
June 1718)
By September 29, 1717 (O.S.), Revenge
was back off Virginia’s Cape Charles, pil-
laging the 40-ton merchant sloop Betty
‘‘of certain pipes of Madeira wine and
other goods,’’ before removing its crew
and scuttling it. Two weeks later, a large
ship out of Liverpool was taken near the
mouth of Delaware Bay, its Captain Codd
later relating how Bonnet could be seen
walking the pirate sloop’s quarterdeck in
his nightshirt, still weak from his wounds.
Numerous other captures ensued, before
Revenge abruptly vanished south toward
the end of October 1717.
Reappearing in a fresh hunting-
ground in the Lesser Antilles, Thatch
took the 300-ton French slaver Con-
corde as it was approaching Martinique
on November 28, 1717, diverting this
big prize to the island of Bequia in the
Grenadines so as to convert it into his
own flagship. Yet although Bonnet
nominally regained command over
Revenge at that time, he nonetheless
remained under Blackbeard’s control,
sailing as his consort as this pirate pair
cut a swathe of destruction through the
Greater Antilles over the next couple
of months, before finally entering Cox-
en’s Hole on the Honduran island of
Roat
an in early February 1718 to rest
and careen.
Shortly after Thatch’s refreshed flo-
tilla ventured back out to sea in mid-
March 1718, Bonnet failed to take the
Bonnet, Stede (fl. 1717
1718) 529
400-ton merchant ship Protestant Cae-
sar, provoking angry unrest among his
frustrated crew. Blackbeard therefore
removed him from his sloop, putting a
henchman named Richards in command
of Revenge. Bonnet was held aboard
Queen Anne’s Revenge as a powerless
supercargo, confiding to a few loyal
hands that he was ready to give up his
piratical career altogether for exile in
Spain or Portugal. Thatch led the for-
mation in its assault against Belize’s
Turneffe Atoll, during which Revenge
under Richards seized the sloop Adven-
ture of Captain David Herriot, before
the pirates continued past the Cayman
Islands and through the Bahamian ar-
chipelago, to emerge off Charleston in
South Carolina by May 22, 1718 (O.S.).
After a week-long blockade of this
port, Blackbeard moved farther up the
coast, apparently seeking an accommo-
dating place where he and his minions
might receive pardons and disperse, with
their booty intact. The new, hard-scrab-
ble colony of North Carolina offered just
such a venue of escape, so that on or
about June 10, 1718 (O.S.), Thatch’s
flagship and Adventure followed his
three smaller sloops into the tricky
entry-channel into Old Topsail Inlet,
today known as Beaufort Inlet. Both ran
aground, and the pirates began stripping
Queen Anne’s Revenge of everything of
value, while Thatch and Bonnet sailed
on to North Carolina’s capital of Bath to
obtain their pardons from its obliging
Governor, Charles Eden.
Last Independent Command
(June
September 1718)
Finally about to be free from Black-
beard’s bullying domination, Bonnet
530 Bonnet, Stede (fl. 1717
1718)
lingered in Bath to also secure clearance
from its Governor to sail Revenge to the
Danish West Indian island of Saint
Thomas, so as to purchase a commission
and resume privateering against the Span-
iards. Yet by the time Bonnet returned to
Topsail Inlet in late June or early July
1718 with this clearance, he found that
Blackbeard had already robbed his vessel
and the two other pirate sloops of most of
their supplies, beached the majority of
their former crewmen, and sailed away
for parts unknown with 20 loyal hands
and the pick of the booty aboard the
refloated Adventure.
Bonnet resumed command over
Revenge, and fleshed out its crew by res-
cuing some 17 to 25 men whom Black-
beard had left marooned on the sandbar
beside Topsail Inlet. A passing bumboat
chanced to inform Bonnet that Blackbeard
lay in nearby Ocracoke Inlet, so that he
weighed at once to hunt down his treach-
erous ex-confederate, but then could not
find him. As Thatch had left no more than
10 or 11 barrels of provisions aboard
Revenge when he absconded, it was now
impossible for Bonnet to strike out toward
distant Saint Thomas, especially during
the summer hurricane season. He there-
fore decided to resume pirating in nearby
waters, hoping to at least preserve his
newly-obtained North Carolinian pardon
through adopting the alias of ‘‘Captain
Thomas,’’ and changing Revenge’s name
to Royal James. (This latter choice may
have indicated pro-Jacobite sentiments
among Bonnet and his men.)
In July 1718, he and his freebooters
ventured northward and:
. . . took off Cape Henry, two ships
from Virginia bound to Glasgow; the
next day, a small sloop from Virginia
bound to Bermuda, from which they
took twenty barrels of pork and gave
her in return two barrels of rice, and
as much molasses. The next day,
they took another Virginia-man
bound to Glasgow, out of which they
took two men and a few small things,
and gave her a barrel of pork and
another of bread. From thence they
sailed to Philadelphia, where they
took a schooner coming from North
Carolina to Boston, from which they
took two men and two dozen of
calves’ skins, to make covers for
guns. In the latitude of 32°, off of
Delaware River near Philadelphia,
they took two snows bound to Bris-
tol, from which they took money and
goods to the value of two hundred
pounds; as also a sloop of sixty tons
from Philadelphia to Barbados, from
which they took a few goods and let
her go. The 29th of July [1718 O.S.],
they took a sloop of fifty tons, bound
from Philadelphia to Barbados laden
with provisions, which they kept; as
also another of sixty tons from Anti-
gua to Philadelphia having on board,
rum, molasses, sugar, cotton, and in-
digo to the value of five hundred
pounds, all of which they kept.
Bonnet veered around southward on
August 1, 1718 (O.S.), with the latter
two prizes, sloops named Francis and
Fortune, threatening at one point to sink
them for lagging behind during this
trio’s run toward the Carolinas. He also
distributed shares of loot worth £10 or
£11 apiece among his crew, suggesting
that Bonnet was shedding any last lin-
gering ideals about honest conduct, such
as paying regular wages to his men.
Twelve days from Delaware Bay, the
three vessels entered the Cape Fear River
estuary, and dropped anchor near the

mouth of a small concealed waterway
(today known as Bonnet’s Creek). Royal
James had begun to leak badly and was
in need of repair, so that when shortly
thereafter a small shallop unwittingly
entered that stream, Bonnet took it to
break up for its timbers. The actual
heavy toil of careening and repairing
Royal James in the sweltering August
heat, was done mostly by Bonnet’s pris-
oners. Yet his sloops remained in this
bolt-hole for the next month-and-a-half,
the boatswain Ignatius Pell later testify-
ing that the pirates intended to wait out
the hurricane season, before departing
for Saint Thomas.
This lengthy layover proved Bonnet’s
undoing. The authorities in neighboring
South Carolina learned of his presence
and were also soon being harassed by a
renewed pirate blockade by Charles
Vane, so that its private Governor Robert
Johnson feared ‘‘that we might expect
the same usage from another who was
careening and refitting in Cape Fear
River.’’ South Carolina’s Council there-
fore accepted an offer from Colonel Wil-
liam Rhett to exit with two sloops and
deal with this twin menace, being com-
missioned to sail aboard the Henry of
eight guns and 70 men under Captain
John Masters; and the similar-sized Sea
Nymph under Captain Farrier Hall. Rhett
emerged from Charleston harbor on Sep-
tember 15, 1718 (O.S.), armed with fresh
intelligence that Vane had steered south.
The Colonel followed in that direction
for a few days, ‘‘but not meeting with
him, tack’d and stood for Cape Fear,
according to his first design.’’
Capture (September 1718)
The two 8-gun South Carolinian sloops,
heavily manned with 130 hands, arrived
Bonnet, Stede (fl. 1717
1718) 531
outside the mouth of the Cape Fear
River by September, 1718 (O.S.). Bon-
net initially mistook Rhett’s vessels for
a pair of passing merchantmen, and so
sent out three boats to intercept them.
Yet unfortunately for the Colonel, his
flagship Henry then ran aground in the
shifting sandbars of the river entrance,
allowing Bonnet’s boat-parties to come
quite close and discern his strength,
before returning to warn their chieftain.
The sun had set by the time the rising
tide at last freed Henry from the river
bottom. Bonnet therefore spent that
ensuing night recalling his men from
his pair of prizes, so as to concentrate
all 46 aboard Royal James, and fight his
way past in a desperate rush out to the
open sea next morning. Yet he also took
time to pen a letter to Governor John-
son, angrily threatening to burn the
shipping in Charleston harbor by way
of retaliation.
At first light on September 27, 1718
(O.S.), Bonnet started downriver to-
ward Rhett’s waiting force, at which
the two South Carolinian sloops di-
vided so as to catch Royal James in
between, pouring in fire from both
sides. Bonnet veered to avoid this trap
by steering close toward the western
shore, but ran aground. Rhett’s sloops
moved in on the stranded Royal James,
yet also grounded, only Henry coming
to rest ‘‘within pistol-shot of the pirate,
on his bow; the other [Sea Nymph],
right ahead of [Bonnet], almost out of
gun-shot, which made it of but very lit-
tle use to the Colonel.’’ Over the next
five hours, the immobilized vessels
exchanged fire, the pirates having the
advantage in that their deck was tilted
away from their opponents, while
Henry’s deck heeled toward Royal
James, exposing Rhett’s men to
532 Bonnet, Stede (fl. 1717
1718)
punishing volleys of musket-fire. Ten
South Carolinians were killed and 14
wounded, compared to only 12 casual-
ties aboard Bonnet’s vessel.
Throughout these exchanges, the
pirate Captain prowled his deck with a
drawn pistol, threatening to shoot any
man who faltered, although most of his
crew fought enthusiastically, challeng-
ing their enemies to board and fight
hand-to-hand, and even tying a knot in
their flag as a mock signal to ‘‘come
aboard and render aid.’’ Yet the battle
was ultimately decided when the rising
tide lifted Rhett’s sloops free, while
leaving Royal James still hard aground.
Bonnet and his outnumbered men could
only watch helplessly as their foes
quickly repaired their rigging, and then
closed in on their paralyzed vessel from
oblique angles to simultaneously launch
devastating assaults by boarding. In one
final gesture of despair, Bonnet ordered
his gunner George Ross to blow up
Royal James’s powder magazine, but
the remainder of his crew overruled this
act. A white flag-of-truce was hoisted
instead, and all the pirates surrendered.
Rhett spent until next day securing his
prisoners and prizes, before clearing for
Charleston and returning there by Octo-
ber 3, 1718 (O.S.), ‘‘to the no small joy
of the people of Carolina.’’
Escape, Trial, and Execution
(October
December 1718)
Bonnet was separated from the bulk of
his crew and held for three weeks in
the Provost-Marshal’s house, along
with his boatswain Pell and sailing
master Herriott. On October 24, 1718
(O.S.), Bonnet and Herriott managed to
escape, probably with the collusion of
The execution of Stede Bonnet on Charles-
ton’s waterfront in December 1718, as
depicted six years later in Johnson’s A
General History of the Robberies and
Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates.
(Author’s Collection)
the local merchant Richard Tookerman.
Governor Johnson immediately placed
an enormous £700 bounty on the pirate
Captain’s head, and sent out parties to
cut off most avenues of escape. The
two fugitives, accompanied by a slave
and an Indian, meanwhile stole a boat
and made for the north shore of Char-
leston harbor, but foul winds and lack
of supplies forced them onto desolate
Sullivan’s Island. Getting wind of this,
Johnson sent across a posse under Rhett
in pursuit, who discovered all four after
a lengthy search and opened fire, killing
Herriott and wounding the two slaves.
Bonnet surrendered and was brought
back into prison in Charleston.
While awaiting trial, some sort of civil
uprising in his support took place within
the city, an event that authorities would
later describe as having nearly resulted
in the burning of the town and the over-
throw of the government. On November

10, 1718 (O.S.), Bonnet was brought to
trial before Nicholas Trott, sitting in his
capacity as Vice-Admiralty Judge, and
who had already sentenced most of Bon-
net’s crew to hang. Bonnet was formally
charged with only two acts of piracy,
against the Francis and the Fortune,
whose commanders were on hand to tes-
tify in person. Pell had turned King’s evi-
dence for the preceding trials, and now
somewhat reluctantly testified against
Bonnet.
Bonnet conducted his own defense
without assistance of counsel, cross-
examining witnesses to little avail, and
even calling a character-witness. Trott
nonetheless rendered a damning summa-
tion of the evidence, and the jury
returned a guilty verdict. Two days later,
after treating the convicted man to a stern
lecture, Trott sentenced Bonnet to death.
While awaiting execution, the repentant
rover wrote to Governor Johnson, beg-
ging for clemency—even promising to
have his own arms and legs cut off, as
assurance that he would never again
commit piracy. The chronicler Charles
Johnson later recorded how Bonnet’s
visibly disintegrating mind and ‘‘piteous
behavior under sentence’’ moved many
Carolinians, particularly the female pop-
ulation, and London papers later reported
that the Governor delayed his execution
seven times. Finally, though, Bonnet was
turned off from the cart’s tail at White
Point on the Charleston waterfront on
December 10, 1718 (O.S.), only a few
days before the fearsome Blackbeard
himself also met his own bloody end.
See also
Hornigold, Benjamin; Maroon; Thatch,
Edward; Vane, Charles.
Boone, John (fl. 1684
1687) 533
References
Butler, Lindley S., Pirates, Privateers, and
Rebel Raiders of the Carolina Coast
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press, 2000).
Collections of the South Carolina Historical
Society, Volume I (Charleston, SC:
Historical Society, 1857).
Howell, Thomas Bayly and Cobbett,
William, comp. and eds., ‘‘The Trials of
Major Stede Bonnet and Thirty-Three
Others, at the Court of Vice-Admiralty
at Charleston in South Carolina, for
Piracy,’’ A Complete Collection of State
Trials and Proceedings for High
Treason and Other Crimes and
Misdemeanors, from the Earliest Period
to the Year 1783 (London: Longman,
1816), pp. 1231
1302.
Lee, Robert E., Blackbeard the Pirate: A
Reappraisal of His Life and Times
(Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 1995).
The Lives and Adventures of Sundry Notorious
Pirates (New York: McBride, 1922).
Sanders, Joanne M., ed., Barbados
Records: Baptisms, 1637
1800
(Baltimore, MD: Genealogical
Publications, 1984) and Barbados
Records: Baptisms, 1693
1800
(Houston, TX: Sanders Historical
Publications, 1982).
The Tryals of Major Stede Bonnet, and Other
Pirates (London: Benjamin Cowse, 1719).
Woodard, Colin, The Republic of Pirates
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
2008) and ‘‘Blackbeard in the Bay
Islands,’’ Bay Islands Voice 6, No. 8
(August 2008).
BOONE, JOHN
(fl. 1684
1687)
One of the first colonists of South Car-
olina, who was accused of ‘‘holding
correspondence with pirates.’’
534 Boone, John (fl. 1684
1687)
The earliest official notice of his activ-
ities occurred on February 20, 1676
(O.S.), within a few years of that colony’s
foundation, when Boone was granted 200
acres along the banks of the Ashley River.
Four years later, he was one of a half-
dozen residents appointed on May 17,
1680 (O.S.), by the Lords Proprietors in
London ‘‘to take cognizance of and deter-
mine any disputes between [the Westoe]
Indians and Englishmen.’’ He addition-
ally secured a town-lot in Charleston as of
March 10, 1682 (O.S.), but the Lord Pro-
prietors were less pleased in September
1685 to learn that Boone and another
plantation-owner had been appointed as
Deputies in the Grand Council, ‘‘though
not the eldest men in age of those chosen
by the Commons.’’
Because of this infraction of legisla-
tive rules and other violations including
involvement in the native slave-trade
and suspicion of receiving piratical
goods, the private Governor Joseph
Moreton was instructed to:
. . . dismiss Matthews and Boone,
and appoint other Deputies in their
stead, and you will discharge them
from all offices, civil and military,
in the gift of the Governor or Pala-
tine’s Court. If they persist in trans-
porting Indians, you will indict
them.
The Lord Proprietors also enjoined
Moreton to ‘‘take all imaginable care
that no pirates or privateers be admitted
in Carolina,’’ so it is not surprising to
find them sending the following direc-
tive on March 3, 1687 (O.S.), to his suc-
cessor, Governor James Colleton:
We see by the Minutes of Council
that there was evidence that Mr. John
Boone had not only helped the
pirates Chapman and Holloway with
victuals, but had taken and concealed
part of their stolen goods, for which
he was rightly expelled the Grand
Council. But we hear since that he is
again chosen, and is sitting in the
Grand Council. This must not be.
Men convicted of such misdemean-
ors must not be chosen again and
restored. You will put him out, and
see that another is chosen in his
place. We are sorry to see the prone-
ness of the Parliament of Carolina to
such proceedings, and hope that they
will not occur again.
This specific complaint apparently
stemmed from an incident which had
begun on September 1, 1684 (O.S.),
when unexpectedly ‘‘an armed vessel
came into the Ashley River in Caro-
lina, which pretended to have been
trading among the Spaniards.’’ The
then-Acting-Governor and Justice Rob-
ert Quarry permitted it to stay and
refresh its provisions, but prohibited
the landing or sale of any of its goods,
which was evidently ignored—after
which it was determined ‘‘that it was a
piratical vessel, containing plundered
goods.’’
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes
9
12 (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1893
1899).
Collections of the South Carolina
Historical Society, Volume I
(Charleston, SC: Historical Society,
1857).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
 Bot or Botte, Pierre (fl. 1672
1685) 535

BOT OR BOTTE, PIERRE that devastated city at the end of August

for Isla Mujeres with the rest of the free-
(fl. 1672
1685) booters, to divide their spoils.
From there, he departed for Petit-
Breton corsair who took part in the
Go^ave in company with De Graaf’s
assaults against Veracruz and Campeche.
Neptune and three other pirate ships,
Bot had apparently first gone to sea in
but on September 11, 1685, was sighted
1672, serving aboard fishing boats that
and pursued by the Armada de Barlo-
visited both La Coru~na and Martinique,
vento. After four hours, Regla and a
as well as on a ship belonging to the
pirate sloop had lagged so far astern
Knights of Malta. Late in 1682, he joined
that they came under Spanish fire. A
the flibustier flotilla of the ‘‘Chevalier’’
brisk cannonade ensued, but Antonio de
de Grammont off Cuba, proceeding to
Astina’s vice-flagship Nuestra Se~ nora
the Bahamas where—‘‘being the brav-
de la Concepci
on closed inexorably, de-
est,’’ according to him—he captured a
spite Bot’s desperate attempts to lighten
Spanish ship commanded by ‘‘Martı́n de
his ship by flinging articles over-
Melgar’’ [sic; more likely Martı́n de
board—beginning, according to one
Echagaray, the senior pilot at St. Augus-
eyewitness, with the ‘‘three large canoes
tine, Florida]. Bot’s share of this booty
they had stolen from the Campeche
came to ‘‘sixty pounds of silver,’’ and
fishermen.’’
Spanish survivors were returned to Ha-
Finally, Bot hailed, offering to strike
vana aboard a barco luengo. In March
if granted quarter. This was conceded,
1683, Bot intercepted the 22-gun Span-
so Regla hove to. The Spaniards found
ish merchantman Nuestra Se~ nora de
130 French buccaneers aboard, along
Regla off Cuba’s southern coast, losing
with numerous captives from Cam-
nine men in a bloody clash before this
peche: 20 Spaniards, 13 Indians, and
ship could be carried. He set its survivors
some black slaves. In addition to its 22
ashore at Guant
anamo Bay, sailing his
guns, it had been armed with 10 swivel-
battered prize toward Petit-Go^ave with
guns and more than 200 firearms, in
the rest of Grammont’s squadron. On
addition to those jettisoned during the
approaching, they were met by Nikolaas
chase or appropriated by the Armada’s
van Hoorn, who was exiting in Gram-
light-fingered sailors. (The Spanish sea-
mont’s corvette Colbert to recall them
men behaved badly, seizing many
for an enterprise against the Spaniards.
weapons and items for themselves, de-
Bot then captained Regla across to
spite their officers’ intervention. The
Roat
an and afterward to Guanaja, before
veedor or ‘‘purser’’ Juan Nieto beat one
taking part in the huge assault against
such group of looters with his cutlass,
Veracruz led by Grammont, Van Hoorn,
calling them ‘‘scoundrels, drunks, and
and Laurens de Graaf in May 1683. He
thieves’’; another band was set on by
returned to Saint-Domingue, and may
the prize-master, Ensign Pedro de
perhaps be the ‘‘Capitaine Blot’’ listed
Iriarte. The situation deteriorated fur-
next year as commanding the 8-gun
ther when boarders arrived from the
Quagone of 90 men. Bot also served in
flagship Santo Cristo de Burgos as well,
Grammont’s and De Graaf’s sack of
being bitter rivals to those aboard the
Campeche in 1685, withdrawing from
vice-flag. By the time all this pilfering
536 Bouton, Jacques Cl
ement (fl. 1686)
was done, scarcely 30 pounds of Church
ornaments were left to be restored to
their rightful owners, along with some
dry goods in the hold, and a little
money.)
While Regla was being ransacked,
Bot and his men were redistributed
around the Spanish warships: 50
aboard the flagship, a like number
aboard the vice-flagship, and 30 on the
frigate Honh
on. The pursuit of De
Graaf thereupon resumed, ending
unsuccessfully four days later when his
Neptune escaped. The Armada limped
back into Veracruz, entering on the
night of September 28
29, 1685.
Although the French buccaneers had
been promised clemency, Bot and his
lieutenants were sentenced to death,
along with half-a-dozen Spanish sub-
jects who had been serving with them,
and were consequently convicted of
treason. These executions were carried
out in Veracruz a few weeks later.
References
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Weddle, Robert S., Wilderness Manhunt:
The Spanish Search for La Salle (Austin,
TX: University of Texas Press, 1973).
BOUTON, JACQUES

MENT (fl. 1686)
CLE
French shipowner who was charged in
1686 by the Spanish authorities in the
Canary Islands of wanting ‘‘to cross
over to Indies and rove as a privateer’’
aboard his ship Saint-Cl

ement.
Reference
Archive of Indies (Seville), Escribanı´a de
C
amara de Justicia 949B, two
documents.
BRADISH, JOSEPH
(fl. 1698
1700)
New Englander convicted of running
away with a ship in the Far East.
Bradish was born at Cambridge, Mas-
sachusetts, on November 28, 1672
(O.S.). Pursuing a career at sea, he was
signed on as boatswain’s mate aboard the
350-ton ship Adventure of London in
March 1698, bound on a trading voyage
to Borneo. When this ship paused at the
Spice Islands for water that same Sep-
tember, its Captain Thomas Gullock and
most of the officers and passengers went
ashore. Bradish seized this opportunity to
lead the crew in a mutiny, setting loyal
hands ashore in a boat before sailing
away. When their booty was counted, he
and his followers found that their shares
came to £1,600 apiece, Bradish himself
receiving two-and-a-half shares.
The Adventure touched at Mauritius
and Ascension Island to replenish sup-
plies, before appearing off Long Island
at the end of March 1699, to strike a
deal with Colonel Henry Pierson to
store some of their loot. Bradish then
continued northward to Block Island
near Rhode Island, where he encoun-
tered two sloops. These helped the
pirates strip Adventure of everything of
value, before scuttling the ship. The
men subsequently attempted to disperse
throughout New England, but the alarm
had been raised. Bradish and 10 others
were detained in Boston’s jail, yet he
and a companion managed to escape

on June 25th with the collusion of his
relation, jailer Caleb Ray. A reward of
£200 was posted and search-parties
were sent out, the two fugitives being
quickly recaptured at Saco (Maine),
and returned to Boston.
Bradish was apparently sent to Eng-
land in irons aboard HMS Advice in
early 1700, along with William Kidd,
James Kelley, and other pirates. He
was tried and executed along with Kel-
ley, their bodies being exhibited in
chains at Hope Dock near Gravesend
‘‘as a greater terror to others.’’
References
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Ritchie, Robert C., Captain Kidd and the
War against the Pirates (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).
BRANLY, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1685)
English buccaneer who commanded a
36-man bark in the flotilla of Edward
Davis, as it was lying off the Pacific
coast of Panama during April
May
1685, awaiting the arrival of the Peru-
vian silver ships. The chronicler Rave-
nau de Lussan misspells his name as
‘‘Brander.’’
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1990).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
Breholt, John (fl. 1699
1700) 537
BREHOLT, JOHN
(fl. 1699
1700)
English privateer suspected of piracy,
and of plotting a Red Sea foray.
The first official notice of his activ-
ities occurred in peacetime, while com-
manding a hired privateer in August
1699, as part of the global manhunt for
the renegade Captain William Kidd.
Governor Ralph Grey of Barbados had
sent out the 26-gun, 115-man frigate
HMS Speedwell of Captain Jedidiah
Barker on an anti-piracy patrol,
who departed Carlisle Bay on August
6, 1699 (O.S.). After touching at Marti-
nique, Barker reached Montserrat three
days later:
. . . where I met with Captain Bill-
ingsly in the Queenborough and
Captain John Breholt in the Carlisle,
and that night we sailed for Nevis,
where we arrived the next morning.
On the 13th [August 1699 O.S.] we
sailed in company with the foremen-
tioned ships for the Virgin Islands.
We arrived the 15th at Beef Island
in the evening. Captain Billingsly
sent his boat ashore to take one Ham
off for his pilot, who had traded with
Kidd, but received information that
he was gone for Saint Croix the
16th. We sailed for Saint Croix, but
could not meet with the said Ham.
The 17th, we came off Saint
Thomas, there coming out a ship
which we took for a pirate; we gave
him chase all that day and till twelve
o’clock at night, but could not come
up with him. After chase, Captain
Breholt lost us, but Captain Bill-
ingsly and myself made the best of
our way up for St. Thomas.
538 Breholt, John (fl. 1699
1700)

Evidently, after losing contact with
his two consorts, Breholt had chosen to
venture farther westward and scour the
Cuban coastline, intercepting and
examining various passing vessels. He
then proceeded up the Atlantic Sea-
board, and by November 1699 had put
into Charleston harbor. Carlisle and its
Captain would be detained there for
five months on suspicion of piracy,
although the colonial inspector Edward
Randolph out of England would later
allege that Acting-Governor Joseph
Blake’s real ‘‘design was to get her
into his and his confederates’ hands,
by putting the sailors upon seizing her
for their wages, and then get her to be
sold to them for little or nothing.’’
The matter eventually went to court.
A report compiled next spring by
South Carolina’s private colonial
administrators on May 17, 1700 (O.S.),
informed their Lords Proprietors in
London in detail about several recent
matters, including how Breholt:
. . . commander of ye Carlisle frigate,
a ship of very great force, both of
guns and men, from ye coast of Cuba
came into Ashley River in November
last and was informed against by his
men for committing of diverse pira-
cies and hostilities upon ye subjects
of His Most Catholic Majesty, ye
King of Spain, for which in a special
court of oyez and terminer and jail
delivery for ye Admiralty jurisdiction,
he was brought upon his trial. It was
clearly proved to ye grand jury that
he had boarded several vessels,
chased some on shore, had taken and
made use of several things from on
board them, and as often he espied a
sail, he told his men that there was a
prize he hoped loaden [sic] with
money, &c. Notwithstanding which,

Captured pirates being exhibited by their jailer, as depicted by Howard Pyle. (Johnson,
Merle (compiled by). Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates: Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning the
Buccaneers & Marooners of the Spanish Main, 1921)

ye grand jury found ye bill against
him ignoramus; as soon as he was
cleared, he hastened ye fitting his ship
for sea, which as soon as he had done,
he fell down ye river below our fort
and guns, and then made it his busi-
ness to make it known everywhere
that he was bound to ye Red Seas,
encouraging all sorts of men to come
on board him. Several persons in debt
more than they were able or willing
to pay, went on board him.
News of his brazen intention was car-
ried to York River by William Clay,
Master of the outward-bound vessel
Endeavor, who told Virginia’s Gover-
nor Francis Nicholson:
. . . that Captain Breholt, commander
of the Carlisle, 36 guns and 120 men,
who had been tried for piracy in South
Carolina some time before and acquit-
ted, sailed out of Ashley River about
March 26 [1700 O.S.], came to an
anchor without the bar, landed on Sul-
livan’s Island and there killed a great
many cows, hogs, and goats, the best
of which they carried on board. He
told Captain Clay he designed either
to sail for Smith’s Island in Virginia
to get more provisions, or else to Cape
de Verd [sic; Cape Verde at Africa’s
westernmost tip].
Meanwhile, several prisoners had
escaped from Charleston’s jail to Bre-
holt’s anchored ship, allegedly with his
connivance or assistance. Governor Blake
consequently demanded their return, as
well as ‘‘all other persons on board him
for which he had not his permit to take
them on board,’’ but the embittered Bre-
holt refused. Unwilling to risk bloodshed
by resorting to force, an appeal was made
Brigaut, Nicolas (1679
1686) 539
to the lower house of South Carolina’s
legislature, but that body’s Speaker—
‘‘Breholt’s particular friend,’’ according
to one observer—blandly asserted that
the defiant privateer Captain:
. . . was ready to send on shore as
many of ye aforesaid persons as ye
Governor would require. Notwith-
standing which, Breholt would not
set one man ashore, and we verily
believe he is upon a piratical design,
gone to ye Red Seas.
See also
Beef Island; Kidd, William.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 17,
18 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1908
1910).
Collections of the South Carolina Historical
Society, Volume I (Charleston, SC:
Historical Society, 1857).
Salley, A. S., Jr., comp. and ed.,
Commissions and Instructions from the
Lords Proprietors of Carolina to the
Public Officials of South Carolina,
1685
1715 (Charleston, SC: Historical
Commission, 1916).
BRIGAUT, NICOLAS
(1679
1686)
French flibustier who served in the
assaults against Maracaibo, Campeche,
and Saint Augustine, Florida.
Brigaut was born a Huguenot or
‘‘French Protestant’’ on the ^Ile de R
e
near La Rochelle, France, sometime
around 1653. He went to sea at a young
540 Brigaut, Nicolas (1679
1686)
age, and in 1679 embarked for Martini-
que. Although his ship was lost ‘‘50
leagues from Puerto Rico,’’ he was res-
cued by another vessel and carried into
Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti), where
the next year he signed on with the Sieur
de Grammont’s freebooter flotilla bound
for Cuman
a. After that campaign, Brigaut
traveled to New England (perhaps with
Capitaine Br
eha in 1683, or with Michiel
Andrieszoon and Jan Willems in 1684),
where he purchased a 40-ton sloop.
Returning into the Caribbean, Brigaut
rejoined his comrades off Isla Orchila
near Caracas, before heading northward
and joining the formations of Grammont
and Laurens de Graaf for their descent on
the Mexican port of Campeche.
This assault took place in July 1685,
after which Brigaut received command
of a 40-man Spanish galliot found lying
in its roads, and followed Grammont
when the raiders withdrew two months
later. The galliot, Grammont’s Hardi,
and a sloop went to Roat
an off the Cen-
tral American coast to careen, after
which Grammont decided to attack the
Spanish outpost of Saint Augustine in
Florida, perhaps in alliance with the
English settlers of Carolina. The flibust-
ier trio worked its way into the Atlantic,
and on April 30, 1686, Brigaut’s galliot
stood alone in toward Matanzas, Flor-
ida, flying Spanish colors. Grammont’s
flagship and sloop remained concealed
at anchor farther south.
The pirates wished to gather intelli-
gence on the main garrison at Saint
Augustine, 15 miles to the north, and at
first everything seemed to go well: Four
Spanish soldiers rowed out in a boat, and
were invited aboard Brigaut’s galliot by
a friendly hail. Once in the pirates’
power, though, two soldiers were tor-
tured for information, while the rovers
set a landing-party ashore to also secure
an Indian interpreter and pillage sup-
plies. They returned some hours later
with another Spanish prisoner, several
Indian captives, and provisions; but
more Spanish soldiers soon appeared on
the beach, and the raiders realized that
they had been discovered from Saint
Augustine. Next morning, May 1st, two
boatloads of buccaneers rowed ashore
and fought a four-hour battle with the
Spanish soldiers, killing one and wound-
ing four. During that night, the weather
worsened until the galliot grounded on
the bar in a heavy groundswell. Next
morning, Brigaut’s men, ‘‘carrying their
arms in their mouths, waded ashore and
dug holes in the beach, from which they
poured a heavy fire into the Spanish
troops.’’ Although outnumbered, they
were able to drive off the Spaniards
thanks to their superior firepower, killing
four and wounding seven; yet their gal-
liot remained stuck fast.
That night, Brigaut decided on a des-
perate expedient: He sent a launch with
five men to advise Grammont that he and
his crew would march almost 40 miles
south to ‘‘Mosquitos Bar’’ (near modern
Daytona Beach), asking that the sloop
pick them up there within five days. In
the darkness and a heavy downpour,
Brigaut and his remaining 40 men then
abandoned their galliot, stealing ashore
undetected with their captives to begin
the trek. Dawn of May 3rd found them
clean away, the rain having erased their
footsteps from the sand; however, that
same night Grammont had anchored
close to Matanzas in search of his lost
consort, so consequently never received
Brigaut’s plea for help. Within 15 miles
of their destination, the buccaneers were
approached by a band of 50 or 60 Indi-
ans, who beckoned them to board canoes

and join them for a meal. Brigaut was
suspicious, and warned his men to be
careful. Suddenly the natives shot
arrows, and six buccaneers fell wounded;
when the remainder returned fire with
their muskets, the Indians vanished.
Shaken, Brigaut and his men gained
the offshore bank to await rescue. One
of their captives, a Spanish-speaking
native of Tallahassee named Juan
L
opez, bolted and gained the mainland,
despite being fired on as he swam away.
Three days later, he was reporting to
Gov. Juan M
arquez Cabrera at Saint
Augustine, saying that the raiders were
led by the turncoat Alonso de Avesilla.
A column of 50 soldiers sallied in pur-
suit, chancing on the flibustiers at a
weak moment, when 19 had ‘‘left the
bar to swim ashore, carrying their mus-
kets and powder in waterproof bags.’’
The Spaniards ambushed and massacred
them all, before proceeding to the bank
and visiting a like treatment on the rest.
Even the Spanish captives were mistak-
enly slain, only Brigaut, a black pirate
named Diego, and a nine-year-old boy
were carried off as prisoners. At Saint
Augustine, the flibustier captain and his
lone companion were interrogated on
May 30
31, 1686, then hanged shortly
thereafter.
Reference
Weddle, Robert S., Wilderness Manhunt:
The Spanish Search for La Salle (Austin,
TX: University of Texas Press, 1973).
BROOKS, JOHN (fl. 1692)
English merchant master, whose ship
was impressed to help defend Jamaica.
Brooks, John (fl. 1692) 541
Early in the spring of 1692, as King
William’s War was about to enter its
fourth year, news arrived that a large
French fleet had obliged an approach-
ing trans-Atlantic convoy under Com-
modore Ralph Wrenn to retreat back
into Barbados. Emboldened by this dis-
play of French naval strength in the
region, flibustiers had then sallied out
of Saint-Domingue to descend on the
plantations of northern Jamaica, carry-
ing off several vessels, slaves, and
goods, while threatening to return in
greater numbers. The Council of
Jamaica had consequently moved to
preempt such an onslaught, by launch-
ing its own counter-raid against Saint-
Domingue.
To bolster the Royal Navy warships
Guernsey, Swan, and four privateer
sloops preparing to sortie from Port
Royal, the Council also on March 13,
1692 (O.S.), forcibly hired Brooks’
330-ton anchored merchantman Joseph,
a powerfully-armed ship of 34 guns
and 157 men. This arrangement was
abruptly cancelled two days after Port
Royal was swallowed up by the sea
during the cataclysmic earthquake and
tidal wave of June 7, 1692 (O.S.), so
that Brooks was free once more to sail
for England. The Jamaican government
being so heavily indebted at that time,
the £1,147 of Joseph’s hire was not
paid on that island, prompting its
merchant owners to bill the Royal
Treasury in London—in vain, as it
turned out.
Reference
Calendar of Treasury Books, Volumes 10,
19 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1935 and 1938).
542 Broome, John (fl. 1691
1694)

BROOME, JOHN quartet weighed soon after the Privy

Council had ordered London’s Cus-
(fl. 1691
1694) toms Commissioners to clear them on
August 8th (O.S.).
English slaver and privateer, who
It was during Broome’s subsequent
thanks to a rich capture, became a pros-
crossing to the Antilles that he cap-
perous planter on Barbados.
tured the 300-ton French slaver Bona-
Details about his early life are
venture in the Berbice River of
sketchy, beyond the fact that he was a
Guyana, and carried it into his next
nephew of Colonel Samuel Tidcombe,
port-of-call at Jamaica. An examination
a long-established and wealthy planter
confirmed Bonaventure to be a very
himself on that island, in Saint Lucy’s
wealthy prize, deemed:
Parish. It is uncertain whether Broome
was the Captain mentioned in English
. . . to be worth 30 thousand pounds
records as commanding the Lusitania
by the attestations in the Court of
in September 1689, during the very
Admiralty. I find her of great value,
first months of King William’s War, as
having then on board two chests
well as holding a letter-of-marque for
about three foot in length, 16 inches
the ship Mary Rose. It is possible that
in breadth, and 16 inches depth, with
this referred to another individual, the
gold and silver; about three tons of
confusion compounded by the fact that
elephants’ teeth [i.e., ivory]; four
their surname would be variously
tons of bees’ wax; 40 pieces of Hol-
spelled over the ensuing years as
land duck [hardy linen-cloth or can-
‘‘Brome,’’ ‘‘Broom,’’ etc.
vas, from the Dutch word doek]; 165
The first clear reference to his activ-
Negroes, and 40 they took from the
ities occurred on September 3, 1691
shore.
(O.S.), when Broome’s 300-ton Amer-
ica was cleared—along with two other
The local Royal African Company agent
merchant ships ‘‘of good force’’—to
vigorously demanded its full value from
sail from England and resupply the
the Jamaican Vice-Admiralty Court,
Royal African Company’s slaving sta-
delighted by this unexpected windfall
tions in West Africa, as the conflict
from Broome’s slaving voyage.
with France was now entering its third
Yet the problem was that America
year. Broome apparently succeeded
had not been furnished with a privat-
and also crossed the Atlantic to deliver
eering commission, so that the matter
a consignment of slaves, before regain-
of full compensation had to be
ing England with West Indian goods.
appealed to the Lords of the Admiralty
On July 28, 1692 (O.S.), the Royal
in London. Legal inquiries were pro-
African Company again petitioned the
ceeding more slowly than usual, as
Crown to allow Broome’s America and
Port Royal had only recently been
three other large ships, manned by a
destroyed by an earthquake, and the
total of 200 sailors, to once more sail
new Lieutenant-Governor Sir William
‘‘with English manufactures, provi-
Beeston and Governor James Kendall
sions, and stores’’ so as to replenish
would not arrive to assume office until
their slave-stations. Presumably this
next year. And to further complicate

matters, the highly influential Henry
Sydney, the newly-created Earl of Rom-
ney and a favorite of King William,
expressed an interest in also filing a
claim, because he had recently received
a royal grant for prizes taken in the
West Indies. It was even suggested that:
‘‘. . . my Lord Rumney hath great pre-
tensions against Sir William Phips’s
government of New England for prizes,
by virtue of said grant.’’
Broome could only post bail against a
future verdict, before hastening home to
Barbados to claim his inheritance. His
uncle had died in August 1692, leaving
Broome and his married sister Priscilla as
main beneficiaries. With the Bonaventure
judgment still under review, he took title
over his lands and in September 1694
was elected one of two members from
Saint Lucy’s Parish to the Council of
Barbados, and then re-elected in Decem-
ber 1695. The last reference to ‘‘Major
John Broome’’ occurred in the summer
of 1701, when he was sued along with
Colonel Boteler and the widow Jane
Hunt, because some slaves which they
jointly owned had burned down a house
belonging to Captain James Graham, in
which four people were killed.
See also
Beeston, Sir William; Phips, Sir William.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 14,
19 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1910).
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic:
William and Mary, 1689
1690
(London, 1895).
Burke, Thomas (fl. 1699) 543
Calendar of Treasury Books, 1689
1692,
Volume 9 (London: His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1931).
Marsden, Reginald G., ed., Documents
Relating to Law and Custom of the Sea,
Volume 2 (London: Navy Records
Society, 1916).
BURKE, THOMAS
(fl. 1699)
Irish-born pirate who committed
numerous robberies among the fishing-
fleets of Newfoundland, before dying
in the Lesser Antilles.
Precise information about this rover’s
activities remains sketchy. Apparently he
rose to prominence off the Newfoundland
coast during the uneasy interlude follow-
ing the end of King William’s War, steer-
ing far south in the summer of 1699 with
his Prophet Daniel. According to a depo-
sition given a few months afterward on
November 17, 1699 (O.S.,) by one of his
West Indian victims, boatswain Francis
Tippett of the merchant pink Flowerpot
of Master Anthony Tailor, this vessel was
seized fifty leagues from Barbados:
. . . by a pirate, the Prophet Daniel,
commanded by Thomas Bourck [sic],
an Irishman. Burke presently died and
the Irishmen of the crew, which was
of several nations, after a bloody fight
overpowered the rest. But fourteen of
the Irish were left alive and about six-
teen French, which were wounded
and turned on shore at Tobago, with
deponent and 25 other prisoners taken
by the pirates out of several ships in
Newfoundland.
Late that same year, Governor Rich-
ard, Lord Bellomont, received a some-
what different and less accurate report
544 Burke, Thomas (fl. 1699)
at Boston about Burke’s fate, which he
included toward the end of a lengthy
report on piracy which he then submit-
ted to the Council of Trade and Planta-
tions in London on November 29,
1699 (O.S.), noting:
We have advice that Burk, an Irish-
man and pyrate that committed sev-
eral robberies on the coast of
Newfoundland, is drowned with all
his ship’s company, except 7 or 8
persons, somewhere to the south-
ward, in the hurricane about the end
of July or the beginning of August
last. ‘Tis good news, he was very
strong, and said to have had a good
ship with 140 men and 24 guns.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 17
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1908).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
 C

. . . the unfortunate could never be assured of safety from them,

for danger lurked in their very smiles.
—Deposition given by the captive sailor Philip Ashton,
describing the cruelty of Ned Low’s pirate crew, 1723

CALLAO miles, and 1,050 feet in height, plus a

Sea-outlet for the silver rich capital of
the Viceroyalty of Peru, as well as home
port for the Spaniards’ main Pacific bat-
tle-fleet, the Armada del Mar del Sur.
After Francisco Pizarro had con-
quered the Inca heartland high up in
the Andes, he descended to this arid
coastal zone to found his new capital,
so as to maintain his small army’s vital
seaborne links with Panama. Lima was
duly created in January 1535, one of
its principal attractions being the natu-
ral harbor less than 10 miles farther
down the Rı́mac River. This was con-
sidered to be the best anchorage along
Peru’s otherwise exposed, desert-like
coastline, being sheltered by a low
tongue of land called La Punta to its
south, as well as an offshore island
measuring one mile by four-and-a-half
few lesser islets. Callao’s climate
would prove to be temperate and equa-
ble, although it was often overcast
from April through November, because
of clouds generated by the Pacific’s
cold Humboldt Current.
Callao was incorporated as a town
by 1537, and maritime traffic boomed
after the fabulous silver finds made
eight years later at Potosı́ (Bolivia). It
soon evolved into the port of call for
vessels circulating as far south as Chile,
and as far north as Mexico. A uniform
grid of 16 blocks was surveyed in Octo-
ber 1555, so that a proper church,
homes, and private warehouses might
appear. The legendary wealth of its sil-
ver traffic also attracted foreign enemies
such as Francis Drake and Thomas
Cavendish during the late 16th century,
as well as Dutch rovers in the early

545
546 Careen
17th century. A 10-ship expedition
under Jacques l’Hermite of Antwerp
took the Spaniards completely by sur-
prise in May 1624, disgorging several
hundred fighting-men, who were
repelled only with difficulty.
This frightening experience galvan-
ized the Peruvian Viceroy into making
permanent the four extemporized bat-
teries which had been thrown up dur-
ing this crisis, as well as to erect a
small castle to defend Callao proper
(designed by the Scottish Catholic
engineer Rodrigo Montero de Stuarte,
and completed by May 1625). Rumors
of continual enemy designs on the Pa-
cific spurred the Spaniards to build a
wall around their town as well, taking
almost six years to complete from its
inaugural date of November 21, 1641.
This circuit also protected Callao’s
dwellings from tidal waves which
roared in from the sea on May 10,
1647, and in February 1651, but the
great storm of December 19, 1651, so
weakened the walls that they came
tumbling down with the earthquakes of
November and December 1655, plus
another heavy storm which struck in
late January 1656.
Yet as the threat of foreign attacks
had seemingly receded by this time,
Callao’s circuit was only indifferently
rebuilt, with stone ferried across from
San Lorenzo Island. When rapacious
buccaneers began pushing out of the
Caribbean two-and-a-half decades later,
the Peruvians would be unprepared for
this renewed round of enemy incur-
sions. On February 13, 1679, Callao
was startled when a foreign ship and
two launches cut out a laden vessel
from its roads. These rovers had
worked their way up from the Strait of
Magellan, robbing vessels off Chile
and Arica. Recuperating from their
shock, 150 soldiers and 70 harquebus-
iers were sent out from Callao under
Captain Diego de Frias in pursuit, but
these interlopers soon released their
prize and disappeared.
CAREEN
Nautical expression meaning to tilt a sta-
tionary vessel, so as to expose its under-
side for cleaning, caulking, or repairs.
The term originally came from the
ancient Latin word carina, the name for
a ship’s keel. When carefully beached
in a sheltered anchorage, a lightened
vessel would come to rest with its hull
exposed as the tide receded, allowing
its crew to scrub off barnacles and other
impediments to swift sailing, as well to
replace timbers weakened by wood-rot,
and insulate against attachments by ter-
edo worms. During such an operation,
the ship would be highly vulnerable,
lying immobile and tilted, with all its
guns removed. Pirate commanders, who
seldom enjoyed the sanctuary of a pro-
tected harbor or shipyard, had to careen
with great caution in isolated bays. It was
while thus occupied on the northeastern
coast of Hispaniola during the summer of
1686, for example, that Joseph Bannis-
ter’s 36-gun Golden Fleece was
destroyed by the Royal Navy, virtually
ending his career.
All vessels were vulnerable while
undergoing this procedure. During the
third year of Queen Anne’s War, the
minutes for the Council of Virginia
recorded on July 5, 1692 (O.S.), that:
‘‘On intelligence of pirates [being in
that vicinity], letters were ordered to
Captain Townsend to be on his guard,
and to Captain Finch to get HMS
Henry off the careen as soon as
possible.’’
 Careen 547

JEAN CHARPIN’S CHARTER-PARTY

A month after the legendary Dutch-born flibustier Laurens de Graaf had been officially
relocated in January 1688 with his followers to hold ^Ile a  Vache, the island off the
southwestern tip of Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti), he allowed a subordinate named
Jean Charpin (or Fantin) to set sail on a cruise aboard his 14-gun Spanish prize Santa
Rosa with 70 men. Despite the peace prevailing with the Spaniards, this expedition
drew up the usual profit-sharing arrangement before weighing, which is reproduced
here below in the original French:

Copie de la charte-partie faite entre

M. Charpin, commandant la Sainte-Rose, et son e
quipage qui sont convenus entre
eux de lui donner dix lots pour lui, que pour son commandement et pour son navire.
Tous les b^
atiments pris en mer ou a  l’ancre portant huniers qui ne se donneront point
voyage; les b^atiments seront br^ul

es et les agr
es seront pour le b^
atiment de guerre.

Item. Tous les b^atiments pris, le capitaine aura le choix; et le non-choix demeurera a
l’
equipage sans que le capitaine y puisse rien pr
etendre.
Item. Le capitaine se r
eserve ses chaudieres et son canot de guerre; et les chaudieres qui
seront prises seront pour l’
equipage.
Item. Tous b^atiments pris hors de la port
ee du canon avec les canots de guerre seront pil-
lage. Tous ballots entam
es entre deux ponts ou au fond de cale, pillage.
Item. Or, argent, perle, diamant, musc, ambre, civette et toutes sortes de pierreries, pillage.
Item. Celui qui aura la vue des b^atiments, aura 100 pieces de 8 si la prise est de valeur ou
double pillage.
Item. Tout homme estropi
e au service du b^atiment, aura 600 pieces de 8 ou 6 negres a
choix s’il s’en prend.
Item. Tout homme convaincu de l^achet
e, perdra son voyage.
Item. Tout homme faisant faux serment et convaincu de vol, perdra son voyage et sera
d
egrad
e sur la premiere caye.
Item. Tout canot de guerre qui sortira en course qui prendra au-dessus de 500 pieces, sera
pour l’
equipage dudit canot.
Item. Tous negres et autres esclaves qui seront pris par le canot, reviendront au pied du
m^at.
Item. Pour les Espagnols qui ne seront point gu
eris,
etant arriv
e en lieu, l’
equipage s’oblige
de donner une piece de 8 pour lesdits malades pour le chirurgien par jour l’espace de 3
mois
etant arriv
e a terre.
Item. M. de La Borderie et M. Jocom se sont oblig
es de servir l’
equipage de tout ce qui
leur sera n
ecessaire pendant le voyage; et l’
equipage s’oblige de leur donner 180 pieces
de 8 pour leur coffre; et ceux des chirurgiens qui seront pris avec les instruments qui ne
seront point garnis d’argent seront pour le chirurgien.
Ladite charte ne pourra se casser ni annuler que nous n’ayons fait voyage tous ensemble.
Fait a l’^ile a Vache, ancr
e et affourch
e le 18 de f
evrier 1688.
This document is today preserved in the French National Archives, under the call-number
CAOM COL-C9A/2, f. 357.
548 Charte-Partie or ‘‘Charter Party’’
See also
Bannister, Joseph; Careen (Volume 1).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
CHARTE-PARTIE OR
‘‘CHARTER PARTY’’
Freebooter covenant drawn up prior to
a cruise, to pre-determine the division
of any spoils (see sidebar).
This term was originally a French com-
mercial one, used whenever two or more
merchants agreed to share a hired vessel. If
only a single individual were involved, the
question of cargo-space would not be a
pressing concern; yet in the case of a
charte-partie—literally, a ‘‘split char-
ter’’—each consignor’s portion had to be
carefully allotted. The flibustiers, many of
whom were former merchant sailors,
adopted this expression to their own
needs—agreeing on a proportional distri-
bution of ‘‘purchase’’ before any piratical
foray, with special provisos for compensat-
ing the wounded, senior commanders, etc.
See also
Charte-Partie (Volume 1).
CHIVERS, DIRCK
(fl. 1694
1699)
New York rover of Dutch ancestry,
who enjoyed his greatest success as a
Red Sea raider.
A large ship flying English colors
entered the Calcutta anchorage on the
morning of November 23, 1696 (O.S.),
only to suddenly substitute Danish colors
and loose off a few broadsides and vol-
leys of small-arms’ fire into its clustered
shipping. Three merchantmen were
boarded by boatloads of pirates before
Captain Mason was sent out from shore
and then determined that these attackers
referred to themselves as ‘‘soldiers of for-
tune’’ and insisted ‘‘that if the ships were
not ransomed for £10,000, they and the
rest of the shipping should be burned.’’
After two days of tense bartering, during
which one prize was torched, 10 Indian
praus finally arrived from the Malabar
Coast to chase this intruder back out to
sea on the morning of November 26, 1696
(O.S.). Mason, who was released by these
retreating pirates in a small boat, returned
into Calcutta and reported their ship:
. . . to be of about 300 tons, 20 guns,
and 100 men, her captain a Dutchman
of New York, and that she daily
expected a consort of about the same
strength under one Hore. They offered
him command of the ship, if he would
join them. He gathered that most of the
pirates were fitted out from New York,
and returned thither to share the plun-
der, with the Governor’s connivance.
Mason added that the Captain’s name
was ‘‘Dirck Clevers of New York, that
he has been two years out from thence,’’
but this may have been a pseudonym.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 16
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1908)
 Cocket 549

Silver Spanish peso, dating from 1723 and pierced for use on Dominica. British colonies
often lacked currency, so mutilated foreign coins were allowed to circulate, either cut into
segments or with a hole stamped through them. Dominica’s stamp was heart-shaped, so as
to discourage any export from that island. The cut-out metal centers, known as dumps, were
also used locally as money. (British Museum/Art Resource, NY)

CLAVERIE, CHARLES lodged, and desired to borrow a pair

DE LA
See La Claverie, Charles de
CLIPPED MONEY OR
CLIPPINGS
Coins illegally reduced in weight by
filing, shaving, or clipping metal from
around their edges, thereby deceitfully
reducing their value, the resultant
shards being melted down for resale.
On May 22, 1699 (O.S.), a gold-
smith named Walter Turner gave the
following deposition before the Crown
officials on Bermuda:
About six weeks since, one William
Pargiter came to the house of Major
Michael Burrowes, where deponent
of shears, a file, and a pair of scales,
saying he had some heavy money
and had a mind to clip it. Afterwards
he asked leave to melt some silver at
deponent’s forge. The silver proved
to be silver clippings.
Turner also gave a second deposition
‘‘about Mrs. Elinor Hall selling clippings
to him at 5 shillings, 4 pence per ounce.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 17
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1908).
COCKET
A written certificate issued by a custom-
house, confirming that merchandise being
550 Commission Port
transported by a vessel had been duly reg-
istered, and paid the appropriate duties.
Lack of such papers, or incorrect or
otherwise irregular documentation, could
have serious consequences for a merchant
Master, at the mercy of any ill-disposed
local official. For example, the Lords
Proprietors wrote reprovingly from Lon-
don on May 12, 1691 (O.S.), to inform
their colleague Seth Sothell that he had
exceeded his authority by his actions dur-
ing his visit to South Carolina, and must
answer a number of charges immediately
on his return to England, the first being:
That you seized upon two persons that
came into Albemarle from Barbados,
pretending they were pyrates, although
they produced cockets and clearments
of their goods from the government of
Barbados and Bermudas.
One of these captives, Richard Hum-
phrey, had subsequently died in jail ‘‘of
grief and ill usage.’’
See also
Cocket (Volume 1).
Reference
Salley, A. S., Jr., ed., Commissions and
Instructions from the Lords Proprietors
of Carolina to the Public Officials of
South Carolina, 1685
1715 (Charleston,
SC: Historical Commission, 1916).
COMMISSION PORT
Legally, the seaport at which a priva-
teer received his commission, posting a
bond for his good conduct during the
forthcoming cruise, and into which all
prizes were to be sent for adjudication.
Such a system was necessary to hold
rovers accountable, however tenuously,
for the actions that they perpetrated during
their forays. Although weak and fraught
with many flaws, such enforcement was
at least better than no responsibility what-
soever. In January 1686, for example, the
English government would lodge a protest
with the French Ambassador in London,
raising questions about the peacetime
practices being observed in the Antilles:
The Governor of Jamaica complains
that the French continually seize the
ships of English subjects, whether
they come into French ports in the
West Indies to wood and water, or
whether driven thither by stress of
weather. The fact is confirmed by a
letter from the Chevalier St. Laurens
[Governor Claude de Roux, Cheva-
lier de Saint-Laurent], who shows an
order from the French King to con-
fiscate all vessels anchoring in
French ports. Several privateers also,
pretending French commissions,
even in time of peace continue to
harass English traders, being encour-
aged by their not being obliged to
give security in their commission
port, as the European treaties direct.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899).
COWARD, WILLIAM
(fl. 1689
1690)
In November of 1689, with three men
and a boy, he rowed out to the ketch

Modern view of Vieques Island, once known as ‘‘Crab Island,’’ near Puerto Rico. (Lee Cohen)
Elinor of Master William Shortrigs,
which was lying at anchor in Boston
harbor, seizing the vessel and taking her
to Cape Cod. The crew of the ketch could
offer no resistance as they were all pros-
trate with smallpox. The pirates were
soon caught and locked up in the new
stone jail in Boston, Coward being
hanged on January 27, 1690 (O.S.).
Reference
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
CRAB ISLAND
English name for what is today known
as Vieques Island, lying east of Puerto
Rico, still noted for its large and plen-
tiful land-crabs.
When Lord Archibald Hamilton,
Governor of Jamaica, was queried by
Crab Island 551
the Board of Trade and Plantations in
London about the possibility of settling
the Virgin Islands, he gave as his writ-
ten opinion in August 1715:
That Crab Island is much the best of
them, but it lies so near to Puerto
Rico that it would be almost impos-
sible to keep any Negroes there, the
passage between that and Puerto
Rico being fordable all but a little
space.
And as late as December 1735, Richard
Coope (this same Council’s agent on St.
Kitts) was writing to London to suggest
that the island be populated by poor
English families being driven out of the
Leeward Islands by want, arguing that:
‘‘We have a very fine island called Crab
Island, close to Puerto Rico, about the
bigness of St. Christopher’s, where these
dispersed families would unanimously
go, settle, and fortify, if they could
552 Cussy, Pierre-Paul Tarin, Sieur De (fl. 1684
1691)
obtain protection for one year from
the Spanish piracy and murders from
Puerto Rico.’’
See also
Crab Island (Volume 1).
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 42
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1953).
Journals the Board of Trade and
Plantations: March 1715
October
1718, Volume 3 (London: His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1924).
CUSSY, PIERRE-PAUL
TARIN, SIEUR DE
(fl. 1684
1691)
Sixth French Governor of Saint-
Domingue and Tortuga Island, who
reluctantly repressed its flibustiers,
then lived to regret it.
Born at Beaufort-en-Vall
ee in Anjou,
the son of Jean Tarin—a member of
Louis XIII’s retinue—the youthful
Pierre-Paul was apparently among the140
men who accompanied Bertrand d’Oger-
on’s original colonizing expedition out
from France in July 1663. He soon
became a trusted subordinate of the new
Governor, and during a visit home to
Corn
e in Anjou, furthermore received the
honorific title of commandant pour le roi
or ‘‘King’s commander’’ in September
1670, before returning to Saint Dom-
ingue. When the Compagnie des Indes
Occidentales was disbanded in 1674 and
Ogeron was preparing early the next year
to return to Paris and petition the King,
he appointed De Cussy as leader of the
region’s flibustiers in April 1675, with
the aim of leading them in an offensive
against Puerto Rico as part of France’s on-
going war against Spain. (The next month,
Sec. Peter Beckford of Jamaica would
report to London: ‘‘Advice from Tortuga,
that the French are making up a fleet and a
great body of men, to attack some consid-
erable place of the Spaniards.’’)
That same June 1675, Ogeron also
dispatched De Cussy as his personal
representative to Jamaica, in hopes of
discreetly reaching an unofficial accom-
modation with its newly-arrived Lieuten-
ant-Gov. Sir Henry Morgan and his
brother-in-law, Lieutenant-Colonel Rob-
ert Byndloss, to allow English privateers
to continue serving under French colors,
despite London’s withdrawal from the
hostilities. De Cussy arrived at Port
Royal aboard Captain George Springer’s
vessel, and apparently conducted his
negotiations so successfully with these
two well-disposed English officials, that
after reporting back to Ogeron, the
French Governor even wrote to Byndloss
from Tortuga Island on August 5, 1675,
to grant him power-of-attorney to act on
behalf of any French prizes brought into
Port Royal for sale. (Morgan and
Byndloss were serving as two of the
three judges on Jamaica’s Admiralty
Court, along with William Beeston;
when their superior Gov. John, Lord
Vaughan, learned of these and other col-
lusions with privateers, it deepened his
distrust of Morgan and his backers.)
De Cussy had meanwhile departed
Port Royal in July 1675, aboard a
small licensed ship under the veteran
privateer John Morris. He also served
as interim Governor of Tortuga Island
 Cussy, Pierre-Paul Tarin, Sieur De (fl. 1684
1691)
during Ogeron’s absence, until a ship
arrived from France in June 1676 with
news that the colony’s founder had
died several months previously in
Paris, and that his nephew Jacques
Nepveu, Sieur de Pouançay, would
succeed him in office, with De Cussy
as Saint-Domingue’s new Lieutenant-
Governor. Seven years later, De Cussy
was in France when Pouançay passed
away. De Cussy’s three-year term tech-
nically began to run as of September
30, 1683, although he did not actually
land at Petit-Go^ave until next April
1684 to assume office. In late June of
that same year, Gov. Sir Thomas
Lynch of Jamaica would write to the
Council of Trade and Plantations in
London: ‘‘A new Governor, Mons.
Cussy, has arrived at Petit Guavos.’’
Restraint of the Flibustiers
(1684
1691)
Initially, De Cussy continued the policy
of his predecessors regarding the flibust-
iers, considering them as necessary both
for the colony’s defense and prosperity.
He promulgated France’s 1684 Treaty of
Ratisbonne with Spain, while simultane-
ously maintaining a suspiciously hostile
attitude toward the neighboring Spanish-
Americans, who reciprocated in full. Yet
as this decade wore on, depredations
such as the Sieur de Grammont’s unpro-
voked sack of Campeche in July 1685
became increasingly embarrassing to the
French royal authorities, until finally on
March 9, 1687—on direct orders from
Paris—De Cussy was forced to publish
an amnesty for the island’s flibustiers,
‘‘on conditions that they return into ports
and cease their piratical acts and become
inhabitants, or give themselves to the
business of the sea.’’ The greatest rover,
553
Laurens de Graaf, had already been set-
tled with the title of mayor of one of
Saint-Domingue’s quartiers or ‘‘dis-
tricts,’’ as well as membership in the
Order of Saint Louis, and it was hoped
that lesser lights would emulate his
example.
Privateering therefore gradually
receded, amid De Cussy’s deep suspicions
of Spanish designs. When the War of the
League of Augsburg or King William’s
War exploded in April 1689, France was
ranged against the combined forces of
England, Holland, and Spain, so that De
Cussy felt his fears amply vindicated. ‘‘I
destroyed privateering here because the
court so willed it,’’ he wrote bitterly from
Port de Paix on August 24th of that year,
adding that if he had not succeeded ‘‘there
would be ten or twelve stout ships on this
coast, with many brave people aboard to
preserve this colony and its commerce.’’
In the summer of 1690, he led a small
army across the border into Santo Domi-
ngo, capturing the Spanish town of San-
tiago de los Caballeros, and unwittingly
triggering a massive counter-offensive. A
host of Spanish volunteers mustered at the
capital of Santo Domingo and trooped
aboard the ships of the Armada de Barlo-
vento, departing on December 21st to
circle eastward around the island, while
another Spanish army advanced overland.
The two forces met near Manzanillo
Bay on the north coast, and were
confronted shortly after advancing
into French territory by an overconfi-
dent De Cussy, with inferior numbers.
At the Battle of La Limonade on Janu-
ary 21, 1691, the Spanish invaders
won a crushing victory, killing more
than 400 Frenchmen against only 47
Spanish dead. When the naval officer
Jean-Baptiste Ducasse stepped ashore
amid the burnt remnants of Cap
554 Cussy, Pierre-Paul Tarin, Sieur De (fl. 1684
1691)
François and visited the nearby battle-
field two weeks later, he found De
Cussy’s corpse lying among the dead,
‘‘their bodies not yet buried, being rot-
ted and half desiccated.’’
See also
Beeston, Sir William; Morris, John;
Ogeron, Bertrand d’; Vaughan, John.
References
Crouse, Nellis M., The French Struggle for
the West Indies, 1665
1713 (New York:
Octagon, 1966).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo,
Dominican Republic: Editorial ‘‘La
Naci
on,’’ 1944).
 D
. . . accepting the hardness of ye seas,
and the danger of the enemies.
—From Thomas Tew’s privateering articles, 1692
DAMPIER, WILLIAM
(fl. 1675
1715)
English buccaneer, chronicler, and
circumnavigator.
He was apparently born in Hynerford
House at East Coker, near Yeovil in
southwestern England, the son of a ten-
ant farmer. He was baptized on June 8,
1652 (O.S.), his father dying when he
was only 10 years old, and his mother by
the time he had turned 16. Initially edu-
cated at the Latin School, his guardians
had later transferred him to another
school, where he learned arithmetic and
writing. Dampier was then apprenticed
to a Weymouth shipmaster, making his
first voyage at the age of 18 to France,
then on to Newfoundland. Daunted by its
chilly clime, he chose to return to Eng-
land and during a visit to London, signed
on as an ordinary seaman ‘‘before the
555
mast’’ aboard the East Indiaman John
and Martha. It sailed to Bantam on the
island of Java, remaining there for two
months, before returning via the Cape
Verde Islands to England within a year.
The Third Anglo-Dutch War had just
erupted in 1672, and by next year Damp-
ier was rated an able seaman aboard the
100-gun HMS Royal Prince, Sir Edward
Spragge’s flagship at the Battles of
Schooneveldt and the Texel. Dampier
missed this latter action, having become
sick and sent to Harwich to recuperate,
and later to his brother’s residence. His
health restored and hostilities against the
Dutch at an end, the unemployed 22-
year-old seafarer accepted an offer early
in 1674 from his father’s old landlord,
Colonel William Helyar, to go to
Jamaica as assistant manager for his
Bybrook Plantation. Quickly tiring of
this occupation, Dampier started Carib-
bean trading voyages; then in August
556 Dampier, William (fl. 1675
1715)
The adventurous William Dampier, bucca-
neer, circumnavigator, and best-selling
author. (Russell, W. Clark. William
Dampier, 1894)
1675, he shipped on a ketch into the
‘‘Bay of Campeche’’ or Laguna de
T
erminos, with a cargo of rum and sugar
to exchange for logwood. So taken was
he with the Baymen’s life, that after the
ketch returned to Jamaica, he made his
way back to the Laguna in February
1676 and remained for more than two
years. In autumn of 1678, he traveled to
England with a goodly amount of
money, and married a young woman
named Judith, ‘‘out of the family of the
Duchess of Grafton.’’
In the spring of 1679, Dampier
sailed again for the West Indies aboard
the Loyal Merchant, leaving his wife at
Arlington House. He remained on
Jamaica for some months and by
Christmas, on the point of returning
home, was persuaded to go on a short
voyage to the Mosquito Coast. Putting
into Negril Bay at the western end of
Jamaica, he instead joined a party of
buccaneers led by Captain Richard
Sawkins, who crossed to Bocas del
Toro on the northwestern shores of
present-day Panama to become incor-
porated into the pirate fleet of John
Coxon, which proceeded to Golden
Island. Dampier was one of more than
300 buccaneers who traversed the Isth-
mus, captured some Spanish coasters,
and terrorized the Pacific coast. In Feb-
ruary 1681, they were repulsed with
heavy losses at Arica in northern Chile,
withdrawing in disarray. Dampier con-
sequently went that same April 1681
with a contingent of about 50 bucca-
neers to recross the Isthmus of Pan-
ama, emerging near Point San Blas,
where they found the French corsair
ship of Capitaine Tristan lying off La
Sounds Cay. Dampier remained with
this commander, Capitaine Archaim-
baud, and George Wright for about a
year, then in July 1682 went with 19
companions to Virginia.
In August 1683, he and his comrades
joined Captain John Cooke’s Revenge,
who had served in the previous expedi-
tion, and intended to return to the South
Sea. Finding their craft too small, the
raiders crossed to Sierra Leone on the
West African coast, where they seized a
Danish ship of 36 guns and renamed it
Bachelor’s Delight. They then rounded
Cape Horn and touched at Juan Fern
an-
dez Island, rescuing a Mosquito Indian
who had been marooned three years
previously, before proceeding north-
ward as far as New Spain. There, Cooke
died in July 1684 off Cabo Blanco,
being succeeded by Edward Davis. The
pirates ravaged the Pacific coast of
South America for another year, most
particularly in the company of Capts.
John Eaton and Charles Swan, until
Dampier parted from Davis on August

27, 1685 (O.S.), off Peru, in favor of
Swan’s Cygnet. ‘‘It was not from any
dislike to my old captain,’’ Dampier
later explained, but rather because the
latter intended to ‘‘pass over for the
East Indies, which was a way very
agreeable to my inclination.’’
Cygnet first prowled the Mexican
coast for a few months, hoping to inter-
cept the fabulously wealthy Manila gal-
leon, which usually reached Acapulco
around year’s end. Santa Rosa having
been forewarned of this enemy pres-
ence, though, slipped safely into harbor
on December 14, 1685, so that the buc-
caneers gave up in frustration. On
March 31, 1686 (O.S.), they set out
from Cape Corrientes, and reached
Guam almost two months later. Damp-
ier cruised Far Eastern waters for the
next five years, finally returning to Eng-
land aboard the East Indiaman Defence
in September 1691. He published his
Voyage around the World six years
later, which became an immediate suc-
cess, and in 1699 to 1700 led an explo-
ration of Australia. In 1703, during the
War of the Spanish Succession or
Queen Anne’s War, he commanded the
26-gun privateer Saint George into
the South Pacific, again failing to take
the Manila galleon. In 1708 he made a
third attempt, acting as pilot aboard
Woodes Rogers’ Duke and Duchess,
which succeeded in capturing one of the
Philippine ships, and returned via the
Cape of Good Hope to England in Oc-
tober 1711. Dampier died in London
four years later in March 1715.
References
Amussen, Susan Dwyer, Caribbean
Exchanges: Slavery and the
Transformation of English Society,
Dari
en Colony (1698
1699) 557
1640
1700 (Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press,
2007).
Bennett, J. Harry, ‘‘Cary Helyar, Merchant
and Planter of Seventeenth-Century
Jamaica,’’ William and Mary Quarterly,
Third Series, Volume 21, No. 1 (January
1964), pp. 53
76.
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Dictionary of National Biography (London:
1885
1900, 63 volumes; reissued by
Oxford University Press, 2004).
Piracy and Privateering, National Maritime
Museum Library catalogs, Volume Four
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1972).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables, 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr

ua, 1972).
Wafer, Lionel, A New Voyage and
Description of the Isthmus of America
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1933).
Williams, Gary C., ‘‘William Dampier:
Pre-Linnean Explorer, Naturalist,
Buccaneer,’’ Proceedings of the
California Academy of Sciences 55,
Suppl. II, No. 11 (November 2004),
pp. 146
166.
DARIE
N COLONY
(1698
1699)
Short-lived Scottish settlement on the
northeastern shores of Panama.
In the summer of 1698, a flotilla of
five ships left Scotland with 1,200 peo-
ple in an ill-conceived attempt to estab-
lish a trading outpost on the Spanish
Main. Having hired the retired privateer
Robert Allison as pilot, they reached the
Gulf of Dari
en by mid-November, and
established themselves ashore. Although
able to fend off an overland assault
from Spain’s Armada de Barlovento,
they nonetheless quickly succumbed to
558 Daudorus
Crude map of the ill-fated Scottish settle-
ment in northeastern Panama named New
Caledonia, as sketched thirty years after-
ward by H. Moll. (Glasgow University
Library, Special Collections)
disease, lack of profits, and internal
strife, withdrawing next summer.
Reference
Prebble, John, The Darien Disaster
(London: Secker & Warburg, 1968).
DAUDORUS
Euphemism for a thrashing or beating,
apparently derived from the ancient
Scottish verb ‘‘to daud.’’
An example of its usage in the West
Indies occurred in late December 1716,
when a poor turtler appeared before
Governor Peter Heywood of Jamaica, to
complain that he had been robbed of
‘‘what little he had’’ by a pirate sloop,
whose ruffianly crew had then further-
more burdened him with three outcast
members and a young boy that they were
expelling from their ship—yet not with-
out ‘‘first whipping them inhumanely,
and burning matches between their fin-
gers, ears, and toes.’’ Heywood noted
that the young lad in particular, ‘‘who I
take to be about twelve or thirteen years
of age,’’ was punished for having dared
to say that he wanted to quit their com-
pany, at which the enraged pirates had
vowed that they would not let him go
‘‘without a daudorus, as they called it—a
good whipping.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 29
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1930).
DAVIS, EDWARD
(fl. 1680
1693)
English pirate who twice roamed the
South Sea, escaped around Cape Horn,
and unwillingly became a founding
patron for the College of William and
Mary in Virginia.
Davis may have originally hailed
from the great English seaport of
Plymouth, and began his West Indian
career as a simple freebooter among
the followers of John Coxon and other
commanders who penetrated the Isth-
mus of Panama from Golden Island,
starting in April 1680 to raid the Span-
iards on the Pacific coast. Eventually,
Bartholomew Sharpe assumed overall
command of this formation, until a fac-
tion of 50 buccaneers—including
Davis, William Dampier, and Lionel
Wafer—quit his company a year later,

to attempt to regain the Caribbean
under John Cooke.
They emerged near Point San Blas in
early June 1681, where they found the
French corsair ship of Capitaine Tristan
lying off La Sounds Cay, who rescued
them. They were then incorporated into
the crew of Capitaine Archaimbaud,
and then afterward served both George
Wright and Jan Willems in succession,
before arriving off ^Ile a Vache in the
summer of 1682, where they fell out
with the latter commander over a prize
and became marooned. Tristan nonethe-
less took eight or ten of them—includ-
ing Cooke, Davis, and Wafer—into his
ship and carried them to Petit-Go^ave,
where they repaid his kindness by run-
ning off with this vessel when he and
his men went ashore. Returning to ^Ile a
Vache to rescue their English compan-
ions, this band subsequently seized a
ship recently arrived from France with
wines and another French ship ‘‘of good
force,’’ which they renamed Revenge
and decided to use for another foray
into the South Sea. They therefore
sailed to Virginia to dispose of their
goods and reunite with Dampier, Ring-
rose, and other shipmates, before ven-
turing across the Atlantic to West
Africa and seizing a 36-gun Danish
ship, renaming it Bachelor’s Delight
and rounding the Horn to cruise in the
Pacific.
Pacific Command (1684
1688)
When Cooke died from illness while
they were approaching Costa Rica’s
Gulf of Nicoya in the summer of 1684,
Davis assumed command of this
powerful vessel, which would give him
precedence over any rovers he met. On
Davis, Edward (fl. 1680
1693) 559
October 2, 1684, he encountered the
vessels of Charles Swan and Peter
Harris the Younger off Isla de la Plata
(literally ‘‘Silver Island,’’ also referred
to as ‘‘Drake’s Island’’), and finding
that they mustered close to 200 men
between all three ships, they sailed to-
gether for the South American main-
land on October 20th. Paita was
assaulted on the morning of November
3, 1684, yet nothing much of value
was found, before the town was put to
the torch. The Lobos Islands were vis-
ited next, after which a second abortive
raid ensued against Guayaquil in early
December 1684. A few small prizes
were taken off that coast, but Davis
realized that the marauders were too
weak for greater enterprises, so headed
northward for Panama, in hopes of
meeting other buccaneers traversing
the Isthmus. At the end of December,
he captured an aviso off Gallo Island
bound for Callao, and although its cor-
respondence had been flung overboard,
some letters were retrieved from the
water and revealed that the annual
Spanish plate-fleet had arrived at Por-
tobelo on November 28th, which the
Peruvian silver ships would soon have
to meet.
On January 8, 1685, Davis’ bucca-
neers furthermore intercepted the 90-
ton Santa Rosa, before repairing to the
Pearl Islands to careen. On February
14th, a fresh contingent of 200 French
flibustiers and 80 English buccaneers
reached the islands in canoes, under
Capitaines François Grogniet and Les-
cuyer. The flibustiers were offered
Santa Rosa by Davis, while the Eng-
lishmen were to be incorporated into
his Bachelor’s Delight and Swan’s
Cygnet. In appreciation, Grogniet pre-
sented Davis with a blank privateering
560 Davis, Edward (fl. 1680
1693)
commission from the French Governor
of Saint-Domingue, and informed him
that more buccaneers were apparently
on their way, so that a party was
detached to await them in the Gulf of
San Miguel. On March 3rd, they met
Captain Francis Townley with 180 men,
mostly English, in two captured barks.
A few days later, another bark bearing
about a dozen Englishmen entered the
Gulf of Panama from the west, having
become separated from William Knight
off the coast of New Spain. And on
April 11th, another band of 264 mainly
French flibustiers arrived across the
Isthmus under Capitaines Jean Rose,
Pierre le Picard, and Desmarais. They
remembered Davis as one of the Eng-
lishmen who had stolen Tristan’s ship,
yet nevertheless joined his flotilla, and
settled down to await the arrival of the
Peruvian convoy.
It unexpectedly slipped past Davis’
lookouts, deposited its treasure in Pan-
ama City, then sortied to offer battle.
As a result, these six Spanish men-of-
war suddenly emerged from a morning
shower on June 7, 1685, and caught the
pirates unprepared off Pacheca Island.
An indecisive, long-range engagement
ensued, with the lightly-armed bucca-
neer craft unwilling to close against the
mightier vessels of the Armada del Mar
del Sur, who in turn could not overtake
their more nimble opponents. Neverthe-
less, next day ended in a Spanish vic-
tory, as Davis’ buccaneers were driven
off and their blockade ended. They then
fell out along national lines, Davis,
Swan, Townley, and Knight sailing
northwestward as a single group to raid
Realejo and Le
on (Nicaragua) in early
August 1685, for little gain. Davis then
proceeded southward from Realejo with
three other vessels, visiting Honduras’
Gulf of Fonseca and the Gal
apagos
Islands before raiding the Peruvian
coast with Knight in July 1686. The lat-
ter parted from him after careening at
the Juan Fern
andez Islands, ‘‘making
the best of his way round Tierra del
Fuego to the West Indies,’’ while Davis
returned to Mocha Island around Christ-
mas 1686. He remained on that coast
for another year, before finally rounding
the Horn himself.
After touching at the River Plate,
Davis rounded Brazil and met a Barba-
dos sloop commanded by Edwin Carter,
who informed the rovers of James II’s
recent ‘‘proclamation to pardon and call
in the buccaneers’’ (most probably that
of May 22, 1687 O.S.), so sailed with
Carter’s sloop to Philadelphia, where
they arrived by May 1688. After a brief
layover, Davis, Wafer, and a few others
traveled to their former sanctuary of
Virginia, yet immediately on arriving in
June 1688 were arrested by Captain
Simon Rowe of HMS Dumbarton, on
suspicion of piracy because of the
£1,500 worth of battered silver which
they had brought with them. Davis and
his men insisted that this booty had
been procured in the South Sea merely
to help them ‘‘spend the remainder of
their days honestly and quietly,’’ yet
they were nonetheless thrown into
irons. When Rowe questioned a black
slave that they had also brought with
them from the Pacific, he came to the
conclusion that the rovers should have
been hanged as multiple murderers.
In fact, Davis and the rest of his men
were allowed to travel to England aboard
the merchantman Effingham in late 1690
to stand trial, their appearance in court
guaranteed by dispatching their treasure
separately. Although eventually cleared
of all charges after a lengthy proceeding,

Davis and the others were constrained in
March 1693 to cede £300 of their booty
toward building a college in Virginia,
which became William and Mary.
References
Alsedo y Herrera, Dionisio de, Compendio
hist

orico de la provincia, partidos,
ciudades, astilleros, rı´os y puerto de
Guayaquil en las costas de la Mar del
Sur (Madrid: Manuel Fern
andez, 1741).
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1990).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
DAVY, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1704
1705)
French blockade-runner, who subse-
quently raided the New England coast
as a privateer.
Apparently a merchant master out of
Bordeaux, Davy had reached Marti-
nique with a cargo from France, then
taken on additional men and secured a
West Indian commission to continue
operating as a privateer, before prowl-
ing northward in the spring of 1704,
just as Queen Anne’s War was about
to enter into its third year. The first of-
ficial English notice of his activities
occurred on July 20, 1704 (O.S.), when
his 14-gun, 120-man vessel intercepted
Davy, Capitaine (fl. 1704
1705) 561
the ship of Simon Pasco off the Dela-
ware Capes, while it was bound from
Antigua toward New York. According
to this victim, the French:
. . . took a barrel of sugar and a
hogshead of rum out of the sloop,
her guns and arms, & then burnt her
with all her loading, notwithstanding
Mr. Pasco offered £300 for her ran-
som; afterward said privateer chased
Mr. Sandiford, bound hither from
Carolina, who got into Sandy Hook
before him.
Davy arrived and dropped anchor off
Sandy Hook by July 25, 1704 (O.S.),
seizing the passing sloop of Eleazer
Darby as it was headed from Boston to-
ward Philadelphia, then landed two-dozen
flibustiers after nightfall to plunder two
houses in the vicinity of Navesink in
New Jersey.
Next day, Davy snapped up a small
wood-boat manned by two slaves, and
that same evening released the captive
Pasco and his crewmen onto the Jersey
shoreline, who by ‘‘about ten o’clock
[a.m. on July 27, 1704 O.S.] got up to
New York.’’ Meanwhile, a ship under
Captain Sinclare had arrived in out of the
Atlantic from London before that dawn
had even broken, and around 4:00 A.M. on
July 27, 1704 (O.S.), spotted Davy’s ship
in the darkness flying English colors, so
assumed it to be a vessel emerging from
New York. Only when the Frenchman
fired two cannon-shots and ‘‘a man upon
shore pull’d off his shirt & made signs
that the privateer was a rogue,’’ did Sin-
clare realize his danger. He immediately
veered toward Sandy Hook in a desperate
bid to at least ground his ship, but the
wind proved contrary, so that the Captain
and several passengers—including Philip
562 Davy, Capitaine (fl. 1704
1705)
French, former Speaker of the Assembly
and ex-Mayor of New York, Captain
Humphrey Jenkins of the sloop Freder-
ick, as well as several wealthy mer-
chants—piled into a boat and were rowed
ashore to the safety of the garrison at
Highlands. Sinclare’s mate and Captain
Perkins’ son remained aboard in a futile
try to win around the Hook, finally leap-
ing into the dark sea to swim ashore once
Davy closed within pistol-shot range.
In New York City, the abrupt arrival
of the victimized Pasco prompted an
emergency meeting of its Royal Council,
who summoned Captain Claver, com-
mander of an anchored Dutch privateer,
and proposed that he sortie and take
Davy, or at least wrest away his most
recent prize. Claver cleared the anchor-
age within two hours, his 150-man vessel
accompanied by a 50-man consort sloop,
yet despite sighting Davy and racing in
pursuit, they returned into New York by
July 28, 1704 (O.S.), without having
come to grips with the agile French ma-
rauder. Claver consequently sortied once
again next day, this time accompanied
by two well-manned sloops under Cap-
tains Evertson and Tom Penniston.
Yet Davy was detaching his capture
that same July 29, 1704 (O.S.), toward
Martinique with a prize-crew, then two
days later intercepted a brigantine arriv-
ing from Nevis some ‘‘eight leagues off
of Sandy Hook . . . and ransomed [it]
for £400, Saint Thomas money.’’ The
elusive rover then stood away toward
Tarpaulin Cove, releasing Captain Dar-
by’s plundered sloop to limp into
Salem, New Jersey, and then vanished
as stealthily as he had appeared. Despite
additional sorties made out of New
York by HMS Jersey and assorted other
privateers, Davy was not to be sighted
again that summer.
However, given the success of his
initial sweep, he may well have been
the Martinican freebooter who returned
into these very same waters a year
later. On June 3, 1705 (O.S.), the sloop
of Captain Outerbridge set sail ‘‘out of
Sandy Hook bound for Jamaica loaded
with provisions,’’ only to be ‘‘taken by
a privateer from Martinico about 150
leagues off’’ and diverted toward that
Antillean isle under a prize-crew. Next
day, these flibustiers also took:
. . . a small sloop belonging to one
Godfrey of this town [New York],
loaded with pitch and tar, which
they burnt, one Reynolds was Master
of her, and ‘tis said sides with the
French and is a pilot to them on this
coast, and has informed them of our
vessels expected and outward bound.
The approaching privateer continued to
press ever closer and by June 14, 1705
(O.S.), arrived off Sandy Hook, ‘‘and in
the night sent her boat to the Narrows
with design to take Captain Potter, who
was then loaden at the watering place,
bound for Nevis; but the boat could not
find him.’’ The captives Outerbridge and
Godfrey thereupon persuaded its French
commander to set them ashore, after
which this enemy vessel coasted south-
ward down the Hook and landed a party
beyond Navesink, to burn yet another
two isolated country-houses.
Given its presence, all ship-traffic
out of New York was halted while a
ship, brigantine, and two sloops were
manned with a total of 350 men, and
sallied to clear the approaches. After
patrolling as far southwest as the Dela-
ware Capes, the ship and one sloop
reentered New York by July 2, 1705
(O.S.), while the brigantine and other

sloop prowled as far northeast as Block
Island; however, the shadowy raider
was not seen again.
References
Nelson, William, Documents Relating to
the Colonial History of the State of
New Jersey, Volume I: 1704
1739,
Extracts from American Newspapers
(Paterson, NJ: Archives of the State
of New Jersey, First Series,
Vol. XI, 1894).
Weeks, Daniel J., Not for Filthy Lucre’s
Sake: Richard Saltar and the
Antiproprietary Movement in East New
Jersey, 1665
1707 (Bethlehem, PA:
Lehigh University Press, 2001).
DEAD MAN’S ISLAND
See Isla del Muerto
DELBOURG, JEAN
(fl. 1696)
Listed in a French document dated
March 26, 1696, the seventh year of
Queen Anne’s War (France was
arrayed against the combined might of
England, Spain, and The Netherlands)
as a flibustier operating out of the
West Indian island of Guadeloupe. Lit-
tle is known about Delbourg’s activ-
ities, beyond the fact that he was also
married to Madeleine Chaumont, by
whom he had three children.
Reference
Goddet-Langlois, Jean and Denise, La vie
en Guadeloupe au XVIIe siecle,
Devereux, John (fl. 1692) 563
suivi du Dictionnaire des familles
guadeloup
eennes de 1635
1700 (Fort-
de-France: Editions Exbrayat, 1991).
DESSAUDRAYS,
CAPITAINE (fl. 1692)
Saint-Malo shipmaster issued an emer-
gency commission by Gov. Jean-Baptiste
Ducasse. Dessaudrays’ name may have
been more properly spelled ‘‘De Sauldre.’’
In the early days of 1692, when the
French colony of Saint-Domingue was
struggling to recover from the trauma
of that previous year’s Spanish inva-
sion, its vigorous new Governor
Ducasse dispatched the frigates of Cap-
tains Dessaudrays and Duhamel:
. . . to cruise off Cape Tiburon with
orders that when they discover the
enemy ships returning, they are to
advise me in order to gather every-
one who is scattered over 20 or 30
leagues of countryside.
Reference
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
DEVEREUX, JOHN
(fl. 1692)
Scottish smuggler accused of wrong-
doing, for accepting a commission from a
dishonest Governor of Bermuda.
Inexperienced and eager for personal
gain, Isaac Richier placed Devereux (or
564 Dew, George (fl. 1686
1695)
Devereaux) in command of a sloop
built and outfitted on that island, with a
commission to seize enemy rovers early
during the War of the League of Augs-
burg, known in America as ‘‘King Wil-
liam’s War.’’ However, with Richier’s
apparent connivance, he instead sailed
this sloop, in which they both held
shares, to Maryland to conduct clandes-
tine trade along its Eastern Shore, then
across the Atlantic to Ireland, and slip-
ping into Scotland. Giving a false desti-
nation on standing out of Greenock
again, Devereux apparently steered for
blockaded France, where American
goods were commanding high prices.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 15
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1904).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Dobson, David, Scottish Emigration to
Colonial America, 1607
1785 (Athens,
GA: University of Georgia Press, 2004).
DEW, GEORGE
(fl. 1686
1695)
Barbadian-born freebooter who pene-
trated the Pacific and helped sack
Guayaquil, before relocating to Ber-
muda, where he operated with mixed
results.
It is believed that he may have been
born sometime between 1666 and 1670,
one of the younger sons in the very
large family of Captain Thomas Dewe,
the son of Colonel Thomas Dewe, a
prominent Virginia landholder. Despite
being elected (along with his father) as
a Burgess from Nanesmond County in
Long Norfolk, Captain Dewe had cho-
sen to emigrate back to England and
then on to Barbados, where he resettled
amid other relations in Saint Peter’s
Parish, and served as a militia officer.
Young George’s parentage, though, has
never been definitively proven, the
bewildering array of spellings of his
family surname in genealogical records
—Deu, Dew, Dewes, Due, Doe, Doo,
Do, Du, Dhout, Dhu, d’Hout, etc.—
make any precise modern determination
difficult.
Presumably he took to the sea at an
early age, and may possibly have served
a turn aboard slavers bound to and from
West Africa, before adventuring as a
member of the second wave of pirate
raiders who began crossing the Isthmus
of Panama into the Pacific Ocean in
early February 1684. These marauders
would roam unchecked throughout the
South Sea over the next few years, but
whether Dew had been part of the initial
bands or joined later, is unclear.
Pacific Raider (1686)
By July 1686, it is known that he was
serving aboard Francis Townley’s flo-
tilla, when it and a large band of fli-
bustiers under Le Picard made a
descent on the outskirts of Panama
City. Some 300 captives were seized
and an uneasy truce arranged with the
local Spaniards, while Townsley tried
to negotiate the release of five bucca-
neers being held in Panama’s jails. On
August 22, 1686, the Spaniards broke
this agreement by slipping three ships

and 240 men out of their Perico Island
anchorage, to fall on the blockaders
while they lay resting off Taboga
Island. This thrust was fiercely beaten
back, two of the Spanish ships being
captured, and only 65 Spaniards escap-
ing injury or death. Townley, furious
at finding himself wounded during this
sneak attack, sent 20 prisoners’ heads
ashore in a brutal protest against this
violation of the truce. The Spanish
released the five captive buccaneers on
the morning of August 28, 1686, and
furthermore sent out 10,000 pesos on
September 4, 1686, to placate the
blockaders, along with a conciliatory
note from the Archbishop of Panama,
promising that all English prisoners
would henceforth be considered as
Catholics, and so enjoy protection from
the Church.
Townley died of his wounds five
days later, his body being cast over-
board near Otoque Island in accordance
with his wishes, after which the youth-
ful Dew succeeded him in command
over the 90-man English band. The
pirates eased their blockade next day;
Picard and Dew eventually wandered
west from Panama and sighted a forma-
tion in the Gulf of Nicoya on February
23, 1687, of 210 fellow boucaniers
under the French commanders François
Grogniet and Le Picard—among their
ranks being the chronicler Ravenau de
Lussan, who recorded the new English
Captain’s name phonetically as
‘‘Georges d’Hout.’’ The French being
divided into rival factions, they redis-
tributed themselves—Grogniet and
some 50 followers going aboard Dew’s
ship for a total crew of 142 men, com-
pared to 162 boucaniers who remained
aboard the French frigate and longboat
under Picard—before steering south
Dew, George (fl. 1686
1695) 565
separately from Puerto Caldera. Each
group hoped to be the first to reach
Ecuador and mount a surprise attack
against Guayaquil, but after sighting
one another again at sea on March 18,
1687, all agreed to mount a joint strike.
Sack of Guayaquil (April 1687)
The South American coastline swam
into view by April 6, 1687, and at
noon six days later Le Picard’s, Grog-
niet’s, and Dew’s combined forces
reached Point Santa Helena, the north-
westernmost entry into the wide, taper-
ing Gulf of Guayaquil. That same
night, they espied a Spanish prize
manned by eight English pirates from
Captain Edward Davis’ crew, who
joined their enterprise the next day.
Running southward unseen farther out
at sea, they circled back and by dawn
of April 15, 1687, sighted Cabo
Blanco, the south-easternmost entry
into the Gulf. By 10:00 A.M., 260
rovers transferred off their ships, which
were to remain hidden in a nearby bay;
the raiding-party began rowing into the
Gulf aboard eight large piraguas. By
sundown, they had reached Santa Clara
Island, a barren rock in mid-channel
also known as Isla del Muerto or
‘‘Dead Man’s Island,’’ anchoring over-
night to ride out the powerful ebb-tide
flowing out of the Guayas River into
the ocean. Next morning, piloted by
four native turncoats serving among
their ranks, they glided across to Pun
a
Island and hid there all day, before cir-
cling past its Spanish settlements that
same night to conceal themselves once
more at dawn of April 17th, up an es-
tuary near Pun
a’s northern tip.
Here, the buccaneers agreed to
storm specific strongpoints once they
566 Dew, George (fl. 1686
1695)
reached Guayaquil, in three companies
under Grogniet, Picard, and Dew. But
on emerging that same dusk aboard
their boats to enter the Guayas River,
they found its counter-current so strong
that they had to return to Pun
a Island
by daybreak of Friday, April 18, 1687.
Spotted by coastal-watchers before
they could hide up another inlet, these
lookouts set fire to a hut as a warning-
signal to the Spaniards farther upriver,
before a buccaneer party pushed
through the jungle to extinguish it, kill-
ing two of these sentinels and captur-
ing a third. The rovers remained
hidden throughout the rest of that day,
and even allowed an arriving Spanish
ship to pass unchallenged upriver,
before reemerging at nightfall to pene-
trate the eastern mouth of the Guayas
River. Their native guides piloted them
past a couple more lookout-stations,
the flotilla’s movements masked
behind several small islands. By the
time the pirates hid yet again at dawn
of Saturday, April 19th, they had
circled far enough upstream to be able
to surprise Guayaquil out of its east
next daybreak, a Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Pun
a signal-blaze
had been reported within the city that
same Saturday morning, so that Gover-


nor Juan Alvarez de Avil
es and militia
General Fernando Ponce de Le
on mus-
tered every able-bodied man; yet when
nothing more occurred by evening, the
entire garrison stood down. As a result,
when the pirate formation finally came
gliding out of the darkness at 4:00 A.M.
on Sunday, April 20, 1687, their sur-
prise was complete. Dew’s two pira-
guas disgorged more than 60 men at
Marı́a Fico’s landing-dock north of the
city, half circling around Ataranza Inlet
on foot to occupy the city workshops,
while the remainder scrambled up the
cliffs to conceal themselves outside the
earthen San Carlos redoubts atop Santa
Ana Hill.
Grogniet and Picard meanwhile dis-
embarked more than a mile farther to
the south, the swift downriver current
having carried their six piraguas off
course, so that they failed to land any-
where near La Planchada fort on the
city outskirts. Instead, the flibustiers
waded ashore into dense brush around
the small anchorage of Casones (near
modern Aguirre and Elizalde Streets),
where they were challenged by a Span-
ish sentry and gun-exchanges quickly
erupted. Rain started to fall as well, so
that the French had to furthermore
pause in a large house for their grena-
diers to light their tinders, before Grog-
niet and Picard could advance at
daybreak with ‘‘flags flying and drums
beating,’’ into the maze of shipyards
lining the four intervening inlets lying
between them and Guayaquil proper.
General Ponce had meanwhile
appeared on the far side of these yards,
mounted on a horse, to direct the 300
black and Spanish militiamen who
were rallying out of the city to the
northern shoreline of the fourth inlet,
which was owned by Juan de Villamar.
In the rainy gloom, Grogniet’s advanc-
ing flibustiers mistook its low wooden
levee for a fort, so that they lost sev-
eral men probing forward gingerly
along the small bridge spanning Jos
e
del Junco’s adjoining inlet, before a
pirate detachment finally paddled
around westward on planks—between
Junco’s house and Carlos’s smithy—to
outflank the defenders. Ponce was shot
in a thigh and fell, being helped to
remount, before ordering his men to
retreat back into Guayaquil.

Grogniet followed them into its
streets, only to discover that the Span-
iards were making a second stand from
behind earthworks around Guayaquil’s
main square, as well as sweeping the
nearby intersections with grapeshot.
This resistance lasted for more than an
hour, until another pirate flanking-
column circled behind the Franciscan
church and headed toward the Domini-
can monastery. Afraid of being cut off
from their last avenue of escape into
the high ground behind the city, the
Spanish abandoned the main square,
allowing Grogniet to push up Los
Morlacos Street and along the river-
front in twin columns. For a third time,
the defenders regrouped in trenches
encircling the nearby northern heights,
but their seven guns within San Carlos
redoubt could not be depressed low
enough to fire down the slope, so that
Grogniet soon fought his way into this
system of trenches, along with Dew’s
few-dozen men attacking by surprise
from the opposite side.
By 11:00 A.M., the last traces of Span-
ish resolve sputtered out, 34 defenders
having been slain during these seven
hours of rain-soaked combat, compared
to nine pirate dead and a dozen woun-
ded—among the latter, Grogniet. The
city was quickly occupied and 700 pris-
oners herded into Guayaquil’s main
church, while Picard assumed command
over the flibustier contingent. Leading
citizens were singled out to be terror-
ized—the wounded Ponce, for example,
being beaten on his back with sword-
blades in front of his weeping family—
while fearsome pirates roared demands
of 300,000 pesos out of Ecuador’s inte-
rior to free all their hostages. To further
drive home their point, seven or eight
rich Spaniards were dragged out of the
Dew, George (fl. 1686
1695) 567
church and down to the riverbank, along
with all the clerics, where Lorenzo de
Sotomayor was randomly selected and
murdered by a pistol-shot. Eventually,
the victorious pirates reduced their
demand to 100,000 pesos, a ransom
which was to be raised and paid by fami-
lies and friends who lived inland.
Meanwhile, Guayaquil’s buildings
were ransacked, 14 anchored vessels
were seized, and pirate piraguas sped
upriver in pursuit of fleeing Spanish
craft. Eventually, a boat was sent down-
river on Wednesday morning, April 23,
1687, to contact the anchored pirate
ships waiting at Cabo Blanco, and order
them to rendezvous with the raiding-
party at Pun
a Island. Next day, Picard
and Dew withdrew from gutted Guaya-
quil, their original eight piraguas now
augmented by four large riverboats,
plus a new Spanish brigantine, with
more than 250 captives crammed
aboard. At the very last moment, Picard


ordered the wounded Governor Alvarez
to stay behind, so as to arrange the flow
of supplies for the pirates and their pris-
oners, until the ransoms could be paid.
The wounded Grogniet was carried
back aboard his flagship that same eve-
ning when the raiders reunited with
their vessels off Pun
a, and expired of
his wounds on May 2, 1687.
A few days later, the buccaneers were
joined by Davis, who brought in word
that a squadron of Peruvian privateers
was on its way to drive them off. The
Peruvians appeared by May 27, 1687,
consisting of the purchased vessels San
Jos
e and San Nicol
as of 20 guns apiece,
commanded by the Biscayans Dionisio
L
opez de Artunduaga and Nicol
as de
Igarza, plus a small patache. The pirate
formation by now included almost 20
medium- to small-size craft, mostly
568 Dew, George (fl. 1686
1695)
prizes, which the Peruvian privateers
rather gingerly engaged at long range
over the next five days, eventually scat-
tering the freebooters and recuperating
some lost vessels. During these actions,
San Nicol
as ran aground hard on a sand-
bank off Atacames, so it limped back to-
ward Callao taking on water. It was
quickly replaced by San Francisco de
Paula and another patache, that joined
L
opez de Artunduaga off Ecuador and
resumed his distant pursuit of the retreat-
ing buccaneers, at last compelling them
to relinquish their largest prize (San
Jacinto) before making a final division
of spoils off Cape San Francisco, and
dispersing northward 10 days later.
Bermudan Privateer
(January 1691)
The first official notice of his activities
did not occur until January 22
23,
1691 (O.S.), when the minutes of a
Council session at St. George’s, Ber-
muda, recorded:
Mr. Henry cited to attend the Coun-
cil on the next Council-day to an-
swer the complaint of Mr. George
Deu, Master; Dr. Johnson; and Mr.
L. Briggs, for making waste of the
timber on the King’s land.
As the European conflict known in
America as King William’s War was
just then entering its third year, Dew
apparently was issued a privateering
commission, as well as a permit to
impress seamen, from Acting-Governor
Isaac Richier. He then sortied as junior
consort to Captain Thomas Griffin,
and—prizes being scarce in the lonely
Bermudan approaches—both sloops
roamed farther north, apparently sepa-
rating briefly after they had moved up
the Atlantic Seaboard to join in on the
fighting against the French frontline out-
posts in Acadia (modern Nova Scotia).
‘‘Hurly-Burly’’ Off New England
(Summer 1691)
Both visiting freebooter vessels alleg-
edly joined the hunt for a large French
privateer which was known to be
operating off that coastline, but their
aggressiveness would soon bring them
into conflict with the local authorities.
Dew’s sloop became temporarily
attached to the larger brigantine of
Captain William Kidd out of New
York, who was also patrolling the New
England shores that summer in search
of enemy raiders. Yet on July 29, 1691
(O.S.), as a New Hampshire sloop
crammed with a company of militia-
men under Captain John March was
gliding down the Piscataqua River to
exit into the North Atlantic and take
part in a seaborne expedition against
the French settlements in Casco Bay
(Maine), they ‘‘sailed by a brigantine
and a small sloop with the King’s jack
flying,’’ which opened fire to prevent
their passage. Unable to depart on their
expedition, a frustrated March and
other witnesses were instead obliged to
go ashore and lodge a complaint, add-
ing that when Fort William and Mary
on Great Island (modern New Castle)
subsequently fired several rounds at
these same two interlopers:
. . . and commanded Captain Dew
ashore, which the men said was Cap-
tain of one of the vessels; and said
Dew when he came ashore, he

utterly denied to give the authority
any account of these things which
was done; and also I heard the said
Dew swear on this 30th day of July
91 in the morning, that he would run
his sloop on shore against Their
Majesties’ fort upon the Great
Island, and land his men there before
the sun was set this day.
Depositions describing this ‘‘hurley-burley
with ye privateers’’ were received from
March and various other victims, during
which it was furthermore noted that: ‘‘The
name of the Captain of the brigantine,
which is above mentioned which fired at
us, was Kidd; and said Kidd belonged to
New York, as we are informed.’’
As the two menacing rovers finally
weighed to depart the blockaded road-
stead, another eyewitness noticed how
‘‘either Captain Dew or some other
man on board his sloop, upon the quar-
terdeck, brandished his sword’’ in defi-
ance of the King’s colors as they
glided past Fort William and Mary. Its
garrison commander, Captain Nathaniel
Fryer, therefore fired yet more shots
across Dew’s bow, causing the depart-
ing rovers to reverse course and once
more come threateningly ‘‘to an anchor
in the River of Piscataqua again, to the
great fear of the inhabitants.’’
Dew nonetheless left the bay for good
shortly thereafter, and also parted com-
pany from Kidd so as to rejoin Griffin, as
yet another victim—Captain Thomas
Wilkinson of the pink Three Broth-
ers—would reach Boston on August 8,
1691 (O.S.), to complain to Governor
Simon Bradstreet that he had been
robbed of his vessel ‘‘on the high seas’’
by the two Bermudans, just as he was
nearing home after a commercial voyage
to Cadiz. This pair had taken and then
Dew, George (fl. 1686
1695) 569
sailed his pink, first into the Isles of
Shoals and later into the outer reaches of
the Piscataqua River, where they alleg-
edly held a mock trial at which this prize
and its cargo were supposedly ‘‘con-
demned.’’ Having heard of the ‘‘hurly-
burly’’ incident as well, Massachusetts’
Governor gave orders on August 9, 1691
(O.S.), for the commissioned privateer
Swan of Captain Christopher Goffe to
sortie from Portsmouth (New Hamp-
shire) and seize these two transgressors,
so as to bring them in ‘‘to answer for
their misdemeanors.’’
Before this order could even be deliv-
ered, though, Griffin had already written
a letter to Governor Bradstreet on Au-
gust 12, 1691 (O.S.), explaining how he
and Dew had mistaken Wilkinson’s mer-
chant pink for the French privateer
which they were hunting, and then ‘‘dis-
covered’’—after its capture—that it was
transporting prohibited goods. They had
wished to send their prize home to their
commission-port of St. George’s in Ber-
muda for proper adjudication, Griffin
assured the Governor, but were informed
by various carpenters that it was not fit to
make such a voyage. Consequently, as
senior partner, Griffin had ‘‘proceeded
by virtue of ye power I have (being satis-
fied that no larger can be granted out of
Boston to condemn her, as by law is pre-
scribed).’’ He then went on to rather
insultingly tell Bradstreet that since so
many smugglers were allowed to carry
goods out of Boston to sell to the French
enemy in Acadia, that he suspected ‘‘I
should be unkindly dealt with [before a
Massachusetts jury], being a subject of
ye Crown of England.’’
When the local collector of customs,
Jahleel Brenton, learned of this travesty
of justice, he attempted to impound the
pink, which Dew and Griffin resisted
570 Dew, George (fl. 1686
1695)
‘‘with force of arms.’’ Eventually, Bren-
ton succeeded in regaining possession of
Three Brothers and a portion of its cargo,
while the privateer Swan of Captain
Christopher Goffe was sent out of Bos-
ton in early August 1691 to pursue the
pair of marauders. They easily eluded
him, Goffe later reporting while lying at
anchor near Portsmouth on August 14,
1691 (O.S.), that ‘‘they could sail two
feet to his one,’’ and so he withdrew a
few days later into Nantasket to reprovi-
sion his Swan. Meanwhile, Dew and
Griffin boarded another English vessel
off Cape Cod which was bound for Vir-
ginia with a valuable cargo of oil, brim-
stone, gold, and silver. They claimed that
its captain did not have the requisite
papers, and so sailed this prize back to
Bermuda for disposal.
Failed Red Sea Venture (1693)
It is possible that on his successful
return, Dew married Ann Welsh, daugh-
ter of John and Anne Welsh. Less than
a year-and-a-half later, Dew ventured to
sea on a privateering voyage again, this
time as second to Captain Thomas
Tew—originally from Rhode Island,
but by now a veteran West Indian rover.
Both commanders set sail from Ber-
muda in January 1693, Dew in com-
mand of the brigantine Amy, as consort
to Tew’s Amity. Ostensibly, they were
bound on a joint expedition against the
French slaving-factory of Gor
ee in West
Africa, but actually intended to round
the Cape of Good Hope and make a pi-
ratical raid into the Red Sea. A few
days out into the Atlantic, though,
Dew’s vessel sprang its mast in a storm,
leaving Tew’s Amity to continue his
journey alone around Africa, while
Dew limped across the Atlantic as best
he could under a jury-rig.
On May 2, 1693, his Amy crept into
Saldanha Bay, a vast and beautiful natu-
ral harbor on the southwestern shores of
South Africa (northwest of modern Cape
Town). Dew landed there to begin to
effect repairs on his mainmast, only to be
arrested soon after by the suspicious
Dutch East India Company ship Tam-
boer. As his crippled Amy gave all the
impressions of having been engaged in
battle, plus two conflicting sets of ship-
papers found aboard, and Dew’s own
alleged lies as to the number of his crew,
the local Dutch authorities impounded
his brigantine as a suspect pirate vessel.
Amy was even temporarily condemned
as such, and Dew sent prisoner along
with his crew to Holland, before it
proved impossible to sustain any such
charge of piracy before a Dutch court.
Consequently, England being an ally
in the hostilities still raging against the
French, Dew had to be released, at
which point he filed a claim for dam-
ages against the Dutch East India
Company or VOC, causing its Direc-
tors considerable trouble and expense.
Last African Attempt and
Demise (1695
1703)
On December 30, 1695 (O.S.), Dew
limped back into St. George’s with his
damaged brigantine Marigold, filing a
formal complaint for mutiny before its
local authorities that while sailing from
Barbados for the slaving-stations of
West Africa, he had been struck by a
storm and his crew thereupon refused
to proceed, obliging him to return.
Next year, Captain Dew and his wife
Ann were listed in the ‘‘1696 Oath
Roll of Association Island’’ as residing
in the town and parish of St. George’s
Island. George, Jr., was born late that

same year, soon to be followed by a
pair of daughters, Anne and Mary.
Once peace was concluded, Dew—now
variously described as a ‘‘reformed
pirate,’’ as well as a ‘‘failed privateer and
slave trader’’—is known to have bought a
house on Broad Alley in the island capital
of St. George’s in 1700, a cottage con-
structed only that previous year. (Much
later, this structure would come to serve as
the rectory for St. Peter’s Church, and still
stands today, beautifully preserved as the
‘‘Old Rectory’’ by the Bermuda National
Trust.) In June 1701, Dew was listed as
one of four members elected to the
Assembly of Bermuda from the capital ri-
ding, but his health must have taken a turn
for the worst shortly thereafter, for on Sep-
tember 29, 1702 (O.S.), while still only in
his early to mid-thirties, Dew made his
will; it was proved on February 15, 1703
(O.S.), suggesting that he died during this
interim. His widow took their daughter
Mary with her to Charleston, South Caro-
lina, and in a family arrangement remar-
ried that same year, leaving George, Jr.,
and other daughter Anne on Bermuda to
be raised by their grandparents.
See also
Commission Port; Davis, Edward; Goffe,
Christopher; Griffin, Thomas; Grogniet,
François; Isla del Muerto; Kidd,
William; Lussan, Ravenau de; Patache;
Piragua; South Sea; Tew, Thomas;
Townley, Francis.
References
Alsedo y Herrera, Dionisio de, Compendio
hist

orico de la provincia, partidos,
ciudades, astilleros, rı´os y puerto
de Guayaquil en las costas de la
Mar del Sur (Madrid: Manuel
Fern
andez, 1741).
Doubloon 571
Archive of Indies-Seville, Audiencia de
Quito 159, Number 20, Folios 48
53.
Baxter, James P., comp. and ed.,
Documentary History of the State of
Maine, Volume IV (Portland, ME:
Maine Historical Society, 1869).
Bell, Winslow M., comp.,’’Minutes of
Their Majesties’ Council (1690),’’
Bermuda Historical Quarterly XIV, No.
3 (Autumn 1957), pp. 72
79.
Bernal Ruiz, Marı́a del Pilar, La toma del
puerto de Guayaquil en 1687 (Seville:
Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
americanos, 1979).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 19
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1910).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Dow, George F., and Edmonds, John H.,
The Pirates of the New England Coast,
1630
1730 (Salem, MA: Marine
Research Society, 1923).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
Theal, George McCall, History of South
Africa under the Administration of the
Dutch East India Company, 1652 to
1795 (London: Swan, Sonnenscheim &
Company, 1897).
DOUBLOON
Term for the largest of Spanish gold coins,
derived from the word dobl
on, signifying
an escudo or piece of gold-currency,
worth double its regular face-value.
By the late 17th century, although the
doubloon remained the most valuable
gold coin minted by Spain, its purity
and appeal had drastically declined, in
part because of repeated clipping. For
572 Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste (fl. 1689
1697)
Spanish gold doubloon, originally struck in
1714 at the Royal Mint in Mexico City, only
to be looted later by pirates. (Private
Collection/Peter Newark Pictures/The
Bridgeman Art Library)
example, when about thirty sailors were
discharged in England from the packet
Spanish Expedition at the conclusion to
King William’s War in October 1697,
most ‘‘complained of the payment in
Spanish gold.’’ One of these men, the
purser Thomas Slade, described the
fraudulent practices of the agent at Fal-
mouth: ‘‘That at that time, he received
twenty pistoles of Mr. [Daniel] Gwyn for
Richard James, all of them wanting
weight, among which were doubloons
that wanted two shillings and two shil-
lings, sixpence of weight; the whole loss,
by exchanging the gold, came to twelve
shillings.’’
See also
Clipped Money; Doubloon (Volume 1);
Pistole.
Reference
Journal of the House of Commons, Volume
12: 1697
1699 (London, 1803).
DUCASSE, JEAN-BAPTISTE
(fl. 1689
1697)
Seventh Governor of French Saint-
Domingue, who led his flibustiers on
major assaults against Jamaica in 1694,
and Cartagena three years afterward.
Ducasse was born on August 2, 1646,
into a Huguenot or ‘‘French Protestant’’
family in the tiny town of Saubuse near
Dax in southern France, not far from the
Bay of Biscay. He first went to sea as a
young boy aboard slavers of the Compag-
nie du S
en

egal. Starting in 1677, he made
several voyages from West Africa to
Saint-Domingue, Canada, and the ‘‘coast
of Florida,’’ and in September 1678, dur-
ing the closing stages of the Franco-Dutch
War, captured a Dutch slaving-station on
the African coast, thereby winning
appointment as one of the Directors of his
company two years later.
In March 1686, Ducasse was admitted
into the French Royal Navy as a lieuten-
ant de vaisseau or ‘‘senior lieutenant,’’
and next year conducted a lengthy cam-
paign against pirates and Dutch slavers
along the African coast in the 28-gun,
250-ton frigate Temp^ ete or ‘‘Tempest.’’
Promoted to capitaine de fr
egate or
‘‘junior captain’’ at the outbreak of the
War of the League of Augsburg (known
in America as ‘‘King William’s War’’),
Ducasse led an unsuccessful assault
against the Dutch colony of Suriname in
November 1688, and that following year
played a conspicuous part in the con-
quest of the English portion of St. Kitts.
Capture of Fort Charles
(August 1689)
In command of a contingent of 120 fli-
bustiers, Ducasse quit Martinique as

part of Governor-General the Comte de
Bl
enac’s six warships, 14 merchant-
men, and 23 sloops, arriving off Basse-
terre at St. Kitts on July 27, 1689. The
French landed ‘‘and laid the southern
part of the island in ashes,’’ driving
Colonel Thomas Hill and 400 to 500
English defenders inside tiny Fort
Charles at Old Road Town. Bl
enac
instituted a formal siege, digging an
approach-trench while his batteries and
warships bombarded the gate, although
the fortress itself had no moat and only
gently-sloping walls. More importantly,
a hill overlooked its interior, so that af-
ter two weeks’ fruitless firing, Ducasse
convinced Bl
enac that a battery should
be installed atop it. The Governor-
General finally agreed, and during the
night of August 14th-15th Ducasse’s
men dragged six heavy pieces to the
top. They opened fire next morning,
and the besieged surrendered once they
discovered that their counter-fire could
not reach the summit.
Early next year, Ducasse was given
command of three warships, a brigantine,
and a sloop, to convey 700 reinforce-
ments to the island of Saint Martin, which
was being invested by Sir Timothy
Thornhill’s expedition. Ducasse arrived
just in time to save this French colony
from being overrun, and trapped the Eng-
lish contingent on shore. The latter were
rescued late in January 1690 by Thomas
Hewetson, who fought a running two-day
battle with Ducasse before evacuating
Thornhill’s men to Nevis. Ducasse sailed
to Saint-Domingue in late January 1691,
after hearing of a devastating Spanish
attack against its French inhabitants.
Stepping ashore amid the burnt remains
of Cap François, he visited the nearby
Limonade battlefield, where he found
more than 300 French dead, ‘‘their bodies
Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste (fl. 1689
1697) 573
not yet buried, being rotted and half-
desiccated.’’ Shortly thereafter, he pro-
ceeded to France and reported on this
defeat, leaving La Rochelle for the West
Indies once more by the end of March.
Guadeloupe Operation
(May 1691)
On his return to Martinique, it was
learned that a large English force under
Gov. Sir William Codrington of the Lee-
ward Islands and Royal Navy Captain
Lawrence Wright was besieging Guade-
loupe. Ducasse therefore conveyed two
companies of infantrymen and 600
flibustiers to reinforce its beleaguered
garrison aboard his Hasardeux or ‘‘Dar-


ing,’’ Mignon or ‘‘Dainty,’’ Emerillon or
‘‘Merlin,’’ Cheval Marin or ‘‘Sea
Horse,’’ plus three 20-gun merchantmen.
Being heavily outnumbered, he intended
to avoid combat, depositing these troops
by stealth. During his passage, the
French freed Marie-Galante from Eng-
lish occupation, then began landing their
reinforcements on May 23, 1691, at
Grosier, Guadeloupe. The English with-
drew two days later, their morale sapped
by torrential rains and enormous sick-
lists, with Wright refusing to remain off-
shore or even engage Ducasse, despite
his numerical advantage.
Returning triumphantly to Marti-
nique, Ducasse transferred his ships to
Saint Croix on August 2nd, as they were
infected with yellow fever. Five days
later, he sailed again for Port de Paix on
the north shore of Hispaniola, where his
two warships and single corvette lost 250
men before this disease abated. On Octo-
ber 1st, a letter arrived from Paris,
appointing him as Governor of Saint-
Domingue in succession to Pierre-Paul
Tarin de Cussy, killed during the Spanish
574 Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste (fl. 1689
1697)
invasion eight months previously. The
colonists were still frightened and con-
fused in the wake of this disaster, but
Ducasse was able to restore their spirits.
On February 20, 1692, he conveyed a
company of infantrymen from Petit-
Go^ave to Port de Paix aboard two corsair
vessels, sending another company under
the Sieur Dumesnil on ahead to Cap
François, where they disembarked along
with the 120 flibustier crewmembers to
reinforce Laurens de Graaf and Charles
François Le Vasseur de Beauregard,
thereby discouraging a second Spanish
incursion from Santo Domingo.
Gradually, Saint-Domingue recuper-
ated its strength, and in January 1693
Ducasse was promoted to capitaine de
vaisseau or ‘‘senior naval captain.’’ In
April of the next year, he dispatched
Beauregard with six privateer vessels to
raid the eastern coast of Jamaica. They
took a New England ship, but HMS Fal-
con sighted the interlopers next day and
chased them, recuperating the prize. When
Beauregard reentered Petit-Go^ave, he
found that the men-of-war T
em
eraire or
‘‘Fearless’’ of 54 guns, Envieux or ‘‘Envi-
ous’’ of 50 guns, and Solide or ‘‘Well-
found’’ had just arrived from France with
a merchant convoy, so Ducasse employed
them to return to Falcon’s patrol-area and
seize the Royal Navy vessel, despite a
stout resistance. He then marshaled all his
forces for a descent on the English island.
Jamaican Campaign
(Summer 1694)
Early in June, Ducasse sortied from
Petit-Go^ave with his flagship T

em

eraire
under its Captain the Chevalier du
Rollon, accompanied by Hasardeux and
Envieux. Off Cape Tiburon, he gathered
a fleet totaling 22 sail and more than
3,000 men, appearing off the eastern tip
of Jamaica by the morning of June 27,
1694, ‘‘in a fresh gale.’’ Eight vessels
remained off Port Morant, while 14
others anchored in Cow Bay, 15 miles
east of Port Royal. The French learned
that the island’s English forces had been
forewarned by Captain Stephen Elliott,
their defenses being fully prepared.
Therefore, Ducasse’s plan of directly
storming Port Royal had to be altered,
as Du Rollon refused to risk any of the
King’s ships in such a bold undertaking.
Ducasse consequently landed 800 men
under Beauregard, who marched east-
ward plundering and destroying every-
thing in his path. From Port Morant,
French boats were sent round to ravage
the northern shoreline as well; the Eng-
lish under Gov. William Beeston were
reluctant to sally for fear of dividing their
smaller forces with their enemy still to
windward. On July 1, 1694, a sudden gust
made T
em
eraire drag its anchors, carry-
ing it downwind to Bluefields Bay along
with another French vessel, where the
flibustier commander Jean Bernanos
made a secondary disembarkation before
eventually standing away toward Petit-
Go^ave. Ducasse, however, was already
encamped ashore, so continued to direct
land operations until July 27th, when he
mustered the bulk of his fleet in Cow Bay
to once again threaten Port Royal.
When Beeston sortied to contest
this French maneuver, Ducasse quickly
reembarked his men under cover of dark-
ness, and sent all but the three largest ships
with his deputy De Graaf to assault
Carlisle Bay, 35 miles farther west. This
contingent dropped anchor on the after-
noon of July 28th, landing 1,400 to 1,500
flibustiers that night. Next morning,
they assailed the small local garrison,
 Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste (fl. 1689
1697) 575

Jamica

The French fleet divided, some anchoring off Port Morant (1), others near Yallahs (2). Real-
izing that Port Royal could not be surprised, both squadrons ravaged coastal plantations,
before T
em
eraire dragged its anchors and drove downwind—dotted line—to Bluefields Bay
(3), where Bernanos made a secondary landing. Ducasse eventually sent De Graaf in a
thrust toward Carlisle Bay (4), where more damage was inflicted, before the French fleet
reunited and retraced their course back to Saint-Domingue (5).

Beauregard commanding the van, De
Graaf directing the main body. After driv-
ing back the few Englishmen, foraging
parties were sent out to scour the country-
side, and when Ducasse joined a few days
later, the booty was transferred aboard his
flotilla. The French weighed on August 3rd
and 11 days afterward were back in Petit-
Go^ave, having spent a month-and-a-half
rampaging through Jamaica.
Anglo-Spanish
Counterattack (1695)
Late that following month, Beeston sent
a small force of three men-of-war, a
fire-ship, and two barks to exact venge-
ance. They bombarded the village of
l’Esterre near L
eog^ane on October 11,
1694, and then bore down on Petit-
Go^ave, sheering off when they realized
Beauregard was prepared to receive
them. A few huts were burnt on ^Ile a
Vache before the Jamaicans disappeared
over the horizon. Next spring, however,
an expedition arrived in the Antilles
from England, two-dozen vessels and
almost a thousand troops under Colonel
Luke Lillingston and Commodore Rob-
ert Wilmot, which joined forces with
the Spaniards of Santo Domingo and
Armada de Barlovento. On May 15,
1695, this huge force descended on Cap
François (modern Cap Ha€tien), pushing
aside the heavily outnumbered French
defenders commanded by De Graaf.
One month later, the Royal Navy squad-
ron reached Port de Paix, skirmishing
with its defenders until the invading
576 Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste (fl. 1689
1697)
armies arrived overland. The garrison
became besieged and attempted to evac-
uate two hours before dawn on July
15th, but were caught in an ambush. Af-
ter leveling Port de Paix, the English
and Spanish sailed away on July 27th.
No major campaigns could be
mounted that following year, although
Ducasse was advised that a counter-
expedition would be sent out from
France under Bernard Jean-Louis de
Saint-Jean, Baron de Pointis, for which
he should prepare by raising a large
contingent of flibustiers. This fleet did
not actually appear off Cap François
until early March 1697, and the 84-gun
flagship Sceptre dropped anchor before
Petit-Go^ave on March 16th. When
Ducasse went aboard, Admiral Pointis
was infuriated to learn that only a few
hundred buccaneers awaited him, the
rest having dispersed on their own pur-
suits. Relations worsened a day later
when a French naval officer arrested
an unruly boucanier ashore, touching
off a riot in which two or three others
died. Only the intervention of Ducasse
succeeded in calming the mob.
The freebooters were offended by
the secondary role that they were being
offered in the enterprise, the question
of their shares was kept deliberately
vague and Ducasse was excluded from
any command position. Nonetheless,
they enlisted in good numbers once
Pointis published a proclamation stat-
ing that they would participate ‘‘man
for man’’ with the crews of the royal
warships, and Ducasse offered to go as
an individual ship-captain aboard his
40-gun Pontchartrain, commanding
only the island contingent. A force
of 170 soldiers, 110 volunteers, 180
free blacks, and 650 buccaneers was
promptly raised, sailing aboard the
20-gun Gracieuse or ‘‘Graceful’’; the
18-gun Serpente, Cerf Volant or ‘‘Kite,’’
Saint Louis, the 16-gun Dorade or
‘‘Golden One,’’ Marie-Françoise, and
one other vessel. They rendezvoused off
Cape Tiburon with the royal fleet, and
by April 8, 1697, were in sight of the
Spanish Main. Five days later, they
dropped anchor before Cartagena.
Cartagena Campaign
(April
May 1697)
An immediate landing by the buccaneers
was proposed near the city, but cancelled
once Ducasse and Pointis reconnoitered
the shore in a boat, finding it lined with
dangerous reefs. (Their own craft
became overturned, and they barely
escaped drowning.) It was therefore
decided to force the harbor entrance
known as Bocachica further to the south,
so that Ducasse and Pointis disembarked
on April 15, 1697, with 1,200 men.
While preparing their siege operations,
the buccaneers captured a coaster arriv-
ing from Portobelo, and drove off Span-
ish reinforcements which were stealing
down for Bocachica from Cartagena in
boats. During this latter affray, some
freebooters came under fire from the for-
tress itself, which caused them to imme-
diately scatter. Mistaking this flight for
military indiscipline, Pointis fell on them
with a cudgel, and treated the rovers with
ever-increasing contempt. Bocachica
surrendered after the initial assault on
April 16th, with six French soldiers and
seven buccaneers having been killed and
22 wounded, among the latter Ducasse.
The flibustier contingent was now
under his second, Joseph d’Honon de
Galliffet, a relative newcomer to Saint-
Domingue and who was not well known

among the rovers. When Pointis ordered
them into the boats to seize the Nuestra
Se~ nora de la Popa high ground while his
main army advanced overland, there
was considerable hesitation. Galliffet
seized a buccaneer by the arm, but was
thrown off. Pointis therefore had the of-
fender tied to a tree and blindfolded, in
anticipation of being executed by regu-
lar musketeers. Galliffet publicly inter-
ceded and in a contrived gesture, Pointis
released the man so as to ingratiate Gal-
liffet with his followers. The buccaneers
then occupied the heights unopposed,
and linked up with the main army on
April 20th.
A formal siege of the city was
thereupon instituted, with approach-
trenches being dug and heavy artillery
landed from the fleet. Pointis was
wounded in a leg by a sharpshooter’s
round, so supervised the works from a
litter. On April 28, 1697, a heavy bom-
bardment began against the Getsemanı́
suburb, and during a lull two days
afterward, Ducasse, now recuperated
from his injury, visited a Spanish offi-
cer at the gate and noticed that a
breach had been battered. At his urg-
ing, Pointis ordered the final assault
for four o’clock that same afternoon
and in bloody fighting, French grena-
diers and buccaneers fought their way
through to the very edge of Cartagena
itself. The defenders’ morale collapsed
and on the evening of May 2nd, white
flags were hoisted on the city walls.
While finalizing the capitulation
terms, Pointis received word that a Span-
ish relief-column of more than 1,000 men
was approaching, so sent Ducasse and his
buccaneers with several hundred soldiers
to oppose them. The enemy never
appeared, though, and Pointis meanwhile
occupied Cartagena on May 4th. By the
Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste (fl. 1689
1697) 577
time Ducasse and his men returned, they
found the gates closed and were billeted
in the impoverished, devastated suburb of
Getsemanı́. The French commander-in-
chief feared that they would violate his
carefully-arranged capitulation terms, so
kept them outside the walls and away
from where the booty was being tallied.
The few remaining Spanish inhabitants in
the city were obligated to surrender most
of their wealth as tribute, and the total
plunder eventually ascended to eight mil-
lion French crowns. The buccaneers
expected a quarter of this amount, but
were outraged at the end of the month to
discover that they were only to receive
40,000 crowns. Unknown to them, the
crews aboard Pointis’ royal warships had
been serving for only a small percentage
of the whole, which is what he had meant
when he had deceitfully offered them
shares ‘‘man for man.’’
Yet by now the plunder was aboard
his men-of-war, ready to depart. Furious
at being duped, the buccaneers swarmed
back into Cartagena on May 30th,
brushing aside Ducasse’s attempts to
dissuade them, and rounding up every
Spaniard they could find. These
unhappy victims were herded into the
principal church and sprinkled with
gunpowder, threatening to be scorched
alive unless an additional five million
crowns was forthcoming. This was
clearly impossible, but through torture
and extortion, the buccaneers raised a
thousand crowns per man before weigh-
ing on June 3rd. Pointis had meanwhile
departed, yet four days later encoun-
tered the large fleet of Vice Admiral
John Neville and his Dutch allies has-
tening to Cartagena’s rescue. Outnum-
bered and with most of his crews dead
or diseased, Pointis reversed course and
evaded his pursuers over the next two
578 Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste (fl. 1689
1697)
days, until finally shaking them off by
sun-up on June 10th.
This chase had carried Neville very
near to Cartagena, which he visited
briefly before roaming eastward and
sighting Ducasse on June 25th, at anchor
with eight buccaneer vessels off Sambay.
The English captured Gracieuse and the
50-gun Christe (perhaps a Spanish prize
originally called Santo Cristo?), and
drove Saint-Louis of Capitaine Charles
aground, where he and his crew escaped
ashore—only to be hunted down and
eventually put to work rebuilding Carta-
gena’s defenses. Neville detached four
men-of-war to pursue Ducasse’s remain-
ing vessels, which scattered in the direc-
tion of Saint-Domingue. Cerf Volant of
Capitaine Macary was driven aground on
that coast, but the rest arrived safely.
On June 29, 1697, Ducasse wrote
Pontchartrain from L
eog^ane, complain-
ing bitterly of Pointis’ deceitfulness, and
the destruction of his flibustiers. A pro-
longed litigation ensued, even after hos-
tilities concluded a few months later,
that eventually resulted in a slightly
larger share being paid to the free-
booters. By 1700, Ducasse had resigned
his Governorship and returned to France.
Subsequent Career
(1701
1715)
At the outbreak of the War of the
Spanish Succession, he was promoted
in July 1701 to chef d’escadre or
‘‘commodore’’ in the remobilizing
royal navy and dispatched into Spain
to secure the slave asiento for French
interests, now that the two countries
had become united. Additionally
appointed as capit

an general or ‘‘admi-
ral’’ by the new Bourbon monarch
Philip V of Spain, Ducasse then quit
Cadiz to escort a Spanish convoy with
his flagship Heureux and three other
French warships, ironically reentering
Cartagena as an ally five years after
having helped lay it to waste. Then, in
a running fight off Santa Marta from
August 29 to September 3, 1702, he
beat off a superior English force in
what has become known as Admiral
John Benbow’s ‘‘Last Fight.’’
Returning to Europe, Ducasse partici-
pated in the huge Battle of V
elez-M
alaga
on August 24, 1704, in which he was
wounded. Recuperated from his injuries,
he resumed his escort duties for Spanish
treasure-fleets, successfully guiding them
across the Atlantic in 1705, 1708, and
1711. As a reward for these services, he
was promoted to lieutenant g
en
eral or
‘‘rear admiral’’ in the French royal navy
in 1707, and invested with Spain’s
Tois
on de Oro or ‘‘Golden Fleece’’ in
April 1712. Ducasse was placed in com-
mand of the Spanish royalist forces
besieging Barcelona in March 1714, yet
was forced to retire next year because of
ill health. He died at Bourbon-l’Archam-
bault in France, on June 25, 1715.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
Crouse, Nellis M., The French Struggle for
the West Indies, 1665
1713 (New York:
Octagon, 1966).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica:
Lewis, Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
 Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste (fl. 1689
1697) 579

SPAIN’S ‘‘CROSS OF BURGUNDY’’ FLAG

Throughout much of its early imperial history, Spain did not have a single national
flag. The amalgamation of medieval kingdoms and principalities of the Iberian Penin-
sula, as well as various other dynastic possessions scattered throughout Europe, had
all mostly chosen to retain their own traditional colors as they coalesced under diverse
Hapsburg rulers. Yet Spain’s distant colonies in the New World had been conquered
at a later date, during the reign of its first great unifying Hapsburg monarch Charles I,
whose preferred personal symbols were those of his father, Duke Philip of Burgundy.
Once Charles had furthermore been crowned in 1530 as Holy Roman Emperor, in
addition to his many other titles, his favorite ‘‘Cross of Burgundy’’ flag became
embraced as the standard ensign flown throughout his vast Spanish-American
holdings.
This flag featured a red raguly saltire, also known as the Cross of Saint Andrew,
usually on a white background. In heraldry, such raguly patterns were meant to depict
two tree-trunks, with their branches cut off and crossed so as to form the saltire. Further
regional symbols might be discreetly included in a flag’s center, as well as decorative
borders, and their backgrounds were not always uniformly white; this basic design
was to remain the standard ensign displayed throughout the New World until the end
of the 17th century, and even well into the succeeding Bourbon reign.
It was distinct and easily recognizable, an example of its usage occurring on Sep-
tember 19, 1686, when a small captured frigate and bark steered by pirates
approached the Perico Island anchorage off Panama City, to make a reconnaissance.
The flibustier chronicler Ravenau de Lussan, who was aboard, later noted how: ‘‘The
Spaniards, upon sighting us from the opposite shore, peppered us with three shots, af-
ter raising the flag of Bourgogne on their windward bastion.’’

Red raguly saltire upon a white background, the standard flag flown throughout
Spain’s American empire during the seventeenth century. (Author’s Collection)
580 Duhamel, Capitaine (fl. 1692)
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).


Taillemite, Etienne, Dictionnaire des
Marins Français (Paris: Editions
Maritimes et d’Outre-mer, 1982).
DUHAMEL, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1692)
Saint-Malo shipmaster issued an emer-
gency commission by Gov. Jean-Bap-
tiste Ducasse.
In the early days of 1692, when the
French colony of Saint-Domingue was
struggling to recover from the trauma
of that previous year’s Spanish inva-
sion, its vigorous new Governor
Ducasse dispatched the frigates of Cap-
tains Dessaudrays and Duhamel:
. . . to cruise off Cape Tiburon with
orders that when they discover the
enemy ships returning, they are to
advise me in order to gather every-
one who is scattered over 20 or
30 leagues of countryside.
Reference
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
DUMESNIL, SIEUR
(fl. 1684
1692)
Flibustier and defender of Saint-Domingue.
Dumesnil’s name was first mentioned
in 1684, when he was listed in a report to
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquis de Seigne-
lay, as one of the senior buccaneer
captains on that island, commanding the
ship Trompeuse or ‘‘Trickster’’ of 14 guns
and 100 men. Eight years later, following
the disastrous losses incurred during the
Spanish invasion of 1691, Dumesnil and
his men were pressed into a more active
role in the colony’s land defenses. On Feb-
ruary 16, 1692, he and his company set sail
from Petit-Go^ave with the new Gov. Jean-
Baptiste Ducasse, aboard two small fli-
bustier vessels, to bolster the northeastern
frontier against an anticipated Spanish
return. Ducasse landed with some militia
contingents at Port de Paix on February
20th, forwarding Dumesnil and his free-
booters to Cap François to reinforce Lau-
rens de Graaf and Charles François Le
Vasseur de Beauregard. The expected
Spanish attack never materialized, though,
and in the words of Ducasse: ‘‘From the
moment the flibustiers knew that the Span-
iards’ design had been aborted, they exited
with five or six vessels.’’ The frustrated
Governor added:
They are very bad subjects, who
believe they have not been put in the
world except to practice brigandage
and piracy. Enemies of subordina-
tion and authority, their example
ruins the colonies, all the young peo-
ple having no other wish than to
embrace this profession for its liber-
tinage and ability to gain booty.
References
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
 E

Those great rogues and enemies to all mankind

are sensible of their condition if they be taken,
which naturally makes them very desperate.
—Governor Francis Nicholson of Virginia, June 1700

ELLIOTT, STEPHEN in company with the sloop Greyhound

(fl. 1692
1694)
English master who saved Jamaica.
It is not known whether Elliott was
in command of the private sloop Pem-
broke in 1692, the third year of the
War of the League of Augsburg or
King William’s War, when this vessel
was hired by the Council of Jamaica,
but it seems likely. Specifically, 10 or
12 French corsair craft had been
reported prowling to windward or east-
ward of that island in mid-April, and
the renegade Nathaniel Grubbing was
‘‘on his way to make a second raid.’’
As a result, Pembroke was hired and
Captain Edward Oakley of HMS Guern-
sey was instructed to put 60 men on
board and press 10 more, so that his
Lieutenant might ‘‘take command and
cruise round the island.’’ The two sloops
were joined by a third a few days later,
yet did not come up with any enemies.
In the first days of September 1692, a
similar crisis occurred when the order
was given ‘‘for payment to the master of
the sloop Pembroke, and that he at once
go in pursuit of Nathaniel Grubbing.’’
However, it was not until two years
later that Elliott truly distinguished him-
self, when he was sent from Port Royal
in April 1694 with a cargo of £8,000 to
£10,000 worth of merchandise ‘‘to trade
upon the coasts of Cartagena and Porto-
belo.’’ There, he was taken in a bay by
two French privateers, and carried to
Petit-Go^ave on Saint-Domingue. While
being held captive, he witnessed the ar-
rival of a French convoy escorted by
three 50-gun men-of-war under the
Chevalier du Rollon. The island Gov.

581
582 Enfants Perdus
Jean-Baptiste Ducasse used this trio to
surprise the lone Jamaican coast-guard
frigate, HMS Falcon, then decided to
mount a full-scale assault against unsus-
pecting Jamaica, which the French
knew to be weakened in the aftermath
of the earthquake of two years earlier,
plus desertion by many privateers.
Consequently, a huge French force
began to muster, soon swelling to 20
sail and 3,000 men. Alarmed, Elliott
and two companions resorted to the des-
perate expedient of stealing a canoe,
and putting to sea on the night of June
5, 1694. They reached Jamaica five days
later, arriving at the house of Gov. Wil-
liam Beeston that evening, as he was sit-
ting with some visitors. Beeston was
astonished at the sight of Elliott, ‘‘in a
very mean habit and with a meager
weather-beaten countenance,’’ but more
astounded still at his news. The Council
was immediately convened, and at a
nine o’clock that same night a state of
emergency was declared. Work was
rushed on the harbor fortifications, guns
were mounted, troops marshaled, ships
secured, and reinforcements dispatched
to outlying areas. By the time Ducasse
appeared off Port Morant with 22 sail
on June 27th, the defenders had used the
intervening two-and-a-half weeks to
great advantage. Although outnumbered
by the invading host, they were able to
discourage any direct assault against
Port Royal, so that the French contented
themselves with ravaging the coastal
plantations. As a reward for his bravery,
the Lords of Trade and Plantations in
London voted that November:
That the services of Captain Elliott
and two men who escaped from Petit-
Go^ave and gave warning of the com-
ing attack on Jamaica be represented
to the King, and that His Majesty be
moved to grant Captain Elliott £500, a
medal and chain, and the two men £50
apiece.
The King furthermore appointed Elliott
on January 14, 1695 (O.S.), as a Captain
in the Royal Navy, with a commission
back-dated to June 14, 1694, and gave
him command of the 24-gun frigate
HMS Maidstone.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 13,
14 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1893
1899).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica:
Lewis, Lunan and Jones, 1800).
ENFANTS PERDUS
French military slang—translated liter-
ally, it means ‘‘the lost children’’—used
to describe any vanguard, assault-force,
or other advance-unit in battle.
The English equivalent was the
‘‘forlorn.’’ When the stealthily advanc-
ing pirate flotilla of François Grogniet
and George Dew concealed themselves
up a steamy inlet on Pun
a Island’s
northern tip on April 17, 1687, they
agreed to divide up and assault specific
strongpoints once they reached their
intended upriver target of Guayaquil
three days later. Fifty enfants perdus
under Captain Pierre Le Picard were
assigned the task of storming its cita-
del, ‘‘with the promise of a thousand
pieces-of-eight to the first man to hoist
the colors over the main fort.’’

The Irish-born Edward Seegar, better
known as ‘‘Captain Edward England,’’ as
depicted in A General History of the Rob-
beries and Murders of the Most Notorious
Pyrates. (Library of Congress)
See also
Dew, George; Forlorn; Grogniet, François;
Le Picard, Capitaine.
Reference
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
ENGLAND, EDWARD
(fl. 1718
1720)
Wide-ranging rover, who prowled from
the West Indies to Africa and into the
Indian Ocean during his brief, yet
spectacular career.
His surname ‘‘England’’ was appa-
rently adopted as a pseudonym once he
turned pirate, it being generally believed
England, Edward (fl. 1718
1720) 583
that he had been born in Ireland as
Edward Seegar, and was most likely
raised a Catholic. Nothing precise is
known about his early life, and he first
appeared in the official records as mate
of a Jamaican trading-sloop taken late in
1717 by the freebooter Captain Christo-
pher Winter, who carried this prize into
lawless New Providence (modern Nas-
sau in the Bahamas). When news of an
amnesty for pirates being offered by
King George I was announced there that
same December 1717, as a prelude to a
full-blown expedition next summer
intended to re-colonize that archipelago
under a new Royal Governor, Woodes
Rogers, Winter was one of the renegade
commanders who chose to accept the
English Crown’s pardon and submit to
this new administration.
Initial African and Antillean
Sweeps (1718
1719)
Seegar, however, had evidently com-
mitted fully during his brief captivity
to a life of piracy, and emerged as a
leader among the more defiant ele-
ments of Winter’s crew. He therefore
assumed command, adopted the ficti-
tious name of ‘‘Edward England,’’ and
cleared New Providence before the ar-
rival of Governor Rogers’ convoy of
settlers in late July 1718. England
instead steered across the Atlantic for
the Azores and Cape Verde Islands,
then prowled along the slaving coast of
West Africa, snapping up prizes and
increasing his flotilla’s strength by
recruiting or impressing new hands.
Off Sierra Leone, he intercepted the
small snow Cadogan out of Bristol,
whose Captain Peter Skinner was or-
dered aboard England’s flagship Pearl.
584 England, Edward (fl. 1718
1720)
Immediately on stepping on its deck,
Skinner was recognized by his former
boatswain, whom he had gotten rid of
along with a few other troublesome
hands during a previous voyage, by
deliberately having them pressed into
the Royal Navy. Skinner had even
refused to pay their overdue wages as
they were dragged off his ship, so that
the vengeful boatswain and his pirati-
cal comrades now vowed to repay ‘‘all
in your own coin.’’ Skinner was lashed
to the windlass and pelted with broken
bottles, then untied to stagger bloodily
about the deck while being whipped,
until he finally collapsed. Since he had
been such a good master, the boat-
swain sneeringly told him prostrate
form, he would be given an easy death,
and then shot him through the head.
Cadogan was afterward released under
Skinner’s mate, the Welsh seaman
Howell Davis, who would sail it for
Brazil and Barbados, before starting
his own piratical career.
England had meanwhile returned
across the ocean as well on the trade
winds, to hunt among the Lesser Antil-
les. On January 17, 1719 (O.S.), another
of his victims—Jonathan Bull, com-
mander of the merchant ship Christiana
out of Boston—appeared before Gover-
nor Walter Hamilton of Antigua to
complain that while:
Bound from Surinam to Boston, de-
ponent on Dec. 5th last [1718 O.S.],
was taken and plundered off Barba-
dos by a pirate brigantine mounted
with 12 guns, about 90 men on
board, commanded by Edward Eng-
land, with a sloop their tender. An
hour before, they [i.e., the pirates]
took a sloop belonging to Colonel
Lesley of Barbados, which they
sank. The night following, they took
a vessel bound to Barbados from
Guinea with 250 Negroes, and some
small time after another ship from
Madera bound for Barbados with
provisions, etc. On [December] 28th,
they took a small sloop belonging to
Martinico. Believes they intend to fit
out the Guinea-man [i.e., the slaver]
for their man of war, somewhere
near St. Vincents. When they sent
him and his men off in their own
vessel, they had on board five
commanders with their men, includ-
ing the commander of a brigantine
belonging to Piscataqua taken about
18th December. They were about
125 in number when he left them.
Despite what Bull had reported, though,
England stood away westward shortly
thereafter for the Greater Antilles. John
Bois, a carpenter from the English mer-
chant frigate Wade, who was being held
captive that same January 1719 aboard
Captain Louis La Buze’s French pirate
ship Postillon, later declared how his
flibustier captors were:
. . . engaged by an English pirate off
Saman
a Bay, which plundered them
and took off deponent. These [Eng-
lish marauders then] plundered
another vessel, and sent deponent and
one Isaac Walker on board, because
they refused to go with the pirates.
The pirates had on board about 130
white men, and about 50 Spaniards,
Negroes, and Indians, 26 guns and
four swivel-guns, commanded by
Edward England, an Irishman. They
designed to go to the latitude of Bar-
bados to get bread or flour and a bet-
ter ship, and from thence to the coast
of Guinea and Brazil.

England must have incorporated La
Buze’s vessel into his flotilla, and then
used the well-known pirate refuge at
Saman
a Bay to fit out his Guinea-slaver
prize as his new flagship, renaming it the
Royal James (most likely in honor of the
exiled Stuart Pretender, who was still
living in Rome and laying claim to the
English throne from afar as James III,
against the Hanoverian George I). Yet
the latter part of Bois’ deposition cer-
tainly proved to be true, for Robert
Leonard, commander of the snow Eagle
out of New York, would later testify
how while sailing along out in the open
Atlantic, in a latitude of 23° North on
February 15, 1719 (O.S.), he had the
misfortune to be:
. . . taken and his ship plundered by
a pirate ship. The commander beat
him with his cutlass for not bringing
to at first shot, and the pirates threat-
ened to sink his vessel and throw
him overboard with a double-headed
shot about his neck, if he concealed
where his money was. They said
they had taken a French pirate in
Scots Bay at the north end of His-
paniola. The Captain’s name was
Edward England and the Master,
who sailed with deponent about six
months ago as boatswain, was
Alexander Ure.
Renewed West African
Depredations (1719)
On regaining his old hunting-grounds
off West Africa for a second time, Eng-
land’s Royal James began a sweep from
the mouth of the Gambia River, inter-
cepting a pair of vessels as he slowly
circled around to the main English slav-
ing-depot at Cape Corso (modern Cape
England, Edward (fl. 1718
1720) 585
Coast, Ghana). On March 25, 1719
(O.S.), the 6-gun pink Eagle out of
Cork, bound for Jamaica under Captain
Rickets, suffered the loss of seven of its
seventeen-man crew—either compelled
or volunteering to join the pi-
rates—before his ransacked vessel was
released. The second vessel, the 8-gun
Charlotte out of London, Captain Olson
commander, suffered the burning of his
ship and loss of 13 of his 18-man crew
into the marauder ranks on May 16,
1719 (O.S.).
Little more than a fortnight later,
England attacked seven ships lying at
anchor off Cape Corso Castle itself,
buying and loading slaves on that May
27, 1719 (O.S.). The 12-gun Bensworth
out of Bristol under Master Nicholas
Gardner was boarded, pillaged, and had
12 of its 30-man crew assimilated into
the pirate following, before it was burnt
down to its waterline. The 4-gun Sarah
out of London, preparing to clear for
Virginia under Captain Stunt, was also
looted and had three of 18 crewmem-
bers join the rovers, although it was
otherwise spared. The same happened
to the 2-gun sloop Buck of Captain
Silvester, which only had two hands
aboard as it was not yet ready to weigh
for Maryland, so that these two men
were incorporated into the freebooter
ranks.
The next day, May 28, 1719 (O.S.),
England seized the 4-gun Carteret out
of London, Captain Snow commander,
gaining another five hands from among
its 18-man crew, before this gutted
vessel was torched. Then, Captain
Maggott’s 4-gun Mercury out of Lon-
don was taken on May 29th (O.S.) and
incorporated into the pirate flotilla as a
prize, while five of its 18 sailors also
transferred aboard. England did not
586 England, Edward (fl. 1718
1720)
strike again until June 17, 1719 (O.S.),
when the 2-gun galley Coward out of
London, Captain Creed in command,
was pillaged, stripped of four of its 13
hands, and burned. Ten days afterward,
the 6-gun Elizabeth and Katherine of
Captain Bridge out of Barbados, was
seized as yet a second prize and
relieved of four of its 14 hands.
England then decided to rearrange
his motley force, and allow some of his
subordinates to cruise independently.
The captive Mercury and Katherine
were outfitted, armed, and manned as
pirate vessels under the new names of
Revenge and Flying King, which then
separated so as to make their own foray
back across the Atlantic. (After taking a
few prizes in the West Indies, they
would venture south to Brazil that same
November 1719, eventually meeting
with a disastrous end.) It also seems pos-
sible that Captain La Buze may have
regained his freedom from England’s
command off West Africa in the summer
of 1719, receiving the 28-gun, 250-ton
prize Indian Queen with his own autono-
mous following of 90 pirates.
Now with a reduced force, England
steered for the Cape Corso anchorage
once again in August 1719, capturing
in its vicinity the galley Peterborough
out of Bristol, under Master John
Owen. England also wished to cut out
two anchored slavers—the Whydah of
Captain Prince and John of Captain
Rider—but they slipped their cables and
moved directly beneath the protection
of the Cape Corso Castle guns, which
drove off the pirates. England therefore
sailed his large prize Peterborough to
Ouidah, so as to fit it out as a consort
raider renamed the Victory under his
subordinate John Taylor, while further-
more careening and cleaning his own
flagship Royal James. After the pirates
had worn out their welcome among Oui-
dah’s native tribesmen, both ships stood
back out to sea and their crews voted to
sail around South Africa’s Cape of
Good Hope, to mount raids into the Red
Sea as their predecessors had once done,
two decades earlier.
Indian Ocean Foray, Defeat,
and Death (1720)
After touching at the island of Mada-
gascar for water and provisions early
in 1720, England and Taylor pressed
on deeper into the Indian Ocean, arriv-
ing off the busy Malabar Coast,
the south-westernmost tip of the Indian
subcontinent. Eventually, they inter-
cepted a pair of local ships and a
300-ton Dutch East Indiaman, which
England selected as his new flagship
and renamed the Fancy. The pirates
returned to Madagascar and set up a
base ashore, so as to refurbish and
fully arm their two ships. Shortly
thereafter, the marauders learned that
a trio of East Indiamen had reached
nearby Johanna Island on July 25,
1720 (O.S.), to refresh their provisions,
so that England’s 34-gun Fancy and
Taylor’s 36-gun Victory sortied to fall
on them.
At 8:00 A.M. on August 17, 1720
(O.S.), Captain James Macrae of the
English East Indiaman Cassandra
sighted the pirate ships entering the bay,
so went aboard his consort Greenwich
to confer quickly with its Captain Rich-
ard Kirby about a joint defense, before
returning aboard his own vessel. How-
ever, the faint breezes then failed Cas-
sandra, which could scarcely get under
way, while Greenwich and a 22-gun
Dutch Indiaman out of Ostend sailing in
their company managed to open up a

three-mile head-start. England’s Fancy
therefore bore down slowly on the lag-
gard Macrae, ‘‘flying a black flag at
the main-topmast, a red flag at the fore-
topmast, and the cross of Saint George
at the ensign staff.’’ Cassandra finally
opened fire shortly before 1:00 P.M., ini-
tiating a very brave resistance against
the two closing pirate ships—and alone,
as Greenwich did not reverse course
to help its consort, leaving Macrae to
face both marauders on his own. ‘‘He
basely deserted us,’’ Cassandra’s Cap-
tain would later complain bitterly to
his Company directors, ‘‘and left us
engaged with barbarous and inhuman
enemies with their black and bloody
flags hanging over us, and no appear-
ance of escaping being cut to pieces.’’
After three hours of holding off Eng-
land’s and Taylor’s inexorable advance,
by smashing their ships’ oars and rid-
dling their hulls with gunfire, Macrae
realized that his badly-battered Cassan-
dra was doomed. He consequently
steered in toward shore by 4:00 P.M. on
August 17, 1720 (O.S.), hoping to
beach it and at least allow his crew to
escape onto land. Fancy pursued, and
both vessels ran aground in the shal-
lows, exchanging heavy gunfire. But as
England’s flagship had become hung up
with its bows exposed to Cassandra’s
broadside, he received very much the
worst of it. At 5:00 P.M., the watching
Greenwich at last turned to slip out of
the bay, though, a retirement which
allowed Taylor to send three additional
boatloads of men across to reinforce
England, then finally bring an end to
the battle by towing his Victory directly
beneath the Indiaman’s stern. Seeing
this threatening advance, the wounded
Macrae ordered his men into the long-
boat, and by seven o’clock that evening
had all his survivors ashore, leaving 13
England, Edward (fl. 1718
1720) 587
dead and 24 wounded behind aboard
the Cassandra.
The pirates took possession of their
hard-won prize with its £75,000 worth
of trade goods, then offered a bounty
of £2,000 for the person of Macrae
himself. This brave captain, though, of
his own volition ventured aboard the
pirate ships 10 days later—once their
fighting fury had abated—to negotiate
a way off the island for himself and
his men. Impressed by his courage,
England gave him the badly-damaged
Fancy and those trade items which the
pirates did not want, permitting the
merchant master and his crew to sail
away freely. After a terrible 48-day or-
deal, Macrae succeeded in reaching the
East India Company factory in India,
where he was promoted and eventually
rose to become Governor of Madras.
Meanwhile, his opponent England
had suffered a distinctly different fate,
despite his triumph. Enraged at the heavy
casualties which they had endured in
capturing an outward-bound vessel,
without any Oriental treasures on board,
his minions had vented their disgust by
voting England out of office as Captain.
Furthermore, they banished him from
their company, giving him and his few
loyal adherents a small boat with which
they reached Saint Augustine’s Bay on
Madagascar. England died there shortly
afterward, in abject poverty.
See also
La Buze, Louis.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series
America and West Indies, Volume 30
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1930).
588 Evertsen, Jacob (fl. 1685
1688)
Ellms, Charles, The Pirates Own Book:
Authentic Narratives of the Most
Celebrated Sea Robbers (New York:
Courier Dover, 1993).
EVERTSEN, JACOB
(fl. 1685
1688)
Dutch freebooter who acted as Jan
Willems’ consort.
Evertsen was first mentioned in April
1685, when Laurens de Graaf and the
Sieur de Grammont assembled a huge
throng of pirates off Isla de Pinos on
Cuba’s southern coast, to launch a
peacetime raid against Campeche. Evert-
sen commanded one of the vessels in a
buccaneer fleet of six large and four
small ships, six sloops, and 17 piraguas
that appeared off that Mexican port by
the afternoon of July 6th. A landing
force of 700 buccaneers rowed in to-
ward shore, and next day overran the
city. Its citadel held out for a week, after
which the invaders were left in undis-
puted possession of Campeche over
the next two months; but as most of
the Spaniards’ wealth had been with-
drawn prior to this assault, little plunder
was found, and the disappointed pirates
evacuated the city by late August, after
putting it to the torch.
Jamaican Overture
(September 1687)
Evertsen was not heard of again until
the autumn of 1687, when he reap-
peared off the northwestern shores of
Jamaica with Willems, their force
being described as follows:
Yankey [Willems] has a large
Dutch-built ship with 44 guns and
100 men; Jacob [Evertsen] has a fine
bark with ten guns, 16 patararoes
[sic; pedreros or ‘‘swivel-guns’’],
and about 50 men. They have also a
small sloop.
Having recently returned from North
America, the rovers hoped to refresh
their provisions, for which reason
Willems smuggled a letter ashore to a
Jamaican with whom he had previously
had dealings. This man advised Act-
ing-Gov. Hender Molesworth, who
declared that the privateers could not
be resupplied, but if they were to come
in and renounce roving, they might be
made welcome. At that same time,
Molesworth secretly instructed Captain
Charles Talbot of the frigate HMS Fal-
con to circle round to the north coast
of the island and seize Willems, who
was wanted for having captured an
English sloop three years earlier. This
scheme came to naught when the frig-
ate had to turn back into Port Royal
because of its dilapidated sails and
rigging.
Unaware of this treacherous attempt,
Willems and Evertsen entered Montego
Bay and drafted a formal petition to
the Governor on September 3, 1687
(O.S.), declaring:
We have arrived from Carolina and
brought several people thence who
have been driven from the colony
by the trouble with the Spaniards.
In all sincerity we present our-
selves, our ships and company to
the service of the King of England,
and hope for your assurance that
our ships and men shall not be
troubled or molested, as we are
ignorant of the laws and customs of
this island. We can satisfy you that
we have never injured any British
subject.

Molesworth replied nine days later,
offering a royal pardon and letters of
naturalization if the rovers would break
up their ships and renounce privateering.
Willems and Evertsen responded in late
September that to do so would leave
them ‘‘destitute of all livelihood in pres-
ent and future,’’ and that neither had
‘‘money to purchase an estate ashore.’’
The Governor remained unmoved, writ-
ing on October 19th: ‘‘If you will accept
the condition, make the best of your way
to Port Royal; if not, leave the coast at
once, for I shall consider the treaty to be
at an end.’’ Both captains made off,
although a number of their men deserted
ashore.
Honduran Attack
(February 1688)
Four months afterward, the new Jamai-
can Governor, the Duke of Albemarle,
heard:
. . . that the pirates Yankey and
Jacobs have fallen upon a great
Spanish ship in the Bay of Honduras
called the Hulk [sic; an urca or
‘‘cargo ship’’], and that they had
been in sight of her twelve hours. If
Yankey failed in this attempt he is
ruined, for it is said that he was very
ill provided before.
Evidently, the buccaneers succeeded in
their aim, for two months later Albe-
marle received confirmation that they
had fought the Spanish ship ‘‘in the port
of Cavana [sic; Puerto Cabello?] from
seven in the morning till three in the
afternoon, and took her.’’ This was to be
their last hurrah, however, for shortly
thereafter both commanders died.
Every, Henry (1659
?) 589
Later that same summer, Captain
Peterson appeared off New England
with ‘‘the remainder of Yankey’s and
Jacobs’ company,’’ and possibly Wil-
lems’ ship as well, as his craft was
described as ‘‘a barco luengo of ten
guns and 70 men.’’
See also
Evertsen, Jacob (Volume 1).
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899).
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
EVERY, HENRY (1659
?)
English mutineer and pirate, last seen
at New Providence in the Bahamas.
Every—whose name has sometimes
been erroneously rendered as ‘‘John
Avery,’’ or even ‘‘Long Ben’’—was
apparently born to John and Anne
‘‘Evarie’’ in the village of Newton Fer-
rers, a few miles southeast of Plym-
outh, England, in August 1659. The
details of his early career are unknown,
until he enters the books of the 64-gun
HMS Rupert as an experienced mid-
shipman under Captain Francis
Wheeler in March 1689. In all likeli-
hood, Every must have taken part in
the capture of a large French convoy
off Brest that summer, the first year of
the War of the League of Augsburg or
King William’s War, and at the end of
590 Every, Henry (1659
?)
July was promoted as chief mate to
Rupert’s sailing master. In June 1690,
Every transferred to HMS Albemarle
of 90 guns when Wheeler became its
commander, doubtless seeing action in
the disastrous Battle of Beachy Head
two weeks later. In August of that
same year, Every was discharged from
the Royal Navy.
He next appears in 1693, as the mate
aboard the heavily-armed private frigate
Charles II, which was lying at Grave-
send in anticipation of making a salving
expedition to the West Indies. An Irish
officer named Arthur O’Byrne, after
long service in the Royal Spanish Navy,
had secured permission from King
Charles II of Spain to work wrecks in
the Americas. O’Byrne then sought fi-
nancial and technical support in Lon-
don, as England and Spain were
temporarily allied against France. The
command of this flagship, named in
honor of the Spanish monarch and fly-
ing his colors, was held by John Strong,
who had served with Sir William Phips
in a highly lucrative operation on the
treasure-ship Concepci
on six years
previously.
This latest expedition was also
intended to attack French possessions
and trade with Spanish-American ports,
so was to sail well-armed. In addition
to the flagship, there were the frigates
James and Dove, as well as the pink
Seventh Son. After lengthy delays, this
flotilla put into the Spanish port of La
Coru~ na early in 1694, only to remain
at anchor for another three months.
Strong died, and was succeeded as
Flag-Captain by Charles Gibson, with
Every as first mate. The English crews
grew restless at being thus long unpaid,
so that at nine o’clock on a Monday
night, May 7, 1694, with Every acting
as ringleader, they rose with their flag-
ship and slipped past the harbor bat-
teries. Next morning, he set Captain
Gibson and some 16 loyal hands adrift
in a boat, saying: ‘‘I am a man of for-
tune, and must seek my fortune.’’ Ev-
ery then convened a meeting of the 85
mutineers left aboard Charles II, whom
he persuaded to embark on a piratical
cruise into the Indian Ocean (perhaps
in emulation of the well-known exploit
of the Rhode Island freebooter Thomas
Tew, of that same year). The ship was
renamed Fancy, and fell down the
West African coast to round the Cape
of Good Hope. After a year-and-a-half
of adventures in the Far East, Every
succeeded in boarding the enormous
Mogul trader Ganj-i-sawai off Bombay
on September 8, 1695, pillaging it of
the immense sum of £200,000.
He and his men then sought a means
of escaping with their ill-gotten booty,
by returning into the Atlantic, and mak-
ing for the West Indies. In late April
1696, the weather-beaten Fancy dropped
anchor at Royal Island off Eleuthera,
some 50 miles from New Providence
(modern Nassau) in the Bahamas. Every
sent a boat with four men to call on the
corrupt local Governor, Nicholas Trott,
ostensibly giving his name as ‘‘Henry
Bridgeman’’ and alleging that his ship
was an ‘‘interloper’’ or unlicensed slaver
come from the Guinea Coast with ivory
and slaves. Privately, this official was
offered a bribe of £1,000 to allow the
vessel into port and the pirates to dis-
perse. He signaled his acceptance and
Every quickly sailed Fancy into harbor,
where he and the Governor furthermore
struck a deal as to the disposal of the
craft itself. Still maintaining the fiction
that this was a legal transaction, Every
made the ship over into the Governor’s
 Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier (ca. 1645
post 1707)
safe-keeping, ‘‘to take care of her for use
of the owners.’’ Once this deal was
struck, Fancy was stripped of everything
of value—46 guns, 100 barrels of pow-
der, many small arms, 50 tons of ivory,
sails, blocks, etc.—and allowed to drift
ashore two days later, to be destroyed by
the surf.
With this tell-tale piece of evidence
obliterated, Every and the majority of
his followers disappeared from the
Bahamas aboard different passing ships,
hoping to blend back into civilian life.
He was one of the few rovers who ever
fully succeeded in eluding justice,
which may be why so many myths have
attached themselves to his name, both
during his lifetime and since. More typ-
ical, perhaps, was his crewman Joseph
Morris, left behind on the Bahamas
when he went mad after ‘‘losing all his
jewels upon a wager.’’
Reference
Baer, Joel H., ‘‘‘Captain John Avery’ and
the Anatomy of a Mutiny,’’ Eighteenth-
Century Life 18 (February 1994),
pp. 1
23.
EXQUEMELIN,
ALEXANDRE-OLIVIER
(ca. 1645
post 1707)
Flibustier surgeon who became famous
as a chronicler of buccaneers.
He was apparently born around 1645
at the seaport of Honfleur, in France’s
Baie de la Seine, and raised as a Hugue-
not or ‘‘French Protestant.’’ In 1666, war
just having been declared against Eng-
land, Exquemelin departed France as an
engag
e or ‘‘indentured servant’’ bound
for the Antilles. He set sail from Havre
591
on May 2nd, aboard the West Indian
Company ship Saint-Jean of 28 guns,
which joined a convoy of 30 merchant-
men assembling at Barfleur, then struck
out into the Atlantic one foggy morning
escorted by the Commodore Chevalier
de Sourdis. A relatively uneventful pas-
sage ensued; Barbados, Martinique, Gua-
deloupe, and Puerto Rico being sighted
before Tortuga Island was at last reached
on July 7th, on the north coast of Saint-
Domingue (modern Haiti). Here, Exque-
melin was sold into indenture to ‘‘the
wickedest rogue in the whole island,’’
the Deputy Governor or ‘‘Lieutenant
General.’’ Falling sick, Exquemelin was
in turn resold to a surgeon, ‘‘and when I
had served him for a year, he offered to
set me free for 150 pieces of eight,
agreeing to wait for payment until I had
earned the money.’’
Exquemelin seems to have joined
the flibustiers during the late 1660s,
possibly serving under Jean-David Nau
l’Olonnais in 1667 to 1668, for he
compiled a most detailed account of
this leader’s raids against Maracaibo
and Central America. In later writings,
Exquemelin stated that he remained
with the buccaneers ‘‘until the year
1670,’’ although he must have meant
only among the flibustiers of Saint-
Domingue, for he certainly participated
in Henry Morgan’s sack of Panama in
January 1671. Disappointed at the mea-
ger booty from that enterprise, as many
other freebooters were, Exquemelin
returned to Europe some time later,
and by the late 1670s was studying
medicine in Amsterdam.
While there, he wrote an account
of the buccaneers of the West Indies
entitled De Americaensche Zee-Roovers
(Jan ten Hoorn, publisher, 1678),
which became a celebrated best-seller.
592 Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier (ca. 1645
post 1707)
A German edition appeared the next
year, a Spanish one in 1681, and two
rival English editions in 1684. (Morgan,
who figured prominently in Exqueme-
lin’s work, sued the latter two publishers
for £10,000 on account of his negative
portrayal, and succeeded in winning
£200 with damages from each, plus a
public apology.)
Little else is definitely known about
the life of Exquemelin, beyond the fact
that he qualified as a doctor with the
Dutch Surgeons’ Guild on October 26,
1679, and 17 years later served aboard
Admiral Bernard de Pointis’ 84-gun
flagship Sceptre, when it set sail from
France in January 1697 to participate
in the sack of Cartagena. Exquemelin
evidently returned from that enterprise,
for it is believed that he was still alive
in France 10 years later.
See also
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier (Volume 1).
References
Camus, Michel Christian, ‘‘Une note
critique a propos d’Exquemelin,’’ Revue
française d’histoire d’outre-mer, Vol.
77, No. 286 (1990), pp. 79
90.
Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier, The
Buccaneers of America. Translated from
the Dutch by Alexis Brown, with an
introduction by Jack Beeching (London:
Penguin, 1969).
Piracy and Privateering catalog, Vol. Four,
National Maritime Museum Library
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1972).


Taillemite, Etienne, Dictionnaire des
Marins Français (Paris: Editions
Maritimes et d’Outre-mer, 1982).
 F

Here are widows lamenting the loss of their husbands,

and parents their children.
—Newspaper account of the loss of Otto Van Tuyl’s
privateer in a winter gale outside New York,
just prior to Christmas 1705

FENN, JOHN assumed command over this newer and

(fl. 1721
1723)
A subordinate of Bartholomew Roberts
and Thomas Anstis, whose bones would
wind up adorning an executioner’s gibbet
on Rat Island.
According to the chronicler Charles
Johnson, Fenn was Anstis’ gunner aboard
his 18-gun flagship Good Fortune in the
late summer of 1721, when this prowling
pirate intercepted a fine 24-gun slaver
named the Morning Star, while it was
bound from Guinea toward Carolina. A
second ship was taken shortly thereafter
and its eight guns were also removed, so
as to outfit this large slaver prize with a
powerful array of 32 cannons and a crew
of 100 men. Anstis promoted Fenn to
Captain, although he might well have
larger ship himself, but was allegedly
‘‘so in love with his own vessel, she
being an excellent sailer,’’ that he pre-
ferred to remain aboard Good Fortune.
Although the pair of pirate com-
manders had two good ships with which
to roam on the account, such a large
proportion of their crews had been
pressed or forced into service, that a ma-
jority voted some months later in favor
of requesting a royal pardon, so as to be
able to abandon their nomadic existence
and return into civilian life. Johnson
later recorded their petition as follows:
To His Most Sacred Majesty
George, by the Grace of
God of Great Britain,
France, and Ireland,
King, Defender of the Faith, etc.

593
594 Fenn, John (fl. 1721
1723)
The humble petition of the
Company now belonging
to the Ship Morning Star and
Brigantine Good Fortune, lying
under the ignominious Name
and Denomination of Pyrates.
Humbly sheweth:
That we, Your Majesty’s most loyal
subjects, have at sundry times been
taken by Bartholomew Roberts, the
then Captain of the above vessels and
company, together with another ship in
which we left him; and have been
forced by him and his wicked accom-
plices, to enter into and serve in the
said company as pirates, much con-
trary to our wills and inclinations. And
we your loyal subjects, utterly abhor-
ring and detesting that impious way of
living, did with a unanimous consent
and contrary to the knowledge of the
said Roberts and his accomplices, on
or about the 18th day of April 1721
[O.S.] leave and ran away with the
aforesaid ship Morning Star and brig-
antine Good Fortune, with no other
intent or meaning than the hopes of
obtaining Your Majesty’s most gra-
cious pardon. And that we, Your Maj-
esty’s most loyal subjects, may with
more safety return to our native coun-
try and serve the nation unto which we
belong in our respective capacities,
without fear of being prosecuted by the
injured, whose estates have suffered
the said Roberts and his accomplices
during our forcible detainment by the
said company: We most humbly
implore Your Majesty’s most royal
assent, to this our humble petition.
This document was signed in ‘‘round-
robin’’ fashion, all names being affixed
in a circle so that no one would be
more prominent than any other.
Johnson suggested in his General His-
tory that this petition was sent directly to
England about December 1721 aboard a
merchant vessel sailing out of Jamaica,
while the pirates hid with their two ships
among the mangrove swamps of a small
uninhabited island at the western end of
Cuba, to await nine months for an an-
swer. However, official records indicate
that this missive was actually addressed
in June 1722 to the Governor of Jamaica,
it being noted as a:
Petition from the ship’s companies
of the Morning Star ship and Good
Fortune brigantine, 14th June 1722
[O.S.], to Governor Sir Nicholas
Lawes: Taken at sundry times by Bar-
tholomew Roberts, the then Captain
of the above-said vessels with another
ship, petitioners were forced by him
to serve as pirates, until on 18th April
1721 [O.S.] they ran away from him
with above ships, in hopes of obtain-
ing His Majesty’s pardon, etc. Signed
in the form of two round-robins.
It was duly forwarded on to the Council of
Trade and Plantations in London, who in
turn passed it over on December 4, 1722
(O.S.), to the attention of several prominent
West Indian merchants, to inquire what
they ‘‘may have to offer upon the pirates’
petition.’’ Somewhat surprisingly, these
traders replied on January 10, 1723 (O.S.):
We have no reason why His Majesty
may not be graciously pleas’d to
issue his Royal Proclamation for
their pardon. Upon this occasion,
however, we think it proper to repre-
sent, that in former proclamations of
this nature, it has been usual to fix a

certain day beyond which no act of
piracy shall be pardon’d by the said
proclamation, which is generally pro-
portion’d to the time by which the
persons concern’d may reasonably
be supposed to have notice of the
said proclamation, after which there
is likewise a further day fix’d, before
which all such persons who mean to
take the benefit of His Majesty’s
most gracious pardon, are to surren-
der themselves. Some proclamations
of this kind have been issued by His
Majesty with very little effect; the
main reason whereof, as we have
been inform’d, hath been that the
pirates are all of them apprehensive
that immediately upon their surren-
dering themselves to any of the Gov-
ernors of His Majesty’s plantations
in America, all their effects would be
seiz’d; wherefore although His Maj-
esty cannot by law give up the prop-
erty of any persons’ goods piratically
taken from him, yet there is no doubt
but that His Majesty, if he is so gra-
ciously dispos’d, may depart from
his own right to any goods found in
the possession of pirates, and may
likewise, if the same shall be thought
reasonable, give orders in the body
of the same proclamation by which
he shall publish his most gracious
pardon to the said pirates, that none
of the Governors of His Majesty’s
plantations do presume to seize or
take possession of any goods in cus-
tody of such pirates as shall come in
upon the said proclamation, which
clause in all probability would be a
great inducement to the pirates to
surrender themselves, and neither
His Majesty’s subjects nor any other
person whatsoever would be thereby
debarr’d from recovering their
Fenn, John (fl. 1721
1723) 595
effects in the hands of the said
pirates by due course of law.
The Council then transferred the petition
yet again, this time to the Attorney-
General’s and Solicitor-General’s offi-
ces on March 8, 1723 (O.S.), so as to
receive legal clearance.
Yet long before this bureaucratic
process had run its course, Fenn and
Anstis reemerged from their hiding-
place in August 1722 to resume their
old practices. However, while steering
southeastward, Morning Star ran
aground one evening on a reef in the
Caymans, Fenn and most of his crew
escaping onto a nearby island. Anstis
spotted them there next morning, but
no sooner had he taken aboard Fenn,
his carpenter Phillips, and a few other
hands, than the 44-gun HMS Hector of
Captain Ellis Brand and his hired con-
sort Adventure hove into view. Anstis
barely had time to cut his cables and
run out to sea, closely chased by
Adventure. This pursuer slowly gained
on him and Fenn, keeping within gun-
shot for several hours, until the wind
finally died away. The pirates there-
upon manned their sweeps and franti-
cally rowed Good Fortune out of
range, managing to disappear into the
night. Meanwhile, Brand had landed an
armed party from Hector on the island,
to take up 40 of Morning Star’s crew
without resistance—this group being
glad of the opportunity to surrender to
the authorities, while the more hard-
bitten pirates remained hidden in the
woods.
Anstis steered his brigantine south-
westward, to recuperate on an island
near the Bay of Honduras. They did not
put out to sea again until December
1722, making a few more captures
596 Fenn, John (fl. 1721
1723)
while cruising toward the Bahamas,
before eventually circling southeast and
dropping anchor off Tobago by next
spring. While most of this dispirited
piratical band was ashore, the 24-gun
HMS Winchelsea of Captain Humphrey
Orme appeared by surprise, causing
many to flee into the woods. Anstis
once again cut Good Fortune’s cables
and managed to escape out to sea with a
dozen hands, but Fenn was not so lucky.
On June 8, 1723 (O.S.), a satisfied Gov-
ernor John Hart was able to report from
Saint Kitts to London how:
On the 11th of May [1723 O.S.],
HMS Winchelsea, Captain Orme
commander, arrived at Antigua hav-
ing on board nine pyrates which he
took on the island of Tobago, where
Captain Finn [sic] and the greatest
part of his crew had landed with an
intention to separate, the nine men-
tioned being surpriz’d by a party sent
by Captain Orme in quest of them
into the woods. Immediately on Cap-
tain Orme’s arrival at Antigua, I went
on board to take their examinations,
and finding no proof against them of
piracy, I was obliged to take two per-
sons out of the nine, who upon exam-
ination I found were fore’d into the
service of the pirates, to be evidence
against the rest; the remaining seven
were brought to their trial on the 17th
May [1723 O.S.] at the town of St.
John’s, where fourteen persons
named by His Majesty’s commission
for the trial of pirates sat as Judges.
Captain Finn, who was an associate
of the infamous Roberts the Pyrate
and the principal of these, came first
upon his trial, and the evidence was
strong and plain against him: that
he had been three years in the brigan-
tine Good Fortune, which he com-
manded, and had exercis’d several
notorious acts of piracy, he was
accordingly convicted with six more
of his associates, five of which were
executed at high-water mark in the
town of St. John’s in Antigua. One of
the condemned persons being very
penitent, and asserting upon his trial,
that he was forc’d from the coast of
Brazil into their service where he
was a pilot, he was repriev’d at the
gallows; and I being thoroughly con-
vinced of his innocence, have since
pardoned him. There was also a Por-
tuguese, one of the number taken by
the pirates at sea and prov’d to be
forced on board by the evidence of
two masters of ships, on which the
Court of Admiralty acquitted him.
Finn is hung up in chains on Rat
Island in St. John’s harbor.
The fugitive Anstis was murdered
around that same while lying in his ham-
mock, shot by a faction aboard Good
Fortune who also clapped his few loyal
pirates into irons, before sailing to the
neutral Dutch island of Curaçao to
receive pardons.
See also
Account; Anstis, Thomas; Roberts,
Bartholomew.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 32,
33 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1933
1934).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Journals of the Board of Trade and
Plantations, Volume 4: November
1718
December 1722, Journal Book Y
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1925).

The Lives and Adventures of Sundry
Notorious Pirates (New York: McBride,
1922).
Seitz, Don Carlos, Gospel, Howard F., and
Stephen Wood, Under the Black Flag:
Exploits of the Most Notorious Pirates
(Mineola, NY: Courier Dover, 2002).
FERNANDO, FRANCIS
(fl. 1715
1716)
Mulatto privateer who sortied from
Jamaica on a freebooter cruise, ending
with charges of piracy.
Because of the swelling volume of
piratical attacks being reported in
peacetime to Kingston in late 1715, the
Jamaican Governor Lord Archibald
Hamilton—so at odds with the island’s
Assembly that he could not get any
funds authorized—responded to such
complaints by beginning to issue com-
missions to unemployed privateers, so
as to hunt down these rogues. Jamai-
ca’s merchants would later complain,
however, that while 14 sloops were
duly ‘‘mann’d with about 3,000 men to
clear those seas . . . the remedy was
worse than the disease.’’
One of the commanders who received
such a commission on December 12,
1715 (O.S.), was Francis Fernando, ‘‘a
mulatto commander of the sloop Ben-
nett.’’ Nothing is known about his birth
and early life, nor how he came to be
residing in that colony, although one
report later stated that: ‘‘This tawny
Moor has an estate at Jamaica, and has
given good security for his navigation.’’
It was also later proven that Fernando
had sold a one-third share in his sloop
Bennett to Governor Hamilton, who
therefore stood to profit personally from
any captures which he made.
Fernando had evidently sortied by early
next year, yet rather than immediately
Fernando, Francis (fl. 1715
1716) 597
proceed to pursue renegade rovers off
their hunting-grounds of Florida or the
Bahamas, he instead intercepted the
Spanish sloop Nuestra Se~ nora de Bel
en of
Captain Manuel de Aramburu, as it came
staggering toward Havana from Veracruz,
having been dismasted and thrown its
guns overboard during a storm. Tempted
by its rich cargo, the mulatto com-
mander seized on the excuse that this par-
ticular sloop had once been the English
Kensington of Master Henry Thornton,
which—while conveying goods valued at
£12,000 for a Jamaican owner—had been
captured off Cartagena as a smuggler and
carried into Portobelo for condemnation.
In hopes of now retaining this recaptured
vessel as his prize, Fernando sailed Bel

en
into Carlisle Bay on the south coast of
Jamaica on February 6, 1716 (O.S.),
removing all its valuables and writing a
letter to warn Hamilton of its special sta-
tus, before sending Bel
en on into Port
Royal next day for adjudication. It was
duly condemned along with all its cargo
one month later, yet a witness noted how:
The commander of the Spanish
sloop affirmed that the said Spanish
sloop had on board her at the time
of her capture to the value of
250,000 pieces of eight, and Fernan-
do—after he had taken all the
money, jewels, and fine goods out of
her—sent her with the bulky part of
her cargo to Port Royal to be con-
demned, with a letter to the Gover-
nor purporting that she was formerly
taken by the Spaniards from the
English, and that he would remain at
sea with the money until she was
condemned.
When Aramburu finally did manage to
speak with the Jamaican Governor
directly, Hamilton ‘‘affirmed that what
Fernandez [sic] had done was piracy
598 Fernando, Luis (fl. 1699)
and without any order from him,’’ yet
no other remedy was offered to the
aggrieved Spaniard.
Fernando had in the meantime re-
sumed his cruise toward the Bahamas, for
at the beginning of July 1716, a man
named John Vickers reported at Virginia:
Sometime about the beginning of
March [1716], one Captain Fernan-
dez [sic], an inhabitant of Jamaica,
in the sloop Bennet mounted with 10
guns and with about 110 men, took
a Spanish sloop with about three
millions of money, as it was
reported, and silks and cochinilla to
the like value, and brought the sloop
into Providence and there divided
the money and goods among the
men, and is returned to the north
side of Jamaica to try whether he
may go home in safety; and if he
found he could not, he gave out that
he would return to Providence and
settle amongst the rovers.
By late September 1716, Captain
William Howard of HMS Shoreham
was reporting from his station off
Charleston in South Carolina, that the
pirate-hunters unleashed by Lord Ham-
ilton were abusing their commissions
by searching any and all vessels, add-
ing specifically that:
. . . there are three of the said sloops
turned pirates since: one Horngold,
Jennings, and Fernando, who have got
200 men and are joined by a French-
man [La Buze]; there is in this harbor
now three vessels that have been plun-
dered by them, and one master whose
sloop and cargo they have taken; they
have harbor at Providence [i.e., Nassau
on New Providence Island], where
they re-victual and clean.
See also
Hamilton, Lord Archibald; Hornigold,
Benjamin; Jennings, Henry; Pieces of
Eight.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
West Indies, Volumes 29, 30, 33
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1957).
Journal of the Board of Trade and
Plantations, Volume 3: March
1715
October 1718 (London: His
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1924).
FERNANDO, LUIS
(fl. 1699)
Spanish corsair mentioned as having
captured a sloop in 1699 belonging to
Samuel Salters, the Registrar of the
Vice-Admiralty Court of Bermuda.
Reference
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
FLAG OF TRUCE
In addition to its obvious meaning—a
white standard displayed to request a mili-
tary parley—this term was also applied to
any vessel delegated to visit a hostile
coast or port during wartime, most often
to transact a prisoner exchange.
For example, during the sixth year of
Queen Anne’s War, Governor Thomas
Handasyd of Jamaica reported in Decem-
ber 1708 to the Lord High Treasurer in
London how: ‘‘A Spanish flag of truce
from Santiago upon Cuba came into Port

Royal harbor on the 28th of October [1708
O.S.] with twelve English prisoners, and
she carried away 28 Spanish prisoners.’’
Not surprisingly, authorities on the
far side of the Atlantic remained suspi-
cious of any and all such contacts with
the enemy during wartime, as when the
Board of Trade and Plantations in Lon-
don commended the newly-appointed
Governor Sir Bevill Granville of Bar-
bados in October 1703:
We do not doubt but you have well
considered Her Majesty’s interest in
refusing to ratify the cartel with the
French, and we cannot but approve of
your discouraging the frequent flags
of truce sent between the French
islands and Barbados, which serves
only to carry on a prohibited trade
injurious to Her Majesty’s service.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 21,
24 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1913
1922).
Calendar of Treasury Papers, Volume 4:
1708
1714 (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1974).
FLIP
English nickname for a punch-drink
made chiefly with ‘‘hot small beer and
brandy, sweetened and spiced upon
occasion’’ (‘‘small’’ beer being a light
or watered beer).
This curious name is believed to have
derived, obscurely, from the name ‘‘Phi-
lip,’’ and the drink itself was very popular
among all West Indian seamen, pirates
included. For example, when the Jamaican
privateer Jonathan Barnet slipped out of
Flip 599
Port Royal in early November 1720 (O.S.)
to surprise the pirate ‘‘Calico Jack’’ Rack-
ham, the latter was relaxing unwarily at
the western tip of that island, having just:
. . . met near the Negril Point a small
pettiauger [sic; piragua], which upon
sight of him, ran ashore and landed
her men; but Rackham hailing them,
desired the pettiauger’s men to come
aboard him and drink a bowl of
punch; swearing they were all friends
and would do no harm. Hereupon
they agreed to his request, and went
aboard him, though it proved fatal to
every one of them, they being nine in
all. For they were no sooner got
aboard, and had laid down their mus-
kets and cutlasses in order to take up
their pipes, and make themselves
merry with their new acquaintance
over a can of flip, but Captain Bar-
net’s sloop was in sight, which soon
put a damp to all their merriment.
And the pirate Henry Every was also
once described as ‘‘lolling at Madagas-
car with some drunken sunburnt whore,
over a can of flip.’’
See also
Every, Henry; Rackham, John.
References
Baer, Joel H., ‘‘‘Captain John Avery’
and the Anatomy of a Mutiny,’’
Eighteenth-Century Life 18 (February
1994), pp. 1
23.
The Lives and Adventures of Sundry
Notorious Pirates (New York: McBride,
1922).
Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang,
1972.
600 Flute
FLUTE
By the early 18th century, the general
designation for any cargo-ship or trans-
port, especially in the French Navy.
Originally, a century earlier, Dutch
shipwrights—seeking to maximize the
volume of bulk-cargos which could be
carried by a single merchant vessel, using
only a minimal crew—had begun launch-
ing broad-bottomed, round-sterned ves-
sels with radically tapered upper works,
known as fluyts. This term had passed into
the English language as ‘‘flutes,’’ and into
French as fl^utes. The narrowness of these
vessels’ upper decks—perched atop a
bulging, ample hold—plus the simplicity
of their rigging, had meant that they could
be handled by relatively small comple-
ments, making them a highly-efficient
means of conveying commercial freight.
But being so lightly manned and armed,
they required escorts during times of war.
Many Dutch commercial and naval expe-
ditions during the 17th century were
accompanied by fluyts, to provide ready
resupply in any corner of the globe.
Yet by the early 1700s, these original
small, old-fashioned vessels were being
supplanted by better-designed merchant
ships. The term fl^ ute was nonetheless
retained in France’s Royal Navy, to
describe their auxiliary transport—a dis-
tinct branch of that service. These ves-
sels did not constitute a single type of
craft, though, but rather a motley collec-
tion of wartime prizes and foreign pur-
chases, varying in size from the 700-ton
Chariot down to 70-ton brigantines.
They were almost exclusively com-
manded by non-prestigious ‘‘blue offi-
cers,’’ capitaine de fl^
ute being the lowest
rank recognized on the French Navy’s
hierarchical charts.
When the cleric Jean-Baptiste Labat
was ordered to the Antilles as a mis-
sionary in the late summer of 1693, he
arranged passage from La Rochelle
aboard the naval fl^ ute Loire, a large
ship of 500 tons—yet manned by only
80 sailors under Capitaine de la
H
eronniere. Although pierced with 30
gunports, only 20 cannon were in-
stalled for this particular voyage, so as
to make room for the 30 additional sol-
diers and 25 civilian passengers, plus
extra cargo. Along with the smaller
royal fl^ ute Tranquille, they sailed on
November 29, 1693, as part of a 38-
vessel convoy escorted by the brand-
new, 44-gun, 500-ton King’s warship
Opini^ atre (Obstinate) under Capitaine
de Sainte-Marie.
The War of the League of Augsburg
against England, Holland, and Spain
was just then entering its fifth year, so
as the Loire was approaching Marti-
nique alone on the afternoon of January
28, 1694—having become separated
from its convoy—it was engaged by the
675-ton HMS Chester of 50 guns. De-
spite their few heavy guns, the French
crew was able to beat off this initial
attack, because the English mistakenly
believed that their large opponent must
be the more powerfully-armed Opi-
ni^atre. Darkness fell with Loire still
bravely defending itself, and it managed
to slip away from this one-sided
engagement into the night, despite suf-
fering 37 killed and 80 wounded,
including its brave Captain de la
H
eronniere.
Still, such vessels played a significant
role in maintaining France’s empire.
When tensions escalated with England
again in the spring of 1701, the author-
ities in London paid close attention to

A Dutch fluitschip or flute, showing its characteristic rounded hold and narrow upper-
works, as depicted by the painter Jan Theunisz Blanckerhoff. (Nederlands Scheepvaart
Museum, Amsterdam)
the number of fl^
utes departing Brest with
supplies for overseas garrisons.
See also
Blue Officers, Flute (Volume 1); Labat,
Jean-Baptiste.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic:
William III, 1700
1702 (London: His
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1937).
FLYING GANG
Nickname for the band of toughs who
prowled the lawless waterfront at Nas-
sau, before Crown rule was restored to
the Bahamas.
Flying Gang 601
During Queen Anne’s War, the
Bahamian archipelago had become so
depopulated by Cuban raids and inter-
ruptions to its commercial traffic that
only 27 families were left on its main
island of New Providence by the time
hostilities ceased in April 1713.
Another 400 to 500 English residents
were scattered throughout the other
islands, and there was no private Gov-
ernor in residence amid the burnt rem-
nants of Nassau, or any assistance
forthcoming from the Lord Proprietors
in England. Unemployed West Indian
rovers therefore drifted into these
unpatrolled waters, especially after a
Spanish plate fleet was wrecked on the
nearby Florida coast in late July 1715,
sparking a rush of fortune-seekers and
other desperadoes.
602 Forban
Although visits into Nassau resurged
as a result, the only authorities controlling
its waterfront were self-appointed hood-
lums such as Thomas Barrow. When a
disgusted former citizen of New Provi-
dence Island, John Vickers, relocated to
Virginia in July 1716, he informed Lieu-
tenant-Gov. Alexander Spotswood how:
It is common for the sailors now at
Providence (who call themselves the
flying gang) to extort money from the
inhabitants, and one Captain Stock-
dale . . . was threatened to be whipp’d
for not giving them what they
demanded, and just upon his coming
from thence, he paid them 20 shil-
lings, for which the aforementioned
Barrow and one Peter Parr gave him a
receipt on the public account. Many
of the inhabitants of that island had
deserted their habitations, for fear of
being murdered.
Such receipts, of course, were worthless.
Law and order would not be restored at
Nassau until Woodes Rogers arrived as
the islands’ new Royal Governor in July
1718, accompanied by 250 new settlers
and with four naval warships to back up
his authority, marking an end to the Fly-
ing Gang’s extortions.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 29
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1957).
FORBAN
French synonym for ‘‘pirate’’ or law-
less sea-rover, as opposed to a licensed
corsaire or West Indian flibustier.
While the latter two groups might
prove destructive and difficult to con-
trol, a necessary evil tolerated during
wartime, they at least eventually had to
respond for their actions before some
government authority on land. Forbans
answered to no one, and were likely to
attack any targets, including neutrals or
even French interests—during war or
peacetime—which lowered them from a
legal into an illegal status in the eyes of
the Crown, everybody’s foe. For exam-
ple, when Saint-Domingue’s Governor
Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy sent a report
from Cap-François to Paris on May 3,
1688, addressing a complaint forwarded
by the Minister of Marine Marquis de
Seignelay about the sacking of a bark
by Captain Jan ‘‘Janquay’’ Willems’
followers, he concluded by saying: ‘‘It
would be very difficult to find [even]
five or six men from that crew, having
dispersed, some to the South Sea, and
others having become pirates among
the English.’’
See also
Forban (Volume 1); Willems, Jan.
Reference
Archives Nationales [France], CAOM
Colonies, C9 A rec. 1.
FORD, ANTHONY
(fl. 1697)
English privateer whose ship John’s
Bonadventure, in consort with the
Dutch privateer Dolfijn out of Middel-
burg, captured the French Concorde or
Conqu^ete in 1697, during the closing

stages of King William’s War, carrying
this prize into Barbados.
Reference
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
FRANCO, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1686
1694)
French or Dutch corsair who roamed
the South Sea.
Franco’s tiny expedition originally
sailed from the coast of New England
for the Guinea Coast in West Africa,
from whence it departed again on De-
cember, 1686, presumably to join the
French privateering forces already
known to be operating in the Pacific
under Capitaines François Grogniet,
Pierre le Picard, Jean Rose, and others.
Franco himself was later described in
Spanish records as French, or possibly
Dutch (Frank? Frankel?), yet operating
with a French commission.
His small ship entered the Strait of
Magellan in early March 1687, emerg-
ing into the South Pacific one month
later. By June 27th he was off Tumbes,
at the mouth of the Gulf of Guayaquil,
after which he touched at Coiba Island
on July 20th, before entering the Gulf
of Panama on August 4th. The flibus-
tiers he had hoped to meet were already
being driven out of those waters by the
Armada del Mar del Sur, so Franco—
with only 41 crew-members—elected to
proceed even further northwest and
prowl the coast of New Spain. He may
have been the rover who landed at
Franco, Capitaine (fl. 1686
1694) 603
Acaponeta (Mexico) more than a year
later, on November 14, 1688, ‘‘and
carried off 40 women, much silver
and people,’’ including a Jesuit and
Mercedarian friar. This same intruder
was chased early next year by ships
from Acapulco, who described the
enemy vessel as ‘‘old and with few peo-
ple on it.’’
By June 1689, Franco had returned
to Isla de la Plata (Ecuador), and
shortly thereafter visited the remote
Gal
apagos Islands, which he was to
use as a base for sweeps along the
mainland between the Gulf of Guaya-
quil and Trujillo. The raiders’ numbers
were insufficient for any significant
descents, however, as was revealed
when Franco captured the ship San
Francisco Xavier out of Pun
a on Octo-
ber 15, 1689. The Spanish captives dis-
covered that he only had 89 men on
board, 34 of them French, four Dutch,
an English pilot, and the rest Spanish-
American blacks or Indians. By April
1690, Franco was back at the
Gal
apagos, where he burnt his old ves-
sel and transferred into the prize. He
then sailed northwestward to New
Spain, remaining off that coast from
July 1690 through August 1691.
Returning to the Gal
apagos, he
seized Santa Marı´a y Hospital de los
Pobres off Isla de la Plata on August
25, 1691, with a cargo of cloth, sails,
ropes, and 70 black slaves. Next, he
intercepted the Jesuit-owned Santo
Tom
as off Punta Pari~nas (Peru) on Sep-
tember 2nd, with only timber aboard.
Franco then ran southward, touching at
the Juan Fern
andez Islands on October
31st, before capturing the Valdivia-
bound Nuestra Se~ nora de Begonia three
days later, with a welcome cargo of
flour, biscuit, cheese, and wine. The
604 Franco, Capitaine (fl. 1686
1694)
rovers thereupon retired to the Juan
Fern
andez grouping, making occasional
forays to the Chilean coast until March
1, 1692, when they struck northward
again toward Peru. This cruise took
them as far as the Gal
apagos and back
to Juan Fern
andez, yet proved unsuc-
cessful, with few prizes or plunder won.
Franco therefore decided to exit by the
Strait, and parted company with his
quartermaster and 22 other companions
in late December 1692, who had chosen
to remain cruising in the South Sea with
one of their prizes.
By early March 1693, Franco’s ship
was as far south as the island of Chilo
e
(Chile), when he inexplicably veered
around and headed up the South Amer-
ican coastline again, this time employ-
ing different tactics. He took the
Santiago de Mendı´a off Iquique at the
end of that same month, which he
sailed to Arica and offered to restore
to the Spaniards, if they would pay a
ransom of 7,000 pesos. This was
refused, so he burnt Santiago within
sight of that port; but when he returned
in June with Magdalena and Nuestra
Se~nora del Rosario, which he had
intercepted carrying a cargo of Chilean
wheat for Lima, he received payments
of 4,000 and 9,000 pesos respectively.
In a final act of duplicity, Franco
cheated the merchants of Arica by sail-
ing away with this latter prize to the
Gal
apagos, where he prepared it for
returning into the Atlantic, and aban-
doned San Francisco.
Three more Spanish vessels were
plundered off Pisco, mostly of wine,
before Franco at last disappeared into
the Strait of Magellan in early Decem-
ber 1693. Once through, he set course
for Brazil, then sought refreshment and
provisions at the French colony of
Cayenne. From there, he ran across the
Atlantic through the Anglo-Dutch
blockades, ironically running aground
as he approached La Rochelle on Sep-
tember 4, 1694.
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1990).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables, 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr

ua, 1972).
 G

He says he will tell all that he knows, as if he was to die,

he will tell the truth.
—From the trial transcript of the French pirate
Captain Louis Guittard, Virginia, May 1700

GAINES, HUGH the recent, untimely death by disease

(fl. 1691
1692)
English salvor, granted a temporary
wartime privateering commission by
the Council of Jamaica.
On August 27, 1691 (O.S.), Gaines
had appeared before this body along
with Captain Joseph Cuttance, and they
jointly ‘‘produced the King’s grant of a
wreck within seventy leagues’’ of that
island, which they intended to work for
its treasure. King William’s War was
just then entering into its third year,
though, with England, Holland, and
Spain arrayed in an alliance against
France. Early in the new year, fears of
a French offensive out of Martinique
gripped the British West Indies, so that
the Jamaican Councilors initiated a se-
ries of defensive measures—assuming
leadership in such matters because of
of Governor William O’Brien, Earl of
Inchiquin, on January 10, 1692 (O.S.).
Jamaica’s fortifications were duly
strengthened, artillery installed, militia
regiments mobilized, martial law declared,
and privateering commissions freely
offered. The worried Council even
complained to the Lords of Trade and
Plantations in London on January 28,
1692 (O.S.), that:
. . . our seafaring men leave us and seek
[commissions] elsewhere. To increase
our numbers, we beg that a free pardon
may be granted to privateers abroad, to
encourage them to return hither.
During this wave of military pre-
parations, Gaines was issued a priva-
teering license on February 12, 1692
(O.S.), although no direct enemy threat

605
606 Goffe, Christopher (fl. 1685
1691)
subsequently materialized, as France’s
Navy had actually suffered crushing rever-
sals in European waters that same spring.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
GOFFE, CHRISTOPHER
(fl. 1685
1691)
Rhode Island privateer who in the
summer of 1685 appeared before
Bermuda with Captain Thomas Henley,
in a Dutch prize which they had jointly
taken. The new Royal Gov. Richard
Cony attempted to detain this ship and
cargo, but was prevented by his recal-
citrant colonists. On May 28th (O.S.),
while this incident was transpiring,
one Christopher Smith attested before
the Governor: ‘‘That it was commonly
reported at the Bahama Islands in April
that Thomas Henley and Christopher
Goffe had been proclaimed pirates at
Jamaica.’’ Confirmation soon followed,
specifying that Henley had been so pro-
claimed at Jamaica, but Goffe at New
England. Nevertheless, Cony was unable
to prevent either one from departing.
Two years later, a large ship appeared
off New Providence in the Bahamas
early in June 1687, setting a boat ashore
to say that she had come from the South
Sea under Captain Thomas Woollerly.
The local Bahamian magistrate, Thomas
Bridge, instructed one man to remain
ashore while the boat returned to the
ship, then learned that Goffe and some
of his cohorts were aboard. Bridge
therefore advised the strangers:
. . . it was the King’s order that they
[pirates] should not be entertained,
and as she continued standing in, I
fired a shot across her forefoot. She
then anchored, and next day Wool-
erly told me that he was come to
wood and water, that he had Colonel
Lilburne’s commission and had done
nothing contrary to it, and that he
had taken in Goffe and his compan-
ions in extremity of distress. I
refused him leave to come in, and he
sailed away next day. I am told that
they burnt the ship at Andrew’s
Island and dispersed, leaving only
six or seven men in the Bahamas.
Despite Bridge’s apparent compliance
with the King’s instructions, it was sus-
pected that he had merely allowed
Woollerly’s prize a convenient place to
be scuttled, and the captors opportunity
to scatter back into civilian life, most
likely in exchange for a hefty bribe. This
impression was reinforced when Bridge
delayed three months before writing to
his immediate superiors at Jamaica, by
which time Woollerly and Goffe had
long since left the Islands.
In fact, Lieutenant-Gov. Hender
Molesworth of Jamaica was to learn
of their presence in the Bahamas by
chance through secondhand sources, and
on August 17, 1687 (O.S.), was inform-
ing London that he had heard the
buccaneers:
. . . quarrelled and burnt the ship,
but some of them had bought a ves-
sel and intended to sail for New
England, but were detained by want
of provisions. It is said that some of
these pirates have [so much money]
at times [that they pay] half a crown
a pound for flour.

Molesworth therefore dispatched Cap-
tain Thomas Spragge of HMS Drake to
the Bahamas with specific orders ‘‘to
take the pirate Woollerly,’’ but arrived
only to find the rovers already gone. It is
presumed that they had sailed to Boston,
where Goffe is known to have surren-
dered himself in November of that year,
and obtained a royal pardon.
In August 1691, during the War of the
League of Augsburg or King William’s
War, Goffe was commissioned by the
Governor of Massachusetts to cruise with
his ship Swan between Cape Cod and
Cape Ann, to protect that coastline from
the depredations of the rogue Bermuda
privateers George Dew and Thomas
Griffin, who were illegally seizing New
England traders on trumped-up charges.
Golden Island.
A nineteenth-century map of the Scottish settlement at Darien in 1698
1699, featuring
Golden Island at top. (Author’s Collection)
Golden Island 607
Goffe sighted the pair and attempted to
overhaul, but the Swan was easily outdis-
tanced, Goffe reporting later that ‘‘they
could sail two feet to his one.’’
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
GOLDEN ISLAND
Located in the Golfo de San Blas, due
east of the Panamanian port of Nombre
de Dios, and used as a springboard for
608 Grenade
buccaneers traversing the Isthmus to
attack Spaniards in the Pacific.
As early as December 19, 1684 (O.S.),
Governor Hender Molesworth of Jamaica
had given special instructions to Captain
David Mitchell of HMS Ruby, that after
escorting a Spanish slaver home to
Portobelo, this Royal Navy officer was to:
On your return from Portobelo you
will visit Golden Island off the coast
of the Main, through which a pas-
sage has lately been found to the
South Sea. Four hundred English-
men are said to have been conveyed
that way in small parties by Darien
Indians, and it would be well to
spread report that they have been cut
off, in order to discourage others.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
GRENADE
One of the favorite weapons used by
late 17th and early 18th century pirates.
Oftentimes buccaneers found them-
selves few in numbers, so had to rely on
surprise, mobility, and superior fire-
power to gain their objectives. Not wish-
ing to be encumbered with artillery, they
substituted hand-grenades—especially
whenever engaging larger enemy con-
centrations. For example, the chronicler
Ravenau de Lussan recorded how the
boat-flotilla of Captains François
Grogniet and Le Picard were forced by
heavy river currents to land below their
intended target of Guayaquil at 4:00
A.M. on Sunday, April 20, 1687, and
were furthermore spotted by an alert
Spanish sentinel. The ensuing exchange
of gunfire roused the city garrison, so
that in addition to having lost the
element of surprise, Lussan noted that:
Simultaneously showers suddenly
descended, forcing us to run to cover
in a large house nearby, there to
light the grenadiers’ tinders and to
await daylight. All this time, the
enemies poured out a steady fire
from the city to intimidate us, and
by way of warning us that they had
a warm reception waiting.
Grogniet’s and Picard’s men nonetheless
advanced successfully at daybreak, their
‘‘flags flying and drums beating,’’ to
carry Guayaquil by storm.
Grenades could be made of either iron
or glass. The French priest Jean-Baptiste
Labat recorded an instance of the latter
usage, when the flibustiers of Capitaine
Pinel swarmed over the bows of an 18-
gun English ship off Barbados early in
1694, during the fifth year of the War
of the League of Augsburg or King
William’s War. Labat described how the
English crew had barricaded themselves
inside their forecastle, at which Pinel’s
boarders found a small hatch:
. . . through which they flung a
glass jar filled with gunpowder and
surrounded by four or five lit fuses,
which ignited the powder when
the jar burst, and burnt seven or
eight Englishmen so horribly, they
called for quarter.
See also
Grenade (Volume 1).

References
Labat, Jean-Baptiste, Memoirs, 1693
1705
(London: Routledge, 1970, translation
by John Eaden).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a
Voyage into the South Sea (Cleveland,
OH: Arthur H. Clark Company,
1930).
GRIFFIN, JOHN (fl. 1692)
English master issued a temporary pri-
vateering commission by the Council
of Jamaica.
As King William’s War was enter-
ing its third year—with England, Hol-
land, and Spain arrayed in an alliance
against France—fears of an offensive
out of Martinique gripped the British
West Indies. The Jamaican Council
therefore initiated a series of defensive
measures, assuming leadership in such
military affairs due to the untimely
death by disease of Gov. William
O’Brien, Earl of Inchiquin, on January
10, 1692 (O.S.). The island’s fortifica-
tions were duly strengthened, artillery
installed, militia regiments mobilized,
martial law imposed, and privateering
commissions freely offered. The Counci-
lors were so concerned, that they even
complained to the Lords of Trade and
Plantations in London on January 28th
(O.S.) that:
. . . our seafaring men leave us and seek
[commissions] elsewhere. To increase
our numbers, we beg that a free pardon
may be granted to privateers abroad, to
encourage them to return hither.
During this wave of military prepara-
tions, Griffin was issued a privateering
license on February 4, 1692 (O.S.),
Griffin, Thomas (fl. 1687
1691) 609
although no direct enemy threat then
materialized, as France’s Navy had
actually suffered crushing reversals in
European waters that same spring.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
GRIFFIN, THOMAS
(fl. 1687
1691)
Freebooter out of Bermuda, who ven-
tured as far north as New England dur-
ing King William’s War.
Virtually nothing is known about
this seafarer’s birth or early life. He
may possibly have been the master
who, during peacetime, presented a
petition before the Council of Jamaica
on February 9, 1687 (O.S.), ‘‘com-
plaining of the capture of his sloop by
a Spaniard.’’ The next official notice
of his activities did not occur until
spring of 1691, as the third year of
King William’s War was commencing,
when Griffin was issued a privateering
commission and a permit to impress
seamen by Lieutenant-Governor Isaac
Richier of Bermuda. He sortied from
the island capital of St. George’s shortly
thereafter, accompanied by another
sloop under his junior, the young
and impulsive Captain George Dew,
and—prizes being scarce in those im-
mediate waters—both roamed farther
north, apparently separating briefly as
they moved up the Atlantic Seaboard
to join in on the fighting against the
French outposts in Acadia (modern
Nova Scotia).
610 Griffin, Thomas (fl. 1687
1691)
Depredations off New
England (1691)
On gaining the vicinity of Boston, both
marauders were informed of an on-going
hunt for a large French privateer raid-
ing along the New England coastline,
but their aggressiveness soon brought
them into conflict with local authori-
ties as well. In late July 1691 (O.S.),
Dew—temporarily detached and serving
as a consort to Captain William Kidd out
of New York—became embroiled in a
fracas with the garrison guarding the Pis-
cataqua River mouth, on the outskirts of
Portsmouth (New Hampshire). Dew
rejoined Griffin shortly thereafter, and a
week later another victim—Captain
Thomas Wilkinson of the pink Three
Brothers—appeared at Boston on August
8, 1691 (O.S.), before the Massachusetts
Governor Simon Bradstreet, to complain
that he had been robbed of his vessel ‘‘on
the high seas’’ by the two Bermuda
rovers, just as he was nearing home from
a commercial voyage to Cadiz.
Griffin and Dew had indeed taken
this pink, sailing it first to the offshore
Isles of Shoals, and then to the outer
reaches of the Piscataqua River itself,
where they allegedly held their own
‘‘trial’’ at which this prize and its cargo
were duly ‘‘condemned,’’ and began
selling off some of its goods. The Mas-
sachusetts Governor therefore issued
an order on August 9, 1691 (O.S.),
directing the commissioned privateer
Swan of Captain Christopher Goffe to
sortie from Portsmouth and seize these
two transgressors, so as to bring them
in ‘‘to answer for their misdemeanors.’’
Yet before this order could even be
delivered, Griffin had already addressed
a letter to Governor Bradstreet from
Piscataqua on August 12, 1691 (O.S.),
attempting to explain his actions by
arguing that Wilkinson’s pink was so
similar to the French privateer bark
which they were seeking, that on com-
ing up with Three Brothers, he had:
. . . fired several shot at her to lower
her topsails, but would not before
we had fired three great shot and a
volley of small arms, which gave me
cause to command him [Wilkinson]
to come on board my sloop and to
examine what he was; and finding
that he was come from Cadiz loaded
with several prohibited goods, made
seizure of her for Their Majesties,
and did design to send her to my
commission port [i.e., to St.
George’s in Bermuda], but found her
not capable to be carried there, as by
ye deposition of three carpenters I
requested to survey her may appear;
therefore proceeded by virtue of ye
power I have (being satisfied that no
larger can be granted out of Boston
to condemn her, as by law is pre-
scribed), designing to be answerable
for ye same at my commission port,
where I will answer anything that
can be alleged against me.
Griffin then rather insultingly concluded
his letter by adding:
I have been informed, and complaint
is made to me, that vessels are suf-
fered to go out of Boston to furnish
ye French that live at Port Royal
[modern Annapolis Royal, Nova
Scotia] with arms, ammunition,
clothes, and other things in truck for

beaver and other goods, which gives
me great cause to suspect I should
be unkindly dealt with [i.e., before a
Boston jury], being a subject of ye
Crown of England; and likewise
your neglect in forwarding my
design against ye French, and suffer-
ing ye provisions I sent for to be
stopped.
That same evening of August 12, 1691
(O.S.), New England’s collector of cus-
toms, Jahleel Brenton, reached Portsmouth
from Boston and presented the Gover-
nor’s arrest order to Captain Goffe,
who forthwith went aboard his ship
Swan. But Griffin and Dew had seen
the Collector sail past them up the
Piscataqua River’s eastern channel
beside Great Island (modern New Cas-
tle Island), and correctly surmised his
intent, so that their two sloops stood
out toward sea that same night, know-
ing full well that their vessels were
much too swift to be caught on its
open waters.
Two days later, Goffe himself
admitted as much when he wrote to
Bradstreet, acknowledging receipt of
the Governor’s command for:
. . . making seizure of Captain
Griffin and Captain Dew, if it lies in
my power to meet with them; but
being at the bank myself when the
Collector came to this place, the said
Captain Griffin and Dew, supposing
that I had an order to stop them,
came to sail and one of them is
now in sight, standing off and on
between this place and Isles of
Shoals. I could desire that if it were
possible for us to come up with them
Griffin, Thomas (fl. 1687
1691) 611
in our ship, but they sail two feet to
our one.
Rather than engage in a pointless and fu-
tile pursuit, Goffe instead requested per-
mission to return into his home-port to
reprovision Swan.
Eventually, the collector Brenton suc-
ceeded in reclaiming the pink and part of
its cargo, despite Griffin’s and Dew’s
threat to resist ‘‘with force of arms.’’ The
two rovers subsequently boarded another
English vessel off Cape Cod, which was
bound to Virginia with a cargo of oil,
brimstone, gold, and silver. Griffin and
Dew again trumped up charges, alleging
that its Captain did not have proper clear-
ance papers, and so sailed this prize home
to Bermuda. Nothing more is known
about Griffin’s career, beyond being
mentioned as the Constable of Smiths.
See also
Commission Port; Dew, George; Goffe,
Christopher; Kidd, William.
References
Baxter, James P., comp. and ed.,
Documentary History of the State of
Maine, Volume 4 (Portland, ME: Maine
Historical Society, 1869).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial:
America and West Indies, Volume 12
(London: Her Majestys Stationery
Office, 1899).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Mercer, Julia A., Bermuda Settlers of the
17th Century: Genealogical Notes from
Bermuda (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical
Publishing Company, 1982).
612 Grogniet, François, Alias ‘‘Cachemar
ee’’ (fl. 1681
1687)
GROGNIET, FRANÇOIS,
ALIAS ‘‘CACHEMARE
E’’
(fl. 1681
1687)
Wide-ranging French freebooter, who
roamed the South Sea for two years, before
finally meeting his end at Guayaquil.
Virtually nothing is known about his
origins or early life, as well as his curi-
ous pseudonym. In modern French,
ketch marin is the term for a type of
small two-masted vessel, while in
northern Spain, such a craft would be
called a quechemarı´n or cachemarı´n.
Just how such a vessel may have fig-
ured in Grogniet’s past, or why this
nickname came to be applied to him,
is today unclear. He seems to have
arrived in the West Indies as a ship’s
master, who after being victimized by
some Spaniards in 1681 (two years af-
ter the official cessation of hostilities
between France and Spain) obtained a
letter-of-reprisal from the Governor of
Saint-Domingue, Jacques Nepveu,
Sieur de Pouançay, and sailed for the
Venezuelan coast to begin making re-
taliatory captures among its coastal
traffic. However, while prowling off
the island of Trinidad in January 1682,
Grogniet was intercepted by the flibus-
tier commander Charles, Marquis de
Maintenon, who was under orders from
the French Crown to curb piratical ac-
tivity and restore stolen property, and
who took away Grogniet’s letter-of-
reprisal and ordered his ship back into
its commission-port of Petit-Go^ave.
Grogniet’s next privateering cruise
proved equally unprofitable, for when
Saint-Domingue’s Acting-Governor
Jacques de Pardieu, Sieur de Franques-
nay, attempted to placate its angry fli-
bustiers by authorizing a strike against
Santiago de Cuba in November 1683,
Grogniet’s 6-gun, 70-man Saint-
François was one of eight vessels
which weighed from Petit-Go^ave under
the command of Laurens de Graaf. Yet
military command for this 1,000-man
expedition was held by the planter and
militia Major Jean Le Goff, Sieur de
Beauregard, who shortly after depar-
ture attempted to discipline a flibustier,
provoking an angry mutiny and caused
this venture to disintegrate.
A disappointed Grogniet regained
Petit-Go^ave a few weeks later, but in
March 1684 he departed yet again—-
this time in the company of Capitaines
Blot, Jean Rose, and Vigneron—as part
of a five-ship flotilla led by Jean, Sieur
de Bernanos. They secured a privateer-
ing commission from the French Gov-
ernor of Saint Croix, and with a party
of Carib auxiliaries advanced up Vene-
zuela’s Orinoco River to seize the
newly-completed Spanish fort of San
Francisco de Asis by May 30, 1684,
guarding the approaches to the frontier
outpost of Santo Tom
e de Guayana far-
ther upstream. The flibustiers also
sacked that town and held onto Fort
San Francisco until late August 1684,
when they withdrew to patrol off the
islands of Margarita and Trinidad.
That same November 1684, the great
flibustier leader Grammont called for a
general assemblage at the island known
as Tortille or Salt Tortuga near Vene-
zuela, to which Grogniet sailed along
with three other commanders. After wait-
ing a month, Grammont failed to materi-
alize, so Grogniet and his fellow-Captain
Lescuyer decided to sail for Panama to
traverse its Isthmus and join other bucca-
neers already operating in the South Sea;
they weighed toward the end of Decem-
ber 1684 for Golden Island.
 Grogniet, François, alias ‘‘Cachemar
ee’’ (fl. 1681
1687)
Penetration into the Pacific
(1685
1686)
By early January 1685, Grogniet and
Lescuyer had reached that Panamanian
anchorage, leaving their ships at Golden
Island to lead a contingent of roughly
200 French flibustiers and 80 English
buccaneers upriver aboard boats and
afoot across the Isthmus toward the Pa-
cific Ocean, hoping to catch up with
another band of rovers who had already
penetrated into the jungle that previous
month under Captain Francis Townley.
Grogniet’s and Lescuyer’s men emerged
into the Gulf of San Miguel without
meeting these colleagues, so they began
seizing coastal craft as transports, until
they reached Taboga Island south of
Panama City. There, they sighted a
burning vessel to their north on the
night of February 13, 1685, and next
morning a flotilla of English buccaneers
appeared under Captains Edward Davis
and Charles Swan (among their ranks
was the chronicler William Dampier).
These two commanders offered the
newly-arrived flibustiers their unarmed,
90-ton Spanish prize Santa Rosa, which
they had recently captured, while Grog-
niet’s 80 English companions were to
be incorporated aboard their own ships
Bachelor’s Delight and Cygnet. In
appreciation for this gift of Santa Rosa,
Grogniet—Lescuyer having died—
presented the two English Captains with
blank privateering-commissions issued
by the French Governor of Saint-
Domingue. More flibustiers were also
known to be on their way across the
Isthmus, so that Grogniet sent a boat
back eastward to await them along the
shores of the Gulf of San Miguel. On
March 3, 1685, this craft also chanced
to meet up with Townley, his 180
613
mostly-English followers crammed
aboard two captured barks; a few days
later a third bark bearing about a dozen
more Englishmen that had become sep-
arated from William Knight off the
coast of New Spain entered the Gulf of
Panama out of the west. Then on April
11, 1685, the band which Grogniet was
expecting finally arrived from across
the Isthmus, consisting of 264 mainly
French flibustiers under Capitaines
Rose, Le Picard, and Mathurin Desmar-
etz (including the chronicler Ravenau
de Lussan).
Once assembled, this pirate force of
six vessels and almost 1,000 men
decided to blockade Panama City, in
hopes of intercepting the annual Peru-
vian treasure-shipment. As Captain of
the only French vessel within this for-
mation, Grogniet assumed command
over the entire flibustier contingent,
despite some reluctance among his
subordinates. The Peruvian vessels then
managed to slip past undetected in
mid-May 1685, delivering their cargo,
before sallying to directly challenge
the buccaneers. Toward noon on June
7, 1685, the rovers were lying off
Pacheca Island when Grogniet:
. . . who was anchored further away
from the island, gave us the signal
that he had sighted the Spanish fleet,
composed of seven sails. He indi-
cated how many were coming by
hoisting his flag seven times.
A squadron of six Spanish men-of-
war and a tender indeed bore down on
the pirates, who were caught ill pre-
pared. Grogniet, in particular, had to
delay weighing with Sainte-Rose
because a large percentage of his men
were still ashore sacking two small
614 Grogniet, François, Alias ‘‘Cachemar
ee’’ (fl. 1681
1687)
chapels, so that his ship fell behind its
consorts. An indecisive, long-range
battle ensued between Davis and Swan
versus the Spaniards, the buccaneer
pair unwilling to close against the
more heavily-armed vessels of the Ar-
mada del Mar del Sur, who in turn
feared being boarded by their more
nimble adversaries. Nevertheless, the
next day ended with a Spanish victory,
as the pirates were driven off.
The disperse formation of free-
booters wandered westward, Grogniet
reuniting with Davis and Swan to
attack the Panamanian town of Reme-
dios by early July 1685, after which
both contingents continued northwest
once more as separate groups. A month
later, Grogniet refused to join his Eng-
lish colleagues in a raid against the
Nicaraguan city of Le
on, instead lead-
ing 120 of his flibustiers in five boats
for a repeat attempt against Reme-
dios—only to be repulsed and rejoining
his 200 other men aboard Sainte-Rose
by September 3, 1685. Grogniet next
entered the vast Nicaraguan harbor of
Realejo on November 1, 1685, finding
its surrounding countryside already looted
by English pillagers, so obtained little
booty. Reversing course, the French
rovers paused off the Costa Rican
coast on December 9, 1685; they hesi-
tated to attack the small inland city of
Esparta and instead worked their way
around Burica Point into the Gulf of
Chiriquı́ by the end of that year.
Grogniet’s flibustiers overran the
impoverished Panamanian hamlet of
Chiriquita on January 9, 1686, resting
ashore for a week, before withdrawing.
When they approached the anchorage
off Remedios again on the night of
March 5, 1686, to forage for food, they
were ambushed by a small Spanish
frigate, a barco luengo, and a piragua,
suffering more than 30 casualties.
Bloodied and half-starved, Grogniet’s
dispirited followers wandered westward
once more, anchoring off Esparta by
March 19, 1686. Sighting Townley’s
flotilla four days later, both groups
agreed—despite some residual ill will—
to combine for an attempt against the
Nicaraguan city of Granada. Landing
345 men at Escalante on April 7, 1686,
Grogniet and Townley fought their way
into that regional capital three days
later, only to find little plunder. The
Spaniards had been forewarned and had
transferred their valuables to Zapatera
Island in the lake, so that the pirates
withdrew empty-handed five days later.
They endured numerous ambushes
before finally passing through Masaya
on April 16, 1685, and regaining their
ships, after which they traveled back to
Realejo.
Grogniet having enjoyed such mea-
ger success as a commander, half of
his men voted on June 9, 1685, to sail
under Le Picard and join with Townley
in that English Captain’s return east
toward Panama. The remaining 148 fli-
bustiers ventured westward with Grog-
niet to operate for a time in the Gulf
of Fonseca. However, still failing to
find any rich prey, a majority of these
loyal hands also voted to quit his com-
mand; 85 of them steered Sainte-Rose
still farther northwest toward New
Spain and California, in hopes of way-
laying the annual Manila galleon.
Grogniet retraced his course down the
Central American coastline with only
60 followers left aboard his three pira-
guas. After returning to mount various
minor raids in the vicinity of El Salva-
dor’s Point Amapala, Grogniet eventu-
ally decided to abandon the Pacific near
 Grogniet, François, alias ‘‘Cachemar
ee’’ (fl. 1681
1687)
Esparta, intending to lead his weary
band overland across Costa Rica ‘‘rely-
ing on a compass.’’
Just as he was approaching Esparta’s
shoreline, Grogniet rediscovered Picard’s
large group and Townley’s smaller
contingent—now commanded by George
Dew—on January 26, 1687, who warned
him that the regional Spanish militias
were now fully aroused. After ravaging
that area together for a month, all three
bands decided to shift into another
theater, by steering south to mount a
surprise attack against Guayaquil. How-
ever, the French still remained divided
into factions, so redistributed themselves
accordingly: Grogniet and his 50 remain-
ing followers going aboard Dew’s ship for
a total crew of 142 men, compared to 162
boucaniers who remained aboard Picard’s
French frigate and longboat. Each group
then stood away separately from Puerto
Caldera on February 24, 1687, hoping to
be the first to reach Ecuador and launch
an assault on Guayaquil; but after sighting
one another at sea again on March 18,
1687, all agreed to mount a joint strike.
Death at Guayaquil (1687)
The South American coastline swam
into view by April 6, 1687, and at
noon six days later the combined force
reached Point Santa Helena, the north-
westernmost entry-point into the wide,
tapering Gulf of Guayaquil. That same
night, they espied a Spanish prize
manned by eight English pirates from
Davis’ crew, who next day volunteered
to join their enterprise. Running south
unseen farther out at sea, they circled
back and by dawn of April 15,
1687, sighted Cabo Blanco, the south-
easternmost entry into the Gulf. By
10:00 A.M., 260 rovers had transferred
615
off their ships—which were to remain
hidden in a nearby bay—while the
raiding-party began rowing northwest
aboard eight large piraguas. By sun-
down, they reached Santa Clara Island,
a barren rock in mid-channel also
known as Isla del Muerto or ‘‘Dead
Man’s Island,’’ anchoring overnight to
ride out the powerful ebb-tide flowing
out of the Guayas River into the ocean.
Next morning, piloted by four native
turncoats serving among their ranks,
they glided across to the much larger
Pun
a Island and hid there all day,
before circling past its Spanish settle-
ments that same night to conceal them-
selves once more at dawn of April
17th, up an estuary near Pun
a’s north-
ern tip.
Here, the buccaneers agreed to
storm specific strongpoints once they
reached Guayaquil, in three separate
columns led by Grogniet, Dew, and
Picard. But on emerging to enter the
Guayas River that same dusk, they
found its counter-current so strong that
they had to return to Pun
a Island by
daybreak of Friday, April 18, 1687,
being spotted by coastal-watchers
before they could hide up another inlet.
These lookouts set fire to a hut as a
warning-signal to the Spaniards farther
upriver, before a buccaneer party could
push through the woods to extinguish
it, killing two sentinels and capturing a
third. The rovers remained hidden
throughout the rest of that day, even
allowing a Spanish ship to proceed
upriver unchallenged, before reemerg-
ing at nightfall to penetrate the eastern
mouth of the Guayas River. As the flo-
tilla stole upriver, their native guides
piloted them past a couple of lookout-
stations, with the pirates’ movements
concealed behind several small islands.
616 Grogniet, François, Alias ‘‘Cachemar
ee’’ (fl. 1681
1687)
By dawn of Saturday, April 19, 1687,
when they hid yet again, they had
circled far enough upstream to be able
to surprise Guayaquil out of its east
next daybreak, a Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Pun
a signal-blaze
had been reported in that city on Satur-
day morning, so that Governor Juan


Alvarez de Avil
es and militia General
Fernando Ponce de Le
on mustered ev-
ery able-bodied man; however, when
nothing more occurred by evening, its
entire garrison stood down. As a result,
when the pirate formation came gliding
out of the darkness at 4:00 A.M. on
Sunday, April 20, 1687, surprise was
total. Dew’s two piraguas disgorged
more than 60 men at Marı́a Fico’s
landing-dock north of the city, half cir-
cling around Ataranza Inlet on foot to
occupy the city workshops, while the re-
mainder scrambled up the cliffs to con-
ceal themselves outside the earthen San
Carlos redoubts atop Santa Ana Hill.
Grogniet and Picard meanwhile
brought their six piraguas in more than
a mile farther south, the swift down-
river current having carried them off
course, so that they failed to land near
La Planchada fort on the city outskirts.
Instead, the flibustiers waded ashore
into the dense brush around the small
anchorage of Casones (near modern
Aguirre and Elizalde Streets), where
they were challenged by a Spanish sen-
try, soon followed by gunfire. Rain
started to fall as well, so that the
French had to furthermore pause in a
large house for their grenadiers to light
their tinders, before Grogniet and Pic-
ard advanced at daybreak with ‘‘flags
flying and drums beating,’’ into the
maze of shipyards lining the four inter-
vening inlets before reaching the edge
of Guayaquil proper.
General Ponce had meanwhile
appeared on the far side of these yards,
mounted on a horse and directing the
300 black and Spanish militiamen who
were rallying out of Guayaquil to the
northern shoreline of its last inlet,
owned by Juan de Villamar. In the
rainy gloom, the advancing flibustiers
mistook its low wooden levee for a
fort, so that they lost several men prob-
ing forward gingerly along the small
bridge spanning Jos
e del Junco’s
adjoining inlet, before a pirate detach-
ment finally paddled around westward
on planks—between Junco’s house and
Carlos’s smithy—to outflank the defend-
ers. Ponce was shot in a thigh and
fell, being helped to remount, before
ordering his men to retreat back into
Guayaquil.
Grogniet and Picard pressed into the
streets behind them, only to discover
that the Spaniards would make a second
stand from behind earthworks around
Guayaquil’s main square, as well as
sweeping the nearby intersections with
grapeshot. This resistance lasted for
more than an hour, until another pirate
flanking-movement circled behind the
Franciscan church and headed toward
the Dominican monastery. Afraid of
being cut off from their last avenue of
escape into the high ground behind the
city, the Spanish thereupon abandoned
the main square, allowing Grogniet and
Picard to push up Los Morlacos Street
and along the riverfront in twin col-
umns. For a third time, the defenders
regrouped in trenches encircling the
nearby northern heights, but their seven
guns in San Carlos redoubt could not
be depressed low enough to fire down
the slope, so that the flibustiers soon
fought their way into this system of
trenches, seconded by Dew’s few-dozen
men from the opposite side.
By 11:00 A.M., the last traces of
Spanish resolve sputtered out, the city
being occupied and 700 prisoners

herded into Guayaquil’s main church.
However, Grogniet had been badly
wounded during this hand-to-hand
combat in the rain, so that Picard
assumed command over the entire fli-
bustier contingent. He ordered build-
ings plundered, vessels seized, and the
pirate ships anchored at Cabo Blanco
to prepare to rendezvous with the
raiders off Pun
a Island. On Thursday,
April 24, 1687, Picard and Dew with-
drew from gutted Guayaquil, their flo-
tilla groaning with booty and more
than 250 captives. Grogniet was carried
back aboard ship that same evening,
when the rovers reunited with their
vessels off Pun
a, and expired there of
his wounds by May 2, 1687, never
enjoying the silver and jewels won dur-
ing his one great strike.
See also
Barco luengo; Blot, Capitaine; Commission
Port; Dampier, William; Davis, Edward;
Dew, George; Golden Island; Lussan,
Ravenau de; Maintenon, Charles,
Marquis de; Mar del Sur, Armada del;
Piragua; Pouançay, Jacques Nepveu,
Sieur de; South Sea; Townley, Francis;
Vigneron, Capitaine.
References
Archive of Indies (Seville), Audiencia de
Quito 159, Number 20, Folios 48
53.
Bernal Ruiz, Marı́a del Pilar, La toma del
puerto de Guayaquil en 1687 (Seville:
Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos,
1979).
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru: Maritime
Intrusion into the South Sea, 1598
1701
(New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899).
Grubing, Nathaniel (fl. 1692
1697) 617
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Laburu Mateo, Miguel, Breve vocabulario
que contiene t
erminos empleados en
documentos marı´timos antiguos (San
Sebasti
an: Departamento de Cultura y
Turismo, Diputaci
on Foral de Gipuzkoa,
1990).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom

atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola
y francesa de la isla de Santo
Domingo, 1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo,
Dominican Republic: Editorial ‘‘La
Naci
on,’’ 1944).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark Company, 1930).
GRUBING, NATHANIEL
(fl. 1692
1697)
English turncoat who led French
flibustier raids against Jamaica.
He was apparently born on that
island to English parents, yet—perhaps
because he had been raised as a Roman
Catholic or otherwise chose to remain
loyal to King James II after that mon-
arch had been exiled into France by
the Glorious Revolution—Grubing took
up service with the French of Saint-
Domingue during King William’s War.
His detailed knowledge of Jamaica
stood him in very good stead, as he
was able to steal onto its familiar
coastline and land:
. . . in the night upon lone settle-
ments near the sea, and robbing
them of all they had, and away again
before any notice could be given for
any strength to come against him.
Grubing was first noted in the offi-
cial English records during the third
618 Grubing, Nathaniel (fl. 1692
1697)
year of that conflict, when the Council
of Jamaica received a report on March
2, 1692 (O.S.), that a small French
sloop under his command ‘‘had lately
landed men and plundered Spanish
River.’’ Angry at his treachery and op-
portunism, the Councilors offered a
special bounty of £100 to two sloop-
commanders who volunteered to sail in
his pursuit, in addition to Grubing’s
vessel, if they should capture him.
However, that very next month the
Council minutes also noted on April 6,
1692 (O.S.):
Reported by prisoners that ten or
twelve privateers were cruising to
windward, and that Nathaniel Grub-
ing was on his way to make a second
raid on Jamaica. Order that the sloop
Pembroke be hired, that Captain
Edward Oakely of H.M.S. Guernsey
put sixty men on board her and press
ten more, that the Lieutenant of the
Guernsey take command, and in
company with the sloop Greyhound
cruise round the Island.
Two months later, Port Royal was
destroyed by a cataclysmic earthquake
and tidal wave, so that Jamaican inter-
ests were diverted into major reconstruc-
tion and relocation efforts. Grubing’s
depredations nonetheless returned to the
forefront a couple of years later, after
his French wife had been captured off
Hispaniola by an English sloop. The Ja-
maican Council minutes for June 24,
1694 (O.S.), read:
A letter from a French man-of-war
as to exchange of prisoners was con-
sidered, on which letter was a notice
that unless William Grubbin’s [sic]
wife were sent back, none of the
English nation should be returned.
Agreed to take no notice of it.
The English authorities later maliciously
alleged that they were willing to release
her, but she supposedly preferred to ‘‘be
quit of her husband who, she said, used
her very ill,’’ so chose to remain on
Jamaica.
In revenge for her capture, Grubing
vowed to make off with every Jamaican
woman ‘‘he met with till he had his
wife again.’’ One such victim proved to
be Rachel, the 14-year-old daughter of
a minister’s widow called Mrs. Barrow,
whom Grubing carried off to Petit-
Go^ave after ransacking her mother’s
plantation. Another was Major Terry’s
wife, whom Grubing ‘‘stripped to her
shift and beat’’ on board his ship after
another nocturnal descent. Governor
William Beeston wrote to his French
counterpart Jean-Baptiste Ducasse to
complain about these and other ‘‘inhu-
manities beyond the customs of Chris-
tian warfare,’’ but the matter was
interrupted by a massive French inva-
sion of Jamaica in the summer of 1694.
Finally, a delighted Beeston wrote
on January 27, 1697 (O.S.), to inform
the Council of Trade and Plantations in
London that:
Captain Moses of the Reserve has
done like a brave man in gaining
intelligence and taking Grubbin, a
renegade of this island, who has
robbed and plundered most of our
out-coasts. I have thanked Captain
Moses in Council and given him a
present of £100. Mons. Ducasse has
sent to demand Grubbin of me as a
naturalized subject of France and

married there, and has kept as a hos-
tage one Price, who, he tells me, if I
use any violence on Grubbin, shall
fare accordingly; but that shall not
hinder me from causing Grubbin to
suffer whatever the law may con-
demn him in, nor do I think that
Mons. Ducasse will venture to do
anything to an innocent man for the
punishment of a criminal.
See also
Beeston, Sir William; Ducasse, Jean-
Baptiste; Elliott, Stephen.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes
13
15 (London: His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1901
1904).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica:
Lewis, Lunan and Jones, 1800).
GUARDACOSTAS
Spanish term literally meaning ‘‘coast-
guard,’’ but which was applied equally to
both privateersmen or to their vessels
commissioned by Spanish-American offi-
cials to operate in their regional waters.
Generations of pitiless warfare against
cruel pirates had hardened their con-
duct, to which was also added a single-
minded pursuit of profit—for like their
rover foes, most guardacostas only
received shares from any captures, not
regular wages. Such motivation wors-
ened their behavior against even inno-
cent traders or passing merchant vessels.
Guardacostas 619
One particularly violent encounter with
these lawless marauders befell James
Wilkins, Master of the sloop Sarah and
Mary out of Philadelphia, while he was
homeward-bound during peacetime, sim-
ply bearing a cargo of cocoa and salt
from Curaçao and Bonaire:
On 17th March [1725 O.S.], ten
leagues from Hispaniola, he was
chased by a sloop, which by the dis-
charge of great guns and some
arrows compelled him to strike his
colors, which were English. He was
ordered aboard the sloop. As he was
getting on board her, he received a
great blow on his head with a cut-
lass, and then was stripped of his
coat, hat, and silver shoe-buckles.
He was examined by the officers of
the sloop, who were Spaniards com-
manded by a Spanish mulatto whose
name he could not learn, nor the
name of their vessel, but that she
was Spanish having on board Span-
iards, Indians, and Negroes. Upon
affirmant’s demanding by what
authority they took him, the Spanish
Captain directed the point of his
sword to affirmant’s breast and
answered that was commission
enough for him, adding: ‘‘Goddamn
you, hold your tongue or I’ll run you
through.’’ Some of the Spanish offi-
cers confessed the sloop belonged to
the Havana, and that they were a
guarda de la costa [sic].
They anchored at a small island,
Saona, one league from Hispaniola,
and demanded what money affirm-
ant had. Two of them beat him, and
throwing a rope about his neck,
threatened to hang him if he would
not discover what he had on board.
620 Guardacostas
Among many other violences, the
Spaniards inflicted a very deep
wound, quite to his thigh-bone, and
thereupon he shew’d 700 pieces-of-
eight silver and four pistoles gold,
all which they took. Then they cut
and much bruised this affirmant
with cutlasses by the Spanish Cap-
tain’s order, because he had not dis-
covered the money sooner. They
seized the sloop with all her stores
and cargo, etc., at a moderate esti-
mate of the full value of 4,583
pieces-of-eight.
After affirmant and three of his men
had been detained by the Spaniards on
board their sloop about 29 days, being
in the meantime stripped of their
clothes, almost famished, and very
inhumanly treated, they set the three
men upon Saint Thomas [in the Virgin
Islands]. Two Spaniards took affirm-
ant in a canoe near the shore and
obliged him to leap into the sea,
where he was much bruised and in
great danger to be dashed to pieces
against the rocks. They discharged a
swivel gun loaded with many small
bullets at affirmant and his three men,
that were standing together near some
of the inhabitants of the island. The
shot missed them but fell among some
sugar canes that grew near, in which it
cut down a wide lane.
A little more than a year later, the ‘‘Mer-
chants of London and others trading to
and interested in the British Colonies in
America’’ submitted the following peti-
tion to the Crown in London on May 20,
1726 (O.S.):
It has been a general practice with the
subjects of His Catholic Majesty in the
West Indies, for several years past to
fit out vessels in a warlike manner, on
pretence of guarding their coasts from
unlawful traders: but in reality, under
color of such commissions, have com-
mitted many depredations and other
acts of hostility on Your Majesty’s
subjects on the high seas, and even on
the coasts of Jamaica; where they have
landed in the remote parts, plundered
the inhabitants, and at times carried
away above 300 Negroes. It is notori-
ous those guarda de la costa’s, [sic] as
they are called, never met with an
English vessel an’t could overcome,
which they did not take, destroy, or
plunder, and to intimidate them, have
frequently hoisted and fought under
pirate’s colors. Many of Your Maj-
esty’s subjects have been killed and
wounded in defense of their vessels
and goods, and several in cool blood:
and that the damages sustained in this
unlawful manner since the Peace of
Utrecht have amounted to above
£300,000. Notwithstanding applica-
tions have been made from time to
time to the Spanish Governors and
other officers in America, not only by
the unhappy sufferers, but also by the
Governors of Your Majesty’s colonies;
yet they have not been attended with
any manner of satisfaction or redress.
See also
Guardacostas (Volume 1); Pieces of Eight;
Pistole.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial:
America and West Indies, Volumes 35,
37 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1936
1937).
 Guittard, Louis (fl. 1699
1700) 621

GUITTARD, LOUIS spite, to be revenged upon the master

of the ship, who had wronged him of 6
(fl. 1699
1700) or 700 crowns.’’ The pirates did indeed
surprise a fine 140-ton Dutch ship most
French pirate captured while making a
probably named the Vrede (Peace), 84
peacetime strike into Lynnhaven Bay,
feet long and 25 feet wide, which these
Virginia.
marauders converted into their flagship
He was apparently born in Brittany
and retained under its name of La
around 1667, but details about Guit-
Paix. Its Captain, Cornelis Issaak, was
tard’s early life remain sketchy. Even
set adrift in his longboat.
the exact spelling of his surname is
Guittard had thereupon steered to-
indeterminate, as he could neither read
ward Martinique with his prize, but
or write. It is believed that he must
when its main yard broke, reversed
have emigrated as a young adult to
course back toward the Spanish Main
Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti), as he
to effect repairs. He resupplied by ran-
later declared during his trial that he
sacking a Dutch brigantine, then
had lived on that island for almost
engaged a 12-gun Dutch ship, killing
20 years. He had most likely served as
two of its 32 crewmen before relieving
a privateer during King William’s War,
this latest victim of its best guns, as
and in the uneasy peace following
well as pressing seven skilled hands.
the cessation of those hostilities, was
Steering back toward Saint-Domingue,
residing at Pointe-a-Gravois on Saint-
they took another two crewmen from
Domingue’s remote southern coastline
a small sloop, and were apparently
when he took a canoe with a servant in
joined by a 6-gun, 80-man pirate sloop.
December 1699, to visit a friend some
With the onset of spring and La Paix’s
20 miles distant.
main armament now augmented to 28
While descending a little river,
guns, the 140 or so marauders ventured
though, Guittard’s canoe was spotted
north, ransacking a Bostonian sloop off
by a pirate sloop anchored offshore,
the Florida Keys before materializing
which sent a boat in pursuit. Taken
off the Atlantic Seaboard, accompanied
aboard, its crew had then allegedly
by their consort sloop and another prize.
cajoled him into serving as their Cap-
On April 17, 1700 (O.S.), this trio
tain. They increased their numbers by
sighted the 100-ton pink Baltimore out
rescuing castaways from two lost
of Bristol, sailing along 300 miles
French ships on a nearby island, then
short of Cape Henry under its Master
prowled east-southeastward into the
John Loveday, bound from Barbados
Lesser Antilles, where they relieved a
toward Virginia. Hoisting a Dutch flag,
small Dutch trading ship of its cargo
Guittard closed within hailing-distance
of linens and its surgeon. This latter
of this unsuspecting prey, before firing
individual informed his captors of an
a single gun into the pink, which killed
excellent ship recently departed from
a merchant passenger named James
Suriname to gather salt at Salt Tortuga
Waters and caused Baltimore to imme-
(Isla Tortuga, off northeastern Vene-
diately surrender. The pirates removed
zuela). Guittard testified that the cap-
Loveday and his crew, while Guittard
tive surgeon had told them this ‘‘in
sent across his quartermaster and 20
622 Guittard, Louis (fl. 1699
1700)
hands to man it as a second consort for
his flagship.
Five days later, the pirate quartet
intercepted the sloop George of Master
Joseph Forest, sailing in the opposite
direction from Pennsylvania toward
Jamaica. Its crew was imprisoned within
La Paix’s hold, while a fire was lit in
George’s cabin, a hole drilled in its
side, and the sloop left to sink. On the
morning of April 23, 1700 (O.S.),
about 30 leagues from the Virginia
Capes, Baltimore sighted the brigantine
Barbados Merchant of Liverpool,
whose Master William Fletcher later
testified how ‘‘between 50 or 60 men,
most French and Dutch and some Irish-
men . . . seized his ship, rifled her, and
barbarously used him.’’ Their captors
had flown into a fury after the brigan-
tine’s merchant sailors refused an offer
of joining their pirate ranks. Fletcher
was stripped and almost beaten to
death, while Barbados Merchant’s
masts, bowsprit, sails, and rigging were
all cut away to fall into the sea, its
helm disabled, compasses smashed,
even every candle stolen. Guittard’s
four vessels paraded past the crippled
ship to continue heading northeast as
evening fell, the pirates calling taunt-
ingly to the brutalized crew left
stranded aboard: ‘‘Why have you cut
away your masts?’’
La Paix left a light displayed for
Baltimore to follow it into the night,
but the consort pink had disappeared
by next morning, April 24, 1700
(O.S.). Nevertheless, La Paix and the
6-gun pirate sloop sighted a vessel
about 8:00 A.M., lolling some 20
leagues short of Cape Henry, almost
becalmed in the light winds. By after-
noon, a slight breeze sprang up and
Guittard’s flagship slowly began to
close, once more flying Dutch colors.
As the pirate vessel edged to gain
the windward gauge, though, Master
Samuel Harrison of the brigantine
Pennsylvania Merchant—bound from
England toward Philadelphia—at last
realized his danger, and steered north
in hopes of outrunning his pursuer. Yet
by evening, the pirates had closed
enough to call on Harrison to surren-
der, which he refused until next dawn,
when they loosed off a few volleys of
small-arms fire. Heaving to, a party
came aboard and began to ruthlessly
plunder the brigantine, and its Master
later declared: ‘‘Understanding they
designed to burn my ship, I begged
hard for her, but it was put to the vote
and carried for ye burning of her, and
burnt she was.’’ Its crew and 31 pas-
sengers, all stripped and robbed, were
interned within La Paix’s hold along
with the other captives.
Three days later, the Virginia mer-
chantman Indian King of Master
Edward Whitaker was spotted by Guit-
tard on the morning of Sunday, April
28, 1700 (O.S.), only three or four
leagues off Cape Henry, having just
exited Chesapeake Bay for London.
As usual, La Paix slowly drew close
under Dutch colors, until these were
suddenly hauled down and replaced
by a red pirate-flag. While Indian
King was being taken over by a prize-
crew, the French Captain asked what
English men-of-war were patrolling
inside Chesapeake Bay, and Whitaker
replied only the 16-gun Essex Prize.
Reassured, Guittard then fired on and
seized the outward-bound Friendship
of Belfast, killing its Master, before
steering Paix into Lynnhaven Bay
along with his two prizes and consort
sloop. Unbeknownst to him, though,
 Guittard, Louis (fl. 1699
1700) 623

HEYMAN’S FORGOTTEN GRAVE

One of the fatalities suffered during the protracted ship-duel fought out in Lynnhaven
Bay that windy Monday, April 29, 1700 (O.S.), between HMS Shoreham and Guit-
tard’s pirate flagship La Paix, was a volunteer: the local Collector of Customs and
Deputy Postmaster for Virginia, Peter Heyman. A seaman serving aboard the Royal
Navy frigate, Joseph Mann, later testified how he had stood ‘‘within a foot’’ of Hey-
man during this fighting, and witnessed him fire ‘‘several shots into the pirates’ ship.’’
However, sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 P.M., Heyman toppled back, dead
from a pirate round. Governor Francis Nicholson, who stood on the far side of Hey-
man during this battle, later commissioned a large stone slab to cover his grave in the
Third Elizabeth City Parish yard. Its inscription read:

This Stone was Given by His Excellency Francis Nicholson, Esq., Lieutenant and Gov-
ernor General of Virginia, in Memory of Peter Heyman, Esq., Grandson to Sir Peter
Heyman of Summerfield in ye County of Kent—he was Collector of ye customes in ye
lower district of James River and went voluntarily on board the King’s Ship Shore-
ham, in Pursuit of a pyrate who greatly infested this coast—after he had behaved him-
self 7 hours with undaunted courage, was killed with a small shot, ye 29 day of April
1700. In the engagement he stood next the Governor upon the Quarterdeck, and
was here honorably interred by his order.

The church no longer remains and the faded, shattered slab—now more than three
centuries old—lies neglected in a field along West Pembroke Avenue in downtown
Hampton.

the 28-gun, 115-man frigate HMS
Shoreham of Captain William Passen-
ger had just arrived off Hampton
15 days previously, to take up station
as the new guardship within Chesa-
peake Bay (see sidebar). Early that
same Sunday afternoon, Guittard bore
down on the vessels anchored inside
Lynnhaven Bay, steering straight for
the Nicholson of Master Robert Lurt-
ing, who hailed this approaching
stranger with: ‘‘Whence come ye?’’
‘‘Out of the sea, you dogs!’’ was
the reply, followed by a volley of
small shot. Lurting slipped his cable
and got under way, managing to avoid
La Paix for a couple of hours in the
faint breezes, until Nicholson’s main-
yard and top-sail were finally toppled
by pirate salvoes. As evening fell,
Guittard’s flotilla dropped anchor
to pillage all its prizes at leisure,
while at the same time enjoying a
drunken spree. Lurting’s fully-loaded
merchantman had ‘‘about 100 hogs-
heads of tobacco, besides bulk tobacco,
clothing, and several materials of the
ship’’ wantonly thrown overboard dur-
ing this rampage.
Unnoticed amid that Sunday after-
noon’s confusion, though, a tiny vessel
had sped away toward Hampton to
warn the authorities. As a result, shortly
after 3:00 P.M. on that same day,
624 Guittard, Louis (fl. 1699
1700)
Governor Francis Nicholson and Cap-
tain Passenger were informed while vis-
iting at Kecoughtan; the naval officer
immediately hastened aboard his Shore-
ham, leaving a small boat for the Gov-
ernor to follow. Nicholson meanwhile
dashed off a general circular ordering a
muster of every militia company, add-
ing as a further incentive for the Virgin-
ian volunteers, the following clause:
And I do hereby promise to any per-
son or persons who shall take or kill
any Pyrate that shall belong to either
of these three or four ships or vessels
now in Lynnhaven Bay, a reward of
twenty pound sterling for each pyrate
that they shall either take or kill.
Hampered by contrary winds, Captain
Passenger slowly worked his frigate
through the dark waters of the James
River, to circle around the sandy shoal
known as The Horseshoe, north of Old
Point Comfort. The Governor overtook
Shoreham around 10:00 P.M., coming
aboard along with Captain John Aldred
of Essex Prize and Peter Heyman, col-
lector of customs for the district. After
anchoring overnight, Passenger weighed
at 3:00 A.M. on April 29, 1700 (O.S.), to
resume his advance as the land-breeze
gradually grew. One hour later, the
Royal Navy Captain:
. . . came within half a mile of the
pirate. He got under sail, with a design
to get to windward and board us, and
said: ‘‘This is but a small fellow, we
shall have him presently.’’ I guessed
his intention and kept to windward,
fires one shot at him; he immediately
hoists a Jack ensign, with a broad
pendent all red, and returned me
thanks [i.e., hoisted his red pirate-flag
and replied with his own guns]. So
then the dispute began and continued
till three in the afternoon, the major
part of which time within pistol-shot of
one another. It was a fine top-gallant
gale of wind, and I sailing something
better than the pirate, so that he could
not get the wind of me to lay me on
board, which was his design. After we
had shot all his masts and rigging to
shatters, unmounted several guns, and
hull almost beaten to pieces, and being
very near the shore, he put his helm a-
lee, so the ship came about; but he hav-
ing no braces, bowlines, nor sheets to
haul his sails about, and we playing
small shot and partridge so fast that all
his men run into the hold, so the ship
drove on shore with all her shattered
sails aback. I let go my anchor in three
fathoms of water, so he struck his en-
sign. I left off firing.
Guittard had been surprised by Shore-
ham’s unexpected charge, initially mis-
taking the onrushing ship for another
merchantman, rather than a man-of-war.
Only 20 of La Paix’s guns were mounted,
the other eight lying stowed in its hold,
while his drink-sodden crew reacted
sluggishly to this abrupt challenge. Pas-
senger had then battered his opponent
into submission over several hours, kill-
ing approximately two-dozen pirates.
But the desperate survivors retreated
below decks and threatened to ignite
thirty barrels of powder in La Paix’s
magazine, dying along with their fifty
or so English captives. The latter
pleaded for an offer of surrender to be
made, so that a prisoner named John
Limpany was selected to swim over to
Shoreham, the French Captain instruct-
ing him to: ‘‘Tell the commander-
in-chief, if he will not give me and my

men quarter and pardon, I will blow the
ship up and we will all die together.’’
Upon receiving this message, Governor
Nicholson quickly wrote back:
Whereas Captain Lewis, commander
of the Lay Paste [sic], has proffered to
surrender himself, men and ship,
together with what effects thereunto
belong, provided he may have quar-
ter, which I grant him on performance
of same, and refer him and his men to
the mercy of my royal master King
William III, whom God preserve.
Guittard and some 118 pirates conse-
quently gave up, two others being found
sleeping off their drunkenness aboard
one of the prizes, while a third had swum
ashore and was seized by onlookers.
Eight later died of their wounds in jail,
before the remaining 111 were sent
to England that June 1700 aboard the
annual tobacco-convoy, to stand trial.
Guittard and 23 of his men were hanged
Guittard, Louis (fl. 1699
1700) 625
on the outskirts of London that same
November.
See also
Partridge; Salt Tortuga.
References
Bruce, Philip A., Institutional History of
Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An
Inquiry in (New York: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1910).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 18
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1910).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Middleton, Arthur P., Tobacco Coast: A
Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in
the Colonial Era (Newport News, VA:
Mariners’ Museum, 1953).
 H

. . . everyone doeth what is right in his own eyes,

and the greatest vice walks barefaced with impunity.
—From a letter by Colonel William Rhett,
South Carolina, July 1718

HALF-WAY TREE HAMILTON, LORD

A crossroads in Jamaica, located well
to the northwest of Kingston in Saint
Andrew’s Parish during the early 18th
century, yet today engulfed by the
modern urban sprawl of the capital.
According to legend, its unusual
name derived from an ancient cotton-
wood tree, which for many years
stood at the junction of four roads. It
became customary for British troops
during their regular rotations between
Port Royal and the inland capital of
Spanish Town to be allowed to rest at
this shady spot, during their marches
back and forth across that warm
expanse. Written historical references
to ‘‘Half-Way Tree’’ exist from as
early as 1696.
ARCHIBALD
(fl. 1715
1716)
Governor of Jamaica who was recalled
for issuing anti-piracy commissions
with too free a hand, thus unwittingly
fueling an upsurge in that very activity.
His father, the Scottish nobleman
William Douglas, had received the title
of Earl of Selkirk at the age of 11 in
August 1646 and a decade later—amid
the chaos left by the recently concluded
English Civil War—had married the
destitute Anne, Duchess of Hamilton,
whose family estates had been declared
forfeit by Oliver Cromwell as he
emerged triumphant from that revolu-
tionary upheaval. Selkirk himself had

627
628 Hamilton, Lord Archibald (fl. 1715
1716)

Eighteenth-century map of Port Royal and Kingston, by Richard Jones; Port Royal was
located at the westernmost tip of this land-spit, well-situated against any attack. (Browne,
Patrick. The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica, 1756)

also been fined £1,000 when those hos-
tilities had ceased, yet after negotiating
with the new Protectorate in London,
had succeeded in getting the Hamilton
lands restored by 1657. Selkirk had then
legally changed his name to William
Douglas-Hamilton and taken the title of
Duke of Hamilton as of September
1660, so that all his children would bear
the Hamilton surname.
The eleventh and final child—and
seventh son—born into this marriage,
would be baptized as Archibald on Feb-
ruary 17, 1673 (O.S.), presumably within
a few days of his birth. He grew up amid
great privilege, being tutored at Glasgow
University until the age of 11, then en-
rolled into the peacetime Royal Navy
four years afterward. Because other offi-
cers bore this same name, though, he
would become most commonly known
as ‘‘Lord Archibald Hamilton,’’ an
unusual form of address. And his father,
despite having been favored by James II,
would forsake the Stuart King during the
winter of 1688
1689 in favor of the
Protestant challengers William and
Mary, so that he was rewarded with
numerous new offices once their ‘‘Glori-
ous Revolution’’ succeeded in driving
James from the throne and into exile.
Naval Career (1690
1705)
To see active duty once war erupted
officially against France that same
spring, the 17-year-old Archibald vol-
unteered as a staff member to Colonel
James Kendall, who was being sent
out to Barbados to help conduct re-
gional operations as its new island
Governor. They sailed from Plymouth
aboard Commodore Lawrence Wright’s
54-gun flagship HMS Mary, along with
 Hamilton, Lord Archibald (fl. 1715
1716)
another dozen warships, escorting a
56-ship convoy. Within a month of
limping into Carlisle Bay on May 11,
1690 (O.S.), young Hamilton was
being read into Mary’s books as its
most junior Lieutenant, because of
losses sustained during its storm-tossed
passage and outbreaks of disease on
gaining the Antilles.
When Lieutenant-General Sir Chris-
topher Codrington, Governor-General of
the Leeward Islands at Antigua, subse-
quently decided to mount a large expe-
dition to recuperate St. Kitts from
French occupation that same July 1690,
Hamilton served ashore as his aide-de-
camp during this successful reconquest.
At its conclusion, he retired aboard
Wright’s Mary and the rest of the Royal
Navy fleet to Barbados that August
to ride out the hurricane season, and
prepare for their return homeward. Trad-
ers and planters openly complained
about this inactivity, which allowed
French reinforcements to reach Marti-
nique uncontested early next year, so
that a second English offensive had to
be organized.
Still only 18 years old, Hamilton was
by now such a seasoned West Indian
officer that he was appointed as second-
in-command under Captain Richard
Kirkby of a landing-force of 400
Marines and seamen, with the tempo-
rary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. After
weighing and probing down the western
shores of Guadeloupe, Codrington threw
this vanguard ashore on the morning of
April 21, 1691 (O.S.), in a small unde-
fended bay near Anse a la Barque. The
vigorous and dashing Hamilton came
ashore with its very first wave, and was
conspicuous for his bravery during the
ensuing English advance across the
island. Although Guadeloupe’s defend-
ers reeled back through their capital
without a fight and into their main
629
stronghold of Fort Saint-Charles, Codring-
ton and Wright could then not subdue
it, and soon the English sick-lists began
to grow amid heavy tropical downpours.
When the French Commodore Jean-
Baptiste Ducasse appeared offshore with
a relief-force on May 13, 1691 (O.S.), the
demoralized invaders lifted their siege
and quit Guadeloupe two days later.
Wright reappeared off Barbados
with only five warships and five trans-
ports by May 30, 1691 (O.S.), being
too ill to step ashore, so that he dele-
gated the teenaged Hamilton to deliver
the news of this failure to Governor
Kendall. Yet all the senior English
commanders in this theater singled out
the young Scottish officer for praise, Ken-
dall writing to the Lords of Trade and
Plantations in London a month afterward:
I should not do justice to Lord
Archibald Hamilton, youngest son to
the Duke of that same name, if I did
not assure you that he has shown
more prudence and conduct than
perhaps was ever seen in so young a
gentleman, and as much bravery as
any man living.
Codrington echoed these sentiments,
when he too wrote from Antigua:
Let me mention that Lord Archibald
Hamilton has shown great zeal, and
gained honor and esteem, both in
fleet and army. He served as my
aide-de-camp at St. Christopher’s
and as Lieutenant-Colonel of the
Marines at Guadeloupe, in which
services he was as much exposed as
any private sentinel, and showed a re-
solution becoming to his quality, and
a discretion far beyond his years.
Wright having already sailed for England,
Hamilton followed that same July 1691
630 Hamilton, Lord Archibald (fl. 1715
1716)
as senior Lieutenant aboard the 42-gun,
210-man HMS Tiger Prize, escorting a
homeward-bound merchant convoy.
He returned to a proud reception
from his family, even sitting to have
his portrait painted next year by the
famed Sir Godfrey Kneller, and being
promoted to First Lieutenant of Scot-
tish Rear Admiral David Mitchell’s
Duke early in 1693—aided by the fact
that Hamilton’s very influential father
had also been elevated in 1692 to the
offices of High Admiral and High
Commissioner of Scotland, in addition
to his many other titles, and became
Extraordinary Lord of Session that fol-
lowing year. But the 59-year-old Duke
was suddenly felled by a stroke and
died in Edinburgh on April 18, 1694
(O.S.), leaving his eldest surviving son
James to inherit the title as 4th Duke
of Hamilton.
Portrait of the nineteen-year-old Lord
Archibald Hamilton, as painted in 1692 by
Sir Godfrey Kneller. (Lennoxlove House)
Resuming his Royal Navy duties, the
21-year-old Archibald was promoted to
Captain of the 32-gun HMS Sheerness
on September 17, 1694 (O.S.), before
being entrusted that following summer
with the brand-new HMS Litchfield of
48 guns, which had just been launched
in February 1695 from the Portsmouth
yards. He used it to pursue enemy pri-
vateers off the coast of France that
autumn, seizing the 24-gun Tigre of
Saint-Malo in January 1696, then took
five prizes from a 60-ship convoy near
Cherbourg that same April. When King
William’s War finally ended in the
autumn of 1697, Hamilton was in com-
mand of the 70-gun, 450-man HMS
Berwick, and had managed to thwart a
malicious prosecution that same May
over prize-goods filed by some disgrun-
tled former crew-members. Two years
later, the young nobleman would be
granted an annual pension of £200 by
the English Crown, yet because of fi-
nancial irregularities at the Treasury,
this stipend was never paid.
When hostilities with France threat-
ened to resume in the spring of 1701,
Hamilton prepared to return to active
duty as Captain of the 80-gun HMS
Boyne, only to be disappointed at the
last minute. His brother George, Earl
of Orkney, reported that May how
Archibald ‘‘was in spleen to a great
degree’’ because just as he was about
to sail as part of Admiral Sir George
Rooke’s fleet, he had been ordered
to relinquish command of Boyne in
favor of John Cranby, having already
spent some £400 equipping that vessel.
Although Lord Archibald would remain
with Rooke’s fleet throughout that
summer of 1701, he missed the start of
hostilities and its famous victory at
Vigo Bay in October 1702, and was
 Hamilton, Lord Archibald (fl. 1715
1716)
not given the 70-gun, 1,100-ton HMS
Eagle until March 1703, after it had
returned home and its Captain Sir
James Wishart had been promoted into
the Channel fleet.
Hamilton sailed with his new com-
mand that same spring of 1703, as part
of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s
squadron, bound into the Mediterra-
nean. A year later, Eagle returned into
those waters as part of Admiral
Rooke’s fleet, so as to transport the
Habsburg claimant to the Spanish
throne, Archduke Charles of Austria,
with his army into Lisbon. On arriving
there safely on March 6, 1704, the
Archduke personally rewarded Lord
Archibald with a portrait clustered with
diamonds, and a purse holding 100
guineas. After a couple more patrols,
Rooke’s fleet weighed on April 27,
1704 (O.S.), to vainly attack Barcelona
three weeks later, then sailed on to
relieve Nice. Having shadowed the
movements of a large French fleet
operating out of Toulon for several
weeks, Rooke decided in mid-July to
secure the strategic Spanish town of
Gibraltar as a base. Needing to find a
harbor first to water his fleet, Hamil-
ton’s Eagle and HMS Hampton Court
fought their way past the guard-tower
into Altea Bay, then helped batter the
besieged town of Gibraltar into surren-
der by August 4, 1704.
When Rooke learned 18 days after-
ward that the 50-ship Toulon fleet of
Admiral Louis Alexandre de Bourbon,
Comte de Toulouse, was approaching,
he gathered his own 51 warships and
met this challenger off M
alaga on Au-
gust 24, 1704. Hamilton’s Eagle was
in the thick of this fight, suffering
65 casualties among its 440 crewmen;
however, because his ammunition stocks
631
were already so low, he endured the
shame of having his broadsides fall
silent, and so was towed out of the bat-
tle-line two hours before nightfall. The
entire engagement having ended incon-
clusively, much to England’s vexation,
he was one of five Captains court-
martialed in January 1705. Although
exonerated, their acquittals were so grudg-
ingly written that Hamilton’s Royal Navy
career seemed effectively over.
Political Beginnings
(1707
1710)
Lord Archibald would spend the next
three years trying to clear his name,
and obtain a new command. Recogniz-
ing that prospects were dim, the
34-year-old unemployed Captain began
spending considerable sums during the
summer of 1707 in the English bor-
ough of Great Marlow, hoping to be
elected as its Member of Parliament in
the forthcoming elections. Although
beaten, he was promised promotion in
January 1708 to Rear Admiral in the
Royal Navy. However, realizing that
the junior Captain James Berkeley,
Lord Dursley, would pass over him in
seniority if he should accept, Hamilton
proudly refused. He also complained
to Queen Anne at this same time that
his annual pension, which had been
increased to £300, had never once been
paid.
Consequently, Lord Archibald accepted
the opening to run for the Scottish seat
of Lanatkshire in 1708. Despite his
Whig leanings attributable to a staunch
Presbyterianism imbued by his formi-
dable mother, the Duchess Anne, his
family name overcame the Episcopa-
lian Tory sentiments of most voters,
632 Hamilton, Lord Archibald (fl. 1715
1716)
so that he won election to the House
of Commons. Hamilton supported most
policies of the emerging Whig govern-
ment party throughout that tumultuous
session, at least partly in hopes of
regaining favor at court, for privately
he lamented that he was in:
. . . greater straits than ever I was in
my life. I have now been a consider-
able time without any employment,
and the best I ever had was but
barely bread for that present, so that
nothing being possible to be saved
out of it. I am altogether at a loss
how to support myself here, without
reparation from the government.
He was further saddened by the death
of his wife Anne in 1709. Eventually,
his loyalty was rewarded when—with
powerful political backing from John
Churchill, Duke of Marlborough—Lord
Archibald was proposed in May 1710 as
the new Governor for Jamaica. This
plum posting, ‘‘with a salary of £2,500
Jamaica money,’’ plus numerous other
possibilities for enrichment through fees
and privileges, made it ‘‘the best the
Queen has, excepting that of Ireland.’’
Governor of Jamaica
(1711
1716)
However, when Hamilton reached that
island aboard HMS Defiance on July
11, 1711 (O.S.), he was concerned by
its debilitated economic condition.
Although funds were available for his
departing predecessor, Major-General
Thomas Handasyde, Lord Archibald
privately expressed the fear that ‘‘there
is not any money to pay me.’’ He soon
experienced frictions with the local
Assembly as well, whose membership
of planters and traders held very differ-
ent priorities, especially with regard to
raising taxes for the war-effort. Rela-
tions quickly turned cantankerous, as
the imperious Scot tried to secure fi-
nancing for his administration from
this land-owning elite.
Hostilities ceased in Europe as of
April 1713, and when the Stuart Queen
Anne died childless 16 months
later and was succeeded by the new
Hanoverian monarch George I, Hamil-
ton retained his office. Both he and his
older brother, the Earl of Orkney—the
absentee Governor for Virginia—had
their commissions renewed that same
December 1714, with Lord Archibald’s
even being increased in strength by the
Council of Trade and Plantations in
London, so as to better deal with the
difficult Jamaican Assembly. He even
delayed convening the newly-elected
membership of that body for 10 months,
until his expanded powers had arrived.
Early the next year, reports also
began reaching Jamaica of piracies being
committed by lawless privateers who
had drifted into the sparsely-populated,
ungoverned Bahamas Islands, inciting
retaliatory sorties by Cuban corsairs. A
few complaints soon began to reach
Madrid and London, threatening the
slow revival of maritime traffic through-
out the West Indies, which was greatly
desired by both Crowns and merchant
interests, after a dozen years of naval
blockades. Hamilton was incensed when
he finally convened the long-deferred
Assembly in early November 1715, only
to have its members present him with a
long list of pent-up demands. Rather
than agree to any so as to get his budget
approved, the Governor rebuffed all such
proposals out of hand.
 Hamilton, Lord Archibald (fl. 1715
1716)
Yet his position became further
complicated when reports were received
that a Jacobite rebellion had erupted
in Scotland two months previously,
with the aim of supplanting George on
the throne with the exiled Stuart pre-
tender. Despite publicly proclaiming his
loyalty as a Whig to the Hanoverian
monarch, a wave of anti-Scottish senti-
ment emboldened the Jamaican Assem-
bly, as kinsmen within his own extended
Hamilton family were known to be among
the rebellion’s leadership. The session
of November 14, 1715 (O.S.), ended with
the members voting to send a petition of
their grievances directly to King George,
bypassing the Governor.
Jamaica’s finances meanwhile re-
mained stalled, though, so that in order to
secure some funds, Lord Hamilton turned
to his prerogative of issuing privateering
commissions. In addition to the need for
battling pirates, news had also been
received of the wreck of an entire Spanish
plate fleet on the eastern shores of Florida
that summer, leaving a dozen immensely-
rich galleons strewn temptingly as a lure
for scavengers and lawless elements. Both
Henry Jennings and John Wills therefore
received permits a week later, on Novem-
ber 21, 1715 (O.S.), and exited Port Royal
for those troubled waters, soon to be fol-
lowed by a half-dozen other hard-bitten
commanders. Realizing that such sorties
represented the potential for considerable
personal profit as well, Hamilton pur-
chased private shares in several of these
vessels.
Unfortunately, once over the hori-
zon, these licensed rovers acted arbitra-
rily, seizing any and all vessels which
crossed their path under a variety of
pretexts. The Governor and Assembly
meanwhile remained bitterly at odds,
he reproving them in January 1716 for
633
their ‘‘peevish and fruitless inquiries,’’
to which they defiantly retorted that
‘‘the island has been ill-treated by His
Excellency,’’ so that loyalty to the
Crown had induced them not to vote
‘‘any further sum of money, while His
Lordship continued in the govern-
ment.’’ Their grievances were instead
forwarded to London for resolution
next month, and while the Crown min-
isters were initially inclined to support
Hamilton—because of their concern
over a growing volume of demands
being received from all overseas colonies
—this was offset by the many addi-
tional complaints being submitted by
neutral Spaniards about the depreda-
tions perpetrated by heavy-handed
Jamaican privateers. (The royal minis-
ters’ decision may also have been
swayed by the fact that Lord Archi-
bald’s 18-year-old nephew, Basil Ham-
ilton, son of the Governor’s next older,
predeceased brother of that same name,
was among the rebel officers taken
prisoner at the Battle of Preston in
mid-November 1715, and condemned
to death for treason.)
As a result, Britain’s Secretary of
State James Stanhope instructed the
Board of Trade and Plantations on
May 19, 1716 (O.S.), to remove Ham-
ilton from office, and temporarily
replace him with the Jamaican planter,
Colonel Peter Heywood. This order
went on to add that:
. . . there having been several abuses
committed of late under the covert
of [privateering] commissions granted
by the said Lord Archibald Hamilton,
to the prejudice of the treaties
between this Crown and that of
Spain, the said Peter Heywood and
the Council [of Jamaica] are to be
634 Hamilton, Lord Archibald (fl. 1715
1716)
instructed to make strict inquiry into
such commissions, and into all abuses,
piracies, and robberies committed of
late upon the Spaniards in the Gulf of
Florida or elsewhere, and to seize all
persons they shall find guilty, and
send them over hither with their
effects and such evidence as may be
proper to convict them according to
law; and they are to be instructed to
inquire into the conduct of the said
Governor in this matter, and if they
find that he has been concerned in
these unjustifiable practices, they are
to take care that he be put under
arrest, and his effects seized and sent
over with him by the first ship that
shall come from that island.
A vigorous prosecution was begun once
this order reached Port Royal.
Later Career (1717
1754)
To revive the family fortunes, Lord
Archibald successfully ran in a Lanark-
shire by-election in December 1718,
thereby reestablishing the Hamiltons’
political influence in southwestern
Scotland. He also married the elderly
widow Anne Hamilton on December
17, 1718 (O.S.), whose endowment
rather curiously insisted that she not
remarry to anyone ‘‘except one of the
name of Hamilton.’’ This lucrative
match, described by the writer Jona-
than Swift as the best in Ireland, left
Lord Archibald well off when she died
three months afterward. He then
quickly married Lady Jane Hamilton
on September 29, 1719 (O.S.), by
whom he would have six children—the
last being Sir William Hamilton, later
to become a great friend and patron of
Horatio Nelson.
Lord Archibald retained his Lanark-
shire seat in 1722, despite local resent-
ment against his recent failures to
support Scottish linen interests before
Parliament. His reelection was due to
his 19-year-old nephew James, the
5th Duke of Hamilton, who supported
the candidacy of his Hanoverian Whig
uncle, despite himself being a pro-
Jacobite Tory. Lord Archibald was
then further rewarded for his loyalty
to the British government with an
appointment as a Lord of the Admi-
ralty in 1729, and six years later his
wife Lady Jane became the mistress of
George, Prince of Wales. Hamilton
would remain in various sinecure posi-
tions until his death in April 1754.
See also
Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste; Fernando, Francis;
Jennings, Henry.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 13,
25, 28
30 (London: His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1901
1930).
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic:
William and Mary, 1694
96, and
William III, 1697 (London: His
Majesty’s Stationery Office,
1906
1913).
Calendar of Treasury Books, Volumes
20
21: 1705
1707 (London: Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1952).
Cruickshanks, E., et al. The House of
Commons, 1690
1715, Vol. 1
(Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Marshall, Rosalind K., The Days of
Duchess Anne: Life in the Household of
the Duchess of Hamilton, 1656
1716
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973).

HARISMENDY, LOUIS DE
(fl. 1690
1694)
French privateer who campaigned in
Canada during King William’s War.
Harismendy was born in 1645, in
the seaside town of Bidart, southwest
of Biarritz on the Bay of Biscay, very
near to the border with Spain. Little
is known about his early career, except
that he evidently took to the sea at
a young age. His difficult Basque
surname would be often misspelled
throughout his lifetime by French scribes.
By the time hostilities between France
and The Netherlands erupted in late No-
vember 1688, Harismendy was already a
seasoned 33-year-old merchant captain.
He secured a privateering commission on
December 26th of that same year, from
the Admiralty of Guyenne offices at
Versailles, to cruise against the Dutch
with the 76-man, 180-ton ship Dissim-
ul

ee. Evidently, he was to be seconded
in these efforts by his fellow Basque,
Johannis de Mons
egur, aboard the
67-man Entreprenant.
Fifteen months later, after Spain and
England had also joined into the ‘‘Grand
Alliance’’ fighting against France, Haris-
mendy obtained a second privateering
commission on March 27, 1690—this
time to brave the Royal Navy’s Atlantic
blockade by running out of Bordeaux
and La Rochelle that same July with his
20-gun, 43-man Glorieux, to carry sup-
plies across the ocean to beleaguered
Quebec City. Harismendy’s ship and
two other consort-vessels managed to
gain the Saint Lawrence Seaway by late
October 1690, shouldering their way
through snowy gales and hiding up the
Saguenay River, until the New England
siege-force of Gov. Sir William Phips
Harismendy, Louis De (fl. 1690
1694) 635
had retreated back past them, out into
the Atlantic.
After spending the winter of
1690
1691 in Canada, Harismendy
seems to have sailed Glorieux home to
France next spring, and operated in Eu-
ropean waters as a privateer during
1691 to 1692. He is known to have
brought in the Dutch ship Hoop as a
prize in May 1692, followed the next
month by the Two Brothers of Riga.
Major defeats suffered by France’s reg-
ular Navy during these same months,
though, prompted the Crown to alter
its naval strategy—away from set-piece
battles, in which its main battle-fleets
were clearly overmatched by the Eng-
lish and Dutch, to instead opt for
swift squadron-sorties and commerce
raids. And to better conduct such inde-
pendent forays, skilled private captains
were moreover to be admitted into the
French Navy’s command ranks, tradi-
tionally the preserve of its nobility.
(Such low-born, unpaid, temporary
wartime appointees were to become
known as officiers bleus or ‘‘blue offi-
cers,’’ as opposed to the ‘‘red’’ regular
officers.)
Harismendy was therefore approved
for such a ‘‘blue’’ appointment that
same November 1692, and on Decem-
ber 10th was given his first task: com-
missioning the brand-new, 36-gun,
300-ton royal frigate Aigle, recently
launched at the Bayonne yards by the
master shipwright F
elicien Arnaud.
Along with its sister-ship Favori, plus
the equally new 50-gun, 500-ton flag-
ship P
elican of Commodore Antoine
d’Arcy de La Varenne, the Crown
decided to send this trio on a surprise
strike the next spring against the lucra-
tive Dutch whaling-station of Spitsber-
gen at the Arctic Circle. The exuberant
636 Harismendy, Louis De (fl. 1690
1694)
young Basque privateer Joannes de
Subigaray Chipi—more commonly known
as ‘‘Coursic’’—was appointed to com-
mand Aigle, while Harismendy took
over Favori. The 44-gun, 500-ton pri-
vateer Prudent of Captain Jacques Gouin
de Beauchesne of Saint-Malo completed
this four-vessel squadron.
Spitsbergen Foray (1693)
La Varenne’s quartet of warships departed
Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the morning of
June 30, 1693, and after a month of
steadily sailing due northward, sighted
Svalbard Island. The French flagship
dropped anchor in its South Bay,
while La Varenne’s three consorts
chased after scattering Dutch whalers.
Harismendy returned with three prizes,
and Coursic two, before both were
allowed to circle around to the north-
ern tip of the island, in search of the
main Dutch anchorage. At dawn of
August 6, 1693, Aigle and Favori
pushed through the ice-floes outside
Treurenburg Bay, to find 40 Dutch
ships anchored inside, in a defensive
crescent. The French sent in a launch
calling on the tough whalers to surren-
der, and when this was refused, fight-
ing erupted shortly after 8:00 A.M.
After five hours of furious broad-
sides, during which each French frigate
expended almost 1,600 rounds, the
Dutch began to use their longboats to
escape, warping their ships out of the
bay. The triumphant Coursic and Har-
ismendy were left with 13 prizes, of
which two were so badly damaged that
they had to be burnt. After repairing
their own warships, the two French
commanders set sail with their 11
remaining prizes on the evening of Au-
gust 7, 1693, rejoining the flagship
P
elican and Prudent two days later in
South Bay. A total of 26 prizes were
assembled there, of which 15 were
scuttled. Coursic was assigned six of
the remainder and Harismendy five,
weighing anchor by August 14th to
escort them home into Bayonne.
P
elican and Prudent meanwhile split
off to cruise down the British coastline,
snapping up a West Indian convoy that
they chanced to meet off Cape Clear.
Harismendy regained Bayonne with
his five prizes by September 9, 1693, to
a hero’s welcome. Sixteen days later,
Louis XIV personally wrote to the re-
gional Gov. Charles-Antoine, Duc de
Gramont, to say that he ‘‘was very
pleased’’ with what had been accom-
plished during this foray, and assuring
his officers ‘‘that he will remember this
on a future occasion.’’ On September
27th, the 48-year-old Harismendy—now
rich and famous—was able to marry
26-year-old Marie de Lafourcade in
Bayonne’s Notre Dame Church. As the
campaigning season was winding down
with the onset of winter, a sudden pri-
vateering sally also had to be made
from Bayonne under Subigaray, who
weighed on November 21, 1693, with
Aigle, Favori, Entreprenant, and Jolie
to chase away some enemy raiders
prowling off the coast of Gascony.
Disappointment at
Newfoundland (1694)
After celebrating over that winter of
1693
1694, a new expedition was pre-
pared next April to visit a similar treat-
ment on the English fisheries of the
Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Once
again, Harismendy was reaffirmed in
command of the Favori by April 26,
1694, to sail together with Coursic’s

Aigle and Gouin de Beauchesne’s Pru-
dent, this time across the North Atlan-
tic toward Canada under the leadership
of Commodore Pierre Vidard, Seigneur
de Saint-Clair, aboard his new 54-gun,
850-ton flagship Gaillard. Funding
for the flagship’s operation was to be
furnished by the Crown, yet the rest of
this enterprise was underwritten by pri-
vate investors—the Commodore himself
contributing 1,000 e
cus. All four war-
ships departed Bayonne on May 26,
1694, pausing at La Rochelle, before
striking out into the open Atlantic.
Despite successfully reaching Plais-
ance (modern Placentia) Bay in New-
foundland, this expedition ended badly.
Temporarily detached from Saint-Clair’s
main force, under the command of the
‘‘red’’ naval Captain Duvignau, Cour-
sic’s Aigle and Harismendy’s Favori,
as well as Beauchesne’s Prudent,
circled around southern Newfoundland
and attempted to penetrate the harbor
at Forillon or Ferryland on September
10, 1694, against stout opposition from
Captain William Holman with his
16-gun letter-of-marque ship William
and Mary; plus four shore-batteries
mounting 30 guns; all the local English
inhabitants that could be mustered, as
well as crews from eight or nine
other anchored vessels. Duvignau aboard
Aigle ordered Coursic to fight his way
inside, irregardless of the odds, but
the frigate ran aground at the channel’s
narrowest point and Subigaray fell
mortally wounded, at which some of
his Basque officers and crewmen appa-
rently panicked and launched a boat to
row across to Harismendy’s Favori,
which had veered around as it could not
find a way around the blocked entry.
Aigle was refloated with difficulty
under enemy fire, and managed to stagger
Harismendy, Louis De (fl. 1690
1694) 637
back out of Ferryland Bay after being
riddled for eight hours, at which point
Harismendy took it under tow and all
three French vessels limped back to
rejoin Saint-Clair at the Placentia anchor-
age by September 15, 1694. Heated
recriminations ensued, Duvignau—guilty
because his commands had resulted in
this bloody fiasco—immediately ordering
one of Aigle’s surviving ‘‘blue’’ Basque
ensigns arrested for desertion, while lodg-
ing formal charges against several others
now aboard Favori, and even threatening
to do the same against Harismendy him-
self, for harboring these men. The
accused in turn angrily denied these
charges, alleging that they had merely
launched the boat so as to obtain the nec-
essary equipment from Favori to help
refloat the grounded Aigle.
It was a disappointed and quarrel-
some quartet of warships which quit
Placentia Bay on October 15, 1694,
to escort a 34-ship merchant convoy
homeward to France. Bad weather
struck two days later out in the Atlantic,
and Harismendy’s Favori became sepa-
rated by October 24th. Evidently con-
vinced that the Basques accused of
desertion who were still aboard his frig-
ate stood no chance of being cleared at
a trial presided over by senior ‘‘red’’
officers, Harismendy drifted toward
North America and set them free. Their
boat reached Falmouth in Buzzard’s
Bay, south of Cape Cod, where they
were safely interned for the remainder
of this conflict as prisoners-of-war.
Meanwhile, Saint-Clair’s initial dis-
patches had reached France, trying to
explain his expedition’s failure and his
own lack of active participation in
the Ferryland attack by blaming the
Governor of Placentia, Jacques-François
de Montebon de Brouillan. Duvignau
638 Hawkins, Thomas (fl. 1689
1690)
regained Bayonne with Aigle by
November 16, 1694, publicly filing
charges against various Basque ‘‘blue’’
officers. Prudent arrived four days later,
followed lastly by Harismendy’s Favori
on December 7th. Eight days afterward,
France’s displeased Minister of Marine,
Louis de Ph
elypeaux, Comte de Pontch-
artrain, wrote to request all the paper-
work regarding these numerous charges
and counter-charges. Needless to say,
the naval careers of Harismendy and
many others were at an end.
See also
Blue Officers; Holman, William; Phips, Sir
William; Subigaray ‘‘Chipi,’’ Joannes
de.
References
Henrat, Philippe. ‘‘French Naval Operations
in Spitsbergen during Louis XIV’s
Reign.’’ Artic 37, No. 4 (December
1984), pp. 544
551.
Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. The Jesuit
Relations and Allied Documents,
Volume 64 (Cleveland, OH: Burrows
Bros, 1900).
HAWKINS, THOMAS
(fl. 1689
1690)
Born in Boston, he turned pirate and
cruised with Captain Thomas Pound
off the coast of New England in 1689,
burning and plundering its shipping.
The Bay Colony that October sent
out the armed sloop Mary under com-
mander Samuel Pease, to attempt to
capture Hawkins. Pease found the pirate
in Buzzard’s Bay, where his opponent
ran up the red flag and a furious
engagement began. The crew of the
Mary at last boarded the pirates, but
Captain Pease was so severely
wounded, that he died. Hawkins was
subsequently tried for piracy at Boston
in 1690, but reprieved. Sent to England,
he was killed during the voyage in a
fight with a French privateer.
Reference
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
HEWETSON, THOMAS
(fl. 1688
1690)
English commander who failed to es-
tablish a colony in Chile, but fought
well as a privateer in the West Indies.
Hewetson departed England with a
small flotilla in 1688, intending to
found a settlement on the Pacific coast
of South America, yet was unable to
beat his way through the Strait of
Magellan. Instead, he retreated to
Tobago with his 50-gun flagship Lion
and two other vessels, where he
learned that England’s James II had
been deposed in favor of William and
Mary; he then reached Barbados where
one of his ships exploded at anchor to-
ward the end of July 1689. Discour-
aged and with most of his men having
deserted, Hewetson sailed for home as
escort to a merchant convoy, touching
at Bermuda, where he learned that the
War of the League of Augsburg or King
William’s War had broken out back in
Europe. In cooperation with that island’s
Gov. Sir Robert Robinson, Hewetson
was furnished with a commission dated
October 19, 1689, and sufficient men

to bring Lion’s strength up to ‘‘350 lusty
men,’’ so he decided to return to Antigua
by the middle of the next month and
offer his services against the French.
Gov. Christopher Codrington promptly
appointed Hewetson as ‘‘commander-
in-chief of all vessels fitted out in
the Leeward Islands,’’ and when word
arrived that the French under the Comte
de Bl
enac had initiated attacks against
the island of St. Kitts, Codrington retali-
ated by sending Hewetson with his three
ships and two sloops to Marie Galante to
‘‘reduce it, securing the plunder for him-
self and his fellow adventurers.’’ (Among
the latter was Captain William Kidd,
commanding the 20-gun Blessed William
of 80 to 90 men.) Hewetson made a suc-
cessful descent against that French island
on December 30, 1689 (O.S.), ransacking
it over the next five days. On returning to
Nevis, his squadron was hurried out
again to rescue the expedition of Sir
Thomas Thornhill, which had become
cut off after attacking the French colony
on Saint Martin. Hewetson arrived off
that island in late January 1690 to find
the English troops besieged ashore by
five French warships under Jean-
Baptiste Ducasse. The two squadrons
exchanged broadsides throughout much
of that day, until Ducasse withdrew at
nightfall. Thornhill’s men were rescued
and restored to Nevis, after which
Hewetson transferred to Barbados, where
he was issued yet another privateering
commission on April 11th (O.S.) to pro-
tect that island. After reinforcements
arrived from England, Hewetson char-
tered Lion to the factor of the Spanish
slave asiento, and sailed away.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London, 1901).
Hicks, Gaspar (fl. 1690
1692) 639
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Ritchie, Robert C., Captain Kidd and the
War against the Pirates (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University
Press, 1986).
HICKS, GASPAR
(fl. 1690
1692)
Difficult English merchant-master,
hired by the Crown to perform auxil-
iary naval service in North America.
As King William’s War was enter-
ing into its second year, Hicks’
48-gun, 200-man Archangel was one
of several large private ships commis-
sioned by the Admiralty, to supplement
the efforts of its thinly-stretched war-
ships on distant stations. Specifically,
Hicks was to carry Colonel Henry
Sloughter and a body of troops across
the Atlantic to New York City, so as
to supplant Jacob Leisler’s usurper
administration with William’s royal
rule. During that autumn, Archangel
took on two companies of soldiers, and
was cleared to weigh from Cowes on
the Isle of Wight by late September
1690 (O.S.). But to the considerable
annoyance of the King’s ministers in
London, Hicks did not actually set sail
until December 1st (O.S.), ineffectually
shepherding 25 vessels toward their
stopover-point at Bermuda.
This convoy became dispersed dur-
ing the Atlantic crossing, though, and
an exasperated Sloughter had to endure
‘‘extravagant ill-usage’’ from Hicks. The
Governor later explained to London:
. . . the difficulty of finding Ber-
muda in winter, contrary winds, and
the striking of the [Archangel] on
640 Hoar or Hore, John (fl. 1694
1697)
the rocks at Bermuda, delayed our
arrival at New York till [19 March
1691 (O.S.)]. The other ships arrived
two months before us . . .
Archangel having lost 50 feet of its
false-keel on the night of January
10
11, 1691 (O.S.), Hicks was delayed
in putting out to sea again for New
York. Short of men, he had also pressed
several Bermudan sailors and became
embroiled in a dispute with its govern-
ment, which refused to lower the chain
barring St. George’s harbor-mouth for
Archangel to depart. The Council
minutes for February 2, 1691 (O.S.),
recorded how its members were consid-
ering the matter of ‘‘Captain Hicks, his
pressing several men and delaying the
pilot on board his ship, and threatening
to batter down the town and forts.’’
Eventually, this boom was lowered and
Archangel was allowed to proceed on
the morning of February 4th (O.S.),
although a letter sent aboard that previ-
ous evening requiring Hicks to appear
before the angry Council had been
rebuffed.
On reaching New York, Sloughter
quickly ended Leisler’s resistance, and
set about installing his royal adminis-
tration. Five days later, on March 24,
1691 (O.S.), Hicks was one of eight
Judges appointed to try the rebel pris-
oners, and at the same time was or-
dered ‘‘to return the men pressed from
Captain William Kidd.’’ Evidently, the
shortage of hands continued aboard
Archangel, so that he had laid a hold
of some of the privateer crew. Governor
Sloughter nonetheless begged London:
. . . that Captain Hicks may be
instructed to stay here and guard the
coast against French privateers, until
relieved. Another frigate is wanted in
the bay of Boston, where the French
did what they pleased last year.
See also
Kidd, William.
References
Bell, Winslow M., comp., ‘‘Minutes of
Their Majesties’ Council (1690)’’
Bermuda Historical Quarterly XIV, No.
3 (Autumn 1957), pp. 72
79.
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic:
William and Mary, 1690
91 (London:
Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1898).
Calendar of Treasury Books, 1689
1692
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1931), Volume 9.
HOAR OR HORE, JOHN
(fl. 1694
1697)
Irish-born rover who operated as a pri-
vateer out of Jamaica, before turning to
piracy in the Red Sea.
He first appeared before Newport,
Rhode Island, in early 1694 with his
frigate Dublin, bearing a commission
from Governor Sir William Beeston
of Jamaica, and a French prize called
the Saint-Paul. England then being
engaged in the War of the League
of Augsburg or King William’s War
against France, Hoar asked to have this
prize lawfully condemned so that he
might change ships. As there was still
no Admiralty court in that colony, its
General Assembly agreed on January 7,

1694 (O.S.), to approve such a measure,
allowing their general council to act in
such a capacity ‘‘until His Majesty’s
pleasure be further known.’’ Saint-Paul
was duly condemned, and renamed
John and Rebecca by Hoar. Some
months later, he sailed it south to New
York, where he obtained yet another
privateering commission from the pliant
Gov. Benjamin Fletcher, then departed
Narragansett Bay in early 1695, appa-
rently without clearance papers.
On June 22, 1697 (O.S.), Fletcher
would defend himself against numer-
ous complaints received by the Council
of Trade and Plantations in London,
arguing among other things that:
An Irishman, one Hoare, holding a
commission from Sir William Bees-
ton, took a considerable prize,
loaded with sugar and indigo, from
the French, which he took into
Rhode Island and there disposed of
the cargo. Finding the prize to be fit-
ter for his purpose, he shifted on
board of her and applied to me for a
commission to go against the French
at the mouth of Canada River and on
the banks of Newfoundland, which I
gave him, taking security for his
obedience to my instructions. I have
heard no more of him since. It may
be my misfortune, but not my crime,
if they turn pirates: I have heard of
none yet that have done so.
Hoar openly turned pirate by subse-
quently working his 100-man ship around
the Cape of Good Hope and attacking
neutral shipping in the Arabian Sea and
Persian Gulf. On August 15, 1696 (O.S.),
he intercepted the ships Ruparrel and
Calicut, while they were bound toward
Bombay. A wealthy English merchant
Hoar or Hore, John (fl. 1694
1697) 641
named Henry Watson, who was traveling
aboard the Ruparrel, later described how
‘‘the mate, gunner, and myself were car-
ried on board the pirate-ship, which was
a prize taken from the French, formerly
called the St. Paul, but now the John and
Rebecca.’’ This captive added:
I have often heard the commander
and many of his men say that he took
the ship from the French near the
river of Canada, and that they had a
commission from the Governor of
New York to take the French. They
fitted their ship from Rhode Island,
and the then Governor of New York
knew their designs, as also the
Governor of Rhode Island. Another
pirate-ship of equal burden was fitted
out there at the same time with this,
which Hore commands. The Captain
of the other ship is Richard Glover,
brother-in-law to Hore.
Finally, they made a major capture near
Surat early in 1697, and retired with it to-
ward Saint Mary’s Island, off the east coast
of Madagascar. According to a deposition
given more than two years later in New
York City before Governor Richard, Lord
Bellomont, the man who controlled that
pirate anchorage—Adam Baldridge—
would recall:
February the 13th 1697 [O.S.]:
Arrived Captain John Hor’s prize
from the Gulf of Persia, and three or
four days after arrived Captain Hore
in the John and Rebecca, burden
about 180 tons, 20 guns, 100 men in
ship and prize. The prize about 300
ton, laden with calicoes.
Five months later, the local natives
fell on them, killing 30 and driving the
642 Holman, William (fl. 1694)
survivors to seek shelter at Fort Dauphin,
the abandoned French settlement at the
southeastern tip of that island, where
their ship foundered; Hoar’s quartermas-
ter Abraham Samuel, a former slave on
the French West Indian island of Marti-
nique, was proclaimed king by the local
tribal queen, ruling under the title of
‘‘Tolinor Rex’’ with a bodyguard of 20
of his old shipmates.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 15
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1904).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Ritchie, Robert C., Captain Kidd and the
War against the Pirates (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).
HOLMAN, WILLIAM
(fl. 1694)
English merchant captain holding a let-
ter-of-marque, who defended a fishing-
port in Newfoundland during King
William’s War.
While at anchor inside Ferryland
harbor in the summer of 1694—the
fifth year of the struggle against
France—with his 16-gun William and
Mary, Holman learned of an impending
attack against that place from Placentia
by the recently-arrived squadron of
Commodore Pierre Vidard, Seigneur de
Saint-Clair. Holman therefore used the
authority of his privateering commis-
sion to order the eight or nine other
English vessels lying inside Ferryland
bay into a defensive formation; to mar-
shal all English inhabitants ashore ‘‘by
threatening to take their fish and burn
their houses;’’ and to erect four bat-
teries, mounting a total of 30 guns.
The British Admiralty rewarded
Holman for his successful defense with
a medal and chain, while the King in
Council was persuaded to compensate
him for his expenses during this opera-
tion. Holman’s claim included ‘‘one
hogshead of sherry wine, twenty gal-
lons of brandy, and a barrel of strong
beer which I gave the men to encour-
age them in time of fight.’’
See also
Harismendy, Louis de; Letter of Marque;
Subigaray ‘‘Chipi,’’ Joannes de.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 14
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1903).
HOLMES, SIR ROBERT
(fl. 1687
1691)
English Admiral who used his influ-
ence to secure the right to expropriate
‘‘all wares, merchandises, etc., pirati-
cally taken on board in any part of
America.’’
Holmes was born in 1622 in Mallow,
in County Cork, Ireland, and served the

Crown as a loyal Cavalier throughout
the English Civil War. After Charles I’s
execution, he went abroad with Prince
Rupert’s squadron, and attached himself
to James, Duke of York. On the Resto-
ration of Charles II in 1660, he entered
the Royal Navy, his patron James hav-
ing become Lord High Admiral. Holmes
sailed to the Guinea Coast that same
October 1660 to protect English trade,
and returned to England next year with
‘‘a great baboon’’ aboard. In autumn of
1663, he was appointed to the 40-gun
HMS Jersey, to lead another peace-
time expedition to the coast of Africa in
support of the English slave-factories
competing with the Dutch. Although
instructed to avoid hostilities, Holmes
was forced to take possession of several
Dutch settlements. He then led his
squadron across the Atlantic, ransack-
ing the Dutch island of Sint Eustatius
in passing, although not bothering to
occupy it.
On his return to England in 1664,
he was detained in the Tower of
London to answer Dutch protests
regarding his conduct. In the meantime,
Admiral Michiel de Ruyter sailed to
Africa and reconquered the Dutch forts,
as well as crossing over into the West
Indies and taking many prizes. The Sec-
ond Anglo-Dutch War resulted, much
of the blame for its outbreak being lev-
eled at Holmes, although at his inquest
he showed that he had merely obeyed
instructions. Holmes fought with rare
distinction at Lowestoft, the Four Days
Fight, and St. James’s Day, and in
August 1666 burned 150 to 160 Dutch
East Indiamen at the Texel in what
became known as ‘‘Holmes’ Bonfire.’’
He ended the war in 1667 with a knight-
hood and a seat in Parliament, as
well as appointment as Admiral of
Holmes, Sir Robert (fl. 1687
1691) 643
Portsmouth and Governor of the Isle of
Wight. He became very wealthy as a
result, entertaining the King lavishly at
his new mansion at Yarmouth. Early in
1672, Holmes again commanded the
English squadron which launched hos-
tilities by being sent out to attack the
homeward-bound Dutch Smyrna con-
voy off the Isle of Wight, thereby inau-
gurating the Third Anglo-Dutch War.
After the cessation of hostilities two
years later, Holmes seldom went to
sea again. In late August 1687, he was
supposedly given ‘‘command of a
squadron of ships sent to America for
suppressing pirates,’’ but it does not
appear as if any such force ever actually
sailed. Instead, Holmes delegated a man
called Stephen Lynch to visit the West
Indies in his place, with plenary powers
to have pirates arrested and their goods
impounded by local authorities. This indi-
vidual reached Jamaica in April 1688,
where his powers were much resented,
the Governor Duke of Albemarle observ-
ing: ‘‘Had he not been deputed by the
King, I should have given him deserved
correction.’’ When James II was deposed
at the end of that same year in favor of
William and Mary, Lynch found himself
no longer welcome in the Caribbean and
returned home.
Holmes’ last venture occurred when
Edward Davis and his colleagues were
brought to England from Virginia in
1690, to stand trial for piracy. Holmes
impounded their money and petitioned
to keep it, writing in August 1691:
‘‘The robberies of Davies [sic] and his
crew were unparalleled, and I am sorry
to hear that he is countenanced in
England, when the gallows is too good
a reward for him.’’ Holmes promised to
visit London ‘‘as soon as my health ena-
bles me to leave Bath,’’ but evidently
644 Hornigold, Benjamin (fl. 1713
1719)
was never able to do so, dying there on
November 18, 1692 (O.S.), and was bur-
ied in Yarmouth Church.
References
Calendar of State Papers: Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 12,
13 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899
1901).
Dictionary of National Biography (London,
1885
1900, 63 volumes; reissued by
Oxford University Press, 2004).
Ollard, Richard, Man of War: Sir Robert
Holmes and the Restoration Navy
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1969).
Piracy and Privateering catalog, Volume
Four, National Maritime Museum
Library (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1972).
Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert
D., Raid on America: The Dutch Naval
Campaign of 1672
1674 (Columbia,
SC: University of South Carolina Press,
1988).
HORNIGOLD, BENJAMIN
(fl. 1713
1719)
Freebooter who plied his trade out of the
Bahamas, and then later—ironically—
became a licensed pirate-hunter.
Nothing much is known about Horni-
gold’s early life or career. He had
undoubtedly fought aboard English pri-
vateers operating out of Jamaica against
the French and Spanish during Queen
Anne’s War, and once these hostilities
ceased as of April 1713, was left unem-
ployed. It is believed that he and a few-
score companions, most likely including
Edward Thatch, drifted that same
summer from Port Royal into the beau-
teous yet sparsely-populated Bahamian
archipelago. Cuban raids and lack of
any significant commercial traffic had
left only 27 families still living in
makeshift huts on its main island of
New Providence, with no more than
400 to 500 English residents scattered
through out all its island chain. No pri-
vate Governor was in residence amid
the burned remnants of Nassau, or any
assistance forthcoming from the Lords
Proprietors in England.
Piratical Acts (1713
1718)
Hornigold and his followers acquired
and fitted out three large piraguas, with
25 freebooters aboard each making for-
ays against Spaniards living and circulat-
ing along the nearby Cuban and Florida
coastlines; John West and John Cockram
served as his fellow-commanders. Much
of their booty was sold to visiting ships
at the English settlement on Harbour
Island, 50 miles north of ruined Nassau,
where in March 1714 Cockram married
a daughter of its wealthiest resident,
Richard Thompson, and settled on
neighboring Eleuthera Island. When
rumors began to circulate of a retaliatory
strike being prepared at Havana against
Nassau, Hornigold and his raiders tem-
porarily disbanded.
They regrouped later that same
summer of 1714, though, when Horni-
gold departed Harbour Island aboard
Jonathan Darvell’s borrowed sloop
Happy Return, accompanied by his son
Zacheus and son-in-law, Daniel Still-
well. The profits from this cruise allowed
Hornigold to buy his own large boat
from an Eleutheran settler, and make an
independent sortie, during which he
intercepted a pair of boats off the Cuban
coast early that December 1714 bearing
46,000 pieces-of-eight—a rich haul.

Such nuisance raids prompted a resi-
dent at Nassau named Captain Thomas
Walker, holder of an old commission as
Judge of its now-defunct Vice-Admiralty
Court, to step into the administrative vac-
uum and act as self-appointed ‘‘Deputy
Governor,’’ sailing for Havana in January
1715 to try to patch up relations with
the neighboring Spaniards before a coun-
ter-offensive was launched. The Gover-
nor of Cuba, Laureano de Torres Ayala,
Marqu
es de Casa Torres, complained vig-
orously of the descents made on his
shores since the peace treaty had been
signed back in Europe, by Hornigold with
his sloop Happy Return out of an anchor-
age on Eleuthera Island. Walker therefore
returned to Nassau and made at least eight
arrests, including Hornigold’s cohort
Daniel Stillwell (formerly of Jamaica),
who had used a small shalloup to steal a
Cuban launch bearing more than 11,000
pieces of eight. Yet despite holding Still-
well captive for deportation to Jamaica,
Walker could not find any ship to carry
him to Port Royal to face trial before its
Crown authorities.
Then the annual plate fleet bound
from Havana for Spain was driven by
a sudden storm onto the barrier reefs
of nearby Florida on the night of July
30
31, 1715, leaving the wreckage of
a dozen rich galleons strewn tempt-
ingly over 40 miles of coastline around
Cape Canaveral. A boat with some sur-
vivors limped back into the Cuban cap-
ital by mid-August to report on this
disaster, at which point the Spaniards
immediately launched a large-scale res-
cue operation. Their salvage flotilla
arrived and divers quickly raised 5
million out of an estimated 7 million
pieces-of-eight in royal bullion which
had been lost aboard these wrecks,
before fair weather ended and
Hornigold, Benjamin (fl. 1713
1719) 645
operations were temporarily halted by
the changing seasons in late October.
Yet such an immense and vulnerable
expanse of loot also attracted hundreds
of idled West Indian rovers into the
region, hoping to scavenge among this
debris, as well as to prey on its Span-
ish salvors. The open roadstead at Nas-
sau consequently became busier, and a
witness reported how Hornigold sought
shelter there in November 1715 with
the sloop Mary of Jamaica (which had
been sailing under Master Augustine
Golding, until he had intercepted it at
sea and taken over command). Horni-
gold also brought in a captured Spanish
sloop loaded with dry goods and sugar,
which he disposed of, as well as set-
ting free his imprisoned colleague Still-
well and angrily menacing Captain
Walker ‘‘to have his house burned for
offering to concern himself’’ in such
affairs. Hornigold even allegedly added
‘‘that all pirates were under his protec-
tion,’’ and that he would shoot the
meddlesome Walker.
Although Hornigold’s Spanish prize
was then taken away from him by Captain
Henry Jennings (who was apparently
operating the 40-ton sloop Bathsheba
under a anti-pirating commission issued
by the Governor of Jamaica, Lord Archi-
bald Hamilton), Hornigold nonetheless
ventured out to sea once more in January
1716 with Mary, ‘‘having on board 140
men, six guns, and eight patararas [sic;
pedreros or swivel-guns].’’ Shortly there-
after, he reentered Nassau with yet
another Spanish sloop, which he had
seized off the Florida coast. While fitting
out this second vessel to serve as
his new 10-gun flagship Mary Anne
(or Marianne), Hornigold sent Golding’s
sloop back to Jamaica, to be returned to
its owners.
646 Hornigold, Benjamin (fl. 1713
1719)
He sallied out of Nassau yet again
in late March 1716, in company with
the 8-gun French privateer Postillon
of Captain Louis La Buze, 140 men
being distributed between both their
sloops. Around April 8, 1716 (O.S.),
they reached the Cuban port of Mariel,
where they sighted the large French
merchantman Marianne of Ensign Le
Gardew at anchor, which was appa-
rently smuggling goods ashore. Horni-
gold and La Buze robbed it of
everything of value over the span of a
week, before abandoning their ransacked
prize at the approach of a rival privat-
eering flotilla under Jennings. Hornigold
and La Buze then prowled farther
along the northwestern Cuban coast-
line, rounding its tip to intercept a
pair of Spanish brigantines off Cape
Corrientes, loaded with cacao from
Maracaibo. When these Spaniards
could not raise the demanded ransom
to have their vessels spared, they were set
ashore, and their brigantines burned.
Hornigold and La Buze next pro-
ceeded along Cuba’s southwestern
shoreline to Isla de Pinos (modern Isla
de la Juventud), where they met three
or four empty English sloops and
‘‘made use of them in cleaning their
own,’’ before restoring them to their
crews. The rover pair subsequently
weighed again by late May 1716 to
call at French Saint-Domingue, but
here Hornigold was voted out of office
in favor of his crewman Samuel Bell-
amy, ‘‘upon a difference arising
amongst the English pirates because
Hornygold refused to take and plunder
English vessels.’’ He therefore departed
with only 26 loyal hands aboard a
smaller prize sloop, Bellamy retaining
90 men aboard Mary Anne, most of
them being English.
Ill-fortune continued to dog Horni-
gold when he ventured north to South
Carolina, as some local privateers com-
missioned by Gov. Francis Nicholson
even took and destroyed his small
sloop in late June 1716, though he
himself escaped. Somehow, Hornigold
managed to regain the Bahamas, and
acquired another ship. By March 1717,
Captain Walker, who in the face of
repeated pirate threats had left Nassau
for South Carolina with his family that
previous summer, then resettled on
Abaco Island and reported:
. . . that five pirates made ye harbor
of Providence [i.e., Nassau] their
place of rendezvous, viz. Horngold,
a sloop with 10 guns and about 80
men; Jennings, a sloop with 10 guns
and 100 men; Burgess, a sloop with
8 guns and about 80 men; White, in
a small vessel with 30 men and
small arms; Thatch [i.e., Black-
beard], a sloop 6 guns and about 70
men. All took and destroy’d ships of
all nations, except Jennings, who
took no English.
However, the Crown authorities in
London had at last decided to inter-
vene. As early as November 30, 1716
(O.S.), the Council of Trade and Plan-
tations had been informed that it was
‘‘His Royal Highness’s pleasure, that
you consider what may be the most
proper course for the government to
take, in order to dislodge those profli-
gate fellows or pirates that may have
possessed themselves of the island
of Providence, and may, if not driven
from thence in time, commit depredations
on His Majesty’s subjects or those
of his allies trading in those parts of
the world.’’ The answer would be a

threefold recommendation: a procla-
mation granting a general pardon to
all pirates who would surrender before
a given date, followed by the dispatch
of a colonizing expedition to reclaim
Nassau as a lawful port, as well as
sufficient Royal Navy forces to not
only patrol the Bahamas, but the
entire Caribbean region and hunt down
any rovers who refused to comply.
In fact, Hornigold and some of his
pirate colleagues were giving signs of
digging in at Nassau. The castaway
privateer Captain Matthew Musson
reported to the Council of Trade and
Plantations in London on July 5, 1717
(O.S.) that:
. . . they had taken a Spanish ship
of 32 guns, which they kept in the
harbor for a guardship. Ye greatest
part of the inhabitants of Providence
are already gone into other adjacent
islands to secure themselves from
ye pirates, who frequently plunder
them. Most of the ships and vessels
taken by them, they burn and destroy
when brought into the harbor, and
oblige the men to take on with
them.
Even a few guns were being emplaced in
old Fort Nassau’s crumbly embrasures,
so that Musson feared unless the town
was reclaimed and properly fortified
under Crown rule, ‘‘the pirates will, to
protect themselves.’’ Three weeks later,
the idea of a royal pardon was approved
by the Crown, and proclamations were
sent across the Atlantic by September 5,
1717 (O.S.), to various provincial Gov-
ernors, for regional distribution.
Consequently, the son of Lieutenant-
Gov. Benjamin Bennett of Bermuda
materialized off New Providence Island
Hornigold, Benjamin (fl. 1713
1719) 647
in December 1717, bringing a copy of
the royal amnesty for its denizens. At
first, his vessel was fired on, the 400 to
500 pirates in port ‘‘having the day
before resolved among themselves to
sacrifice the first person that should pre-
tend to offer them a pardon.’’ Even after
Bennett’s son came ashore and submit-
ted to them for a parley, ‘‘they held a
consult whether they should not destroy
him,’’ before cooler heads prevailed.
Hornigold was absent on a cruise, yet
Jennings along with seven or eight
companions were willing to return to
Bermuda with Bennett’s son in January
1718, while their confederates awaited
to hear how these first representatives
would be treated.
Shortly thereafter, this proclamation
was also delivered at sea, when two dis-
patch-vessels sent out with copies by
Gov. Peter Heywood of Jamaica, specifi-
cally to cruise for rovers, ‘‘came up with
Hornigold and one or two more his con-
sorts.’’ The surprised rogue wrote a brief
response to the Governor, couched in
pleasantries—‘‘We embrace His Maj-
esty’s act of grace, and return His Maj-
esty our hearty thanks for the same,
etc.’’—and six of his crew even submit-
ted on the spot, yet skepticism remained
as to whether the rest of the pirates
would follow suit. Hornigold’s own per-
sonal decision was complicated when he
intercepted the Dutch merchantman
Jonge Abraham of Flushing soon after-
ward, and ‘‘carried her to the Island of
Providence, where the cargo was deliv-
ered to a French ship.’’ Not all such cap-
tures made by pirates would be
recognized as legitimate under the terms
of the amnesty, so that some of the
wilder spirits such as Vane and Black-
beard (Edward Thatch) refused to
accept.
648 Hornigold, Benjamin (fl. 1713
1719)
Loyal Privateer (1718
1719)
Hornigold, however, did prove willing
to submit. Almost four weeks after the
amnesty deadline had elapsed, he was
still at Nassau when the colonizing
expedition arrived outside its bar on the
afternoon of July 26, 1718 (O.S.). This
force was led by the new Governor-
designate Woodes Rogers, a battle-
scarred ex-privateer who had circled the
globe and captured a Manila galleon,
and who had been specially selected for
his toughness to make this difficult tran-
sition. He was accompanied by 250 col-
onists aboard the 460-ton ex-Indiaman
Delicia, and backed by the Royal Navy
frigates Milford of 32 guns and Rose of
20 guns, plus the naval sloops Buck and
Shark.
News of the Crown intentions had
preceded them, so that the more recalci-
trant pirates had already left the Bahamas
for other hunting-grounds. Yet Vane’s
flagship still rode defiantly at anchor
inside the harbor, and when Rose began
to take soundings around its entrance at
nightfall, Vane responded by setting a
recently-captured French prize ablaze,
and loosing it as a fireship. Nevertheless,
he grudgingly got under way next morn-
ing as Rogers’ expedition penetrated
amid the growing daylight, exiting via
Nassau’s other channel with his 90-man
sloop ‘‘wearing the black flag’’ and firing
‘‘guns of defiance,’’ before steering away
for Abaco Island.
Rogers came ashore that same July
27, 1718 (O.S.), to be greeted by an
honor guard of 300 boozy pirates under
Hornigold and several lesser captains,
who all swore fealty to the Crown. Yet
none of these leaders was appointed to
the new administration, nor employed in
organizing militia companies, repairing
the fortress, erecting a new barracks and
eastern battery, or any other civic
improvement. The disappointed rovers
soon began to drift away, and Rogers
informed his superiors in London later
that same summer: ‘‘We have scarce half
of those who have been pirates left, for
they soon became weary of living under
restraint, and are either gone to several
parts of North America, or engaged
themselves on services at sea, which I
was willing to promote, for they are not
the people I ought to think will make any
land improvements, and I wish they may
be faithful at sea.’’
Somewhat surprisingly, one who did
remain constant at Nassau was Hornigold.
As the new Governor maintained a wary
eye on the movements of the outlaw
Vane, he received an urgent message on
September 15, 1718 (O.S.):
. . . that three vessels supposed to be
Vane and his prizes were at Green
Turtle Key near Abaco, and since I
had no strength to do better, I got a
sloop fitted under the command of
Captain Hornygold to send and view
them, and bring me an account what
they were; in the meantime I keep a
very strict watch for fear of any sur-
prise, and not hearing from Captain
Hornigold, I was afraid he was either
taken by Vane or begun his old prac-
tice of pirating again, which was the
general opinion here in his absence;
but to my great satisfaction, he
return’d in about three weeks, hav-
ing lain most of that time concealed
and viewing of Vane the pirate in
order to surprise him, or some of his
men that they expected would be
near them in their boats; but though
they failed in this, Captain Horny-
gold brought with him a sloop of
 Hornigold, Benjamin (fl. 1713
1719) 649

this place, that got leave from me to
go out a-turtling, but had [instead]
been trading with Vane.
Reassured by this obedience of his
orders, Rogers did not hesitate to assign
a second such mission to Hornigold in
November 1718, nor in writing a glow-
ing report on its successful conclusion:
Having lately had intelligence of
certain pirates who had run away
with some vessels fitted out of this
port, and where they might be found,
I equipped a sloop with sufficient
men and arms under ye command of
Captain Hornigold and Cockram,
who had themselves been pirates,
but accepted of His Majesty’s Act of

RELOCATION OF GUAYAQUIL
Like many other Spanish-American cities—for example, Santa Marta in Colombia,
Remedios on Cuba, or Panama City—the wide-open Ecuadorian port-city of Guaya-
quil was relocated after its devastating piratical ordeal of April 1687. Many of its citi-
zens were at first too traumatized to even return into their homes, or to begin
rebuilding any of the many burned structures, until well after Le Picard and Dew had
vanished over the horizon.
The original layout of Guayaquil had been spontaneous, and unplanned. Its first set-
tlers had simply chosen to build permanent homes on the high ground, the southern
slopes of Santa Ana Hill, so as to avoid the springtime overflows from the muddy
Guayas River. They had added a Dominican convent and La Concepci
on as their par-
ish church (in today’s Plaza Col
on), yet its streets, lined with a motley collection of
wooden, thatched-roof houses, had curved down without any discernible pattern to-
ward the flat marshy terrain below, where a maze of shipyards mushroomed along
the shoreline. Here were launched the vast majority of vessels for the rich Peruvian
traffic. Large visiting ships usually dropped anchor many miles downriver, in the lee
of Pun
a Island, to lighter goods to and from Guayaquil’s customs-house, rather than
risk the shifting sandbanks and powerful currents of the Guayas.
This, then, was the city which had been sacked by Grogniet, Le Picard, and Dew.
Eleven months afterward, Guayaquil’s Council debated—in an open session held on
March 24, 1688—the vulnerability of their situation, and by July 11th it was resolved
that: ‘‘Recognizing the poor and sprawling layout of this city, whose principal parts
have been burnt, the necessity of moving it to the port of Casones is confirmed.’’ Don
Antonio de Mestanza was therefore commissioned to travel high up into the Andes to
the regional capital of Quito, and began the legal process of winning approval from
the Royal Audiencia. Permission was granted four years later, and the actual transfer
to a new cleared site a mile farther to the south, directly opposite the Casones anchor-
age, commenced that same September 1692. A square grid of 25 blocks was soon
laid out, five extending between modern Luque to Col
on Streets to face the riverbank,
while an equal number ran inland from today’s Pichincha to Boyac
a Streets. Residents
were assigned urban plots measuring roughly 90 x 90 feet in this so-called Ciudad
Nueva or ‘‘New City,’’ which was defended by intricate, twin lines of trenches run-
ning along Mejı́a and Elizalde Streets, soon extended to encircle the entire perimeter.
Yet many citizens refused to forsake their homes in the Ciudad Vieja, or
‘‘Old City.’’
650 Howard, Thomas (fl. 1698
1703)
Grace, and by their behavior since my
arrival gave me full confidence of their
sincerity, which has been successfully
confirmed by their apprehending them
to the number of thirteen, three
whereof died of their wounds. I am
glad of this new proof Captain Horni-
gold has given the world to wipe off
the infamous name he has hitherto
been known by, though in the very acts
of piracy he committed, most people
spoke well of his generosity.
On January 30, 1719 (O.S.), Rogers
furthermore added: ‘‘I have paid as much
as I could spare towards the bounty
money His Majesty has allow’d for
apprehending pirates to Captains Horni-
gold and Cockrem, and those that were
with them.’’ This is the last mention of
the ex-rover amid the official correspon-
dence. In The Pirates’ Who’s Who, Phi-
lip Gosse noted only this laconic
epilogue: ‘‘Shortly afterwards, Hornigold
was wrecked on a reef and drowned.’’
See also
Bellamy, Samuel; Jennings, Henry; La
Buze, Louis; Pedrero; Pieces of Eight;
Plate Fleet; Thatch, Edward, alias
‘‘Blackboard;’’ Vane, Charles.
References
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Journal of the Board of Trade and
Plantations, Volume 3: March
1715
October 1718, Book T (London:
His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1924).
HOWARD, THOMAS
(fl. 1698
1703)
Minor commander, who flourished briefly
as Captain of a raider in the Red Sea,
before retiring a rich man—only to be
murdered.
Little is known about his early life,
some alleging that he was born the son
of a penniless Thames lighterman in
London, others that he had squandered
an inheritance. The former seems more
likely, for while sailing toward Jamaica
sometime prior to 1698, he apparently
deserted his ship and with some like-
minded companions stole a canoe, and
set off for the Grand Cayman Islands.
There they eventually merged into a
multinational group of some 200 unem-
ployed rovers, which coalesced during
this uneasy peace after the conclusion
to King William’s War, under the lead-
ership of a renegade privateer Captain
out of New York. Details about their
activities remain murky, but these
pirates evidently took several vessels of
increasing size, including a well-armed
Spanish ship and a large New England
brigantine, into which Howard was
appointed as quartermaster.
The most complete account of the
emergence of this pirate force was given
by Governor Samuel Day of Bermuda,
who informed the Council of Trade and
Plantations in London:
. . . that about the latter end of April
last [1699 O.S.], one Captain Hind,
a notorious pirate and sea-rover,
having lately got into a brigantine
with a mix’t company of Dutch,
French, and other people, came up
with an English-built ship mounted
with 22 guns called the Providence

galley, under the command of Cap-
tain William Rhett of Carolina, who
made a very generous defense, but
was outdone and taken by the said
pirate; that having taken the said
ship, Hind and his mixed and di-
vided gang fell into a mutiny. And
the English party prevailing, they
laid hands and exercised their power
on their Captain, Hind, and turned
him and fifteen more of his com-
rades on shore on a place called the
Berry Islands, about ten leagues to
the leeward of Providence [Nassau
in the Bahamas], allowing them
three small arms and a bottle of gun-
powder. After this, one John James
took upon him the command of
the ship.
Howard was evidently a member
of this company, as James worked
his way north toward Virginia aboard
this pirate galley, now renamed the
Alexander. Numerous more captures
were made off that coastline, before
the rovers steered out across the Atlan-
tic in early August 1699 (O.S.) for the
Guinea coast of Africa, where they
took more prizes, including a 36-gun
Portuguese ship. Rounding the Cape
of Good Hope for Madagascar, the
Alexander was unexpectedly wrecked
and lost on a reef, during which up-
heaval Howard allegedly seized the
bulk of the pirates’ booty, and escaped
ashore in a boat with a faction of the
crew. They lived for a while by fishing
and hunting, but during one of their
hunts, the men ran away and aban-
doned Howard.
He was cared for by a local chief-
tain, until he could be rescued by
George Booth early in 1701. Howard
remained aboard the flagship Speaker
Howard, Thomas (fl. 1698
1703) 651
following Booth’s death, and John
Bowen’s subsequent election as its new
Captain. When this vessel was lost by
grounding on St. Augustine’s Reef,
Howard briefly settled on the nearby
island of Mauritius. Shortly thereafter,
though, he recruited his own band of
pirates and took the 36-gun Prosper-
ous, being elected its Captain around
Christmas 1702. Meeting up with
Bowen sometime later at the port of
Mayotte, the two pirate commanders
combined to attack the East Indiaman
Pembroke in March 1703, off Johanna
Island in the Comoros.
They parted company for a few
months while Bowen’s ship Speedy
Return was being careened, but the
two cooperated once again in August
1703, when they engaged two rich In-
dian ships off Saint John’s Island.
Tenaciously pursuing their opponents
up a river, the pirates subdued the
largest vessel after a fierce fight, dis-
covering treasure and goods aboard
worth £70,000. Both crews merged
aboard this large prize, a 56-gun ship
renamed the Defiant, under Bowen’s
command.
Howard nonetheless received a for-
tune as his share when they dropped
anchor to divide up their spoils at the
Indian port of Rajapura, so decided to
retire from piracy, and remained there
when Bowen departed with the Daunt-
less. Howard then married a local
woman, but according to the chronicler
Charles Johnson, being ‘‘a most ill
natur’d fellow, and using her ill, he
was murder’d by her relations.’’
See also
James, John.
652 Hyne, Captain (fl. 1699)
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 17
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1908).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Seitz, Don Carlos, Gospel, Howard F., and
Wood, Stephen, Under the Black Flag:
Exploits of the Most Notorious Pirates
(Mineola, NY: Courier Dover, 2002).
HYNE, CAPTAIN (fl. 1699)
Renegade privateer out of New York,
probably of Dutch ancestry.
As part of a lengthy report submitted
on May 3, 1699 (O.S.), to the Council
of Trade and Plantations in London by
Governor Richard, Lord Belloment, he
informed that the following statement
had been received two days previously
when Master John Clotworthy returned
to New York aboard the Jamaican sloop
Mary, and so was included:
Hyne the Pyrat he informs of is a
bloody villain, has murdered several
men, and will give no quarter, they
say, to Spaniards that he takes. He
belongs to this town, his wife and
family now here. He was master’s
mate of the Fortune, which I seized
at my first coming here, which had
been also commissioned by Colonel
[Benjamin] Fletcher.
The most complete account of Hine’s
rise as a pirate leader, during the uneasy
interlude of peace immediately after the
end to King William’s War, was given
when the brigantine Larke of John Tri-
mingham returned to Bermuda from
New York and its Captain recited the
following string of events to Governor
Samuel Day, who in turn forwarded
them onto the Council of Trade and
Plantations in London:
. . . that about the latter end of April
last [1699 O.S.], one Captain Hind, a
notorious pirate and sea-rover, having
lately got into a brigantine with a
mix’t company of Dutch, French, and
other people, came up with an Eng-
lish-built ship mounted with 22 guns
called the Providence galley, under
the command of Captain William
Rhett of Carolina, who made a very
generous defense, but was outdone
and taken by the said pirate; that hav-
ing taken the said ship, Hind and his
mixed and divided gang fell into a
mutiny. And the English party prevail-
ing, they laid hands and exercised
their power on their Captain, Hind,
and turned him and fifteen more of his
comrades on shore on a place called
the Berry Islands, about ten leagues to
the leeward of Providence [Nassau in
the Bahamas], allowing them three
small arms and a bottle of gunpowder.
After this, one John James took upon
him the command of the ship.
In a letter addressed to England’s Secre-
tary of State James Vernon from Char-
leston on May 27, 1700 (O.S.), Edward
Randolph complained of the:
Injustice of Governor [Joseph] Blake
to William Joel of Bermuda, by
which he got from him £80 upon
pretense of his vessel not being
registered, although nine months is
allowed for the registering of vessels.
Joel’s vessel and loading taken by
Hinde the pirate, and in her defense
he lost his right hand, and cannot bear
 Hyne, Captain (fl. 1699) 653

the charges of a journey to England (London: His Majesty’s Stationery

to petition His Majesty for relief. Office, 1908).
Salley, A. S., Jr., comp. and ed.,
Commissions and Instructions from the
References Lords Proprietors of Carolina to the
Public Officials of South Carolina,
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1685
1715 (Charleston, SC: Historical
America and West Indies, Volume 17 Commission, 1916).
 I

For certainly we are in a state of war with the pirates,

expecting them upon our coasts, and many
be within the Capes all this summer.
—Virginia’s Governor Francis Nicholson,
aboard HMS Shoreham, June 1700

INTERLOPER of blacks and Christians dead; and

A term specifically applied in the
Caribbean to any unsanctioned merchant
visitor who sought to smuggle goods
ashore for sale, most especially slaves.
As the African Company held the
exclusive Crown monopoly to import
and dispose of African captives, any
other English vessel bearing such cap-
tives was regarded as a trespassing
‘‘interloper,’’ subject to official seizure.
For example, Gov. Sir Thomas Lynch of
Jamaica reported to London in February
1684 how the Spanish ship Santo Tom
as
had entered Port Royal with factors from
Cartagena wishing to buy slaves:
about ten days since agent Peirson
arrived in an interloper of forty guns.
He landed two or three hundred
Negroes at Barbados, of which I am
told that the Spaniards bought a hun-
dred and fifty. I shall order the ship to
be seized, and shall do my best always,
but I know of no expedient but . . .
clearing the coast of Africa and Amer-
ica. Being unwilling to offend the
Company, I told the Spaniards that I
must not buy of interlopers, and Colo-
nel Molesworth threatened to seize
them; but the Negroes were landed out
of port and will pass to the Spaniards
by second hands.

Unfortunately, we have no Negroes, Reference

nor hope of Negroes this long time.
There were two miserable ships of the Calendar of State Papers: Colonial Series,
African Company with two-thirds both America and West Indies, Volume 11

655
656 Ireland, John (fl. 1695)
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
IRELAND, JOHN (fl. 1695)
‘‘A wicked and ill-disposed person,’’
according to the royal warrant granted
in King William III’s name in 1695 to
‘‘our truly and dearly beloved Captain
William Kidd,’’ ordering him to be
seized along with other pirates who
were doing mischief to ships trading
off the coast of North America.
Reference
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
ISLA DEL MUERTO
Spanish name, meaning ‘‘Dead Man’s
Island.’’
At least six geographic sites are still
known today by this grim name: one is
a small, barren rock in the approaches
to the Gulf of Guayaquil, more properly
called Isla Santa Clara—its lugubrious
nickname apparently derived from the
fact that seen at sea-level from a certain
angle, it resembles a fallen man, while
its low silhouette also results in it being
called Bajo del Muerto. This particular
island was used as a stopover-point by
the buccaneers under François Grogniet
and George Hout, during their stealthy
advance into that estuary to sack the
city of Guayaquil farther upriver in
April 1687. The chronicler Ravenau de
Lussan apparently remained unaware of
Isla Santa Clara’s lurid nickname and
described it in his journal as ‘‘merely a
huge piece of rock.’’
Another Isla del Muerto forms part
of Alacranes Reef, a half-moon cres-
cent of jagged rocks some 80 miles
off Mexico’s Yucat
an coast, where
Laurens de Graaf battled the Armada
de Barlovento in a legendary triumph.
A third is better known as Isla Front
on,
part of a cluster of islands off Lima’s
Pacific seaport of Callao—a desolate
spot which would for many years serve
as a penal island. A fourth forms part
of the inland Zapatera Archipelago
near Granada in Lake Nicaragua (home
to prehistoric rock-carvings), while a
fifth lies off the southwestern coast of
El Salvador. A sixth is an extinct
volcanic tip rising out of the northern
Sea of Cortez, off Mexico’s Baja Cali-
fornia Peninsula—so named, allegedly,
because the first Conquistadors found
only a single corpse when they stepped
onto its stark and silent shores.
See also
Barlovento, Armada de (Volume 1); De
Graaf, Laurens (Volume 1); Grogniet,
François; Hout, George; Lussan,
Ravenau de.
References
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
Seliger, William G., Isla El Muerto and the
Treasures of the ‘‘Consolaci

on’’
(Privately published, Ecuador, 2008).
 J

The Captain was a man of middle stature, square-shouldered,

large jointed, lean, much disfigured with the smallpox,
broad speech, thick-lipped, a blemish or cast in
his left eye, but courteous . . .
—John James, as described by one of his victims, August 1699

JACOBS, CAPTAIN Perhaps for this reason, they refused

(fl. 1690
1694)
Possibly a Dutch mercenary, who
served both the French and English
in the Greater Antilles during the War
of the League of Augsburg or King
William’s War.
Late in 1690, Gov. Pierre-Paul Tarin
de Cussy of Saint-Domingue sent a flag-
of-truce bark to Jamaica, hoping among
other things to arrange the exchange of
‘‘Capitaine Jacob’’ and his crew, who
had been captured after a pitched battle
against two armed English barks, one of
10 guns and 75 men, the other of 8 guns
and 65 men. De Cussy added that Jacobs
had been wounded three times in this
engagement, and that the English
regarded him ‘‘with much admiration
and held him in high esteem.’’
to part with their prisoner, for on Janu-
ary 16, 1694, during a period of partic-
ularly low English fortunes, the island
Council ruled that:
Since the men in the [two hired Ja-
maican sloops] of war refuse to go
to sea, ordered that Captain Jacobs
have leave to go out in the vessel
lately captured from the French, on
terms of ‘‘no purchase, no pay,’’ and
that the tenths and fifteenths on cap-
tures be remitted to them.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 14
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1903).

657
658 James, John (fl. 1699)
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
JAMES, JOHN (fl. 1699)
Welsh-born pirate, who operated for
only a few summer months off Virginia
and Africa’s Guinea coast, before being
wrecked that winter at Madagascar.
Virtually nothing is known about
his birth or early life, beyond the fact
that numerous victims affirmed that he
was Welsh, and one—Nicholas Thomas
Jones, Master of the sloop Roanoke
Merchant—even specified that James
had told him ‘‘he was a Welshman of
Glamorganshire.’’ The most complete
account of his rise as a pirate leader,
during the uneasy interlude of peace
immediately after the end to King
William’s War, was given when the
brigantine Larke of John Trimingham
returned to Bermuda from New York
and this Captain recited the following
string of events to Governor Samuel
Day, who in turn forwarded them onto
the Council of Trade and Plantations
in London:
. . . that about the latter end of April
last [1699 O.S.], one Captain Hind, a
notorious pirate and sea-rover, having
lately got into a brigantine with a
mix’t company of Dutch, French, and
other people, came up with an Eng-
lish-built ship mounted with 22 guns
called the Providence galley, under
the command of Captain William
Rhett of Carolina, who made a very
generous defense, but was outdone
and taken by the said pirate; that
having taken the said ship, Hind and
his mixed and divided gang fell into
a mutiny. And the English party pre-
vailing, they laid hands and exercised
their power on their Captain, Hind,
and turned him and fifteen more of
his comrades on shore on a place
called the Berry Islands, about ten
leagues to the leeward of Providence
[Nassau in the Bahamas], allowing
them three small arms and a bottle of
gunpowder. After this, one John
James took upon him the command
of the ship, and standing out to sea
they spied a sail, which proved to be
a man-of-war, and they chased her
into Virginia, having killed her above
forty men. And the said pirates,
James and company, have given out
that they resolve to stay there and
take a better ship, which lies within
the capes of Virginia.
James certainly did work his way
north toward that coastline with his
pirate galley, which he had now renamed
the Alexander. En route, he seized
the 20-ton Bermudan sloop Success of
William Joell, and then the brigantine
Charles of William Sare, which was
headed in the opposite direction, from
Carolina toward the Bahamas. To com-
pensate Joell for the loss of his two-
year-old sloop, James gave him the
Charles, which the Bermudan sailed
away and clandestinely sold at Cura-
çao. On July 26, 1699 (O.S.), James
brazenly penetrated the Virginia Capes
and stood into Lynnhaven Bay, raking the
16-gun HMS Essex Prize of Captain John
Aldred with a broadside, causing it to
retreat up the James River. James mean-
while robbed the ship Maryland Merchant
of Bristol, whose Master Richard Burgess

later gave a detailed description to the
authorities of his assailant:
The Captain was a man of middle stat-
ure, square-shouldered, large jointed,
lean, much disfigured with the small-
pox, broad speech, thick-lipped, a
blemish or cast in his left eye, but cour-
teous, and declared he designed no prej-
udice to the English nation as to their
persons, but particular wants would be
supplied, and would rather pay for nec-
essaries than be obliged to take it per-
force; a compliment not obliged to
believe, finding the contrary myself.
The rattled Burgess had provided such a
precise picture of the man who ‘‘so
damnified’’ him, because he was con-
vinced that he had been confronted by
none other than the notorious Captain
William Kidd, for whom a global man-
hunt was then in full vigor, and further-
more asserted that his captors carried in
their hold ‘‘£3,000,000 sterling in gold
and silver’’—although both facts were
palpably untrue. Kidd had actually been
captured that previous month in New
York City, while James and his men
were so hard-pressed that they eagerly
‘‘seized the cargo of corn and pork from
a North Carolina sloop.’’ And as noted
above, when the Alexander ransacked
the sloop Roanoke Merchant on July 27,
1699 (O.S.), its Master Jones observed
‘‘ye company and Captain himself to
have gold chains about their necks.’’
Shortly thereafter, the rover must
have steered northeast for on August 3,
1699 (O.S.), James plundered Master
Joseph Baker’s Charles of New York
about 200 miles east of that seaport,
out in the open Atlantic. When news
of this and other depredations were
James, John (fl. 1699) 659
carried before Governor Richard, Lord
Bellomont, he would later report to
London how he had ordered the newly-
arrived 32-gun, 135-man frigate HMS
Arundel of Captain Josias Crow to exit
New York soon after it had entered on
September 27, 1699 (O.S.):
. . . on a cruise to look after a pirate
ship whereof Hine of New York was
commander, but since John James, a
Welshman, has commanded, Hine
with some others having been put on
shore on a maroon island. The ship
had infested the Eastern Coast a long
while, but she was gone before Cap-
tain Crow could overtake her.
Indeed, James had long since van-
ished across the Atlantic for the Guinea
coast, where he made numerous more
prizes, including a 36-gun Portuguese
ship. However, on rounding the Cape of
Good Hope for Madagascar, his galley
Alexander was wrecked on a reef, at
which time the bulk of his booty was
stolen and taken ashore in a boat by the
quartermaster Thomas Howard, and no
more was heard of Captain James.
See also
Howard, Thomas; Kidd, William.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series
America and West Indies, Volumes 17,
19 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1908
1910).
Shomette, Donald G., Pirates on the
Chesapeake: Being a True History of
Pirates, Picaroons, and Raiders on
Chesapeake Bay, 1610
1807
(Centreville, MD: Tidewater, 1985).
660 Jennings, Henry (fl. 1712
1716)

JENNINGS, HENRY soon to be followed by a half-dozen

other hard-bitten commanders.
(fl. 1712
1716) Beersheba dropped anchor in Port
Royal by January 26, 1716 (O.S.), and
Jamaican merchant seaman and war-
Jennings found the political climate
time privateer, whose commissioned
greatly changed. Three weeks previ-
anti-piracy sweep in peacetime resulted
ously, news had arrived of the Jacobite
in charges against himself.
Rebellion in Britain, in which members
Jennings was a merchant Captain
of Governor Hamilton’s own family
known to have operated as a privateer
were implicated.
out of Port Royal during Queen Anne’s
On April 28, 1719 (O.S.), Governor Sir
War, being regarded on Jamaica as a
Nicholas Lawes of Jamaica wrote to
man ‘‘of good standing and estate.’’
inform the Council of Trade and Planta-
When a hurricane struck that island on
tions in London about various matters,
the evening of August 28, 1712 (O.S.),
and on the policy of piratical prosecutions,
his 4-gun sloop Diamond was among
requested the following clarification:
at least 54 vessels that were lost that
night. I should be glad Your Lordships
Then a storm drove the annual plate would do me the honor to explain
fleet bound from Havana for Spain in a fuller manner how His Maj-
onto the barrier reefs of nearby Florida esty’s pardon to the pirates is to be
on the night of July 30
31, 1715, understood. I have told Mr. Bonfils
leaving the wreckage of its dozen rich and other sufferers that whatever
galleons strewn temptingly over 40 goods or effects can be proved to be
miles of coastline around Cape Canav- in the hands of any persons under
eral. A boat with some survivors my government, which they can
limped back into the Cuban capital by anyways legally claim, that in such
mid-August, and the Spaniards imme- case wherever it appeared I would
diately launched a large-scale rescue do them all the service in my power
operation. Their salvage flotilla arrived to obtain restitution. But Your
and set up a base-camp amid the Pal- Lordships will please to consider
mar de A€s Keys (part of modern that if the pirates, after they have
Orchid and Hutchinson Islands, received His Majesty’s pardon for
between Vero Beach and Sebastian the offence and have not where-
Inlet, Florida), raising 5 million out of withal to make satisfaction to those
an estimated 7 million pieces-of-eight they have injured, should be
in royal bullion lost among these clapped up in goal, it would render
wrecks, by the time the fair weather His Majesty’s gracious intentions
finally brought a temporary halt to towards them in a great measure
operations in late October. Both Henry ineffectual, and deter others from
Jennings and John Wills therefore coming in; and I am really per-
received permits a week later, on No- suaded the prosecution which has
vember 21, 1715 (O.S.), and exited already been commenced against
Port Royal for those troubled waters, Jennings has had a bad effect, not

one of the pirates having surren-
dered to me since that time.
Evidently, both public and official opin-
ions were shifting in Jennings’ favor.
Indeed, when Governor Lawes next
reported to London on December 6,
1719 (O.S.), he included the fact that:
. . . the writ of error brought by Captain
Jennings before me in Council, as a
Court of Appeals upon a judgment
obtained on his bond for £1,500 in
the Grand Court, come to a hearing
some days ago, and the Council have
reversed the said judgment. Mr. Bonfils
has desired leave to appeal to His Maj-
esty in Council; which I have granted
him, and His Majesty’s determination
in this affair will be a guidance with
respect to the putting in suit the bonds
given by the other sureties.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 31
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1933).
JOLLY ROGER
Later-day English euphemism for a
pirate flag, believed to have derived
from the French expression joli rouge
or ‘‘jolly red’’—itself an ironic refer-
ence to the blood-red ensigns flown in
battle, whenever no quarter was to be
expected or given. However, there is
no recorded usage of this expression
during the late 17th or early 18th cen-
turies, when piracy was in its prime.
Judgment Cliff 661
JUDGMENT CLIFF
Located on a steep hillside in Jamai-
ca’s Saint Thomas Parish, high up in
the Blue Mountains.
This curious name originated when a
mile-long segment of this hill’s eastern
face broke loose during the great earth-
quake of June 1692, and slid down onto
some dwellings clustered below, along
the banks of the Yallahs River near
Llandewey, burying some homes com-
pletely, as well as damming up the river
itself. The famous doctor and naturalist
Hans Sloane later noted this spectacular
slide, with the following words:
At Yellows, a great mountain split
and fell into the level land, and cov-
ered several settlements, and destroyed
nineteen white people. One of the per-
sons, whose name was Hopkins, had
his plantation removed half-a-mile
from the place where it formerly stood.
Seventeenth century islanders promptly
began interpreting this phenomenon as a
divine punishment, weaving many tales
as to its motivation over ensuing de-
cades, including one about how a retired
Dutch pirate had been buried alive in his
home by this rock-slide, as God’s judg-
ment for his many past sins. Presumably,
this particular version of the legend was
fueled by the name of the Dutch-born
privateer Jelles de Lecat—known among
the English as ‘‘Yellows’’—although his
demise had actually occurred in an alto-
gether different manner.
See also
Lecat, Jelles de.
 K

The encouragement given to the pirates

that have been in the Red Sea,
causes our people to run away to them,
for there they are all pardoned.
—Complaint by Governor Sir William Beeston
of Jamaica, July 1693

KELLEY, JAMES Reference

A notorious pirate, who while serving
aboard the East Indiaman Mocha, led a
mutiny and with his own hands mur-
dered the ship’s commander, Captain
Edgecomb, in his sleep. Kelley came
back to America with Captain William
Kidd, and was caught in 1699 at Char-
lestown opposite Boston by the Gover-
nor of Massachusetts, who described
him as ‘‘the most impudent, hardened
villain I ever saw.’’ It was said that
Kelley had entered the service of the
Mogul, turned Mohammedan, and been
circumcised. To settle this last point,
the prisoner was examined by a sur-
geon and a Jew, who both declared on
oath that it was so.
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
KIDD, WILLIAM
(fl. 1689
1699)
Scottish-born rover and pirate-hunter,
who ironically became one of the most
notorious pirates of them all.
Legend has it Kidd was born at Green-
ock in Scotland around 1645, the son of a
Presbyterian minister. He first figured in
official records in the summer of 1689,
when on learning of the outbreak of the
War of the League of Augsburg or King
William’s War back in Europe, he and a

663
664 Kidd, William (fl. 1689
1699)
few colleagues carried an anchored
French privateer away from St. Kitts in
the Leeward Islands, and into Nevis.
Lieutenant-General Christopher Codring-
ton would report to London on August
15, 1689 (O.S.), how he had arrived at
Nevis eight days previously:
. . . and found a French ship of sixteen
guns, that had been surprised and cap-
tured by the English. She was for-
merly a privateer manned by a
hundred and thirty English and
French, but mostly French. All but
twenty of them made a descent on St.
Christophers, leaving the ship at
anchor at Basseterre with twelve
French and eight English on board.
The last named set upon the French,
soon overcame them without the loss
of a man, and brought the ship in here.
She is now fitting for the King’s serv-
ice, her captain being William Kidd.
This vessel had four additional guns in-
stalled and was renamed Blessed Wil-
liam, Kidd being either elected or
appointed as its Captain, with additional
volunteers raised to bring its comple-
ment up to 80 to 90 privateersmen.
It was thereupon incorporated into
the small squadron which Captain Thomas
Hewetson was to lead against the French.
A descent was made against Marie Ga-
lante on December 30, 1689 (O.S.), the
French island being ransacked over the
next five days. On returning to Nevis,
the squadron was hurried out again to res-
cue the expedition of Sir Thomas Thorn-
hill, which had become cut off after
attacking the French colony of Saint
Martin. Hewetson and Kidd arrived off
that island in late January 1690, to find
the English troops besieged ashore by
five French warships under Jean-Baptiste
Ducasse. The two squadrons exchanged
broadsides throughout much of that day,
until Ducasse withdrew at nightfall.
Thornhill’s men were rescued and
restored to Nevis, Kidd himself being
praised by Hewetson as a ‘‘mighty man’’
who fought as well as any he had ever
seen. Yet his freebooters felt differently,
muttering about Kidd’s ‘‘ill behavior,’’
feeling resentful at finding themselves
embroiled in a line-of-battle engagement
with scant booty to be won.
Consequently, when Kidd went ashore
on February 2, 1690 (O.S.), a group of
mutineers led by William Mason made
off with Blessed William, and £2,000
worth of Marie-Galante loot. Gov. Chris-
topher Codrington presented Kidd with a
recently-captured French vessel which
had been renamed Antigua, and after rais-
ing a new crew, the furious captain set
off in pursuit of his lost ship. Blessed Wil-
liam had meanwhile been sailed to New
York, where Kidd eventually arrived in
March 1691, too late to overtake the
mutineers (who had served briefly as
New York privateersmen, before depart-
ing for the Indian Ocean).
However, New York’s previous Gover-
nor had also been driven out of office
when James II had fled into exile, and a
usurper government had entrenched itself
in power under Jacob Leisler, complicat-
ing Kidd’s quest. The new monarchs Wil-
liam and Mary had dispatched Colonel
Henry Sloughter from England to restore
royal rule, but he had not yet arrived, and
as Mason had served Leisler’s administra-
tion with Blessed William, Kidd now sided
with the royalist faction. Antigua was
being used to ferry arms and ammunition
to the troops preparing to assault insurrec-
tionist Fort James, just as Sloughter
arrived to carry the day for the Crown.
Kidd’s loyalty was rewarded with
£150 from the new provincial Assem-
bly, and he furthermore profited from

the adjudication of the 100-ton French
prize Saint Pierre, which had been
seized by Blessed William using one of
Leisler’s commissions. More impor-
tantly, Kidd married Sarah Bradley
Cox Oort, their marriage license being
dated May 16, 1691 (O.S.), just days
after her second husband John Oort
had died, leaving her a sizeable estate.
Kidd then sortied 11 days after his
wedding to pursue a French privateer
which was reportedly lurking off Block
Island (Rhode Island). On June 18, 1691
(O.S.), Governor Simon Bradstreet of
Massachusetts reported to Sloughter:
Captain Kidd and Captain Walkington,
in their passage from Rhode Island to
this place [Boston], came in sight of
the privateer before being advised of
her, and as some English prisoners
then on board [it] say, neglected a fair
advantage to take her and to have made
themselves masters of very consider-
able purchase, they reporting her to be
a ship worth ten thousand pounds or
more. At their arrival here [Boston],
very fair proposals were made and
encouragement given to the said two
Captains to be further enforced with
men to cruise some days for her, but
they saw no reason to accept thereof,
notwithstanding the prospect of gain
so great as might have been sufficient
to invite thereto, besides the service it
would have been to Their Majesties to
have had such an enemy suppressed.
Bradstreet furthermore complained of
the two privateers’ conduct, especially
Walkington, in pressing men from vari-
ous vessels around Boston harbor so as
to augment his crew.
Kidd seems to have resumed his
patrol and joined forces with a swift pri-
vateer sloop out of Bermuda under
Kidd, William (fl. 1689
1699) 665
Captain George Dew, creating even
more mischief during a visit to New
Hampshire. On July 29, 1691 (O.S.),
a local sloop proceeding down the
Piscataqua River with a company of
militiamen to mount a seaborne raid
against the French settlements in Casco
(Maine), ‘‘sailed by a brigantine and a
small sloop with the King’s jack flying,’’
which opened fire to prevent their pas-
sage. The nearby fort on Great Island fired
several guns back at the two interlopers,
but even when Dew came ashore next
morning, he unabashedly refused to
explain the two privateers’ actions. The
local authorities noted that: ‘‘The name
of the Captain of the brigantine, which is
above mentioned which fired at us, was
Kidd; and said Kidd belonged to New
York, as we are informed.’’ As the two
menacing vessels thereupon weighed
anchor, some more shots were angrily
fired across Dew’s bow, at which the
rovers ‘‘returned and came to an anchor
in the River of Piscataqua again, to the
great fear of the inhabitants.’’
Kidd nonetheless left shortly there-
after, and parted company as well with
the young and pugnacious Dew. He soon
seems to have settled down to live in
New York, it being reported how he sold
property on Dock Street in 1693, and
moved into a fine house next year with
his wife at 119
121 Pearl Street, as well
as purchasing a pew in Trinity Church—
where the newly-arrived Royal Governor
Benjamin Fletcher was also a congregant.
Kidd still maintained contact with his for-
mer calling, though, for on May 27, 1694
(O.S.), Captain John Evans of HMS Rich-
mond noted in his log how Captain Kidd,
a ‘‘privateer,’’ left New York harbor in
his brigantine; and shortly thereafter,
Kidd figured as foreman of the jury
which acquitted his friend Robert Living-
ston’s ship Orange of trading with the
666 Kidd, William (fl. 1689
1699)
French enemy on Hispaniola, despite
overwhelming evidence against him.
In 1695, Kidd sailed Antigua to
London, ostensibly on a trading voyage
to England, although also in hopes of
obtaining a privateering commission.
These were not easily available, so that
he and his fellow New York Scotsman,
Livingston, who was also in London
that summer, entered into a scheme
with the influential Earl of Bellomont:
As the Earl was in need of money, and
about to be appointed Governor of
New England, he would gather invest-
ors and secure a patent from his friends
in the Whig government to allow Kidd
to outfit a ship and hunt for pirates in
the Far East, who were making a rich
haul in those unguarded waterways.
Through a special proviso, Kidd would
be allowed to carry his prizes back to
New England for adjudication, where
the investors would additionally profit
as they need pay no royal duties.
A privateering commission to operate
against the French was therefore issued
to Kidd on December 11, 1695 (O.S.),
and a few days later the brand new
frigate-galley Adventure of 34 guns, 287
tons, and 46 sweeps was bought at Dept-
ford, 70 crewmen being recruited to serve
aboard on the basis of ‘‘no purchase, no
pay.’’ A second patent was issued to Kidd
on January 26, 1696 (O.S.), specifically
allowing him to hunt for such rovers as
Thomas Tew and William Mayes, a most
unusual concession for any but a Royal
Navy warship. Adventure quit London at
the end of February 1696, yet did not get
far. Kidd had acquired a reputation for
conceited boastfulness because of his
influential patrons, and instead of saluting
a warship at the mouth of the Medway,
he had his men man the yards and ‘‘clap
their backsides in unison’’ over some
minor slight. Adventure was conse-
quently detained and Kidd’s seamen
taken aboard HMS Duchess of 90 guns,
not being released to him until April,
after which he continued his interrupted
voyage.
While traversing the Atlantic, he
captured a small French fishing-boat,
before putting into New York to recruit
a larger complement. Announcing a
cruise to the Red Sea, he quickly had
152 men on board—some coming from
as far away as Philadelphia—and on
September 6, 1696 (O.S.), bid farewell
to his wife and daughters to get under
way. Adventure reached Madeira by
mid-October, then visited the Cape
Verde Islands. Proceeding southward,
he unexpectedly fell in with the Royal
Navy squadron of Commodore Thomas
Warren on December 12th (O.S.). They
sailed together for a week toward the
Cape of Good Hope, Kidd bragging of
his prospects, while worrying that War-
ren might impress many of his seamen.
Consequently, when the ships became
becalmed, Kidd availed himself of this
opportunity to row out of sight.
Warren entered the Cape Colony
convinced that Kidd intended to turn
pirate, while the latter reached Mada-
gascar on January 27, 1697 (O.S.).
These suspicions were confirmed later
on that same summer, when Adventure
attacked the peaceful Mocha trading-
fleet in August 1697, being driven off
by the 36-gun English East Indiaman
Sceptre. Other attacks nonetheless
ensued, until Kidd finally succeeded in
capturing a rich prize at the end of
January 1698, the 400-ton Quedah Mer-
chant out of Surat, India. It took him a
few weeks to dispose of its goods, then
several months before he touched at the
pirate lair off Madagascar, where he

beached and burnt Adventure, before
heading home in his prize.
In early April 1699, Quedah Merchant
or Adventure’s Prize made its landfall
off Anguilla Island in the West Indies,
where Kidd took on fresh provisions. He
now learned that his numerous clumsy
attempts to capture merchantmen in the
Far East had spread alarm throughout the
East India Company, which had declared
him a pirate and instituted a global man-
hunt. He sought asylum at Danish Saint
Thomas, yet this was denied to him, so
he hovered off Mona Island between
Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo, sell-
ing off the last of his Indian wares
while attempting to buy another ship.
Kidd tried to smuggle so many caches of
booty ashore before surrendering to the
Boston authorities, that rumors would per-
sist for many years about his buried treas-
ure, as in this romantic scene depicted by
Howard Pyle. (Johnson, Merle (compiled
by). Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates: Fiction,
Fact & Fancy Concerning the Buccaneers &
Marooners of the Spanish Main, 1921)
Kidd, William (fl. 1689
1699) 667
He eventually purchased the sloop San
Antonio and abandoned his prize, creep-
ing stealthily into lower Delaware Bay
early in June 1699, hoping to avoid detec-
tion. His wife Sarah and daughters met
him off Rhode Island’s Oyster Pond Bay
a few days later, when Kidd learned the
full scope of his notoriety. Honest mer-
chants felt that he was a villainous pirate,
while others believed that he was return-
ing fabulously wealthy.
Kidd clandestinely distributed portions
of his booty among trusted friends, even
sailing San Antonio up into Narragansett
Bay to visit his 67-year-old retired col-
league, Captain Thomas Paine. The cus-
toms collector at Newport set out with 30
armed men aboard a boat to try to inter-
cept Kidd’s renegade sloop, but the fugi-
tive knew that he could not afford to be
arrested until he got into Boston, where
he might hope to be protected by his
patron, the Earl of Bellomont—who had
been installed as New England’s Gover-
nor little more than a year previously.
Kidd therefore fired two cannon-shots to
drive back the collector’s boat, before
continuing up the bay to drop anchor
off Conanicut Island near Jamestown,
and summon aboard Paine. The latter
agreed to safeguard numerous of his
gold bars, despite the very real danger
that he might be charged with receiving
and concealing stolen goods, a capital
offense.
Kidd then went back out to sea and
proceeded toward Boston, having sent
a message on ahead to his patron
Bellomont, to determine where he
stood. The Governor returned a letter
assuring Kidd of protection, yet hint-
ing at unforeseen complications. San
Antonio therefore put into that port,
where Kidd met Bellomont on the
weekend, July 1
2, 1699 (O.S.). On
668 Knight, William (fl. 1685
1686)
that following Monday, the rover also
presented himself before the Massachu-
setts Council, and although all seemed to
go well at first, Kidd was arrested when
he returned to testify on Thursday, July
6th—despite rushing into the chamber
and crying out for Bellomont’s assistance
as the constables closed in. The Gover-
nor did not intercede as Kidd was
dragged away and jailed, nor when he
was deported to England next spring. Af-
ter a sensational trial, Kidd was executed
at Wapping along the banks of the
Thames, on May 23, 1701 (O.S.).
See also
Dew, George; Mayes, William; Paine,
Thomas (entry in Volume 1); Tew,
Thomas.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series
America and West Indies, Volumes 13,
15
19 (London: His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1901
1910).
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic:
William III, 1698 (London, 1933).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Ritchie, Robert C., Captain Kidd and
the War against the Pirates
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1986).
KNIGHT, WILLIAM
(fl. 1685
1686)
English privateer who roamed the
South Sea.
In March 1685, Knight’s bark with
a dozen men came from the coast of
New Spain to join the pirate fleet of
Edward Davis, François Grogniet,
Charles Swan, and other rovers lying
off the coast of Panama. After an
unsuccessful engagement against the
Armada del Mar del Sur on June 7th,
these buccaneers fell out among them-
selves along national lines. Knight at
first sailed northwestward as a part of
the English contingent, raiding Realejo
and Le
on (Nicaragua) early in August
1685, for little gain. Returning south-
ward, he wound up raiding the Peru-
vian coast with Davis in July 1686,
before parting from him after careening
at the Juan Fern
andez Islands, and
‘‘making the best of his way round
Tierra del Fuego to the West Indies.’’
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1990).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
 L

Have you heard of Teach the rover,

And his knavery on the Main,
How of gold he was a lover,
How he lov’d all ill-got gain?
—From a ballad attributed to 13-year-old
Benjamin Franklin, Boston 1719

LA BARCA, ESTEBAN DE also encouraged to sally against the Eng-

(fl. 1722
1724)
Mexican corsair who thrice sortied
from Campeche to strike against the
foreign logging camps in Belize.
Virtually nothing is known about his
birth or early career, until a Cuban cor-
sair happened to put into Campeche
with a captured English sloop and frig-
ate in August 1722, which it had inter-
cepted off the northeastern coast of the
Yucat
an Peninsula for illegally carry-
ing cargoes of logwood away from
Spanish-claimed Belize. This Cuban
captain—possibly Juan Machado or
Juan P
erez Machado—was offered var-
ious inducements by the local Mexican
authorities to remain on patrol in their
waters, and Campeche’s seamen were
lish interlopers. Although the brief Euro-
pean conflict between Spain and the
Quadruple Alliance of Britain, France,
Holland, and Austria had ended fifteen
months earlier, the Spaniards nonetheless
regarded the growing number of English
loggers settling into the jungle maze
around the Valis River mouth as tres-
passers, and a potential future threat.
First Cruise (1722)
Perhaps further encouraged by news
that Jamaica’s ports and shipping had
been devastated by a huge hurricane
on August 28, 1722 (O.S.), thereby
reducing the danger of encountering
any strong English force at sea, La
Barca was one of the first Campechan

669
670 Labat, Jean-Baptiste (fl. 1694
1705)
corsairs to sortie on this privateering
venture. Within a few weeks, he set sail
with only 25 men aboard two piraguas.
His pair of tiny craft hugged the
coastline as they rounded the Yucat
an
Peninsula, and eventually stole into
the profusion of channels of the Valis
River delta to surprise an anchored
English frigate.
This 24-gun vessel, manned by 36
crewmen and eight black slaves, was
carried by storm in a violent assault
which left one of La Barca’s men dead
and six wounded, as well as an English-
woman slain and various injuries aboard
the frigate. Discovering that their prize
was loaded with logwood and intended
to weigh anchor the very next day, the
victorious corsairs sailed it back to Cam-
peche, where it was condemned early in
1723 as a legitimate prize.
Second Sweep (1723)
Because of this lucrative haul, La Barca
was provided with a demi-galley and
piragua manned by 40 men, and accom-
panied by another small corsair vessel,
on his next sortie. His flotilla rounded
the Yucat
an Peninsula once more, and
sighted an English sloop being careened
on Isla Mujeres, which it captured.
Another sloop and a brigantine were
also intercepted as La Barca approached
the Valis River mouth again, after which
his corsairs stole ashore and torched a
few English logging camps, before retir-
ing for Campeche.
Third Assault (1724)
The provincial Governor of Yucat
an,
Antonio Cortaire y Terreros, decided to
follow up La Barca’s successes next
year with a full-blown expedition, com-
manded by Campeche’s coast-guard
Captain Nicol
as Rodrı́guez aboard his
newly-launched royal paquebote, named
Felipe V. This force was to include such
corsair commanders as La Barca, Jos
e
Aguirre, Jos
e Marqu
es de Valenzuela,
Juan Rodrı́guez de Raya, Baltasar de
Alc
azar, and Juan de Ulloa as subordi-
nates. The first elements of this forma-
tion reached Ascensi
on Bay (modern
Emiliano Zapata Bay) by April 2, 1724,
where Rodrı́guez held a council-meeting
and proposed leading the main body
inside Belize’s protective chain of reefs,
while Marqu
es was to sail on ahead and
await off Cocos Key, before then sailing
down outside them and catching any
interlopers who attempted to escape.
Yet after the main force departed
Ascensi
on Bay on April 11, 1724,
Marqu
es’ galliot was wrecked on a reef,
delaying the advance of the flotilla.
Rodrı́guez paused at Aguada Key to send
piraguas in search of his vanished con-
sort, but in vain. Instead, the concealed
Spaniards sighted seven English sails far-
ther out at sea on the afternoon of April
21, 1724, and prepared to stand out next
day to engage, but awakened to find an
empty horizon. A pair of piraguas was
consequently dispatched toward the Valis
River mouth on April 24, 1724, to gather
intelligence. They returned two days later
with six English prisoners, who informed
Rodrı́guez until April 28th, when they
proceeded to blockade Belize. As two
Royal Navy schooners under a Captain
named Peyton were protecting the poach-
ers inside, though, the English were
allowed to exit unmolested on May 1st,
before the Spaniards disembarked.
LABAT, JEAN-BAPTISTE
(fl. 1694
1705)
French missionary who met numerous
flibustiers during his travels throughout

the Lesser Antilles, and later recorded
descriptions of their activities.
Born near Paris in 1663, Labat
joined the Dominican Order at the age
of nineteen. Ordained as a priest by
1685, he was assigned to Nancy, where
in addition to his clerical duties, he
taught philosophy, theology, and math-
ematics. His intellectual prowess and
curiosity were considerable. While at
the Jacobin monastery on Paris’ Rue
Saint-Honor
e in 1693, word arrived
that many missionaries in the French
West Indies had died during a recent
epidemic. Over the objections of his
superiors, Labat volunteered to go out
to serve as a replacement, having long
harbored a desire to see and live in the
New World.
Trans-Atlantic Crossing
(1693
1694)
Labart departed Paris on August 5,
1693, traveling to the port city of La
Rochelle to book passage across the
ocean. Any ocean voyage threatened to
be doubly perilous at that time, for
in addition to natural dangers, the War
of the League of Augsburg or King
William’s War against the combined
powers of England, Holland, and Spain
was just then entering its fifth year.
The 30-year-old friar secured a berth
aboard the French Royal Navy ship
Loire, an armed fl^ ute or cargo-vessel
of 500 tons manned by 80 sailors,
which although fitted with 30 gunports
only had 20 cannon mounted, so as to
make room for 30 soldiers and 25 ci-
vilian passengers, plus extra cargo.
Under Capitaine de la H
eronniere, this
ship set sail on November 29, 1693,
paired with the smaller royal fl^ ute
Tranquille, as part of a 38-vessel con-
voy to be escorted across the Atlantic
Labat, Jean-Baptiste (fl. 1694
1705) 671
by the brand-new 44-gun, 500-ton war-
ship Opini^atre (Obstinate) of Capitaine
de Sainte-Marie.
On the afternoon of January 28,
1694, just as the Loire was approach-
ing Martinique alone—having become
separated from its convoy—it was
sighted and pursued by HMS Chester
of 50 guns. The French crew was able
to beat off its more heavily-armed op-
ponent, because the English initially
believed that they were engaging the
more powerful Opini^ atre, rather than
a cargo ship. Night fell with Loire
still managing to defend itself, and it
then slipped away into the darkness,
despite suffering 37 killed and 80
wounded during this lopsided struggle,
including its brave Captain de la
H
eronniere.
Antillean Observer
(1694
1705)
Labat gratefully disembarked from this
battered vessel on Martinique at 3:00 P.M.
that following afternoon, January 29,
1694, and two weeks later began
his missionary work when he was sent
by Governor Charles de Courbon,
Comte de Bl
enac, to its northeastern
parish of Macouba. Labat would spend
the next two years energetically work-
ing at several spots throughout the
island, using his mathematical talents
to help rebuild many of its structures
and enhancing many businesses, in
addition to his religious duties. He
also took keen note of everything new
which he encountered, including the
island’s colorful sea-rovers. As early
as March 6, 1694, he had celebrated a
Mass at Martinique’s main harbor of
Saint-Pierre for a flibustier captain
and crew, who had just brought two
English prizes into Les Mouillages.
672 La Buze, Louis (fl. 1716
1717)
Labat recorded how their anchored
corvette even fired salvoes at appro-
priate points during his ceremony,
and a portion of their booty was
donated to the Church.
The vigorous Dominican was trans-
ferred to Guadeloupe in 1696, remain-
ing on that large neighboring island
for another four years, until restored
to Martinique on August 30, 1700.
Three days later, he departed on yet
another mission, setting sail for the
English island of Grenada aboard the
large bark Trompeuse, and also visit-
ing Barbados en route.
When hostilities against England
and Holland were renewed in 1703,
Labat was summoned back to Guade-
loupe to improve its defenses. The
Dominicans resident at their coastal
town of Baillif also employed his tal-
ents, by asking him to design and
supervise construction by their slaves
that same year of a stone defensive
tower (which still stands today, known
as the Tour de p ere Labat or ‘‘Father
Labat’s Tower’’).
His ship arrived in the roadstead at
Cadiz by October 9. 1705, and he
stepped ashore next day. On regaining
France, he wrote a six-volume treatise
entitled Voyages aux Iles de l’Am
erique,
which was published in Paris in 1722.
It contained valuable information on
Antillean life, and frequently mentioned
the activities of privateers such as Capi-
taine Pinel and George Roche. Labat
died on January 6, 1738.
See also
Flute; Roche, George.
Reference
Labat, Jean-Baptiste, Memoirs, 1693
1705
(London: Routledge, 1970 translation by
John Eaden).
LA BUZE, LOUIS
(fl. 1716
1717)
French corsair who apparently operated
out of Saint-Domingue, often in con-
cert with English pirates.
Nothing is known about his early life
and career, beyond the few glimpses con-
tained in English records, where phonetic
versions of his surname appear in many
garbled forms: ‘‘Leboofe,’’ ‘‘Leboose,’’
‘‘La Buze,’’ ‘‘de Boure,’’ etc.
Consort with Hornigold (1716)
He sallied out of Nassau yet again in
March 1716, in company with the
French privateer Postillon of Captain
Louis La Buze, 140 men being distrib-
uted between both their sloops. Early
next month, they seized a large foreign
merchantman at anchor in the Cuban
port of Mariel, which was apparently
smuggling goods ashore. Hornigold, and
La Buze, robbed it of everything of
value over the span of a week, before
abandoning their ransacked prize at
the approach of a rival privateering flo-
tilla under Jennings. Hornigold, and La
Buze, then prowled farther along the
northwestern Cuban coastline, rounding
its tip to intercept a pair of Spanish
brigantines off Cape Corrientes, loaded
with cacao from Maracaibo. When
these Spaniards could not raise the
demanded ransom to have their vessels
spared, they were set ashore, and their
brigantines burnt.
 La Claverie, Charles De (fl. 1702
1711)
Hornigold and La Buze next proceeded
along Cuba’s southwestern shoreline to
Isla de Pinos (modern Isla de la Juventud),
where they met three or four empty Eng-
lish sloops and ‘‘made use of them in
cleaning their own,’’ before restoring
them to their crews. The rover pair subse-
quently weighed again by late May 1716
to call at French Saint-Domingue, but
here Hornigold was voted out of office in
favor of his crewman Samuel Bellamy,
‘‘upon a difference arising amongst the
English pirates because Hornygold
refused to take and plunder English ves-
sels.’’ He therefore departed with only 26
loyal hands aboard a smaller prize sloop,
Bellamy retaining 90 men aboard Mary
Anne, most of them being English.
After having visited the Spanish
authorities at St. Augustine, Florida, in
early June 1716, Captain Howard of
HMS Shoreham returned to South Car-
olina and reported on September 15th
(O.S.) that at least three English sloops
out of Nassau were involved in pirati-
cal deeds: ‘‘One Horngold, Jennings,
and Fernando, who have got 200 men,
and are joined by a Frenchman.’’
Later Depredation (1719)
Although it is uncertain whether La
Buze was still in command, his vessels
at least were known to be prowling
the waters off Saint-Domingue some
two-and-a-half years later. On February
24, 1719 (O.S.), an escaped English
captive—John Bois, former carpenter of
the merchant frigate Wade—declared
before Governor Walter Hamilton of
Antigua, how while:
Bound for Jamaica, he was taken by
a French pirate ship, the Mary Anne.
The pirates plundered and drove the
673
ship [Wade] ashore after using the
Captain very barbarously, upon sus-
picion of his having concealed
money. Their consort the Postillion
took a French pink, which they fitted
out and then sank the Mary Anne in
Saman
a Bay. They pretended to
trade with Spanish merchants upon
the coast, but robbed them when
they got them on board. They after-
wards took several vessels belonging
to New England, one belonging to
Bermudas, and one to Jamaica.
Ironically, these French corsairs—perhaps
including La Buze—were in turn captured
and plundered in ‘‘Scots Bay,’’ along the
north coast of Hispaniola, by Edward
England’s pair of English pirate vessels in
January 1719.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 30
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1958).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
LA CLAVERIE, CHARLES
DE (fl. 1702
1711)
French merchant master who operated
as a wartime privateer, and was detained
for smuggling on Cuba.
The first official notice of his activ-
ities occurred during the early months
of Queen Anne’s War, a conflict which
saw France aligned with Spain against
Britain and The Netherlands. He was
most likely of Basque origin, his surname
674 Lartigue (fl. 1696)
apparently being more correctly written
as ‘‘Chavarie’’—which in Spanish would
have been rendered as ‘‘Chavarri’’—yet
which would be quite commonly garbled
into ‘‘La Claverie’’ or ‘‘Claverie’’ by vari-
ous French scribes. At Marly on August
2, 1702, he secured a commercial permit
from the Admiralty of Guyenne to trans-
port a consignment of goods to the Amer-
icas aboard his 26-man, 100-ton ship
Trois Unis, furthermore bearing a priva-
teering commission ‘‘to pursue corsairs
and pirates.’’
Information about his movements in
the New World remained sketchy,
although he was possibly the ‘‘Captain
Claverie’’ who was reported as having
found a tobacco-ship from Brazil out at
sea and brought it into Plaisance on New-
foundland in July 1707, as well as taking
a galley from Amsterdam in those same
waters in December 1708. And despite
France’s alliance with Spain, he was also
charged in 1711 (under the name of ‘‘Car-
los de la Claverı́a’’) for making an unau-
thorized visit to Santiago de Cuba with
his ship Dauphin, resulting in the confis-
cation of his cargo and its adjudication at
Havana next year.
References
Archives D
epartementales de la Gironde
[France], 6B 79 173v.-175v.
Archive of Indies (Seville), Escribanı´a de
C
amara de Justicia 55A.
Archives Nationales d’Outre-mer [France],
COL C11C 5/fol. 90-103 and 6/fol.
121
131.
LARTIGUE (fl. 1696)
French rover who is described in a
document dated June 22, 1696, as a
‘‘flibustier of B
earn,’’ then residing
at Mont-Carmel (Basse-Terre), on the
West Indian island of Guadeloupe.
Nothing is known about his privateer-
ing activities.
Reference
Goddet-Langlois, Jean and Denise, La
vie en Guadeloupe au XVIIe si ecle,
suivi du Dictionnaire des familles
guadeloup
eennes de 1635
1700
(Fort-de-France: Editions Exbrayat,
1991).
LAURENS, PIETER
(fl. 1693
1705)
Dutch-born privateer who operated out
of Rhode Island and Boston during King
William’s and Queen Anne’s Wars, with
English commissions under the Angli-
cized name of ‘‘Peter Lawrence.’’
In the summer of 1693, following
the withdrawal of the frigate HMS Non-
such from those waters, its provincial
Assembly later reported that:
. . . there hath been a French priva-
teer, which being near Rhode Island,
hath seized several vessels; one of
them belonged to Rhode Island, John
Godfrey, master; whereupon Your
Majesty’s Governor [John Easton]
sent forth a brigantine under com-
mand of Cap’n Peter Laurence, who
having been forth to pursue after
them, not finding them, are returned.
Granted a second commission more
than a year later by Deputy Governor
John Greene, Jr., he captured two
French fishing boats off the Grand
Banks of Newfoundland.

Once peace was restored, the gov-
ernment of Rhode Island later justified
Major Greene’s issuance of this partic-
ular license against complaints being
received from the Council of Trade
and Plantations in London, by writing
on May 13, 1700 (O.S.), to explain that
Lawrence’s commission was only ‘‘to
cruise upon this coast, and [he] was
never off from the coast further than
Canada.’’
Queen Anne’s War
(1702
1705)
Shortly after news of the May 1702 dec-
laration of hostilities against France and
Spain reached Boston from London,
Lawrence posted surety and obtained a
privateering commission from Governor
Joseph Dudley to once again sortie east-
ward into French-Canadian waters with
his sloop Charles. He soon captured
‘‘some small vessels’’ and sent these into
Boston for adjudication, except one
which was apparently forced by weather
‘‘down to South Carolina, where the
company had her condemned and sold.’’
As the onset of that upcoming winter
would curtail local operations, Lawrence
put into his old base of Providence on
Rhode Island late that same autumn to
recruit fresh hands, before steering south
toward the warmer Caribbean.
Off the coast of Cuba, his Charles
joined forces with the privateers Hannah
and Mary out of Boston under Captain
John Blew, and Tyger from Barbados
under Captain Jeremiah Burrows. Early
in 1703, this trio captured the ship Jes

us
Nazareno y Nuestra Se~ nora de la Esca-
lera of Captain Alonso Caro Galafate in
Matanzas Bay east of Havana, which had
been chartered by the Spanish Crown as
Laurens, Pieter (fl. 1693
1705) 675
an aviso or ‘‘dispatch-vessel’’ to convey
trans-Atlantic correspondence to and
from Cartagena (Colombia). The three
Captains steered northward with their
rich prize that spring, but as they
approached the coast of New England,
debated among themselves whether to
put into Providence or Boston. Although
Lawrence had been commissioned out of
the latter port, he later argued that he also
carried:
. . . instructions both from the Gov-
ernor of Boston and our owners, that
prizes taken to the eastward we
should send to Boston, and to the
southward, into any of Her Maj-
esty’s governments in America for
condemnation.
Even after having contacted Charles’
owners while still at sea, his fellow
commanders and all three crews none-
theless voted to put into Rhode Island,
presumably because its adjudication
would prove less strict and hence more
profitable for the privateers.
Their flotilla consequently dropped
anchor off Providence, and on April 23,
1703 (O.S.), formally petitioned its pri-
vate Governor Samuel Cranston to
inspect and receive their Spanish prize.
Two of Charles’ irate owners in Bos-
ton—the merchants George Lawson and
Andrew Faneuil—angrily appealed to
Governor Dudley to not allow any
‘‘judgment to proceed, or all would be
immediately embezzled.’’ The prize was
reputedly laden with wines and other
valuables worth more than £5,000, so
that Dudley:
. . . immediately wrote to both the said
Captains [Lawrence and Blew], direct-
ing them to bring their prize to Boston,
676 Laurens, Pieter (fl. 1693
1705)
their commission port, whence they
proceeded, where the ships under their
management belonged, and where
they were indebted for their advance,
and where dwell all the owners and
sharers with them.
But while vainly awaiting a reply, Cran-
ston had also contacted Thomas Newton,
Deputy Judge of the Vice-Admiralty
Court at Boston, asking him to assist in
the legal adjudication of Jes
us Naza-
reno, adding: ‘‘I should have been glad
if they had not brought it into this gov-
ernment, as I told them before her ar-
rival, for I feared it would create us
many enemies, besides much trouble to
myself, with little profit.’’
Still hoping to forestall matters,
Dudley dispatched the Deputy Receiver
of the Lord High Admiral’s Tenths in
Massachusetts Bay to intervene, but as
Rhode Island fell outside this official’s
jurisdiction he was simply ignored. Pro-
ceedings began at Providence on May 8,
1703 (O.S.), when it was declared that
on first carrying their prize, its captors
had pillaged items ‘‘called small plun-
der’’ worth £441, nine shillings, and
nine pence, but that all its bulk cargo
had remained intact. Jes
us Nazareno
and its contents would eventually be
appraised at only £1,681, and two days
afterward, Dudley wrote furiously to
London, concluding his report:
I have found the reason of Mr. Law-
rence, one of the privateers, unwill-
ingness to come hither. One Captain
Tucker of Bermudas brings me
account that Lawrence met him in the
sea in November last past, and rob’d
him and sunk his vessel, and set him
on shore at Carolina. I am taking care
to have him arrested upon that head,
to see what may appear upon his trial,
but I shall not be able to bring it to
pass, while they have a pretence to
any government [at Rhode Island].
Indeed, Lawrence seems to have spent
the year there. Next spring, in one of the
earliest advertisements ever published in
North America, the May 15
22, 1704
(O.S.), edition of the Boston News-Letter
contained the following notice:
Captain Peter Lawrence is going a-
Privateering from Rhode Island in a
good sloop, about 60 tons, six guns,
and 90 men for Canada, and any gen-
tlemen or sailors that are disposed to
go, shall be kindly entertained.
The haven offered by Rhode Island to
Lawrence and other such seafaring rene-
gades formed one of 13 charges leveled
from London against that colony’s pri-
vate ‘‘chartered government’’ in March
1705, accusing them of serving as ‘‘a re-
ceptacle of pirates.’’
See also
Commission Port.
References
Bartlett, John R., Records of the Colony
of Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations, in New England, Volume III
(Providence, RI: State Printers, 1858).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 18,
21
23 (London: His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1936).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
 Lenham, George (fl. 1687
1694) 677

LEAGUE
A measurement of distance, roughly
equivalent to three miles.
In the 17th century, English nautical
leagues were gauged at 20 to a degree
of latitude, roughly equivalent to 6,000
total yards. Each league was further-
more subdivided into three nautical
miles. The Spaniards used the same
measurements at sea [5.57 kilometers],
although on land a legua of 17.5 to a
degree was sometimes employed, equiv-
alent to 6.35 kilometers.

Reference
Howse, Derek, and Thrower, Norman J.
W., eds., A Buccaneer’s Atlas: Basil
Ringrose’s South Sea Waggoner. A Sea
Atlas and Sailing Directions of the
Pacific Coast of the Americas 1682
(Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1992).
LE MOYNE D’IBERVILLE,
PIERRE (1661
1706)
French explorer who founded the col-
ony of Louisiana, then died serving as
a privateer during the War of the Span-
ish Succession.
Iberville (as he is most commonly
known to English-speaking historians)
was born at Montreal, Quebec, on July
20, 1661. He began his military career
in 1686, taking part in an expedition
against the English in the Hudson’s
Bay region. He spent the winter of
1687
1688 in France, requesting aid
to reinforce the French fur-trading out-
posts and turn back the Indians of Port
Nelson. Once more back in James Bay,
he organized a furring expedition. In
The French-Canadian privateer and foun-
der of Louisiana, Pierre Le Moyne
d’Iberville. (Library of Congress)
1690, he took part in Governor de Fron-
tenac’s campaign out of Quebec City,
against the English colonies to the south.
In 1697, he was granted a monopoly
over the trade in Hudson’s Bay.
Reference
Dictionnaire de l’Am

erique française (Ottawa,
Ont: Ottawa University Press, 1988).
LENHAM, GEORGE
(fl. 1687
1694)
English privateer and pirate-hunter.
In the autumn of 1687, Lenham
sailed to New Providence in the Baha-
mas with a special peacetime commis-
sion from Lieutenant Governor Hender
Molesworth of Jamaica, to seek out
pirates. This patrol had been prompted
678 L
eog^ane
by news of Thomas Woollerly dispos-
ing of his booty illegally at those
islands, and when Lenham arrived he
learned of another band of pirates
‘‘who had burnt their ship and raised a
fort of eight guns on a neighboring
island for their security.’’ In the words
of Molesworth’s report, dated Decem-
ber 7, 1687 (O.S.):
He [Lenham] accordingly sailed
thither, beat them out of it and
brought off the men with their goods,
and three or four Portuguese negroes
who were the only witnesses that
could be produced against them. It
appeared from their account that they
had taken a Portuguese ship off the
coast of Brazil, and on this evidence
the men were condemned. Though
pardon had been promised, not one
of them singly would make the least
confession. At last the pardon was
offered to all, when it appeared that
they belonged to three sloops which
left Carolina in company, with the re-
solution to take some good ship and
sail with her to the South Sea. At last
they got a Dutch vessel of good
force, with which they took another
and sailed away south, but were
beaten back by foul weather at
Magellan’s Strait, and forced into
[New] Providence. There they burnt
their ship (as Woollerly had done
before them) and hearing of the proc-
lamation for pardon of pirates, were
intending to go to New England.
Their spoil was condemned, though it
was of little value. . . .
Almost five months later, the citizens of
the Bahamas complained to the Council
of Jamaica that Lenham and Royal Navy
Captain Thomas Spragge had plundered
their houses during this operation, which
both commanders denied, attributing
this charge to the islanders’ well-known
sympathy for such rovers.
Lenham was also most likely the
same ‘‘Captain George Lenham’’ listed
in May 1699 among the property own-
ers of Jamaica’s ‘‘Windward Parishes,’’
who had suffered material losses dur-
ing the French invasion and pillage
along that particular stretch of coastline
five years previously.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 12,
17 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1933).

OGA
LE ^ NE
Technically, the French administrative
capital for Sainte-Domingue, although
not the colony’s largest or busiest city.
Soon after J
er
emie Deschamps de
Moussac et du Rausset had arrived at
Tortuga Island in 1659, with authoriza-
tion from both Paris and London to act
as its private ‘‘Governor,’’ he founded
a new mainland settlement named
Petit-Go^ave to take advantage of its
broad and fertile plains.
By 1663, a second hamlet dubbed
L
eog^ane (the French rendering of La
Yaguana) had also been established
nearby by another 30 migrants; then in
June 1665, one of L
eog^ane’s estate-
holders—Bertrand d’Ogeron, Sieur de
la Bouere, a retired Marine Regiment
Captain and shareholder in an earlier
colonizing company—was appointed
Governor over the entire French half
of Hispaniola by the newly-created

Compagnie des Indes Occidentales or
‘‘Company of the West Indies’’ in
Paris, which was backed by the chief
royal minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert.
Despite considerable resentment on Tor-
tuga against this corporation’s trade
monopoly and its boucaniers even muti-
nying against d’Ogeron in the spring of
1670, his 11-year tenure nonetheless
proved remarkably successful; the col-
ony flourished as numerous engag
es or
‘‘indentured laborers’’ were brought out
from France to clear and work Saint-
Domingue’s mainland. By the time
d’Ogeron resumed his private occupa-
tion at L
eog^ane in 1674, the total
French population had multiplied from
700 to 800 residents to roughly 5,000.
Although Cap-François (modern Cap-
Ha€tien) soon emerged as the busiest and
largest town, L
eog^ane and Petit-Go^ave
shared the title of its administrative capi-
tal, as they were farther removed from
seaborne raiders, and better sheltered from
hurricanes behind the island’s central
mountain range. L
eog^ane’s inhabitants
had initially been concentrated at a spot
called l’Ester or ‘‘The Inlet,’’ with a
few others living some miles away at
Petite-Rivi ere or ‘‘Little River’’; both
communities—plus a few lesser ones
scattered in between—comprised the
‘‘parish of L
eog^ane,’’ and were minis-
tered to by the Dominican Order.
However, their geographic dispersal
meant that they could never be coalesced
into a defensible whole, so that Petit-
Go^ave was fortified to act as a single
stronghold during times of war, most
especially after the harrowing Anglo-
Spanish descent against the island’s
northern coastline in spring of 1695.
Still, Petit-Go^ave did not prove entirely
satisfactory as a capital, as it was too far
west from the rich farmlands on Cul-de-
Le Picard, Capitaine (fl. 1682
1690) 679
Sac Plain for easy overland access, while
furthermore blighted by an insalubrious
reputation.
LE PICARD, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1682
1690)
Wide-ranging French flibustier, who
roamed deep into the South Sea and as
far north as Canada during his career.
Details about his early life are
unknown, and even his true name is
uncertain. It is believed that Picard had
served as a subordinate under Thomas
Paine of Rhode Island, when that free-
booter had been operating with a
French commission against the Span-
iards during the late 1670s and early
1680s. It also seems that Picard was a
member of the crew of the famous Lau-
rens de Graaf, when that chieftain
weighed from Petit-Go^ave (Haiti) on
November 22, 1684, to prowl the Span-
ish Main. Ten weeks later, having failed
to make any significant captures, Picard
may have been the leader of a faction
of 87 flibustiers who voted to separate,
sailing away on February 13, 1685, on
an independent cruise aboard a Spanish
prize nicknamed the Cascarilla.
Ten days later, after meeting Cap-
tains Jean Rose and Mathurin Desmar-
etz at sea, Picard’s contingent decided
to steer for Golden Island off the north-
eastern coast of Panama, so as to cross
the Isthmus into the South Sea. Drop-
ping anchor, they learned that a large
force of flibustiers had already preceded
them under Captains François Grogniet
and Lescuyer to join an even bigger
contingent of English buccaneers who
were known to be operating in the
Pacific. Picard and his companions were
680 Le Picard, Capitaine (fl. 1682
1690)
overtaken by Rose and Desmaretz, so
that on March 1, 1685, ‘‘after com-
mending our journey to God,’’ 264
mainly French flibustiers set off through
the jungle afoot.
Pacific Penetration
(1685
1686)
Emerging on the far side of the Isth-
mus of Panama by April 11, 1685, Pic-
ard and the rest were met by a boat
which Grogniet had sent back for
them. This craft conducted the new
arrivals to a pirate assemblage off Isla
del Rey, where they joined the fleet
of English Captains Edward Davis,
Charles Swan, William Knight, and
Francis Townley. The flibustiers were
offered the 90-ton Santa Rosa, which
had been recently captured from the
Spaniards, all the French agreeing to
serve under Grogniet. The six vessels
and almost 1,000 freebooters settled
down to blockade the City of Panama,
in hopes of intercepting the annual Pe-
ruvian treasure fleet. But these Spanish
vessels slipped past, delivered their
cargo, and sallied to engage the bucca-
neers on June 7, 1685, catching the
rovers unawares off Pacheca Island.
An indecisive engagement ensued, with
the buccaneers eventually being driven
off. They then fell out among them-
selves along national lines, each group
blaming the other for this defeat.
A joint attack was made next on the
coastal town of Remedios (Pueblo Nuevo),
after which both contingents headed
northwestward as separate groups. Lus-
san and the other flibustiers refused
to join the English raid on Le
on
(Nicaragua) of early August 1685, prefer-
ring to take 120 men in five boats for a
repeat attempt against Remedios. This
was repulsed and Realejo attempted on
November 1st, but the French found it al-
ready devastated from an earlier English
assault, so obtained little booty. Revers-
ing course, on January 9, 1686, they cap-
tured the tiny coastal town of Chiriquita
(Panama), which they abandoned a week
later. At the end of this same month, a
Spanish squadron passed them by out at
sea, and when the flibustiers approached
Remedios again on the night of March
5
6, 1686, to forage for food, they were
ambushed by a small frigate, a barco
luengo, and a piragua, suffering more
than 30 casualties. They then roamed
westward once more, anchoring off
Esparta on March 19th, and sighting
Townley’s small flotilla four days later.
Sack of Guayaquil (April 1687)
The South American coastline swam
into view by April 6, 1687, and at
noon six days later Grogniet’s and
Dew’s combined force reached Point
Santa Helena, the north-westernmost
entry into the wide, tapering Gulf of
Guayaquil. That night, they espied a
Spanish prize manned by eight English
pirates from Captain Edward Davis’
crew, who next day agreed to join their
enterprise. Running southward unseen
farther out at sea, they circled back
and by dawn of April 15, 1687, sighted
Cabo Blanco, the south-easternmost
entry into the Gulf. By 10:00 A.M.,
260 rovers had transferred off their
ships—which were to remain hidden in
a nearby bay—while Grogniet’s and
Dew’s raiding-party began rowing into
the Gulf aboard eight large piraguas.
By sundown, they had reached Santa
Clara Island, a barren rock in mid-
channel also known as Isla del Muerto

or ‘‘Dead Man’s Island,’’ anchoring
overnight to ride out the powerful ebb-
tide flowing out of the Guayas River
into the ocean. Next morning, piloted
by four native turncoats serving among
their ranks, they glided across to Pun
a
Island and hid there all day, before cir-
cling past its Spanish settlements that
same night to conceal themselves once
more at dawn of April 17th, up an es-
tuary near Pun
a’s northern tip.
Here, the buccaneers agreed to
storm specific strongpoints once they
reached Guayaquil, in three companies
under Grogniet, Dew, and Pierre Le
Picard. But on emerging that same
dusk aboard their boats to enter the
Guayas River, they found its counter-
current so strong that they had to
return to Pun
a Island by daybreak of
Friday, April 18, 1687. Spotted by
coastal-watchers before they could
hide up another inlet, these lookouts
set fire to a hut as a warning-signal to
the Spaniards farther upriver, before a
buccaneer party pushed through the
jungle to extinguish it, killing two of
these sentinels and capturing a third.
The rovers remained hidden through-
out the rest of that day, and even
allowed an arriving Spanish ship to
pass unchallenged upriver, before re-
emerging at nightfall to penetrate the
eastern mouth of the Guayas River.
Their native guides piloted them past
a couple more lookout-stations, the
flotilla’s movements masked behind
several small islands. By the time the
pirates hid yet again at dawn of Satur-
day, April 19th, they had circled far
enough upstream to be able to surprise
Guayaquil out of its east next day-
break, a Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Pun
a signal-blaze
had been reported within the city that
Le Picard, Capitaine (fl. 1682
1690) 681
same Saturday morning, so that Gover-


nor Juan Alvarez de Avil
es and militia
General Fernando Ponce de Le
on mus-
tered every able-bodied man; however,
when nothing more occurred by eve-
ning, the entire garrison stood down. As
a result, when the pirate formation
finally came gliding out of the darkness
at 4:00 A.M. on Sunday, April 20, 1687,
their surprise was complete. Dew’s two
piraguas disgorged more than 60 men
at Marı́a Fico’s landing dock north of
the city, half circling around Ataranza
Inlet on foot to occupy the city work-
shops, while the remainder scrambled
up the cliffs to conceal themselves out-
side the earthen San Carlos redoubt
atop Santa Ana Hill.
Grogniet meanwhile disembarked
more than a mile farther to the south,
the swift downriver current having car-
ried his six piraguas off course, so that
he failed to land anywhere near La
Planchada fort on the city outskirts.
Instead, his flibustiers waded ashore into
dense brush around the small anchorage
of Casones (near modern Aguirre and
Elizalde Streets), where they were chal-
lenged by a Spanish sentry and gun
exchanges quickly erupted. Rain started
to fall as well, so that the French also
had to pause in a large house for their
grenadiers to light their tinders, before
Grogniet could advance at daybreak
with ‘‘flags flying and drums beating,’’
into the maze of shipyards lining the
four intervening inlets lying between
them and Guayaquil proper.
General Ponce had meanwhile
appeared on the far side of these yards,
mounted on a horse, to direct the 300
black and Spanish militiamen who
were rallying out of the city to the
northern shoreline of the fourth inlet,
which was owned by Juan de Villamar.
682 Le Picard, Capitaine (fl. 1682
1690)
In the rainy gloom, Grogniet’s advanc-
ing flibustiers mistook its low wooden
levee for a fort, so that they lost sev-
eral men probing forward gingerly
along the small bridge spanning Jos
e
del Junco’s adjoining inlet, before a
pirate detachment finally paddled
around westward on planks—between
Junco’s house and Carlos’s smithy—to
outflank these defenders. Ponce was
shot in a thigh and fell, being helped
to remount, before ordering his men to
retreat back into Guayaquil.
Grogniet followed them into its
streets, only to discover that the Span-
iards were making a second stand from
behind earthworks around Guayaquil’s
main square, as well as sweeping all
nearby intersections with grapeshot.
This resistance lasted for more than an
hour, until another pirate flanking col-
umn circled behind the Franciscan
church and headed toward the Domini-
can monastery. Afraid of being cut off
from their last avenue of escape into
the high ground behind the city, the
Spanish abandoned the main square,
allowing Grogniet to push up Los Mor-
lacos Street and along the riverfront in
twin columns. For a third time, the
defenders regrouped in trenches encir-
cling the nearby northern heights, but
their seven guns within San Carlos
redoubt could not be depressed low
enough to fire down the slope, so that
Grogniet soon fought his way into this
system of trenches, along with Dew’s
few-dozen men attacking by surprise
from the opposite side.
By 11:00 A.M., the last traces of Span-
ish resolve sputtered out, 34 defenders
having been slain during these seven
hours of rain-soaked combat, compared to
nine pirate dead and a dozen wounded—
among the latter, Grogniet. The city was
quickly occupied and 700 prisoners
herded into Guayaquil’s main church,
while Picard assumed command over the
flibustier contingent. Leading citizens
were singled out to be terrorized—the
wounded Ponce, for example, being
beaten on his back with sword-blades in
front of his weeping family—while fear-
some pirates roared demands of 300,000
pesos out of Ecuador’s interior to free all
their hostages. To further drive home their
point, seven or eight rich Spaniards were
dragged out of the church and down to the
riverbank, along with all the clerics,
where Lorenzo de Sotomayor was ran-
domly selected and murdered by a pistol-
shot. Eventually, the victorious pirates
reduced their demand to 100,000 pesos, a
ransom which was to be raised and paid
by families and friends who lived inland.
Meanwhile, Guayaquil’s buildings
were ransacked, 14 anchored vessels
were seized, and pirate piraguas sped
upriver in pursuit of fleeing Spanish
craft. Eventually, a boat was sent
downriver on Wednesday morning,
April 23, 1687, to contact the anchored
pirate ships waiting at Cabo Blanco,
and order them to rendezvous with the
raiding-party at Pun
a Island. Next day,
Picard and Dew withdrew from gutted
Guayaquil, their original eight piraguas
now augmented by four large river-
boats, plus a new Spanish brigantine,
with more than 250 captives crammed
aboard. At the very last moment, Picard


ordered the wounded Governor Alvarez
to stay behind, so as to arrange a flow of
supplies for the pirates and their prison-
ers, until the ransoms could be paid. The
wounded Grogniet was carried back
aboard his flagship that same evening,
when the raiders reunited with their ves-
sels off Pun
a. He expired of his wounds
by May 2, 1687.

Picard’s and Dew’s buccaneer contin-
gents shared plunder totaling ‘‘134,000
pesos, much precious jewelry, a large
amount of wrought silver, and an exorbi-
tant tally of merchandise and produce,’’
before being joined a few days later by
Davis, who brought word that a squad-
ron of Peruvian privateers was on its
way to drive them away. The Peruvians
appeared by May 27, 1687, with the pur-
chased vessels San Jos
e and San Nicol
as
of 20 guns apiece commanded by the
Biscayans Dionisio L
opez de Artun-
duaga and Nicol
as de Igarza, plus a
small patache. The pirate formation by
now included almost 20 medium- to
small-size craft, mostly prizes, which
the Peruvian privateers rather gingerly
engaged at long range over the next five
days, eventually scattering the free-
booters and recuperating some lost ves-
sels. During these actions, San Nicol
as
ran hard aground on a sandbank off Ata-
cames, so limped back toward Callao
taking on water. It was quickly replaced
by San Francisco de Paula and another
patache, which joined L
opez de Artun-
duaga off Ecuador and helped him re-
sume his distant pursuit of the retreating
buccaneers, at last compelling them to
relinquish their largest prize (San
Jacinto) before making a final division
of spoils off Cape San Francisco, and
dispersing northward 10 days later.
Each then went his separate way,
Picard venturing with five vessels as far
north as the Mexican port of Tehuante-
pec, which he captured with 180 men on
August 30, 1687, then looked into Aca-
pulco bay a few weeks later. Reversing
course until he regained the Gulf of
Fonseca, Picard scuttled his vessels
there on January 2, 1688, and with some
260 followers, marched overland into
Nueva Segovia Province. In the interior
Le Picard, Capitaine (fl. 1682
1690) 683
highlands the buccaneers constructed
rafts and sped down the Coco River,
emerging at Cape Gracias a Dios by
March 9, 1688. A Jamaican ship was
persuaded to carry them to Saint Dom-
ingue, which they reached on April 8th.
Picard and his flibustiers were leery of
any official retaliation for their actions,
peace having long since been declared
between France and Spain; therefore, they
feigned ignorance of this new state of
affairs, because of their lengthy absence.
Governor Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy
was not present at the capital of Petit
Go^ave, being on an inspection tour of
Saint-Domingue’s northern districts, so
there were no immediate repercussions,
although it soon became obvious that
Crown policy had changed drastically
with regard to roving, despite the continu-
ing local distrust against their Spanish
neighbors. De Lussan and many other
freebooters therefore elected to disperse
farther afield, with Picard apparently
choosing to emigrate with his booty to
Acadia in French North America.
Battle Off Block Island
(July 1690)
Official word arrived during the winter
of 1689
1690 of the outbreak back in
Europe of the War of the League
of Augsburg—soon to become known
in British North America as ‘‘King
William’s War’’—and with the coming of
that spring, local offensives and counter-
offensives began. By early July 1690
(O.S.), it was being reported at Boston
that a pair of hired ships had exited in
search of ‘‘a French privateer, who we
have information lies about Cape Cod,
and has taken 23 small vessels which
belong to this country.’’ Such reports were
 Picard Retreat Pacific, 1688.

After skirmishing against some Peruvian privateers in the Gulf of Fonseca (1), Picard scuttled his ships and led his 260 followers inland, determined to
regain the Caribbean. Local Spanish forces allowed his small army past Choluteca into the central highlands, where Picard eventually found the
headwaters of the Coco River (2). Building rafts, he headed downstream, emerging by March 9, 1688, at Cape Gracias a Dios (3), where he
commandeered a Jamaican to carry him on to Saint-Domingue.

confirmed when a bark limped into Bos-
ton harbor on the morning of July 7, 1690
(O.S.), crammed with about 50 men
released by this raider.
Possibly this referred to Picard, for a
few days later he is known to have
passed through Nantucket Sound with
his small flotilla, and led a landing party
ashore at Block Island on July 12, 1690
(O.S.), plundering and seriously mis-
treating its inhabitants. News of this
depredation quickly reached the main-
land, so that warning bonfires were lit
‘‘from Pawcatuck to Seaconnet,’’ while
a sloop with 34 men was sent out from
Newport next day on a reconnaissance.
That following night, Picard apparently
tried to penetrate Newport itself, but
drew off when discovered.
Three days later, on July 17, 1690
(O.S.), Governor John Easton overrode
his Quaker sensibilities and ordered the
10-gun sloop Loyal Stede of Barbados,
which was lying in Newport roads,
impressed into the colonial service.
(This vessel had been named in honor
of Edwin Stede, Lieutenant-Governor
of that West Indian colony.) Some 60
men were hastily mustered, and Paine
was put in command of this sloop, as
well as of a smaller consort which
accompanied him under Captain John
Godfrey.
Three days later, the two craft set
out for Block Island, with an extra
contingent of soldiers crammed aboard.
Picard had meanwhile moved off to
attempt an attack against New London
(Connecticut), so that Paine’s force
gained Block Island without sighting
their enemy. Next day, the two New
England sloops beat about offshore,
until they beheld the French formation
bearing down on them that same after-
noon of July 21, 1690 (O.S.): one large
Le Picard, Capitaine (fl. 1682
1690) 685
bark, one large sloop, and a smaller
sloop. Paine retreated so as to be able
to take up a defensive position in the
shallows off Block Island, and there-
fore only have to work the guns on
one side of his vessels. The French,
misinterpreting this flight to mean that
the pair were frightened coastal trad-
ers, made all possible sail and ‘‘sent a
piragua before them, full of men, with
design to pour in their small arms [fire]
on them and take them, as their man-
ner was.’’ Unfortunately, Paine’s gun-
ner opened fire too soon on this
leading French vessel, missing and thus
alerting Picard that his opponents were
armed. The piragua sheered around
and its men reboarded the French
ships, before all three resumed their
advance on the New Englanders.
A brisk fire-fight erupted at five
o’clock that same evening lasting until
nightfall, during which the French suf-
fered 14 killed, including their second-
in-command—‘‘a very violent, resolute
fellow,’’ according to English sources,
who was shot in the neck while drinking
a glass of wine and wishing damnation
on the opposition. Paine only emerged
with one dead and six wounded, and next
morning Picard made off. The two New
England sloops pursued, forcing the
French to scuttle a merchantman which
they had captured, by firing ‘‘a great shot
through her bottom.’’ When Paine
reached it, he found this prize already
standing straight up and down, so that
none of its cargo of wine and brandy
could be saved before it slipped beneath
the waves. Paine nonetheless returned
triumphantly into Newport, where he
learned that reinforcements had since
arrived from Boston under Captain Sug-
ars, who was sent off after the retiring
Picard.
686 Leroux or Le Roux, Jean (fl. 1692
1693)
In a letter written to Governor Slough-
ter of New York almost a year later,
the Massachusetts authorities on June
18, 1691 (O.S.), complained ‘‘that the
French privateer that lately visited Block
Island, has lyen upon the coast and taken
three small vessels belonging to this col-
ony inward-bound: viz., two from the
West Indies and one from Connecticut.’’
See also
Paine, Thomas (Volume 1).
References
Archive of Indies (Seville), Audiencia de
Quito 159, Number 20, Folios 48
53.
Baxter, James P., Documentary History of
the State of Maine, Volume 5 (Portland,
ME: Maine Historical Society, 1897).
Bernal Ruiz, Marı́a del Pilar, La toma del
puerto de Guayaquil en 1687 (Seville:
Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos,
1979).
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St Martin’s
Press, 1990).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark Company, 1930).
LEROUX OR LE ROUX,
JEAN (fl. 1692
1693)
French privateer captured near New
York City.
Leroux, having been raised as a Hu-
guenot or French Protestant, emigrated
to New York and became a naturalized
English citizen in the spring of 1692,
presumably so as to escape from
religious persecution by his Catholic
compatriots. Master of a coastal
trading sloop, he then made a voyage
to Boston during which he allegedly
scuttled his vessel ‘‘and ran away with
£600 or £700 in money,’’ for which he
was imprisoned. Breaking jail in Bos-
ton, he contrived to escape north into
Canada along with some French pris-
oners of war (the War of the League of
Augsburg [known in America as King
William’s War] being then in its fourth
year). Leroux crossed the Atlantic to
France and claimed to have been inter-
viewed in February 1693 by Jean
Gabaret, ‘‘Lieutenant General of the
French forces by sea,’’ as to a potential
descent on New York by 10 men o’
war and six fireships, which he dis-
couraged despite being offered the
position of pilot.
Instead, Leroux quit La Rochelle in
July 1693 in command of a privateer
bark of 4 guns and 35 men, arriving
off the coast of New England where he
seized a Boston ketch, and on October
16th a Rhode Island sloop. Shortly
thereafter, however, he anchored his
bark on the north side of Nassau Island
and led a landing-party ashore ‘‘to take
his wife and [five] children on board,’’
whom he had left behind. Leroux’s
group was discovered and captured,
and a vessel sent out after his bark in
the Sound. It easily outsailed its pur-
suer, but the captain remained in Eng-
lish hands, being kept ‘‘close prisoner
till the King’s pleasure is known.’’
Several of those defrauded by Leroux’s
earlier Boston voyage called for his
immediate execution, but a month-and-
a-half later passions had cooled suffi-
ciently for the city council to order
‘‘John Reaux [sic] to be released from
irons and lodged in New York jail.’’
That following spring, Leroux offered
to serve aboard the provincial man o’

war, and on March 15, 1694 (O.S.), this
was accepted, ‘‘provided that Captain
Evans take care that he shall not escape’’
again.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 14
(London; Her Majesty’s Stationery
office, 1903).
LE SERF, JEAN
(fl. 1692
1693)
French sea-master and slaver, who
briefly prowled the Caribbean as a pri-
vateer during King William’s War.
Le Serf (also spelled Leserf or Le
Cerf) was most likely born around 1652,
and was already a veteran West Indian
seafarer when he secured a commercial
permit on November 29, 1684, to sail
from his native Bordeaux for the Ameri-
cas that following spring, in command
of the 12-man, 50-ton Palme. Almost
exactly one year later, he obtained a sec-
ond license on November 25, 1685, for
another voyage, this time in command of
the 20-man, 140-ton slaver Saint-Jean.
This vessel departed on January 10,
1686, and left the French coast behind
13 days later, reaching Gor
ee in Senegal
by February 14, 1686. After loading
105 black captives on account of the
Compagnie royale d’Afrique, Saint-Jean
weighed again on May 5th and reached
Cap-Français (modern Cap-Ha€tien) by
June 11th, where it delivered the 90 sur-
vivors of its trans-Atlantic crossing. Le
Serf’s second officer and three hands
also deserted in that port one night in a
boat, and when Le Serf fired four shots
Letter of Marque 687
after them, he was fined by the local
authorities. Saint-Jean cleared for France
on August 11, 1686, reaching Le Havre
by October 4th, and Bordeaux six days
afterward. After a dispute with the own-
ers at Le Havre, during which Le Serf
threatened to retain part of his cargo of
tobacco if he were not paid, he also pla-
cated his restless crew with extra pay,
and then—as this New World cargo was
mostly intended for Holland—he sailed
again on December 1686, before finally
regaining his home on January 3, 1687.
Le Serf signed up for a third trans-
Atlantic crossing that same September
23, 1687, a regular commercial run with
the 11-man, 55-ton Aimable. However,
once France was plunged into war
against The Netherlands, Spain, and
England during the winter months of
1688
1689, all such commercial traffic
became much more difficult. We there-
fore next find him obtaining a privateer-
ing commission at Bordeaux on July 5,
1692, for the formidable 195-man, 300-
ton warship Saint-Louis. Almost exactly
one year later, he obtained yet another
privateering commission on July 15,
1693, for the 160-ton ship Saint-Pierre.
Reference
Saugera, Eric, Bordeaux, port n
egrier:
chronologie, e
conomie, id
eologie, XVIIe-
XVIIIe si
ecles (Paris: Karthala, 1995).
LETTER OF MARQUE
Another name for a privateer or corsair
vessel, yet apparently distinct in that its
crew received regular wages ‘‘as any
merchant marine sailors,’’ in addition to
shares from captures, while privateers-
men served for booty alone.
688 Lewis, John (fl. 1715)
On May 5, 1703 (O.S.), the minutes
for the Council of Barbados session on
that day recorded the following:
Edward Chilton, Attorney General,
moved that no privateers be admitted
to go out of this island until they have
given security to pay the Lord High
Admiral’s tenths of every prize they
shall take, which was granted. Then
he presented a commission from Eng-
land empowering Charles Thomas to
receive the Lord High Admiral’s
tenths, and also a commission from
the Lord High Admiral appointing
Captain Charles Thomas, James Ayns-
worth, and Thomas Stewart to be Com-
missioners to examine witnesses of all
prizes brought in here by letters of mar-
que; which the Board allowed.
See also
Letter of Marque (Volume 1).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies., Volume 21
(London; Her Majesty’s Stationery
office, 1952).
LEWIS, JOHN (fl. 1715)
English master who robbed a wealthy
Spanish passenger, and so came to be
accused of piracy.
In the spring of 1715, Lewis provided
passage homeward from Jamaica aboard
his brigantine Lark to the visiting trader
Jer

onimo Jos
e de la Vega y Caviedes,
Marqu
es de Nevares, the retired Gover-
nor of the remote Andean province of
Popay
an (Colombia). According to the
Jamaican merchant James Cumberford,
who was also traveling aboard this vessel
as supercargo, Lewis ‘‘set ashore at Santa
Marta ye said Marques and promis’d to
send him his goods ashore, but instead
broke up some of his trunks and took out
of them a great deal of riches.’’ Cumber-
ford disapproved of this theft, but ‘‘not
being able to oppose ye master and crew,
dissembled till they came to Charleston’’
in South Carolina, where he denounced
this crime before Governor Charles Cra-
ven on June 2, 1715 (O.S.).
Lewis was briefly detained along with
his crew, while Lark was impounded and
the stolen goods seized, although nothing
more was then done. Cumberford there-
fore wrote on July 8, 1715 (O.S.), to also
report this incident to the Governor of
Jamaica, Lord Archibald Hamilton, who
immediately forwarded the information
on to the Council of Trade and Plantations
on August 30, 1715 (O.S.), with the added
information that Lewis and his men
had apparently been allowed to escape
from Charleston with Craven’s conniv-
ance. The Crown authorities in London
responded very strongly to this matter by
that same November, ‘‘. . . as His Majesty
is very sensible such a base and dishonor-
able action may very much reflect on the
credit of the nation, and affect the trade
and commerce of those parts.’’ Secretary
of State James Stanhope therefore:
. . . assured the [Spanish Ambassa-
dor] Marquis de Monteleon that the
Governors of all His Majesty’s prov-
inces are directed to seize Lewis and
all or any of his crew, that they may
be brought to condign and exem-
plary punishment, and for making
full restitution to the Marquis of
such of his goods as can be found
anywhere, or reparation to him out
of the effects of the criminals, when
any such can be seized.

It was hoped that such vigorous prosecu-
tion would furthermore allow the King’s
ministers to in turn ‘‘engage the Court of
Spain to do his subjects justice on the
like occasions’’; yet, despite repeated
commands, Lewis was never caught, nor
were Nevares’ goods ever returned.
See also
Hamilton, Lord Archibald.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 28,
29 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1955).
LILLY, THOMAS (fl. 1698)
English privateer who in October 1698,
was ordered arrested at St. Kitts for
persisting in attacks against French
subjects, despite the cessation of the
War of the League of Augsburg (King
William’s War) that previous year.
Lilly had once served under the notori-
ous James Weatherhill of Jamaica.
Reference
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
LISLE OR LYLE, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1688
1689)
English freebooter captured off French
Hispaniola.
Early in November 1688, after the
English authorities on Jamaica had
Loverell, Captain (fl. 1696) 689
detained a group of French flibustiers,
Governor Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy
received word that Lisle had arrived at
^Ile a Vache off the southwestern tip of
Saint-Domingue with a barco luengo
called Dorado (Spanish for Golden One),
‘‘heretofore commanded by one [John]
Coxon.’’ Lisle’s crew consisted of 80
English, three French, and five Dutch or
Flemish buccaneers. Governor de Cussy
issued orders for this ship’s detention:
. . . which was punctually done on
the 16th of November. A few days
later 38 men, 24 of them English,
were brought to me at Petit-Go^ave,
several now [February 5, 1689] being
left ashore miserably wounded.
Lisle had meanwhile been condemned to
perpetual punishment aboard France’s
galleys and his companions sentenced to
long terms, by which the French Gover-
nor demonstrated to his English counter-
parts that he too ‘‘shall show no mercy
to those that I catch.’’
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
LOVERELL, CAPTAIN
(fl. 1696)
Jamaican privateer who ventured north
to Rhode Island, intending to raid French
Canada during King William’s War.
As a postscript to a letter written to
Governor Benjamin Fletcher at New
York from Newport on May 14, 1696
(O.S.), Rhode Island’s Governor Walter
Clarke added how on:
690 Low, Edward or ‘‘Ned’’ (fl. 1722
1724)

. . . the 12th instant [May 1696

(O.S.)], arrived here one Cap’n Lov-
erell from Jamaica, a private man-
of-war of six guns, one hundred and
two men, bound for the coast of
Canada; he commanded with him
one small ship, which he took off
the coast of Cuba, the mariners leav-
ing her as was suspected, being near
land, found no person in her, by rea-
son of the fogs, laying long off and
on this coast, so that they were very
suspicious to be enemies, which
occasioned some trouble. But send-
ing out a boat of twenty men, was
discovered and made known to us,
and are both come into our harbor of
Newport, endeavoring for a pilot,
with intent to proceed as promised. The notorious Captain Edward Low riding
out a hurricane ashore, from The History
of the Lives and Actions of the Most
Reference Famous Highwaymen, 1734. (Library of
Congress)
Bartlett, John R., Records of the Colony of
Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations, in New England, Volume III Low left England around 1710, emi-
(Providence, RI: State Printers, 1858). grating to North America and visiting
several places, before settling down to
work as a rigger in a Boston shipyard. He
LOW, EDWARD OR ‘‘NED’’ married Eliza Marble on August 12, 1714
(O.S.), at the First Church of Boston, and
(fl. 1722
1724) they soon had a son. Tragically, this child
died in infancy, and his young wife also
Minor English pirate, notorious for his
succumbed during the winter of 1719,
cruelty and destructiveness.
while giving birth to a daughter who
According to the chronicler Charles
would be christened Elizabeth. These
Johnson, Low was born in the Westmin-
losses naturally left a deep impression on
ster district of London, sometime around
Low; it was reported later how he would
1690. He grew up amid great poverty,
often express regret for the daughter he
illiterate, and running ‘‘wild in the streets
had left behind.
of his native parish.’’ Apparently his
family consisted of criminals and
thieves, so that he too became embroiled Piratical Career (1722
1723)
in petty street crime at a tender age,
along with his older brother, who would Early in 1722, he joined a 12-man crew
eventually be hanged at Tyburn. aboard a sloop that cleared Boston on a

peacetime voyage, to gather logwood
from Honduras. Low was put in com-
mand of the boat-party ferrying logs out
from shore, and while employed on
such heavy labor in that tropical heat,
allegedly returned aboard ship thirsty
and hungry, only to be told by the Cap-
tain that he and his men would have to
wait to eat and drink. Angry, Low
‘‘takes up a loaden musket’’ and fired at
the Captain, but missed. Forced to quit
his sloop because of this act, Low and a
few friends took over a small sloop out
of Rhode Island that very next day, kill-
ing a crewman in the process. Now
fully committed to a life of piracy, they
supposedly then ‘‘made a black flag,
and declared war against all the world.’’
Working their way over toward the
Cayman Islands, Low’s tiny band
became absorbed into the pirate crew
of Captain George Lowther, who was
prowling in those waters with his 100-
ton Rhode Island sloop Happy Deliv-
ery, mounting eight cannon and 10
swivel-guns. Losing this vessel shortly
thereafter, the pirates transferred aboard
the Ranger, and then captured the 6-gun
brigantine Rebecca on May 28, 1722
(O.S.). Lowther installed Low aboard
as Captain, with Francis Farrington
Spriggs as his quartermaster, and 43
other piratical hands.
The two Captains amicably parted
company, and within a month Low had
cruised far north up the Atlantic Sea-
board, laying at anchor by Friday, June
15, 1722 (O.S.), within the small fish-
ing harbor of Port Roseway (modern
Shelburne, Nova Scotia). When 13
Marblehead schooners began coming
in from the nearby fishing-banks to rest
there over the weekend, the pirates
seized and looted every one of them.
Low furthermore selected the brand-
Low, Edward or ‘‘Ned’’ (fl. 1722
1724) 691
new, 80-ton schooner Mary of Joseph
Doliber as his new flagship, arming it
with 10 guns and renaming it the
Fancy, before burning his other prizes
and abandoning Rebecca. He was to
rove off Newfoundland for the next
several weeks, pitilessly preying on
hapless fishermen, before finally stand-
ing out across the Atlantic for the
Azores.
Among those islands, he intercepted
a French pink named the Rose and
converted it into his new flagship,
while ceding command of Fancy to his
subordinate Charles Harris. After
sweeping through the Canary and Cape
Verde Islands, this pair of pirate ves-
sels steered west across the Atlantic to-
ward Brazil, yet were forestalled by
contrary winds and currents. Driven
northwest to the Wild Coast, Low
entered a quiet harbor some 120 miles
short of Surinam and attempted to ca-
reen Rose, so as to clean its befouled
hull. Instead, his pink was heeled too
far over, water poured into its open
gunports and Rose sank, killing two
men. Most of the pirates’ provisions
had also been lost aboard, so that Low
was forced to captain the prize schoo-
ner Squirrel, and go in search of new
victims in order to resupply.
Steering toward Tobago, the pirates
overshot this island, before eventually
dropping anchor off the French-held
island of Grenada. Hiding most of his
cutthroats below decks, Low was per-
mitted to send men ashore for water,
then next day captured a French sloop
which the authorities had sent out to
investigate. It was renamed Ranger and
became Low’s next flagship, while
Squirrel was given to his quartermaster
Spriggs, who renamed it the Delight;
and then sailed away in the middle of
692 Low, Edward or ‘‘Ned’’ (fl. 1722
1724)
the night with a small crew after a dis-
agreement with Low.
The pirate chieftain nonetheless
intercepted more sloops in those same
waters, including one which he kept as
the Fortune. Then on January 25, 1723
(O.S.), Low captured the rich Portu-
guese prize Nossa Senhora da Vitoria,
allegedly butchering most of its crew
in a fit of rage, after its Captain had
deliberately dropped a bag containing
11,000 gold moidores into the sea.
Tales of Low’s barbarity were by now
increasing. He reached the island of
Roat
an off the Honduran coast by early
March 1723, watering and resting for a
few weeks, before resuming his depre-
dations. The American Weekly Mercury
newspaper reported in it 6
13 June
1723 (O.S.) edition how:
Captain Willing, Captain Burlington,
and Capt Eastweek, and a schooner all
belonging to New England, and a sloop
Captain Ellicott [bound] for Hampton
in Virginia; in sailing round the west
end of Cuba, off of Cape St. Antonio,
the aforesaid vessels were taken by
pyrates and only Fraser escaped by run-
ning close under the land and coming
to an anchor within the breakers, then
weighing and standing to the south-
ward, past them in the night and so got
clear of them; but entering the Gulf, the
pyrates waiting there for them, took
them and plundered them; they cut and
whipped some, and others they burnt
with matches between their fingers to
the bone, to make them confess where
their money was, they took to the value
of a thousand pistoles from passengers
and others, they then let them go, but
coming on the coast off of the Capes of
Virginia, they were again chased by
the same pyrates who first took them,
they did not trouble them again but
wished them well home, they saw at
the same time his consort, a sloop of
eight guns, with a ship and a sloop
which were supposed to be prizes, they
were commanded by one Edward
Low. The pyrates gave us an account
of his taking the Bay of Honduras from
the Spaniards, which had surprised the
English and taking them, and putting
all the Spaniards to the sword except-
ing two boys, as also burning the King
George and a snow belonging to
New York, and sunk one of the New
England ships, and cut off one the
master’s ears and slit his nose, all this
they confessed themselves; they are
now supposed to be cruising off of
Sandy Hook or thereabouts.
Low narrowly escaped an encoun-
ter with HMS Greyhound a month
later, and his eventual fate is
unknown. He was last seen steering
toward the Canaries and Guinea, and
is believed to have ended his days in
Brazil.
See also
Careen; Moidore; Sunday Keeping; Wild
Coast.
References
Ashton, Philip, Jr., Ashton’s Memorial: An
History of the Strange Adventures and
Signal Deliverances of Mr. Philip
Ashton (Salem, MA: Peabody Museum,
1976).
Dow, George F. and Edmonds, John H.,
The Pirates of the New England Coast,
1630
1730 (Salem, MA: Marine
Research Society, 1923).

Leslie, Edward E., Desperate Journeys,
Abandoned Souls (New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 1998).
The Lives and Adventures of Sundry
Notorious Pirates (New York: Robert
M. McBride and Company, 1922).
LUQUE, MATEO (fl. 1722)
Italian-born corsair and Puerto Rican
guardacosta, executed for piracy on
Jamaica.
Virtually nothing is known about this
rover, beyond the details of his untimely
end. A year after peace had been restored
between Britain and Spain, the 42-gun
HMS Launceston of Captain Bartholo-
mew Chandler had been dispatched from
Port Royal to patrol off the southwestern
tip of Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti),
where many English merchantmen were
being intercepted. Governor Sir Nichols
Lawes later informed the Council of
Trade and Plantations in London, via a
letter written on May 18, 1722 (O.S.),
how this Royal Navy warship had:
. . . luckily met with a notorious
Spanish pirate commanded by an
Italian, one Mathew Luke [sic], the
crew consisted of fifty-eight, chiefly
mulattoes and Spaniards of Porto
Rico. Last week, I had them all
brought to a trial. The commander
pretended he had a commission from
the Alcalde of Porto Rico to be a
guard de la coast, but it having been
plainly proved that he had taken two
English vessels who were going on
their lawful occasions, and no ways
near to or within the sight of any
part of Hispaniola, the Judges found
them all guilty of piracy, except
seven. Two we were obliged to
Lussan, Ravenau De (fl. 1684
1688) 693
make evidences of, and it appearing
on the trial that eight more were
young raw lads and had never been
at sea before, the judges recom-
mended them as objects of His Maj-
esty’s mercy; so that out of the fifty-
eight, there were forty-one hanged.
According to a petition later filed by
Candler and his crew to claim their prize-
shares for this capture, Luque’s ship was
called the Venganza. The Governor con-
cluded his report by adding he had also
heard that the corsair Captain ‘‘when he
was to die, confessed the taking two other
vessels, besides those he was accused of.’’
See also
Guardacostas.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 33
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1934).
Calendar of Treasury Papers, Volume 6:
1720
1728, Volume 253 (London: Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1889).
LUSSAN, RAVENAU DE
(fl. 1684
1688)
Flibustier chronicler, famous for his
eyewitness accounts of raids into the
South Sea.
Born on the outskirts of Paris at an
unknown date, Lussan set sail from Di-
eppe on March 5, 1679, as an engag
e or
indentured servant destined for three
years’ servitude on the West Indian
island of Saint-Domingue. He came to
694 Lussan, Ravenau De (fl. 1684
1688)
hate his master so much, that he later
refused to even mention his name in his
memoirs. Once his indenture was com-
plete, Lussan joined the household of
Deputy-Governor Monsieur de Frasque-
nay, where he remained another six
months. Then, wishing to earn money to
meet his obligations, he ‘‘conceived the
idea of joining the buccaneers, sailing
away with them [and] seizing what
money I could from the Spanish.’’ He
consequently enlisted in the 120-man
crew of the legendary Dutch-born flibus-
tier Laurens de Graaf, departing Petit-
Go^ave on November 22, 1684, aboard a
14-gun Spanish prize.
De Graaf sailed to the Spanish Main
and by January 1685 reunited with his
colleagues Michiel Andrieszoon, Jean
Rose, and other consorts, then agreed to
split up at a conference held off Cape de
la Vela (Venezuela) on February 8th,
thus allowing Lussan and 87 others to
sail away by February 23rd with his 14-
gun prize. Three days later, they called at
Golden Island off the northeastern coast
of Panama, and learned that a large force
of flibustiers had already traversed the
Isthmus under Captains François Grog-
niet and Lescuyer, to join an even bigger
contingent of English buccaneers who
were known to be operating in the South
Sea. Lussan and his companions, after
reuniting with Rose, Pierre Le Picard,
and Capitaine Desmarais, decided to fol-
low the first groups across the Isthmus,
and on March 1, 1685, ‘‘after commend-
ing our journey to God,’’ 264 mainly
French flibustiers set off on foot.
Pacific Campaign (1685
1688)
Emerging on the far side of the Isth-
mus of Panama by April 11, 1685, they
were met by a boat which Grogniet
had sent back for them. This craft con-
ducted the new arrivals to a pirate
assemblage off Isla del Rey, where
they became incorporated into the fleet
of the English Captains Edward Davis,
Charles Swan, William Knight, and
Francis Townley, who offered the fli-
bustiers the 90-ton Santa Rosa that
they had recently captured from the
Spaniards. All the French were to serve
under Grogniet, and the six vessels and
almost 1,000 men of this freebooter
fleet settled down to blockade the City
of Panama, in hopes of intercepting the
annual Peruvian treasure-fleet. But these
Spanish vessels slipped past, delivered
their cargo, and sallied to engage the
buccaneers on June 7, 1685, catching
the rovers unawares off Pacheca Island.
An indecisive engagement ensued, with
the buccaneers eventually being driven
off. They then fell out among them-
selves along national lines, each group
blaming the other for this defeat.
A joint attack was made next on
the coastal town of Remedios (Pueblo
Nuevo), after which both contingents
headed northwestward as separate groups.
Lussan and the other flibustiers refused
to join the English raid on Le
on (Nicara-
gua) of early August 1685, preferring to
take 120 men in five boats for a repeat
attempt against Remedios. This was
repulsed and Realejo attempted on No-
vember 1st, but the French found it al-
ready devastated from an earlier English
assault, so obtained little booty. Revers-
ing course, on January 9, 1686, they cap-
tured the tiny coastal town of Chiriquita
(Panama), which they abandoned a week
later. At the end of this same month, a
Spanish squadron passed them by out at
sea, and when the flibustiers approached
Remedios again on the night of March
5
6, 1686, to forage for food, they were

ambushed by a small frigate, a barco
luengo, and a piragua, suffering more
than 30 casualties. They then roamed
westward once more, anchoring off
Esparta on March 19th, sighting Town-
ley’s small flotilla four days later.
Despite some residual ill-will, the two
groups combined for a joint attempt
against the inland city of Granada
(Nicaragua), landing a force of 345 men
on April 7, 1686, and fighting their way
into that city three days later. Again little
plunder was found, as the Spaniards had
transferred their valuables offshore to
Zapatera Island, so that the pirates with-
drew empty-handed five days later. They
endured numerous ambushes before
passing Masaya and regaining their
ships, after which they traveled to Real-
ejo. Having enjoyed such limited success
thus far, the French voted on June 9,
1686, to divide their forces. Lussan’s
group eventually rediscovered Town-
ley’s contingent, now commanded by
George Dew, in the Gulf of Nicoya on
January 23, 1687, and after ravaging that
area for a month, weighed together for a
surprise attack on the Equatorial port of
Guayaquil.
On April 16, 1687, the rovers arrived
opposite Pun
a Island, and two hours
before dawn on Sunday, April 20th,
landed to march inland against Guayaquil.
The Spaniards had earlier been advised of
strange sails off the coast, but when no
attack developed, assumed this to be a
false alarm. Between three and four
o’clock on that rainy Sunday morning,
though, the buccaneers burst on them and
a vicious house-to-house struggle ensued.
Between 34 to 60 Spaniards were killed
in eight hours of fighting, and many
others captured, as opposed to only nine
pirate dead and a dozen wounded. Among
the latter was Grogniet, who died a few
Lussan, Ravenau De (fl. 1684
1688) 695
days later and was succeeded by Picard.
Several days later Davis joined, bringing
word of a squadron of Peruvian privateers
on their way to attack the raiders. Another
inconclusive series of engagements was
fought against these vessels off Pun
a
between May 27th and June 2nd, after
which the bands separated.
Lussan sailed with Picard’s five ves-
sels as far north as Tehuantepec (Mex-
ico), which was captured on August
30, 1687, then looked into Acapulco
bay before reversing course into the
Gulf of Fonseca. There, the flibustiers
boldly scuttled their vessels on January
2, 1688, and marched inland into
Nueva Segovia province. In the interior
highlands they constructed rafts and
sped down the Coco River, emerging
at Cape Gracias a Dios on March 9th.
A Jamaican ship was persuaded to
carry them to Saint-Domingue, which
they reached by April 8th.
Later Career (1688
1705?)
Picard and the flibustier commanders
were somewhat leery of the official
reaction to their campaign, peace hav-
ing long since been reestablished
between France and Spain, which they
feigned not knowing because of their
lengthy absence. Governor Pierre-Paul
Tarin de Cussy was not present at the
capital of Petit Go^ave, being then on
an inspection tour of that island’s
northern districts, so there were no
immediate recriminations for the re-
turnees, although it became obvious
the Crown’s policy had changed drasti-
cally with regard to roving. Many of
the freebooters therefore elected to
continue even farther afield, although
Lussan was fortunate in that being a
696 Lussan, Ravenau De (fl. 1684
1688)
subordinate—as well as author of a
meticulous journal of these events—he
was able to approach the Governor
without hesitation.
Pleased with his account, De Cussy
issued Lussan a certificate on May 17,
1688, at Port-de-Paix, praising his
‘‘zeal and courage,’’ and recommend-
ing him both to the authorities and to
Lussan’s father in Paris. The young ad-
venturer must have returned there very
shortly thereafter, for his Journal du
voyage fait a la Mer du Sud avec les
flibustiers de l’Am
erique (‘‘Journal of
the Voyage made to the South Sea
with the Filibusters of America’’) was
published in 1689, and reissued next
year, and again in 1705.
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1990).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
 M

Where is the trader of London town?

His gold’s on the capstan,
His blood’s on his gown,
And it’s up and away for Saint Mary’s Bay,
Where the liquor is good, and the lasses are gay.
—Early Eighteenth-Century ballad,
referring to the pirate lair off Madagascar

MACHADO, JUAN often shrouded in mists, because of the

See P
erez Machado, Juan
MADAGASCAR
A huge island which lies about 250
miles off the southeast coast of Africa,
and which temporarily served as a no-
torious pirate lair during the late 17th
and early 18th centuries.
It is about 1,000 miles long from
north to south, and nearly 360 miles
wide at its center, making it the fourth
largest island in the world. Its straight
eastern coastline gives way to a narrow
band of plains, quickly rising into a
mountainous spine whose forests are
humid trade winds constantly wafting
in from the Indian Ocean. Innumerable
coves and inlets dot its northwestern
and southwestern sides, with beaches
ideal for careening ships, plus ample
access to fresh water and many food
sources, including citrus plants.
On November 28, 1697 (O.S.), Cap-
tain Thomas Warren of HMS Windsor
wrote the following description of this
island to the East India Company:
The master of ship from Madagascar,
whom I met, gave me the following
account: There is a small island
called Santa Maria at the northeast
part of Madagascar, where the
pirates have a very commodious

697
698 Mal De Siam
Map of Madagascar in 1705, shortly after its greatest heyday as a pirate lair.
(Jupiterimages)
harbor to which they resort and clean
their ships. Here they have built a
regular fortification of forty or fifty
guns. They have about 1,500 men,
with seventeen sail of vessels, sloops
and ships, some of which carry forty
guns. They are furnished from New
York, New England, and the West
Indies with stores and other necessa-
ries. I was informed that if they
could obtain pardons, they would
leave that villainous way of living.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 16
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1905).
MAL DE SIAM
A French expression which translated
literally ‘‘Siamese disease,’’ a 17th-
century nickname for yellow fever.
According to the chronicler priest
Jean-Baptiste Labat, this disease was
so called because it was believed that
the crew of the royal vessel Oriflamme
had contracted it at Brazil on their
return leg from Bangkok, and so intro-
duced it to the French West Indian
island of Martinique.
Reference
Labat, Jean-Baptiste, Memoirs, 1693
1705
(London: Routledge, 1970, John Eaden,
trans.).
 Mar Del Sur, Armada Del 699

MAR DEL SUR, ores at the Potosı́ mines. The anchored

Armada would meanwhile receive the
ARMADA DEL past year’s raw silver output, crude bars
which would be sailed back to Callao
Peruvian squadron based at Callao,
and carried inland to the Lima mint, for
whose principal duty was to escort sil-
assaying and the striking of coins. Then
ver consignments from Potosı́ to the
in May or June, the Armada would
Royal Mint at Lima, then on to Pan-
depart again, this time northward for
ama City for export to Spain.
Panama with the King’s bullion and an
Starting during the 1680s, this force
accompanying convoy of Peruvian mer-
also had to contend with waves of for-
chantmen, travelling to meet the annual
eign pirates penetrating into the Pacific,
plate fleet from Spain and conduct busi-
for which their large and heavy ships
ness. This voyage from Callao to Pan-
would prove ill-suited. The Armada del
ama usually only took three weeks, but
Mar del Sur—its name literally meant
the Armada had to remain at anchor until
‘‘South Sea Fleet’’—fell under the juris-
the commercial fair concluded, after
diction of Peru’s Viceroys in their mili-
which it faced a slow upwind beat back
tary capacity as Captains-General, and
toward Callao, normally arriving late in
so was administered through adjutants
the year. Sometimes, passengers even
known as tenientes de capit
an general.
disembarked at Paita and traveled the
Over several decades of peace, this
last few hundred miles overland, rather
position had become a well-paid sine-
than tarry aboard the slow-moving ships.
cure, usually occupied by well-
Because of the particular nature of
connected relations. Actual command
their missions, Armada vessels had soon
was exercised by the Captains of the
become quite large and cumbersome,
Armada’s capitana or ‘‘flagship’’ and
more like Indiamen than fighting men-of-
almiranta or ‘‘vice-flagship,’’ who were
war. Their tactics were completely defen-
military officers drawn from the Callao
sive as well, relying on the remoteness of
garrison rather than naval officers, and
their routes and the vastness of the ocean
addressed as ‘‘General’’ or ‘‘Almirante’’
for safety. Artillery was often reduced
respectively. The five companies garri-
during peacetime, so as to accommodate
soning Callao provided sea-going infan-
greater cargos, while senior commanders
try for the Armada, so that at any given
were under orders that if approached by
time, 200 to 300 of these soldiers could
enemy vessels while bearing the King’s
be found aboard the warships, on
treasure, they were to defer combat until
cruises of several months’ duration.
the silver could be set ashore.
Early every year, the Armada would
sail southward from Callao to Chincha,
to load the mercury being extracted from Emergence of the Peruvian
the azogue mines at Huancavelica. It Privateers (1687
1688)
would then convey that year’s produc-
tion of this ingredient still farther south, Such constraints meant that the Armada
unloading it at Arica in present-day del Mar del Sur was ill-suited to offen-
Chile, to be conveyed high up into the sive operations, such as the pursuit of the
Andes by mule-trains for use in refining elusive pirates who began slipping into
700 Mar Del Sur, Armada Del

First Wave Pacific

First Wave Pacific, 1680
1681. In April 1680, Coxon, Edmond Cooke, Peter Harris the
Elder, Sawkins, and Sharpe had pushed inland from Golden Island (1), to raid in the Pacific.
After destroying Santa Marı´a el Real (2), they reached the Gulf of San Miguel, and defeated a
Spanish force off Panama (3). Coxon then withdrew, leaving Sawkins in command, who
ventured to Remedios (4) before being killed. The remainder touched at Coiba Island (5),
before dividing—some to retrace their steps back across the Isthmus, while Sharpe steered
southeast for Gorgona Island.

the Pacific Ocean in alarming numbers
as of the mid-1680s. Therefore, while
the regular warships were absent on a
commercial mission early in 1687, a
consortium of rich Peruvian merchants
had agreed to finance a private arma-
dilla, which they called the Compa~ nı´a de
corso ‘‘Nuestra Se~nora de Guı´a (literally
the ‘‘Privateering Company Our Lady as
Guide’’). The Viceroy contributed guns
and ammunition, and allowed these cor-
sairs to retain full shares in any prize
which they took. Shortly thereafter, the
merchants had three purchased vessels
ready to sail: the 20-gun San Jos
e and
San Nicol
as, commanded by the Bis-
cayans Dionisio L
opez de Artunduaga
and Nicol
as de Igarza respectively, plus
a small patache. In mid-May 1687, they
sortied hurriedly, on receipt of a report
that the pirates François Grogniet,
George Dew, and Le Picard had captured
Guayaquil, and were holding its citizens
for ransom offshore. On May 27th, they
came within sight of this enemy forma-
tion, consisting of almost 20 medium
and small craft under Davis, Picard, and
George Dew. A long-range gun duel
ensued over the next five days, with the
Peruvian privateers eventually scattering
the raiders and recuperating some prizes.
During this action, San Nicol
as ran
hard aground on a sandbank off Ata-
cames, and limped back into Callao tak-
ing on water. It was quickly substituted
by San Francisco de Paula and another

patache, who joined L
opez de Artun-
duaga and resumed the pursuit of the
retreating buccaneers. Davis departed
southward around the Horn, and the
Peruvians were able to hound the
remaining rovers as far north as New
Spain, bringing them to a confrontation
in late December 1687, where the
pirates were worsted. Another contin-
gent of six buccaneer ships and many
piraguas was defeated in Amapala Bay
during the summer of 1688, obliging
the raiders to retreat overland. For the
first time in almost a decade, the Pacific
coast was free of any large concentra-
tion of pirate vessels, and the Armada
resumed its former peacetime duties.
The convoy which recently promoted
general Antonio de Vea escorted to
Panama with the vice-flagship Guada-
lupe early in 1691 was one of Peru’s
biggest, beginning its return passage on
July 7th. Guadalupe and one other man
o’ war protected twelve merchantmen
all the way to Callao, arriving by De-
cember 1st, and followed by another
warship and five more merchantmen
which had lagged behind. But by now
the vice-flagship was more than 30
years old, and in need of being replaced.
The 40-gun private ship Jes
us, Marı´a y
Jos
e was purchased in 1692 as a stop-
gap measure, but new warships actually
had to be built. The Viceroy therefore
approached the merchant backers of the
‘‘Nuestra Se~ nora de Guı́a’’ Privateering
Company, who agreed to dissolve their
enterprise and instead channel funds
into the construction of a new Armada.
Rebuilt Fleet (1693
1694)
By early 1693, two warships capable
of mounting roughly 40 guns apiece
were taking shape in the Guayaquil
Mar Del Sur, Armada Del 701
yards, under the supervision of Juan
Bautista de Mendive and master ship-
wright Andr
es del Valle. That summer,
De Vea traveled there to assume
command of the new 845-ton flagship
Santı´simo Sacramento (Most Holy Sac-
rament). Unfortunately, he died on the
last leg of the journey before Guaya-
quil, being replaced by Jos
e de Alza-
mora, who sailed this 40-gun vessel
back into Callao by September 25,
1693. The following summer, the new
36-gun, 781-ton vice-flagship Nuestra
Se~nora de la Concepci
on arrived on
June 8, 1694, accompanied by a small
new frigate, the San Miguel, which
was to serve as patache along with the
256-ton, 18-gun Santa Cruz (Holy
Cross). The older auxiliary Santo Tori-
bio was scrapped, and this was to
remain the basic constitution of the Ar-
mada for the remainder of the 17th
century. Peru’s authorities therefore
had to rely on hired merchantmen and
privateers to maintain patrols out of
Callao until the early 1690s, when this
buccaneer menace finally abated.
French Alliance (1701
1721)
The War of the Spanish Succession wit-
nessed only minor enemy incursions into
the Pacific: In 1704 the former bucca-
neers William Dampier and Thomas
Stradling rounded Cape Horn with their
vessels Saint George and Cinque Ports,
achieving little before being chased
away by a 20-gun Callao warship,
seconded by a hired Spanish, and three
French merchantmen; then in 1709
Woodes Rogers prowled past with his
frigate Duke and Stephen Courtney’s
Duchess, seizing Guayaquil in early
May before continuing north. However,
for Callao the most significant change
inaugurated by this Bourbon ascension
702 Maroon
to the throne in distant Madrid was to be
an attempted reform of its naval estab-
lishment, as royal officers came out from
Spain for the first time to assume direct
command over its operations.
First to appear was the French mili-
tary engineer Jean-Baptiste de Ros-
main, who arrived from Panama in
mid-1707 and helped rebuild some of
Callao’s crumbling walls before dying
on February 27, 1711. Then the French
mercenary Commodore Jean-Nicolas
Martinet entered on September 27,
1717, having been contracted by the
Spanish Crown to rid South America’s
coastline of foreign smugglers. He
brought the purchased French warships
Prı´ncipe de Asturias (ex-Conqu
erant)
of 700 tons, 64 guns, and 500 men;
Triunfante (ex-Grand Saint Esprit) of
600 tons, 50 guns, and 400 men; plus
the storeship Princesse de Valois. They
had been accompanied out of Cadiz by
the 60-gun Spanish warship Nuestra
Se~nora del Carmen (ex-English Pem-
broke) of Captain Bartolom
e de
Urdinzu, plus the 48-gun, 600-ton Per-
egrino (ex-French P elerin) of Blas de
Lezo; however, the latter pair had been
incapable of rounding the Horn, so had
turned back to Buenos Aires.
Martinet had already seized a French
smuggler off Cobija, plus another five
French vessels off Arica, before gaining
Callao. Peregrino did not catch up until
March 1718, but Carmen had for a sec-
ond time been compelled to circle back
into the Atlantic, seizing two small
Saint Malo frigates off the River Plate
before finally being abandoned there as
useless. Urdinzu therefore did not enter
Callao with his two prizes until January
1720, further bringing in the newly
appointed Naval Intendant-General
Gabriel Lacunza, who was to begin
reorganizing its shore establishments in
the face of aroused opposition from jeal-
ous local authorities. Martinet’s ships
returned to Europe shortly thereafter
(relations between the French merce-
naries and Peru’s officials having
soured), while Lezo soon succeeded the
unhappy Urdinzu in command of the
remaining Armada forces. These proved
so weak that Callao was briefly blockaded
in May 1721 by five French merchant-
men, who hoped to continue their illicit
trade along that coastline. Next year, the
engineer Captain Nicol
as Rodrı́guez
reached Callao, and on August 22, 1724,
began a much needed overhaul of its pe-
rimeter, which lasted almost nine years.
See also
Almiranta; Armadilla; Capitana; Dew,
George; Grogniet, François; Le Picard,
Capitaine; Mar del Sur, Armada del
(Volume 1); Patache; South Sea.
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1989).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
P
erez Mallaı́na Bueno, Pablo Emilio, and
Torres Ramı́rez, Bibiano, Armada del
Mar del Sur (Seville: Escuela de
Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1987).
MAROON
Term originally derived from the Span-
ish adjective cimarr
on, which denotes
anything wild, rogue, or untamed, but
in English came to mean deliberately
abandoning someone on a desolate
island or beach as a punishment.
 Maroon 703

The original expression had many
applications—ganado cimarr
on, for
example, meant wild cattle; indio
cimarr
on, a renegade Indian; negro
cimarr
on, a runaway slave—and was of-
ten spelled in late 17th- or early 18th-cen-
tury Spanish as cimaroon or cimarroon,
before accents had become standardized
in that language. Runaway slaves, in par-
ticular, were referred to collectively as
cimarrones by Spaniards during the colo-
nial era, from where this noun presum-
ably passed into English. The reason for
this confused application was that during
the 17th century, many Africans who
eluded their Spanish masters sought ref-
uge in coastal areas, normally shunned as
unhealthy by Castillian Spaniards, and
reminiscent of West Africa to these fugi-
tives. Buccaneers and other seamen who
chanced on these isolated havens, hidden
in remote tropical inlets all the way
from the Spanish Main deep into the
Gulf of Mexico, assumed that their
inhabitants had been driven there—‘‘mar-
ooned’’—for their rebelliousness.
By the early 18th century, pirates
had begun giving their own sinister
twist to this term. For example, Henry
Watson, an English merchant traveling
toward Bombay aboard the ship Rupar-
rel, was captured and held for several
weeks aboard John Hore’s John and
Rebecca in the Indian Ocean during the
summer of 1696. When several fellow-
prisoners managed to slip away one
night aboard a small boat, the infuriated
pirates turned on Watson next morning:
. . . and threatened to make me fast
and beat me, and afterwards turn me
on shore naked on a bare rock, or
maroon-key as they called it, without
food, wood, or water. I told them
that they knew my daily solicitation
to them to be put on shore, that I
knew nothing of these men’s going,
or I should certainly have escaped

A marooned pirate, as envisioned by the great illustrator Howard Pyle. (Johnson, Merle
(compiled by). Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates: Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning the
Buccaneers & Marooners of the Spanish Main, 1921)
704 Maroon Islands
with them. This abated their rigor
and villainous design against me.
In another instance of this term’s usage,
when Woodes Rogers stepped ashore at
lawless Nassau on the morning of July
27, 1718 (O.S.), to assume office as new
Royal Governor of the Bahamas, he was
greeted by a double-line of freebooters
extending ‘‘from the waterside to the
fort,’’ who fired a welcoming salute over
his head as he passed between them. The
Royal Navy Captain Pomeroy of the
sloop Shark, who witnessed this colorful
reception, later noted: ‘‘Governor Rog-
ers made his entry, and was greeted with
a great deal of seeming joy from those
who style themselves marooners.’’
See also
Spanish Main.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 16
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1905).
Konstam, Angus, Blackbeard: America’s
Most Notorious Pirate (New York:
Wiley, 2007).
MAROON ISLANDS
Nickname during the late 17th and early
18th centuries for the largely-deserted
Bahamian archipelago, where many
hapless seamen came to be abandoned.
For example, the ex-privateer Read
Elding, writing from Nassau to London
in his capacity as Acting-Governor on
October 4, 1699 (O.S.), reported that:
The West Indies are full of pirates. I
have been so severe to those sort of
people, that about a fortnight now past
I had a notorious pirate tried here, con-
demned, and hanged. I am informed
that there are several pirates at St.
Thomas and Danish port to windward,
and so scattered amongst some of the
Maroon Islands, which they expected
that some encouragement might be
given them, as formerly used to be
among these territories.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 17
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1908).
MARTEL, JAMES
(fl. 1716
1717)
West Indian freebooter, who operated
briefly during the uneasy interlude of
peace following Queen Anne’s War.
Charles Johnson, author of A Gen-
eral and True History of piracy, con-
fessed that ‘‘we have not been able to
find the Original of this Rover, of
whom we are now to speak.’’ Martel
was believed to have operated out of
Jamaica as a privateer, until these hos-
tilities ceased in April 1713. The first
official notice of his activities did not
occur until late September 1716, when
his 8-gun, 80-man sloop intercepted
the galley Berkeley. This 200-ton
slaver had departed Bristol on January
10, 1716 (O.S.), to make a stopover at
West Africa, and deliver 200 slaves
into Port Royal by that same August.
Its Captain Edmund Saunders had then
loaded with a cargo of Jamaican sugar
and rum, as well as six months’ provi-
sions, before departing on his

homeward leg by mid-September. A
few days out into the Caribbean,
though, Berkeley was intercepted by
Martel, who robbed it of £1,000 in
cash, some valuables, and all its
provisions.
This pirate inflicted a like treatment on
a sloop shortly thereafter called the King
Solomon, as well as two other vessels,
while standing toward the Cuban coast-
line. Then near the mouth of Guant
anamo
Bay, he and his marauders sighted a pass-
ing 20-gun galley named the John and
Martha, ‘‘which they attacked under the
pyratical black Flag, and made them-
selves masters of her.’’ Martel decided to
transform this fine vessel into his new
flagship, so set Captain Wilson ashore
with a few loyal hands, and told him:
. . . to advise his owners, that their
ship would answer his purpose
exactly, by taking one deck down
[i.e., lowering its profile by remov-
ing a deck]; and as for the cargo,
which consisted chiefly of logwood
and sugar, he would take care it
should be carried to a good market.
Martel increased the armament of this
prize to 22 guns and manned it with
100 men, while another 25 remained on
his original sloop to operate it as his
consort.
Both pirate vessels steered for the
Leeward Islands, pillaging a sloop and a
brigantine on their arrival, before chas-
ing down and retaining the 20-gun ship
Dolphin, which had been bound toward
Newfoundland. In mid-December 1716
(O.S.), Martel stole all the provisions
from the galley Kent, outward-bound
from Jamaica under Captain Thomas
Lawton, then did the same to a small
ship and sloop coming downwind from
Barbados, as well as removing several
Martel, James (fl. 1716
1717) 705
crewmen to swell his ranks. The galley
Greyhound out of London, sailing from
Guinea toward Jamaica under the slaver
Captain Evans, was relieved of gold
dust, elephants’ tusks, and its 40 healthi-
est captives, before Martel decided that
he needed to careen and clean his
ships—so as to fit himself out ‘‘for fur-
ther mischief,’’ according to Johnson.
Martel therefore piloted his flotilla
(two 20-gun ships, two sloops of 8 and
4 guns, plus another sloop which he
seized en route) to the sparsely popu-
lated island of Saint Croix in the Vir-
gin Islands, arriving there by early
January 1717 (O.S.). He carefully
picked a small, shallow harbor along
its northwestern shoreline, divided by a
small islet and with rocks offshore, as
a defensible bolt-hole. A 4-gun battery
was erected on the islet, a 2-gun bat-
tery was installed at the north point of
this bay, and the 8-gun sloop was
warped into the channel-mouth to serve
as a guardship. Finally, Martel light-
ened his flagship and entered, prepar-
ing to careen it.
But two months previously, Gover-
nor Walter Hamilton of the English
Leeward Islands had summoned the
30-gun, 140-man Royal Navy frigate
Scarborough from Barbados, to ‘‘dis-
perse those vermin’’ such as Martel
and Samuel Bellamy, who were com-
mitting so many depredations through-
out the archipelago. Despite having
lost 20 hands due to illness, and with
another 40 men lying sick, its Captain
Francis Hume sailed in response, being
reinforced with 20 soldiers during a
stopover at Antigua on January 4, 1717
(O.S.), plus another 10 from Nevis,
and 10 more from St. Kitts. On reach-
ing Spanish Town at the southern end
of Virgin Gorda, Hume had still
sighted no pirates and so was about to
706 Matross
reverse course, when a boat arrived on
the evening of January 16, 1717 (O.S.),
with news that Martel’s flotilla had put
into northwestern Saint Croix.
Scarborough immediately weighed
and materialized outside Martel’s anchor-
age by next morning. Hume bravely
worked his frigate in as close as possible
to its offshore rocks and reefs, then anch-
ored to begin his bombardment. The
pirate batteries replied with red-hot shot,
but after several hours of intense firing,
Martel’s 8-gun guard ship sank in the
channel around 4:00 P.M. on that same
January 17, 1717 (O.S.). Hume then
shifted his aim across the islet against
Martel’s flagship until nightfall, when the
Royal Navy frigate weighed and stood
out to sea, rather than risk running
aground as the winds and tides shifted in
the darkness.
The warship nonetheless hovered
offshore over the next couple of days,
before retreating over the horizon by
the evening of January 20, 1717 (O.S.).
Martel chose this opportunity to try to
slip out to sea, but his flagship ran
aground at midnight, after which Scar-
borough loomed back out of the dark-
ness. Desperate, Martel set his
grounded galley ablaze—which was
consumed ‘‘with 20 Negroes in her,
who were all burnt’’—before fleeing
into the woods of Saint Croix with a
few loyal hands. Only 19 pirates man-
aged to escape out through the shoals
aboard a small sloop, after which
Hume freed the prisoners aboard the
remaining prize ship and sloop, then
continued his patrol. Martel was never
heard from again.
See also
Bellamy, Samuel; Logwood.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies., Volume 29
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1957).
Johnson, Capt. Charles, The History of
the Lives and Actions of the
Most Famous Highwaymen,
Street-Robbers, Etc., Etc., to
Which Is Added a Genuine Account
of the Voyages and Plunders of the
Most Noted Pirates (London:
Longman, 1813).
MATROSS
Seventeenth century English expression
for a gunner’s mate, doubtless derived
from the Dutch word matroos, signify-
ing a ‘‘sailor.’’
For example, late in King William’s
War, Governor Francis Russell of Bar-
bados reported to the Lords of Trade
and Plantations in London on August
25, 1695 (O.S.), how he had 12 gunners
and 24 matrosses to man the 267 guns
of his island defenses; he furthermore
indicated that the 42 guns within the
principal Needham’s Fort or Charles
Fort, covering the main anchorage at
Carlisle Bay, had one gunner and 12
matrosses, ‘‘which are all that can be
depended on to secure it against
surprises.’’
Two years later, on October 14,
1697 (O.S.), the Council of Barbados
also passed an order ‘‘for Robert Chap-
man, son of the late master gunner, to
be admitted [as] a matross.’’
See also
Matross (Volume 1).

Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 14,
15 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1903
1904).
MAYES, WILLIAM
(fl. 1694
1699)
Rhode Island seafarer who emulated
his countryman Thomas Tew, by mak-
ing a piratical foray into the Red Sea.
Mayes was the son of a local tavern-
keeper of that same name, who seems to
have been operating a public house in
Rhode Island ever since the early 1670s.
Historical records show that William
Mayes, Sr., received at least one such
publican license in 1687, and he would
seem to have been quite well-connected
in local politics, because his wife Sarah
was the daughter of Samuel Gorton, a
former President of that private colony.
When Tew returned to Newport in the
spring of 1694 with immense booty
acquired from the capture of one of the
Great Mogul’s treasure ships, Mayes and
many other Rhode Islanders were dazzled
by this display of wealth. Consequently,
he obtained clearance from the customs
house at Newport that same September 7,
1694 (O.S.), to sail his 60-ton brigantine
Pearl, of six guns and 50 men, ‘‘on a trad-
ing voyage to Madagascar.’’ But as the
Lords of Trade and Plantations in Eng-
land would later note, there was virtually
no commerce to be had on that wild
island, so the best reason one could have
for sailing there would be ‘‘to buy goods
captured by pirates.’’ At worst, Mayes
intended to try his hand at piracy himself.
This was seemingly confirmed when
on December 3, 1694 (O.S.), he further-
Mayes, William (fl. 1694
1699) 707
more obtained ‘‘a defensive commission
against His Majesty’s enemies,’’ plus
an outright war commission one week
later—both from the disreputable Deputy
Governor of Rhode Island, John Greene,
Jr., an individual described by a con-
temporary source as ‘‘a brutish man of
very corrupt or no principles in religion.’’
London would later object that Greene
was not empowered to issue such patents,
nor did he extract the requisite bond
against Mayes’ future good behavior.
Greene eventually countered that he was
unaware of any such laws, to which the
Lords responded in exasperation that
‘‘such an ignorant person’’ should never
have been put into office.
By this time, of course, Mayes’ Pearl
had long since weighed from Newport
on December 17, 1694 (O.S.), for the
Cape of Good Hope. Next year, rumors
began to drift back that he had helped the
notorious Captain Henry Every rob
another of the Great Mogul’s treasure
ships, the Ganj-i-Sawai. When Captain
William Kidd was issued a pirate-hunt-
ing commission in London on January
26, 1696 (O.S.), he was specifically
instructed to hunt for such renegade
rovers as Thomas Tew and William
Mayes, who had apparently far exceeded
their privateering licenses against the
French by these actions.
On February 9, 1697 (O.S.), the
Lords of Trade and Plantations in Lon-
don furthermore wrote an angry inquiry
to Governor Samuel Cranston and the
Council of Rhode Island, demanding an
explanation for their sanctioning of such
a piratical cruise. They did not reply
until more than a year later, on May 8,
1698 (O.S.), and then blandly asserted:
Several informations have been for-
warded to you, that Rhode Island is a
708 Mayes, William (fl. 1694
1699)
place where pirates are entertained.
Thus it is said that William Mayes, a
pirate fitted out at Rhode Island, and
that Thomas Jones was concerned in
the old bark with Captain Want. These
things have been misrepresented to
you. We have never countenanced
such proceedings, and we are sure that
William Mayes had his clearance here
for Madagascar and a commission
from this government to fight the
French. By the best information that
we have, Captain Every plundered
him, and we very much suspect has
destroyed him and his company, for
none of them are returned and there is
no news of any of them.
The Lords of Trade acknowledged
receipt of this belated letter that same
October 25, 1698 (O.S.), and opened
with a rebuke:
We cannot but take note of your delay
in replying, since we know by the
receipt of one of your officers, that
our letter remained in your hands for
some months unanswered. You send
us copies of acts and proclamations in
defence of your conduct in relation to
pirates, and seem to say that Rhode
Island has never countenanced them,
adding that William Mayes was
cleared from your Custom-house for
Madagascar, with a lawful privateer’s
commission. All this is very well, but
for your further justification against
aspersions that have been, and still are
cast upon you, we desire to have cop-
ies of all private commissions granted
by your Governors or Deputy Gover-
nors during the late war, as also of the
bonds given by the said privateers on
receiving the said commissions.
Governor Cranston answered in late
May 1699, explaining that he and his fel-
low Rhode Islanders ‘‘are a plain and
mean sort of people, but very loyal,’’
who had innocently erred through igno-
rance, and would in future ‘‘endeavor to
be more diligent.’’
A mere six weeks later, Mayes appa-
rently returned from his epic four-and-
a-half year voyage into the Indian
Ocean, as Richard Coote, Earl of Bello-
mont, the Royal Governor for New
England, would report from Boston that
same July 8, 1699 (O.S.), about numer-
ous pirate ships returning into New
York and Rhode Island, and specifically
mentioned that: ‘‘A great ship has been
seen off this coast any time this week;
‘tis supposed to be one Maise [sic], a
pirate, who has brought a vast deal of
wealth from the Red Seas.’’ Bellomont
added on August 24th (O.S.), that after
having arrested the fugitive Kidd:
. . . for want of a man-of-war, I could
not attempt anything against a great
ship that hovered off this coast five or
six days together, about the time I
secured Captain Kidd, supposed to be
one Maze [sic], a pirate, who is said to
have brought £300,000 from the Red
Sea, and who, ‘tis believed here,
would have come into this place [i.e.,
Boston], could he have hoped to make
his terms; but hearing how it fared
with Kidd, he bore away, and ‘tis said
he is gone to Providence.
The Governor furthermore wrote from
New York on October 15, 1699 (O.S.),
to the Lords of the Admiralty in London,
how he had been informed:
. . . that Mays, a pirate, and another
came with two ships to the east end of

Nassau Island the latter end of last win-
ter, and had to the value of half a mil-
lion between ‘em; that they sent
privately to this town to know whether
they might come in with safety and be
pardon’d, but that some men of the
Law frightened them away, by telling
them there would be no quarter for
‘em, if they fell into my clutches.
Mayes had apparently chosen wisely, by
putting into the private colony of Rhode
Island, beyond the immediate reach of
the Crown authorities. Despite Bello-
mont’s directives to its local officials, he
was never arrested, and in 1702, like his
father before him, was granted a license
to sell ‘‘all sorts of strong drink’’ at the
family inn, the White Horse Tavern.
This institution still operates today, at
the corner of Marlborough and Farewell
Streets in modern Newport.
See also
Kidd, William; Tew, Thomas.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes
16
18 (London: His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1905
1910).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
MICHELE, BIAGIO
(fl. 1687)
Corsican-born mercenary, who patrolled
the Greater Antilles under Spanish
Michele, Biagio (fl. 1687) 709
colors, until he was brutally executed for
leading a peacetime raid against the
French flibustier haven of Petit-Go^ave.
Biagio Michele was apparently the
younger brother of Giovanni Michele,
who had been commonly referred to by
the Spaniards throughout his privateering
career as ‘‘Juan Corso,’’ until he was lost
somewhere along the Gulf Coast of the
modern United States during a storm in
May 1685. His younger sibling was to be
likewise known by the Hispanicized name
of ‘‘Blas Miguel Corso.’’ Both had been
born on Corsica at a time when that island
was governed by the Republic of Genoa,
itself a satellite of Spain, so that they had
been able to win authorization from
Madrid to operate in the New World.
Cuban Patrols
(February
June 1687)
No longer subordinated to his deceased
brother, Biagio Michele reached Ha-
vana from Mexico early in 1687 with
his piragua, apparently nicknamed the
Cachimbo or ‘‘Tobacco Pipe,’’ most
likely because of its long, low, brown
appearance. Although peace reigned in
Europe that year between all the major
powers, he secured a local privateering
commission on February 26, 1687, from
Havana’s Acting-Governor, garrison
commander Andr
es de Munibe, to
patrol Cuban waters as a guardacosta
or ‘‘coast-guard’’ vessel. Setting sail
accompanied by another corsair’s brig-
antine, Michele and his piragua circled
around western Cuba, where his consort
dropped anchor in the port of Casilda,
while Cachimbo proceeded on to Trini-
dad to recruit more men. A few volun-
teer hands were taken on there, and
Corso also borrowed two swivel-guns, a
710 Michele, Biagio (fl. 1687)
dozen rifles, and 400 pesos from his fel-
low privateer Captain, Mateo Guarin.
Once Michele returned into Casilda, he
exited again in company with his brig-
antine consort, coasting together farther
east toward Santiago de Cuba. En route,
the two corsair vessels inspected a
Spanish frigate outward-bound from
Cartagena (Colombia), as well as a
sloop coming out of Puerto Rico.
On gaining Santiago and being inter-
viewed by its authorities on April 14,
1687, Michele learned that its Governor
Gil Correoso Catal
an had been tempo-
rarily suspended from office because of
suspicions of illicit commerce with for-
eign traders, and supplanted for a few
months by the Mexican visitador Tom
as
Pizarro Cort
es. The latter granted Corso
a second privateering license, as well as
permission to recruit more hands in that
port. The citadel commander, sargento


mayor Alvaro Romero Venegas, would
also later testify that he had specifically
warned Michele against operating
beyond this jurisdiction and attacking
the French flibustier bases on nearby
Saint-Domingue, as a fragile truce had
been forged and appeared to be holding.
After more than 20 days of this lay-
over at Santiago, Michele exited and
steered around the eastern tip of Cuba
for the port of Baracoa, with a total of
83 men aboard both the replenished
vessels. At Baracoa, he found the sus-
pended Governor Correoso living in
exile, who later declared how he too
had warned the Corsican against any
offensive action against the nearby
French harbors, which would threaten
the shaky truce. Yet that same May
1687, the galliot Santiago of the Bis-
cayan privateer Fermı́n de Salaberrı́a
had been hurrying from Veracruz with
messages for its main squadron, when
it became embroiled in a losing battle
off J
ucaro on the south-central Cuban
coast, against a pirate flotilla under the
famous Laurens de Graaf. The Bis-
cayan vessel was soon driven aground,
and in serious danger of being cap-
tured, until some small local guarda-
costa vessels hastened out to his
rescue. De Graaf immediately turned
on them as well, seizing a schooner
and sinking a piragua, before standing
away in triumph.
This bloody encounter may have
possibly goaded Michele into contem-
plating a counter-blow, as the truce
was seemingly being observed by only
one side. In any event, when he exited
Baracoa with Cachimbo and his brig-
antine consort, Corso made a stealthy
crossing over to the dark-green coasts
of Saint-Domingue, so as to launch a
surprise dawn-attack against the flibus-
tier capital of Petit-Go^ave. Moreover,
this date had been chosen with particu-
lar care, as Sunday, August 10th, was
also the Church feast-day when Saint
Lawrence would be honored, so that he
and his raiders hoped to catch De
Graaf in his home port, relaxed and
unwary, in anticipation of celebrating
his holiday.
Petit-Go^ave Raid (August 1687)
As Cachimbo and the brigantine
groped through the pre-dawn darkness
toward their objective, they intercepted
a canoe bearing an elderly Frenchman
named Jean de Lassaline, his black
wife, their young son, and a slave. A
second canoe was seized shortly there-
after as well, with four more French-
men aboard. The senior of these, a
man named Saint-Antoine, gave in to
the Spaniards’ threats, and agreed to
pilot them into Petit-Go^ave’s harbor.

At first light on August 10, 1687, the
officer of the watch overlooking the har-
bor, Captain Vigneron, saw a large pira-
gua gliding into its roads, which he
challenged. A terrified French captive
was made to reply, but when Vigneron
suspiciously hailed for a second time, a
warning cry ensued. Before the French
defense could react, though, the Cubans
swarmed ashore, rampaging throughout
the town. In the home of Mayor Dupuis
they hacked both he and his young man-
servant to death with their machetes,
then bayoneted the Mayor’s pregnant
wife when she wept that she could not
live on without her husband. The small
fortress was occupied without resistance,
and many homes ransacked (some by
local ‘‘Negros, Negresses and free
mulattos,’’ a French official angrily
noted). But in the growing dawn, the
defenders realized that Miguel had but a
few-score men ashore with him, and no
more than 85 in total, of whom 20 had
remained aboard his brigantine and
demi-galere (half-galley) out in the har-
bor. French reinforcements began pour-
ing in from outlying areas, shooting
down isolated groups of looters and
Cubans, who had few firearms between
them.
Miguel’s men were soon forced
back inside the fortress, then forsaken
by their two craft out in the harbor, as
the batteries opened fire on them. Only
the piragua still rocked idly in the
surf, with a single Cuban corsair on
board, until De Graaf personally waded
out ‘‘machete in hand’’ and took it.
The attackers were now trapped inside
the fortress, and sent out a message
with ‘‘a woman of ill repute they had
captured,’’ offering to restore their
booty if allowed to sail away. Now
fully enraged, the flibustiers scorned
this suggestion, storming the walls and
Moidore 711
taking the remaining 47 Cubans pris-
oner. Another 17 already lay dead in
the streets of Petit-Go^ave.
The next day a summary trial was
held, at which Miguel and his two princi-
pal lieutenants were condemned to be
‘‘broken alive’’ on the wheel, while
another 42 corsairs were sentenced to be
hanged, and only two—‘‘a young boy
and a Negro’’—were spared because
they had been forced to join the raiders.
On August 12, 1687, these terrible pun-
ishments were carried out, Miguel being
slowly battered to death as the ‘‘whites,
mulattos, Indians, and blacks who had
accompanied’’ him were strung up all
around the dying figure.
See also
Biscayan Privateers; Corso, Juan (Volume
1); De Graaf, Laurens (Volume 1);
Guardacostas; Michele, Giovanni
(Volume 1); Piragua.
Reference
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
MIGUEL, BLAS
See Michele, Biagio
MOIDORE
Term which had originally entered the
English language from the Portuguese
phrase moeda d’ouro, literally meaning a
‘‘coin of gold,’’ but which came to be
712
tienne De (fl. 1691
1696)
Montauban or Montauband, E
generally applied to any finely-wrought-
piece of gold currency during the 18th
century.
For example, on July 21, 1716
(O.S.), the Scottish widow Luce Evans
bequeathed to her sister Margaret Mor-
gan of Llantarnam ‘‘a piece of gold of
the value of 27 shillings, sixpence, com-
monly called a Portugal Moyder [sic].’’
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 5, 7
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1880
1889).
Cardiff Records, Volume 3: Wills,
1702
1717 (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1901).
MONTAUBAN OR
MONTAUBAND, E
TIENNE
DE (fl. 1691
1696)
French flibustier who was reported as
operating off Newfoundland during
King William’s War.
When the French fishing-boat master
Jean Pigeon returned across the Atlantic
into Bordeaux in December 1691 with
his 60-ton Charmante of Saint-Malo, he
declared to its port authorities that late
that same summer, Montauban had force-
fully removed a member of Pigeon’s
crew—18-year-old François Chanda-
voine, a native of the French Antilles—in
exchange for ‘‘four hogsheads of sugar.’’
Antillean Sweep (1694)
On February 11, 1694, Montauban
received a privateering commission from
Versailles to campaign with his 34-gun,
200-ton, and 172-man ship Trois Freres.
He consequently materialized off the
Venezuelan coast that same spring, rav-
aging as far west as Caracas, before
steering for French-held St. Kitts. There,
he learned of an English convoy about to
depart Barbados and Nevis for London,
so hastened to lay in wait of these mer-
chantmen off Bermuda. Before reaching
that Atlantic island, though, Montauban
sighted the English vessels at sea, defeat-
ing their escort-ship Wolf and capturing
two merchantmen laden with sugar,
while the rest scattered.
While nearing Europe with his three
prizes, Trois Freres also encountered a
16-gun English vessel which was home-
ward-bound from Spain, and which Mon-
tauban took after a brief fight and carried
into La Rochelle for sale. He then entered
Bordeaux in September 1694 with his
three other rich prizes, but soon became
alarmed when his wild flibustiers—‘‘find-
ing themselves in a large city where pleas-
ure and abundance reign’’—ran up
enormous expenses on his credit. Montau-
ban lamented of his men:
Every night was passed in amuse-
ments, every day in running in masks
throughout the city; they had them-
selves carried in chaises, with torch-
bearers even at high noon, while a
few died of their debauches, and four
others deserted me.
Fearful of seeing all his profits evapo-
rate, the Captain recruited and trained a
number of local volunteers as replace-
ments, then prepared Trois Freres for an
early departure next year.
African Misadventure (1695)
Montauban cleared Bordeaux in Febru-
ary 1695 to campaign off Guinea in West
Africa. After hovering uneventfully for
 Moreno Mondrag
on, Blas (fl. 1703
1713)
eight days off the Azores, he spent
another two weeks waiting in vain for
some Dutch East Indiamen which were
daily expected at the Canaries, but which
slipped past him safely into port. Disap-
pointed, Trois Fr eres steered for the
Cape Verde Islands, and sighted two
English vessels anchored off May Island.
He wrote an account of his misad-
ventures, which was published in Am-
sterdam in 1698 by the exiled
Huguenot publisher J. Louis de Lorme
under the title of Relation du voyage
du Sieur de Montauban, capitaine des
flibustiers, en Guin
ee en l’an 1695.
MORENO MONDRAGON,
(September 1703)
BLAS (fl. 1703
1713)
Cuban corsair who helped assault Nas-
sau, and fought against the English and
Dutch throughout Queen Anne’s War.
Virtually nothing is known about his
birth or early career, although when
these hostilities erupted in the summer
of 1702, Moreno was apparently an
active participant in the West Indian
island trade owning the brigantine
Nuestra Se~ nora del Rosario y las


Animas. The first notice of his priva-
teering involvement occurred when
Governor Juan Var
on de Ch
avez of
Santiago de Cuba issued a call early
next year for local volunteers to serve
against the English and Dutch. Having
careened, armed, and fitted out his
Rosario as a corsair vessel, Moreno
was duly issued a commission on
March 15, 1703, ‘‘to cruise those
coasts, infested by English and Dutch
pirates, who were preventing [the
importation] of foodstuffs, which were
brought by sea into that garrison-city.’’
713
He ventured to Baracoa after it had
been attacked, and patrolled the north-
eastern Cuban coastline as far as Puerto
del Prı́ncipe, while receiving complaints
from Havana about the boldness of
English rovers prowling out of Nassau.
As a result, Moreno took part in a joint
expedition that same autumn with 100
or more French boucaniers aboard a
sloop out of Saint-Domingue (modern
Haiti) under Claude de Lachasney—
also recorded as La Chaney or Le Ches-
naye—which was supplemented by at
least 100 Spanish volunteers aboard
Moreno’s brigantine Rosario.
Destruction of Nassau
Since both the French and Spanish
allies in the region regarded New Prov-
idence Island as a mutual menace,
Le Chesnaye and Moreno steered
stealthily for the Bahamas, snapping up
every craft that they met, so as not to
reveal their approach. An English cap-
tive was then coerced into piloting
them directly into Nassau’s main an-
chorage before dawn, so that some 200
raiders were able to wade ashore one
dark morning early in September 1703,
taking its defenders completely by
surprise. The Acting-Governor Ellis
Lightwood, ‘‘a gentleman of consider-
able estate in that island,’’ had hosted
a raucous party the previous night to
celebrate the birth of his son, so that
virtually every able-bodied Englishman
had gone to bed very late and quite
drunk. The assault-column therefore:
. . . found no resistance, nor was any
of the inhabitants destroyed at that
time, except only one man who was
killed, and another had his hand cut
714 Morpain, Pierre (fl. 1706
1711)
off. However, before [the attackers]
attempted the fort, they made a hail
and by threatening their [latest Nas-
savian] prisoners, found that there
would be no resistance, so proceeded
and carried all before them. The
French Captain and the Spaniards
declared if anybody had appeared in
the fort and fired but one gun, they
would never have attempted it.
Instead, though, Le Chesnaye’s and
Moreno’s men were able to fall exul-
tantly to looting the captive dwellings
and ‘‘plundered in gold, silver, slaves,
etc., to the value of £30,000.’’ They also
removed 22 of the fort’s 40 guns,
destroying the rest and breaking the
wooden gun-carriages so new ones could
not immediately be reinstalled, as well
as the gates so as to leave the palmetto-
and-lime structure to slowly rot. A total
of 11 prizes were also seized, before the
raiders ‘‘burnt the town and church to
ashes,’’ then departed almost two weeks
later for Santiago de Cuba with 80 to 100
captives, including Lightwood.
When the new Governor-designate
Edward Birch landed at devastated Nas-
sau on January 1, 1704 (O.S.), he would
become so discouraged at beholding its
ruined state—the score or so survivors
not even having a ‘‘shift to cover their
nakedness,’’ according to another
report—that he did not bother unfurling
his company-issued commission to
assume office, preferring to take ship for
South Carolina a few months later.
Defeat off Hispaniola and
Later Career (1706
1713)
At the conclusion of these hostilities,
the Spanish Crown rewarded Moreno
in December 1713 by appointing him
as a Captain in the Armada de Barlo-
vento, a reward for his having:
. . . dislodged the enemies from the
island of Providence which they had
occupied, having fitted out a brigan-
tine at your own expense for this
purpose and then continued patrol-
ling the coasts of America, in pursuit
of the pirates which infested them,
to the detriment and loss which you
experienced of said brigantine, fight-
ing against them.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 21,
23 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1952).
MORPAIN, PIERRE
(fl. 1706
1711)
Wide-ranging French privateer, who
was credited with saving Acadia from
an Anglo-American invasion.
Morpain was born on February 9,
1686, in Blaye, a small town on the
banks of the Gironde River estuary, 30
miles north of the great Atlantic seaport
of Bordeaux. Within the next three years,
the famous military engineer Vauban
would complete a massive new citadel
beside this town, one of a trio of forts
designed to impede any enemy incursion
upriver. The future rover’s parents were
a minor local dignitary and businessman
of modest means, Jacques Morpain, and
his wife Marguerite Audoire. Following
the premature death of both, the teen-
aged Pierre set sail in 1703 to join his
older brother in the Antilles.

The War of the Spanish Succession
was just then entering into its second
year, with France and Spain ranged
against England and The Netherlands.
Displaying a remarkable aptitude for free-
booting, Morpain obtained his first privat-
eering commission in 1706, and at the
age of 20 was entrusted with command of
the Intr

epide by Governor Jean-Pierre de
Charitte of Saint-Domingue. One of Mor-
pain’s earliest voyages was to carry a
group of Dutch captives to Curaçao for
exchange, during which passage he inter-
cepted a neutral merchantman with a sus-
picious manifest, carrying it into Santiago
de Cuba for adjudication before its more
pliant Spanish-American officials.
Acadian Rescue (1707)
The next summer, Morpain sailed
Intr

epide north on his own initiative to
prowl off the New England coast,
where he promptly took two important
prizes: a slave-ship and the merchant
frigate Bonetta, which was laden with
foodstuffs. Wishing to secure his cap-
tures at the nearest French-held port,
the 21-year-old Captain towed his
prizes into the harbor at Port-Royal
(modern Annapolis Royal, Nova Sco-
tia) on August 13, 1707.
This front-line outpost had just sur-
vived a 10-day siege by 1,100 New Eng-
landers under Colonel John March of
Casco Bay (Portland, Maine), who had
withdrawn less than a month previously
aboard their two-dozen sloops and trans-
ports. The arrival of Morpain with a
frigate bulging with supplies was conse-
quently viewed by its frightened, out-
numbered, and isolated defenders as a
miraculous deliverance. One week later,
Colonel March returned and disembarked
Morro 715
1,600 troops for a second attempt against
the French stronghold. Yet its heartened
garrison put up a stout resistance, and the
New Englanders’ assault once more
became bogged down, after which March
fell ill. This second thrust ended in fail-
ure and retreat like the first, convincing
the Anglo-American authorities of their
need for regular troops and warships to
be sent out from England, so as to better
assure the success of any future ventures.
In the glowing account of this
defense written to France’s Minister of
Marine, Governor Daniel d’Auger de
Subercase of Port-Royal stated that
Morpain and his rovers had ‘‘helped us
to fight them off and left us 700 bar-
rels of flour, without which we would
certainly have been in difficult straits.’’
Intr
epide departed on September 20,
1707, as Morpain wished to return to
Saint-Domingue to report to Governor
Charitte, as well as to sell his cargo of
captive slaves in the Antilles.
Reference
LeBland, Robert, ‘‘Un corsaire de Sainte-
Domingue en Acadie: Pierre Morpain,
1707
1711,’’ Nova Francia [Canada] 6,
No. 4 (1931), pp. 195
203.
MORRO
Spanish word for any large harbor-
castle or coastal fortification.
This term doubtless originated in me-
dieval times, when such defenses were
needed in Spain against the seaborne
descents by fierce North African Moors.
This generic name became confused by
English and other foreigners in the New
World as the actual name for an indi-
vidual castle, leading to a profusion of
716 Musson, Matthew (fl. 1716
1719)
ports ostensibly having a morro of their
own: Havana, Santiago de Cuba, San
Juan de Puerto Rico, etc. In fact, all of
these castles, or morros, had different
individual names, the one at Portobelo
being officially called San Felipe, etc.
MUSSON, MATTHEW
(fl. 1716
1719)
Luckless Jamaican privateer, who oper-
ated briefly as a pirate-hunter, without
much distinction.
Musson must have obtained a peace-
time privateering commission sometime
late in 1715 or early 1716 from the Ja-
maican Governor Lord Archibald Ham-
ilton, to bring in rogue rovers who were
proliferating throughout the Caribbean.
After working his way northward past
the pirate hotbeds off Cuba, Florida,
and the Bahamas, Musson proceeded
still farther up the Atlantic Seaboard
and in the spring of 1716 put into Char-
leston, South Carolina, to renew his six-
month license. Its provincial Deputy
Governor Robert Daniel later declared
on July 14, 1716 (O.S.), that:
I renewed the commission of Captain
Mathew Musson to take pirates, etc.,
the commission he had from the Lord
Hamilton being nearly expired, and
he intending to cruise about Cape
Florida, a station now much fre-
quented by pirates. I added a further
power against the Yamasees and other
our Indian enemies, who were likely
to be met with upon that coast. Having
intelligence of several pirates lying
amongst the Bahama Islands, he met
there one Perrin from Virginia on
board a sloop in which Hornigold the
pirate sailed, and which he took last
winter from the Spaniards, having on
board sundry goods which Perrin pre-
tended to have bought of Hornigold.
Musson seized the said sloop and sent
Perrin in a sloop [named the Betty]
properly owned by him, and the said
goods, under command of Joseph
Carpenter to this government, in order
to be prosecuted for his clandestine
and illegal trade.
However, when Musson’s consort sloop
Betty reached Charleston in mid-July
1716, a jurisdictional dispute flared up
between the naval authorities anchored
out in its harbor aboard HMS Shore-
ham, and the Deputy Governor’s pro-
vincial officials ashore, which quickly
degenerated into an armed confronta-
tion, gunfire, and much abusive lan-
guage (Daniel himself being derided in
his boat as an ‘‘old rogue, old dog, old
crooked-back, Lurkenburg dog,’’ etc.).
Betty’s hold was forcibly opened, and
Musson’s evidence rifled and removed
by Shoreham’s officers, who were con-
vinced that the Carolina authorities
often connived with pirates and smug-
glers to defraud the King’s Exchequer.
Unaware of this fracas, Musson evi-
dently continued operating in and around
the Bahamas with his privateer vessel,
until he was shipwrecked amid its archi-
pelago in March 1717. He subsequently
secured passage to London, where on
July 5, 1717 (O.S.), he appeared as an
expert witness before the Council of
Trade and Plantations, who were worried
by the escalating wave of piracy in those
troubled waters. Musson was able to
inform them, that after having come
ashore from his lost vessel:
At Harbour Island, he found about
30 families, with several pirates,

The Morro guarding the entrance into San Juan de Puerto Rico, one of several castles
erected to defend Spanish seaports in the New World. (Ramunas Bruzas)
which frequently are coming and
going to purchase provisions for the
pirates’ vessels at Providence [i.e.,
Nassau, which was located on the
main New Providence Island]. There
were there two ships of 90 tons
which sold provisions to the said
pirates, the sailors of which said they
belong’d to Boston. At Abaco, one
of the Bahamas, he found Captain
Thomas Walker and others who had
left Providence by reason of the
rudeness of the pirates, and settled
there. They advis’d him that five
pirates made ye harbor of Provi-
dence their place of rendezvous viz.,
Horngold, a sloop with 10 guns and
Musson, Matthew (fl. 1716
1719) 717
about 80 men; Jennings, a sloop with
10 guns and 100 men; Burgess, a
sloop with 8 guns and about 80 men;
White, in a small vessel with 30
men and small arms; Thatch [i.e.,
Blackbeard], a sloop 6 guns and
about 70 men. All took and
destroyed ships of all nations, except
Jennings, who took no English; they
had taken a Spanish ship of 32 guns,
which they kept in the harbor for a
guardship. Ye greatest part of the
inhabitants of Providence are already
gone into other adjacent islands, to
secure themselves from ye pirates,
who frequently plunder them. Most
of the ships and vessels taken by
718 Musson, Matthew (fl. 1716
1719)
them, they burn and destroy when
brought into the harbor, and oblige
the men to take on with them. The
inhabitants of those Isles are in a
miserable condition at present, but
were in great hopes that His Majesty
would be graciously pleas’d to take
such measures, which would speed-
ily enable them to return to Provi-
dence, their former settlement. There
are several more pirates than he can
now give an account of, that are
both to windward and to leeward of
Providence, that may ere this
be expected to rendezvous there,
he being apprehensive that unless
the government fortify this place, the
pirates will, to protect themselves.
It is possible, although unconfirmed, that
Musson may have returned to the
Bahamas next summer as a member
of Governor Woodes Rogers’ colonizing
expedition, which succeeded in reimpos-
ing direct Crown rule over that outpost.
The last notice we have of this pri-
vateer occurred on March 4, 1719
(O.S.), when William Whaling or
Whaley was tried at Nassau ‘‘for steal-
ing goods belonging to Mathew Mus-
son, Gent., and William Hewson,
mariner, from the house of John Pear-
don and setting fire to the said house,’’
for which crimes the accused was
executed.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 29,
31 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1957).
Journals of the Board of Trade and
Plantations, Volume 3: March
1715
October 1718 (London: His
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1924).
 N

. . . and these people are so skillful, My Lord,

that what is a precipice to us, is flat terrain for them.


—Governor Juan Alvarez de Avil
es of Guayaquil,
reporting on the capture of his city heights by
pirates led by George Dew, April 25, 1687

NARBOROUGH, SIR JOHN Michiel de Ruyter. Narborough himself

(fl. 1687
1688)
English Admiral who made a private
voyage into the South Sea, and then
died working Sir William Phips’ Span-
ish wreck site off Santo Domingo.
Narborough had been born at Cock-
thorpe in Norfolk, England, in early
October 1640. His first voyages were to
the Guinea coast and Saint Helena
aboard merchantmen, and his earliest na-
val career was spent as a prot
eg
e of Sir
Christopher Myngs, with whom he sailed
to Jamaica on his second tour-of-duty in
1657. Returning to England more than
five years later, Narborough followed
Myngs into a succession of warships dur-
ing the Second Anglo-Dutch War, until
the latter died during the ‘‘Four Days’
Fight’’ of June 11
14, 1666, against
was promoted to command of the 40-gun
frigate HMS Assurance for his bravery
during this battle.
In May 1669, following the cessa-
tion of hostilities, he was appointed to
the Sweepstakes of 36 guns, 300 tons,
and 80 men, setting sail from the
Thames that same autumn to attempt
to establish peaceful contacts with
Spain’s colonies on the Pacific coast of
South America. Narborough passed
through the Strait of Magellan in
November 1670, and by Christmas Day
(December 15, 1670 [O.S.]) Sweep-
stakes came to anchor in Valdivia Bay,
Chile. After an initially friendly recep-
tion, the Spaniards abruptly arrested a
small landing-party going ashore from
his vessel, and Narborough found the
port closed to him. Unable to recover

719
720 Narborough, Sir John (fl. 1687
1688)
his men, nor authorized to take any of-
fensive action, he returned through the
Strait in January 1671, arriving home by
that same June. (More than a decade
later, Bartholomew Sharpe’s men would
report that Narborough’s ‘‘lieutenant
and nine or ten others’’ were still being
held captive at Lima, Peru.)
In June 1672, Narborough served with
some distinction aboard the 100-gun
flagship HMS Prince, at the otherwise
lackluster Battle of Solebay during the
Third Anglo-Dutch War, and next year
was promoted to Rear Admiral and
knighted. In October 1674, following
England’s withdrawal from the war
against The Netherlands, he was sent to
deal with the Tripoli corsairs, blockading
their ports and capturing ships until
the Bey agreed to terms in early 1677.
Within a few months, Narborough
returned into the Mediterranean to visit a
like treatment on Algiers, which also
submitted more than a year later. Thanks
to these victories, Narborough was able
to retire from the sea as a wealthy man,
being appointed one of His Majesty’s
Commissioners of the Navy in March
1680, and entering into a rich mar-
riage the next summer with Elizabeth
Hill of Shadwell. (His first marriage to
Elizabeth Calmady in the spring of 1677
ended tragically when she died during
that following winter ‘‘mightily afflicted
with a cough, and big with child.’’)
Despite his retirement from active
duty, newfound wealth, and growing
family, Narborough continued to be
interested in naval affairs, becoming
William Phips’ firmest backer in his
attempts to locate a Spanish shipwreck
in the West Indies. When these efforts
were finally crowned with success in
1686, Narborough could not resist vis-
iting the site when a second expedition
was organized in England next year.
He commanded this group from the
48-gun frigate HMS Foresight, while
Phips served aboard the 400-ton mer-
chantman Good Luck and a Boy, John
Strong had the James and Mary, and
the ship Princess and smaller Henry
rounded out the convoy.
These five set sail from the Downs on
September 3, 1687, but soon encountered
heavy weather. Phips’ vessel was dam-
aged and forced back into Plymouth, while
Strong became separated from the others
off Cape Finisterre. Narborough reached
Funchal at Madeira Island with the smaller
two ships on October 13th, and Barbados
by November 16th, where he found James
and Mary already awaiting him. He
departed again more than two weeks later
for Saman
a Bay, on the northeastern coast
of Hispaniola, reaching there on Decem-
ber 5th. Two days later, Phips joined him,
and the expedition proceeded northward
to the Ambrosian Bank (today’s Silver
Bank) where the galleon lay.
By the time Narborough’s flotilla
arrived on December 15th, they found it
surrounded by more than four-dozen
craft. These and many other local scav-
engers had been working the wreck for
months, making away with an estimated
£250,000. The interlopers were driven
off, and Narborough’s men settled in to
resume their work, employing a total of
almost 200 divers; yet the gleanings now
proved slender, hard labor resulting in
relatively little silver. In February 1688,
the site was visited by two Dutch war-
ships, the 46-gun frigate Noordhollandt
and a galliot hoy, bearing the exiled
English nobleman Lord Moraunt. Fore-
sight cleared for action ‘‘not knowing his
design,’’ but he had allegedly come
merely to view the wreck (although it was
suspected that his true intent was to sound

Narborough out as to his loyalty to James
II). After being rowed over the spot in a
pinnace, Moraunt found the sea too rough
for anything to be seen, so withdrew.
Little more treasure could be raised,
and an attempt to blast away coral with
an underwater explosive failed. By the
beginning of May 1688, morale aboard
the flotilla was lagging, with the
weather squally, men on half-rations,
and disease spreading throughout the
ships. Narborough himself fell ill on
May 18th, and finally decided to give
up. After a few days’ preparation, Fore-
sight attempted to weigh on the evening
of May 26th, but an anchor remained
fouled on the bottom. Narborough’s last
action was to order divers to recover it,
before lapsing into unconsciousness. At
three o’clock next morning, he died.
Unable to embalm the corpse, Fore-
sight’s surgeon removed Narborough’s
bowels, and the body was rowed over to
the wreck site at five o’clock that same
afternoon, and slid over the side as the
ships fired a salute. His entrails were
then conveyed home to England and
buried at the church of Knowlton, near
his estate at Deal, with the rather
misleading inscription: ‘‘Here lie the
remains of Sir John Narborough.’’
See also
Myngs, Sir Christopher; Phips, Sir William;
South Sea.
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1990).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
New Providence (Nassau) 721
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898).
Dictionary of National Biography (London,
1885
1900, 63 volumes; reissued by
Oxford University Press, 2004).
Earle, Peter, The Treasure of the
Concepcion: The Wreck of the
Almiranta (New York: Viking, 1980).
NEW PROVIDENCE
(NASSAU)
Strategically placed seaport, which
because of its sparse population and
lax overseas administration, briefly
became a major pirate lair.
The first English pioneers in this archi-
pelago moved onto a succession of its
islands, one smaller one due west of
Eleuthera being occupied about 1666—
which until then had been unofficially
called ‘‘Sayle’s Island’’ because their
Governor, William Sayles, had allegedly
twice ridden out storms in a sheltered
harbor on its northeastern shore. On
becoming inhabited, it was renamed
‘‘New Providence’’ in memory of the ear-
lier Calvinist colony on Providencia or
Santa Catalina Island, 150 miles east of
Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast, which had
been extirpated by a Spanish expedition a
quarter-century earlier.
Early Struggles As ‘‘Charles
Town’’ (1666
1694)
Despite only measuring 58 square miles,
and being rather flat and covered with
brushwood and lagoons, this newly-
inhabited island was surrounded by crys-
talline waters and enjoyed one of the
most delightful climates in the archipela-
go—being neither too rainy, as occurred
722 New Providence (Nassau)
farther to its northwest, nor too hot and
arid as to its southeast. Its anchorage also
proved to be exceptionally good,
approachable via the deep-water pas-
sages dubbed ‘‘Tongue of the Ocean’’ or
Providence Channel, as well as protected
from southeasterly gales and hurricanes
by an 80-foot ridge rising just 400 yards
south of its beach. The harbor also
offered respite from sea currents because
of a five-mile-long offshore cay, which
was christened ‘‘Hog Island’’ by Gov.
Nicholas Trott in the mid-1690s, appa-
rently in memory of his family estate
and birthplace of Hog Bay, Bermuda.
Although vessels of more than 500-tons
could not easily traverse its 14-foot-deep,
reef-lined bar, the inner roads stretched
out three-and-a-half miles long by one-
third of a mile wide, with high and low
tides ranging from 18 to 24 feet in depth.
Soon, a ramshackle collection of huts
built from the nearby palmetto copses
began sprawling just inside the bar, each
plot surrounded by its own colorful gar-
den or orchard; this whole untidy agglom-
eration was named ‘‘Charles Town’’
in honor of the recently-restored Stuart
monarch Charles II in England. By early
1670, it was estimated that half of the
1,000 English residents of the Bahamas
were eking out a hard-scrabble existence
on New Providence Island, when they
were unexpectedly reinforced by survi-
vors from Captain John Russell’s Port
Royal, wrecked on Abaco Island while
conveying a large party of settlers and
supplies to the Carolinas. This unforeseen
landing inspired Russell’s London-based
backers—six high-born friends of the
King known collectively as the ‘‘Lords
Proprietors of Carolina’’—to rewrite the
Bahamian company charter that same
November, displacing its original Puritan
shareholders in favor of themselves.
Residents of the islands nonetheless
retained much of their autonomy, a primi-
tive log stockade being completed at
Charles Town by 1672, which became
unofficially recognized as the archipela-
go’s capital despite conflicting claims
from Harbour and Exuma Islands. Noth-
ing more was done to encourage the
development of the Bahamian chain,
though, its settlers languishing rather for-
lornly over the next few years, sup-
plementing their meager fishing and
agricultural activities by scavenging for
wrecks or ambergris, as well as by trading
with any vessel which chanced to call.
This eagerness to please casual visi-
tors meant that West Indian privateers
soon found Charles Town a most oblig-
ing bolt-hole to dispose of their booty,
although such illicit proclivities also
attracted unwanted attention against the
struggling settlement. In March 1683,
for example, the French flibustier
Br
eha—seconded by the English merce-
naries John Markham of New York,
Thomas Paine, Conway Wooley, plus
Dutch-born Jan Corneliszoon (also of
New York)—sailed from New Provi-
dence Island to raid Spanish Saint
Augustine, and in retaliation, the Cuban
corsair Captain Juan de Larco made a
stealthy descent with 200 men aboard a
pair of vessels on January 19, 1684
(O.S.). Having seized a woodcutting
sloop off Andros, De Larco compelled
its master to pilot them through the less-
frequented eastern approach, so that his
150 raiders disgorged suddenly at day-
break within a half-mile of Charles
Town itself, while his corsair ships bore
down on the six vessels anchored in its
harbor.
Charles Town’s population consisted
of approximately 400 men capable of
bearing arms—although scarcely half

actually possessed any guns—plus per-
haps 200 women, a like number of
children, and 200 slaves. Taken utterly
by surprise, they were incapable of
mounting an effective defense; former
Gov. Robert Clarke was wounded and
captured as he attempted to mount
a feeble counter-charge, while his
recently-arrived successor Robert Lil-
burne fled from his bedroom in the
Wheel of Fortune Inn into the jungle,
along with most other residents. The
10-gun New England frigate Good
Intent of Captain William Warren and
another anchored vessel managed to
escape across the bar, leaving the
Spaniards to pillage the remaining four
and quickly ransack the town, loading
their plunder aboard their largest prize
before torching the rest, then sailing
away that same evening. De Larco has-
tened across to northern Eleuthera and
visited a like treatment on its English
settlement, before returning to Charles
Town on November 15, 1684 (O.S.), to
torch its buildings and carry off numer-
ous residents to Havana.
Frightened by this devastating sweep,
a couple of hundred survivors sought
refuge on Jamaica, while another 50
from northern Eleuthera were temporar-
ily resettled at Casco (Maine). The
Bahamas subsequently remained devoid
of any recognizable English presence
until December 1686, when a small con-
tingent from Jamaica under the preacher
Thomas Bridges reoccupied New Provi-
dence Island, and more colonists gradu-
ally joined them. The archipelago
revived fully after the New England sal-
vor William Phips raised an immense
fortune in bullion from the nearby
Ambrosian Bank (modern Silver Bank,
north of the Dominican Republic) in
spring of 1687 from the Spanish vice-
New Providence (Nassau) 723
flagship Nuestra Se~ nora de la Pura y
Limpia Concepci
on, which had sunk in
1641. The resultant treasure-hunting
fever made the Bahamas an attractive
prospect once more, Phips’ patron—
Christopher Monk, 2nd Duke of Albe-
marle—even attempted to take over the
archipelago’s lease from his fellow Pro-
prietors back in London, although
balked by the new King James II, who
preferred having the islands transformed
into a Crown colony.
This latter notion was postponed
when that English monarch was driven
from the throne in November 1688 and
succeeded by the Protestant Queen
Mary and her Dutch consort William,
Prince of Orange-Nassau, after which
war erupted with England, Holland,
and Spain being ranged against France.
New Providence Island was conse-
quently left largely to its own devices
once again, profiting as a lawless pri-
vateer base during the ensuing hostil-
ities (known to history as King
William’s War, the War of the League
of Augsburg, the War of the Grand
Alliance, or the Nine Years War). Its
remote locale, coupled with its insig-
nificance and absentee rulers, meant
that the ruffianly Colonel Cadwallader
Jones could even act as self-proclaimed
‘‘Governor’’ from 1690 to 1693, refus-
ing to acknowledge the authority of
William and Mary.
Creation of ‘‘Nassau’’
(1695
1717)
Eventually, though, Jones was suc-
ceeded in August 1694 by the more
loyal and ambitious Nicholas Trott; with
allegiance to the Crown restored, the
island capital could begin to undergo
724 New Providence (Nassau)
a modest reformation by commenc-
ing construction of a 28-gun wooden
fort, as well as implementing a rational
street-plan. The town was officially
renamed ‘‘Nassau’’ next year in honor
of the Queen’s foreign-born consort,
and by the time Trott’s term ended
in November 1696, it boasted 160
houses, being assigned a Vice-Admiralty
Court as of February 1697 complete
with judge, registrar, and marshal ap-
pointed from London, who arrived that
same July.
Such a measure was needed because
of continuing venality in island admin-
istration; Trott lost his post for receiv-
ing the notorious pirate Henry Every, a
renegade who had mutinied and carried
off an English salvage ship from La
Coru~ na, Spain, launching a year-and-a-
half rampage through the Far East dur-
ing which he had robbed the Mogul
trader Ganj-i-Sawai of £200,000 off
Bombay. Hoping to escape back into
civilian life, Every and his 200 cut-
throats dropped anchor in late April
1696 at Royal Island off Eleuthera,
sending a boat with four spokesmen
the 50 miles into Nassau to allegedly
offer Trott a £1,000-bribe to permit
their stolen flagship Fancy into port,
and its crew to disperse. On accep-
tance, Every sailed into Nassau harbor
masquerading as ‘‘Henry Bridgeman’’
and Fancy as an ‘‘interloper’’ or unli-
censed slaver from the Guinea Coast,
with an unregistered cargo of ivory
and slaves. He and Trott then struck a
deal for disposal of the ship; Every
made Fancy over to the Governor’s
care, after which it was stripped of
everything of value including its 46
guns, 100 barrels of powder, many
small arms, 50 tons of ivory, sails,
blocks, etc. It was allowed to drift
ashore two days later, being pounded
to pieces by the surf. With this tell-tale
piece of evidence destroyed, Every and
his men disappeared from the Bahamas
aboard passing ships.
Imposing honest administration in
this unruly, unfrequented colony proved
so difficult that Nassau’s new Gov.
Nicholas Webb even quit office for
Newcastle (Delaware) in 1699, his cho-
sen successor, the mulatto privateer
Read Elding, being arrested in October
1701 by another disreputable figure,
Elias Haskett; although quickly released
by a band of Elding’s own supporters,
who in turn deposed and banished Has-
kett. Such tumultuous, ineffectual lead-
ership was to cost Nassau dearly when
another round of hostilities erupted back
in Europe in May 1702: Queen Anne’s
War or the War of the Spanish Succes-
sion, with England and Holland arrayed
against France and Spain. Officials at
Saint-Domingue and Santiago de Cuba,
who viewed New Providence Island as a
mutual menace, raised a joint expedition
of French boucaniers and 150 Spanish
soldiers aboard two frigates commanded
by Claude Le Chesnaye and Blas Mor-
eno Mondrag
on, materializing off Nas-
sau in October 1703. More than 100
startled residents were slaughtered in
this opening onslaught, while another
80 to 100, including Acting-Gov. Ellis
Lightwood, were carried away as cap-
tives two weeks later, along with 13
prizes and 22 cannons, while the town’s
half-rotted palmetto-and-lime fortifica-
tion was thrown down.
When the new Governor-designate
Edward Birch landed at Nassau early
in 1704, he became so distraught at
beholding its ruined state—survivors not

having even a ‘‘shift to cover their nak-
edness,’’ according to his report—that he
did not bother unfurling his company-
issued commission before taking ship to
South Carolina a few months later, and
eventually home to England. Another
enemy raid in 1706 left only 27 families
still cringing inside makeshift huts on
New Providence Island, and no more
than 400 to 500 English residents scat-
tered throughout the entire archipelago,
who suffered considerable distress from
more descents for the remainder of this
conflict, while their scant overseas trade
dried up and no new Governors or assis-
tance came out from England.
The cessation of hostilities in 1713
brought little relief, as hundreds of West
Indian privateers—suddenly bereft of
legitimate employment—drifted into the
sparsely-populated Bahamas to continue
preying on nearby shipping lanes, sell-
ing their booty to accomplices ashore.
Rogue captains such as Benjamin
Hornigold, ‘‘Calico Jack’’ Rackham,
and Edward Teach (alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’)
were so powerful that when Nassau’s
Vice-Admiralty Judge Thomas Walker
brought Hornigold’s lieutenant Daniel
Stilwell to trial for robbing a Spanish
vessel in 1715, an enraged Hornigold
crossed over from Eleuthera and released
the prisoner and his men from jail,
threatening to burn Walker’s house about
his ears. The judge fled in August 1716,
after more pirates had entered port and
brazenly placed their guns within Fort
Nassau’s crudely reconstructed embra-
sures, menacing the harbor and town.
International grievances against this bur-
geoning ‘‘pirate republic’’ at last goaded
the British government into reviving its
former plan of bringing the Bahamas
directly under Crown rule.
New Providence (Nassau) 725
Crown Capital (1718
1775)
Woodes Rogers, a battle-scarred priva-
teer who had circumnavigated the globe
and captured a Manila galleon—as well
as incidentally rescuing the marooned
Scottish master Alexander Selkirk from
the Juan Fern
andez Islands, thereby
furnishing the inspiration for Daniel
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe—was selected
to effect this difficult transition, sailing
from England with 250 new colonists
aboard the 460-ton ex-Indiaman Delicia,
backed by the frigates HMS Milford and
HMS Rose, plus the naval sloops Buck
and Shark. News of his appointment had
preceded him, along with a promised
amnesty for pirates, so that the more
recalcitrant spirits such as Blackbeard
had already forsaken the Bahamas for
easier hunting-grounds.
Still, when Rogers’ expedition arrived
outside Nassau’s bar on the afternoon of
July 26, 1718 (O.S.), Charles Vane’s
pirate flagship remained defiantly at
anchor, so that the Governor-designate
sent Rose and Shark to take soundings
after nightfall. Vane responded by loos-
ing a recently-captured French prize
against them in flames, before getting
under way next dawn for Abaco. With
this lone threat removed, Rogers came
ashore by mid-morning, being greeted by
an honor guard of 300 boozy buccaneers
under Hornigold and other captains, who
swore fealty to the Crown. Rogers
promptly assumed office and began civic
improvements to Nassau, such as repair-
ing its shoddily-rebuilt fortress, erecting
a new barracks and eastern battery,
granting 120-square-foot plots in town to
each new settler family, plus 25 acres
outside for gardens, as well as many
other needed public-works.
726 Noland, Richard (fl. 1717
1722)
However, progress was soon sus-
pended by the eruption of the War of
the Quadruple Alliance in December
1718, with England, Holland, France,
and Austria being ranged against Spain.
Although heavily-outnumbered elsewhere,
the Spaniards in Cuba were able to mount
a strong expedition against Nassau; the
privateer Capts. Francisco Cornejo and
Jos
e Cordero appeared outside the harbor
on February 24, 1720 (O.S.), with 1,200 to
1,300 men crammed aboard three frigates,
plus nine sloops and brigantines. Reluctant
to steer directly across its bar because of
the intimidating presence inside of Delicia
and the 24-gun frigate HMS Flambor-
ough, these raiders instead circled east
before disembarking three contingents
under Capts. Fernando Castro, Francisco
de Le
on, and Juli
an Barroso, who inflicted
considerable material damage among out-
lying properties before finally being
expelled a few weeks later by the 500
militiamen which Rogers had gathered at
Nassau. Yet the Spanish continued to
roam unchecked throughout the islands,
making off with at least 100 slaves and
much booty, before peace was restored in
March 1721.
NOLAND, RICHARD
(fl. 1717
1722)
Irish-born pirate who also served as a
Spanish corsair.
First mentioned in September 1717 as
‘‘quartermaster of the late Sam Bellamy,’’
Noland was hired at that time by Captain
Benjamin Hornigold to act as his agent at
Nassau, recruiting men and looking after
his financial interests during Hornigold’s
absence. Hornigold weighed shortly
thereafter, with a cargo of provisions to
sell to Richard Thompson and other
smugglers residing on Harbour Island.
By next summer, Noland had evidently
taken up service with the Spaniards.
When Richard Taylor of Philadelphia,
Master of the sloop Elizabeth and Mary,
reached Exuma Island in the Bahamian
archipelago to load with salt on July 5,
1718 (O.S.), he was instead surprised and
taken by three Spanish piraguas which
had prowled into these waters from
the Cuban port of Baracoa. Taylor later
testified how:
Richard Holland [sic], an Irishman in
command of one of them, told depo-
nent that a new Governor was lately
arrived at the Havana from Spain,
with orders to destroy all the English
settlements on the Bahama Islands:
and that they had provided for that
purpose, one ship of 50 guns and
700 men, another of 26 guns and 300
men, and three row galleys full of
men, with instructions in case of sur-
render, to transport the people and
their effects to Carolina, Virginia, or
some other of the northern govern-
ments, but in case of resistance to
send them to the Havana, for Old
Spain. Deponent desired that he
might go with his sloop to defend
her upon her trial, but this was
refused, and Holland said the Alcalde
of Baracoa or Trinidad would for
500 pieces-of-eight condemn any
vessel he carried in, and showed him
a large commission from the Alcalde
of Baracoa for what he did.
Taylor was held prisoner until July
24, 1718 (O.S.), Noland and his Cuban
consorts all the while ‘‘cruising about
between Stocking Island and Exuma, at
which time they stretch’d over for Cat
Island and on the 26th landed there in a
creek on the southwest part of the island,
and took six women and several

children, but not one of the men belong-
ing to the said island, they all flying to
the bushes for shelter.’’
Of English vessels etc. taken since the
cessation, restitution is to be made,
especially for four prizes brought in
by Captain Richd. Holland, ‘‘which
are the only that were taken, and as
for others which they say were taken
by Nicholas of the Conception, they
did not come here, excepting a sloop
loaden with flour, the which was
returned to the Captain and afterwards
bought on the account of the King, the
payment of which hath not been yet
made, by reason that the persons
have not come that are interested in
the same. Also, there was a frigate
returned to them that was taken by
Captain Rendon without any lading’’
etc. etc. St. Augustine de Florida,
3rd Aug. (N.S.) 1722. Signed, Don
Antonio de Benavides.
See also
Hornigold, Benjamin.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 30,
33 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1930
1934).
Woodard, Colin, The Republic of Pirates
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
2008).
NORTON, BENJAMIN
(fl. 1720
1722)
Rhode Island privateer victimized in the
West Indies by Bartholomew Roberts,
who subsequently released him with a rich
Norton, Benjamin (fl. 1720
1722) 727
prize so that when Norton returned home,
he was charged with colluding in piracy.
In the autumn of 1720, during the clos-
ing phase of the War of the Quadruple
Alliance which had seen Britain, France,
Holland, and Austria embroiled in conflict
against Spain, the wealthy Newport mer-
chant Joseph Whippole financed Norton’s
venture into Antillean waters with his
brigantine—‘‘a vessel by common obser-
vation more fit for pirates than trade, for
which they pretended to employ her,’’
according to the disapproving Scottish-
born Judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court
in New England, John Menzies. Yet the
eyewitness testimony of Richard Simes,
Master of the sloop Fisher out of Barba-
dos, would assert while lying at anchor on
January 13, 1721 (O.S.):
. . . in Saint Lucia near Pidgeon Island,
deponent’s sloop and Captain Nor-
ton’s brigantine belonging to Rhode
Island, were seized by the pirate Rob-
erts, who afterwards sailed for the
windward of Barbados to cruise for
provisions, of which they seemed to
be in great want. They took four
French sloops, three of which they
sunk, and the other they gave to depo-
nent. They forced Captain Norton and
all his men to remain with them, using
his mate very barbarously.
Toward the end of November of that
same year, the Dutch Envoy in London
submitted the following complaint to the
British government:
The ship El Puerto del Principe of
Flushing was taken by Roberts the
Pirate at Dominica, 29th January
1721, and afterwards brought into
Tarpaulin Cove, New England, by
Benjamin Norton of Newport, Rhode
Island, who pretends that Roberts
728 Norton, Benjamin (fl. 1720
1722)
took a brigantine from him, and gave
him this ship instead. Norton broke
bulk at Tarpaulin Cove (a byplace fit
for roguery), and in a clandestine
manner put a considerable part of her
cargo into small vessels and sent
them to sundry ports therewith; some
of the cargo he hid in the woods, and
some part he left on board. The news
thereof coming to the several govern-
ments, and Governor Cranston issu-
ing a Proclamation enjoining all
persons that had any of the effects to
bring them to him, some negroes and
sugar were brought to him at New-
port, a sloop with part of the said
ship’s cargo was seized at New York,
another at New London, and another
at Boston. The ship itself was
brought by the Seahorse man-of-war
to Boston with a large quantity of
sugar on board, and is there seized.
On August 25, 1722 (O.S.), an Order-in-
Council was issued by King George
I from Kensington Palace in England,
and repeated again one month later,
instructing the Governor and Council of
Rhode Island:
. . . to deliver into the custody of the
Judge of the Vice-Admiralty [Court]
of New England, the proceeds of the
sale of the ship and cargo brought
into Tarpaulin Cove by Benjamin
Norton, and condemned as having
been piratically employed. They are
to be strictly observant to the decree
of that court for the future, and not to
assume to themselves in anywise any
right to Admiralty jurisdiction, as
they will answer the contrary at their
peril.
This command was received in Rhode
Island by November 9, 1722 (O.S.), and
read into the official minutes four days
afterward.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 32,
33 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1933
1934).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
 P

And thus, my Lord, it is with everything in that place.

It is a perfect receptacle of rogues and pirates . . .
—Governor Joseph Dudley of Massachusetts, complaining about
the separate jurisdiction of Rhode Island, May 1703

PARTRIDGE cannot propose fewer than twenty

English nickname for clusters of small
rounds fired from cannon, later more
commonly known as grapeshot.
Apparently this name derived from the
buckshot commonly used in hunting par-
tridges. For example, immediately on
assuming office on April 29, 1701 (O.S.),
as Lieutenant-Governor of Bermuda,
Benjamin Bennett was expected to
report to London about the state of its
defenses and armaments, which he
found to be deplorable, yet assured the
Council of Trade and Plantations:
The supply of great guns, My Lords, I
am to request, there being so general a
deficiency and unserviceableness of
those here, and many more being
wanting that might be placed to do
service in the castle and forts, that I
whole culverins, and fifteen demi-
culverins, which if thought fit to be
complied with, together with a suffi-
cient complement of round, double-
headed, and partridge shot, and a sup-
ply of all necessary ammunition for
those guns as are useful, according to
the enclosed account, I doubt not but
to put these islands in a very good
posture of defense.
A year later, as tensions escalated
between England and France, this artil-
lery arrived and Bennett reported that he
had mounted these new guns in the forti-
fications, while placing ‘‘the old ones
that are useless on the platforms I am
planting in the trenches, and against such
places where an enemy may land, and
they will serve very well for partridge-
shot.’’

729
730 Patache
As Queen Anne’s War threatened to
erupt, the government of Barbados also
cast about for temporary local meas-
ures to provide ‘‘for the better defense
of this Island,’’ until regular forces
could arrive from across the Atlantic.
The minutes of its Council in Assem-
bly meeting on February 24, 1702
(O.S.), indicate that these measures
included:
. . . that materials be always in readi-
ness to fit out two or three fire-ships;
that guns, without carriages till they
can be gotten, be planted in the
breast-works, and that cross
entrenchments be made at the end of
every gully and fortified with great
guns on planks, where carriages are
not to be had; that bits of old iron be
bought of the several smiths to use
in bags as partridge shot . . .
Not surprisingly, pirates were also
known to favor such rounds. Cecil
Headlam even described Blackbeard
preparing to make his last stand within
Ocracoke Inlet in November 1717,
thus:
The pirate captain had heralded the
fight by draining a bowl of liquor,
and crying: ‘‘Damnation to anyone
who should give or ask quarter.’’
Then he raked the approaching
sloops with his great guns loaded
with partridge shot, inflicting serious
loss on the unprotected sailors . . .
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 19,
20, 30 (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1910
1930).
PATACHE
Generic Spanish term used to describe
any smaller vessel acting as a consort
to a larger ship, or as a fleet auxiliary,
rather than to a specific type of craft.
Over the centuries, this expression
had also passed verbatim into both the
English and French languages, although
it was often misspelled. For example, in
July 1711—as Queen Anne’s War was
just entering its tenth year—Rear Admi-
ral James Littleton, naval commander-
in-chief on the Jamaica station, exited
from Port Royal with five two-deckers
and a sloop to intercept the homeward-
bound galeones or South American
plate fleet, as they emerged from a long
layover in Cartagena. Five large Spanish
vessels were duly sighted and chased
back into that Colombian port on Au-
gust 7, 1711; another four were sighted
the next morning. Of the latter, the
50-gun HMS Salisbury of Captain Fran-
cis Hosier and 50-gun Salisbury Prize
(ex-French Heureux) of Robert Harland
managed to overtake and subdue the 60-
gun, 1,050-ton Spanish vice-flagship
San Joaquı´n of Admiral Miguel Agustı́n
de Villanueva, while a second smaller
Spanish consort was also captured by
Edward Vernon’s 48-gun HMS Jersey.
When the victorious Royal Navy
squadron returned into Port Royal a
week later with its two prizes, the
newly-arrived Jamaican Governor Lord
Archibald Hamilton informed the
Council of Trade and Plantations in
London on August 15, 1711 (O.S.):
I shall now have the satisfaction to
mention to Your Lordships the success
of Mr. Littleton’s cruise, which has
been the taking of the Vice-Admiral of
the galleons, and another galleon they
call a potache [sic], which are both

now in harbor. I can’t give Your Lord-
ships any particulars of their value,
reports about galleons being very dif-
ferent; these are said to be full of
goods, but that Monsieur Du Casse
had taken out all the King’s plate, and
several merchants their money. How-
ever, it’s beyond dispute that they are
very rich prizes. The Almirante of the
galleon died of his wounds.
One of many instances of the usage
of the term patache in Spain occurred
when Crown ministers in Madrid, seek-
ing to encourage alternate routes for
South American exports, granted a
license in 1724 to Francisco de Alz
aibar
and Crist
obal de Urquijo to jointly make
a pair of commercial voyages to Buenos
Aires ‘‘with two ships of a combined
burthen of 1,000 tons, and a patache.’’
See also
Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste; Galeones;
Hamilton, Lord Archibald; Patache
(Volume 1); Plate Fleet.
References
Archive of Indies (Seville), Contadurı´a
1791, Number 7.
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 26
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1925).

REZ MACHADO, JUAN
PE
(fl. 1722)
Spanish corsair who operated out of Cuba
and the Mexican port of Campeche.
Peace having been uneasily restored
between Britain and Spain 18 months
previously, the newly-arrived Bahamian
P
erez Machado, Juan (fl. 1722) 731
Governor George Phenney wrote from
Nassau on September 14, 1722 (O.S.), to
inform the Council of Trade and Planta-
tions in London how he had captured
one of two sloops prowling through
that archipelago under Machado’s fellow
corsair commander, Augustı́n Blanco,
and that:
There was found among the prison-
ers a journal belonging to William
Williams, Master of the Oak bound
from London to Virginia, which is
brought down to the 24th July last
[1722 O.S.], so that I am afraid Juan
Matchao [sic], a comrade of Augus-
tine’s who has been upon that coast
and lately spoke with him among these
islands, has made a prize of the said
ship, the prisoners telling me he gave
them that and other papers to make
cartridges, as he passed by them.
It is likely that this Machado was ac-
tually Captain Juan P
erez Machado, ori-
ginally born in Havana, and that he was
also the same anonymous ‘‘corsair from
Trinidad on Cuba’’ who carried two
English prizes into Campeche that same
August 1722, in turn inspiring sorties
from that Mexican port by Esteban de la
Barca, which repeatedly circled around
to the eastern side of the Yucat
an
Peninsula and assaulted the English log-
ging establishments in Belize.
See also
Blanco, Augustı́n; La Barca, Esteban de.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 33
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1934).
732 Phips, Sir William (fl. 1683
1690)
William Phips, low-born carpenter and
treasure-salvor, who rose to become Gover-
nor of Massachusetts. (Library of Congress)
PHIPS, SIR WILLIAM
(fl. 1683
1690)
Low-born New England salvor, who
rose to become Royal Governor of
Massachusetts.
He was born on February 2, 1651
(O.S.), in the backwoods hamlet of
Woolwich, Maine, later described as ‘‘a
despicable plantation on the river of
Kennebeck.’’ He was the youngest of 14
children of an immigrant gunsmith from
Bristol in England, who co-owned the
local trading-post, bartering weapons for
furs from the Wabanaki natives. When
his father died, 14-year-old William was
apprenticed for four years to a carpenter.
On completing his indenture, the
18-year-old Phips made his way to Boston,
and took service there with a ship’s
carpenter. The young man succeeded in
this trade, and according to an account later
published by Cotton Mather, grew ‘‘tall
beyond the common set of men, and thick
as well as tall, and strong as well as thick.’’
Phips also befriended the ship’s Captain
Roger Spencer, and began making voyages
to the Bahamas and West Indies. Then
in 1673, the 22-year-old married the Cap-
tain’s sister, Mary Spencer Hull, widow of
the prosperous merchant, John Hull. This
union had provided Phips with the means
to buy and command his own ship. Enor-
mously ambitious, the young husband had
allegedly bragged to his wife that ‘‘he
should come to have the command of bet-
ter men than he was now accounted him-
self, and that he should be the owner of a
fair brick house’’ in the most fashionable
quarter of Boston.
During his subsequent travels, Phips
learned of numerous Spanish ship-
wrecks dotting the Caribbean, many with
immense treasure still aboard. He quickly
acquired a reputation for ‘‘continually
finding sunken ships,’’ and grew skillful at
underwater salvage. In particular, he vis-
ited a famous wreck site near New Provi-
dence in the Bahamas (perhaps Nuestra
Se~nora de las Maravillas, lost in 1656?),
which was being worked by many other
seafarers, and he also heard rumors of
another lost galleon which lay undisturbed
on the shoals north of Hispaniola. He tried
to raise money in Boston for an expedition
in quest of this latter wreck, and when this
failed, sailed to England in the early 1680s
to petition Charles II.
Another semi-official expedition was
preparing there around this same time in
an attempt to combine regular naval
patrols with a search for the wreck, com-
prised of Captain George Churchill’s
HMS Falcon of 42 guns, and Captain
Edward Stanley’s HMS Bonito of four.

But while in London, Phips came into
contact with the wealthy Sir John Nar-
borough, a Commissioner of the Royal
Navy and former serving officer in the
West Indies, who shared this enthusiasm
for such projects. Thanks to his interven-
tion, Phips was provided with the loan of
an 18-gun Royal Navy vessel, Golden
Rose (also known as Rose of Algier, hav-
ing been captured during the recent cam-
paign against that North African state),
which he was to man with 100 men and
sail to the Bahamas so as to work the
known wreck there, and thus raise the
finances for a subsequent expedition
north of Hispaniola.
Bahamian Expedition
(1683
1685)
Phips cleared from the Downs on
September 5, 1683, steering for Boston
to pick up his diving equipment, and
arriving there by the end of October.
Proud of being in command of a King’s
ship, he exceeded his instructions when
he insisted that every vessel salute his
flag, and was fined £10 for firing five
times at the Samuel and Thomas of
London, when it failed to do so. His
men, who were serving for shares
only—no wages—furthermore got into an
altercation with the Boston constabulary,
which ended when Phips ordered them
back aboard ship. He then argued with the
constables himself, saying ‘‘he did not
care a turd for the Governor’’ and invit-
ing the constabulary to ‘‘kiss his arse.’’
Hauled into court once more, he was
released with the admonition ‘‘that every-
body in Boston knew very well what he
was and from whence he came, and there-
fore desired him not to carry it so loftily
among his countrymen.’’
Phips, Sir William (fl. 1683
1690) 733
Phips also made agreements with
Captains William Warren of the ship
Good Intent and William Davis of a
Bermuda sloop, to help him work the
wreck. Warren sailed first from Boston
on November 28, 1683, followed by
the other two on January 14th. Phips
arrived at New Providence in the
Bahamas on February 9th, only three
weeks after it had undergone a devas-
tating attack from the Spaniards out of
Havana. He reached the site itself
March 16th, and discovered that it had
been largely picked clean over recent
months by rovers such as Thomas
Paine. Several weeks’ work resulted in
only disappointing returns, and after
another Spanish attack on New Provi-
dence (this time by the Cuban corsair
Gaspar de Acosta), Phips was forced to
go careen his ship on a desolate isle.
His hard-bitten crew attempted to rise
with the ship and try ‘‘a trade of piracy
in the South Sea,’’ but the massive
Phips put them down with his fists.
In November 1684 he visited Port
Royal, Jamaica, where he got into a pub-
lic dispute with a Spanish Captain,
whose slaver was also lying in the harbor
(see sidebar). A few days afterward, the
pugnacious salvor departed, accompa-
nied by the sloops of Davis and a local
captain named Abraham Adderley. They
paused at Puerto Plata on the north coast
of Santo Domingo, where Phips met a
very old Spaniard who claimed to have
been ‘‘cast away in the [1641] wreck’’ of
the vice-flagship Nuestra Se~ nora de la
Pura y Limpia Concepci
on, and was
willing to guide him out to its site.
Together, they traveled northeastward to
the Ambrosian Bank, but could not hit
on the galleon exactly.
Nevertheless, Phips realized that he
was close, but because of the growing
734 Phips, Sir William (fl. 1683
1690)

PHIPS AT PORT ROYAL, NOVEMBER 1684

Big, loud, and truculent, the future Royal Governor of Massachusetts left an indelible
impression during his visit to Jamaica. Many masters were assertive and brash during
those days in the lawless West Indies, yet none more so than the 33-year-old New
Englander. Self-consciously proud about being in temporary command of a King’s
ship, he roamed the crowded streets of Port Royal seeking a fight with Spanish visi-
tors. They remained unpopular, yet given the shaky peace established between both
Crowns, were being actively courted by the wealthier commercial houses, who
wished to sell slaves and other goods into Spanish America.
It was therefore ruefully, that the island’s Acting-Governor Hender Molesworth—in office
scarcely a few months, and invested in the slave trade in his private capacity—penned the
following account on November 18, 1684 (O.S.), to his young friend William Blathwayt,
an influential civil servant of the Privy Council in London:

This afternoon, the Spanish factor with one of his captains came to me with great
complaints, that they had been affronted by some unknown people, and could not
pass the streets in peace. But their chief complaint is against Captain Phipps [sic] of
H.M.S. Rose, who is said, upon some mistaken punctilio of the sea, to have fired a
shot at one of the Spaniards, who had on a festival day put his pendant under his
ram, and made him take it in. Captain Phipps meeting the Spanish captain in the
street, with a rabble at his heels, told him that if he did not pay him for his shot, he
would take his sword from him. The Spaniard was unwilling either to give up his
sword or to pay the money, and the rabble was ready to have laid hands on him, if a
gentleman passing by had not taken ten shillings from his pocket and paid it for him.
I am told that this is not Phipps’s first affront to the Spanish captain, but that he con-
stantly seeks occasion for it, being egged on by ill-wishers to the trade. The Spaniards
were so sensibly concerned that the factor asked leave to send his two greatest ships
away, which I could not refuse, though I cannot think where they will go. I ordered
Captain Phipps to come to me and explain his conduct, but as he is on the point of
sailing, I doubt whether he will do so—or indeed, whether he thinks himself bound to
obey. Valuing himself on his independence and his private instructions, he may run
into further mistakes and not think himself accountable to this Government. This will
show you how liable we are to be affronted by capricious captains. When privately
animated by enemies to the Government they are ready to raise a faction against the
authorities of the place, and, as it were, to use the King’s name against himself.
This man never had better than a carpenter’s education, and never before pretended
to the title of Captain; but now he assumes it, though he cannot yet show a commission
for it, and takes more to himself than any other of the King’s Captains. I must do justice
to the Government and the Spaniards, but will endeavor to do so without hindering his
voyage. I enclose copy of the letter that I wrote to him. I hope that in future, when ships
put in here accidentally for relief, their commanders may be better instructed, and not
go about to disturb the Government and take part with the disaffected.

The original of this document is reproduced in the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial
Series, America and West Indies, Volume 11 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1898), p. 730.

unreliability of his men, decided to return
to England for a new expedition. He
paused at Bermuda during April
May
1685, where the colonists were in open
rebellion against its Royal Governor
Richard Cony, because of the recent
death of Charles II and his succession
by James, Duke of York, whom they
regarded as ‘‘a Papist.’’ Phips helped
uphold Cony’s rule, carrying two of his
most vociferous opponents back to Eng-
land as prisoners aboard the Rose when
he sailed. They preferred charges against
Phips once they arrived (August 1685),
so he was detained for a day within ‘‘the
liberties of the Tower [of London].’’ His
lack of profits also meant that Phips
would no longer receive royal patronage,
but had to seek out private investors.
Fortunately, the wealthy Narborough
and hard-pressed Duke of Albemarle
agreed to form a syndicate in March
1686, which attracted the necessary
funds. The 200-ton merchantman Bridge-
water of 23 guns was purchased and
renamed James and Mary in honor of the
new King and Queen, to which was
added the 40-ton sloop Henry under Cap-
tain Francis Rogers, with a combined
total of 70 crewmembers.
Treasure Expedition
(1686
1687)
On September 12, 1686, Phips set sail
again from the Downs, parting company
with his sloop during the trans-Atlantic
voyage, before reuniting at the end of
November 1686 in Saman
a Bay, on the
northeastern coast of Santo Domingo.
The two vessels disguised their true
intent by pretending to seek trade with
the local Spaniards, meanwhile dis-
creetly stocking up on supplies and
Phips, Sir William (fl. 1683
1690) 735
waiting for the stormy season to pass, so
as to proceed to their true destination of
the Ambrosian Bank. After visiting
Puerto Plata and the Turks Islands,
Phips and Rogers reached the bank on
January 12, 1687, and eight days later
one of their East Indian divers discov-
ered the wreck, proving it by bringing
up pieces of eight ‘‘by thousands, stick-
ing together, the sea water having dis-
solved some of the alloy or copper next
with the silver and made it into verdi-
gris, which has fastened them together.’’
Phips worked the site feverishly
until May 2nd, when he set sail for
England with more than 34 tons of
silver aboard, worth £200,000. He
returned to a hero’s welcome that June,
a naval guard being placed aboard
James and Mary to escort it to its an-
chorage at Deptford, and prevent any
treasure being smuggled ashore. Phips
himself was summoned to Windsor on
June 28th to tell James II of his expe-
dition, at which time he was knighted
and offered ‘‘a very gainful place
among the Commissioners of the Navy,
with many other invitations to settle
himself in England, [yet] nothing but a
return to New England would content
him.’’ In deference to his wishes, he
was appointed Provost Marshal of New
England on August 4th, a position sec-
ond only to that of Governor.
Narborough’s Expedition
(1687
1688)
But much more silver still remained at
the site, so that a second expedition
was prepared, which Narborough was
to command from the King’s frigate
Foresight of 48 guns, being comprised
of the 400-ton merchantman Good
736 Phips, Sir William (fl. 1683
1690)
Luck and a Boy under Phips, James
and Mary under John Strong, the ship
Princess under Rogers, along with the
former Henry. The five set sail from
the Downs on September 3, 1687, but
soon encountered heavy weather. Phips’
vessel was damaged and forced back
into Plymouth, while Strong lost sight
of the others off Cape Finisterre. He
nevertheless pressed on to Barbados,
where he was eventually rejoined by
Narborough on November 16th.
By the time the expedition finally
reached the Ambrosian Bank ([now
renamed the Silver Bank) in mid-
December, they found it surrounded by
more than four dozen craft. These and
numerous other local scavengers had
been working the wreck for many
months, making away with a further
£250,000. The interlopers were driven
off, and Narborough’s men settled in to
resume their work; yet the gleanings now
proved slender, five months’ labor result-
ing in little silver. Phips therefore sailed
away for New England in May, ‘‘to enter-
tain his lady with some accomplishments
of his predictions,’’ and officially assume
office as Provost Marshal. That same win-
ter, James was deposed in the ‘‘Glorious
Revolution,’’ and next year the War
of the League of Augsburg or King
William’s War erupted against France.
Acadian Expedition
(April
May 1690)
The following spring, Phips exercised his
newfound authority by impressing sev-
eral private vessels and leading a raid
against the French settlements in Acadia.
His force consisted of his 42-gun, 120-
man flagship Six Friends under Captain
Gregory Sugars; the 16-gun Swan of
Captain Thomas Gilbert; the 8-gun Mary
of Captain Cyprian Southack; and five
lesser vessels. On April 23, 1690 (O.S.),
500 drafted soldiers went aboard these
eight vessels at Nantasket, putting out to
sea five days later.
On May 1, 1690 (O.S.), they anch-
ored at Mount Desert, and next day
attempted to rush Penobscot fort,
although the wind died away and left
them becalmed in the harbor. It was not
until the day after that the soldiers could
get ashore, and when they attacked the
fort at dawn on May 4th (O.S.), found it
deserted. Further reinforcements then
joined Phips’ expedition from Salem
and Ipswich, which together plundered
the settlement of Passamequoddy on
May 6th (O.S.), and three days later
captured Port Royal in the Bay of Fundy
without resistance. Phips’ triumphant
fleet returned to Boston at the end of
that same month, only to have to hasten
back out again in early July, in a vain
attempt to counter the retaliatory raid of
Capitaine Le Picard.
Quebec Campaign
(August
October 1690)
That autumn, Phips launched a much
more ambitious enterprise, when he
sailed from Hull on August 9, 1690
(O.S.), with the following ships in three
divisions:
Six Friends (flagship), Captain Gregory
Sugars
John and Thomas, Captain Thomas
Carter
Return (fire-ship), Captain Andrew
Knott
Lark, Captain John Walley
Bachelor, Captain Thomas Gwynne

Mary, Captain John Rainsford
Elisabeth and Mary, Captain Caleb
Lamb
Mary Anne, Captain Gregory Sugars, Jr.
Hannah and Mary, Captain Thomas
Parker
Friendship, Captain Windsor
Elijah, Captain Elias Noe
Swallow, Captain Thomas Lyzenby
Swan (vice-flagship), Captain Thomas
Gilbert
Swallow, Captain Small
Samuel, Captain Samuel Robinson
Delight, Captain Ingerston
Mary of 4 guns, Captain Jonathan
Baulston, Jr.
Beginning, Captain Samuel Elsoe
Speedwell, Captain Barger
Mayflower, Captain Bowditch
Boston Merchant, Captain Michael
Shute
William and Mary, Captain Peter Ruck
America Merchant (rear-admiral),
Captain Joseph Eldridge
Lark, Captain Walk
Union, Captain Brown
Adventure, Captain Thomas Barrington
Kathrine, Captain Thomas Berry
Fraternity, Captain Elias Jarvis
Success, Captain John Carlisle
Bachelor, Captain Edward Ladd
plus two transports, commanded by Cap-
tains William Clutterbuck and Febershear.
Eleven days later, these 32 vessels
sighted Cape Breton, and on August
31st (O.S.), Captain Joseph Eldridge’s
America Merchant captured a French
fishing-boat near ^Ile Perc
e, then Phips
landed and burnt some houses. A few
more tiny craft were taken as the fleet
slowly groped its way up the Saint
Lawrence Seaway, with Captains Clutter-
buck and Ingerston taking soundings in
the lead and waving ‘‘their jack respec-
tively so many times as they had fathom.’’
Phips, Sir William (fl. 1683
1690) 737
On October 6, 1690 (O.S.), Phips finally
anchored three miles below Quebec, and
demanded the surrender of the city. Not
surprisingly, the French Governor Comte
de Frontenac refused, being well prepared
for the English, which he proved once
Phips’s fleet weighed and advanced
against the batteries. A one-sided duel
ensued between the wooden ships and
stone ramparts, until the New Englanders
cut their cables and drifted out of range.
Checked in his assault, Phips was left
with no other choice than to retreat a
few days later, pausing off the north-
ern tip of ^Ile d’Orl
eans to repair his
damaged ships. It was noted that ‘‘Sir
William worked as diligently as any
among them, plying his former trade of
ship’s carpenter,’’ before the fleet fortui-
tously intercepted the French bark N^ otre
Dame de la Conception as it arrived from
La Rochelle with a cargo of pork, flour,
and salt. Three other French merchant-
men were chased a few days afterward,
but disappeared ‘‘amid thick fogs and a
howling tempest of snow’’ as winter now
set in. Captain John Rainsford’s Mary
was wrecked on Anticosti Island with 60
men, and Phips limped back into Boston
at the end of November with six ships
missing, although all but three eventu-
ally reappeared. Nevertheless, his grand
expedition against Quebec had ended in
utter failure.
Later Career (1691
1695)
Notwithstanding this setback, Phips trav-
eled to England next year and won ap-
pointment as Governor of Massachusetts.
When he returned to Boston in May
1692, he found the province in the grip
of the Salem witch hunts, which question
he relegated to his Lieutenant-Governor
738 Picard, Capitaine Le
William Stoughton, while concentrating
on throwing back the French and Indian
counter-offensives along the eastern bor-
ders of New England. During his absence
20 innocent men and women were
hanged, and when Phips finally returned
from Pemaquid and Penobscot that fall,
he found his wife among the accused.
This promptly led him to decree that no
more people were to be committed, and
the hysteria abated. Two years later he
was accused of maladministration, and
sailed to London to clear himself of these
charges. He arrived in January 1695, but
died suddenly on February 18th, not yet
45 years of age.
References
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 11
(London: Her Majestys Stationery
Office, 1898).
Earle, Peter, The Treasure of the
Concepcion: The Wreck of the Almiranta
(New York: Viking, 1980).
PICARD, CAPITAINE LE
See Le Picard, Capitaine
PILLET, FRANÇOIS
(fl. 1691
1702)
French-Canadian seaman nicknamed
‘‘Lajeunesse,’’ who also served in the
Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.
His father had been a master carpenter
of this same name, originally from Paris,
who had emigrated out to Canada. There
he had married Françoise Loisel on
August 16, 1669, and presumably their
son François, Jr., was born shortly there-
after. The senior Pillet (or Pilet) pros-
pered, as it is known that by February
1681 he was at La Rochelle with his own
200-ton merchant ship Honor
e, preparing
to sail for Cayenne, Saint-Domingue, and
then homeward to New France. And also
that same year, according to a Crown
census, his family was recorded as living
in the Lower Town of Quebec City.
However, Pillet’s father died at
Boucherville at nearby Chambly in
September 1688, followed almost exactly
two years later by his mother. Whether
the youthful Pillet then decided to seek
his fortune abroad is unknown, but
on July 1, 1691—as King William’s War
was entering its second year—he ob-
tained a privateering commission at Ver-
sailles to sortie from France with his own
200-ton ship Saint-François Xavier.
More than a decade later, he would also
play a vital role in the French coloniza-
tion of Louisiana, aboard his 45-ton
ketch Dauphine.
References
Archives D
epartementales de la Gironde
[France], 6B 75 28v.
29v.
Higginbotham, Jay, Old Mobile: Fort Louis
de la Louisiane, 1702
1711 (Mobile,
AL: University of Alabama Press, 1991).
PISTOLE
English nickname for any full-weight
Spanish coin, worth more than a pound
sterling.
For example, among the complaints
of corruption filed against the deposed

private Governor of the Bahamas, Elias
Haskett, was one sworn on November 3,
1701 (O.S.), by Tabitha Alford at Nassau,
explaining how six weeks previously:
Deponent carried to Governor Haskett
at his house £50, which was a bribe
for enlarging Colonel [Read] Elding,
who was then a close prisoner and in
irons; when Governor Haskett found
it was not as much as he expected, he
returned it to deponent, swearing that
if Elding did not send him 50 pistols
(£67, 10 shillings), he should not be
released. Deponent, by order of Eld-
ing, was forced to go to Captain
George Graham to borrow the rest.
Haskett was not contented with that
sum, but told deponent that Elding
must also send him a rich ring, and a
piece of plate of value, which ring and
a silver tankard was carried by depo-
nent to Haskett for a bribe, and also
some pieces of dry goods, and a set of
gold buttons, and three gold drops.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 20
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1912).
POLLET, DIEGO (fl. 1718)
Minor Spanish corsair who operated
briefly out of Cuman
a, Venezuela.
Nothing is known about Pollet’s early
life or career. The first notice of his activ-
ities occurred in the summer of 1718,
when his piragua seized a pair of English
trading vessels lying at Salt Tortuga. Pollet
had presumably been commissioned by
Pollet, Diego (fl. 1718) 739
the Governor at Cuman
a—sargento
mayor Jos
e Francisco Carre~no, Knight of
the Order of Calatrava—to patrol the re-
gional waters claimed by Spain as part of
this jurisdiction, detaining any trespassers,
smugglers, or pirates. The merchant ship
Neptune of Master Joseph Bosworth and
sloop Mary and Elizabeth of Master An-
thony Attwood had earlier departed Anti-
gua together for this particular destination,
so that Attwood later testified how:
. . . on 3rd July [1718 O.S.] saw the
ship Neptune, which was in company
with him, boarded by a periaga [sic;
piragua] or row-galley, upon which
deponent put his sloop under sail; but
the periaga boarded him, overcame
the crew, and carried the sloop into
Cuman
a. The periaga was commanded
by Dago Pocheet [sic], who showed a
commission from the Governor of
Cuman
a. On 13th August, after sev-
eral times petitioning the Governor,
deponent was ordered away in a boat
with his sloop’s crew, and Captain
Bosworth and the Neptune’s crew.
The Englishmen regained Antigua a cou-
ple of weeks later, where Bosworth and
Attwood gave depositions before Gover-
nor Walter Hamilton on September 3
4,
1718 (O.S.). A few days afterward, this
official complained to London that the
Spaniards had also recently taken several
other small sloops belonging to the Lee-
ward Islands, ‘‘which only went to Crab
Island and St. Croix to get turtle.’’
Nothing more was heard from Pollet,
though, and Governor Carre~no’s three-
year term expired by the spring of 1719.
His successor, Juan de la Tornera Sota,
pursued a much less aggressive policy
regarding the English. Indeed, within
several months of his assuming office,
740 Pound, Thomas (fl. 1687
1703)
the Spanish sloop Marı´a appeared off
Barbados on December 18, 1719 (O.S.),
and its Master Pablo Planes stepped
ashore next morning, to inform the Eng-
lish authorities that his cargo consisted:
. . . of a little turtle-shell, four bags
of coconuts, two bags of snuff, and a
small quantity of hides, being the
growth and produce of ye Spanish
West Indies, which he was directed
by the Governor of Cuman
a to barter
for provisions.
See also
Crab Island; Piragua; Salt Tortuga.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 30,
31 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1930
1933).
POUND, THOMAS
(fl. 1687
1703)
Massachusetts privateer turned renegade.
In 1687, Pound was a loyal servant of
the English Crown, serving as pilot aboard
the Royal Navy sloop HMS Rose which
patrolled the New England coastline in
search of illicit traders, smugglers, and
pirates. Next year, he was appointed cap-
tain (commission dated July 11, 1688
[O.S.]) of the new colonial sloop Mary,
which Gov. Sir Edmund Andros had
ordered built through public subscriptions.
Yet he was to operate this vessel only
briefly, because the upheaval caused by
the ‘‘Glorious Revolution’’ in England
(when James II was deposed in favor of
the Protestant rulers William and Mary)
(see sidebar) evidently led to his dismissal.
On August 8, 1689 (O.S.), amid
reports that the former King had landed
in Ireland with a French army to attempt
to recoup his throne, Pound sailed out of
Boston harbor with five men and a boy
as passengers aboard a small vessel.
When off Lovell’s Island, five other
armed men joined them and Pound
seized command, declaring his intention
of going on a self-proclaimed privateer-
ing cruise. The first vessel which he and
his partner Thomas Hawkins met—a
fishing-boat—was rushed, but at the last
moment Pound changed his mind and
merely bought ‘‘eight pennies’ worth of
mackerel’’ from the surprised fishermen.
The renegades then proceeded northward
to Falmouth, Maine, where the corporal
and soldiers of the guard deserted their
fort one night to join forces with Pound.
Meanwhile, the colonial sloop Resolu-
tion had been manned with 30 sailors in
Boston, and ordered out into Massachu-
setts Bay under Captain Joseph Thaxter
to detain these rovers on a charge of pi-
racy. Pound, however, circled past and
around Cape Cod to instead take up sta-
tion in Vineyard Sound, where over the
next few weeks he attacked the merchant
sloop Good Speed off Cape Cod, and
seized the brigantine Merrimack along
with several other prizes.
Battle off Tarpaulin Cove
(October 1689)
On September 30, 1689 (O.S.), Pound’s
original sloop Mary was dispatched from
Boston to again search for him, with
20 volunteer crewmembers under Cap-
tain Samuel Pease. This vessel reached
Wood’s Hole four days later, where a
boat rowed out from shore and informed
Pease that the renegades were cruising off

nearby Tarpaulin Cove. At this news,
Mary’s crew gave ‘‘a great shout or hur-
rah,’’ and shortly thereafter sighted their
prey to westward, overhauling it in a stiff
south-southeasterly wind. Pease had the
King’s jack raised and a shot from the
great gun fired across the renegades’ fore-
foot, at which a man climbed Pound’s
mast and affixed ‘‘the red flag of piracy at
the mainmast top.’’ Pease responded with
a single musket-shot, then a full volley,
directly into the renegades’ hull and as the
distance narrowed, called on them ‘‘to
strike to the King of England.’’ Such a
sentiment must have enflamed Pound,
who could be clearly seen on his quarter-
deck, brandishing a sword and shouting
back above the wind: ‘‘Come aboard, you
dogs, and I will strike you presently!’’
Pound then picked up his gun and led
his men in firing a volley against Mary,
which touched off a heated exchange.
Pease’s sloop, being more nimble, ran
down to leeward of the renegades, nor-
mally a tactical disadvantage—but not on
such a blustery day. The heeling caused
by the strong wind raised Mary’s weather
side as a bulwark for its marksmen, while
further allowing the volunteers to fire
down on the more exposed renegades.
They nonetheless resisted bravely, even
after Pound was wounded in both arm
and side, and was carried below. Soon,
two of Mary’s men were also injured by
an accidental detonation of gunpowder,
which created a small fire and much bil-
lowing smoke. Seeing this, the renegades
cheered and redoubled their efforts, shoot-
ing Pease in the arm, side, and thigh, as
well as wounding two other volunteers.
With Captain Pease below being
tended, his Lieutenant Benjamin Gallop
assumed command and decided to board
the enemy. Mary surged alongside the
renegade craft, and a fierce hand-to-hand
Pound, Thomas (fl. 1687
1703) 741
struggle ensued. Muskets were swung
about viciously as clubs, until four
pirates lay dead and 12 wounded, forcing
the remaining two to surrender. By now,
the weather had become so bad that Gal-
lop sailed his two vessels into the Sakon-
net River, and anchored in the shelter
between Pocasset and Rhode Island.
Next morning, October 5, 1689 (O.S.),
the casualties were treated by doctors
ashore, after which Pease resumed com-
mand six days later and attempted to sail
back to Boston. His wounds proved too
severe, though, so that he was carried
back ashore to die in agony on October
12th (O.S.), being buried at Newport. A
week afterward, Gallop sailed Mary back
into Boston with his prize, and the
14 prisoners were cast into jail.
Later Career (1690
1703)
Although Pound was tried on January
13, 1690 (O.S.), and found guilty of
piracy, along with his confederate
Hawkins and several other crewmem-
bers, the peculiar circumstances moti-
vating his cruise meant that none was
executed. Instead, he and Hawkins
were sent to England for a determina-
tion (the latter dying en route in a fight
against a French privateer). Pound
arrived and was eventually set at lib-
erty, afterward even obtaining com-
mand of a ship. He died there in 1703.
References
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
742 Pound, Thomas (fl. 1687
1703)

ENGLAND’S ‘‘GLORIOUS REVOLUTION’’ OF 1688

Ever since his older brother Charles II had died in February 1685, his successor James
II was viewed with suspicion by his English subjects. A staunch Catholic, it was feared
that he would attempt to reimpose his faith on the Protestant kingdom. He had lost the
support of the dominant Anglican Tories in Parliament that first year. His removal of
Protestants from key positions of power and his recruitment of a large peacetime army
had also seemed preludes to a seizure of absolute power.
As a result, a conspiracy had been hatched to remove James in favor of his daugh-
ter Mary and her husband, the Dutch Stadhouder Willem of Orange. Both were Prot-
estant, and both were grandchildren of King Charles I of England. They stood second
and third in line to the throne. And Willem moreover had the reputation of being the
main Protestant champion in Europe against French Catholic absolutism.
Events accelerated as of late 1687, once it was learned that James was expecting
a child. This had made the prospect of a Catholic dynasty on the English throne much
more likely. When James had signed a naval agreement with Louis XIV of France in
April 1688, Willem began actively raising political and financial support to invade.
He had struck secret deals with the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna, the Duke of Hano-
ver, the Elector of Saxony, even Pope Innocent XI. All had been united by their hostil-
ity to France. The Dutch Navy had been mobilized, thousands of troops had
mustered, and 400 transports were hired. But great care had also gone into a propa-
ganda effort to convince the English people that Willem would be coming in peace to
‘‘save the Protestant religion.’’
When Louis XIV had warned the States-General in September 1688 against acting
in England, his threat backfired. James had been embarrassed, and the Dutch con-
vinced that a secret Franco-English alliance must exist. Their 21,000 troops had
boarded their transports by October 8th, to be escorted by 53 warships under Lieuten-
ant-Admiral ‘‘Kees the Devil’’ Evertsen. Contrary winds had kept them in Hellevoetsuis
until November 11th, when the so-called ‘‘Protestant Wind’’ carried them across to
England. This enormous 60,000-man fleet, four times the size of the Spanish Armada
and carrying 5,000 horses, had sailed through the English Channel uncontested
because Admiral George Legge, Lord Dartmouth, could not exit from the Thames.
Willem had landed amid popular acclaim at Torbay on November 15, 1688. His
banner had read: ‘‘The Liberties of England and the Protestant Religion I Will Main-
tain.’’ His Dutch army behaved well, and he did not thrust inland. Instead, he had let
anti-Catholic riots and desertions sap James’ resolve. The King had joined his
19,000-man army at Salisbury two weeks later, only to soon retreat. Willem had
begun a triumphal advance on London, until James fled for France on December 21st.
Captured the next day, there were cheers when he was brought back into London.
Willem had arranged for a second escape, so as not to complicate his own assump-
tion of office. The Dutch had called their venture the Glorieuze Overtocht or ‘‘Glorious
Crossing.’’ English supporters would dub Willem’s almost-bloodless ascension as the
‘‘Glorious Revolution.’’
 R

For our word’s sake, we let thee go,

But to Creoles we are a foe.
—Scribbled in chalk above the companion-way of a prize released off
Saint Kitts by Bartolomew Roberts, further embellished with
‘‘a Death’s head and arm with a Cutlass,’’ September 1720

RACK ashore, besides eighteen sloops lost.

In nautical terminology, a synonym for
wreckage, as in the expression ‘‘rack
and ruin.’’
For example, when the 26-gun,
115-man frigate HMS Speedwell of Cap-
tain Jedidiah Barker departed Barbados’
Carlisle Bay on an anti-piracy patrol on
August 6, 1699 (O.S.), this officer later
reported.
On the 7th we arrived at Martinico
[sic; Martinique] where we met with a
great deal of rack and timber, whereon
I hoisted out my boat and sent my
Lieutenant ashore, who brought me
off word that they had had a very
severe hurricane, which carried down
houses and trees and put three ships
That night I sailed for Montserrat.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 17
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1908).
RACKHAM, JOHN, ALIAS
‘‘CALICO JACK’’
(fl. 1718
1720)
Minor rover best remembered for his col-
orful nickname, and female shipmates.
Governor Nicholas Lawes of Jamaica
reported to London how:

743
744 Reiner, George (fl. 1691
1692)
On the 11th December [1718 O.S.],
an unlucky accident happened to a
ship called the Kingston from London,
whose cargo is said to be valued at
£20,000. She was unfortunately taken
by one Thompson, a notorious pyrate,
within sight of Port Royal and none of
His Majesty’s ships of war being then
in harbor, the freighters and owners of
that ship made application to me to
commission two sloops, which were
then lying in harbor ready to sail, to
go in quest of the said pyrate, they
promising at the same time one-third
part of whatever was recovered as a
reward, beyond what His Majesty had
been pleased to promise in his Royal
Proclamation, to such who would go
out in the said sloops on that service; I
did thereupon grant two commissions
to the said vessels, to continue in force
for the space of two months and no
longer, and gave the commanders
thereof proper instructions, and took
the usual security on like occasions for
the due observance of them: and they
were soon man’d and sayl’d the 26th
December in pursuit of the pyrate.
But on November 13, 1720 (O.S.), Gov-
ernor Lawes could inform London how:
About a fortnight ago, a trading sloop
belonging to the island [i.e., Jamaica],
being well manned and commanded
by a brisk fellow, one Jonathan Bar-
net, did us a very good piece of serv-
ice: he was met by a pirate vessel at
the leeward part of this island com-
manded by one Rackum [sic], in
which were eighteen pirates more,
whom he took and are now in jail; this
week I intent to have them tried.
See also
Vane, Charles.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 31,
32 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1933).
REINER, GEORGE
(fl. 1691
1692)
Renegade English privateer, who made
a lucrative piratical foray into the Red
Sea during King William’s War, before
slipping back into civilian life in South
Carolina.
According to a deposition given
almost eight years later in New York
City by Adam Baldridge before its Royal
Governor Richard, Lord Bellomont,
Reiner had been one of the earliest rovers
to call at his notorious freebooter sanctu-
ary on Saint Mary’s Island near Mada-
gascar. Baldridge’s statement read:
October 13, 1691 [O.S.]: Arrived the
Batchelor’s Delight, Captain George
Raynor [sic] commander, burden
180 tons or thereabouts, 14 guns, 70
or 80 men, that had made a voyage
into the Red Seas and taken a ship
belonging to the Moors, as the men
did report, where they took as much
money as made the whole share run
about £1,100 a man. They careened
at St. Marie’s, and while they ca-
reened I supplied them with cattle
for their present spending, and they
gave me for my cattle a quantity of
beads, five great guns for a fortifica-
tion, some powder and shot, and six
barrels of flour, about 70 bars of iron.
The ship belonged to Jamaica and set
sail from St. Marie’s November
the 4th, 1691 [O.S.], bound for Port
Dauphin on Madagascar to take in
their provision, and December ’91

they set sail from Port Dauphin
bound for America, where I have
heard since they arrived at Carolina
and complied with the owners, giving
them for ruin of the ship three thou-
sand pounds, as I have heard since.
This ship had evidently departed Port
Royal on a privateering cruise under the
name of Loyal Jamaica, before Reiner
had decided to circle around Africa on
an unsanctioned raid into the more lucra-
tive hunting-ground of the Indian Ocean.
On July 16, 1692 (O.S.), Lieutenant-
Governor Francis Nicholson of Virginia
noted in a letter to the Lords of Trade
and Plantations in London:
I have an account that a ship lately
came to South Carolina, which pre-
tended to have come from the Red
Sea and to have captured a Moorish
ship, which brought £2,000 apiece to
the hundred men of the crew. They
parted in Carolina and I hear that
several of them are in Pennsylvania,
where the government, owing to the
Quakers falling out among them-
selves, is very loose. I beg your
orders for my guidance, in case any
of these men should come here.
In November 1696, Edward Randolph
presented a report about illegal trade in
South Carolina, part of which read:
About three years ago, 70 pyrates
having run away with a vessel from
Jamaica, came to Charleston, bring-
ing with them a vast quantity of gold
from the Red Sea; they were enter-
tained, and had liberty to stay or go
to any other place. The vessel was
seized by the Governor for the
[Lords] Proprietors as a wreck, and
sold; they have no regard for the
Acts of Trade.
Reiner, George (fl. 1691
1692) 745
Captured the vessel of Jonathan
Amory and carried it into Jamaica,
where it was condemned as a legiti-
mate prize (presumably for operating
as an illicit trader). However, when
Loyal Jamaica subsequently visited
Charleston, South Carolina, in April
1692, its crew was seized by the local
authorities, apparently on account of
rumored irregularities, although they
were quickly released on bail.
Eight years later, when Governor
William Penn wrote from Philadelphia
on April 28, 1700 (O.S.), to inform the
Council of Trade and Plantations in
London of his efforts to root out law-
less elements from that colony, in the
wake of the peacetime manhunts for
such wanted renegades as Henry Every
and William Kidd, he mentioned that:
[George] Thomson, [Peter] Lewis,
and [William] Orr were under suspi-
cion of being old pirates, whose
camerades [sic] have long sown
themselves in Boston, Rhode Island,
New York, Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Virginia, and Carolina,
where their Captain, one Reiner,
now lives, and Colonel Quary tells
me, he bought their ship. They were
84 in company; here are five of them
in this government, but three of
them have followed a life of hus-
bandry, turning planters, the other
have trades.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 13,
18 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901
1910).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
746 Richier, Isaac (fl. 1689
1697)
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
Collections of the South Carolina
Historical Society, Volume I
(Charleston, SC: Historical Society,
1857).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
McCrady, Edward, The History of South
Carolina under the Proprietary
Government, Volume One: 1670
1719
(Westminster, MD: Heritage Books,
2008).
RICHIER, ISAAC
(fl. 1689
1697)
Royal favorite rewarded with the office
of Governor of Bermuda,
On September 17, 1689 (O.S.), the
Earl of Shrewsbury informed the Lords
of Trade and Plantations in London that
the newly-crowned William III had
appointed Richier as his Governor for
Bermuda, so that instructions for his
administration of that island should be
prepared. These were ready by Novem-
ber 11th (O.S.), when Richier also peti-
tioned the Board to have his annual
salary increased to £400, plus an accom-
panying detachment of 50 soldiers, and
‘‘two hundred tons of freight to transport
myself and family.’’ Instead, the Lords
merely recommended that he be given a
‘‘grant of £200 as traveling allowance.’’
Richier’s commission was officially
issued on December 8, 1689 (O.S.), and
the Board 19 days later ordered ships
prepared to deposit him at Bermuda,
before carrying Colonel Henry Slough-
ter on to New York City as its new
Royal Governor. But Richier managed
to get to Bermuda on his own, chairing
a meeting of its Council on October 16,
1690 (O.S.), William further issued an
Order-in-Council: ‘‘That Sir Robert
Robinson be recalled from Bermuda,
and that a clause be inserted in
Mr. Richier’s instructions directing him
to admit Samuel Trott as Collector of
the King’s Customs.’’
See also
Dew, George; Tew, Thomas.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
ROBERTS,
BARTHOLOMEW
(fl. 1719
1722)
Last of the great pirate commanders,
who roamed the Atlantic unchecked,
before finally meeting a bloody death
off the slave coast of West Africa.
He was apparently born on May 17,
1682 (O.S.), in Casnewydd-Bach or
Little Newcastle, a hamlet which lies
near Fishguard and Haverfordwest in
Pembrokeshire, Wales. He was chris-
tened John Roberts, and his father was
most likely George Roberts. It is not
clear whether his full baptismal name
was John Bartholomew Roberts, and
that he later started using his middle
name to avoid confusion with another
individual, or whether ‘‘Bartholomew
Roberts’’ was simply a pseudonym

adopted to confuse the authorities, just
as was his repeated use of the same or
very similar names for his many flag-
ships. Roberts is thought to have first
gone to sea at the age of 13, but there
is no record of any of his activities
prior to 1718, when he appeared as
mate aboard a Barbados sloop.
Slaver to Pirate (June
1719
May 1720)
The 37-year-old Roberts was serving
as third mate of the merchant-galley
Princess of Captain Abraham Plumb
out of London, when around noon on
June 5, 1719 (O.S.), a pair of pirate
ships under Howell Davis stood into
the anchorage off the English slaving-
station of Anamaboe on the Gold Coast
(modern Anomabu, Ghana). The first
of these raiders was described by an
eye-witness as a dark-hulled vessel
with a black flag fluttering from its
masthead, called the King James; the
other was a former Dutch trader now
mounting 32 cannon and 27 swivels,
which Davis had recently captured off
Cape Three Points and renamed the
Royal Rover. These marauders quickly
subdued and pillaged the three English
slavers lying in the roads, in the pro-
cess removing some of their prime sea-
men, as was their practice—among the
latter, the tall and dark-haired Roberts.
Six weeks later, Davis visited the
Portuguese colony of Principe Island in
the Guinea Gulf, masquerading as a
patrolling Royal Navy officer seeking
to resupply his ships after a cruise
against pirates. The local Portuguese
Governor was not deceived, though,
and instead turned the tables by per-
suading Davis and a landing-party to
Roberts, Bartholomew (fl. 1719
1722) 747
come ashore, where they were then
ambushed and the Welsh Captain slain.
Retreating out to sea aboard the Royal
Rover, his surviving crew-members
elected Roberts skilled mariner to fill
his place, despite the latter’s very short
time among the pirates. Their new Cap-
tain—despite never having served in
any dishonest capacity—would prove an
astonishingly resourceful corsair leader,
and indeed become the last of the
great rover chieftains. Roberts later
allegedly explained his willingness to
embrace his disreputable new calling
by saying:
In an honest service there is thin
rations, low wages and hard labor; in
this [i.e., roving], plenty and satiety,
pleasure and ease, liberty and power;
and who would not balance creditor
on this side, when all the hazard that
is run for it, at worst, is only a sour
look or two at choking [i.e., hanging].
No, a merry life and a short one shall
be my motto.
Having committed himself to sail under
the black flag, he furthermore added: ‘‘It
is better to be a commander than a com-
mon man, since I have dipped my hands
in muddy waters and must be a pirate.’’
Black Bart, as he came to be known,
would spend the next two-and-a-half
years on spectacular campaigns against
both sides of the Atlantic. After first
devastating Principe Island in retaliation
for Davis’ death, he swept through the
Bight of Biafra before laying in a course
across the ocean toward Brazil. In
September 1719, Roberts’ ship came on
a Portuguese convoy of 42 merchantmen
preparing to depart Bahia, escorted by
two men o’ war. Sailing impudently into
their midst, he plundered the wealthiest
748 Roberts, Bartholomew (fl. 1719
1722)
of 400,000 gold moidores, before retir-
ing utterly unscathed. The pirates then
visited Devil’s Island in the Guianas,
before being chased further northward
out of the Caribbean by Royal Navy
patrols.
Governor Benjamin Bennett of
Bermuda received news dated February
8, 1720 (O.S.), and informed London
how it had been confirmed that:
. . . a pirate ship that took, some time
since, a Portuguese ship upon the
coast of Brazil, which he carried to
Cayenne, a French island and there
plundered her, and there took also a
Rhode Island sloop, and after detain-
ing the master for some days, he gave
him the Portuguese ship, with which
he is arrived at Antigua; the pirate
went afterwards to the windward of
Barbados, where he took two New
York snows, the one he plundered
and afterwards gave the vessel to the
master and men again, the other they
have fitted out of the pirate ship, she
being a much better sailor, and are
gone to the northward with, and gave
the ship to the master of the snow;
his men, and some others that pretend
to have been forced, of which they
landed five white men and one black
upon Anguilla, of which number
there are now two in jail at Antigua
and the rest are sent for, they say.
The quartermaster of the pirate and
one more were on board the said
ship, from whence, and their having
divided their plunder to the windward
of Barbados (as these men say), it is
concluded they have broke up and
are shifting for themselves by drop-
ping some in one place, some in
another, for they had a great booty in
the Brazil ship, at least 15,000 moi-
dores, besides a vast quantity of dust
gold they had got upon the coast of
Guinea, where they had taken many
prizes.
Eight days later, Governor Walter
Hamilton wrote from Nevis to relate
the following string of events to
William Popple in London:
We have of late heard of several
pirates that rove in these seas, partic-
ularly one of about thirty guns that
had been for a considerable time
upon the coast of Guinea, where she
had done a great deal of damage,
afterwards took a Portuguese ship
upon the coast of Brazil, which he
brought to the island of Cayenne, a
French island lying off of Surinam;
and there plundered her of a vast
booty, most in moidores, not valuing
the rest of the cargo (which con-
sisted of sugar, tobacco, and Brazil
plank) would have set the ship on
fire, but meeting with a Rhode
Island sloop, which they took and
fitted out for their use, they gave the
Portuguese ship to the master of
the Rhode Island sloop, who with
the Portuguese that were left on
board, brought her into Antigua,
where I have ordered a merchant to
take care of her and what was
remaining on board, for the use of
the owner or owners. There are
now five white men and one black
in the jail of this island, that were
of the crew of that ship, which were
put ashore out of her at the island
of Anguilla, which pretend all to
have been forced; I have sent to the
Lieutenant-Governor of Antigua to
 Roberts, Bartholomew (fl. 1719
1722) 749

LEAVING ROBERTS’ SERVICE

Unlike most other pirate Captains, who usually resented and refused to allow any of
their men to quit their company, Bartholomew Roberts was often accommodating to
such requests, whether from veteran rovers or pressed merchant sailors. Having him-
self endured long years of poverty at sea, he seemed to empathize with the desire to
slip back into civilian life and enjoy their hard-won booty. One of several instances
occurred during his advance up the Atlantic Seaboard in early 1720, and was
recorded on the pages of the newspaper American Weekly Mercury:

The beginning of last month [i.e., early February 1720 O.S.] arrived in the Capes of
Virginia, Captain Knot in a ship of 150 tons and twelve men from London. The said
Captain, within 200 leagues of the Capes, was taken by a pyrate ship that was lately
come from the coast of Guiney, but last from Brazil, man’d with 148 bold fellows;
they took from Knot some provision, but restored him the ship and cargo. The Captain
of the pyrates obliged Knot to take eight of his men on board his ship, and made him
give an obligation under his hand, that he shipped them on passengers from London
to Virginia. The pyrates’ Captain gave those men a boat, which boat Captain Knot
was obliged to let any of them have, when they requested to go from his ship. The
pyrates also put two Portuguese prisoners on board which they had taken on the
coast of Brazil, to be set on shore in Virginia. When Knot arrived within the Capes,
the wind turning westerly, he came to an anchor, upon which four of the pyrates
came to him and required him to hoist their boat out.

This first quartet were rowed deeper into Chesapeake Bay and up the ‘‘Black River’’
(?), until they stepped ashore and found a tavern ‘‘where they might ease themselves
of their Golden Luggage.’’ They spent their money so lavishly, though—one even pur-
chasing the freedom of several indentured English women servants for the princely
sum of £30—that this extravagance brought them to the attention of the local author-
ities, who soon committed them on suspicion of being pirates to the county jail. The
other four pirates landed at Hampton on the James River, where they too soon fell
under suspicion, and were also arrested.
The Portuguese captives later told their story to a ship captain who understood their
language, who immediately took them before Governor Alexander Spotswood, so
that these eight detainees were brought to trial. Although they insisted that they had
been taken from the coast of Guinea and forced to become pirates, the Portuguese
testified that ‘‘they appeared as forward in action and were as busy in plundering as
any of the crew,’’ so were sentenced to death. Six were executed, two reprieved.
‘‘They died as they lived,’’ the account concluded:

. . . nor showing any sign of repentance; their bodies were afterwards hanged in
chains. They brought on shore with them in Spanish gold and gold dust, upward of
1,500 pounds sterling. Seven of the pirates were Englishmen, the other a mulatto.
750 Roberts, Bartholomew (fl. 1719
1722)
enquire of the Master of the Rhode
Island sloop, his men, or the Portu-
guese, whether they know any of
these persons to have been active
amongst the pirates, in order that if
any of them have been guilty of the
piracy they stand suspected off, they
may be proceeded against, etc.
I had last Sunday morning an
account given me by Major Richard
Holmes of Colonel Richard Lucas’s
Regiment, and one Mr. Thomas Ottley,
that as they were on their voyage to
the island of St. Eustatius and St.
Thomas (whither they were bound, the
first to look for some deserters that had
run away) they were informed that a
pirate ship lay under the island of St.
Thomas, that most of the men were on
shore; they went to said ship and found
her at an anchor, and was equipped in
a warlike manner, and several pirate
colors on board, and not being able to
bring her up to any of the islands
(inhabited) of my government, they
carried her to the island of Santa Cruis
or Sancta Croix, where they left her
under the care of an officer of the regi-
ment and some men, till the Major
could inform me of the premises;
whereupon I ordered Captain John
Rose, commander of H.M.S. Seaford,
forthwith to get ready to go down, to
take the said ship under his care, and
bring her up to this His Majesty’s
Island, or the island where at his return
he shall hear I then am, and to see that
no embezzlement be made; who sailed
yesterday with the Major on board.
I have desired the Major to make a
particular enquiry as to the conduct
of the Danish Governor upon this
occasion, for it has been of a long
standing, and it’s now to be too much
suspected that the Danes give too
much encouragement and counte-
nance, nay even public protection to
that vermin, which makes our land-
and seamen so frequently desert, that
being their place of refuge.
Almost six weeks later, Governor
Hamilton would write again on March
28, 1720 (O.S.), to inform the Council of
Trade and Plantations how Captain Rose
had returned into Saint Kitts with this
empty prize, and then sailed up to Nevis
to report personally to the Governor how:
She was called amongst the pirates
by the name of the Royal Rover, and
has committed a great many depre-
dations upon the coast of Guinea.
She was the same that took the Por-
tuguese ship, and I find the crew
were the same which were formerly
in a ship they called the King James,
which they sunk and betook them-
selves to this. She is a ship of force
capable of mounting 30 guns and
had once near 200 men, (and as far
as I can learn) was in the service of
His Imperial Majesty when she was
taken, but she is now much out of
order, for which reason I suppose
they quitted her.
As I have met with a vast deal of
trouble and opposition from some
persons who would have disputed
with me the power I had of seizing
her, I think it my duty to lay before
Your Lordships a distinct account of
the manner in which the ship was
taken, and the measures that were
took to prevent my securing of her
either for His Majesty or for the
Right Honorable the Lord High
Admiral.

North American Foray
(February
July 1720)
On July 3,1720 (O.S.), Lieutenant-
Governor Samuel Gledhill wrote from
Placentia to the Council of Trade and
Plantations in London, to apprise them
of the grim situation on Newfoundland,
pointing out that there were ‘‘many
ships drove in here by the pyrates who
infest our coast.’’ He added that: ‘‘These
pyrates have now destroyed near 150
boats and 26 ships at Trepassy and
St. Mary’s, which if a communication
had been cut o’er land, had not been
above two days’ march to have rescued
those harbors, where the pyrates have
been repairing their ships for fourteen
days past.’’
Ranging as far as the southeastern tip
of Newfoundland, Royal Roger stood
into Trepassey Bay on June 21, 1720
(O.S.), with the Jolly Roger flying from
its masthead, and the ship’s band loudly
playing on deck. An English merchant
convoy of 22 sail was gathering within,
whose crews fled ashore in panic while
Roberts casually rifled their holds.
Royal Roger being worn out, he trans-
ferred into a Bristol galley which he
renamed Royal Fortune. His audacity
was so breath-taking that the Governor
of New England could not refrain from
concluding his report to London on this
incident, with the comment: ‘‘One can-
not withhold admiration for his bravery
and daring.’’
Off the Grand Banks, Roberts seized
half-a-dozen French vessels, preferring
one mounting 28 guns to his Bristol gal-
ley, and so moving his flag and giving
this new ship the same name as its prede-
cessor, Royal Fortune. Veering south-
west, he then snapped up a string of
Roberts, Bartholomew (fl. 1719
1722) 751
prizes off New England in August 1720,
the richest being the sloop Samuel bound
from London toward Boston. After ran-
sacking it ‘‘like a parcel of furies,’’ Rob-
erts’s crew informed Samuel’s master
what they thought about a royal pardon:
We shall accept no Act of Grace,
may the King and Parliament be
damned with their Act of Grace for
us, neither will we go to Hope Point
[i.e., Execution Dock] to be hanged
a-sun-drying.
Instead, they let it be known that they
would only seek pardons when they had
accumulated enough money, which they
judged to be ‘‘seven or eight hundred
pounds each.’’
Caribbean Rampage (September
1720
April 1721)
By early next month, Roberts had run
deep down into the Lesser Antilles,
espying the sloop Relief out of Ber-
muda on September 4, 1720 (O.S.), as
it was turtling at Carriacou in the
Grenadines. This vessel’s Master, Rob-
ert Dunn, would later describe how he
had been surprised:
. . . by a pirate ship and sloop com-
manded by one Roberts of Barbados,
about 130 men all told. The remnant
of the Royal Rover’s crew are in this
gang. The ship they took on the banks
of Newfoundland, French-built, and
one of 21 [vessels] they took there.
The pirates dismissed deponent after
putting on board his sloop some bun-
dles of old rigging and cloth, in return
for his tending them with turtles,
752 Roberts, Bartholomew (fl. 1719
1722)

Bartholomew Roberts’s pair of pirate ships, Ranger and Royal Fortune, bearing down upon
eleven anchored slavers off the West African port of Ouidah, 11 January 1722 O.S. (Pyle,
Howard ed. The Buccaneers and Marooners of America, 1897)

which they made him do. They said
they intended to take Marie-Galante.
They intend to take their revenge of
Antigua and Barbados, and then go on
the coast of Brazil or the East Indies.
They would blow up rather than be
taken. Every man double armed, and
mostly Englishmen.
True to their word, after careening
at Carriacou and recuperating, Royal
Fortune and its consort stood boldly into
Saint Kitts’ principal anchorage of
Basseterre at 1:00 P.M. on September 27,
1720 (O.S.), rousing militia defenders
all along that stretch of coastline. By
the time Lieutenant-General William
Matthew, Saint Kitts’ Governor, could
arrive on the scene on horseback an hour
later, he could see that already ‘‘the
pirates’ ship and sloop with black flags,
had cut out one ship—that was under
sail actually then—and had set two more
on fire.’’ A few belated salvoes were
fired off by the shore-batteries, before
Roberts moved easily out of range.
He sent back a few prisoners after night-
fall, with a plea from the captive
merchant Captain Henry Fowles for a
number of sheep and goats to be pre-
pared to ransom his ship, as well the fol-
lowing letter addressed personally to the
Governor:
Royal Fortune, Sept. 27th, 1720
[O.S.].
This comes expressly from me to
let you know that had you come off,

as you ought to ‘a done, and drank a
glass of wine with me and my com-
pany, I should not [have] harmed the
least vessel in your harbor. Farther, it
is not your guns you fired that
affrighted me, or hindered our coming
on shore, but the wind not proving to
our expectation, that hindered it. The
Royal Rover you have already burnt
and barbarously used some of our
men, but we have now a ship as good
as her, and for revenge you may
assure yourselves, here and hereafter,
not to expect anything from our hands
but what belongs to a pirate. As far-
ther, gentlemen, that poor fellow you
now have in prison at Sandy Point is
entirely ignorant and what he hath,
was gave him, and so pray make con-
science for once, let me beg you, and
use that man as an honest man and
not as a C [criminal?]. If we hear any
otherwise, you may expect not to have
quarters to any of your Island
Yours, Bathll. Roberts.
Next morning, a boatload of pirates
deposited Captain Fowles ashore, then
at 11:00 A.M. Roberts’ consort stood
into the harbor to receive the antici-
pated ransom. Instead, Governor Mat-
thew ordered the reinforced batteries
to open fire once more, loosing
two salvoes and striking the sloop
several times, before it retreated out
of range. It was noted how the
two pirate vessels then ran into the
Grand Goulet, and set Fowles’ ship
adrift. When this empty vessel was
retrieved, the rovers’ parting threat
was found written in chalk above its
companion-way:
For our word’s sake, we let thee go,
But to Creoles, we are a foe.
Roberts, Bartholomew (fl. 1719
1722) 753
Beneath was drawn a Death’s head,
adorned with an arm holding a cutlass.
Accompanied by 70 militia riders, the
Governor shadowed Roberts’ movements
from ashore as the pirates tacked slowly
north toward Nevis, disappearing by
10:00 A.M. on September 29, 1720 (O.S.),
to the east of Saint Bartholomew’s. Mat-
thew concluded:
These villains are certainly going to
windward of Antigua and Barbados,
etc. They want bread, and will wait
some New England vessels coming.
They offer any price for Mr. Pinney,
Spooner, and Brown for condemning
their comrades at Nevis, threaten
and bluster much, and have intelli-
gences off this island in particular,
that I am surprised at.
But instead, Roberts intended to strike
out across the Atlantic toward Africa
again. Contrary winds so dogged this pas-
sage, though, that Roberts and his 124
men almost died of thirst before being
driven back into Surinam, on the north
coast of South America. Deciding to
throw caution to the wind, Roberts then
gambled on rampaging through the
Windward Islands, notwithstanding the
presence of several Royal Navy patrols,
and the lack of any adequate pirate sanc-
tuaries. His boldness was nonetheless
rewarded by dozens of prizes, the Gover-
nor of the French Leeward Islands even
noting at one point that ‘‘between the
28th and 31st October [1720] these pirates
seized, burned, or sunk fifteen French
and English vessels and one Dutch inter-
loper of 42 guns at Dominica.’’
Basing himself off Saint Lucia,
Roberts inflicted such a heavy toll on
French shipping bound to and from
Martinique that its Governor was forced
754 Roberts, Bartholomew (fl. 1719
1722)
to plead for help from the neighboring
British authorities. The Governor of Bar-
bados attempted to assist his beleaguered
French colleague, which cooperation so
angered Roberts that he designed a spe-
cial pirate jack, showing a figure of him-
self standing with a sword in his right
hand and each foot atop a skull: one hav-
ing the initials ABH written beneath it,
signifying ‘‘A Barbadian’s Head,’’ the
other AMH for ‘‘A Martinican’s Head.’’
The plate on his cabin door also bore this
same design. By the spring of 1721, Rob-
erts had nearly brought Antillean com-
merce to a complete standstill, and so
prepared to sail away. Knowing he could
expect to find no haven in American
waters, he loaded all his plunder aboard
two captured ships and struck out across
the Atlantic that same April.
Second West African Sweep
(April 1721
January 1722)
Roberts reached the Cape Verde Islands
late that same month of April 1721,
where his second Royal Fortune being
found to be leaky, was abandoned. All
the pirates were concentrated aboard the
Sea King, which thus was renamed the
third Royal Fortune and made its landfall
off the Guinea coast in early June 1721,
near the mouth of the Senegal River, to-
ward Sierra Leone. Here there existed a
tiny outlaw colony of European smug-
glers and interlopers, who were not
averse to trading with pirates. One of its
more famous shore-establishments was
run by an ex-buccaneer named John
Leadstone, alias ‘‘Old Crackers;’’
another on the Rio Pungo was main-
tained by Benjamin Gun (who would
later serve as the model for Robert Louis
Stevenson’s ‘‘Ben Gunn’’ in Treasure
Island). Roberts spent six weeks there,
before setting out eastward again in late
August 1721. Off Sestos (in present-day
Liberia) he captured the Royal African
Company frigate Onslow, increasing its
armament from 26 to 40 guns and con-
verting it into his fourth and last Royal
Fortune. Slowly continuing southeast-
ward, he eventually reached Cape Lopez
around Christmastime, before reversing
course northwestward.
Roberts realized that there were two
powerful Royal Navy warships patrol-
ling that coastline, HMS swallow and
Weymouth, each mounting 50 guns
and almost brand-new, having been
launched only two years previously.
Believing that they had returned to
their winter quarters off Sierra Leone,
the pirate captain doubled back along
his course and on Thursday, January
11, 1722 (O.S.), brashly stood into the
great slaving port of Ouidah. Brushing
aside its feeble defenses, he sent board-
ing-parties onto the 11 slavers lying in
its roads and held them for ransom,
demanding eight pounds of gold dust
apiece (about £500 each, in the cur-
rency of that day).
All but one master agreed to pay, and
this unfortunate’s ship was then set on
ablaze and sunk as an example for the
rest, despite the 80 slaves already fet-
tered in its hold. Two days later, though,
Roberts intercepted a message from
Cape Coast Castle to the Royal African
Company’s agent in Ouidah, warning
him that the pirates were headed in his
direction—with Swallow in close pursuit.
Alarmed to learn that this Royal Navy
vessel was so near at hand, Roberts
immediately fled back out to sea and
steered southeast toward Cape Lopez
again. Two days afterward, Swallow
entered Ouidah, and its commander

Captain Chaloner Ogle made a shrewd
guess as to the intruder’s intended bolt-
hole. Pressing on for Cape Lopez him-
self, the Royal Navy officer began
searching its shoreline until at daybreak
on February 5, 1722 (O.S.), he suddenly
heard the sound of a lone gun being fired
in the distance. Sailing in its direction, he
at last spotted Roberts’ trio of vessels
lying at anchor beneath the Cape: Royal
Fortune, along with its consorts Great
Ranger and Little Ranger.
Aboard the pirate flagship, Roberts,
too, saw this strange sail appear, and
assumed it to be a large merchantman.
Consequently he ordered his subordinate
Captain James Skyrme to pursue with
Great Ranger, while Ogle cunningly
turned Swallow away at this same
moment, running before the wind as if
afraid, yet actually allowing his solitary
pursuer to gradually overhaul. By 10:30
A.M., Cape Lopez had fallen below the
horizon, and Skyrme had closed up suffi-
ciently astern of Swallow to open fire
with his bow chasers. The gradually
narrowed, Great Ranger’s decks were
lined with cutlass-brandishing pirates,
while also displaying a bewildering array
of flags including, most prominently, a
black Jolly Roger.
Half-an-hour later, Ogle finally
decided to spring his trap by bearing up
to starboard, running out his guns, and
letting fly with a crushing broadside. The
pirates were appalled to discover that
they had been lured directly beneath the
muzzles of a heavily-armed man o’ war,
and so fell into some confusion. A brisk
firefight ensued, in which one of
Skyrme’s legs was blown off, and Great
Ranger lost its main topmast. Finally, by
three o’clock that afternoon the pirates
had had enough, and a desperately-
wounded Skyrme struck his colors and
Roberts, Bartholomew (fl. 1719
1722) 755
cast them into the sea, so that they could
not be used as evidence against him in a
court of law. Meanwhile, half-a-dozen of
his most desperate crew-members ran
down into Great Ranger’s magazine,
where they stuck a pistol into a barrel of
gunpowder and pulled the trigger, so as
to blow everyone aboard into oblivion.
However, this container proved to be
only partially full, so that while the
would-be suicides were horribly burnt,
their ship did not explode nor sink.
When Swallow’s boarders came over
its bulwarks, they found 10 pirates dead
and another 20 wounded, out of a crew of
100 men: 59 of them English, 18 French,
and the rest Africans. (The Royal Navy
warship, by way of contrast, had not suf-
fered a single casualty.) Ogle hastily
repaired Great Ranger and sent it limping
back toward Principe Island with its
wounded pirates under guard, while the
uninjured captives were clapped below
decks aboard Swallow to return to Cape
Lopez. Ogle came within sight of its head-
land again on the morning of February 10,
1722 (O.S.), just as Roberts was sitting in
Royal Fortune’s great cabin, finishing off
his favorite breakfast dish of salmigondis.
The rover was neither worried by Great
Ranger’s five-day absence, nor by the
approach of this strange ship under a
French flag. It was only when Swallow
drew near enough to be plainly visible
from on deck, that one of the pirates—a
naval deserter who had previously served
aboard the man o’ war—recognized his
old ship and cried out a warning.
Belatedly, Roberts sprang into action,
coming on deck and ordering Little
Ranger’s crew to reinforce Royal
Fortune, thus bringing his flagship’s
strength up to 152 men. At 10:30 A.M., he
slipped his cable and got under way,
directing all full sail to be set. As Royal
756 Roche, George (fl. 1691
1697)
Fortune gathered way, its commander
ducked below and put on his finery in
anticipation of a battle. He reappeared
wearing a crimson waistcoat and
breeches, as well as a hat with a big red
feather in it. From his neck dangled
numerous gold chains and a silk sling,
with two pairs of pistols thrust through it.
On gaining his poop deck, Roberts then
inexplicably altered course directly
toward the charging Swallow, and at 11
A.M. leapt unto a gun-carriage to begin
directing his ship’s artillery-fire.
But it was the man o’ war which
boomed out the first rounds, bringing
Royal Fortune’s mizzen topmast crashing
down with a single well-aimed broadside.
When the smoke and wreckage was
cleared, the pirates discovered Roberts
draped over the rope tackles of one of his
guns, dead from a wound in his throat. He
was not quite 40 years of age. Greatly dis-
tressed at the death of their brilliant Cap-
tain, his followers quickly cast his body
into the sea (in accordance with his oft-
expressed wish), then fought on as best
they could, hoping to win free. But with-
out Roberts, they were no match for Swal-
low, which continued to pound Royal
Fortune relentlessly until 1:30 that same
afternoon, when the pirates’ mainmast
collapsed. By two o’clock they begged
for quarter, and Ogle sent over his board-
ers, who secured the prisoners and carried
them into the English slave factory at
Cape Coast Castle to stand trial.
Eventually, 52 of these pirates were
condemned to hang, 20 to serve as
manual laborers in the Royal African
Company’s gold mines (which none of
them survived), 17 to transportation to
Marshalsea Prison in London (only four
reaching that destination alive), while
the 76 others were either acquitted or
reprieved. These numbers were totally
insignificant when measured against the
tens of thousands of sailors serving at
sea, yet Roberts’ demise marked a dis-
tinct watershed in the history of piracy.
Half a century earlier his intelligence,
charisma, and courage might have earned
him a knighthood, such as Morgan and
De Graaf had received, or at least offers
of wartime command and a comfortable,
even honorable retirement ashore.
Instead, his meteoric rise had seen him
chased to the far ends of the Earth, with
every government’s hand raised against
him. Despite having captured more than
400 vessels during his spectacular career,
this success had not become transformed
into either financial or social rewards. He
ended his days in a watery grave, leaving
lesser marauders to ponder what their
own fate must be, where such a talented
leader as Roberts had failed. Indeed, it
was Ogle who received the knighthood,
from a country grateful that he had slain
this hated pirate.
See also
Moidore.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 31,
32 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1933).
Journals of the Board of Trade and
Plantations, Volume 4: November
1718
December 1722, Journal Books
W and X (London: His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1925).
ROCHE, GEORGE
(fl. 1691
1697)
English planter from Antigua, who
served as a militia officer and raider
 Roche, George (fl. 1691
1697) 757

A PIRATE COVENANT
One of the unforeseen consequences of Bartholomew Roberts’ abrupt end off the
West African coast in February 1722, was that the written articles governing the con-
duct of his pirate crew survived his unexpected surprise and death. By this point in the
18th century, with roving on the decline, charters which freebooters had typically
agreed to were becoming more like secret covenants. Indeed, pirates were often at
great pains to destroy any such papers whenever in danger of being captured, as
they realized that they could be presented against them as evidence in a court of law.
Such exactly occurred with the set of articles found in Roberts’ cabin, which when
read into the record at his surviving crewmen’s trial, were shown to stipulate that:

I. Every man shall have an equal vote in affairs of moment. He shall have an equal
title to the fresh provisions or strong liquors at any time seized, and shall use them
at pleasure, unless a scarcity may make it necessary for the common good that a
retrenchment may be voted.
II. Every man shall be called fairly in turn by the list on board of prizes, because over
and above their proper share, they are allowed a shift of clothes. But if they
defraud the company to the value of even one dollar in plate, jewels, or money,
they shall be marooned. If any man rob another, he shall have his nose and ears
slit, and be put ashore where he shall be sure to encounter hardships.
III. None shall game for money, either with dice or cards.
IV. The lights and candles should be put out at eight at night, and if any of the crew
desire to drink after that hour, they shall sit upon the open deck without lights.
V. Each man shall keep his piece, cutlass, and pistols at all times clean and ready for
action.
VI. No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them. If any man shall be found seduc-
ing any of the latter sex and carrying her to sea in disguise, he shall suffer death.
VII. He that shall desert the ship or his quarters in time of battle, shall be punished by
death or marooning.
VIII. None shall strike another on board the ship, but every man’s quarrel shall be ended
on shore by sword or pistol, in this manner: at the word of command from the quar-
termaster, each man being previously placed back to back, shall turn and fire im-
mediately. If any man do not, the quartermaster shall knock the piece out of his
hand. If both miss their aim, they shall take to their cutlasses, and he that draws first
blood shall be declared the victor.
IX. No man shall talk of breaking up their way of living, till each has a share of
£1,000. Every man who shall become a cripple or lose a limb in the service, shall
have eight hundred pieces-of-eight from the common stock, and for lesser hurts
proportionately.
X. The captain and the quartermaster shall each receive two shares of a prize; the master
gunner and boatswain, one and one half shares; all other officers, one and one
quarter, and private gentlemen of fortune [i.e., ordinary hands] one share each.
XI. The musicians shall have rest on the Sabbath Day only, by right; on all other days, by
favor only.
758 Roche, George (fl. 1691
1697)
during King William’s War, then later
moved to Pennsylvania.
According to the French chronicler-
priest Jean-Baptiste Labat, Roche took
part in the English invasion of Guade-
loupe in 1691—during the second year
of the conflict known as King Wil-
liam’s War, and prior to the priest’s ar-
rival in the Antilles—in which the
Governor’s aide mayor Jean, Sieur de
Bordenave, was killed. A few years
later, after peace was reestablished and
Roche had resumed his practice of
smuggling contraband goods across to
that French colony at night, he came to
know Labat and once boasted of hav-
ing personally slain Bordenave:
. . . in proof of which he showed
some buckles and a silver badge he
had removed from his body. He gave
me the badge, which I gave to Ma-
demoiselle [Christine] Radelin,
daughter of the Sieur Bordenave,
who immediately recognized it as
her father’s.
Just prior to the official proclamation
of the Treaty of Ryswyck in 1697, both
English and French raiders had redoubled
their efforts in those waters, hoping to
secure one final haul of plunder before
peace was declared. Roche had evidently
been one such freebooter commander, for
on the night of October 14
15, 1697, he
had appeared off Martinique’s harbor of
Marigot with a vessel bearing eight guns
and almost 80 men. Roche had brought
more than 60 of them ashore in two
boats, his approach being undetected
because the French had neglected their
lookouts ‘‘on seeing the night so dark,
and the seas so agitated.’’ Leaving two
men to guard each of his beached boats,
Roche infiltrated the town, but was
discovered and driven off, suffering
seven dead and one captured.
Two-and-a-half weeks later, he reap-
peared off Fonds Saint-Jacques, three
miles farther up the Martinican coast,
and once again attempted to land. The
night being clear and moonlit, his boats
were spotted while still offshore and
challenged by Labat himself, backed by
a party of armed black slaves. Surprised
to hear themselves hailed, the English
‘‘replied in good French that they were
from Basse-Terre [Guadeloupe]’’ and
seeking the Sainte-Marie anchorage.
Undeceived, Labat in turn tried to lure
Roche ashore, but when the English sud-
denly bent their oars and veered back out
to sea, his slaves opened fire. Roche
allegedly suffered another three killed
and five wounded before his boats could
pull out of range, in one of the very last
actions of King William’s War.
Emigration to Pennsylvania
(1704)
Six years later, during the early phases of
the next Anglo-French conflict known
as Queen Anne’s War, Roche, now a
planter and trader of some substance,
emigrated to Pennsylvania, and so was
mentioned in a letter written by James
Logan from Philadelphia late in 1703 to
William Penn, with the following words:
‘‘There is one George Roach [sic] lately
arrived here from Antigua, a very rich
and good-natured man.’’ Next year, Isaac
Norton would add in another letter to his
friend Jonathan Dickinson:
The gentleman thou hast heard of is
a Captain George Roche, from Anti-
gua; he has bought Captain Smith’s
plantation over Schuylkill, and the

little place that was Chanlott’s on
this side of that river, and there he at
present lives. He has also bought
Christopher Sibthorpe’s house, and
last week has taken most of Samuel
Carpenter’s warehouses and part of
the dwelling house, and carries on a
great trade, especially to Antigua.
Roche also became a member of Pennsyl-
vania’s provincial Council, and obtained
Roche, George (fl. 1691
1697) 759
a Captaincy of one of its newly-formed
militia companies.
References
Labat, Jean-Baptiste, Memoirs, 1693
1705
(London: Routledge, 1970, John Eaden,
trans.).
Memoirs Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, Volume 9 (Philadelphia:
Lippincott, 1870).
 S

All the news of America is the swarming of pirates,

not only on these coasts, but all the West Indies over,
which does ruin trade ten times worse than a war.
—Judge Robert Quarry, 1700

SAINTE-BARBE OR SANTA name also came to be associated with

RBARA
BA
the structure itself.

Seventeenth-century expression for a SALMIGONDIS

powder-room or magazine, the first
used by the French and the second by
the Spanish.
The origin of this rather curious
name stems from early Church history:
Barbara was one of the first converts to
Christianity, for which her heathen fa-
ther Diosorus had her tried, tortured,
and executed. He personally carried out
her death sentence, but in an act of
divine retribution, was killed by light-
ning while returning home afterward.
For this reason, the young martyr
became known as the patron saint of all
those who worked with explosives, such
as gunners or miners. A votive image
of Saint Barbara being commonly dis-
played outside any powder-room, her
French name for a communal stew or
ragout made with a mixture of meats,
to which vegetables and other items
were added, the whole being highly
seasoned.
During the 17th century when salt-
ing, smoking, or pickling were the sole
means of preservation, people often
had to resort to extraordinary means to
render their meals more palatable. Sal-
migondis (usually spelled salmagundi
in English) became popular among
West Indian buccaneers, not the least
because it entailed a shared contribu-
tion to a general pot, from which
everyone would draw in true Brother-
hood fashion. In times of plenty, such

761
762 Salt Tortuga
meals could make for hearty eating.
One such concoction began with what-
ever available meats being:
. . . roasted, chopped into chunks
and marinated in spiced wine, then
combined with cabbage, anchovies,
pickled herring, mangoes, hard-
boiled eggs, palm hearts, onions,
olives, grapes and any other pickled
vegetables that were available. The
whole would then be highly seas-
oned with garlic, salt, pepper, and
mustard seed, and doused with oil
and vinegar—and served with drafts
of beer and rum.
Reputedly, Bartholomew Roberts was
breakfasting on salmigondis in his great
cabin aboard the Royal Fortune, when
he was caught and killed off the West
African coast by HMS Swallow.
Reference
Botting, Douglas, The Pirates (Alexandria,
VA: Time-Life Books, 1978).
SALT TORTUGA
English nickname for sun-bleached Isla
Tortuga, an island which lies off the
northern shores of Venezuela.
According to the buccaneer chronicler
William Dampier, turtling was such a
frequent activity among Caribbean sea-
farers, that this particular island had
come to be ‘‘so called to distinguish it
from the shoals of Dry Tortuga, near
Cape Florida, and from the isle of
Tortuga by Hispaniola.’’ When Dutch
salters had first discovered and then
flocked during the early 17th century to
exploit the vast natural salt-pans of the
Araya Peninsula, on the nearby South
American mainland, they were eventu-
ally denied access by the erection of a
Spanish fort near its entrance in 1623.
However, these Dutch interlopers merely
shifted their salting operations to other
nearby sources: Isla Tortuga, the Unare
River mouth, Curaçao, and the Antillean
isle of Saint Martin. The Spaniards were
unable to prevent visits to all of these dis-
perse sites by the persistent salters over
the ensuing decades. The name ‘‘Salt
Tortuga’’ therefore remained current long
after the Dutch had been superseded
by other foreigners in the quest for this
valuable natural preservative, although
French flibustiers would instead refer to
this Venezuelan island as ‘‘Tortille,’’ as
opposed to Tortue for their famous base
off of Haiti.
Ships from as far away as French
Canada and Boston would come every
year to tap the open Venezuelan
resource, oftentimes in protective groups
or with naval escorts, even during peace-
time. For example, Governor Richard,
Lord Bellomont, wrote from New York
to the Lords of the Admiralty in London
on October 27, 1699 (O.S.), two years
after King William’s War had ceased, to
explain that:
Captain Crow is of opinion, your
orders will not justify my sending
[HMS] Arundel about the middle of
December to convoy the ships to
Saltertudos [sic], but says if I will
positively order him, he will go. The
reasons for sending both the [Royal
Navy] ships there every winter are
that in winter no pirate ships come
on the [New England] coast, but may
very probably be caught there, whilst
if the ships are laid up here, they lose

their men. When I left England my
orders from you were to send the
Deptford and Fowey frigates every
winter upon that service. If there was
reason then, there is now.
In one of many other such references to
Salt Tortuga, Governor Walter Hamilton
of Antigua—complaining about Spanish
corsair depredations on September 10,
1718 (O.S.), to the Council of Trade and
Plantations in London—added that
he had just received ‘‘an account that
they have also at Tertuga [sic], alias
Saltatudas [sic], taken a ship and a sloop
belonging to the subjects of His Maj-
esty.’’ And in the uneasy aftermath to
the War of the Quadruple Alliance,
Samuel Cox reported from Barbados in
February 1721 how the frigate HMS
Seahorse of Captain Thomas Durrell had
arrived ‘‘to convoy the New England
vessels to Tortuga for salt.’’
A few years later, the Massachusetts
Bay Council would even complain of
the poor protection provided by Captain
James Cornwall of HMS Sheerness, who:
. . . while at Tortuga, he was so far
from encouraging the merchant ships
under his convoy, that he seques-
tered and engross’d a great quantity
of salt to his own use, to the great
damage and discouragement of the
trade, so that the merchant ships
who used to desire the station-ship
here for their convoy, choose to let
their vessels go without a guardship,
rather than be subjected to the impo-
sitions of the said Captain Cornwall.
See also
Dampier, William; Salt Tortuga (Volume 1).
Sample, Robert (fl. 1719
1720) 763
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 17,
30, 32, 35 (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1908
1936).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
SAMPLE, ROBERT
(fl. 1719
1720)
Subordinate of Captain Edward England,
who made his own independent foray to
Brazil.
England’s piratical squadron had
swept along the slaving coast of West
Africa during the spring of 1719, inter-
cepting numerous vessels and pressing
fresh hands. The marauders seized the
6-gun Elizabeth and Katherine out of
Barbados on June 27, 1719 (O.S.), which
they armed and manned more heavily
shortly thereafter, so as to convert it into a
pirate vessel which they rechristened the
Flying King. Sample was appointed to its
command, and allowed to separate from
England’s formation soon afterward with
the similarly-transformed Mercury—now
rearmed and renamed the Revenge—under
a colleague named Lane.
Together they crossed the Atlantic
into the West Indies, where according
to the chronicler Charles Johnson:
. . . they took some prizes, cleaned,
and sailed to Brazil in November
[1719]; they took several Portuguese
ships there and did a great deal of
mischief, but in the height of their
undertakings, a Portuguese man of
war, which was an excellent sailor,
came a very unwelcome guest to
them, and gave them chase.
764 Santo Y Se~na
Lane’s Revenge managed to temporarily
elude this warship, although not long
afterward he was wrecked and lost on the
Brazilian coast. Sample had meanwhile
been forced to beach his Flying King in
hopes of escaping ashore, but he and his
70 men were quickly caught by their pur-
suers. Twelve pirates were killed outright
during this fighting, and of the survivors,
38 were later hanged by the Portuguese,
‘‘of which 32 were English, three Dutch,
two French, and one of their own nation.’’
See also
England, Edward.
Reference
Defoe, Daniel, and Johnson, Charles, A
General and True History Printed by
R. Walker, 1742.
~
SANTO Y SENA
Spanish system of passwords, based on the
Church calendar, and frequently employed
along the South American coastline.
If a vessel or fortress were approached
by strangers after nightfall, a saint’s
name would be randomly shouted out by
the sentry on duty, as a challenge. The
correct answer was to name the corre-
sponding place associated with each par-
ticular saint: for example, to a cry of
‘‘Santa Rosa,’’ the proper reply would be
‘‘Lima,’’ to ‘‘San Francisco Javier,’’ the
answer was ‘‘Navarra,’’ and so on.
This system had been introduced with
foreign pirates in mind, especially the
heretic English or Dutch, as they would
never have such pious answers ready on
their lips. Moreover, such a flexible sys-
tem permitted Spanish vessels to depart
on protracted voyages, without worrying
about a specific password being altered
during their absence.
Reference
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
SARGENTO MAYOR
Seventeenth-century Spanish military
rank, much more senior than its present-
day English equivalent would imply.
A sargento mayor was second-in-
command to a military governor of
a city, or to the commander of a large
garrison, or to maestre de campo (‘‘field
marshal’’) during a campaign.
SCROOPE OR SCROOP,
ROBERT (fl. 1692)
English captain issued a privateering
commission by the Council of Jamaica
on February 8, 1692 (O.S.).
That same year, he was listed as owning
quarter-shares in the sloops Diligence and
Dragon. As King William’s War was just
then entering its third year—with England,
Holland, and Spain arrayed against Fran-
ce—fears of a purported offensive out of
Martinique were gripping the British West
Indies. The Council of Jamaica conse-
quently initiated a series of defensive
measures, assuming leadership in such
matters because of the death by disease of
Gov. William O’Brien, Earl of Inchiquin,
on January 10, 1692 (O.S.). Jamaica’s for-
tifications were to be strengthened, artil-
lery installed, militia regiments mobilized,
martial law imposed, and privateering

commissions freely offered. The Council
even complained to the Lords of Trade and
Plantations in London that:
. . . our seafaring men leave us and seek
[commissions] elsewhere. To increase
our numbers, we beg that a free pardon
may be granted to privateers abroad,
to encourage them to return hither.
During this wave of warlike prepara-
tions, Scroope was issued a privateering
license, although no direct enemy threat
then materialized, as France’s Navy suf-
fered crushing reversals in European
waters that same spring.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
Thornton, Diana V., ‘‘The Probate
Inventories of Port Royal, Jamaica,’’
College Station, TX: M.A. thesis,
Anthropology Department, Texas A&M
University, 1992.
SEEGAR, EDWARD
See England, Edward
SHIRLEY, THOMAS
(fl. 1692)
English captain issued a special privateer-
ing commission by the Council of Jamaica.
Early in 1692, King William’s War
was just then entering into its third year,
with England, Holland, and Spain arrayed
against France. Rumors of a great French
offensive gathering at Martinique gripped
the entire British West Indies, spreading as
Sir Cloudesley 765
far as Jamaica. That island’s Council con-
sequently began adopting a series of de-
fensive measures, uncharacteristically
assuming leadership in such military mat-
ters because of the recent death by disease
of Gov. William O Brien, Earl of Inchi-
quin, on 10 January 1692 (O.S.). Among
the measures hastily taken, was one pro-
posing that privateering commissions be
freely offered. The Council even com-
plained to the Lords of Trade and Planta-
tions in London that:
. . . our seafaring men leave us and seek
[commissions] elsewhere. To increase
our numbers, we beg that a free pardon
may be granted to privateers abroad, to
encourage them to return hither.
During this wave of preparations, Shirley
was issued a privateering license on Feb-
ruary 12, 1692 (O.S.), although no enemy
invasion then ever ensued, as France’s
Navy suffered crushing reversals in Euro-
pean waters that same spring.
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
SIR CLOUDESLEY
Jocular English name for a 17th-century
drink, made of small beer and brandy,
often with sweetening, spices, and nearly
always lemon juice. This concoction
was apparently named in honor of the
famous mariner Sir Clowdisley Shovell
(1650
1707), both for his services
against the Barbary corsairs, as well as his
unusual—and dreamy—first name.
766 Skull and Crossbones
Headstone of an unknown pirate’s grave in Malaysia, engraved with a skull-and-crossbones.
(Mika Makkonen/iStockPhoto.com)
Reference
Partidge, Eric H., and Simpson, Jacqueline,
Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang
(London: Penguin, 1972).
SKULL AND CROSSBONES
Lamentably, not an expression current
during the 17th or early 18th centuries,
the usual term for the symbol displayed
by pirates being the ‘‘Death’s head.’’
SKUTT, BENJAMIN
(fl. 1693)
Longtime English planter on Barbados,
who of necessity financed the opera-
tions of privateers during times of war.
On May 3, 1676 (O.S.), Skutt was
mentioned as owner of the ship Allen of
Poole, and so was one of numerous farm-
ers and merchants of Barbados and the
Leeward Islands who were subject to
payment of a four-and-a-half percent
duty. On January 26, 1677 (O.S.), he
appeared before the Chancellor of the
Exchequer in the Treasury Chambers in
London on behalf of this group, to
request an adjustment, and was also pres-
ent almost exactly one year later, when
the matter of this duty was decided.
Skutt petitioned the Crown in mid-June
1693, the fifth year of the War of the
League of Augsburg (known in America
as ‘‘King William’s War’’), that:
. . . in consequence of the losses of
West Indian merchants, he may have
a license for his advice boat of 150
tons and 16 guns to sail to and from

Barbados, also a commission for her
as a private man o’ war, and immu-
nity from embargo or press gang.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 14
(London: His Majestys Stationery
Office, 1903).
Calendar of Treasury Books, Voume. 5:
1676
1679 and Volume 7: 1681
1685
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1911 and 1916).
SOCARRAS Y AGU € ERO,
BENITO (fl. 1689
1725)
Long-serving Spanish corsair, who
operated out of Santo Domingo.
Apparently, this rover had sortied
from the Dominican capital on privat-
eering cruises and coast-guard patrols
for more than two-and-a-half decades,
starting during King William’s War.
As late as 1725, he is known to have
brought in the captured Dutch pink
Jonge Bonte Koe of Master Nicolaas
van der Meer for adjudication.
Reference
Archive of Indies (Seville), Contadurı´a
1064 and Escribanı´a de C
amara de
Justicia 9B, twenty documents.
SOUTH SEA
Term originally applied to the Pacific
Ocean by the 16th-century conquistadores.
As the first Spanish explorers and
conquerors crossed through the native
Spanish Main 767
dominions of Central America and
Mexico, to emerge onto the shores of
this vast new body of water, their ini-
tial contacts gave them the impression
that it lay due south of the Gulf of
Mexico and Caribbean. The Spaniards
therefore referred to their latest discov-
ery as the Mar del Sur or ‘‘Southern
Sea,’’ to distinguish it from the former
two, which were collectively known as
the Mar del Norte or ‘‘Northern Sea.’’
This latter expression never really
entered into popular usage, although
‘‘South Sea’’ would remain in vogue,
even after future explorations had
revealed the Pacific Ocean’s true boun-
daries. Doubtless the presence of the
wealthy Viceroyalty of Peru due south
of Panama did much to perpetuate this
name, which then passed from Spanish
into the English language.
SPANISH MAIN
The northern coasts of present-day Pan-
ama, Colombia, and western Venezuela.
This curious name dates from the
early 16th century, when Spanish
explorers ventured beyond their initial
discoveries amid the Caribbean islands,
in search of what they believed would
prove to be the nearby Asian continent.
By coincidence, the first large land
mass that they charted contiguously
proved to be that of northern South
America, which these early pathfinders
dubbed Tierra Firme or the Mainland.
Even after further explorations had
revealed it to be but a portion of a vast
new continent, it remained customary
to refer to this particular stretch of
coastline by its original name. From
Spanish, the expression then passed
into English, soon being shortened into
the ‘‘Spanish Main’’ and occasionally
768 Strong, John (fl. 1686
1694)
misapplied to the waters lying off that
coast, rather than to the territory itself.
See also
Spanish Main (Volume 1).
STRONG, JOHN
(fl. 1686
1694)
English privateer and treasure-salvor,
who served in both Sir William Phips’
and Sir John Narborough’s fabulously
successful dives on a sunken galleon
north of Hispaniola, then launched a
similar mission of his own into the
South Sea, ending with his death on a
fourth and final such attempt at La
Coru~na, Spain, which unwittingly set
the stage for Henry Every’s mutiny
and subsequent venture into piracy.
Phips’ Expedition (1686
1687)
On September 12, 1686, Strong set sail
from the Downs, England, as first mate
aboard Phips’ tiny flagship James and
Mary. Accompanied by the Henry, the
two vessels proceeded to the Greater
Antilles and there pretended to begin
trading with the local Spaniards, while
discreetly searching for the remains of
the Nuestra Se~ nora de la Pura y Lim-
pia Concepci
on, a fleet vice-flagship
which had been sunk in a storm in
1641 while conveying a vast quantity
of Mexican bullion toward Spain.
Although unable to salvage the wreck
themselves, the Spanish authorities still
naturally regarded its treasure as their
own, and kept its half-forgotten resting
place a secret.
After a few weeks, however, the Eng-
lish located it on the ‘‘Ambrosian Bank’’
(today the Silver Bank, directly north of
Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic),
and worked the wreck until May 2, 1687,
when Phips set sail for England with
more than £200,000 in silver aboard. He
received a hero’s welcome on his arrival
there that same June, a naval guard being
placed aboard the James and Mary to
escort it to its anchorage at Deptford, and
prevent any treasure from evading the
royal taxes. (More than one year later,
Strong and four other officers were
arrested for allegedly smuggling £1,200
ashore without paying the requisite
duties, although these charges were
quickly dropped.)
Narborough’s Expedition
(1687
1688)
Knowing more silver remained at the
site, a second expedition was prepared,
with Strong now promoted to com-
mander of the James and Mary. His posi-
tion nonetheless remained a junior one,
as three larger vessels had been incorpo-
rated into the flotilla: Narborough him-
self headed the group aboard the King’s
frigate Foresight, while Phips com-
manded the 400-ton merchantman Good
Luck and a Boy, and the ship Princess
had also been added, along with the
former Henry. The five set sail on Sep-
tember 3, 1687, from the Downs, but
soon encountered heavy weather. Phips’
vessel was damaged and forced back into
Plymouth, while Strong lost sight of the
others off Cape Finisterre. He neverthe-
less pressed on to Barbados, where he
was eventually joined by Narborough on
November 16th.
By the time the expedition finally
reached the Silver Bank in mid-December

1687, they found it surrounded by more
than four-dozen craft. These and many
other local scavengers had been working
the wreck for months (including such
notables as the buccaneer Laurens de
Graaf and, perhaps, the English renegade
John Phillip Beare), making away with a
further £250,000. The interlopers were
driven off, and Narborough’s men settled
in to resume their work. But the gleanings
now proved slender, five months’ labor
resulted in little silver. In May 1688,
Phips sailed away for New England, after
which Narborough died. His body was
buried over the galleon, and the discour-
aged expedition weighed for England.
Strong evidently returned with these ves-
sels to London in early August 1688,
being detained shortly thereafter for his
alleged fraud.
South Sea Expedition
(1689
1690)
He was soon released, and also weathered
the upheavals surrounding the deposition
of James II in favor of the Protestant
rulers William and Mary (the so-called
‘‘Glorious Revolution’’ of the winter of
1688
1689), being then able to obtain
financial backing for a new, independent
salvage operation of his own into the
South Pacific. Information had been
received ‘‘of a rich wreck or two, at or
near to Santa Elena not far from the Bay
of Pun
a’’ off Guayaquil, on Spain’s Pa-
cific shores, which Strong proposed
locating with the same subterfuge as his
mentor Phips: a vessel would be supplied
with trade goods to visit this area, and
conduct clandestine commerce with the
local citizens (who were starved for Euro-
pean goods, on account of the Spanish
monopoly). This not only might result in
handsome profits, but more importantly
Strong, John (fl. 1686
1694) 769
would disguise the true intent of this voy-
age, which was to dive on the wrecks. Its
timing was furthermore favorable, in that
England and Spain were now united
against France in the War of the League
of Augsburg.
Consequently, the 270-ton ship Wel-
fare was prepared, with 40 guns and a
crew of 90 men and boys. A cargo of
woolen fabrics, ‘‘stockings, arms and
other ironworks, as hatches, hoes, etc.,’’
was loaded on board, it being speculated
this merchandise ‘‘would bring a return
of sixteen hundred per cent.’’ The Wel-
fare also carried ‘‘bombs and carcasses
for our defence, and to work on the
wreck, if there should be occasion to
blow up rocks.’’ Thus prepared, Strong
set sail from the Downs on October 22,
1689, touching at Plymouth, Madeira,
and the Falklands before entering the
Strait of Magellan on February 20, 1690.
It took Welfare several tries over the span
of three months and twelve days to claw
its way into the South Pacific, in ‘‘desper-
ate weather,’’ according to Strong’s log.
His first contacts with the coastal
Spaniards were not promising; they were
hostile on account of the numerous cor-
sairs already prowling their shores. The
Welfare struck northward until it reached
Pun
a on August 20, 1690, where Strong
had his first friendly meeting with two
Spanish merchantmen bound from
Guayaquil toward Payta. He learned of
the location of the shipwreck, ‘‘about
eight leagues within ye point of St.
Helena, about half a mile from the shore
in four fathom water, sandy ground.’’
The vessel had been the flagship of the
Armada del Mar del Sur, the 900-ton
Jes
us Marı´a de la Limpia Concepci
on,
which had gone down the night of
October 26, 1654, with ‘‘twelve millions
of pieces of eight, besides a great
770 Strong, John (fl. 1686
1694)
quantity of plate.’’ Supposedly, only a
small amount had ever been raised by
Spanish salvors, but Strong could not find
any trace of the remains when he anch-
ored over the spot on September 7, 1690.
The local inhabitants informed him that it
was 20 years ‘‘since they could see her,
by reason she is buried in ye sand.’’
Disappointed, Strong stood away
to Juan Fern
andez Island, where on
October 21, 1690, he found four Eng-
lish sailors who had been left there
three years earlier, by ‘‘a privateer that
were on these seas.’’ (This rescue pre-
dated Woodes Rogers’ discovery of
Alexander Selkirk on this same island
by 15 years and provided the inspira-
tion for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Cru-
soe.) The Welfare then continued down
the Chilean coast, suffering 11 men
killed when one of Strong’s landing
parties was slaughtered in the surf by
Spanish lancers. His return passage
through the Strait was completed in a
week, after which he headed northward
into the Caribbean.
Barbados (1691)
On February 17, 1691 (O.S.), the Welfare
came to anchor at the Barbadian capital
of Bridgetown, where Strong quickly
secured a contract to transport sugar to
London. Twelve days later, though, the
Governor impressed his vessel ‘‘to go
look after a [French] privateer which had
taken several ships about this island.’’
Strong sortied on March 15th, but could
not lure this raider close enough to
engage, nor overtake the swift French
craft ‘‘which sailed too hard for us.’’
Returning to Bridgetown, he finished his
lading and departed at dawn of April
15th, escorting an outward-bound con-
voy of 18 sail.
Off northwest Ireland, Strong inter-
cepted the Dutch flyboat Kroonprins
Frederik (Crown Prince Frederick), sail-
ing with Danish papers but a cargo of
French wine, as well as a Norwegian
vessel ‘‘laden with pickled salmon’’ and
other provisions destined for France. He
therefore seized both for trading with the
enemy, and carried them into Tynemouth
on June 14, 1691 (O.S.). The Welfare
had been absent for a year-and-a-half,
and one of its crew opined at the conclu-
sion to this voyage: ‘‘A traverse of near
40,000 miles might have promised more,
we for a long time, and to little purpose,
conversed with beasts and men.’’ The
profits proving modest, the investors
failed to recoup their money.
‘‘Spanish Shipping’’ Expedition
(1692
1694)
Nevertheless, Strong soon became in-
volved in another project, when in Janu-
ary 1692 a consortium formed to dive on
other Spanish wrecks. An Irish-born offi-
cer named Arturo O’Byrne had been
granted such a privilege by Carlos II of
Spain, in honor of two decades’ service
in the Royal Spanish Navy, during which
O’Byrne had risen to Admiral. Armed
with this patent, O’Byrne had sought
financial and technical expertise in
England, still allied with Spain against
the French. He had come into contact
with a wealthy London merchant called
Sir James Houblon, who had extensive
dealings with the Spanish trade, and
promptly organized a group of 68 invest-
ors to fund the expedition.
Because of his ample experience in
this area, Strong was retained to com-
mand the flagship. Preparations pro-
ceeded slowly because of problems
 Subigaray ‘‘Chipi’’ (i.e., Junior), Joannes De (fl. 1691
1694)
brought on by the war, and an ever-
expanding role for the expedition itself:
soon it was being designed to trade with
Spanish America and raid French West
Indian outposts, in addition to its original
salvage operation. By the time that the
flotilla finally prepared to quit Gravesend
in August 1693, Strong had been super-
seded by Charles Gibson as senior cap-
tain. Now a major enterprise, the force
consisted of the 46-gun flagship Charles
II (named after the Spanish King), as
well as the frigates James and Dove, and
the pink Seventh Son.
However, delays continued to plague
its departure, so that it was not until early
February 1694 that the ships at last arrived
in La Coru~ na, Spain. Strong died here
within a few days, depriving the expedi-
tion of its salvage expert, and spreading
unease among the demoralized men.
Gibson also lay ill within his cabin, and
the crews were not allowed ashore. After
three months of this treatment, being long
unpaid and in despair of ever seeing the
West Indies, the crew of the Charles II
rose under their first mate Henry Every,
carrying the ship out of harbor the night of
May 7
8, 1694, and launching one of the
most famous piratical careers.
References
Baer, Joel H., ‘‘‘Captain John Avery’ and
the Anatomy of a Mutiny,’’ Eighteenth-
Century Life 18 (February 1994), pp.
1
23.
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St Martin’s
Press, 1990).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
771
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic:
William and Mary, 1691
1692 and
1693 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901
1903).
Dyer, Florence E., ‘‘Captain John Strong,
Privateer and Treasure Hunter,’’ The
Mariner’s Mirror, Vol. XIII (1927), pp.
145
158.
SUBIGARAY ‘‘CHIPI’’
(I.E., JUNIOR), JOANNES DE
(fl. 1691
1694)
Dashing young French Basque priva-
teer, killed while fighting in New-
foundland, where he lies buried today.
Subigaray was born in the port-city of
Bayonne, in the southwestern-most corner
of France, in a house which still overlooks
the Nive River at 3 du Quai Galuperie.
His parents were Joannes and Marie-
Margerie de Subigaray, of whom little is
known. The infant’s name was most likely
originally spelled as Joannes de Subigarai
Chipi in his native Euzkadi, but which
was to be often garbled by French scribes
throughout his lifetime as ‘‘Subygaray,’’
‘‘Suhygaray,’’ ‘‘Suvigaray,’’ ‘‘Suigaray,’’
etc. The diminutive appendage Chipi, sig-
nifying Junior, is often erroneously incor-
porated into his surname as well, and even
such compressed versions as ‘‘Desuhigar-
aychipy’’ or ‘‘Desuigaraychipy’’ have
been recorded. It is possible that his sur-
name may actually have been an early
variant of the much more common mod-
ern Basque surname of Zubigaray.
Privateering Flair (1691)
Nothing is known about his early life,
except that Subigaray presumably took
to the sea at a young age, and made
772 Subigaray ‘‘Chipi’’ (i.e., Junior), Joannes De (fl. 1691
1694)
several voyages to the Americas aboard
merchantmen. The first official notice
of his activities occurred in the summer
of 1691, when King William’s War,
which had pitted France against the
combined might of England, Holland,
and Spain, was already entering its third
year. Despite his youth, Subigaray was
sufficiently seasoned as a commander
to raise the financing necessary to fit
out the 24-gun frigate L
eg
ere as a pri-
vateer, and make his first independent
forays. On June 8, 1691, he seized a
Dutch prize known as the Plie Dor
ee.
That same September, he daringly
trailed an enemy squadron and maneu-
vered his nimble vessel past three heav-
ily-armed escorts, to snap up a Dutch
storeship from amid this large forma-
tion’s midst. When carried into Saint-
Jean-de-Luz for adjudication, his prize
proved to be loaded with iron, arms,
tools, and saffron worth a total of
100,000 francs.
The young Captain’s successes quickly
inspired many other imitators and earned
him the Basque nickname of Croisic,
meaning ‘‘Little Corsair’’ (and which in
French would become spelled as Cour-
sic). No less a personage than the Gover-
nor of Bayonne—Lieutenant-General
Charles-Antoine, Duc de Gramont, Vice-
roy of Navarre and B
earn, etc.—was
asked to share in the financing of
L
egere’s future operations. The Governor
also wrote a glowing report to France’s
Minister of Marine, Louis de Ph
elypeaux,
Comte de Pontchartrain, describing a bold
action in early October 1691 when Subi-
garay—short of water and battling stormy
seas—fought his way by surprise into a
Spanish harbor to replenish his stock. By
the end of that same year, Gramont
could furthermore inform Louis XIV with
pride that Subigaray and other Basque
privateers had brought in a total of 125
prizes over the previous eight months.
The March 1, 1692, issue of the
Gazette de France described a dogged,
two-day pursuit by Subigaray of a pair
of large Dutch merchantmen bound
into San Sebasti
an. He had finally
fought his way aboard one of these
ships—an imposing vessel of 36 guns,
100 men, and 500 tons—on the morn-
ing of February 18th, despite being
bloodily repulsed twice and receiving a
musket-round in his shoulder. The
defenders even continued their stub-
born resistance from inside the forecas-
tle and below decks, requiring another
three-quarters of an hour of vicious
fighting to be fully subdued. Coursic
suffered five dead and 35 wounded
during this entire five-hour fracas,
while only 18 Dutchmen emerged from
the battle unscathed. Their ship was
carrying a valuable cargo of sails,
masts, cordage, powder, and other na-
val stores for a new Spanish flagship
which had just been launched at Los
Pasajes arsenal.
Then while limping homeward into
Bayonne a few days later, the battered
L
eg
ere was intercepted at dawn by the
120-man English privateer Princess,
allegedly armed with 64 guns.
Onlookers clustered anxiously ashore
along Boucau Beach could see how
Subigaray out-dueled his larger oppo-
nent by 3:00 P.M. The young Captain
therefore reentered port with this latest
capture as well, to an ecstatic hero’s
welcome. Governor Gramont even
wrote on March 12, 1692, to request
that the King present him with a
medal, but Pontchartrain instead
replied 10 days later, that Louis had
decided to accord Subigaray the singu-
lar honor of a commission in France’s
 Subigaray ‘‘Chipi’’ (i.e., Junior), Joannes De (fl. 1691
1694)
Royal Navy as a Junior Captain (capi-
taine de fr
egate), with the further
intention of placing him in command
of one of two new royal frigates being
built in the Bayonne yards.
Naval Appointment (1692)
Major defeats suffered by France’s regu-
lar Navy at Barfleur and La Hogue dur-
ing this same spring of 1692, had finally
convinced the Crown to shift its naval
strategy away from set-piece battles—in
which its fleets were clearly over-
matched by the English and Dutch—to
opt for swift sorties and destructive com-
merce-sweeps by lone squadrons or ves-
sels. So as to better conduct such
independent campaigns, skilled privateer
captains were to be admitted for the first
time into the Navy’s command structure,
traditionally the preserve of the nobility.
Such unpaid, temporary wartime
appointees were to become known as
officiers bleus or ‘‘blue officers.’’
Subigaray therefore received just
such a ‘‘blue’’ appointment on October
1, 1692, to assume command over the
soon-to-be completed royal frigate
Aigle. This 36-gun, 300-ton vessel was
launched that same December, along
with its sister-ship Favori, at the Ba-
yonne yards of F
elicien Arnaud. While
commissioning was being completed
and a mission planned for next spring
by the Crown authorities in the distant
capital, Coursic was free to continue
patrolling throughout that winter
aboard his L
eg
ere, leading a force of
privateers.
Unfortunately, his impulsiveness led
him to order an attack immediately on
sighting an unidentified squadron off
Cape Ortegal, without pausing to hoist
the usual recognition-signals. It was only
773
when Subigaray’s flotilla had closed to
within firing-range and the first broad-
sides were about to be unleashed, that
he recognized the vessels as a French
naval squadron under Captain Claude,
Chevalier de Forbin, so that a tragedy
was narrowly averted. Yet this tactical
blunder was nonetheless taken very seri-
ously at Versailles, and the over-zealous
young ‘‘blue officer’’ was suspended
temporarily from holding naval com-
mand in March 1693. Still, he contin-
ued roving aboard L
eg
ere, and even
seized the rich English prize Success of
Barnstaple on May 21st.
Spitsbergen Raid (1693)
Within a month, Subigaray was restored
to his naval rank, so as to participate in
a strike that upcoming summer against
the lucrative Dutch whaling-operations
at Spitsbergen on the Arctic Circle.
France’s naval planners had decided to
send a squadron to that remote locale
led by the ‘‘red’’ Commodore Antoine
d’Arcy de La Varenne, aboard his new
50-gun, 500-ton flagship P
elican. Subi-
garay was to command Aigle, accompa-
nied by Favori under his fellow-Basque
privateer, the 48-year-old ‘‘blue’’ Cap-
tain Louis de Harismendy. The 44-gun,
500-ton privateer Prudent of Captain
Jacques Gouin de Beauchesne of Saint-
Malo was to round out this force.
La Varenne’s quartet of warships
departed Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the
morning of June 30, 1693, and after a
month of steadily sailing due northward,
sighted Svalbard Island. The French
flagship dropped anchor within its South
Bay, while La Varenne’s three consorts
chased after the scattering Dutch
whalers. Harismendy returned with
three prizes, and Coursic two, before
774 Subigaray ‘‘Chipi’’ (i.e., Junior), Joannes De (fl. 1691
1694)
both commanders were told to circle
around to the northern tip of the
island, and find the main Dutch an-
chorage. At dawn of August 6, 1693,
Aigle and Favori pushed through the
ice-floes outside Treurenburg Bay, to
find 40 Dutch ships anchored inside,
in a defensive crescent. The French
sent in a launch to call on the tough
whalers to surrender, and when this
was refused, fighting erupted shortly
after 8:00 A.M.
After five hours of furious broad-
sides, during which each French frigate
expended almost 1,600 rounds, the
Dutch began to use their longboats to
escape, by warping out of the bay. The
triumphant Subigaray and Harismendy
were left with 13 prizes, of which two
were so badly damaged that they had
to be burned. After effecting repairs on
their own warships, the two French
commanders set sail with their 11
remaining prizes on the evening of
August 7, 1693, meeting Prudent two
days later at sea, with two captive
Dutch store-ships of its own. All three
raiders rejoined P
elican inside South
Bay on August 10th, a total of 26
prizes being assembled. Fifteen were
scuttled, after which Coursic was
assigned six of the remainder and
Harismendy five, weighing anchor by
August 14th to escort them homeward
into Bayonne. P
elican and Prudent
meanwhile split off to cruise down the
British coastline, snapping up a West
Indian convoy that they chanced to
meet off Cape Clear.
Subigaray and Harismendy became
separated from each other by a thick
mist shortly after weighing, and the
energetic young Captain even tried to
sail his Aigle to rejoin the flagship off
the Orkneys, in hopes of seeing more
action, but in vain. The dispersed
squadron and its many prizes nonethe-
less straggled into Bayonne over a few
weeks in mid-September 1693, to a ju-
bilant reception. On September 25th,
Pontchartrain even wrote to inform
Governor Gramont that the King had
been ‘‘very pleased with what the two
officers [Subigaray and Harismendy]
and their crews did on this occasion,
and you can assure them that he will
remember this on a future occasion.’’
Yet even with the royal expedition to
Spitsbergen well concluded, and the
European campaigning season winding
down with the onset of winter, the rest-
less Subigaray launched yet another
sudden privateering sally from Bayonne
on November 21, 1693, emerging with
Aigle, Favori, Entreprenant, and Jolie
to chase away some enemy raiders
prowling the coast of Gascony.
Death at Newfoundland (1694)
Once winter passed, a new royal expedi-
tion was prepared in April 1694, to
mount a similar foray against the Eng-
lish fisheries of the Grand Banks of
Newfoundland. Again, Coursic’s Aigle,
Harismendy’s Favori, and Gouin de
Beauchesne’s Prudent were to sail to-
gether, this time across the North Atlan-
tic for Canada under the leadership of
Commodore Pierre Vidard, Seigneur de
Saint-Clair, aboard his new 54-gun, 850-
ton flagship Gaillard. Funding for the
flagship was to be furnished by the
Crown, but the rest of this squadron was
to have their expenses underwritten by
private investors, the Commodore him-
self contributing 1,000 e
cus toward this
venture. All four warships departed
Bayonne on May 26, 1694, pausing at La
 Subigaray ‘‘Chipi’’ (i.e., Junior), Joannes De (fl. 1691
1694) 775

Rochelle, before shouldering their way

out into the open Atlantic rollers.
Despite reaching Plaisance (modern
Placentia) Bay in Newfoundland safely,
this expedition’s fortunes then fared
badly. Saint-Clair decided to remain at
anchor with his flagship, while detaching
his three consorts for an attack under
the temporary command of his ‘‘red’’
Flag-Captain Duvignau (also spelled
Du Vignau, Du Vigneau, etc.) With
Coursic’s Aigle in the lead, this trio
circled around southern Newfoundland
to attempt to penetrate the harbor at
Forillon or Ferryland, a major anchorage
and shore-establishment for the English
fisheries.
On approaching it on September 10,
1694, though, the raiders found their
opponents forewarned and well ready
to receive them. The letter-of-marque
Captain William Holman had used his
emergency authority, as well as the
crew of his 16-gun ship William and Drawing of Joannes de Subigaray’s broken
Mary; to throw up strong defenses. grave-marker at Placentia; it has since
Four shore-batteries bristling with a been reassembled and is today preserved.
total of 30 guns had been installed; (Howley, Rt. Rev. Bishop. The Old Basque
plus all local English inhabitants had Tombstones of Placentia, 1902)
been mustered, as well as the crews
from the eight or nine other anchored equipment and a line from Harismendy’s
vessels. Committed to an attack, Favori to help refloat the grounded Aigle,
though, Duvignau aboard Aigle ordered although Duvignau angrily accused the
Coursic to rush the entrance regardless, men of desertion. Eventually, the stranded
hoping to fight his way inside. But the frigate was refloated by the rising tide,
frigate ran aground at the channel’s and managed to stagger back out of
narrowest point, directly under fire Ferryland Bay with its dying young com-
from the English batteries, and in a mander aboard, after being under fire for
position that the trailing Favori and eight hours. Favori took it under tow, and
Prudent could not get past. all three French vessels limped back to
Subigaray fell mortally wounded, and rejoin Saint-Clair at the Placentia Bay an-
discipline collapsed as the French Flag- chorage by September 15, 1694.
Captain could not communicate with most There, the Basque privateers carved a
of his Basque subalterns and crew. In the stone grave-marker to bury their beloved
heat of battle, according to its Basque Captain, while heated recriminations
seamen, a boat was launched to get were being exchanged. Duvignau—guilty
776 Sunday Keeping
because of his clumsy and bloody
repulse—lodged formal charges against
several surviving ‘‘blue’’ officers, so as
to affix blame. Saint-Clair meanwhile
wrote directly to France, trying to explain
his expedition’s failure (and his own lack
of active participation) by blaming the
Governor of Placentia, Jacques-François
de Montebon de Brouillan. The Basque
seamen remained openly surly with their
French leadership. It was a disappointed
and cantankerous squadron which quit
Placentia on October 15, 1694, to escort
home a merchant convoy, and leaving
behind the remains of Subigaray.
See also
Blue Officers; Holman, William.
References
Duc
ere, Edouard, ‘‘Un corsaire basque sous
Luis XIV, d’apres des documents
in
edits,’’ Revue Internationale des
Etudes Basques (1908), pp. 76
82,
222
229, and 302
312.
Horwood, Harold and Butts, Ed, Bandits
and Privateers: Canada in the Age of
Gunpowder (Toronto: Doubleday, 1987).
Howley, Michael F., The Old Basque
Tombstones at Placentia (Ottawa, 1902).
SUNDAY KEEPING
Religious observance practiced by cer-
tain pious New Englanders, of refraining
from doing any work on the Sabbath.
A long-established custom ashore,
many religious-minded skippers would
also depart the fishing banks prior to the
weekend, so as to anchor in a quiet harbor
and spend the Lord’s Day in restful
contemplation, without any labors beyond
routine shipboard duties. When 13 such
‘‘Sunday Keeper’’ fishing-schooners from
Marblehead stood into Port Roseway at
the southwestern tip of Nova Scotia to
anchor on Friday, June 15, 1722 (O.S.),
they found the pirate brigantine Rebecca
of Captain Ned Low already inside, who
pillaged them all.
See also
Low, Edward.
Reference
Ashton, Philip, Jr., Ashton’s Memorial: An
History of the Strange Adventures and
Signal Deliverances of Mr. Philip
Ashton (Salem, MA: Peabody Museum,
1976).
SWAN, CHARLES
(fl. 1684
1686)
English adventurer who roamed the
South Sea.
As a young man, Swan had served
under Henry Morgan at the sack of
Panama. More than 10 years later, he
was residing in England when the sensa-
tional trial of Bartholomew Sharpe was
held, revealing new knowledge about the
Spanish Pacific. In particular, Swan met
Sharpe’s companion Basil Ringrose in
London, and after exchanging reminis-
cences, decided to raise a peacetime trad-
ing expedition by traveling around the
Horn into South America. Ringrose
agreed to invest in this venture and
accompany it, so that soon the 16-gun
Cygnet was being furnished with a crew
of 60 men and £5,000 worth of merchant
 Swan, Charles (fl. 1684
1686) 777

Second Wave Pacific, 1684
1687.

N
778 Swan, Charles (fl. 1684
1686)
traders’ goods, weighing on October 1,
1683. A few months later, at the entrance
to the Strait of Magellan, they encoun-
tered the Nicholas of John Eaton, also
out of London on a similar mission.
However, the latter had been operating
with a much more vigorous hand, leav-
ing a trail of destruction down the Brazil-
ian coast and capturing a Portuguese
prize, which sank in a storm. Some of
Swan’s men wished him to adopt the
same policy and when he refused, one
night nine deserted ‘‘after they saw they
could not prevail with me to play the
rogue.’’ Nonetheless, the two English
ships continued round the Horn in
company, but became separated by bad
weather.
On April 2, 1684, Cygnet entered the
Spanish port of Valdivia, Chile in an
open attempt to establish trade relations,
much as Sir John Narborough had done
14 years earlier. At first, everything
went well, with Swan even warning the
Spaniards about the presence of more
hostile Englishmen off the coast, but
once the initial surprise wore off, the
Spanish authorities ruthlessly reimposed
their monopoly over trade. Swan had
two men killed and others captured
while going ashore under flag of truce,
adding: ‘‘An ambuscade of between 100
and 200 men came out and fired upon a
poor eight of us in the yawl.’’
Rebuffed at Valdivia, he wandered
northward into the Gulf of Nicoya (in
present-day Costa Rica), where on Au-
gust 3, 1684, he met a small party of buc-
caneers under Peter Harris. They had
sortied from Jamaica on a straightfor-
ward freebooter raid, crossing the Isth-
mus of Panama, sacking the town of
Santa Marı́a, and defeating a Spanish flo-
tilla off Panama’s Pearl Islands. Swan’s
disgruntled crew now insisted on joining
them and he felt constrained to accede,
else he would have been left with ‘‘no
one to sail the ship.’’ He sold some of his
cargo to the buccaneers, retaining only
the silks and muslins, and insisting that
Cygnet’s owners receive a share of any
prize money. Reversing course south-
ward, Swan and Harris reached Isla de la
Plata (literally ‘‘Silver Island,’’ or
‘‘Drake’s Island’’) on October 2nd,
where they found the 36-gun Bachelor’s
Delight of Edward Davis.
Together they mustered close to 200
men, and on October 20, 1684, sailed for
the mainland. Paita was assaulted the
morning of November 3rd, but nothing
much of value was found before the town
was put to the torch. The Lobos Islands
were visited next, where Swan encour-
aged his men to sample the local wildlife
by ‘‘comparing the seal to a roasting pig,
boobies to hens, and the penguins to
ducks.’’ A second abortive raid followed
against Guayaquil in early December,
which ended when the pirates’ captive
Indian guide escaped as they were
marching overland. A few prizes were
then taken off the coast, but the rovers
realized that they were too weak for
greater enterprises, so headed northward
for Panama in hopes of meeting other
buccaneers crossing the Isthmus. At the
end of December, they captured an aviso
off Gallo Island bound for Callao, and
although its correspondence had been
flung overboard, some letters were
retrieved from the water quickly enough
to reveal the annual plate fleet had
arrived at Portobelo on November 28th,
which the Peruvian silver ships would
very soon have to sail to meet.
On January 8, 1685, the buccaneers
furthermore intercepted the 90-ton Santa
Rosa, before repairing to the Pearl
Islands to careen. On February 14th, a

fresh contingent of 200 French flibustiers
and 80 English buccaneers reached the
islands in coastal canoes, under the
command of François Grogniet and
Lescuyer. The flibustiers were offered
the Santa Rosa by Swan and Davis,
while the Englishmen were incorporated
into Cygnet and Bachelor’s Delight. In
appreciation, Grogniet presented the two
commanders with blank commissions
issued by the French Governor of Saint-
Domingue. Davis accepted, but
Swan—vainly striving to maintain some
semblance of legality—politely declined
with the observation that:
. . . he had an order from the Duke
of York neither to give offence to
the Spaniards, nor to receive any
affront from them; and that he had
been injured by them at Valdivia,
where they had killed some of his
men and wounded several more, so
that he thought he had a lawful com-
mission of his own to right himself.
More buccaneers were apparently on
their way, so a party was sent to await
them in the Gulf of San Miguel.
On March 3, 1685, they met Captain
Townley’s 180 men, mostly English, in
two captured barks. A few days later,
another bark bearing about a dozen Eng-
lishmen entered the Gulf of Panama from
the west, having separated from William
Knight off the coast of New Spain. And
on April 11th, another band of 264
mainly French flibustiers arrived across
the Isthmus under Rose, Le Picard, and
Desmarais. Swan availed himself of this
opportunity to send letters back across the
Isthmus to his wife and owners, explain-
ing his change of fortunes and beseeching
them to intercede with the King:
Swan, Charles (fl. 1684
1686) 779
. . . for as soon as I can I shall
deliver myself to the King’s justice,
and I had rather die than live skulk-
ing like a vagabond for fear of
death.
On June 7, 1685, a fleet of six Spanish
men o’ war suddenly emerged from a
morning shower off Pacheca Island, and
caught the pirates unprepared. An inde-
cisive, long-range engagement ensued,
with the lightly armed buccaneer craft
unwilling to close with the mightier ves-
sels of the Armada del Mar del Sur, who
in turn could not overtake such nimble
opponents. Nevertheless the next day
ended with a Spanish victory, the pirates
being driven off and Peru’s silver deliv-
ered. The buccaneers fell out among
themselves, with Davis, Swan, Townley,
and Knight sailing northwestward as a
single group, raiding Realejo and Le
on
(Nicaragua) in early August 1685, for
little gain. After maintaining a fruitless
blockade of the Mexican coast until
March 1686, Swan concluded he would
rather head across the Pacific for the
East Indies. After making a few more
minor captures in the Philippines, he
died—possibly in an arranged accident—at
Mindanao.
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St Martin’s
Press, 1990).
Calendar of State Papers: Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
 T

We hear that there are three [pirate ships] cruising off Cape Comorin,
who vainly as well as impudently give out that they are
friends to no man, but to God Almighty.
—Letter from Bombay, 18 February 1697 (O.S.)

TAVERNS
In 1710, Thomas Walduck puckishly
observed that the first institution which
the English always established in a
new colony was a drinking-house—in
contrast to the Spaniards who began
with a church, and the Dutch who
started with a fort.
Some of the better known taverns
which dotted Port Royal’s crowded
streets prior to its destruction by the great
earthquake of June 1692 (see sidebar)
were the Black Dog, Blue Anchor,
Cat and Fiddle, Cheshire Cheese, The
Feathers, Green Dragon, Jamaica Arms,
King’s Arms, The Salutaçon [Saluta-
tion], The Ship, Sign of Bacchus, Sign of
the Mermaid, Sign of the George, Sugar
Loaf, Three Crowns, Three Mariners,
Three Tunns, and The Windmill.
Reference
Pawson, Michael and Buisseret, David J.,
Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
TEACH, EDWARD
See Thatch, Edward
TENTHS
In the 18th century, the percentage due
to the English Crown from any priva-
teer capture adjudicated before a court
of law, the proceeds of which were
assigned to the Lord High Admiral.
Shortly after the accession of Queen
Anne to the throne in April 1702, with
war about to erupt between England and

781
782 Tenths

PORT ROYAL EARTHQUAKE

At 11:40 A.M. on a busy Wednesday morning, June 7, 1692 (O.S.), an earth-
quake struck with such ferocity that much of the northern section of the town slid
into the harbor, at least two rows of its buildings and some 2,000 of 6,500
inhabitants being swallowed in 30 to 40 feet of water. Another 2,000 people
succumbed as a result of the tidal wave which followed almost immediately there-
after, swamping many of the remaining dwellings and even bursting open the
graveyard, adding to the subsequent spread of disease. Such a dramatic catas-
trophe was widely interpreted abroad as divine punishment, Port Royal’s lurid
past as a buccaneer roost leading some moralists to label it ‘‘the wickedest place
on earth,’’ although not having been previously known as exceptionally licen-
tious, when compared to other seaports.
Nevertheless, many frightened survivors temporarily shifted to ‘‘the Rock’’
(modern Rockfort) at the eastern extreme of the bay in the aftermath to this
calamity, while Council members examined several sites along the inner shore-
line for a new urban locale, rejecting Delacree Pen or ‘‘cattle-farm’’ where the
ferry connecting Port Royal to Liguanea Plain had traditionally deposited its pas-
sengers as too marshy and unhealthful. A hog-crawl farther east was therefore
selected and purchased for £2,000 from its absentee proprietor, Colonel
William Beeston, after which a gridiron-pattern of blocks measuring half-a-mile
wide by three-quarters of a mile deep was laid out by John Goffe, and 809 lots
were assigned for distribution.
Within six weeks of Port Royal’s devastation, the name of this new settlement
appeared in Council minutes as ‘‘Kingston’’; yet despite a decree directing that
all surviving property-holders were to erect a house ‘‘worth £50’’ within three
years of receiving their new allotment, little construction actually commenced, as
most Port Royal residents were at first inclined to rebuild on the original land-spit.
A further complication arose when Beeston arrived early in 1693, armed with a
knighthood and title as the island’s new Lieutenant-Governor, and immediately
contested the Council’s unilateral purchase of his hog-crawl, so that it reverted to
his ownership. He thereupon began privately selling lots at £5 apiece, while at
the same time using his official position to constitute Kingston into a parish—a
church soon being started on the southeast corner of King Street and the new set-
tlement’s ‘‘Parade’’ or main square—as well as ordering the island Secretary,
Receiver-General, and naval agent to all transfer their operations ashore from
Port Royal, so that merchants and others must also transpose.
However, Beeston’s blatant profit-mongering naturally retarded Kingston’s de-
velopment, as well as the fact that Jamaica remained distracted by on-going hos-
tilities against France known as King William’s War. The destruction of all
harbor defenses except for Fort Charles and part of Morgan’s Line by the earth-
quake and tidal wave soon tempted the French of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) to
mount an invasion attempt under their Gov. Jean-Baptiste Ducasse, who material-
ized off Jamaica’s eastern tip on the morning of June 17, 1694, with 22 vessels
bearing more than 3,100 men. The bulk of this fleet anchored in Cow Bay, 15

miles east of devastated Port Royal, hoping that they had taken the defenders by
surprise; yet on realizing that the English had been forewarned and were pre-
pared to resist, Ducasse contented himself with plundering isolated coastal com-
munities as far west as Carlisle Bay, before departing in late July.
Holland against France and Spain, she
appointed her husband and consort, Prince
George of Denmark, to this supreme
naval rank, while the influential John
Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, simi-
larly received the highest army rank of
Captain-General. The royal tenths from
all seizures made by English privateers
anywhere in the world would therefore be
destined to Prince George, and colonial
officials overseas were so advised. For
example, a year after these hostilities had
actually erupted, the Council of Barbados
during its May 5, 1703 (O.S.), session
entertained a motion from that island’s
Attorney-General, Edward Chilton:
. . . that no privateers be admitted to go
out of this Island until they have given
security to pay the Lord High Admi-
ral’s tenths of every prize they shall
take, which was granted. Then he pre-
sented a commission from England
empowering Charles Thomas to
receive the Lord High Admiral’s
tenths, and also a commission from the
Lord High Admiral appointing Cap-
tain Charles Thomas, James Ayns-
worth, and Thomas Stewart to be
commissioners to examine witnesses
of all prizes brought in here by letters
of marque, which the Board allowed.
A year-and-a-half earlier, before Anne
had even attained the throne or war had
been declared, the Council of Barbados
had passed an act omitting this perquisite.
Tenths 783
The Council of Trade and Plantations in
London therefore wrote reprovingly to
Governor Sir Bevil [or Beville] Granville
on February 16, 1704 (O.S.):
Upon consideration of an Act passed
at Barbados, November 18, 1701
[O.S.], entitled An Act to encourage
privateers in case of a war, wherein is
no provision for preserving to the
Lord High Admiral his tenths and
other dues according to the enclosed
Order of Council of March 6, 1665/6,
we are to advise you to endeavor that
a clause be inserted in some other Act
for reserving the said tenths and dues,
otherwise this Act will be repealed by
Her Majesty for that defect.
Three months later, the Board of Trade
and Plantations wrote more approvingly
to Governor-General Sir Christopher
Codrington on May 4, 1704 (O.S.):
‘‘The account of prizes taken and con-
demned at Antigua, we sent to my Lord
High Treasurer, and the account of His
Royal Highness’ tenths of prizes con-
demned at Nevis, to the Admiralty.’’
See also
Tenths (Volume 1).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 21, 22
784 Tew, Thomas (fl. 1692
1695)
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office,
1913
1916).
TEW, THOMAS
(fl. 1692
1695)
Rhode Island rover, who after prowling
the West Indies and Bermuda, became
famous for a single spectacular raid into
the Red Sea, which set a notorious
precedent for other pirate Captains such
as Henry Every and William Kidd.
As with many other freebooters, details
about Tew’s birth and early life remain
sketchy. It is alleged that he may have
been a younger son of Richard Tew and
Mary Clarke, who were known—when
that family emigrated out to North
America from Maidford in Northampton-
shire, England, in 1640—to have already
had three boys: six-year-old William,
four-year-old John, and two-year-old
Richard. A daughter Seaborn was deliv-
ered while they were still traversing the
Atlantic, and other children would follow
once they settled on Rhode Island—yet
no record exists of any son named
Thomas. Richard Tew’s younger brother
John, a doctor who had remained behind
in Towcester in England, had a son
named Thomas in 1656, who may possi-
bly have then traveled out to America as
well, to live with his uncle. Or the
Thomas who grew up to become the
famous rover may have also been a grand-
son of Richard and Mary, born to their
third son Richard.
Thomas Tew himself would later
claim that his roots on Rhode Island
extended back as far as 1640, and that
he had come from a good family. He
may have even been a distant cousin to
Henry Tew, who would much later rise to
become a Lieutenant-Colonel and Deputy
Governor of that colony. Knowledge
about young Thomas’ early seafaring
experience is equally vague, one of
the few hints being mentioned many
years afterward, when an old friend
named John Graves testified how,
while traveling from New England to
New York in October 1694:
. . . I saw three small vessels, a sloop,
a brigantine, and a bark, fitting out at
Rhode Island. The name of the mas-
ter of the sloop was Thomas Tue
[sic], whom I had known living in
Jamaica twelve years before. He was
free in discourse with me . . .
Graves’s deposition would seem to indi-
cate that Tew had been on Jamaica as
early as 1682, during a turbulent period
in Caribbean history, when he very well
may have served as a privateer.
In any event, by the time the War of
the League of Augsburg—known in the
American colonies as King William’s
War—erupted against France in June
1689, Tew was already a veteran seafarer,
who the following year allegedly arrived
at Bermuda to obtain a privateering
license. He must have proven successful
in this calling, for the first official notice
of his activities occurred in December
1692, when he purchased another com-
mission from that island’s obliging Lieu-
tenant-Governor, Isaac Richier. Armed
with this permit, Tew then bought a par-
tial share from four owners—Henry Fif-
ield, Thomas Walmsley, Richard Gilbert,
and Thomas Hall—in the 70-ton 8-gun
sloop Amity, which that previous year
had been operating as a privateer out of
Barbados, under Gilbert as its Captain.
First Red Sea Expedition (1693)
Tew furthermore recruited a crew of
46 seasoned veterans, and a mutual

agreement was signed between all the
parties on January 8, 1693 (O.S.), after
which Amity put out to sea, accompa-
nied by the privateer brigantine Amy
of the Bermudan Captain George Dew.
Ostensibly, both vessels were bound
for an attack against the French slaving
factory of Gor
ee in West Africa, but a
few days out into the Atlantic, Dew’s
vessel sprang its mast in a storm and
the two became separated. Now pro-
ceeding alone, Tew assembled his
ship’s company and proposed that they
choose another destination, farther
afield in the unprotected Far East:
. . . a course which should lead them
to ease and plenty, in which they
might pass the rest of their days.
That one bold push would do their
business, and they might return
home, not only without danger, but
even with reputation. The crew find-
ing he expected their resolution,
cried out, one and all: ‘‘A gold
chain, or a wooden leg, we’ll stand
by you!’’
Despite the illegality of venturing
against neutral shipping, Tew and his
men then altered course so as to round
the Cape of Good Hope and head into
the Indian Ocean.
After several weeks’ fruitless search,
Tew stemmed the Strait of Bab-el-
Mandeb (in Arabic, the Gate of Tears,
the narrow entrance into the Red Sea),
where he sighted a ‘‘tall vessel’’ lead-
ing six others—an immensely-wealthy
merchant convoy belonging to the
Great Mogul of India, which was mak-
ing on a trading-voyage for the Arab
ports deeper inside the Red Sea. His
heavily-armed privateersmen easily
subdued the 300 Indian troops manning
the flagship, in a one-sided fusillade
Tew, Thomas (fl. 1692
1695) 785
which carried that vessel without suf-
fering a single loss. Tew then carried
his prize for St. Mary’s, a tiny slender
island off the Madagascar coast, arriv-
ing by October 19, 1693 (O.S.), to
begin dividing his spoils, and careening
his own brigantine. According to a
deposition given more than five years
later in New York City before Gover-
nor Richard, Lord Bellomont, the
pirate who controlled that anchorage,
Adam Baldridge, would recall how:
Arrived the ship Amity, Captain
Thomas Tew commander, burden 70
tons, 8 guns, 60 men, having taken a
ship in the Red Seas that did belong
to the Moors, as the men did report;
they took as much money in her as
made the whole share run £1,200 a
man. They careened at St. Marie’s
and had some cattle from me, but
for their victualling and sea-store
they bought from the Negroes. I sold
Captain Tew and his company some
of the goods brought in the Charles
from New York. The sloop [Amity]
belonged most of her to Bermudas.
Captain Tew set sail from St. Marie’s
December the 23d 1693 [O.S.],
bound for America.
Amity touched at the open pirate port
known as Libertatia on Madagascar
proper, before steering back around the
Cape of Good Hope for the New World.
Traversing the Atlantic, Tew deliber-
ately bypassed Bermuda in favor of his
own home-port of Newport, Rhode
Island, where the Amity arrived in April
1694, having logged more than 22,000
miles on its epic 15-month cruise. The
local citizenry were bedazzled by this
exploit, and the exotic plunder brought
in: gold, silver, jewelry, elephants’ tusks,
ivory, spices, and silk, the whole valued
786 Tew, Thomas (fl. 1692
1695)
at more than £100,000. Tew’s seamen
received shares ranging from £1,200 to
an astonishing £3,000 apiece, and the
formerly inconsequential Captain now
found himself a rich man. He was
accorded a hero’s welcome by the towns-
people, although less so by honest John
Easton, the Quaker Governor of that pri-
vate colony. When Tew approached him
about obtaining a new privateering com-
mission, Easton asked where he intended
to use it. ‘‘Where perhaps the commis-
sion might never be seen or heard of,’’
Tew replied darkly, and offered to buy it
for the sum of £500; which the good
Quaker refused.
Tew therefore traveled to New York
with his family, where they were enter-
tained by the much more pliant Royal
Governor, Colonel Benjamin Fletcher.
He later described Tew as ‘‘what they
call a very pleasant man; so that at some
times when the labors of my day were
over, it was some divertissement as well
as information to me, to hear him talk.’’
Iron strong-box, probably of German or
Dutch manufacture, allegedly owned by
Captain Thomas Tew. It has an elaborate
locking-mechanism within its lid, plus a
dummy keyhole in its front panel. (Pirate
Soul Museum and Wyatt Gallery)
But their relationship truly flourished on
account of corrupt transactions, which
included the purchase of a privateering
commission for £300 on November 8,
1694 (O.S.). Meanwhile, Mrs. Tew and
her two daughters attended gala func-
tions at the Governor’s mansion, dressed
in rich silks with glittering diamonds
from the Orient, while Fletcher openly
bestowed a gold watch on her husband.
Tew also took some pains to write to
the Amity’s majority owners on Bermuda,
alleging that he had not been able to return
there as the sloop had sprung a mast, forc-
ing him to bypass that island—despite
having ‘‘for two weeks beat unsuc-
cessfully against head winds’’ in a vain
attempt to arrive. He furthermore bought
their cooperation by sending them a large
payment, reputedly equivalent to fourteen
times their original investment in Amity.
Second Red Sea
Expedition (1694)
Returning to Newport, Tew began to
prepare his sloop for another cruise.
When news of this development
spread, there was great excitement
throughout that colony, with ‘‘servants
from most places of the country run-
ning from their masters, sons from
their parents,’’ in the hopes of signing
on with Tew for this voyage. Some
lads even snuck aboard the Amity, try-
ing to sail as stowaways.
By the end of November 1694, Tew
was ready and got under way. He again
worked his way around the tip of Africa,
and into the Red Sea. However, when
another of the Great Mogul’s treasure
ships was finally encountered in Septem-
ber 1695, the results proved very differ-
ent. For in ‘‘the engagement a shot carried
away the rim of Tew’s belly, who held
his bowels in his hands for some space.
 Thatch, Edward, Alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ (fl. 1717
1718)
When he dropped, it struck such terror to
his men that they suffered themselves to
be taken without further resistance.’’
At Saint Mary’s Island off Madagascar,
Baldridge would record:
December 11th 1695 [O.S.]: Arrived
the sloop Amity, having no Captain,
her former Captain Thomas Tew
being killed by a great shot from a
Moor’s ship, John Yarland master,
burden seventy ton, 8 guns, as before
described, and about 60 men. They
stayed but five days at St. Marie’s and
set sail to seek the Charming Mary,
and they met her at Mauratan on
Madagascar and took her, giving Cap-
tain Glover the sloop to carry him and
his men home and all that he had,
keeping nothing but the ship. They
made a new commander after they
had taken the ship, one Captain Bob-
bington. After they had taken the ship,
they went into St. Augustine Bay and
there fitted the ship, and went into the
Indies to make a voyage, and I have
heard since that they were trepanned
and taken by the Moors.
See also
Bab-el-Mandeb; Baldridge, Adam; Dew,
George; Every, Henry; Kidd, William;
Trepan.
References
Botting, Douglas, The Pirates (Alexandria,
VA: Time-Life Books, 1978).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes
15
17 (London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1893
1899).
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
787
Documents Relative to the Colonial History
of New York, Vol. IV.
Dow, George F. and Edmonds, John H.,
The Pirates of the New England Coast,
1630
1730 (Salem, MA: Marine
Research Society, 1923).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Leamon, James S., ‘‘Governor Fletcher’s
Recall,’’ William and Mary Quarterly,
Third Series, Volume 20, No. 4
(October 1963), pp. 527
542.
THATCH, EDWARD, ALIAS
‘‘BLACKBEARD’’
(fl. 1717
1718)
Colorful ruffian who enjoyed a mete-
oric rise to fame as a pirate, before
meeting his inevitable and bloody
death.
Most contemporary sources indicate
that his surname was probably Thatch,
although some publications would sug-
gest that it might have been Teach.
Nothing is known about his birth or
early life, although it is believed that
he was originally from the great Eng-
lish seaport of Bristol, and had served
aboard privateers operating out of
Jamaica against the Spanish and
French during Queen Anne’s War.
Once these official hostilities ceased as
of April 1713, he evidently chose to
continue roving, one of many priva-
teers who, now finding themselves
unemployed, began drifting toward the
Bahamian archipelago. Cuban wartime
raids and the lack of any significant
commercial traffic left these beautiful
islands almost entirely depopulated,
788 Thatch, Edward, Alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ (fl. 1717
1718)

Edward Thatch or Blackbeard, as depicted in A General History of the Pyrates by Captain

Charles Johnson, 1724. (Jupiterimages)

only 27 families still remaining in
makeshift huts on its main island of
New Providence. Lawless rovers there-
fore began filtering into this void,
where they could live and prowl as
they pleased.
This migration accelerated notably af-
ter the annual Spanish plate fleet, home-
ward-bound from Havana, was driven by
a storm in late July 1715 onto the Florida
coast opposite, leaving a dozen rich gal-
leons strewn temptingly along 40 miles
of empty shoreline. Treasure-hunters
swarmed into this region to scavenge
among the debris and rob Spanish sal-
vage-teams, so that by the spring of
1716, Nassau had become a full-fledged
pirate haunt. Thatch apparently attached
himself to the crew of Captain Benjamin
Hornigold, and most likely was one of
26 hands who remained loyal when this
Captain was voted out of office in favor
of Samuel Bellamy in early June 1716,
after an unprofitable cruise around Cuba
to French Hispaniola. Hornigold’s woes
were then compounded when he ven-
tured north aboard a small sloop to South
Carolina, where his vessel was destroyed
 Thatch, Edward, Alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ (fl. 1717
1718)
by local privateers that same month,
although he somehow managed to escape
and reestablish himself in the Bahamas
by the next year.
The first direct mention of Thatch in
official records occurred in March
1717, when Captain Thomas Walker—a
former dignitary from Nassau, who
had been driven over to Abaco Island
by the excesses of its piratical
occupiers—declared:
. . . that five pirates made ye harbor
of Providence [i.e., Nassau] their
place of rendezvous, viz.: Horngold,
a sloop with 10 guns and about 80
men; [Henry] Jennings, a sloop with
10 guns and 100 men; Burgess, a
sloop with 8 guns and about 80 men;
White, in a small vessel with 30
men and small arms; Thatch, a sloop
6 guns and about 70 men. All took
and destroy’d ships of all nations,
except Jennings, who took no
English.
A few months later, the castaway Cap-
tain Matthew Musson would report to
the Council of Trade and Plantations in
London how these pirates had even
begun fortifying Nassau’s harbor, add-
ing that: ‘‘Most of the ships and vessels
taken by them, they burn and destroy
when brought into the harbor, and oblige
the men to take on with them.’’
It is possible that such a fate befell
the 6-gun renegade sloop Revenge of
Major Stede Bonnet out of Barbados,
as a few months afterward the Boston
News-Letter would be reporting how
he had been wounded and his crew
suffered almost two-score casualties in
assaulting a Spanish warship, so that
after ‘‘putting into Providence, the
place of rendezvous for the pirates,
789
they put the aforesaid Captain Teach
on board for this cruise.’’
Sweep up the Atlantic Seaboard
(Autumn 1717)
This cruise, made after augmenting
Revenge’s armament to 12 guns and
manning it with well over 100 cut-
throats, was a brazen piratical foray
northward by Thatch to prey on the
peacetime maritime traffic circulating
off British North America. Around
September 29, 1717 (O.S.), Thatch
intercepted the sloop Betty off Virgin-
ia’s Cape Charles, pillaging it ‘‘of cer-
tain pipes of Madeira wine and other
goods,’’ before sinking it. Two weeks
later, a large ship out of Liverpool was
taken near the mouth of Delaware Bay,
its Captain Codd and other survivors
relating afterward how Revenge was
‘‘commanded by one Teach, who for-
merly sail’d mate out of this port [Phil-
adelphia].’’ Shortly thereafter, the
snows Spofford and Sea Nymph were
seized as well, the latter being con-
verted into a pirate consort, helping
Thatch to make a string of more cap-
tures. Among the latter was a large
New York sloop under Captain Simp-
kins, which was also rearmed with 12
guns so as to serve as a second pirate
consort, and a third was procured from
Captain Goelet:
. . . who was lately taken by Teach
the pirate, coming hither [i.e., to-
ward New York] in a sloop from
Curaçao, half loaden with cocoa,
which the pirates threw overboard,
and man’d the sloop for a pirate, and
gave Goelet and his crew the Sea
Nymph snow to bring them home in.
Goelet saw the pirate take a ship and
790 Thatch, Edward, Alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ (fl. 1717
1718)
a brigantine or snow after parting
with them.
A subsequent edition of the News-
Letter added that Blackbeard had been
joined in his sweep by his old com-
mander Hornigold, for the merchant
Captain Pritchard arrived from Saint
Lucia with a tale, that on October 18,
1717 (O.S.):
. . . in Latitude 36 and 45 [near the
modern North Carolina-Virginia bor-
der] was taken by Captain Teach, in
company with whom was Captain
Hornygold; they took from him
about 8 casks sugar, and most of
their clothes. At the same time, they
took a ship from London [bound] for
Virginia, out of which they took
something and let them go.
Four days later, the marauders looted
the sloop Robert of Philadelphia and
ship Good Intent of Dublin inside Dela-
ware Bay, before abruptly disappearing.
Thatch had presumably decided to aban-
don this hunting-ground off Maryland,
Virginia, and the Carolinas, because
winter was approaching and the presence
of his pirate flotilla was becoming so
well known, that it was scaring away
potential prizes. He therefore veered
around and ran far south, steering so as
to materialize unexpectedly in the warm
waters of the Lesser Antilles.
West Indian Rampage
(November
December 1717)
Thatch’s shift into this new theater
quickly paid handsome dividends, for
on November 28, 1717, he sighted the
300-ton French slaver Concorde of
Captain Pierre Dosset within 60 miles
of Martinique, as it limped in from a dif-
ficult trans-Atlantic crossing (see side-
bar). Its 75-man crew had lost 16 men
during its protracted voyage, while
another 36 lay ill from scurvy and dys-
entery, so that Dosset’s vessel, with
only 14 guns mounted, proved no
match for the voracious pirates. Ac-
cording to the French Lieutenant Fran-
çois Ernaut, their attacker, ‘‘Edouard
Titche,’’ had two sloops under his com-
mand: Bonnet’s Revenge bearing 120
men and 12 guns, the other 30 men and
8 guns. The diseased French could
scarcely resist, so that after two pirate
volleys, the Concorde surrendered.
Thatch sailed his big new prize to
the island of Bequia in the Grenadines,
where its crew and 450 surviving
African slaves were cast ashore, while
the ship itself was ransacked. A cache
of gold dust was found, and four French
crewmen voluntarily joined the pirates,
while 10 other skilled hands were
pressed including a pilot, three surgeons,
a pair of carpenters, two sailors, and the
cook. Thatch and his crew then voted to
keep the slaver as their new flagship,
renaming it Queen Anne’s Revenge.
They hoisted the eight guns out of their
smaller pirate sloop and installed these
aboard, after which the empty sloop was
given to the stranded Frenchmen so as
to continue their interrupted voyage.
(Ernaud would later describe this castoff
vessel as ‘‘of Bermuda fabrication, of 40
tons or thereabouts.’’ The French would
rename it the Mauvaise Rencontre or
‘‘Bad Encounter,’’ and eventually suc-
ceeded in transporting all their African
captives from Bequia to Martinique, in
two trips.)
Thatch soon put to sea again, his
new flagship and Bonnet’s Revenge
 Thatch, Edward, Alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ (fl. 1717
1718) 791

BLACKBEARD’S LOST FLAGSHIP

Apparently, sometime during the spring of 1710—the eighth year of the conflict
called the War of the Spanish Succession in Europe, yet known in England’s
New World colonies as Queen Anne’s War—the French merchant Ren
e Mon-
taudouin of Nantes had acquired a captured 300-ton Dutch frigate armed with
26 cannon, whose original name may well have been Eendracht, as it was to be
renamed with the French equivalent of Concorde. Montaudouin had commis-
sioned this ship as a privateer, and it departed Nantes on its first such expedition
under French colors that same summer, a lengthy cruise which would last from
July 1710 to November 1711. During this year-and-a-half, Concorde traveled
down the west coast of Africa and across the Atlantic into the Caribbean, captur-
ing various English, Dutch, and Portuguese vessels.
Once hostilities between the Franco-Spanish alliance ceased against England
and Holland in April 1713, Montaudouin reduced Concorde’s armament to 16
guns, and fitted it out to serve as a peacetime slaver. The ship made one such
voyage that same year, returning home into Nantes to make a second successful
triangular slaving-run in 1715. On March 24, 1717, Concorde cleared Nantes
for its third such slaving-voyage, armed with 14 guns and manned by 75 sea-
men under Captain Pierre Dosset. They reached the slave-port of Ouidah in pres-
ent-day Benin by July 8th, gradually taking on 516 African captives. Dosset and
some other officers also secured about 20 pounds of gold dust through barter,
as their personal horde.
Concorde then weighed to make its trans-Atlantic run, but took nearly eight
weeks to complete its crossing, an unusually lengthy passage which claimed the
lives of 61 slaves and 16 crewmen, while another 36 sailors became seriously ill
from scurvy and dysentery. As a result, the debilitated slaver proved easy prey
when it came within 60 miles of Martinique, and was sighted by Thatch’s two
heavily-manned pirate sloops. Dosset was in no position to resist such strength,
so that after two pirate volleys, he surrendered Concorde.

either being joined or capturing a brig-
antine shortly thereafter, as within a
few days it was being reported that ‘‘a
great ship from Boston [the merchant-
man Great Allen] was taken at or near
St. Lucia or St. Vincent, by Captain
Teach the pirate in a French ship of 32
guns, a brigantine of 10 guns, and a
sloop of 12 guns, his consort.’’ The
captors had held Great Allen’s master,
Captain Christopher Taylor, ‘‘24 hours
in irons, and whipped him in order to
make him confess what money he had
on board, [then] burnt his ship, [and]
put his men on shore at Martinico [sic;
Martinique].’’ Thatch then struck the
French island of Guadeloupe on the
evening of November 28, 1717 (O.S.),
shelling the town and cutting out a
large ship which had just finished load-
ing with sugar, before vanishing into
the night.
Next morning, the English merchant-
man Montserrat of Master Benjamin
792 Thatch, Edward, Alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ (fl. 1717
1718)
Hobhouse had the misfortune to sight
‘‘two ships and a sloop, and thinking one
did belong to Bristol and the other two to
Guinea,’’ a subordinate named Thomas
Knight was rowed across in Montserrat’s
longboat to enquire whether they were
bringing any mail from home. Knight
was beckoned aboard, ‘‘but seeing Death
Head in the stern’’ as he drew near, sud-
denly realized his mistake and tried to re-
fuse, only to be compelled to do so by
growled pirate threats. On the morning
of November 30, 1717 (O.S.), the sloop
New Division of Antigua under Master
Richard Joy, was also taken by these
same ‘‘two pirate ships and a sloop, who
said they belonged to Barbados, and
enquired what vessels were along
shore.’’ Joy’s vessel was restored to
him after a crewman was pressed out of
it, then the pirates examined the Eng-
lish anchorage at Nevis from out at
sea—contemplating a possible cutting-
out operation against its anchored Royal
Navy warship, the 24-gun HMS Seaford
of Captain Jonathan Rose, although ‘‘the
[pirate] Captain being ill, prevented it.’’
This seemed to have been the earliest
mention of Thatch’s disease.
Although the captive Knight had been
deliberately misled as to the renegade
commanders’ names, he correctly noted
that Thatch’s flagship had ‘‘150 men on
board and 22 guns mounted, the sloop
about 50 white men, and eight guns.’’ The
pirate pair made a distant sighting of
HMS Seaford off the island of Saint
Thomas on December 2, 1717 (O.S.),
while it was transporting Governor Walter
Hamilton, yet chose not to engage.
Instead they pressed still farther west, car-
rying an English and Danish prize into
Saint Croix’s harbor to ransack over the
next couple of days. On December 5,
1717 (O.S.), Queen Anne’s Revenge and
Bonnet’s sloop-consort bore down on the
trading sloop Margaret of St. Kitts while
it was lying off Vieques Island near the
eastern tip of Puerto Rico under Master
Henry Bostock. This frightened Master
would later relate to Governor Hamilton
at Antigua how:
He was ordered on board and Cap-
tain Tach [sic] took his cargo of cat-
tle and hogs, his arms, books, and
instruments. The ship, Dutch built,
was a French Guinea-man [i.e.,
slaver], 36 guns mounted and 300
men. They did not abuse him or his
men, but forced two to stay, and one
Robert Bibby voluntarily took on
with them. They had a great deal of
plate on board, and one very fine
cup they told deponent they had
taken out of Captain Taylor, bound
from Barbados to Jamaica, whom
they very much abused and burnt his
ship. They said they had burnt sev-
eral vessels, among them two or
three belonging to these [Leeward]
Islands, particularly the day before a
sloop belonging to Antigua, one
[Robert] McGill owner. They owned
they had met the man of war on this
station, but said they had no business
with her; but if she had chased them,
they would have kept their way.
Bostock described this Captain as ‘‘a
tall sparse man with a very black beard,
which he wore very long,’’ and added
that he had informed his captors that an
‘‘act of grace’’ or royal pardon had been
granted for piracy and was expected
to arrive from England any day, ‘‘but
they seemed to slight it.’’ Instead, the
cutthroats demanded whether any other
vessels were trading off the nearby
Puerto Rican coast, and then sent
 Thatch, Edward, Alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ (fl. 1717
1718)
Bonnet’s Revenge ‘‘to look for them,’’
before finally telling Bostock that they:
. . . intended for Hispaniola, to ca-
reen and lie in wait for the Spanish
Armada [de Barlovento], that they
expected would immediately after
Christmas come out of the Havana
for Hispaniola and Porto Rico, with
the money [i.e., situados] to pay the
garrisons.
This information was not entirely accu-
rate, for although Thatch may well have
paused in nearby Saman
a Bay on the
northeastern shores of the modern Do-
minican Republic to watch for passing
ships, he eventually chose to careen his
ships on the island of Roat
an in the Bay
of Honduras.
Their arrival there in early February
1718 was witnessed by Captain William
Wade of the sloop William and Mary,
probably coming to anchor in Coxen’s
Hole. He later reported that there
‘‘came in a ship of about 40 guns and a
sloop of 10 commanded by . . . Edward
Thatch, having in all about 250 men
(70 or thereabouts being Negroes).’’
Wade also noted that these pirates
brought in two prizes. They forced him
to dump his valuable cargo of logwood
overboard, then beached his sloop so as
to act as a makeshift dock, to provide
them with a platform in cleaning their
vessels’ hulls.
Belize and Charleston
(March
May 1718)
Thatch and his pirates remained at
Roat
an for several weeks, seizing
whatever vessels happened to enter its
anchorage. They bragged to Wade
793
‘‘sundry times’’ that they ‘‘doubted not
but to take and have . . . His Majesty’s
ship Adventure,’’ a 36-gun frigate that
was then the largest British warship
stationed in the Americas. Finally, they
departed in mid-March 1718, after first
burning the two captured vessels which
they had arrived with, as well as
restoring William and Mary to Wade,
so that he would eventually be able to
salvage much of his jettisoned cargo
and limp back to Jamaica to tell his
tale.
Curiously, the departing pirates were
attacked off nearby Utila Island by a
small sloop. Mistaking Thatch’s forma-
tion for a group of merchantmen stand-
ing away from the Honduran coast
with cargoes of logwood, this vessel
closed one evening on one of Thatch’s
consorts and hailed, asking whence
they came. ‘‘Their reply was: from the
sea,’’ recalled a captive held aboard
this daring upstart, at which point
Thatch’s men promptly fired a hail of
musket-balls into their pursuer, forcing
it to surrender.
Their would-be attacker proved to be
the Dolphin, a small vessel which had
been attending on the British asiento
slaver Royal Prince and its naval escort,
HMS Diamond, while they were trad-
ing at Veracruz. Dolphin had quit that
Mexican port alone, ahead of these two
ships that previous month, only to have
its crew mutiny and turn pirate. Intrigued
because they knew the situation at Vera-
cruz, Thatch interrogated Dolphin’s
crew for information about these two
large British traders, learning that Dia-
mond’s crew had been weakened by
tropical diseases. Preston later reported
that the pirates ‘‘often threatened’’ to
take this Royal Navy frigate, although
Thatch first steered due west for what is
794 Thatch, Edward, Alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ (fl. 1717
1718)
now Belize, launching a spectacular raid
in early April 1718 against the logwood
fleet clustered at anchor off Turneffe
Atoll. The sloop Adventure of Captain
David Herriot was taken and forced
to join the pirate flotilla, which then
sailed eastward once again, passing near
the Cayman Islands and snapping up a
Spanish sloop off of Cuba as well.
Turning north, Thatch passed through
the Bahamas while avoiding Nassau,
where most of its rovers were now pre-
paring to welcome Woodes Rogers as its
first Royal Governor, ending forever its
role as a pirate refuge. Instead, Thatch
proceeded up the Atlantic Seaboard and
by May 22, 1718 (O.S.), had arrived in
the vicinity of South Carolina’s busy
seaport of Charleston with his Queen
Anne’s Revenge and three accompanying
sloops—Bonnet’s Revenge, Herriot’s
captive Adventure, and the Cuban prize-
manned by almost 400 pirates. It seemed
as if they were seeking an accommodat-
ing place where they might receive par-
dons and disperse with their booty intact,
but the Act of Grace only covered depre-
dations committed prior to January 5,
1718 (O.S.). The proceeds from their
most recent captures would therefore be
forfeit.
Governor Robert Johnson of South
Carolina described how on June 4, 1718
(O.S.), this formation ‘‘appeared in sight
of the town, took the pilot-boat, and
afterward eight or nine sail, with several
of the best inhabitants on board.’’ A frus-
trated Blackbeard angrily blockaded this
port, the crew and passengers of the
Crowley furnishing him with particularly
valuable hostages, including the London
merchant Samuel Wragg, who was also a
member of South Carolina’s colonial
Council, and his four-year-old son.
Thatch threatened to kill both and send
their heads to Governor Johnson, as well
as to ‘‘burn the ships that lay before the
town and beat it about our ears,’’ if he
did not receive a chest of urgently-
needed medical supplies. Apparently the
pirate chieftain was now suffering from
an advanced case of syphilis, contribut-
ing to his intemperate, self-destructive
outbursts. The Governor complied by
sending out a chest containing £300 or
£400 worth of mercurial drugs, for just
such a treatment.
‘‘Retirement’’ in North Carolina
(June
October 1718)
Shortly after these medicines were deliv-
ered and the captives released, Thatch
and his minions wandered higher up the
coast, seemingly still seeking an escape
ashore. The new, hard-scrabble colony of
North Carolina proved much more invit-
ing, as its penniless authorities would
welcome the booty-laden rovers, asking
few questions as to their past activities.
Therefore, on or about June 10, 1718
(O.S.), Thatch’s flagship and Adventure
approached the tricky entrance-channel
to Old Topsail Inlet, today known as
Beaufort Inlet. Two of his sloops already
lay at anchor inside, their crews prepar-
ing to distribute their goods and disperse.
According to a deposition later given by
Herriot, ‘‘the said Thatch’s ship Queen
Anne’s Revenge run a-ground off of the
bar,’’ and his own Adventure ‘‘likewise
about [a] gunshot from the said Thatch.’’
Captain Ellis Brand of HMS Lyme would
corroborate this information in a letter to
the Lords of Admiralty dated July 12,
1718 (O.S.), stating that ‘‘a large pirate
ship of forty guns with three sloops in
her company came upon the coast of
North Carolina, where they endeavored
 Thatch, Edward, Alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ (fl. 1717
1718)
to go into a harbor called Topsail Inlet;
the ship stuck upon the bar at the en-
trance of the harbor and is lost; as is one
of the sloops.’’
Despite evidence that Blackbeard
then attempted to kedge Queen Anne’s
Revenge free of this predicament, Herriot
believed that the grounding of these two
pirate vessels had been intentional, to
help break up the company. Thatch
promptly sent a few loyal hands ahead to
ensure a safe reception at North Caroli-
na’s capital of Bath, before he and
Bonnet followed to obtain their pardons
from its obliging Governor, Charles
Eden. He and the North Carolina Coun-
cilors were willing to overlook the
pirates’ checkered past for a share of
their loot, their colony being quite poor
and as yet without any appreciable trade.
Once these pardons were issued,
Bonnet lingered to also get a clearance to
sail Revenge to the Danish West Indian
island of Saint Thomas, so as to purchase
a new commission and resume privateer-
ing against the Spaniards. Yet by the
time Bonnet returned to Topsail Inlet in
late June or early July 1718, he found
that Blackbeard had in the meantime
robbed his vessel and the two other pirate
sloops of almost all their supplies,
beached the majority of their crewmen,
and sailed away with 20 loyal hands and
the pick of the booty aboard the refloated
Adventure. When Bonnet heard shortly
thereafter that Thatch had gone to Ocra-
coke Inlet, he weighed at once with
Revenge to hunt down his treacherous
ex-confederate, but could not find him.
Several months afterward, Governor
Alexander Spotswood of neighboring
Virginia would report to London:
That about the beginning of last June
[1718], one Captain Thatch, a noto-
795
rious pirate, refused to accept of His
Majesty’s pardon offered him by the
Governor of South Carolina, about
eight days before he lost his ship
at Topsail Inlet, with one of the
four sloops he had in his company;
upon which he and his crew pre-
tended to surrender to the Governor
of North Carolina, most of his peo-
ple dispersed, some going towards
Pennsylvania and New York, and
others betaking themselves to their
former villainies under the command
of Major Bonnet. Thatch, with about
twenty more, remained in North
Carolina and kept one of the sloops,
pretending to employ themselves in
trade, but both their discourses and
actions plainly showed the wicked-
ness of their designs.
He lived in Bath for a couple of
months, marrying a local girl and over-
seeing an underground piracy operation
with the collusion of colonial authorities
(see sidebar). In August 1718, Black-
beard, bearing a written copy of his par-
don, again took to the sea, telling
Governor Eden that he was headed to
Jamaica. Adventure returned by mid-
September 1718, having surprised two
French merchantmen laden with sugar
and cocoa near Bermuda. Blackbeard
had emptied one vessel and forced all
the French crewmen aboard it, allowing
them to sail away aboard this gutted
ship, while returning to North Carolina
with his bulging prize. He informed
the authorities at Bath that he had
found this French vessel adrift and
abandoned, so that a court of inquiry
obligingly ruled that he could keep it
and its valuable cargo. Furthermore, act-
ing on Blackbeard’s suggestion, they
agreed that the prize itself was leaking
796 Thatch, Edward, Alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ (fl. 1717
1718)

BLACKBEARD AT BATH
When the fugitive sea-rover chose to settle in North Carolina’s 13-year-old capi-
tal, it was a ramshackle but thriving seaport of perhaps 8,000 inhabitants on the
mainland shore of Pamlico Sound. He purchased a house on Plum Point, about a
mile south of town, allegedly atop a knoll overlooking its river-traffic. Remnants
of an ancient homestead there have been rumored over the years to mark its
foundations, although it is impossible to verify that this site was indeed Thatch’s
abode for the last few months of his life during that steamy summer of 1718.
To the west of Plum Point (often still referred to today as ‘‘Teach’s Point’’),
across the mouth of Bath Creek, lies Archbell Point, where the provincial Secre-
tary Tobias Knight had also just bought a plantation that same June 1718,
beside Governor Charles Eden’s own 400-acre plantation. Local legend says
that a subterranean passage was cut from the cellar of Governor Eden’s mansion
to the steep bank of Bath Creek, so that the disreputable pirate Captain might
enter and depart unseen on their crooked business dealings.
Yet such subterfuge would have scarcely been necessary. Despite his notoriety
and lurid appearance, the ruffianly Blackbeard fit in well amid the frontier life-
style of his hardy fellow-citizens. Even large landowners lived rough during those
early colonial days, so that the hard-drinking freebooter with his cache of booty
quickly made friends. During his brief sojourn, he even married the 16-year-old
daughter of a neighboring planter (allegedly Thatch’s fourteenth wife, at least 10
of her predecessors still being alive). Governor Eden performed this civil cere-
mony, in his judicial capacity.
By August 1718, though, Blackbeard was stealing away to sea once more
aboard his sloop Adventure, waylaying riverboats and visiting coasters so as to
maintain his new household and old retinue in style. He then cruised to Bermuda,
returning by mid-September 1718 with a French prize, which he disposed of with
the connivance of local authorities. Shortly thereafter, he departed Bath to estab-
lish a base on Ocracoke Island amid the Outer Banks, so as to emerge from vari-
ous sandy channels and ambush passing merchantmen. He never returned.
With the passing of that same century, Bath lost its importance, as the eco-
nomic life of North Carolina shifted elsewhere. Memories of its infamous denizen
nonetheless survived and multiplied. For many years, a round brick structure
resembling a huge oven stood in a field between Plum Point and the town of
Bath, a tale being told that Blackbeard had used it to boil tar to caulk his vessels,
so that this structure became known as ‘‘Teach’s Kettle.’’ Treasure-hunters have
also riddled Plum Point with countless holes over the decades, vainly searching
for Blackbeard’s last stash of gold, and many spots in the modern town still
evoke this dead pirate’s name.

dangerously and so should be scuttled, Blackbeard shared his windfall: 60

allowing him to torch and sink all evi- hogsheads of sugar went to Governor
dence of his crime. In repayment, Eden; 20 to the Secretary Knight.
 Thatch, Edward, Alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ (fl. 1717
1718)
Soon, Blackbeard and his followers
began more brazenly basing themselves
around Cape Fear and the Outer Banks,
so that Governor Spotswood of neighbor-
ing Virginia soon received word that he
had carried a captured merchantman into
Ocracoke Inlet, which he was seemingly
converting into a fortified base. The
Governor detested pirates in general and
Blackbeard in particular, having already
persuaded the Virginia Assembly to
post a £100 reward for his capture (along
with £40 for other pirate captains, £20
for lieutenants, masters, quartermasters,
boatswains, and carpenters, and £10 for
ordinary seamen). Notwithstanding the
fact that Blackbeard’s vessel was clearly
operating within North Carolina’s juris-
diction, Spotswood decided to act by
sending an agent to survey the situation
and bring back a pair of coastal pilots
knowledgeable about the local inshore
inlets.
Death (November 1718)
The Governor thereupon prepared an
expedition in utmost secrecy, ‘‘for fear
of Blackbeard’s having intelligence,
there being in this country an unac-
countable inclination to favor pirates.’’
Virginia had two Royal Navy men o’
war stationed as guard-ships in the
James River—HMS Pearl under Cap-
tain George Gordon, and Lyme under
Captain Ellis Brand—but these drew
too much water to penetrate the sandy
shoals of Ocracoke Inlet. Spotswood
therefore hired two shallow-draught
sloops and manned one of them with 35
men under Lieutenant Robert Maynard
of HMS Pearl, and the other with 25
men under Midshipman Baker of
HMS Lyme. Both got under way from
Chesapeake Bay at three o’clock on
797
the afternoon of November 17, 1718
(O.S.), and late on the afternoon of
November 21st came within sight of
Ocracoke Inlet. After spotting their
quarry inside, Maynard and Baker
stood into its entrance and dropped
anchor to await the dawn.
An unconcerned Blackbeard spent
that night carousing with his 19 men,
and at first light it was the Royal Navy
pair which moved first. Maneuvering
across the inlet with some difficulty in
the gloom, they drew near the Adven-
ture, until Blackbeard himself at last
hailed: ‘‘Damn you for villains, who
are you?’’
Maynard responded by running up his
English ensign and shouting back: ‘‘You
may see by our colors we are no pirates.’’
Blackbeard roared out that they
should come on board, so that he could
personally see who they were, to which
Maynard replied: ‘‘I cannot spare my
boat, but I will come aboard of you as
soon as I can, with my sloop!’’
This implicit threat to storm the
pirate vessel sent Blackbeard into a
rage, during which he sputtered: ‘‘Dam-
nation seize my soul if I give you quar-
ters, or take any from you!’’ Maynard
hollered back in a similar vein, at which
Blackbeard ran up his black ensign with
its death’s-head insignia, cut his cables,
and began sliding Adventure down
channel toward the open sea. Baker
tried to block this escape with his sloop,
at which the pirate veered around and
loosed off a vicious broadside, killing
Baker and several of his crew, and leav-
ing the Royal Navy sloop helplessly
adrift. But the faint morning breeze
then died away, so that in frustration
Maynard ordered his own crew to man
their sweeps, and closed on Adventure
with his one remaining vessel.
798 Thatch, Edward, Alias ‘‘Blackbeard’’ (fl. 1717
1718)
When he came within range, the
pirates opened up a withering counter-
fire on Maynard’s sloop as well, wound-
ing many of his crew and forcing the
Royal Navy officer to order most of his
men below, out of the line of fire. Only
he, a midshipman, and a North Carolina
pilot remained above decks, exposed to
the rovers’ ire. Sensing his opponent’s
weakness, Blackbeard worked Adven-
ture up against Maynard’s sloop, and
showered it with glass hand-grenades
(bottles filled with powder, small shot
and scrap iron, each garlanded with lit
fuses). When the smoke from these
blasts cleared, Blackbeard noticed that
the Royal Navy vessel’s decks were
almost entirely empty, so shouted to his
men that their enemies were ‘‘all
knock’d on the head, except three or
four; and therefore let’s jump on board,
and cut them to pieces.’’ He himself was
the first to vault across, lashing the two
sloops together with the rope which he
carried in his hands.
But at that moment, Maynard shouted
down his hatches and ordered all remain-
ing men on deck, much to the pirates’
dismay. Nonplussed, the huge Black-
beard waded furiously into the Navy
men, hacking and slashing until he came
face-to-face with Maynard, who shot
him with a pistol. Howling mad, the
pirate chieftain immediately swung his
cutlass and snapped the naval officer’s
blade in half, yet before he could finish
Maynard off, a seaman slashed Black-
beard across the throat with a sword.
Surrounded by a pack of sailors, the
ogre was then repeatedly shot, hacked,
and stabbed until he toppled over dead,
at which his followers surrendered. Ten
pirates had been killed during this vicious
melee, the remaining nine wounded, as
opposed to 10 dead and 24 injured among
Maynard’s men. The Royal Navy officer
then concluded the day by ordering
Blackbeard’s body decapitated, so as to
carry his head triumphantly back in to
Virginia, dangling from the bowsprit of
his sloop.
See also
Asiento; Barlovento, Armada de; Bellamy,
Samuel; Hornigold, Benjamin; Jennings,
Henry; Situado.
References
Archives Nationales [France], Centre des
Archives d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence,
AN Col C8A 22 (1717) Folio 447.
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 29,
30 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1930
1933).
Collections of the South Carolina
Historical Society, Volume II
(Charleston, SC: Historical Society,
1858).
Konstam, Angus, Blackbeard: America’s
Most Notorious Pirate (New York:
Wiley, 2007).
Lee, Robert E., Blackbeard the Pirate: A
Reappraisal of His Life and Times
(Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair,
1995).
Moore, David D., ‘‘A General History of
Blackbeard the Pirate, the Queen Anne’s
Revenge, and the Adventure,’’
Tributaries 7 (1997), pp. 31
35.
National Archives [Kew, UK], ‘‘Captains’
Letters’’, ADM 1/1597.
Rankin, Hugh F., The Pirates of Colonial
North Carolina (Raleigh, NC: State
Department of Archives and History,
2001).
Saunders, William L., ed., The Colonial
Records of North Carolina, Volume II
(Raleigh, NC: State of North Carolina,
1886).

Woodard, Colin, The Republic of Pirates
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
2008) and ‘‘Blackbeard in the Bay
Islands,’’ Bay Islands Voice 6, No. 8
(August 2008).
Yetter, George H., ‘‘When Blackbeard
Scourged the Seas,’’ Colonial
Williamsburg Journal 15, No. 1
(Autumn 1992), pp. 22
28.
TORTILLE
French nickname for sun-bleached Isla
Tortuga, an island which lies off the
northern shores of Venezuela.
According to the buccaneer chroni-
cler William Dampier, turtling was such
a frequent activity among Caribbean
seafarers that this particular island was
called Salt Tortuga among the English
‘‘to distinguish it from the shoals of Dry
Tortuga, near Cape Florida, and from
the isle of Tortuga by Hispaniola.’’
See also
Salt Tortuga; Tortille (Volume 1).
Reference
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
TOWNLEY, FRANCIS
(fl. 1685
1686)
English buccaneer who raided the
Spaniards in the South Sea.
Townley was first heard from at the
beginning of 1685, when he led a party
of 115 mostly English freebooters from
Golden Island across the Isthmus of Pan-
ama into the Pacific Ocean, to join the
Townley, Francis (fl. 1685
1686) 799
flotilla of Edward Davis and Charles
Swan, which had already penetrated
those waters. A larger group of French
flibustiers had set out later than Townley
to do the same, under Capitaines Fran-
çois Grogniet and Lescuyer, but who
nonetheless came up with Davis and
Swan first. Grogniet therefore sent a boat
back into the Gulf of San Miguel to
await the others, which met Townley on
March 3, 1685, now with a total of 180
to 190 men and two captured Spanish
barks. Townley incorporated these ves-
sels—manned with 110 and 80 bucca-
neers respectively—into the formidable
array of pirate craft which then gathered
under Davis’ orders to blockade the port
of Panama, and hopefully intercept the
Peruvian treasure fleet.
But toward noon on June 7, 1685,
the rovers were caught off guard near
Pacheca Island by a squadron of six
Spanish men o’ war and a tender from
the Armada del Mar del Sur. These
bore down on the pirates and an inde-
cisive, long-range engagement ensued,
mostly involving Davis and Swan,
whose vessels were the only ones
among the buccaneer flotilla mounting
cannon. Next day, the freebooters were
driven off, abandoning their blockade
and falling out among themselves, each
national group blaming the other for
this defeat.
Another failed attack followed at
the beginning of July 1685 against the
coastal town of Remedios (Panama),
and afterward both contingents headed
northwestward as separate groups. The
English under Davis, William Knight,
Swan, and Townley raided both Realejo
and Le
on (Nicaragua) during the first
two weeks of August 1685, but were
disappointed at the spoils. Conse-
quently they too split up, Swan and
800 Townley, Francis (fl. 1685
1686)
Townley proceeding farther northwest
to sweep the coast of Mexico and
await the Manila galleon, while Davis,
Peter Harris, and Knight returned to
attack Peru.
Swan and Townley made numerous
disembarkations along the coast of New
Spain, eventually reaching as high as the
Gulf of California, but missing the Philip-
pine galleon Santa Rosa that December
1685. Early next year, they decided to
part company, Swan remaining to set sail
later across the Pacific with his Cygnet,
while Townley immediately began work-
ing his way back down the Central
American coastline. It was presumably
Townley’s flotilla which was spotted by
the Spaniards near Acapulco in mid-
February 1686, ‘‘burning one of their
ships to redistribute the people around
the four which remained, and setting our
prisoners on land.’’ By March 23rd, he
was opposite Esparta (Costa Rica), where
he encountered Grogniet’s larger French
formation. Despite some residual ill will
between both groups, English and French
combined for a joint attempt against
the inland city of Granada (Nicaragua).
Grogniet and Townley landed a force
of 345 men on the coast on April 7, 1686,
and fought their way into the city three
days later. Little loot was found, however,
as the Spaniards had been forewarned
of their approach and had transferred
their valuables across the inland lake to
Zapatera Island, so that the pirates with-
drew empty-handed five days later. They
endured numerous ambushes before pass-
ing Masaya and regaining their anchored
ships, after which they then traveled to
Realejo.
Grogniet having had such limited
success on his own, half his 300 French
followers voted on June 9, 1686, to join
Townley, who was determined to press
southeastward for Panama. The remain-
ing 148 flibustiers stayed with Grogniet
while he sailed westward, and the two
contingents parted company a fortnight
later. Thus heavily reinforced, Townley
made a sudden descent on the outskirts
of Panama on July 22, 1686, seizing
merchandise estimated to be worth
1,500,000 pesos, but which was subse-
quently lost in a Spanish counter-
ambush. Nonetheless, the raiders made
off with 15,000 pesos in silver and 300
captives, which Townley used to extort
a truce. After two captives’ heads were
sent to the President of the Audiencia of
Panama, the latter reluctantly agreed to
supply the pirates with cattle, sheep,
and flour on a daily basis. Meanwhile,
Townley was threatening to send
another 50 heads ashore, if five bucca-
neers in Spanish hands were not
released.
After a month of this uneasy arrange-
ment, the Spaniards attempted a surprise
attack on August 22, 1686, by slipping a
force of three ships and 240 men out of
the island of Perico to fall on the raiders.
This assault was fiercely beaten off; two
of the Spanish ships were captured and
only 65 Spaniards escaped injury
or death. A furious Townley, himself
wounded in the battle, sent 20 more
heads ashore as a protest against this
violation of the truce. ‘‘This measure
was in truth a little violent,’’ the pirate
chronicler Ravenau de Lussan piously
noted, ‘‘but it was the only means of
bringing the Spanish to reason.’’ Indeed,
they promptly delivered an additional
10,000 pesos to Townley on September
4th, along with a conciliatory note from
the Archbishop of Panama saying all
English prisoners would henceforth be
considered Catholics, and so enjoy the
protection of the Church. But Townley

did not savor this victory for long, as
four days later he died of his wounds.
His body was cast overboard, as he had
wished, near Otoque Island and he was
succeeded in command of the free-
booters by George Hout.
References
Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru:
Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea,
1598
1701 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1990).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 13
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1901).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Interesting Tracts Relating to the Island of
Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica:
Lewis, Lunan and Jones, 1800).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
Robles, Antonio de, Diario de sucesos
notables, 1665
1703 (Mexico City:
Editorial Porr
ua, 1972).
TREPAN
Slang English expression, used as ei-
ther a noun or verb, to denote any
deception intended to ensnare, ambush,
or take by surprise.
Many examples abound. For exam-
ple, the ex-privateer Read Elding, hop-
ing to prove his good intentions as
Acting-Governor of the Bahamas,
wrote to London on October 4, 1699
(O.S.):
The West Indies are full of pirates. I
have been so severe to those sort of
Tristan, Jean (fl. 1681
1693) 801
people, that about a fortnight now
past I had a notorious pirate tried
here, condemned, and hanged. I am
informed that there are several
pirates at St. Thomas and Danish
port to windward, and so scattered
amongst some of the Maroon
Islands, which they expected that
some encouragement might be given
them, as formerly used to be among
these territories. But, to the contrary,
I shall and do my utmost to suppress
them, wishing that I could but trepan
one of their ships, in order to bring
them to public justice.
See also
Trepan (Volume 1).
Reference
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 17
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1908).
TRISTAN, JEAN
(fl. 1681
1693)
Huguenot flibustier who became a
British subject, and settled on Jamaica.
This Captain was first mentioned on
May 24, 1681 (O.S.), when his barco
luengo was being careened at La
Sound’s Key among the San Blas
Islands, ‘‘about three leagues from the
mouth of the river Concepci
on’’ on the
northeastern coast of Panama. While
lying at anchor there, he was approached
by native canoes bearing John Cooke’s
party (among them William Dampier
802 Tristan, Jean (fl. 1681
1693)
and Edward Davis) who were returning
from having served in John Coxon’s raid
into the South Sea. They bought beads,
knives, scissors, and mirrors from Tris-
tan’s crew to repay their Indian guides,
and would have given more ‘‘but could
not get any, the privateer having no more
toys.’’ Tristan then weighed two days
later to rejoin a large raiding party he had
been operating with, and which had
earlier shifted to nearby Springer’s
Key, ‘‘about seven or eight leagues from
La Sound’s Key.’’ These included Cap-
tains Coxon, Archaimbaud, Thomas
Paine, Jean Rose, Tucker, Jan Willems,
Williams, and George Wright, who were
sailing under commissions issued by the
French Governor of Saint-Domingue.
Tristan transferred Cooke’s survivors
into Archaimbaud’s crew, and the
buccaneer commanders decided to make
a descent on the Central American
coast, for which they hoisted anchor to
gain San Andr
es Island, and steal boats
to serve as landing craft. But a gale scat-
tered the formation, and as they were
struggling to regroup, a large Spanish
armadilla appeared from Cartagena to
chase the rovers away. Tristan, ‘‘having
fallen to leeward,’’ was making for
Bocas del Toro (literally ‘‘Bull’s
Mouths’’ or ‘‘Entrances of the Bull,’’ on
the northwestern coast of Panama),
when he sighted these vessels and
assumed that they were his corsair com-
rades. Instead, the Spanish warships
fired on Tristan when he approached
‘‘and chased him, but he rowed and
towed,’’ and so got away. Nonetheless,
Coxon’s flotilla dispersed, and Tristan
was not heard of again until next year.
In May or June 1682, he arrived off
^Ile a Vache, at the southwestern tip of
Hispaniola, homeward bound for Petit-
Go^ave. Cooke’s South Sea survivors
were also there, now serving aboard
Jan Willems’ ship, and had just cap-
tured a Spanish vessel. Cooke and his
men fitted this prize out as their own,
despite having no commission, but
according to Dampier the French:
‘‘begrudging the English such a vessel,
all joined together, plundered the Eng-
lish of their ships, goods and arms, and
turned them ashore.’’ Tristan incorpo-
rated eight or ten of the dispossessed
Englishmen—including Cooke and
Davis—into his own crew, before com-
pleting his voyage to Petit-Go^ave. He
soon regretted this decision, for shortly
after Tristan and the bulk of his French
crew had gone ashore on their arrival,
the English rose and made off with his
vessel, returning to ^Ile a Vache to res-
cue their companions.
Sometime during the ensuing decade
of the 1680s, Tristan emigrated to set-
tle on the English island of Jamaica,
because he was a Huguenot or French
Protestant, and like thousands of his
coreligionists felt constrained to flee
following the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes in 1685. Whatever the cause
for his exile, when the War of the
League of Augsburg (known in America
as ‘‘King William’s War’’) erupted
against France a few years later, he was
considered a loyal English subject.
Toward the end of 1692, he sailed with
a 14-man crew on a smuggling voyage
to the Spanish Main, presumably trust-
ing to the alliance with that nation. But
on January 16/26, 1693, the President of
the Audiencia of Panama—Pedro Jos
e
de Guzm
an D
avalos, Marqu
es de la
Mina—wrote to the Council of Jamaica:
Ever since peace was made between
the two Crowns of Spain and England
I have endeavored to preserve it,

never doubting that the government
of Jamaica would do the like. But
recently a sloop has come from
Jamaica manned by Frenchmen under
Captain Tristan, with merchandise to
trade on these coasts. I am surprised
that you should have permitted this
breach of the treaty. These men
though bidden by the Lieutenant Gen-
eral of Portobelo to come to him
would not do so, and he, understand-
ing that they were French, seized the
ship. The men resisted and were all
killed. I cannot omit to point out to
you the danger to which the arrival of
such vessels, especially manned with
Frenchmen, exposes me.
The newly-arrived Jamaican Governor,
Sir William Beeston, replied toward
the end of March 1693:
What [Tristan’s] business was on the
coast, I know not, but he and all his
men were British subjects, and there-
fore even if they were trading [ille-
gally] I conceive that the utmost
required by the Articles of Peace is
the seizure of themselves and the
condemnation of their goods. But to
cut them all off in cold blood on pre-
tence of friendship (you must pardon
me for saying it) was sanguinary,
and contrary to the good agreement
between the two Crowns.
This protest prompted a somewhat
different tone when the Marqu
es next
wrote:
I confess that Captain Tristan’s busi-
ness has troubled me much, for I
have always endeavored that English
Tryer, Matthew 803
vessels should have good passage in
these harbors, and have given orders
accordingly. Frenchmen have too of-
ten been allowed to come and prose-
cute unlawful trade, under pretence
of being English. I was lying very
sick when I first heard of the matter,
and my grief over the deceit of these
men went near to cause my death. I
have put the guilty parties in close
confinement with a view to proper
punishment. But do not doubt that
the vessel was lawfully seized, for
most of her people were French and
her captain known to be one of the
greatest pirates in America. Had he
been brought in alive, I should have
punished him.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 14
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1903).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round
the World (New York: Dover, 1968).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
TRYER, MATTHEW
A Carolina privateer accused and
acquitted on a charge of having cap-
tured a sloop belonging to Samuel
Salters of Bermuda in 1699.
Reference
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
 V

. . . any gentlemen or sailors that are disposed to go, shall be kindly entertained.
—From Captain Peter Lawrence’s ad in the Boston News-Letter,
May 15
22, 1704 (O.S.), seeking recruits for his privateer ship

VALENTIN, PIERRE Reference

(fl. 1701
1702)
French merchant captain who sailed
with a privateering commission.
On Christmas Day 1701, Valentin had
been issued a routine peacetime permit
at Versailles ‘‘to transport merchandise
to the islands of America, Cayenne, Tor-
tuga Island, and Saint-Dominigue’’ with
his 65-man, 250-ton frigate Reine des
Anges. However, once hostilities against
England and Holland erupted in May
1702—a conflict which would become
known in British North America as
Queen Anne’s War—Valentin further-
more obtained a privateering commis-
sion as well at his home-port of
Bordeaux on June 7, 1702, so as to enjoy
legal claim to any prizes which he might
take during his forthcoming voyage.
Archives D
epartementales de la Gironde
[France], 6B 79 121v.
124v. and
153
154.
VANE, CHARLES
(fl. 1718
1720)
English pirate who defied a Royal
Governor, yet was later voted out of
his ship for cowardice and ignomini-
ously captured.
Vane was apparently one of hun-
dreds of West Indian privateers left
unemployed by the conclusion to
Queen Anne’s War in April 1713. A
couple of years later, the annual Span-
ish plate fleet, homeward-bound from
Havana, was driven onto the Florida
coast by a storm in late July 1715,

805
806 Vane, Charles (fl. 1718
1720)
leaving a dozen rich galleons strewn
temptingly along 40 miles of empty
shoreline. Swarms of treasure-hunters
descended into these waters to scav-
enge among its debris, and rob Spanish
salvage teams.
Vane was most likely a member of
the expedition which the privateer
Captain Henry Jennings then led out of
Port Royal, Jamaica, armed with a
license from Governor Lord Archibald
Hamilton to rein in such excesses. Once
at sea, though, Jennings and his minions
perpetrated numerous crimes them-
selves, and even established their base-
of-operations at lawless Nassau in the
sparsely-populated Bahamian archipela-
go—which by the spring of 1716 had
become a notorious pirate-hotbed and
home to such well-known rogue
commanders as Benjamin Hornigold
and Edward Thatch.
Eventually, the British government
was goaded by the many complaints
which it had received into devising a
strategy to bring the Bahamas directly
under Crown rule. The archipelago’s old
private-company charter was revoked,
and while 250 new colonists were being
recruited and ships prepared to transport
out a proper colonial administration, a
royal ‘‘act of grace’’ or amnesty for
pirates was sent on ahead across the At-
lantic in September 1717, addressed to
various regional Governors for distribu-
tion among all renegade rovers. Those
who chose to accept this pardon would
be allowed to live on as honest citizens,
those who refused would be hunted
down as outlaws.
Consequently, the son of Lieuten-
ant-Gov. Benjamin Bennett of Ber-
muda materialized off New Providence
Island in December 1717, bearing a
copy of this amnesty for Nassau’s
denizens. At first, his vessel was fired
on, the 400 to 500 pirates gathered in
port ‘‘having the day before resolved
among themselves to sacrifice the first
person that should pretend to offer
them a pardon.’’ Even after this emis-
sary was allowed ashore and admitted
to a parley, ‘‘they held a consult
whether they should not destroy him,’’
before cooler heads at last prevailed.
Eventually, Jennings and seven or eight
freebooter companions traveled back to
Bermuda with Bennett’s son in January
1718, while their confederates waited
at Nassau to hear how these first repre-
sentatives would be treated.
When the Royal Navy Captain Vin-
cent Pearce also touched at New Provi-
dence Island on a similar commission
that same March 1718, while outward-
bound to take up station at New York
with his 20-gun, 100-man HMS Phoe-
nix, he was accorded a much different
reception—being welcomed ashore by
Jennings and Hornigold in person, and
issuing 209 provisional pardons to as
many pirates before weighing again on
April 6, 1718 (O.S.).
Defiance (1718)
Yet not all rovers were eager to obtain
such amnesties, or were pleased at the
prospect of losing their autonomy by
making way for a restoration of ‘‘hon-
est’’ rule. Vane was present at Nassau
during this Royal Navy officer’s visit,
allegedly scoffing at the very notion of
a pardon and certainly appeared in a
belligerent mood shortly thereafter at
sea aboard his Ranger, ‘‘a sloop of
6 guns and 60 men.’’ He and his ruffi-
ans intercepted the Bermudian sloop
William and Martha of Master Edward
North on April 14, 1718 (O.S.), cruelly

A defiant Captain Charles Vane, as
depicted in Johnson’s General History of
the Pyrates, 1725. (Library of Congress)
mistreating both Captain and crew,
before releasing this vessel. Next, the
merchant sloop Diamond of Captain
John Tibby was:
. . . captured off Rum Key, one of
the Bahama Islands, by Charles Vain
[sic], commander of the pirate sloop
Ranger. The pirates robbed and beat
Tibby and the rest of the company.
They had taken twelve vessels on
their cruise, seven belonging to Ber-
muda, including [the vessels of]
Edward North, Daniel Styles, and
James Basden.
Lieutenant-Governor Bennett recorded
depositions a month later about these
incidents and worriedly noted that one
of Vane’s subordinates, Thomas Brown,
had once been detained at Bermuda on a
suspicion of piracy, so that these rovers
Vane, Charles (fl. 1718
1720) 807
seemed to bear a particular grudge
against his island and its inhabitants.
They would give no quarter to Bermu-
dians, Vane’s men had sworn, adding
menacingly that ‘‘they designed to be
with us this summer.’’
Then on April 19, 1718 (O.S.), the
sloop Samuel of Master Joseph Besea
[sic; Bethea?] was boarded off Crooked
Island in the Bahamas ‘‘by Cha. Vain,
who robbed and cruelly beat him and
the major part of his company.’’ Four
days later, the luckless North was lying
off Exuma Island, recuperating after his
first ordeal at Vane’s hands and in the
company of another Bermudian sloop,
when they were both spotted by Ranger
and subjected to a second mauling. Dur-
ing this second round of abuse on April
23rd (O.S.), North later declared:
They informed deponent that they
had taken a ship belonging to New
England, two sloops of Jamaica, one
of these Islands [i.e., Bermuda],
some of whom they acknowledged
to have used very barbarously by
beating them, etc.
By early next month, Vane and
his heavy-handed marauders—‘‘being
in want of provisions,’’ according to
the somewhat confused timeline later
cobbled together by the chronicler
Charles Johnson—began tacking up-
wind toward the Windward Islands. En
route, they intercepted a Spanish sloop
bound from Puerto Rico toward Havana,
burning it and setting its crew adrift in a
boat ‘‘to get to the island by the blaze of
their vessel.’’ Then, while prowling
between St. Kitts and Anguilla, Vane
seized a brigantine and sloop loaded
with provisions, and so was able to
resupply Ranger.
808 Vane, Charles (fl. 1718
1720)
Reversing course back into the
Bahamas, he made yet more intercep-
tions, before finally returning into Nas-
sau with a large captured French
merchantman. This port was now daily
expecting the arrival of Woodes Rog-
ers’ expedition as its new Royal Gov-
ernor, yet Vane supposedly swore that
‘‘while he was in the harbor, he would
suffer no other Governor than him-
self.’’ Less than two months later, Rog-
ers arrived outside Nassau’s bar on the
evening of July 26, 1718 (O.S.), aboard
the 460-ton hired ex-Indiaman Delicia
as his flagship, backed by the frigates
HMS Milford of 32 guns under Com-
modore Peter Chamberlaine and Rose
of 20 guns under Captain Thomas
Whitney, plus the 10-gun naval sloop
Shark and 10-gun privateer Buck.
Unfamiliar with the harbor’s
approaches, a couple of local pilots had
been placed aboard Rose and Shark,
who as the sunlight faded cautiously
probed their way around the western
end of Hogg (modern Paradise) Island,
while Rogers’ heavier ships prepared to
tack back-and-forth overnight three
miles out at sea, in deeper waters. By
6:30 P.M., Whitney’s Rose dropped
anchor just inside the harbor entrance,
only to have three warning shots fired
over it by Vane’s large French prize,
which was riding at anchor amid a clus-
ter of vessels flying black flags. The
Royal Navy Captain hoisted a white
flag to request a parley, sending a
Lieutenant across in a boat to discover
the reason for this hostility. Vane
informed the emissary that he intended
to ‘‘use his utmost endeavor to burn us
and all the vessels in the harbor,’’
before presenting the Lieutenant with a
letter addressed to the new Governor-
designate, which read:
July 24th, 1718 [O.S.]
Your Excellency may please to
understand that we are willing to
accept His Majesty’s most gracious
pardon on the following terms, viz:
That you will suffer us to dispose
of all our goods now in our posses-
sion. Likewise, to act as we think fit
with everything belonging to us, as
His Majesty’s Act of Grace specifies.
If Your Excellency shall please to
comply with this, we shall, with all
readiness, accept of His Majesty’s
Act of Grace. If not, we are obliged
to stand on our own defense.
Your humble servants,
Charles Vane & Company
Its cover furthermore bore the inscrip-
tion ‘‘We await a speedy answer,’’ but it
was impossible to deliver this missive to
the distant Rogers that same night. Only
Shark, Buck, and the 20-gun hired trans-
port Willing Mind had joined Rose at its
anchorage off the western tip of Hogg
Island, Rogers’ flagship and Milford still
tacking back-and-forth farther out over
the dark sea.
Vane waited for a reply until 2:00
A.M. on July 27, 1718 (O.S.), when he
and his 90 die-hard followers quietly
aimed his French prize at the anchored
warships and unleashed it in flames,
causing them to cut their cables and
scatter before the threat of this fireship.
When Rogers himself neared the west-
ern entrance next morning, Vane was
still stubbornly riding at anchor inside
Nassau’s harbor aboard the sloop
Katherine, which his pirates had previ-
ously commandeered from their fellow
rover Charles Yeats. As the Governor’s
flagship and Milford stemmed the
western channel, Vane weighed to
begin exiting via the eastern channel,

causing Rogers to signal his sloop
escorts to try to intercept. The Gover-
nor later reported that Vane and his
minions ‘‘fled away in a sloop wearing
the black flag, and fir’d guns of defi-
ance when they perceived their sloop
outsailed the two that I sent to chase
them hence.’’ The Governor stepped
ashore at Nassau’s waterfront by mid-
morning, to be greeted by an honor
guard of 300 rovers under Hornigold
and other captains, who had chosen to
remain behind to swear fealty to the
Crown.
Two days after his spectacular exit,
Vane reportedly took a sloop from Bar-
bados, transferring his unwilling part-
ner Yeats aboard with 25 hands, to sail
this prize as his consort. And a day or
two later, they also seized the small
unlicensed trader or interloper John
and Elizabeth while it was making for
Nassau, before apparently crossing
over to Cuba and eventually steering
north for the Carolinas by mid-August
1718, to summon aid from more pirate
allies. Considerable confusion exists as
to Vane’s exact movements throughout
this period, but he seems to have mate-
rialized off Charleston on August 30,
1718 (O.S.), intercepting various mer-
chantmen over the next couple of days.
Colonel William Rhett offered to go
with two sloops to attack them;
which being by the Governor and
Council approved of, he was com-
missioned on board the Henry, with
eight guns and seventy men com-
manded by Captain John Masters;
and the Sea Nymph, commanded by
Captain Farrier Hall, with as many
guns and men; both under the direc-
tion of the Colonel, who went on
board the Henry the 14th of
Vane, Charles (fl. 1718
1720) 809
September, and sailed from Charles
Town to Sullivan’s Island in order to
cruise: where he was informed, by a
small ship from Antigua, which in
sight of the bar was taken and plun-
dered by Charles Vane, in a brigan-
tine of sixteen guns and a hundred
men; that he had taken two sloops,
one Captain Dill, Master, from Bar-
badoes; the other Captain Thomp-
son, from Guinea, with seventy
negroes, which they put on board
one Yeats his consort, being a small
sloop with twenty-five men, who
being weary of this course of life,
ran into Edisto River, and surren-
der’d to His Majesty’s pardon, by
which the owners got their negroes
again, and Yeats and his men had
their certificates sign’d.
One was the 80-ton brigantine Dorothy
of London, inward-bound with 90 slaves
from Guinea, which Vane selected as his
new flagship. Yeats was restored into his
Katherine, but Vane crammed all Doro-
thy’s slaves aboard it as well, to continue
serving as his tender—but, tired of being
so mistreated by his superior, Yeats
finally found an opportunity to escape.
While lying at anchor one evening, he:
. . . slipped his cable and put his ves-
sel under sail, standing into the
shore; which when Vane saw, he
was highly provoked, and got his
sloop under sail to chase his consort.
Vane’s brigantine sailing best, he
gained ground of Yeats and would
certainly have come up with him,
had he a little longer run; but just as
he got over the bar, when Vane
came within gunshot of him, he fired
a broadside at his old friend, and so
took his leave.
810 Vane, Charles (fl. 1718
1720)
Yeats ventured up the North Edisto
River, sending a message overland to
South Carolina’s Governor in Charles-
ton, requesting permission to surrender
under the terms of the royal amnesty for
pirates, as well as bringing in his con-
signment of slaves. According to the
chronicler Johnson, this was eventually
agreed to ‘‘and Captain Thomson, from
whom the Negroes were taken, had them
all restored to him, for the use of his
owners.’’
Vane had meanwhile seized the
large merchantmen Neptune and Em-
peror as they exited Charleston, so
stood away from the Carolina coast for
the Bahamas again. Governor Rogers
had maintained a wary vigil for any
news about the outlaw’s movements,
and on September 1, 1718 (O.S.),
recorded how ‘‘three men that came in
a boat from Vaine, who was then on
the coast of Cuba, confess’d they
promised to meet him again about this
time’’ at Abaco Island. Two weeks
later, the Governor received more reli-
able information:
. . . that three vessels supposed to be
Vane and his prizes were at Green
Turtle Key near Abaco, and since I
had no strength to do better, I got a
sloop fitted under the command of
Captain Hornygold to send and view
them, and bring me an account what
they were; in the meantime I keep a
very strict watch for fear of any sur-
prise, and not hearing from Captain
Hornigold, I was afraid he was either
taken by Vane or begun his old prac-
tice of pirating again, which was the
general opinion here in his absence;
but to my great satisfaction, he
return’d in about three weeks, having
lain most of that time concealed and
viewing of Vane the pirate in order to
surprise him, or some of his men that
they expected would be near them in
their boats; but though they failed in
this, Captain Hornygold brought with
him a sloop of this place [Nassau],
that got leave from me to go out a-
turtling, but had [instead] been trading
with Vane, who had then with him
two ships and a brigantine, his sloop
that he escaped hence in [i.e., Yeats’s
Katherine] being run away with by
another set of new pirates; the two
ships he took coming out of Carolina,
one of 400 and the other of 200 tons,
loaded with rice, pitch, and tar and
skins, bound for London. The Nep-
tune, Captain King, being the largest,
he sunk and the Emperor, Captain
Arnold Gowers, he left without doing
her any damage, except taking away
their provisions. I have secured the
merchant that traded with Vaine
[Nicholas Woodall of the sloop Wolf],
and having not yet a [judicial] power
to make an example of them here, he
remains in irons to be sent home to
England by the next ship. For want of
Captain Whitney’s staying to assist
me, we have once more missed taking
this pirate.
Rogers went on to inform the Council of
Trade and Plantations in London that:
This Vaine had the impudence to
send me word that he design’s to
burn my guardship and visit me very
soon, to return the affront I gave
him on my arrival, in sending two
sloops after him instead of answer-
ing the letter he sent me. He expects
soon to join Major Bonnet or some
other pirate, and then I am to be
attack’d by them. But being now got

to the 20th of October [O.S.], the
heat abates very much and our peo-
ple all begin to be pretty well, and
our fort will be soon in a tolerable
posture of defense, and the guard-
ship is well provided, which makes
me now not concern’d at his threats.
Visit with Blackbeard
(September
October 1718)
Vane seemingly persisted with his
notion of uniting a freebooter fleet to
reclaim Nassau, for a couple of months
later, a different correspondent would
write from South Carolina: ‘‘The pirates
yet accounted to be out are near 2,000
men and of those Vain, alias Vaughn,
Thaitch, and others promise themselves
to be repossessed of Providence in a
short time.’’ For this reason, it appears
as if Vane may have quit Green Turtle
Cay at the end of September 1718, to
head north once more for the Carolinas.
During his previous foray into those
waters, his old comrade Thatch had
been absent on a cruise. Johnson
described a meeting between these two
pirate commanders at Ocracoke Inlet,
before Vane must have steered back for
the Bahamas by early October 1718.
Whatever if anything had been agreed
to, Vane pillaged Eleuthera Island on his
return, before intercepting a small sloop
and the 40-ton brigantine Endeavour of
Master John Shattock on October 23,
1718 (O.S.), off Long Island in the
Bahamian archipelago, while it was
homeward-bound to Salem, Massachu-
setts, from Kingston in Jamaica. Shat-
tock later declared that Vane ‘‘bore
down on him, hoisted a black flag, and
fired a shot at him.’’ Commanded ‘‘to
hoist out his boat and come aboard
Vane, Charles (fl. 1718
1720) 811
him,’’ Endeavor’s crew was even threat-
ened to have ‘‘a volley of small shot into
them if they did not make haste,’’ before
enduring two days of beatings and vio-
lence while their vessel was being ran-
sacked. Finally, the gutted Endeavor was
freed, although the little sloop was
retained as Vane’s tender. He and his
pirates then ‘‘resolved on a cruise
between Cape Maise and Cape Nicolas’’
(a reference to the Windward Passage
between the easternmost Cuban town of
Maisı́ and the west Haitian headland of
M^ole Saint-Nicolas, normally a rich
hunting-ground for any marauders).
Misfortunes (November
1718
February 1719)
Yet Vane’s luck now abandoned him.
After scouring the Windward Passage
for ‘‘some time, without seeing or
speaking with any vessel,’’ they finally
spotted a large sail on November 23,
1718 (O.S.). On bearing down to
engage and hoisting their black ensign,
though, this ship replied with a broad-
side and raised its own colors, proving
to be a 24-gun French warship. Vane
therefore ordered his 12-gun brigantine
to turn tail and run, with the man-of-
war in pursuit, although most of his
crew was soon clamoring to fight this
larger opponent. Vane refused because
of its size and heavier artillery, insist-
ing that the pirates make good their
escape.
Yet next day, a vote was held and he
was turned out of command by 75 of his
unhappy crewmen who favored the quar-
termaster, John ‘‘Calico Jack’’ Rackham.
Vane was given the small sloop which
had been intercepted off Long Island,
parting company from the brigantine
812 Vane, Charles (fl. 1718
1720)
along with his first mate, Robert Deal,
and 15 loyal hands. They briefly prowled
along the northwestern coast of Jamaica
in late November 1718, seizing another
sloop and two piraguas, before steering
west toward the hidden logging camps
and pirate bolt-holes dotting the steamy
Honduran coastline. On December 16,
1718 (O.S.), Vane’s and Deal’s sloops
sighted Captain Charles Rowling’s Pearl
out of Jamaica and captured it, along
with another Jamaican sloop, and a few
days later they boarded the 40-ton sloop
Prince out of Kittery, Maine, under Cap-
tain Thomas Walden. All five vessels
were then sailed to an island known as
‘‘Barnacho’’—possibly Bonnaca, a cay
lying just off Guanaja Island—where
they spent the next couple of months
careening and cleaning their hulls.
Thus refreshed, Vane and Deal sort-
ied together in February 1719, only to
become separated when a heavy storm
struck them a few days later. The luck-
less Vane had his sloop smashed two
days afterward on an uninhabited Hon-
duran island, being one of its few sur-
vivors to crawl alive onto its beach. He
eked out a miserable existence for sev-
eral weeks, with occasional help from
visiting fishermen and turtlers, until a
passing Jamaican ship chanced to land
for water. Its master, an old buccaneer
named Captain Holford, knew Vane
from better days, yet refused to carry
him off the island. Johnson recorded in
his History how he turned away all the
castaway’s pleas with the words:
‘‘Charles, I shan’t trust you aboard my
ship, unless I carry you as a prisoner;
for I shall have you caballing with my
men, knock me on my head, and run
away with my ship a-pirating.’’
Since he was headed deeper into the
Bay of Honduras, the best Holford would
offer was to call at the island again in a
month’s time, as he exited. While he was
gone, a second merchantman also
touched at the island for water, and Vane
was able to convince its unwitting mas-
ter, ‘‘Captain Margaritte,’’ that he had
been innocently lost with a trading-
sloop. He was therefore given a berth,
and quickly became regarded as ‘‘a brisk
hand.’’ But when this ship subsequently
met Holford at sea, and he was invited to
dine aboard, he spotted this new hand
working in the hold and immediately
informed the Master that it was none
other than ‘‘Vane, the notorious pirate.’’
Although Johnson states that it was
Holford who carried the prisoner to
Jamaica, official records indicate that it
was Margaritte who petitioned the
Crown for the reward for bringing in
this renegade. Vane was tried at a
Court of Admiralty session held on
March 22, 1720 (O.S.), at Jamaica’s
inland capital of Santiago de la Vega
(modern Spanish Town) and sentenced
to death, the execution most likely
being carried out a week later.
See also
Careen; Jennings, Henry; Piragua;
Rackham, John; Thatch, Edward.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volumes 30,
31 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1930
1933).
Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 6,
1720
1728 Volume 233 (London: Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1889).
Johnson, Charles, The History of the Lives
and Actions of the Most Famous
Highwaymen, Street-Robbers, Etc.
(London: Longman, 1813).
 Van Tuyl, Otto Janszoon (fl. 1695
1705)
Journals of the Board of Trade and
Plantations, Volume 3: March
1715
October 1718, Book T (London:
His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1924).
Konstam, Angus, Blackbeard: America’s
Most Notorious Pirate (New York:
Wiley, 2007).
The Lives and Adventures of Sundry
Notorious Pirates (New York: McBride,
1922).
Woodard, Colin, The Republic of Pirates
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
2008).
VAN TUYL, OTTO
JANSZOON
(fl. 1695
1705)
New York adventurer of Dutch ancestry,
who prowled the Red Sea with John Hoar,
before perishing in a terrible shipwreck.
He was born around 1661 at Game-
ren near the city of Zaltbommel in the
Province of Gelderland in The Nether-
lands, the eldest of what would be
eight children born to a sailor named
Jan Otto Van Tuyl and Geertruyd Jans
Van Lent. His parents married in
Utrecht shortly before or after their
son’s birth, after which the infant
Otto’s father stabbed a man to death in
a tavern brawl, so that in January 1662
he had to temporarily flee a murder
warrant issued in his native village of
Tuyl, on the far side of the Waai
River. Both parents and their two-year-
old son then departed Amsterdam on
April 16, 1663, part of a group of
almost 90 emigrants crammed aboard
the Bonte Koe of Captain Jan Bergen,
bound for New Amsterdam.
Next year, this Dutch colony would
pass under English rule when four heavily-
armed frigates under Commodore Robert
Holmes appeared off Staten Island in
813
August 1664, compelling Pieter Stuyve-
sant to surrender by next month and accept
the installation of Colonel Richard Nicolls
as new Royal Governor over this territory.
Henceforth, the Van Tuyl family sur-
name—which rhymes with ‘‘tile’’—would
be often misspelled by English scribes, the
patriarch himself appearing in city records
as ‘‘Jan Otten Van Thyl’’ or even ‘‘John
Otter,’’ while his son would be variously
listed over the ensuing years as ‘‘Tayl,’’
‘‘Teyl,’’ ‘‘Thyle,’’ ‘‘Toyle,’’ ‘‘Tyle’’, etc.
Presumably the teenaged Otto, as
eldest child in the family, followed his
father to sea, although details about his
early life and career are unknown. The
year after his father’s death, Otto mar-
ried Margrietje Dircks Fluyt in New
York City on June 14, 1693 (O.S.), by
whom he would eventually have three
children. And less than two years after
this wedding, the 34-year-old Van Tuyl
apparently shipped out on a Red Sea
cruise aboard John Hoar’s privateer
John and Rebecca.
Indian Ocean Adventures
(1695
1703)
The Irish-born Hoar had reached Rhode
Island that previous year, his vessel
Dublin bearing a Jamaican commission,
so as to have a rich French prize named
the Saint-Paul condemned by its pliant
authorities. Once adjudicated, he sold
its rich merchant cargo of sugar and in-
digo to the highest bidders, then refur-
bished this vessel so as to become his
new flagship, renaming it the John and
Rebecca. King William’s War was by
then entering into its sixth year, so that
Hoar next traveled to New York to
obtain a new privateering license from
814 Van Tuyl, Otto Janszoon (fl. 1695
1705)
its accommodating Governor Benjamin
Fletcher, as well as to recruit extra
hands—presumably including Van
Tuyl—for a cruise northeastward to the
coasts of French Acadia and Canada.
Details about the subsequent move-
ments of John and Rebecca are murky,
but these rovers evidently seized a sec-
ond French prize near the mouth of the
Saint Lawrence River, which they con-
verted into a consort under the com-
mand of Hoar’s brother-in-law,
Richard Glover. Next year, a prisoner
taken in the Indian Ocean in August
1696 and held aboard by these pirates
for 10 weeks, would later relate how:
I have often heard the commander
and many of his men say that he
took the ship from the French near
the river of Canada, and that they
had a commission from the Gover-
nor of New York to take the French.
They fitted their ship from Rhode
Island, and the then Governor of
New York knew their designs, as
also the Governor of Rhode Island.
Another pirate-ship of equal burden
was fitted out there at the same time
with this, which Hore [sic] com-
mands. The Captain of the other ship
is Richard Glover, brother-in-law to
Hore.
Presumably the privateers had wearied
of patrolling off French Canada, so
decided to venture into the Red Sea in
hopes of making a lucrative piratical
haul. What exactly Van Tuyl’s participa-
tion was during this rampage by Hoar’s
pair of raiders in Eastern waters, cannot
today be proven.
When the pirate Captain Thomas
Howard put into Saint Mary’s Bay
with his 36-gun prize Prosperous, Van
Tuyl invited him and some of his 70
cutthroats:
. . . to visit his plantation in the
mainland and attend a celebration
held in honor of the christening of
two of his children. The company
accepted and were hospitably enter-
tained. Word having been passed
around by someone envious of his
prosperity, that Van Tuyl had once
killed some pirates, the fickle ras-
cals—without any facts to justify the
fancy—pillaged his house, and in
violation of all laws of hospitality
took him prisoner. Such goods as
they could not transport in cases,
they burned or threw into the river,
and it was decided to take Van Tuyl
to the ship and hang him from the
yardarm.
Fortunately, a friendly pirate cut his
bonds during this drunken chaos, so that
Van Tuyl was able to escape into the
woods. Rallying a body of native allies,
he then laid in ambush as Howard’s pin-
nace and a canoe began the return-run
downriver toward Saint Mary’s Bay.
The ingrate pirate Captain was wounded
in an arm while passing and the canoe
overset near the river-bar, so that Van
Tuyl was at least able to recuperate his
women captives, and lay ahold of two of
his recent guests.
Van Tuyl was one of four Red Sea-
men who returned from Madagascar via
Cayenne aboard Captain Giles Shelley’s
ship Nassau, slipping across from
Sandy Hook to land on a lonely stretch
of shoreline. His fellow passenger,
Edward Buckmaster—like Van Tuyl, a
legal citizen of New York, both their
names and residences being listed on
the city tax-rolls—described a few days
 Van Tuyl, Otto Janszoon (fl. 1695
1705)
later how he and ‘‘Paul Swan, Jonathan
Evans, and Otto van Toyle went on
shore at the west end of Long Island on
Saturday last [May 27, 1699 (O.S.)], at
seven of the clock in the evening.’’
Although briefly incarcerated, Van
Tuyl was released a few weeks later
and settled back into civilian life as a
merchant. Once Queen Anne’s War
erupted a few years later, though, he
was tempted back into roving and so
prepared a major privateering venture.
But tragically, it was reported how, on
December 19, 1705 (O.S.). . . .’’
The minutes of Council of New
York for June 14, 1699 (O.S.), read:
‘‘Otto van Toyle, one of Hoar the
Pirate’s men, committed.’’
Examination of Otto van Toyle by
the L.G., June 14, 1699, who sailed
with Hoar the pirate to Madagascar
and returned on the Nassau, like
Buckmaster. The Dutch are so strong
in the East Indies that they can fit
out 100 sail at any time. There are
above 170 privateers at St. Maries,
who have fortified themselves there
with palisades and great guns.
Otto Van Tuyl, in the name of
God, Amen. Be it known and manifest
unto all people that I, Otto Van Tuyl
of New York, merchant, being in
good health: I leave to my eldest son
Dirck Van Tuyl, six shillings when of
age or married. All the rest of my
estate, real and personal, I leave to my
wife Margaret during widowhood,
with full power to sell. If she marries,
then she shall deliver up to my chil-
dren, Dirck, Jan, and Anna, and what
she shall have undisposed of, is to go
to them equally. If my children should
die, then half the estate is to go to my
brothers Aert, Abraham, and Isaac
815
Van Tuyl, and to Elizabeth, wife of
William Pell, Antie, wife of Cornelius
Van der Venter. And half to my wife’s
mother Elizabeth, wife of Joris Bur-
ger; and to my wife’s sister Janettie,
wife of Moses Gilbert, Fytie, wife of
Francis Van Dyck, and to my wife’s
half-sisters Engeltie and Elizabeth
Burger. I make my brother-in-law,
Cornelius Van der Venter, and Moses
Gilbert, the guardians of my children
under age. And I make my wife Mar-
garet executor.
Dated November 12, 1704. Wit-
nesses: Cornelius Louvert Van Wag-
ner, Abraham Low, Abraham
Gouverneur.
. . . the private ship of war call’d the
Castle del Rey of 130 tons, 18 guns,
Captain Otto Van Tyle commander,
sailed from Jacques Bay (about ten
miles from hence) and in going down
towards Sandy Hook with an easy gale
of wind, she struck upon the East Bank
and stuck there. They sent some of their
men on shore in the canoe for boats to
assist them, but that night a hard gale of
wind sprung up between west & north-
west, and froze very hard, the ship
began to fill with water. A sloop and
large boat was sent down, but it freez-
ing and blowing so hard, they would
not venture to relieve them, for fear of
running the same fate of being
aground, and so froze or drowned.
The next morning, the gale continued
hard all day, and the men were all alive
upon the deck and in the shrouds, the
sea beating over them; and on Friday
morning, the wind abating, a boat went
on board and found but four of the men
alive; the Captain and all the rest being
froze and drowned/ There was 145 men
on board when she sailed, and all peri-
shed but thirteen, and 132 died in this
816 Vercoue, Capitaine (fl. 1693
1694)
deplorable manner. Here are widows
lamenting the loss of their husbands,
and parents their children. ’Tis said
about 80 or 90 of the men were English,
Scotch, and Irish, and the rest of Dutch
parentage, most born in this country.
A subsequent news-story added the
chilling observation that: ‘‘Christmas
Day was the coldest that was ever felt
here; Hudson’s River was froze over
and continued fast several days, the
severe cold lasted three days.’’
See also
Hoar, John; Kidd, William.
References
Boston News-Letter, issues Number 90 and
92 for the weeks of December 31,
1705
1707, January 1706 (O.S.) and
January 14
21, 1706 (O.S.).
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 17
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1908).
Jameson, John F., comp. and ed.,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial
Period: Illustrative Documents (New
York: Macmillan, 1923).
Seitz, Don Carlos, Gospel, Howard F., and
Stephen Wood, Under the Black Flag:
Exploits of the Most Notorious Pirates
(Mineola, NY: Courier Dover, 2002).
VERCOUE, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1693
1694)
French flibustier mentioned in the
chronicle of Jean-Baptiste Labat, as
having traveled out from La Rochelle
to Martinique aboard the fl^
ute Loire at
the end of 1693.
Reference
Labat, Jean-Baptiste, Memoirs, 1693
1705
(London: Routledge, 1970).
VIGNERON, CAPITAINE
(fl. 1684
1687)
French flibustier who operated out of
Saint Domingue.
In March 1684, Vigneron was listed
as commanding the bark Louise of four
guns and 30 men, which sailed from
Petit-Go^ave for Saint Croix as part of
Jean, Sieur de Bernanos’ five-ship flo-
tilla, to enter the Gulf of Paria and
ascend the Orinoco River, eventually
capturing the Spanish river-fort called
San Francisco and frontier outpost of
Santo Tom
e de la Guayana. That fol-
lowing January 1685, Vigneron was
with Michiel Andrieszoon, Jean Rose,
Capitaine La Garde, and an English
trader off the South American coast,
hoping to intercept a Spanish patache
called the Margarita. The night of Jan-
uary 17th, they sighted a ship, which
the following morn was challenged.
Rose opened fire, but in the growing
light Andrieszoon recognized the ves-
sel as the 14-gun Spanish prize of Lau-
rens de Graaf, and realized that they
were engaging their own commander.
This exchange being halted, the next
day the formation headed toward Cura-
çao. At two o’clock that same after-
noon, they sighted a Flemish ship
standing out of La Guaira, which they
chased and captured by evening. On
January 20, 1685, De Graaf and his con-
sorts anchored off Curaçao, departing
four days later. On January 27th, they
stood over toward Cape de la Vela

(Venezuela), although Vigneron parted
company during this passage, as he
wished to return to Saint Domingue
because, only having ‘‘20 men on
board, they were not prepared for war.’’
More than a year-and-a-half later,
Vigneron was the officer of the watch
overlooking the harbor at Petit-Go^ave,
when the Corsican-born Cuban corsair
Biagio Michele made his attack. At first
light on August 10, 1687, Vigneron beheld
a large piragua gliding into the roads and
challenged it with the cry: D’ou est ce
canot? (‘‘Where is that boat from?’’) A
French captive named Saint-Antoine,
whom the Spanish raiders held captive
aboard, was made to reply: Saint-Antoine,
qui vient de L
eogane (‘‘Saint-Antoine,
coming from L
eogane’’). But when the
suspicious Vigneron hailed for a second
time, the prisoner bravely shouted out
across the waves: ‘‘Aux armes! Aux
Vigneron, Capitaine (fl. 1684
1687) 817
armes!’’ (‘‘To arms! To arms!’’), thus
alerting the defenses. Michele stormed
ashore and caused considerable damage,
before being defeated and executed the
following day.
See also
Bernanos, Jean; Michele, Biagio.
References
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
Lugo, Am
erico, Recopilaci
on diplom
atica
relativa a las colonias espa~
nola y
francesa de la isla de Santo Domingo,
1640
1701 (Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican
Republic: Editorial ‘‘La Naci
on,’’ 1944).
Lussan, Ravenau de, Journal of a Voyage
into the South Sea (Cleveland, OH:
Arthur H. Clark, 1930).
 W

Horrible clamors are occasioned by the pirates from all parts,

which are unanimously reputed to be English.
—From a letter written to the East India Company Directors
from Bombay, October 1696

WAFER, LIONEL attempt to poach logwood, only to be

(ca. 1660
post 1705?)
Buccaneer surgeon and chronicler.
Wafer apparently lived in the Scottish
Highlands as a boy, as well as in Ireland,
because it was later recorded that he
knew a bit of Gaelic. He first went to sea
as a young surgeon’s assistant or
‘‘loblolly boy’’ aboard the English East
Indiaman Great Ann in 1677, traveling
to Bantam in the Far East. On his return
to England aboard the Bombay in 1679,
he shipped out in a similar capacity
aboard the 300-ton ship John of Captain
Buckingham. Reaching Jamaica, Wafer
remained on that island visiting his
brother (who was employed at Gov. Sir
Thomas Modyford’s ‘‘Angels’’ planta-
tion), while the John crossed over to
Mexico’s Laguna de T
erminos in an
captured by the Spaniards. Wafer estab-
lished a surgery in Port Royal, but after
four months shipped out with the priva-
teer Captain Edmond Cooke.
They sailed to Golden Island, and
there met the flotilla of John Coxon,
which was about to assault Portobelo.
After sacking that port, the pirates
returned to Golden Island and crossed
over the Isthmus of Panama, capturing
a succession of Spanish vessels in the
South Sea. Cooke was deposed, and
Wafer remained under the overall com-
mand of Bartholomew Sharpe, prowl-
ing the Pacific coast until April 1681,
when a faction under John Cooke quit
his company. Wafer was among this
latter group, which included William
Dampier and Basil Ringrose, and re-
crossed the Isthmus for the Caribbean.
As they were traveling through the

819
820 Wafer, Lionel (ca. 1660
post 1705?)
jungle on May 15th with their Darien
Indian guides, Wafer:
. . . was sitting on the ground near
one of our men, who was drying of
gunpowder in a silver plate; but not
managing it as he should, it blew up
and scorched my knee to that
degree, that the bone was left bare,
the flesh being torn away, and my
thigh burnt for a great way above.
Badly injured, Wafer was forced to fall out
five days later and remain behind among
the Indians. As his wound worsened:
. . . the Indians undertook to cure
me, and applied to my knee some
herbs which they first chewed in
their mouths to the consistency of a
paste, and putting it on a plantain
[banana] leaf, laid it upon the sore.
This proved so effectual, that in
about 20 days’ use of this poultice,
which they applied fresh every day,
I was perfectly cured.
For several months, Wafer and some
companions lived among the natives,
until they reached the northern coast in
early September 1681, and heard guns
being fired out at sea. On investigating,
they spotted an English sloop and Span-
ish tartan lying off La Sounds’ Key, and
went aboard the sloop from an Indian
canoe. The tartan proved to be a cap-
tured vessel under the command of John
Cooke. Wafer’s companions were rec-
ognized and welcomed aboard, but he
himself was dressed in native garb, so:
I sat awhile cringing upon my hams
among the Indians, after their fash-
ion, painted as they were and all na-
ked but only one about the waist,
and with my nose-piece hanging
over my mouth. I was willing to try
if they would know me in this dis-
guise, and ‘twas the better part of an
hour before one of the crew, looking
more narrowly upon me, cried out:
‘‘Here’s our doctor!’’
Reunited with Dampier and his com-
rades, Wafer cruised the Spanish Main
under Capts. George Wright and Jan
Willems until late April 1682, when the
latter sailed for French Saint-Domingue.
Cooke and Wafer were among Wil-
lems’ contingent, who fell out with their
commander over a prize near ^Ile a
Vache, so that the English faction was
marooned. But Capitaine Tristan took
eight or 10 of them—including Cooke,
Edward Davis, and Wafer—aboard as
part of his crew and carried them toward
Petit-Go^ave. They repaid this kindness
by running off with his ship when he and
most of his men went ashore, returning
to ^Ile a Vache to rescue their English
companions. Cooke’s band then seized a
ship recently arrived from France with
wines and another French ship ‘‘of good
force,’’ which they renamed Revenge,
deciding to use it on a foray into the
South Sea. They therefore sailed these
vessels to Virginia, disposed of their
prize goods, reunited with Dampier,
Ringrose, and other shipmates, then ven-
tured to West Africa, where they seized a
36-gun Danish ship and renamed it
Bachelor’s Delight, rounding the Horn
to cruise the Pacific.
When Cooke died, Wafer remained
under his successor Davis, setting out
southward from Realejo with three
other vessels on August 27, 1685
(O.S.). They visited the ‘‘Gulf of Ama-
pala’’ (today’s Golfo de Fonseca in
Honduras) and the Galapagos Islands,

before raiding the Peruvian coast with
Captain William Knight in July 1686.
The latter parted from them after
careening at the Juan Fern
andez Islands,
‘‘making the best of his way round
Tierra del Fuego to the West Indies,’’
while Davis returned to Mocha Island
around Christmas 1686. He and Wafer
continued on that coast for another year,
before rounding the Horn themselves.
After touching at the River Plate,
they rounded Brazil and met a Barbados
sloop commanded by Edwin Carter,
who informed them of King James II’s
‘‘proclamation to pardon and call in the
buccaneers’’ (probably of May 22, 1687
[O.S.]), so sailed with Carter’s sloop to
Philadelphia, where they arrived by
May 1688. Wafer remained there
briefly, before transferring to Virginia
with Davis and other rovers, ‘‘but meet-
ing with some troubles after a three
years’ [sic; two years’] residence there,
I came home for England in the year
1690.’’ In fact, Wafer had been arrested
on suspicion of piracy immediately on
reaching Virginia in June 1688, being
deported aboard the Effingham to stand
trial in England. Although eventually
cleared, he was forced to cede part of
his booty in March 1693 toward estab-
lishing the College of William and
Mary in Virginia.
Three years later, Wafer was con-
sulted by the Scottish investors con-
templating establishment of a Darien
colony, and in 1697 by the Commis-
sioners of Trade in London as to the
feasibility of such a project. In the
summer of 1698, Wafer was secretly
smuggled to Edinburgh and plied for
information by the Scots, before their
own expedition departed—receiving a
paltry £20 for his troubles. Next year,
he published his A New Voyage and
Wanton, William (fl. 1694
1697) 821
Description of the Isthmus of Panama
in London. He died about 1705.
References
Prebble, John, The Darien Disaster
(London: Secker & Warburg, 1968).
Shomette, Donald G., Pirates on the
Chesapeake: Being a True History of
Pirates, Picaroons, and Raiders on
Chesapeake Bay, 1610
1807
(Centreville, MD: Tidewater, 1985).
Wafer, Lionel, A New Voyage and
Description of the Isthmus of America
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1933).
WANTON, WILLIAM
(fl. 1694
1697)
Massachusetts seaman who supposedly
fitted out ships on two different occa-
sions, to help defend New England
against enemy blockaders.
Born at Scituate, Massachusetts, in
1670, Wanton was the third son of a
Quaker ship-builder named Edward
Wanton. When Wanton married the
Presbyterian or Congregationalist Ruth
Bryant in June 1691, family opposition
drove the couple ‘‘to the Church of
England and to the Devil together,’’ as
he later jokingly described it. The
young inter-denominational couple set-
tled at Newport, Rhode Island, where
Wanton was to become a successful
merchant, sea captain, and ship builder.
In 1694, during the War of the
League of Augsburg or King William’s
War, a large French vessel (allegedly of
300 tons and 20 cannon) appeared off
the harbor-mouth, establishing a block-
ade ‘‘between Block Island and Point
Judith.’’ Wanton and his younger
brother John prepared a 30-ton unarmed
822 Weatherhill, James (fl. 1693
1694)
sloop, and went aboard with 30 of their
friends, most hiding below decks. They
stood out of port as if bound on a cruise,
and were soon intercepted by the
French ship, which fired a round across
their bow. Immediately, Wanton ‘‘low-
ered the peak of the mainsail and luffed
up’’ toward the enemy, as if in token of
surrender. But rather than bring his
sloop directly alongside as customary,
he drove it under the startled French-
man’s stern and grappled, further wedg-
ing the rudder. His friends then poured
up on deck, and a fire-fight ensued until
the enemy struck.
Three years later, at the very end of
that same war, the two brothers alleg-
edly captured another French ship
using much the same trick. This time,
they sortied aboard two sloops, and
encountered their enemy off Holmes’
Hole. While the younger John engaged
the Frenchman from a distance, Wil-
liam again drove under his stern and
wedged the rudder. The prize suppos-
edly proved ‘‘very valuable, as she had
the choicest spoils from the prizes she
had taken, and the Wantons were
greatly enriched.’’ When the two broth-
ers visited England in 1702, they were
granted an addition to their coat of
arms by Queen Anne, as well as each
being presented with two pieces of
plate, a silver punch-bowl and salver,
with their mottos inscribed in Latin.
In 1732, William Wanton became
Governor of Rhode Island.
Reference
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
WEATHERHILL, JAMES
(fl. 1693
1694)
English privateer originally from Anti-
gua, who commanded the Jamaican
sloop Charles, with which he reputedly
captured a Spanish merchantman of
great value, despite that country’s alli-
ance with England during the War of
the League of Augsburg or King Wil-
liam’s War. Several of its crewmem-
bers were killed and others reputedly
‘‘inhumanly abused.’’
Reference
Chapin, Howard M., Privateer Ships and
Sailors: The First Century of American
Colonial Privateering, 1625
1725
(Toulon: G. Mouton, 1926).
WILLEMS, JAN, ALIAS
‘‘JANTJE’’ OR ‘‘JANKE’’
(fl. 1680
1688)
Dutch corsair who prowled the Carib-
bean for many years.
Willems appears to have called him-
self ‘‘Jantje,’’ a diminutive form of Jan
or ‘‘John’’ traditionally associated with
Dutch sailors (much as ‘‘Jack’’ was
among the English); however, this nick-
name was most often rendered ‘‘Janke’’
or ‘‘Johnnie’’ by other nationalities he
came into contact with. The French, for
example, listed him as Janch
ee, Jan-
quais, or Jonch
ee; the chronicler Rave-
nau de Lussan mangled his name even
further into Jean Quet; the Spanish
knew him as ‘‘Yanch
ee,’’ ‘‘Yanqu
ee,’’
‘‘Yonqu
ee,’’ or ‘‘Yunqu
e’’; the English
came the closest with ‘‘Yankey’’ or
 Willems, Jan, Alias ‘‘Jantje’’ or ‘‘Janke’’ (fl. 1680
1688)
‘‘Yankey Dutch,’’ but referred to him
more precisely as ‘‘John Williams, alias
Yanky.’’
Delivery of the Peace
Overture (1680)
The first notice of Willems’ activities
occurred in the spring of 1680, when he
played a modest role in the attempt to
reestablish relations between the French
flibustiers of Saint-Domingue, and their
Spanish neighbors on that same island.
On May 16th, Willems was lying with
his ship Saint Bernard at Puerto Plata
on the north coast of Santo Domingo,
when Spanish scouts from the inland
town of Santiago de los Caballeros sur-
prised one of his crewmen on the beach,
handing the seaman a letter asking if his
captain would be willing to communi-
cate with them concerning the peace.
Willems sent a written message back to
the Spaniards next day, saying that it
would give him ‘‘great joy to see
them.’’
At ten o’clock the morning of May
18th, a company of Spanish cavalrymen
appeared bearing a white flag. Willems
sent two boats ashore to convey a depu-
tation aboard, from whom he received a
copy of Madrid’s real c
edula of July 6,
1679, which announced ratification of
the Treaty of Nijmegen, ending Franco-
Spanish hostilities in Europe. The Presi-
dent of the Audiencia of Santo Domi-
ngo, Francisco de Segura Sandoval y
Castilla, allowed sufficient time for
Willems to convey this document to the
French Gov. Jacques Nepveu, Sieur de
Pouançay, before dispatching another
messenger with a copy of the treaty
itself, plus a private letter dated July 10,
1680. Willems was present at the
823
French capital of Petit-Go^ave when this
emissary arrived, recognizing him as
one of the persons who had come
aboard his ship at Puerto Plata, and sub-
sequently served as interpreter during
the interviews with the French Gover-
nor, at which local frictions proved too
deep-seated for anything other than a
brief truce to be arranged.
Cruises (1681
1682)
Early in June of that following year,
Willems was lying at Springer’s Key
in the San Blas Islands north of Pan-
ama with a barco luengo of four guns
and 60 English, Dutch, and French
crewmembers, in the company of John
Coxon, Jean Rose, George Wright,
and five other captains. The bucca-
neers were joined by Capitaine Tri-
stan, who had just rescued John
Cooke’s band of rovers at nearby La
Sound’s Key after their adventures in
the South Sea (among whom was Wil-
liam Dampier). From there, the free-
booter flotilla decided to make a
descent on the Central American
coast, for which they sailed toward
San Andr
es Island to procure boats. A
gale struck the formation, however,
and an armadilla of a dozen tiny
men-of-war sent from Cartagena fur-
thermore scattered them. Willems put
into Bocas del Toro on the northwest-
ern coast of present-day Panama with
Coxon, and two weeks later they were
joined by Wright.
According to Dampier, Willems
agreed to act as Wright’s consort
‘‘because Captain Yanky [sic] had no
commission, and was afraid the French
would take away his bark.’’ The two
therefore sailed to Cartagena, seized
824 Willems, Jan, Alias ‘‘Jantje’’ or ‘‘Janke’’ (fl. 1680
1688)
some boats, then returned to the San
Blas Islands to forage. Capturing some
coastal traders laden with foodstuffs
(as well as rescuing Lionel Wafer),
they retired near Darien to careen.
Afterward, they prowled past Carta-
gena, Santa Marta, and Rı́ohacha,
before reversing course and intercept-
ing a 12-gun Spanish merchantman
from Santiago de Cuba as it was
approaching the Spanish Main. During
this chase, Wright overtook the Span-
iard first and engaged, followed a half-
hour later by Willems’ slower craft.
Because of this, Wright claimed the
entire prize, but was persuaded by his
company to share it. Nevertheless,
Wright burnt his own bark and
assumed command over Willems’ ship,
transferring the Dutchman and his crew
into the Cuban prize.
After the buccaneers deposited their
captives at Rı́ohacha, they made for
Curaçao in mid-November 1681 to
attempt to sell their Cuban cargo. No
deal could be made, so Willems and
Wright continued to Bonaire, where
they met a Dutch sloop from Europe
with Irish beef, which they exchanged
for some of their captured goods. They
then visited Aves Islands, where
Wright careened his bark while Wil-
lems’ was scrubbed, and two guns
were fished from the wreck of the Duc
d’Estr
ees’s fleet. In mid-February
1682, they crossed to Los Roques,
where Willems’ vessel was careened,
and 10 tons of sugar sold to a passing
French warship of 36 guns. By April
1682, they reached the Salt Tortuga off
Venezuela, before attempting to tack
upwind to Trinidad, only to be driven
back to Blanquilla. Ten days later, they
returned to Salt Tortuga, where Wil-
lems parted from Wright.
Cuban Blockade (1682
1683)
Evidently, he thereupon laid in a
course for Saint-Domingue, as later
that summer Willems was serving as
part of a French flotilla blockading the
southern coast of Cuba, under a com-
mission issued to the legendary flibust-
ier Sieur de Grammont. At the end of
that year, the force proceeded toward
the Bahamas, where a Spanish ship
was captured by Willems’ consort
Pierre Bot, and its survivors returned
to Havana aboard a barco luengo. But
Willems’ own activities must have also
been noteworthy, for his reputation
soon reached Jamaica. In February
1683, Gov. Sir Thomas Lynch, in a
vain attempt to destroy the elusive
pirate ship Trompeuse or ‘‘Trickster’’
commanded by Jean Hamlin, sent
Coxon:
. . . to offer to one Yankey (who
commands an admirable sailer) men,
victuals, pardon, naturalisation, and
£200 in money to him and Coxon if
he will go after La Trompeuse.
Before any deal could be struck, Wil-
lems became involved in another, more
spectacular venture.
Late in March 1683, the flotilla
began to sail back toward Petit-Go^ave
with another Cuban prize, but on
approaching they were met by the Dutch
rover Nikolaas Van Hoorn, exiting in
Grammont’s corvette Colbert to recall
them for a major enterprise against the
Spaniards. Van Hoorn had earlier been
cheated out of a large consignment of
slaves at Santo Domingo, for which
Governor de Pouançay had granted him
a letter-of-reprisal against the Spaniards.
Willems joined the freebooter force
 Willems, Jan, Alias ‘‘Jantje’’ or ‘‘Janke’’ (fl. 1680
1688)
which crossed into the Bay of Honduras,
searching for further reinforcements. In
particular, it was hoped to recruit the
Dutch buccaneer Laurens de Graaf and
his confederate Michiel Andrieszoon;
they were persuaded to join in the pro-
jected attack against Veracruz at a meet-
ing held on Roat
an Island that April.
The expedition of 13 sail then rounded
the Yucatan Peninsula, steering into the
Gulf of Mexico.
Sack of Veracruz (May 1683)
Willems’ Spanish-built ship was one of
two advance scouts used by the pirates
to reconnoiter Veracruz’s defenses
from out at sea on the afternoon of
May 17, 1683. That night, a landing
party of 800 buccaneers was slipped
into the sleeping city, attacking its
buildings at dawn. The Spanish garri-
son and citizens were surprised in their
beds, the entire city being seized and
ransacked over the next four days. The
pirates then withdrew offshore to Sac-
rificios Island with 4,000 captives,
dividing their booty and awaiting the
payment of ransoms out of Mexico’s
interior. Two weeks later, they were
paid, and after herding 1,500 blacks
and mulattos aboard as slaves, the
pirate fleet weighed. They encountered
the annual Spanish plate fleet just as
they were standing out from the coast,
but its commander deferred combat, so
that the raiders escaped scot-free.
The majority of buccaneer craft
paused at Coatzacoalcos to take on
water before shouldering back around
the Yucatan Peninsula to Isla Mujeres,
where by late June 1683 they had split
the remaining spoils. Each went their
separate ways, and by July 26th (O.S.)
Governor Lynch was reporting:
825
Yankey got first to Caimanos [sic;
the Cayman Islands] and is bound
for Hispaniola. A sloop that came in
yesterday got this information from
his men.
Lynch further identified the main perpe-
trators of the Veracruz assault as ‘‘Van
Hoorn, Laurens, and Yankey Dutch.’’
Willems now subordinated himself to
his more famous compatriot, so that after
a few months spent enjoying their loot,
De Graaf led a pirate contingent consist-
ing of Andrieszoon, Willems, François
Le Sage, and several other captains to-
ward the Main, arriving near Cartagena
by late November 1683.
Victory off Cartagena
(Christmas 1683)
When the local Spanish Governor, Juan
de Pando Estrada, learned that these
rovers were hovering outside his har-
bor, he commandeered the private mer-
chant ships San Francisco of 40 guns,
Nuestra Se~ nora de la Paz of 34, and a
28-gun galliot to chase them away.
This trio exited on December 23, 1683,
manned by 800 soldiers and sailors
under the command of Captain Andr
es
de Pez. The result was scarcely as the
Spaniards had anticipated, for the
seven nimble pirate ships swarmed all
over them. In the confusion San Fran-
cisco ran aground, Paz struck after four
hours’ fight, and Willems took the
galliot. Ninety Spaniards were killed
in the battle, as opposed to only 20 buc-
caneers. San Francisco was refloated
and became De Graaf’s new flagship,
being renamed Fortune (later Neptune);
Andrieszoon received command of
the Paz, rechristening it as Mutine
826 Willems, Jan, Alias ‘‘Jantje’’ or ‘‘Janke’’ (fl. 1680
1688)
(Rascal); while Willems was given De
Graaf’s old flagship Francesa or Dau-
phine (Princess). On December 25th,
the triumphant buccaneers deposited
their prisoners ashore, then settled
down to blockade the port.
In mid-January 1684, a small con-
voy of English slavers arrived, escorted
by the 48-gun frigate HMS Ruby of
Captain Matthew Tennant, who visited
Willems and reported ‘‘that Yankey
showed him a commission from the
Governor of Petit-Go^ave.’’ The free-
booters proved friendly, letting the
English slavers past and even entering
into a contract with one of their pas-
sengers, a Dutch slave factor named
Diego Maquet, to have a large supply
of wine and meat delivered from Port
Royal, Jamaica, to Roat
an. Shortly
thereafter, the pirates quit their block-
ade and headed northwestward. En
route, De Graaf captured a 14-gun
Spanish vessel, then touched at Roat
an
with his flotilla before continuing to
the south coast of Cuba. There, he and
his consorts intercepted a Spanish
aviso or dispatch vessel, bearing news
that Spain and France were once again
at war. Realizing that this meant they
could renew their French privateering
commissions, De Graaf left Andries-
zoon and Willems to prowl the Cuban
coast, while he sailed his 14-gun prize
into Petit-Go^ave to obtain new patents.
Ransacking of the Dutch
West Indiamen (May 1684)
After parting company with their leader,
Andrieszoon and Willems rounded west-
ern Cuba and took up station near Ha-
vana. On May 18, 1684, while opposite
the tiny hamlet of Santa Lucı́a, they saw
two large vessels approaching, which
they stood out to intercept. The strangers
proved to be the Dutch West Indiamen
Stad Rotterdam and Elisabeth, and de-
spite Holland’s neutrality in the conflict,
Andrieszoon led an 80-man boarding
party across in two boats to inspect their
cargos. He discovered that they had sailed
from Cartagena three weeks previously,
and because of the protection afforded by
Dutch colors, the Spaniards had shipped a
great deal of money and passengers on
board, including a Bishop. Andrieszoon
laid claim to half the 200,000 pesos and
all the Spanish nationals, removing them
over the masters’ objections.
New England Visit
(August 1684)
After this lucrative haul, the pair of
buccaneer vessels worked their way up
the Atlantic Seaboard, and by the end
of August 1684 Gov. Edward Cranfield
of New Hampshire was informing Lon-
don that:
. . . a French privateer of 35 guns has
arrived at Boston. I am credibly
informed that they share £700 a man.
The Bostoners no sooner heard of her
off the coast than they dispatched a
messenger and pilot to convoy her
into port, in defiance of the King’s
proclamation [of March 1684 prohib-
iting aid and abetment of rovers]. The
pirates are likely to leave the greatest
part of their plate [i.e., silver] behind
them, having bought up most of the
choice goods in Boston. The ship is
now fitting for another expedition.
This was Andrieszoon’s Mutine. Two
days later, the Governor wrote again,
 Willems, Jan, Alias ‘‘Jantje’’ or ‘‘Janke’’ (fl. 1680
1688)
adding that a second French privateer,
Willems’ Dauphine, had appeared off
that coast. Spanish escapees told the
Governor that they had been taken off
Cartagena ‘‘by the men who plundered
Veracruz,’’ and identified the ship refur-
bishing in Boston’s yard by its former
Spanish name of La Paz, while the sec-
ond they called Francesa (which the
Governor misheard as ‘‘Francis’’).
‘‘They are both extraordinarily rich
ships,’’ Cranfield concluded, ‘‘chiefly
through spoil of the Spaniards, though
they have spared none that they have
met at sea.’’ Once Andrieszoon’s ship
had completed refitting, Willems’ was
to be repaired. However, a couple of
weeks later the King’s latest proclama-
tion against piracy was promulgated in
Boston, leading Gov. William Dyre to
attempt to seize Mutine. It was restored
to Andrieszoon after a brief impound-
ment, but apparently convinced Willems
to sail away alone.
Return to the West Indies
(October 1684)
He was off the Main again by October
14, 1684, for on that day Willems
intercepted the English sloop James as
it approached that coast with a cargo
of goods for the Spaniards. In the
words of its master, John Thorp:
. . . we met Captain Yankey in the
ship Dolphin [sic; Dauphine] off
Cartagena, who fired a volley of
small shot into our sloop, in spite of
our showing our [English] colors,
and ordered us on board him, while
his men plundered our sloop. We
were kept prisoners for six weeks till
he came to Petit-Go^ave, where the
827
Intendant [Chevalier de St. Laurent]
and Council voted her good prize.
This condemnation occurred on Novem-
ber 22, 1684, and when Thorp and the
sloop’s owner James Wale protested
against this verdict, the Intendant replied
with ‘‘reviling language, and told us to
go complain to the King of England.’’
The sloop had been taken entering a
Spanish port, with Spanish goods and
three Spanish factors aboard, who fur-
thermore had been tortured to reveal
their ownership of the cargo. All this
evidence rendered the James forfeit,
France being then at war with Spain, and
the disgruntled English captives noted
how ‘‘Laurens the pirate, who gave Yan-
key his commission, took three barrels
of flour from our ship.’’
When news of this capture reached
Port Royal early in December, Acting-
Governor Hender Molesworth
instructed the new Captain of the Ruby,
David Mitchell, to ‘‘forthwith sail to
Petit-Go^ave and deliver my letter to
the Governor, demanding satisfaction
for a sloop of this island unlawfully
seized by Captain Yankey.’’ Mitchell
arrived on the morning of December
16, 1684, where he ‘‘saw in the port
the ships commanded by Captain Yan-
key, Br
eha, Thomas, and Johnson.’’
Dauphine was the largest of this group,
being described in a contemporary
French document as mounting 30 guns
and carrying 180 men. The Royal
Navy officer referred to it by its former
Spanish nickname when he sent his
protest ashore, alleging piracy against
‘‘Captain Yankey of the Francis.’’ The
French Gov. Pierre-Paul Tarin de
Cussy was absent, but his deputy Capi-
taine Boisseau returned a polite rejoin-
der, disputing the characterization of
828 Willems, Jan, Alias ‘‘Jantje’’ or ‘‘Janke’’ (fl. 1680
1688)
Willems as a pirate. ‘‘I assure you that
we know him to be incapable of such a
thing,’’ he wrote, explaining that the
James had been condemned as a lawful
prize after examination at ‘‘the little
river L
eog^ane,’’ where it had been
found to be laden with Spanish mer-
chandise. Mitchell persisted, arguing
next day that the sloop ‘‘was bona fide
the property not of Spanish but English
subjects,’’ yet to no avail. In a concili-
atory gesture, Boisseau sent out three
English seamen who had been serving
aboard Willems’ ship—it being techni-
cally illegal for them to sail under for-
eign colors while England was at
peace—but otherwise took no further
action. Ruby returned to Port Royal
empty-handed four days later.
Willems was next sighted at a huge
pirate gathering off Isla de Pinos on
Cuba’s southern coast in April 1685,
when Mitchell and HMS Ruby stumbled
on a vast assemblage of 22 sail including
De Graaf, Grammont, George Bannister,
and Jacob Evertsen, but could not dis-
cover their design, despite speaking with
several captains. In fact, the buccaneers
were preparing for a major descent on
the Mexican port of Campeche.
Assault on Campeche
(July 1685)
Shifting to Isla Mujeres and Cape
Catoche to gather more recruits, the
raiders began their advance late in June,
their fleet of six large and four small
ships, six sloops, and 17 piraguas
appearing half-a-dozen miles off Cam-
peche on the afternoon of July 6th. A
landing force of 700 buccaneers took to
the boats and began rowing in toward
shore, and next day overran the city. Its
citadel held out for a week, after which
the invaders were left in undisputed pos-
session of the port for two months, but
as most of the Spaniards’ wealth had
been withdrawn prior to the assault, little
plunder was found. Captives were threat-
ened with death if ransoms were not
forthcoming, but Yucatan’s Gov. Juan
Bruno T
ellez de Guzm
an prohibited all
such payments, so that finally the pirates
evacuated the city late in August, after
putting it to the torch.
Disappointed with their results, the
pirate host scattered. Willems was not
mentioned again for more than a year,
but in October 1686 Molesworth
received word that:
Yankey, the privateer, has taken a
Spanish vessel with fifty thousand
dollars off Havana. If we could meet
with him, this would be a good time
to call him to account for the Eng-
lish sloop [James] that was con-
demned at Petit-Go^ave, but he is
said to be bound northward.
Almost another year would elapse before
the Jamaican Lieutenant-Governor got
his opportunity, during which time
Willems apparently visited North Amer-
ica once more.
Jamaican Overture
(September 1687)
Willems was not heard of again until
the autumn of 1687, when he reap-
peared off the northwestern shores of
Jamaica with his consort Evertsen,
their force being described as follows:
Yankey [Willems] has a large
Dutch-built ship with 44 guns and
 Willems, Jan, Alias ‘‘Jantje’’ or ‘‘Janke’’ (fl. 1680
1688)
100 men; Jacob [Evertsen] has a fine
bark with ten guns, 16 patararoes
[sic; pedreros or ‘‘swivel-guns’’] and
about 50 men. They have also a
small sloop.
Hoping to obtain supplies, Willems
smuggled a letter ashore to a man he had
dealt with previously; who in turn
requested authorization from the Gover-
nor. Molesworth declared that he could
not permit the rover to be supplied ‘‘with
anything whatever, but that if he was
ready to come in and live honestly
among us, giving security for the same,
he might be received.’’ At the same time,
Molesworth secretly directed Captain
Charles Talbot of the frigate HMS Fal-
con to circle round to the north coast of
the island and seize Willems, who was
still wanted for having captured the Eng-
lish sloop three years earlier. This
scheme came to naught when the frigate
had to turn back into Port Royal because
of its dilapidated sails and rigging.
Unaware of this treacherous attempt,
Willems and Evertsen entered Montego
Bay and drafted a formal petition
before its local authority, Ensign Wil-
liam Geese, which read:
Captains Yankey and Jacob to Lieu-
tenant Governor Molesworth, Mon-
tego Bay, 3 September 1687 [O.S.].
We have arrived from Carolina
and brought several people thence
who have been driven from the col-
ony by the trouble with the Span-
iards. In all sincerity we present
ourselves, our ships and company to
the service of the King of England,
and hope for your assurance that our
ships and men shall not be troubled
or molested, as we are ignorant of
the laws and customs of this island.
829
We can satisfy you that we have
never injured any British subject.
(Signed) John Williams, Jacob
Everson
According to Geese, before this proposal
was sealed, ‘‘the whole company agreed
to it.’’
Molesworth replied nine days later,
offering a royal pardon and letters of
naturalization if the rovers would break
up their ships and renounce privateer-
ing. Willems and Evertsen responded in
late September that to do so would
leave them ‘‘destitute of all livelihood
in present and future,’’ and that neither
had ‘‘money to purchase an estate
ashore.’’ The Governor remained
unmoved, writing on October 19th: ‘‘If
you will accept the condition, make the
best of your way to Port Royal; if not,
leave the coast at once, for I shall con-
sider the treaty to be at an end.’’ Wil-
lems and his confederate made off,
although a number of their men
deserted ashore. The last Molesworth
heard of both captains, they were stand-
ing ‘‘away to leeward [westward], their
vessels being much in want of repair.’’
Final Coup (February 1688)
Nonetheless, Willems and Evertsen
remained sufficiently strong to attack
one of the annual Spanish galleons a
few months later, which had crossed
the Atlantic to trade with Guatemala
and Honduras. In mid-February 1688,
the new Jamaican Governor, the Duke
of Albemarle, was told:
. . . that the pirates Yankey and
Jacobs have fallen upon a great
Spanish ship in the Bay of Honduras
called the Hulk [urca or ‘‘cargo
830 Williams, Thomas (fl. 1702
1704)

ship’’], and that they had been in WILLIAMS, THOMAS

sight of her twelve hours. If Yankey
failed in this attempt, he is ruined,
(fl. 1702
1704)
for it is said that he was very ill pro-
Minor Bahamian privateer who operated
vided before. Had I the honor of par-
out of Nassau during Queen Anne’s War.
doning pirates, which formally was
The first official notice of his activities
usual here, I could have done the
came when Williams, along with his
King good service [by granting am-
friend Read Elding, was one of that
nesty to these two rovers].
island’s rough-hewn Councilors who
deposed the private Governor Elias Has-
Evidently the buccaneers succeeded in
kett in October 1701, supplanting him in
their aim, for two months later Albe-
office with Ellis Lightwood. In the lengthy
marle received confirmation that they
memorial which Haskett subsequently
had fought the Spanish ship ‘‘in the port
presented in his defense before the Coun-
of Cavana [sic; Puerto Cabello?] from
cil of Trade and Plantations in London
seven in the morning till three in the
next July 1702, he dismissively referred to
afternoon, and took her.’’ This was to be
many of his accusers, among them:
both commanders’ last hurrah, however,
for later that same summer, Captain
Thomas Williams, an old privateer, and
Peterson led ‘‘the remainder of Yankey’s
so illiterate that he cannot write his
and Jacobs’ company’’ to New England,
name. Thomas Dalton, now Master of a
revealing that they were dead.
small bark, had served under pirates in
Twenty-five years afterward, the
the South Sea; a person of a very weak
director of the French slaving asiento
understanding. Nicholas David, a poor
at Havana was one ‘‘Jean-Baptiste
journeyman carpenter, working for me
Jonch
ee,’’ who may possibly have been
at two shillings sixpence a day when I
a descendant of Willems, from those
was seized; had been a privateer.
early halcyon days on Saint-Domingue.
A memorial subscribed by the few
References remaining inhabitants on New Provi-
dence Island, dated November 30,
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1704 (O.S.), stated that:
America and West Indies, Volumes 11,
12 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Several Spanish prizes brought into
Office, 1898
1899).
Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round this harbor by Captain Thomas Wil-
the World (New York: Dover, 1968). liams, who has taken the same by
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s virtue of a commission derived from
Who (London: Dulau, 1924). Sir Nathaniel Johnson, Governor of
Ju
arez Moreno, Juan, Piratas y corsarios en North and South Carolina.
Veracruz y Campeche (Seville: Escuela
de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1972).
Marley, David F., Sack of Veracruz: The References
Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor,
Ontario, Canada: Netherlandic Press, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
1993). America and West Indies, Volume 20
 Woollerly or Woolerly, Thomas (fl. 1687)
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1912).
Collections of the South Carolina Historical
Society, Volume II (Charleston, SC:
Historical Society, 1858).
WOOLLERLY OR
WOOLERLY, THOMAS
(fl. 1687)
English rover who plied the South Sea.
In early June 1687, a large ship
appeared off New Providence in the
Bahamas, and sent a boat ashore to say
that she was come from the South Sea
under Woollerly. The local Bahamian
magistrate, Thomas Bridge, instructed
one man to remain ashore while the
boat returned to the ship, then learned
that the notorious Christopher Goffe
and some of his cohorts were also
aboard. Bridge therefore advised the
strangers:
. . . it was the King’s order that they
[pirates] should not be entertained,
and as she continued standing in,
I fired a shot across her forefoot.
She then anchored, and next day
Woolerly told me that he was come
to wood and water, that he had
Colonel Lilburne’s commission and
had done nothing contrary to it, and
that he had taken in Goffe and his
companions in extremity of distress.
I refused him leave to come in, and
he sailed away next day. I am told
that they burnt the ship at Andrew’s
Island and dispersed, leaving only
six or seven men in the Bahamas.
Despite Bridge’s apparent compliance
with the King’s instructions, the suspicion
831
remained that Woollerly’s prize had been
allowed a place to scuttle, and his men
the opportunity to disappear into civilian
life, most likely in exchange for a hefty
bribe. This impression was reinforced
when Bridge delayed writing to his imme-
diate superiors at Jamaica over the next
three months, by which time Woollerly
had long since left the Islands.
In fact, Lieutenant-Gov. Hender
Molesworth of Jamaica learned of Wooll-
erly’s presence in the Bahamas through
secondhand sources, and on August 17,
1687 (O.S.) was informing London that
he had heard the buccaneers:
. . . quarreled and burnt the ship, but
some of them had bought a vessel
and intended to sail for New Eng-
land, but were detained by want of
provisions. It is said that some of
these pirates have [so much money],
at times [they pay] half a crown a
pound for flour.
Molesworth consequently dispatched
Captain Thomas Spragge of HMS Drake
to the Bahamas with specific orders ‘‘to
take the pirate Woollerly,’’ but he
arrived only to find the pirate gone. It is
presumed that the rovers had sailed to
Boston, where Goffe is known to have
obtained a royal pardon in November of
that same year.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 12
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1899).
Gosse, Philip H. G., The Pirates’ Who’s
Who (London: Dulau, 1924).
 Y

And truly since we do our best to suppress our pirates,

it is hard that the Spanish Governors should not do the like for theirs,
instead of which they encourage them.
—Governor Sir Nathaniel Johnson of Antigua, April 1689

YEATS, CHARLES That very same day, Yeats lay un-

happily at anchor aboard Katherine in
(fl. 1718) Nassau harbor under Vane’s orders,
observing the arrival outside of Woodes
Minor pirate who seemingly operated
Rogers’ expedition to assume office as
out of Bermuda, before losing his
its new Royal Governor. Vane intended
sloop to a rival Captain, Charles Vane.
to repudiate his authority, though, so
The latter bore a grudge against
fired three warning-shots from a large
Bermudians, which might explain why
French prize over the first Royal Navy
he took over Yeats’ fine sloop Kather-
frigate to edge in through the western
ine in the summer of 1718. Richard
entrance that evening of July 26, 1718
Tayler of the sloop Elizabeth and
(O.S.). He then sent a letter out for
Mary—a Philadelphian master being
the incumbent Governor, outlining his
held prisoner around that same time by
demands, and when no reply was re-
three Cuban piraguas—testified that
ceived by 2:00 A.M., aimed his French
during his captivity, he was carried to
prize at the first anchored British war-
Cat Island in the Bahamian archipel-
ships and unleashed it in flames, causing
ago, where on July 26, 1718 (O.S.),
them to cut their cables and scatter
the Spaniards landed ‘‘and took eight
before this onrushing fireship.
men who had lately belong’d to a
Next morning, Rogers himself led
pirate sloop built at Bermudas, com-
his squadron in through the western
manded by one Cha. Yate.’’

833
834 Yeats, Charles (fl. 1718)
entrance aboard his flagship, by which
time Vane and his 90 die-hard followers
were all aboard the swift Katherine. As
the Royal Navy warships pressed in,
Vane gave the order to weigh and exit
via Nassau’s eastern channel, causing
the Governor to signal his pair of sloops
to try to intercept. He later reported that
the pirates ‘‘fled away in a sloop wear-
ing the black flag, and fir’d guns of
defiance when they perceived their
sloop outsailed the two that I sent to
chase them hence.’’
Rogers stepped ashore by mid-morn-
ing at the Nassau waterfront to be in-
stalled into office, while Vane used
Katherine to take a sloop from Barbados
two days later, transferring his unwilling
partner Yeats aboard this prize with
25 hands, to sail as his consort. And a
day or two later, they also seized a small
unlicensed trader or interloper while it
was making for Nassau, before crossing
over to Cuba and then eventually steer-
ing north for the Carolinas. They
appeared off Charleston by August 30,
1718 (O.S.), intercepting various mer-
chantmen over the next couple of days.
One was the 80-ton brigantine Dorothy
of London, inward-bound with 90 slaves
from Guinea, which Vane selected as
his new flagship.
Yeats was therefore restored back
aboard Katherine, although Vane also
crowded all 90 slaves into it as well, to
continue serving as his tender. The dis-
gruntled Yeats at last saw an opportunity.
While lying at anchor one evening, he:
. . . slipped his cable and put his ves-
sel under sail, standing into the
shore; which when Vane saw, he
was highly provoked, and got his
sloop under sail to chase his consort.
Vane’s brigantine sailing best, he
gained ground of Yeats and would
certainly have come up with him,
had he a little longer run; but just as
he got over the bar, when Vane
came within gunshot of him, he fired
a broadside at his old friend, and so
took his leave.
Yeats sailed up the into shallow waters
of the North Edisto River, from where
he sent a message overland to South Car-
olina’s Governor in Charleston, asking
to surrender under the terms of the royal
amnesty for pirates, in exchange for
handing over his slaves. According to
the chronicler Charles Johnson, this was
eventually agreed to, and Yeats’ name
then faded from the history books.
See also
Piragua; Vane, Charles.
References
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
America and West Indies, Volume 30
(London: His Majesty’s Stationery
Office, 1930).
Johnson, Capt. Charles. The History of the
Lives and Actions of the Most Famous
Highwaymen, Street-Robbers, Etc.
(London: Longman, 1813).
 Documents

DOCUMENT 11.
PRIVATEERING COMMISSION ISSUED

BY THE EXILED ENGLISH KING JAMES II, JUNE 1691
The almost-bloodless deposal of the last Catholic Stuart monarch during the winter
of 1688
1689, in favor of his Protestant challengers William and Mary, created
some perplexing uncertainties. Supporters of the popular new rulers insisted that
every title or commission issued by the exiled James had been rendered null and
void, while only new ones emanating under William and Mary’s seal could be
regarded as legitimate. Adherents of the Stuart cause upheld the exact opposite,
dismissing all new edicts as worthless paper and maintaining the legitimacy of
original documents, so long as their duly-anointed King remained alive and deter-
mined to reclaim his throne. Bearers of the wrong commission would be regarded
as lawless pirates by their opponents.
A sizeable majority in England and its overseas colonies quickly accepted this
change in government, so that William and Mary’s titles soon became widely rec-
ognized. Yet even two-and-a-half years after fleeing London, James would still con-
tinue issuing letters-of-marque from his residence in Paris, such as the following:
James the Second, by the grace of God King of England, Scotland, France, and
Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. To our trusty and well beloved Nicholas
Roche, greeting: We reposing special trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage,
experience, and conduct in sea affairs, and good affection to us, do by these
presents give leave, and permit and suffer you, the said Nicholas Roche, to fit out
and equip what vessel soever you please, with what number and complement of
men and arms as to you shall seem meet, in order to privateer and seize the ships
of all persons whatsoever, only excepted the subjects of those who are in friend-
ship and alliance with us, or of such as have our royal protection and passport, or

835
836 Documents

of the Duke of Tyreconnel, our Lieutenant-General and General-Governor of our

kingdom of Ireland. Given at our court at the castle of Saint-Germaine the 28th
day of June, 1691, and in the seventh year of our reign.
Source: Privateering Commission Issued by the Exiled English King James II, June
1691. Reginald G. Marsden, compiler and editor. Documents Relating to the Law
and Custom of the Sea. London: Navy Records Society, 1915, Volume 1, Page 139.

DOCUMENT 12.
CAPTAIN THOMAS TEW’S COVENANT

WITH HIS CREW, JANUARY 1693
Tew, a Rhode Island privateer, purchased a commission in December 1692—the
fourth year of King William’s War against France—from the obliging Lieutenant-
Governor of Bermuda, Isaac Richier. Armed with this permit, Tew then bought a
partial share with four local owners of the 8-gun, 70-ton sloop Amity, and
recruited a crew of 46 seasoned veterans. A mutual agreement was signed between
all these parties on January 8, 1693 (O.S.), which is reproduced here below—just
prior to the Amity’s putting out to sea on its voyage, accompanied by brigantine
Amy under Captain George Dew:
Articles of agreement indented, had, made, concluded, and agreed upon the eighth
day of January in the fourth year of the reign of our sovereign lord and lady, King
William and Queen Mary, over England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Defender
of the Faith, Anno Domini 1692 [sic: 1693]. Between the owners Capt Thomas
Tew, Henry Fyfeild, Thomas Wamsly, Richard Gilbert, Thomas Hall, being own-
ers of the sloop called the Amity, now riding at anchor in the island of Bermuda at
Somers Islands, of the one part, and the rest of the sloop’s company on the other
part, have severally and jointly subscribed their names and affixed theirs to those
present, as followeth.
Whereas the said Capt Thomas Tew and the rest of the sloop’s company, parties
to those present, are now intended out on a voyage to sea in the said sloop Amity,
now those present witness that it’s agreed by between all the said parties to those
present and the said owners Capt Thomas Tew, Henry Fyfeild, Thomas Wansly,
Richard Gilbert, Thomas Hall for themselves, their heirs, executors, administrators,
and assignees, doth covenant, promise, grant, and agree to and with the said
sloop’s company, and every of them his and their executors, administrators, and
assignees, by those present in manner and form following (that is to say):
In primis: That the said sloop the Amity, at the proper cost and charges of the
aforesaid owners, shall within ten days after the date hereof be well and suffi-
ciently fitted, tackled, equipped, and appareled for the sum of months certain and
month uncertain as the command and major part of the said company shall agree
on, and shall sail on such voyage or expedition as the said commander and com-
pany shall think fit for the best advantage of the said owners and company; and
further the said owners doth covenant, promise, grant, and agree to and with the
 Documents 837

company of the said sloop Amity, in the penal sum of one thousand pounds, that
they and their heirs, executors, administrators, and assignees shall and will allow
all proper costs and charges to the said company at their return, they giving an
account of their expenses, charges, disbursements during the said voyage in the
said sloop the Amity.
Item: That whatsoever interest, profit, or advantage as money, plate, bullion,
jewels, ambergris, goods, wares, merchandise, shipping, vessel or vessels, or other
matter or thing whatsoever that shall be found, taken, gotten, had, or recovered at
any time or place, or in any manner during the whole term of the said voyage, or
voyages or expedition, shall be shared and divided as followeth (that is to say):
That all maimed men of the said company that shall be disabled in the true service
of the voyage, to the apparent hindrance of getting their future livelihood, before
any dividend shall be made, he or they shall have and receive eight hundred
pieces-of-eight, or the true value thereof it so much shall be gained, received, or
procured in the said voyage.
Item: Provided that if any person or persons belonging to the said sloop Amity,
in time of fight or in acting or in doing for the good of the said voyage, he or they
losing of a joint or joints, they or their executors, administrators, and assignees
shall have and receive one hundred pieces-of-eight for each joint so losing.
Item: That all plunder that did belong to the said prize or prize’s company,
excepting money, plate, bullion, jewels, ambergris, or merchandises, whatsoever
that shall be found, taken, gotten, upon deck or between decks, or in the cabin,
shall be free plunder equally to be divided amongst the said sloop’s company.
Item: It’s further agreed that the said owners, for their said sloop, shall next
have and receive nine full common shares, and the commander thereof for the time
being for himself and his commission shall have two-and-a-half like full shares,
the master shall have one-and-a-half like full shares. The doctor, conditionally
(that is) his chest be well fitted with medicines and that he give due attendance on
all the said company as need shall require, throughout the said voyage and for the
term of one month if need be after the expedition thereof, shall therefore have and
receive all surgeons’ instruments and medicines properly belonging to any vessel
taken, and also one hundred pieces-of-eight towards his chest, over and above his
full share in common with the said company.
Item: That if it shall happen that any ship or vessel whatsoever shall be taken,
gotten, or obtained during this term of the said voyage by the said parties to those
present, or any others being parties hereunto, that then the said commander and his
successor commanders for the time being, shall and may save, keep, burn, or
destroy such ship, vessel, or vessels at his discretion, according as he shall order
and think most convenient, without any of the said company.
Item: That all disbursements by the said owners for the said company on the
account of provision, shall be duly paid for according to agreement, before any
dividend be made of the first money or goods taken, as they or their orders shall
think most meet to the advantage.
Item: That all and singular, the whole remaining part of the produce, profits, and
issues of the said voyage, without any fraud or concealment, shall be shared and
838 Documents

divided amongst the said company, part and part alike; and ashore, any of them shall
die, be shared and divided amongst the said company, part and part alike; and
ashore, any of them shall die or be injured in the service of the said voyage, every
such person’s share of the whole shall be good to the time of his or their death, and
no further; and their executors, administrators, and assignees, by virtue of those pres-
ent, shall have a good right and title according to demand and receive the same;
always hereby excepting and reserving to the said commander and company for the
time being, the power known, use, and custom of making any defalcation or abate-
ment, where he or the company find cause for any known default or misdemeanor,
or any of the said company then living, which defalcations shall be disposed of
amongst the said company by de . . . [illegible], and the party as thereby pretending
to be aggrieved shall have no remedy thereby or herein.
Item: That whomsoever of the said company shall first spy a sail, and the same
prove to be a prize sufficient to make them a voyage, he shall therefore have one
hundred pieces-of-eight, or the value at the choice and appointment of the com-
mand and the major part of ye company, and free entrance into the prize.
Item: That if the company belonging to the said sloop’s canoe [sic; boat], being
at any time sent out, shall take or find anything under that value of five hundred
pieces-of-eight without gunshot of the said sloop [i.e., beyond range of the sloop],
the same shall be equally shared amongst the said canoe’s company; but if any
such booty or purchase shall amount to that value or upwards, it shall be brought
to a common and general dividend amongst the said sloop’s whole company.
Item: It is further covenanted, granted, and agreed to, and with the consent of the
sloop’s whole company, that all due and civil respect that is usually paid to a Capt
in his station, shall be paid to Capt. Thomas Tew and his successors as our commis-
sion officer; and also that the said company in general will furnish themselves with
small arms, and ammunition for their small arms, fitting for the said expedition.
Item: If any of the said company shall during the said voyage, force or ravish
any maid or woman, then he or they shall lose his or their whole share as afore-
said, and be punished at the Captain’s and the company’s discretion.
Item: That if any man of the said company shall in time of service, be so drunk and
incapable that he does not fight and withstand the enemy, then he or they shall be cut off
or punished according as the Captain and the major part of the company thinks meet.
Item: That if any of the said company shall in time of service during the said
voyage, show or prove himself a coward, then he or they shall lose his and their
voyage as aforesaid.
Item: That if any of the said company shall during the said voyage conceal or
defraud anything of the booty or purchase found, taken, or gotten, to the value of
a piece-of-eight for any longer than four-and-twenty hours, and shall not fully and
truly deliver the same unto the Quartermaster for the time being, he or they shall
therefore lose his and their whole share and dividend as aforesaid.
Item: It’s mutually agreed that those Islands [i.e., Bermuda in the Somers
Islands] shall be their commission port, and to the full and true performance of
these present articles, and every clause and thing herein contained, each of the said
parties to those present bindeth him and themselves severally, and his and their
 Documents 839

several executors, administrators, and assignees, unto the other of the said parties
his and their executors, administrators, and assignees, in the sum or penalty of two
thousand pounds current money of those Islands.
Nevertheless it’s further covenanted, granted, concluded, and agreed upon that
the whole company, or each person severally, will form those articles, accepting
the hardness of ye seas and the danger of the enemies, in witness whereof all the
said parties to those articles have set their hands, etc. Dated the day and year first
above written [January 8, 1693 (O.S.)].
Signed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of us,
Joshua Lake
Samuel Stone
Capt. Thomas Tew
Ostensibly, both vessels were supposed to attack the French slaving-factory of
Gor
ee in West Africa, but in fact they secretly intended to round the Cape of Good
Hope and raid in the easier hunting-grounds of the Red Sea. However, Dew’s ves-
sel sprang its mast in a storm a few days later, so that the two became separated,
and Tew’s Amity proceeded alone.
Source: Captain Thomas Tew’s Covenant with His Crew, 8 January 1693 O.S.

DOCUMENT 13.
ROYAL PROCLAMATION AS TO

PROPER FLAGS TO BE FLOWN BY ENGLISH
PRIVATEERING VESSELS, JULY 1694
In an age before naval uniforms had been issued, distinguishing features of a royal
warship were its insignia and pennants. Large, powerful men-of-war might be eas-
ily recognizable because of their sheer size and heavy armament, yet lesser vessels
were harder to differentiate from similar-sized privateers. The multiplicity of jacks
and pennants flown by freebooter craft, operating from dozens of different ports
ranging from the Lesser Antilles as far north as Newfoundland, prompted the Admi-
ralty in London to issue the following proclamation in the summer of 1694, the fifth
year of King William’s War:
Whereas diverse of Their Majesties’ subjects have of late presumed on board their
ships to wear Their Majesties’ jacks, pendants, and ensigns, which according to an-
cient usage have been appointed as a distinction for Their Majesties’ ships, and many
times thinking to evade the punishment due for the same, have worn jacks, pendants,
and ensigns in shape and mixture of colors so little different from those of Their Majes-
ties, as not without difficulty to be distinguished therefrom, which practice is found
attended with manifold inconveniences; For prevention of the same for the future,
Their Majesties have thought fit, with the advice of their Privy Council, by this their
royal proclamation, strictly to charge and command all their subjects whatsoever, that
they do not presume to wear in any of their ships or vessels Their Majesties’ jack, com-
monly called the Union Jack, nor any pendants, nor any such ensigns or colors as are
840 Documents

usually born by Their Majesties’ ships, without particular warrant for their so doing
from Their Majesties, or the Lord High Admiral of England, or the commissioners for
executing the office of Lord High Admiral for the time being.
And Their Majesties do hereby also further command all their loving subjects,
that without such warrant as aforesaid, they presume not to wear on board their
ships or vessels any jacks, pendants, ensigns, or colors made in imitation of those
of Their Majesties or any other flags, jacks, pendants, or ensigns whatsoever than
those usually worn in merchants’ ships, viz. the flag and jack white, with a red
cross, commonly called St. George’s Cross, passing quite through the same, and
the ensign red with the like cross in a canton white at the upper corner thereof,
next the staff; nor any kind of pendant whatsoever, saving that for the better dis-
tinction of such ships as shall have commissions of letters-of-marque or reprisals
against the enemy, and any other ships or vessels which may be employed. . . .
And Their Majesties do strictly charge and command that none of their loving
subjects do presume to wear any of the said distinctive jacks unless they shall have
commissions of letters-of-marque or reprisals, or be employed in Their Majesties’
service by the before mentioned offices respectively.
And Their Majesties do hereby require the principal officers and commissioners
of Their Majesties’ Navy, the governors of their forts and castles, the officers of
their customs, and the commanders or officers of any of their ships, upon their
meeting with or otherwise observing any ships or vessels of Their Majesties’ sub-
jects wearing any flag, pendant, jack, or ensign contrary hereunto, whether at sea
or in port, not only to seize or cause such flag, pendant, jack, or ensign to be
forthwith seized, but also to return the names of the said ships and vessels, to-
gether with the names of their respective masters or commanders unto the Lord
High Admiral, commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral, or
the judge of the High Court of Admiralty for the time being, to the end that the
persons so offending may be duly punished for the same. And Their Majesties do
hereby command and enjoin the judge and judges of the High Court of Admiralty
for the time being that they make strict enquiry, and cause all such offenders to be
duly punished. And all Vice Admirals and judges of the Vice Admiralties are also
to do the same, and attend [to] the due observation hereof within the several ports
and places belonging to their respective precincts.
Source: Royal Proclamation as to Proper Flags to be Flown by English Privateer-
ing Vessels, 12th July 1694. Reginald G. Marsden, compiler and editor, Documents
Relating to the Law and Custom of the Sea. London: Navy Records Society, 1916,
Volume 2, Pages 162
164.

DOCUMENT 14.
LETTERS-OF-MARQUE AND REPRISAL

ISSUED TO WILLIAM DAMPIER, OCTOBER 1702
Five months after Queen Anne’s War had erupted in Europe, with England and
Holland allied against the recent Bourbon union between France and Spain, the
 Documents 841

ex-logger and pirate from the Bay of Campeche, Pacific rover and now also best-
selling author of A Voyage Around the World—William Dampier—was readying
to put to sea yet again, on another epic voyage. Amid his preparations, he went
before the High Court of Admiralty in London on October 13, 1702 (O.S.), to regis-
ter the following:
Appeared personally Captain William Dampier and produced a warrant from the
Right Honourable the Commissioner deputed by His Royal Highness Prince
George of Denmark, etc, Lord High Admiral of England, Ireland, etc, and of all
Her Majesty’s Plantations, etc, for the granting of a commission of letters of mar-
que to him, the said William Dampier, and in pursuance of Her Majesty’s Instruc-
tions to Privateers, made the following declaration: viz., that his ship is called the
St. George and is of the burthen of about two hundred & sixty tons, mounted with
twenty-two guns, that he the declarant goes Captain of her, that she carries one
hundred men, one hundred small arms, thirty cutlasses, thirty barrels of powder,
thirty rounds of great shot and about one thousand weight of small shot; that the
said ship is victualled for eight months, has two suites of sails and some spare
sails, five anchors & five cables, and about one ton of spare cordage. That Samuel
Huxford goes Lieutenant; John Hill, Master; Robert Edlington, Boatswain; Robert
Carr, Gunner; William Joy, Carpenter; Edward Morgan, Cook; and John Phelps,
Surgeon of the said ship; and that William Price of Kingstreet near Golden Square
in the County of Middlesex, Gentleman, is the sole owner and setter-out of the
said ship.
The same day, this declaration was made before William Dampier.
George Bramston, Junior
This original document is today preserved by Britain’s National Archives, under
the call-number HCA 26/17 f.170. By February 1704, Dampier will have clawed
his way through the Strait of Magellan to the uninhabited Juan Fern
andez Islands,
accompanied by the 16-gun galley Cinque Ports. After prowling the Pacific coast
of Spanish America for the remainder of that year, and vainly awaiting the Manila
galleon off Mexico, the former buccaneer will eventually steer out across that
ocean toward Asia and home, completing another of his three circumnavigations.
Source: Letters-of-Marque and Reprisal Issued to William Dampier, October 1702.
Original document held at the National Archives, UK, HCA 26/17 f.170.

DOCUMENT 15.
A NOCTURNAL ENCOUNTER WITH

BLACKBEARD UPON THE PAMLICO RIVER,
SEPTEMBER 1718
The notorious pirate Edward Thatch had sought sanctuary in North Carolina by
purchasing a pardon in June 1718, and a house at Plum Point, about a mile south
of its ramshackle capital of Bath. Despite marrying and professing a desire to settle
down and retire into an honest life, he slipped back out to sea within a couple of
842 Documents

months, resuming his former piratical ways by seizing a French merchantman off
Bermuda. Stealing back into Pamlico Sound with this prize, Blackbeard proceeded
quietly upriver aboard his boat one night in mid-September, to meet under cover of
darkness with the pliant provincial Secretary Tobias Knight, so as to arrange the
reception of his illegal capture.
On returning back out toward his waiting ships next dawn, the pirate
Captain—allegedly informed by Knight of a victim lying temptingly along his
route—paused to rob this tiny boat of its contents. A description of this brutal
crime was subsequently recorded:
William Bell of the precinct of Currituck, being sworn and examined, deposeth
that being on board his periangor [sic: piragua] at the landing of John Chester in
Pamlico River in North Carolina, in the night of the 14th of September last [1718
O.S.], a large periagor passed by standing up the river. That a little before break
of day, the same periagor returned and rowed on board the deponent. That a white
man, that he since understands was Edward Thache, entered the deponent’s perian-
gor and asked him if he had anything to drink, to which the deponent answered it
was so dark, he could not well see to draw any; whereupon the said Thache called
for sword, which was handed him from his own periagor, and commanded the de-
ponent to put his hands behind him in order to be tied, swearing Damnation seize
him, he would kill the deponent if he did not tell him truly where the money was.
That the deponent asked him who he was and whence he came, to which the
said Thache replied he came from Hell, and he would carry him presently. That
the deponent laid hold of the said Thache and struggled with him, upon which he
called to his men to come on board to his assistance, and they came and laid hold
on the deponent, his son, and an Indian he had with him; then the said Thache
demanded his pistols and the deponent telling him they were locked up in his
chest, he was going to break it open, but the deponent entreated him not to do so,
for he would open it; but though he permitted the deponent to unlock the chest, he
would not suffer him to put his hands therein, but took the pistols out himself.
That the said Thache, having got the deponent’s periangor out into the middle of
the river, rifled her, took away »66 10s in cash, one piece of crepe containing 58
yards, a box of pipes, half a barrel of brandy, and several other goods; the particu-
lars are mentioned in an account the deponent now delivered into court. That par-
ticularly the deponent was robbed of a silver cup of remarkable fashion, being
made to screw in the middle the upper part, resembling a chalice, the lower a tum-
bler, which cup the deponent is informed has been found on board Thache’s sloop.
That when the said Thache and his crew had taken what they thought fit from
the deponent, they tossed his sail and oars overboard, and so rowed down the river.
That the said Thache, in beating the deponent, broke his sword about a quarter of
a yard from the point, which broken piece of the sword the deponent found in the
periangor and now produces in court; and the deponent verily believes Thache had
intelligence of his having money, otherwise he would have passed by in returning
from, as he did in going to Mr. Knight, without concerning himself with the
periangor.
 Documents 843

Source: A Nocturnal Encounter with Blackbeard upon the Pamlico River, Septem-
ber 1718. Saunders, William L. The Colonial Records of North Carolina. Raleigh:
P.M. Hale, 1886.

DOCUMENT 16.
MOCK PIRATE-TRIAL PERFORMED ON

CUBA BY CAPTAIN THOMAS ANSTIS AND HIS MEN,
SUMMER 1722
After a year of roaming the Caribbean, the crews of Captain Thomas Anstis’ ship
Morning Star and consort brigantine Good Fortune—many of whom had been
pressed into piracy—addressed a petition to the Governor of Jamaica in June
1722, requesting pardons. While awaiting a reply, they apparently withdrew into a
quiet bay along the southern Cuban coast, where—to amuse themselves—they
would occasionally hold a ‘‘court of justice’’ to try each other for their crimes. As
described later in Captain Charles Johnson’s General History, ‘‘he who was on one
day tried as the prisoner, would next day take his turn at being Judge.’’ The untu-
tored pirates’ quick-witted sense of humor still shines today, centuries later:
The Court and Criminals being both appointed, as also Council to plead, the Judge
got up in a tree, and had a dirty tarpaulin hung over his shoulder; this was done
by way of robe, with a thrum-cap on his head and a large pair of spectacles upon
his nose. Thus equipp’d, he settled himself in his place; and abundance of officers
attending him below with crow[bar]s, handspikes, etc., instead of wands, tipstaves,
and such like. The Criminals were brought out, making a thousand sour faces; and
one who acted as Attorney-General opened the charge against them; their speeches
were very laconic, and their whole proceedings concise. We shall give it by way
of dialogue:
Attorney General: ‘‘An’t please Your Lordship and you Gentlemen of the Jury,
here is a fellow before you that is a sad dog, a sad sad dog; and I humbly hope
Your Lordship will order him to be hang’d out of the way immediately. He has
committed piracy upon the high seas, and we shall prove, an’t please Your Lord-
ship, that this fellow, this sad dog before you, has escaped a thousand storms,
nay, has got safe ashore when the ship has been cast away, which was a certain
sign he was not born to be drown’d; yet not having the fear of hanging before his
eyes, he went on robbing and ravishing man, woman, and child; plundering ships’
cargoes fore and aft; burning and sinking ship, bark, and boat, as if the Devil had
been in him. But this is not all, My Lord, he has committed worse villainies than
all these—for we shall prove, that he has been guilty of drinking small-beer; and
Your Lordship knows there never was a sober fellow but what was a rogue. My
Lord, I should have spoke much finer than I do now, but that as Your Lordship
knows, our rum is all out; and how should a man speak good law that has not
drank a dram? However, I hope Your Lordship will order the fellow to be
hang’d.’’
844 Documents

Judge: ‘‘Hark’ee me, Sirrah . . . you lousy, pitiful, ill-look’d dog; what have you
to say why you should not be tuck’d up immediately, and set a sun-drying like a
scarecrow? Are you guilty, or not guilty?’’
Prisoner: ‘‘Not guilty, an’t please Your Worship.’’
Judge: ‘‘Not guilty! Say so again, Sirrah, and I’ll have you hang’d without any
trial.’’
Prisoner: ‘‘An’t please Your Worship’s honor, My Lord, I am as honest a poor
fellow as ever went between stem and stern of a ship, and can hand, reef, steer,
and clap two ends of a rope together, as well as e’er a he that ever cross’d salt
water; but I was taken by one George Bradley [the name of the pirate acting as
Judge] a notorious pirate, a sad rogue as ever was unhang’d, and he forc’d me,
an’t please Your Honor.’’
Judge: ‘‘Answer me, Sirrah: how will you be tried?’’
Prisoner: ‘‘By God and my country.’’
Judge: ‘‘The Devil you will . . . why then, Gentlemen of the Jury, I think we have
nothing to do but to proceed to judgment.’’
Attorney General: ‘‘Right, My Lord; for if the fellow should be suffered to speak,
he may clear himself, and that’s an affront to the Court.’’
Prisoner: ‘‘Pray, My Lord, I hope Your Lordship will consider . . .’’
Judge: ‘‘Consider! How dare you talk of considering? Sirrah, Sirrah, I never con-
sider’d in all my life. I’ll make it treason to consider.’’
Prisoner: ‘‘But, I hope Your Lordship will hear some reason . . .’’
Judge: ‘‘D’ye hear how the scoundrel prates? What have we to do with the Rea-
son? I’d have you to know, rascal, we don’t sit here to hear Reason; we go
according to Law. Is our dinner ready?’’
Attorney General: ‘‘Yes, My Lord.’’
Judge: ‘‘Then hark’ee, you rascal at the bar. Hear me, Sirrah, hear me. You must
suffer, for three reasons: first, because it is not fit I should sit here as Judge, and
nobody be hanged. Secondly, you must be hanged, because you have a damn’d
hanging look. And thirdly, you must be hanged, because I am hungry—for know,
Sirrah, that ’tis a custom, that whenever the Judge’s dinner is ready before the
trial is over, the prisoner is to be hanged of course. There’s Law for you, ye dog.
So take him away, Jailer.’’
Source: Mock Pirate-Trial Performed on Cuba by Captain Thomas Anstis and His
Men, Summer 1722. Source: Johnson, Charles. A General History of the Robberies
and Murders Of the most notorious Pyrates, and also their Policies, Discipline, and
Government from their first Rise and Settlement in 1717 to the present year, with
the Adventures of the two Female Pyrates, Mary Read and Anne Bonny. To which
is prefix’d An Account of the famous Captain Avery and his Companions;
with the Manner of his Death in England. London: C. Rivington, J. Lacy, and
J. Stone, 1724.
 Documents 845

DOCUMENT 17.
ACCOUNT OF A RANSACKING ON

THE HIGH SEAS AT THE HANDS OF NEW LOW’S
PIRATES, JULY 1723
During colonial times in New England, it had become customary for some merchant
vessels to steer south late in the year, rather than remain laid-up throughout the
long winter months. A ship might instead run to warmer climes and take on pro-
duce, returning home to make delivery by springtime, before resuming its regular
operations. Yet many perils could arise on such vast round-trips, which might easily
cover more than 5,000 miles of lonely and often hostile ocean. Misfortune befell the
schooner Essex of Salem, Massachusetts, under its 34-year-old Captain Bartholo-
mew Putnam, which limped back into port on July 5, 1723 (O.S.), under its mate
Nathan Putnam from such a peacetime voyage, who gave the following declaration
before Judge Stephen Sewall:
That on the 10th day of March 1722/3 [March 10, 1723 (O.S.)], they set sail from
the island of Saltateodos [sic; Salt Tortuga off Venezuela] laden with salt, their
vessel being very leaky, bound for New England. That on the 12th day of March
aforesaid at night, they sprang their foremast, by reason of which & their vessel’s
remaining very leaky, on the 14th they bore up to Jamaica, where they arrived the
24th of the same month; & after they had stopped their leaks & strengthened their
mast, refitted their vessel what was necessary, which they were foreed to do at a
great disadvantage, by selling a considerable parcel of salt—being at a low rate
there.
On the 24th of April 1723 [O.S.], they set sail from Port Royal in Jamaica
bound for Salem in New England, & on the 8th of May following in the latitude
of the 21 degrees North Lat., they unhappily met with Loe the famous pyrate [sic;
Edward Low], who had two sloops or vessels under his command; and the pyrates
carried the Master Bartholomew Putnam & two of our men on board the vessel he
himself [Low] was aboard, & the rest of us on board the lesser piratical vessel
called the Ranger, & then the pyrates went on board our vessel, broke open the
chests, trunks & ransacked & took away what silver & gold was aboard that they
could find, & the cloths & everything else they See cause [sic?], beat the Master
with the cutlass, & on the 9th of May dismissed us, when we made the best of our
way to New England. On the 23rd day of May, our master Captain Bartholomew
Putnam died, having been sick from the time they came out of Jamaica; & that on
the 5th day of July 1723, they arrived at Salem in New England with about twenty
tons of salt.
The deceased Captain Putnam left behind at least three young children, ages
eleven to five.
Source: ‘‘Account of a Ransacking on the High Seas at the Hands of New Low’s
Pirates, July 1723.’’ Elizabeth Putnam, The Putnam Lineage: Historical-Genealogical
Notes Concerning the Puttenham Family (Salem, Massachusetts, 1907), pp. 139
140.
 Chronology

January After his revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Louis XIV boasts that
1686 only 1,000 to 1,500 out of 800,000 to 900,000 former Huguenot sub-
jects remain in his realm.
March 1686 On the eastern shores of Yucat
an, Laurens de Graaf leads seven free-
booter ships into Ascensi
on (modern Emiliano Zapata) Bay, disem-
barking 500 buccaneers who march inland. Despite encountering no
Spanish resistance and penetrating within half-a-dozen miles of the
town of Valladolid, he inexplicably gives the order to retreat, and by
April his ships are retiring toward Roat
an.
April 7, In the Pacific, Francois Grogniet and Francis Townley combine 345
1686 of their buccaneers for an attack against the Nicaraguan capital of
Granada, landing at Escalante and fighting their way into that inland
city three days later. Little plunder is found, the Spaniards having
removed all valuables to Zapatera Island, so that the pirates with-
draw empty-handed five days afterward. They endure various
ambushes before passing through Masaya on April 16th, regaining
their ships and sailing to Realejo, where they vote to split up into
smaller groups that June.
April 30, Grammont’s flagship Hardi, accompanied by a galliot prize and a
1686 buccaneer sloop, appears off Florida to make a sneak-attack on Saint
Augustine. The galliot is sent toward Matanzas under Spanish colors
to gather intelligence, but is wrecked in heavy weather. Grammont
therefore sails past Matanzas three days later, driven north by this

847
848 Chronology

same storm. After visiting South Carolina, he will be lost with all
hands off the Azores a few months later.
July 4, 1686 Two Royal Navy frigates from Jamaica—Charles Talbot’s Falcon
and Thomas Spragge’s Drake—catch the English renegade Joseph
Bannister careening his 30-gun Golden Fleece near Saman
a Bay,
along with a small prize. The corsair has two batteries mounted
ashore and fights the English frigates as they work in as close as the
water will allow, beating Golden Fleece to pieces. Drake suffers 13
casualties and Falcon suffers 10 before running out of ammunition.
The English captains return into Port Royal a few days later, and are
censured for not destroying both of Bannister’s craft. They therefore
rearm and go back to Saman
a Bay, discovering that in the interim
the renegade has torched Golden Fleece and sailed away in his prize.
July 22, In the Pacific, Townley’s buccaneers make a sudden descent on the
1686 outskirts of Panama City, seizing merchandise reputedly worth
1,500,000 pesos, but which is subsequently lost in a Spanish coun-
ter-ambush. The raiders nonetheless make off with 15,000 pesos in
silver and 300 captives, which Townley uses to extort a truce. After
two captives’ heads are sent to the President of the Audiencia of Pan-
ama, the latter reluctantly agrees to supply the pirates with cattle,
sheep, and flour on a daily basis. Meanwhile, Townley threatens to
send another 50 heads ashore if five buccaneers in Spanish hands are
not released, and an uneasy peace ensues.
August 1686 A galley and two piraguas bearing 100 Spaniards out of Saint
Augustine, plus native allies and mulattoes, descend on the new
Scottish establishment at Port Royal (South Carolina). Its settlers
have been reduced to 25 able-bodied men because of disease and
want, so are easily overrun; their capital of Stuart’s Town is
destroyed.
The Spaniards then range northward to the Edisto, plundering
plantations (including those of English Gov. Joseph Morton and his
secretary Paul Grimball). The raiders are eventually prevented from
assaulting Charleston by a hurricane, which destroys two of their
vessels and drowns Capt. Tom
as de Le
on, obliging the remainder to
retire toward Saint Augustine. The English wish to retaliate by com-
missioning two French privateers, but are forbidden by their newly-
arrived Gov. James Colleton.
November An agreement is struck between James II of England and Louis XIV
16, 1686 of France, promising to restrict the activities of buccaneers in the
New World.
September Amid growing tensions in Europe, Madrid severs relations with Brit-
16, 1718 ain, and orders its Spanish-American officials to begin reprisals
against English vessels and goods in the New World.
 Chronology 849

December London declares war against Spain, a decision which will result in a
26, 1718 resurgence of privateering throughout the Americas.
March 1719 The War of the Quadruple Alliance escalates when France sends an
army via the Pyrenees to invade northern Spain.
April 19, Joseph Le Moyne de S
erigny et de Loire arrives aboard a French
1719 warship at Biloxi, the advance French base on the Gulf Coast, to
launch a preemptive strike against the neighboring Spanish outpost
at Pensacola.
May 14, Le Moyne de S
erigny’s four French warships and 600 men surprise
1719 Pensacola, calling on its 200-man garrison to surrender. The Span-
iards do so after a token three-day resistance, unable to withstand a
protracted siege with their 800 noncombatants. De S
erigny offers
French citizenship to anyone who chooses to remain, then assigns
the 22-gun frigate Comte de Toulouse and 20-gun Mar
echal de
Villars to transport the defeated Governor and dispossessed inhabi-
tants to Havana. The occupiers meanwhile begin transforming Pen-
sacola into Louisiana’s new capital and principal port, having been
disappointed by the inferior harbor configurations at Mobile and
Biloxi.
August 28, Jamaica is struck by a hurricane, causing extensive damage and
1722 (O.S.) flooding.
 Glossary

Abraham’s Cay—name for what is today Bluefields, Nicaragua

Account—an English slang expression for piracy, more commonly used with a verb,
such as going or sailing ‘‘on the account’’
Advice-Boat—another term for a dispatch-vessel, derived from the Spanish word
aviso
Almiranta—a Spanish term for vice-flagship
Apostles—military slang for the 12 charges usually carried in a bandolier or
cartridge-belt
Armada de Barlovento—Spanish naval squadron assigned to patrol the Caribbean
Armadilla—a small flotilla of Spanish warships
Arribada—Spanish legal term for any unauthorized entry into port
Ash, Isle of—English mispronunciation of ^Ile a Vache, the French island off south-
western Haiti
Asiento—in English, the name for the monopoly of supplying African slaves to Span-
ish America
Aviso—Spanish word for a dispatch vessel or mail boat
Azogue—Spanish word for quicksilver or mercury, a vital ingredient in refining silver
ores
Bab-el-Mandeb—Arabic name for the narrow strait leading into the Red Sea, the
‘‘Gate of Tears’’
Banda del Norte—Spanish name for the north coast of Hispaniola, inhabited by
French intruders
Barco luengo or longo—from the Spanish, a type of galliot or oared sailing-vessel

851
852 Glossary

Bay of Campeche—English name for the Mexican bay, whose real name is the
Laguna de T
erminos
Bilboes—a long iron bar with shackles, used to secure prisoners
Biscayan privateers—squadron of corsairs raised in northeastern Spain, to combat
pirates and smugglers in the West Indies
Blue officers—French nickname for non-aristocratic officers of privateer or merchant
vessels, temporarily admitted into the Navy during wartime
Caper—English spelling of the Dutch word kaper, meaning ‘‘privateer’’
Capitana—Spanish term for ‘‘flagship’’
Careen—nautical expression, meaning to tilt a vessel so as to expose its underside for
cleaning or repairs
Cassava—tropical West Indian shrub, whose roots provided sustenance for slaves
and indentured servants
Charter Party—freebooter covenant, drawn up prior to a cruise to determine the
division of spoils
Cincuentena—Spanish militia cavalrymen on Santo Domingo
Clipped money—coins illegally reduced by filing, shaving, or clipping metal from
around their edges
Cocket—a written certificate issued by a custom-house to a departing ship
Commission port—the seaport from which a privateer had received his commission,
and where all prizes should be sent
Corsair—synonym for privateer, especially among the Spanish
Crab Island—English name for what is now Vieques Island, east of Puerto Rico
Cross of Burgundy—name for the Spanish flag, a red cross on a white background
Darien Colony—short-lived Scottish settlement in northeastern Panama
Daudorus—Scottish euphemism for a thrashing or beating
Dead Man’s Island—see ‘‘Isla del Muerto’’
Dogger—nautical expression for an auxiliary vessel or ‘‘tender’’
Doubloon—name of the largest Spanish gold coin
Dry gripes—English nickname for a West Indian malady
Dry Tortugas—English name for the shoals at the west end of the Florida Keys
Ducat—English name for a small Spanish gold coin, worth eleven reales
Ducking—a type of nautical punishment
Enfants perdus—French military slang for any vanguard unit, or frontline assault-
force
e—French indentured servant
Engag

Flibustier—a synonym for West Indian privateer or corsair, especially among the
French
 Glossary 853

Flag of truce—in addition to its obvious meaning, also the name applied to any
vessel authorized to visit a hostile port during wartime
Flip—English nickname for a mixed alcoholic drink, similar to punch
Flota—Spanish expression for the annual plate-fleets sailing to and from Veracruz
Flute—a type of cargo-ship or transport
Flying Gang—nickname for the toughs who controlled the waterfront at lawless
Nassau, prior to the restoration of Crown rule
Forban—French synonym for ‘‘pirate’’
Forlorn—English military slang for any advance unit or vanguard
Freebooter—individual performing military or naval service without salary, but for
shares of plunder
Galeones—Spanish expression for the annual plate-fleets sailing to and from
Cartagena
Gardens of the Queen—Spanish name for the maze of islands off southern Cuba
Gobernador de Tercio—Spanish officer in command of the Marine Regiment aboard
the Armada de Barlovento
Golden Island—uninhabited pirate base off northeastern Panama, used to stage
forays across the Isthmus into the Pacific
Guardacostas—Spanish term for coast-guards
Half-Way Tree—a crossroads in Jamaica, northwest of Kingston
Hispaniola—English name for the island today shared by the Dominican Republic
and Haiti
Hogshead—a large wooden cask
Inch of candle—method of setting a time-limit, by marking a line upon a lit candle
Indigo—a valuable blue dye produced by certain tropical plants
Interloper—term applied to any unauthorized merchant visitor, regarded as a
trespasser or smuggler
Isla del Muerto—Spanish name for ‘‘Dead Man’s Island,’’ at least six spots still bear
this grim name today
Jolly Roger—later-day English euphemism for a pirate flag, dating from the Victo-
rian era
Kaper—Dutch word for ‘‘privateer’’
Keelhauling—savage form of nautical punishment
Kilduijvel or Kill-Devil—Dutch euphemism for rum
Laars—Dutch name for a ‘‘cat o’ nine tails’’
League—measurement of distance, roughly equivalent to three miles
Let-pass—simplest form of ship’s papers, merely identifying a bearer and requesting
that he be allowed to pass
854 Glossary

Letter of marque—another name for a privateering commission, sometimes

misspelled as ‘‘letter of mart’’
Letter of reprisal—special type of privateering commission, issued during peacetime
to redress a specific wrong
Light money—English euphemism for clipped or poor-grade coinage
Logwood or Dyewood—dark-red tropical tree, harvested to produce an indelible
black or brown dye
Madagascar—huge island off southeast Africa, which for a few years became a noto-
rious pirate lair
Main—abbreviated form of the Spanish Main, the stretch of mainland coast from
Venezuela to Panama
Mal de Siam—French nickname for yellow fever
Mar del Sur—Spanish name for the ‘‘South Sea,’’ or Pacific Ocean
Maroon—expression meaning to abandon someone on a desolate island
Matross—English expression for a gunner’s mate
Moidore—term originally derived from the Portuguese moeda d’ouro, meaning a fine
‘‘coin of gold’’
Morro—Spanish word for any large harbor-castle or coastal fortification
Mum—strong German ale, made from wheat and oat malts
Para—Dutch nickname for Paramaribo, capital of Suriname
Partridge—English nickname for clusters of small rounds, or grapeshot
Patache—Spanish term for any small consort to a larger ship, or fleet auxiliary
Pedrero—Spanish name for a swivel-gun, misspelled many different ways in English
Pichelingue—Spanish nickname for a Dutchman, believed derived from a garbling of
the name Vlissingen or Flushing
Pieces of eight—English name for the silver coin known in Spanish as a peso de ocho
reales
Pipe—a large and long wooden barrel
Piragua—Spanish-American term for a crude type of coastal craft or riverboat
Pistole—English nickname for any full-weight Spanish coin, worth more than a
pound
Plate fleet—convoy sent annually for the King of Spain’s American plata or ‘‘silver’’
Puerto Real—generic Spanish expression meaning ‘‘Port Royal’’, used to designate a
major anchorage
Punch house—English nickname for a low drinking-establishment
Purchase—English euphemism for booty or loot, much used among privateers and
pirates
Rack—a synonym for wreckage in nautical terminology, as in ‘‘rack and ruin’’
 Glossary 855

Round-Robin—pirate practice of signing names in a circle, so that no one would be

more prominent
Sainte-Barbe or Santa Ba
rbara—French and Spanish expression, respectively, for a
powder-room or magazine
Salmigondis—a stew or ragout dish
Salt Tortuga—English nickname for Tortuga Island, off northern Venezuela
~a—Spanish system of passwords
Santo y sen
Sargento mayor—senior Spanish military rank, such as second-in-command of a
military garrison
Sir Cloudesley—nickname for a punch-drink made of small beer and brandy
Situados—payrolls and subsidies sent annually from Mexico and Peru to Spanish-
American garrisons
Skull and crossbones—not an expression current during the 17th or early 18th
centuries
Snow—a distinctive type of two-masted, square-rigged brig, with a supplemental
half-mast just behind its mainmast. The name ‘‘snow’’ (originally from the Dutch)
Fell into disuse as the eighteenth century progressed, giving way to the common term
‘‘brig.’’
Somers Island—early English name for Bermuda
South Sea—original Spanish name for the Pacific Ocean
Spanish Main—the stretch of coastline along northern Panama, Colombia, and
Venezuela
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 Index
Abraham’s Cay, 1
2. See also Nau,
Jean-David; Villebon, Jean
Account, 3, 463. See also Modyford,
Sir Thomas; Morgan, Sir Henry;
Purchase
Acosta, Gaspar Mateo de, 464;
anti-piratical forays, 464
66;
early career, 464; later career, 466
Adam, Captain, 3
4
Adventure (frigate), 666, 793
Advice (HMS), 537
Advice-boat. See Aviso
Aernouts, Jurriaen, 4. See also
Cincuentena; Delisle, Captain;
Le Roux, Anne; Lormel, Captain;
naval uniforms, 6; North
American campaign, 4
5; West
Indian campaign, 5
Aigle (frigate), 490, 635, 773
Alarc
on, Juan de, 7
8. See also Barco
Luengo
Albemarle (HMS), 590
Alford, Lewis, 8. See also Let-Pass
Allen, Captain, 8
Allison, Robert, 8
10, 467
69
Allword, Captain, 11. See also
Guardacostas; Lecat, Jelles de;
Lynch, Sir Thomas; Morris, John
I-1
Almiranta, 12, 469
470


Alvarez, Augustı́n, 470
41
Andrade, Alonso Felipe de, 471.
See also Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste;
early Mexican service, 472;
reconquest and defense of the
Laguna de T
erminos, 472
Andreis, Bernart, 473
Andreson or Andrieszoon, Cornelis,
12
13
Andrieszoon, Michiel, 473; assault on
Campeche, 477
478; Cuban
operations, 477; New England
visit, 475
476; return to Spanish
Main, 476
77; sack of Veracruz,
473
74; victory at Cartagena,
474; violation of Dutch West
Indiamen, 474
475
Ansell, John, 13. See also Morgan,
Sir Henry
Anstis, Thomas, 478, 479. See also
Account; Fenn, John; Roberts,
Bartholomew
Apostles, 13, 483
Archambaud, Capitaine, 14
15. See
also Abraham’s Cay; Armadilla;
Cooke, John; Coxon, John;
Dampier, William; Estr
ees, Jean,
I-2 Index
Comte de; De Graaf, Laurens;
Grammont, Sieur de; Rose, Jean;
South Sea; Spanish Main; Tristan,
Jean; Willems, Jan; Wright,
George
Armada De Barlovento. See
Barlovento, Armada de
Armada Del Mar Del Sur. See Mar del
Sur, Armada del
Armadilla, 15, 483. See also Barreda,
Felipe de
Arribada, 15
16
Artigue or Artigny, Michel d’, alias
‘‘le Basque,’’ 16. See also Exque-
melin, Alexandre-Olivier; Nau,
Jean-David; Ogeron, Bertrand d’
Arundel (HMS), 659, 762
Ash, Isle of, 17, 484
Ashworth, Leigh, 485
486. See also
Fernando, Francis; Jennings,
Henry; Piraguas
Asiento, 17
18, 486
487
Assistance (HMS), 41, 205, 216, 246,
263, 338, 398, 509
Assurance (HMS), 719
Astorga, Juan de, 487
488
Auger, John, 488
Augers or Augiers, Chevalier de, 488.
See also Beare, John Philip; West
Indian forays and, 489
491
Avesilla, Alonso de, 491
Aviso, 18
19, 491
492
Avispa (frigate), 120
Aylett, John, 19; death as a privateer,
22; naval service, 20
21; Spanish
captivity, 19
20
Azogue, 22
23, 492
Bab-el-Mandeb, 493
Baldridge, Adam, 494
Bamfield, John, 25
Banda del Norte, 494
Bannister, Joseph, 494
497
Barca, Esteban de la. See La Barca,
Esteban de
Barco luengo or longo (frigate), 497,
695
Barlovento, Armada de, 26, 497. See
also Azogue; Barlovento, Armada
de; Graaf, Laurens de; cruise of
1679
1681, 30
31; cruises
(1691
1693), 500; cruise of
1683, 32
33; Dari
en campaign,
502
503; defeat before Santo
Domingo, 502; failure at Alacr
an
Reef, 33
34; fifth fleet,
500
501; first fleet, 26
29; first
Saint-Domingue campaign,
499
500; fourth fleet, 498
499;
search for La Salle and other
cruises, 498; second fleet, 29
30;
second Saint-Domingue
campaign, 501; Tampico Foray,
33; third fleet, 31
32
Barnes, William, 34
35
Barreda Villegas, Felipe de, 35; Laguna
de T
erminos campaign, 36
37;
sack of Campeche (July 1685),
37
39
Barre’s Tavern, 39, 503
Basque, Michel Le. See Artigue,
Michel d’
Battle of Alacr
an Reef, 107
8
Battle of Cartagena, 102
3
Battle off Block Island, 683
86
Battle off Tarpaulin Cove, 740
41
Battle of the Bar of Maracaibo,
259
62
Battle of Tobago, 46
47, 341
42
Battle with the Biscayans, 109
Beare, John Philip, 504; English
service, 504
505; French
Service, 506
507; Spanish
service, 505
506
Beauregard, Charles François Le
Vasseur de, 39
Becquel, Captain, 39
Beef Island, 39, 507; Mexico, 39
40,
507
8; Virgin Islands, 40,
508

Beeston, Sir William, 40, 508; career,
42, 510; pirate hunting, 41
42,
509
10
Bellamy, Samuel, 511; cruise
(1716
1717), 511
516;
shipwreck and death, 516
Ben Franklin’s ode on piracy, 525
Bennett, John, 43
Bernanos, Jean, Sieur de, 517; death,
518
19; flibustier commander,
517; planter and militia officer,
517
18
Bernard, Antoine, 519
20
Bernardson, Albert, 43
44
Berwick (HMS), 630
Bigot. See Vigot, Guillaume
Bilbo or bilboes, 44, 520
Billiards, 45, 521
Billop, Christopher, 521
22
Binckes, Jacob, 45; first Battle of
Tobago, 46
47; first Caribbean
campaign, 45
46; second Battle
of Tobago, 47; second Caribbean
campaign, 46
Biscayan privateers, 522
24
Blackbeard. See Thatch, Edward; at
bath, 796; lost flagship, 791;
nocturnal encounter with (1718),
841
43
Blackburne, Lancelot, 47
48
Black flag, 513
Blanco, Augustı́n, 524
26
Bl
enac, Charles de Courbon, Seigneur
de Romegoux, Comte de, 48
49,
526
27
Blood-red flag, 345
Blot, Capitaine, 49. See also Bernanos,
Jean, Sieur de; Br
eha, Pierre; De
Graaf, Laurens; Grammont,
Sieur de; Pouançay,
Jacques Nepveu, Sieur de;
Willems, Jan
Blue officers, 527
Blunden, Robert, 50
Bond, George, 50
51
Index I-3
Bonetta (frigate), 715
Bonidel, Capitaine, 51
Bonito (HMS), 470, 732
Bonnet, Stede, 527; Blackbeard’s sub-
ordinate, 529; capture (1718),
531
32; escape, trial, and
execution, 532
33; initial cruise,
528
29; last independent
command, 529
31
Boone, John, 533
34
Bot or Botte, Pierre, 535
36
Bourillon, François, 52
Bouton, Jacques Cl
ement, 536
Boyne (HMS), 630
Bradish, Joseph, 536
37
Bradley, Joseph, 52. See also
Gerritszoon, Gerrit; Lecat, Jelles
de; Mansfield, Edward; Morgan,
Sir Henry; charges assault (1671),
53
54; as privateer, 52
Brand, Bartel, 54. See also Flute;
Modyford, Sir Thomas; Ogeron,
Bertrand d’; early life of, 54
55;
West Indian sweep and, 55
56
Brandenburg privateers, 57
58
Branly, Captain, 537
Brasiliano, Rok. See Gerritszoon, Gerrit
Brauns, Koen de, 59. See also
Modyford, Sir Thomas; Morgan,
Sir Henry
Br
eha, Pierre, 59; Cuban blockade,
60
61; complaint at Petit-Go^ave,
61
62; Saint Augustine raid, 60;
salvage operations (1679
1682),
59
60
Breholt, John, 537
539. See also Beef
Island; Kidd, William
Brenningham. See Brimacain, George
Bridget (frigate), 114
Brigaut, Nicolas, 539
41
Brimacain, George, 62
63. See also
Bull, John; Fackman, Jacob;
Mitchell, Abraham; Modyford,
Sir Thomas; Myngs, Sir Christo-
pher; Purdue, John; Searle,
I-4 Index
Robert; Windsor, Thomas, Lord.;
privateering commission and,
419
22; privateer turned planter,
63
Brooks, John, 541
Broome, John, 542
43
Browne, James, 64
Buckingham, Captain, 64
65
Buen Jes
us de las Almas (frigate), 362
Bull, John, 65
66. See also Brimacain,
George; Fackman, Jacob;
Mitchell, Abraham; Myngs, Sir
Christopher; Purdue, John; Searle,
Robert; Windsor, Thomas, Lord
Burke, Thomas, 543
44
Caballero, Andr
es, 67
68; career of,
67; as pirate encounter, 68
Cachemar
ee. See Grogniet, François
Cagaway, 68
Callao, 545
46
Campeche, sack of (July 1685), 37
39,
105
7, 159
61, 229
30,
281
82, 366
67
Campos y Espinosa, Alonso de,
69
70
Caper. See Kaper
Capitana, 70
Careen, 70
71, 546
548. See also
Bannister, Joseph
Carlile, Charles, 71
72
Cassava, 72
73
Casten, Captain, 73
Castro, Pedro de, 73; initial captures,
73
75; search for La Salle, 75
Centurion (HMS), 229, 252, 372, 404,
408, 423, 424
Charles (frigate), 399
Charles II (frigate), 590
Charte-partie or ‘‘charter party,’’ 76,
548. See also Purchase
Chester (HMS), 600, 671
Chivers, Dirck, 548
Cincuentena, 76
Clarke, Robert, 76
77
Claverie, Charles de La. See La
Claverie, Charles de
Clipped money or clippings, 549
‘‘Clostree,’’ Capitaine, 77
Cloudesley, Sir, 765
66
Cobham, Nathaniel, 77
78
Cocket, 78
79, 549
50. See also
Cagway; Morris, John
Coffin, Captain, 79
Commission port, 550
Cooke, Edmond, 79; Pacific campaign,
81
82; Portobelo attack, 80
81
Cooke, John, 82
83
Cooper, Captain, 83
C
ordoba y Z
u~niga, Luis Bartolom
e de,
83
85
Corneliszoon, Jan, 85
Corsair, 85
Corso, Juan, 85
89
Coward, William, 550
51
Coxon, John, 89; capture of Santa
Marta, 89
90; cruises of
1680
1682, 92
93; Indigo
seizure, 90; Jamaican service
(1682
1683), 93
94; Pacific
incursion, 91
92; Portobelo
campaign, 90
91; Renegade
(1683
1688), 94
Crab Island, 95, 551
52
Crane, William, 95
Crijnssen, Abraham, 96
Cusack, George, 96
Cussy, Pierre-Paul Tarin, Sieur de;
early life of, 552; restraint of
flibustiers, 553
54
Dampier, William, 555
57
Darien Colony, 557
58
Darien expedition, 10
11, 469
Dark Wanderer (frigate), 505
Dartmouth (HMS), 504
Daudorus, 558
Dauphin (frigate), 16
Dauphine (ketch), 738
Davis, Captain, 97

Davis, Edward, 558; Pacific command,
559
61; as pirate, 558
Davy, Capitaine, 561
63
Dead Man’s Island. See Isla del Muerto
Deane, John, 97
98
Dedenon, Capitaine, 98
Defiance (HMS), 632
De Graaf, Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn,
98
100; Battle of Alacr
an Reef,
107
8; Battle of Cartagena,
102
3; Battle with the Biscayans,
109; Blas Miguel’s Counter-raid,
109; capture of the ‘‘Situados,’’
100
101; Cartagena shipwreck,
108
9; cruise to the Spanish
Main, 104
5; defeat on
Saint-Domingue, 113; disaster
at La Limonade, 111
12;
emigration to Louisiana, 113
14;
engagement off the Caymans,
111; failed Santiago de Cuba
Venture, 102; first English
overture, 102; ^Ile
a Vache
Stronghold, 109
10; Jamaican
blockade, 111; Jamaican raid,
112
13; sack of Campeche,
105
7; sack of Veracruz, 101;
second English overture, 103
4
treasure-hunting expedition,
110
11; Valladolid raid, 108
Delacourt, Zachariah, 114
Delander, Robert, 114
Delbourg, Jean, 563
Delisle, Capitaine, 114
16. See also
Adam, Captain; Cincuentena; Le
Roux, Anne; Lormel, Captain
Dempster, Edward, 116
Deptford (ketch), 520
Desenne, Jacques, 116
17. See also
D’Oyley, Edward; Engag
e
Dessaudrays, Capitaine, 563
Devereux, John, 563
64
Dew, George, 564; Bermudan privateer,
568; failed Red Sea venture, 570;
‘‘Hurly-Burly’’ off New England,
Index I-5
568
70; last African attempt and
demise, 570
71; Pacific raider,
564
65; sack of Guayaquil,
565
68
Dey, Dennis, 117
Diamond (HMS), 44, 191, 383, 406,
793
Dockyer, Richard, 118
Dogger, 118
Dolphin (ship), 10
Dotson, Thomas, 118
19
Doubloon, 119, 571
72. See also
Clipped Money; Ducat;
Piece-of-Eight; Pistole
D’Oyley, Edward, 119
20
Drake (HMS), 111, 496, 505,
607, 831
Dry gripes, 121
Dry Tortugas, 121
Dublin (frigate), 640
Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste, 572;
Anglo-Spanish counterattack,
575
76; capture of Fort Charles,
572
73; career, 578; Cartagena
campaign, 576
78; Guadeloupe
operation, 573
74; Jamaican
campaign, 574
75
Ducat, 121
22
Duchesne, Capitaine, 121
Duchess (HMS), 666
Ducking, 122
Duglas, Jean, 122
24
Duhamel, Capitaine, 580
Duke (frigate), 701
Dumbarton (HMS), 560
Dumesnil, Sieur, 580
Eagle (HMS), 631
Earring, 125
Eaton, John, 125
26
Edmunds, John, 126
27. See also
Morgan, Sir Henry; Vaughan,
John, Lord
Elizabeth (HMS), 96
Elliott, Stephen, 581
82
I-6 Index
Enfants perdus, 582
83. See also Dew,
George; Forlorn; Grogniet,
François; Picard, Capitaine Le
Engag
e, 127
England, Edward, 583. See also La
Buze, Louis; Indian Ocean foray,
defeat and death, 586
87; initial
African and Antillean sweeps,
583
85; renewed West African
depredations, 585
86
England’s ‘‘Glorious Revolution’’ of
1688, 742
Essex, Cornelius, 127
29
Essex Prize (HMS), 658
Estr
ees, Jean, Comte and later Duc d’,
129; early career, 129; first Battle
of Tobago, 130; later career, 132;
naval service, 129
30; second
Battle of Tobago, 131; shipwreck
on Aves Islands, 131
Evertsen, Jacob, 134
35, 588; Hondu-
ran attack, 589; Jamaican
overture, 588
89
Evertsen de Jongste or ‘‘the Youngest,’’
Cornelis, alias ‘‘Kees the Devil,’’
132; later career, 134; West
Indian campaign, 133
34
Every, Henry, 589
91
Expectation (ship), 2
Exquemelin, Alexandre Olivier,
135
36, 591
92
Fackman, Jacob, 137; Central
American campaign, 138
39;
Mexican raid, 137
38
Falcon (HMS), 122, 496, 574, 582,
588, 732, 829
Fenn, John, 593
96. See also Account;
Anstis, Thomas; Roberts,
Bartholomew
Fermı́n de Huidobro, Juan, 139
40.
See also Hadsell, Charles;
Maintenon, Charles-François
d’Angennes, Marquis de
Fernando, Francis, 597
98
Fernando, Luis, 598
Filibuster, 140
41
FitzGerald, Philip, 141
42
Flag of truce, 598
99
Flamborough (HMS), 726
Flip, 599
Flota, 142
Flute, 142
43, 600
601. See also Blue
Officers; Labat, Jean-Baptiste
Flying gang, 601
2
Forban, 143, 602. See also Willems,
Jan
Ford, Anthony, 602
3
Foresight (HMS), 21, 217, 264, 390,
720, 735, 768
Forlorn, 143
Fortune (frigate), 62, 63, 420, 421
Fortuyn (frigate), 340
Francis (HMS), 71, 172
Francis, Captain, 144
Franco, Capitaine, 603
4
Freebooter, 144
Gaillarde (frigate), 489
Gaines, Hugh, 605
6
Galeones, 145
46
Galesio, Francisco, 146
Gallion, Captain, 147
Garcı́a Gal
an, Francisco, 145
Gerritszoon, Gerrit, alias ‘‘Rock
Brasiliano,’’ 147; Gulf of Mexico
campaign, 149
150; Panama
campaign, 150
51; rise to
Captain, 147
48; St. Eustatius
campaign, 148
149
Gibbons, Edward, letter-of-reprisal to,
417
18
Gobernador de tercio, 151
Gobierno, 151
Goffe, Christopher, 606
7
Golden Island, 607
8
Gonz
alez de Perales, Juan, 152
Good Intent (frigate), 7, 212, 723
Goodson, William, 152
53
Goody, Captain, 154

Graham, Captain, 154. See also Veale,
Captain
Grammont, ‘‘Chevalier’’ or Sieur de,
154; Cuban blockade, 157
58;
La Guaira raid, 156
57;
Maracaibo campaign, 155
56;
sack of Campeche, 159
161;
sack of Veracruz, 158
59; Saint
Augustine raid, 161
Gregge, Thomas, 162
Grenade, 162, 608
Greyhound (HMS), 692
Griffin (frigate), 148, 371, 375, 408
Griffin, John, 609
Griffin, Thomas, 609. See also
Commission Port; Dew, George;
Goffe, Christopher; Kidd,
William; early life of, 609;
depredations off New England,
610
11
Griffith (frigate), 423, 424
Grillo, Diego, 162
63
Grogniet, François, alias
‘‘Cachemar
ee,’’ 612; death at
Guayaquil, 615
617; penetration
into Pacific, 613
15
Grubing, Nathaniel, 617
19.
See also Beeston, Sir William;
Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste; Elliott,
Stephen
Guardacostas, 163
64, 619
20. See
also Pieces-of-Eight; Pistole
Guayaquil; sack of, 565
68, 680
83;
relocation of, 649
Guernsey (HMS), 170, 377, 504, 581
Guinea (frigate), 402
Guittard, Louis, 621
25. See also
Partridge; Salt Tortuga
Guy, Richard, 164. See also Brimacain,
George; Harmenson, John;
Cagway; D’Oyley, Edward;
James, William; Lecat, Jelles de;
Let-Pass; Maroon; Modyford, Sir
Thomas; Pieces-of- Eight;
Reyning, Jan Erasmus; Windsor,
Index I-7
Lord Thomas; later career, 166;
profit as a privateer, 164
66
Hadsell, Charles, 167; raider and
smuggler, 168; Spanish captivity
and escape, 167
168
Half-Way Tree, 627
Hall, Jacob, 168
69
Hamilton, Lord Archibald, 627. See
also Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste;
Fernando, Francis; Jennings,
Henry; Governor of Jamaica,
632
34; later career, 634;
naval career, 628
31; political
beginnings, 631
32
Hamlin, Jean Vo, 169; first cruise,
169
72; second cruise, 172
73
Hamlyn or Hamlin, William, 173
74
Hampton Court (HMS), 631
Handley, Thomas, 174
Hardue or Herdue, Captain, 174
Harismendy, Louis de, 635. See also
Blue Officers; Holman,
William; Phips, Sir William;
Subigaray ‘‘Chipi,’’ Joannes de;
disappointment at Newfoundland,
636
38; Spitsbergen Foray, 636
Harmenson, John, 174
75
Harris, Peter (1671
1680), 175; Pacific
incursion, 176
77; as privateer,
175
Harris, Peter (fl. 1684
1686), 177
79
Harris, Thomas, 179
80
Hawkins, Captain, 180
Hawkins, Thomas, 638
Hector (HMS), 481, 595
Henley, Thomas, 180
Henry (HMS), 133, 546
Hewetson, Thomas, 638
39
Heyman’s forgotten grave, 623
Hicks, Gaspar, 639
40. See also Kidd,
William
Hispaniola, 181
Hoar or Hore, John, 640
42
Hoces, Esteban de, 181
I-8 Index
Holman, William, 642. See also
Harismendy, Louis de; L of
Marque; Suvigaray ‘‘Chipi,’’
Joannes de
Holmes, Sir Robert, 642
44
Honh
on (frigate), 536
Hornigold, Benjamin, 644; loyal
privateer, 648
50; piratical acts,
644
47
Hout, George, 656
Howard, Thomas, 650
51. See also
James, John
Huidobro, Mateo Alonso de, 181;
cruises (1668
1669), 182; defeat
off Maracaibo, 182
83; Laguna
de T
erminos campaign, 183
84;
pirate raid, 184
Hunter (HMS), 6, 127, 349, 494
Hyne, Captain, 652
53
Inch of candle, 187
Indigo, 187
88
Interloper, 655
Ireland, John, 656
Isla del Muerto, 656. See also
Barlovento, Armada de;
De Graffe, Laurens Grogniet,
François; Hout, George; Lussan,
Ravenau de
Island of Margarita, 432
33
Jacobs, Captain, 657
Jamaica, resolution of the council of,
425
26
James (frigate), 504
James, John, 658
59. See also
Howard, Thomas; Kidd, William
James, William, 189
90
James II, privateering commission
issued by, 835
36
Janszoon, Pieter, 190
Jean Charpin’s charter-party, 547
Jennings, Henry, 660
61
Jersey (HMS), 562, 643, 730
Johnson, George, 190
Johnson, Peter. 190
91
Jolly Roger, 661
Judgment Cliff, 661. See also Lecat,
Jelles de
Kaper, 193
94
Keelhauling, 194
Kelley, James, 663
Kidd, William, 663
68. See also Dew,
George; Mayes, William; Paine,
Thomas; Tew, Thomas
Kilduijvel, 194
95
Knight, William, 668
Laars, 197
La Barca, Esteban de, 669; first cruise
(1722), 669
70; second sweep
(1723), 670; third assault (1724),
670
Labat, Jean-Baptiste, 670. See also
Flute; Roche, George; Antillean
observer, 671
72; trans-Atlantic
crossing, 671
La Buze, Louis, 672; consort with
Hornigold (1716), 672
73; later
depredation (1719), 673
La Claverie, Charles de, 673
74
La Garde, Pierre. See Alarc
on, Juan de
Laguna de T
erminos, 198
99
Langford, Abraham, 199
200
Laques or Jacques, Captain,
197
98
Larco, Juan de, 201
Lartigue, 674
Launceston (HMS), 693
Laurens, Pieter, 674. See also
Commission port; Queen Anne’s
war and, 675
76
Layseca y Alvarado, Antonio de, conde
de la Laguna de T
erminos, 201;
Campeche assault, 202
3;
Maracaibo campaign, 202;
Spanish counteroffensive,
203
4
League, 677

Le Basque, Michel. SeeArtigue,
Michel d’
Lecat, Jelles de, 204; Laguna de
T
erminos campaign, 204
5; sack
of Panama, 205; Spanish service,
205
6
L
eg
ere (frigate), 772
Le Moign, Bernard, 206
Le Moyne d’Iberville, Pierre, 677
Lenham, George, 677
78
L
eog
ane, 678
79
LePain or Pain, Pierre, 206
7
Lepene, Jacques, 207
Le Picard, Capitaine, 679. See also
Paine, Thomas; Battle off
Block Island, 683
86; Pacific
penetration, 680; sack of
Guayaquil, 680
83
Le Roux, Anne, 207
8. See also
Adam, Captain; Cincuentena;
Delisle, Capitaine; Lormel,
Capitaine; Tortuga
Leroux or Le Roux, Jean, 686
87
Le Sage, François, 208
9
Lescuyer, Jean, 209
Le Serf, Jean, 687
Lessone, Capitaine, 210
Let-pass, 210, 211. See also Allison,
Robert; Coxon, John; Essex,
Cornelius; Guardacostas; Guy,
Richard; James, William; Magott,
Thomas; Mansfield, Edward;
Oxe, Robert; Sharpe,
Bartholomew
Letter of marquee, 211; description,
687
88; and reprisal issued to
Dampier (1702), 840
41
Letter of reprisal, 211
12
Lewis, John, 688
89. See also
Hamilton, Lord Archibald
Light money, 212
Lilburne, Robert, 212
13
Lilly (frigate), 259
Lilly, Thomas, 689
Lisle or Lyle, Captain, 689
Index I-9
Litchfield (HMS), 630
Little Betty’s let-pass, 211
Logwood or dyewood, 213
Lord Windsor’s instructions to
commodore Myngs, 422
25
Lormel, Capitaine, 213
14. See also
Adam, Captain; Cincuentena;
Delisle, Capitaine; Le Roux,
Anne; Tortuga
Loverell, Captain, 689
90
Low, Edward or ‘‘Ned.’’ See also
Careen; Moidore; Sunday
Keeping; Wild Coast; early life
of, 690; piratical career,
690
92
Lucas, Jan, 214
15
Luque, Mateo, 693. See also
Guardacostas
Lussan, Ravenau de, 693; later career,
695
96; Pacific campaign
(1685
1688), 694
95
Lyme (HMS), 794, 797
Lynch, Sir Thomas, 215; first term
(1671
1675), 216
18; second
term (1682
1684), 218
19
Machado, Juan. See P
erez Machado,
Juan
Madagascar, 697
98
Magott, Thomas, 221
23
Maidstone (HMS), 582
Maintenon, Charles François
d’Angennes, Marquis de, 223;
career and death of, 225
26;
Flibustier Chieftain, 223
25
Mal de Siam, 698
Maldonado de Aldana, Antonio, 226;
Morris and Morgan’s raid,
227
28; Myngs’ and Mansfield’s
raid, 226
27
Malherbe, Abraham, 228
Mansfield, Edward, 228; capture of
Providencia Island, 231
32;
Cartago campaign, 231;
mysterious demise, 260;
I-10 Index
sack of Campeche, 229
30;
Sancti Spritus raid, 230
Manso de Contreras Rodrı́guez de
Mendoza, Andr
es, 232
Mar del Sur, Armada del, 233, 699.
See also Almiranta; Armadilla;
Capitana; Grogniet, François;
Dew, George; Le Picard, Pierre;
Patache; South Sea; emerging of
the Peruvian privateers, 699
701;
first major incursions, 234
36;
French alliance, 701
2; rebuilt
fleet, 701; standing fleet, 233
34
Markham, John, 236
37
Marmaduke (HMS), 244, 249
Maroon, 702
3. See also Spanish Main
Maroon Islands, 704
Marquesa (frigate), 27
Marston Moor (frigate), 120, 406
Martel, James, 704
6
Martien, David, 237; Central American
campaign, 238
40; French
service, 240; later career,
240
41; Mexican raid, 237
38
Martı́n, Alonso, 241
Martin, Christopher, 241
42
Martı́nez Freire, Antonio, 242. See also
Arribada
Mary (HMS), 628
29
Mary Rose (HMS), 320
Matross, 242
43, 706
Mayes, William, 707
8. See also Kidd,
William; Tew, Thomas
Mayflower (frigate), 52, 53, 177
Michele, Biagio, 709. See also
Biscayan Privateers; Corso, Juan;
De Graaf, Laurens; Guardacostas;
Michele, Giovanni; Piragua;
Cuban patrols, 709
10;
Petit-Go^ave raid, 710
11
Miguel, Blas. See Michele, Biagio
Milford (HMS), 725, 808
Mitchell, Abraham, 243. See also
Brimacain, George; Bull, John;
Fackman, Jacob; Myngs, Sir
Christopher; Purdue, John; Searle,
Robert; Windsor, Thomas, Lord
Mock pirate-trial on Cuba by Anstis
(1722), 843
44
Modyford, Sir Thomas, 244; Governor
of Jamaica, 244
46; later career,
247
Moidore, 711
12

Montauban or Montauband, Etienne de,
712; Antillean sweep, 712;
African misadventure, 712
13
Moreau, Jean, 247
48
Moreno Mondrag
on, Blas, 713; defeat
off Hispaniola and later career,
714; destruction of Nassau,
713
14
Morgan, Edward, 248
51. See also
Gerritszoon, Gerrit; Modyford,
Sir Thomas; Morgan, Sir Henry;
Williams, Maurice
Morgan, Sir Henry, 251; arrest,
263
64; Battle of the Bar of
Maracaibo, 259
62; Central
American campaign, 254
55;
hostilities against Spaniards in
Americas, 428
31; Lieutenant
Governor, 264; Maracaibo raid,
259; Oxford explosion, 258
59;
Portobelo raid, 256
58; Puerto
del Prı́ncipe raid, 255
56;
reconquest of Providencia Island,
262; sack of Panama, 262
63;
Santiago de Cuba raid, 252
53;
Tabasco raid, 254
Morgan’s fleet, 431
32
Morpain, Pierre, 714
15
Morris, John, 264; Central American
campaign, 266
67; death of
Rivero Pardal, 268; later career,
268; Mexican raid, 265
66;
Morgan’s Lieutenant, 267
68
Morro, 715
16
Moseley or Maudsley, Samuel, 269
Mosquito Coast, 269
Mum, 269
70

noz Gadea, Juan, 270. See also
Mu~
Estr
ees, Jean, Comte d’; Fermı́n
de Huidobro, Juan; Maintenon,
Marquis de; brushes with pirates,
270
71; as Governor of
Margarita, 271
72
Munro, Captain, 272
Murphy Fitzgerald, John, 273
74
Murphy, John, 274
75
Musson, Matthew, 716
18
Myngs, Sir Christopher, 275. See also;
Cagway; D’Oyley, Edward;
Goodson, William; James,
William; Maldonado de Aldana,
Antonio; Mansfield, Edward;
Morris, John; Prins, Laurens;
Searle, Robert; Spanish Main;
Whetstone, Sir Thomas; Windsor,
Thomas, Lord; defense of
Jamaica and early seaborne
campaigns, 276
77; destruction
of Santiago de Cuba, 278
81;
later career, 282
83; sack of
Campeche, 281
82; second
descent against the Spanish main,
277
78
Narborough, Sir John, 719
21. See
also Myngs, Sir Christopher;
Phips, Sir William; South Sea
Nau, Jean-David, alias ‘‘Capitaine
François’’ or ‘‘François
l’Olonnais,’’ 285; Central
American campaign, 287
88;
death, 288; sack of Maracaibo,
286
87
Navarro, Baltasar, 289
91
Neville, Edward, 291
92
New Providence (Nassau), 721;
creation of ‘‘Nassau,’’ 723
25;
crown capital, 725
26; early
struggle as ‘‘Charles Town,’’
721
23
Nichols, Bernard, 292
Noland, Richard, 726
27
Index I-11
Nonsuch (HMS), 674
Noordhollandt (frigate), 45, 720
Norman, Richard, 292
93
Norton, Benjamin, 727
28
Norwich (HMS), 99, 135
Nuestra Se~ nora de la Concepci
on de
Ibiza(frigate), 471
Nuestra Se~nora de la Soledad (frigate),
182, 289, 472
Nuestra Se~nora de la Soledad y San
Antonio, 37, 106, 160
Nuestra Se~
nora del Honh
on (frigate), 107
Nuestra Se~nora de los Remedios
(frigate), 27, 69, 182
Ogeron, Bertrand d’, Sieur de La
Bou
ere; disaster at Puerto Rico,
296
98; early life of, 295
Onslow (frigate), 754
Orange, Pierre d’, 298
99
Otto van Tuyl, 813, 815
Outlaw, John, 299
300
Oxe, Robert, 300
Oxford (HMS), 52, 246; disaster
aboard, 426
28; explosion,
258
59
Paine, Thomas, 301. See also
Armadilla; Barlovento, Armada
de; Careen; Coxon, John; Estr
ees,
Jean, duc d’; Grammont,
Chevalier de; Maintenon, Charles
François d’Angennes, Marquis de;
Morgan, Sir Henry; Nau,
Jean-David; Ogeron, Bertrand d’;
Phips, Sir William; Purchase;
Willems, Jan; Wright, George;
Battle Off Block Island, 306
7;
Captain Kidd’s confederate,
307
9; English service, 304
5;
French service, 302
4; later
career, 309
10; return to Rhode
Island, 305
6
Panama city; relocation of, 311; sack
of, 205, 262
63, 338
I-12 Index
Para, 310
Partridge, 729
30
Patache, 310, 730
31. See also
Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste;
Galeones; Hamilton,
Lord Archibald; Plate fleet
Patarata (frigate), 228
Pearl (HMS), 797
Pednau, Jacques, 310
Pedrero, 310
12
Pennon, Capitaine, 312
P
erez de Guzm
an y Gonzaga, Juan,
312
14
P
erez Machado, Juan, 731. See also
Blanco, Augustı́n; La Barca,
Esteban de
Petersen, Jon, 315
16
Petit, Capitaine, 316. See also
Bernanos, Jean; Lynch, Sir
Thomas; Spanish Main.
Phips, Sir William, 732; Acadian
expedition, 736; Bahamian
expedition, 733
35; later career,
737
38; Narborough’s
expedition, 735
36; at Port
Royal, 734; Quebec campaign,
736
37; treasure expedition, 735
Phoenix (HMS), 401, 806
Picard, Capitaine Le. See Le Picard,
Capitaine
Pichelingu, 317
Pieces of eight, 317
Pignier, Captain, 317
18
Pillet, François, 738
Piragua, 318
Pistole, 319, 738
39
Plate fleet, 319
20
Poincy, Philippe Lonvilliers de, 320
Pollet, Diego, 739
40
Pons, Jean, 320
21
Portland (HMS), 21, 42, 509
10
Port Royal, 322; earthquake,
782
83; erection at Cagway,
322
23; Phips at, 734;
transformations and, 323
24
Pouançay, Jacques Nepveu, Sieur de,
324
26
Pound, Thomas, 740; Battle off
Tarpaulin Cove, 740
41; later
career, 741
Powell, Henry, 326
27
Presbyter (frigate), 33, 237
Prince (HMS), 720
Princesa (frigate), 100, 363
Prins, Laurens, 327; Bonaire raid, 327;
Panama campaign, 329
30;
Spanish Main and Nicaragua
raids, 327
29
Providence (ketch), 19
Puerto del Prı́ncipe, 329. See also
Brimacain, George; Bull, John;
Fackman, Jacob; Mitchell,
Abraham; Myngs,
Sir Christopher; Searle, Robert;
Windsor, Thomas, Lord;
Grammont’s raid, 330;
Morgan’s raid, 330
Puerto Real, 330
31
Punch house, 331
Purchase, 332
Purdue (frigate), 332
Purdue, John, 332
33
Quaker (ketch), 521
Rack, 743
Rackham, John, alias ‘‘Calico Jack,’’
743
44. See also Vane, Charles
Ransacking on High Seas at New low’s
pirates, 845
Reijniersen, Claes, 335
Reine des Anges (frigate), 805
Reiner, George, 744
45
Relief (frigate), 116
Resolution (frigate), 174
Reyes, Andr
es de los, 335
36
Reyning, Jan Erasmus, 336; arrival in
the New World, 337; Binckes’
campaign, 340; death, 343; first
Battle of Tobago, 341; hostilities

with France, 339
40; Laguna de
T
erminos campaign, 337
38;
sack of Panama, 338; second
Battle of Tobago, 341
42; slav-
ing voyage, 342; Spanish service,
338
39; surrender at Grenada, 340
Richier, Isaac, 746. See also Dew,
George; Tew, Thomas
Richmond (HMS), 665
Risby, James, 343
44. See also Beef
Island; Careen; Coxon, John;
D’Oyley, Edward; Lecat, Jelles
de; Logwood; Lynch, Sir Thomas
Roberts, Bartholomew, 746. See
Moidore; Caribbean rampage,
751
54; leaving Robert’s service,
749; North American foray, 751;
second West African sweep,
754
56; slaver to pirate, 747
51
Roche, George, 756; emigration to
Pennsylvania, 758
59; pirate
covenant, 757
Rose (HMS), 725, 740
Royal Prince (HMS), 555
Royal proclamation as flags flown by
English privateering vessels,
839
40
Ruby (HMS), 42, 61, 103, 121, 319,
378, 495, 510, 608, 826, 828
Rupert (HMS), 589
Ruyter, Jan Barendszoon, 344
46. See
also States’ Ship
The Sack of Veracruz, account of,
433
35
Sainte-Barbe or Santa B
arbara, 761
Saint-François (frigate), 59
Salisbury (ketch), 12
Salisbury (HMS), 730
Salmigondis, 761
62
Salter, Thomas, 347
Salt Tortuga, 347
48, 762
63. See
also Dew, George; Tew, Thomas
Sample, Robert, 763
64. See also
England, Edward
Index I-13
S
anchez Xim
enez, Jos
e, 348
San Jos
e y San Diego (frigate), 506
San Luis (frigate), 27, 182
San Miguel (frigate), 701
Santo Cristo de San Rom
an (frigate),
30, 73
Santo y se~na, 764
Sargento mayor, 764
Sawkins, Richard, 348; Coxon’s
incursion and, 348; Pacific
incursion, 349
50
Scarborough (frigate), 705
Scott, Lewis, 351
Scroope or Scroop, Robert, 764
65
Seaford (HMS), 792
Seahorse (HMS), 763
Searle, Robert, 351. See also
Brimacain, George; Bull, John;
Fackman, Jacob; Mitchell,
Abraham; Modyford, Sir Thomas;
Myngs, Sir Christopher; Purdue,
John; Spanish Main; Windsor,
Thomas, Lord; detention and
vindication, 352
53; initial
cruises, 351
52; St. Augustine
raid, 353
56
Seegar, Edward, 765
‘‘Senolve, Captain,’’ 357
Sergeant, Benjamin, 357. See also
Letter of Reprisal; Modyford, Sir
Thomas
Sharpe, Bartholomew, 357; Pacific
incursion of, 358
60; subsequent
career, 360
Sheerness (HMS), 630, 763
Shirley, Thomas, 765
Shoreham (HMS), 598, 623, 655, 671,
716
Sibata, Kempo, 360
62
Sibylle (frigate), 223
Sint Suzanna (frigate), 345
Situado, 362
63
Skull and crossbones, 766
Skutt, Benjamin, 766
67
Smith, Samuel, 363
I-14 Index
Socarras y Ag€ uero, Benito, 767
Somers Island, 363
64
Sorci
ere (frigate), 224
South Sea, 767
Spain’s ‘‘Cross of Burgundy’’ flag,
579
Spanish Main, 364, 767
68
Spanish Privateering Commissions;
instructions issued to Brimacain,
419
22; suspension of, 418
19
Speedwell (HMS), 537, 743
Speirdyke, Bernard Claesen, 364
65
Spurre, George, 365; sack of
Campeche, 366
67; sack of
Veracruz, 367
68
Stanley, George, 368
Starr, John, 368
State’s or States’ ships, 369
Steadman, Captain, 369
Stepney, Robert, 369
70
Strong, John, 768; Barbados, 770;
Narborough’s expedition,
768
69; Phip’s expedition, 768;
South Sea expedition, 769
70;
Spanish shipping expedition,
770
71
Subigaray ‘‘Chipi’’ (i.e., Junior),
Joannes de, 771. See also Blue
Officers; Holman, William; death
at Newfoundland, 774
76; naval
appointment, 773; privateering
flair, 771
73; Spitsbergen raid,
773
74
Success (HMS), 175, 348
Sunday Keeping, 776
Swallow (HMS), 754, 762
Swan (HMS), 111
Swan, Charles, 776
79
Swart, Adriaen van Diemen, 370;
Jamaican service, 372
74;
Royalist privateer, 370
72;
shipwreck and death,
374
75
Swayne, Peter, 375
Sweepstakes (HMS), 218
Taverns, 781
Teach, Edward. See Thatch, Edward
Temp^ete (frigate), 572
Tennant, Matthew, 377
78
Tenths, 378
79, 781
83
Tew, Thomas, 784; covenant with his
crew, 836
39; first Red sea
expedition, 784
86; second Red
sea expedition, 786
87
Thatch, Edward, alias ‘‘Blackbeard,’’
787
88. See also Asiento;
Barlovento, Armada de; Bellamy,
Samuel; Hornigold, Benjamin;
Jennings, Henry; Situado; Belize
and Charleston, 793
94; death,
797
98; retirement in North
Carolina, 794
97; sweep up the
Atlantic Seaboard, 789
90; West
Indian rampage, 790
93
Thurston, Humphrey, 379
80
Tiger Prize (HMS), 630
Toccard, Capitaine, 799
Toccard, Jean, 380
82
Tortille, 382, 799. See also Salt
Tortuga
Towers, Captain, 382
Townley, Francis, 799
801
Trepan, 382
83, 801
Trinitaire (frigate), 49
Tristan, Jean, 801
3
Trompeuse (frigate), 169, 170, 190,
305, 377
Tryer, Matthew, 803
Turtle, 383
84
Unicorn (ship), 10
Valentin, Pierre, 805
Van De Veld, Andries, 385
Vane, Charles, 805. See also Careen;
Jennings, Henry; Piragua;
Rackham, John; Thatch, Edward;
defiance, 806
11; misfortunes,
811
12; visit with Blackbeard, 811
Van Hoorn, Nikolaas, 385
89

Van Klijn, Mozes, 389
90
Van Tuyl, Otto Janszoon, 813. See also
Hoar, John; Kidd, William; early
life of, 813; Indian Ocean
adventures, 813
16
Vaughan, John, 390; as governor of
Jamaica, 391
92; later career of,
392
Veale, Captain, 392
93
Ventura Sarra, Juan, 393
Veracruz, sack of, 107, 158
59,
367
68, 473
74
Vercoue, Capitaine, 816
Vertpr
e or Vespre, Capitaine, 393
Victory (HMS), 282
Vigneron, Capitaine, 816
17. See also
Bernanos, Jean; Michele, Biagio
Vigot, 393
Villebon, Jean, 393
94. See also
Abraham’s Cay; Engag
e; Morgan,
Sir Henry; Nau, Jean-David;
Ogeron, Bertrand d’; piraguas
Vliegende Postpaard (frigate), 4
Vonck, Maerten Jansse, 394
95
Wade (frigate), 584, 673
Wade, Captain, 397
Wafer, Lionel, 819
21
Waggoner, 397
Wanton, William, 821
22
Waters, Samson, 398
Weatherbourne, Francis, 398
Weatherhill, James, 822
Welcome (HMS), 263, 398, 509
Wentworth, John, 399
Westerband, Laurens, 385, 398
Westergate (HMS), 244, 249
Index I-15
Weymouth (HMS), 754
Whetstone, Sir Thomas, 399, 408;
capture and death of, 404
5;
Commonwealth naval career,
400
403; privateer and planter,
404; Royalist convert, 403
4
Wild coast, 405
6
Willems, Jan, alias ‘‘Jantje’’ or
‘‘Janke,’’ 822; assault on Cam-
peche, 828; cruises (1681
1682),
823
24; Cuban blockade,
924
25; delivery of the peace
overture, 823; final coup,
829
39; Jamaican overture,
828
29; New England visit,
826
27; ransacking of the Dutch
West Indiamen, 826; return to
West Indies, 827
28; victory off
Cartagena, 825
26
Williams, Maurice, 406
7
Williams, Thomas, 830
Winchelsea (HMS), 482, 514, 596
Windsor (HMS), 697
Windsor, Thomas, 407; as
Governor of Jamaica, 408
9;
later career, 409
Woodruffe, Thomas, 411
Woollerly or Woolerly, Thomas, 831
Woolley, Conway, 411
Wright, George, 411
13
Wroth, Peter, 413
14
Yeats, Charles, 833
34. See also
Piragua; Vane, Charles
Yellows, Captain. See Lescat, Jelles de
Zoby, Joseph, 415
 About the Author

David F. Marley is a naval historian who has lived and traveled extensively in Latin
America and Europe, and currently resides in Canada. His published works include
ABC-CLIO’s Historic Cities of the Americas, Pirates and Privateers of the Americas,
and Wars of the Americas.