Welcome to the Pieces of 8 Challenge!
Some of the world’s most famous pirates have visited the North Country and left behind a large treasure chest of their richest valuables. Each of the notorious pirates then left behind a separate cache with a hint for you to find the motherload. There are 8 caches for each of the 8 pirates, plus the motherload. The pirates left a part of the coordinates for the motherload in each of their caches. They don’t need to be found in order, but they all need to be found to get the final coordinates for the motherload.
Henry Morgan was born around 1635 in Wales and started his career as a privateer by 1655. By the early 1660s, he captained his own ship in the fleet of ships owned by privateer Christopher Myngs. Port Royal, Jamaica, was the home base of a number of privateers, who were granted land, and it was there that he married his wife, the deputy governor’s daughter, in 1666, which gave him access to the highest levels of Jamaican society. In 1667, Morgan was given letters of marque, which gave him permission to plunder Spanish ships at sea. However, Morgan decided to attack the town of Puerto Principe, which is 50 miles inland on the island of Cuba. Porto Bello, in modern day Panama, was the next target, as well as being Spain’s third largest and strongest city in the Caribbean. They took control of the city and remained there for a month, taking all the plunder they could, while simultaneously sending ransom notes to the governor of Panama. A ransom was eventually paid and Morgan returned to Jamaica an extremely rich man, only to return to Panama and completely destroy the settlement in 1671. In 1672, Morgan went to London, where he was “arrested”, even though he was probably able to roam about London as he pleased, eventually being released and returning to Jamaica, where he was charged with the duty of eradicating piracy from Jamaican waters. By the late 1670s, Morgan took control of the defense of Port Royal, at one point being the temporary governor of the island. Morgan died in 1688. Even though Morgan was technically a privateer, a legal form of piracy, he is often considered a pirate because Spain didn’t recognize privateering as a legal activity.