Capt. Morgan

Capt. Morgan's mission is to travel along coasts and islands in search of treasures in caches. Please do not keep. Please log so it does not go missing or lost at sea.

~~           Sir Henry Morgan ranks as one of the greatest scoundrels known to history. He was one of the most successful pirates to haunt the shores of the Spanish Main. He thrived during the 1660's in the years immediately after the Second Anglo Spanish War, after Britain took possession of some important colonies in the area, but before the government started to crack down on piracy. He was considered a privateer, rather than a pirate, because his fleets sailed with the tacit approval of the British government. He was responsible, however, for a series of atrocities, and rampages of such brutal abandon, that eventually the government felt it could no longer tolerate the lawless behavior. When Britain began to crack down on piracy, Morgan lost no time in giving up his disreputable ways, betraying his pirate fellows, bribing the English government to acquit him of his wrong-doings, and purchasing a veneer of respectability.
         Morgan was born to a Welsh farmer, but sold himself into indentured servitude for three years in order to obtain passage to the new world. He was intelligent and capable, and upon gaining his freedom, lost no time in settling in Jamaica and learning the trade of a freebooter. In 1655, during a war with Spain, Britain had won the Island of Jamaica from the Spanish, and soon after decided to allow pirates a free haven in the area because it was in Britain's interest that Spanish ships and towns should be attacked. They did not do this by adopting an official policy, but rather the government was known to look the other way, and officials were sometimes involved in financing piratical ventures, "on the side". In this environment, Henry quickly rose to a position of prominence for his daring exploits and intelligent leadership and by 1664 was elected a pirate captain.
        Three of the most famous of Henry's raids were Porto-Bello (Cuba), in 1664; Maracaibo (Venezuela) in 1669, and Panama City in 1671. All were accompanied by unspeakable atrocities, torture, and blood-thirsty violence of an appalling nature. The British government disavowed any involvement with Morgan, but the reports of some of these outrages were too much to countenance, even unofficially. In 1672 Britain resolved to crack down on piracy and arrested Morgan. Morgan however, was exceedingly wealthy and well connected, and had no trouble in convincing the British government of his "innocence of any knowledge of a truce between Spain and Britain", and was eventually knighted. Morgan had already betrayed some of his pirate fellows, by stealing more than his fair share of the loot, so in 1674 he returned to Jamaica and helped "clean up" the pirate problem there, by executing any pirates there who may have harbored a grudge against him.
In 1678, one of the Pirates who had accompanied Morgan on his raids published an extremely famous book about the exploits of the Buccaneers in the Americas. Morgan however, sued the author for slander and succeeded in having some parts of the book retracted. In 1781 Morgan was replaced as governor. He died seven years later, likely of liver failure from excessive drink.
            Sir Henry Morgan has remained prominent in popular culture well after his death. He is memorialized on the labels of bottles of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum. In 1926, the famous author John Steinbeck wrote A Cup of Gold, a fictional account of Morgan’s life. It was Steinbeck’s first novel. Morgan’s life was again dramatized in Josephine Tey’s 1952 novel The Privateer.