Sir Henry Morgan is best known today from the image of a swashbuckling pirate depicted on Captain Morgan rum bottles. In real life, he was one of history’s most successful pirates. He operated out of Port Royal, Jamaica, and became the most famous of the adventurers who plundered and terrorized the Spanish Main and Spain’s Caribbean colonies in the seventeenth century. The life expectancy of pirates was pretty short, but Morgan was an exception. He grew rich off plunder, became Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, and retired to the life of a wealthy plantation owner.
The Rise of a Buccaneer
Other than the fact that he was born in 1635 in Cardiff, Wales, little is known of Henry Morgan’s background. He probably first arrived in the West Indies with the British expedition that seized Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655. Once in the Caribbean, Morgan must have demonstrated some ability, because by 1666 he was second in command of a fleet of buccaneers that operated against Dutch colonies during the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665 – 1667). In 1668, he rose to top command of the buccaneers.
Morgan led his men in the capture of Puerto del Principe in Cuba. He followed that up by storming and sacking the wealthy and well-fortified city of Portobello in Panama. In 1669, he pillaged the prosperous Spanish settlements around Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. He topped that in 1670 with his most daring and ambitious expedition, when he commanded an expedition of thirty six ships and two thousand buccaneers against Panama City. Morgan landed on Panama’s Caribbean coast, then led his men across the isthmus and through thick jungles to arrive before the city on the Pacific coast.
A Peaceful and Prosperous Retirement
On January 18th, 1671, Morgan defeated a large Spanish force, then stormed Panama City. He put it to the torch, while his men looted and indulged themselves in an orgy of murder and rapine. On the way back, Morgan double crossed his men: he ditched them, and disappeared with most of the loot. Morgan had operated with the unofficial support of England’s government, but by the time he plundered Panama City, England had already signed a peace treaty with Spain. For appearances’ sake and to appease the understandably upset Spanish, he was arrested in 1672 and sent to London.
It was just for show, and once Morgan disembarked in England, he was celebrated, feted, and treated as a national hero. The policy of appeasing Spain did not last for long. Diplomatic relations took a turn for the worse, so now that he no longer had to care what the Spanish thought, King Charles II knighted Morgan in 1674, and sent him to Jamaica as the colony’s lieutenant governor. There he spent the rest of his days, a prosperous plantation owner and powerful political figure who subbed in as governor whenever that officeholder was absent, until he passed away peacefully in 1688.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
History Halls – Black Sam Bellamy: The Golden Age of Piracy’s Richest Pirate
Pope, Dudley – The Buccaneer King: The Biography of Sir Henry Morgan, 1635-1688 (1978)
