The Island that Disappeared

by Tom Feiling

  From Port Royal, the buccaneer fleet headed toward Cape Gracias a Dios. En route, Morgan seized a Spanish merchant ship and, after rigorously interrogating its captain, ascertained that Sir Thomas Whetstone, Capt. Stanley Steven, and the thirty-two soldiers captured on Providence were still languishing in the dungeon at Portobello. The ship’s captain also confirmed that the authorities in Panama and Cuba were indeed raising levies to finance another attempt to retake Jamaica. This suited Morgan well, since the threat of such an attack was what kept the privateering commissions coming.

  After spending a few days at the cape, Morgan’s fleet made its way down the Miskito Coast to Bocas del Toro, where he and four hundred of his men transferred to a convoy of small launches and traveled another forty leagues down the coast to Portobello. After a series of battles in the outlying villages, they were able to breach the town’s walls and fight their way to the dungeon beneath the town’s castle. Morgan found just eleven of the prisoners alive; one of them told him that while a few of his fellows had been able to escape, most of them had died. Sir Thomas Whetstone was never heard of again. ‘If our number is small, our hearts are great,’ Morgan declared to his men. ‘And the fewer we are, the better shares we shall have in the spoil.’2 He had the emaciated prisoners removed to his ship and sent a ransom demand to the governor of Panama for the safe return of Portobello.

  When Juan Pérez de Guzmán received word of the famous pirate’s arrival, he ‘was brought into extreme admiration, considering that 400 men had been able to take such a great city with so many strong castles, especially seeing they had no piece of cannon.’ The governor of Panama raised three thousand troops and set out on the track used by the mule trains that carried the king’s bullion over the mountains to Portobello. But their movements were betrayed by the local tribesmen as they made their way down to the Caribbean coast, and this gave Morgan the chance to make the first move. Hoping to catch Pérez de Guzmán unawares, he led one hundred of his Brethren to a narrow ravine through which his adversary’s army was sure to pass. Alexander Esquemelin, who was a surgeon in the buccaneer force, described their meeting in his Buccaneers of America.

  At the first encounter, the hundred buccaneers put to flight a good party of those of Panama…with considerable damage, in so much that the next day [Pérez de Guzmán] proffered 100,000 pieces of eight for the delivery of the towns and castles in as good condition as we found them.

  Esquemelin records that the governor of Panama’s offer was accompanied by a request that Morgan supply him with ‘some small pattern of those arms wherewith he had taken with such violence so great a city.’ Morgan treated the governor’s messenger with great civility and gave him a pistol with a few lead bullets. His master could ‘keep them for a twelve month,’ he told him, ‘after which time he would come to Panama and fetch them away.’3 Morgan insisted that Pérez de Guzmán up his offer, and a few days later, his flotilla left the dock at Portobello with 250,000 pieces of eight (£12 million in today’s money).

  Crossing the bay where Sir Francis Drake’s lead-lined coffin had been dispatched to a watery grave seventy years before, the Brethren could congratulate themselves on pulling off a feat of bravado not seen since the days of the Elizabethan seafaring heroes. Little did they know that in addition to their magnificent plunder, their ships were carrying plague-stricken rats. Once ashore, they would kill off many of the denizens of Port Royal, among them the governor’s wife, Lady Elizabeth Modyford, before they had time to enjoy their share of the spoils.

  * * *

  In retaliation for the raid on Portobello, Pérez de Guzmán let it be known that he would issue a privateering commission to any ship’s captain willing and able to seize an English merchant ship. By the time Henry Morgan made it back to Port Royal, the Spanish had already taken several English prizes, and the town’s merchants were clamoring for redress. Thomas Modyford was again forced to walk a tightrope: He recognized the importance of keeping Jamaica’s privateers in business, for the sake of the island’s defense as much as to keep them from wanton piracy. But he was also aware that Sir William Godolphin, the king’s ambassador to Madrid, was in negotiations toward a comprehensive peace treaty between their two countries. In concert with Henry Morgan, he hurried to cement his own grand design for the Caribbean.

  In June 1669, Modyford made Henry ‘Admiral and Commander-in-chief of His Majesty’s fleet belonging to the island of Jamaica,’ and gave him orders ‘to put to sea for the guard and defence of this island.’ The Admiral of the Brethren was now admiral of Jamaica as well, an act of collusion between organized crime and the British state never seen before or since. The Jamaica Assembly also lent their support to the enterprise, commissioning Morgan to ‘attack, seize and destroy all the enemy’s vessels that come within his reach,’ and granting him ‘power to land in the enemy’s country as many of his men as he shall judge needful, and with them to march out to such places as he shall be informed the said magazines and forces are.’4 In a letter to the secretary of state, Modyford expressed his regret at having to appeal to the buccaneers but lamented that he had no choice, ‘there being no other way to encourage these men.’5

  Encouraged they certainly were: in return for posting a £1,000 bond, and a cut of any booty seized, the captains of English merchant ships were authorized to seize any Spanish ship and storm any settlement in the name of the crown. In August 1670, Henry sailed from Port Royal with eleven ships and six hundred men, among them several of the prisoners that he had sprung from the dungeon in Portobello. Some of the Brethren argued for an attack on Santiago de Cuba, but Morgan rejected the idea—the city was known to be well defended, and the risk of being struck by a hurricane was strong in the months of late summer. Others suggested Cartagena, but that too was ruled out because, according to Morgan’s Spanish prisoners, the city was already ‘all in arms against the English.’6

  The third and most daring option was to mount an assault on Panama. The city was ‘the greatest mart for silver and gold in the whole world,’ said Morgan, ‘for it receives the goods into it that come from Old Spain in the King’s great fleet, and likewise delivers to the fleet all the silver and gold that comes from the mines of Peru and Potosi.’7 Panama was the finest gem in Spain’s imperial crown and the gateway to the Pacific coast. Strike a blow there and all the silver and gold of Peru and Mexico would fall into English hands, a setback from which the king of Spain would never recover.

  Every buccaneer and privateer in the Caribbean dreamed of attacking Panama. Situated on the Pacific coast, less than fifty miles from Portobello as the crow flies, it had never been attacked with any force, and its inhabitants seemed oblivious to the threat from marauding foreigners. Their city was graced with two thousand houses ‘of curious and magnificent structure,’ according to Alexander Esquemelin, built by the merchants who had made their fortunes in the bullion trade, and surrounded by beautiful gardens and prosperous plantations.

  But Henry’s plan suffered an early setback: The day after his fleet sailed from Port Royal, a pinnace drew up alongside his flagship, the Satisfaction, carrying a copy of the secretary of state’s latest letter to Thomas Modyford. King Charles was unmoved by the governor’s complaint that the Spanish were attacking English shipping. ‘The Spanish men-of-war attacking English ships is not to be wondered at after such hostilities as your men have acted upon their territories,’ wrote Lord Arlington. ‘This way of warring is neither honourable nor profitable to His Majesty.’8 His letter was accompanied by a copy of the articles of peace that had just been signed by Charles II and Philip IV.

  The Treaty of Madrid was a breakthrough in relations between the rival powers. Philip had finally relinquished his country’s two-hundred-year-old claim to exclusivity over the lands ‘beyond the line’ and acknowledged English sovereignty over its territories in the New World. The treaty was a triumph for the settlers of Jamaica, who Philip had always regarded as little better than jackdaws in a Spanish nest, for it opened the w
ay for peaceful trade between English merchants and their customers in the Spanish colonies.

  But for those who made their living from sea robbery, contraband, and raids on the Spanish Main, it was a disaster. It also dashed Sir James Modyford’s hopes of taking up his post as governor of Providence, for in accepting the status quo, Philip had made it clear that he would tolerate no more assaults on his American territories, of which Santa Catalina was indisputably one.

  Ever since the loss of Providence in 1666, Thomas Modyford had urged his brother to be patient while he waited for the opportune moment to take up the governorship of the island. He had appointed him sole judge of customs in Port Royal, an extremely lucrative post, and then commander of the town’s castle. When he wasn’t counting his money or stalking the sea walls, Sir James was to be found in his plantation house, writing letters to friends in high places in London. ‘We may certainly have [Providence] again if His Majesty pleases,’ he wrote to one. He confessed that whenever he heard of the arrival of a ship carrying the king’s latest instructions to his brother, he would ride down to Port Royal, always ‘hoping it may be the retaking of the said island.’9 But the order for a renewed assault on Providence never came.

  Perusing the terms of the Treaty of Madrid aboard the Satisfaction, Morgan wondered who could have dispatched a copy of a peace treaty that had yet to be made public? It could only have come from someone in high office who knew of his plans, expected to profit by them, and hoped that they would be realized before the treaty came into force. It could well have come from the king himself, or Charles’s brother James, Duke of York, both of whom were friends of Thomas Modyford and could expect a substantial cut of any booty Morgan brought back to Port Royal. In fact, it came from the governor himself; in an accompanying letter, Modyford gave Morgan advance warning that while he had ‘no orders to call him in, yet thought fit to let him see [the treaty] and to advise him to do nothing that might prevent the accomplishment of His Majesty’s peaceable intentions.’

  Modyford’s letter put the Admiral of the Brethren in a quandary: Word that he was about to embark on the most audacious raid of his career had already traveled through the buccaneering communities. Mariners, castaways, and renegades from every secluded cove and isolated cay in the Caribbean had flocked to join his fleet, and the Satisfaction was now at the head of the largest fleet of privateers ever seen. There were 28 English vessels, with a combined crew of 1,320 men, and 8 French vessels, carrying a further 530 men.10 Far from discouraging them, the Treaty of Madrid only lent urgency to their plan to attack Panama.

  Henry gathered the thirty-six captains under his command, among them renowned privateers like Edward Collier, Lawrence Prince, Joseph Bradley, and John Morris. They agreed that before they launched their assault on Panama, they would retake Providence. As their surgeon, Alexander Esquemelin noted, ‘No place could be more fit [to take]’ the island ‘being the King’s ancient property.’11 They also had reasons of their own for retaking the island: if they were to cross the mountains from Portobello to Panama without being detected, they would have to avoid the royal road used by the mule trains. Providence, being ‘a place of banishment for all the Spanish felons of the region,’ was a likely place to find a knowledgeable man with nothing to lose who might guide them along the local Indians’ jungle paths.

  Henry’s fleet reached Providence in the dead of night. Guided by the English soldiers he had sprung from the dungeon in Portobello, his ships passed through a channel in the northern reef and glided toward the mouth of the island’s harbor. To prevent any attempt at escape, two ships dropped anchor within sight of Fort Warwick, while the other thirty-four vessels drifted with the current as far as Southwest Bay, where a thousand men clambered into launches and coasted around the island’s southern tip to Manchineel Bay. By daybreak, they were marching through the woods toward New Westminster.

  The man who replaced the murdered governor of Santa Catalina was José Ramírez de Leiba. According to Alexander Esquemelin, Morgan and his men reached the governor’s residence that afternoon but found it deserted. In what had become a familiar ritual, the Spanish governor and his garrison had taken refuge in El Castillo Santa Teresa, formerly known as Fort Warwick.12 After coming under fire from the fort’s guns, Henry and his men withdrew ‘to sleep under the stars, according to their old habit, with no surfeit of supper in their stomachs, for they’d eaten nothing all day.’ Soon after midnight, a cold, heavy rain began to fall. There was some letup at dawn, but no sooner had the Brethren dried and primed their weapons than it began to rain heavier than ever, ‘as if the skies were melted into the waters.’ In the midst of the downpour, the Spanish renewed their bombardment, ‘to demonstrate that their powder was not wet.’ In such dispiriting conditions, Morgan grew fearful of mutiny and began to turn the screws on his opponent. He sent a message to Ramirez de Leiba, warning him that unless he surrendered immediately, his men ‘would most certainly put them all to the sword, without granting quarter to any.’

  Shortly afterward, the island’s governor agreed to Morgan’s terms—but on one condition. To save his reputation, and to avoid being garroted by his superiors on his return to Madrid, he asked that the Admiral of the Brethren join him in a curious compact. If the buccaneers pretended to mount a furious attack, Ramírez de Leiba would have his men make an equally pretentious show of resistance. Much powder would be burned by both sides, and shots would be fired, ‘but in the air, or with blanks, so that no one should suffer from it.’ The governor would then allow himself to be ‘captured’ and surrender his fort. This comic twist to the handover of power speaks volumes about the hollowed-out shell that Spain had become since its Golden Age. Behind the imperial edifice were ranks of cowardly soldiers and corrupt priests united only by their dependence on the king and their evasion of all responsibility for the protection of his empire.

  Morgan agreed to the governor’s scheme with a good-natured laugh—and a stipulation of his own. If any of his men sustained as much as a scratch in the charade, he would have every last Spaniard on the island executed. Ramírez de Leiba had little choice but to agree, and the play was enacted to the satisfaction of both parties. When the compact with the Spanish had been carried out and all was calm, ‘the war against the hens, pigs, and sheep began,’ wrote Esquemelin. With the handful of Creole women on the island held captive in Hope Sherrard’s abandoned church, the Spanish soldiers were compelled to head into the fields to gather yucca, plantain, and sweet potatoes for the hungry buccaneers. ‘The boiling and roasting went on all night.’ When all bellies were full, Ramírez de Leiba was permitted to sail for Cartagena with his reputation as a loyal servant of the king intact.

  The Brethren finally had their island. As Morgan knew from his visit in 1666, Providence offered great advantages to the ambitious buccaneer, and he was pleased to see that it had been well fortified in the interim. The island’s nine forts and batteries were well stocked with all kinds of munitions, including thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder. The Spanish might have been shadows of their former selves, but they were bound to attempt another assault on Providence at some point, so the one hundred thirty Brethren who would hold the island until their admiral returned from Panama would need strong defenses. He had forty-nine cannon brought ashore and mounted, most of them in Fort Warwick, which had the added advantage of being ringed by a twenty-foot-deep dry ditch.

  Prior to Ramírez de Leiba’s departure, Morgan had enlisted three felons willing to guide the buccaneers across the mountains to Panama. In return, he offered them their freedom and ‘as much booty as they could gather.’ Esquemelin recalled that one of them was:

  happy of an opportunity to revenge the wrong he thought had been done him—as indeed it had, for he did not deserve banishment, but rather to have been broken alive on the wheel for all the murders, rapes and robberies he had committed.

  On 10 January 1671, the admiral and his Brethren returned to their ships and hoisted their sails. Guided by thi
s villain, the Satisfaction led the thirty-six ships of Morgan’s fleet to the mouth of the River Chagres, where their most daring raid to date would begin in earnest.

  * * *

  After storming the castle at the mouth of the River Chagres, the buccaneers sailed upriver. As they approached the watershed, its course narrowed and they had to transfer to their dories. When the water became too shallow for dories, they enlisted the aid of the local tribesmen, and ‘betook themselves to the wild woods.’ Their journey upriver had not gone unnoticed: every village they came to had been stripped of anything of value or succor, and Spanish ambushes prevented them from foraging for food in the woods. Esquemelin noted that by the fifth day ‘many were complaining of Captain Morgan and his conduct…and desiring to return home.’13 But the promise of plunder stoked their resolve and the threat of desertion was averted when they found a few horses that the Spaniards had overlooked and were finally able to sate their hunger.

  Traversing a pass in the chain of mountains that runs down the spine of the isthmus, they caught their first glimpse of the South Sea. Arrayed on the plain before them was Pérez de Guzmán’s large but ragged force of 3,600 men, among them 400 cavalry, 300 Darien Indian archers, and 2,000 foot soldiers ‘of all castes.’ The army that Morgan assembled to meet them in battle was less than half the size, but still larger than anything the Spanish could have prepared for. At its vanguard was a battalion of 360 men, led by Lt. Col. Lawrence Prince and Maj. John Morris. On the left flank, Col. Edward Collier commanded 300 men, while on the right were another 300 men under the admiral himself. The rear guard, also of 300 men, was led by his valiant, if obese, cousin Col. Bledry Morgan. Henry sent a message to Pérez de Guzmán: he had come to retrieve the pistol that he had lent him two years before.