The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire

by H. W. Crocker, III

  After Doughty’s execution, Drake rechristened the Pelican as the Golden Hind. It was certainly his ambition to fill it with gold. Drake had left England with five ships. He entered the Straits of Magellan with three, and entered the Pacific with only the Golden Hind; brutal storms crushed the Marigold in the Straits and buffeted the Elizabeth so badly that her captain John Wynter had to beat a retreat to England.

  For both ships and ports, the coast of Chile was prime raiding territory, and Drake hit them, and dodged his pursuers (though an initial landing among the Indians had left him with arrow wounds, one just below his right eye). His big haul came near Lima, Peru, where he seized, in separate actions, two treasure ships full of gold, silver, and jewels; the second ship, Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion, was so laden with treasure that it took Drake’s men six days to strip it and store the valuables on the Golden Hind.

  On 26 September 1580, after circumnavigating the globe, Drake presented his glittering treasure to the queen. Drake’s share made him one of the wealthiest men in England. The queen, entitled to half the expedition’s plunder, was quite pleased and ennobled Drake in 1581, the same year that he, in short order, became a member of Parliament, mayor of Plymouth, and thus a man of the establishment.

  Still, he remained a man of action. In 1585, Drake mounted another great raid on the Spanish. With him was Martin Frobisher—an explorer and pirate like himself—whom he made vice admiral, and more than twenty ships. They began by raiding the coast of Spain itself, then headed west, burning their way through the Cape Verde Islands (where, alas, they picked up a deadly fever that killed hundreds of Drake’s men), and then to the West Indies where they sacked Santo Domingo in January 1586, even rounding up the city’s women to drop their jewels into the pirates’ collection plates. It is a tribute to Drake’s mastery of tactics that his plan of attack was used by Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables in 1655—with disastrous results. Not everyone had Drake’s touch. Even so, his expedition—which included attacks on Cartagena, Colombia, and Saint Augustine, Florida, as well as an evacuation of the colonists of Roanoke Island—failed to turn a profit, and only about half of Drake’s men returned alive. It was a tribute to Drake’s own stamina that he was one of them.

  The Lord Helps Those Who Help Themselves

  “But if God will bless us with some little comfortable dew from heaven, some crowns or some reasonable boo[ty] for our soldiers and mariners, all will take good heart again, although they were half dead.”

  Sir Francis Drake, quoted in Harry Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate (Yale University Press, 1988), p. 298

  Armada!

  On 15 March 1587, Drake received the queen’s commission to raid Spain, especially its ports where it was preparing for an invasion of England. Drake struck Cadiz on Spain’s southwest coast, pillaging merchant ships (more than twenty), fighting boldly “for our gracious Queen and country against Antichrist and his members,”4 blasting everything in sight in Cadiz harbor, and then burning and looting along the Portuguese coast and the Azores. In Drake’s famous phrase, he was “singeing the beard of the King of Spain.”

  In Spain they called Drake “el Draque,” the Dragon, and King Philip II offered a reward of 20,000 ducats (about $10 million today) for anyone who could douse his flames. But if Drake was a dragon, it was part of the patriotic myth that he was a phlegmatic English one. On 19 July 1588, news reached Drake at Plymouth that the Spanish Armada had been spotted off the coast of Cornwall. Drake, the popular story goes, was playing bowls with his colleagues.

  The game was stopped, all eyes were turned towards the Channel. Yes, there at last, far out to sea, the proud Spanish vessels were to be seen. They were distant yet, but a sailor’s eye could see they were mighty and great ships, and the number of them was very large. But the brave English captains were not afraid.

  “Come,” said Drake, after a few minutes, “there is time to finish the game and to beat the Spaniards too.”5

  Drake had actually advocated a strike on the Spanish before they embarked for England. It was obviously too late for that now. Drake was vice admiral of Elizabeth’s fleet under Lord Howard of Effingham. In a splendid show of ceremony and respect, Drake lowered his admiral’s flag when Howard’s ship first came into view, and Howard raised his as Drake’s was lowered. A series of fires over England—lighted beacons—alerted England’s captains to the invasion, and in the weeks that followed, the English sea dogs darted between the Spanish ships, utterly routing them, leaving a storm to finish them off. When the fight was over, Philip II’s ships looked like they’d been through a nautical bonfire of the vanities, galleons shattered and sunk or wrecked along the shores of Ireland; as many as 20,000 Spaniards lost; and amidst the carnage and catastrophe stood Drake on his quarterdeck. In true entrepreneurial fashion he had managed not only to fight the Spaniards, but to grab captives to be ransomed and a treasure chest of gold to be divided with the Crown.

  Drake on Tactics

  “The advantage of time and place in all martial actions is half the victory.”

  Quoted in Stephen Coote, Drake: The Life and Legend of an Elizabethan Hero (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2003), p. 250

  Such enterprise did not endear Drake to some of his captains—Martin Frobisher, for one, loathed Drake’s swashbuckling greed (though Elizabeth’s depleted treasury relied on it)—and the great glory of victory was marred somewhat by the exchequer’s inability to promptly pay the men who had saved England, and by an outburst of disease that ravaged the sailors, with thousands dying of dysentery or typhus. Worse, at least for Drake, was that when the queen assigned him the task of finishing off the remnants of the Spanish fleet the following year, he failed utterly—indeed he was distracted with a hapless siege of Corunna, and an equally hapless attempt to liberate Portugal from Spain—and lost royal favor.

  It was not until 1595 that Drake—now well over fifty, and feeling it—was able to outfit another expedition against Panama with royal approval and investment. It started badly, with Drake quarreling with John Hawkins, and it got worse, with Hawkins succumbing to a mortal illness, the campaign proving a bloody failure, and Drake himself dying of dysentery—or as one of his officers, Sir Thomas Baskerville said, “as I think through grief.” Drake’s last wish was to be buckled into his armor “that he might die like a soldier.”6 He was buried at sea off the Panamanian coast in a lead-lined coffin that, to the delight of thrill-seeking divers, has never been found.

  The English do love their rogues, and in Drake they had a brilliant one. Spain, with the approval of the pope, had claimed the New World as its own. Drake put paid to that pretension, and in the process opened up the New World to English imperialism. In the popular mind he was a patriot, a hero, and a godly Protestant—and of course, a pirate, which only added to his charm. He stood for freedom (or for looting), against a Spain that was “Fast-bound in misery and iron, with chains / Of Priest and King and feudal servitude.” Drake was theseaman who late had scourged

  The Spanish Main; he whose piratic neck

  Scarcely the Queen’s most wily statecraft saved

  From Spain’s revenge: he, privateer to the eyes

  Of Spain, but England to all English hearts,

  Gathered together in all good jollity.

  It was Drake who had led “a force of nigh three thousand men wherewith to singe / The beard o’ the King of Spain”7—and what could be better than that?

  Chapter 5

  SIR HENRY MORGAN (1635–1684)

  “Got a little Captain in you?”

  —the slogan for Captain Morgan’s Rum

  Henry Morgan—now known more for his rum than anything else—was a Welshman whose uncles fought on opposite sides of the English Civil War (1641–1652). Uncle Edward served with the gallant, high Anglican Royalists, the Cavaliers; Uncle Thomas served with the puritanical Protestant Parliamentarians, the Roundheads. The latter won, unfortunately, and under Oliver Cromwell (Lord Prot
ector of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1653–58) they proved to be extremely aggressive in foreign policy. Under the guidance of an apostate Catholic priest turned Protestant chaplain, Thomas Gage, Cromwell endorsed a strategy to bedevil Spain in the New World, of which Gage had some knowledge. The strategy was “the Western Design.” It was, in essence, a plan to revive the glorious days of Sir Francis Drake of more than half a century before; the goal of “the Western Design,” however, was not just to raid the Spanish Main, but to seize it and the Spanish West Indies.

  * * *

  Did you know?

  After being arrested and sent to London as a pirate, Morgan was knighted and returned to Jamaica as its deputy governor

  Morgan was equally vigorous in exterminating pirates—his former colleagues—as he had been in terrorizing the Spanish Main

  Morgan did not, ahem, “drink responsibly”

  * * *

  Launched in 1654, the Western Design was, on the whole, a miserable failure (and landed Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables some months in the Tower of London; for, like a James Bond villain, Cromwell did not take failure lightly), but it provided action for a young soldier named Henry “Harry” Morgan. It also brought the English Jamaica (in 1655), which might have seemed but a wee speck in the Caribbean, but was actually a crucial island base. It put the wind behind the backs of English pirates and privateers who preyed on Spain’s ships and colonies.

  “More Used to the Pike Than the Book”

  We have little account of Morgan’s early years in Wales, England, and Jamaica. Of his early life, Morgan said only that he “left school too young” to be an expert in law (though he tried, as a respectable buccaneer, to stay reasonably within it), and was “more used to the pike than the book.”1 We also know that Morgan later sued and won a judgment against a man who claimed Morgan had been an indentured servant.

  He was not a sailor either (though Jamaica’s governor would give him the rank of admiral). He was a soldier, and it seems certain that after the conquest of Jamaica he was kept busy fighting Spanish guerrillas in the mountains. His public life began with the restoration of the monarchy to England under Charles II. Under the new royalist governor in Jamaica, Lord Windsor, the army was converted into militia units and in 1662 Henry Morgan appears as a captain in the Port Royal Regiment. Its first mission: attack Cuba.

  Charles II, being a Catholic-leaning Anglican, did not have Cromwell’s burning desire to pillage Spanish churches, smash their images of the Virgin Mary, take axes to their altars, desecrate their Eucharists, and steal their golden chalices and crucifixes. But as king, he gained a quick appreciation of the value of England’s New World holdings (or “foreign plantations,” as they were called), and demanded “free commerce” between the English plantations and the “territories belonging to the King of Spain”—by force if necessary.2

  As in the day of Drake, so in the day of Morgan, the Spanish refused to acknowledge that anyone else had a right to be in the New World, and trade had to be run through Spain’s strict bureaucratic channels. Nevertheless, many Spanish outposts in the New World, however much they feared the English Vikings, engaged in sometimes elaborately concealed trade with the English, French, and Dutch.

  But because Spain did not concede Jamaica to England—insisting that it, like all other New World territories, belonged to Spain3—Cuba remained a serious threat to Jamaica’s security. Jamaica’s Spanish rebels had been supplied from Cuba, and it was decided that giving Cuba the old Francis Drake treatment would prove England’s seriousness about insisting on free trade with Spain’s colonies. The attack was to be made by Commodore Sir Christopher Myngs. Myngs was popular in Jamaica because he was a friend of the buccaneers (though a professional navy man, the Spaniards considered him an out and out pirate). He was skilled and brave, as were the soldiers, like Captain Morgan, he brought with him—and their raid on Santiago de Cuba in October 1662 was a roaring success. At the cost of only six men killed they captured six ships and enormous quantities of loot, and blew Santiago’s fortress to smithereens.

  Myngs returned to action in January 1663, sailing for an attack on the Mexican port of Campeche. It too was successful, though at a much higher cost. Myngs himself was badly wounded while leading the landward attack, and thirty of his men were killed.

  In 1664, Jamaica’s new governor, Sir Thomas Modyford, declared peace with Spain. Morgan was not of a mind to listen—even if his uncle Edward was now lieutenant governor.4 Morgan was apparently ignorant of the order—at any rate while he was at sea—clutching the paper that made him a fully commissioned privateer, and thus free to raid the Spanish Main. While Uncle Edward, a colonel, was commissioned to attack the Dutch Caribbean islands (as part of the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665 to 1667), Morgan raided Mexico with four of his fellow captains. With fewer than two hundred men, Morgan’s raiders roamed the coast of Central America, sacked inland towns, and came home bearing immense spoils of war and incredible stories of profitable adventure—stories that established Morgan as a true leader of men. While Morgan’s exploits were diplomatic embarrassments, such embarrassments were easily ignored when they were so popular and so useful for Jamaica’s treasury. Morgan and his men were heroes, reminders of the glory of Good Queen Bess and Sir Francis Drake. He was promoted a colonel in 1666, charged with Jamaica’s defense, and had by this time married Uncle Edward’s daughter and used his wealth to become a planter. He was a respected man.

  Vice Admiral of Buccaneers

  In 1667, Governor Modyford suspected the nefarious Spaniards might invade Jamaica—though Spain was at that moment at war with France, not England. Still, it seemed like a good excuse to commission Morgan to seize a few Cuban Spaniards for questioning. It is a tribute to Morgan’s reputation that he soon had seven hundred men ready to sail—not just Englishmen, but a polyglot crew of buccaneers and pirates. Together they stormed the town of Puerto Principe, where Morgan’s men outfought regular Spanish soldiers and sacked the town with all due diligence; it yielded, however, paltry rewards.

  Morgan, undaunted, decided that an attack on Panama would be a nice way to round out his voyage. His associated French pirates demurred and retired to their lairs at Tortuga or elsewhere. Morgan pressed on, raiding Portobello, an inland town that was caught utterly unaware, his buccaneers again proving doughtier fighters than the Spanish regulars. Having reduced the town and robbed it of all that was worth robbing, Morgan demanded its ransom from the president of Panama. The presidente notified Morgan that he did not negotiate with corsairs and that he was on the march to defeat him. To this Morgan replied,We are waiting for you with great pleasure 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 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.5

  The Best Economic Stimulus Package: Privateering

  “It furnishes the island with many commodities at easy rates. It replenishes the island with coin, bullion, cocoa.... It helps the poorer planters by selling provisions to the men-of-war. It hath and will enable many to buy slaves and settle plantations. . . .” It keeps the pirates of the Caribbean friends rather than foes, provides spies for the Jamaican governor against the designs of the Spanish, “and bring[s] no small benefit to his Majesty and his Royal Highness” in prize money. The pirates, privateers, and buccaneers, “keep many able artificers at work in Port Royal and elsewhere at extraordinary wages.... They are of great reputation to this island and of terror to the Spaniards. . . . ”

  from the Minutes of the Council of Jamaica, 22 February 1666, reproduced in David F. Marley, Pirates of the Americas (ABC-CLIO, 2010), pp. 425–26

  This was a nobly stated bit
of effrontery because of course “the King of England, my master,” had no idea Morgan had annexed the town on his behalf (indeed His Majesty had signed a treaty of peace with Spain). But Morgan was as good as his word. The Spaniards, finding they could not relieve Portobello, ransomed it.

  Morgan returned to Port Royal and organized his largest expedition yet—a thousand freebooters to attack Cartagena. With them was a thirty-four-gun frigate, HMS Oxford, sent by the Duke of York (the future King James II) for Jamaica’s defense. It was to be the flagship for Morgan’s new expedition. Unfortunately, during the rollicking New Year’s revels to welcome the year 1669 and celebrate their plan of attack, its powder magazine exploded killing virtually everyone on board, more than two hundred men, leaving only ten survivors—among them, Morgan.

  Morgan’s “We Few, We Happy Few”

  “If our numbers are small, our hearts are great, and the fewer we are, the better share we shall have in the spoils!”

  Morgan before the attack on Portobello 1668, quoted in Stephan Talty, Empire of the Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe that Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign (Crown, 2007), p. 104