Empire of Blue Water

by Stephan Talty

  At the other side of the fort, a separate scenario was unfolding. A squadron of privateers had taken advantage of the spectacle unfolding at the main gate to slip away and stage a rearguard action. They scaled the walls of the fort with ladders while the Spanish fought them off with everything they could find, including “great quantities of stones and earthen pots full of combustible matter.” It took an extreme form of courage to climb a ladder into the barrel of a musket, but this was the privateer style: fast, unrelenting attacks that depended as much on psychological terror as they did on sharpshooting. “We must have put up a pretty stiff fight,” wrote Raveneau de Lussan of another battle; “in a word, we must have fought like regular filibustiers.” The men swarmed over the ramparts and cut down the last of the defenders in their section of the castle, then raised the infamous red flag. Red stood for “no quarter”; every enemy met under it would be sacrificed. None of the various black banners later used by the pirates—ones adorned with skull and crossbones, skeletons, hourglasses, spears, and bleeding hearts—was as terrible in the sight of their enemies, as black meant quarter would be given to those who surrendered. The pirates assaulting the front gate of the castle soon breached it and joined up with their compatriots. Seventy-four of the Spanish defenders lay dead, including the castellan. Morgan in the entire operation lost eighteen and thirty-two wounded, one-eighth of the number who had staged the attack. Roderick had a deep gash from a Spanish sword on his thigh; he was carried screaming to where the doctor was treating the wounded. Hours later, after the more badly wounded had been treated, the doctor held a sword in a blazing fire and then walked over to Roderick. Three buccaneers held him down as the doctor positioned the sword flat over the wound, then pressed it into the flesh. Roderick fainted from the pain, but the wound was cauterized. He’d sleep until the next day.

  On the horizon, San Felipe remained in Spanish hands, but the pirates felt, with justification, that they’d accomplished enough for one day. They got so drunk that “fifty courageous men…might easily have retaken the city.” There was soon news of far more than fifty men who were intent on doing just that; the Spanish would not take the capture of one of the Main’s jewels so lightly. In Panama, just seventy miles away, a horseman brought the news of the city’s capture to the president of Panama, Don Agustín de Bracamonte, the rider arriving just one day after Morgan had begun his siege of Portobelo. Bracamonte instantly knew how the capture would be received in Madrid: It was as if Morgan had seized a state mint and was now cavorting in its vaults. When reacting to crisis, Spanish administrators believed devoutly in consensus, drawing as many important people into the process as possible, thereby sharing out the blame and reducing their chances of being summoned back to Madrid and prison. Calling a junta, or council of war, would be standard operating procedure. But young and new in his position, Bracamonte ordered that the city’s militias be organized immediately to save Portobelo. Drummers walked the city streets calling the men to arms. “I swore to God,” Bracamonte testified, “that I would leave on Friday morning and be at Portobelo on Saturday.”

  Back in Portobelo only the final castle, San Felipe, stood between Morgan and the city’s riches, and on the second morning of the raid he set out to take it peacefully. Two pirates in a canoe rowed out to the castle to deliver the surrender terms, but apparently Spanish honor was not quite dead: The canoe was met with a barrage from the castle guns. Morgan must have sighed wearily. The Spanish were defending a lost cause. The fortress held only 49 soldiers, and they were in bad shape, sharing just four pounds of bread and some wine among them. Nevertheless, this handful of men stood in the way of clear passage for his ships through the harbor mouth, so Morgan sent 200 men in eleven canoes to take Felipe. Two Spanish prisoners were acting as guides (at gunpoint), and one of them, Sergeant Juan de Mallveguí, had a plan: After landing on the shore near the castle, he led the pirates along a path that would bring them directly in range of the gunners above. Seeing what was about to happen, his compadre, Alonzo Prieto, asked him whether he’d lost his mind. They’d die along with the infidels. Mallveguí was undeterred. It was very possible, he told his friend, that God would save them for their good intentions and, if he didn’t, it was better that they should both die and kill all the English than the castle be lost. Prieto blanched. “Oh, no, amigo,” he told Mallveguí, “I have a wife and children and I do not want to die.”

  It was a conversation between old Spain and new Spain. In the old country, Mallveguí’s plan would have been considered a thing of genius. Death was its own moral drama for the Spanish; to die well was superior to living well. Mallveguí’s plan would bring a public martyrdom (witnesses were essential, as they were needed to spread the word of one’s behavior) connected to nobility—in fact, to the king himself, as it was his castle they’d be dying for. The honor this glorious death would bring to Mallveguí would be incalculable. The Spanish thought differently about these things: In the fifteenth century, the poet Jorge Manrique wrote that there were actually three stages to earthly existence, not two; to the temporal life and the afterlife he added the afterglow of one’s name, which was most important of all. This “chivalric religion” was strong in Spain and had been for centuries. A witness to the kingdom’s battles against the Italians wrote, “These crazy Spaniards have more regard for a bit of honor than for a thousand lives.” But honor mattered far less in the New World, which was more sensual and more attuned to the here and now. Prieto wanted to go home and eat a beefsteak with his wife. The king was far away, and one could not eat or make love to honor.

  The debate ended with the sound of wood on skull. The English had among them ex-captives who knew the town’s layout well, and one of them, having realized what was happening, cracked the butt of his musket against Mallveguí’s head. The pirates changed course and soon began probing the castle’s defenses, sending one group of men to set fire to the main gate, while others staged a series of charges on the fort. The Spanish repulsed the assaults at the cost of only five men, but with little food and no reinforcements on the horizon, their situation was grim. The castellan huddled with a lieutenant and gave him some awful news: “We shall have to surrender.” The soldier was shocked to hear those words from the mouth of a fellow Spaniard. Surrendering San Felipe, and thus Portobelo, to the heathens would be a sharp loss to the Catholic cause. “We must fight to the last man,” the lieutenant said in reply. But the castellan ignored him and soon had put his name to the terms of surrender. The other officers were appalled, and the pirates added insult to injury when they reneged on the generous terms of capitulation, which preserved a shred of honor for the king’s troops by allowing them to leave the castle with their muskets at their sides and their flags flying high, and stripped the men of all but their swords. The Spanish stumbled out of the castle like slaves. The castellan soon suffered an attack of conscience and was granted his last wish: poison, which he gulped down. The pirates who had dishonored him were soon extracting every last piece of eight from the locals and the men and women who had fled into the hinterlands.

  They also came across some information to tantalize Modyford back in Jamaica. “The Prince of Monte Circa,” Morgan later reported, “had been there with orders from the King of Spain to raise 2,200 men against us out of the Province of Panama.” This was added to the earlier intelligence that Morgan had gathered on the approach to the city: Seventy men “had been pressed to go against Jamaica,” a levy had been exacted to raise funds, and “considerable forces were expected from Vera Cruz and Campeachy, with materials of war to rendezvous at the Havannah….” Morgan had his smoking gun: The plot against Jamaica was real.

  The acting governor of Panama was the town’s last hope. But the Spanish Main had the habit of entangling bright ambitions in its tentacles and slowly squeezing the life out of them; almost immediately Governor Bracamonte’s bold moves were countermanded by ennui and distance. His 800 men rushed out of the city into the trails to Portobelo without adequate supplies
of food or armament, and days were wasted as the necessary rations caught up with the army. In that time the jungle began to work on the men. Some fell victim to the usual fevers, but others experienced more exotic tortures, like mazamorra, the excruciatingly painful foot disease that would centuries later nearly cripple Che Guevera’s army on the approach to Havana. As they got closer to the besieged city, refugees met them and gave them news: The castles had fallen, and the pirates were everywhere and strong. Bracamonte sent for urgent assistance to Cartagena and Havana, where the Armada de Barlovento, with orders to exterminate the pirates, was stationed. Messengers flitted through the trees and set out in canoes to race down the coast. But Morgan was smarter than he’d been in Puerto del Príncipe and was not going to wait for the collected armies of the empire to arrive. Bracamonte would have to face Morgan alone.

  So began an exchange of letters, with Morgan’s first:

  Señor, tomorrow we plan to burn this city to the ground and then set sail with all the guns and munitions from the castles. With us we will take all our prisoners…and we will show them the same kindness that the English prisoners had received in this place.

  The reference to the men in the dungeon was ominous, but Morgan’s insouciant tone (he signed himself “Henrrique”) must have been even more daunting for the Spanish noble. The pirate also included eight conditions for the surrender, including the price for the return of the city unburned: 350,000 pesos ($17.8 million), a tremendous fortune. Morgan proposed a unilateral cease-fire so that the ransom could be brought to the city, and he demanded that the castles surrender all of their artillery.

  Bracamonte responded with consummate disdain. “I take you to be a pirate,” he wrote back, “and I reply that the vassals of the King of Spain do not make treaties with inferior persons.” He expressed nothing but contempt for the people of Portobelo, who had allowed themselves to be overcome by corsairs. “And if you decide to decapitate the prisoners,” he finished, “you will excuse me for not ordering you to do it.” Many pirates would have been goaded by Bracamonte’s taunt; one can only imagine L’Ollonais’s bug-eyed response. But Morgan felt himself to be a highborn gentleman, fully the equal of this Spanish noble. His answer was pure acid:

  Although your letter does not deserve a response, since you call me a pirate, despite that I am writing you these lines to ask you to come quickly. We are waiting for you with great pleasure and we have gunpowder and bullets with which to receive you. If you do not come very soon, we will, with the favour of God and our arms, come and visit you in Panama. Now, it is our intention to garrison the castles and save 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 to go to help you. As to whether I will order them decapitated, I respond that I will not. I am not so bloody as to kill people in cold blood, as the Spanish are used to doing.

  Morgan hated being called a pirate; in his mind, he was a soldier of the English king. He’d come to the New World to make his name and his fortune from weaker men, not to be called a criminal.

  As the missives shot back and forth, the governor was receiving his own intelligence from those who had escaped the pirates. A pair of Spanish sailors told him that the French defection from the pirate fleet after Puerto del Príncipe, when they’d supposedly gone to join L’Ollonais, was a ruse: They’d actually agreed with Morgan that the English would attack Portobelo, which would cause the leaders of Panama to raise a rescue force. When that army left Panama, the French would attack the defenseless city. It was a terrifying thought to men who had left their women, their children, and their fortunes back in Panama. Bracamonte finally attacked, but it was a halfhearted attempt. Squads of men were sent into Portobelo to retrieve captives (and some Catholic images the English were sure to desecrate if they got the chance) but they were not to try to take back the castles. There was only one pitched battle, which Morgan exaggerated hugely: “The 5th day arrived the President of Panama with 3,000 men,” he reported, “whom [the pirates] beat off with considerable damage.”

  Another barrage of letters passed between the adversaries after the attack. Bracamonte wrote, “In case he departed not suddenly with all his forces from Porto Bello, he ought to expect no quarter for himself nor his companions, when he should take them, as he hoped soon to do.” Morgan shot back, “He would not deliver the castles before he had received the contribution-money he’d demanded. Which in case it were not paid down, he would certainly burn the whole city, and then leave it; demolishing beforehand the castles, and killing the prisoners.”

  Both armies were wilting under the assault from the diseases that made Portobelo so notorious. With the rumors of a French attack on Panama, Bracamonte felt the pressure to settle; he called a junta. One Spanish commander spoke out: “We find ourselves today with just eight hundred men, inexperienced and poorly armed people who, man for man, are not the equal of their enemies.” It had to be said. The soldier continued, “I consider it impossible for us to recover Portobelo and its castles,” he said. “We would get smashed to pieces if we attacked, whichever way we went.” Many of the other officers chimed in their agreement. Bracamonte had at least provided a paper trail showing that he was only bowing to his subalterns’ advice. Finally he relented.

  An intermediary was sent into the city under a white flag and found that Morgan, who was also seeing his men sicken and die, would not budge from his price: 350,000 pesos, payable immediately, or the city would go up in flames. The negotiations continued back and forth with, at one point, the Spanish cheekily offering to fulfill half their proposed ransom of 100,000 pesos by a bill of exchange, payable sometime in the future by the kingdom’s Italian financiers, the equivalent of giving a kidnapper a personal check. Morgan declined the offer. At length the deal was struck: 100,000 in ready cash. The booty was raised by the rich merchants of Panama and delivered by mule train: gold coins, twenty-seven silver bars, chests of silver plate, and a backbreaking load of silver cobs. One suspects that the incredible wealth generated by the mines undercut Spanish courage. Why fight when you can pay the hoodlums off? There would always be more silver flowing out of Potosí.

  The pirates loaded it onto their ships, along with their own looted treasure and their captured slaves, and bade farewell to the town that had made them wealthy. Morgan had certainly learned from L’Ollonais on this expedition, but he also made a point to report on the pirates’ gallantry. He claimed that the lady prisoners chose to travel with the pirates rather than go to the governor’s camp, finding the Brethren “more tender of their honours” than the Spaniards. It’s a wonder Morgan did not have them begging to return to Jamaica as the pirates’ wives.

  The Spanish had actually gotten a bargain in the Portobelo negotiations, but Morgan had proved he could attack the empire’s strongholds at will. Now his reputation would grow immeasurably. Even the president of Panama, after the deal had been struck, succumbed to an “extreme admiration” for Morgan’s feat of arms, “considering that four hundred men had been able to take such a great city, with so many strong castles: especially seeing they had no pieces of cannon, nor other great guns….” He sent a messenger to Morgan, asking the admiral to send a sample of the arms that the pirates had used to take Portobelo. If the story is true, Morgan must have shaken his head: It was not the weapons that had proved themselves; it was the men and their leader. He sent a pistol and a few bullets back, with a note saying that the president should keep the guns for a year, after which he’d come to Panama himself “and fetch them away.” The president, seeing that the pistol was a common type, sent it back with a gold ring and a warning: If Morgan came to Panama, he wouldn’t find the success he’d achieved at Portobelo.

  The president would have been well advised not to dare Henry Morgan.

  The pirates sailed toward Port Royal with numbers running in their heads.
They’d left Portobelo in a rush, and there had been no chance to total up the various “loans” they’d extracted from the Spanish; now the loot had been whisked away and was stored under guard. Did it add up to 100,000 pieces of eight? Or 150,000? Was 300,000 completely out of the question? The worth of the swag they carried fluctuated with the price of silver and gems in Port Royal and the going rate for slaves, so all the way back to Jamaica the men gossiped like accountants. Morgan was known to be dissatisfied with the ransom money, but they’d rifled the fabled city of Portobelo, for God’s sake.

  When the ships arrived at their rendezvous point off Cuba, the treasure was piled up, inventoried, and priced. When the total was announced, it came out to 250,000 pieces of eight, plus an unspecified but sizable sum to be gained from the slaves and trade goods they’d seized. In today’s money the Brethren had taken about $12.5 million in Portobelo. The average pirate received about 240 pieces of eight, or $12,000, plus any compensation for injuries he might have suffered or bravery he might have displayed. In a time when an average laborer in London earned the annual equivalent of $3,500, the ordinary pirate had collected a minimum of three-plus years’ wages in the expedition, enough to set himself up in business or buy a good piece of land or a long stretch of unrestrained debauchery. Anyone who lost an arm earned the equivalent of ten years of a London workingman’s salary. Most of the pirates, like Roderick, would choose to spend their money on pure pleasure, a decision that will lead to one of the great mysteries at the heart of the Brotherhood.

  In Spain the news of Portobelo’s fall and the pirates’ rich haul was bitter news in a bitter season. The kingdom was bowing under the lash of one misfortune after another. The issue of money was especially galling: The Crown had been cash-strapped since the reign of Philip IV. There were days when the royal larder was nearly empty and the queen would be offered a rancid, midget chicken that “stank like a dead dog.” During one meal, Queen Mariana had requested a bit of pastry and was told the castle’s pastry chef would send no more desserts until an overdue bill was paid. Mariana, the daughter of the unimaginably rich Hapsburgs, took a ring off her finger and told her servant to go out into the street and find her a pastry at any cost. Her fool, appalled, gave the man a coin and put the ring back on her finger. It would embarrass everyone to have such a story get out.