Captain Morgan and the Pirates of the Caribbean

Who Was Captain Morgan

0:00Henry Morgan is THE Captain Morgan. He's the guy that famous Spiced Rum brand is named after. And this is the story of how he became famous. He was, of course, a pirate. And this is a story of exploding ships, cunning plans, and a private war against the Spanish for control of islands in the Caribbean. And of course, there's a lot of rum and a lot of treasure. You are listening to Villains and

0:30Virgins podcast, and this is an episode on Captain Henry Morgan and Pirates of the Caribbean. This is not the first pirate story we've had on the podcast. In fact, we're on a bit of a pirate cruise right now. There's a whole lineup of stories coming out. But if you want even more pirate lore, you should head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert, where we have a treasure chest of monthly bonus episodes, including pirate stories like that time Julius Caesar, the famous Roman,

1:03was kidnapped by pirates, and then Pompey, another famous Roman, decided to clear the Mediterranean of them. I also host live chats where we get into even more gory pirate stories than the ones I dare to tell here on YouTube. So if any of that appeals to you, head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert

Rum and the Caribbean

1:23and become a supporter of Villains and Virgins. Now, as I said, Captain Henry Morgan now has a rum brand named after him, which commemorates the long-standing connection between pirates like him and rum. This is no accident. Henry Morgan and many of the other pirates in today's story are operating in the Caribbean. And the Caribbean is the center of sugarcane plantations, and therefore rum production, because rum is made from the juice of the sugarcane. Captain Morgan and other pirates

1:56like him were more than happy to drink the rum they found on board ships they seized, although they were equally content to drink their way through casks of port or Spanish wine, whatever was available. But rum was most readily available in the many taverns and bars available on shore. And so the drink of choice for pirates in the Caribbean was rum. But Henry Morgan didn't start his life in the rum-soaked Caribbean. In fact, he was born in the damp Welsh countryside, probably to a farming family round about 1635.

2:33And how he got to the Caribbean isn't exactly clear. But what we do know is that two of his uncles served as soldiers of fortune in the British civil wars. So essentially, they worked as mercenaries. Therefore, undertaking adventure in very dangerous and violent situations was something that you could say ran in the family. We don't know exactly how Henry Morgan made his way to the Caribbean, but we do know what he found when he got there. The world of the mid-1600s, in which young Henry

Spanish Trade Monopoly

3:05Morgan comes of age, is a world that is already full of piracy. And it's been that way for at least a century. In our last episode on this podcast, we covered the career of Francis Drake, an English pirate, or privateer if you like, who made his career attacking Spanish ships and Spanish colonies in the Spanish Main. Now the Spanish Main is just another label for the same area. We can call it the Caribbean because essentially it's a circle. It contains all the famous Caribbean islands you're

3:38familiar with. Places like Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Trinidad. But it also contains the edge of Florida, parts of Mexico, Panama, and the coast of Venezuela. Now the Spanish called this the Spanish Main because they believed that they had exclusive rights to it. So the Caribbean Sea and all the islands in that area were Spanish colonies. But other countries had long contested this Spanish claim. Francis Drake did so, and this has been going on for the last century. So it's no longer

4:10just the Spanish inside the Spanish Main, or the Caribbean as we're going to call it. Confusingly, the same area is also referred to by the English as the West Indies. But I'm going to stick to the Caribbean because it's the term that most of us are familiar with today. One of the really surprising aspects of piracy at this point in time is that there's a strong religious angle to this. And this is the case even by the time we get to the mid-1600s. The wars of religion have just concluded with the

4:42Peace of Westphalia in 1648. But over in the Caribbean, where the English and the French and the Dutch have been making incursions into these Spanish colonial waters, it's very much still a high hostility situation. And those hostilities fall along religious lines. You can even see this in the language that's used. Because the words that the Spanish used for any foreign ships they found in their waters were piratos, or pirates. And the other words that they used were cosarios lutheranos,

5:18in other words, Lutheran pirates. These are two different phrases or labels that are used interchangeably by the Spanish. And that's not because they're being sloppy. It's because any pirates, any ships they found who were busy stealing from Spanish ships, also happened to be Protestants. The Spanish used the term Lutheran as a catch-all for any heretic dogs, even though by this point in history, Protestants had already begun to fragment into many other groups. Lutherans were

5:49the earliest Protestant group, but by now there were many others, including people like Calvinists and Anabaptists. But outside of Protestant circles, no one else was really interested in these fine divisions. Outside of Protestant circles, they were all just heretics. The pirate problem in the Caribbean was linked to an underlying economic problem. You see, the Spanish were trying to maintain a trade monopoly on their colonies in the Caribbean. This meant that nobody else was allowed to buy or sell to these colonists

6:22on the islands. The Spanish wanted their colonies relying on shipments from Spain, and they wanted to enrich only themselves through trade with the islands. The problem was that if you were going to ship goods from Spain to Chile, for example, something like paper, there was going to be tax applied to that product at multiple points along the journey, which meant by the time it arrived in a port in Chile, the cost of paper was ruinously expensive. And to make matters worse, these Spanish trading ships didn't

6:52arrive with anywhere near the regularity that was required. So this created a strong incentive for colonists on the Spanish Caribbean islands to trade with other people, smugglers or heretic merchants, who would sell them the goods they needed at a much lower rate. This created a market for piracy. Protestant pirates could seize ships, take the cargo, and then sell that cargo to smugglers, who could then sell it on to colonists at a much lower rate. This situation allowed the colonists to buy their goods tax-free,

7:29and obviously there were record-making profits for the pirates and smugglers involved. Often enough, the pirates and the smugglers were one and the same. Of course, pirates preferred to seize silver and gold. But sometimes when they seized a ship, it was full of cargo. That cargo could include things like slaves, rum, tobacco, sugar, or even cloth. So if the pirates have seized a ship full of this kind cargo, they need to take it somewhere to sell it and turn it into cash. Many pirates in the Caribbean

8:02operated with something called a letter of mark. And so this was essentially a letter of permission that was issued by a local government authority. For the purposes of today's story, that was usually the governor of Jamaica. And what it did was it gave these pirates official permission to attack the ships of one country in particular, usually Spain. So it limited their activities because they couldn't attack just any vulnerable merchant ship they came across. But in exchange for that, they were allowed

8:34to sell whatever they seized from these prizes, these Spanish ships, in the ports back in Jamaica. So that made the selling part really easy if you happened to have a ship full of cargo that you needed to transform into cash. And of course, the governor of Jamaica was going to get a cut of the sales of those prizes. So there's a kickback system where the governor also benefits financially from issuing this letter of mark. These letters of mark transformed pirates into privateers. It gave them a veneer of

9:08official permission. In other words, they weren't just lawless men operating to enrich themselves at the expense of anyone who happened to be vulnerable. No, they were informal agents of government policy. And so they are serving some sort of design beyond their own personal enrichment. That was the theory anyway. Now, for the Spanish, this was a distinction without a difference. For ships or towns who found themselves invaded and their stuff taken away, there was no obvious difference

9:42between someone who called himself a pirate and someone who might happen to be carrying a letter of mark somewhere aboard his ship. For the Spanish, the results were exactly the same. They were being robbed on a regular basis. So by the mid-1600s, there's a well-developed tradition, at least a century long, of privateering in the Spanish main. And this can sometimes cause political problems back in Europe, because there are times when England and Spain are officially at peace with each other. But sometimes

10:13word of these peace agreements takes a very long time to reach the Caribbean, where hostilities between Protestant English privateers and Spanish ships continue just as before. And sometimes when that word does arrive, the governor of Jamaica is quite happy to ignore it. So why is the governor of Jamaica a little hard of hearing about these peace deals back in Europe? Well, it's because even if there are peace treaties back in Europe, it doesn't mean that he can reasonably expect an end to hostilities in the

10:47Caribbean. Those things have a life of their own. So even if Spain and England are at peace back home, it doesn't mean that the Spanish might not be busy trying to push the English out of the Spanish main or the Caribbean Sea. Secondly, these letters of marque, or this privateering business, keeps a lot of people employed. And remember, it's also financially profitable for the governor of Jamaica himself. He gets a cut of any prizes that are taken by privateers operating under these letters of marque. So that's a personal incentive

11:21for him to keep that going. But quite apart from his own bank balance, there are sound reasons to want to keep privateers busy attacking only the Spanish. Because if you stop issuing letters of marque, that means nobody can be a privateer. So what are all the guys who are operating as privateers going to do? Are they just going to say, well, it's too bad boys, we're unemployed. It's time to go back to Port Royal and put out the begging bowl? Probably not. They're going to continue doing exactly what they're

11:53so well practiced at doing, which is attacking other ships and taking stuff. The difference is, they're no longer going to be bound by letters of marque to only attack the Spanish. Which means now, they might even attack merchants and other countries doing business in the Caribbean, and some of those might be Jamaican. So in a very real way, these letters of marque keep a potentially dangerous and unscrupulous group of men busy with the Spanish and prevent them from expanding their

12:24operations to threaten other people. Now, another word you might have heard for this business of piracy or privateering in the Caribbean is buccaneer. So who are the buccaneers? Well, the buccaneer is just another word for a privateer. The only real difference is that the term buccaneer develops at this point in history, in the 17th century, for privateering that's going on in the Caribbean, and it's a British word. There are other words that are used. The French call them corsairs. So whether you want to call them a privateer, a buccaneer, or a corsair, these are

13:00three different labels for men in the same line of business. When Henry Morgan arrives in Jamaica,

English Seizure of Jamaica

13:06it's only just become a British colony. Jamaica had for a long time been a Spanish colony in the Spanish main, and it was full of black slaves who had been imported from Africa to serve as labor on plantations. So in 1655, around about the time that Henry Morgan turns 20, England takes Jamaica from Spain. This is a forcible seizure of this colony, so Jamaica has just become British property.

13:37England does this when it's under the rule of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, and leader of the victorious side of the English Civil War. He doesn't call himself a king because the last guy who was called king got his head chopped off, so he much prefers the term Lord Protector, but he does pass on his position of rule over England to his son. One of these days I'll give you an entire episode on Oliver Cromwell, but suffice to say he comes across as a very dure and joyless

14:10character, someone who's famous for stifling Christmas celebrations in England. And the Irish aren't too fond of him either, because a year or two before Cromwell decided to take over Jamaica from the Spanish, he was also busy trying to bring Ireland under English control. And that meant killing a lot of Irish people, displacing many others, and then he came up with a brilliant plan of shipping some of these troublesome Irish far, far away to the brand new English colony of Jamaica. This would remove a

14:45troublesome population who might cause difficulties for the English who were now entering these parts of Ireland and trying to establish their own estates and plantations. So we need fewer Irish in Ireland, was the general consensus, and Oliver Cromwell decided that a great plan would be to send these Irish over to Jamaica. So in 1665, the very year that the English take over in Jamaica, they send their first shipment of unwilling Irish captives, some 1,000 young men and 1,000 young women. And this is going to be

15:19only the beginning of a regular transport of unhappy Irish over to the Caribbean. They're going to serve as indentured servants. So essentially, people who are already in prison in Ireland for all kinds of things, including political offences, can now be sold off as indentured servants. So they're basically shipped off to Jamaica, and they're sold under contract to some property owner there, who then has their unpaid labour for a period of something between two and seven years. So during this time, these Irish

15:53labourers aren't paid anything, and these years of labour are supposed to count toward the cost of shipping them over and their upkeep for that period of time. But once the contract was ended, they were free. So in other words, unlike the Black African slaves they worked alongside, they weren't into generational servitude. So an Irish woman who was shipped over would have to work like a slave for several years. But when her contract was over, she was free, and she might then seek employment elsewhere

16:24in Jamaica, she might marry or begin her own home. The Black slaves they served alongside were, of course, not so fortunate. They weren't servants under law, there was no contract or end date to their servitude, and any children they had inherited the slave status as well. So there's a fundamental difference between Irish indentured servitude and Black slavery in Jamaica. But these two populations worked alongside each other for years, and even today, people remark on the similarity between the Jamaican accent and

17:02accents from certain parts of Ireland, like say, Cork, for example. This is no accident. It's because Black Jamaicans learned how to speak English from the Irish who were working next to them. And Jamaican English, as a result, can sound a lot like Irish people speaking English. Try it sometime. Listen to a Jamaican accent, and then go listen to some Irish accents, and you can hear history echoing even today. So this is what Jamaica looks like when young Henry Morgan arrives. It's a place that has a

17:34large African population that's been imported, it has an Irish servant population, and it has some other poor whites from Scotland and England. These are not indentured servants, they are overseers, and they are people who are coming in to serve as governors, but they're not the elite of England. These are poorer people who are looking for opportunity, and they see this brand new English colony as a place where they might make their fortunes. So Henry Morgan arrives on this scene, and he probably arrives with similar

18:07hopes, that this is a place that's going to give him opportunities that weren't available back on the farm in Wales. Young Henry Morgan would have met many privateers in Jamaica, quite possibly at some of

Democratic Pirate Crews

18:20the bars or taverns in Port Royal, which was a city that was once called the most sinful city on earth. It was very much a hub of business, prostitution, gambling, and drinking, and it was a place where they went to have a bit of fun when they came back from their pirate cruises with money in their pockets. So it was very likely, in this wretched hive of scum and villainy, that young Henry Morgan got his first job working aboard a privateering ship under another captain. And we don't know exactly how many

18:54voyages he went on, possibly three or four, before he himself starts entering the historical record, no longer as a crewman on someone else's ship, but as someone in charge of his own privateering mission. By the time Henry Morgan starts appearing by name, incredible historical sources, he's about 30 years old. Now we think of privateering or piracy as one ship closing in on another, boarding, and seizing everything. But in the Caribbean, a lot of these raids were just as likely to be on Spanish coastal

19:30towns, where essentially the pirates would come ashore, they would rush into a town, they would seize anything valuable they could find there, and then they would try to force the inhabitants of the town to reveal where other valuables or treasure might be hidden. So Henry Morgan had already been involved in a number of activities of this sort. And he might even have made a stop off at the island of Tortuga, which wasn't something that was made up for Captain Jack Sparrow and a certain film that I'm sure you've heard about. It was a real place in the Caribbean and it was a known haunt for outlaws, privateers, pirates,

20:08and general ne'er-do-wells. So it was a place where he might have stopped off to reprovision or even to pick up new recruits as members aboard his ship. And Henry Morgan takes some of the proceeds of these early activities and he uses them to buy land in Jamaica. So he buys a plantation and the slave labor to work it. And that's going on back at home while he's busy on a ship out there seizing whatever else he can get his hands on. And as soon as he's got a bit of land and a bit of money, Henry Morgan decides

20:39that it's time to get married. So he pursues the daughter of the deputy governor of Jamaica, a man called Edward Morgan, who has the same last name. And that's not an accident because Edward Morgan was Henry Morgan's uncle, which means that Edward Morgan's daughter, Mary Elizabeth, whom Henry wants to marry, is his first cousin. There was a shortage of women in Jamaica. What can I say? Henry Morgan decides that this is the woman he wants to marry. And this is a really interesting moment because it tells us something about Henry Morgan's personal life, but it also tells us

21:15something about how closely the administration of Jamaica worked beside pirates for hire or privateers like Henry Morgan. Deputy Governor Edward Morgan knew exactly what Henry had been up to. In fact, Edward Morgan himself had led a buccaneering raid. So it was no secret what Henry was doing, and it was nothing that disqualified Henry from marrying into Edward Morgan's family. Now we're going to get into the fighting and exploding ships in just a moment. But before we

21:47do that, I want to point out that there's something quite fascinating about the way that Henry Morgan is operating as a privateer with his men. And he wasn't the only one doing this. But one feature of privateering in the Caribbean in the 1600s is that there's a very different kind of agreement between the captain and the crew. It's different from what we would have seen under Francis Drake, a hundred years ago. The Francis Drake model was that he as the captain was a complete autocrat.

22:17There was a very strict hierarchy, the captain's word is law, and you cross him at your peril. You could die or be punished quite severely for saying something contrary to Francis Drake at sea. But the way that privateering was done in the Caribbean a hundred years later is much more democratic. And this is fascinating. So the first major difference is that almost everybody on these ships is a volunteer. We don't have press gangs or people being put onto these ships as part of a punishment sentence.

22:47These guys have signed up to work on a privateering vessel because they think the captain of that vessel is likely to bring them a good return. And they're working under these formal articles of association. So there's a very clear agreement laid out in advance about how things are going to operate and what everybody's share of the treasure is going to be. These guys aren't working for wages. So the only way they get paid is if they lead a successful raid and they bring back booty. Then that booty gets

23:18divvied up along these very specific rules to everyone on board. But if they don't make any successful raids or take any prizes, nobody makes any money. Now when it comes to how this plunder is going to be shared out, again, it's remarkably equal. Pretty much it's one man, one share. Everybody gets an equal amount. The captain gets two shares. And the ship's surgeon or carpenter get a share and a half each because they bring specialized skills that everybody relies on. A boy, a cabin boy, was entitled to half a

23:53share. But these are pretty small differences. By the time that Henry Morgan starts leading expeditions that have multiple ships under his command, each ship with their own captain, then he as the leader of a fleet gets five shares at that point. But that's later on in his career. So while there are some differences in how much money each person gets, they're not massive differences. It's not as though the CEO of Pirates Incorporated is getting a thousand times more than the average employee. The differences

24:27are much smaller. These articles of association were normally laid out on paper and signed before the voyage even began. But this didn't mean that the captain was your equal all the time. When your ship was involved in violent action, the captain's orders had to be obeyed. You were expected to do what you were told. And if you were unable to do that, either because you were too drunk or too lazy or insubordinate in some way, the punishment for that could be losing your entire share of any prize taken in that action. So that's pretty serious. However, that rule also worked the other way. Any captain who

25:04was not seen to be fulfilling his duties, whose leadership the crew was very dissatisfied with, could lose his position after the fighting was over and be replaced by somebody else. So there wasn't a sort of permanent power hierarchy in which the captain was always your superior and you had to do what he said no matter what time of day it was or whether you were fighting or sailing through calm waters. Now I promised you explosions. So here are some Captain Morgan stories full of the smell of

The Attack on Portobello

25:36gunpowder. One of these is the time that Henry Morgan attacks the city of Portobello in 1668. And Portobello is a city near Panama. It's kind of a hub city for the Spanish. It's a place where treasure from farther south, places like Chile or Peru, can be transported and loaded onto ships near Panama or places like Portobello and then transported on ship back to Spain. So it's a place where silver tends to

26:08be massed. Other valuables tend to be accumulating in significant amounts. And that's why this city has attracted Henry Morgan's particular attention. Now the reason that he's gotten permission or a letter of mark at this point is that the English in Jamaica have reason to believe that the Spanish might be planning an attack to push them out of Jamaica. The Spanish are very jealous about other people occupying islands in the Spanish main. So the English who are relatively recent in terms of occupying

26:40Jamaica are very worried about being pushed out of there. As a result, the governor of Jamaica gives Henry Morgan an official commission. And the commission says that he is to, quote, draw together the English privateers and take prisoners of the Spanish nation whereby he might inform of the intention of that enemy to attack Jamaica, unquote. So essentially, Henry Morgan has permission to take some Spanish prisoners and interrogate them by various methods to get information about whether

27:12the Spanish are planning an attack. Where he collects those Spanish prisoners and how much gold and silver he can obtain along the way, well, that's up to Henry Morgan. Because this is, after all, a business operation. But officially, this is a privateering mission rather than straight out piracy, because Henry Morgan has an official state objective from the governor of Jamaica. He's supposed to be gathering intelligence here. That said, he'd better collect his Spanish prisoners from a wealthy city,

27:46because that is how Henry Morgan is going to pay his privateering crew. Portobello is known to be a rich city, but as a result of that, the Spanish have invested in some defensive infrastructure. So that city is guarded by no less than three different forts. And these forts have guns in them, and usually soldiers to shoot those guns. They're intended to be a deterrent to pirates who would like to come in and seize treasure from the city. But Henry Morgan has heard from some informants that these forts are more of

28:20a visual deterrent than an actual defense. They're ludicrously undermanned. Discipline is lax. Many of the Spanish soldiers who are supposed to garrison these forts have been given permission to live in town, so essentially there aren't too many men manning those impressive guns. Henry Morgan is fairly confident that he can concoct a daring plan to bypass these defenses and take the city. He's going to use a level of creativity and ingenuity here, which will characterize

28:54all of the stories that I tell you about him. Captain Morgan gathers his pirate crews together on multiple ships at a pirate trading hub, a place called Bocas del Toro. And from there, they set out toward Portobello, which is some distance away. When they get to within 150 miles of Portobello, Captain Morgan puts most of his men into smaller boats. So there is a skeleton crew to operate the main vessel, but most of his men are in much smaller boats for the final approach.

29:27The reason for this is that he doesn't want to attract attention to how many men he's bringing close to the city, so he leaves some of his other large ships behind. He only approaches with one large ship visible, manned by a skeleton crew, and most of the men are riding in these much smaller, much lower boats that aren't going to be visible from a large distance away. And this means that when the Spanish sentries in the fort look out, they say, oh, there's a ship approaching. But it's one ship.

29:59How worried should we be? Now, it takes them nearly four days to get within sight of Portobello in these small boats. But they finally arrive nearby on an afternoon in July. At this point, they slow right down because the entire plan relies on stealth and not drawing attention to themselves before the attack. So they're not even going to approach the town or dock there until darkness falls. And when it does

30:29get dark, all these men in these small boats creep up on the shore, they dock silently, and then they start marching over land towards these forts and the city beyond. The reason for this extreme caution was that if they approached by daylight, the Spanish sentries could easily sound the alarm and the governor of the city could send Spanish soldiers from that city into the forts to man the guns. And now it would be a much more difficult situation. So they don't want to attract any attention.

31:01They're using every trick that they can. It's silent, it's dark, and they're moving as quietly as possible. So Morgan and his men sneak past the forts unnoticed. They get just outside the city itself. And right before the sky begins to lighten and the sun comes up, they suddenly invade. So Morgan and all his men are in the city. They're shooting their guns at anything that moves, including men, women, dogs. And their purpose is to be as chaotic as possible and to spread panic and disorder. And they're

31:33very successful in this. So you have citizens who have no idea what's going on. They're screaming, they're running. They don't know how many men there are or what's going on. Very quickly, Morgan and his men are in control of the town. And then they grab some hostages. So they deliberately pick some women like nuns and friars, some elderly people, and even the mayor of the city. And these are deliberate choices because these hostages are going to be human shields. With these human shields in front of them,

32:07Morgan and his men advance on the first defensive fort. And the idea here is that the Spanish soldiers inside that fort are not going to want to fire on these human shields that are being held sobbing and praying in front of the pirates behind them as they're getting ever closer. And Henry Morgan was quite correct about this. The Spanish soldiers did not want to fire on these civilians, their neighbors, people that they knew. And the result of this was that Morgan and his men close the distance.

32:40They get up to the walls of the fort. They managed to invade and kill or wound every single soldier inside. And remember, there weren't too many Spanish soldiers actually stationed inside that fort. Far fewer men than there should have been. With one fort taken, there were two forts left. Now, as it happened, one of those two forts wasn't entirely finished its construction. And so the Spanish soldiers inside that fort abandoned it as indefensible. If the walls weren't complete, if it wasn't a secure fortification

33:13to fight behind, then it wasn't worth fighting for at all. So that was abandoned. Which means, there's one fort left. The following morning, Captain Morgan led his men in an assault on the third and final fort. And here, the soldiers inside quickly surrendered. They had no wish to be slaughtered, like the Spanish soldiers in the first fort were. So they were very quick to lay down their guns. Now that all three defensive forts had been eliminated, Captain Morgan and his men were fully

33:45in possession of the city of Portobello. They moved freely throughout it, they ransacked warehouses, they were looking for supplies of treasure that had been transported from farther south, and were awaiting Spanish ships. And of course, they were torturing residents to make them reveal where they might have hidden their own personal household valuables. Think of this as a massive shakedown operation, right? These guys have control of the city and they just want to seize anything valuable they can lay their hands on. And they have very few scruples about how they do this.

34:20The next thing Captain Morgan does is he writes a very audacious letter to the governor of Panama, which is nearby. And he says, you know, Portobello is a really nice city. Too bad I planned to burn it to the ground, destroying all the buildings and sail away with all the guns and ammunition and treasure that I find here. But you can avoid this horrible fate. For the bargain price of 350,000 Spanish pieces of eight, you can keep your town. I will not burn it. But you need to make arrangements to send me that

34:52money pretty quickly. Now, the governor of Panama responds with a very contemptuous message to Henry Morgan. And he essentially says, the vassals of the King of Spain do not engage with inferior persons. Meanwhile, he also sends a contingent of about 800 Spanish soldiers heading towards Portobello. Now, at this point, Henry Morgan writes back. And I love it when you can get people in their own words, historically, because it really gives you a flavor of the personality. And Henry Morgan has plenty of

35:24that. So he writes and he says, quote, Although your letter does not deserve a reply, since you call me a corsair, a pirate. Nevertheless, I write you these few lines to ask you to come quickly. 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, unquote. So I love how Henry Morgan brings God into this. You know, if it pleases God,

35:58we will come with our weapons to visit you in Panama. And he also takes remarkable exception to being called a corsair. A corsair is just a French word for a privateer, which Henry Morgan certainly is. But he likes to cloak himself in the mantle of a higher purpose and to say, no, I'm really a good soldier here. Never mind that I'm torturing you and I'm seizing everything valuable from your house that I can get my hands on. Really, I'm not just a pirate. I'm not a pirate for hire. I'm a more noble sort

36:30of person. And how dare you refer to me in such terms, essentially. Now, even if Henry Morgan was as much a pirate as he was a soldier, you have to give him credit for being a very good soldier. Because when the Spanish arrive, Henry Morgan successfully organizes his men to repel their attack. So these 800 Spanish soldiers who are coming into Portobello to fight these pirates and to capture or kill them are defeated. They're forced to retreat. So this is pretty embarrassing for the

37:01governor of Panama, right? I mean, he wasn't going to pay to save the city of Panama. He thought he would save it by force of arms. And here his soldiers have come scampering back to Panama, having been forced to retreat by these heretic dog pirates. So at this point, the governor of Panama is forced to send another letter to Henry Morgan. And he says, okay, fine, I'll pay you not to burn the city of Portobello, but I can only pay you 100,000 pieces of eight, not 350,000. So this is less money than Henry

37:34Morgan would have liked to get. But if he hangs around for too long, it's only a matter of time before more Spanish soldiers are going to show up. So he decides to take the money and run. But before he does that, Captain Morgan gives the Spanish messenger a very menacing gift. He gives the messenger a pistol with a few bullets. And he says, please take this to the Spanish governor of Panama, representing the very light weapons that I have used to take this city and repel his men.

38:05And let him know that he can keep it for about 12 months. And after that time, I promise that I'll show up myself in Panama to collect my gun again. And Henry Morgan was as good as his word. It took him a little bit longer than a year to get to Panama. But three years later, he did invade and sack the city of Panama. Did he find his pistol when he arrived? I couldn't tell you, but I think he made his point. So the 100,000 pieces of eight that Henry Morgan receives from the governor to spare Portobello,

38:40combined with the 150,000 that he's already seized from plundering valuables and warehouses in the city, brings the total haul to 250,000 Spanish pieces of eight. In today's money, that works out to something like 300 million US dollars. So that's a very handsome return. And all of the men who'd worked as his privateering crew considered themselves very well rewarded. The result of this was that

39:10when Henry Morgan returned to Port Royal in Jamaica, he was soon swamped with volunteers, clamoring to be crew members on his next privateering cruise. As it turned out, those plans would prove to be explosive.

Explosion on the Oxford

39:26Plans for this next raid begin on January the 2nd, 1669. And at this point, Henry Morgan has so many men and so many ships who want to be involved that he has to have a meeting with just the captains of these ships. So he has them on board his new flagship, a ship called the Oxford. And the purpose of this meeting is to decide on what Spanish target they're going to attack with all of the ships and all of the manpower that is now assembled. We're talking about hundreds of men here. So they've decided on a plan,

40:01they've got their target fixed, and Henry Morgan says, I insist all of you captains need to stay as guests for dinner. So this meeting is taking place on board Henry Morgan's new flagship, the Oxford. And this is the biggest and most magnificent ship he's ever had. That's because it was a former ship of the Royal Navy, which has been sent to Jamaica to help with the defense of the English colony of Jamaica. And somehow this ship has been handed over to Henry Morgan to be used as part of his

40:33privateering raid against the Spanish. So that already tells you something again about how closely the government of Jamaica is working with Henry Morgan. So he's literally got a British Navy ship to work with here, and they're all going to have dinner, the captains and he, on board. Now remember, this is the day after New Year's Day. It's January the 2nd. People are eating, they're drinking, there's a lot of rum. They are in a very high spirits toasting their anticipated riches and soon to come victories over the Spanish. And it's not just the captains who are in high

41:08spirits. Many of the men are as well. So the crew members are drinking and they're even firing off their guns in celebratory volleys. Now, somewhere during the course of dinner and these festivities, a spark came too close to the ship's magazine aboard the Oxford. So it's a chamber that's full of barrels of gunpowder that would be used over weeks or months of any voyage. The result was horrific. The ship's magazine exploded, which blew the ship to bits, which means that without any warning, Henry Morgan

41:43went from sitting at a table having dinner to finding himself floating in a mess of splintered timber and broken bodies. There were very few survivors. Most of the men, the other captains who'd been sitting across the table from him at dinner, were dead. Eventually, some canoes paddled out from some of the other privateer ships nearby, looking for survivors. And there were a few. The surgeons survived, two captains, two carpenters, and four cabin boys. And of course, Henry Morgan himself.

42:17But the magnificent ship, the Oxford, and some 250 men who had been aboard were now at the bottom of the sea. Needless to say, this was a fairly inauspicious beginning to the new privateer and cruise. And it forces Henry Morgan to significantly revise his plans in the downward direction to reflect the loss of his best ship and a significant number of his men. So he sets out with the rest of the captains and their ships. But after a few difficult weeks, three of those ships abandon him. So that means he now has a

42:51much reduced fleet of something like six ships. So with the resources that are available to him,

The Siege of Maracaibo

42:57he consults again with the captains of these various vessels, and they decide on the city of Maracaibo in Venezuela. So this is a Spanish colonial city, of course, and it's defended by a fort, which is intended to be a deterrent to the pirates of the Caribbean. In order to get to the city, Henry Morgan and his men are going to have to take the fort. So they bring their boats ashore, they advance toward the fort, and the Spanish soldiers inside that fort are of course firing at them as much as possible. And they're hoping to give the impression that there are more of them

43:31inside the fort than there actually are. Because when they look at the number of pirates, I mean privateers, coming up the beach at them, and the number of men inside the fort itself, well, they know that they're significantly outnumbered. So when darkness falls, these Spanish soldiers decide their best bet is to sneak out of that fort, rather than be killed or taken prisoner by these privateers who have surrounded them. So this means that as the sun is about to come up the next morning,

44:02Henry Morgan and his men are prepared for a new assault, they're creeping up towards the fort, and everything is eerily silent. Nobody's firing at them. So at first they're probably thinking, okay, the Spanish are sleeping, we're going to sneak up on them, but they scale the walls, they get into the fort, and nobody's there. So of course they're glad to take possession of this fort and realize that no one is going to get wounded or killed in combat that day. And they're looking around to see what else the Spanish might have left for them. And then they discover it. A fuse

44:37that is burning. And that fuse leads all the way down to the magazine inside the fort, the place where the gunpowder in the fort is stored. So Henry Morgan's men find this lit fuse and they put it out with not much time to spare because the Spanish had left that burning hoping that the magazine would explode with all of Henry Morgan's men inside the fort. And if that had happened, they all would have died. You can imagine the massive sigh of relief that Henry Morgan must have breathed when he realized

45:09that he'd avoided death by gunpowder for the second time in a matter of weeks. Having averted this disaster, Henry Morgan and his buccaneers advance into the city of Maracaibo. And there too, they find the place abandoned. So the fleeing Spanish soldiers have sounded the alarm. The inhabitants of the city have grabbed their valuables, anything they can carry, and they flood into the hills. And they've essentially abandoned the city to the pirates. Henry Morgan's buccaneers immediately set out

45:41in pursuit of these people who are fleeing to the hills. And they managed to round up some of the ones who weren't fleeing fast enough and drag them back to the city. And the reason for this is that they want information. Where has the treasure been buried? Where are the valuables in your house hidden? Where are the other prisoners or other important things in the city that we can take away? They're grabbing anything valuable they can get their hands on. This means cattle. It means slaves. It means jewelry.

46:11It means cash. These buccaneers even managed to get their hands on a number of small ships as well. And they decide to take a few hostages. So these are inhabitants of the town that they've managed to chase down, who they think are quite wealthy, and they can extract ransom payments in exchange for the return of these people. So from a privateering point of view, this is going very well so far. There's a good return being made on all of this activity. But what Henry Morgan and his men don't know yet is that the Spanish response is coming very quickly, and it's going to put them in a

46:47desperate situation. Don Alonso de Campos y Espanosa is the commander of the Spanish Windward Fleet. They're also known as the Armada de Barlovento, and their purpose is to defend Spanish colonies in the area. So Don Alonso gets wind of this heretic pirate action that's going on in Maracaibo, and he decides that he'd better go down there and do something about it. So he's going to track down these pirates and give them their just desserts. Now, Don Alonso has three large warships to work

47:21with. And these ships are way bigger and better armed than anything Henry Morgan has control over right now. The biggest of these is called the Nuestra Senora de la Magdalena. This is a warship that has something like 38 guns, and it weighs 412 tons. The middle-sized ship under Don Alonso's command is the San Luis, and this one weighs in at 218 tons with 26 guns. And the smallest of his ships is called the

47:55Marquesa. She weighs 50 tons, and she has some 14 guns. Now, the biggest ship that Henry Morgan ever had was the Oxford. It had some 34 guns. But remember, that ship has been blown up. It's gone. The ships that he now has, even though there are quite a number of them, more than 10, are much, much smaller. So some of them have some guns, but they're nothing on the scale of these warships that Don Alonso is using. Henry Morgan, his buccaneers, and their fleet of small ships are still anchored

48:30in a lagoon not far from Maracaibo when Don Alonso and his warships locate them. And Don Alonso is delighted at his good fortune, because essentially the lagoon, although it's large, has a very narrow mouth at the top. And so all he has to do is block the mouth of the lagoon with his three ships, and there's no way the pirates can escape except by fighting their way out. There is also a Spanish fort at the entrance of this lagoon. It's the same fort that Henry Morgan and his men ran into and found a lit

49:03fuse inside of. But they put that fuse out, so the fort is intact. This means that Don Alonso can restaff that Spanish fort with Spanish soldiers, and he ensures that the guns in that fort are operational and ready to go. So now he feels like he's trapped Henry Morgan and his pirates quite thoroughly. Essentially, they're men in a bottle. The lagoon looks like a round, wide bottle at the bottom, but Don Alonso, with his three warships and a fort with guns, are guarding the neck of that

49:38bottle, and there's no other way to escape. With that done, Don Alonso, the Spanish commander of the Windward Fleet, sends a message to Henry Morgan, and he says, If you surrender to me and give up all of your booty, I will let you leave with your lives. But if you refuse this merciful offer, I promise I will destroy every one of you down to the last man. Consider how you will respond to this. So Henry Morgan takes this letter, and he assembles all of

50:13his men in a marketplace, because they're still ashore. And he reads the letter of the Spanish commander out to them. So he reads it in English, and then he reads it in French, because a good number of his privateers happen to be Frenchmen as well. So in both languages, he gives them the message, and then he says, What would you like to do? Because remember, even though Henry Morgan is their captain, he's not a dictator. He needs their consent over whether or not they're going to fight. And he says, Would you like to throw yourselves on Spanish mercy, or would you prefer to fight your

50:47way out? His men roared back that they had fought for their treasure once, and they would gladly do it again. So they're very unanimous in the decision here. They're going to fight. And this is very likely also because they didn't actually trust Don Alonso's promise of mercy. They suspected that his promise to spare their lives might just be an attempt to gain an easy victory, and that once they had surrendered, he would be entirely happy to imprison or execute them all. So if the Spanish are

51:18likely trying to kill them anyway, you might as well go down fighting, and at least you have a chance of escaping with your life and your treasure. But if you surrender, you may lose both. So after getting this response from his men, Captain Morgan pens a defiant response to Captain Alonso, and he says, I'll spare you the trouble of coming into the lagoon after us. Don't worry, we're coming to you where you are at the mouth. And then he says, we will shortly visit you and put to hazard of battle in whose

51:50power it shall be to use clemency. Your clemency we are acquainted with, nor do we expect any. So essentially, he's saying, let's see who's going to be in the position to offer mercy to the defeated side. We know what your idea of mercy is. We don't expect that we're going to get any from you anyway. So let's see if we can put ourselves in the position of being the ones who get to offer it, as opposed to relying on it. So battle's been declared, but there's no immediate rush to start

The Fire Ship Ruse

52:22shooting. Don Alonso and his warships are camped out there at the top of the lagoon, and they've got that fort staffed with Spanish soldiers and guns, so they can afford to wait. Henry Morgan and his men are going to do their best to prepare for this confrontation, and it takes them about a week. They decide to convert one of their smaller ships, a sloop, into a fire ship. Now you might be wondering, what is a sloop exactly? Well, a sloop in the 1600s looks a lot like a sailboat. Often it has one or two sails. It's a small vessel.

52:55It's not for long distance voyages. So they have one of these in their possession, and they decide that they're going to fill it with incendiaries. This is a common naval warfare tactic. It goes back centuries. The idea is that you sail this fire ship next to the wooden ships of your enemy and hopefully light them on fire. So Morgan's men are doing this, and then they're also converting the biggest ship they have into a flagship. So they're actually carving gun ports and adding additional guns onto this ship because this is going to be the one leading their assault. Now,

53:29of course, word of what Henry Morgan and his buccaneers are doing is carried up to Don Alonso by observers. So he knows they're making a fire ship. And as a result, he's also preparing his vessels to respond to that. And this takes the form of basically large tubs of water that he's putting on board his ships for firefighting purposes, so that if there is a flaming ship that ends up next to his ships, he can try and put those flames out. When Henry Morgan and his buccaneers are ready, and they've made all their preparations, they wait for the wind and tide to be just right.

54:03And then they start sailing their little fleet of smaller boats toward the mouth of the lagoon, straight toward Don Alonso's three warships. And leading the charge is the buccaneer flagship with the extra guns and two smaller boats, including a sloop. So they're closing in on Don Alonso's biggest ship, the Magdalena, with its 38 guns and 280 men aboard. And so even though there are these three

54:33buccaneer boats heading for this ship, it's so big, it's so much larger than they are. So what happens is the sloop and the other small boat are heading for the bow and the stern of the Magdalena. And the buccaneer flagship, the biggest boat they have, is going straight for the center, the side of the Magdalena. So as the buccaneer ship gets closer, the buccaneers throw grappling hooks overboard to attach their ship firmly to the side of the Magdalena. Don Alonso gives the signal to prepare

55:06his soldiers for hand-to-hand combat and boarding. And then no salty sea dogs emerge over the edge of his ship. There are no buccaneers coming on board the Magdalena. So Don Alonso orders his men to board the buccaneer ship, which they do. And they find it abandoned. There are no buccaneers waiting to fight them. And as they look over the edge of the ship, all they see is a little canoe paddling away from the buccaneer flagship as fast as it can go. And similarly, the other two buccaneer boats, the sloop

55:41and the other small boat on either side of the Magdalena, are also heading away as quickly as they can go. This is a sign that something is very, very wrong. Then everything exploded. The buccaneer ship bursts into flames with such incredible speed that the eyewitnesses themselves can scarcely believe it. Everything has been pre-treated to ensure rapid burning. So all the wood has been coated with tar. It's been packed with every combustible material the buccaneers can lay their hands on.

56:15The buccaneer flagship was no flagship at all. It was a fire ship in disguise. The extra guns that looked like they'd been added were actually just logs that were put in place to look like extra guns and were of course coated in flammable material. And there were also fake crew members also made out of logs with little caps put on top of them to make it look as though this flagship was full of men. It had in fact been maneuvered by a skeleton crew who had managed to use the grappling hooks to attach it to the Spanish

56:51Magdalena, lit a match and then jumped into their canoe and paddled away as quickly as they could. The buccaneer flagship was an inferno in a matter of seconds, lighting the Spanish Magdalena as well and taking it with her to the bottom. This was an incredible ruse on the part of Henry Morgan and his men. Because they had led the Spanish to believe that there was a fire ship coming but it was a small sloop. When in fact the fire ship that the Spanish needed to be concerned about was a ship

57:22disguised as a flagship full of fake guns and fake crew members. The other two Spanish ships are shocked by the loss of the Magdalena. So the mid-sized ship the San Luis begins heading toward the Spanish fort hoping to be reinforced by the guns of that fort. But instead it runs aground and this forces the captain of the San Luis to order his own men to push holes into the hull of that ship so that it can't be successfully re-floated by pirates later and carried off as a prize. So he's destroying the San Luis

57:59with his own crew members and then running ashore to take refuge inside the Spanish fort. And that leaves only the third Spanish ship. The smallest Spanish ship. The one that is closest in size to the buccaneer ships and it's now being pursued by several buccaneer ships who are anxious to run it down and seize the treasure and the ship itself. This ship also runs aground. Its captain and crew flee as quickly as they can and that ship is overtaken and seized by Henry Morgan's men. Obviously this is a

58:34moment of massive celebration for Captain Morgan and his buccaneers. They've managed to win a confrontation against much more powerful, better equipped vessels. They've sunk the Magdalena and they're even sending divers to the bottom now of the wrecked ship to retrieve gold and silver, some of which has been melted together in large lumps due to the heat of the fire. They've also managed to seize the smallest of the three Spanish ships. So they're already doing much better, but

59:05they're not out of trouble yet. Yes, they've defeated these Spanish ships, but there's still that fort

Escaping the Lagoon

59:12guarding the mouth of the lagoon. A fort that is fully capable of firing boat-eating rounds at any buccaneer ships that try to sail past. So they're not out of the bottle just yet. Don Alonso, the Spanish commander of the Windward fleet, had managed to swim ashore and he was inside that fort. And understandably, he was quite furious. Furthermore, with every day that passed from this point, the possibility that the Spanish would send reinforcements increased. So Captain Morgan and his men aren't out of

59:48trouble yet. What they need is a cunning plan. And Henry Morgan is just the man for that. He has his men begin to paddle canoes from his ships across the lagoon in full view of the Spanish fort. And these canoes are going ashore near a mangrove swamp. So the mangroves provide some cover and all the men in the canoes are armed. So the Spanish soldiers and Don Alonso, the Spanish commander, are in the fort

1:00:20watching with concern as there is this entire convoy of canoes carrying armed buccaneers from the ships over to this mangrove swamp, which is on the same side as the Spanish fort. So what seems to be happening here is that there's a massing of men being carried ashore, preparing for an assault on the fort, a land-based assault. So obviously, to respond to this, they begin to redirect some of the guns in that fort to cover the direction of a land-based assault from the mangrove swamp. And as darkness

1:00:56falls, the Spanish sentinels are watching with some urgency, waiting for this assault of pirates coming towards them from the swamp. The sun goes down, the darkness settles in, and when the ebb tide arrives, the buccaneer ships very quietly reel in their anchors and sail past the Spanish fort through the mouth of the lagoon out into the open water. They've navigated the dangerously shallow parts of the

1:01:27water here successfully, and they've escaped. All of the men who appeared to be in the mangrove swamp ready to attack the fort are actually on board those ships, and they've now escaped the lagoon and are free. So, how did this happen? This is another piece of the strategic genius that Henry Morgan is so famous for, because what he did was he actually had a very small number of his men in these canoes.

1:01:58They were the same guys. So essentially, on the way from the ships to the swamp, they all sat up in the canoes, brandishing their weapons. Some of them are rowing, some of them are carrying their guns. They get to the mangrove swamp, they turn around, and then half the guys in the canoe lay flat. So they're lying on the bottom of the boat, they're lying on the laps of their comrades, and they're being rowed back toward the ship. And then they repeat this, and perhaps the guys rowing and the guys hiding take turns, so that no one is getting too tired rowing. But basically,

1:02:31these are the same guys going back and forth all day long. So to the Spanish, it looks like all these men are being dropped off, and you're going back to the ship to get more men. But in fact, it was just the same guys going back and forth all day. And at the end of the last trip to the mangrove swamp, these canoes full of the same guys returned to their ships. They all got back on the ships, they waited for it to be dark, and then they sailed away. The entire thing had been a decoy designed to draw Spanish attention and Spanish firepower in the wrong place. Meanwhile, these

1:03:07ships quietly sailed off at a time when they were least looked for. This last brilliant maneuver ensured that Henry Morgan and all his men returned to Port Royal with a very handsome amount of treasure and some excellent stories to tell. Henry Morgan is, of course, the toast of the taverns

Knighthood and Return

1:03:26of Jamaica. The English government, however, wavers back and forth over its approval of privateering in Jamaica. There are times when the English government sends messages to its governor in Jamaica saying, no more letters of marque shall be issued. It's very important that you put a stop to privateering. Our new policy is that you should find ways to live peacefully with your Spanish neighbors in the Caribbean and start trading with them and doing business. But at other times they were perfectly

1:03:56happy to turn a blind eye to English privateers like Henry Morgan attacking Spanish colonies and Spanish ships and weakening the Spanish in the Caribbean. After all, these privateers were much cheaper than sending troops to actually defend these colonies. And the English were aware that the survival of their colony of Jamaica in large part depended on these privateers. So there's this interesting scenario where sometimes the government is willing to say, yes, okay, do this, but we have to officially

1:04:30disavow it. And then other times they're saying, no, no, really don't be doing this, but it's carrying on anyway. So one of the things that happens during this political flip-flopping is that Henry Morgan, a couple of years later, makes good on his promise to the Spanish governor of Panama. Remember that promise to visit him in Panama and collect that pistol he sent? Well, he does go to Panama. He does invade and sack the city. And this is of course a very bold and very risky mission, but it doesn't go over too

1:05:00well with the English government back in England. And that's because they've just signed an official peace deal with the Spanish. So when word goes back to England that some privateer from Jamaica has just sacked Panama, well, the Spanish are really very upset about that. And they demand that the King of England, who's now Charles II, Cromwell is gone. England is in the business of having kings again. So they have Charles II. And Charles II is like, okay, well, I guess I better do something about this

1:05:32Henry Morgan guy, because otherwise the peace deal with the Spanish is going to be ruined. So King Charles II requires that Henry Morgan be transported to England. And so Henry Morgan arrives in London and he's given a very stern talking to and required to stay in London for a little while. And when things begin to settle down a year or two later, King Charles II gives Henry Morgan a knighthood. He also takes advantage of his proximity in London to, you know, get his expertise on

1:06:05the defenses that are required in Jamaica and the situation down there in the colony. And once he's been knighted, the King is quite happy to send Henry Morgan back to Jamaica, not only as Sir Henry Morgan, but with a new job. Henry Morgan, shameless privateer of the Caribbean, is going to be the new deputy governor of the colony of Jamaica. And this moment is really just the latest iteration in a century-long tradition of the English government using pirates for hire, privateers, to attack the

1:06:39Spanish in their New World colonies while officially making noises of great disapproval and denial and giving stern talkings to these English privateers. But in private, these privateers are celebrated and rewarded with knighthoods. So this happened to Francis Drake a hundred years ago, it's happening here to Henry Morgan, and there have been any number of other English privateers in the same tradition who haven't reached perhaps the same heights of fame and wealth, but have been very useful tools

1:07:12for the English government, even if they're tools that have to be officially denied. So Henry Morgan is now back in Jamaica, he's the deputy governor, he's climbed the social ladder, he's officially respectable, and he owns no less than three plantations at this point, and all the slaves that go along with that. But he's very much at heart still a pirate, or a privateer, if you will. And there are complaints from some real aristocrats who have decided to come over to the English colony of Jamaica. Guys like the Earl of Carberry,

1:07:47who complains that this deputy governor of Jamaica, this Sir Henry Morgan, spends far too much of his time drinking and gambling in the taverns of Port Royal with the rest of those disreputable pirates. What sort of behaviour is this for a member of the establishment? And Henry Morgan is of course now supposed to be in charge of getting rid of piracy and privateering in the Caribbean. So he's been told that he cannot issue any further letters of Mark, the privateering business is closed in

1:08:20Jamaica. So what he does is he tells all of his old privateering buddies to simply head on over to the island of Tortuga, which is now under the control of the French governor, and get letters of Mark from him and carry on doing the same business of raiding and stealing from the Spanish. And by the way, Henry Morgan got a little cash kickback on every single one of those letters of Mark that were issued by the French governor of Tortuga to privateers that Henry Morgan sent over to him. Old pirate habits

Death and Legacy

1:08:52die hard, it would seem. And in 1688, Henry Morgan died of a serious illness that was caused by heavy drinking. So this was a pirate who was finally killed by rum. During his life, he'd been the foremost buccaneer of the Caribbean. And by the time he died, the business of privateering, or piracy with permission, was on the wane. Only four years after his death, the notorious town of Port Royal, that nest of pirates, the most sinful city on earth, suffered a horrific earthquake and sank to

1:09:30the bottom of Kingston Bay. Four years after his death, the city of Port Royal, that nest of pirates, and the most sinful city on earth, suffered a massive earthquake and sank to the bottom of Kingston Harbor, taking Henry Morgan's bones with it. His legend, however, lives on. That is the end of our story. But before you sail off into the sunset, remember that you can get this podcast as audio only on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify or Apple or Amazon.

1:10:03So if you want to listen to pirate stories while you're driving or cooking or otherwise busy, that is available to you. And for even more pirate stories, head on over to patreon.com Eva Schubert. Thank you for being with me here today, and I'll see you in our next episode, which is also about pirates.

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