Buccaneer

SIR HENRY MORGAN--W. Adolphe Roberts--Covici, Friede ($3). Buccaneers were originally harmless Caribbean creatures, so named from their hunter's trade of smoking meat on a boucan (grid), but that was before Henry Morgan became their Admiral-in-Chief. By that time (1667) they had found other, more dangerous fish to fry; some of them were no better than pirates. In Morgan's early career he was not much better himself: he served a bloody apprenticeship against the Spaniards in Hispaniola and Granada, quitted himself so like a buccaneer that he was elected Admiral. Jamaica's Governor Modyford made it official by handing him a commission.

Morgan was primarily a land fighter. His plan was to cripple Spain's power in the Caribbean by raiding and destroying her chief ports. He sacked successively Puerto Principe, Porto Bello, Maracaibo, Gibraltar, Panama City. When he stormed the last defences of Porto Bello he forced captured monks and nuns to carry the scaling ladders; it tickled him to see the Spaniards forced to shoot down their sacred compatriots. At the fight at Matasnillos the Spaniards stampeded 1,500 bulls against the buccaneers: Morgan's men indulged in no matadorean antics, routed the bulls with a musket volley. Morgan's only serious repulse, says Biographer Roberts, was after the taking of Panama, when one of the beauteous captives caught his weather eye. He laid siege to her virtue by attrition and guile, but did not carry her, buccaneer-like, by storm. When she held out longer than his patience, he sent her back to her people.

Spain's Ambassador protested continuously to Charles II about Morgan's pillaging progress; finally he was recalled to England to stand trial (1672). His foregone acquittal brought him a knighthood and the Lieutenant-Governorship of Jamaica. During his three terms as Governor he turned on his old cronies, the buccaneers, with a fierce, forgetful hand. Once he wined and dined 17 of them, led them on to talk dangerously of what they had done, had them arrested as they left, hanged them all next day. Said he: "I abhor bloodshed, and I am greatly dissatisfied that in my short government I have been so often compelled to punish criminals with death."

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