Empire of Blue Water by Stephan Talty

full of excellent fish with its banks full of brave pastures and savannahs covered with horses and cattle.” The grazing cows soon began dropping to the report of muskets, and the men enjoyed “good beef and mutton as any in England.” After feasting on the herd, the men approached the town, “hiding by day under cays and islands and rowing all night.” On the fifth night, they reached the outskirts of the city of Gran Granada. Founded in 1524 by Hernández de Córdoba, Gran Granada was a rich commercial outpost that just might, the buccaneers hoped, still contain some of the golden Aztec treasures that had astonished the conquistadors. The town was twice as big as Portsmouth and boasted seven stone churches, colleges, monasteries, and, more important, seven companies of cavalry and militia. But Gran Granada, like so many others, was unprepared for the buccaneers. What astonishment Morgan’s band must have caused when they marched into the town square, overturned the great guns, captured the sergeant-major’s house, which doubled as the town’s armory, locked “300 of the best men prisoners” in the great church, and went on a major spree. The privateers had been children’s stories told to wayward boys to frighten them. But now they swept in, real as life, with over a thousand of the local Indians, who, believing themselves liberated, joined in with the plundering and were on the verge of executing the Spanish prisoners en masse until Morgan reminded them that the English would be leaving and the natives would have to live with their colonizers when they were gone. The knives were stayed, and Morgan and his men collected their loot, headed back to their ships and set their course for Jamaica. Roderick counted his takings and was satisfied: He could pay off his debts, rent a better room, and look forward to more weeks of carousing back in Port Royal. It wasn’t just the money—it was the feeling of entering the town with as much cash in one’s pocket as the richest merchant, of being able to look anyone in the eye, hard if he liked. Money made the man in Jamaica; it didn’t matter who your father was or what you had done in the Old World. Roderick’s estimation of himself was rising by the week.
    Each of Morgan’s raids was remarkable for a different reason. His first was a feat of navigation and improvisation: He’d covered thousands of miles across portions of the globe for which no good maps existed, made alliances with Indians, learned to trust their advice, survived the loss of his vessels, and brought his men back safely and much richer. The Spanish had proved less of an adversary than sheer geography, and in fact Morgan had studiously avoided attacking the power centers of the empire: Havana, Cartagena, Panama. But he’d rampaged at will through the length and breadth of the empire. The sheer number of miles he’d covered demonstrated how the Spanish Empire had been distorted by the search for treasure: It was a collection of distant towns strung out over a huge continent. It had not been created with defense or sustainability in mind, only exploitation. What excitement Morgan must have felt as he set course for Jamaica: He’d just proved to himself that the empire was vulnerable to smart, driven men like himself. If he could mold the Brethren to his will, he’d be as rich and as respected as any of his illustrious kin. The West Indies were his for the taking.
    Reports filtered back to Madrid about Morgan’s feats in territories previously thought out of reach. Morgan began to acquire the name that would pass the lips of terrified colonists for years to come:
El Draque.
The Spaniards were beginning to believe he was the reincarnation of the dreaded Sir Francis Drake.

5
    Sodom

    W hen word reached Port Royal in the fall of 1665 that Morgan was on his way back in, the townspeople were amazed, having considered the men lost at sea or long dead in some wretched jungle. The buccaneers had been gone