was off fighting the Dutch on the island of Statia. Then, a month and a half after Henry had sailed back into the harbor, news arrived: Statia was taken, but Colonel Morgan was dead. “The Lieutenant-general died not with any wound,” his second-in-command reported, “but being ancient and corpulent, by hard marching and extraordinary heat fell and died.” The islands often required a season of acclimatization; the colonel had gone out too fast and too hard.
There was also news of a change of opinion on the privateers. The Spanish were furious about the privateers like Morgan, “much dejected,” one English official reported, “at hearing of our hostile carriage toward them, which has wholly ruined their trade.” In the eternal minuet of European alliances, Charles was now wooing the Spanish as allies and trying to head off war with France and the Dutch, so he ordered that his Jamaican subjects stop their raids on all parties, which to the islanders was like an open invitation to every nation to attack them at will. If the privateers could not get commissions in Port Royal, they’d look to the French island of Tortuga to get permission to attack Spanish targets. The commission business can get confusing: Dutch or French privateers might carry English commissions against the Spanish. English privateers could sail with Dutch or French commissions. So long as
someone
was at war with Spain—the richest and most desired target in the West Indies—you could get a license to attack them. The letter didn’t have to be from your native government; the privateers were soldiers of fortune, even if men like Morgan preferred to sail for their home country.
Thomas Lynch, a rich planter and an advocate for better relations with Spain, doubted that the 1,500 privateers could be reined in without five or six warships. “What compliance can be expected from men so desperate and numerous,” he wrote, “that have no other element but the sea, nor trade but privateering?” The Spaniards were not the only ones threatened by the flourishing of the buccaneers; some in Port Royal were beginning to realize that the lure of gold was empowering the worst instincts among them. Here, unlike in England, there were few institutions to restrain the power of the Brethren. The old class structures meant little in Port Royal; nationalism, which could get the rabble of London primed for a war, was important, but in the final analysis it was trumped by gold and opportunity. The peculiar circumstances of life on the Caribbean frontier were molding a new kind of mind-set: that of an autonomous, geographically mobile, highly confident, heavily armed bandit-hero with few ties to nations or systems of belief.
A certain Jamaican, one Mr. Worsley, made that point in a letter that described the situation of the merchants and planters on the island. Mr. Worsley was convinced that the French were wooing the buccaneers to their side and that one day the townspeople of Port Royal would come to regret their alliance with the murdering bands. Like the townspeople in a Hollywood western who hire the disreputable, ex-alcoholic gunman to protect them, Mr. Worsley (and many like him) were secretly appalled by their guardians, and he wrote that if “such a crew of wild, dissolute and tattered fellows” had become so accustomed to preying on people, they were liable to turn on their own. The very individuality that made the pirates such marvelous fighters made them sorry material for a civilized society. And the treasure of the New World empowered them, made them stronger than decent men. As it turned out, Mr. Worsley was right to worry. The day would come when the traders of Port Royal would see the pirates turn away from the Spanish devil and, cutlasses raised, advance slowly toward their merchant allies.
What Worsley recognized was that the pirates were a kind of supervirus: They represented an extreme form of predatory capitalism, where the strongest, who
There was also news of a change of opinion on the privateers. The Spanish were furious about the privateers like Morgan, “much dejected,” one English official reported, “at hearing of our hostile carriage toward them, which has wholly ruined their trade.” In the eternal minuet of European alliances, Charles was now wooing the Spanish as allies and trying to head off war with France and the Dutch, so he ordered that his Jamaican subjects stop their raids on all parties, which to the islanders was like an open invitation to every nation to attack them at will. If the privateers could not get commissions in Port Royal, they’d look to the French island of Tortuga to get permission to attack Spanish targets. The commission business can get confusing: Dutch or French privateers might carry English commissions against the Spanish. English privateers could sail with Dutch or French commissions. So long as
someone
was at war with Spain—the richest and most desired target in the West Indies—you could get a license to attack them. The letter didn’t have to be from your native government; the privateers were soldiers of fortune, even if men like Morgan preferred to sail for their home country.
Thomas Lynch, a rich planter and an advocate for better relations with Spain, doubted that the 1,500 privateers could be reined in without five or six warships. “What compliance can be expected from men so desperate and numerous,” he wrote, “that have no other element but the sea, nor trade but privateering?” The Spaniards were not the only ones threatened by the flourishing of the buccaneers; some in Port Royal were beginning to realize that the lure of gold was empowering the worst instincts among them. Here, unlike in England, there were few institutions to restrain the power of the Brethren. The old class structures meant little in Port Royal; nationalism, which could get the rabble of London primed for a war, was important, but in the final analysis it was trumped by gold and opportunity. The peculiar circumstances of life on the Caribbean frontier were molding a new kind of mind-set: that of an autonomous, geographically mobile, highly confident, heavily armed bandit-hero with few ties to nations or systems of belief.
A certain Jamaican, one Mr. Worsley, made that point in a letter that described the situation of the merchants and planters on the island. Mr. Worsley was convinced that the French were wooing the buccaneers to their side and that one day the townspeople of Port Royal would come to regret their alliance with the murdering bands. Like the townspeople in a Hollywood western who hire the disreputable, ex-alcoholic gunman to protect them, Mr. Worsley (and many like him) were secretly appalled by their guardians, and he wrote that if “such a crew of wild, dissolute and tattered fellows” had become so accustomed to preying on people, they were liable to turn on their own. The very individuality that made the pirates such marvelous fighters made them sorry material for a civilized society. And the treasure of the New World empowered them, made them stronger than decent men. As it turned out, Mr. Worsley was right to worry. The day would come when the traders of Port Royal would see the pirates turn away from the Spanish devil and, cutlasses raised, advance slowly toward their merchant allies.
What Worsley recognized was that the pirates were a kind of supervirus: They represented an extreme form of predatory capitalism, where the strongest, who
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