Puerto del Príncipe Attacked
Before they left the South Cays, Morgan called a council of war with all his captains to decide on the target to attack. The sun shone and the fleet bobbed at anchor in a beautiful blue sea teaming with wildlife. The trees and vegetation along the shore were vibrant with colour.
And the men talked. There were several proposals for attacking Havana. This proposal was to be a surprise assault by night with the buccaneers plundering the city and taking several priests hostage before any defence could be mounted against them. There were murmurs of approval from some of the men while others who had been imprisoned by the Spaniards in Havana reckoned the buccaneers would need 1,500 men to take the city and make the raid successful. Ultimately, the motion wasn’t carried.
Esquemeling tells us that another man spoke up suggesting the buccaneers raid Puerto del Príncipe. ‘He had been there, he said, and there was plenty of money in the town, for it was where the Havana merchants came to buy hides. Lying some distance from the sea, the place had never been plundered and so the inhabitants had no fear of the English,’ writes Esquemeling.
It is at this point that Morgan made a mistake, which he quickly learned lessons from for his subsequent expeditions. On board the ship where the council meeting was taking place, a Spaniard who was a prisoner of the English overheard their plans. He’d been a prisoner for some time and had managed to pick up enough English to enable him to understand what they were planning. Morgan did not have the Spaniard removed from earshot when the meeting was taking place as he assumed he did not understand English.
This man jumped overboard one night and began swimming for the nearest island. The English at once sprang into their canoes to fish him out again, but he managed to land before they could catch him and hid among the trees, where they could not find him.1
The next day the Spaniard managed to reach Puerto del Príncipe and he raised the alarm. Now Morgan’s element of surprise was gone. Immediately, the Spaniards began preparing for the coming attack, with many inhabitants hiding themselves and their valuables in the woods near the town. At the same time, the governor of the town began to assemble as many men as he could to defend the place. Mustering about 800 men, he had many trees cut down and hauled across the roads. Ambushes were set up with cannon mounted so that the buccaneers would be hit with shot as they came down the road. These ambushes, or ambuscades, were manned with only the men that the governor thought fit enough, while he had the rest of his forces mustered in an ‘open field near the city, whence he could see the enemy’s approach from afar.’ Esquemeling states that the buccaneers:
put their men ashore, and finding all the cattle driven up the country and the inhabitants fled, they marched 20 leagues to Porto Principe on the north of the island, and with little resistance possessed themselves of the same.2
Instead of using the roads and being ambushed Morgan led his men into the stifling thick forest and began a long march through very difficult terrain that avoided the ambushes and ‘after a long, sweaty march the pirates emerged onto a plain, la Savana, that lay before the city.’3 With drums beating and banners flying the buccaneers began advancing, forming into a semi-circle and the governor seeing Morgan’s army before him ordered his cavalry to attack the buccaneers from the rear and cut them to pieces. However, things did not turn out the way he’d anticipated.
With the buccaneers now in their semi-circle formation the Spaniards charged them, but the musket fire from the buccaneers was very accurate. Esquemeling takes up the rest of the story:
The buccaneers never missed their mark, and kept up a continuous fire without pausing in their charge. The defenders’ courage began to flag, especially when they saw their governor fall. They began to retreat towards the forest, where they would have a better chance of escape, but most of them were struck down before they reached shelter.
Within an hour Morgan’s forces were in the town and had captured it, but some Spaniards still held out, taking pot shots at them. Esquemeling writes:
Some locked themselves in their houses and fired from windows, but once the buccaneers became aware of this sniping they threatened to burn down the whole town, destroying women and children and all.
The Spanish now had no choice and they quickly surrendered. Morgan had them all locked up in the large churches in the town. The buccaneers then began plundering the empty homes in the town and once this had been done, Morgan sent them out ‘on marauding expeditions, every day bringing back fresh booty and prisoners, so time did not lie heavy on their hands.’4
Even though Morgan’s men were out in the countryside searching for booty, Morgan turned to an old tactic used by pirates—ransoming the prisoners. He released four prisoners and ‘sent them into the adjacent woods to find the people who had fled and demand money for the imprisoned families.’ In addition, says Esquemeling, Morgan also told the prisoners that the people who had fled would have to pay a ransom for the town or they would burn it to the ground.
A few days later, the four men returned, telling Morgan that they couldn’t find anyone and they needed another fifteen days to do the job properly. Morgan agreed to this and while he was negotiating with the prisoners, Esquemeling tells us that ‘seven or eight buccaneers, who had been out of town shooting cattle, returned with a Negro prisoner.’ This man was carrying letters from the governor of Santiago, the capital city of the adjacent province lying some 160 miles to the east of Puerto del Príncipe. These letters were addressed to some of the prisoners and once Morgan had opened them he discovered they were telling the prisoners ‘not to make too much haste to pay any ransom.’ The letters also said the governor was building an army and ‘would soon be coming to relieve the town.’
We can only imagine how Morgan felt. The Spanish had betrayed him. Calling his captains together, Morgan explained how the Spanish had deceived them and then turned to the prisoners demanding that the ransom for the town be paid the very next day or he would reduce the entire city to ashes. ‘The Spanish again answered that it was impossible; their people were scattered here and there, and the money could not be collected in so short a time.’5
Not wanting to hang around any longer and knowing that an army was being prepared to intercept and stop him, Morgan realized that getting the ransom would be difficult so instead he told the Spaniards that he would ‘forbore to fire the town, or bring away prisoners, but on delivery of 1,000 beeves released all.’6 He then took six of the leading citizens as hostages, telling the Spanish that they would not be released unless they, the Spanish, killed the cattle, salted the carcasses and carried the meat on board. They agreed.
Esquemeling writes that the next morning the Spanish arrived on the beaches near Morgan’s anchored ships with the cattle and demanded their prisoners back. Morgan replied they would only be released once the cattle had been slaughtered and salted and loaded on their ships. However, Dudley Pope writes in his book that it was two days later that the Spanish arrived on the beaches with the cattle.
In order to ensure the speedy release of their fellow countrymen, the Spanish worked with great haste until all the meat had been salted and stowed aboard Morgan’s ships. While this was happening an incident occurred that tested Morgan’s leadership. Remember, he was leading a force of men from different nations and cultures with different languages, and they all followed him because of his charisma and because they trusted that he would be successful. This incident would now test his mettle in the eyes of the men who followed him. Esquemeling provides the details:
An Englishman had shot a Frenchman dead on account of a marrow bone. I have recounted earlier how the buccaneers when they killed a beast suck out the marrow and these men did the same thing. The Frenchman had flayed an animal and the Englishman came up and helped himself to the marrow bones. This started the quarrel and they challenged each other to fight it out with muskets. On coming to the duelling place, away from the rest, the Englishman was ready before the other, and shot him through the body from behind. Upon this, the French seized their muskets and wanted to fall on the English, but Morgan thrust himself between the rival groups and promised the French he would do right by them and have the Englishman hanged as soon as they reached Jamaica.
Morgan was as good as his word for as soon as they returned to Jamaica, the man was hanged.
With all the meat and booty aboard, Morgan released the six hostages and before setting sail arranged a rendezvous point back at the South Cays7 with his captains where they could divvy up the plunder. This was a small cay called Isla de las Vacas (Cow Island, or Île à Vache), just off south-west Hispaniola. ‘This was Morgan’s favoured rendezvous for dividing booty after expeditions, as some of his captains and crews could not return to Port Royal because there was a price on their heads.’8
Once they’d arrived there they discovered the booty they’d pillaged in terms of gold, silver and other goods amounted to 50,000 pieces of eight, which, according to Esquemeling, ‘was of little help to them, for it would not even pay the debts they owed in Jamaica.’
In this account of the attack and capture of Puerto del Príncipe by the buccaneers we start to see some discrepancies between the sources. Esquemeling clearly states that the Spanish prisoners were ‘given little to eat and every day were pained and plagued by unspeakable tortures to make them say where they had hidden the money or goods.’ Esquemeling is referring to the buccaneers torturing the Spanish prisoners.
However, Pope states that ‘there was no threat that he would hold a few of the leading citizens over a barbecue pit.’ So he believes there was no intention of torture as far as Morgan was concerned. On the other hand, Stephen Talty does not even mention that the prisoners were tortured or treated roughly on this particular raid.
Could this be one of Esquemeling’s embellishments, blending fact with fiction in order to make his narrative more sensational?