Breakout
On the face of it, one could say that Morgan held all the cards. Two of the three Spanish men-of-war under the command of Don Alonso had been sunk. The third, La Marquesa, had been captured by the buccaneers and Morgan had transferred his flag to that ship. But the problem was the castle, San Carlos. It was in the hands of the Spanish and was bristling with guns, all pointing towards the channel, so any ship that Morgan tried to get through would be blasted to bits. The castle had the higher ground and more firepower than Morgan’s combined fleet. Even the attacks by the buccaneers on the castle had proved to be fruitless as the Spanish resistance had been too strong for the buccaneers and many men had been lost in the process. Yet Morgan knew that something had to be done. He could not sail his fleet up the channel to open sea without coming under fire from San Carlos.
To make matters worse, Don Alonso had escaped the inferno of the Magdalen and managed to get to the castle, which was now under his direct command. This meant that the garrison there, reinforced days earlier by Don Alonso, would not easily give in. Morgan ordered his best snipers to position themselves in such a way so that any Spanish soldier who appeared on the battlements of the castle would be shot. The men had dug themselves in on the beach so they would have some protection from any cannon fire from the castle. The buccaneers now watched and waited. In the castle, the Spanish did the same. The firing had stopped. Both sides were at an impasse.
Morgan knew that he could not fight his way out so he had to do something that he was unaccustomed too—bargaining. Maracaibo was still empty and under his control. Morgan sailed the rest of the fleet back to Maracaibo, according to Esquemeling, ‘where he refitted the great ship he had taken and chose it for himself.’
He then sent a messenger to Don Alonso, ‘demanding of him a ransom of fire for Maracaibo; which being denied, he threatened entirely to consume and destroy it.’ Don Alonso refused the ransom, but the rest of the Spanish, ‘considering the ill-luck they had all along with those pirates and not knowing how to get rid of them, concluded to pay the said ransom.’1
Despite Don Alonso’s refusal to negotiate, the people of Maracaibo began bargaining with Morgan, asking him what he wanted in return for leaving the town alone. They finally decided on 20,000 pieces of eight and 500 head of cattle, for which Morgan would release his prisoners and not set fire to the town.
The cattle were brought the next day, with one part of the money; and, while the pirates were busied in salting the flesh, they made up the whole 20,000 pieces of eight as was agreed.2
With the beef aboard and the ransom paid, Morgan said goodbye to Maracaibo for the last time and headed back towards the channel. However, he had not released the hostages as he’d promised. Don Alonso’s intractability had left Morgan with little choice but to use the hostages as his only remaining bargaining tool. Esquemeling writes that Morgan ‘wished the prisoners to agree with the governor [Don Alonso] to permit a safe passage to his fleet, which, if he should not allow, he would certainly hang them all up in his ships.’
Morgan sent a group of prisoners to Don Alonso with his request, ensuring that many more remained in his custody. The prisoners pleaded with the Spanish governor, but to no avail. Esquemeling states in his book that Don Alonso replied: ‘If you had been as loyal to your king in hindering the entry of these pirates, as I shall do their going out, you had never caused these troubles, neither to yourselves nor to our whole nation, which hath suffered so much through your pusillanimity.’3
By this time, Morgan had anchored his fleet near the ship that he’d assigned to conduct salvage operations on the wreck of the Magdalen. In the midst of the bleak situation Morgan received some good news. The buccaneers had managed to salvage 15,000 pieces of eight from the wreck.
Yet the problem still remained. Even if Don Alonso had agreed to let the fleet pass without firing on it there was nothing to stop the Spaniard issuing orders to fire on the buccaneers once they were in range. In the past the Spanish had gone against their word and there was no reason to trust them now, but it was the only option open to Morgan.
The prisoners Morgan sent to Don Alonso returned with his answer. It was no. He would not allow safe passage for the fleet. The hostages would have to die.
The Spaniards returned with much consternation, and no hopes of obtaining their request, telling Captain Morgan, what answer they had received; his answer was, ‘If Don Alonso will not let me pass, I will find means how to do it without him.’4
At this point, according to Esquemeling, Morgan decided to divide the booty equally into each ship of his fleet so that no one vessel would have the lion’s share of their takings, ‘fearing he might not have an opportunity to do it in another place, if any tempest should rise and separate the ships, as also being jealous that any of the commanders might run away with the best part of the spoil.’
According to the laws of the Brethren, each of the buccaneers came forward and declared on oath how much they had. The accounts from each of the men and ships were added up and found ‘to the value of 250,000 pieces of eight in money and jewels, besides the huge quantity of merchandise and slaves: all which purchase was divided into every ship or boat, according to its share.’5
Time was running out for Morgan. It was certainly on Don Alonso’s side. It would only be a matter of days before Spanish reinforcements arrived from Panama and other Spanish cities on the Main. Morgan would end up facing a force of thousands if he remained bottled up, so he had to come up with a plan, and do it fast.
This book is about the character of Morgan, what makes him unique and why he should always have more than a passing footnote in history. He was a brilliant strategist and tactician. He was able to adapt to his environment and willing to take risks in order to achieve his objectives.
On the other hand, Don Alonso was a nobleman and ‘could not imagine that he could be out-thought by scum like the Brethren.’6 In addition, he represented the King of Spain and as such the complete arrogance that nothing could defeat him—certainly not a band of pirates. Another of his main concerns, according to Pope, was how he would be seen in Madrid, especially if he failed. This was his overriding motivation. Indeed, every note he wrote was copied and sent to his masters in Madrid.
Don Alonso’s real audience for the note, which was no doubt copied in triplicate, was back in Madrid, awaiting word of Morgan’s demise. He was building a legal case for the disaster that was unfolding.7
While he had called Morgan’s bluff, one has to wonder just how well his masters in Madrid would have taken the burning of Maracaibo and the execution of the hostages—all Spanish—because he refused to let Morgan pass.
While Morgan was capable of adapting quickly, Don Alonso was rigid, traditional, bound by duty to his king and, more importantly, bound by his arrogance and belief of his superior birthright. He was far more comfortable in his ship firing a broadside at his enemy than he was besieged in a castle.8
Morgan drained every bit of information he could from the pilot, treating the man with great respect and very well in the process, so much so that the pilot joined Morgan as a buccaneer. Part of the information Morgan received told him about the character of the man he was facing. While Morgan was a brilliant and subtle tactician, Don Alonzo was the reverse.
Morgan realized that the Spanish guns in the fort were almost entirely facing seaward so as to blast the fleet as they sailed through the channel to the open sea. After studying Don Alonso’s tactics, Morgan came up with an ingenious plan. He realized that if the Spanish admiral suddenly saw a large force of buccaneers landing on the island this would signal their intention to attack the fort from the landward side, where his defences were weakest.
The buccaneer fleet was anchored just out of range of the castle’s guns, and close to the ships the shoreline was covered in mangrove trees that grew right at the waterline, some more than a dozen feet high. The foliage was thick and a perfect place for men to hide while they prepared a land assault against the fort.
As the day wore on, the Spanish, watching the buccaneers from the ramparts, saw boats filled with men, armed to the teeth with muskets, swords, pikes and so on, leave the buccaneer ships and head towards the shore, where they disappeared behind the mangrove trees. The boats would then row back to the ships with what looked like only two or three men rowing them back. Throughout the day, boat after boat, filled with armed men, rowed to the shore and returned with just the rowers. From Don Alonso’s perspective the conclusion was obvious: the buccaneers were landing men in readiness for a full-scale land attack, which would most likely take place under the cover of darkness.
Convinced this was the case, Don Alonso ordered the guns pointing towards the sea to be shifted to the landward side of the castle so that their arc of fire would sweep the area that the buccaneers would have to travel to make their attack. Men pushed and pulled, sweating in the tropical heat, as each gun was slowly hauled across the castle to the landward side.
Night fell quickly and the Spanish waited for what they believed would be the sudden crash of muskets and cries of charging men signalling the attack. Instead, they heard only the familiar sounds of the tropical night. No muskets, no cries . . . nothing. They waited. Don Alonso must have wondered what the buccaneers were waiting for.
Finally, they heard what they had been waiting for—cannon fire. But this was from the seaward side and there were seven shots altogether. Racing to the seaward side of the fort, Don Alonso’s heart sank. Morgan had tricked him. In the darkness the fleet had passed the fort on the tide and once out of range raised their sails. The seven shots had been a mocking salute by Morgan.
Realizing what had happened, Don Alonso ordered the guns to be moved back to the seaward side and this was done quickly. The Spanish gunners began laying down a furious barrage, but it was no use. The buccaneer fleet, now anchored in the seaward side of the channel, were out of reach.
How had Morgan tricked the Spanish? Esquemeling explains how the wily Welshman outwitted Don Alonso for the second time:
They rowed towards the shore, as if they designed to land: here they hid themselves under branches of trees that hang over the coast awhile, laying themselves down in the boats; then the canoes returned to the ships, with the appearance of only two or three men rowing them back, the rest being unseen at the bottom of the canoes: thus much only could be perceived from the castle.9
With that part of the subterfuge done, Morgan waited until night for the ebb tide that flowed north from the Lake of Maracaibo into the Gulf of Venezuela. Quietly, he ordered the fleet to raise their anchors and slowly the ships drifted on the tide into the gulf, La Marquesa, Morgan’s flagship, leading the fleet. As each ship passed the fort, they raised their sails and fired a single salute, hence the seven shots of cannon.
Anchored in the gulf, out of reach of the Spanish guns, one can only imagine the relief felt by the buccaneers, who must have all laughed heartily at beating the Spanish yet again. Perhaps Don Alonso and his men could hear this laughter in the darkness. The furious barrage of gunfire that the Spanish fired into the darkness of the night did no damage to the buccaneers.
The following day, Morgan let the hostages from Maracaibo go as they had paid their ransom. Under a flag of truce they were loaded into canoes and rowed ashore, where they were received by Don Alonso, who gave them a boat so they could all return to their homes. However, aboard La Marquesa were prisoners from Gibraltar who had still not paid their ransom.
From the events in these pages it appears as if the Spanish were inept and incapable of fighting the Brethren and defeating them. However, Stephen Talty, in Empire of Blue Water, tells us that this is not the case:
The Spanish did regularly defeat pirates in battle throughout the history of their New World possessions, and the historical records are littered with tales of buccaneers who ended their days on the enemy’s beaches or in his prisons. Just not Morgan.10
It is this statement that brings this story into context and makes Morgan’s exploits so remarkable. Indeed, few commanders in history have been able to do what he did. That’s why he was a legend amongst the Brethren, because he was the exception rather than the norm.
Free and successful, Morgan and his largely intact fleet left the Gulf and sailed as rich men for Port Royal.