In all the histories about pirates, buccaneers or privateers that sailed the Atlantic and Caribbean there are many others whose names we know today—Blackbeard, Kidd, Rackham and Roberts. The name of Morgan is still relatively unknown. Yet this man commanded thousands of men right into the heart of the Spanish Main. He sacked Portobello, Maracaibo and Panama. He was a man of courage, determination, bravery, and oozed the charisma that every leader needs to command men. He was a planner, a brilliant military strategist and intensely loyal to the king, to England and to Jamaica.
But unlike so many of the Brethren, he was flexible and adaptable, able to see that the future for Jamaica lay not in plunder or pillage but in peaceful trade with the Spanish, Dutch and French colonies of the West Indies and Americas. He turned his back on the Brethren, indeed, hunted them down and executed some of those that were captured in order to pursue the single-minded determination to build trade.
He was responsible for building up the defences of Jamaica to repel invasion or attack. He was also an adept politician and held office longer than any of the governors of his time. He was lieutenant governor under Vaughan, Carlisle and, briefly, Lynch.
The Port Royal that Morgan thrived in was destroyed by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami on 7 June 1692. Many researchers and scholars writing about Morgan go into great detail about the destruction of Port Royal but we will leave that for another time. Suffice it to say that, during that apocalyptic day, Morgan’s coffin was brought up from the heaving earth and washed out to sea—perhaps a fitting end for a man whose wealth and position gained from his expeditions began on the sea.
Sadly in the modern world it is unlikely that a man of Morgan’s stature could ever achieve what he did. The Western World of the twenty-first century is too mediocre and politically correct to enable a man like Morgan to flourish. His expeditions can never be repeated and so while he was a man of his time he is still a man much larger than his time and should be forever remembered for what he accomplished. Did he commit atrocities? It is likely that some of the Brethren did commit savage acts while on his expeditions but whether he did is questionable. But Morgan’s life over the centuries has become more myth than fact and his expeditions and actions larger than life. Yet, as Talty states, ‘you can’t attempt to do what Morgan and his men did without seeing yourselves as a prince of the New World, deserving of every wonder it possesses.’1
Like most men of Morgan’s stature, fame and legend, his star shone brightly for a short time and then quickly dimmed, but he shall never be forgotten.