Henry Morgan
Henry Morgan raided the Spanish Caribbean with royal licence, was arrested for it, and was knighted and made lieutenant governor of Jamaica. Born in Monmouthshire around 1635 into a family of soldiers, he reached the West Indies in the 1650s, probably with the expedition that took Jamaica from Spain in 1655. He operated as a privateer under commissions from the governor of Jamaica, which made his attacks legal in English eyes and piracy in Spanish ones. The colony was weak and had no garrison worth the name, and the buccaneers of Port Royal were in effect its defence force. He took Puerto del Príncipe and then Portobelo in Panama in 1668 with about 460 men against a fortified town, reportedly using captured clergy as a shield to approach one of the forts. He raided Maracaibo in 1669 and escaped a blockading Spanish squadron by sending in a fireship disguised as a warship. His largest operation was Panama in 1671. He crossed the isthmus with around 1,400 men through jungle on short rations, defeated a larger defending force outside the city, and took it; it burned, with each side blaming the other, and the plunder was less than expected. England and Spain had signed a peace treaty months earlier. Morgan and the governor were recalled to London under arrest in 1672. He was never charged. Political circumstances changed, Charles II knighted him in 1674 and sent him back as lieutenant governor, where he prosecuted his former colleagues for piracy. He sued the publishers of a book that called him a pirate, and won. He died in 1688.
- Lived: 1635 CE – 1688 CE
- Nationality: Welsh
- Roles: privateer, naval_commander, colonial_governor
