Captain Henry Morgan

Think pirate and you probably get an image in your head of Henry Morgan. Why? Because his name and face appears on the label of the second biggest-selling brand of rum in the world. Morgan never made rum. His image was borrowed by Seagram’s as a marketing ploy in the early 1980s. But even though he never made his own rum, Morgan did make a tremendous effort to drink as much of it as humanly possible. On a typical evening he could tip six pints of the stuff and show no exterior effects at all. Morgan’s epic appetite also extended to women and wealth.

Handsome, genial, and well-educated, Henry Morgan moved with ease through high society (King Charles II was his personal friend), but his first love was the high seas. He was an expert seaman and, unlike his contemporary, Captain Kidd, his crew loved him.

There has always been some question as to whether or not Morgan was a pirate at all. He always carried a letter of marquee from the British crown, after all, and confined his attacks to Spanish shipping, striking blows for king and country. On the other hand, his fleet was made up of ships captained by known pirates and he never hesitated to use pirate-style trickery and brutality to achieve his goals. He was also, at age 32, made admiral of a group called the Brethren of the Coast, a loose confederation of pirates and privateers who, sailing the Caribbean became known as the Buccaneers.

Henry Morgan was born in Wales sometime around 1635. He joined the British navy as a steward and quickly rose through the ranks. As a young officer, he participated in raids against Spanish positions in Hispaniola (Haiti) and Nicaragua, where he distinguished himself and earned a promotion to captain. Soon after, he led the raid that forever wrested Jamaica from Spanish control. This feat alone would’ve cemented his reputation, but others were to come.



He took the Spanish port, and the fort protecting it, at Portobello, using a fleet of canoes, and accrued zero casualties among his crew. After securing this position, a mainstay for the Spanish defence of Panama, he sent a letter to Don Augusten, governor of Panama, demanding 350,000 pesos (millions of dollars today) or he would attack Panama City and raze it to the ground. Don Augusten relented and gave Morgan his ransom. Morgan and his crew sailed to Port Royal, Jamaica for a hero’s welcome and an eye-popping bacchanalia of drinking and gambling.

A short time later the Spanish broke the peace treaty. In retaliation, England decided to go on the offensive and divest Spain from all its holdings in the West Indies and the New World. The man England picked for the job was Henry Morgan, naming him Admiral of the Fleet of Jamaica, and siccing him on all things Spanish.

The first thing Morgan did as admiral was gather up all his old pirate buddies and plot strategy. Over rum aboard his flagship, the Merchant Jamaica, Morgan and his mates decided that there was only one worthwhile point of attack that would strike the needed blow against Spain: They had to sack Panama City. There would be no hostage-holding like last time around. They would take it and hold it forever, the property of Merry Ol’ England.

Panama had a new governor by this time, one Don Juan, and he wasn’t about to let the hated British set up shop in his town without a fight. He plotted and planned, working on a surprise for the British. When Morgan’s fleet of 38 ships arrived, many flying pirate, not British, colours, Don Juan let them land—and then blew the city to smithereens. Don Juan had rigged the whole town with barrels of gunpowder, every building, barn, horse trough and tree. On their way out, the remaining members of the Spanish garrison torched one building, which exploded and set fire to the next, and the next, and the next and so on. The chain of explosions lasted over an hour and left a smoking crater where Panama City once stood.

Don Juan, his troops, and his charges fled into the hills and jungles, where Morgan’s men lost them. They tried to follow the Spaniards but malaria, starvation, and a lack of liquor stalled the chase almost at once. Morgan sailed around for a while, looting smaller settlements and ships until he paid off his fleet, then sent them away with his blessings.

Morgan himself sailed back to Jamaica, landing to another hero’s welcome. He was promptly knighted by King Charles II and appointed to the post of Lt. Governor of Jamaica.

Henry Morgan settled easily into his new role, though was largely ineffective as a political leader because he was drunk day and night. It’s said that if you wanted Governor Morgan on some matter it was fruitless to go looking for him at his estate. No, you were more likely to find him in one of the many dockside taverns he frequented. He would usually be found whooping it up with a mug of rum in one hand and a comely barmaid in the other, dancing, singing, and generally enjoying a never-ending party at which he was the permanent guest of honour.

People complained about his behaviour all the time, the same sort of people who always complain when someone else is having a good time. Morgan was usually able to fend off complaints, however, largely because his prime benefactor, King Charles II, was a well-known hell raiser in his own right. Eventually, though, the voices of propriety won out and Morgan was removed from his post for “irregularities.” A certain brand of Jamaican citizen enjoyed branding Morgan a drunken buffoon, and were glad to have him gone, replaced by a sober doofus who rarely made noise after dark. Before passing judgment on Morgan’s leadership, pause to consider the number of fools and jerk-offs who politicked around the West Indies in those days. All in all, you can make the claim that Morgan was a highly effective leader, in that he did nothing to upset the balance of the island.

After being evicted from his post, Morgan retired to his estate, and the party never stopped. He died in bed on August 25th, 1688. Records indicate that he drank himself to death. He went out the way he lived and never gave an inch.

Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Written by: Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island