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'A certain pirate of Campeche' joined the English buccaneers, bringing Morgan's force up to 460 men and 9 sail. He landed within a few miles of Portobello and took two of the forts defending the town without difficulty. The third however, was commanded by the Spanish Governor in person, and resisted bravely. The Buccaneers made a number of scaling ladders wide enough for three or four abreast, and compelled priests and nuns from a nearby convent to carry these ladders to the walls under the murderous fire of the defences. Then bearing 'fireballs' in their hands, the buccaneers were able to storm the fort and kill the Governor and most of his men.
This was Exquemelin's account, and he also credited the buccaneers with all kinds of cruelties and excess when the city was taken. Morgan's official report gives an entirely different view of the affair. He certainly lost only 18 men killed and 32 wounded against a town held by 3000 men, but 'for the better vindication of ourselves against the usual scandals of the enemy, we aver that several ladies of great quality and other prisoners, were offered their liberty to go to the Presidents camp, but they refused, saying they were now prisoners to a person of quality, who was more tender to their honours than they doubted to find in the President's camp among his rude Panamainian soldiers.
Exquemelin also gives the story that the President of Panama, sent to ask Morgan for a specimen of the arms with which he captured Portobello. Morgan sent him a pistol and a few bullets, telling him to 'accept that slender pattern of the arms wherewith he had taken Portobello, and hold them for a twelvemonth, after which time he promised to come to Panama to fetch them away'. He was as good as his word, although it was more than a year before he came.
Portobello was ransomed for 100,000 pieces of eight, and with this and their plunder Morgans men returned to Jamaica. By November the Governor of Jamaica was writing that six Captains with 500 men 'are all gone out again, Capt. Morgan is their Admiral'. In January 1669 the Frigate Oxford was sent out to join Morgan at the Isla Da Vaca, where he now had ten vessels and 1000 men.
A council was held on board the Oxford, and as usual on buccaneering expeditions the offices sat around the table one night, drinking healths and firing off muskets. A stray spark set fire to a barrel of powder standing in the waist of the ship, and in the explosion that followed 350 men lost their lives. 'Admiral Morgan and those Captains that sat on that side of the table he did were saved, but those Captains on the other side were all killed'.
But this accident was not allowed to interfere with the preparations for a new expedition, at the suggestion of the pilot who had led L'Ollonois, the buccaneers voted to make another attack on Maracaibo.
They fought their way past the fortifications at the head of the lake, but were disappointed to find that the inhabitants of the town had fled with most of their valuables. 'Amongst other tortures then used, one was to stretch their limbs with cords and at the same time beat them with sticks and other instruments. others had burning matches placed between their fingers, others had slender cords twisted about their heads, till their eyes burst out of their skull. Thus all sorts of inhuman cruelties were inflicted upon these innocent people. these tortures continued for the space of three whole weeks'.
Then Morgan heard that three large Spanish ships had arrived at the lake entrance to block his return to the sea. A fireship was secretly prepared, logs were stood on deck with hats on top, to give the impression that she was a manned ship. then pitch and powder were light below decks, and she was sent downwind to come alongside the Spanish flagship, which soon went up in flames. the second ship retired under the guns of the fort, the third ship was captured, and Morgan sailed out with booty valued at ú30,000.
He returned to Jamaica to be met with the complaints of the Spanish Ambassador from London concerning his exploits at Portobello, and these were soon followed by even stronger protests over the action at Maraciabo. For a year Morgan remained quietly on his estate, but then another war with Spain broke out, and in June 1670 he was instructed to 'get together all the privateers, with the title of Admiral'. On 5th of July, a certain spanish captain, Pardal, landed on the Jamaican coast and left a challenge nailed to a tree.
'I Captain Manuel Ribera Pardal, to the chief of the buccaneers in Jamaica. I am he who has done that which follows. I went on shore at Caimanos and burnt twenty houses and fought with Captain Ary and took from him a ketch laden with provisions and a canoe. And I am he who took Captain Baines and did carry the prize to Cartagena, am and now arrived at this coast and have burnt it. I am come to seek Admiral Morgan with two ships of twenty guns, and having seen this, I crave he would come out upon the coast and seek me, that he might see the valour of the Spaniards. And because I had no time, I did not come to the mouth of Port Royal to speak by word of mouth in the name of my King, whom God preserve'.
Morgan's fleet sailed for the old buccaneer rendezvous of Isla Da Vaca, and soon he had gathered 28 English ships and 8 French ships, and nearly 2000 men. there seems to have been some delay, and Morgan returned to Jamaica for some reason, it was not until 21 December that a council of war on board his ship decided to attack the city of Panama. at the same council the plan for the division of booty was drawn up, one fifteenth was due to the King, a tenth to the Duke of York as Lord High Admiral, Morgan was to receive one hundredth part, and his Captains shares equal to eight men. The other shares and payments for duties and loss of limbs were according to usual buccaneers articles.
Then the expedition set out. First the island of Santa Catalina was recaptured as a base, and then on the Mainland the fortress of San Lorenzo on the River Chagre was taken.
Leaving crews of about 20 men to guard his ships, Morgan took a picked force of 1200 men up the river in canoes until the rapids forced them to continue on foot along mule tracks. They struggled for a week through the tropical jungle, tormented by mosquitoes and leeches, short of food and drink, and constantly on the watch for ambushes. Then on the ninth day they reached the highest point, and could sea the Pacific ocean spreading beneath them only ten miles away.
They were now near to Panama, and found a paved road leading to the city, and fields full of cattle. the cattle were quickly rounded up and slaughtered and roasted as quickly as possible, 'for such was their hunger that they more resembled cannibals than Europeans'.
The next day the buccaneers were met outside Panama by the Spanish forces, two squadrons of cavalry, four regiments of foot, and several hundred wild bulls that the Spaniards drove before them to scatter the buccaneers. however, the effect of the first volley fired by Morgan's men was to stampede the terrified cattle back into the Spanish lines, the cattle ran amok among the Spaniards and both cattle and spaniards became targets of the buccaneers disciplined volleys. Morgan had trained his men to fight in a military manner, and their fire decimated the Spanish troops who fled and abandoned the city, and in two hours the battle was won.
As soon as Panama was occupied, Morgan tried to restrain his men from excessive drinking by spreading a rumour that all the wine in the city had been poisoned. The city was the port for all the gold and silver that was brought up the coast from Peru, and for the goods and supplies that came every year from Spain to the colonies, and the buccaneers set about plundering in earnest. Unfortunately by some mischance, the city was set on fire and a large part of it burnt. The Captain of the treasure ship Santissima Trinidad from Lima saw the smoke from a distance, and wisely turned back before he could be captured.
Nevertheless, Morgan's force left Panama with loot estimated at 400,000 pieces of eight, and there was great discontent at the shareout at Chagre, when the men only received only forty apiece, while Morgan and a select few of his Captains sailed quietly away one night to Jamaica, leaving the rest of the buccaneers to fend for themselves.
But while he had been away the situation in Jamaica had changed. Sir Thomas Modyford, an old friend of Morgan's, had been removed from his post as Governor, and Sir Thomas Lynch was on his way from London to take over, with instructions to send Morgan home to stand trial for piracy.
Panama was Morgan's last expedition. He was sent as a prisoner to England, though said Lynch, 'to speak the truth of him, he is an honest brave fellow'. In England the news of the sack of Panama soon spread, and Morgan became a popular hero compared with Drake, and all thought of his trial was soon forgotten. When the third Dutch war broke out he was appointed as Deputy Governor of Jamaica, Knighted, and presented with a silver snuff box with a portrait of the king set in diamonds on the lid. he returned to Jamaica in 1675, where he spent the last thirteen years of his life, in public as an enemy of the buccaneers, but in private he did what he could to secure them privateers commissions from the French or the Portuguese.
With the withdrawal of Morgan the initiative passed for a few years to the French buccaneer commanders such as Gramont, Laurent de Graaf and Van Horn (the latter two were Dutch, but commanded French forces). In 1678 the French Admiral Estrees recruited a large fleet of buccaneer ships for an attack on the Dutch settlement at Curacao, but he entrusted the vanguard to the Buccaneers in their shallow draughted vessels, and in trying to follow them he ran most of his warships onto a reef, and had to withdraw with the remnants of his fleet.
The buccaneers remained on Curacao for some weeks and then they sailed westward again, whether they had English buccaneers with them at this time is not known, but certainly a little later, when they landed on the main to take Portobello again, there were some 350 Englishmen in the party.
After the attack the buccaneers withdrew in their ships to some islands off the coast, and the English contingent suggested another expedition to Panama. De Graaf had never favoured operations on land, and under his influence the French, whose Captains included, Grognier, Lescuier, Rose, Desmarais and L'Ollonois's old comrade Le Picard, would not agree. so the English sailed on to Golden island to discuss the matter among themselves. It was another five years before the French buccaneers followed their example and ventured into the Pacific ocean.
The Pacific Ocean was called the South Sea because it was on the south side of the isthmus of Darien, the Caribbean and the Atlantic made up the North Sea. It was discovered by Vasco Nunez de Balboa in 1513, and for sixty years was little more than a rumour to nations other than the Spaniards. They held the easy way to the south sea, the narrow isthmus, and they built their own ships on the west coast of America and traded across the Ocean with the Philipines and the South China Seas. The ships of other nations had to make the long run south to the Magellan straight, with no charts to guide them, or even further south to round cape horn.
With Henry Morgan at his taking of Panama in 1671, were the buccaneer Captains, Bartholomew Sharp, Edmund Cook, Richard Sawkins, John Coxon, Peter Harris and Charles Swan. Swan was so attracted by the possibilities of the South sea that he tried to desert and planned to take one of the Spanish vessels lying in the port. When Morgan got wind of this plan, he had all the ships in Panama Harbour burnt before he started his march back across the isthmus.

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