When you think of alcohol, one of the most famous liquors you can think of is Captain Morgan spiced rum and spirits, the seventh best-selling liquor in the world. Like Samuel Adams was the real-life inspiration for Samuel Adams as a beer, Captain Morgan was actually a real person and pirate as an inspiration for the rum. And he was a notorious pirate at that.
Sir Henry Morgan was born in 1865 in Monmouth County in Wales. He had two uncles who served famously in the English military and he quickly decided to join them. At the time, England was at war with Spain, and Morgan served as an admiral. In 1654, he helped capture Jamaica from the Spanish.
Henry Morgan would chafe at the thought of being called a pirate, as being a pirate implied that someone wasn't associated with a government and only sought money. Instead, since Morgan was aligned with England, he was a privateer, and spent much of his life attacking ports in Central and Spanish America. Since Spain and England were at war for most of Morgan's life, most of his attacks were of the legal variety.
According to Christopher Minster of ThoughtCo., Captain Morgan "excelled at privateering. His attacks were well-planned, he was a fearless leader, and he was very clever." In 1668, Morgan led a group called "The Brethren of the Coast," a group notorious for wrecking havoc on Spanish ports in the Atlantic while Spain and England were at war again.
Jamaica was always vulnerable to attack, so Morgan always had to be ready in times of war against surrounding Spanish colonies. In 1667, Morgan heard of rumors of an attack on Jamaica and went to capture Spanish prisoners in Cuba, and then turned his sights to the rich Spanish city of Portobello (now in modern-day Cuba). At the time, he had a force of about 500 men in many ships, and Morgan took Portobello easily by surprise.
Henry Morgan and his men didn't stop at looting the town, but held it for ransom, and demanded 100,000 pesos to not burn down the city to the ground. A month later, Morgan left, but his fame and fortune rose.
In October of 1668, Morgan and his men went on another expedition to the Mediterranean, right next to Spain. He and hundreds of other pirates, corsairs, and buccaneers attacked the main defense of Lake Macaibo, entered the lake, and then sacked Gibraltar and Maracaibo. He and his men lingered for a long time, but then sneaked out at night, escaping and only raising his fame and fortune.
1671 is marked by Morgan's most famous attack: the sack of Panama. Morgan gathered pirates, corsairs, and buccaneers and decided to attack Panama. He and his men captured San Lorenzo, and marched to Panama on land.
The Spanish didn't even put up a fight. Terrified based on his past assaults on cities, they fled the city. Morgan and his men sacked the city before reinforcements could arrive. The Spanish, however, knew that Morgan was coming and shipped most of its loot out of the city before the attack.
Let it be known that Morgan did not always have the permission of the crown to attack and raid cities. Right before his attack on Panama, Spain and England had signed a peace treaty. In fact, politicians like Thomas Modyford, the governor of Jamaica, would receive punishment for Morgan constantly straining English-Spanish relations. Morgan was free of consequences, had celebrity status when he dined in England, and was even knighted and sent to Jamaica as a lieutenant governor for his successes.
Morgan spent the rest of his days drinking, telling war stories, and helping to administer the colony of Jamaica when the governor was absent. But he never went back to sea. Morgan would die on August 25, 1688, and given a royal funeral where he laid in the King's House in Port Royal, Jamaica, and ships in the harbor fired in salute. His body was carried through town on a gun carriage until it reached a church.
By celebrating and memorializing Henry Morgan in our consumption of alcohol, we are celebrating a man who was responsible for rape, torture, pillage, and killings of Spanish ports and civilians. Morgan was a diplomat's nightmare for constantly violating peace treaties, but, as Minster notes, it was Morgan's notorious reputation as a privateer that inspired fear in the Spanish, and that fear helped drive the Spanish to the negotiating table.
Despite Morgan's recklessness and cruelty, however, he remained a national hero and celebrity in England. He built Jamaica as a colony. He was not only charismatic, brave, and daring, bur adaptable. Author Thomas Graham notes that Morgan knew that the future of Jamaica "lay not in plunder or pillage but in peaceful trade."
Morgan was depicted as a villain by many historians and authors, including famous pirate author Alexandre Exquemelin, who was once a shipmate of Morgan. But perhaps much of the appeal of Captain Morgan, not only in liquor but in tourist attractions and landmarks in the Caribbean, was that he played by nobody's rules, not even his own government. Born as an ordinary man to becoming a legend, Morgan's astronomical social mobility and naval exploits and victories made him a 17th century cowboy who dominated the wild west of his age in the seas. For all Morgan's ethical and diplomatic depravities, you can't argue with the results: he died a hero, knight, politician, and lieutenant governor.
Perhaps that is why Captain Morgan is a legend today. We can all see a part of ourselves in the old emblem, the romanticized symbol of freedom, independence, dominance, and wealth. You can read books of fiction, tour seas or bridges, and even drink rum all named after a pirate who famously attacked a couple of Spanish cities.
