Somewhere in all the blood and flame and smoke, Morgan picked up the knack for inspiring men too, as opposed to just scaring them into obeying. He learned all the actor’s craft of putting a throb in his singsong Welsh voice and a flash in his eye, he learned how to stand six inches taller than he really was, and he learned the words that fired men up like hot rum.
Men listened to his voice and followed him through the swamps of the Mosquito Coast, three thousand miles to sack Villahermosa, and Trujillo, and Gran Granada with its seven churches. The Spanish said he was Drake come again, or the Devil, which was nearly as bad.
He came home with his ships stuffed with loot. There he found that his uncle was the new lieutenant-governor, and had moreover arrived in Jamaica with honor, glory, a household of pretty daughters and scarcely anything else. Bravery hadn’t made Colonel Edward Morgan wealthy. It was hoped one of his girls might manage to win the heart of her cousin Henry.
Mary Elizabeth saw him first from her window as he came ashore—wild and handsome as the Devil with his pointed, black beard, and in his train grinning buccaneers throwing Spanish doubloons to the whores all along Queen’s Street.
She met him in a quiet drawing-room with shades over the windows to keep out the tropical heat, and him cleaned up and dressed in his elegant best, curled hair, lace collar, emeralds glinting on his fingers as he took her hand and bowed to kiss it, murmuring something polite the whiles she caught his scent: something subtle and expensive, just failing to mask the tang of rum and male sweat.
They fell in love. They must have. Harry took her as she was, without a penny’s worth of dowry. They settled down on his fine new estate with the intention of starting a dynasty.
Which didn’t happen, somehow.
Oh, there was passion and desire enough. There was good blood: Mary Elizabeth’s sisters married Harry’s friends, and proceeded to raise great broods of babies. There was opportunity: Harry stayed home from the taverns for a great while after the honeymoon, and slept in most mornings.
But no son came to bless his grand new house, nor any little girl.
Still, folk shrugged and said it would be only a matter of time. Hadn’t Harry Morgan more luck than any other man in the West Indies?
Here’s something else you’ll find in the history books.
Around the time that the first Mayflower sailed for New England, her sister ship the Seaflower set sail too, but took her cargo of sour-faced Puritans south and west. They ended up on a tiny speck of land, far out by itself in the Caribbean, which suited them fine. They sang psalms, tilled the soil, and named the place Providence. It came to be called Old Providence, to distinguish it from a place in the Bahamas called Providence too.
Some years later the Spanish reached out from the Main and flicked them away like so many righteous flies, and put a garrison there, and called the place Providencia.
Around the time that Mary Elizabeth was watching her calendar and counting days off in a hopeful kind of way, Governor Modyford of Jamaica sent an expedition to take Curacao. It was headed by Captain Edward Mansfield, who was an experienced old buccaneer, though not the persuasive devil Harry Morgan could be.
Halfway there, his men mutinied. They didn’t want to try for Curaçao, they said; it was defended by the Dutch, who were nasty fighters, and the plunder was bound to be skimpy pickings. Cartago, they said, was rich and undefended, another Gran Granada for sure! So away they sailed to sack Cartago, and bungled it royally. Too much rum, too much quarreling, too much greedy anticipation.
The survivors were lucky to sail away again, with Mansfield—like Venables and Penn before him—wondering how he was going to explain his little failure to the governor. What could he offer up to excuse himself?
He decided to recapture Old Providence. It might make a good base for the Brethren of the Coast, when things got too hot in Port Royal; there was only one little troop of Spaniards to guard it. About half his forces had deserted him and sailed off, as drunken cutthroats will, but there remained enough men for a modest assault.
A modest assault was all it took. The Spanish surrendered to a man, and were put on a ship and let off at Portobelo, according to the terms of truce. Mansfield left a garrison to secure the place and sailed back to Port Royal.
Governor Modyford was not as angry as he might have been, but by no means as pleased either. Old Providence had tactical value, true, but where was he to get the men to hold it? Buccaneers couldn’t be trusted not to desert their posts.
A call for volunteers went out, and two ships were made ready. Thirty-three solid citizens put their marks on paper and took the first ship for New Providence, under command of Major Samuel Smith. The second ship was delayed, waiting for more volunteers, but sailed in its time.
It’s said that on the night before the second ship sailed, a man crept from a Port Royal cellar and made his way to the interior, to a fine grand house owned by a wealthy planter. Here he knocked, and begged leave to speak with the master of the house. It’s said he gave a password that brought the planter downstairs in his dressing gown. They spoke alone together in the drawing room, late at night behind closed doors, but you know how servants are; something was heard through a keyhole, it seems.
The stranger was lately come from Barbados, he said, with his wife and little daughter, one step ahead of his creditors. You wouldn’t think it would be possible to go bankrupt selling grog to seamen, but the stranger had done just that. His luck was as bad as ever it had been.
Yet now Governor Modyford was calling for volunteers to re-settle Old Providence. It lay better than a thousand miles to windward of the stranger’s misfortunes—no one would ever find him there, if he started again under an assumed name—he and his wife and child might make a new life for themselves, and breathe easy, if they were allowed to go.
All that was wanting was a recommendation to the governor. And money, of course.
The master of the house heard him out. Then he called for paper and pen, and wrote out a recommendation in his steep slanting hand, and signed it; then he went from the room, and returned bearing a purse heavy with gold. They embraced. The stranger took money and paper, and crept from the house, and disappeared into the night.
The ship sailed the following day. Two years passed, without a word from New Providence.
One August day in 1668, two men stepped onto the quay at Port Royal. Maybe they sank to their knees in prayer, and kissed the ground; maybe they simply fell, for they were weak as ghosts, mere skeletons under scarred and scabbed skin. One was the British master of a merchant ship. The other was Major Samuel Smith, who’d been sent out to command the garrison at New Providence. They had been released from a dungeon, where they’d spent the last twenty-three months.
The Spanish had retaken the island, landing a force outnumbering the English by ten to one. The English fought with all they had; when they ran out of shot they sawed the pipes out of the church organ and fired those off too. When they saw there was no hope, they surrendered, and were bound in irons.
Then, as the Spanish were mopping up, the second ship from Jamaica sailed into the harbor. Only fourteen men, one woman and her daughter aboard. They were tricked into walking ashore by a ruse, and so were taken prisoner too.
And did the Spanish abide by the terms of the truce, and send them packing back to Port Royal? No indeed.