The Buccaneers

The buccaneers were a celebrated association of sea-robbers, or pirates, called also "Brethren of the Coast," who for nearly two centuries, from the second quarter of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, maintained themselves in the Caribbean Seas, and waged a constant warfare against the Spaniards in the West Indies. The buccaneers were Europeans, chiefly natives of Great Britain and France, who first associated together about 1524. The arrogant assumption by the Spaniards (on account of a bull issued by the Pope) of a divine right to the whole New World was not, of course, to be tolerated by the enterprising mariners of England and France; and the enormous cruelties practised by the Spaniards upon all foreign interlopers, of which the history of that time is full, naturally led to an association for mutual defence, particularly among the English and French.

The fundamental principles of their policy--for they in course of time formed distinct communities--were close mutual alliance, and mortal war with all that was Spanish. Their simple code of laws bound them to share the common necessaries of life; locks and bars were proscribed, as an insult to the general honor; and every man had his comrade who stood by him when alive, and succeeded to his property after his death.

When they were not hunting Spaniards, or being hunted themselves, their chief occupation and means of subsistence was the chase.

From the flesh of wild animals they made their "boucan," or cured meat, and sold the skins and tallow to Dutch traders.

The name buccaneer is derived from the Caribbee word "boucan," the French calling it "boucanier," from which the English derive our present "buccaneer."

The history of these men embraces narratives of cruelty and bloodshed unsurpassed in the annals of crime.

It has, however, not a few stories of high and romantic adventure, of chivalrous and brilliant generalship.

Among the great captains whose names figure most prominently in the records of buccaneering, are the Frenchman Montbar, surnamed "The Exterminator;" and his countryman Peter Dieppe, surnamed "The Great."

Pre-eminent, however, among them all was the Welshman Henry Morgan, who organized fleets and armies, took strong cities, and displayed throughout the genius of a born commander. He led the way for the buccaneers to the Southern Ocean, by his daring march, in 1670, across the Isthmus of Panama to the city of that name, which he took and plundered after a desperate battle.

He was knighted by Charles II., and became deputy governor of Jamaica. The war between France and Britain, after the accession of William III., dissolved the ancient alliance of the French and English buccaneers. The last great event in their history was the capture of Carthagena, in 1697, where the booty was enormous.

After the peace of Ryswick (1697), and the accession of the Bourbon, Philip V., to the Spanish crown (1701), the finally disappeared.