BUCCANEERS, the name given to a group of English, French, Dutch and Portuguese piratical adventurers united in their opposition to Spain, who maintained themselves chiefly in the Caribbean sea during the 17th century. They must not be confused with the earlier adventurers and privateers of whom Sir Francis Drake was an outstanding example, nor with the outlawed pirates of the 18th century.
By the early part of the 17th century the oppressive colonial policy of Spain had almost depopulated the island of Hispaniola, the modern Santo Domingo. Thinned of its former inhabitants, the island became the home of immense herds of wild cattle and pigs, and consequently an excellent place to provision the ships of smugglers. The natives still left were skilled in preserving flesh without the use of salt, an article both scarce and costly. The meat was cured in the sun and then smoked over a fire of green wood—a process termed "boucanning." The adventurers and smugglers, who were soon called buccaneers, learned boucanning from the natives ; and gradually Hispaniola became the scene of an extensive and illicit provision trade. As the Spaniards would not recognize the right of other nations to make settlement, or even to trade in the West Indies, the Governments of France, England and Holland would do nothing to control their subjects who in vaded the islands. Out of such conditions arose the buccaneer, alternately sailor and hunter, even occasionally a planter—roving, bold, unscrupulous, often savage, with an intense detestation of Spain.
Both England and France contributed bands of colonists for a settlement made on the island of St. Kitts or St. Christopher, in the West Indies. The English and French were, however, not very friendly; and in 1629, after the retire ment of several of the English to an adjoining island, the remain ing colonists were surprised and partly dispersed by the arrival of a Spanish fleet. But on the departure of the fleet the scattered bands returned, and were soon of sufficient strength to give assist ance to their countrymen in Santo Domingo. As buccaneering had developed into a profitable employment, it was thought expedient to build a storehouse secure from the attack of the Spaniards. The small island of Tortuga was seized for this purpose in 163o, and converted into a magazine for the goods of the smugglers, Santo Domingo still continuing their hunting ground. A purely English settlement directed by a company in London was made (163o) at Old Providence, an island in the Caribbean sea, but it was suppressed by the Spaniards in 1641. About the same time the Spaniards attacked Tortuga and massacred every settler they could seize. The few who escaped returned, and the buccaneers, now in open hostility to the Spanish arms, began to receive re cruits from every European trading nation, and for three-quarters of a century became the scourge of the Spanish-American trade and dominions. This roving community had to maintain itself as best it could—now mainly on the sea. However, in i655 fortune turned their way when, with their assistance, the navy of the Eng lish Commonwealth succeeded in capturing the island of Jamaica. Its ample harbours, for many years, furnished the buccaneers with havens in their operations against the Spaniards.
Their history now divides itself into three epochs. The first extends from the period of their rise to the capture of Panama by Morgan in 1671, during which time they were hampered neither by Government aid nor, till near its close, by Government restric tion. The second, from 1671 to the time of their greatest power, 1685, when the scene of their operations was no longer merely the Caribbean, but principally the whole range of the Pacific from California to Chile. The third and last period extends from that year onwards; it was a time of disunion and disintegration, when the independence and rude honour of the previous periods had degenerated into vice and brutality.
It is chiefly during the first period that those leaders flourished whose names and doings have been associated with all that was really influential in the exploits of the buccaneers—the most prominent being Mansfield and Morgan. In 1654 the first great expedition on land made by the buccaneers, though attended by considerable difficulties, was com pleted by the capture and sack of New Segovia, on the mainland of America. The Gulf of Venezuela, with its towns of Maracaibo and Gibraltar, were attacked and plundered under the command of a Frenchman named L'011onois, who performed, it is said, the office of executioner upon the whole crew of a Spanish vessel manned with 90 seamen. Such successes removed the buccaneers further and further from the pale of civilized society. Mansfield, in 1664, conceived the idea of a permanent settlement upon a small island of the Bahamas, named New Providence, and Henry Morgan, a Welshman, intrepid and unscrupulous, joined him. But the untimely death of Mansfield nipped in the bud the only rational scheme of settlement which seems to have animated this wild community at any time; and Morgan, now elected com mander, swept the whole Caribbean, and from his headquarters in Jamaica led triumphant expeditions to Cuba and the mainland. He was leader of the expedition which surprised and plundered Porto Bello, one of the best-fortified ports in the West Indies.
This was too much for even the adverse European powers ; and in 167o a treaty was concluded between England and Spain, pro claiming peace and friendship among the subjects of the two sovereigns in the New World. The treaty was very ill observed in Jamaica, where the governor, Thomas Modyford (162o-79), was in close alliance with the "privateers," which was the official title of the buccaneers. He had already granted commissions to Morgan and others for a great attack on the Isthmus of Panama, the route by which the bullion of the South American mines was carried to Porto Bello, to be shipped to Spain. The buccaneers to the number of 2,000 began by seizing Chagres, and then marched to Panama in 1671. The city was taken, and, accidentally or not, it was burnt ; but the Spaniards had removed the treasure, the booty was small, and many died of starvation on the way back to Jamaica. Mody ford was recalled, and in 1672 Morgan was called home and im prisoned in the Tower. In 1674 he was allowed to return to the island as lieutenant-governor with Lord Vaughan. During his later years he was active in suppressing the buccaneers who now had inconvenient claims on him.
From 1671 to 1685 was the time of the great daring, prosperity and power of the buccaneers. Notwithstanding their many successes in the Caribbean and on land, they pictured the South sea as a far wider and more lucrative field for the display of their united power. In 168o a body of marauders over 300 strong, well armed and provisioned, landed on the shore of Darien and struck across the country to the Pacific. With John Coxon as commander they entered the Bay of Panama, where the Spaniards had hastily prepared a small fleet to meet them. But the valour of the buccaneers won for them another victory; within a week they took possession of four Spanish ships, and now successes flowed upon them. Coxon and 7o men returned as they had gone, but the others, under Sawkins, Sharp and Watling, roamed north and south on islands and mainland, and remained for long ravaging the coast of Peru. Again, in 1683, numbers of them under John Cook departed for the South sea by way of Cape Horn. On Cook's death his successor, Edward Davis, undoubtedly the greatest and most prudent commander who ever led the forces of the bucca neers at sea, met with a certain Captain Swan from England, and the two began a cruise which was disastrous to the Spanish trade in the Pacific. In 1685 they were joined in the Bay of Panama by large numbers of buccaneers who had crossed the isthmus under Townley and others. At this period the power of the buccaneers was at its height. But the combination was too extensive for its work, and the different nationality of those who composed it was a source of growing discord.
The separation of the English and French buccaneers, who together presented a united front to the Spanish fleet in 1685, marks the beginning of the third and last epoch in their history. They hung doggedly along the coasts of Jamaica and Santo Domingo, but their day was nearly over. Only once again— at the siege of Carthagena—did they appear great ; but even then the expedition was not of their making, and they were mere auxiliaries of the French regular forces. The French and English buccaneers could not but take sides in the war which had arisen between their respective countries in 1689. Thus was broken the bond of unity which had for three-quarters of a century kept the subjects of the two nations together in schemes of aggression upon a common foe.
The importance of the buccaneers in history lies in the fact that they opened the eyes of the world to the whole system of Spanish American Government and commerce—the former in its rotten ness, and the latter in its possibilities in other hands. From this, then, along with other causes, dating primarily from the helpless ness and presumption of Spain, there arose the West Indian pos sessions of Holland, England and France.
A work published at Amsterdam in 1678, entitled De Amer csensche Zee Roovers, from the pen of a buccaneer named Exquemelin, was translated into several European languages, receiving additions at the hands of the different translators. The English edition is entitled The Bucaniers of America. Other works are Raynal's History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, book x., English translation 1782 ; Dampier's Voyages; and L. Wafer, Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America (1699). A reliable narrative is Capt. James Burney's History of the Buccaneers of America (i816). The Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series (London, 186o et seq.) , contains much evidence for the history of the buccaneers in the West Indies. Popular works are J. Manefield, On the Spanish Main (1906) and A. H. Verrill, In the Wake of the Buccaneers (1923) .
