MORGAN, SIR HENRY (c. 1635-1688), Welsh buccaneer, and lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, is said to have been kidnapped as a boy at Bristol and sold as a slave at Barbadoes, thence making his way to Jamaica, and is possibly to be identified with the Cap tain Morgan who accompanied the expedition of John Morris and Jackman when Vildemos, Trujillo and Granada were taken. In 1666 he commanded a ship in Edward Mansfield's expedition which seized the island of Providence or Santa Catalina, and shortly afterwards was chosen by the buccaneers as their "ad miral." In 1668 he was commissioned by Sir Thomas Modyford, the governor of Jamaica, to capture some Spanish prisoners, in order to discover details of the threatened attack on Jamaica. He took Puerto Principe, Porto Bello on the mainland, and collected a large sum from the governor of Panama. Entrusted with another expedition by Modyford against the Spaniards, he ravaged the coast of Cuba, and in 1669 sacked Maracaibo, and afterwards Gibraltar. Returning to Maracaibo, he found three Spanish ships waiting to intercept him ; but these he destroyed or captured, recovered a considerable amount of treasure from one which had sunk, and exacted a heavy ransom for evacuating the place.
On his return to Jamaica a new commission was given to Mor gan, as commander-in-chief of all the ships of war in Jamaica, to levy war on the Spaniards. He recaptured the island of Santa Catalina in Dec. 167o, and in 1671 took Panama. Meanwhile on July 8, 167o, a treaty had been signed between Spain and England, and both Modyford and Morgan were ordered home under arrest to answer for their conduct. Morgan, however, soon gained the king's favour, and in 1674 was appointed lieutenant-governor of Jamaica and was knighted, leaving England in December. He was charged by Lord Vaughan, afterwards earl of Carbery, the gov ernor, soon after his appointment, of encouraging privateering; he intrigued against his colleagues and successive governors of Jamaica, and participated in various drunken orgies. Finally, on Oct. 12, 1683, he was suspended in Jamaica from all his employ ments. He died in Aug. 1688.
See A. 0. Exquemelin (one of Morgan's buccaneers), Buccaneers of America (5684, reprinted 1891) ; A. Morgan, History of the Family of Morgan 0900 ; J. L. Phillips, Sir Henry Morgan (1912).