A few miles outside of the modern city of Panama stand some ancient ruins, gray masses of masonry which have been brooding there in their desolation for nearly three centuries. They are the remains of Old Panama, "Panama la Vieja," which was sacked by Sir Henry Morgan, and destroyed so utterly that it was never again rebuilt. "Morgan the pirate," people say, meaning no disrespect to his memory, for pirates are nowadays much admired, along with gangsters and perpetrators of front-page murders, yet it is easy to see how an English gentleman in the days of King James the Second might resent the charge.
Thus, when a London bookseller, Thomas Malthus, published a translation of Esquemelling's De Americaenische Zee Roovers in which it was alleged that Sir Henry had once engaged in piratical adventures with the "Buccaneers," Morgan immediately brought suit, collecting substantial damages. True, His Majesty's Judges may have been corrupt, but then again, Esquemelling may have been a liar. It is certain the Dutchman didn't like Morgan, and it is not always a good idea for posterity to accept the judgment of a man's enemies. The British still call Paul Jones a pirate, a term which has been used rather loosely by writers describing naval commanders they didn't happen to like.
Even the buccaneers were not really Pirates. At first they were not pirates at all, but hunters, who chased the wild cattle in the western part of Haiti, and cured the meat to sell to passing ships. (Indians called smoked meat boucan.) They were adventurers who owed allegiance to neither king nor pope, and were therefore anathema to the Spaniards, who claimed jurisdiction over the whole island, though their settlements occupied only a small portion. But when the governor sent soldiers to drive them out, the buccaneers struck back savagely, and for a number of years waged a private war with Spain on land and sea. They were generally considered pirates, since they fought under no recognized ensign, but since their quarrel was only with Spain they were frequently useful to Spain's more legitimate enemies. Many of them obtained letters of marque, and though certain officials have been criticized for having overly cordial relations with these men, who were sometimes considered quite low characters, nevertheless it is not always thought necessary in time of war to inquire too closely into the moral attainments of the individual combatants. If we believe Esquemelling when he says that Morgan associated with these buccaneers in his youth, that fact is doubtless deplorable, but scarcely important. It is as a commander of expeditions against the Spaniards that he is remembered, and these were exploits in which he was expressly authorized to engage by the government of Jamaica.
That island had only recently come under British rule. Cuba lay only 80 miles to the northward; the tip of Hispaniola was scarcely more than 100 miles away. With a fair wind a vessel might sail from Santiago to Port Royal in a single day. Jamaica was fertile and well watered, with broad, open valleys, and steep, forest- covered mountains, where grew curious ferns, the valuable logwood trees, and other tropic vegetation, and where many rivers rushed through picturesque ravines to the sea. A few of the peaceful Arawak Indians still roamed the interior, for the English had settled only a small portion, and that but sparsely. A spacious harbor on the southern side, where Kingston now stands, was separated from the sea by a sand spit called the Pallisades. This sundrenched beach, with its mangrove swamps and cockle ponds, its fierce black crabs and fiercer mosquitoes, became the site of the town of Port Royal. Huddled together at its tip, overlooking the narrow entrance to the harbor, were the white brick houses closely bordering the narrow, sandy streets, and the cavernous warehouses where the beach sloped sharply down to the bay. Here in the heart of the Spanish possessions was a port open to · Spain's enemies, and here they gathered, crowding the streets and brothels of the boisterous town; bearded seamen who had seen half the cities of the world, somber merchants fattening on the spoils of war, well-born adventurers who found more scope here for their activities than among the ordered hedgerows of England.
Among the latter was Henry Morgan, a Welshman by birth, a burly man with bold, handsome features, related to a good many of the gentry of the island, friendly with merchants and sailors, and with a suspiciously wide acquaintance, it was rumored, among the "Brethren of the Coast." To him the Governor lent an attentive ear when he proposed an expedition against the Spanish lands. Surrounded as Jamaica was by Spanish possessions, far as it was from English fleets and dockyards, Sir Thomas Modyford might well have wondered how he could keep England's foothold in the Caribbean from passing once more under the flag of Spain.
In that year, 1668, men did not know that the days of Spain's military glory were passing. Never again would a Spanish general take the field independently in a European struggle, and her armies were to be henceforth pawns to be shuffled about by the masters of European destiny. Yet in America she held great cities with splendid buildings and frowning battlements, deep mines of gold and silver, from which long lines of laden mules toiled over the roads to the sea.
An era was ending when Henry Morgan, commissioned Admiral of Privateers, led his fleet around Cape San Antonio to frighten the Spaniards at Havana. Here the grim walls of El Morro looked too formidable for his little force, which had to be content with a sudden raid on Camaguey, or Puerto Principe, as it was then called. Shortly afterwards he sailed for the Isthmus of Panama, where the wealth of South America passed on its way to Spain. The route across the Isthmus now ends at Colon. Lush jungles creep up on Porto Bello, an insignificant village, despoiled even of its ruins by the men who built the canal, but in those days Colon was still the haunt of roaming Indians, and Porto Bello was on one of the great trade routes of the world. Its harbor was protected by mighty fortresses; the town was rich and prosperous. Morgan's attack was brilliantly executed. He gained possession of the town after a bloody struggle, and forthwith put it to the sack.
The next year he captured Maracaibo, but was bottled up in its lagoon by the Spaniards, whose ships were fewer in number, but greatly superior in size and armament. Nevertheless, Morgan stood boldly out, sending a fire ship to grapple the leader, which soon burst into flames, while the other ships laid aboard the two remaining Spaniards till one was forced to surrender and the other driven ashore.
He now turned his attention once more to the Isthmus, planning an attack on Panama, then one of the richest cities in America. A year elapsed before he could get permission to make this raid, a delay which was almost fatal to his plans, for in the meantime peace was signed. It was not, however, till after he had sailed that the news reached Jamaica.
He had gathered a force of more than 2,000 men and 30 ships. At the mouth of the Chagres River they captured the fort of San Lorenzo, and there they assembled preparatory to their long march through the steaming jungle. In those days the river flowed through the valley now occupied by Gatun Lake, sometimes roaring with the flood waters from the hills at other times sluggish and shallow. Morgan found the water too low for navigation, and was obliged to force his way through the forest, his men clearing their way With their cutlasses through vines and creepers and low spreading thickets where lurked fever-bearing mosquitoes and hostile Indians. At Cruces they reached the road that led from Porto Bello across the mountains to Panama. The Spaniards Were falling back before them, and it was not till they reached the plain of Matasnillas, just outside the city, that they encountered any opposition. Pouring out from a defile in the low hills the English found the hostile army drawn up before them. Wild cattle stampeded toward them with thundering hoofs and spreading horns, horsemen charged against their flanks, but steadily the invaders pressed forward till they met the main body of the Spaniards. These half-trained Indians and conscripted peons were no match for the English; they broke and fled, rushing in panic through the streets of the town. Hastily the ships in the harbor made sail; in terror the citizens buried their treasures and fled to the hills, the Governor, delaying only long enough to fire the military stores. When Morgan's men entered, the city was already in flames.
They remained there a month, raping and plundering, as was the custom in those days of military expeditions, and then went back to their ships, laden with loot from churches and convents and the ransoms of captives.
Never again would Panama la Vieja be anything but ruins. When the English forces had gone, driving before them unransomed prisoners, and the fugitives crept back to the ravished city to dig in the ashes for the hidden hoards the invaders had overlooked, they decided not to rebuild the city there, but to move to a new location 4 miles away. Of the many streets and houses of the town there is now no trace, but a few massive walls of churches, convents, and other public buildings have defied the elements and the creeping jungle. The graceful arch of a bridge rises beside the modern road, and a single tall tower which flanked the cathedral's eastern face still looks out over the wide Pacific. Before it usually stand rows of cheap American cars, while the tourists, stepping gingerly over fallen stones, look with uncomprehending eye on the remains of the spacious nave, and listen to the guide telling in broken English about "the pirate, Morgan."
On returning to Jamaica, Morgan found the war undoubtedly over, and learned, what he may have suspected, that peace had been declared before he started. That made little difference in those days of difficult communications, when hostilities were frequently prolonged many months after the signing of the treaty of peace. The Spanish ambassador, however, was raising quite a row, and Morgan had to sail for London to explain his actions. There was no proof that he had known about the conclusion of peace; Sir Thomas Modyford's vessel, sent out to intercept him, had returned unsuccessful. To disprove the charge that land warfare was not within the rights of a privateer he quoted from his commission: " . . . power to land in the enemy's country ... to do all manner of exploits . . . . " In the end the Lords of Trade and Plantations approved his actions, the King knighted him and appointed him Deputy Governor of Jamaica and Lieutenant General of the King's forces on the island.
For the next 10 years he took a prominent part in the somewhat turbulent Jamaican politics, exercising the duties of Governor on three separate occasions. The island's population was growing, plantations covered the fertile plain stretching westward from Port Royal, and to the war-time prosperity succeeded the more substantial riches that came from sugar. Spain's power, attacked at home and abroad, was no longer formidable; the buccaneers had outlived their usefulness. Morgan was wise enough to see that the old days of sudden wealth and brilliant, but dangerous, adventures were over; he set himself to buying land, and became one of the principal planters of the island. We hear many stories about his activity at this time in capturing and hanging pirates, great numbers of whom are supposed to have taken part in the various expeditions which he led, yet we can well believe that a commander who excluded from his ranks all who had ever fallen foul of the law would have found few followers, nor can we blame him for not having condoned further lapses into evil ways.
Today Port Royal, whence he sailed on his expeditions and where he spent his last days, is gone, overwhelmed by earthquakes and the engulfing sea. No tombstone marks his grave, for his bones lie far beneath the blue waters of Kingston Harbor, but those melancholy ruins at Old Panama form a monument such as few men can boast. What need is there to add the questionable glamor of piracy to his name?
THE HIGHER the rank the more necessary it is that boldness should be accompanied by a reflective mind, that it may not be a mere blind outburst of passion to no purpose; for with increase of rank it becomes always less a matter of self-sacrifice and more a matter of the preservation of others, and the good of the whole. Where regulations of the service, as a kind of second nature, prescribe for the masses, reflection must be the guide of the general, and in his case individual boldness in action may easily become a fault. Still, at the same time, it is a fine failing, and must not be looked at in the same light as any other. Happy the Army in which an untimely boldness frequently manifests itself; it is an exuberant growth which shows a rich soil. Even foolhardiness, that is boldness without an object, is not to be despised; in point of fact it is the same energy of feeling, only exercised as a kind of passion without any co-operation of the intelligent faculties. It is only when it strikes at the root of obedience, when it treats with contempt the orders of superior authority, that it must be repressed as a dangerous evil, not on its own account, but on account of the act of disobedience, for there is nothing in War which is of greater importance than obedience.-CLAUSEWITZ, On War.