The Buccaneers' King
A Historical Novel
The Story
1688 – Port Royal, Jamaica. The Caribbean city is ruled by buccaneers. And the buccaneers are ruled by their king. Captain Henry Morgan.
Captain Morgan’s cutthroats are a gang who call themselves the Red Dragons. These Dragons are the closest thing Port Royal has to law and order.
But the Red Dragons are not the only buccaneers in the Caribbean. And Morgan’s city is the prize that all cutthroats seek. Among his mightiest enemies are the vicious Sea Wolves. Years ago, Morgan banished his foes, but now, they’ve returned to claim dominion over Port Royal.
As enemies and allies gather, the heirs of Morgan are forced to accept an inescapable truth. A brutal city cannot be tamed without brutality…
The Style
Pop culture has told us that Caribbean pirates were colourful scoundrels, who buried their treasure and over-pronounced their arrs. This is history’s biggest lie. Real life pirates weren’t Jack Sparrow, they were gritty criminals living lawlessly on the very frontier of civilisation. In The Buccaneers’ King, you’ll find pirates who are more akin to the criminal gangs of The Godfather than the campy villains of Treasure Island.
My writing is inspired by themes of moral ambiguity and dark journeys of self-discovery. I love high stakes, complex characters, and epic conflicts. After all, in the buccaneers’ city, a man with good intentions is the most dangerous man of all…
The History
The Buccaneers’ King is a work of fiction, but this much, at least, is true:
- In 1655, a force of English buccaneers conquered the Spanish island of Jamaica on a whim. Henry Morgan was among these buccaneers. Because the invasion occurred while England and Spain were at war, the buccaneers were hailed as national heroes.
- By 1657, the English governor was struggling to defend Port Royal from Spanish retribution, so he invited a gang of pirates called The Brethren of the Coast to settle in the city, and defend it as their new base. Again, Henry Morgan was among these pirates.
- Over the span of a few years, the buccaneers were awarded letters of marque from the King. These letters made them privateers, or legal pirates, who were free to plunder at will, so long as their victims were Spanish.
- The plunder of the buccaneers made Port Royal the wealthiest city in the world. In 1668, 300 buccaneers looted £75,000 – that’s more than seven times the annual value of all the sugar exported across the entirety of Jamaica. The leader of these 300 buccaneers, was Captain Henry Morgan.
- Between 1669 and 1672, Henry Morgan pulled off the most outrageous expedition of his life. He brought the nation of Panama to its knees. The Spanish defenders lost 500 men. The buccaneers lost 15. They spent three weeks plundering and torturing, before they returned to Port Royal with 400,000 pesos in Spanish gold.
- However, the attack on Panama was both a blessing and a curse for Captain Morgan. What he did not know was that during his absence, England and Spain had signed the Treaty of Madrid. It was a pact declaring peace between the two superpowers. It also meant that Captain Morgan had just gone from national hero to international terrorist. He was arrested and shipped back to London in chains. There, he languished in the Tower of London. For about a week.
- You see, it turns out that peace between superpowers does not last long. Public opinion in London changed quickly, and before Morgan served his day in court, Spain and England were at war again. He was never even tried for his act of terrorism.
- In fact, public opinion swung to such an extent, that Morgan was once again considered a hero of the Empire. In 1671, he was sent back to Jamaica, except instead of shackles, this time he wore the insignia of the Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica. Effectively, the King had just made Morgan the most powerful man in the New World.
- Morgan lived out the rest of his life as the Governor of Jamaica, where he expertly toed the line between lawful ruler and outright pirate. In 1688, he died as an exquisitely wealthy (and morbidly obese) gentleman, inside the governor’s mansion in Port Royal.
- Four years later, Port Royal faced a disaster beyond anything that any buccaneer had ever wrought. In 1692, the city was utterly obliterated by an apocalyptic earthquake. Most of the land was flooded, and to this day, Port Royal’s coastline is entirely different from what it was in the Sventeenth Century. Among Morgan’s contemporaries, the destruction of Port Royal was deemed God’s judgement upon the “wickedest city in Christendom.”