Introduction
En ce début de la décennie 1680, les flibustiers jamaïcains attirent à eux tous les laisser pour compte de la colonie anglaise. Suite au départ du gouverneur Carlisle pour Londres, le Conseil de l'île, avec à sa tête Morgan alors lieutenant-gouverneur, propose à Londres certaines solutions pour éliminer le fléau dont il identifie la cause: les Espagnols, eux-mêmes, par leur refus de permettre la liberté de commerce.
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The Council of Jamaica to Lords of Trade and Plantations [extrait] Port Royal, May 20, 1680 [30 mai 1680]. (...) As to our trade, nothing can further it more than a firm and uninterrupted preservation of the peace made with the Spaniard in these parts. Though instructed by the King to this end, the Governor can do little from want of ships to reduce the privateers, and of plain laws to punish them. Could this peace but be well kept, a good and neighbouring correspondence would follow, and a private trade connived at by the Spanish Governors and officers both on the Main and in the Islands adjacent to the great expense of our English manufactures, and the general benefit of the nation, as well as this Island and the shipping trading unto it. For the vast duties paid in Spain on our English goods, and the great advance upon them made by the Spaniards (with all the charges of transporting them here to the West Indies), will by this more direct conveyance come to be divided between His Majesty's subjects, and be an inducement to afford them here to the Spaniards on much easier terms than can be brought from Spain, and an encouragement to the Spaniards not only to admit us to a private trade in their outports and creeks, but also to come to us and bring us money and goods wherewith to purchase our English commodities. We cannot give better proof of this than the trade that at present is, and of late has been, driven with them by divers people from hence, nothwithstanding the detestable depredations of some our nation (who pass for inhabitants of Jamaica) under colour of French commissions. How much greater would their confidence be in us could these ravenous vermin be destroyed. His Majesty to this very end keeps a fourth-rate frigate or two constantly about this Island, but with no better success than to drive the privateers into distant and secure creeks and holes to commit their robberies on canoes, sloops, and barks where no fourth-rate frigate can follow them, as they have done in the bays of Nova Hispania and Honduras, and in the gulf of Matica. Despairing of any countenance or protection here, the privateers resort of protection to the French, thereby strenghtening them and weakening us, and they never want serious protests for irreconcilable hostility to the Spaniards in the horrid butcheries of divers of their fellow subjects, who have unhappily fallen into their power. The number of the privateers is also increased hereby, for any sailors that espace these cruelties forget their duty to God and man, and give themselves wholly up to implacable revenge, having no hope of redress here or in Europe. For the preservation of peace, therefore, it is absolutely necessary that the Spanish Governors and officers in the West Indies do their duty, for all the acts of our privateers are disowned by us and every endeavour made to bring the offenders to justice, whereas the acts of the Spaniards are encouraged and owned by authority. We humbly suggest, as the surest way of putting down these incorrigible robbers, the ratification of an Act, formerly transmitted by us, declaring it felony, without benefit of clergy, for any of the King's subjects in the West Indies, to serve any foreign prince against any other foreign prince at amity with England without a licence from the Governor. And for the better enforcement of the Act we suggest the appointment of a couple of sixth-rate frigates or yatches which can follow them into shoal water, with a fifth-rate frigate to support them, with orders to demand and take from them all English subjects in their service. They are now grown to such a height of strength and desperation that a smaller force will not suffice for the first year. They have one ship of 28 guns, one of 24, one of 12, one of 8 (besides sloops and barks), all extraordinarily well manned, and much better armed than any of our European shipping. The biggest of them was the prize taken by one Peter Harris from the Dutch, in chase of which His Majesty's ship Success was unfortunately lost. (...) Hen. Morgan.
source: P.R.O. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and West Indies: no. 1361. |
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