January 24, 1631 - Henry Morgan
Operating under letters of marque that gave his raids a veneer of legal sanction, Morgan conducted some of the most destructive privateering campaigns of the seventeenth-century Caribbean, sacking fortified Spanish colonial ports with a scale and audacity that went well beyond what his commissions strictly authorized. His career illustrates how thin the line between state-sponsored warfare and outright plunder could be in an era when European powers used irregular naval actors as instruments of imperial rivalry.
From Wikipedia
Sir Henry Morgan (Welsh: Harri Morgan; c. 1635 – 25 August 1688) was a Welsh privateer, plantation owner and, later, the lieutenant governor of Jamaica. From his base in Port Royal, Jamaica, he and those under his command raided settlements and shipping on the Spanish Main, from which he profited. With the prize money and plunder from these raids, Morgan purchased three large sugar plantations in Jamaica.
Much of Morgan's early life is unknown; he was born in an area of Monmouthshire that is now part of the city of Cardiff. It is not known how he reached the West Indies or how he began his career as a privateer. He was probably a member of a group of raiders led by Sir Christopher Myngs in the late 1650s during the Anglo-Spanish War. Morgan became a close friend of Sir Thomas Modyford, the Governor of Jamaica; as diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of England and Spain worsened in 1667, Modyford gave Morgan a letter of marque, or licence, to attack and seize Spanish vessels. Morgan subsequently led raids on Puerto del Príncipe (now Camagüey in modern Cuba) and Porto Bello (now Portobelo in modern Panamá).
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