Edward Kritzler - Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean

Chapter Ten: Buccaneer Island

1. S. A. G. Taylor, The Western Design: An Account of Cromwell’s Expedition to the Caribbean (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica and Jamaican Historical Society, 1969), 111–12.

2. C. H. Haring, The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1966; reprint of 1910 edition), 92; Dudley Pope, The Buccaneer King: The Biography of the Notorious Sir Henry Morgan, 1635–1688 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978), 74.

3. Taylor, The Western Design, 113.

4. Ibid., 118.

5. Michael Pawson and David Buisseret, Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1975), 62.

6. S. A. G. Taylor, ed., “Edward D’Oyley’s Journal,” part 2, transcribed by F. J. Osbourne, Jamaican Historical Review, vol. XI, 1978, 69: In September 1657, D’Oyley wrote the Committee of Officers and Merchants: “I am sending to Hispaniola for about 250 buccaneers, vizt. French and English that kill cattle who would come to us if they might have that liberty which I intend to give them.”

7. Taylor, The Western Design, 133.

8. Ibid., 141–42: Privateers were empowered to attack Spanish ships. By attacking Spanish settlements rather than Spanish ships, they did not have to fork over some of the loot to the licensing authorities.

9. Pawson and Buisseret, Port Royal, Jamaica, 80.

10. Ibid., 131.

11. Pope, The Buccaneer King, 77.

12. Taylor, The Western Design, 205; Pope, The Buccaneer King, 80.

13. Pawson and Buisseret, Port Royal, Jamaica, 220.

14. Haring, The Buccaneers in the West Indies, 109.

15. Ibid., 110.

16. Pawson and Buisseret, Port Royal, Jamaica, 97.

17. Ibid., 99.

18. Ibid., 83.

19. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America & West Indies, 1901 , 593: January 28, 1692, the president of the Council of Jamaica to the Lords of Trade and Plantations: “The Jews eat us and our children out of all trade, the reasons for naturalizing them not having been observed; for there has been no regard had to their settling and planting as the law directed…they have made Port Royal their Goshen and will do nothing but trade…This is a great and growing evil.”

20. Pope, The Buccaneer King, 86.

21. Salvador de Madariaga, The Rise of the Spanish American Empire (New York: Free Press, 1965), 162.

22. Pawson and Buisseret, Port Royal, Jamaica, 119.

23. H. R. Allen, Buccaneer: Admiral Sir Henry Morgan (London: Arthur Barker Ltd., 1976), 23.

24. Quoted in Clinton Black, Port Royal (Kingston: Bolivar Press, 1970), 21.

25. Alexander Winston, Pirates and Privateers (London: Arrow Books, 1972), 30; a reprint of No Purchase, No Pay (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd., 1970), one of the best books on buccaneers.

26. Philip Lindsay, The Great Buccaneer (London: Peter Neville Ltd., 1950), 103.

27. Pope, The Buccaneer King, 163.

28. Pawson and Buisseret, Port Royal, Jamaica, 119.

29. John Esquemelin, The Buccaneers of America. A true account of the most remarkable assaults committed of the late years upon the coasts of the West Indies by the Buccaneers of Jamaica and Tortuga by John Esquemelin One of the Buccaneers who was present at those tragedies (New York: Dover Publications, 1967), 65–69.

30. Stephen Alexander Fortune, Merchants and Jews: The Struggle for British West Indian Commerce, 1650–1750 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1984), 35.

31. Zvi Loker, Jews in the Caribbean: Evidence on the History of the Jews in the Caribbean Zone in Colonial Times (Jerusalem: Misgav Yerushalayim, Institute for Research on the Sephardi and Oriental Jewish Heritage, 1991), 164–67; best one-stop source of period documents.

32. Egerton MSS., folios 152b–185b, British Museum.

33. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America & West Indies, 1669–1674, 7, no. 968, 15-11-1672. Petition of Rabba Couty to the King; vol. 9, no. 306, 22-21-1672: The King to Sir Thomas Lynch re: Rabba Couty.

34. Loker, Jews in the Caribbean, 181.

35. Ibid., 177–82; Richard Hill, Lights and Shadows of Jamaica History (Kingston, Jamaica: Ford & Gall, 1859), 120–21.

36. Hill, Lights and Shadows, 125, cites: Appendix to the Journals of the Assembly, 22 Charles II. A. 1670.

37. Pope, The Buccaneer King, 23; Winston, Pirates and Privateers, 37.

38. Allen, Buccaneer: Admiral Sir Henry Morgan, 131.

39. Ibid., 75; Pope, The Buccaneer King, 106, 155.

40. Allen, Buccaneer: Admiral Sir Henry Morgan, 75.

41. Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh, No Peace Beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean, 1624–1690 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 170.

42. Lindsay, The Great Buccaneer, 103–5.

43. Ibid., 106.

44. Ibid., 106–7.

45. Ibid., 151.

46. Ibid., 108.

47. Pope, The Buccaneer King, 215.

48. Lindsay, The Great Buccaneer, 112.

49. Winston, Pirates and Privateers, 88.

50. Ibid., 87.

51. Lindsay, The Great Buccaneer, 177.

52. Pope, The Buccaneer King, 257.

53. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America & West Indies, 1669–1674, 27, no. 697, 17-14-1671.

54. Nuala Zahedieh, “The Merchants of Port Royal, Jamaica, and the Spanish Contraband Trade, 1655–1692,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 43, no. 3 (1986), 580.

55. Israel, Diasporas Within a Diaspora, 443: “A bitter quarrel erupted in the mid 1670’s pitted Barbary Jews residing in Tangiers against Abraham Cohen, who they complained, ‘did continually affront, molest and disquiet them that they could not attend to their callings.’”

56. Zahedieh, “The Merchants of Port Royal,” 575.

57. Ibid., 581–82.

58. Calendar of State Papers, 1669–1672, 28, no. 63, 11-6-1672, Petition of the Merchants of Port Royal to Sir Thos. Lynch, Governor of Jamaica. Full transcript in Hill, Lights and Shadows, 124–25.

59. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America & West Indies, 1669–1672, no. 999, 453.

60. Fortune, Merchants and Jews, 26–27; Gedalia Yogev, Diamonds and Coral: Anglo-Dutch Jews and 18th Century Trade (Leicester, U.K.: Leicester University Press, 1978), 28–60: Statistics show Jamaica’s Jews were of major financial value to England.

61. Winston, Pirates and Privateers, 89.

62. Pope, The Buccaneer King, 263.

63. Ibid., 262.

64. Ibid.

65. Ibid., 268.

66. Calendar of State Papers , 1668–1674, no. 503, 552: Council of Jamaica petitioned the Royal African Company “demanding more slaves.” The Company replied, “On January, 1674…seven ships had been sent to Jamaica with 2320 negroes and in 1676 four more ships with 1660 negroes and 1540 sent in November 1676.”

67. Cohen Abraham to Moses Cohen Henriques, signed May 5, 1675, Spanish Town Record Office, Liber 6, 1674, no. 232.

68. Spanish Town Record Office, Liber 6, no. 275, July 1675, Sept. 8, 1675 sells land to Mathew Mattson of Port Royal, witnessed by Humphrey Knollis and Thomas Helyar.

69. Moses Cohen naturalization, Spanish Town Record Office, Liber 13, 1681, no. 220.

70. Henry Barnham, An account of the Island of Jamaica, from the time of the Spaniards first discovery to the year 1722 (London), British Library, Sloane Ms 3918, 6. When Morgan was in England, the then nineteen-year-old Christopher Albemarle was the buccaneer’s sidekick. Half Morgan’s age, he hero-worshipped his elder, being himself a wild youth given to drink, frequenting brothels, and enjoying sordid escapades that owing to his aristocratic status were excused, even admired.