Читать книгу The Life of Sir Henry Morgan. With an account of the English settlement of the island of Jamaica онлайн

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From his former expeditions he had brought to Jamaica booty valued at £200,000 or as much as £300,000, but being accused of some irregularities in the distribution of the prize-money, D'Oyley had suspended him from command, and described him with veiled sarcasm as "the wonder-working captain of the Marston Moor". Another military officer maliciously referred to him as "a proud-speaking, vain fool and a knave in cheating the state and robbing the merchants." But his popularity in Jamaica was unimpaired by these accusations, for, as a contemporary writer stated, "Not a man in the island but can say that he has reaped a benefit of that action."[39]

As many of the disbanded soldiers were very poor and possessed small means of cultivating their lands, they gladly enlisted for this expedition, and about thirteen hundred men, mostly former soldiers of the army of the Commonwealth, were assembled and equipped in a week. Eleven ships, most of them privateers, were quickly fitted out and provisioned, having, however, the Centurion, a fourth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, carrying forty-six guns and a crew of 180 men, as the flagship of Commodore Mings. Formal instructions for him were prepared by the governor, and he set sail from Point Cagway on September 21, "with great hopes of a large booty." Calms and contrary winds retarded the fleet in rounding the windward end of the island, as was usually the case. "On the 25th", Mings reported, "we encountred Sir Thomas Whetstone in Pacazo with a family of Indians, whose intelligence assured us of noe aditional forces in St. Jago upon Cuba, and likewise rectified our former advice beeing most by English prisoners, whose restraints there gave them not the advantage of a full discovery. At a councell of warr itt was judged feasable and upon debate resolved the manner of atempting itt which was to land in the harbour, the mouth of which was very strongly fortefied."