Original subtitles

[Narrator] Henry Morgan,

an obscure soldier from rural Wales,

sent to the Caribbean as a pawn in a war of empires.

[Expert 1] He was really interested in being

on the seas, capturing treasure.

[Narrator] Through cunning, plunder, and conquest,

he outmaneuvered his enemies...

[Expert 2] Morgan was an agent

of very violent imperial expansion.

[Narrator] ...to build a kingdom for himself.

[Expert 3] Morgan, he's ruthless and brutal

in his military tactics.

[Narrator] Morgan's sins were continuously overlooked,

his ability to make great sums of money for the right people

rendering him untouchable.

From lowly privateer to pirate to lieutenant governor,

Henry Morgan used the power he seized to transform his life,

building up Jamaica's earliest sugar plantations,

accelerating a brutal slave trade.

[Expert 4] Henry Morgan was a slave trader

as well as a pirate.

[Narrator] So how did Morgan come to be known

as a fierce pirate?

♪ ♪

The year is 1654.

Across English port towns,

able men join a rapidly expanding navy...

...to be shipped off to fight for England's stake

in the New World.

♪ ♪

Some volunteer; others are conscripted against their will.

Amongst the crowd is a young man, Henry Morgan.

[Mark Hanna] That navy consisted often of guys drunk from bars

who would be kidnaped and thrown on board these ships.

We're pretty sure that Morgan might have been

one of those guys, someone who had just been swept up

in this, this fervor to invade the Caribbean.

[Narrator] Spain and England have been lodged

in a fierce rivalry for nearly 200 years.

For decades, the Spanish have dominated the Caribbean.

To launch a counterstrike,

the English Navy needs serious manpower.

7,000 troops sail to the Caribbean;

amongst their ranks, young Henry Morgan.

Their aim?

To conquer the island of Hispaniola,

the cornerstone of Spain's New World empire.

But the Spanish lie in wait.

[Nuala Zahedieh] They were humiliatingly

defeated at Hispaniola.

[Narrator] Thousands of English troops

lose their lives on Hispaniola,

survivors beating a hasty retreat to their boats.

[Zahedieh] And then limped on to Jamaica.

It's much smaller, ill defended,

and very much a consolation prize.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] This invading force,

with Morgan amongst them,

have just become the first English settlers to set foot

on the shores of Jamaica.

But they're at constant risk of attack.

Four major European powers subscribed

to the mutual concept of no peace behind the line,

a mutual understanding that war will continue

in the Caribbean

regardless of any peace treaties agreed in Europe.

[Zahedieh] So, whatever the situation in Europe,

whether there's war or peace,

the Spanish treated anyone who ventured into these waters

as a pirate.

[Iszi Lawrence] It's perfect for pirates.

It's very hard to actually control and police by any state.

Spain is extracting a lot of wealth from the Americas,

all coming through the Caribbean,

and where there's trade, there's opportunity to thieve.

[Harcourt Fuller] When you look

at a map of Jamaica,

it's right in the middle of the action.

All of the ships coming into the New World,

there's a point where they have to go past Jamaica.

[Zahedieh] It's completely surrounded

by Spanish territories,

and it's a very long way

from the nearest English outpost,

so there was real fear about Spanish reprisals.

[Narrator] Within a year, the English naval fleet

withdraws from Jamaica,

their fight spreading to other fronts.

But some men remain.

Morgan is one of them.

The young Welshman harbors fantasies

of raiding treasure from Spanish colonies,

fed by an insatiable desire to make his fortune.

♪ ♪

[Hanna] 1660s is the first time

English people started to use the word "privateer,"

and privateer was a term coined specifically in Jamaica

to describe these sailors who had been forced

to come into the Caribbean to fight,

but now on their own, acting independently.

[Narrator] Morgan is eager to prove himself.

Whilst many settle into quiet lives farming the land,

Morgan has developed a taste for battle

and a reputation as a talented tactician.

He decides to put these skills to good use.

[Hannah Cusworth] He was very wedded to the life

of a privateer,

of being on the seas,

of capturing treasure.

He was really interested in Jamaica being a place

that privateering could flourish.

[Richard Blakemore] Morgan, by the early 1660s,

is a captain,

and he leads a series of voyages,

each one striking at a different part

of the Spanish territories,

and with each one bringing back more plunder.

[David Wilson] He's part of different privateering crews.

But then by the sort of mid-1660s,

he's sort of elevated to become one of the principal

or dominant privateering figures in Jamaica.

And part of that is through the patronage

of Sir Thomas Modyford.

[Narrator] In 1664,

Thomas Modyford becomes governor of Jamaica.

The English Crown instructs Modyford to clamp down

on any privateering in the region.

But Modyford soon grasps just how essential

these privateers are to both the security

and economy of his island.

And he finds a like-minded accomplice in Captain Morgan.

[Wilson] They strike up a bit of a partnership,

a bit of a relationship,

whereby Modyford commissions Morgan to attack the Spanish

as part of this idea of offensive defense, if you will.

It was a really good way of outsourcing war

at a time when navies were extremely expensive,

so they couldn't afford a standard navy, as it were.

But what that meant was that you had a maritime force

that were focused on attacking other vessels.

It wasn't really a defensive force.

All of the wages for the privateers

came from the plunder,

so if they didn't attack vessels,

if they didn't take any prizes, they didn't get paid.

[cannon fire]

♪ ♪

[Narrator] In the 10 years since his arrival in Jamaica,

Morgan's striking reputation has grown to attract

colonial officials and fellow privateers alike.

He is elected Admiral of the Brethren of the Coast...

...a loose coalition of free boaters,

better known as the buccaneers.

[Blakemore] Morgan is authorized by Thomas Modyford

to take out a buccaneer fleet

and to gather intelligence about Spanish intentions.

He is not commissioned to attack Spanish towns,

and in fact, his commission, by excluding Spanish towns,

gives him an incentive to attack Spanish towns

because any plunder from shore is not due to be shared

with the governor and the Crown, whereas anything he takes at sea

is due to be shared with the governor and the Crown.

[Hanna] There is a difference

between a buccaneer and a pirate.

The original buccaneers were essentially French cowboys,

cattle rustlers, who also took to piracy,

who were known as "boucaniers."

But among the English,

when they anglicized the word to buccaneers,

that became individuals who committed acts of piracy

that involved amphibious attacks.

They're usually referring to individuals who start

their ventures on a ship, but actually their plundering

is typically land-based.

♪ ♪

[Zahedieh] Buccaneers knew the local geography.

They understood how to extract resources.

They had local knowledge and skills.

In fact, much of this knowledge

was gained from indigenous people.

So, whereas a European force would come out

and usually die like flies,

buccaneers were seasoned to the climate.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] To satisfy their desire for plunder,

the buccaneers take to the seas

with a fleet of nine ships

packed with a crew of 500 privateers.

[Blakemore] So the first thing Morgan does is attack a town

in Cuba, to capture prisoners,

so he's already instantly gone beyond

the commission that he was given.

But the prisoners that he captured,

prisoners who may have been tortured

to elicit this information,

obligingly say Portobelo is intending to attack Jamaica,

and so he uses that as his justification

to go and attack the city.

[Narrator] Morgan sets his sight on one

of the wealthiest settlements in the Spanish Empire.

Portobelo is the terminus for a cache of silver

plucked from across South America.

As a result, it's one

of the most heavily fortified cities in the New World,

surrounded by hostile waters

busy with Spanish fighting ships.

♪ ♪

To snatch Portobelo's treasures,

Morgan must remain invisible.

[Blakemore] A particular kind of vessel,

often known as a Jamaica or a Bermuda sloop,

develops in the Caribbean.

And it has two particularly important characteristics.

One is they're relatively small

and therefore can fit into shallow water.

And the other feature was a different sail plan.

They used what we'd now call a fore and aft

and a gaff-rig sail, which was much more maneuverable

than the larger square rigged sails of frigates or warships.

[Narrator] Anchoring at Bocas de Toro,

Morgan and his buccaneers

transfer to an agile fleet of canoes.

For four days, they traverse the coast undetected.

[Zahedieh] Canoes were faster, more maneuverable.

They could go in very shallow waters,

and they were silent, so people didn't know they were coming.

[Narrator] The men leave their canoes and continue by foot.

At the gates of the city looms Santiago Castle.

Gathering his troops, Morgan prepares to strike.

♪ ♪

[Blakemore] And it's an astonishingly quick attack.

The buccaneers sweep through the defenses outside the city.

[swords clashing]

The guard of the city are caught

almost completely by surprise.

[Narrator] The buccaneers push into the heart of the city,

cutting down its terrified defenders and seizing captives.

One final stronghold stands between them

and complete control of Portobelo.

But Morgan has a cruel plan.

[Blakemore] Morgan forces some friars and some nuns

and the mayor of the city

to walk as a sort of human shield towards the gate.

So he's ruthless and brutal in his military tactics.

[Narrator] With innocent hostages as their shield,

Morgan and his men storm the final battlement.

Soldiers are captured, tortured into revealing

the whereabouts of Portobelo's hidden riches.

Several blood-soaked weeks see the buccaneers loot the city,

ransoming captives and reveling in their new wealth.

But Morgan still wants more.

[Blakemore] He writes to the Spanish governor

and threatens to destroy Portobelo if he is not paid off.

[Zahedieh] He started off asking for 350,000 pieces of eight,

but in the end, settled for 100,000,

mainly because his men were actually beginning to get fever,

so he wasn't sure that he could last a long siege.

They left after a month with a prize

worth about 100,000 pieces of eight.

[Blakemore] A piece of eight, or a Spanish dollar,

was a peso de ocho,

a Spanish coin worth eight reales,

hence "pieces of eight."

Pieces of eight became really

the first international currency, and they traveled

through all of the colonies in the Americas,

many of them finding their way there by the way of buccaneers.

A single piece of eight would probably be worth

a couple of days' wages for a merchant sailor,

but it could be a very unreliable currency as well.

It was very common to clip the edges off

in order to make new coins.

And when people needed small change,

because there was no smaller denomination,

people would simply cut up the pesos.

And so slivers of silver would be changing hands.

So this really was the coinage that floated the economy

of the early modern world.

[Zahedieh] Every one of the 500 men

came away with about 120 pounds,

which was a massive amount for a 17th-century mariner...

...probably about 20 times their usual annual wage.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] The victorious buccaneers return to Jamaica

to a hero's welcome,

their ships crammed with looted treasure,

their pockets bulging with Spanish silver.

For a buccaneer with silver to spend, Port Royal is paradise.

[Fuller] The importance of Port Royal to the English

cannot be overemphasized.

It was considered to be the richest

and the wickedest city on earth.

It was quite the town. It had taverns, it had brothels.

[Blakemore] Which are being driven

by the presence of the buccaneers.

The buccaneers probably make up somewhere between a third

and a half of the population of Port Royal at this time.

[Kevin Dawson] Port Royal becomes this sanctuary

for pirates, including Henry Morgan,

and so they end up bringing

much of their looted wealth

into Port Royal.

[Narrator] When buccaneers have silver in their palm,

rum flows like water.

[Hanna] The connection between pirates and rum

is real for one reason, which is that sugar

is the primary commodity produced in the Caribbean.

And rum, of course, is made from sugar.

So, of course, pirates drinking rum

would have been quite common.

Morgan himself was probably more fond of drinking

than many of his contemporaries

and was well known for causing small riots in Port Royal.

[Lawrence] All of these stories about Morgan being this drunk,

I think it's very likely

because water couldn't keep fresh at sea.

You had to drink in order to not die of thirst.

This is, you know, part of being a pirate.

And the fact that Morgan is seen this way

means that he must have been drinking a lot.

This is, you know, a story that we keep getting about him,

a rumor that keeps returning

is actually he was very out of control a lot of the time.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] Port Royal, however,

is more than a chaotic jumble

of raucous taverns and brothels.

By the tail end of the 1660s,

the city has grown to become the largest,

richest English settlement in the New World,

overtaking North American towns

such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

[Cusworth] It was quite a diverse place.

There were English settlers,

enslaved Africans, Jewish merchants.

[Lawrence] People wanted to settle,

and if you wanted to settle,

you can't do that with just men; you need women.

And so women were being transported

down to the Caribbean.

[Narrator] Ever more people begin to settle,

families taking root, building communities,

men, women, children, merchants, officials, soldiers,

and of course, those with growing wealth

from illegal privateering.

[Narrator] Anglo-Spanish relations remain

on a knife edge.

Morgan has clearly overstepped

the limits of Modyford's commission.

But he's also made Jamaica, and its governor, wildly rich.

So long as treasure continues to fill Modyford's lap,

Captain Morgan is free to do as he pleases.

Still, the official has to at least appear

to be reprimanding the overzealous captain.

Despite a warning to appease the Crown,

Morgan is gifted a brand-new flagship,

a frigate known as the Oxford.

Capable of carrying a crew of around 250 men

armed with 26 cannons, this two-deck gunship

offers Morgan a level of firepower and speed

that far surpasses any vessel he has commanded before.

Sent to protect Jamaica's coastline,

Morgan decides that the Oxford is far too magnificent

to be wasted on mere defense.

[Blakemore] He instantly takes it as his flagship

because even though it's relatively small

by the standards of naval ships of the day,

it's one of the most powerful warships in the Caribbean.

Most of the shipping in the Caribbean at this time

is relatively small vessels, and so a frigate like the Oxford

is a pretty big weapon in the Caribbean at this time.

[Narrator] Plotting his next attack on the Spanish,

Morgan sails to a small island off the coast of Hispaniola,

where he's joined by 900 buccaneers

from across the Caribbean.

A war council is assembled aboard the Oxford

in preparation for one of the greatest

buccaneering expeditions ever attempted.

[Blakemore] He calls a council on the ship to plan their raid,

and after the council, they have a big party on the ship,

as is the custom of the buccaneers.

There's lots of firing of guns and salutes and drinking.

Doing those two things together is probably not a good idea.

The spark hits the magazine, and the ship explodes.

♪ ♪

[distant screams]

All of those who were sitting on the same side of the table

as Morgan at dinner survive.

All of those sitting on the other side of the table

are killed in this enormous blast.

Of about 200 men on board, fewer than 10 survive.

[man yelling]

[Narrator] What remains of the HMS Oxford sinks.

Most of Morgan's best men, dead.

His grand plan is no longer feasible

with such a diminished force,

and so Morgan settles on a soft target--

the Spanish city of Gibraltar and its neighbor, Maracaibo.

If his fleet can safely navigate the sandbanks

which shield both cities,

this could still be his greatest raid yet.

[Zahedieh] Gibraltar is in a huge lagoon.

It was extremely difficult to get entry.

[Narrator] Once again, Morgan utilizes canoes,

now as pilot boats guiding his ships

through the perilous shallows of the inlet.

Once into the mouth of the lagoon,

his men head for Gibraltar.

[Zahedieh] They took Gibraltar fairly easily.

They gathered the prize.

[Narrator] Those unable or unwilling to flee

the city face torture.

[man screams]

[Narrator] Morgan and his men thieving vast piles of silver,

stealing a major Spanish trading vessel,

and seizing enslaved African captives.

Flush with victory and treasure,

they head back through the lagoon.

[Blakemore] A Spanish squadron arrives

and blockades the mouth of the lake.

[Zahedieh] Three Spanish men-of-war were lined up.

There was a moment of panic.

[Blakemore] So, the buccaneers are trapped within this lake,

and they have to fight their way out against a Spanish squadron

of much more heavily armed ships.

[Zahedieh] But Morgan quickly developed a strategy.

[Narrator] He has his carpenters

convert his newly stolen ship into a floating trap.

The decks of the ship are lined with wooden planks.

[Zahedieh] They put sailor's hats on the top of them

to make it look as though it was heavily manned.

They cut holes in the sides of the ship and stuck logs through

to make it look as though it was armed.

They put gunpowder inside with fuses

and sailed towards the exit of the lagoon.

[Blakemore] So when this flagship is sailing

towards the Spanish fleet, the Spanish sailors

think that Morgan is just overconfident.

[shouting]

[Blakemore] No one would sail their flagship

straight into the guns of the enemy fleet.

[Narrator] Morgan times it to perfection.

As the Spanish realize they've been tricked, it's too late.

The buccaneers' empty vessel

plows into the Spanish flagship,

which immediately ignites, engulfed by flames.

[Zahedieh] The Spanish flagship was totally burnt in minutes.

Most of the crew drowned.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] Racing past the smoking remains

of the flagship, Morgan seizes the second Spanish ship,

while survivors rush for the safety of dry land

on their third and final boat.

Within minutes, Morgan has cleared his way to safety.

But he suspects the sunken flagship

may have carried great treasures.

[Dawson] The flagship sinks,

and so Morgan comes to realize

that a number of the Africans that he has stolen

are actually skilled underwater divers.

These African divers,

they've trained their bodies to basically work underwater.

So, they're engaged in what we call free diving,

which is basically just diving with the air in their lungs.

Most of these divers were able to hold their breath

two to five minutes.

And so they're not just kind of diving underwater

and picking things up,

but they're actually having to dive underwater

and to break into the hulls of Spanish treasure ships.

They would have a rope with rocks tied to both ends of it

that they could loop around their neck.

They'd use these rock weights to quickly descend

and stand on a ship's deck,

and then using sledgehammers and pickaxes

to actually gain access.

And so he sends those divers down,

and they end up recovering about 17,000 silver coins.

[Narrator] Morgan is unstoppable.

This expedition has blessed him with unimaginable wealth,

his unique military cunning

proven by his spectacular escape.

The infamous captain's return to Port Royal

is sure to be celebrated.

But upon his arrival,

he receives startling news from London.

There's been another swing in Anglo-Spanish relations,

and privateering is now strictly forbidden.

Without knowing it, Morgan has just committed

an illegal act of piracy.

Will he face arrest,

or worse?

But silver saves Morgan's skin once again.

An official scolding from Governor Modyford

is softened by a share of the plunder.

♪ ♪

Now in his mid-30s, Morgan must discover a way

to thrive in a time of peace between England and Spain.

In a world without privateers,

his raids have made him rich, and now he seeks status.

Founding sugar plantations

and populating them with enslaved people,

Morgan's bleak empire is growing.

[Fuller] Jamaica at the time was a sugar producing country.

Sugar was essentially the major commodity.

All of that wealth Morgan had acquired,

he brought that back to Jamaica and he owned three plantations.

What does that mean?

It means that Sir Henry Morgan

was a slave trader as well as a pirate.

When we speak about pirates,

we talk about the gold and the silver,

but oftentimes when pirates raided ships,

some of those ships were slave ships,

and they would also take those slaves.

Jamaica is one of the most brutal places

where enslaved Africans went to.

Jamaica is a tropical country, it's very hot,

and they are working sunup to sundown,

the sun bearing down on their backs.

The leaves of sugarcane, they're almost like razors.

Their skins are being cut by the extremely sharp edges

of the sugarcane leaves.

Their sweat is running down into their cuts.

And of course, they can't stop.

[Blakemore] By the 18th century

and through the course of the 18th century,

Britain becomes the biggest shipper

of enslaved African people in the world.

And that's directly related to the growth

of these Caribbean sugar colonies.

And in their early decades, without buccaneering,

these colonies would not have been viable.

So, there's a direct personal connection

because Henry Morgan is himself a slaveholder,

is capturing enslaved people, is selling enslaved people.

But there's also this broader economic dimension.

He is boosting the economy that then leads

to this enormous slave system

that continues for more than 100 years.

[Narrator] But Morgan isn't content living out his days

on a plantation.

July 1668.

With trouble brewing between England and Spain,

he spots an opportunity.

[Zahedieh] Modyford received instructions

to proclaim peace with Spain.

But ironically, the Spanish sent out orders

to the Spanish governors to commission privateers

against the English, and there was a real feeling

that they were very vulnerable to attack.

[Hanna] Governor Modyford told Morgan,

"Hey, I have a feeling that the governor of Panama

is gonna raid Jamaica.

I don't have proof,

but I have a good feeling it's gonna happen,"

and that will justify a raid against the Spanish.

"So, how about you, Morgan, go out and prove

that this is going to happen,

that there is going to be a preemptive attack

against Jamaica on the island."

So Morgan said, "Sure, I can do that."

And so he captured a ship,

and he went up to the captain and said,

"I have a feeling you are about to raid Jamaica."

He said, "No, I don't think so."

And Morgan essentially put a knife to his throat

and said, "No, tell me, you were about to raid Jamaica, right?"

He said, "Sure. Yeah, of course I was."

And Morgan said, "Great.

Okay, now I have a right to do whatever I want."

[Narrator] Upon receipt of this information,

Modyford issues Morgan with a wide-ranging commission,

the ruthless pirate given carte blanche to organize

the biggest buccaneering expedition

in the history of the West Indies,

targeting one of the oldest European cities

in the Americas.

[Zahedieh] Like Portobelo,

Panama had a sort of legendary wealth.

It was a glittering sort of prize.

[Narrator] Not only does Panama boast

a thriving mercantile community of some 7,000 households,

but it's key to the Spanish silver route.

Aware this could be the mightiest conquest

of his pirating career,

Morgan and his invading force set sail for Panama.

[Blakemore] He gathers about 2,000 buccaneers,

probably four out of every five buccaneers

who are present in the Caribbean at that time,

including Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian,

also some people of African heritage,

some indigenous Americans as well.

[Narrator] Between the buccaneers

and the treasures of Panama

are 70 long miles of thick rainforest.

Unable to safely dock any closer to Panama,

Morgan's men sail to the head of the Chagres River,

anchor their boats, gather their weapons,

and set off into the jungle.

[Zahedieh] It's very, very dense tropical vegetation

either side of the river,

so they were chopping their way through.

Along the river, there were regular defense posts

which had been manned by the Spaniards.

When they realized there was this massive English force

coming, they all just fled.

But they did take all their provisions with them.

So the main problem for the English

was that they actually had no food.

[Narrator] As the days go by,

hunger and sickness grip the buccaneers,

and many die of exhaustion.

Seven torturous days and nights pass

before finally the survivors emerge from the jungle.

At the shores of the Pacific,

they find Panama and their salvation.

[moo]

[Zahedieh] They saw fields which were full of grazing cattle,

so they just fell upon them and barbecued the meat.

[Narrator] Whilst the buccaneers gorge themselves

in the fields outside the city, the people of Panama

prepare as best they can for the battle ahead.

♪ ♪

[Zahedieh] The town of Panama was very ill defended.

They were completely inexperienced.

There was no trained militia or real defense force,

so they were very vulnerable.

[Narrator] The Spanish governor makes a difficult decision--

if the city falls to the pirates,

there will be nothing left for the invaders to plunder.

He orders barrels of gunpowder to be wedged between buildings,

to be ignited if and when their defenses are breached.

The two armies clash beyond the city's walls.

Morgan rapidly seizes the high ground,

dispatching a small body of troops to take a hill

overlooking the enemy's position.

The Spanish try to dislodge Morgan's men,

first with a cavalry charge and then with infantry

but are cut down by a curiously disciplined pirate force.

In desperation, the governor unleashes

a huge herd of cattle,

hoping the beasts will stampede over the attackers.

But the animals, startled by the crash of gunfire,

turn back on their keepers, crushing the Spanish troops.

♪ ♪

It's a massacre.

The buccaneers only lose 15 men,

whilst the Spanish sacrifice around 500.

The last line of defense breaks,

and Morgan's men storm the fabled city.

[Zahedieh] Because the Spaniards had got warning

that these privateers were coming, they had actually

managed to ship off all of the real treasure.

They put it all on ships and taken it away,

and then by the time the privateers entered,

the Spaniards burned the town to the ground.

♪ ♪

[cannons fire]

[Narrator] The buccaneers had battled the ocean waves,

trekked through miles of inhospitable forest,

and slaughtered hundreds of Spanish soldiers,

and yet all that awaits them are smoldering ruins.

The treasures they were promised are long gone.

Owing to the sheer size of the invasion force,

each man takes home a mere 80 pieces of silver,

the equivalent today of $2,500.

[Blakemore] Ironically, although Panama is the biggest expedition

and probably his most well known,

it's also his least successful.

[Zahedieh] The shares were really quite small,

and there were actually stories

that Morgan had embezzled some of the prize.

He was shipwrecked, or cast away,

in a port outside Port Royal when he was on his way home.

So it would have been perfectly possible for him

to have unloaded some of the prize.

[Narrator] Rumors evolved into accusations.

Could Panama really have held so little plunder?

Had Morgan taken the best jewels for himself?

We will never truly know what happened.

Legend claims that Morgan's buried treasure

is still out there,

waiting for a lucky adventurer

to unearth the lost hoard of Panama.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] Back in Jamaica,

controversy grows around Morgan.

It becomes clear his raid on Panama

was carried out under false intelligence.

The Spanish never did attack Jamaica,

meaning Spain and England were at peace

when Morgan effectively destroyed the city

and stole all that remained of its riches.

A furious Spain demands immediate retribution

for what it considers an unprovoked attack.

[Wilson] He is taken, as is Modyford,

and sent back to England in chains.

[Blakemore] It seems that Morgan is going to get into trouble.

Modyford is imprisoned in the Tower.

Both of them may well be put on trial for piracy,

but in fact, no trial ever happens.

It seems like this is just a sort of way

of calming relations with the Spanish.

[Hanna] The king himself clearly interacted

and met Morgan himself and was also very impressed.

And so rather than be charged with piracy,

Morgan was actually knighted

and sent back to Jamaica as lieutenant governor,

meaning the sort of right-hand man to the governor himself,

which is probably one of the most dramatic career changes

in the entire history of piracy.

[Narrator] 1676.

Morgan returns to Port Royal as lieutenant governor.

His mission from the king--

to end piracy in Jamaican waters.

Former comrades are now enemies.

Despite his orders,

Morgan is rumored to support the local pirates,

taking a cut from the bounty of each of the hundreds of men

operating illicitly in the area.

When Morgan suspects the French plan to invade Jamaica,

threatening his land, his wealth,

he uses his new powers to declare martial law.

The lieutenant governor spends the following decade

fortifying the island.

[Zahedieh] By 1680, Port Royal had 4 castles, about 120 cannon.

It was actually better fortified then somewhere like Portobelo

had been when he'd attacked in 1668.

[Wilson] But at the same time,

as a plantation owner and a slaver,

he is starting to get more invested in the land

and more embedded in that plantocracy in Jamaica,

that is mostly actually emerging through the wealth

that was brought in by the privateers.

[Blakemore] Morgan becomes an establishment figure,

and so he ends up being part of this establishment

who move against the buccaneers

and tries to suppress buccaneers.

He sends out expeditions to capture what he calls pirates.

He executes some people for piracy.

[Narrator] At the age of 53,

Morgan has reached the pinnacle of Jamaican society.

He has plundered a fortune

in Spanish silver and African labor.

He now owns more than 100 enslaved people

on three sugar plantations.

But the consequences of a lifetime

of excessive drinking finally catch up with him.

[Cusworth] His body had really taken a battering,

and that he was in pretty bad health.

[Narrator] On August 25, 1688,

he dies at his mountaintop estate.

Morgan is given a state funeral,

and an amnesty is declared

so that pirates, privateers, and buccaneers

can pay their respect without fear of arrest.

♪ ♪

Henry Morgan rose from poverty,

through the ranks, becoming a powerful pirate.

[Lawrence] Morgan's story is unbelievable.

He goes from absolutely nothing to becoming a captain.

[Narrator] Stirring up conflict between nations

only to find himself coming face-to-face

with a king who pardoned him.

[Hanna] He was sent back to England

to face charges for piracy,

only to be instead knighted, appointed lieutenant governor,

and then sent back as one of the primary political leaders

of the island of Jamaica.

It's a remarkable trajectory and career transformation.

[Narrator] He had little respect for the rule of law

other than when it benefitted him.

He didn't care for the lives of others.

But his relentless desire for more

and a masterful ever-tactical military mind

rewarded him with great wealth.

[Zahedieh] He accumulated a considerable fortune

through the proceeds of plunder.

[Narrator] Treasure which would be shared with powerful men

to ensure his continued prosperity.

[Lawrence] Unlike so many pirates who end up dead

or hanged, Morgan is celebrated,

Morgan ends up on top,

and that makes him really unique among pirates.

[Narrator] Morgan singlehandedly bolstered

the Jamaican economy

through piracy, theft, death, and slavery.

[Blakemore] Henry Morgan himself

ends up purchasing numerous large plantations,

becomes a very large landholder in Jamaica

and a slaveholder himself.

So there are these really intricate connections

between slavery and plundering.

[Narrator] He rose to the role of governor

and defended the lands he'd helped build,

but only when his own personal wealth was under threat.

[Zahedieh] I think in the last 20 years,

Morgan has been recast.

He's no longer seen as a national hero.

He was an agent of very violent imperial expansion.

[Narrator] Captain Morgan might be best remembered today

as a brave, swashbuckling pirate, but he was, in fact,

a cruel and brutal thug...

[gunshot]

...who would do almost anything

to protect his ill-gotten treasures.

♪ ♪