Note (return) — Chapter VII

The last years of Sir Thomas Lynch's life had been troublous ones. Not only had the peace of the island been disturbed by "La Trompeuse" and other French corsairs which hovered about Hispaniola; not only had his days been embittered by strife with a small, drunken, insolent faction which tried to belittle his attempts to introduce order and sobriety into the colony; but the hostility of the Spanish governors in the West Indies still continued to neutralize his efforts to root out buccaneering. Lynch had in reality been the best friend of the Spaniards in America. He had strictly forbidden the cutting of logwood in Campeache and Honduras, when the Spaniards were outraging and enslaving every Englishman they found upon those coasts;461 he had sent word to the Spanish governors of the intended sack of Vera Cruz;462 he had protected Spanish merchant ships with his own men-of-war and hospitably received them in Jamaican ports. Yet Spanish corsairs continued to rob English vessels, and Spanish governors refused to surrender English ships and goods which were carried into their ports.463 On the plea of punishing interlopers they armed small galleys and ordered them to take all ships which had on board any products of the Indies.464 Letters to the governors at Havana and St. Jago de Cuba were of no avail. English trade routes were interrupted and dangerous, the turtling, trading and fishing sloops, which supplied a great part of the food of Jamaica, were robbed and seized, and Lynch was compelled to construct a galley of fifty oars for their protection.465 Pirates, it is true, were frequently brought into Port Royal by the small frigates employed by the governor, and there were numerous executions;466 yet the outlaws seemed to increase daily. Some black vessel was generally found hovering about the island ready to pick up any who wished to join it, and when the runaways were prevented from returning by the statute against piracy, they retired to the Carolinas or to New England to dispose of their loot and refit their ships.467 When such retreats were available the laws against piracy did not reduce buccaneering so much as they depopulated Jamaica of its white inhabitants.