The Man on the Bottle vs. The Man in the Stocks
He is one of the most recognizable figures in the world: the smiling, swashbuckling rogue on the label of a bottle of spiced drink; the very picture of adventure and devil-may-care charm. This is Captain Morgan, the corporate mascot. But the man he is based on, Sir Henry Morgan, was no cartoon.
Records reveal a man of terrifying ambition and calculated brutality. At the time of his death, this "lovable rogue" was one of Jamaica's largest slaveholders. His estate included three plantations and 131 enslaved men, women and children, whose appraised value constituted over a third of his entire fortune. One of his contemporaries, Alexandre Exquemelin, who claimed to have served on his ships, accused him of unspeakable cruelties, including using captured nuns and monks as human shields to storm a Spanish fort.
What’s intriguing is how the latter man became the former: a story not only of plunder and power, but of how violence, when cloaked in commerce and legitimized by the state, can be laundered into legend.
Morgan’s rise from obscure Welsh beginnings to the heights of Jamaican governance charts an arc built on gold, blood and political convenience. It poses a disquieting question: Pirate, patriot, or profiteer?
The Crucible: The World That Made Morgan
Henry Morgan was not a self-made anomaly; he was forged in the crucible of a specific and violent historical moment. He arrived in the Caribbean in the late 1650s, shortly after England seized Jamaica from Spain in 1655. This conquest was the key outcome of Oliver Cromwell’s "Western Design," a grand and aggressive imperial strategy to shatter Spain's monopoly in the Americas. For the first time, the English state itself, rather than private adventurers, directly drove the project of extra-European conquest.
The initial target, Hispaniola, ended in a humiliating defeat and Jamaica was taken as a mere "consolation prize". The new English colony was a battered, disease-ridden frontier with few laws but immense strategic value. Lacking a formal navy to defend its prize, the English Crown turned to an unconventional solution: issuing "letters of marque". This act transformed pirates into state-sanctioned privateers, making them the island's de facto defense force and its primary economic engine. This lawless but officially English base, perfectly positioned for raiding the Spanish Main, was the stage upon which Morgan would make his name. He was not just a pirate; he was an early and brutal agent of an emerging English empire, his violence directly serving the state's strategic and economic goals.
The Bloody Ascent: A Career in Calculated Brutality
Morgan quickly became a rising star among the Caribbean privateers, distinguished by his tactical brilliance and ruthlessness. His campaigns were not random acts of piracy but high-risk business ventures, often funded by consortiums of wealthy merchants and colonial governors who expected a return on their investment.
His bloody ascent began in earnest in 1668.
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Puerto Principe, Cuba (March 1668): Marching inland with a force of around 700 men, Morgan overwhelmed the town’s defenses. The loot was a disappointing 50,000 pieces of eight, causing resentment among the French buccaneers in his company who felt cheated.
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Portobelo, Panama (July 1668): Undeterred, Morgan immediately targeted Portobelo, a vital and heavily fortified Spanish port. Here, his capacity for cruelty became legend.
According to Exquemelin’s account, when his men were unable to take the third and final fort, Morgan forced captured monks and nuns to place the scaling ladders against the walls, using them as human shields against the Spanish defenders. The raid was a financial success, netting a ransom of 100,000 pesos, but it cemented his reputation for terror.
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Maracaibo, Venezuela (March 1669): Morgan’s next major raid saw him sack the towns of Maracaibo and Gibraltar. Exquemelin chronicled the systematic torture of prisoners to force them to reveal hidden valuables. Trapped in Lake Maracaibo by a Spanish naval squadron sent to intercept him, Morgan escaped through a stroke of tactical genius, converting one of his ships into a fireship that scattered the blockade and allowed his fleet to escape.
This terror was not just sadism; it was a calculated military tactic. Morgan weaponized his own fearsome reputation - he understood psychological warfare was as effective as any cannon.
The Great Rebranding: From Raider to Ruler
By 1670, Morgan was hungry for a prize that would eclipse all others: Panama City, the Pacific terminus of Spain’s silver trade. Assembling a massive force of over 1,400 men, he marched his army across the isthmus, reaching the city in January 1671. Despite being outnumbered, Morgan’s men routed the Spanish defenders, whose morale was reportedly shattered by the prospect of facing the infamous buccaneer.
The raid, however, was a diplomatic disaster. It took place months after the signing of the Treaty of Madrid in July 1670, which had formally established peace between England and Spain. Under intense pressure from an outraged Spain, the English Crown had to act. Morgan was arrested in April 1672 and transported to London to face charges of piracy.
This should have been his downfall. Instead, it was his greatest rebranding. In London, Morgan was not imprisoned for long. He was fêted as a national hero who had struck a mighty blow against the hated Spanish. He skillfully argued that he had been unaware of the peace treaty, a plausible defense given the slow speed of transatlantic communication. King Charles II, recognizing Morgan’s value as a military commander in a vital colony, made a pragmatic choice. In 1674, the "pirate" was knighted and sent back to Jamaica as its Lieutenant Governor.
The privateer had become a politician, but the violence did not end; it was merely domesticated and institutionalized. Morgan used his plundered gold to purchase vast sugar plantations. As Lieutenant Governor, he led campaigns against communities of Maroons - escaped slaves who had formed free societies in the island's interior - to protect the brutal plantation economy that was now the source of his "respectable" wealth. He had successfully laundered his violent past into a new, legally sanctioned form of exploitation.
Deconstructing the Myth: From Libel Suit to Liquor Brand
The image of Henry Morgan that persists today is the product of a deliberate, centuries-long process of sanitization; a process that began with the man himself.
When the English translation of Alexandre Exquemelin’s tell-all book, The Buccaneers of America, was published in London in 1684, the now-respectable Sir Henry Morgan filed a libel suit. He vehemently denied the accounts of his worst cruelties and, just as revealingly, objected to the claim that he had arrived in the Caribbean as a lowly indentured servant. For a man who had clawed his way to the top of colonial society, the suggestion of a humble origin was as damaging as the accusation of being a war criminal. Morgan won his case, and the publishers were forced to issue a public apology and retract the offending passages from subsequent English editions.
In the centuries that followed, literature and film continued the romantic transformation. John Steinbeck’s 1929 debut novel, then Cup of Gold, the 1961 film Morgan the Pirate presents a fictionalized backstory where Morgan (played by bodybuilder Steve Reeves) is an enslaved Englishman who leads a slave revolt. The film portrays him and his men as "devil-may-care action heroes" and "avoids any suggestion that in reality they were little more than brutal criminals".
The final stage of this historical laundering is his reincarnation as a corporate mascot. The Captain Morgan brand, founded in 1944, hired fantasy artist Don Maitz in the 1980s to create its iconic image: the grinning pirate, a figure deliberately designed to be a "lovably rogue" character embodying "clever charm" and "lightheartedness". This image is the antithesis of the historical Henry Morgan: the ruthless commander, the cynical politician and the brutal slave owner. In a move of supreme irony, the company even sponsored archaeological digs of Morgan's sunken ships, using real history to lend an air of "authenticity" to its sanitized product.
Over time, the horror of Morgan’s deeds faded, his reputation polished, romanticized, and commercialized. England forgot the screams in Portobelo and the starvation on the march to Panama. What remained was the myth.
So, was he a pirate, a patriot, or a profiteer? The historical record shows he was all three. He was a patriot to the English Crown he served, a pirate to the Spanish he terrorized and above all, a profiteer who masterfully converted violence and political chaos into immense personal wealth and status. His true legacy is darker and more instructive than the one on a bottle. He shows how violence becomes palatable when wrapped in the language of commerce and statecraft, and reminds us how easily brutality can be reframed as boldness, and greed as patriotism.
We may condemn him. We may admire him. But perhaps most disturbingly, we recognize him. And Morgan’s life poses a question worth asking: If offered power, wealth, and reknown—at the cost of your conscience—how long could you say no?
Phew! That was quite a heavy read and one that lends beckons a sip to allow us to mull it over!
Spiced Rum came about to polish up rum that was hard to drink. You added stuff to it to mask its taste. Sometimes bitter things, sometimes sweet and sometimes fragrant (to hide a funky nose). Just like food has come on a lot, so the notion of a traditional spiced rum is one to avoid!
With our spiced rum we have taken our best-in-the-world Old Salt Rum and - before squirrelling it off into a barrel - we spiced it to take it into a very different, immediately lovely place.
A quick sniff of great rum always reveals rich raisin notes, Christmas cake, caramel, dark chocolate, perhaps a mild whiff of banana and tropical fruits. With these beauties, it's fun to weave together a gorgeous ensemble, a sipping symphony. We choose red cherries, vanilla pods, red hibiscus flowers, star anise and a wizard’s palm of pixy dust to embellish our spiced rum.
To serve, try your own variation on a mojito or maybe a dark and stormy. My current fave is tonic water, ice, grapefruit twist and a few quarters of lime - brings out a big Assam tea note don’t you know! Naturally, sipping when it's over ice cannot but delight!
No privateers or mayhem, simply gorgeous, painstakingly fermented and distilled British rum.
Cheers to your discerning palates my friends!
Dr. J
