The buccaneers were pirates who attacked Spanish shipping in the Caribbean Sea during the 17th century.
The term buccaneer is now used generally as a synonym for pirate. Originally, buccaneer
crews were larger, more apt to attack coastal cities, and more
localized to the Caribbean than later pirate crews who sailed to the
Indian Ocean on the Pirate Round in the late 17th century.
The term buccaneer derives from the Caribbean Arawak word buccan, a wooden frame for smoking meat, preferably manatee. From this became derived in French the word boucane and hence the name boucanier
for French hunters who used such frames to smoke meat from feral cattle
and pigs on Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). English colonists anglicised the word boucanier to buccaneer.
About 1630, some Frenchmen who were driven away from the island of
Hispaniola fled to nearby Tortuga. The Spaniards tried to drive them out
of Tortuga, but the buccaneers were joined by many other French, Dutch
and English and turned to piracy against Spanish shipping, generally
using small craft to attack galleons in the vicinity of the Windward
Passage. Finally they became so strong that they even sailed to the
mainland of Spanish America and sacked cities.
English settlers occupying Jamaica began to spread the name buccaneers
with the meaning of pirates. The name became universally adopted later
in 1684 when the first English translation of Alexandre Exquemelin's
book The Buccaneers of America was published.
Viewed from London, buccaneering was a low-budget way to wage war on
England's rival, Spain. So, the English crown licensed buccaneers with
letters of marque, legalizing their operations in return for a share of
their profits. The buccaneers were invited by Jamaica's Governor Thomas
Modyford to base ships at Port Royal. The buccaneers
robbed Spanish shipping and colonies, and returned to Port Royal with
their plunder, making the city the most prosperous in the Caribbean.
There even were Royal Navy officers sent to lead the buccaneers, such as
Christopher Myngs. Their activities went on irrespective of whether
England happened to be at war with Spain or France.
Among the leaders of the buccaneers were two Frenchmen: Jean-David Nau,
better known as François l'Ollonais, and Daniel Montbars, who destroyed
so many Spanish ships and killed so many Spaniards that he was called
"the Exterminator". Another noted leader was a Welshman named Henry Morgan,
who sacked Maracaibo, Portobello, and Panama City, stealing a huge
amount from the Spanish. Morgan became rich and went back to England,
where he was knighted by Charles II.
In the 1690s, the old buccaneering ways began to die out, as European
governments began to discard the policy of "no peace beyond the Line."
Buccaneers were hard to control and might embroil their colonies in
unwanted wars. Notably, at the 1697 joint French-buccaneer siege of
Cartagena, led by Bernard Desjean, Baron de Pointis, the buccaneers and
the French regulars parted on extremely bitter terms. Less tolerated
by local Caribbean officials, buccaneers
increasingly turned to legal work or else joined regular pirate crews
who sought plunder in the Indian Ocean, the east coast of North
America, or West Africa as well as in the Caribbean.
The status of buccaneers as pirates or privateers was ambiguous. As a
rule, the buccaneers
called themselves privateers, and many sailed under the protection of a
letter of marque granted by British, French or Dutch authorities. For
example, Henry Morgan had some form of legal cover for all of his
attacks, and expressed great indignation at being called a "corsair" by
the governor of Panama.
Nevertheless, these rough men had little concern for legal niceties,
and exploited every opportunity to pillage Spanish targets, whether or
not a letter of marque was available. Many of the letters of marque used
by buccaneers were legally invalid, and any form of legal paper in
that illiterate age might be passed off as a letter of marque.
Furthermore, even those buccaneers
who had valid letters of marque often failed to observe their terms;
Morgan's 1671 attack on Panama, for instance, was not at all authorized
by his commission from the governor of Jamaica. The legal status of
buccaneers
was still further obscured by the practice of the Spanish authorities,
who regarded them as heretics and interlopers, and thus hanged or
garrotted captured buccaneers entirely without regard to whether their
attacks were licensed by French or English monarchs.
Simultaneously, French and English governors tended to turn a blind eye
to the buccaneers' depredations against the Spanish, even when
unlicensed. But as Spanish power waned toward the end of the 17th
century, the buccaneers'
attacks began to disrupt France and England's merchant traffic with
Spanish America. Merchants who had previously regarded the buccaneers
as a defense against Spain now saw them as a threat to commerce, and
colonial authorities grew hostile. This change in political atmosphere,
more than anything else, put an end to buccaneering.
A hundred years before the French Revolution, the buccaneer companies
were run on lines in which liberty, equality and fraternity were the
rule,. In a buccaneer
camp, the captain was elected and could be deposed by the votes of the
crew. The crew, and not the captain, decided whether to attack a
particular ship, or a fleet of ships.
Spoils were evenly divided into shares; the captain received an agreed
amount for the ship, plus a portion of the share of the prize money,
usually five or six shares.
Crews generally had no regular wages, being paid only from their shares
of the plunder, a system called "no purchase, no pay" by Modyford or
"no prey, no pay" by Exquemelin. There was a strong esprit among
buccaneers. This, combined with overwhelming numbers, allowed them to
win battles and raids. There was also, for some time, a social insurance system guaranteeing compensation for battle wounds at a worked-out scale.
Tortugan buccaneers also lived in lifelong male partnerships. This institution of male partnership was called matelotage and the partners matelots. Matelots
shared their beds, property, food, and loot with one another.
The extent to which matelotage included homosexuality is controversial.
Although a few historians have claimed, with no evidence, that
homosexuality was universal among the buccaneers, it is recognized by
most that matelots shared women as well as their chattels, and that
buccaneers were frequent and enthusiastic patrons of female prostitutes.
It is nevertheless agreed that a substantial minority of buccaneer
matelots were likely homosexual.Download this game and enjoy the Playing Experience.
Before Download Please Just Click Here to Support then Download
http://www.exegames.net/2012/10/pirates-legend-of-black-buccaneer-pc.html
http://www.exegames.net/2012/10/pirates-legend-of-black-buccaneer-pc.html
0 comments:
Post a Comment