Pg 014 - Henry Morgan Recruiting for the Attack (bw)

The Brethren or Brethren of the Coast were a loose coalition of

pirates Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...

and

privateers A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...

commonly known as

buccaneer Buccaneers were a kind of privateers or free sailors particular to the Caribbean Sea during the 17th and 18th centuries. First established on northern Hispaniola as early as 1625, their heyday was from Stuart Restoration, the Restoration in 16 ...

s that were active in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico ...

, and

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

. They were a syndicate of captains with letters of marque and reprisal who regulated their privateering enterprises within the community of privateers and with their outside benefactors. They were primarily private individual merchant mariners of Protestant background, usually of English and French origin. During their heyday, when the

Thirty Years War The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, most destructive conflicts in History of Europe, European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648. Fought primarily in Central Europe, an es ...

was devastating the Protestant communities of France, Germany, and the Netherlands while England was engaged in various conflicts, the privateers of these nationalities were issued letters of marque to raid Catholic French and Spanish shipping and territories. Based primarily on the island of Tortuga off the coast of

Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...

and in the city of Port Royal on the island of

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

, the original Brethren were mostly French

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

and British Protestants, but their ranks were joined by other adventurers of various nationalities including

Spaniards Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance peoples, Romance ethnic group native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of National and regional identity in Spain, national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex Hist ...

, and even

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

n sailors, as well as escaped

slaves Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

, and

outlaw An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so that anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them ...

s of various sovereigns. In keeping with their Protestant and mostly

Common Law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipresen ...

heritage, the Brethren were governed by

codes of conduct A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the norms, rules, and responsibilities or proper practices of an individual party or an organization. Companies' codes of conduct A company code of conduct is a set of rules which is commonly writt ...

that favored legislative decision-making, hierarchical command authority, individual rights, and equitable division of revenues.

Henry Morgan Sir Henry Morgan ( cy, Harri Morgan; – 25 August 1688) was a privateer, plantation owner, and, later, Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica. From his base in Port Royal, Jamaica, he raided settlements and shipping on the Spanish Main, becoming wea ...

was perhaps the most famous member of the Brethren and the one usually credited with codifying its organization. However, following the demographic changes which featured the rise of slave labor in the Caribbean islands, most maritime families moved to the mainland colonies of the future United States or to their home countries. A few, unable to compete effectively with slave labor, enamored of easy riches, or out of angst, continued to maintain the Brethren of the Coasts as a purely criminal organization which preyed upon all civilian maritime shipping. This second era of the Brethren began the age of piracy and brigandage which affected the Caribbean until socioeconomic and military changes of the late 18th and early 19th century finally broke its back. Many pirates made their journeys there, and one of the most famous was

Alexandre Exquemelin Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin (also spelled ''Esquemeling'', ''Exquemeling'', or ''Oexmelin'') (c. 1645–1707) was a French, Dutch or Flemish writer best known as the author of one of the most important sourcebooks of 17th-century piracy, first p ...

. A fictionalized, romanticized version of the Brethren was featured in the '' Pirates of the Caribbean'' films.

References

*Kemp, Peter Christopher Lloyd. ''Brethren of the Coast: The British and French Buccaneers of the South Sea.'' New York: St. Martin, 1960, 1961. *Marx, Jennifer. ''Pirates and Privateers of the Caribbean.'' Melbourne, Florida: Krieger, 1992. {{DEFAULTSORT:Brethren Of The Coast Piracy in the Atlantic Ocean Pirates

See also

References