William Jackson () was an English

privateer 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 ...

who, based in

Guanaja Guanaja is one of the Bay Islands of Honduras and is in the Caribbean. It is about off the north coast of Honduras, and from the island of Roatan. One of the cays off Guanaja, also called Guanaja or Bonacca or Low Cay (or just simply, The Ca ...

and Roatan, was in the service of the

Providence Island Company The Providence Company or Providence Island Company was an English chartered company founded in 1629 by a group of Puritans including Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick in order to establish the Providence Island colony on Providence Island and Mosq ...

from 1639 until around 1641. During that year, he captured a Spanish slave ship at the Honduran port of Trujillo and received a ransom of 8,000 pounds of

indigo Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue (a primary color in the RGB color space), as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word ''indicum'', m ...

as well as 2,000 pieces-of-eight and two gold chains. Leaving the Providence Island Company, he sailed to England where he sold sugar and indigo to obtain supplies for another privateering expedition and, upon receiving a three-year letter of marque from the

Earl of Warwick Earl of Warwick is one of the most prestigious titles in the peerages of the United Kingdom. The title has been created four times in English history, and the name refers to Warwick Castle and the town of Warwick. Overview The first creation c ...

, he set sail commanding a fleet including such prominent privateers as

Samuel Axe Samuel Axe was an English privateer in Dutch service during the early 17th century. Serving with English forces in the Netherlands during the Dutch War of Independence, Axe traveled to the British Providence Island colony in the western Caribbe ...

William Rous William Rous ( fl. 1631–1645) was a 17th-century English privateer in the service of the Providence Island Company. He was later enlisted by William Jackson to accompany him on his expedition to the West Indies. Biography A step-nephew of Joh ...

and

Lewis Morris Lewis Morris (April 8, 1726 – January 22, 1798) was an American Founding Father, landowner, and developer from Morrisania, New York, presently part of Bronx County. He signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence as a delegate to the Continen ...

in 1642. Although Jackson's later activities are not recorded, another Captain William Jackson led a small fleet consisting of over 1,000 buccaneers from St. Kitts and

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate). ...

looting and plundering throughout the

Spanish Main During the Spanish colonization of America, the Spanish Main was the collective term for the parts of the Spanish Empire that were on the mainland of the Americas and had coastlines on the Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico. The term was used to di ...

including looting the cities of

Maracaibo ) , motto = "''Muy noble y leal''"(English: "Very noble and loyal") , anthem = , image_map = , mapsize = , map_alt = ...

and Trujillo during 1642 and 1643. Anchoring in the harbor of present-day Kingston on March 25, he led a party of 500 men against the nearby town of St. Jago de la Vega which he captured after heavy resistance by the town's defenders at a cost of around forty men. Threatening to burn the town, he received a ransom of 200 cattle, 10,000 pounds of

cassava bread Tapioca (; ) is a starch extracted from the storage roots of the cassava plant (''Manihot esculenta,'' also known as manioc), a species native to the North and Northeast regions of Brazil, but whose use is now spread throughout South America. ...

, and 7,000 pieces-of-eight. Many of the English buccaneers became enamored with the tropical island and, during their stay, twenty three men left to live among the Spaniards.C.V. Black, ''A History of Jamaica'' (London: Collins, 1975), p. 45. Whether the two men are one and the same is unclear by traditional accounts, however both were in the same location at roughly the same period.

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Pirates and Privateers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jackson, William Year of death missing English privateers Year of birth uncertain

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