So many successful pirate attacks were made that galleons were forced to sail together in fleets with armed vessels for protection. The Caribbean remained at the centre of lucrative trade as gold and silver gave way to slave trading, tobacco, sugar and so on ensuring a steady supply of attractive targets.įrom the 16th century, large Spanish ships, called galleons, began to sail back to Europe, loaded with precious cargoes that pirates found impossible to resist. The buccaneers had become true pirates.Īs Spanish settlers set up new towns on Caribbean islands and the American mainland, these too came under pirate attack. Although raids began in this way, with official backing, the buccaneers gradually became more and more out of control, eventually attacking any ship they thought carried valuable cargo, whether it belonged to an enemy country or not. Some of the largest scale raids were led by the Welsh captain, Sir Henry Morgan (later knighted for his services). Later, the governors of Caribbean islands such as Jamaica paid the buccaneers to attack Spanish treasure ships and ports.

Their name came from the special wooden huts called boucans where they smoked their meat. At first, they lived as hunters, and shot wild pigs with their long-barrelled muskets. In the 17th century, buccaneers lived on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola and its tiny turtle-shaped neighbour, Tortuga. While Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean films are entirely fictional, there is no doubting that the Caribbean was the centre of piracy in the ‘Golden Age of Piracy’. Who were the real pirates of the Caribbean?

Pirate of the caribbean free