Henry Morgan

Born around 1635 in Monmouthshire, Morgan's path to the Caribbean remains unclear - he likely sailed with Christopher Myngs's raiders during the Anglo-Spanish War in the late 1650s. As tensions flared in 1667, Jamaica's governor handed him a letter of marque, and Morgan moved through the Spanish Main methodically: Puerto del Príncipe, Porto Bello, then Maracaibo and Gibraltar in 1668, where he destroyed a Spanish squadron on his way out. In 1671 he crossed the Panamanian jungle and sacked Panama City from the Pacific side, a raid that violated a freshly signed peace treaty and got him arrested and shipped to London. Charles II knighted him instead. Morgan returned to Jamaica as lieutenant governor in 1674, sat in the Assembly, occasionally ran the colony when the governor was away, and lived off his three sugar plantations until his death in 1688. A former crewmate's memoir later accused him of torture during the Panama raid; Morgan won the libel case, but the damage stuck, and the legend that followed him had sharper edges than the man in office ever did.