Admiral Sir Henry Morgan was not a pirate but a Welsh privateer who had the authorization of the English government to fight against Spanish ships and everything he would stole was in fact his pay. He was a sea raider with permission.
Morgan was born in 1635 in Llanrhymney, Glamorgan, Wales but there are no records of his life until 1662. It is believed that he was a captain of a ship that was involved in raid of several places in Cuba and by 1665 his wealth was rather large. At that time he was commander of a ship in Edward Mansfield's expedition and later when Mansfield was killed he became an admiral which meant he was in fact Colonel of the Port Royal Militia. It was also this year when he married his cousin Mary Elizabeth.
With a fleet of ten ships and five hundred men, Henry Morgan landed first on the island of Cuba and after conquering and plundering the town of Puerto Principe he continued to Portobello, Panama. Governor of Panama, aware of the fact he can’t deal with Henry Morgan’s army, offered a large ransom. This made Morgan indescribably wealthy man when he came back to Port Royal, Jamaica. It was in 1668 when Morgan set off again, this time to try to stop the Spaniards from attacking Jamaica. He spent eight weeks in the Lagoon of Maracaibo, mostly unsuccessful because most of the people fled before he had landed and there was little many found. When he tried to leave Maracaibo he came across three Spanish ships, the Magdalena, the San Luis, and the Soledad, waiting for him at the inlet to the Caribbean. In a battle on May 1st 1669 the Magdalena was destroyed, the Soledad captured while the crew of San Luis burnt their ship to stop the pirates from having it. Then Henry Morgan showed his brilliance as a commander by beginning to fake landing of his troops and after all of enemies guns being moved from the Lagoon, Henry Morgan elegantly sailed back for Port Royal.
In 1671 Henry Morgan decided to head for Panama once again uniting his forces with those from Tortuga, leading an army of total 1800 men. After taking a loot of over thousand hundred pounds, they burnt the city to the ground. Meanwhile, England and Spain had signed a piece treaty, so Morgan was arrested because of his violence in Panama but managed to prove in English court he had no knowledge of treaty, and was brought back to Jamaica as a Lieutenant Governor. This place was his only until 1681 when his health got worse. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis but might also have liver failure because he was a heavy drinker. Henry Morgan died on August 25th, 1688 and was buried in a cemetery which sank after an earthquake in 1692.
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