Buccaneers (through the Fr. verb boucaner, and noun boucanier, from Caribbean boucan, 'smoke-dried meat'), a name given to the celebrated associations of piratical adventurers, who, from the commencement of the second quarter of the 16th century to the end of the 17th, maintained themselves in the Caribbean seas, at first by systematic reprisals on the Spaniards, latterly by less justifiable and indiscriminate piracy. The arrogant assumption by the Spaniards of a divine right to the whole New World, and their consequent exclusive monopoly of trade, could not of course be tolerated by the enterprising mariners of England and France, who began to band themselves together for mutual defence, and for the plunder of the common enemy. In 1625 an attempt was made to found a settlement on the island of St Christopher as a centre of smuggling enterprise with San Domingo, and in 1630 the small island of Tortuga was seized and converted into a stronghold. From this the buccaneers made their incursions against the Spaniards, and here they stored the gains of their roving adventurous life. Their earlier history shows that they had a rude honour and fidelity in their relation with one another, which attracted to their flag hundreds of adventurous spirits from every European trading nation. Tortuga was taken and retaken by the Spaniards, but the capture of Jamaica in 1655 finally gave the buccaneers a surer footing. Their power had now become considerable, and their seamen were as famous for their desperate courage as for their consuming hatred of the Spaniards. Their history embraces narratives of cruelty and bloodshed hardly to be surpassed in the annals of crime, but is brightened by many a story of high and romantic adventure, of chivalrous valour, and brilliant generalship. Among the 'great captains' whose names figure most prominently in the records of buccaneering were the Frenchman Montbars, surnamed by the terrible title of 'The Exterminator'; Peter of Dieppe, surnamed 'The Great'—as truly, perhaps, as many others so distinguished; L'Olonnais; Michael de Busco and Bartolomeo de Portuguez; Mansvelt, and Van
Horn. Pre-eminent, however, among them all was the Welsman, Henry Morgan, afterwards knighted by Charles II. and made deputy-governor of Jamaica, a man of rare capacity and courage. He it was that led the way for the buccaneers to the Southern Ocean, by his daring march in 1671 across the Isthmus of Panama to the city of that name, which he took and plundered after a desperate battle. In 1680 they crossed the Isthmus of Darien and seized some Spanish vessels in the Bay of Panama, after which some returned, but others cruised for months through the South Sea, coming back with enormous wealth to the West Indies by Cape Horn. Other expeditions followed, whose ravages almost paralysed the Spanish trade in the Pacific. In 1685, when their fleet defied the Spanish power in the Bay of Panama, their glory was at its height. The strange confederacy now began to fall to pieces under the jealousies that grew up with wealth and greater security; and the next stages in their history are disunion, decay, and extinction. The war between France and Britain, after the accession of William III., dissolved the ancient alliance of the French and English buccaneers. After the Peace of Ryswick, and the accession of the Bourbon Philip V. to the Spanish crown (1701), the buccaneers finally disappeared to make way for a race of mere cut-throats and vulgar desperadoes, who lacked the greatness of their predecessors. The last event in their history was the capture of Cartagena in 1697, where the booty was enormous. See Dampier's Voyages; the Narratives of Wafer, Ringrove, and Sharp; Captain Burney's History of the Buccaneers of America (1816); Thornbury's Monarchs of the Main (1855); Les Flibustiers au XVII. Siècle (1884); Powell's edition (1893) of Esquemeling's Buccaneers of America.