General-at-Sea William Penn and General Robert Venables had seized Jamaica in 1655 without orders in the name of Britain's Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, seeking to make up for the disastrous failure of the mission Cromwell had assigned them: to seize Hispaniola.

Spanish resistance has continued for some years, in some cases with the help of the maroons, but Spain will ever succeed in retaking the island.

Under English rule Jamaica has become a haven of privateers, buccaneers, and occasionally outright pirates: Christopher Myngs, Edward Mansvelt, and most famously, Henry Morgan.

Myngs had earned a reputation for unnecessary cruelty during his actions as a commerce raider during the Anglo-Spanish War of 1654, sacking and massacring entire towns in command of whole fleets of buccaneers.

The Spanish government considers Myngs a common pirate and mass murderer, protesting to no avail to the Cromwell government about his conduct.

Because he had shared half of the bounty of his 1659 raid on Venezuela, about a quarter of a million pounds, with the buccaneers against the explicit orders of Edward D'Oyley, the English Commander of Jamaica, he had been arrested for embezzlement and sent back to England on the Marston Moor in 1660.

The later governor described him in an accompanying letter as "unhinged and out of tune".

The Restoration government has retained Myngs in his command however, and in August 1662 he is sent to Jamaica commanding the Centurion in order to resume his activities, despite the fact the war with Spain had ended.

This is part of a covert English policy to undermine the Spanish dominion of the area, by destroying as much as possible of the infrastructure.

Myngs decides that the best way to accomplish this is to employ the full potential of the buccaneers by promising them the opportunity for unbridled plunder and rapine.

He has the complete support of the new governor, Lord Windsor, who fires a large contingent of soldiers to fill Myngs's ranks with disgruntled men.

This year, ...