The pirate Laurens de Graaf was reported in the autumn of 1679 to have captured a Spanish frigate of twenty-four to twenty-eight guns, which he had renamed the Tigre (tiger).

De Graaf has by  1682 become so successful that Henry Morgan, serving his third term as Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, sends the frigate Norwich, under command of Peter Haywood, pirate hunting with de Graaf as his primary quarry.

It is not reported if Haywood encountered de Graaf.

During a brief stop in Cuba around the same time, de Graaf is told of the plans of the Armada de Barlovento, a military institution created by the Spanish empire to protect American overseas territories from European enemy attacks, likewise those of pirates and privateers, to seek him out.

Rather than waiting for the pirate-hunting fleet, he sails immediately in search of them.

After a running gun battle that lasts hours, the Princesa strikes her colors, having lost fifty men to de Graaf's eight or nine. (De Graaf, in an act of kindness, reportedly put the seriously wounded captain of the Princesa ashore with his own surgeon.)

The Princess carries the payroll for Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo: about one hundred and twenty thousand pesos in silver.

After sharing out the prize, ...