Captain Lawrence Prince

Lawrence Prince was born in Amsterdam. In 1670, he sailed from Port Royal, Jamaica to Colombia. He had plans to take the town of Mompos which was over 150 miles inland, part of the trip was up the Magdalena River. Upon their arrival they found a new fort on an island river. The pirates were drove back with cannon fire. Prince was determined not to return to Port Royal empty handed. In August he sailed for Nicaragua and was successful in an almost indentical scheme. He sailed up the San Juan River, captured the fort and took canoes up to Lake Nicaragua where they pillaged the city of Granada.
The Spanish report of the incident states, "made havoc and a thousand destructions, sending the head of a priest in a basket and saying that he would deal with the rest of the prisoners in the same way unless they gave him 70,000 pesos in ransom."
Considering that the city had been sacked by Henry Morgan and John Morris in 1664 they were only able to raise a small portion of the ransom. prince having his bluff called, returned to Port Royal.
Modyford, Governor of Jamaica, sent Prince to join Morgan's Panamanian expedition. Morgan, seeing Prince to be a man of much spirit, made him third in command after himself and Edward Collier. After the raid, the English government sent Thomas Lynch to Jamaica to arrest Modyford and Morgan for their piratical activities. Lynch, not having sufficient force to outright arrest Morgan, decided to try ingratiating himself to the pirates. Prince was made Lynch's lieutenant and under the governorship of Lynch thrived at Jamaica, having his own plantation.

Posted by Under The Black Flag on 4:22 π.μ.. Filed under biographies, Captain Lawrence Prince . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0