the French to the west, Spanish Florida
was in an unfavorable position by the
mid-18th century.
Pirates of the Caribbean
The power struggle taking place in Florida
and adjoining regions was mirrored by
the struggle in the Caribbean Sea. As early
as the 1570s, when Spain and Portugal
were alone in having founded New World
colonies and Spanish power was at its
zenith, Spanish traffic was harassed by
English privateers such as Sir Francis
Drake (1540–1596) and Sir John Hawkins
(1532–1595). As privateers, they acted as
agents of their country in harassing the
commerce of England’s enemy, attacking
and plundering Spanish ships and colonial
ports. Puerto Rico built strong fortifica-
tions in defense, such as the fortress El
Morro, erected to guard San Juan, and in
1595 repelled Drake and Hawkins’s
attempt to capture the colony.
In the 17th century, privateering gave
way to unqualified piracy, robbery on the
high seas unsanctioned by rival powers. In
the Caribbean, English, Dutch, and
French pirates, also known as buccaneers
or freebooters, went down in lore and lit-
erature for attacking coastal colonies and
slow-moving Spanish galleons laden with
New World gold and silver. Their name
came from the French boucanier, a person
from Hispaniola or the nearby island of
Tortuga who smoked meat on a boucan, or
barbecue frame. Tortuga and Jamaica were
among their bases in what was called the
Spanish Main, an area roughly equivalent
to the Caribbean region. Another base
was the Central American region that is
now Belize, a longtime British colony
called British Honduras. The line betweenSPAIN IN THE AMERICAS 51This illustration of Sir Francis Drake’s ships attacking St. Augustine appeared in a book published in London in 1589.(Library of
Congress)