The plan was never supposed to be Maracaibo. Henry Morgan had sailed from Port Royal in October 1668 with ten ships and 800 men, his sights set on Cartagena de Indias, the richest city on the Spanish Main. Then his flagship exploded. A drunken celebration aboard HMS Oxford ended with a spark reaching the powder magazine, killing over 200 men. Morgan survived by luck -- he and the captains sitting on his side of the table lived, while those across from him died. With his fleet crippled and his numbers dwindling as ships deserted, Morgan needed a new target. A French captain named Pierre Le Picard suggested repeating a raid on the towns around Lake Maracaibo, an inland sea eighty-six miles long in the Spanish Province of Venezuela. Morgan agreed. What followed became one of the most audacious episodes in the history of Caribbean piracy.
Morgan's reduced fleet -- eight ships, 500 men -- arrived at Lake Maracaibo on March 9, 1669. The Spanish had built the San Carlos de la Barra Fortress since the last raid on the lake two years earlier, positioning it to guard the narrow approach. It should have stopped Morgan cold. Instead, his men stormed the fortification after dark and found it abandoned -- garrisoned by only an officer and eight soldiers, who had fled, leaving behind a slow-burning fuse connected to the powder kegs. The privateers extinguished the trap, spiked all sixteen guns, and buried them. Then Morgan sailed his entire fleet through the channel into the lake.
Maracaibo fell without a battle. Its residents had been warned and fled into the surrounding jungle, but Morgan's men hunted them down across thirty miles of forest and swamp, taking roughly 100 prisoners. For three weeks the English occupied the town, with Morgan using the St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral as his headquarters. When the plunder proved disappointing -- only 500 pieces of eight -- he sailed south to Gibraltar at the far end of the lake. There the garrison resisted, firing enough cannon to keep Morgan offshore, but his men landed by canoe and took the town from the landward side. Five weeks of occupation followed. The privateers captured some 250 prisoners and looted the surrounding plantations, taking valuables and enslaved people. The human cost of these raids was severe -- residents of both towns were subjected to torture to reveal where they had hidden their wealth.
When Morgan returned north to Maracaibo, disaster awaited. The Spanish Armada de Barlovento had arrived and now blocked the exit: the 48-gun flagship Magdalena, the 38-gun San Luis, and the 24-gun frigate Soledad, commanded by Don Alonso del Campo y Espinosa with 500 men and 126 cannon. Alonso had also restored the fortress with salvaged guns and forty soldiers. Morgan was outgunned from both sides -- the fleet ahead and the fort behind. Alonso sent an ultimatum: surrender within two days or face annihilation. Morgan replied that he looked forward to the "hazard of battle." Negotiations dragged on for a week, with the final Spanish offer demanding Morgan abandon all plunder and slaves. His men voted to fight their way out instead.
The privateers' plan borrowed from Francis Drake: a fireship. They disguised a captured vessel with logs wearing hats to simulate crew, cut extra portholes and fitted log cannons, then packed her with gunpowder, tar, and dried palm leaves. On May 1, Morgan's fleet sailed directly at the Spanish. The fireship rammed the Magdalena, grappled fast, and erupted in flames. A strong wind drove the fire through the flagship in minutes. Alonso abandoned ship for the fort. The Soledad drifted helplessly when her rigging fouled; privateers boarded and took her in hand-to-hand combat. The crew of the San Luis, panicking, set their own ship ablaze rather than let it be captured. Within an hour, the Armada de Barlovento had ceased to exist. Morgan then executed one final trick: he ferried men to shore in canoes, visible to the fort, but brought them back lying flat in the boats, invisible. Alonso moved his guns landward to repel an expected night assault. Under cover of darkness, Morgan's fleet drifted past the fortress on the tide, raising sail only when level with the guns. By the time Alonso realized the deception and dragged his cannon to the seaward wall, the privateers were out of range. Morgan fired a seven-gun salute as a parting insult.
Morgan sailed into Port Royal on May 27, 1669, aboard the captured Soledad -- which he had renamed Satisfaction. Fort Charles fired a salute and crowds lined the beaches. The haul was immense: some 30,000 pounds, worth roughly 10 million pounds today, surpassing even his earlier raid on Porto Bello. Morgan invested part of his share in an 836-acre plantation in Clarendon Parish. Alonso, meanwhile, was sent back to Spain in chains aboard the silver fleet, though he was eventually acquitted after two years of courts-martial. The Queen Regent of Spain, Mariana of Austria, was so furious at the defeat that she ordered all English shipping in the Caribbean seized or sunk, escalating the cycle of reprisal that would lead Morgan to his grandest and most controversial exploit: the sacking of Panama.
Located at 9.82°N, 71.56°W on Lake Maracaibo in northwestern Venezuela. The lake is enormous -- 210 km north to south, 121 km east to west -- and dominates the landscape from any altitude. The narrow strait at the northern end, where the fireship battle occurred, is clearly visible between the Gulf of Venezuela and the lake proper. The San Carlos de la Barra Fortress ruins sit on a sandbar near the strait. Nearest major airport is La Chinita International (SVMC) at Maracaibo. Best viewed at 5,000-15,000 ft to appreciate the strait's narrowness and the lake's vast interior where Morgan's fleet operated.