Pirates, Buccaneers, Privateers, Corsairs, and Circumnavigators

Abstract

After the conquest of territory on the western coast of South America, from Panama down to the Magellan Strait, Spain came to regard the Pacific Ocean—better known then as the South Sea—as its own monopoly, a kind of privately owned lake. With this in mind, two Spanish viceroys were established—the one in Lima covered Chile. Britain strove to break this monopoly, both officially and unofficially, motivated by the prospects of plunder against the Spanish, often backed by the legitimacy of a state of war existing between the two countries. A secondary motive was that, from the British perspective, the land mass of Latin America acted as a barrier to the important spice trade in the east. There was no Panama Canal, no passage in the northern hemisphere, and for many years it was believed that the only sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific was through the Magellan Strait. Britain’s efforts to harass Spain in her imperial backyard and to get around this barrier brought her into continual conflict with Spain.

I heard Mr Caldcleugh say that sitting by an old lady at a dinner in Coquimbo, she remarked how wonderfully strange it was that she should live to dine in the same room with an Englishman. Twice as a girl, at the cry of “Los Ingleses,” every soul carrying what valuables they could had taken to the mount.

—Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary, May 12, 1835