QUARANTINE BLOG # 628

December 18, 2021

After a few weeks in port, most of the pirates were broke – when the pirates came home from a mission, flush with cash, the prices of everything went up. With empty pockets, they came to Morgan, demanding another mission.

The target was Venezuela’s eastern shores. When they arrived at Gibraltar (not the Mediterranean island), the people were gone. A bad reputation was as good as bullets to a pirate, and by now Morgan’s had spread far and wide. 

The Spanish launched the Armada de Barlovento – the Windward Fleet, under the command of Don Alonzo de Espinosa. When they reached the Gulf of Venezuela, Don Alonzo received word that Morgan was at Gibraltar, behind enemy lines, trapped without the possibility of escape. Henry Morgan was going to surrender or die. Or, since we are talking about the colonial Spanish system, he was going to surrender and then die.

Don Alonzo arrayed his ships across the entrance to Gibraltar. Morgan faced three ships with 94 guns between them. Any approaching vessel would pass through an 800 yard wide channel with Spanish cannon pointed at them.

Brash as ever, Morgan sent Don Alonzo a letter, not of surrender but one demanding a tribute for not putting the city of Maracaibo to the flame. Don Alonzo replied that Morgan had two days to surrender or face annihilation.

The stalemate actually lasted for a week when Morgan’s fleet sailed up the lagoon and took a position within view of the Spaniards, but out of firing range. The two sides stared each other down for two days, when the pirate fleet raised anchor and came sailing straight at Don Alonzo, Morgan’s flagship in the lead.

The buccaneers’ ships appeared to be attempting a frontal assault. And then Don Alonzo had a moment of realization. The decks were empty, except for wooden cutouts shaped by Morgan’s carpenters to resemble men with cutlasses. It was a fireship, a floating trap designed to set the enemy aflame. A dozen men steered the ship, and then jumped into canoes to join the pirate fleet.

A 17th century warship was a conflagration waiting to happen: In addition to the magazines of gunpowder in the hold, its seams were caulked with tar, its ropes were covered with a layer of fat, and its sails were flammable canvas. First one Spanish ship, then a second were fully engulfed. The Soledad, the flagship, wheeled away but had a malfunction in its rigging and was soon unnavigable. The buccaneers chased it down, swarmed up the its sides, corrected the rigging jam, and had a fine Spanish ship as plunder.

Morgan’s men still had to deal with the deadly cannon. In plain sight of the castle’s lookouts, canoes were unloaded from Morgan’s ships, and men climbed down into them. Boats were then rowed toward the shoreline. Once there they were concealed behind trees, presumably to unload the men and head back to the main ships empty except for two or three oarsmen. Don Alonzo drew the obvious conclusion: Morgan was unloading his men for a land assault, and turned the fort’s guns away from the sea.

Morgan was doing nothing of the sort. The canoes were full of men as they left the ships, but when they reached the shore, out of sight of the shore guns, the men lay down on the bottom of the craft and returned to the ships. The small craft sailed to the side of the ship which was hidden from watching eyes where the buccaneers climbed the ropes, and then made their way over to the side facing the Spanish and repeated the process.

Morgan waited for cover of darkness, then pulled up his anchors and let the currents take them through the channel. When they were even with the castle, the ships sprang to life and picked up speed. Don Alonzo wheeled his cannon to the seaside ports, and blasted away at the departing ships, but Morgan was now out of range.

Next week, Henry Morgan sails for Panama and the heart of the Spanish Main.

👉  Today’s close, “Beyond All Our Expectations,” is from Celebrating Abundance, by Walter Brueggemann.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth (John 1:9-14).

There was something unroyal about him: no pretense, no ambition, no limousine, no army, no coercion, no royal marking. Wise and intelligent people are turned toward the regal. Kings and prophets want to penetrate the mystery. But the Jesus who showed up amid royal hopes and royal songs was of another ilk, powerful in weakness, rich in poverty, wise in foolishness, confounding the wisdom of the Greeks and bewildering the Jews.

He is beyond all usual categories of power, because he embodies the gentle, gracious, resilient, demanding power of God. He does not trifle in temples and cities and dynasties but in the power and truth of the creator God.

But John does not linger over Christology. He rushes on to the disciples. You disciples, you have seen. You have known; you have been in his presence. You have been healed and fed by him. You have tasted his bread and drunk his wine. You know!

●  You know about life rooted in the spirit of God and not in the spirit of the age of violence.

●  You know about the poor and have not had your head turned by wealth and power.

●  You know about the impulse of creation toward health, a creaturely health signed in bread and wine. You know.

And because you know, you keep on singing. You can keep singing. You can keep hoping. And because you sing and hope, you can act in freedom, unburdened, uncoerced, unafraid, and without cynicism. The song goes on. It is a subversive, revolutionary song. And we, given access to this odd king, get to sign on to sing and to live it unafraid!

God of joy and hope, you come to us in Jesus as a king who overturns all our ordinary understandings of power. Your presence is unexpected and unsettling, but we know you, for we have known your healing and provision. Open our hearts to keep on singing and hoping, that we may live and act without fear. Amen.

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