Buccaneer.

In December, 1679, he met with several other well-known buccaneers in four barques and two sloops at Point Morant, and on January 7th set sail for Porto Bello. The fleet was scattered by a terrible storm, but eventually they all arrived at the re...

Buccaneer.

In December, 1679, he met with several other well-known buccaneers in four barques and two sloops at Point Morant, and on January 7th set sail for Porto Bello. The fleet was scattered by a terrible storm, but eventually they all arrived at the rendezvous. Some 300 men went in canoes and landed about twenty leagues from the town of Porto Bello, and marched for four days along the sea-coast.

The buccaneers, "many of them were weak, being three days without any food, and their feet cut with the rocks for want of shoes," entered the town on February 17th, 1680. The buccaneers, with prisoners and spoil, left the town just in time, for a party of 700 Spanish soldiers was near at hand coming to the rescue. The share to each man came to one hundred pieces of eight. In 1679 Essex was brought a prisoner by a frigate, the Hunter, to Port Royal, and tried with some twenty of his crew for plundering on the Jamaican coast. Essex was acquitted, but two of his crew were hanged.