So, now I’m at Bermuda island, actually Bermudas, an archipelago of almost two hundred islands, maybe the more oriental of the Caribbean group, and at this point, we are actually going through some caves, looking for old treasures, etc. Then I’m in Freetown, Eleuthera, a small stript island on the east coast of the main Bahamas archipelago. Then I’m at Pillory Beach, a beach on the west coast of the Grand Turk Island. Then I’m in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Then I’m in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, the hometown of Cofresí, which is considered the "Last of the West India pirates". Then I’m at Sam Lord's Castle, Barbados. And at the same time, I’m in Oranjestad, Aruba. And I’m in Willemstad, as well, the capital city of Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island. So, back to Bermuda, here we go, under earth, I’m actually with a group of drug dealers from European and American origin, and so, here we are, exploring some caves, and as we go through, some of the guys are actually talking about two old pirates from Bermudian origin, John Bowen and Nat North. And yeah, the American gobbler says, “Bowen… here, in this island, he was born, but later he would move to the proprietary colony of Carolina… then, Bowen's ship would be attacked and captured by French pirates… this is, by then, at that time… the pirates used to cross the Atlantic Ocean, heading to Madagascar, but… they ran aground near Florida’s shores… so, Bowen and the other English prisoners managed to seize one of that french ships and sailed to St. Augustine, North Florida, where they would join the Captain Read crew, a master pirate active in the Caribbean and in the Mozambique channel, and so, Bowen would end up in Madagascar as well, where he would become a captain, and later… making several crosses between east Africa and India… where they would attack portuguese ships loaded with spices…” And then I’m in Freetown, Eleuthera, a small stript island on the east coast of the Bahamas, a island with no more than ten thousand habitants, and so, I’m here with Roy, a local guy, we are at a pub, on the beach, beaches with pinkish sand… and as it goes, Roy tells me about the Eleutheran Adventurers, a group of English Puritans and religious independents who left Bermuda to settle in this island in the late seventeenth century. “They were expelled from Bermuda for their failure to swear allegiance to the Crown and left in search of a place in which they could freely practice their faith… this group represented the first concerted European effort to colonize the Bahamas... mid-seventeenth century was a period of religious and political turmoil in England, culminating in the English Civil War… this conflict spread to Bermuda, where a period of civil strife resulted in a victory for the supporters of the royalist party, known as Cavaliers… the struggle eventually led to the expulsion of the colony's Puritans and independents to the Bahamas, which the English had laid claim circa 1600 but had not permanently settled… So, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Bermudian independent Puritans had sent an expedition to explore these new islands, led by captain William Sayle who took about seventy people to settle here… so, in the beginning, they made landfall on a small island called Cigateo, which they would name Eleutheria… a deserted inland… coz, its original inhabitants, the Lucayans, had been decimated through the slaving activities of the Spanish and the numerous European diseases, especially smallpox… Sayle and his assistants had an argument aboard, an argument about what religious freedom means, and as a solution to this problem, Sayle left his assistants and went forward to reach other Bahamian Islands.. and so, the settlers ran into trouble before they even land here, when they encountered a storm and their ship ran aground into rocks, later called the Devil's Backbone, located on the north of Spanish Wells… They had lost their provisions and had no food, and so, Sayle took some men in a small boat and went to Virginia to find help, where he got a ship and supplies and came back to relieve the others… Then, later, more colonists expelled from Bermuda would arrive here, by the middle of the seventeenth century and also these ones faced the predicament of inadequate supplies… but the Eleutheran people showed their thankfulness by sending the ship back to Boston filled with Braziletto wood… then later, Sayle went on to become governor of South Carolina and Eleuthera would drift…” and so, then I’m at Pillory Beach, Grand Turk Island with a Turkish guy called Memet that has just told his story, that is, some years ago he emigrated to US but didn't go well with the americans and later would come down looking for a warmer place, so, first he came to Mexico, then to Cuba and then he would get curious with this name “Turks and Caicos” and after a trip through other caribbean islands he ended up here, thinking that he would encounter another people from turkish background here… but later, “I would get to know that this name “Turks” actually comes from a species of cactus common on the island, a cactus with a distinctive cap, reminiscent of an Ottoman fez” he said and later we would go up some mountains, looking for this type of cacti. And now I’m already at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, I’m here at some balcony, by the harbor, with a very calm man from Norwegen origin, Lars, and so, as it goes, knowing the level of violence and debauchery in this city, this is, knowing the levels of homicide, rape, kidnapping, and lynchings, I decide to ask him what he' still doing here after all, and thus, with some resilience he tells me that “a woman did witchcraft on me, she robbed all my interests and so… that’s why I’m still here, and I have no will to go anywhere…” and then, while we drink that borbon, me also, I will tell him the problems I had with other Caribbean women on other islands, but soon, we would leave that matter and concentrate on the traveling issues. Lars tells me about his first sailboat trip across the Atlantic, “on my debut, I sailed from Ireland to St. Pierre Miquelon island on the Canadian coast… It took me only about two weeks, because I had a great wind on my back… and once in St. Pierre, I would cross into the Canadian mainland and then I would travel extensively across the USA before arriving in Cuba, Jamaica, and other Caribbean islands… and then I would come back to Europe… and a few months after I was back… this time I came from Norway to Germany, I spent some time in south Spain and would end up in the Canary Islands… from there I got into another sail boat that took me to Brazil, and from Brazil I would pass to French Guiana, Suriname and then The Caribbean Islands again… then, I would get into a relationship with a woman from the Dominicana, and later we would travel across South America together, and eventually we would cross into central Africa mainland, and so, I lost her around there… desolated, I ended up in East Africa with no reason to be there, and so, from East Africa I passed to the Arabian peninsula, India, Thailand and the Indonesian archipelago, where once again I got into this sea life… and so, later, I would make my base in Bali island, open a business there… then I would come to Australia, work there for a while, and from Australia I would sail into French Polinesea, that is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and then I would cross onto central America, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and from there, once again, I would come back into the Caribean islands…” And so, by now, I’m in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, Ponce is a large city on the southern coast of Puerto Rico, its well-preserved old town features grand mansions built in the unique Ponce Creole architectural style, and once again, we are talking about pirates, my friend Juan tell me about Cofresí, “that was probably the last of the West India pirates… he acted in the beginning of the nineteenth century, sailing with the flag of Gran Colombia, a state that encompassed present-day Colombia, mainland Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, parts of northern Peru, northwestern Brazil and Guyana. So other ships would lower their guard as he passed by… His real name was Roberto Cofresí, he was born into a noble family, but the political and economic difficulties faced by the island as a colony of the Spanish Empire during the Latin American wars of independence meant that his household was poor… Cofresí worked at sea from an early age which familiarized him with the region's geography, but it provided only a modest salary, and he eventually decided to abandon the sailor's life and became a pirate. He had previous links to land-based criminal activities, but the reason for Cofresí's change of vocation is unknown; historians speculate that he may have worked as a privateer aboard El Scipión, a ship owned by one of his cousins… He commanded several small-draft vessels, the best known a fast six-gun sloop named Anne, and he had a preference for speed and maneuverability over firepower… He manned them with small, rotating crews with no more than twenty people onboard… most crew members were recruited locally, although men occasionally joined them from the other Antilles, Central America, and Europe and he never confessed to murder, but he reportedly boasted about his crimes… so, later, after a series of robberies… Spain would create an alliance with the West Indies Squadron and the Danish government, and it was this alliance that ambushed and injured him. Cofresí was captured and imprisoned, making a last unsuccessful attempt to escape by trying to bribe an official with part of a hidden stash. By then, the pirates were sent to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where a brief military tribunal found them guilty and sentenced them to death. He inspired stories and myths after his death, most emphasizing a Robin Hood-like "steal from the rich, give to the poor" philosophy which became associated with him. This portrayal has grown into legend, commonly accepted as fact in Puerto Rico and later, Cofresí became a symbol of the Puerto Rican independence movement, including Simón Bolívar's campaign against Spain… Historical and mythical accounts of his life have inspired songs, poems, plays, books, and films... Caves, beaches, and other alleged hideouts or locations of buried treasure have been named after Cofresí, and a resort town near Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic also has his name, do you wanna go there?”; “No, I just came from there…” I say, “Actually I wanna go east not west…” And east we went on a fast boat, called a cigarette boat… so, quickly we got to the US virgin Islands, St. Thomas and St. John, then the Anguilla, famous for its Big Spring Caves, with its prehistoric petroglyphs, and then we passed Saint Martin/Sint Maarten, a divided tiny island, half belonging to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, half belonging to the French crown, so european community territories, then we pass the Dutch islands of Saba and Sint Eustatius, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere. Then we pass Montserrat, a British Overseas Territory, and then Guadeloupe, Dominica and Martinique or Madinina or Madiana, also part of the French Republic. Then we make a stop in St Lucia, previously called Ouanalao and later Hewanorra, names given by the native Arawaks and Caribs, who are described as Amerindian peoples. Then we make a stop in St Vincent and the Grenadines, that are also a country, or an independent archipelago, but previously part of France and then the British captured the island and drove out the French from during the Seven Years' War, but then the Black Caribs opposed themselves to the British presence and entered into open conflict with them, starting the First Carib War, which lasted almost until the end of the eighteenth century. Then during the Anglo-French War that happened around that time, the French recaptured St Vincent again, however, the British regained control of it under the Treaty of Versailles. Then the uneasy peace between the British and the Black Caribs led to the Second Carib War, which lasted until the end of the century. Then the British abolished the slavery and the tensions eased… Later in the nineteenth century many Portuguese immigrants arrived from Madeira island, and shiploads of Indian laborers would arrive circa the same time. Then we cross to Barbados, mooring close to the so-called, Sam Lord's Castle, “a famous buccaneer native from this island” Juan tells me. “Lord amassed great wealth for this castle-mansion plundering ships stranded in the coral reefs just off the coast of his estate… according to legend, Sam Lord would hang lanterns high in the coconut trees around his estate and the passing ships far out at sea would think it was the port city of Bridgetown and would sail towards the reef in the area, leading them to wreck their ships… Sam Lord would then board the ships and keep the riches for his castle, this one, in our back… later turned into a hotel, but eventually the massive debts of the hotel was auctioned off and parts of it were scheduled to be demolished to make way for a larger hotel development… but due to financial woes, the redevelopment didn't happen and for a while the Government of Barbados was proposing a buy-out, but later, along this process, the castle was gutted by a major fire, and so, what we see now is the ruins of it, acquired by a new group intended to keep speculating on it…” And then, after this story we get aboard the cigarette-boat again, we make a sudden stop in the tiny island of Petite Martinique which is a dependency of Grenada, and then we move to out last stop, the island of Curaçao, that is already relatively close to the Venezuela mainland, and me, that understand a bit of Portuguese and Spanish, thinking that the word “Curaçao” would come from the portuguese word “coração” that means “Heart”, got to know that actually No, this word is coming from the verb “to cure” in portuguese “curar”, and the explication for this is that “the Portuguese and Spanish sailors from the sixteenth and seventeenth century going across the atlantic would get scurvy due to the lack of vitamin C and so, the crew suffering from this sickness would be let on to this inland (rich in some kind of acid oranges) and then, when the ship would return from their journeys across the south American coast, they would stop again in this island and the members left there would be cured…” that’s the theory. But as we stop on the harbor, it is not oranges that we are looking for, we try this Curaçao liquor, bluish, a liqueur flavored with the dried peel of the bitter orange Laraha, “a citrus brought by the Dutch to this island from the then so-called Dutch East Indies, nowadays Indonesia” the barman explains.
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