According to Spanish accounts, Lawrence Prince was a Dutchman from
Amsterdam who arrived in the Caribbean in the late 1650s. In 1659, he was one of four men, including
John Morris and
Robert Searle, who bought a captured Spanish prize from Commodore
Christopher Myngs following his ten-week voyage. Prior to joining Morgan's forces at
Port Royal in November 1670, he had previously sailed up to
Rio Magdalena intending to raid the town of
Mompos located inland. Prince was forced to retreat, however, when they were surprised by cannon fire from a recently built island fort protecting the settlement. Prince and his men, determined to "make voyage", sailed north to
Nicaragua in August. As in
Colombia, Prince sailed up the
San Juan River, captured a
Spanish fort and paddled by canoe to
Lake Nicaragua where they successfully raided
Granada. This was almost identical to Morgan's raid in 1664. Official Spanish reports of the incident claimed that Prince "made havoc and a thousand destructions, sending the head of a priest in a basket and demanding 70,000 pesos in ransom." Arriving in Port Royal weeks later, he and two other captains were reproved by Governor
Thomas Modyford for attacking the
Spanish without a commission or
letter of marque. Modyford thought it prudent not "to press the matter too far in this juncture" This not only forced the Spanish defenders into committing to an attack, it also disrupted plans by their commander,
Juan Perez de Guzman, to stampede a herd of cattle and other livestock towards the advancing buccaneers. He had kept them behind his infantry line, intending to allow the buccaneers to pass through his lines, and setting them against the attackers to presumably disrupt and disorganize them just before the Spanish foot made contact with the buccaneering force. Instead, the Spanish cattle drovers were scared away by Prince's attack, allowing the cattle to wander among the Spanish lines. A simultaneous assault on the hill and against Morgan's advancing buccaneers ended in disaster as concentrated volley fire decimated Spanish forces, which suffered 100 casualties in the first volley alone. The wandering cattle and concentrated fire, left between 400 and 500 dead and wounded before the Spanish finally retreated from the field. He was later appointed a
lieutenant by Modyford's successor, Sir
Thomas Lynch, who replaced Captain John Wilgress, commander of
HMS Assistance, with Major
William Beeston. Lynch may have intended to initiate the restructuring of colonial administration, surrounding himself with known associates rather than appointed officials of the British crown. By 1672, using his share from the Panama raid, Prince became a wealthy landowner on the
Liguanea plain on his
Lawrencefield Estate as it was opened up for cultivation and farming. He died in the mid 1680s, shortly before Henry Morgan purchased the Estate. Prince is commonly mistaken for the English slave trader Lawrence Prince, who captained ships for independent slave traders during the decline of the
Royal African Company in the early 18th century. That Lawrence Prince gained notoriety as the ill-fated captain of the
Whydah, which was captured by the pirate
Samuel Bellamy in 1717. == In popular culture ==