At end of 1682, the
Saint Nicholas, commanded by Nicolas Van Hoorn, arrived in the Caribbean Sea. This vessel, armed (in part) by the commander of
Dover Castle, had left
England the previous year, intending to trade with the Spaniards in
Cádiz then in
America.
Nicolas Porcio, who was one of the holders of
Asiento de Negros - a royal licence granting monopoly over the draft of the slaves for the Spanish colonies - had apparently promised to obtain for Van Hoorn the permission to sell him Africans in Spanish America. Said promise could not be fulfilled and Van Hoorn sought alternate employ. Van Hoorn was then transformed into a true pirate. He plundered the coast of
Western Africa expecting to be supplied with slaves, as the depositions of four of his men reveal. These depositions, taken in front of Reginald Wilson, the naval officer of
Port Royal, were transmitted by the governor of
Jamaica, Sir
Thomas Lynch, to the secretary of the committee for the Trade and the Plantations,
William Blathwayt, with his letter of 4 March 1683. Indeed, before the arrival of Van Hoorn in
America, the
English colonial authorities had been informed of his piracies in
Africa, and - more seriously - the fact that the
Saint Nicholas had openly broken with its British ship-owners to act on Van Hoorn's own account. Thus, cruising against the forbans of the Antilles on order of the Governor Lynch, Jamaican captain George Johnson fell on Van Hoorn, in December 1682, but could not demand any account nor explanation. The president of the Royal Audience of Santo Domingo indeed prohibited Johnson from any contact with Van Hoorn. The reason was simple: the president retained the
Saint Nicholas, for a flight made from Cádiz by his captain, for whom what remained in African slaves was confiscated. All this made Van Hoorn determined to gain the
French part of the
Hispaniola Island, to take a commission from its governor Pouançey and to assemble the famous forwarding of
Veracruz. Van Hoorn was engaged with
Laurens de Graaf and
Michel de Grammont in the capture of Veracruz in 1683. After the sacking of Veracruz, the two retreated to
Isla de Sacrificios with prisoners where they planned to wait for ransom payments. Impatient that payments did not arrive immediately, Van Hoorn ordered the execution of a dozen prisoners and had their heads sent to Veracruz as a warning. De Graaf was furious; the two argued and then fought a duel. Van Hoorn received a minor wound and was returned to his ship in shackles. The wound soon turned
gangrenous and Van Hoorn died shortly thereafter. Despite Van Hoorn's death, the pirate crews of 1683 completed the mass kidnapping of the Afro-Veracruzan population. Over 1,400 women, children and men of African descent were taken from Veracruz and sold into slavery in Saint-Domingue (Haiti), Jamaica, and Carolina during the summer of 1683. ==Notes==