The first Europeans to land on Tortuga were the Spanish in 1492 during the
first voyage of
Christopher Columbus into the
New World. On December 6, 1492, three Spanish ships entered the
Windward Passage that separates
Cuba and Haiti. At sunrise, Columbus noticed an island whose contours emerged from the morning mist. Because the shape reminded him of a
turtle's shell, he chose the name of Tortuga. Tortuga was originally settled by a few
Spanish colonists under the
Captaincy General of Santo Domingo. In 1625,
French and
English colonists from
Saint Kitts arrived on the island of Tortuga after initially planning to settle on mainland
Hispaniola. They were attacked in 1629 by Spanish forces commanded by
Don Fadrique de Toledo, who expelled them before building a fort on the island and garrisoning it. As most of the garrison eventually left for Hispaniola to expel French colonists residing there, other French settlers returned in 1630, occupying and expanding the fort. From 1630 onward, the island of Tortuga was divided into French and English colonies, allowing
buccaneers to use the island as their main base of operations. In 1633, the first
slaves were imported from
Africa to aid in the plantations. However, by 1635 the use of slaves had ended. The slaves were said to be out of control on the island, while at the same time there had been continuous disagreements and fighting between French and English colonists on Tortuga. In 1635, the Spanish
expelled the French and English colonists from Tortuga before leaving. As more English and French settlers soon returned, the Spanish returned to expel them again, only to leave because the island was too small to be of major importance. This allowed the return of both French and English colonists. In 1638, the Spanish returned for a third time to secure their claim to the island and expel the French and
Dutch settlers on Tortuga. They occupied the island, but were eventually expelled by the French and Dutch colonists in 1640, at which time the French built
Fort de Rocher in a natural
harbour; the fort enabled the French to defeat a Spanish invasion force the following year. By 1640, the buccaneers of Tortuga were calling themselves the
Brethren of the Coast. The buccaneers population was mostly made up of French and Englishmen, along with a small number of Dutchmen. In 1654, the Spanish
attacked the island for the fourth and last time, defeating a Franco-English force. In 1655, Tortuga was settled again by English and French colonists under
Elias Watts, who secured a commission from Col.
William Brayne, the
governor of Jamaica, to serve as governor of Tortuga. In 1664, French buccaneer Jeremie Dechamps sold the island for 15,000
livres to the
French West India Company after having tried to sell it to the English for 6,000
pounds following an initial offer of 10,000 pounds by the French. In the same year, 400 French colonists came to Tortuga from
Anjou, and they established Hispaniola's first
sugar plantations since the
first wave of European colonization. This group of colonists spread to the coast of the mainland and became the nexus of the French colony of
Saint-Domingue. By 1670, the buccaneer era was in decline, and many of the pirates turned to
log cutting and
wood trading as a new income source. At this time, Welsh privateer
Henry Morgan started to promote himself and invited the pirates on the island of Tortuga to set sail under him. Morgan and some 2,000 privateers then
attacked and sacked Panama the following year. They were hired by the French as a striking force that allowed France to have a much stronger hold on the Caribbean region. Consequently, the pirates never really controlled the island and kept Tortuga as a neutral hideout for pirate booty. In 1680, the
Parliament of England forbade English subjects to sail under foreign flags (in opposition to former practice). This was a major legal blow to the
Caribbean pirates. Settlements were made in the
Treaty of Ratisbon of 1684, signed by the European powers, that began to put an end to piracy. Most of the pirates after this time were hired by European powers to suppress their former buccaneer allies. The capital of Saint-Domingue had been moved from Tortuga to
Port-de-Paix on the mainland of Hispaniola in 1676. ==Geography==