Arica
Several days later, the buccaneers decided to attack the rich Spanish settlement of Arica, Viceroyalty of Peru. [3] They had attacked Arica previously but had not found any of the rumoured riches. A captured Indian warned Watling that Arica was heavily fortified, but Watling thought he was trying to trick them and shot him.
As it was four or five days' walk from the coast to Arica, and the 92 buccaneers had to carry their own water, they were exhausted when reaching the town. They tried to approach the settlement secretly, but were seen by the Spanish, who prepared their defense. On January 30 Watling split his men into two groups, one to attack the fort with hand grenades and the rest to attack the town. Upon seeing how heavily outnumbered the men were in the town, Watling soon sent all his forces there. The buccaneers repeatedly forced the Spanish to retreat, but, as they were outnumbered, the Spanish quickly retook territory they left. Finally the buccaneers conquered the town, and Watling turned back to the fort. The Spanish regained the settlement and surrounded Watling's men. Completely overwhelmed, the buccaneers fled, losing several men, including Captain Watling, shot during the retreat. [4]
The earliest arrival of people in the islands now known as The Bahamas was in the first millennium AD. The first inhabitants of the islands were the Lucayans, an Arawakan-speaking Taino people, who arrived between about 500 and 800 AD from other islands of the Caribbean.
Juan Ponce de León was a Spanish explorer and conquistador known for leading the first official European expedition to Florida and serving as the first governor of Puerto Rico. He was born in Santervás de Campos, Valladolid, Spain in 1474. Though little is known about his family, he was of noble birth and served in the Spanish military from a young age. He first came to the Americas as a "gentleman volunteer" with Christopher Columbus's second expedition in 1493.
The era of piracy in the Caribbean began in the 1500s and phased out in the 1830s after the navies of the nations of Western Europe and North America with colonies in the Caribbean began combating pirates. The period during which pirates were most successful was from the 1660s to 1730s. Piracy flourished in the Caribbean because of the existence of pirate seaports such as Port Royal in Jamaica, Tortuga in Haiti, and Nassau in the Bahamas. Piracy in the Caribbean was part of a larger historical phenomenon of piracy, as it existed close to major trade and exploration routes in almost all the five oceans.
The Lucayan people were the original residents of the Bahamas before the European conquest of the Americas. They were a branch of the Tainos who inhabited most of the Caribbean islands at the time. The Lucayans were the first indigenous Americans encountered by Christopher Columbus. Shortly after contact, the Spanish kidnapped and enslaved Lucayans, with the genocide culminating in complete eradication of Lucayan people from the Bahamas by 1520.
New Providence is the most populous island in The Bahamas, containing more than 70% of the total population. It is the location of the national capital city of Nassau, whose boundaries are coincident with the island; it had a population of 246,329 at the 2010 Census; the latest estimate (2016) is 274,400.
San Salvador Island is an island and district of The Bahamas. It is widely believed that during Christopher Columbus's first expedition to the New World, this island was the first land he sighted and visited on 12 October 1492. He named it San Salvador after Christ the Saviour. Columbus's records indicate that the native Lucayan inhabitants of the territory, who called their island Guanahani, were "sweet and gentle".
Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin was a French, Dutch or Flemish writer best known as the author of one of the most important sourcebooks of 17th-century piracy, first published in Dutch as De Americaensche Zee-Roovers, in Amsterdam, by Jan ten Hoorn, in 1678.
Guanahaní is an island in the Bahamas that was the first land in the New World sighted and visited by Christopher Columbus' first voyage, on 12 October 1492. It is a bean-shaped island that Columbus changed from its native Taíno name to San Salvador. Guanahaní has traditionally been identified with Watlings Island, which was officially renamed San Salvador Island in 1925 as a result, but modern scholars are divided on the accuracy of this identification and several alternative candidates in and around the southern Bahamas have been proposed as well.
This timeline of the history of piracy in the 1680s is a chronological list of key events involving pirates between 1680 and 1689.
Robert Searle was one of the earliest and most active of the English buccaneers on Jamaica.
Watling is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Bartholomew Sharp was an English buccaneer and privateer. His career of piracy lasted seven years (1675–1682). In the Caribbean he took several ships, and raided the Gulf of Honduras and Portobelo. He took command of an expedition into the Pacific and spent months raiding settlements on the Pacific Coast of South America including La Serena which he torched in 1680. His flagship, taken at Panama, was the Trinity.
Between 1492 and 1504, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus led four Spanish transatlantic maritime expeditions of discovery to the Americas. These voyages led to the widespread knowledge of the New World. This breakthrough inaugurated the period known as the Age of Discovery, which saw the colonization of the Americas, a related biological exchange, and trans-Atlantic trade. These events, the effects and consequences of which persist to the present, are often cited as the beginning of the modern era.
William Knight was a 17th-century English buccaneer and pirate known for joining privateering expeditions against Spanish colonies in Central and South America.
Edward Davis or Davies was an English buccaneer active in the Caribbean during the 1680s and would lead successful raids against Leon and Panama in 1685, the latter considered one of the last major buccaneer raids against a Spanish stronghold. Much of his career was later recorded by writer William Dampier in A New Voyage Round the World (1697).
Captain John Coxon, sometimes referred to as John Coxen, was a late-seventeenth-century buccaneer who terrorized the Spanish Main. Coxon was one of the most famous of the Brethren of the Coast, a loose consortium of pirates and privateers. Coxon lived during the Buccaneering Age of Piracy.
The Flying Gang was an 18th-century group of pirates who established themselves in Nassau, New Providence in The Bahamas after the destruction of Port Royal in Jamaica. The gang consisted of the most notorious and cunning pirates of the time, buccaneers who terrorized and pillaged the Caribbean until the Royal Navy and infighting brought them to justice. They achieved great fame and wealth by raiding salvagers attempting to recover gold from the sunken Spanish treasure fleet. They established their own codes and governed themselves independent from any of the colonial powers of the time. Nassau was deemed the Republic of Pirates as it attracted many former privateers looking for work to its shores. The Governor of Bermuda stated that there were over 1000 pirates in Nassau at that time and that they outnumbered the mere hundred inhabitants in the town.
Edmund Cooke was a merchant captain, buccaneer, and pirate. He is best known for sailing against the Spanish alongside Bartholomew Sharp, John Coxon, Basil Ringrose, Lionel Wafer, and other famous buccaneers. Cooke's flag was red-and-yellow striped and featured a hand holding a sword.
John Cook was an English buccaneer, privateer, and pirate.
Bilateral and diplomatic relations exist between The Bahamas and Spain. The Spanish embassy in Kingston, Jamaica, is accredited for Bahamas.
