Sharp and Company: The First of the Buccaneers (1679–82)

Abstract

Before the 1670s had expired, a force was already gathering which would launch assaults on Peru from a fresh direction, the West Indies. Soon, and with greater justification, it would revive the alarm inspired by the initial rumours of Narborough’s presence in the south of the viceroyalty at the start of the decade, as it ranged along the coasts and through the islands. The buccaneers, of which it was composed, were an identifiable group in the West Indies by the early seventeenth century, particularly in the north and north west of Hispaniola, where they found herds of cattle running wild in the dense forests after their abandonment by Spanish settlers who had followed the tide of discovery and conquest to the mainland. These cattle provided a means of sustenance and income for refugees from wrecked ships, runaway negro slaves, and a variety of rogues and villains who sought to escape the hand of justice, and whose livelihood came to be based on the selling of supplies to passing privateers and traders. Originally referred to as ‘cow killers’, they eventually were designated buccaneers from their manner of cooking and preserving strips of meat, Indian style, on a boucan, a hardwood grill or gridiron placed over a pit or hollow housing the fire.¹