England had sent Port Royal HMS Oxford…
January 1669 CE
England had sent Port Royal HMS Oxford soon after Morgan’s return to Jamaica, (as a gift meant to protect Port Royal from privateers like Morgan); Port Royal has instead given the ship to Morgan, who sets out to assemble a fleet of buccaneers willing to engage in a bold attack on the Spanish Main.
He is able to attract nine-hundred men to his eleven-ship fleet and, once gathered, brings them to Île à Vache, also known as Cow Island, a small island lying off the southwest peninsula of Hispaniola near the town of Les Cayes, to decide on a city to attack.
After deliberation it is decided that the Spanish settlement of Cartagena will be their intended target because of the riches it contained.
It is one of Spain’s most important cities, and holds all of the gold that is in transit from Peru to Spain, so sacking Cartagena will not only provoke the Spanish into an attack while weakening one of their strongest cities, but it will also make for a very large loot.
The night that the final decision to attack Cartagena is made, there is a rum-fueled celebration, during which a few intoxicated sailors accidentally light a fuse that ignites explosives on-board Morgan’s flagship, the Oxford.
Morgan and his officers narrowly escaping death but several others lose their lives, and many men, seeing the ship’s destruction as an omen of bad luck, choose to desert the enterprise, thus decreasing the fleet to only ten ships and eight hundred men.