Pirate Latitudes

Epilogue

ACCORDING TO HIS own memoirs, Life Among the Privateers of the Caribbean Sea, Charles Hunter searched for Sanson’s treasure during all of the year 1666, but never found it. The gold coin did not have a map scratched on its surface; instead, there was a funny series of triangles and numbers, which Hunter was never able to decipher.

Sir James Almont returned to England with his niece, Lady Sarah Almont. Both perished in London’s Great Fire of 1666.

Mrs. Robert Hacklett remained in Port Royal until 1686, when she died of syphilis. Her son, Edgar, became a merchant of substance in the Carolina Colony. In turn, his son, James Charles Hacklett Hunter, was governor of the Carolina Colony in 1777, when he urged that the colony side with the northern insurgents against the English army under the command of General Howe in Boston.

Mistress Anne Sharpe returned to England in 1671 as an actress; by that time, women’s parts were no longer played by boys, as they had been earlier in the century. Mistress Sharpe became the second most famous woman from the Indies in all Europe (the most famous, of course, being Madame de Maintenon, mistress of Louis XIV, who had been born on Guadeloupe). Anne Sharpe died in 1704, after a life of what she herself described as “delicious notoriety.”

Enders, the sea artist and barber-surgeon, joined Mandeville’s expedition on Campeche in 1668 and perished in a storm.

The Moor, Bassa, died in 1669 in Henry Morgan’s attack on Panama. He was run down by a bull, one of the many animals Spaniards released in an attempt to protect the city.

Don Diego, the Jew, lived on in Port Royal until 1692, when, at an advanced age, he died in the earthquake that destroyed the “wicked city” forever.

Lazue was captured and hanged as a pirate in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1704. She was said to have been a lover of Blackbeard’s.

Charles Hunter, weakened by malaria during his searches for Sanson’s treasure, returned to England in 1669. By that time, the raid on Matanceros had become a political embarrassment, and he was never received by Charles II, nor accorded any honor. He died of pneumonia in 1670 in a cottage in Tunbridge Wells, leaving a modest estate and a notebook, which was stored at Trinity College, Cambridge. His notebook still exists, as does his grave, in the cemetery of the Church of St. Anthony in Tunbridge Wells. The stone is nearly worn smooth, yet it can still be read:

HERE LYES

CHAS. HUNTER, CAPT.

1627–1670

Honest Adventurer and Seaman

Beloved of His Countrymen

In the New World

VINCIT