In our limited series - The Chocolate Pirate Series, Ed Easton and Andrew Nason discuss Captain Henry Morgan’s role in 17th-century European power struggles that shaped the histories of sugar, plantations, and chocolate, including an account of privateers mistaking valuable cacao for “sheep’s poo.”

They outline what is known and disputed about Morgan’s origins (born around 1635 in Wales, possibly arriving in Jamaica as an indentured servant) and describe his rise in Jamaica as an ambitious, politically astute privateer with a negotiated crew code for shares and injury payments.

The episode centers on Morgan’s 1668 raid on the heavily fortified Spanish port of Portobello: landing covertly, taking and blowing up a fort, and using captured monks and nuns to advance on another fort, with contested reports of later conduct and torture. Morgan then ransoms the city, taunts Panama’s governor with a pistol, and the story ends setting up Part 2.

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