Morgan was charged [by the English government] with exterminating piracy from Jamaica and the surrounding waters. He did it, as always, with a style balanced somewhere between mockery and brutality. Morgan most likely wrote a 1679 report that laid out the Jamaican government’s policy on pirates: They were “ravenous vermin” who used any Spanish cruelty against English sailors as justification for their raids on the enemy, thereby wreaking havoc on trade. Morgan kept up a constant stream of letters to London on his efforts against the pirates, issued arrest warrants, and sent squadrons of militia out into the surrounding waters to chase down suspicious ships.
When one sloop anchored in Montego Bay and the sailors stayed aboard, his suspicions were aroused; only buccaneers uncertain of their reception acted in this way. Morgan invited the seventeen men aboard to King’s House in Port Royal (which Morgan preferred to the governor’s mansion in Spanish Town) and served them red snapper, lobster, beef, fruit pie, and goblets of the best local rum. As the alcohol worked through their veins, the men dropped their pretenses and admitted that they were indeed pirates. Mor4gan roared with laughter, and the party continued; for the younger men, it was like being feted by their boyhood hero, the greatest buccaneer who had ever lived.
After a long night of storytelling and carousing, Morgan sent the boys to their beds. The next morning he greeted them, and with reluctance they strolled out the door. Waiting on the steps were members of the local garrison, and the confessed pirates were clapped in chains.
[They were later executed for piracy.]
Source:
Talty, Stephan. “Aftermath.” Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign. New York: Crown Publishing Group (NY), 2007. 271-72. Print.
Further Reading:
Talk about a last meal... I read that Jamaica hadn't published anything considered a literary art until 1905 when a Jamaican moved to Harlem, New York and wrote a great novel. The reason being all of the books coming from Jamaica before that were lathered in racism and unaccepted by the UK scholars as actual contributions to literacy.