In Port royal the privateers were commanded by Christopher Mings, whom the great diarist Samuel Pepys had described as “a man of great parts and most excellent tongue among ordinary men.” The son of a shoemaker, Mings had climbed his way through the ranks from cabin boy to captain by sheer force of will. In 1659 he led a privateer expedition against the Spanish Main, taking and pillaging in succession the towns of Campeche, Coro, Cumana, and Puerto Cabello.
At Campeche his subordinates (who may have included a young Henry Morgan) advised a sneak attack by moonlight, but Mings scoffed at the idea as being beneath an English seaman; he sailed into the harbor in broad daylight, with his trumpeters sounding the attack and his drummers beating a martial tune.
The fort fell in the first attack, surprise or no surprise. And when he returned to Port Royal, Mings’s boats were brimful with Spanish loot, estimated at a value of 1.5 million pieces of eight.
Source:
Talty, Stephan. “Morgan.” 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. 41-42. Print.
Further Reading:
Vice Admiral Sir Christopher Myngs
Estado Libre y Soberano de Campeche (Free and Sovereign State of Campeche) / Campeche
Santa Ana de Coro / Coro, Venezuela
Harri Morgan / Sir Henry Morgan
real de a ocho / Spanish Dollar / Eight-Real Coin / peso de ocho (Piece of Eight)
For reference, one piece of eight weighed exactly one Imperial ounce (28.35 grams). The loot of 1.5 mio pieces would have weighed 42.525 metric tons!
At the current silver price of $17,00 per troy ounce (31.1 grams), the buying power of the loot would be $23,245,176.84. (I couldn't find any good price tables for the time and area, and it probably wouldn't be a good comparison to today's prices as skewed as the Caribbean economy was with its easy access to luxury items like sugar and difficult access to commodities like wine.)