Scaling the fort’s sheer walls under fire would be a nightmare. So Morgan, now fully committed to the ruthlessness his trade demanded, decided to use one of the most controversial stratagems of his career.
Namely, human shields. Morgan “ordered ten or twelve ladders to be made,… so broad that three or four men at once might ascend by them.” He then had his men bring him a selection of the prisoners chosen with care to appeal to Spanish sensibilities: the august (Portobelo’s mayor), the religious (friars and nuns), and the wretched (several elderly men). Shaking, the prisoners were marched at the head of a column that passed through the city streets and then out onto the open road that led to the castle. Now the Spanish could see what was happening: Their leading citizens screamed at them for God’s sake not to shoot, while the pirates – ladders, grenades, and cutlasses in hand – crouched behind them. It was a terrible dilemma for the men inside, but finally the gunners opened up, spraying the particularly lethal chain shot (two small balls of iron connected by an iron chain, designed for ripping apart the masts of enemy ships, which would rotate with a terrifying keen before beheading or de-limbing anyone it caught in its path) into the advancing crowd.
Two friars fell wounded, and the chain shot found one English victim. The rest of the party pushed the human shields out of the way and began hacking at the wooden gate with their axes and lighting it with their torches.
Source:
Talty, Stephan. “Portobelo.” 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. 112-13. Print.
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