Americans considered their bananas as a much more important commodity. In early 1942 Germany began targeting banana boats leaving Honduran and other Central American waters, in an attempt to undermine morale. The unarmed ships of the banana companies experienced serious losses.

In the United States, however, bananas were deemed to be of paramount necessity, not only for the general morale of the population, but also for the banana’s nutritional value to the nation’s diet.

Thus, banana exports from Honduras remained steady during the war. United Fruit’s catchphrase during the period became “Every banana a guest, every passenger a pest!” It was signaling that no space would be reserved for anything but the valued fruit.

Bananas were Deemed to be of Paramount Necessity

In February of 1942 United Fruit lost the SS San Gil. That loss was followed by the SS Esparta in March. Between April and July, is the period that the German U-boat captains called “The Happy Time,” 16 more United Fruit ships, averaging 4,000 tons each, were sunk. All in allover 150 Honduran crewmen lost their lives. During the war, over 80 banana boats from Central America would be sunk.

Standard Fruit had purchased four destroyers left over from WWI from the US Navy and converted them into merchant vessels designated to transport bananas. At the start of WWII, these were leased back to the Navy, and sent as cargo boats, to help break the siege of Corregidor in the Philippines but arrived too late.

In response to the alarming loss of merchant shipping, the U.S. Navy began to build anti-sub bases across the Caribbean. In November 1942 Puerto Castilla was chosen as the base for three Catalina long-range flying patrol boats. These amphibian planes would patrol the Bay Islands on a daily basis.

In its three years of existence, the base would pump over $400,000, in 2020 value, of much-needed money into the local economy. Unfortunately, the naval bombers chose for its bombing practice the mile-long island of San Vicente, lying off Santa Fe. That island was sacred to the Garifuna people.

By the end of the war the landscape of the island, now known as Cayo Blanco, had been completely destroyed.

The German operations in the Caribbean suffered a heavy blow when on Bastille Day, July 14, 1943; the Free French forces liberated the island of Martinique. The Axis submarines lost their base of operations. From then until the war’s end, only two more banana boats would be sunk.

The primary targets for German navy were oil and petroleum routes from Trinidad, Venezuela and the Dutch islands. Almost as important were the cargo vessels hauling bauxite from Jamaica and the Guyanas to be used in the manufacture of aluminum. Thus the battle of the Caribbean began. After the fall of France in 1940, Germany and Italy based most of their submarine fleet on the island of Martinique. Not wishing to provoke the United States into entering the war, the Axis left the American banana boats alone.

Using the Honduran ports of Puerto Castilla and La Ceiba as supply dumps, Nazi agents began bribing workers from United Fruit and Standard Fruit, into providing the Germans with bootleg diesel siphoned from tractors, field generators, and other equipment. Germans were keen on supplying their mariners with fruit, liquor, beer, water, and other contraband merchandise. These would be surreptitiously loaded onto barges which would rendezvous with the U-boats in between the mainland and the Bay Islands.

Germany and Italy based most
of their submarine fleet

on the island of Martinique.

This illicit commerce ended when US entered the war in December 1941, declaring war on Japan on December 11 Germany and Italy declared war on the US in response. Honduras followed suit and declared war on Germany and Italy on December 12. A blacklist of the 510 documented Germans living in Honduras had been compiled by US intelligence.

These “undesirable aliens” were arrested, and their businesses and properties confiscated. These Germans were taken from their Honduran families and deported to internment camps in Texas. The men were sent to a 22-acre compound called Camp Kennedy and the women and children relocated to another camp called Crystal City.

A total of around 4,500 Germans from all over South and Central America would pass through these camps during the war.
Though many would be repatriated to Germany in exchange for seriously wounded American military personnel, many Honduran Germans would remain until late 1946, after the war’s end, returning to find their homes and businesses in ruins and unable to claim any reparations. To say that the German population of Honduras was inconvenienced during World War II would be a major understatement.

However, as the war escalated, on the 1st of March 1917, America began taking the threat of underwater warfare seriously enough to purchase the Danish Virgin Islands for $25 million. This was to preempt a possible German purchase for the purpose of installing a naval base there.

The decision of British Honduras (Belize) to send 450 soldiers to fight in the war on the Allied side further increased tensions in the region. In response, a plan was conceived by the exiled Guatemalan General Isidoro Valdez and it proposed to Heinrich Von Eckhart, the senior German diplomat, the general spymaster serving in Mexico City.

The “Valdez Proposal,” as it came to be known, was to muster an army of 5,000 Germans in Mexico, provoke a coup d’état in Guatemala to oust its pro-American president, Manuel Estrada Cabrera. The plan included an invasion of Belize with an army of Honduran opposition liberals to establish a U-boat base. Once a pro-German government had been installed in Honduras as well as in its major ports, then tire Mosquito Coast could also be used for naval bases.

Upon learning of these plans, U.S. naval intelligence sent the esteemed Harvard-educated Mayanologist Sylvanus Morley to Belize on a United Fruit Company ship. He travelled on the pretext of conducting archaeological research in the area.

Working as a secret agent from his headquarters in the American legation compound in Tegucigalpa, he would spend the next 20 months putting together an espionage ring in Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras to spy on and compile blacklists of German-owned businesses and diplomats. Ironically, his agents in Honduras had to collect their monthly pay of $25 from the German-owned Banco de Honduras, the only bank in Tegucigalpa.

Honduras also closed all of Germany’s consulates.

Morley would also travel over 2,000 miles of Central American coastline, including the Bay Islands of Honduras, looking for clandestine U-boat sanctuaries.

During his time in Central America, Morley and his agents would send back over 10,000 pages of information and reports to naval intelligence. Morley would later be acknowledged as probably America’s most effective secret agent during the war. He would later excavate and largely catalog the objects in the great Mayan city of Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán, as well as make several exciting discoveries of other previously lost Mayan temples and pyramids. Morley has been put forward as a model for Steven Spielberg’s fictional movie hero Indiana Jones.

In May of 1917, reports that a Standard Fruit banana boat had been shelled and sunk by a German gunboat on the milk run between La Ceiba and New Orleans prompted Honduras’s pro-American president, Francisco Bertrand, to cut off diplomatic relations with Germany. Honduras also closed all of Germany’s consulates including those in Puerto Cortez, La Ceiba, and Trujillo, and expelled its German diplomats. Honduras was put under martial law, and people wishing to travel within the country’s borders had to do so using an internal passport.

Germany had indeed been using its consulates to coordinate espionage networks. Most of these German agents were corrupt and much more interested in lucrative smuggling activities with allied ships than in espionage or actual sabotage.

Honduras finally entered World War 1 on the side of the allies on July 18, 1918. It was the last nation in the world to declare war on Germany. The threat of U-boats to the banana companies was now over.

During the 329 years of their presence in the Caribbean and Central America, only around 25,000 African slaves were imported here by the Spanish. This is a great contrast to the 12 million blacks shipped by the English, Dutch, French, and Portuguese for use in their colonies in the same region.

Therefore, the Spanish depended on local labor, and after mostly annihilating the indigenous populations of present-day Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Cuba. Then they turned their attention to Central America and are of today’s Honduras as a source for providing laborers.

They considered anyone not converted to Catholicism with disdain, and the economic value of a Paya, Lenca or Tolupan laborer was less than that of a pig or a horse. In the one hundred years between 1524 and 1624, it is estimated that the population of Honduras fell from around 500,000 indigenous people to less than 150,000, the majority of whom were shipped off to die in the mines of Peru and Bolivia.

However, workers were also needed in the Caribbean islands. The first Spanish raiding parties arrived in the Bay Islands from Cuba in 1516. Equipped with firepower, and huge, spike collared, Pyrenean hunting dogs, brought to pacify the natives. These were previously unseen by the natives.

However, the Paya did not always go to their fate docilely and in the Bay Islands, they were valuable allies to the pirates raiding the Spanish armada. After a Spanish raid on Guanaja in 1516, some 500 Payas were shipped to Cuba, whereupon landing, the Indians took advantage of the crew and soldiers guarding them. During a drunken celebration, the captive Paya overpowered and killed them. Incredibly, they managed to sail back to the Bay Islands using astral navigation. Their feat only provoked the Spanish into sending a much larger punitive force after them, and most were recaptured and disappeared into the vast plantations of Cuba.

This curse became known as “La Maldición de Trujillo.”

Life for the Paya would become much more miserable with the arrival of Hernán Cortés in Trujillo in 1526. Using his Nahuatl speaking mistress from the Yucatan, he summoned three of the head caiques of the region to a meeting in Trujillo. Here he proposed that they and their people, subject themselves to Spanish rule, abandon their idolatry, human sacrifices and convert to Christianity. They also were to pay tribute and taxes to King Charles.

The Paya chieftains were aware of the brutal treatment of their neighbors and friends on the Bay Islands and refused to deal with Cortés. Fearing reprisal, the chiefs of four of the largest towns surrounding Trujillo, Chapagua, Merderato, Potlo, and Thicahutl, took their families, members of their courts and their shamans, and fled to the mountains of Olancho.

Only the proud caique, Mazatl, Lord of Papayeca the Paya capital, remained to defy Cortés. In retaliation, and to prove his superiority over the perceived venality of the infidels, an enraged Cortés, captured Mazatl and his head priest named Pizacura, along with one hundred of the leading citizens of the town, who were branded with the letter “C” on their faces. The mark denoted them as Cortés’s private property.

On being brought to Trujillo, Chief Mazatl again refused to swear allegiance to Cortés and took offense when manhandled by a Spanish soldier, who he slapped on the face. He immediately had his hands nailed to a tree in the plaza.

Chief Mazatl was hanged later in the day, but before dying, he laid a curse on the Spanish, telling them that they would find no wealth, no joy or nor prosperity in the region on account of their inhumanity.

This curse became known as “La Maldicion de Trujillo,” a legendary curse that people all over the region believe in, so much, that when Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa, who was born in Trujillo, became President of Honduras in 2010, he brought the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa to the town to exorcise and remove it.

Walker’s last adventure in Central America, as self-proclaimed President of Nicaragua, had ended in total fiasco. He also earned some respect among white Bay Islanders, and in April of 1860 a representative was sent from Roatan to New Orleans to invite Walker to help set up a new, independent Bay Islands republic, with himself as President.

Unbeknownst to the islanders, Walker, backed by his allies, including wealthy Southern plantation owners and the Masonic pro-slavery group The Knights of the Golden Circle, had been stockpiling weapons and ammunition and recruiting men in New Orleans since September of the previous year in order to launch a new campaign in Nicaragua. There he intended to reclaim the presidency,as well as control of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s transit company, which offered the quickest route from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast by way of stagecoach and river steamer, generating some $6 million in revenue per year.

With this money Walker planned to finance his campaign to conquer all five of the Central American countries and unify them into a huge cotton, rubber and fruit-producing region. Slavery was to be reintroduced and English was to be the official language. He had promised his motley band of soldiers of fortune that, once the expedition proved to be a success, each would receive 150 acres of land.

Starting in late April, Walker began sending his representatives to Roatan on fruit boats in order to await the handover date from Britain to Honduras, at which point he and his forces would strike. In June, he and 55 men left New Orleans on the chartered schooner “John C. Taylor,” while more men and most of his stock of weapons and ammunition were sent to Belize on the “Clifton” to await orders. Meanwhile, the arrival of dozens of American and German mercenaries on the island had not gone unnoticed by the British authorities. They beefed up the island’s defenses with 40 troops sent from Belize, while sending 15 ships from their West Indian naval fleet in Jamaica to patrol off Roatan.

Upon arriving at Coxen Hole, the notorious Walker was refused permission to disembark from the “Taylor.” On also learning that all his ammunition and weapons had been confiscated from the “Clifton” in Georgetown, he retired north to the island of Cozumel to await the handover of Roatan to Honduras. Five weeks later he and his men sailed back to Roatan, only to discover an even larger British military presence barring them from landing. To further frustrate him, Britain and Honduras had hastily extended the handover date for Roatan to April 22 of the following year.

Infuriated, Walker made the biggest blunder of his career: an all-out attack on the Honduran mainland at Trujillo. With a force of 91 men, including three new recruits from Roatan, Walker arrived in Trujillo on August 6 and quickly took the fort. Six of its Garifuna defenders died; five men on Walker’s side were seriously wounded, two of whom would later die.

Walker immediately declared the town a free port and confiscated $3,500 from the town’s customs and excise office. His men encamped in the fort, where they fixed its broken cannons and replaced their ammunition.

His next move was to contact former Honduran President José Trinidad Cabañas about forming a coalition government, with the idea of joining forces to re-invade Nicaragua. Cabañas, however, engaged in setting up Honduras’s fledgling education system, rejected Walker’s overtures. Meanwhile, British Commander Nowell Salmon arrived from Belize on the “Icarus” and informed Walker that the money confiscated from the customs house belonged to Britain in lieu of a debt; if Walker did not surrender the town, Salmon would order a naval bombardment of the fort.

When Walker refused, Salmon confiscated the “Taylor,” and on August 26 General Mariano Alvarez, marching from Tegucigalpa with 700 Honduran troops, arrived in Trujillo to confront Walker on land. Outgunned and outnumbered, Walker beat a fighting retreat some 80 miles to the east, losing 18 men in skirmishing and disease before reaching Black River, where he hoped to find another boat.Salmon set off in the “Icarus” in hot pursuit and soon reached Black River. While laid up resting on a farm along the banks of Río Sico, Walker reluctantly surrendered to the British marines after being promised protection and safe passage back to New Orleans by Salmon.

However, instead of sailing to Louisiana, Salmon broke his word as an officer and a gentleman and promptly delivered Walker and his men to the waiting authorities in Trujillo. Walker was charged with piracy and violating international neutrality laws; in his defense, he claimed he was only attempting to “protect the inalienable rights of the people of Roatan, and protect them from tyranny.” This defense failed,and he alone was sentenced to death.

He languished a further six days in the fort, while his remaining 75 men were deported on the British steamship “Gladiator.” The last throw of the dice to save Walker’s life came from the US consul, and a fellow freemason, in Trujillo who offered General Alvarez $10,000 to spare him. The offer was rejected, and on the morning of September 12, 1860, Walker faced a three-man firing squad behind the fort. The first volley of shots did not kill him, but the coup degrâce blew away his face beyond recognition. The consul paid 10 pesos for his coffin and he was buried in Trujillo’s old cemetery.

One of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the scientific world was the finding of the Crystal Skull of Doom. That skull became an inspiration for dozens of new age websites, books, magazine articles and even an Indiana Jones movie. The swindle was perpetrated by the Canadian born Anna Mitchell-Hedges, the adopted daughter of British big game fisherman, explorer, charlatan and tomb robber, Frederick Mitchell-Hedges. FM-H visited, and lived on his yacht, the “Amigo,” moored off the eastern end of Roatan on and off in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. That is where he and his wealthy mistress and sugar mama Lady Lilian Richmond Brown, looted hundreds of Paya Indian artifacts which they had found on Barbareta and Saint Helene, and later sold to the Museum of the Indiesand the British Museum.

Mike Hedges theorized that Roatan, along with the other Bay Islands, and the islands off Belize, formed the remnants of the lost continent of Atlantis. He fantasized that the island’s inhabitants had imparted their secret knowledge to the Paya and Maya Indians on the mainland of Central America.

Three years prior to visiting Roatan, Mitchell – Hedges and Richmond Brown, had shipped the “Amigo” from Liverpool to New York and voyaged down to British Honduras on a fishing trip. They arrived in Belize City on February 17, 1924, an important date to remember in our story. There they met the former Chief British Medical Officer of the colony, Dr. Thomas Gann, who was an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist. Dr. Gann offered to show them the site of the long-abandoned Mayan city of Lubaantun, located 55 miles northwest of Punta Gorda, Belize.

The site had previously been visited by Europeans in 1903 (an expedition led by Dr. Gann), and later, in 1915 by a group from the Peabody Museum, sponsored by Yale University, In spite of this, Mitchell – Hedges sent a report, along with photographs, to the Illustrated London News, claiming to have single-handedly discovered “the most important, and largest of all the Mayan lost cities.”

This didn’t discourage Mitchell who sponsored his own extensive studies of the site in 1926 and 1927.On returning to Roatan, Mitchell – Hedges would later claim on his syndicated radio show to have found a lost treasure, belonging to the notorious pirate, Ned Lowe. The supposed treasure was to be found on Cow and Calf Caye in Port Royal and was estimated to be worth six million dollars. This detail itself is hard to believe, as Lowe was a lower ranking pirate, who made a living attacking fishing boats and merchant’s vessels. Lowe was ill-equipped to attack larger, well defended Spanish treasure convoys. Furthermore, no mention of this “amazing find” was made in any of the adventure books later written by Mitchell – Hedges, leading me to believe that his claim was another outlandish lie.

No mention of the found treasure was made in any of his books, newspaper columns or radio shows of The Skull of Doom. That magnificent crystal skull weighing over 11 pounds, which his adopted daughter Anna claimed to have discovered in the rubble of an old tomb at Lubaantun on her 17th birthday, on January 1, 1924, over six weeks BEFORE her father arrived in Belize.

Supposed treasure was to be found on Cow and Calf Caye.

No mention of Anna even being present in Belize exists, and she is not mentioned in any of the writings about the expedition. Furthermore, she only revealed the existence of the skull in 1950’s, thirty years after allegedly finding it. It is also a well-documented fact that Mitchell – Hedges purchased the skull for 400 pounds, at Sotheby’s London office in 1943.

Despite his daughter’s claims that the skull was over 3,600 years old, electron microscope work by Margaret Sax in 2008, of the Department of Scientific Research at the British Museum, detected scratches on the skull made by modern, mechanical carving tools. Obviously, Mayans had no access to such tools.

The skull most certainly came from the collection of Eugene Boban, a French dealer who dealt in both real and fake Aztec and Mayan artifact. Boban lived in Mexico City between 1860 and 1880, and most likely crafted the skull, along with several others in the 1870s , in the German town of Idar-Oberstein, renown for its crystal carving German town of Idar- Oberstein. Despite its undenied beauty and unparalleled craftsmanship, the Skull of Doom, is just a very skillful fake.

The ships were manned by 140 men under the command of Admiral Christopher Columbus. It was Columbus’ fourth voyage to the Americas and he was accompanied by his 13-year-old son, Fernando. Columbus’ second in command was his younger brother, Bartholomew.

They had made the fastest to date crossing of the Atlantic from Spain to the Caribbean, having left Cadiz on May 7, and arriving in Martinique on June 15.

Having been refused entry to any port in Hispaniola, Columbus meandered along the coast of Jamaica before heading south into uncharted territory, taking three weeks to reach an island which was then known to the Indians as Caguamara. Columbus immediately claimed the Caguamara and the neighboring Roatan in the name of Spain and renamed it “La Isla de Pinos.”

Guanaja was named after predominant pine trees that would become an important source of pine tar. The Spanish used to caulk their boats with pine tat at such a rate that within 100 years the entire island would be deforested completely. The island would not be known as Guanaja until 1657.

At 51, Columbus was continuously looking for a new trading route to India and China. He incorrectly thought that he had entered the Straits of Molucca, off the coast of Indonesia without the use of latitude in his calculations. He was 16,000 miles off course but charted a new route for Central America.

Although he had gained much prestige, wealth and fame for his previous voyages of discovery to the New World, his star was on the wane after his despotic governorship of Hispaniola ended amidst charges of corruption, abuse of power, mass torture and murder. Stripped of his powers, he had been shipped in chains back to Cadiz, where he spent a year in jail. He was now a much-changed person, he had written a biblical themed book called “The book of prophesies,” and had taken up the name “Christbearer.” Columbus wandered the deck of his ship dressed in a priest’s cassock.

Maya had voyaged down from the Yucatan peninsula to trade with their Paya cousins

Upon his release from jail, his chief benefactress, Spain’s Queen Isabel, decided to give him one more chance to open a trading route to China. As a condition however, on this voyage he was not allowed to settle, colonize or do any trade with newly discovered lands. To assure that Columbus complied, he was accompanied by a royal administrator and overseer, who monitored all of his actions.

After spending two weeks on the island and learning from the local “caique”, or chief, that a large ocean did indeed exist on the other side of the nearby mainland. On the 35-mile voyage to what he named Honduras, he encountered a large canoe, larger than his own ships, manned by 35 Maya Indians.

The Maya had voyaged down from the Yucatan peninsula to trade with their Paya cousins. Among the items Columbus’ men found in the canoe, was were cacao beans — European’s first encounter with chocolate.

Today the most expensive chocolate in the world is made in Belgium, and is called Guanaja chocolate.

Columbus arrived in what is now known as the Bay of Trujillo on August 15, and on that date, the first ever Catholic mass on the American continent was held at “Punta Caxinas”, present day named “Puerto Castilla.” Columbus was stricken with syphilis and tropical fever and remained on his flagship for the duration of the time he spent in Honduras.

Having collected captives to use as guides and translators, the Spanish explorers departed the Trujillo bay on August 30. They sailed west down the coast to look for the elusive passage to the Pacific. In the end Columbus never found the passage to India and it took him two years to return to Spain. He died there at the age of 54.

He had intercepted the French ship on its way to Martinique from the notorious slaving port of Whydah, in present day Nigeria. It was loaded with 516 slaves, twenty pounds of gold dust, and 40 cannons which had to be unloaded before the hull could be properly cleaned. This was not the last visit that Blackbeard would make to Roatan waters.

Thatch was born to a respectable family in Bristol, England, a coastal city located not far from Liverpool, England’s main slaving port and its second largest city. He served in the Royal Navy with honors, and only turned to piracy during his mid-30’s when a temporary ceasefire between England and Spain left Thatch and hundreds of able seamen without jobs and itching for income.

With Jamaica and Isla de Tortuga both firmly under the control of the English and French and Roatan abandoned, Thatch and his band chose New Providence Island in the Bahamas as their base. The island was close to American and Spanish shipping lanes and housed a modest English settlement. Fortunately for Thatch the government turned a blind eye to their illicit comings and goings, because of the pirates outnumbered the local population by three to one.

Thatch joined the “The Flying Gang“, a group of outlaws whose members included: Josiah Burgess, Thomas Nichols, Charles Vane and Benjamin Hornigold. Along with them came Calico Jack Rackham so named on account of his preference for wearing women’s undergarments, which he found to be more comfortable attire in the tropics. Another man named Stede Bonnet, “the Gentleman Pirate”, was a wealthy plantation owner from Barbados. Stede turned to piracy as a business venture. Not one of these men would reach forty years of age, all were either hanged or went down with their ships. Vane was captured on a cay near Roatan. As a rule the Spanish treasure ships were too heavily defended to attack so The Flying Gang took to using fast, open sloops to intercept smaller trading ships and relieve them of their cargo to sell in America.

All were either hanged or went down with their ships.

Thatch’s first venture as a pirate was as first mate for Benjamin Hornigold on a successful excursion into the Gulf of Mexico, around the Yucatan peninsula and along the coast of Honduras in the summer of 1717. Their thirty-gun sloop, “Ranger”, intercepted Spanish flour merchants’ ships and Portuguese wine traders from Madeira. Later in the year, Thatch and Hornigold intercepted a boatload of Englishmen sailing to Roatan. Clad in black and wearing burning fuses twisted into his hair, Thatch looked truly ferocious surrounded by a cloud of smoke from the fuses. The English sailors were truly surprised when Thatch explained that he and his men had thrown their hats overboard during a drunken party the previous night, and that he had boarded their boats only to relieve them of their hats. Thatch was never known to have killed anyone until his final battle the following year. He simply preferred to look the part of the Devil incarnate and to intimidate his foes.

Later in 1717 Thatch and Hornigold parted ways and Thatch was given “The Revenge” as a reward for his work. As captain of “The Revenge” Blackbeard went on a rampage throughout the Caribbean that cemented his place in pirate lore and history.

His reputation made it impossible for Thatch to return to Providencial, so he sailed to Charleston, North Carolina. There he received a full pardon from the colony’s corrupt Governor, Charles Eden with whom he then conspired to rob ships leaving the port in order to sell the goods on the black market. Blackbeard was now considered to be such a menace on the Atlantic seaboard, that Governor Spotswood of Virginia, sent Lieutenant Robert Maynard with two sloops to hunt him down.

On November 22, 1718, Thatch was cornered in an inlet off the shore of North Carolina. With most of his men onshore and with his crew outnumbered by three to one, Thatch put up a desperate last stand after consuming some wine to fortify him. He was killed in hand-to-hand combat by Maynard on the deck. It was discovered that his body had five gunshot wounds as well as twenty cutlass slashes. As a deterrent to others he was decapitated, and his head hung on a pole at the mouth of the Hampton river. Blackbeard’s notorious, yet short lived, pirating career had come to an end.

Coxon had settled on Roatan taking over Henry Morgan’s position as head of the Bretheren of the Coast – a highly organized group of British, Dutch and French pirates. Coxon was planning an ambitious expedition across the Darien gap in present day Panama to raid Spanish seaports along the Pacific coast of South America. He had done that before and enjoyed great success.

The expedition was to last two years and Coxon and Dampier sailed to Port Morant, Jamaica to pick up supplies and rendezvous with several other top line captains who would accompany them. These captain included Bartholomew Sharp, Cornelius Essex, Peter Sawkins, John Watling, Peter Harris and Robert Allison.

They left Jamaica on January 17, 1680 and they almost immediately ran into gale force winds that scattered the fleet. Most of the ships managed to find their meeting point at Boca de Toros and proceeded to move on Portobello, and successfully sacked the town. Shortly thereafter, Coxon and Sharp intercepted a small Spanish eight-gun ship proceeding from Cartagena. Amongst the loot was a wine jar with 500 gold doubloons hidden inside, which Coxen decided to keep for himself. This caused great unrest amongst his crew.

Coxon lost further respect after taking the village of Santa Maria and killing 70 Spaniards. He decided that the risk of further provoking the Spanish combined with the rigors of crossing Panama by foot, were not worth his trouble and decided to abort the entire mission. The other captains fired Coxon from commandeering and placed Sawkins in charge of the expedition. Coxon returned to Jamaica and then to Roatan, using it as a base to attack Florida the following year.

The other pirates completed the forced march to Colombia and immediately stole three boats, including the 400 ton Santisima Trinidad, which was renamed the Trinity and proceeded to raid up and down the coast for a year. The Spanish sent out most of their Pacific based South American fleet to look for them.

Coxon had settled on Roatan taking over Henry Morgan’s position.

Sharp and Watling, with Dampier as navigator, decided to hole up in the Juan Fernando islands, 400 miles off the coast of Chile. On board the boats were several Misquito Indians, hired as crew, cooks, fighters and fishermen. The Misquitos had a great reputation as fishermen andit was said that two Indians could provide enough seafood for one hundred men.

While the Misquitos were foraging for food and water on the main island, three large Spanish ships appeared on the horizon. With trouble approaching, Watling decided to depart immediately. All the men made it back to the ships except one called Will. Will was reluctantly left behind, even though Watling moored his ship on the far side of the island to wait for Will until the Spanish presence demanded they leave.The expedition continued, with Watling being killed three months later on an attack on the town of Atica, Peru.

Although Coxon’s big raid had been a financial success, he was branded a coward and had lost three of his best captains to the Spanish: Sawkins, Harris and Watling were killed. Dampier also left the group, returned to the Caribbean, and three years later returned to Juan Fernando Island on a mission to complete the first circumnavigation of the globe. He also wanted to find Will, whom they eventually found cooking goats on the beach. Dampier commented that he had never seen anyone so pleased to see him.

By an incredible coincidence, 20 years later, another castaway, Alexander Selkirk, was part of another of Dampier’s adventures, acting as ship’s fitter on the Cinq Ports ship. Feeling that the ship was unseaworthy, he asked permission to be put off on Juan Fernando. Indeed Cinq Ports soon-after sank.

Selkirk, like Will, lived off feral goats and spiny lobsters for four years and four months before being rescued, again by the 58 year old William Dampier, this time acting as pilot for a Woodes Rogers expedition. The writer Daniel Defoe combined the stories of Will and Selkirk, to act as his models for Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday. This great story would never have been written had it not been for William Dampier.

These tax levies provoked the banana men into staging a full-scale military invasion of Honduras. They decided to reinstate former president Manuel Bonilla, known to his enemies as El Mono – the monkey. Their “fixer” behind the plot, was the shadowy Russian, Sam “The Banana Man” Zemurray. He was the founder of Cuyamel Fruit Co., and arrived in New Orleans in November 1910. He carried half a million dollars in cash – enough to hire muscle for the coup. These soldiers of fortune were led by Lee Christmas, a former Mississippi railway man who had fought in earlier Honduran campaigns, and who had a propensity of chewing broken glass to impress his recruits. Other tough guys ready to invade Honduras were “Machine Gun” Malony, Victor Gordon, and William Pittman. All were mercenaries who had fought for the British in the Boer War and Sam Dreben.

With the assurance that Bonilla’s allies would simultaneously invade Honduras from Guatemala and El Salvador, Christmas set out with 100 mercenaries carrying 200 rifles and 3,000 rounds of ammunition. On Dec 23rd, after a night of heavy partying at Madam May Evans’ infamous bordello on Basin Street. Christmas quipped, “This is the first time I’ve gone from a whorehouse to the White House!” The heavily laden, 180ft long Hornet made headway for Honduras but found the ports of Puerto Cortez and La Ceiba to be blocked by US Navy boats.

Christmas decided to invade Roatan instead.

So Christmas decided to invade Roatan instead. He and his mercenaries arrived on New Year’s Eve and took the surprised Honduran garrison with only one shot. Utila was next with a shore party led by Christmas and Maloney landing there on January 2. The drunk invaders forced the island’s commander to to cheer “Viva Bonilla” and dance a jig in the main street, clad only in his underwear.

In Trujillo 200 Honduran soldiers, equipped with 39 heavy cannons, waited nervously in the fort while Bonilla maneuvered back and forth, just out of range of the cannons, gleefully blowing the steam whistle every time a shot missed The Hornet. Eventually Christmas landed two raiding parties and surrounded the town, taking it without a shot being fired.

Two days later the Hornet was confiscated by the US Navy and the revolutionaries had to march 80 miles down the coast. The caravan was accompanied by hundreds of Bonilla’s supporters, while the garrison at La Ceiba waited, ready to put up stiff resistance. The Battle of La Ceiba was fought along the estuary of the Cangrejal river on January 25, 1911.

Guy Maloney’s twin 7mm Colt machine guns proved too much for the defenders. 400 were killed and La Ceiba taken. Puerto Cortes raised the white flag as well. The US consul noted that the American soldiers of fortune could be distinguished from the Hondurans by the fact that they were wearing shoes.

To the great joy of the fruit companies, Davila resigned on March 11. Bonilla was reinstated and immediately repealed the banana taxes. Sam Zemurray was repaid $500,000 for the coup and awarded a massive 34,000 acres of land. Lee Christmas was promoted to Commander of the Honduran army and Maloney was made Chief of Police. For the banana men business was back to normal.