The capture of Tortuga was a successful Spanish military expedition against English, French and buccaneer settlers in Tortuga, an island off northern Hispaniola in what is now Haiti, in January 1635, during the colonial theatre of the Thirty Years' War. The campaign was commissioned by Santo Domingo, in southern Hispaniola, upon their learning, from an Irish Catholic defector in late 1634, of an illicit and thriving, but poorly defended, settlement on the leeward side of said island. The operation, which got under way after Puerto Rican aid was secured, involved 250 men on four warships, and was led by Ruy Fernández de Fuenmayor, who successfully captured the port, torched the settlement, and routed virtually all colonists from Tortuga, after summarily executing hundreds of them. Their success was lauded by Spanish authorities, but as no garrison had been left behind in Tortuga, the island was soon resettled by French pirates, making said victory short-lived.
Tortuga was first surreptitiously settled in the early 17th century by the English and French, who took to hunting, woodcutting and piracy to sustain themselves. In the early 1630s, they were joined by English tobacco planters from Saint Kitts, in the Leeward Islands, who soon formalised the settlement as Association Island, a dependency of Old Providence, in the Mosquito Gulf, and appointed Christopher Wormeley as governor. Upon the Spanish capture of Association, the Providence Company severely censured Wormeley for his failure to defend the plantation colony, and attempted, but ultimately failed, to resettle the English farmers, leaving Tortuga as a pirate stronghold from the late 1630s, in time for the Golden Age of Caribbean piracy.
The capture of Tortuga is thought to have prompted, in part, later Spanish expeditions against the Dutch in Curaçao and the Puritans in Old Providence, and has been deemed a precursor to the Franco-Spanish War, which opened in May 1635.
Background
In the early 17th century, pirates and other seamen from England, France and the Nethelands began staying in the Caribbean even after completing their work or between seafaring trips, during their downtime. They began surreptitiously settling the northern coast of Hispaniola, including the leeward (southern) side of Tortuga, and thereby became buccaneers proper by the late 1620s or early 1630s. To supplement their income from piracy, these settler buccaneers took to hunting and barbecuing game, and to cutting and selling dyewoods.
In 1630, the clandestine Tortuga settlers were joined by approximately 150 English tobacco farmers from Saint Kitts, led there by Anthony Hilton. These new arrivals sought to formalise their illicit settlement, and so petitioned the newly chartered Providence Company for recognition and aid. On 21 July 1631, the said company acquiesced by making Tortuga (now officially Association Island) a dependency of their proprietary colony of Old Providence, and further confirmed Hilton as Association's governor, and provided for the island's defence (with ordnance) and plantation needs (with indentured servants). Upon Hilton's death in 1634, the governorship passed on to his associate, Christopher Wormeley.
Among the servants shipped to Association by the company in the early 1630s had been two Irish Catholics, John Murphy and his cousin. Upon Wormeley's inauguration in 1634, they refused to swear allegiance to the English monarch, which protest somehow lead to his cousin's death and Murphy's defection to the Spanish, first to Carthagena and then to Santo Domingo. The Irishman informed Spanish authorities that "there are on the island up to three hundred people, including elderly people, young people, and service people, and they are settled and spread out in a valley measuring three leguas lengthwise along the coast of the said Island with their farms and crops and a large trade with vessels of all nations that come to the island, and that they have an English Governor and are neglectful and lack military discipline, despite there being in the Port a Platform with six pieces of iron artillery, and in the Governor's house some muskets and arquebuses, and that with them there are even thirty African slaves who help them in their crops, and that they go to the mainland of this Island [Hispaniola] to stock up on meat and other things they need".
Thus prompted to action, acting governor Alonso de Cereceda convened a war council which, naturally, resolved to "dislodge the enemy from the said Island and punish their audacity before their greater expansion and fortification", the latter of which was a particular worry, given Tortuga's proximity to Spanish sea lanes, and the settlement's apparently thriving trade in brazilwood and tobacco. Preparations, which involved Puerto Rico, were finalised by about the New Year.
Capture
On 4 January 1635, admiral Francisco Turrillo de Yebra set sail from Santo Domingo with 50 infantrymen on four warships, to rendezvous with general Ruy Fernández de Fuenmayor and his 150 lancers in Port Bayaha, in northern Hispaniola. The ships were watered while the officers coordinated their landing, after which the Spanish carried on due northwest, hugging the coast up to the Tortuga Channel. After nightfall on 21 January, Fuenmayor led his flotilla across the channel, to Tortuga's main (leeward) port. The Spanish pilot, however, ran the vessels aground on some reefs during the approach, causing a ruckus which alerted three (non-Spanish) merchant frigates to their presence. During the loud frenzy that followed, the frigates' crews rushed to man the nearby fort and sound the alarm, while the Spanish slipped away from their grounded vessels in canoes, to make a quiet landing, leaving some men behind to provide cover. This opening skirmish in the leeward port resulted in the campaign's first casualties, for both sides. According to a later Spanish report, "they crossed at night so as not to be noticed, and not being able to take the port, where three merchant frigates and a patache were anchored, unaware and unprepared, when they [Fuenmayor] disembarked the men in the part [of the port] where they sought to land, the flagship and the rest of the ships ran aground, and given this confusion, darkness of the night, [and] noise and voices caused by the people throwing themselves into the water, some drowned, among them the alferez of Captain Camacho, Pedro de Vargas".
Having been startled awake by the bugle call, the scene in the nearby settlement apparently mirrored the port's chaos as French and English settlers and buccaneers collected their valuables and attempted to escape the imminent Spanish. At the governor's house, Wormeley likewise set upon retreat, apparently determining that a defence of Association was not wise or feasible now, and managed to make his escape before Fuenmayor arrived. Said Spanish general, with Turrillo, captain Gonçalo de Frías and a detachment of 24 men, marched into town and made a beeline for Wormeley's residence, where an unidentified man, presumed governor by Fuenmayor, opposed them but was quickly despatched with two well-aimed lance throws. Association's "governor" thus slain, the Spanish now set about methodically sacking and torching the settlement, allegedly killing all residents they came across, while the men left behind in the port managed to capture the fort, forcing the foreign merchant vessels to retreat.
By daybreak on 22 January, most (or some) of Association's inhabitants had apparently managed to escape south to Hispaniola, reportedly making the crossing on rickety canoes. Fuenmayor now sent men farther into Tortuga, directing "that all the fields and houses be put to fire". The invasion's last engagement came on 23 January, when some 190 musket-armed settlers or buccaneers, who had evidently stayed (or been left) behind, resolved to oppose the Spanish by marching to their bivouac. Fuenmayor somehow discovered their scheme, though, and met them outside the Spanish camp, at about the midway mark from the settlers' point of departure. This closing battle was reportedly quick and bitter, with heavy casualties inflicted by the Spanish, who themselves sustained only minor losses.
Aftermath
On 27 or 28 January, the four stranded Spanish warships were finally removed from Tortuga's southern reefs and brought into port. Fuenmayor spent the following three or four days combing the island, for stragglers or unrazed structures, before finally departing, with the rest of the Spanish following not long thereafter. In Santo Domingo, 39 prisoners from Association were condemened to hard labour for life, and set to building the Spanish city's fortifications.
On 10 April, the Providence Company formally stripped Wormeley of his governorship and banished him from Tortuga, "by reason of his cowardice and negligence in losing the island". He is thought to have relocated to Virginia, where he served in a number public offices. They further instructed Philip Bell, governor of Old Providence, that should Wormeley present himself in said colony, "a very strict eye is to be kept upon him, and he is to be sent home [to London] ... for having 'given us some cause for distaste'".
According to Columbia University historian Nellis Crouse, settlers or buccaneers who could (or did) not flee the Spanish were "hunted down" during Fuenmayor's aforementioned sweep, though they deem it possible that a "handful managed to conceal themselves in out-of-the-way recesses until the Spaniards ... sailed back to San Domingo". In any case, though, the Spanish certainly did not leave a garrison behind in Tortuga, and so the island was eventually resettled within the year (at the latest) or within a few months of Spanish withdrawal (possibly).
In April 1635, the Providence Company appointed Nicholas Reskeimmer governor of Association Island. He and some 80 uprooted English settlers, with about 150 slaves, landed in the leeward port, aboard the Expectation, by February 1636. Later that year, Juan de Bargas, under orders from Cereceda, apprehended 59 of their slaves, whom the Spanish then sold to help pay for the Fuenmayor expedition, which had cost Santo Domingo 37,300 reales de plata. By late January 1637, Reskeimmer's settlers had abandoned Association, leaving the island with a French-majority settlement that next came under Spanish assault in 1638, this time by Carlos Ibarra, who "put to the sword those who resisted him and destroyed the houses they had built". These later Spanish offensives were "few and far between" though, and like Fuenmayor's, invariably failed to leave watchmen behind, such that "as soon as warships slipped under the horizon, the brethren of the coast returned to occupy the same sites" in Tortuga.
Legacy
The Spanish crown deemed the capture "a complete success" by late 1636, for which seven of Fuenmayor's men, who had distinguished themselves in service, were granted mercedes ('titles and honours') on 22 August, while the general himself was named governor and captain general of Spanish Venezuela on 26 November of that year. This military achievement is thought to have prompted, at least partly, later Spanish campaigns against Old Providence (from mid-1635) and Dutch Curaçao (from 1637). The Providence Company, on the other hand, blamed the failure of Association's defence on Wormeley, who "displayed the utmost cowardice and took instant flight in a small bark for Virginia", according to King's College London historian A. P. Newton.
The capture is thought to have contributed to Tortuga's transition from a settlement which mostly focussed on cash crop farming (while engaging in piracy incidentally) to "a true pirate stronghold" (dealing primarily in piracy), according to Louisiana State University geographer Peter R. Galvin, as Fuenmayor's success completely routed the English plantation owners from the island, whereas Reskeimmer's later attempt to resettle Association failed, leaving a pirate and buccaneer majority in Tortuga (by early 1637), who did not (or could not be made to) submit to Providence Company's plantation-oriented orversight.