Thread by @MarcACaputo

Since the Tampa Bay #Buccaneers are in the Super Bowl, & since I’m coincidentally reading the 1678 “The Buccaneers of America” by Alex Exquemelin, here’s the amazing short story of a gutsy crazy unfortunate badass named Bartholomew Portugues

1/6

2) Portugues, with 30 men & a small ship w/just 4 small cannon, defeated a Spanish ship, w/70 men & 20 bigger guns, that was laden with cocoa beans & 70k Pieces of Eight

But the buccaneers couldn’t get home to Jamaica, ran into more Spanish ships & were defeated off Cuba

3) Portugues was taken to Campeche, Mexico to be hanged

But he escaped the ship in port by

✅stabbing a guard

✅jumping overboard w/earthen jars for floaties (he couldn’t swim!)

✅trekking the jungle by himself for 120 miles

✅living off the land & evading capture ...

4) Unable to ford a river, at one point, Portugues made a raft of driftwood, floated across and found ... fellow pirates.

Portugues then successfully persuaded them to sail back to Campeche & attack & steal the ship that had held him prisoner.

They succeeded. Crazy

5) Portugues “by a 2nd turn of fortune was become rich & powerful” w/the new ship, but he shipwrecked south of Cuba, escaped in a canoe to Jamaica “where it was not long ere he went on new adventures, but was never fortunate after.”

Lol. The end.

6) Trigger warning: Tampa’s a city of fake pirate history

It wasn’t a home for buccaneers

The pirate Gasparilla, namesake of a big city festival, is probably a myth —but pirates would’ve certainly endorsed a bacchanal in their honor, especially one built on a grift

Go Bucs!