The Damning of Henry Morgan

The story of the book ‘The American Sea-Rovers’, the only eye-witness account of the piracy in the Caribbean in the seventeenth century, and how its translations were distorted in a game of international high politics.


Saved from the Inquisition, thrown into slavery to write the only eyewitness account of pirate battles in the Caribbean, can this ruthlessly manipulated French surgeon survive a world of mayhem and torture to be reunited with his first love?  Will his unique tale, cynically twisted and distorted, discredit his friend, Henry Morgan, infamous Admiral of the Brethren of the Coast?  Or will another soul be damned?

But what was a young student of medicine from Nantes doing in brutal, lawless Tortuga?  What forced him give up six years of study to become an indentured slave?  Was it religious persecution?  Or forbidden love?   How did he come to join Henry Morgan, a Welsh soldier in the service of England?   Why did he write his book about the exploits of these pirates?  And why did the English version of his book cause Henry Morgan to sue the publishers for defamation of character?  

From the court of the Inquisition to the cesspit of Tortuga, from the jungles of Panama to the royal courts of London and Madrid, with its mixture of exotic adventure and high politics, this is a tale of love, truth, deception and ultimate betrayal.  

The young surgeon, his forbidden love, the inquisitor, or the pirate - who will pay the price for damning Henry Morgan?

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© Nigel Holloway 2016