In 1630, English Puritans arrived in Providence Island, under the aegis of the Providence Island Company. The Puritans decide to settle the tropical islands, rather than cold, rocky New England, but the Providence Island colony did not succeed in the same way as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They established slave-worked plantations and engaged in privateering, which led to the Spanish and Portuguese conquering the colony in May, 1641. In 1670, English buccaneers, led by Henry Morgan, took over the islands, which he used as a base to attack Panama. The buccaneers abandoned the islands by 1672. There is no record of anyone inhabiting the islands from then for another century.