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Edward Mansfield (17th century)


Some sources mention him under the name Edward Mansvelt. In the year 1659 we hear of him for the first time when he took a privateering commission at Port Royal (Jamaica) from the governor D’Oyley.
In 1663 Mansfield commands a small buccaneer vessel at Jamaica. At the end of 1665, he led about two hundred buccaneers at the plunder of some Cuban town. Not long after this assault, the governor of Jamaica commissioned him to make an expedition against the Dutch (a different one of this of Edward Morgan) at Curaçao. But his men (Mansfield says afterwards) didn’t want to attack the Dutch, because the richest prizes that they could made in these seas were Spanish.

In January 1666 he set sail from Jamaica. According to John Esquemeling the fleet which he commanded, attacked and plundered both Granada and the Isle of St. Catharine, but this is not true. With the remaining of his fleet, Mansfield took, in May 1666, the island of Santa Catalina (named Providence Island by the English) from the Spaniards.
Mansfield, elected admiral of a fleet of about 500 men and ten ships, went to Costa Rica (April 1666), with the design to attack the city of Cartago (not Carthagena), several miles inland. But Mansfield was repulsed before the town of Turrialba. Then, some of his captains left him to return to Tortuga or Jamaica. Mansfield sailed on and attacked the Isle of St. Catharine.

After his capture of this island he attempted to persuade the Governor of Jamaica in June 1666 to send reinforcements to make it a permanent base for attacks upon the Spaniards. This attempt failed and afterwards he tried to persuade the Governor of Jamaica to establish a pirate base, but he died of an illness. John Esquemeling mentions Mansfield briefly in his book The Buccaneers of America. He sails away in June 1666 for another cruising (He didn’t go to Tortuga as Exquemelin says). During this he was taken by the Spaniards of Cuba, who executed him for his piracies.


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Part of the information as well as the sources were provided by Raynald Laprise.

Written sources:

Cruishank, E.A.
The life of Sir Henry Morgan / E.A. Cruishank. - Toronto, 1935
Haring, Clarence Henry
The buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVIIth Century / Clarence Henry Haring. - New York : Metheun & Co., 1910
Pawson, Michael + DB
Port Royal, Jamaica / Michael Pawson and David Buisseret. - Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1975
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