HMS Oxford

BlackWhskyBlaze

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For those of you who might "fathom" an interest in maritime history, deep sea diving, or even piracy, it has come to my attention that a fairly recent discovery has been made off the coast of Haiti...

A thirty-four gun warship, better known as th HMS Oxford, one of many flagships governed by the lagandary Sir Henry Captain Morgan, was discovered in April of 2004 by an expedition team led by Rick Haupt and Bruce Leeming of Ocean Discovery Network.

The text below is an excerpt from the book "Under The Black Flag" written by David Cordingly that best describes a brief history of the ship and it's sudden fate.

"In October 1668 Morgan let it be known that he was planning another raid and sailed to Isla Vaca (Cow Island) on the southwestern coast of Hispanolia. There he was joined by several French buccaneers from Tortuga and the thirty-four gun warship HMS Oxford, which had been sent out to Jamaica to help in the defense of the island. By January 1669 there were ten ships and eight hundred men gathered at the rendezvous. Morgan transferred his flag to the Oxford and held a council of war to discuss the next objective. It was agreed that the first expedition would be a raid on the city of Cartagena, which was one of the treasure ports on the Spanish Main. The night after the decision was taken a rowdy dinner was held in the cabin of the flagship. As was Usual with buccaneer parties, the drinks and toasts were puntuated with the firing of the ship's guns. At some point during the drunken proceedings, the gunpowder in the magazine was set alight and the ship was blown apart. Morgan, who seems to have had a charmed life, was picked up from the water and was one of only ten people on board to survive the blast."

It is said that Ocean Discovery Network plans to lobby the United Nations to declare the wreck a World Heritage Site.

A small tribute from Black Wiskey Blaze to a distant, but very dear relative, Sir Henry Morgan.
 
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