han
two hundred pieces of eight per capita, of so many valuable purchases
and robberies as they had obtained. Which small sum they thought too
little reward for so much labour and such huge and manifest dangers as
they had so often exposed their lives unto. But Captain Morgan was deaf
to all these and many other complaints of this kind, having designed in
his mind to cheat them of as much as he could."[315]

On 6th March 1671, Morgan, after demolishing the fort and other edifices
at Chagre and spiking all the guns, got secretly on board his own ship,
if we are to believe Exquemelin, and followed by only three or four
vessels of the fleet, returned to Port Royal. The rest of the fleet
scattered, most of the ships having "much ado to find sufficient
victuals and provisions for their voyage to Jamaica." At the end of
August not more than ten vessels of the original thirty-six had made
their way back to the English colony. Morgan, with very inadequate
means, accomplished a feat which had been the dream of Drake and other
English sailors for a century or more, and which Admiral Vernon in 1741
with a much greater armament feared even to attempt. For display of
remarkable leadership and reckless bravery the expedition against Panama
has never been surpassed. Its brilliance was only clouded by the cruelty
and rapacity of the victors--a force levied without pay and little
discipline, and unrestrained, if not encouraged, in brutality by Morgan
himself. Exquemelin's accusation against Morgan, of avarice and
dishonesty in the division of the spoil amongst his followers, is,
unfortunately for the admiral's reputation, too well substantiated.
Richard Browne, the surgeon-general of the fleet, estimated the plunder
at over L70,000 "besides other rich goods," of which the soldiers were
miserably cheated, each man receiving but L10 as his share. At Chagre,
he writes, the leaders gave what they pleased "for which ... we must be
content or else be clapped in irons." The wronged seamen were loud in
their complaints against Morgan, Collier and the other captains for
starving, cheating and deserting them; but so long as Modyford was
governor they could obtain no redress. The commanders "dared but seldom
appear," writes Browne, "the widows, orphans and injured inhabitants who
had so freely advanced upon the hopes of a glorious design, being now
ruined through fitting out the privateers."[316] The Spaniards reckoned
their whole loss at 6,000,00