George Spurre

George Spurre[lower-alpha 1] (fl. 1678-1683) was an English pirate and buccaneer. He is best known for sacking Campeche and for joining a large buccaneer force which captured Veracruz.

History

In early 1678 Spurre joined with Edward Neville off the coast of Cuba, using a French privateering commission to capture two Spanish vessels. They collected additional crew before sailing to Campeche in July 1678.[1] Neville and Spurre attacked the city at night, slipping past the garrison using captured guides, and captured it with little resistance. After several days of looting they left with ransoms, captured ships, and hundreds of slaves. Spurre returned to Jamaica in October, where he spent a few years as a trader.[1] Spanish forces (including privateer and pirate Juan Corso) retaliated by seizing the camps and ships of logwood cutters on the Campeche coast.[2]

By 1682 he was again known to the Spanish as a pirate, and in early 1683 joined a large buccaneer fleet preparing to raid Veracruz.[1] Among the fleet's leaders were Nicholas van Hoorn, Michel de Grammont, Jan Willems, Laurens de Graaf, and Michiel Andrieszoon.[3] Spurre was one of only two English captains in the assembly, the other being Jacob Hall.[4] That May they attacked by surprise and captured the city easily, looting it for several days. Spurre located the cowering Governor and saved him from angry Frenchmen, netting the buccaneers a huge ransom: “[they] had seventy thousand pieces of Eight for the Governour Don Luis de Cordoua's Ransome, which Spurre found hid amongst Grass in a Stable.”[5] The buccaneers scattered afterwards; Hall sailed to Carolina but Spurre left for French Saint-Domingue, where he died soon after.[5] Some months later Jamaican Governor Thomas Lynch seized Spurre's sloop and the goods aboard it, netting £1,175 in buccaneer plunder.[4]

See also
  • Francois Grogniet – One of the other French captains who joined the Veracruz expedition.

Notes
  1. First name Jorge in Spanish sources. Last name occasionally Splure, Spargh, or in Spanish accounts, “D’Elsurra.”

References
  1. Marley, David (2010). Pirates of the Americas. Santa Barbara CA: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781598842012. Retrieved 12 September 2017.
  2. Latimer, Jon (2009). Buccaneers of the Caribbean: How Piracy Forged an Empire. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 234–235. ISBN 9780674034037. Retrieved 15 November 2018.
  3. Little, Benerson (2016). The Golden Age of Piracy: The Truth Behind Pirate Myths. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. ISBN 9781510713048. Retrieved 15 September 2017.
  4. Fortescue, JW (1898). Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies | British History Online. London UK: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Retrieved 15 November 2018.
  5. Ayres, Philip; Perez de Guzman, Juan; Beeston, William (1684). The voyages and adventures of Capt. Barth. Sharp and others, in the South Sea: : being a journal of the same, also Capt. Van Horn with his Buccanieres surprizing of la Vera Cruz to which is added The true Relation of Sir Henry Morgan, his Expedition against the Spaniards in the West-Indies, and his taking Panama. Together with The President of Panama's Account of the same Expedition: Translated out of Spanish. And Col. Beeston's adjustment of the Peace between the Spaniards and English in the West Indies. London UK: London : Printed by B.W. for R.H. and S.T. p. 118. Retrieved 15 November 2018.
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