Christopher Myngs

The date of Myngs's birth is uncertain, but is probably somewhere between 1620 and 1625. It is probable that he saw a good deal of sea-service before 1648. He first appears prominently as the captain of the Elisabeth, which after it had undergone action during the First Anglo-Dutch War brought in a Dutch convoy with two men-of-war as prizes. From 1653 to 1655 he continued to command the Elisabeth, when he was high in favour with the council of state and recommended for promotion by the flag officers under whom he served.^[1]

In 1655, he was appointed to the frigate Marston Moor, the crew of which was on the verge of mutiny. His firm measures quelled their insubordinate spirits, and he took the vessel out to the West Indies, arriving in January 1656 in Jamaica where he became the subcommander of the naval flotilla on the Jamaica Station, until the summer of 1657.^[1][2]

In February 1658, he returned to Jamaica as naval commander, acting as a

The Spanish government, upon hearing of Myngs' actions, protested to no avail to the English government of Oliver Cromwell on his conduct. Because he had shared half of the bounty of his 1659 raid, about a quarter of a million pounds, with the buccaneers against the explicit orders of Edward D'Oyley, the English Commander of Jamaica, he was arrested for embezzlement and sent back to England in the Marston Moor in 1660.^[3]

The

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Myngs, Sir Christopher". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 113.
• Angust Konstam, Buccaneers 1620–1700, Oxford, 2000.

Sources

• Cundall, Frank (1915). Historic Jamaica. West India Committee.