Matthew Luke

Matthew Luke
Died	1722
Nationality	Italian
Other names	Mateo Luque
Occupation	Pirate
Piratical career
Other names	Matteo Luca
Base of operations	Caribbean
Commands	Vengeance

Matthew Luke (died 1722, occasionally named Mateo Luque or Matteo Luca)[1] was a pirate and privateer active in the Caribbean.

History

Luke, originally from Genoa, had been cruising the Caribbean under commission from the Spanish Governor of Puerto Rico as a guarda costa privateer. With his sloop Vengeance (or Venganza) he had earlier captured four English vessels and murdered their crews.[2] In April 1722 he spotted a merchant ship off of Hispaniola and moved alongside to attack it. The ship turned out to be Captain Candler's 40-gun fifth-rate frigate HMS Launceton (or Lauceston / Lanceston),[3] sent to the Caribbean to replace the scrapped HMS Ludlow Castle.[4]

Candler's men boarded the Vengeance, whose sailors claimed she was a merchant trader. The paper wrap from a powder cartridge was determined to be a page from the journal of a snow named Crean, whose crew had been murdered.[5] In the ship's hold they found the rest of the 58-man crew in hiding, all of which were arrested and returned to Port Royal.[6] The Launceton's logbooks note, "25 Apr 1722 - Cape Tiberon - captured boat from Puerto Rico with hiding crew."[7] The crewmen were tried and shown to be pirates, one of whom confessed to killing twenty English men with his bare hands.[5] Despite Spanish objections that the vessel had a legitimate privateering commission,[6] over forty of the pirates were hanged.[3]

See also

• Augustin Blanco and Simon Mascarino, two other Spanish guarda costa privateers caught by English pirate hunters.

References

1. Travers, Tim (2012). Pirates: A History. Stroud UK: The History Press. ISBN 9780752488271. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
2. Gosse, Philip (1924). The Pirates' Who's Who by Philip Gosse. New York: Burt Franklin. Retrieved 23 June 2017.
3. Cordingly, David (2013). Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates. New York: Random House Publishing Group. ISBN 9780307763075. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
4. Shipley, John (2015). Little Book of Shropshire. Stroud UK: The History Press. ISBN 9780750963428. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
5. Johnson, Captain Charles (1724). A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE PYRATES. London: T. Warner. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
6. Earle, Peter (2003). The Pirate Wars. New York: Macmillan. pp. 199–200. ISBN 9780312335793. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
7. "HMS Launceton 1721-1722". baylusbrooks.com. Retrieved 22 December 2018.