patgund | I may have to find this book.....

Thanks to

cahwyguy for alerting me to this book review:

'Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean' by Edward Kritzler

"Many of the episodes in Kritzler's compelling book will be truly startling to the non-specialist reader. When the original Spanish settlement in Jamaica turned out to be a dismal failure, for example, a decision was made to repopulate the island with Jewish conversos: "Jamaica for the Jews," as Kritzler puts it, "or the colony goes under." What's more, the success of the settlement was essential to the task of ridding the sea lanes of pirates who preyed on Spanish treasure ships: "If it meant dealing with converted Jews to ensure their safety and prevent the strategic colony from becoming a pirate base, so be it."

But Jews were to be found among the pirates too. Kritzler introduces us to more than one Jewish buccaneer, including a remarkable man named Samuel Palache, a "pirate rabbi" who sent a flotilla of privateers to operate against Spanish shipping in the Mediterranean under the flag of Morocco in 1611 even as he served as the rabbi of the first synagogue in Holland. "Carved on the bow of his ship was a phoenix," writes Kritzler. "It was his way of saying that the Inquisition might burn individual Jews, but could not destroy their ancestral faith."