If you put your finger on the map of Panama, at the Caribbean mouth of the Panama Canal; and then slide your finger about 2 inches to the right (or east), you’ll see the city of Portobelo. In the middle of the seventeenth century, ships full of priceless treasures left those harbors regularly, en route to Spain.  It is suspected that the Portobelo Bay in the Caribbean Sea contains one of Christopher Columbus’ ships and at least 20 other shipwrecks.  At the ruins of Fort San Lorenzo, you’ll find what remains of the cobblestone route called El Camino Real (the Royal Road).  So how is this fort and the royal treasure road important to our story of Bala Beach?

What must first be made clear is that young Henry Morgan was a rogue, not a pirate! With members of his family on both sides of the war in Britain, he was doing the work of a privateer for England. This meant that he held a paper issued by a representative of the English government. The governor of Jamaica empowered him to fight the Spaniards on England’s behalf. His pay was in effect what he managed to steal from Spain.

Although today this might seem a dishonorable way for a government to conduct itself, in the world paradigm of the 17th century these were accepted means of conducting European naval war. Hence Henry Morgan was a sea-raider authorized by an English Letter of Marque, not an outlaw pirate.

Admiral Henry Morgan was a handsome 25 year old Welshman when he attacked Fort San Lorenzo. It’s at the mouth of the Chagres River, in the bay harbor of Puerto Bello (now known as Portobelo) on the shores of the Caribbean Sea.  He was an ardent young man, who had set aside some of the traditions of his family to go to sea for England.

As one of the fortunate few, he had found the love of his life at a young age….in Genevieve Graham. She was a courageous young woman who found joy in posing as the captain’s cabin boy, to the undisputed king of the buccaneers.  Because of her family’s deaths on shipboard in transit from England to Jamaica; the theft of the family valuables on ship, and her arrival without financial support; it had been necessary for her to learn very quickly to take care of herself, or surrender all.

She had learned aboard ship that her slight figure allowed her to masquerade as a young man, safe from the unwelcome affections of the crew. And with time, her pose became the only safe way for her to go ashore.  Outrageously, she was discovered the first time she went to shore in Port Royal, Jamaica. She literally ran into then Captain Henry Morgan and he knew instantly he had not run into the body of a man, so he wanted to know more.

In discovering her secrets from the past, he lost his heart to her, and when the Captain brought her aboard his ship, she was in disguise. From then on, she posed as the Captain’s cabin boy.  Only Jonathan, a lifelong Welsh friend and one of his closest companions was trusted with their secret.
 

Then the Captain received a huge surprise from his family, the Morgan’s were moving to Jamaica en masse and his Uncle Colonel Edward Morgan had made it his deathbed request that Captain Morgan marry his daughter, Mary Elizabeth.  With great ceremony, Henry did so, after sharing many tears with his beloved Genevieve.  Yet Genevieve was not willing to give up her berth as ‘Captain’s lad’ and beseeched Henry to be allowed to continue sailing with the ship. As usual, he conceded.

When Admiral Henry Morgan went to attack Puerto Bello, he was concerned for Genevieve’s safety. She’d had several close calls aboard ship during their most recent battles, and the challenges expected from the Spanish at Puerto Bello were great.  She was very unhappy as she was insistently shoved into a small boat and rowed to shore, a days’ sail away from Puerto Bello and left there with a complaining monk, a small detail of armed men loaded with supplies to camp on the beach and the courageous Jonathan. The rest of the ship’s crew went to attack Fort San Lorenzo with 9 ships in tow.

At the end of June, 1666 Admiral Henry Morgan’s ships were posed at the great harbor of Puerto Bello, on the northern coast of the Isthmus of Panama. In a daring attack he took the town, held its citizens for ransom and beat off 3,000 strong troops coming to the aid of the town from the city of Panama. But it took two weeks to control the surrounding area, and defeat the remaining troops.

It was Admiral Morgan who was horrified though, when after the attack he returned to the beach, halfway between Puerto Bello and Colon to find all of the small party from his ship, lying dead in the sand.  With Jonathan’s body closest to Genevieve’s, he could see that his friend had spent his last bullet - a silver one –to save her from an even more horrifying death by their angry native attackers. 

Genevieve’s body lay crumpled at the foot of a tree, and as he raised her into his arms to hug her one last time. Admiral Morgan saw the bullet that took her life, a mangled lump of silver wedged into the trunk of the tree, and remembered that he and Jonathan had molded a small number of those bullets from silver reals. 

Genevieve, Jonathan and their men had fought bravely for their lives, dug deeply into the sand and their bodies were surrounded by empty weapons and marks in the sand where native bodies had been drug away from the scene. They had fought with great honor.   The Admiral Henry Morgan wore that scrap of a silver bullet around his neck for the rest of his life in memory of a woman of strength and courage, whom he had loved without restraint, and a best friend who had given his all trying to protect her. 

And as he climbed the ladder to board his ship, he vowed never to return to the beach of the bullet. His crew (who had really known all along about Genevieve’s ‘secret’) passed his words along one to the other…calling that treasured cove of love, Bala Beach. Where the body of love may have died, but the spirit of love will always live on.