Ambuscade: An ambush launched from a concealed fortification.
Arquebus: A heavy, notoriously inaccurate matchlock gun that first came into use during the fifteenth century. Also spelled harquebus.
Ball: A bullet.
Boucan: The tangy smoked meat produced and traded by the buccaneers of Hispaniola.
Buccaneer: A pirate, especially one who operated against Spanish shipping and settlements in the West Indies during the seventeenth century.
Castellan: The military officer in charge of a castle or fort.
Colors: A flag.
Commission: Also known as a letter of marque, this was a document authorizing a private citizen to wage war on a nation’s enemy.
Corsaro: A pirate.
Doubloon: A gold coin used in Spain and Spanish America.
Galleon: A large three-or four-masted sailing ship used from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, especially by Spain, as a war and treasure ship.
Grandee: The highest-ranking noble in the Spanish hierarchy.
Hispaniola: The Caribbean island now divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Logwood: A spiny tropical American tree whose heartwood was used to make a purplish red dye.
Low Countries: A region in northwestern Europe consisting of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
Maroon: A fugitive black slave in the West Indies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; also, the descendant of such a slave.
Matelot: Literally, “bedmate,” but most often used to mean companion, or friend. Used by the early buccaneers to describe the man they paired up with in the jungles of Hispaniola.
Mestizo: A person of mixed race, especially of mixed Native American and European ancestry.
New Spain: Present-day Mexico.
New World: The lands of the Western Hemisphere.
North Sea: The present-day Caribbean Sea.
Piece of eight: A common Spanish silver coin used widely in the New World. Also known as a peso or a cob.
Purchase: All monies and goods obtained during a raid. The commonly used phrase “no purchase, no pay” meant that the buccaneers would depend solely on the booty they recovered on an expedition for their pay.
Roundshot: A cannonball.
South Sea: The present-day Pacific Ocean.
Spanish Main: The Spanish-held mainland of North and South America.
United Provinces: The present-day Netherlands.
Woolding: A commonly used form of torture in which a knotted cord was tied around a victim’s head and then twisted with a stick until the eyes popped out.