You can still hear screams of terror in Old Panama
PANAMA VIEJO: Old Panama. Stand in the graveled, tree-lined
road, the convent and public baths to your left, the Jesuit
church to your right, and listen carefully. Screams of terror.
Shouts of domination. The clash of steel. Musket fire. The roar
of flames consuming the city. It is January, 1671.
Henry Morgan and 1,200 fierce, dirty, scruffy and desperate
pirates are here, smelly from a nine-day trek through the
jungle, sweating under the summer sun.
Morgan had thought his men would be able to live off the land on
their way across the isthmus from the Caribbean. He was wrong.
Villages were deserted, their crops burned. Morgan had thought
he could take the city now known as Panama Viejo by surprise. He
was wrong again. The Spanish knew of the impending attack three
weeks before it came.
With a relatively small defensive force, they could easily have
wiped out Morgan