Edward Mansvelt (also recorded as Edward Mansfield) was a buccaneer commander active in the Caribbean from the late 1650s until his death soon after 1666. His nationality is disputed in the sources: some accounts describe him as a Dutchman from Curaçao, others as an Englishman. By 1659 he held a privateering commission from Edward D’Oyley, governor of English Jamaica, and operated out of Port Royal. He rose to become an informally recognized admiral of the loose buccaneer confederation known as the Brethren of the Coast.
In 1666 Mansvelt led a fleet of roughly ten ships and several hundred men in the capture of the Spanish-held island of Santa Catalina (also called Providencia, or Old Providence), off the coast of present-day Nicaragua, taking a substantial haul of plunder in the process. He petitioned Jamaica’s governor for reinforcements to hold the island permanently as a buccaneer base, but the request was refused, and Spain retook Santa Catalina within months.
Mansvelt died not long afterward; accounts of his death conflict. One version holds that he fell ill and died at Tortuga after a falling-out with Jamaica’s governor, Thomas Modyford. Another holds that he was captured by the Spanish off Cuba and executed for piracy. His vice-admiral and protégé, Henry Morgan, inherited his position and went on to lead the buccaneers on the far larger raids Mansvelt had only attempted.