Moses Cohen Henriques was a Sephardic Jewish privateer of Dutch-Portuguese descent who sailed for the Dutch West India Company during the Eighty Years’ War. In 1628 he served under Admiral Piet Pieterszoon Hein in the capture of the Spanish treasure fleet at Matanzas Bay, Cuba, helping seize roughly 11.5 million guilders in silver, gold, and goods without a single Dutch casualty, the largest prize taken from Spain in the war. He went on to raid Spanish and Portuguese shipping in the Caribbean for years afterward, evading capture even after being named in Inquisition records as a practicing Jew. Later popular claims that he became an adviser to Henry Morgan or received a pardon from him in the 1680s rest on thin, undocumented sourcing and are not supported by contemporary records.
Moses Cohen Henriques
