Matthew Luke
{{Infobox pirate
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| name = Matthew Luke
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| death_date = 1722
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| nationality = Italian
| other_names = Matteo Lucca, Mateo de Luque
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| occupation = Pirate
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| type = Guarda costa
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| base of operations = Caribbean
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| commands = Vengeance
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Matthew Luke (died 1722, occasionally named Mateo Luque or Matteo Luca){{cite book|last1=Travers|first1=Tim|title=Pirates: A History|date=2012|publisher=The History Press|location=Stroud UK|isbn=9780752488271|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gu8SDQAAQBAJ|accessdate=28 July 2017|language=en}} was a pirate and privateer active in the Caribbean.
History
Luke, originally from Genoa, had been cruising the Caribbean under commission from the Spanish Governor of Puerto Rico as a guarda costa privateer. With his sloop Vengeance (or Venganza) he had earlier captured four English vessels and murdered their crews.{{cite book|last1=Gosse|first1=Philip|title=The Pirates' Who's Who by Philip Gosse|date=1924|publisher=Burt Franklin|location=New York|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19564/19564-h/19564-h.htm|accessdate=23 June 2017}} In April 1722 he spotted a merchant ship off of Hispaniola and moved alongside to attack it. The ship turned out to be Captain Candler's 40-gun fifth-rate frigate HMS Launceton (or Lauceston / Lanceston), sent to the Caribbean to replace the scrapped HMS Ludlow Castle.{{cite book|last1=Shipley|first1=John|title=Little Book of Shropshire|date=2015|publisher=The History Press|location=Stroud UK|isbn=9780750963428|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S2QTDQAAQBAJ|accessdate=28 July 2017|language=en}}
Candler's men boarded the Vengeance, whose sailors claimed she was a merchant trader. The paper wrap from a powder cartridge was determined to be a page from the journal of a snow named Crean, whose crew had been murdered. In the ship's hold they found the rest of the 58-man crew in hiding, all of which were arrested and returned to Port Royal.{{cite book|last1=Earle|first1=Peter|title=The Pirate Wars|date=2003|publisher=Macmillan|location=New York|isbn=9780312335793|pages=199–200|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VkPb_vEg1aQC|accessdate=28 July 2017|language=en}} The Launceton's logbooks note, "25 Apr 1722 - Cape Tiberon - captured boat from Puerto Rico with hiding crew."{{cite web |title=HMS Launceton 1721-1722 |url=http://baylusbrooks.com/index_files/Page23292.htm |website=baylusbrooks.com |accessdate=22 December 2018}} The crewmen were tried and shown to be pirates, one of whom confessed to killing twenty English men with his bare hands.{{cite book|last1=Johnson|first1=Captain Charles|title=A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE PYRATES|date=1724|publisher=T. Warner|location=London|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40580/40580-h/40580-h.htm|accessdate=18 June 2017}} Despite Spanish objections that the vessel had a legitimate privateering commission, over forty of the pirates were hanged.{{cite book|last1=Cordingly|first1=David|title=Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates|date=2013|publisher=Random House Publishing Group|location=New York|isbn=9780307763075|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fnoi6SM1u5cC|accessdate=28 July 2017|language=en}}
See also
- Augustin Blanco and Simon Mascarino, two other Spanish guarda costa privateers caught by English pirate hunters.
References
{{reflist}}
{{pirates}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Luke, Matthew}}
Category:Executed mass murderers
Category:Italian mass murderers
Category:People executed for piracy
Category:18th-century Spanish criminals
Category:Year of birth missing