I just keep playing hard,вЂќ Astudillo said recently through team interpreter Elvis Martinez. ItвЂ™s very satisfying to know the fans welcome me here. Buxton displaying superstar potential during TwinsвЂ™ first week.Third timeвЂ™s not the charm: Twins lose in extra innings again 4-3.Photos of the Week: Wild fans return to the Xcel Energy Center.Lead slips away in ninth inning as Twins lose 8-6 to Mariners.Twins Final Pitch: Buxton is вЂvery much locked inвЂ™.The use of privateers was largely abandoned after the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1856. Outright piracy and the use of pirates as privateers for European states would occasionally flair up but rarely would it remain a significant problem for long. The Navy hunted down pirates ruthlessly and dispatched quick and summary justice to anyone they caught. A hundred years after that and the French had lost Haiti (their main Caribbean possession) to a slave revolt and Britain had double its number of ships there. In 1670, the Royal Navy had just two ships in the Caribbean, by 1718 the presence had swelled to 124 and piracy had become a shadow of its former self. As Spanish power declined and Britain and France asserted themselves as the dominant regional powers it became obvious that potentially lucrative colonies where slaves were growing tobacco or sugar were threatened by uncertainty at sea and something had to be done to stamp out piracy. While the Caribbean was primarily a staging post for Spanish treasure on its way to Madrid, there was little incentive for the British, French or Dutch to do much to discourage piracy. The existence of thriving land bases such as Nassau where pirates could sell their ill-gotten (or officially-approved) gains was crucial to the pirate economy.With constant malaria and frequent epidemics of yellow fever raging through the Caribbean, official navies were at a significant disadvantage to seasoned crews making naval action that much more difficult. The local population had been largely killed off by accidentally imported European diseases to which they had no resistance.Pirates, like smugglers need convenient hide-aways and the Caribbean with its many islands and thousands of bays provided the perfect terrain for raiders.What made the Caribbean so pirate-friendly? SpainвЂ™s European rivals especially the French and British spent the next few hundred years in various shifting alliances and both would either rob the Spanish ships directly or issue warrants or вЂletters of marqueвЂ™ to private ships (privateers) to do so without fear of being hung as pirates (unless of course they were caught by the Spanish). So many successful pirate attacks were made that galleons were forced to sail together in fleets with armed vessels for protection. The Caribbean remained at the centre of lucrative trade as gold and silver gave way to slave trading, tobacco, sugar and so on ensuring a steady supply of attractive targets.ДЇrom the 16th century, large Spanish ships, called galleons, began to sail back to Europe, loaded with precious cargoes that pirates found impossible to resist. The buccaneers had become true pirates.ДЄs Spanish settlers set up new towns on Caribbean islands and the American mainland, these too came under pirate attack. Although raids began in this way, with official backing, the buccaneers gradually became more and more out of control, eventually attacking any ship they thought carried valuable cargo, whether it belonged to an enemy country or not. Some of the largest scale raids were led by the Welsh captain, Sir Henry Morgan (later knighted for his services). Later, the governors of Caribbean islands such as Jamaica paid the buccaneers to attack Spanish treasure ships and ports. Their name came from the special wooden huts calledВ boucansВ where they smoked their meat. At first, they lived as hunters, and shot wild pigs with their long-barrelled muskets. In the 17th century, buccaneers lived on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola and its tiny turtle-shaped neighbour, Tortuga. While DisneyвЂ™s Pirates of the CaribbeanВ filmsВ are entirely fictional, there is no doubting that the Caribbean was the centre of piracy in the вЂGolden Age of PiracyвЂ™. Who were the real pirates of the Caribbean?

Is tortuga real