Matthew Luke

Matthew Luke (died 1722, occasionally named Mateo Luque or Matteo Luca) was an Italian 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. 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),

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. The Launceton's logbooks note, "25 Apr 1722 - Cape Tiberon - captured boat from Puerto Rico with hiding crew." The crewmen were tried and shown to be pirates, one of whom confessed to killing twenty English men with his bare hands. Despite Spanish objections that the vessel had a legitimate privateering commission,