Capture of Fort Rocher The Capture of Fort Rocher took place on 9 February 1654 , during the Franco - Spanish War ( 1635 – 1659 ) . Equipped with one siege battery , a Spanish expedition of 700 troops attacked the buccaneer stronghold of Tortuga , capturing the fort and 500 prisoners including 330 buccaneers and goods valued at approximately 160 , 000 pieces - of - eight . The Spanish burned the colony to the ground and slaughtered its inhabitants , leaving behind a fort manned by 150 soldiers . They possessed the island for about eighteen months , but on the approach of the expedition under Penn and Venerables were ordered by the Conde de Peñalva , Governor of Santo Domingo , to demolish the fortifications , bury the artillery and other arms , and retire to his aid in Hispaniola . Background . At midday , the French and English inhabitants of Tortuga sighted four Spanish vessels bearing down . This counterattack had been prompted by the buccaneers ’ sack of Santiago de los Caballeros , in 1650 , and that of the Cuban port of San Juan de los Remedios on August 1652 . Consequently , a punitive expedition had slipped out of the capital of Santo Domingo on 4 December 1653 , bearing 200 soldiers and 500 volunteers under Captain Gabriel de Rojas y Figueroa , seconded by the former Irish renegade John Murphy ( promoted to " maestre de campo " and invested with a knighthood in the Order of Santiago . This Spanish squadron had captured a trio of buccaneer craft off Monte Cristi before sighting Tortuga . Capture . Gliding past its harbor , the Spaniards bombarded the vessels in the roads , then continued two or three miles farther down the coast and disembarked several hundred troops at the hamlet of Cayonne , marching back to besiege the island ’ s principal fortress . On the night of 12 February , Rojas sent a company with grappling lines to scale the heights behind the keep and install siege artillery . The buccaneer fort was built by a skilled French engineer on a rocky hill which dominated the island harbour of Cayenne . By 18 February the French and English requested terms and two days later the Chavalier de Fontenay decided to surrender . More than 500 captives were captured , among them 330 boucaniers . All were allowed to sail to France aboard a pair of ships under de Fontenay and Tibaut and Martin , respectively — with the exception of two leaders who were kept as hostages ; the Spanish seized 70 cannons in the fortress and shore batteries , three ships , a frigate , and eight lesser craft as booty . These attackers also decided to hold their hard - won conquest by leaving behind a garrison of one hundred men under the Irish - born Murphy . Aftermath . The prisoners were shipped to Santo Domingo and would become slaves on Spanish plantations . Hoping that the Spanish had abandoned the island , three buccaneer ships returned in August , but found that the Spaniards had already installed a garrison . However , coinciding with the English invasion of Hispaniola , on 13 September 1654 Spanish governor issued a " real cédula " ordering the withdrawal from Tortuga after first throwing down its fortifications . Tortuga was reoccupied the next year by English and French interlopers under Elias Watts , who secured a commission from Col . William Brayne , acting as military Governor on Jamaica , to serve as " Governor " of Tortuga .