| Matthew Luke | |
| Death Date: | 1722 |
| Nationality: | Italian |
| Other Names: | Mateo Luque |
| Occupation: | Pirate |
| Alias: | Matteo Luca |
| Base Of Operations: | Caribbean |
| Commands: | Vengeance |
Matthew Luke (died 1722, occasionally named Mateo Luque or Matteo Luca[1]) was a pirate active in the Caribbean.
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.[2] 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.[3]
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.[4] The Launceton's logbooks note, "25 Apr 1722 - Cape Tiberon - captured boat from Puerto Rico with hiding crew."[5] The crewmen were tried and shown to be pirates, one of whom confessed to killing twenty English men with his bare hands.[6] Despite Spanish objections that the vessel had a legitimate privateering commission, over forty of the pirates were hanged.[7]