The Anglo-Saxon, English, or Baymen's settlement of Belize is traditionally thought to have been effected upon Peter Wallace's 1638 landing at the mouth of Haulover Creek. As this account lacks clear primary sources, however, scholarly discourse has tended to qualify, amend, or completely eschew said theory, giving rise to a myriad competing narratives of the English settling of Belize. Though none of the aforementioned have garnered widespread consensus, historical literature has tended to favour a circumspect account of a landing near Haulover sometime during the 1630s and 1660s, effected by logwood-seeking, haven-seeking, or shipwrecked buccaneers.

The romantic but commonly held view of the history of Belize begins with a haven of free-spirited and adventuresome pirates occasionally sneaking out of hiding amid the cay[e]s and reef system to perform piratical acts of independence against Britain's economic oppression and Spain's cultural conceit. They eventually become attached to the place so they find legitimate livelihoods, prosper, form a government, and are eventually rewarded with the status of a colony of the British Empire.

— Daniel R. Finamore in 1994.

In November‍–‍December 1544, a patax of 22 French corsairs, mates of a captain called Pedro Braques by the Spanish, were apprehended off the coast of colonial Honduras. Their arrival marked the beginning of over three centuries of piracy in the Bay of Honduras. French corsairs were (belatedly) followed into the Bay by Elizabethan Sea Dogs three decades later. The earliest of these is thought to have been either Sir Francis Drake in the Minion, or John Oxenham in the Beare, who during 23 February 1573 – 22 March 1573 cruised the Bay and watered at Guanaxa. English buccaneering activities in the Bay intensified in the ensuing decades.^{[citation needed]} Notably, during October 1577 – April 1578, an English pirate or privateer, called Francisco de Acles by the Spanish, with 60 men aboard two ships, sacked Puerto Caballos and Bacalar, possibly marking the earliest entrance of such sea dogs into Bacalar's [ie present-day Belize's] waters. It is commonly thought that, upon the 1570s discovery of the intricate, secluded reefs, cayes, and coastline which characterised the waters of Bacalar, English buccaneers promptly opted to base their operations in this portion of the Bay, it affording them safe haven and quick access to Spanish ports.

Prior to 1630, Spanish smuggling with Anglo-Dutch pirate-merchants at ports in the Bay of Honduras is thought to have 'amounted to little more than evasion of duties and taxes,' with typical cases described as 'not spectacular.' However –

The situation altered significantly after 1630 as it became obvious that the flota system was decaying and the Spanish economy declining. Between 1630 and 1680 there seems to have been a slow increase in the volume of smuggling [in colonial Central America], and gradually smuggling became more important than simple fraud [eg tax evasion] [...]. So Central American merchants and indigo plantation owners in the middle years of the seventeenth century found themselves with a fairly viable export crop, [...] and few means of disposing of it. [...] Legal trade to the official ports in the Bay of Honduras had fallen away to a trickle, [...]. Between the early 1630s and the 1680s Central America searched desperately, often beyond the law, for ways of disposing of export crops while obtaining money or goods in exchange.

— Murdo J. MacLeod in 1973.

Consequently, post-1630 smuggling in the Bay is thought to have been 'sporadic but fairly frequent,' especially in indigo and logwood, 'large quantities' of which [illicitly] found their way to non-Spanish markets.