The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  The first privateer to make his mark was Christopher Myngs, who had very modest origins – his father was a cobbler – but he was (literally) a commanding presence, and captained a fleet that sacked four Spanish towns in the Caribbean in 1659, returning to Port Royal with 1,500,000 pieces of eight. He proved to be more of a pirate than a privateer, refusing to hand over part of the proceeds to the governor of Jamaica, which led to his arrest, his despatch back to England and his release by the newly installed king, Charles II, who thought he could tame such a talented sea captain. The king’s confidence in him was justified: in 1662 he led what seemed an impossibly foolhardy attack on the second city of Cuba, Santiago, which lay just across the water from Jamaica, an obvious, tempting but well-defended target. He managed to scatter the Spaniards, march his men into the heart of the city and leave them there for five days of wanton pillaging. His crew included a young Welsh privateer, Henry Morgan, who would terrorize the Spaniards even more effectively in the coming decades, and who would also manage to switch back and forth between licensed and unlicensed raiding.38

  Morgan, who was born in 1635, came from a more prosperous background than Myngs. This casts doubt on the romantic version of his career, which was told during his own lifetime by his Dutch biographer, Exquemeling: that he had run away to sea at Bristol, apparently hoping to make his fortune in Barbados. There he supposedly ended up not as a rich planter but as an indentured servant, at a time when English servants still carried out much of the backbreaking work on the sugar plantations. This led him to run away to sea again, when Cromwell’s fleet arrived in Barbados bound for Santo Domingo.39 It is more likely that he made his way across the sea after paying for a gentleman’s passage on a boat bound for Barbados. He did take part in the Hispaniola campaign, and before long he was sailing aboard Myngs’s ships.40 In 1666 he sailed in a substantial fleet of fifteen ships under the command of an English privateer named Mansfield, en route to Porto Bello and the treasure-laden ships bringing the silver of Peru across the Atlantic. Mansfield realized that the Spanish governor had wind of his arrival, and the privateers selected another, lesser target in what is now Nicaragua. However, Morgan’s appetite for an attack on Panama had been whetted. In 1668, following successes in other theatres, notably Cuba, Morgan led an attack on the surprisingly ill-defended silver station of Porto Bello. The loot amounted to around 250,000 pieces of eight, though there was also profit to be made from merchandise and slaves seized during the raid. Ordinary crew members might expect to receive around one thousandth of the haul of silver, which was enough to lead a comfortable life, or to spend their loot over many months in the bars and whorehouses of Port Royal.41 His most famous expedition was once again sent against the Spaniards in Panama, three years later. This time he marched his men across the isthmus and burned Panama City, though the booty was smaller than Porto Bello had delivered. The problem was that this happened just as Spain and England made peace, so he was sent back to England, notionally in disgrace, but the king could not resist the opportunity to grant him a knighthood.42 And before long he was back in Jamaica, concentrating on the suppression rather than the promotion of buccaneering.

  Morgan is a good example of the pirate who, on close examination, does not look much like a pirate. It has been pointed out that he stayed married to his wife for two decades; that he never led an expedition without obtaining a letter of marque from the Jamaican governor; that he won the strong approval of the English Crown despite the destruction of Panama; and he even became lieutenant-governor of Jamaica; he is known to have joined only one expedition, in 1661, whose members were accused of piracy.43 In addition, he spent the years after 1671 ensuring that piracy was held in check within the Caribbean, to honour peace with Spain and to assert the authority of the English Crown in its Jamaican colony; he saved rather than squandered his money and became a prominent planter on Jamaica.44 Attempts to argue that he did not torture his captives, as Exquemeling’s colourful contemporary account of his career claimed, are less convincing, though if he did so he surely had in mind the methods of the Spanish Inquisition, which were sometimes applied to Protestant sailors. When he read Exquemeling’s biography, which had appeared in two competing English translations in 1684, Morgan tried to suppress it; he even won a libel case and £400 in damages from two publishers. He was as angry at being described as an indentured servant as he was at accusations of torture.45 On the other hand, the wide diffusion of Exquemeling’s book, including Dutch, Spanish and German editions, proves that Sir Henry Morgan had acquired a powerful reputation; and it was inevitable that his days as a privateer would be given all the emphasis, rather than his more respectable career spent clearing the Caribbean of buccaneers.

  The connection between licensed raids and Jamaica is made crystal clear by the fact that the word ‘privateer’ only came into use in the English language following the seizure of Jamaica. The specific circumstances of the English presence in the Caribbean and the raids on the Spanish treasure fleets generated this term, which described an old practice but now gave it legal form – in 1671 the English Parliament passed An Act to Prevent the Delivery up of Merchants Shipps, and for the Increase of Good and Serviceable Shipping, which included clauses dealing with the distribution of ‘Prize Money as in cases of Privateers’.46 However, privateering had already passed its peak. The successful raids of the 1660s had left fewer prospects for profit within the Caribbean. The rule that muggers must not over-mug if they are still to find people to mug came into play. Even before Spain and England made their peace in 1671 privateers started to abandon raids on the Spanish towns, choosing instead voyages to empty coastlines where they could load logwood without interference. They were turning themselves into boring but honest merchants.47

  V

  Prize money spent indiscriminately and smuggling allegedly made Port Royal into the ‘wickedest city on earth’. Its businessmen were involved in several enterprises that were barely legal or were outright illegal. Contraband trade with the Spanish islands has been mentioned already. In the 1670s and 1680s, as privateering went into decline and overt piracy was suppressed, the best opportunities were provided by this contraband trade. Probate documents from Port Royal not long before the great earthquake of 1692 describe about half of the deceased as merchants, even though at this stage Jamaica was producing much less sugar for export than Barbados.48 It was easy to smuggle as there were so many inlets and channels that were left unsupervised by the Spaniards after they had turned Hispaniola into a vast ranch from which cattle and meat products could be obtained for little trouble. Then there was the resale of ships seized at sea, assuming they were not simply kept by the privateers. Prize vessels, even those captured by licensed privateers, were sold at Port Royal under the watchful eye of the governor, and not sent back to England. They could be obtained quite cheaply: when Myngs returned from his campaign in 1663, he had nine ships for sale, at a total price of £797, an average price of £89 – in London one might have to pay £2,000 per ship.49 Salvaging operations also occupied a good deal of energy. The islanders were adept at identifying shipwrecks, and managed to raise large amounts of Spanish gold and silver from the sea, to the frustration of their Spanish neighbours. One ship was the focus of so much attention that it was simply known as ‘the Wreck’; it had foundered off Hispaniola several years before the English arrived in Jamaica, but had lain undisturbed on the seabed until one privateer after another found something worth taking away from the site.50

  One unusual feature of Port Royal was the amount of silver coin that circulated (coins from Peru have been found on the site of Port Royal).51 Other English colonies still relied heavily on barter, but even when the English no longer raided Spanish galleons there was plenty of coin in people’s pockets, because it was easy to sneak into the smaller harbours near Porto Bello or either side of Cartagena, on the coast of Colombia, and do semi-secret business there. Jamaica became an important source of silver for both England and the growing English col
onies in North America, for ships plied back and forth between Jamaica and the American colonies – 363 arrived in five years (1686 onwards). These were relatively tiny ships averaging about twenty-five tons, but the number of these little ships was rather higher than the number of larger vessels that arrived within the same period from the other side of the Atlantic, from England and west Africa.52 The ships brought everything and everyone: convicts who had been spared execution by Judge Jeffreys and his colleagues after the rebellion of the duke of Monmouth against King James II; African slaves who stayed on the island, though most were re-exported; and goods aplenty: every alcoholic drink on the market, from Madeira and Canary wines to naval stores, firearms, tiles, bricks, pots and pans, as well as preserved meat, cheese and cereals, though the islanders preferred fresh turtle meat they could obtain locally to salt pork.53

  Jamaica became an important source of slaves for the Spanish colonies in central and South America. Spain did not have a direct source of supply for slaves, because the trading stations along the coast of west Africa were held by the Portuguese, later joined by the Dutch and the Danes. The Spanish lands in the Americas therefore depended on intermediaries, who held contracts (asientos) to supply slaves. The Genoese normally stood at the top of this chain, but they did not have the ships and slave stations that would be required, something that the English Royal African Company could supply. Spanish slave-merchants were happy to come to Jamaica to buy slaves brought across the Atlantic by the African Company, at a mark-up of 35 per cent; it made the whole business easier for the Spaniards. So far, demand for slaves on Jamaica itself was still quite limited, as the sugar industry had not taken off.54

  Some of the profits were ploughed back into the island, for, remarkably, there was very little investment from England. The slow but sure development of its sugar plantations was financed from the proceeds of contraband trade and other local activities, licit or illicit. The autarky of the Jamaican economy is striking. And yet all this was sufficient to make Port Royal into the most important harbour in the English colonies, indeed the most important harbour in the Caribbean, to the horror of its Spanish neighbours, who could see that its wealth was not all honestly derived. Contemporary accounts describe how splendidly the richer merchants lived, so that even their slaves were dressed in fine livery, and there was never any lack of meat and fruit. The standard of living was said to be higher than in England, even for artisans. Plenty of luxuries were on sale – archaeological finds at Port Royal include Chinese porcelain that must have arrived by way of Macau, Manila and Mexico, as well as English Delftware with blue-and-white decoration in imitation of Chinese ceramics.55 The better-off Jamaicans were also well supplied with silver plate off which to dine – a silver wine taster was excavated on the site of one of the town’s many taverns, and imported English tableware made of brass and pewter turned up in abundance.56 Against this must be set the dangers of living in a tropical climate where malaria and other diseases were widespread; the first English invaders had died like flies during the campaign that failed to capture Santo Domingo. Contrary to Columbus’s claims, Jamaica was not a branch of Paradise.

  To some observers, indeed, it was a branch of Hell. The more colourful accounts of Caribbean pirates enjoy describing it as ‘a rollicking town, where rum-drinking was so common that it seemed to flow through the town’ – not to mention whores such as Mary Carleton, with her frank statement that ‘they have almost delug’d this place in liquor’. She was hanged in 1673 in London, and her notoriety became attached, perhaps unfairly, to Port Royal, which may not have been much worse than other port cities where strong drink and ‘hot Amazons’ abounded. In reality the large number of places of worship, from a Quaker meeting hall to a synagogue, suggests that a fair number of inhabitants tried, at least outwardly, to lead respectable lives in the sight of God.57

  Port Royal stood on a low-lying island at the tip of the narrow peninsula that closed off Kingston Harbour. The harbour itself was excellent, though strong winds and earth tremors were always a source of concern. Houses were crowded together in this confined space: 200 in 1660, 400 in 1664 as the town boomed, maybe 1,500 by 1688, containing a population that peaked at about 6,500 people in 1692, including 2,500 slaves.58 Despite the accounts of luxurious living, there were no truly grand buildings and the streets were unpaved, simply covered with sand; but there were strict building regulations, which required stone foundations and brick walls. As a result the town resembled nothing so much as the English West Country towns from which many of its inhabitants hailed.59 On its exposed site, Port Royal lay at the full mercy of the elements; and just before noon on Wednesday, 7 June 1692, these elements proved fiercer than anyone could have imagined: a violent earthquake brought down the tower of the Anglican church, as buildings crashed to the earth and people were swallowed up in the great cracks that opened as the entire earth heaved apart. That was only the beginning: a vast tidal wave crashed into Port Royal, sweeping away people, buildings and objects. Even the town cemetery was torn apart, so that decayed corpses were seen floating on the water alongside those who had just drowned. Stone and brick had not been enough to protect the inhabitants of this fragile spit of land, much of which remains submerged to this day. At least 90 per cent of the buildings of Port Royal were wiped out. About 2,000 lives were lost on 7 June, and an equal number in the days that followed, as disease spread among the survivors.60

  This was not the end of Port Royal. Reconstruction of part of the town, notably its forts (in view of the danger of Spanish or French attack), took place; and trade resumed. But it seemed to make more sense to govern the island from a place a little further inland, Kingston, for no one could guess when another earthquake and tsunami would strike. In any case, Port Royal had already passed its true peak. The days of privateering had come to an official end in 1671, following peace with Spain; even its entrepôt trade began to tail off, as English residents gradually switched their interest from shipping to the exploitation of the island itself. In the eighteenth century Jamaica would be reborn as a full-scale sugar island. Those who really paid the price for this were the many thousands of African slaves carried across the ocean in abominable conditions to work in the equally abominable conditions of the sugar factories and plantations.

  44

  A Long Way to China

  I

  Just as the inhabitants of Amsterdam, London or Copenhagen developed a taste for the spices of the East and took pleasure in exotic objects brought from China and the Indies, a passion for Chinese and Indian imports developed in the colonies that the Europeans were establishing across the Atlantic. It has been seen that English settlers along the east coast of North America were trying to tap into Indian Ocean trade by way of Madagascar in the late seventeenth century, whether by fair means or foul, although the main outcome was the development of a slave trade carrying Malagasy captives to the West Indies.1 During this period, as Boston, New York and Philadelphia grew into compact but busy trading cities, with populations barely in the tens of thousands, their citizens acquired large quantities of Chinese porcelain, used day to day not just by the rich elite families such as the Philipses of New York but by middle-class townspeople. Around one third of estate inventories from New York at the end of the seventeenth century mentioned Chinese porcelain, and the figure rises to three quarters in the decade before the American Revolution. Chinese silks, already familiar to the inhabitants of Spanish Mexico by way of Manila, reached the north American colonies by way of the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic instead. For, by and large, the American settlers had to rely on imports of these goods either from London, Amsterdam or the West Indies (in which case they had in any case been transported from Europe). The requirement of the Navigation Act of 1651 that the colonies should acquire their eastern goods through London, to which the goods were brought by the East India Company, kept the Company in business, but on the other side of the Atlantic it increased the cost of goods, since the Americans were dealing through
middlemen who expected their share of the proceeds.2

  Early in the eighteenth century goods advertised for sale on Rotten Row in New York included: ‘Fine Heyson, Green, Congoe and Bohea Tea; Coffee and Chocolate; single and double Refined Sugar; Powder and Muscovado ditto; Sugar Candy … Cloves, Mace, Cinnamon, and Nutmeg; Ginger, Black Pepper and Allspice …’ As its position at the start of this list suggests, there was one product of east Asia that held sway in every household: tea, in a variety of types and grades. It was already being drunk right across New England in the 1720s. Among the customers were not just the citizens of New York or Boston but the Mohawks and their native-American neighbours, who were sold tea by the enterprising Philadelphia trader Samuel Wharton.3

  The monopolistic East India Company was determined to control the movement of these exotic products, in the face of constant challenges. These challenges were not just from European rivals; the Chinese themselves, despite imperial ukases forbidding precisely such activities, sent their junks to Melaka and beyond. As they became familiar with Western taste, Chinese potters adapted their own designs to suit the preferences of far-away peoples they regarded as barbarians.4 In America, however, there still existed confusion about what came from where. The term ‘East Indies’ was a catch-all that described the entire Indian Ocean and the western Pacific; Americans called China tea ‘India tea’, while the porcelain was known as ‘India china’, and the colonists had little understanding of the message that Chinese potters were trying to convey in the images of dragons, flowers or rural scenes; this was a language that clients in and near China could follow, particularly if they knew Chinese legends or had read the most popular Chinese classics. Eventually the richer sort of American would opt for custom-made pottery with family monograms or other decorations that had nothing to do with Chinese culture – within a few years of the break from Britain these pieces might be decorated with the coat of arms of the United States and the inscription E PLURIBUS UNUM.5 Well-heeled Americans would buy porcelain in standard sets of 270 pieces for a dinner service and 101 for a ‘long’ tea set, forty-nine for a ‘short’ one.6 As time went by coarser porcelain, poorly decorated, chunky and cheap, arrived in massive quantities; its function was as much to provide ballast when the ship’s cargo consisted of light chests full of tea as to satisfy domestic demand, and these bulk wares were often sold at a loss.7