Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean

by David Cordingly

  Dampier, as we have already seen, was to be the pilot. So great was the respect he had acquired through his publications and his travels that the sponsors of the Bristol expedition were prepared to overlook the disastrous outcomes of his two most recent ventures. His voyage to New Guinea and Australia as a naval captain in command of HMS Roebuck had achieved little in the way of discoveries and had ended ignominiously with his ship sinking on the shores of Ascension Island. Dampier and his crew had been rescued six weeks later by a passing squadron of British ships but when he returned to England in 1701 he had to face a court martial for the loss of his ship, and then a second court martial for his treatment of his crew and in particular for his ‘very hard and cruel usage towards Lieutenant Fisher’. He was fined all his pay for the voyage and the court concluded that he was not a fit person to be employed as commander of any of Her Majesty’s ships.

  Dampier’s second voyage had been a privateering venture to the Pacific which had been backed by a group of London and Bristol investors. In September 1703 he had left the Irish port of Kinsale in command of the 200-ton St George of 26 guns, which was accompanied by the Cinque Ports, a vessel of ninety tons and 26 guns. According to Alexander Selkirk, who was on board the Cinque Ports, she was ‘a good new ship in very good condition as to body, masts, sails’.20 The St George he described as an old ship but a strong one ‘and fitted out for the said voyage in all things and stores’. The voyage was dogged by mutinies and desertions and both ships eventually became so riddled with worm that they had to be abandoned. The first sign of serious trouble took place when they reached the island of Juan Fernández. Forty-two members of the crew of the Cinque Ports refused to serve under Captain Stradling, the young commander of the ship, and set up camp ashore. Dampier persuaded them to return to their ship and when a French merchantman of 36 guns hove in sight the two ships joined forces to attack her. The result was a humiliating failure. Dampier would later blame his crew for deserting their posts but he was accused of failing to consult Stradling on their tactics beforehand, and then of providing no effective leadership during the seven-hour action, and hiding behind a barricade of beds, rugs and blankets on the quarterdeck ‘to defend himself from the small shot of the enemy’. Nine members of the crew of the St George were killed, and it was later learnt that the French ship had lost a great many more killed and wounded and had been about to surrender when Dampier called off the action.

  From Juan Fernández they had sailed north to the Bay of Panama, where they made an abortive attack on the town of Santa Maria. In May 1704 Dampier and Stradling parted company after a series of disagreements. Stradling returned to Juan Fernández and it was there that Alexander Selkirk demanded to be put ashore. The only reliable account of the circumstances of his marooning comes from Woodes Rogers, who wrote, ‘The reason of his being left here was a difference betwixt him and his captain; which, together with the ships being leaky, made him willing rather to stay here, than go along with them at first; and when at last willing, the captain would not receive him.’ In his interview with Selkirk after his return to England the writer and journalist Richard Steele noted, ‘He was put ashore from a leaky vessel, with the captain of which he had had an irreconcilable difference.’ He too noted that Selkirk changed his mind when Stradling decided to take him at his word and abandon him on the island. He recorded that Selkirk had been looking forward to his new life ‘till the instant in which he saw the vessel put off; at which moment his heart yearned within him, and melted at the parting with his comrades and all human society at once’.21

  The Cinque Ports was indeed so leaky that she later sank off the coast of South America. Thirty-two members of the crew took to rafts but only eighteen, including Stradling, managed to reach the mainland. They were captured by the Spanish and taken to Lima and imprisoned. Dampier and his men fared little better. The hull of the St George was so badly eaten away by worm that ‘in some places in the hold we could thrust our thumbs quite through with ease’. In spite of this, and the fact that mutiny, death and desertion had cut down the number of his crew to sixty-four, Dampier decided to make an attack on the Manila galleon as she neared the end of her six-month voyage across the Pacific.

  They sighted the galleon on the morning of 6 December 1704 while they were cruising off a low-lying coastal plain with the volcano of Colima clearly visible in the distance. By ten o’clock the two ships were within gunshot distance. The galleon hoisted her Spanish ensign and fired a gun to leeward, a sign that she assumed the St George was a friend and not an enemy vessel. Among the prisoners on board the privateer was the Spanish captain of a local trading ship who had been brought up in London and once served as a gunner for an English buccaneer. He advised Dampier to head straight for the galleon and board her before her men had time to prepare for action. Perversely Dampier chose to hoist an English ensign and fired a shot directly at the galleon. The captain of the galleon immediately changed course, worked his way to windward of the privateer, cleared for action and ran out his guns. When the boatswain of the St George ordered the helmsman to steer alongside ready for boarding, Dampier told the helmsman he would shoot him in the head if he edged any nearer the galleon.

  While Dampier and his officers argued about what to do next the galleon opened fire. Her guns were eighteen-pounders and twenty-four-pounders, against which the five-pounders of the privateer had no chance. Every direct shot from the galleon struck deeply into the decayed timbers of the privateer. Two feet of planking were stove in on each side of the stem and several shot hit the hull underwater, causing one of the crew to tell Dampier that they were sinking. According to John Welbe, a midshipman on the St George, Dampier’s response was to cry out, ‘Where is the canoe?’ and he was for getting in the boat to save his life. The carpenter managed to stop the leaks but Dampier ordered them to stand off from the enemy, ‘which accordingly we did: all the ship’s company being exceedingly vexed at the captain’s ill conduct’. As they drew away from the galleon Dampier announced that he was going below to sleep. When he woke the next morning the galleon was still in sight but he ordered the helmsman to steer directly away from her.

  Within a few weeks half the crew of the St George had deserted and the privateering expedition was abandoned. Eighteen of the original crew were back in England by August 1706, including William Funnell, who wrote and published a detailed and critical account of the cruise. Dampier did not return to England until 1707. He issued an angry and confused response to Funnell’s publication but this was contradicted by a broadsheet from midshipman Welbe which was entitled An Answer to Captain Dampier’s Vindication of His Voyage to the South Seas in the Ship St George. The sponsors of the expedition, who had lost everything they had invested in the project, did not embark on legal proceedings against Dampier until 1712, when he returned from the expedition led by Rogers.

  3

  From Bristol to Cape Horn

  The Duke and Dutchess had been moored alongside the Quay at Bristol to receive the bulk of their stores and provisions. Situated in the heart of the medieval city, the Quay was reckoned to be one of the finest and busiest in the world. On either side of the long, narrow waterway was a dense cluster of houses, shops, warehouses and churches. Visitors arriving at the Quay were confronted by a mass of people ‘running up and down with cloudy looks and busy faces, loading, carrying and unloading goods and merchandizes of all sorts from place to place’.1 The quayside was lined with wooden cranes, and was full of barrels, bales, casks and teams of horses drawing sledges loaded with heavy goods. The poet Alexander Pope was astonished by the sight of what appeared to be a street full of the masts of hundreds of ships: ‘The street is fuller of them, than the Thames from London Bridge to Deptford, and at certain times only, the water rises to carry them out; so that at other times, a long street full of ships in the middle and houses on both sides looks like a dream.’2

  In mid-June 1708 the Duke and Dutchess left the Quay and were towed down the winding River Avon,
through the Avon Gorge and out to the anchorage at Kingroad in the great expanse of the Severn Estuary. Lighters and barges could still bring the remaining stores out to the ships but reluctant seamen were prevented from deserting. On Tuesday 2 August, at about four in the afternoon, the two ships weighed anchor and, in company with nine merchant ships, they crept downstream. The wind was so light that they continued to be towed until they dropped anchor in Bridgwater Bay, beyond the tiny island of Steep Holm. Around midnight the wind increased. They set sail and at six in the morning they ran past the village of Minehead, the ships heeling before a brisk south-easterly breeze.

  With inexperienced crews and his ships ‘out of trim, and everything in disorder’, Rogers noted that the other merchant vessels sailed much better. This was a concern because a French warship of 46 guns was reported to be cruising in the vicinity and the two privateers were in no fit state to put up a fight. The ships were kept cleared for action but there was no sign of the warship and on 5 August they sighted the coast of Ireland. An incompetent Kinsale pilot nearly ran the Duke ashore in foggy, blowy weather but Rogers over-ruled him and on the afternoon of 7 August they rounded Cork Head and came to anchor in the Cove (Cobh in Irish), the outer harbour of the city of Cork. Here they stayed for the next three weeks. Noblett Rogers provided them with more seamen and the remaining provisions needed. They improved the trim of the ships and during a spell of fine weather they heeled them over and cleaned and tallowed them below the waterline. By the end of August they had a full complement of men and twice the number of officers usual on privateers, ‘to prevent mutinies, which often happen in long voyages’.

  They had set sail from Bristol with 117 men on the Duke and 108 on the Dutchess, but some forty of them deserted or were dismissed at Cork. The additional men recruited in the Irish port made up the numbers to 183 on the Duke and 151 on the Dutchess. Rogers noted that one-third of the seamen were foreigners and the British recruits included tinkers, tailors, hay-makers, pedlars, fiddlers, one Negro and about ten boys. He was, however, optimistic that this mixed bunch would prove to be adequate once they had got their sea legs and been taught the use of firearms.

  At ten o’clock on the morning of 1 September the Duke and Dutchess and twenty outward-bound merchant ships set sail from Cork. They were escorted by HMS Hastings, which kept them company until they were clear of any French privateers cruising in the Atlantic approaches. Although deeply laden with stores the two ships now sailed as well as any others in the fleet. On the fourth day the warship’s commander, Captain Paul, invited the senior officers of the two Bristol ships to join him for a meal aboard his ship, ‘where we were very handsomely treated’. When they parted on 6 September they gave him a salute with their guns which he returned, and wished them a prosperous undertaking.

  A week after leaving Cork the Duke and Dutchess were 184 miles due west of Cape Finisterre and on their own except for the Crown-Galley, a small vessel which was bound for Madeira. ‘Now we begin to consider the length of our voyage,’ Rogers wrote, ‘and the many different climates we must pass, and the excessive cold which we cannot avoid, going about Cape Horn.’3 It was agreed at a council meeting that they should get in a good stock of strong liquor at Madeira as the men would prefer that to warm clothing. And then, eleven days out from Cork, Rogers had the first serious test of his leadership. The cause was a ship flying a Swedish flag which they had intercepted and searched. Rogers could find no reason to take her as a prize and decided to let her go on her way. This caused a mutiny among his men which was led by Giles Cash, the boatswain of the Duke. Rogers’ response was to whip one of the mutineers and put ten others in irons. They remained in irons for several days on a diet of bread and water, with sentries guarding them. Cash was sent aboard the Crown-Galley in irons to be put ashore at Madeira.

  With light and contrary winds holding up their progress, they decided to miss Madeira and press on to the Canary Islands. On 18 September they saw the great mountain peak of Tenerife on the horizon to the south-west, and the next day, as they were passing the island of Grand Canary (Gran Canaria), they chased and captured their first prize. This was a small Spanish bark of twenty-five tons with forty-five passengers on board, including women and four friars from one of the neighbouring islands. The passengers were greatly relieved to find that their captors were English, and not Turkish corsairs, who would have sent them off to the slave markets of Morocco. At this date there were many more white Christian slaves confined in the Barbary states of North Africa than there were black African slaves labouring in the plantations of the New World.4

  With fair weather and a stiff breeze the Duke and Dutchess headed for Tenerife to obtain a ransom for their prize and her cargo. Carleton Vanbrugh, the shipowners’ agent, insisted on going ashore with the Spanish master of the bark in order to carry out the negotiations. Rogers, against his better judgement, let him go and was proved right when the next day a boat came out to them from the town of La Orotava with a flag of truce and a letter to say that unless the English privateers restored the bark and her cargo they would detain Vanbrugh. Rogers and Captain Courtney sent a firm but courteous letter back making it clear that Vanbrugh must be released and a ransom paid or they would sail away with the bark and the passengers, who were their prisoners. Failing to get a satisfactory answer to this, Rogers and Courtney warned the Vice-Consul of the island that at eight the next morning they ‘would visit the town with their guns’. This had the desired effect and promptly at 8 a.m. a boat came out to the privateers with Vanbrugh on board, as well as an English merchant from the town and a ransom in the form of wine, grapes and hogs. The captured vessel was sold to the English merchant for 450 dollars, the passengers were released with their belongings and the four friars had their books, crucifixes and relics returned to them.

  On 22 September the two privateers set sail for the Cape Verde Islands, some 900 miles south-west of Tenerife. The weather being fair and the seas calm, Rogers invited Captain Courtney and three of his officers to dine with him on the Duke. After their meal they held a council meeting to discuss the taking of the Spanish bark and the subsequent negotiations. It was concluded that ‘we do all approve of all that was transacted’. However, while they were still gathered in the great cabin, Carleton Vanbrugh complained that Captain Rogers had not treated him as he ought to have done. Determined to avoid any future misunderstandings, Rogers immediately put his complaint to the council, who ‘adjudged the said Mr Vanbrugh to be much in the wrong’. The unusually democratic regime on the two ships, with their frequent council meetings to determine and approve all major actions, sometimes made life difficult for Rogers, but this minor incident showed that he was often able to use the meetings to get his own way and impose his will on recalcitrant members of the crew.

  It took them nine days to reach St Vincent (São Vicente), one of the smallest of the ten Cape Verde islands. Rogers’ description of their arrival is typical of many passages in his book of the voyage, based as it is on his daily logbook or journal. Written in the language of a seaman, it contains useful information for mariners who may follow in his tracks:

  At ten o’clock we anchored in the Bay of St Vincent in five fathom of water. ’Tis a fine bay: the northmost point bore north near a mile distant and the westermost point bore west distant about two miles: Monks Rock, which is like a sugar-loaf, high and round, and bold on every side, lies almost in the entrance of this fine sandy bay. Sailors must be careful as they come in, not to run too near under the high land of the north point, for fear of being becalmed, and sudden flaws coming every way upon ’em.5

  He noted that there was a constant trade wind blowing from the north-east, except from October to January, when ‘it sometimes blows southerly with tornadoes and rain’.

  While boats were sent ashore to fill up their empty water casks, Joseph Alexander, who was a linguist, was despatched to the nearby island of St Antonio (Santo Antão) with a letter to the local governor and a shopping list which include
d cattle, goats, pigs, chickens, melons, potatoes, limes, brandy and tobacco. Using the prize goods from the Spanish bark as payment they succeeded in obtaining everything they needed. The only problem was that Alexander had disappeared – he had presumably decided that he preferred the delights of a tropical island to facing the rigours of Cape Horn. As always the matter was put to the vote of the council and it was unanimously agreed that it was better to leave him behind than to hold up the voyage waiting for one man who had disobeyed orders.

  On 8 October they put to sea, loaded with fresh provisions, full water casks and wood for the galley fires. They had originally intended to head for Trinidad but decided that it was such a small island that they might miss it. Instead they set a course for the Portuguese island of Grande in Brazil, which lies on the Tropic of Capricorn sixty miles west of Rio de Janeiro. Dampier had called there in 1703 while in command of the St George and knew there was a safe anchorage where they could stock up with firewood and fresh water.

  For six weeks the two ships sailed south across the empty expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. There were days of calms with sudden showers of rain, and days of fresh gales and overcast skies. At last, on the afternoon of 18 November, they sighted land and rounding a headland which they took to be Cape Frio, they came to anchor in 22 fathoms. They were at the eastern end of a large island which lay across the entrance of a great bay. The high, upper slopes of the island were thickly wooded and an unbroken mass of trees came right down to the water’s edge. The next day Dampier, with a boat full of seamen, went ashore to make enquiries and returned in the evening with confirmation that they had reached their objective and were lying off Grande. To have successfully made their intended landfall after a voyage of 3,000 miles was a considerable achievement and a testimony to Dampier’s navigation skills. The charts at his disposal were rudimentary and navigation instruments at this period were limited to the compass for direction finding, the lead-line for measuring depths and the cross staff or back staff for finding latitude by measuring the angle of the sun at midday. Until the later decades of the eighteenth century and the introduction of the nautical almanac and the chronometer, longitude could be calculated only by dead reckoning (working out speed and distance and allowing for tides and currents) and this could lead to disastrous errors over long distances.6