5. Ringrose, in Esquemeling, Bucaniers of America, vol. 2, p. 29.
6. Ibid., p. 30.
7. Ibid., p. 31.
8. A Collection of Original Voyages … published by Capt. William Hacke (London, 1699), p. 12.
9. Ringrose, in Esquemeling, Bucaniers of America, vol. 2, p. 30.
10. Peter Bradley, The Lure of Peru: Maritime Intrusions into the South Sea, 1598–1710 (London, 1989), pp. 126–7.
11. The principal source for the democratic methods of the buccaneers is John Exquemeling, Bucaniers of America, vol. 1, part 1, p. 42.
12. From Woodes Rogers’ Introduction in the Narrative Press edn. of A Cruising Voyage Round the World (Santa Barbara, California, 2004), p. 5.
13. Ringrose in Bucaniers of America, vol. 2, p. 119.
14. For an excellent description of the Miskito Indians see Tim Severin, Seeking Robinson Crusoe (London, 2002), pp. 103–87. Severin tracked down the descendants of Will and his companions on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua.
15. John Masefield (ed.), Dampier’s Voyages (London, 1906), vol. 1, p. 39.
16. Dampier, quoted in Howse and Thrower, A Buccaneer’s Atlas, p. 19.
17. Ibid., p. 22.
18. Ibid., p. 22.
19. Masefield (ed.), Dampier’s Voyages, vol. 1, pp. 285–6.
20. Ibid., p. 114.
21. Ibid., p. 112.
22. See Joel H. Baer, ‘William Dampier at the Crossroads: New Light on the “Missing Years,” 1691–1697’, International Journal of Maritime History, 8 (1996), pp. 97–117; and Diana and Michael Preston, A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier (New York, 2004), pp. 220–4.
23. John Evelyn, Diary (Oxford, 1959), p. 1027.
Chapter Two: The Sea Captain
1. John Callander, Terra Australis Cognita: or Voyages to the Terra Australis or Southern Hemisphere (Edinburgh, 1768), vol. 3, p. 232.
2. Glyndwr Williams, in The Great South Sea: English Voyages and Encounters, 1570–1750 (London and New Haven, 1997), points out the shortcomings in Rogers’ character which are entirely overlooked in Brian Little’s Crusoe’s Captain: Being the Life of Woodes Rogers, Seaman, Trader, Colonial Governor (London, 1960) and other accounts of Rogers’ life.
3. Dr Thomas Dover to John Batchelor & Company … Cape of Good Hope, 11 February 1711. PRO: C.104/160.
4. John Masefield (ed.), Dampier’s Voyages (London, 1906), vol. 2, p. 321. The other references to Captain Rogers are in vol. 2, pp. 202, 246.
5. Captain Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, ed. G. E. Manwaring (New York and London, 1928), p. 99.
6. Daniel Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (London, 1724–7), vol. II, letter III, p. 54.
7. John Macky, A Journey through England (London, 1722), vol. 2, pp. 133–4.
8. The logbooks of the Dreadnought indicate that Whetstone was in command of the ship from July 1696 to June 1699. PRO: ADM. 51/4170.
9. Benbow’s Action of 1702 and the subsequent court martial proved controversial and have been the subject of some debate among naval historians. The transcript of the court martial and related documents are bound into one volume and make fascinating reading. PRO: ADM. 1/5263.
10. Observator, quoted by David J. Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century (Exeter, 1990), p. 86.
11. Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise, p. 100.
12. An Act for the better securing the Trade of this Kingdom by Cruisers and Convoys (6 Annae, c.65, AD. 1707), Statutes of the Realm, vol. VIII, pp. 811–13.
13. Capt. Edward Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World (London, 1712), vol. 1, p. xv.
14. Callander, Terra Australis Cognita, vol. 3, p. 231.
15. Declaration by Woodes Rogers before William Whitehead, Mayor, 26 April 1708. PRO: HCA. 25/20.
16. PRO: HCA. 25/20.
17. PRO: C.104/36, part 2.
18. Ibid.
19. Callander, Terra Australis Cognita, vol. 3, p. 232.
20. Deposition of Alexander Selkirk, 18 July 1712. This is mostly devoted to the voyage of the St George and the Cinque Ports and is somewhat confused and illegible in places. It does contain the memorable passage that Selkirk thought ‘that Dampier & Morgan & Stradling … managed all things hugger mugger among themselves without the knowledge of any of the ships company …’. PRO: C.24/13221, part 1.
21. Richard Steele’s interview with Selkirk was published in The Englishman in December 1713. The text is also reproduced in R. L. Mégroz, The Real Robinson Crusoe: Being the Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Alexander Selkirk of Largo, Fife, Mariner (London, 1939), pp. 193–7.
Chapter Three: From Bristol to Cape Horn
1. Thomas Cox, Magna Britannia et Hibernia: Somersetshire (1720–31), p. 745.
2. George Sherburn (ed.), Correspondence of Alexander Pope (Oxford, 1956), vol. IV, p. 201.
3. Captain Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, ed. G. E. Manwaring (New York and London, 1928), p. 8.
4. Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters (London, 2003), pp. 3–26.
5. Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, ed. G. E. Manwaring, p. 18.
6. The major developments for calculating longitude accurately were John Hadley’s reflecting quadrant of 1731; the publication of Maskelyne’s Nautical Almanac of 1767; and the series of chronometers invented and perfected by John Harrison, notably the large watch known as H4 which he completed in 1759 and which won him the Longitude Prize in 1773.
7. Capt. Edward Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World (London, 1712), vol. 1, p. 33.
8. Pascoe Thomas, A True and Impartial Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas and Round the Globe in His Majesty’s Ship the Centurion (London, 1745), p. 142.
9. On their arrival at Juan Fernández, Rogers notes that Selkirk supplied the sick men with an excellent broth of goat meat mixed with turnip tops and greens. He later notes the effect of this on ‘our sick men, by which with the help of the greens and the goodness of the air they recovered very fast of the scurvy’. A Cruising Voyage Round the World, ed. G. E. Manwaring, p. 74.
Chapter Four: A Man Clothed in Goat-Skins
1. It is named ‘Windy Bay’ on William Hack’s map of 1685, and in an illustration in Edward Cooke’s book A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World (London, 1712) it is called ‘Duke and Dutchess Bay’. According to Tim Severin in Seeking Robinson Crusoe (London, 2002), p. 32, it was named ‘Cumberland Bay’ by the commanding officer of a Royal Navy expedition.
2. Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea, vol. 2, p. xx.
3. Ibid.
4. See ‘Excavation at Aguas Buenas, Robinson Crusoe Island, Chile of a gunpowder magazine and the supposed campsite of Alexander Selkirk, together with an account of early navigational dividers’ by Daisuke Takhashi, David H. Caldwell, Ivan Caceras, Mauricio Calderon, A. D. Morrison-Low and Jim Tate, in Post Medieval Archaeology, vol. 41, no. 2 (December 2007), pp. 270–304. My thanks to David Caldwell for supplying me with a copy of this excavation report.
5. Captain Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, ed. G. E. Manwaring (New York and London, 1928), p. 92.
6. It is interesting to note that in the first volume of his book Cooke only wrote a few sentences describing the rescue of the castaway but so great was the public interest in Selkirk engendered by Rogers’ excellent account in his A Cruising Voyage Round the World which came out three months later that Cooke produced his own extended account in the second volume of his book.
7. Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, ed. G. E. Manwaring, p. 94.
8. Ibid., p. 117.
9. Ibid., p. 131.
10. Ibid., p. 141. The courteous treatment of prisoners by Rogers and his men is in stark contrast to the methods of some of the earlier buccaneers who frequently subjected prisoners to torture, rape and death.
11. Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round
the World, ed. G. E. Manwaring, p. 173.
Chapter Five: The Manila Galleons
1. According to the royal treasurer at Manila the galleon carried 2,300 marks of gold, as well as pearls and silks, and the total value of her cargo on arrival at Acapulco would have been over 2 million pesos. William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon (Manila, 1985), p. 250.
2. Schurz, The Manila Galleon, p. 207.
3. Ibid., pp. 205–6.
4. Captain Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, ed. G. E. Manwaring (New York and London, 1928), p. 214.
5. Ibid., p. 215.
6. Capt. Edward Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World (London, 1712), vol. 1, p. 347.
7. Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, ed. G. E. Manwaring, p. 217.
8. Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea, p. 351.
9. Ibid., p. 349.
10. Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, ed. G. E. Manwaring, p. 220.
11. Rogers to Alderman Batchelor and Company, California, 31 December 1709. PRO: C.104/160.
12. Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, ed. G. E. Manwaring, p. 228.
13. Ibid., p. 230.
14. Rogers to Alderman Batchelor and Company, Batavia, 25 July 1710. PRO: CO. 104/160.
15. Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, p. 286.
16. Rogers to Alderman Batchelor and Company, Cape of Good Hope, 8 February 1710/11. PRO: 104/160.
17. East India Company: Minutes of Court of Directors, 1710–1712. British Library: Asian & African Studies, B/15, f. 450.
18. Admiral Hardy to John Batchelor, 9 October 1711. PRO: CO. 104/160.
Chapter Six: The Voyagers Return
1. From captain’s log of HMS Essex, 23 September 1711. PRO: ADM.51/317.
2. Daily Courant, London, Thursday 4 October 1711.
3. Giles Batchelor and Edward Acton to John Batchelor, Sheerness, 6 October 1711. PRO: CO. 104/160.
4. B. M. H. Rogers, ‘Woodes Rogers’s Privateering Voyage of 1708–11’, Mariner’s Mirror, XIX (1933), p. 199.
5. Ibid., p. 198.
6. The total sum received in 1710 from sales of the prize goods was £147,975 12s. 4d. See B. M. H. Rogers, Mariner’s Mirror, XIX (1933), p. 203. According to the National Archives currency converter this would be worth £11,333,405 in 2010.
7. Ibid., p. 205.
8. Ibid., p. 209.
9. For information about Dampier’s last days see entry by Joel Baer in Oxford DNB; Anton Gill, The Devil’s Mariner: William Dampier Pirate and Explorer (London, 1997), p. 364; and Diana and Michael Preston, A Pirate of Exquisite Mind … The Life of William Dampier (New York, 2004), pp. 322–3.
10. R. L. Mégroz, The Real Robinson Crusoe: Being the Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Alexander Selkirk of Largo, Fife, Mariner (London, 1939), p. 171.
11. PRO: CO. 104/160.
12. B. M. H. Rogers, Mariner’s Mirror, XIX (1933), p. 208.
13. London Gazette, Saturday 10 January to Tuesday 13 January 1712.
14. Post Boy, London, Thursday 27 March 1712.
15. Brian Little, in Crusoe’s Captain: Being the Life of Woodes Rogers, Seaman, Trader, Colonial Governor (London, 1960), pp. 156–8, makes a strong case for Defoe’s involvement in Rogers’ Introduction but can produce no evidence to support his theory.
16. See Glyndwr Williams, The Great South Seas: English Voyages and Encounters, 1570–1750 (London and New Haven, 1997), pp. 172–3.
17. The number was made up of 959 prizes and 726 ransoms. See David J. Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century (Exeter, 1990), p. 86.
18. The Boston News-Letter, 24–31 August 1713.
19. Quoted in Felix Barker and Peter Jackson, London: 2000 Years of a City and its People (London, 1974), p. 173.
20. The veracity of this interview has been questioned by R. W. Lovett in ‘Sir Richard Steele’s “frequent conversations” with Alexander Selkirk’, English Language Notes, 25/1 (1987), pp. 49–50. But Steele mentions a number of facts which were not included in the accounts of Woodes Rogers and Cooke, such as the great quantities of turtles on Juan Fernández; the numerous sealions with their dreadful howlings; Selkirk’s laming of young goats so that he could catch them when they grew up; and the useful and entirely credible information that Selkirk on his return to London was ‘now worth eight hundred pounds …’. Steele’s comments on Selkirk’s appearance also ring true. Steele’s article was published in The Englishman, 1–3 December 1713.
21. Quoted by Mégroz, The Real Robinson Crusoe, p. 149, from details published by W. H. Hart in Notes and Queries, 2nd series, XI, 30 March 1861.
22. The two wills of Selkirk are quoted in full by Mégroz, The Real Robinson Crusoe, pp. 153–8.
23. Quoted by Mégroz, The Real Robinson Crusoe, p. 212, from Chancery Proceedings 1714–1758, The Petition of Sophia Selkirke widow of Alexander Selkirke late of Largo in the Sheir of Fife in North Brittain Marriner deceased, 6 December 1723. PRO: C.11/297/61.
24. Captain’s log of HMS Enterprise, March 1719–October 1720. PRO: ADM.51/312, part 3.
25. The entry in the register is quoted by Mégroz, The Real Robinson Crusoe, p. 160.
26. Mégroz, The Real Robinson Crusoe, p. 161.
27. Quoted by Mégroz, The Real Robinson Crusoe, p. 173, from The Monthly Repository, V, 1810, p. 531.
28. David Cordingly, Heroines and Harlots: Women at Sea in the Great Age of Sail (London, 2001), pp. 171, 181–2.
29. East India Company: Correspondence 1712–13. British Library, India Office records: D/93, f. 511.
30. Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates, ed. Manuel Schonhorn (London, 1972; edn. cited New York, 1999), p. 61.
31. East India Company: Minutes of Court of Directors, 1716–18. British Library, India Office records: B/54, f. 22.
32. Rogers to Sir Hans Sloane, 7 May 1716. British Library, Sloane collection, no. 4044, f.155.
Chapter Seven: Sugar, Slaves and Sunken Treasure
1. Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870 (London, 1997; edn. cited 1998), p. 92.
2. Ibid., p. 226. Thomas takes his figures from the source he regards as most accurate, which is Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969), p. 119.
3. Ralph Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the 17th and 18th Centuries (Newton Abbot, 1962), p. 275.
4. Ibid., pp. 419–21.
5. Richard Sheridan, ‘Caribbean Plantation Society, 1689–1748’ in The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century, ed. P. J. Marshall (Oxford, 1998), p. 400.
6. Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry, p. 280.
7. Peter Earle, Sailors: English Merchant Seamen, 1650–1775 (London, 1998), p. 42.
8. Captain Charles Johnson, General History of the Pyrates, ed. Manuel Schonhorn (London, 1972; edn. cited New York, 1999), p. 35.
9. Governor Handasyd in Spanish Town to Council of Trade and Plantations, London, 25 March 1710. PRO: CO. 137/8, no. 80, i–iii.
10. Lieutenant Governor Hodges of Montserrat to Council of Trade and Plantations, 4 February 1710. CSPC, vol. 1710–1711.
11. Lieutenant General Hamilton of Antigua to Council of Trade and Plantations, 5 April 1711. PRO: CO. 152, no. 70. The privateers and pirates were no different from other Europeans in treating African slaves as saleable commodities. Governor Parke of St Christopher (St Kitts) wrote on 9 December 1706: ‘The privateers used to plague us by taking off our negroes in the night.’ He instituted a system of guards all around the island to prevent the thefts taking place. PRO: CO. 152/6. no 75.
12. Ibid.
13. Jonathan Dickenson of Antigua to John Askew in London, March 1710. PRO: CO. 152/9, no. 27.
14. Mr Dummer to Mr Popple, 17 January 1709. PRO: CO. 323/6, no. 74.
15. Mr Dummer to Mr Popple, 31 January 1710. PRO: CO. 323/6, no. 96.
16. Mr Dummer to Mr Popple, 1 Apri
l 1709. PRO: CO. 137/8, no. 35.
17. See report from Governor Lord Hamilton to Council of Trade and Plantations, 28 April 1712. CSPC, vol. 1712–1714, no. 94.
18. The survivor quoted here was the chaplain of the Hampton Court, and the quote is taken from records in the Mel Fisher Museum, Key West, Florida.
19. The Hampton Court was originally built at Deptford Dockyard in 1678 but in 1701 she was completely rebuilt at Blackwall. She was captured by Forbin’s Dunkirk squadron in 1707 but in 1711 she was sold to the Spanish and renamed Nuestra Señora Del Carmen Y San Antonio. See David Lyon, The Sailing Navy List (London, 1993), pp. 12, 20.
20. Quoted by Colin Woodard, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down (New York and London, 2007), p. 207, from Captain Balchen’s letter to the Admiralty, PRO: ADM. 1/147, f.24.
21. For the details of the ten vessels given privateering commissions by Lord Hamilton in 1715 see PRO: CO. 137/12, no. 78, i–v. In addition to Jennings and Wills, the named commanders of these vessels include Captain Jonathan Barnet, who captured Calico Jack Rackam and the female pirates in 1718.
22. There is a detailed description of this incident in Woodard, The Republic of Pirates, pp. 126–34.
23. Quoted by Woodard, The Republic of Pirates, p. 130, from a letter of Captain D’Escoubet to Lord Hamilton, 4 April 1716.
24. Johnson, General History of the Pyrates, ed. Manuel Schonhorn, p. 37.
Chapter Eight: Governor of the Bahamas
1. Deposition of John Vickers, late of the Island of Providence, sworn before Thomas Nelson, Virginia, July 1716. PRO: CO. 5/1317, f.247.
2. Alexander Spotswood to Harry Beverley, 15 June 1716. PRO: CO. 5/1317.
3. Alexander Spotswood to Council of Trade and Plantations, 3 July 1716. PRO: CO. 5/1317.
4. Captain Howard to Mr Burchett, Admiralty Office, 15 October 1716. PRO: CO. 137/12.
5. R. Methuen to Council of Trade and Plantations, 30 November 1716. PRO: CO. 137/12.
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