We also found more of the same terra-cotta pottery we were finding on the reef. That was tantalizing evidence that we had found a campsite.
We continued to look around inside the lagoon, but we couldn’t do much more than dive down and look at things and confirm our suspicions that we had found a wreck site.
Of course, that initial trip to Las Aves had not been undertaken as a major expedition, just some fun and occasionally life-threatening diving in the tropics. We poked around for four days, and then the expedition came to an end. It was time to go.
Leaving Las Aves by air is perhaps more dangerous than by sea.
A Cessna 210 was piloted by a local, who had made the trip many times before. He was arguing with the passengers about the extra baggage being loaded aboard as the wind lashed across the small grass strip. Tiny cyclones of dust whirled in the hot air.
The runway appeared short to me, especially considering the large earthen embankment at its end. I was debating whether I should insist that the plane not leave. But, as you often do in those situations, you simply pray.
The pilot took the Cessna to the far end of the runway—so far that her tail extended into the brush. He wanted every inch he could get for his takeoff.
There was not a trace of apprehension in the faces of Max and Pedro, who had “beeg Coobans” between their grinning teeth. The pilot revved the engine and popped the brake. But rather than take off like a hot rod, the little plane hesitated. Then, in the most undignified manner she began to waddle down the runway, wheels spread and engine grunting. The pilot had to use every speck of runway to get the speed he needed to get his ship airborne, and a wheel kissed the embankment, leaving a puff of dust as they flew off.
I am happy to report that our departure was somewhat less dramatic.
Back in Caracas, Charles Brewer called a press conference to announce the extraordinary find we had made on the reefs. The conference was held at an exclusive country club, of which he and his family were members. The club was original Spanish Colonial, at least three hundred years old, with a panoramic view of Caracas.
Among the press corps in attendance was the Associated Press correspondent in Venezuela, Bart Jones, an American. I was tired and ready to go back home. Charles had set up an interview for me with Bart, however, and he insisted I do it, so I relented.
Bart was wary. He had a poor opinion of Charles—especially his reputation for manipulating the press. He assumed that I was part of the Brewer publicity machine, and he was prepared to inhale a lot of ether.
Bart and I talked for some time, and, the more we talked, the more he realized that I was not going to hype the find as a treasure wreck as Charles intended to do. Finally, Bart asked, “What do you know about Charles Brewer?”
I equivocated a bit, suppressing an impulse to tell Bart about our experience on the reef with Charles. I told him I didn’t really know much, which was true.
Bart knew quite a lot about Charles Brewer, and he told me a few things—most of which Charles had not mentioned in his résumé.1 Charles Brewer was more well known in Venezuela than I had imagined. He had been Minister of Youth, and he had been a partner of the controversial anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon. Brewer and Chagnon had worked with the mistress of impeached Venezuelan president Andrés Pérez in an effort to take control of huge tracts of land on which the primitive Yanomami tribe live. According to Bart, Charles had been caught in illegal gold strip-mining ventures.
From what Bart was telling me, I could see that, at the very least, Charles was playing the same game here, working himself into the center of things so that he could exploit a situation. For a guy who was essentially a sports diver, he was already posturing himself as a great maritime explorer and underwater archaeologist. Even before I left Venezuela, I knew that if I had any interest in further exploration at Las Aves, Brewer would make sure that he was going to be in control.
I wasn’t so sure about some of Bart’s other allegations. I had not known him long enough to tell what his particular biases might be, and some of his information simply staggered the imagination. It almost sounded as if one of the early Spanish conquistadors had been somehow reincarnated at the very brink of the second millennium. At the back of my mind was also the Elizabethan river wreck of which I had heard. I know the sea; someone like Charles would be needed for a jungle river expedition. I decided to be wary of Charles, but to keep an open mind.
Bart wrote the Las Aves story for AP, and it went out over the wire. Soon the whole world was aware of what we had found at Las Aves. Those stories were read with great interest in certain treasure-hunting circles.
Just a few days after the interview, I was back at my home in Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod. Looking out over the frigid, blue-gray Atlantic, as an icy wind kicked up rows of whitecaps, it was hard to believe that this was the same ocean in which I had been diving just a week before.
What we had found continued to tantalize me. There are, of course, thousands of wrecks scattered across the ocean bottom. Most are not worth the trouble to find. But Las Aves seemed to hold promise. I wanted to know more.
I gave Ken Kinkor a full account of what we had found on the reefs and asked him to look into what ship, or ships, might have been there. With the work on the Whydah wrapped up for the season, Ken had time to dig deeper into the history of Las Aves. What he found fascinated us.
Ken unearthed primary source documents, reports, and letters from English sources describing the magnitude of the disaster that had befallen d’Estrées’ fleet, and the catastrophe it represented to French designs on the Caribbean. In the course of phone conversations with other historians and archaeologists, I gathered more material. Others who had seen the AP reports chimed in with what they knew.
The most important discovery was a map d’Estrées had made of the wreck site before departing Las Aves. It was an incredible document. The admiral’s drawing of the reef system looked very much like modern charts of the area. All along the reef line were drawings of French men-of-war positioned at the places where they had struck. Next to each of the carefully drawn pictures was the name of that unfortunate vessel—except for two. Next to those drawings was only a single word: flibustier.
Flibustier. A French word derived from the Dutch vrijbuiter; in English, it is “filibuster.” All are terms for the same root concept, “freebooter,” defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “one of a class of piratical adventurers who pillaged the Spanish colonies in the West Indies during the 17th century.”
With that one word, my interest in the wrecks at Las Aves skyrocketed. Filibusters. Pirates have always been my main area of interest. At that time, the Whydah was the only known pirate shipwreck ever discovered and authenticated. Now, here were the locations of two more. Not eighteenth-century pirates like Bellamy, but seventeenth-century buccaneers of the Spanish Main.
More research revealed the French recruitment of the buccaneers of Tortuga, at least fourteen hundred pirates on fifteen ships. Knowing that Tortuga was the central gathering point for the Caribbean pirates of that era, and knowing that the French must have recruited nearly every major crew in the West Indies to have put together a flotilla of that size, Ken suspected that some of the famous figures in the annals of seventeenth-century piracy might well have been among those men of Las Aves.
It was an extraordinary prospect. D’Estrées had lost some of the largest warships of his time on the reefs at Las Aves. The buccaneer contingent represented one of the largest mobilizations of those men ever recorded. And here were to be found the remains of ships from that event, artifacts from the beginning of a great wave of piracy that would plague the Caribbean for decades.
I was ready to go back to Las Aves.
9
The Chevalier de Grammont
[T]he chief of the filibusters.
—THE SCOURGE OF THE INDIES
Maurice Besson
JUNE 1678
LAS AVES
The Brethren
of the Coast were not men who took orders easily. Power and influence could shift radically and quickly within their community. Leaders emerged, had their moment of power, and then fell victim to any of the many fates that awaited such men—death in battle, shipwreck, or at the end of a noose, their men turning on them, losing face for a bad decision or a momentary act of perceived cowardice. Many buccaneers rose to power and fell. At the time of the Las Aves disaster there was only one undisputed leader of the filibusters: the Chevalier de Grammont.
One of the most popular Hollywood pirate themes is the banished nobleman turned pirate, the aristocratic gentleman forced to flee his ancestral home and turn buccaneer. Such was the case with de Grammont.
The Chevalier was a small, swarthy man in his late twenties or early thirties at the time of Las Aves. His father, who died when de Grammont was quite young, had served in the King’s Guards. Though the family was not of the uppermost strata of French society, they did enjoy a certain status and the favor of the royal court. As it turned out, that was fortunate for the Chevalier.
Little is known of de Grammont’s earlier years. Indeed, even his Christian name is in some doubt, given variously as Michel, Nicolas, or François. He was born some time before 1643, during the reign of Louis XIII. The story (perhaps “legend” is a more apt term) of his road to piracy is the perfect pedigree for the swashbucklers of fiction.
From an early age, de Grammont displayed all of the pride that came with being a member of French nobility. With his father gone, the young man considered himself head of the family, even if others did not necessarily consider him so.
When de Grammont was in his early teens, his mother remarried. Her new husband, like de Grammont’s father, was a military officer. At some point after becoming de Grammont’s stepfather, he introduced de Grammont’s sister to a fellow officer, who he thought might make a suitable match.
The young Chevalier did not agree. He felt his sister’s suitor was below the family’s station, and he made that opinion well known. His sister’s opinion of the suitor is unknown, but was probably considered inconsequential. Marriages among the French nobility were made on the basis of considerations other than those of the heart.
To de Grammont, it was a matter of family honor. Once, when the Chevalier’s stepfather was not at home and the suitor came to call, de Grammont had the servants forcibly eject the man.
Despite this insult, the suitor continued his courtship and continued to treat de Grammont like a child, making light of the Chevalier’s objections. To be thus dismissed must have been infuriating to the proud young man.
It came to a head at last when de Grammont informed the officer that if he were a little older, they would cross swords. Far from being intimidated, the officer continued to mock the Chevalier until, in a fit of rage, de Grammont snatched up a sword and went for his tormentor.
The young officer, not wishing to hurt his beloved’s brother, did no more than fend off the attack, but de Grammont was out for blood. Twice he managed to wound his adversary. Thrown off by the wounds and the intensity of de Grammont’s assault, the suitor failed to turn the final thrust aside. The Chevalier de Grammont delivered a fatal wound.
Fatal, but not immediately so. De Grammont’s servants carried the dying officer away to his house, where he lingered on for two more days. The king sent a major of the Guards to visit the man to determine what had happened and who was guilty of this crime.
Generously, the wounded officer explained that the fault was his, that he had provoked the affair and that it had been carried out with honor. Even more impressive, he sent the Chevalier de Grammont enough money for him to escape France rather than be tried for murder. Finally, he bequeathed to de Grammont’s sister, whom he would not live to marry, the sum of ten thousand livres.
As it happened, between the officer’s deposition and the influence that the de Grammont family enjoyed in court, the Chevalier escaped banishment and complete disgrace. With the scandal hanging over his head, however, it was thought advisable for de Grammont to absent himself from Paris, so he was given a commission in the Marine Regiment. In that service de Grammont first saw the West Indies.
The Chevalier de Grammont was bold and fearless, and he served with distinction. After several years, he was given command of a frigate. Near Martinique he captured a Dutch convoy worth more than 400,000 livres. The prizes were taken to the French colony in Saint-Domingue (Haiti). De Grammont had to give up a goodly portion of the prize money to the king, but he did receive one-fifth, an enormous sum, as a first taste of the possibilities that sea robbery offered.
Pirates were men apart from society. As such, many chose to engage in excess in all aspects of their lives. Though de Grammont was a reliable and capable officer, he seems also to have been a man who enjoyed a good time. Just eight days after coming ashore with his prize money, de Grammont found himself once again at sea, having in that short time blown nearly all of his newfound fortune on gambling, prostitutes, and other debauchery. Though he was still in the king’s service, he was already acting more like a buccaneer than a marine officer.
De Grammont’s second cruise for France was not so successful. Before taking any prizes, his ship was driven by storm onto a reef, where she broke up. It was then that the Chevalier turned to piracy.
FIRST AMONG EQUALS
Why, exactly, this member of French society, this well-respected officer, turned to buccaneering is not quite clear. There is no indication that he was out of favor with the military, or that the loss of his ship would end his career. Perhaps de Grammont did not care to labor under the eye of superior officers. Perhaps his brief taste of wealth from the Dutch convoy had whetted his appetite for more, and he did not care to share any further good fortune with the king. Whatever his reasons, the Chevalier de Grammont turned pirate, and it proved to be a job for which he had a natural talent, and one in which he rose quickly among his brethren to command.
The pirates of the later seventeenth century were not looked upon in the same way as were the pirates of the early 1700s—Blackbeard, Bartholomew Roberts, and their kind—who were despised as outlaws and the great villains of the age. In the Chevalier’s time, the situation was somewhat different. Pirates of the late 1600s were often called “privateers,” meaning that they actually had legal authority to plunder the wealth of enemy nations—a license to steal.
Such distinctions often became a bit hazy. A good deal of what these “privateers” did was genuine piracy. Still, the buccaneers were not shunned as the later pirates were, and freebooting could even be a stepping-stone to respectability and power.
The early buccaneers may have called themselves “the Brethren of the Coast” as a rejection of the authority of formal government, but they still held national and religious loyalties that would be rejected by pirates four decades later.
The later pirates declared war on the whole world, but the early buccaneers focused on the Spaniards. For pirates of English descent and the French Huguenots, the fight was in part religious. Catholicism infused every part of the Spanish national character, and that was unacceptable to most Englishmen, who would soon exile James II, their last overtly Catholic monarch.
For the French, it was a matter of Spain’s attempts to dominate the West Indies. Spain at this time was like the USSR after Afghanistan, a superpower on the decline, a shell of what it had been, but still trying to exert its influence, still trying to keep the Caribbean a Spanish lake. That attitude was resented, and it was becoming untenable.
For these reasons, it was easy for the legitimate governments of England, France, and Holland to tolerate the buccaneers and, indeed, to recruit them when needed.
Having brought his captured Dutch convoy to Saint-Domingue, de Grammont was well respected by the filibusters there, who were apt to be impressed by such things. From Saint-Domingue, the Chevalier proceeded to Tortuga, the epicenter of pirate activity in the West Indies. There, with the last of his money, he fitted out a fifty-gun
ship.
The Chevalier de Grammont, a natural leader, quickly rose to prominence among the Brethren of the Coast. As a modern writer would put it, “grace, eloquence, a sense of justice and a distinguished courage soon caused him to be regarded as the chief of the filibusters”1 Buccaneers swarmed to him, eager to take part in any exploit he had in mind.
And so, in April 1678, when Governor M. de Pouançay, acting on the orders of King Louis XIV, called for the buccaneers of Tortuga to join in an expedition against the Dutch at Curaçao, de Grammont found himself de facto leader of the filibuster contingent. When they found themselves thrown up on the sands of Las Aves, their plans of sacking Curaçao as shattered as the French fleet, the Brethren of the Coast looked again to de Grammont for leadership.
No doubt it was to de Grammont that d’Estrées appealed in hope that his fellow Frenchman would persuade the pirates to continue with the attack on the Dutch outpost.
One has to wonder what these two men must have thought of each other. D’Estrées was a generation older than de Grammont and from a somewhat better family, but still they were both from the upper strata of French society. Did d’Estrées look with disdain on the Chevalier, who had brought scandal to his family and had left the honorable service of the king to turn pirate? Did de Grammont sneer at d’Estrées as a king’s toady who could not even keep his fleet intact?
Certainly d’Estrées could not have been pleased with de Grammont’s men’s looting of whatever washed up from the wrecks, and must have resented the Chevalier’s mercenary attitude toward an attack for the greater glory of France. For his part, de Grammont was not impressed by d’Estrées’ exhortations to continue on to Curaçao and clearly thought that the admiral had no realistic chance of taking the island.
The Lost Fleet Page 5