by Frank Sherry
As overall commander of the expedition, Rogers was named captain of the Duke. The Duchess was captained by Stephen Courtney, who had invested heavily in the enterprise. In addition to Rogers and Courtney, the two ships were officered by a motley collection of gentlemen-investors, veteran seafarers, medical men, and youthful adventurers. Many of these men had had only minimal experience of the sea, but all were enthusiastic about the coming adventure. Some of them would even become good officers.
The most important figure in the expedition, besides Rogers himself, was William Dampier, who was to act as chief pilot. Lean, long-jawed, and moody, Dampier had already circled the globe twice and knew the currents and winds of the Pacific.1
There was one peculiar aspect of the venture that Rogers had accepted only with great reluctance. This was the insistence on the part of the investors in the enterprise, some of whom were actually sailing with it, that major decisions during the cruise—including those affecting combat and sailing routes—be made by a council of the officers of both ships. Rogers, foreseeing that this would inevitably lead to wrangling among the officers, tried to talk the backers out of the council arrangement. But the investors, who viewed the council system as a way to ensure that their interests would be protected, refused to budge on the issue.
The Duke and Duchess set sail from Bristol in August 1708. The first crisis took place only six weeks later. The expedition had reached the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa and was preparing for the long southwesterly passage across the Atlantic and around the Horn of South America, when the crew of the Duchess mutinied. Rogers, after rowing over from the Duke, quickly subdued the mutineers by seizing their leader and forcing one of his companions to whip him.
Rogers recorded the incident laconically in his journal, saying he thought that forcing one mutineer to whip another would be “best for breaking any unlawful friendship amongst them.”
In January 1709 the Duke and Duchess rounded the Horn and sailed north along the coast of South America for some two thousand miles until, at the beginning of February 1709, they made landfall at the uninhabited islands of Juan Fernandez, approximately six hundred miles west of what is now Santiago, Chile. Here Rogers rescued a white man with long wild hair and a beard, who spoke English but was clothed in skins like a savage.
The wild man turned out to be Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who had been marooned on these desolate sea isles four years earlier. The expedition’s pilot, Dampier, recognized Selkirk as an old shipmate, and Rogers made the former castaway an officer of the Duke. Selkirk’s adventures while stranded on Juan Fernandez later served as the inspiration for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.2
After refitting at Juan Fernandez, the Duke and the Duchess resumed their cruise northward until they reached waters off the coast of Peru. Here they operated for several weeks, taking a number of small Spanish vessels.
It was during this period that Rogers, with cool resolve, led a raid on the rich Spanish town of Guayaquil in what is now Ecuador. After looting the town of supplies and possessing himself of some £16,000 worth of gold chains and jewelry from the Spanish ladies of the town, Rogers demanded that the Spanish authorities come up with a ransom of 30,000 Spanish dollars—or he would burn the town to the ground. The Spaniards paid. Rogers then departed.
Now the raiders, refreshed and resupplied, resumed their northward cruise along the coast of Central America. At the end of May they captured a small Spanish ship, which they renamed the Marquis and kept with them.
By December the privateers were operating off the coast of Baja California. Here, a few days before Christmas, they sighted a Spanish galleon bound for Acapulco. Guessing that the galleon—which was armed with twenty cannon and twenty smaller swivel guns—was en route from the Philippines and might therefore be carrying at least a portion of the treasure that those islands annually sent to Spain, Rogers ordered a chase.
After a day and a night of pursuit, the Duke caught up with the galleon. It was early morning. The Duke was alone. The Duchess had fallen behind in the chase. Without hesitation, Rogers ordered the Duke to engage.
In his journal, Rogers describes the brisk battle that ensued: “At first the enemy fired at us with their stern-chase guns, which we returned with those in our bow, till at length we got close on board each other, whereupon we gave her several broadsides, plying our small arms very briskly, which last the enemy returned as thick for a time, but did not fire their great guns half so fast as we did.”
When the Spaniard lowered her colors, Rogers and his men boarded her. They found that she was indeed carrying a rich cargo: treasure valued at more than two million Spanish dollars. Rogers also learned from the crew of the captured galleon that a second, even richer, treasure ship was on its way to Acapulco. Moreover, it was sailing directly toward the English ships.
Rogers had been badly wounded in the battle with the galleon. A pistol ball had lodged in his upper jaw, shattering the bone and most of his teeth. Although in agony, he maintained an amazing calm. He called together his council of officers to discuss whether to attack the Spanish galleon.
Rogers advised against attacking the second ship. He pointed out that the Spanish officers they had captured described the oncoming galleon as a monster of 900 tons, mounting forty cannon and forty swivel guns, and carrying a crew of 450 men. Rogers expressed his opinion that she was too large and powerful for the English ships to overcome. But he was overruled by the council of officers. Reluctantly Rogers ordered his ships to begin searching for the other Spaniard.
They soon found her—and she proved more formidable than even Rogers had expected. She was the Begonia, newly built of Manila teakwood and served by gunners who knew their business.
For more than seven hours the English ships engaged the Spanish galleon. During the battle Duchess was badly mauled, her rigging and masts severely damaged, and twenty of her men were killed. Duke suffered fourteen men wounded, among them Captain Rogers, who was again hit, this time by shrapnel that tore away part of his left heel. Unable to shout commands because of the wound to his jaw, and unable to stand because of his torn-up heel, Rogers nevertheless continued to conduct the battle. Seated, with his foot propped up on a cushion, Rogers used hand signals to give his orders.
In the end, the Begonia beat off her attackers and escaped. In his journal Rogers estimated that during the battle Duke and Duchess had struck the Spanish ship with approximately five hundred rounds of solid shot without doing more than superficial damage.
Typically, Rogers did not blame his subordinate officers for the debacle even though their misjudgment in insisting on battle had badly damaged their venture.
Instead, despite his own pain, Rogers ordered the expedition to make ready for the long voyage across the Pacific. After effecting what repairs they could, and gathering provisions ashore, the raiders set out on January 11, 1710, for the island of Guam, six-thousand miles to the west.
Rogers’s flotilla now consisted of the Duke, the Duchess, the Marquis, and the captured Spanish galleon, which Rogers had renamed the Batchelor in honor of a friend from Bristol.
During the voyage Rogers suffered a high fever and his jaw and throat were so swollen from his wound that he could barely whisper. He was so weak that he was unable to stand up. Yet he endured his agony with amazing humor and courage. He wrote in his journal every day. One remarkable entry, for February 14, 1710, illustrates the extraordinary strength of Rogers’s character:
“That same day, in Commemoration of the Antient custom in England of chusing Valentines, I drew up a list of the fair ladies in Bristol, that were any ways related to or concerned in the Ships, and sent for my officers into the Cabbin, where everyone drew, and drank the Lady’s Health in a Cup of Punch, and to a happy Sight of ’em all; this I did to put ’em in mind of Home.”
Three days later Rogers managed to cough up slivers of his jawbone that had been lodged in his throat since he had received his wound. From that point on his co
ndition improved rapidly.
The expedition arrived at Guam on March 11. Here they rested, took on water, and put their prisoners ashore before continuing to the Dutch-held island of Java.
In Java, Rogers sold the Marquis. After refitting, he sailed with his remaining three ships across the Indian Ocean to South Africa. Here they joined a Dutch convoy with whom they completed the voyage home. The expedition finally reached England on October 1, 1711.
Rogers and his men had circumnavigated the world in a voyage that had taken more than three years. They had also brought back a huge treasure, amounting to more than £170,000 in the final reckoning.
But after the expedition’s investors were paid off, and the crew compensated, Rogers’s share of the proceeds amounted to only some £1,600—hardly adequate recompense for his pain and suffering, let alone for his outstanding leadership.
Rogers, however, made no complaint. He published his journal of the voyage. The book was a literary success. Rogers became the friend of coffeehouse lions including Addison and Steele.
In addition to gaining him fame and a modest financial reward, Rogers’s round-the-world voyage had given him insight into the political, military, and commercial value of empire. Rogers was convinced that countries that possessed colonies in all regions of the world, as Spain and Holland did, were destined to dominate the future.
With this in mind Rogers tried to interest the Admiralty and the Board of Trade in a scheme to establish British settlements on remote islands in all the oceans. Despite his popularity and the respect in which he was held, Rogers could make no headway with his proposal.
In 1713 he even made a voyage to Madagascar in order to scout the great island as a possible site for the first of his proposed colonial settlements. But Madagascar, still regarded in England as the home of pirates, savages, and half-breeds, seemed to hold no attraction for anyone but Rogers himself—and nothing came of his idea.
In 1717, at the age of thirty-eight, Rogers turned his eyes toward the pirate-infested Bahamas. It seemed to him that these islands, all but abandoned by their proprietors, might be the ideal place to test his ideas about empire. He became an enthusiastic member of the syndicate that leased the islands from the Crown for the purpose of reclaiming them from their pirate overlords.
Rogers was confident that with a new infusion of honest artisans and farmers, this neglected corner of the Crown’s colonial empire could be made to bloom. He was equally confident that the pirates who had made New Providence their base could be suppressed with a modicum of determination and force.
The Board of Trade gave its support to the Bahamas proposal—probably because it did not involve any great expenditure of government funds. As requested by the syndicate that had leased the islands, Rogers was appointed by the Crown as the unsalaried “Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief” of the Bahamas colony. The Admiralty promised to furnish Rogers with an escort of warships to New Providence. The War Department put 100 soldiers under his command to garrison the island. Rogers would also have with him 250 European farmers, most of them Protestant refugees from the Continent, who would be the key to establishing the plantations that would give the Bahamas a viable economy.
As Rogers worked through the early months of 1718, preparing his expedition for departure, dispatches continued to arrive in England reporting a worsening crisis on the sea-lanes of the New World as the pirates continued to increase in both numbers and boldness.
Many, even those who were his closest supporters, wondered how Rogers planned to deal with the pirates of New Providence. Although his commission as governor gave Rogers authority to suppress them in any way he chose, it was clear that he lacked sufficient forces to defeat them militarily. (In addition to his commission Rogers also carried a royal proclamation that promised pardon to the New Providence outlaws for any piracies committed prior to January 5, 1718, provided they came in and surrendered themselves to Governor Rogers. But, given the power of the pirates in the Bahamas, it was thought that only a few would accept these pardons.)
Rogers himself betrayed no concern about the brigands awaiting him across the Atlantic. He might not have had a specific tactical plan in mind for defeating the pirates, but he most definitely had a strategy. He knew seafaring men. He understood pirates, and he was confident that when he arrived at Nassau harbor, he would manage the situation as it presented itself to him.
On April 11, 1718, Rogers set sail for New Providence Island in his 460-ton East Indiaman Delicia. He was escorted by four small Royal Navy warships—the frigates Milford and Rose and the sloops Buck and Shark. (He had left his wife and children at home in Bristol, intending to send for them when he had pacified his colony.)
On the other side of the ocean, the pirates of Nassau had gotten wind of Rogers’s expedition. The reactions to the news varied.
About half the two thousand pirates who made their headquarters in Nassau decided to depart for other waters, conceding Nassau—at least temporarily—to Rogers and his Royal Navy support. This faction, aware of Rogers’s reputation for honesty and fearlessness and, like most pirates, always anxious to avoid unnecessary and unremunerative combat, would go elsewhere and await developments. They would—or would not—return, depending upon the military strength Rogers brought with him and upon his determination to use it.
Another large segment of the Nassau pirates, however, seemed to view Rogers as just another corruptible colonial governor. With their usual disdain for authority, these pirates were ready to receive Rogers peaceably and to accept the royal pardon he offered. It would appear that this group expected Rogers’s rule to last only as long as the Royal Navy stayed around to prop him up. The navy, they anticipated, would not remain long in Nassau. There were more important things for men-of-war to do than guard a colonial governor. When the Royal Navy had gone, this faction thought, Governor Rogers would soon be doing business with the pirates, for the Bahamas had no real value as a colony. They felt sure that in order to support himself, Rogers would soon be issuing bogus privateer commissions and serving as a broker for pirate loot. In the long run, they seemed to feel, Rogers’s arrival in Nassau could prove a boon to the sweet trade. In the meantime, it made prudent sense to cooperate with the new governor—until a better course showed itself.
But at least one pirate captain, the redoubtable Charles Vane, decided he would neither flee, nor welcome, the new governor. Instead he vowed to resist when Rogers appeared.
On July 24, after an uneventful fifteen-week journey, Rogers’s flotilla dropped anchor just outside the narrow entrances of Nassau harbor.
Rogers soon learned from local residents, who rowed out to him with the news, that many of the worst pirates had already left New Providence and that most of those remaining would receive their new governor peaceably. But he also learned that Charles Vane, who had sworn to resist Rogers, was still in the harbor. Before Rogers could decide on any course of action however, an emissary from Vane arrived, carrying a letter addressed to Rogers. In his letter Vane haughtily said he would accept the king’s amnesty from Rogers only if Rogers allowed him and his men to keep the plunder from a prize ship they had just taken and brought into Nassau harbor. If Rogers refused, Vane threatened, there would be a fight.
Rogers disdained even to reply.
Instead, he blockaded the main entrance to the harbor with his ships. When night fell he sent two of his warships, the frigate Rose and the sloop Shark, into the harbor. Under cover of darkness they were to approach and take Vane. But the pirate captain had prepared for such a maneuver. He had filled his captured prize with explosives and combustibles. When he spotted the two men-of-war approaching down the channel, he slipped the cable on his prize and set fire to her. Within minutes she was a roaring inferno. Booming with explosions that sent huge gouts of flaming debris into the night sky, she drifted down upon the nearest of the two warships, the Rose. To avoid Vane’s fire ship, both men-of-war retreated from the harbor out to the open sea.
With the daylight, Vane ran up his black flag and daringly ran out of the harbor through its lesser-used channel not guarded by the warships. Firing a derisive salute to Rogers, Vane, with all sails flying, soon reached the open sea. Three of the navy ships were not well placed to chase him down. The other, Buck, pursued but soon fell far behind.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Vane later sent word he intended to return and burn Rogers’s ship the Delicia in revenge.
Rogers knew that Vane would prove troublesome in the future, but there was a more immediate task to deal with: He had to take official possession of his colony.
Knowing now that most of the pirates awaiting his arrival in Nassau intended to receive him amicably, Rogers was even more confident of success than he had been at the start of his venture. He understood the simple appetites and needs of seafaring men. And pirates were, after all, simple seafarers at heart, wilder than most and more dangerous—but still seamen. Rogers had once written: “Good liquor to sailors is preferable to clothing.” He was sure he would know how to talk to the pirates who awaited him on shore. He would know how much line to give them, when to leave it slack, and when to draw it taut.
Nevertheless, he intended to tread carefully in the first weeks of his administration. Sailors, pirates especially, could easily turn from a good-natured pack of scoundrels into a bloodthirsty mob.
He recognized better than anyone that he lacked the resources to conquer his new colony by force. And he was aware—as were the pirates—that his four Royal Navy men-of-war would not remain perpetually on duty in Nassau harbor. If he was to win control of his colony, it could not be at the point of a pistol, or a Royal Navy culverin.
With these considerations in mind, Rogers seems to have worked out a threefold strategy for the conquest of his islands. First, he planned to claim from the outset all the prerogatives of a governor. He would issue proclamations, grant pardons, enact laws—and in general use his powerful position, and what forces he possessed, to establish the legitimacy of his authority. If he behaved as if he were strong, Rogers seemed to believe, the pirates would assume he was strong.