by Tim Severin
Uring’s sloop had already called at Bluefields to take on fresh water and was heading north along the Moskito Coast when “the Wind began to freshen, with a small drisling rain.” Since the days of Columbus, the coast had kept its evil reputation for its numerous offshore shoals and reefs, so Uring was following another trading vessel whose captain knew the route and was acting as his guide. But in the drizzle the lead vessel soon vanished from sight, and though Uring lit signal flares, he was unable to reestablish contact. Uring had no firsthand experience of the coast, and though he had some “draughts,” or charts, of the area, they were unreliable. Foreseeing just such a difficulty, he had asked the owners of the sloop to provide him with a pilot who knew the coast. But with visibility deteriorating and the wind backing into the northwest and increasing, Uring decided to play it safe. He turned the sloop about, ordered his men to bring down the mainsail and jib, and hove to under a single small headsail, intending to ride out the bad weather. The wind increased to a storm.
At nine or ten in the night the sloop’s bowsprit snapped. It fell into the sea under the lee bow. The crew tried to rescue the spar and haul it inboard, but found it impossible. The gale had raised a “very great sea,” and the sloop was plunging and laboring in the large waves. Uring feared that the loose bowsprit slamming against the hull could impale his ship and sink her. He ordered the spar to be cut away, and a hawser brought forward and rigged as an emergency stay to hold up the mast while the foresail was reefed and reset. But the wind was so strong that almost as soon as the foresail was up, it had to be taken down again for fear of tearing the mast out of the ship. The vessel was now drifting at the mercy of the wind and waves.
An hour later the crew had a bad fright. In the darkness they saw white water close at hand. Worried that his sloop was driving on a shoal, Uring ordered a sounding to be taken and the lead was heaved. Strangely, the depth was found to be fourteen fathoms, more than eighty feet. Again Uring ordered the foresail to be hoisted in the hopes of getting some control of the vessel, and he asked the pilot whether, judging by the depth, he knew where they were. But the pilot was useless. He was “a poor elderly fellow” who “knew nothing of the Matter.” Uring kept the leadsman hard at work, taking repeated soundings, and was relieved when the soundings showed very little shoaling. This “gave me hopes that we were not in so much danger as I before feared.” Better, the wind had eased slightly and it was possible to hoist the double-reefed mainsail and take down the foresail. The little sloop now lay closer to the wind, and was not being driven to leeward so rapidly.
Ominously, the leadsman began to report that the depths were steadily decreasing “to Thirteen Fathom, and so to Twelve, and then Eleven, and about Three a Clock we had but Ten and quickly after Nine Fathom.” Uring was well aware that they were in a very bad situation—close to a shore fringed with reefs and shoals, in darkness and heavy weather, and without any idea of their actual position. He looked again at his charts, which “laid down several Ledges of Rocks and Shoals. And expected nothing less than to be thrown on some of them every moment where we could expect nothing but immediate Death.”
When dawn broke, the leadsman reported the depth had decreased to eight fathoms and was still decreasing. Daylight also showed that the little sloop was alarmingly close to a long, low horizon, which marked the Moskito shore. Again Uring was forced to risk setting the foresail again and trying to work away from the land. He asked the pilot whether he recognized where they were, now that it was daylight. But the old man “confessed he did not, and having no one onboard acquainted in those seas except himself, we were entirely at a loss.”
From the deck Uring could see what looked like the entrance to a river or lagoon, but he was wary. “I had thoughts of venturing, but considered it was a shoal coast, and that it was the highest probability there was not water enough for the vessel, and if there was not, and she should touch the Ground, she would quickly be in pieces.” He decided it would be wiser to claw along the coast, hoping to find an island behind which to take shelter.
After some miles the pilot announced, at last, that he recognized “a remarkable tuft of trees” on the land. He knew the sloop’s position. They were close, he said, to Cabo Gracias a Dios. If the sloop could keep her course and edge her way around the cape, they would find shelter in its lee. He assured Uring that it was a safe passage “where he had been several times” and had five fathoms of water.
Uring took his advice. For a short interval it seemed that his ship would extricate herself from danger. The depth stayed at five fathoms, but then suddenly the bottom shoaled again, and at the same moment the pilot lost his nerve. He was no longer sure that the clump of trees marked Cabo Gracias a Dios. Then he changed his mind, and said it did. As he was dithering, a shudder passed through the hull as the ship ran onto a rocky shoal and came to a halt. She then “gave but a few Thumps before the Main-Mast jumped out of its step.”
Uring kept a cool head. He directed his men to cut away the mainmast before it damaged the ship. But there was only one ax aboard, and the work took an agonizingly long time. Next, knowing that the sloop was hard aground, Uring organized the crew to chop a gap in the rail around the edge of the deck so that the sloop’s tender, a large, heavy canoe, could be launched over the side for use as a lifeboat. Without the mast block and tackle to help them, it was all the crew could manage to manhandle the canoe from its place on deck. But “everyone outdid themselves” and eventually succeeded in sliding the canoe into the water. The entire crew of sixteen men, including the elderly pilot and the ship’s boy, jumped down into the lifeboat. In their haste to get clear before the hulk began to break up, they took with them only some firearms “a little gunpowder, some small shot, an axe and an iron pot.”
The sloop had struck an offshore reef, so now they were faced with rowing the canoe across six miles of open water to get to land. As the sailors approached the shore, their courage failed. They saw that the gale had kicked up a heavy swell, and a broad expanse of whitewater was breaking on the long, straight slope of the beach. It was such a daunting sight with “the Break of the Sea so high and at such a distance” that the crew “were very much afraid of the Canow’s over-setting.” To add to their plight, the sun had gone down by the time they were ready to attempt a landing.
By the light of the moon they waited and watched for a quiet interval between the larger crests. Then came a moment “after the Breach of the Great Seas,” when Uring shouted to his men to row with all their strength for the shore.
Rather to their surprise, the canoe stayed upright, and despite “the Sea breaking over us several times,” they pitched up safely on the strand “by the providence of God.” Jumping out of the canoe, they dragged it up the open beach and out of the reach of the surf, and took stock of their situation.
In the moonlight they could see the line of trees that marked the edge of the coastal forest. They were “wet and sadly fatigued,” and urgently needed shelter. Hoping to find firewood and timber to build a hut, they left the canoe and began trudging up the slope of the beach, only to discover that they were mired in the typical feature of the Moskito Coast: the long, stagnant marsh that lies trapped behind the beach. “We came quickly into a Morass and were up to the mid-Leg, and sometimes up to the Knees in Mud and Water.” Blundering through the slough, the castaways discovered that “it was full of long cutting Grass intermixed with Briars which tore our legs in several places.” They advanced for more than a mile “in this miserable way” before they found themselves, scratched and bleeding, among the trees. There “by the help of a Pistol and some Gunpowder we made a Fire and dried our cloaths.”
The next priority was to build some shelter. They “cut down some small trees with which, and the Branches of others we set up a little Hut to shelter ourselves from the rain in which we designed to rest ourselves after Two Days and a Night’s Fatigue.” Exhausted, they lay down to get some rest.
They had overlooked the scourge of the sw
ampy coast—mosquitoes.
There were “millions of Muschetos,” wrote Uring, “and other biting flies about us. So that neither Mouth, Nose, Eyes or any Part of us was free from them; and wherever they could come at our Skin, they bit and stung us most intollerably.” The torment from the clouds of insects was so bad that the castaways were unable to sleep for the rest of the night “though we were tired to Death.”
Itching and irritable, Uring and his companions made their way back to the beach at first light, and looked out to sea, hoping to see the wreck of their vessel stuck on the reef. But there was nothing. They had become unwilling “marooners.”
Despondently they began to explore their surroundings to see what they could find to eat. Their only food was the single piece of dried beef they had brought with them in the canoe. It weighed about six pounds, and would not last sixteen men for no more than two or three days at most. After four hours of searching, one of the men returned carrying a bunch of unripe plantains. He had found them in an abandoned plantation. It was a hopeful sign that someone, probably native people, occasionally visited the area. The searchers had also seen plants growing near the plantation which they recognized as “sweet cassava.” They dug up the roots. Unlike “poison cassava,” whose roots must be cut up and beaten until all the poison juice is squeezed out, then dried and turned into flour for making cassava bread, “sweet cassava” can be eaten immediately. The sailors peeled off the skin of the roots, which were the size and shape of long parsnips, and boiled or roasted the vegetables. They tasted “something like a potatoe tho’ not so good.”
The next day Uring handed out the guns, shot, and gunpowder and divided his men into hunting groups. They were to shoot “such creatures as probably we might find in that country, to prevent our being starved if we found no Inhabitants.” Also they were to keep a sharp lookout for any more signs of the natives who had planted the cassava. Uring took a gun and, going by a separate track, was angry with himself when he fired at, but failed to hit, a “Tyger Cat” in a tree. It must have been a big animal, possibly a jaguar, because he noted regretfully that his target “would have been sufficient to have made us a plentiful meal” if his aim had been better. When he got back to the camp, he found that the other hunters had shot several large fishing hawks, and “notwithstanding they were very tough and fishy, we eat them very heartily.”
There were more fishing hawks on the menu on the next day, the third since the shipwreck. The birds were already in the cooking pot when the last of the hunters came into camp, carrying a large chunk of fresh beef. They had met a wild cow in the forest and shot the beast. Unfortunately, soon afterward they saw three more cows and realized that the animal they had killed was not wild at all, but tame.
Sure enough, they were eating the beef when a Miskito Indian appeared. Speaking broken English, he informed them that they had just shot a cow belonging to the local Miskito chief, who called himself Captain Hobby, and that the chief would be most displeased when he heard the news. Captain Hobby and his people were in a camp sixteen or eighteen miles to the south. The Miskito also told the castaways that the fresh wreck of a vessel was lying in the shallows only a few miles down the coast. The hulk lay without mast nor people aboard, so to the castaways it sounded as if it was the wreck of their sloop. Uring hurriedly apologized for shooting the tame cow and suggested going to Captain Hobby’s camp. On the way, they would visit the wreck and see if anything could be salvaged.
By now the seas had become calm enough for the canoe to be relaunched. With some of the castaways in the canoe and the others walking along the beach, they headed southeast accompanied by the helpful Miskito. After walking all day, the sailors pulled the canoe back onto the beach and turned her upside down. Some of the party crawled under the canoe to sleep while others lay down on the beach to rest. Those under the canoe soon learned their error. The mosquitos attacked so ferociously that they quickly shifted to join their companions in the open air, where “the Wind blew most of [the mosquitoes] away.” That to Uring’s chagrin, two of his men deserted, carrying away “my Fowling Piece and a Musquet, with a good part of our Powder and Shot.” He never mentioned them again.
By noon the next day the little party had reached the wreck. It was their sloop. The hulk was lying close enough in to shore for them to wade out and check to see whether they could salvage anything. They found that the hull had been stripped bare.
Their Miskito guide now suggested that he would go with some sailors in the canoe down the coast and into the mouth of the Black River. There they would rendezvous with the rest of the party at Captain Hobby’s camp, which Uring and the remainder of the group could reach by walking overland.
Uring arrived in camp to find the Miskitos gloriously drunk. They had ransacked the wreck for her cargo of rum and carried home the windfall and were celebrating. “I found most of them very happy,” he noted. “Some of them were so drunk they could not speak, others mighty drunk singing very heavily, and some about half gone, carousing over their drunken Brethren.” The tipsy Miskitos welcomed the castaways with open arms. A couple of Miskitos were sufficiently sober to lead the sailors to the cache where the Indians had stacked some of the supplies from the wreck. The ravenous sailors started cooking themselves a meal and when the canoe party arrived, “the sober Indians were very courteous and gave us some of our own Rum and Sugar, with which we made some punch and cheared our Spirits.” In this atmosphere of mutual celebration, the Miskitos generously “let us know where they had hid some of our rum. From whence we took a small Cask and put it in our canoe.”
There was still the matter of the dead cow to settle. Uring was nervous of the outcome. He did not expect “Captain” Hobby to take kindly to one of his cattle being shot by strangers. Judging by his title he was a middle ranking chief. The Miskitos had adopted various English titles for their own hierarchy. Their most senior chief was the “king” at Sandy Bay, and various “captains” were scattered along the coast. Later there would also be a governor, a general and even an admiral. Fortunately, Captain Hobby was in too good a humor from the windfall of the shipwreck to be very resentful about the lost cow. He behaved “very civilly” and though he “he made a heavy Complaint for the Loss” he accepted Uring’s explanation that it was a genuine mistake and “that our People [would not have] killed it if they had not believed it had been wild.” He “was very friendly, seeming sorry for our Misfortune.”
Captain Hobby was much more concerned about the health of his mother. She had drunk so much rum “that she speechless lay for three days.” He asked Uring “what he should so to save his Mother’s Life?” and Uring replied that “time would throw it off, and she would be well again.” He had already noticed how the Miskitos had great powers of recovery from a drinking bout. They would drink vast quantities of rum, then lie down in the grass at dusk “scattered about like so many sheep and goats” and completely oblivious to the clouds of insects hovering over them. Next morning they “got upon their legs, shaked themselves, and seemed as well as our true Scots in England, when they have been very drunk overnight; who if you ask them how they do next day, say they are neither sick nor sorry.”
Clearly the rugged Miskito way of life had prepared “Will the Moskito” for his long stay on Juan Fernandez as a maroon until the Batchelor’s Delight brought his compatriot Robin leaping ashore to embrace him. One of Will’s shipmates, the buccaneer Basil Ringrose, who had been with Captain Sharpe’s raiders, marveled how robust, yet carefree, the Miskitos could be. Some, he said, were mere “vagabonds.” They wandered the riverbanks and beaches and, when tired, lay down on the ground and slept comfortably with nothing more than a large leaf to screen them against the wind and rain. If there were mosquitoes, they “dig a hole in the sand . . . and then cover themselves therewith.” Others, he said, were so relaxed that they “lie all day in their Amacks which are a kind of moving beds . . . and when they are pressed with Hunger, they go afishing in their Boats at which they are als
o very skilful, and when they have taken any, they eat them, and go not any more until Hunger returns upon them again.” The place where these blithe natives congregated, according to Ringrose, was “about ten or a dozen leagues to the windward of Cape Grace a Dios.” Here, in the region now known as Sandy Bay, the Miskito live “in those places they call Sambay and Sanibay.”
For a second time I stood on the rickety wooden pier at Puerto Cabezas. It was four months since my brief reconnaissance trip to Sandy Bay with Safel the footloose Miskito. Now my companion was very different. Kendra was thirty years old, tall, serious-looking with a very pale skin and brown eyes. When her dark hair was pulled back, her face with its high forehead, neat features, and narrow chin took on a pixy shape, and then—if something had caught her interest—her whole expression lit up like that of an alert forest creature, a pine marten perhaps, hearing a distant twig snap. At that moment you realized Kendra’s deliberately quiet exterior hid a questing intelligence which—betrayed by the faint twitch of a smile—was matched by a sense of humor always at the ready. Kendra was Canadian, a doctoral student of geography, and this was her first visit to Puerto Cabezas. She approached one of the group of idlers standing on the pier. “Can you tell me if there is any boat going up to Sandy Bay,” she inquired politely, knowing full well what the effect would be. Once again I saw someone react as if Puerto Cabezas pier had tilted beneath his feet. Last time it had been a drug runner appalled at the notion of going to Sandy Bay. This time it was because Kendra had asked the question speaking fluent Miskitu.
I had located Kendra on the Internet. A flurry of reports about La Mosquitia appeared in late 1998, when Hurricane Mitch with its two-hundred—mile-an-hour winds raked Nicaragua and Honduras. Among the volunteers organizing outside help for the indigenous people was Kendra. I contacted her by e-mail, asked whether she spoke the Miskito language, and if so, would she be available to accompany me as an interpreter. She was diffident. She was not sure whether her language skills were sufficient. She had learned to speak Miskitu—she pointed out that the convention was to spell the language with a final u instead of an o—while doing field research among a related group of Indians, the Tawakha, in Honduras. She had lived in a remote Tawakha village for twenty-two months. The Tawakha were former victims of Miskito slave raids and though they spoke their own language, they also spoke Miskitu and still supplied dugout canoes to their former overlords. Fortunately Kendra was curious to learn just how the Miskito lived today and she agreed to accompany me to Nicaragua.