Pistoleer: Slavers

by Smith, Skye

  While his crew made good their escape, Robert and Daniel went down below and threw shackle keys to likely looking men. If enough of these men got free of the shackles then they could keep the shore party busy while he rowed the dinghy back to the Swift.

  There were already enough women free of their shackles and standing on the main deck to stop them from climbing down to their dinghy, had they a mind to, but they were all gazing over the gunnels down at the beach and the slaver shore party. As Daniel rowed them towards the Swift, he could see more and more black bodies standing on the main deck, and on the aft castle. Interestingly, the shore party seemed to be more interested in the torn rudder and the hull of the ship than in the freed slaves. They could not know that a few of the Swift's crew had chopped out some of the rotting planks beneath the water line. The ship was slowly settling deeper and deeper for its entire length. In its half-rotten state, it would never be floated again.

  While all this had been going on, the pilgrims and the crew still on the Swift had been watching the demise of the Amity with shock and concern. Once the escaping jolly boats reached the Swift, everyone was too busy hauling people and things aboard to bother with explanations. After Robert was back aboard, he gave a simple and reasonable-sounding account of events in a voice loud enough so that everyone, especially those from the jolly boats who knew the real story, could hear his version of the goings on.

  "The Amity was from Ireland, and was a slaver most foul. Most of the slaver crew were ashore when some of the slaves got free and overpowered the captain and the watch. We couldn't save them, and if we hadn't captured the firearms, we would not have made it back here. We beached the ship so the rest of the slaver crew wouldn't be left stranded. These young women that fled with us from the Amity have lost husbands aboard that ship, so be kind to them, for they are newly widowed."

  He gave one of his hard stares to his crew. One by one they all replied to the stare with a nod. They would hold their own questions until there were no pilgrims listening. Meanwhile the Irish girls were hugged by the Pilgrim women and hustled by them away from the staring eyes of men.

  Daniel almost lost his serious face when he saw the choice of clothes by the lasses. These Irish girls were the poorest of cottager women, and had probably worn nothing but homespun since birth. Now they were dressed in layers of the smoothest, softest, most colorful clothing imaginable. They looked like festival players ready to entertain a paying crowd. That or whores at an expensive gentleman's club.

  "I figure the trunk of clothes was what the women would wear when on the auction block,” Daniel explained in a low voice to some of the crew, but his words were cut short by the crack of firearms. The slaver shore party was trying to fight their way back aboard the beached ship. Considering that the Amity was now swarming with freed blacks, this seemed to be a strange and dangerous thing to attempt.

  Not trusting the sanity of the Amity's crew, Robert yelled out a string of orders. "Take the boats in tow for now, man the oars, up anchor, let's puts some distance between us and this beach." The crew jumped to it and a half hour later the Swift dropped anchor about a quarter mile out, where the sea was still a greenish colour but just before the bottom dropped away and the water turned deep blue.

  While anchored, the crew busied themselves stretching spare sail duek into a series of canopies over the top decks as they had seen on the Amity. These would provide shade, hopefully without hindering the sailing rigging. Meanwhile, Edward and Anna stood beside Robert and Daniel so they could take turns watching the beach through the looker. "Those poor souls at the mercy of savages,” Edward sighed and then bowed in prayer.

  It took Daniel a moment to realize that Edward meant the slavers. "You do realize that they were slavers, and that half of those blacks would not have survived the journey to the Caribe." He words fell on ears deafened by prayer.

  The battle for the Amity ended when the shore party ran out of, or ran low on powder. It would have been better for all concerned if they had saved their powder and instead put to sea in their shore boats. The boats were seaworthy enough to make it back to where they had bought the slaves. He said as much to Edward.

  "Who are we to judge the ways of the Lord or the life he ordains for each of us,” Edward replied.

  "Aye, exactly,” Robert replied. "and that is why we are not taking any bloody slavers aboard the Swift. The Lord has ordained that those slavers be judged by those they enslaved. It's a shame that their gov'n'r the Lord Strafford or his gov'n'r King Charlie, are not here to share in that judgement."

  "Edward, you are a man of letters from London,” Daniel asked. "Did you know what Strafford and the king were doing in Ireland? I was just told that they have been pushing the Irish clans off their common lands and into slavery, and replacing them with privately-held plantations."

  "I had heard something of it. Usually all you hear is that the Irish are being move off because they refuse to give up their Papist ways."

  "More politicide,” Daniel growled.

  "I do not know that word."

  "It is the opposite of regicide. It is when a king murders his own people. I wonder if our God-fearing king has any plans for selling the Fens villagers into slavery so as to make even more profit out of the drainage enclosures?"

  Edward was beginning to suspect that this Frisian Anabaptist may have had a hand in freeing the blacks. You never knew what to expect from Anabaptists because each of their communes was distinct. He had even heard of a new commune of Anabaptists that had proclaimed themselves as pacifists and refused to raise a hand in violence even to save themselves. They called themselves the Society of Friends. Edward took another turn with the looker. He could see so many blacks and so few whites. "What will happen to them?"

  "If the blacks can scare the slavers away, then they have the spring, and the coconuts, and a dead ship. That means food stores enough for a month, and tools, and timber. They have everything they need to build a village, and in a good location. If the slavers take to their boats and seek the help of the traders along the Senegal River, they are as like as not to be put in shackles themselves. In other words, who knows? It's not like we can help them. Besides, we have an ocean to cross."

  With that having been said, Daniel left Edward with Robert while he went down to the hot, stuffy command cabin that he and Robert shared with most of the crew and unrolled the Amity's charts so he could compare them to his own. His were Dutch charts and on them the suggested course to the west ran well south of the Cape Verde islands. The English chart also showed a much shorter course that went through the islands. So, the English, being officially neutral in the long war between the Spanish and the Dutch, were allowed to travel through the islands.

  This was good news indeed for the Swift but had it been worth all the risk and all the bother? Of course it had. The English charts included one of the inland sea that led to the Virginia Colony which was absent from his Dutch charts. More important, hundreds of slaves were no longer chained to a floating coffin.

  He ducked so he could walk out of the cabin and back out into the daylight. It was amazing what a difference the shade canopy had already made. All the folk aboard were now in the fresh air of the top decks rather than hiding from the hot sun below decks. For the pilgrim women the canopy was a godsend. Before it was stretched out they had the choice of staying on the outside deck, where they would keep their modesty by keeping fully clothed from head to foot in the hot sun, or of going below deck where it was sweaty and breathless but where they could shed some clothing.

  With the canopies rigged it was time to up anchor and get underway. Their course was due west. Perhaps for the rest of their lives.

  * * * * *

  The pilgrims prayed on their knees until they could no longer see the coast of Africa. In front of them were three hundred miles of deep ocean before they would sight the first of the Cape Verde islands. They saw a few other small ships but those all shied away from the pirate silhouette of the Swift.r />
  "It's cause we look like a Barbary corsair,” Robert repeated every time a boat changed course to sail away from them. For the first day and night they sailed quickly and efficiently and Robert had figured out that thanks to the steady wind behind them, they were logging over ten miles per hour. Late on the second day, they sighted a large cloud that became a mountain, and so that night they shortened the sails and coasted along quite slowly.

  Their charts were not good enough to tell them if there were reefs in these channels, so they had no choice but to go slowly and carefully in the night. The only good thing about the situation was that in the heat of the day everyone was sleeping so much under the shade of the canopies, that in the cool of the night there was no shortage of wide awake eyes to keep watch.

  Early the next morning one of those sets of eyes spotted a large ship rounding the end of an island, an island too small to have a village. The looker told them that it was a Portuguese navy frigate, and she must have been hiding behind the island waiting for their ship, or for any ship. The Swift was clearly flying English colors, but that did not stop the frigate from firing a warning shot across the Swift's bow.

  This left Robert and Daniel with a tough decision. Should they spill the wind from the sails and heave to, or should they make a run for it? The Swift could outsail the frigate in any direction except downwind, and since the frigate was downwind of them, that meant they could easily escape her, even though it would mean a long detour to get back on course. That is, so long as the frigate's cannons did not get in a lucky shot. The crew were amazed when Robert told them to spill the wind from the sails and wait for the frigate.

  The crew, of course, had not read the Amity's log as Robert had. On a prior voyage the Amity had been stopped by the Cape Verde Squadron. Apparently the Squadron checked the papers of every large ship that approached the islands to make sure they were not pirates, or worse, Dutch. On Robert's call, Daniel allowed the Swift to drift towards the frigate so they could reach hailing range as soon as possible.

  The Swift hailed first to identify themselves as an English ship carrying settlers to the New World. Though the frigate was Portuguese, and the Swift English, Robert had hailed them with his basic Spanish. Spanish had been the language of trade ships for a hundred years, whereas English was spoken almost nowhere outside of England. Even in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland there was little English spoken outside the major towns.

  The hail was returned promptly with, "We do not understand your Spanish. Does anyone aboard speak Dutch?" It made sense that someone on the frigate would speak Dutch because Dutch was quickly replacing Spanish as the language of trade ships. Robert hid his fluency by replying in broken Dutch.

  The Portuguese navigator was the man aboard the frigate who spoke the best Dutch and so it was he who led the boarding party that rowed over to check the Swift's papers and to search the ship. The navigator stared in disbelief at the party of pilgrims. He told Robert that everyone on the frigate had been certain that they were Barbary corsairs. "This ship is so typical of them."

  "And so it was,” Robert made up a likely story on the spot, "until the English fleet captured it when it was raiding the coast of Ireland. That is why it is registered in Bridgwater, which is near to Bristol." He liked this navigator. He was not full of himself as other naval officers tended to be, for he did not need to prove his skills to other men, but only to the ship.

  The navigator did order a search of the ship, but nothing suspicious was found. The Dutch charts and rudder log had been well hidden before the navigator ever came aboard. The cannons were so small that they did not inspect them closely and therefore did not notice the Dutch foundry markings. A few cupfuls of Irish whiskey made the navigator warm to them, and he even sat in front of the Amity's charts for twenty minutes and kindly marked the position of all the reefs in the main channel through these islands.

  As the navigator left the Swift he called to one of his oarsmen, who threw up a small roll of orange and gold cloth. "Here, if you meet another ship of our squadron, raise this pennant and they will let you pass. And captain, your little galliot can outsail any of our frigates, so if one of them still refuses you passage, just sail around him."

  Blake stepped forward and took the pennant from him, and then clasped his hand in friendship, or perhaps it was in relief. The navigator gave him a big smile and said, "Times they are changing, capitan. The Dutch are Portugal's enemy and yet it was the Dutch defeat of the Spanish fleet which has saved us from our Spanish rulers. For the first time in sixty years we have a king again. The Duke of Braganca has been crowned King Johan IV of Portugal, so we must all celebrate with forgiveness, yes?"

  Daniel was dumbfounded by the news that Portugal was its own kingdom again. Had he caused this by setting off the Hellburner for Admiral Tromp? As he shook the navigator's hand, his thoughts were far away in wonder at how the Wyred sisters weave such intricate patterns in the fates of men.

  * * * * *

  When they again set sail, and reached their cruising speed of over ten miles per hour, it was with a new confidence given to them by knowing the location of any reefs. That night they did not slow their pace by much, and the next day they waved goodbye to Cape Verde, and then stared forward at the emptiness that stretched to the horizon, and then beyond it ... forever.

  While they ran before the trade winds they came to understand why so many galleons were square-rigged. Such ships were designed to sail before the trade winds, so they rarely needed to tack. The Swift sailed before the wind with her two lateen sails spread wide to opposite sides. It was as if she were a butterfly with her wings spread, and she floated along on the following winds. Though it was simplicity itself to keep to a westerly course and use the sun to ensure that they were not drifting north or south, they had no way of knowing how far across the ocean they were other than by estimating the miles they logged each day.

  It was unnerving for all of them, pilgrims and seamen alike, to be so long out of sight of land. Worse, there was nothing much to do but fret about how small this ship was and how large the ocean was. Bored minds were dangerous to the morale, so the pilgrims practiced their reading skills with their bibles, and the seamen practiced theirs with Daniel's Officers Field Guide, and the Irish girls learned English from Anna. Day after day after day.

  Each day there were fewer coconuts. The fresh food was eaten first for otherwise it would spoil in the heat. Once the fresh food was gone, their diet became one of oat biscuits and salted cod. Eventually the only fresh food left was the chili peppers. Even the pilgrims began to eat the peppers to make the rest of the food less boring.

  The whole way they trailed fishing lines but they caught nothing once out of sight of Cape Verde. The endless heat, heat of the air and heat of the ocean water, meant that no one went down below except to fetch and carry, for the timbers of the hull were ceaselessly warm to the touch. Everyone’s woolens were clean and folded and stored in the hold, and even the Puritan women spent the day dressed in not much more than their lightest linen-cotton slips.

  Rarely did anyone leave the shade of the deck's canopy for the hottest eight hours of the day, and even the milking sheep and the chickens were kept on the deck and under the shade. Many of the folk slept those overheated hours away, and chose to live their waking hours under the ever so bright starlight. With everyone hiding from the sun, it was common for them to share their daydreams of fresh spring water, and fresh food and they often laughed and argued long about what they would eat first once they made landfall.

  After three weeks of fast sailing across open seas, both night and day, Robert began to fear that they were closer to the New World than his calculations suggested. Closer to the New World meant closer to islands and reefs that they would not see while running fast in the dark of the night. They began to shorten sails at night and keep a closer watch, which meant that their daily progress was cut almost in half. He began to have the same fears that every captain since Cristobel Colon had shared
. How to balance speed with caution, and how to balance cautious speed with the constant depletion of food and water.

  Twenty-three days after losing sight of Cape Verde, the Swift sighted an island with tall cone-shaped mountains. Robert searched both the Dutch and the English rudder logs and eventually decided that this island most closely matched the description of Santa Lucia. The logs also told him that all attempts to settle this island by Dutch and English had failed because of the fierce native population. If this were Lucia, then they had sailed right passed Barbados without seeing it.

  For the first time since leaving Africa they changed course and actually had to work at sailing the Swift in order to tack eastward against the trade winds to find Barbados. Not that this was slow or difficult work, for the Swift could sail close to the wind, so the tacks were long and fast. The next day they sighted an island that matched the description of Barbados, and they sailed into the lee of the island in search of the port of Bridgetown.

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  The Pistoleer - Slavers by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14

  Chapter 21 - Landfall in Barbados in April 1641

  Bridgetown, the main settlement in Barbados, was a nasty shithole. It should have been a good place, could have even been a paradise, if it weren't filled with hungry folk. Hundreds of ragged and hungry folk looked on from the shore as the Swift came in to the quay. They had the bloated bellies of those who were constantly hungry. Robert ordered everyone to stay on board the Swift while he went ashore to find out what was happening here, and once he was on the quay he ordered the crew to row the Swift away from the quay, for where there was such widespread hunger there might also be a plague.