But there were new arrivals too. One, a British merchant ship called the Lady Nicholl, brought fresh opportunities. A few days after it arrived I was playing billiards with its master, a man called Marvell. I normally enjoy the game with a seafarer, as all that time rocking on the ocean gives them a very poor touch with the cue. But after several improbably complex pots had gone down, I conceded that I had met my match. We talked as we played and I learned that the Lady Nicholl was homeward bound but lacking a full cargo. It was August then and Marvell was in no rush as the storms around Cape Horn at that time would be fearsome. He was content to wait a month or two and that gave me an idea.
Chapter 8
The Octopus mine certificate was only considered worthless because of the levies charged by the officials. What if we did not pay any tax on it? Once the silver was loaded on Marvell’s ship bound for England, the Chileans could forget about their duty money. Then in London the bullion could be sold to prop up the foundering fortunes of my estate in Leicestershire. But I could not do it alone, I would need some help.
“I don’t know,” said Captain Crosbie when I put the idea to him. “It would ruin the admiral’s negotiations over pay if the government finds out about it.”
“Cochrane has been negotiating for months over back pay and has yet to see a penny,” I protested. “The only time you have had your arrears paid was when you took the money yourselves from San Martín’s yacht. Do you honestly think Cochrane is going to get paid?”
“Maybe not…” Crosbie started but I interrupted to play my trump card.
“I am not just talking about silver for me. There must be at least a dozen other certificates in the port that are currently considered all but worthless. You could discreetly start buying them up. Hell, we could even forge a few, and then we’ll go up to the mine and cash in the lot. With a party of marines, no one would stand in our way and then you could pay off the whole fleet. Captain Marvell could take some of the silver back to England to support the families of men there and there is nothing that the Chileans could do about it.”
A slow grin spread over Crosbie’s face as he considered the proposal. There was a reason I had come to Cochrane’s flag captain with the idea: he and his admiral were kindred spirits. Cochrane had often been described as a virtual pirate and Crosbie, a genial Irishman, was cut from the same cloth. “They will be bloody furious when they find out what we’ve done,” he laughed. “But you’re right, silver in the hand is much better than a promise, especially one from Santiago.”
Thus a few weeks later I put to sea again. This time I sailed with Captain Crosbie in the twenty-six-gun Independencia, in convoy with the Lady Nicholl. Crosbie had managed to acquire fifteen share certificates, although two were on different paper from the rest and I doubted were genuine. He had made a great effort to keep the purpose of our voyage secret, claiming it was just a coastal patrol, but it is hard to keep secrets when men live closely together on board ships. While Chilean officials might have remained ignorant of our real intentions, amongst the crew there was eager anticipation of mischief to come. Some thought we were to raid Peru’s treasure again, while a few had heard of the acquisition of share certificates and guessed our objective. The presence of fifty marines, some gathered from other ships, made it obvious to all that we were not simply patrolling the coast.
The only fly in the ointment was the fact that no one seemed certain exactly where the mine was. For obvious reasons, the mine owners did not encourage casual visitors. All we knew for certain was that it was in the mountains to the north. Crosbie had, however, managed to find a man who had visited it by sea, who swore he would recognise the bay they had anchored in. So we set off, staying close to the shore and comparing every inlet we passed on the chart to the description given by the guide. We had travelled for nearly a week when I discovered that our guide was not quite as competent as we had hoped. We had dropped anchor for the night in what had seemed a likely cove, but the guide had taken one glance through the telescope and dismissed it.
“But it has a river as you described and a few houses and a jetty. How can you be sure it is not the right place?” I asked.
“I know, señor,” stated the guide pulling himself up to his full height self-importantly, “because there are no burros.”
“Burros? You mean donkeys?”
“Yes señor, they use them to bring the silver from the mine. The cove we want will have lots of burros in the fields.”
Crosbie, who had overheard the exchange, shook his head in dismay as I asked the obvious question. “And how will you recognise the bay if the burros are already at the mine?” After that we landed a boat in each bay and asked anyone we could find if they knew of the mine. We claimed we were delivering supplies and had got lost in a storm, although most greeted our enquiries with wary suspicion. A few thought the mine was further north, but many of the people we asked were peasants, who had never travelled more than a few miles from where they stood.
Four days later and the mood of early optimism had completely vanished. As the guide stared vacantly into each new cove, there were dark suggestions about dropping him overboard for all the use he was. But then, late that afternoon, we rounded a headland and I knew we had at last found our destination. There was a river where the man had claimed, and some cottages and a jetty. But the clincher was the donkeys. There must have been a hundred of the creatures grazing on the fields near the shore.
The landing party consisted of the fifty marines and a further fifty well-armed seamen. Crosbie had impressed on all the need to give the impression that this was an official party to avoid raising suspicion. Discipline was to be maintained and there would be no looting. The last part was hardly necessary as when we passed through the meagre huts and houses on the shore, there was nothing worth stealing. The headman seemed to accept our story without question. Within a couple of hours we were underway with around fifty of the donkeys, some carrying supplies brought from the ship. It was November then, which for Chile meant early summer and the weather was very pleasant. We were soon heading up into the foothills of the mountains and the headman explained that it would take around three days to reach the mine.
For the first two days everything went well. As we climbed higher and higher into the mountains, it got colder but not uncomfortably so. There were stone huts for travellers along the way but they would not accommodate a hundred men and so most of us slept outside under the stars. Several times we had to travel in single file along narrow paths hacked into the side of a cliff with a stomach-churning drop down one side. A startled donkey could have dragged half a dozen men over the edge, but each trotted placidly along and seemed far more relaxed about the gaping chasm beside it than I was.
It was early on the third morning that it happened. Mercifully, we were not still on a cliff edge but in one of the narrow valleys. Several of the men were filling bottles from a pool fed with water from a high waterfall. It was very quiet, too quiet as it turned out. One of the men had just commented that he could no longer hear the crows that had tracked our progress. God knows where the birds had gone, they must have sensed somehow what was about to happen. It began with a sound like thunder and we all stared up at the patch of clear blue sky still visible between the surrounding peaks.
“What the devil is that?” asked Crosbie. “It can’t be a storm on a day like this.”
“Well it is not gunfire either,” I told him. “You would need hundreds of guns to make such a continuous noise, and - Bloody hell!” It was at that moment that the ground started to shake. I have never known anything like it before or since. The one certainty in life is that the earth will stay still under your feet, but it didn’t that day. We all stared about us, dumbfounded, unsure what to do. Then with a mighty jolt we were all thrown down to sprawl on the still shuddering rocks. I looked around me; the world seemed to be going mad. Clouds of dust were coming off the surrounding mountains to darken the sky. The normally placid donkeys were stampeding in all
directions, knocking down anyone in their way. Most of us just lay were we had fallen, but a few were trying to run up the side of the valley into the trees. It was there that I saw an astonishing sight: some of the trees seemed to be actually moving across the ground! I shook my head in disbelief, but the trees on the hillside were undoubtedly shifting. Some to the left higher up the hill and others to the right, lower down, while in the middle they were tumbling to the ground as though a giant hand was flattening them. I watched, transfixed for a second, and then the first huge rock bounced off the hillside and through our camp. It smashed a crouching sailor into a puddle of gore without even slowing down. It was only then that I appreciated the danger we were in.
“This way!” shouted the headman charging into the pool of water towards the waterfall. Over the centuries, the stream above had worn away at the cliff face to make a horseshoe-shaped recess in the rock. It would provide some shelter against falling boulders. As I glanced over my shoulder to see if more were likely to crash into the camp, I was horrified to see that half of the mountainside was now on the move. I was up in a moment… and down again three steps later as stones moved beneath me. As another rock, the size of a small house, smashed its way through the nearby bushes, I realised there was not a moment to lose and I staggered to my feet once more and ran on. When I got to where the pool had been, I noticed that all the water had gone, but the wet gravel still vibrated underfoot as I finally pushed in to join the men in the recess.
It had perhaps been a minute between when we were first knocked off our feet to when I made it to the waterfall, which had also now stopped flowing. Finally, the ground tremors eased, but the chaos they caused certainly did not. Trees continued to fall and rocks smashed through what had once been our camp, while dodging donkeys ran around in panic. Several of the men I was with darted out to grab wounded comrades and drag or carry them to shelter. There were broken arms and legs and at least two cracked skulls. While we huddled in the recess, a large rock fell from the top of the waterfall and left a man standing just a few feet from me literally stone dead.
We stayed in that shallow gully for half an hour. Gradually, fewer and fewer rocks crashed down the mountainside and while many of the trees remained half uprooted, those that were going to fall had already done so. Men groaned in pain as wounds were dressed, and several corpses were laid to one side. Eventually, it seemed safe enough to emerge from our shelter and find our camp. We lost six men killed that morning and another dozen with broken bones. The ground was all torn up and the stream through the valley floor had completely disappeared, as had most of the donkeys. In the end, we managed to get thirty-eight of the beasts back, with another four found dead in the hills.
The great earthquake of November 1822 was the worst ever known in Chile then or since, so they tell me. Back then, as a small group in the mountains, we had very little idea of the wider devastation it caused. The village headman promised that we were only three hours away from the mine and so having come this far, it seemed sensible to press on. We left twenty men in the camp, including the wounded and a few donkeys that would be needed to carry them back and took the rest further up the valley. It took a good deal longer than the promised three hours as all the roads and tracks had been swept away. In their place were piles of loose rock, some of which were near impassable. We soon left the donkeys behind and just a dozen of us pressed on to see what state the mine was in. The village headman led the way and it was late afternoon when he rounded an outcrop of rock and gave a cry of horror as he sank to his knees. He was busy crossing himself and muttering a prayer when I caught up to him, but when I looked where he was staring I could see nothing but another stretch of the ravine. It seemed exactly the same as the one we had been travelling along.
“What the deuce are you blubbering about, man?” I asked irritably as I nearly twisted my ankle on a loose stone to see what he was gazing at.
“The mine, señor, the mine,” he wailed, pointing into the ravine.
I stared again but there was no sign of any human occupation here, and there were supposed to be some two hundred people living there including the miners and their families. At the end of the gully was an escarpment that reared over a pile of loose rock that must have been a hundred feet high and filling the valley floor.
“Christ, I think we’ll have to climb this huge pile of rock now to get there,” I moaned. “We have already been walking for twice as long as he said.”
“Do you think he has got lost?” asked Crosbie, who had by now caught up with us. “The landscape must be different after the earthquake.”
“No señor,” wailed the headman. He pointed to the top of the escarpment. “The mine was at the bottom of that cliff, which went all the way down to the road that is under the rock we are standing on.”
We stood and stared in shock for a moment and then I asked, “Where are the miners’ cottages?” But from the headman’s renewed wailing and crossing of himself, I deduced that they must have been by the mine entrance. There was no thought of rescue, the whole place must have been buried by thousands of tons of rock. It would take an army of men years to dig out the mine again. I looked carefully and could still see no sign that people had lived or worked there; every trace of them had been buried. Well, not quite. The headman had started clambering over the rock, shouting in vain for survivors. No one could live under that stone, surely, I thought, but then a small voice did answer, a young girl of five or six who had been sent into the hills with some goats to find grazing before the quake hit. We found her crouching on the rubble, crying and confused as to where everyone had gone.
The headman took the girl back with us as we retraced our steps to the rest of the men. Twice on the way we had to stop as new tremors shook the ground, causing small rockfalls, but nothing like the one before.
It took us over a week to get back to the coast, with one of the men dying of a cracked head on the way. Passes were blocked with rubble, roads and paths had been destroyed and we had to find a new route through much of the terrain.
We were in a sorry and dejected state when we finally climbed back aboard the Independencia, without an extra ounce of silver as a reward for our efforts. Indeed, we had less, as we had to pay the headman for his assistance. Captain Marvell and the Lady Nicholl had waited long enough and decided to set sail for England directly. Half a dozen of our crew chose to embark aboard her, foregoing any hope of receiving any back pay for the opportunity to reach home without further delay. I came within an ace of going with them, but thought that I could not leave Cochrane without at least saying goodbye. That was without doubt one of the worst decisions of my life, as it cost me a myriad of horrors to come.
We may have felt sorry for ourselves as we sailed back down the coast, our mission a complete failure, but all that vanished when we caught sight of Valparaíso. The town had not been much to start with, but it had taken the full force of the earthquake and there was barely a wall still standing. We all stood silently at the rail, staring at the devastation before us, scarcely able to believe our eyes. I had seen many a town shelled in a siege and stormed by enemy troops, but nothing like this. There was no structure much above three or four feet high. Black scorch marks on the whitewashed remnants of homes showed that fires had also raged through the ruins. I could see that if the city of Santiago, just a few days’ march inland was similarly levelled, there would be no chance of receiving any pay for the fleet. The government now had far greater priorities. With their economy destroyed, it would be focused entirely on rebuilding their fledgling state.
Well that’s it, I thought, Cochrane will have no choice now but to return home and I will go back with him. But as signal flags broke out on the mast of the O’Higgins, I was swiftly to learn that he had very different ideas.
Chapter 9
“Welcome, welcome,” Cochrane cried as we climbed up through the entry port onto his flagship. He flung his arms around us beaming with delight. For a man who seemed destined to retu
rn home unpaid for much of his arduous work and possibly facing disgrace, he seemed strangely jubilant. Crosbie obviously thought so too and was quick to quell any hopes his admiral might have had that we had been successful.
“I’m sorry, sir,” muttered the flag captain so that other crewmembers standing nearby could not hear, “but the mine was destroyed by the quake before we reached it. We could not get any silver.”
“Never mind about that,” breezed Cochrane, “our fortunes are changing, aren’t they, lads?” He beamed at a couple of carpenter’s mates who were busy planing some wood by the hatch.
“Aye sir,” one of them cackled, “our pockets will soon be full of gold.”
“What on earth is going on?” I asked, puzzled. “And where are the rest of the men? There is hardly anyone here.”
“Most are on shore with ropes, blocks and tackle, helping to raise walls and make repairs. I have paid them off with what little money I have, but a sizable number prefer to come with us.”
“Back to England?” I asked with a growing apprehension.
“Come below and I will explain,” a grinning Cochrane replied, as he led the way to the hatch. Any lingering hope that I would see London again soon was dispelled when I walked into the crowded stern cabin of the ship. They were all there, Cochrane’s inner circle of trusted men: Captain Cobbet, Lieutenant Grenfell, Dr Craig, Jackson and several others, all appearing mighty pleased with themselves.
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