The Brotherhood of Pirates

by William Gilkerson

  “Gone, yes. I’ve been livin’ pure for a month, and also I’m gettin’ younger now. Ahhh,” he said, tasting the aquavit; it was closely followed by a slug of beer and a mouthful of Mother’s solomongundy. Praising her recipe (pickled herring, onions, and herbs) he had another immediate drink of aquavit, before commanding the bottle back into the freezer. “Here’s to refrigerators,” he toasted. Out of his sight, I tried a nip of the strange liquor, and it was like frozen fire. Copying the captain, I washed it down with some beer. When I returned, he was singing.

  “O solomongundy, solomongundy

  Good all week long, Mondy through Sundy

  Sailing from Lundy to foggy old Fundy,

  How I loves my sweet solomongundy.”

  We had our supper at his table by the fire, and the captain spoke at length of the virtues of solomongundy, a favoured delicacy among sailors for hundreds of years, according to him, with many variations in recipe, but the common virtue of keeping well without refrigeration.

  “And the pirates ate a lot of solomongundy?” I put to him. He seemed in a mellow mood, but my simple question made him grimace.

  “Oh aye, they et it, I et it, we all et it, except there is no they. You can’t say ‘the pirates,’ because there wasn’t any ‘the pirates.’ Are you sneaking drinks?” he asked conversationally, regarding me with a level eye. After some squirming, I admitted that I had done that once or twice. “Please don’t tell my mother,” I remember asking him, and he grimaced again.

  “We’re mates. If you’re going to drink, I’m not your judge. Mates don’t do that, which is not to say they don’t see, however, and what I see is you not being straightforward with your mate, which is me. No blame. I’d just say if you’re minded to drink, that’s something you can do with a mate. I wouldn’t recommend your getting legless, nor anybody, except . . .” he interrupted himself, finishing with the scouring of his pipe bowl, then its loading.

  “Except?” I reminded him.

  “You’re on your own,” he shrugged. I went to the bar, drew myself a beer, and returned, asking for some of his aquavit. He pushed the bottle toward me, and for the first time in my life, I openly poured myself a shot of liquor. Feeling initiated, I raised my first toast.

  “To the pirates!” I said.

  “As I was saying earlier, there aren’t any ‘the pirates,’ but I’ll drink to old shipmates and new ones, and to your good education, young Jim.”

  “If there weren’t any pirates, who are we talking about?” I asked, tossing off my drink in the same way he had done. I was pleased I’d accomplished it without getting tears in my eyes. I started to pour myself another, but the captain stopped me.

  “Easy,” he cautioned, “Saying ‘the pirates’ is like saying ‘the politicians,’ or ‘lorry drivers,’ or ‘printers.’ If you land on any one of them, particularly pirates—who are even more independent than printers—you get too much of a collection of individuals to lump them together into a they. I think you’d better put that bottle back into the freezer, lest it get warm or too soon gone. Neh?”

  When I returned, he handed me an old coin, actually a slug of silver, very heavy, highly irregular, and much thicker than a silver dollar. He identified it as a piece of eight, minted in Mexico in 1655, pointing out the old coat of arms and cross of Catholic Spain. “That’s a little piece of Morgan’s treasure. Look at its highlights, where it’s polished from lots of hands, maybe Morgan’s. See the darkness of its age in the stamped indentations. Heft it, feel it, and you’ll feel its story.” I did as I was told. I cannot say I got any kind of “reading,” (Jenny’s word) from the ancient object, much as I tried. I clutched it and closed my eyes, but its story came from the captain, who said it was one of thousands taken in the sack of Panama, where he proceeded to steer me.

  “It is the year of our Lord 1670, by the Gregorian calendar, and it is December, which is quite a nice month in the Sea of the Caribs—balmy and with no hurricanes. As I remember, we had you in the Caymans, aboard . . . what ship did we have you aboard?” I couldn’t recollect his mentioning it. “Make it Satisfaction. You’re aboard the old Satisfaction, twenty-two guns (plus swivels), Morgan’s flagship, on your way toward the Isthmus of Panama with the greatest buccaneer fleet ever assembled, and satisfaction’s what everybody’s feeling. You and your mates have suppered on solomongundy, turtle soup, and pork pepperpot; plantains and rum for dessert. You’ve dined as well as any sailor alive, and now you’re having a belch and a smoke and a jar of punch with your mates, watching the sails drawing circles among the first stars.

  “It’s last twilight. The sun has just sunk into the clouds of the western horizon, and there’s a sweet evening breeze, an’ all the vessels loafing along on a gentle sea with lanterns lit—sloops, barks, ketches, hagboats, pinks, busses . . . and one of them has a fiddler whose music comes down to you on the wind. Over half the ships are English; a third or so are French, plus two or three Dutchmen, and a few whose nationality doesn’t leap out at you. You’ve got Europeans, colonials, free blacks, West Indians, Orientals, two thousand renegade refugees altogether, with every mixture of race and religion. I wish you’d stop squeezing your eyes closed and let go your death grip on that coin. In fact,” he said, taking it back, “let’s clear our dinner mess.”

  Just as he was pulling me into his picture, he tore me out of it, directing kitchen cleanup, making me do every familiar thing differently from the way I’d been trained. During the washing, rinsing, and drying, he summarised Morgan, characterising him as a dark, burly Welshman who came to the Caribbean with the English expedition that had captured Jamaica in 1655. He had been privateering ever since, sailing under Sir Christopher Myngs, who was a student of Drake’s tactics. The captain had a high regard for Morgan, not just as a sailor and commander, but as a shrewd tactician with the skills to hold together and actually command squadrons of buccaneer ships, manned by what he called “the least tameable of all beings.”

  Among his several triumphs, Morgan had looted the principal Spanish ports of Maracaibo and Portobello, to the great benefit of all who sailed with him; and to Jamaica, whose governor had provided him and his ships their letters of marque. “So Morgan was perfectly legal,” I summarised, getting a chuckle out of him.

  “Legal? Oh, aye. Very legal, except for the fact that the governor at Port Royal, a chap named Modyford, has been issuing privateering licences even during a time of declared peace between England and Spain, which is a bit dicey. He’s gambling on Morgan bringing in so much money, he’ll be able to buy his way out of whatever dustup comes from London. But it’s his neck on the line, not yours, because your ship has his authorisation. They all do. Some have documents not just from the English governor, but French and Dutch ones too, so whatever country’s ship one captures, the correct licence is on hand to justify it. All quite legal, wherever you go.”

  “And I am going to . . .?” I prompted him.

  “Panama. It is the crown jewel of Spain’s American empire on the Pacific, the conduit for untold wealth, and a virginal port, never taken by any enemy. Panama tempted Drake, though not even he had plucked that plum. Now it’s your target, and it’s why Morgan’s been able to recruit thirty-eight ships, packed with the brethren, for the most ambitious raid ever undertaken by buccaneers, then or ever after, and that’s where you are.”

  I noted I had been there for weeks, and I wasn’t getting anywhere. “Right,” he nodded, promising a change of scene after I’d mopped the pantry. With that done, and the fire tended, I drew the beer he requested, plus another for myself, and sat down, ready to pick up where we had left off. I asked to see the piece of eight again; he handed it to me, sketching on a paper place mat the Isthmus of Panama, describing Morgan’s strategy. Panama was a dot on the Pacific side, fortified against attack from the sea, but its only landward defence was a hard jungle trail between it and the Caribbean. Morgan planned to cross this, first taking the fort guarding the mouth of the Chagres River. That was a
navigable waterway for the large canoes that he had brought to cover most of the seventy-mile neck.

  By the captain’s account, Morgan had sent four of his toughest ships ahead of the fleet to storm the fort at Chagres, and they had done it with a great slaughter on both sides. “You get there a few days later, to the stink of two hundred corpses, sunning, awaiting burial. From the fort above you come the sounds made by the injured, who are dying all the time as their flyblown wounds fester in the heat.” I smelled the stench of death and disease more vividly than I wanted to, with a rotten sweetness, but I was diverted by having to launch a dugout canoe.

  “Nobody in your own canoe takes more than the clothes on his back, his weapons, ammunition, a straw hat, a pouch of personals, a water-skin, and food for a day or two. There’ll be plenty of game upriver. You’re going to be moving fast. About fifteen hundred of you start out; the rest stay behind to man the fleet and the fort. At first, the river is broad and sluggish; you are fresh, and make good progress.”

  I felt the wooden bilge of the canoe with my bare feet, the paddle making swirls in yellow-brown water. Suddenly I was alarmed by my experience of these sensations. I’d felt only moments of such reality before; this was prolonged, with no end to its depth. That thought brought me instantly back to the table, and my fire, and the winter wind outside.

  “Oh!” I said, looking at him with round eyes.

  “It’s just thoughts interrupted by other thoughts. Don’t think. Let go your thoughts . . . whoosh,” he said, with a sudden wave, as though blowing them away.

  As the stream narrowed, the current against us increased, forcing rests. The river, lower than usual, shallowed rapidly, and was studded with snags. Rests became more frequent. Even slower than the canoes were the men chopping their way along both banks, the flanking parties whose job was to break up any ambush. The mosquitoes loved my sweat, and there was no swatting while paddling, or no paddling would have gotten done. We were covered in bites that got infected when scratched.

  Four days of hard paddling got us to the first of the Spanish stockades guarding the river. Everybody was out of food, nearly out of water, and ready for a good fight, but it wasn’t there. The Spaniards had burnt and abandoned the place, leaving no enemy, no food, nothing. The river was too low to navigate any farther, leaving two-thirds of the distance to be covered on a trail where every bridge had been destroyed. The enemy had plenty of warning and plenty of troops, but where were they? More important, where was all the wild game? Itchy and sweaty, I was now hungry as well, really hungry, and it jerked me back to reality, salivating for the sausage that had been leftover from dinner. The captain laughed.

  “It’s all in your mind,” he said, assuring me that I hadn’t even begun to get hungry yet. “You’re all good hunters, but a whole army of you, fifteen hundred irritable, swearing, bug-bitten buccaneers, has frightened away every edible creature for miles. Also, you don’t know which plants are safe to eat here—and some aren’t.” For the next ten minutes or so, I trekked for three days while eating grass, chewing on my empty leather provision pouch, getting weaker, finally staggering out of the jungle onto hilly grasslands full of cattle. The captain quoted from Esquemeling:

  “At once they brooke ranks and shot down every beast within range. All got busy: while some hunted, others lit fires to roast the meat. One gang of men dragged in a bull, another a cow, a third a horse or a mule. The animals were hacked up and thrown, dripping with blood, on to the fire to cook. The meat scarcely had time to get hot before they grabbed it and began gnawing, gore running down their cheeks.”

  No longer at all hungry, I found myself walking again, over a rolling savannah where the wind riffled the tall grass like waves running across the ocean. Floating on the captain’s story, I marched over a last hill, and there beheld the city of Panama with its roofs and spires all in great detail, although I heard from him no description of architecture. What was I seeing so vividly? As the question popped into my head, the vision vanished.

  “It’s gone!” I said.

  “Don’t think about it. At last you see your enemy. The Spanish army awaits you on the plain below, making a wall of soldiers; a long line of infantry several ranks deep, with flanking squadrons of cavalry. Your admiral, who’s now your general, a sailor turned soldier, has no cavalry at all, just you lot of outnumbered buccaneers. You camp for the night on your hill, rest, eat again, and clean your weapons while Morgan explains his strategy to his captains and issues his orders.

  “You attack at dawn. The rising sun is at your back, and in the eyes of your enemy. Morgan sends you not directly at the Dons but toward a lightly defended hill on the right. With it, he’ll command the enemy flank from a position not easily charged by the Spanish horsemen. He hasn’t much regard for their foot soldiers, many of whom are militia, but the cavalry is a powerful threat. As you move, you can see the horsemen mounting up in the distance.” And there they were, with the morning light winking on their breastplates and lances.

  “The next time you see them, you’re coming around the hill, and they’re charging right at you. Leading the buccaneer attack, however, are three hundred of the best marksmen among you, and their fire is deadly accurate. The front line of horsemen goes down, and then the next, and the charge dissolves. You cheer, but the Dons make an unexpected attack by stampeding a huge herd of wild cattle in your direction. It takes only another volley or two to divert this, and then you turn your long muskets onto the infantry. They are so close-packed, every ball hits somebody; their lines are as hard to miss as a house, but you and your brethren move freely, fanning out, making hard targets.

  “The Spanish line breaks, then disintegrates; its remnants run for the city, with cutlass-swinging buccaneers right on their heels, and Panama is yours. That coin you’re squeezing came from there.” I realised I did have a very hard grip on it. Also, I was breathing hard. He wanted another taste of his aquavit, and more beer. I joined him, pouring our drinks measure for measure.

  “To victory,” I toasted. It was fun to toast.

  “Oh, aye. To victory, whatever form it takes.”

  Whatever thrill I’d felt began to unravel with the captain’s descriptions of Panama during the hours, days, and then weeks after Morgan’s buccaneers swept into the city. “At the outset, the place is put to the torch by the Spaniards themselves. In case of military disaster, they’ve placed barrels of powder and combustibles around to spoil any idea you might have as to getting comfortable in Panama. Also, they have ships waiting, so as you’re coming into the landward side of town, the Spaniards light their fuses and escape by water. There are no ships to chase them, and the town’s burning.”

  He described a hellish street scene of flames, smoke, and surprise explosions; in the chaos, every buccaneer made his own plan of action. Some stayed grouped, ferreting out any remaining defenders; some fought fires; others sought taverns, for whatever grog might be rescued; the most businesslike went after survivors carrying valuables. Anybody caught empty-handed was urged to tell of hidden wealth by skilled persuaders. There were instances of rape and murder. Torture. “All the usual,” he remarked with a languid gesture.

  “Usual?” He had invoked horrors.

  “Usual, aye, quite predictable. When a city fell, the survivors could rather expect to be raped and looted. The buccaneers were no different from any other invading army of their time in that way. Everybody got spoils. It’s how governments kept the chaps in the soldiering life on bad pay. The Spaniards loot the Americas; you loot the Spaniards; everybody loots.”

  “But the screams . . .” They still rang in my head.

  “Aye, the screams, the inevitable screams. How they echo.” He brooded, eyeing me. “What do you do about them?”

  “Do?” It was a confusing question. The captain pressed ahead with the aftermath of the battle. The city was charred ruin, making the buccaneers pick for their loot, with sparse findings. Many Spaniards had evacuated well before the action, either by
sea, or into forest villages, carrying what treasure they could, or hiding it. Jewellery was thrown into wells, so that all the wells had to be dredged, and the ashes raked through. Armed companies were sent out to comb the countryside for the citizens who had fled there; vessels were found to raid the surrounding islands, where more refugees were hiding. A month was given to the search before Morgan deemed it imprudent to remain longer. Everything that had been gathered, mostly silver plate, was loaded onto 175 mules, which seemed impressive to me. “What’s my share?” I wanted to know.

  “Fewer than twenty coins like the one that’s in your hand. That was the count when it was divided among the whole fleet back at Chagres, and there was a lot of grumbling. The sack of Portobello was much easier, and paid ten times that much. Some, including Esquemeling, accused Morgan of cheating everyone, but the fact is that the Spaniards simply had enough warning to disperse their treasure. Morgan’s buccaneer navy was just too big to keep the element of surprise, y’see. The Panama campaign marked the last big fling by the brotherhood, and Morgan was the last of its great admirals.”

  I asked what happened to him after that, and what happened to me, for that matter. “You both sail back to Port Royal for a bit of entertainment.” He refilled his glass, but not mine, so I did. I was for sure feeling the effects of what I’d drunk before, but I didn’t let that stand in my way. Next thing, I was landing with my shipmates behind Morgan, parading through the streets of Port Royal to the cheers and toasts of all the locals who would have our money soon enough. We made a grand procession before dispersing to taverns and bordellos. I wanted to know about bordellos, and he told me a few things of interest, but without more magical illusions. Instead, moving the bottle beyond my reach, he made me concentrate on the ending of his story.

  “Morgan and Governor Modyford were both arrested by their own government for the Panama caper and shipped to London. There, they were detained in comfortable conditions until Spanish tempers had cooled. Morgan’s little legal difficulties didn’t prevent him from being knighted and sent back out as deputy governor of Jamaica. He became a wealthy plantation owner and an authority, who didn’t recruit any more buccaneers, but did hang some. He died in 1687 of ‘drinking and sitting up late,’ according to the physician’s report. Five years later, in 1692, most of Port Royal was swallowed by the sea in a massive earthquake and tidal wave. The Spaniards viewed it as divine punishment. How are you feeling?”