Apocalypse 1692

by Ben Hughes

  The security situation deteriorated further in May. While cruising eight leagues off Jamaica’s easternmost point, HMS Falcon, a 36-gun fifth rate sent to Jamaica to replace the Guernsey and Mordaunt, was attacked by four French men-of-war, three of which—the 44-gun Hasardeux, the 50-gun Envieux, and the 54-gun Téméraire—had recently arrived at Petit Guavos with a merchant convoy from France. Despite being heavily outgunned, the Falcon’s captain, Mr. Bryan, “fought until many of his men were killed and wounded and the rest forced into the hold. . . . When he yielded the ship,” Governor Beeston reported, “there were but two men left on deck besides himself.” The Falcon was taken back to Petit Guavos, where Bryan was treated with the utmost respect. Having learned of his valiant stand from Rear Admiral Rollon, the commander of the newly arrived French men-of-war, Governor du Casse, presented the Englishman with “a silver-hilted sword and belt . . . and lodged him in one of the best houses in town.”12

  By late May 1694 Governor Beeston was growing increasingly worried. With no sign of the Falcon, Jamaica was now reliant on a single aging frigate, HMS Advice of 48 guns, and two hired sloops for coastal defense. To make matters worse, earlier that month Beeston had received a letter from a stranger in Curaçao, warning that the French “were preparing a great strength to take Jamaica.” On May 31, the rumors were confirmed. Slipping away from his captors in Petit Guavos with two or three others “at the hazard of their lives,” Captain Elliot of the Pembroke stole a canoe and made his escape over three hundred miles of open water back to Jamaica to inform Beeston of the imminent threat. “The French had recruits of men and men of war from France and Martinique,” the governor learned from the “weather-beaten” Englishman. “They had taken the Faulcon . . . [and] had drawn up . . . twenty sail of ships and vessels, and three thousand men, and were designed to take this island, and in order to it, monsieur Ducas the governor was coming with them: that Stapleton, Lynch, and others . . . that had deserted from us, had told him he would meet with but little difficulty . . . for the fortifications at Port-Royal were down since the earthquake, and two thousand men would take that place.”13

  Beeston responded with characteristic energy. The night of Elliot’s arrival, he called an extraordinary meeting of the Council of War. Martial law was declared; the Assembly, then standing, was immediately dissolved; a proclamation was read throughout the plantations, stipulating that any slave who killed a Frenchman in the forthcoming assault would be freed as a reward (hundreds were subsequently recruited); all retired militia officers were called back to active duty; standing patrols of horse and foot were organized for Guanaboa Vale and Sixteen Mile Walk; the repairs being made to Fort Charles were brought to completion; two new batteries of culverin were set up at Port Royal, and barricades were thrown up in the streets. On June 6, further measures were taken. Knowing that he could not challenge the enemy at sea and that the 1,630 men at his disposal were not enough to guard the entire coastline, Beeston made a radical decision: to abandon the north, east, and west coasts to the enemy and concentrate his forces in the Jamaican heartland—the central southern shore. A civilian exodus ensued. While some of the more stubborn residents of the parishes to be abandoned chose to “trust . . . to the good nature of the French,” the majority converged on Port Royal, Spanish Town, Carlisle Town, Old Harbour, and Withywood, bringing their “cattle, negroes, etc.” along with them. The guns of Fort William at Port Morant were spiked and the round shot buried. Beeston had a fireship fitted out at the cost of £500. A sloop was dispatched to England begging the Lords of Trade for six men-of-war and at least 1,000 soldiers; salt provisions and flour were stockpiled. Fifty slaves were added to the crew of HMS Advice, and it and all the armed merchantmen then at Port Royal were anchored in line across the mouth of the bay, their broadsides facing the sea approaches. Small bands of militia were posted in the outlying parishes to report on enemy movements, while the majority were concentrated in the towns of the central southern shore, where breastworks were constructed by requisitioned slaves.14

  On the morning of Sunday, June 17, the French fleet was spotted off Port Royal. Twenty-two sail strong and carrying 3,164 privateers and French colonists, it made for a daunting sight. Beeston, who heard the news at Spanish Town, feared that the French would attack Port Royal immediately.15 The enemy, however, remained undecided. On board the flagship, the aging 55-gun Téméraire, a heated debate was in progress. While Governor du Casse advocated an immediate attack on Port Royal, his flag captain, Rear Admiral Rollon, disagreed. Once the fleet was committed to the roads, the sea breeze would ensure there would be no coming out again. Either victory would be secured or the entire French fleet would be lost. As it was apparent that the English had been forewarned, Rollon refused to take such responsibility; the fleet sailed east instead. Later that day, eight of their ships anchored off Port Morant. The other fourteen sailed into Cow Bay, “a bad” anchorage, according to Rollon’s report, “full of lost anchors and isolated rocks” fifteen miles to the east of Port Royal.16

  Eight hundred men were landed at Cow Bay. Led by Charles François Le Vasseur de Beauregard, one of Petit Guavos’ leading privateers, and the much-feared Dutchman Laurens de Graff, “they fell to . . . plunder[ing],” Beeston recalled. They “burnt and destroyed all before them eastward, killed all the cattle . . . and fowls, drove flocks of sheep into houses and . . . fired them, burnt the canes, pulled up the . . . herbs, and cut down the . . . fruit-trees. Some of the straggling people that were left behind they tortured, particularly Charles Barber; and James Newcastle they murdered in cold blood after a day’s quarter: Some women they suffered the negroes to violate, and some they dug out of their graves . . . there were never more inhuman barbarities committed by any Turks or infidels in the world; and what they could not carry away they destroyed.” Meanwhile, forty-five small vessels were dispatched from the French fleet. Sailing round Point Morant to St. Mary’s and St. George’s, their crews disembarked and systematically plundered the parishes’ largest plantations.17

  On Thursday, June 23, a squall off Port Morant caused havoc among the eight French ships at anchor. The Téméraire and one other slipped their cables and were blown to the west. Finding it impossible to beat back up against the wind and current and running low on fresh water, Rear Admiral Rollon sailed westward to Bluefield’s Bay instead. Sixty men were landed and soon afterward set upon by a militia detachment commanded by Major Bernart Andreis. One of Andreis’s men was killed and two others were wounded. Having also sustained casualties, Rollon broke off the encounter. Signaling his men to board their ships, he upped anchor and set sail, leaving behind some freshly butchered beef and plundered cattle. The lost livestock were the least of du Casse’s worries. With the wind against him and plagued by the deliberately contradictory advice offered by a succession of local “informants,” he would be unable to rejoin the fleet until they were about to leave Jamaica.18

  Beeston, meanwhile, remained at Spanish Town, content to wait for the enemy to make the first move. “We now expect them daily to attack us,” he wrote to Sir John Trenchard, the secretary of state, on June 23,

  and we shall do our best to defend ourselves. . . . Our people seem hearty yet, but time will weary them out . . . [and] I fear to think of the consequences to people who live well here but have nothing anywhere else. . . . I beg you to lay . . . our condition before the King and Council that relief may be sent to us and advice of its coming dispatched in good time; otherwise I doubt my ability to prevent the people from complying with the enemy in order to save . . . their property. . . . The relieving force must be speedy and . . . considerable, at least six men-of-war and a thousand or twelve hundred soldiers; else all will be lost, for the French will never leave us now till they conquer or we beat them off the coast. This is a matter of great moment, and I hope for your utmost favour herein.19

  By the first week of July, with the French still anchored off Port Morant and Cow Bay, and landing parties continuing to ravage the cou
ntryside of St. David’s, St. George’s, St. Thomas’s, and St. Mary’s, English morale took a turn for the worse.20 On July 2, Beeston sent another dispatch to England, once more begging for speedy relief. The next morning the Council ordered the arrest of a certain Captain Usher Tyrrell “for insubordination and conniving at desertion,” and on July 5, “four or five armed Irish” with the garrison at Port Royal “contrived to run away to the” French. “The plot was betrayed by one of them,” Beeston reported, “and the ringleader tried by court martial and executed.”21 Despite such events, the governor himself was decidedly more optimistic about Jamaica’s long-term prospects than he had been in June. “I think that if they had any hopes of carrying the island,” he informed the Lords of Trade in a letter written on July 7, “they would not be so barbarous, for they spare nothing alive, except mankind, and those they punish and torture. They burn and destroy all that will burn, fill the wells with dead cattle and do all the mischief they can.”22

  By mid-July the French had done all the damage they could in the eastern parishes. The plantations had been fired, the slaves and livestock that had been left behind by the English had either fled into the mountains or been killed or captured, the walls of Fort William had been torn down, and the carriages of the seventeen guns mounted on the walls had been burned. On July 16, Graff and Beauregard gave the order to reembark. The next morning part of the French fleet was seen off Port Royal and by that afternoon twenty sail had gathered. Among them was HMS Falcon, the English frigate captured by Rollon back in May. By late afternoon the French had sailed back to Cow Bay. The troops were landed and a line of bivouac fires, visible from the battlements of Fort Charles, were lit. Beeston, safely ensconced in Spanish Town, was unconcerned. “[They did this] to amuse us,” the governor wrote, “[to give] us cause to think they designed to try to force the pass in St. Andrew’s.” That night the governor’s suspicions were proved correct. Under cover of darkness, the French reembarked. Leaving their campfires burning to confuse the English, the entire fleet, with the exception of three of the largest ships, sailed westward toward Vere. On the morning of July 18, Beeston “concluded their design was to surprize Carlisle-Bay.” Two troops of horse and part of the infantry regiment of St. Catherine’s were ordered to make the thirty-six-mile march from Spanish Town to reinforce the two hundred militia under Colonel Thomas Sutton who were already stationed there. Part of the regiment of Clarendon Parish, then at Port Royal, was also dispatched, along with a section of the regiment of St. Dorothy’s, at that time based in Old Harbour, less than twenty miles away from Carlisle Bay as the crow flies. Those on horseback arrived at ten o’clock that night. The infantry would not make it until the next morning.23

  Beeston’s instincts proved right yet again. At mid-afternoon on July 18, the French arrived at Carlisle Bay. Edward Daniel, the captain of a Royal African Company vessel named the Mediterranean, watched them approach. Having recently arrived in Jamaica from West Africa with a cargo of 470 slaves, Daniel had been driven into Carlisle Bay by the same contrary winds which were preventing Rollon and the Téméraire from rejoining the French fleet.24 Seeing that there was no escape from the French fleet, Daniel disembarked and set fire to the Mediterranean. He and his forty-strong crew then marched inland with the slaves to reinforce Colonel Sutton, who had drawn up his militia, now numbering “two hundred and fifty men, besides blacks,” behind an “ill-made” breastwork whose embrasures mounted twelve cannon. Beeston later criticized Sutton for the positioning of his men. “On the south was the sea,” the governor explained, “on the west a large river, on the north a village of houses, and on the east they had left a wood standing.” To make matters worse, Sutton had “made no provisions for the men.” The planter was showing his shortcomings as a military commander. With his escape route barred by the wood, the village, and the Rio Minho, his men would be slaughtered should they be forced to retreat.25

  The French landed before dawn on July 19. Rather than tackle the English defenders head-on, Beauregard and Graff’s men, who numbered some 1,500, disembarked one and a half miles to the east of Sutton’s position. After seeing off a small English scouting party, who fired upon them before falling back to the breastwork, the French advanced through a screen of woodland, Beauregard leading the privateers in the vanguard, while Graff commanded the main body of colonists bringing up the rear. Hidden in their approach, the privateers emerged from cover to charge “very hotly” against Sutton’s left flank at about 10 o’clock that morning. “There was a hot fire on both sides for a time,” one witness later recalled. The cannon, discharged on the first approach of the French, did some execution, and “many of the [English] officers and most of the men fought bravely and killed many of the enemy.” Nevertheless “the French officers [continued] forcing their men on,” and when Graff’s men came to the aid of Beauregard’s, the tide turned. Colonel Lionel Claybourne and Captain John Vassel of the St. Elizabeth Regiment and Lieutenant Colonel Smart and Lieutenant William Dawkins of the Clarendon Regiment were killed along with several of their men. Many others were wounded. The survivors broke and fled to the west. Several were killed or taken prisoner during the pursuit: twenty-two casualties by English accounts; 360 according to the French. Four of the militia’s colors and all one hundred and fifty of their horses, saddled and bridled nearby, were also captured. With their line of withdrawal blocked by the Rio Minho, the English retreat was on the verge of becoming a rout: several men were drowned attempting to cross, while a crush of panicked and defeated militia formed on the near bank. Just as all seemed lost, the infantry reinforcements that Beeston had ordered from Port Royal arrived. Despite being “weary, lame and exhausted” following their thirty-mile overnight march, the latecomers, led by Captain Rakestead, “warmly” charged the French right. The action was pursued “with such gallantry” that Rakestead and his men bought their comrades enough time to cross the Minho without suffering further casualties.26

  Following the battle, both sides withdrew. The French set up camp at the mouth of the Rio Minho, while the English occupied several fortified great houses farther up the valley. For the next two days, aside from a few minor skirmishes between the lines, neither side attempted to advance. The French plundered the town of Withywood and burned the properties straddling the small strip of coastline that they had retained, while the thoughts of several of the senior English commanders turned to the possibility of defeat. With their own plantations under a day’s march from the French lines, Thomas Sutton and his neighbor and fellow planter, Francis Blackmore, contacted the enemy seeking to secure their own property should the colony fall to the French. Both planters were later arrested by Beeston for their betrayal and suspended from the island Council.27

  On July 22, the French made one final attack. Their assault fell against one of the English outposts, “a brick house of one Mr. Hubbard,” which had been occupied by Major Richard Lloyd and twenty-five militia. Lloyd, who it will be remembered was one of the chief protagonists of the Assembly of 1691, was well prepared. His men, cavalry troopers from the regiment of Port Royal, were “well-provided with arms, ammunition, water, and conveniences,” and the fortified house was ideal for defense. The French attacked “smartly” but suffered heavy losses: several of their best officers were killed along with a number of their men. A few defenders also fell, but when a second militia detachment came to Lloyd’s aid, the enemy were “beat[en] . . . off” and the English set about “plunder[ing] the dead.” Expecting the French to renew their attack the following morning, Lloyd put fifty men into Hubbard’s house on the night of July 22. The rest of the militia in the area, then numbering some 650, were positioned to ambush the enemy on their approach. The French, however, had had enough. English resistance was mounting; their leader, Governor du Casse, was still absent in the wind-bound Téméraire; and they had already lost as many as 350 killed or wounded. There seemed little possibility of conquering the entire island and therefore no reason to remain. An even more pressi
ng cause for their departure was the spread of disease. While Beeston’s estimate of French casualties in battle noted above seems exaggerated, their losses to sickness were undoubtedly higher: at least two hundred had succumbed on the Envieux and the Téméraire alone. Rear Admiral Rollon was among the dead, and by the time of the reverse at Hubbard’s perhaps as many as seven hundred in total had perished. On July 24, the fleet set sail. Pausing briefly at Port Morant and Legoane to take on wood and water and to land their prisoners whom they could no longer afford to feed, the French departed Jamaica four days later and arrived at Petit Guavos on August 14.28

  English losses had also been severe. “We have had . . . killed and wounded about a hundred men of all sorts, Christians, Jews, and negroes,” Beeston recorded. “Fifty sugar works have been destroyed, besides many plantations in St. Thomas’s, St. David’s, and St. Mary’s, and above a hundred burnt . . . in the parishes of Vere and St. George’s.”29 According to Major Richard Lloyd, five rum distilleries, twenty-one cotton works, fifty-four indigo walks, and eleven provisions’ plantations had also been put to the torch. Many of Jamaica’s most prominent players, including former acting governor John White and the RAC agent Charles Penhallow, had lost property, while others, such as the Vassels and Dawkins, had had family members killed. Approximately 1,600 slaves, worth somewhere in the region of £40,000, had been captured and spirited back to Hispaniola. Another three hundred or so had taken advantage of the chaos to flee into the mountains and join the maroons.30 Nevertheless, the repulse of the French had been a considerable achievement: the militia had acquitted themselves well as had the slaves forcibly pressed into service, at least fourteen of whom had earned their freedom by killing Frenchmen. The islanders’ morale and sense of unity had received a considerable boost; Beeston had proved himself a capable leader, not afraid of taking risks; and fear of the French had waned. Perhaps the most significant consequence of the campaign was that the English government had been awakened to the very real risk of losing Jamaica. In early 1695 a fleet was dispatched carrying 1,800 regular troops assigned to garrison the island. Their transports were convoyed by no less than five frigates. Even following the Treaty of Ryswick, which brought the Nine Years’ War to a close in 1697, the men-of-war were to remain. Jamaica would not be left unguarded again.31