by Travers, Tim
Keeping far off the coast to escape notice, the buccaneers sailed for the Galapagos Islands, although the Spanish prisoners onboard laughed and said that these islands were the Enchanted Isles and were not real. Despite this, Cowley as ship’s navigator steered accurately to the islands, sailing down the latitude. On the Galapagos, Cowley observed the very large turtles and the friendly birds. The former paid dearly for their excellent meat by being easily captured and stored on the ships for future consumption. The buccaneers now sailed toward the mainland, but along the way Captain John Cook died at sea, so the buccaneers took him ashore for Christian burial, and elected Edward Davis as captain in his place. After several frustrated attempts at finding targets to raid, the two captains could not agree on future plans, and Captain Eaton decided to leave for the East Indies to make a voyage – meaning, to succeed in piracy. This created a crisis for Cowley, who wrote that he wanted to escape from the slavery on Davis’ ship (as navigator he did not have the assistance of a mate), and therefore wanted to go onboard Eaton’s ship, and asked Eaton to defend him. Cowley also believed that Eaton feared a mutiny on his ship because Davis’ ship was bigger and offered better accommodation than Eaton’s ship. There was therefore a competition for men, as Davis tried to lure Eaton’s men onboard his ship, and especially the surgeon. Perhaps all this was simply justification for Cowley’s desire to go pirating to the Indies, and abandoning Davis’ ship. On the other hand, according to William Dampier, Davis and his men were the experienced buccaneers, while Eaton’s men were just young beginners, and so the two captains could not agree on the future division of treasure, because Davis demanded the larger percentage of the take.31 In the end, Eaton, with Cowley onboard, sailed for the Indies, while Davis and Dampier, and their crew onboard the Batchelor’s Delight, headed for Peru.
Davis/Dampier, the Batchelor’s Delight and Swan’s the Cygnet
Looking first at the voyage of the Batchelor’s Delight, this Davis/Dampier ship met up with another marauding ship, the Cygnet, commanded by Charles Swan. Together they raided the two towns of Paita and Guayaquil, getting little from the first, and some seventy slaves from the second. Then the small fleet sailed toward Panama again, hoping to intercept the valuable plate fleet that sailed from Lima to Panama with a fortune in pieces of eight and other treasure. This fleet only sailed once every three years, and, 1685 being the appropriate third year, ten pirate ships and about 1,000 men, both French and English, gathered in the Bay of Panama to try and intercept the Spanish plate fleet. Gaining intelligence from Spanish and Indian prisoners, the disparate group awaited the arrival of the Spanish fleet, although there were arguments over command, including an attempt to replace Davis with a tougher captain. This doubt about Davis’ leadership skills turned out to be justified. When the Spanish fleet of fourteen ships hove into view, it was very well defended and carried some 3,000 men and 150 cannon. The French pirates refused to join the English buccaneers in a joint operation, while the English buccaneers, including Davis, did not feel strong enough to confront the Spanish fleet. The net result was a damp squib – the plate fleet sailed harmlessly into New Panama, and had in any case taken the precaution of unloading the treasure onshore before dealing with the buccaneers.32
Frustrated by this failure, the buccaneers split up, in one of the many break-ups that were always taking place amongst pirates. Dampier transferred to sail with Swan and the Cygnet, while Davis in the Batchelor’s Delight decided to sail for home via the Straits of Magellan. Davis went on to a further successful career as a pirate, hauling in large sums of money on the coasts of Peru and Chile, perhaps as much as £100,000. Davis went home to New England, then was imprisoned in Virginia for his crimes, but was released, and finally settled in England in 1690. Davis still retained a fair amount of his booty intact in England, including three bags of Spanish coin, 142 pounds of broken silver, and some dirty linen. Davis continued his pirate career, and it was probably the same Edward Davis who met William Kidd at St Mary’s Island in 1697, and sailed home with Kidd.33
Meanwhile, Swan and the crew of the Cygnet now attempted to track down another Spanish treasure fleet, this time the Manila galleons, which annually sailed between the Philippines and Acapulco, carrying trade goods and treasure to each destination. The Cygnet lay off Acapulco, but managed to miss the Manila galleon as the buccaneers happened to be onshore, hunting for food, as the galleon sailed past. Recriminations followed, and a subsequent raid onshore at Santa Pecaque only resulted in the death of fifty-four buccaneers, including the journal writer and pirate, Basil Ringrose. The death of Ringrose was doubly sad because he had not wanted to continue the voyage, but felt compelled to do so due to poverty. The bodies of Ringrose and the others were ‘stript, and so cut and mangl’d, that he [Swan] scarce knew one man.’ Following this further disaster, Swan and Dampier opted to leave the South Seas and head for the East Indies, as Cowley and Eaton had done earlier. Swan and Dampier managed to persuade their crew to pursue this journey, although Dampier first had to cure himself of a tropical fever, which he achieved by being buried in hot sand up to his neck for half an hour, in order to sweat out the fever. Happily the cure worked, and the Cygnet set off for Guam, covering a tough 5,700 miles in fifty-one days.34
By chance, another Manila galleon, sailing from Acapulco to Manila, with a great deal of silver aboard, was now approaching Guam. The galleon was warned off by the Spanish governor of Guam, yet as luck would have it, the galleon got stuck on a sandbar nearby, and would have been a sitting duck for the buccaneers had they pursued it. Here there arose a fatal rift between the crew of the Cygnet, and Swan, who really wanted to be a trader and not a pirate, and he refused to attack the Manila galleon. In fact, Swan said of such an action, ‘There is no prince on earth able to wipe off the Stain of such Actions.’ Consequently, the Cygnet sailed on to Mindanao, where several months of feasting and drinking, plus Swan’s autocratic behaviour, brought about a final dissolution of the voyage. The result was that Swan and some forty men chose to remain on Mindanao, while the majority of some ninety buccaneers essentially took over the Cygnet, and elected to sail onward. This continuing crew included Dampier, John Read, the new captain of the Cygnet, who had been an old logwood cutter, and Josiah Teat, the new master, who had accompanied the Cygnet from the Americas in command of a small barque. This renewed voyage moved erratically in a great sweep through the Philippines, to the South China Sea, then St John’s Island near Hong Kong, to the Pescadores, and back to Mindanao, where they learned that Swan wanted to leave, although the Cygnet’s crew declined to rescue him. Later, the crew found out that Swan was murdered before he could leave Mindanao. Meanwhile, the Cygnet sailed on through the Celebes, and finally reached New Holland, as Australia was then named.35
The Cygnet arrived on the north-west coast of New Holland, where Dampier wrote down his impressions of the aboriginals. In his unpublished manuscript, Dampier admired the aboriginals for their ability to survive in an unpromising landscape. But in his published journal, Dampier saw the aboriginals as ‘the miserablest people in the world’, differing ‘little from brutes’. They were ‘long visaged and of a very unpleasing aspect, having no one graceful feature in their faces.’ Their speech was a guttural noise like ‘gurry, gurry’, and they seemed to lack any curiosity about the buccaneers and their ship. The buccaneers spent two months in New Holland, then Read ordered the Cygnet careened, and when this was completed, the crew charted a course for the Cocos Islands, Sumatra and the Nicobar Islands. By this time Dampier was more than anxious to leave the Cygnet, since his naturalist interests were at odds with Read and most of the pirate crew. So Dampier confronted Read, and demanded to be set ashore, which was a buccaneer right. Read was angry, but consented because he thought that Dampier was far enough off the beaten track that he would not alert the authorities to the existence or course of the buccaneers. After arguments, Dampier and six others were set ashore on the Nicobar Islands, more or less marooned, with just an axe to tr
ade. The Cygnet sailed on and left them to their fate in May 1688. Dampier and his companions then resolved to cross the rough 130 mile channel to Achin (Banda Aceh), on Sumatra’s northern coast, where there was an East India Company factory. A nightmare voyage of five days and nights in an outrigger canoe caused Dampier to reflect on his life:
I had a lingring View of approaching Death … and I must confess that my Courage, which I had hitherto kept up, failed me here; and I made very sad Reflections on my former Life, and look’d back with Horror and Detestation, on Actions which before I disliked, but now I trembled at the remembrance of. I had long before this repented me of that roving course of Life…
One can imagine that some of this repentance was for the benefit of his reading audience, but some of it seems genuine remorse for his buccaneering days.36
From this time on, for the next two years, Dampier served aboard trading vessels in the Indies and South Asia, and acted unhappily as a gunner for the East India Company fort in Sumatra. Dampier also acquired a half share in Jeoly, a tattooed Philippine prince, and eventually escaped from the fort to wind up back in England after an absence of twelve years. Along the way, in Achin, Dampier came across a member of the Cygnet’s crew who had deserted, and told Dampier that the ship had been pushed off course by monsoon winds which drove the Cygnet to the Coromandel Coast of India. Stories of what then happened to the buccaneers on the Cygnet vary. One version has half the crew deserting the Cygnet in India, some enlisting at an English fort, and others plundering the coastal villages. John Read took the Cygnet to the Bay of Bengal, where he took a rich prize in 1688, then left the Cygnet, and joined an American slave ship to sail back to New England. The crew of the Cygnet subsequently elected one James Smith as captain, and sailed on to Madagascar, where the Cygnet rotted at anchor, and the remaining crew joined the pirates on the island. A second version has Read losing half his crew on the Coromandel Coast of India, but then Read sailed away with the remaining crew to Madagascar. Here, Read joined a slave ship going to New York. At this point the Cygnet was turned over to Josiah Teat, formerly master of the Cygnet, who now became captain of the ship, and he also joined the Madagascar pirates. However, the Cygnet sank at her mooring at the port of St Augustine, Madagascar. A third version has the Cygnet arriving on the coast of Coromandel, India, where half the crew deserted to serve the Great Moghul of India. The rest, under Read, sailed to Madagascar, where Read and half a dozen of the crew went onboard a slaver bound for New York. Meanwhile, Josiah Teat took command of the Cygnet, but decided to abandon the ship and also serve the Great Moghul.37
William Cowley, John Eaton and the Nicholas
These complicated versions of the fate of the Cygnet do show some common themes of how the buccaneers tended to act according to their own particular interests. They often split up into smaller groups and into different ships according to inclination, like or dislike of captains and whether they had accumulated treasure, or gambled it away. Similarly, in a long voyage, few buccaneer crews had the discipline or leadership to stay together. In order to take another look at this phenomenon, it is worth while reverting to the story of William Cowley, who was last seen shifting from Davis’ ship to join John Eaton’s Nicholas as master, in the Gulf of St Michael.
Soon after joining the Nicholas, in October 1684, Cowley almost came to an untimely end. Going by small boat with seven others to get turtles and water on Lord Norris Island, in the Galapagos, the Nicholas was carried away by a current and thus basically marooned Cowley and his companions on Lord Norris Island. They caught fish, but there being no water on the island, Cowley and his shipmates moved on to Albemarle Island, which had turtles and birds but no water either. Trying to leave this island for King James Island, the current forced them back. Here Cowley wrote that while he was cooking a large turtle the fire reminded him of Hell, and he had serious religious thoughts, just as Dampier did when faced with death. Cowley repented of his loose life, but unlike Dampier, Cowley had fearful visions of the fire and demons of Hell. At this moment, Cowley was suddenly faced with an aggressive sea lion, which he fought, and which he thought was a real devil. Recovering from this encounter, Dampier and his ship mates had just decided to sail to the Isle of Plata, some 500 miles away, when the buccaneers were delighted to see the Nicholas suddenly reappear. The marooned group got back onboard at 11p.m. at night, despite the heavy surf. Reunited, Eaton, Cowley and the crew of the Nicholas decided to commence sailing across the Pacific toward the Philippines in late December 1684, or early January 1685.38
Crossing the Pacific was always a voyage of extreme endurance, normally leading to a shortage of water and provisions. After some weeks, Cowley reported many cases of scurvy aboard, and how rats were caught on the ship, cooked, and given to the sick men to revive them. Soon all were sick and starving, but by mid March 1685, the ship reached Joanna Island, 8,600 miles from their starting point. Then it was on to the Ladrones Islands, the Marianas, known to Magellan as the island of thieves, where Cowley’s crew fought with the Indians, whom he described as very large men. Apparently, four of the captured natives were brutally thrown into the water and shot. The Nicholas went on to Canton and Formosa, but captured few prizes except for a ship captained by a Greek, taken in April 1685, that yielded food and 2,000 pieces of eight. An Indian ship bound for Manila, captured in July 1885, produced only rice, and another ship heading for Japan, taken in September 1685, did have silks and velvet onboard, but no pieces of eight, because it would apparently be death for the crew if a single piece of eight was brought into Japan. It seems that the Nicholas also missed a Chinese junk carrying silver.A curious episode at the island of Sogo (Hong Kong Island) in the summer of 1685 had the crew assaulting the town, robbing the church of its plate, and taking away two Church Fathers, who they tried but failed to ransom. At this point, Cowley was relieved of his weapons, because he had become too friendly with the Church Fathers, and was suspected of running away with them. From now on Cowley watched for a place to leave the buccaneers, which he managed on 1 March 1686 at Timor. After this, he shipped onboard a Dutch ship, the Sylida, while Eaton and the Nicholas sailed past, bound for Batavia.39
Eaton and the Nicholas reached Indonesia in March 1686, and then they disappear from history, except that Eaton was alleged to have returned to England. Cowley meanwhile records his further adventures, calling in at the Cape of Good Hope (Bon Esperance), where four ‘Hodmandods’ (Hottentots) came aboard, which he described in another comment on race, as ‘foul creatures’. At the end of June 1686, Cowley reported that he heard that Captain Davis was living in state at the court of the King of Siam with eighty Moors in attendance. In September 1688, Cowley was nearing Holland after some three and a half years voyaging, but nearly ended his life on the Lemon and Ore sands due to the captain’s ignorance of the coast. At last, at the end of September 1686, Cowley came ashore in Holland, and reached London in October 1686. Later, in 1699, Cowley published the journal of his voyages, joining Dampier, Wafer and many others in publishing their journals for a public hungry to hear about the wider world and the exploits of the buccaneers.40
The Last Acts of the Buccaneers: Jamaican Laws; Port Royal Disappears, 1692; the Capture of Cartagena, 1697; and the War of the Spanish Succession 1701–1713
A number of events from the 1680s onward slowly turned the tide against the buccaneers of the Caribbean. In 1681 and 1683, anti-pirate legislation was passed in Jamaica, which at least for the moment turned would-be privateers into hunted pirates, and made the issuing of commissions more difficult. However, French and Dutch buccaneers, such as de Grammont and du Casse, continued to operate. Then in June 1692 a severe earthquake destroyed much of Port Royal, which was seen by some as a just retribution for the wild and ungodly life led by many of the inhabitants. First hand accounts of this earthquake are arresting – the Reverend Dr Emmanuel Heath was taking wine with the acting Governor of Jamaica, John White, when ‘I found the ground rolling and moving under my feet, upon w
hich I said, “Lord, sir, what is this?” White replied very composedly, being a very grave man: “It is an earthquake, be not afraid, it will soon be over.”’ However, it was not soon over, and there were later shocks, tidal waves, and a hurricane, as a result of which as many as 5,000 people perished. Other survivors saw ‘whole streets sinking under water with men, women and children in them; and those houses which but just now appeared the fairest and loftiest in these parts were in a moment sunk down into the earth, and nothing to be seen of them.’ More horrific was the vision of people whom ‘the earth received up to their necks and then closed upon them and squeezed them to death with their heads above ground, many of which the dogs ate.’41
Another significant event was the sacking of the Spanish port of Cartagena (on the coast of modern Colombia) in 1697. Du Casse, French Governor of Santo Domingo (the western half of Hispaniola), and a former slaver, conceived of the idea of sacking Cartagena. He assembled some 700 buccaneers, plus Africans and locals, to a full number of some 1,000 men. But back in France, a certain Baron de Pointis, an experienced naval captain, got wind of the project, and decided to take it over. He appealed to Louis XIV, who placed him in charge, and so along with another 4,000 soldiers and sailors, and a small fleet, de Pointis sailed for Santo Domingo. Naturally, du Casse and de Pointis became bitter enemies, especially since du Casse and his independent minded buccaneers were ordered to submit to the orders of de Pointis. Somehow the two men and assorted buccaneers and French soldiers and sailors managed to co-operate sufficiently so that in the spring of 1697, the force combined landings and sea-based bombardments to capture a series of forts that guarded the narrow entrance to the Bay of Cartagena. These forts also guarded the city of Cartagena itself, yet each fort, isolated from its neighbouring forts, and low in morale, surrendered easily enough to the French attackers. Then the French assaulted the walls of Getsemani, the outer fort of the city of Cartagena. The French employed six very large mortars, hurling balls of twenty and thirty-six pounds, and a breach was quickly created. Du Casse, who had been wounded in a previous attack, personally led the buccaneers in a wild assault that captured the fort. De Pointis, who was himself wounded in the stomach, was very grudging in his comments on du Casse’s leadership, saying unkindly that du Casse was not so ‘nimble as the rest, despite all his good will, du Casse had so much trouble to climb it that he was out of breath by the time he got to the top, where he thought he should never recover his wind.’42