With his third and fourth voyages, Columbus traveled along the coast of South America and up the Gulf of Darien, constantly searching for a sea passage to India and the East. He failed in the mission which he had set himself, but his voyages changed the map of the known world. The Spanish authorities were not slow to exploit his discoveries. In 1502 a permanent settlement was established on Hispaniola, and another Spanish colony was set up by Balboa on the American mainland near Panama. But it was the expedition which followed which was to transform the European vision of the New World and lead to two centuries of plunder, privateering, and piracy on the Spanish Main.
In 1519 a small force of six hundred soldiers landed on the coast of Mexico near the site of what is now the town of Vera Cruz. They were armed with swords, pikes, and crossbows and had brought with them sixteen horses, a few small cannon, and thirteen muskets. Led by Hernán Cortés, the men marched inland through the steamy jungles of the coast and up through mountain passes to the high plateau of Central Mexico. As they traveled, Cortés used a combination of diplomacy and force to obtain food and assistance from the villages they passed through. He learned that the country was ruled by the Aztecs, a warlike people who exacted tribute and forced labor from the villagers.7 The Aztecs had not learned the use of the wheel and did not use horses or oxen, but they had created a civilization which was remarkable for its highly developed agricultural system, its sculpture and hieroglyphs, and its impressive buildings, particularly the awe-inspiring temples. These temples were the scene of human sacrifices which had a horrible, pagan fascination for the invading army. Even more fascinating for Cortés and his men was the discovery that the country was rich in gold and silver, which the Aztec craftsmen fashioned into marvelous jewelry and ornaments.
Within two years of landing in Mexico, Cortés had conquered the country. He had besieged and taken the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, which was built on islands along the shore of an inland lake. He reduced the houses to rubble and began the building of what was to become Mexico City. Montezuma, the Aztec ruler, was stoned to death by his own people, and in his place was established the kingdom of New Spain, which exacted tribute from the subject people in much the same way as the Aztecs had done. During the course of the 1520s, chests full of Aztec gold and jewels were shipped back to the King of Spain in ever-increasing quantities.
Meanwhile, rumors of another rich empire in the vast continent to the south of Mexico began to reach the Spanish explorers and settlers in Panama, or what was then called Darien. The land ruled by the Incas of Peru extended for some two thousand miles across the mountains and valleys of the Andes. The religious and political centers were on remote sites at heights of more than ten thousand feet, but the Incas had established an amazing network of mountain tracks and rope bridges which enabled the rulers to control the scattered population of farmers and peasants. In many respects the Inca civilization was similar to that of the Aztecs: they had no wheeled vehicles and their only beast of burden was the llama, but they had an effective political system which enabled them to extract tribute from the people, and they were skillful builders and craftsmen. Like the Aztecs, they worked in gold and silver, and produced magnificent personal ornaments and images of their gods. In 1532 a group of Spaniards led by Francisco Pizarro set out from Panama to conquer Peru and the Inca peoples. The tiny force consisted of 180 soldiers and twenty-seven horses.
Pizarro lacked the diplomatic skills of Cortés—he was illiterate and came from a humble peasant family—but he was shrewd and ambitious, and a bold and ruthless soldier. At Cajamarca in northern Peru he encountered Atahualpa, the ruler of the Inca Empire. He double-crossed him, and mounted a surprise attack of astonishing bravado, capturing Atahualpa and murdering most of his retinue. Soon afterward he was joined by reinforcements which swelled his army to around six hundred men, and headed south for the Inca capital of Cuzco. Deprived of their leader, the Inca forces were unable to resist the onslaught of the Spanish conquistadores. In November 1533 Pizarro’s men sacked the ancient city of Cuzco. A roomful of gold jewelry and ornaments, which had been collected from far and wide as a ransom to buy the freedom of Atahualpa, was melted down and, together with treasure looted from the inhabitants, was distributed among the Spanish soldiers. One fifth of the gold was retained for sending back to the King of Spain. As a final act of brutality, Pizarro ordered the execution of Atahualpa.
Within another ten years Spain effectively controlled most of South and Central America, and with it one of the world’s major sources of precious metals. In addition to the Aztec and Inca treasure, a further source of riches was discovered in 1545. At Potosí in what is now Bolivia was a mountain which contained massive quantities of silver. It was 15,381 feet high, and within a few years of the discovery of its hidden treasure, it was riddled with mine shafts. A colonial town was established at the foot of the mountain, and hundreds of native Americans were drafted in by the Spanish to dig out the silver ore and to work the mills which were built to process the ore. Mule trains were loaded with the silver and dispatched over the mountain passes and through the jungle paths to the ports of Cartagena and Portobello. At first the Aztec gold from Mexico and the silver from the Potosí silver mountain was sent back to Spain in the form of bars and crude ingots, but the Spanish rulers soon established mints for converting the precious metals into coins. A mint was established at Mexico City in 1536, another at Lima in 1565, and a third at Potosí in 1574. The total value of the gold and silver produced by these mints and shipped back to Spain was astounding. Between 1596 and 1600, Spain imported treasure from the New World worth 34,428,500 pesos.8 In today’s terms that would be the equivalent of £516 million or $774 million.
The most famous of the coins associated with the New World were the “pieces of eight,” or pesos. They were shipped back to Spain in huge quantities to finance, the operations of the ever-growing Spanish Empire, and became the common currency for trading in South and Central America and the West Indies. For more than a hundred years the pieces of eight circulating in the New World were crudely struck silver coins of a type called cobs.9 They were roughly the size of the fifty-pence piece currently in use in Britain, and were sometimes so roughly fashioned that they were almost square in shape rather than round. The pieces of eight produced in Spain, and those produced from 1732 onward in Mexico, were more finely made and smoothly rounded. Both types usually had the Spanish coat of arms on one side and a design representing the pillars of Hercules on the other. The twin pillars symbolized the limits of the ancient world at the Strait of Gibraltar, and in the early designs they were depicted rising out of the sea. In later designs two hemispheres representing the Old and New World were added in the space between the pillars. The pieces of eight were so familiar and so widespread that the twin pillars were eventually turned into the dollar sign used today. In 1644 one piece of eight was valued in England at four shillings and sixpence. That would be the equivalent of about £15 or $23 today.
Although familiarly known as pieces of eight, or pesos, the proper name for these coins was “eight reales.” All the silver coins struck by the mints in Spain and her overseas empire were called reales, while the gold coins were “escudos.” Several denominations of escudos and reales were struck, but it was the piece of eight and the doubloon which became particularly associated with Spanish treasure and pirates. The doubloon, which was the gold eight-escudo coin, was the highest-value Spanish coin in circulation. It was slightly larger than the modern fifty-pence piece, and had the King of Spain’s head on one side and the Spanish coat of arms on the other. A handful of doubloons would have been worth a small fortune to any pirate. Ducats, which are often referred to in pirate literature, were originally Venetian coins, and were the principal trading currency of the Mediterranean region in the days of the Barbary corsairs. There were gold and silver ducats, the gold coins being worth about seven shillings in the English money of the day and the silver ducats about five shillings.
Spain�
�s rivals and enemies were alerted to the scale of the wealth flowing from the New World by the activities of French corsairs cruising the shipping lanes on the approaches to the ports of Europe. In 1523 Jean Fleury was sailing off Cape St. Vincent on the southern shores of Portugal when he sighted three heavily laden Spanish caravels. The ships were under the command of Captain Quiñones and were nearing the end of the long voyage from Mexico. Fleury and his men captured two of the ships and were astonished by what they found on board. They had stumbled on several tons of the treasure plundered by Cortés: there were three huge cases of gold ingots; 500 pounds weight of gold dust in bags; Aztec pearls weighing 680 pounds; and emeralds, topazes, golden masks set with gems, Aztec rings and helmets, and feathered cloaks.10 Jean Fleury was in the employment of the Viscount of Dieppe, and it was not long before news of his rich prizes reached the courts of western Europe. The King of France, Francis I, issued commissions to sea captains, and during the next forty years it was the French privateers and buccaneers who led the attacks on the Spanish treasure ships and treasure ports.
One of the first on the scene was Captain François le Clerc, more picturesquely known as Jambe de Bois because of his wooden leg. In 1553 he set sail with a squadron of three royal ships and a number of privateers. Cruising along the coasts of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, he captured a succession of merchant ships. In 1554 he launched an attack on Santiago de Cuba, which was then the principal Spanish settlement on the great island of Cuba. With a force of eight ships and three hundred men he swept into the harbor, and spent thirty days looting and sacking the town and causing so much destruction that it took years to recover. The following year Jacques de Sores, who had sailed out from France with le Clerc, captured the city of Havana on the north coast of Cuba. When he failed to obtain the ransom which he had demanded, he proceeded to burn the city to the ground. He followed this by setting fire to all the ships in the harbor and laying waste to the countryside around the town. As a final act of vandalism his soldiers desecrated the church and stole the priests’ vestments, which they put to use as cloaks.
It was now the turn of the English to challenge Spain’s claim to the riches of the New World. Sir Francis Drake was the most famous of the English “Sea Dogs,” and was certainly the most feared by the Spanish, but it was John Hawkins who showed the way and taught Drake his trade. Hawkins came from a seafaring family in Plymouth and made himself one of the richest men in England by the success of his trading voyages.11 He was tough and resourceful, and though his activities incurred the wrath of the Spanish, he was a merchant and a privateer rather than a pirate. His instructions to his sailors would have been laughed to scorn by the crew of a pirate ship: “Let every man serve God daily, love one another, preserve your victuals, beware fire, and keep good company.”12
His first voyage in 1562 took him from Plymouth to the African coast of Guinea, where he loaded his three ships with three hundred black slaves. Crossing the Atlantic, he sold the slaves for a handsome profit to the plantation owners on Hispaniola. The success of the venture secured him backing from the highest quarter for his second voyage. Queen Elizabeth authorized the use of the 700-ton warship Jesus of Lubeck as flagship of the squadron, and the Navy Board and the merchants of the City of London were among the investors.
The squadron sailed from Portsmouth in October 1564 and made a series of raids on the African coast which resulted in the rounding up of four hundred slaves. When he arrived off South America, he found that the Spanish authorities had warned all their settlements against trading with him. Undaunted, Hawkins sailed from port to port, and by a combination of shows of force and much haggling, he eventually sold his human consignment as well as his cargo of wine, flour, cloth, and linen in return for gold, silver, and pearls. He sailed home via Hispaniola and the Straits of Florida, and arrived back in England in September 1565. The expedition had cost about £7,000 to mount, and the total profit on the original outlay was around 60 percent. Hawkins had shown that Spain’s monopoly on trade with the New World could be breached. The Spanish Ambassador in London was outraged, and when he learned that Hawkins was planning a third voyage, he sent an urgent warning to King Philip of Spain.
Hawkins’ third expeditionary force consisted of six ships and sailed from Plymouth in October 1567. His young cousin Francis Drake accompanied him on the voyage and was later given command of one of the vessels. They spent several months on the African coast and had the utmost difficulty in procuring slaves. When they crossed the Atlantic, they found that the King of Spain’s instructions had preceded them: “We coasted from place to place making our traffic with the Spaniards as we might, somewhat hardly, because the King had straitly commanded all his governors in those parts by no means to suffer any trade with us.”13 Again Hawkins used a combination of force and diplomacy to sell his cargo, but following a storm in the Gulf of Mexico he was driven to seek shelter at San Juan de Ulúa, the treasure port of Vera Cruz. He promptly captured the fort overlooking the harbor. The next day the Spanish treasure fleet arrived accompanied by two warships, and Hawkins found himself negotiating not with local officials hut with the newly appointed Viceroy of New Spain.
In the middle of the negotiations and without warning the Spanish Viceroy ordered his men to attack the British ships, and a full-scale battle broke out. Hawkins and Drake were lucky to escape alive. Drake’s homeward journey was uneventful, but Hawkins had a nightmare journey and arrived back in Plymouth with only fifteen men still alive. An acute shortage of food and water caused one hundred of Hawkins’ crew to plead with him to be put ashore on the coast of Mexico. Many of these died from sickness and malnutrition, but a number of them surrendered to the Spanish authorities: two were executed, and the rest were given two hundred lashes each and condemned to serve eight years as galley slaves.
The Battle of San Juan de Ulúa and its aftermath showed Hawkins and his countrymen that peaceful trade with the Spaniards in the West Indies was no longer possible. Drake never forgot the treachery of the Spanish Viceroy and henceforth devoted himself to plunder and war against Spain.
Exasperated by the attacks of English and French privateers, the Spanish had taken extensive measures to protect their hoards of gold and silver. At the treasure ports of Vera Cruz, Cartagena, Portobello, and Havana they built massive forts to defend the towns from attack by sea. Soldiers were sent out from Spain to man the forts and their gun batteries. To protect the treasure ships from attack they organized them into convoys. Twice a year a fleet of up to thirty ships came out from Spain with goods for the settlers. Anchored under the guns of the forts, the ships unloaded their domestic products and equipment, and then took on board the sealed chests of silver and gold before making the return journey to Seville accompanied by heavily armed warships.
While such precautions prevented looting by small-time thieves, they were not always effective against the attacks of the more determined privateers, and particularly the bands of privateers and adventurers who came to be known as the buccaneers. Driven out of their inland hunting grounds on Hispaniola by Spanish soldiers, the uncouth men who had lived there on the wild cattle and pigs migrated to the north coast of Hispaniola. There they were joined by a mixed bunch of runaway slaves, deserters, escaped criminals, and religious refugees. Around 1630 a number of buccaneers settled on the small, rocky island off the north coast of Hispaniola which had been discovered by Columbus and named Tortuga because its humped shape resembled a turtle. It had a good harbor and commanded the shipping lanes through the Windward Passage. One of the first buccaneer chiefs on Tortuga was Jean le Vasseur, a French Huguenot refugee who had been a military engineer. He built a fort on the rocky outcrop above the harbor and armed it with twenty-four guns. For several years Fort de Rocher successfully defended the buccaneer stronghold from Spanish attempts to take the island.
The most vivid account of the activities of the buccaneers is contained in a remarkable book by Alexander Exquemelin entitled The Buccaneers of America. The b
ook contains bloodthirsty stories of buccaneer raids, torture, and pillage and also includes evocative descriptions of the landscapes, fauna, and flora of the West Indies. Exquemelin went out to Tortuga in 1666 on a ship of the French West India Company and later joined the buccaneers as a surgeon. He lived among them for more than twelve years and witnessed many of their raids. Careful comparison of his stories with the events described in Spanish documents of the period has shown that he gets most of the facts right but is often mistaken about place-names and dates.14 Some of his wilder stories appear to be secondhand accounts which he probably heard in taverns, but it is clear that he took part in a number of buccaneer expeditions up to and including Henry Morgan’s sacking of Panama City in 1671.
The reception of Exquemelin’s classic work gives some idea of its impact. It was written in Dutch, and first published in Amsterdam in 1678 under the title De Americaensche Zee-Rovers. In 1681 a Spanish edition was printed, and translations into other European languages followed. The first English translation was published in London in 1684 and within three months a second edition followed. As the publisher wrote: “The first edition of this History of the Buccaneers was received with such general applause of most people, but more especially of the learned, as to encourage me towards obliging the public with this second impression.”15
Exquemelin’s book is so packed with detail about the lives and customs of the buccaneers that it is not surprising it proved popular. It has provided the basis for all serious histories of the buccaneers and, in spite of some inaccuracies, remains the standard work on the subject. Exquemelin devoted the first part of his book to the exploits of some of the more colorful buccaneers: Bartholomew Portugues, who captured a Spanish treasure ship, was taken prisoner and escaped by using earthenware jars as buoyancy aids; Roche Brasiliano, a Dutch buccaneer who was notorious for his drunken debauches and for roasting Spaniards alive on wooden spits; and the French buccaneer Francis L’Ollonais, who sacked Maracaibo and captured a Spanish ship carrying 40,000 pieces of eight and jewels worth 10,000 pieces of eight. L’Ollonais also specialized in barbaric cruelties. According to Exquemelin, “It was the custom of L’Ollonais that, having tormented any persons and they not confessing, he would instantly cut them in pieces with his anger, and pull out their tongues.”16
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