by Dudley Pope
Ned and Thomas both laughed together and Ned said: “Buccaneers will only fight to get purchase, but you need purchase, too, General, so that your merchants and tavern keepers prosper. Why don’t you issue the invitation and the commissions, all signed and drawn up in legal form, and with no charge, and then leave the rest to Sir Thomas and me? But while we are away, tell the tavern keepers and bordello owners and merchants what you’ve done, so they’re ready for our return…”
Chapter Eight
“It is beyond belief that we are becalmed in sight of the island after three days of being flung about in that dreadful weather,” Diana grumbled crossly. “And where are the rest of them?”
“Ask Ned,” Thomas said wearily. “He’s to blame for all bad weather and straying ships. I’m responsible only for your moral downfall.”
“Immoral,” Ned corrected. “And give me credit for having four ships still with the three of us, rather than twenty-one missing!”
“When it blows a storm for three days and seven ships out of twenty-eight manage to stay together, that’s chance, not good seamanship,” Thomas said amiably. “But you’re the admiral…”
“My lord bishop,” Ned said, “you are too generous. I am sure it was divine intervention.”
“What is this ‘bishop’ joke?” Diana asked.
Ned explained: “When the mutinous colonel broke into the general’s office he wanted to know who we were. I introduced Thomas as the unfrocked bishop of Woolwich, because he had that sanctimonious but well-fed look…”
“I know it,” Diana said. “It usually means I’ve caught him out doing something wrong, like taking an extra glass of rumbullion.”
“Extra?” Aurelia asked. “Do you ration him?”
“I have in the last few months. A bottle of wine with dinner and only two glasses of rumbullion.”
“Those hills,” Thomas said conversationally to Ned, pointing to the pearl-grey blob on the southern horizon, indistinct and seeming to shimmer because the sun reflected from every wavelet on the almost flat sea. “You can always identify Old Providence, or Providencia, as the Dons call it, by the three peaks in the middle, each about the same height. And remember the main danger is Low Cay, lying about nine miles north of the northern end of the island. You can’t distinguish the small island at this distance. Let’s look at the chart.”
Carefully he unrolled the sheet of parchment. It was small, about a foot square, with round-cheeked cherubs blowing from each corner. Beneath an ornate scroll were drawn two islands, Isla Providencia and the tiny Isla Catalina, and beneath the title was the name of the Spaniard who had drawn it. A cartographer? Master of a ship? There was no indication of its origin – or, Thomas noted, its accuracy.
As soon as Thomas had unrolled it on the deck and weighted down the ends, the four of them knelt and examined it once again. In a different handwriting – by comparison a scribble – was noted a latitude, 13º 25’ North and a longitude, 81º 25’ West.
“Coincidence that the minutes of the latitude and longitude are the same,” Ned commented.
“Well, judging by our noon sight, the charted latitude seems fairly accurate,” Thomas said. “It put us thirty miles north of this latitude, and I reckon we’re about thirty miles from those peaks.”
“Those peaks” were now astern as the Griffin, her sails hanging like limp laundry, slowly turned as she lay becalmed, twisted by currents which they could see only as thin and curling lines of grass-like brown weed all round them, as though the sea was veined.
The Peleus was heading east and the Phoenix south. The other privateers had their bows pointing in different directions: like bird feathers floating down a Kentish stream, Ned thought, a sudden spasm of nostalgia reminding him of the sharp, clean smell of stinging nettles lining the banks. The low clouds, which earlier seemed to stretch down to the wavetops, bringing howling winds and steep waves leaping along the backs of the long swells, had broken into patches and then vanished altogether, taking the wind with them and leaving a great dome of clear blue sky. In the distance, over to the east and low on the horizon, were tiny, insubstantial balls like cotton growing on a plant, giving a hint that the Trade winds would return in a few hours. Meanwhile the sun was scorching and the sea had turned a vivid purplish blue, as though for centuries it had been stealing colour from the sky.
Aurelia looked down at the gaudy colours painted on the chart: compared with the natural tints and shades of the sea and the sky, the hanging sails and coarse grain of the deck planking, they were vulgar, exaggerated. She ran her finger round the outline of the oval-shaped larger island. “I shall call it Old Providence, not the Spanish name. But why ‘Old’?”
“I think there’s a ‘New’ Providence somewhere north of the Bahamas,” Thomas said. “One of those dozens of islands.”
“This design, like a broken wreath, inked in almost all the way round the island – that is a coral reef?”
“Coral reefs, small cays, rocks,” Ned said. “You can see here, this is Low Cay. Now, measure off on the scale –” he opened his fingers to span the distance with his outstretched thumb and little finger and putting them on the scale “–and you see it is about nine miles north of the island. The coral starts there and goes on round the entire eastern side, down to the southwestern end.”
“Like a clock face, with Low Cay at midnight, and this reef ends at seven o’clock!” Diana said. “Then it goes on in fits and starts round to midnight. The bishop had a clock like that once, didn’t you Thomas?”
Thomas grunted as he examined the chart. “Look Ned, there’s a cut through the reef here, at five o’clock, called ‘Tinkham’. Must be English, surely; there’s no Spanish word or name remotely like that.”
“Look at the northern end of the island. The writing isn’t very clear but that’s ‘Jones Point’. And look, at one o’clock out on the reef, ‘Crab Cayo’. And –” Ned laughed delightedly “–this must have been copied from an original English chart: the eastern point on the island is Kalaloo Point!”
“Kalaloo?” Diana exclaimed. “Who was he?”
“What is it, you mean,” Thomas said. “Sort of vegetable, isn’t it Ned, rather like spinach.”
“Yes, makes a good soup. And look, just south of Jones Point, there’s ‘Split Hill’.”
“I remember Leclerc telling me something about that,” Thomas said, scratching his head. “Yes, there’s a great chasm in a mountain about one hundred feet deep and fifty wide, and you can only see it – look along it, rather – from northwest or south east: useful for establishing your bearing.”
Ned nodded and said: “You know, these must be the original names given when the early Puritans came and settled here.”
“English puritans?” Aurelia was obviously startled. “Here – thousands of miles from anywhere?”
Ned smiled and felt a contradictory pride. “Yes – this is probably where it all began – what gave Cromwell the original idea for his Western Design, and which eventually led to the capture of Jamaica.”
Aurelia shook her head. “That is too long a jump for me!”
“It all happened thirty years ago or more. From what I’ve been told, Robert Rich – he was the Earl of Warwick – was one of the leaders of the Virginia Company, colonizing America. He tried to colonize the Bermudas, also known as Somers Island: he and his friends started plantations there but they failed.
“About that time some Puritans, led by John Pym, were looking for a place to start a colony. Not so much to plant for profit but to settle and start a new political and religious community. Pym and his friends chose these two islands, the larger of which they called Providence and this little one,” he tapped the top left-hand corner of the chart, “Henrietta. They moved in with a number of Warwick’s discontented colonists from the Bermudas.
“As far as I can see, while Warwi
ck’s friends regarded Providence as a base for privateering against the Spanish, stirring up the old spirit of Drake, the Puritans wanted only to plant and pray…”
“A fine mixture,” Thomas commented, “and here the islands are right on the main route for the Spanish galleons coming laden from Cartagena bound for Havana to meet the flota from Mexico…”
“How long did the Puritan colony last?” Diana asked.
“I think it started in about 1630; then five or six years later the Spanish managed to launch a big attack, but the reefs and mountains beat them. For the next six years or so, privateering was more practical for the colonists than praying and planting.
“Rich and his brother, the Earl of Holland, with Pym’s help – he was back in England, of course – planned great colonies out here in the West Indies, but the Scottish wars began.”
“Ah,” Thomas interrupted, “I know Uncle Oliver, as a young man, was very influenced by John Pym, and at one time was thinking about emigrating to Providence.”
“A pity he didn’t,” Diana said bitterly. “Yellow fever might have got him!”
“Anyway,” Ned continued, “when the civil war came a few years ago Pym was close to Cromwell, so we can only suppose that Cromwell’s idea for an ‘English West India Association’, although like the Dutch West India Company, was based on the Providence Company.”
Diana bent and looked more closely at the chart. “Is there anywhere named after Pym? If so I’m not going there! But what happened in the end?”
“The place became a privateering and pirate base: they used to raid the Isthmus, particularly the Nicaragua coast. They hated anything Catholic, so there was plenty of opportunity for profit, too, helped by the Dutch. Then, in ’40, the Spanish launched an attack from Cartagena, which failed, but they came back the next year with more soldiers and seized the place. They’ve held it ever since – for the last seventeen years or so.”
Aurelia, pointing at the chart, said: “While you’ve been telling that story, Ned, I’ve found ‘Alligator Point’, here on the west side. Then, on this other island –” she pointed to the tiny one nestling in a curving bay on the northwest corner of Providence “–which I suppose was called ‘Henrietta’ in Pym’s time, but which the Dons call ‘Santa Catalina’, there is ‘Black Point’, ‘Cat Rock’, ‘Boat Rock’… Still, the town, probably just a large village, is here on the Old Providence side of the channel between the two islands, and is called Isabella. After the queen, I suppose. The port near it is called ‘Puerto Catalina’, but perhaps the English call it ‘Port Henrietta’.”
“We called it Henrietta,” Ned corrected her with a grin. “You are not only English by marriage to your late husband, but you’ll be English by marriage to your next one, and I’m sure commanding an English buccaneer makes you English yet again.”
Diana said: “Have you seen how many forts and castles there are on Santa Catalina? Just look – nine! What a mixture of names – I wonder which were originally English and the map-maker translated…” She read some of them. “Fort St Jerome – that obviously just covers this bridge connecting Santa Catalina to the mainland. Santa Teresa seems to be the biggest – it’s called a castle. St Matthew, St Joseph, St Augustine, Santa Cruz, San Salvador – and, just to make a change, ‘La Plataforma de la Concepción’, and ‘La Plataforma de los Artilleros’.”
“Two batteries,” Thomas said. “But from the way they describe things out here, a ‘battery’ means guns on a flat space, ‘fort’ can mean it has walls or rocks, or tubs filled with sand or pebbles or even small rocks or earth. ‘Castle’ – well, that’s a regular castle, like the one at Santiago. Still, this one must be a good deal smaller. Probably where the governor lives.”
“Nine forts and batteries and castle…that must add up to quite a number of guns,” Ned said, wondering what the total could be. Two to a battery meant four, the fort covering the bridge would have ten, which made fourteen; five forts with four each brought the total to thirty-four. And how many in the castle of Santa Teresa? Twenty (five facing each way seemed a reasonable assumption), making a grand total of fifty-four guns.
“Will you attack as soon as we arrive or wait for the rest?” Thomas asked.
“Surprise – without it we don’t stand a chance,” Ned said, and thought they had precious little chance even with it. He wished he had not told the story of the Earl of Warwick and Pym: it reminded him, much too late, of a fact he had long ago forgotten – that the Spaniards finally had to use a large number of trained soldiers to capture the island…
It was a lapse of memory that could cost them dear. When Thomas had first mentioned leadership of the Brethren and then Leclerc had subsequently described the bullion at Portobelo and the stripping of the garrison at Providencia to reinforce the Spanish troops to land on Jamaica, he had been thinking only of the name they had used, ‘Providencia’.
Admittedly he had known at once where it was when they mentioned it. He had noted it and thought no more about it as an island, except to remember that they must find a chart of the place, preferably Spanish. And one of the buccaneers had produced the one he was looking at now, found on board a small Spanish prize.
Yet until Aurelia asked about its early history, and why so many places on the chart had English names, he had completely forgotten about Pym and the Earl of Warwick and the English occupation for so many years of an island only 250 miles from Portobelo and more than 1,250 miles to leeward of Barbados. From Old Providence it was 1,250 miles to windward – which could mean having to cover twice or three times that distance to get there, tacking against the Trade winds. More than half the distance across the Atlantic… But, most important, only 250 miles from Portobelo, the centre for the bullion: the place to which donkeys and mules carried the silver in panniers in the last stage of the journey that began half-way down the South American coast at Arica, the port for the Potosi mines…
Here in Providencia – Old Providence rather – English religious fanatics had lived cheek by jowl with privateers, pirates and early buccaneers, and they all shared one thing in common (about the only thing, he thought to himself) a hatred of the papacy. Perhaps papacy in the case of the Puritans; Spaniards in general as far as the pirates and privateersmen were concerned.
For years Spain was too weak at sea to do anything about getting rid of this hornet’s nest – because Old Providence was just that, with its hornets flying out to sting more or less at will. Then came an unsuccessful Spanish attack in 1635… His memory was working well now: five years later they attacked again with one thousand soldiers in six frigates and failed…finally they succeeded in 1641 with nine ships carrying more than two thousand trained soldiers. Oh yes, the more he thought the more he remembered, and it was time he stopped before his misgivings were spotted by Thomas and the two women. He was glad that Saxby remained on board the Phoenix; that man had an uncanny way of guessing one’s thoughts. Two thousand troops and nine ships… He felt a cold shiver despite the scorching sun which was making the parchment of the chart kink and bump, drying out old dampness.
Old Providence and Henrietta, now Providencia and Santa Catalina. He could only hope the change of name would bring a change of fortune.
Ned stood up and called to the look-out at the Griffin’s masthead, a man almost enveloped in the tent-like awning he had rigged to protect himself from the burning sun. “Anything else in sight, Blackett?”
“Nothin’ sorr, just the six ships round us.”
“No sign of any wind shadows?”
“I saw one whiffle of wind to the north, sir, but it died.”
Ned turned to Thomas, who had just stood up beside him as the two women, tanned a deep golden brown, remained kneeling and looking at the chart.
“Y’know, Ned, I’ve been thinking about the bad weather…” He scratched his beard and then twiddled the end between two fingers to make it
curl. “What with the swell for the days before it, and the swell it left behind, I think it was really a small hurricane, not just a storm.”
Ned grinned. “Well, my lord bishop, you’ve been at sea so long I was shy about mentioning it, but the wind did seem rather strong and the waves rather high…”
“I was going to mention it earlier, but –” Thomas glanced down at Diana and Aurelia “– I didn’t want to alarm the ladies.”
“You didn’t, eh?” Diana said, looking up and winking at Ned. “Well, bishop, I was certain of that that after twelve hours. I didn’t say anything,” she added mischievously, “for fear of alarming you.”
Aurelia held out a hand for Ned to help her to her feet. “Being of a nervous disposition anyway,” she said, “I knew it was a hurricane before any of you. The way those swell waves grew higher and higher, even though at first we had a clear sky and a gentle breeze… I remember one of the men on the plantation telling me the swells – ground seas he called them – usually give the first warning, often several days before the hurricane arrives.”
“So we all knew and we all said nothing,” Ned commented. “Now we can speculate without embarrassment – are we the only survivors of the Brethren?”
“That’s what’s bothering me,” Thomas admitted.
If losing the rest of the ships was his only bother, Ned thought to himself, he’d count himself lucky, but the figures of two thousand Spanish soldiers and nine frigates kept coming to mind like the persistent drumming of thunder. He said: “There’s a chance they’ve been blown a long way to leeward and then the wind dropped so that they’re becalmed like us, but spread over a hundred miles of sea.”
“Seven, instead of twenty-eight,” Thomas grumbled miserably, too absorbed to listen to Ned. “Good men lost.”
“Whoa, bishop,” Ned exclaimed. “You sink twenty-one ships with a wave of the hand? Or should I say a wave of your crozier.”