by Smith, Skye
"Aye, there is that,” Warwick replied. "There is already too much slavery in the Americas, and the problem gets worse with every new war in Europe." He shuffled over on the mats to make room for Daniel, who had come to join them now that the sails and the course were set for the first watch.
"This from a slave owner,” Daniel hissed.
Blake gave his friend a look of concern at such harsh tones being said to such a wealthy and powerful man. "You forget yourself, Danny. The man is our guest aboard."
"No, Robert, he is right,” Warwick said. "I will not deny it. I just bought into the Guinea Company which trades in African slaves. That said, I did not buy it for its slavery business. I mean to use Guinea gold to finance trade routes with the East Indies."
"What about your other companies ... the Virginia Company for instance?"
"My old Virginia company has been taken over by the crown. My remaining Virginia tobacco plantations use indentured bondsmen as labour, but it could be that the managers treat them as slaves. Through my Providence Company I run privateer ships which often capture the slaves of the Spanish, and hold prisoners for ransom. My Somers Island Company once imported Powhatan slaves to Bermuda to dive for pearls. If the commanders and managers and governors are all complicit in slavery, then so am I. I admit it."
Warwick said this not just because it was true, and not just to ease the sudden tension in the cabin. He noticed that his four lifeguards were carefully watching the other three men for a reaction. He was open with the truth because he was a business man and he wanted to do business with these men.
Warwick stared at Daniel and argued, "But you, Daniel, can you throw stones at me. You are a successful pistoleer from the Dutch wars who now trades in aqua vitae and pistols. How many men have you killed or caused to be killed? How many more have been killed by the firearms you have sold? How many families have been destroyed by the liquor you peddle?" Warwick's lifeguards were now very tense while watching Daniel for any hint of violence.
"Daniel, I think you are looking for an excuse to dislike me,” Warwick softened his tone. "You despise the inbred aristocracy who would be nothing if not for their inheritances, and you think me one of them. Would it make a difference if I told you that I was not one of them. My grandfather was a merchant lawyer who served Henry the Eighth as his Lord Chancellor. He was ennobled to the aristocracy for that long service. The blood in my veins is as common as yours."
The lifeguards relaxed as they watched Daniel and Warwick first snicker at each other, and then chuckle, and then laugh, and then slop their rum about in gut wrenching laughter. When Daniel could again speak more than two words at a time without laughing, he said, "Well at least you must do something about Thomas Taylor, your agent in Virginia."
"Why? He has been my agent there for decades, and my other ventures are funded by the tobacco plantations he runs for me." Warwick wide smile disappeared and was replaced, not by a frown, but by keen interest. He listened while Daniel explained about how Taylor had purposefully exterminated much of the Powhatan natives by spreading the pox amongst them, and about Taylor's new plan to breed native and Irish women with black studs to create a new race. A race born and bred to be slaves, forever slaves.
Warwick listened intently and said nothing until the story was finished. Then all he said was that he could not judge Taylor's actions out of context and from this side of the ocean. "Perhaps if I had been in Taylor's boots I would have done the same. Keep in mind that Taylor was sent there expressly because half the colony had been massacred by the Powhatan."
"And if he stays, there will be another massacre,” Daniel interrupted. "All that need happen is for some Irish slaves to escape the plantations and to join forces with the Powhatan and the Delaware tribes, and then Virginia will run red with the blood of Englishmen."
"As I said before, who am I to judge from so far away?"
Daniel couldn't loose this chance of making big trouble for the snake, Taylor, so he couldn't allow Warwick to dismiss the situation so off handedly. "You do realize that for the last five years, Taylor has not been your man, but Strafford’s. Where do you think he got his supply of Irish slaves?"
Warwick was at a loss for words. His face puffed up all scarlet at the mention of Strafford. For a moment he forgot to breathe and when he did breathe it came with a rush of words. "I will send someone on the next ship to Virginia to replace Taylor. Perhaps a pious, virtuous, godly man who believes that slavery is repugnant. A stubborn man who will cow the other plantation managers.... and I know just the man." He looked over at Blake. "Do you think that Oliver Cromwell will accept the posting? Every time we Reformers have a setback in our dealings with Charlie, Oliver swears that he is going to move to the Americas."
"Oliver would be a good choice,” Daniel answered before Blake. He knew Oliver quite well from the years that he had been the titheman for Ely Abbey. His own village of Wellenhay bordered the abbey lands.
"Pym won't thank me for sending him away,” Warwick was thinking with his mouth open. "Cromwell has become his pit bull for barking down the naysayers in parliament. Not that I can't handle Pym. The man was my financial manager for the decade between parliament sittings.
Nay, I cannot send Cromwell. Pym is poorly so he needs Cromwell's loud mouth to voice John Hampden's more brash thoughts." Warwick saw that Blake was taking a keen interest in his vocal thinking, so he explained. "John Hampden is the brains behind our Reformer tactics, but he is a thinker and a writer, not an orator or a leader. Almost everything that comes out of Pym's mouth is scripted by Hampden. Because of Pym's health, Hampden now handed his more audacious speeches to Cromwell to speak."
"That's a shame,” Daniel said, "for Oliver would eagerly dive into straightening Virginia out. He despises all forms of slavery, even bond slavery." It came to him that Oliver would have helped Weston do-for Heath. A decade ago it had been Robert Heath who had financially ruined Oliver in the courts, and that had destroyed Oliver's career, had kept him from being called to the bar, and had beggared him into hiding away on a nothing farm for years.
There was a sound of rapping and Daniel shushed the others in the cabin so he could here it. "That is the helmsmen banging a message to us on the steering post." He moved closer to the post in the center of the cabin and listened again to the rapping. "Wind is changing. I have to go back to the wheel. The rest of you should get some shut eye. There are extra blankets piled in the corner if your cloaks are not warm enough,” he looked towards Warwick who was by far the eldest and the most used to feather beds, "or if the sleeping mats are not thick enough."
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The Pistoleer - Pirates by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Chapter 11 - Trouble in Bere Alston in September 1641
The Swift drifted along off Penice Point with her sails down while they waited for dawn to light up the entrance to Plymouth Sound. Plymouth had a bustling ship building business, so the crew had asked Daniel to enter the sound on the west side and to keep as far away from the shipyards as possible. They even volunteered to row the ten miles north up the sound and up the River Tamar to keep the Bermudan rig from being seen by the local boatmen.
The decision was taken out of men’s hands by the goddess of winds, for once they were in the Sound the wind dropped and becalmed them, so they had no choice but to row the ten miles. With every able man, including Warwick's lifeguards, on the oars, the ten miles took them most of three hours. Blake was their pilot for he had sailed these waters before, and had even visited Bere Alston before, though not by boat.
Warwick purposefully stood between Daniel on the wheel, and Blake with his spectacle looker, for it was a good time for him to talk business. "Daniel, if I replace Taylor in Virginia with someone who is against slavery, then what will you do for me?"
"Please tell me that you will do that in any case,” Blake said sternly. "Slavery is an abomination against all that our Lord Jesus stands for."
Warwi
ck decided to try a different approach. "Daniel, I have been told by Robert and by others, that if I needed a lot of guns in a hurry, that you are the man to talk to. How true is that?"
"I can't make any promises until I get back home to the Fens,” Daniel replied honestly. "My village has another ship and they will have been doing business in aqua vitae and perhaps guns while I was in the Americas with the Swift."
"Can you promise me first denial on any guns, for delivery to London, of course. I don't care their source but I prefer Dutch or German works. Oh ... and this morning I walked around this ship's cannons. Any chance of getting hold of cannons like them? They are field guns, aren't they. Field guns mounted on a different chasses for use on the ship. I was also impressed by the breach loaded swivel gun."
"As I said, I can't promise anything, but can you give me some idea of numbers. Numbers and types."
Warwick went silent in thought and then said. "A thousand muskets to begin with."
The number brought a long silence to the men grouped around the wheel. Daniel's response was slow in coming. "For such a large order you can send one of your own ships to the Netherlands. Agents there will leap at the business. Why do you need me for?"
"I have no ships to spare. When the Dutch defeated and captured the Spanish Armada, the balance of power in the Caribbean changed. I have sent every available ship to Tortugas. Do you know Tortugas, the Island of Turtles off the north coast of Hispaniola?"
"No, we turned back at Puerto Rico,” Daniel explained.
"Umm, well , ... twenty years ago when I was trying to be another Francis Drake,” Warwick told him, "Tortugas was a wild island that the Spanish had seeded with cattle and had then deserted. On it there was a primitive colony of cattle thieves who called themselves boucaniers after the roasting frames they used when smoking the meat. They formed the Brethren of the Coast to run things, and since then it has welcomed pirates, privateers, and escaped slaves.
The Brethren now have enough ships with enough men that it would take the full Spanish fleet to clear them off Tortugas. I have just sent all my available ships to Tortugas with orders to form a partnership between the Providence Company and the Brethren."
"Whatever for?" Weston interrupted. "That will just serve to put your Providence colony at risk."
"It's too late to worry about that. A month ago I received word that the Spanish fleet had raided Providence. The ships escaped but not all the colonists. With the Brethren’s help, my ships will re-take Providence and hopefully free my colonists, if they still live. Either way, retaking Providence will give us our best chance of capturing a Spanish treasure galleon as it leaves Panama."
Weston nodded to Blake and said, "Didn't I say that there would be problems on Providence because of the mix of colonists and privateers."
Warwick stared closely at the man and said, "Weston. That name rings a bell. How do you know so much about Providence?" Weston shrugged back at him.
Since Weston had first joined the Swift on Saint Kitts there had been nothing but trouble about his past, and Daniel did not want yet more trouble so he asked Warwick a question. "Well if all of your ships are on their way to Tortugas, then that does explain why you need me and the Swift. Guns are bought with silver and gold, not with promissory notes. Are you that rich?"
"I'm am that Rich, Robert Rich. I own more than ships and shares in colonial companies, for I am the landlord to many country folk in Essex, and city folk in London. The muskets are for the London Trained Bands so I will pay in coin. I need to hand them muskets if I want to be sure that the Bands are on parliament's side and not on Charlie's side if the Stuart regime lashes out at us."
"So infantry then,” Daniel surmised since not many of the tradesmen or apprentices of London owned riding horses. And why would they in such a crowded city. "What about pistols?"
"Pistols, yes, but only thirty or forty to begin with. No matter how useful pistols would be, I cannot in good conscious hand pistols out to the lads of London. That could lead to carnage in the alehouses. As for cannon, one is better than none and two better than one, but six or eight would be best of all." Warwick watched Daniel nod as if none of this would be a problem for him. "There is one more thing, a different kind of thing."
"Ask it, so long as it is not the buying and selling of folk."
"For this I would grant you a license under the patents of my companies,” Warwick bargained, "and my written blessing for your clan to settle anywhere in the Americas."
"So it must be the buying and selling of folk,” Daniel said his fears aloud.
"Not quite. You see I need, or rather, London needs, some gunsmiths. Most of the English gunsmiths now live and work in Holland or Flanders to profit from endless wars on the continent. I need to coax some of them back home. You have my permission to promise them housing and workshops if they will come back with you to London. In return for the move and the housing all they need promise me is to work on behalf of the Trained Bands for one year."
The vision of the countless gunsmith shops of Rotterdam flitted through Daniel's mind. "I think that can be arranged. Would this license from your patents include the protection of your privateering ships in the Caribbean for my settlers?"
"What you mean to ask is, will it protect you from being attacked by my privateers. It should do, but privateers are a law unto themselves. I cannot guarantee it."
"So after I get home to the Fens, and after I plan my first trading voyage to Holland, and after I have a cargo for you, then how do I get in touch with you. You came from Bristol. Is that where your family home is? No, wait, to the north of Oxford there is a town of Warwick with a grand castle. Is that your home?"
"My grandfather bought the title of Warwick, but not the castle. Warwick Castle is owned by my business associate and brother-in-law, Robert Greville,” Warwick told him in a grumpy tone. "You may reach me at Warwick House, Holborn, but if Parliament is not sitting you will be more likely to find me at Rochford Hall in Rochford, Essex. That is at the end of the Roach River. At high tide there is enough water in the Roach to float this ship all the way to my hall."
"Sorry to interrupt," Blake said. He was not sorry at all for Daniel was promising things that he probably couldn't deliver. "Shouldn't we be planning our march to Bere Alston."
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Weir Quay, up the River Tamar and around the bend from Plymouth, did indeed have a quay, and it also had a small village, and four horses to rent, none of which you could call riding horses. They were pack horses used for taking goods from the quay up the steep road and over the nose of a ridge that ran along the river. "It doesn't matter that there are none fit to ride,” Daniel told Warwick and Blake, "for neither of you parliamentarians are coming with us to Bere Alston."
That news was as welcome as a candle in a gunpowder magazine. "Think about it. Plymouth is a royal town,” Daniel argued. "Heath will have the Sheriffs men with him to arrest Strode. He will be gleeful at the chance of arresting both of you at the same time. No, this is a job for us peasants." What he didn't say was that when Heath was 'accidentally' killed by Weston, he did not want these upholders-of-the-law to witness the act.
Blake finally agreed to stay with the ship and then convinced Warwick stay with him. Daniel would either protect Strode at the house, or bring Strode and his family to the ship. While he was gone, two of the crew would climb to some high ground and watch and listen for a signal from Bere Alston, and relay that signal to the ship.
"Tie it off,” Blake called out to the crew as the Swift nuzzled up to the quay, and then he turned to Daniel, who was busy loading his double barreled dragon, and told him. "From the quay it is less than two miles to Bere, up and over that ridge. Just follow that switchback horse path. You probably won't see anyone along the path because ships don't unload at this quay, but just use it to tie up and wait for the tide before rounding the big bend in the Tamar."
Blake ordered two of the crew to go and rent some of the fly blown nags that car
ried the occasional cargos up and over the ridge from the quay, while Warwick watched as Daniel selected a dozen men to go with him to find Strode. As he watched, the dozen changed out of their sweaty seaman’s rags and into their town clothes, and then armed themselves.
It was then that Warwick first realized that these men were no ordinary trade ship seamen. Every one of them had shoved a dragon under his sash as if it was a part of their clothing, even before they had shoved a long bush knife under the sash beside it. As for other arms, some had a second pistol, some had a carbine, and some carried hunting bows. Not the yew long bows of the Tudor era, but formidable bows all the same.
In his youth Warwick had led a small fleet of privateers to the Caribbean in search of Spanish treasure ships, so he knew the cut of men well enough to gauge the metal of these ones. These were not 'yes sir, no sir, order me about' English seamen, but 'think for themselves' men, and therefore very dangerous. He strode over to Daniel and demanded that he be taken along. The man just shook his head, but told him that he could lead the reserves if reserves were needed.
Blake heard this and gave Daniel a hard stare, for this crew were his men, not Daniel's. The two of them had fought shoulder to shoulder in countless skirmishes in Holland, he the tactician and Daniel the sure shot. He had naturally assumed that he would lead the reserves. Daniel's left eye, the one that Warwick could not see, winked at Blake. The wink said it all. His words had been to humour this rich old Lord, and nothing more.
Warwick, now with a smile on his face at being included in the action, turned to help a big man named Karl who was grunting over by the stern gunnels and calling for help. Karl was one of the few names he had learned on the overnight voyage, mainly because the big man was poor of hearing and would only respond when his name was yelled out. He was the ship's crack gunner, and like all experienced cannon men he wore his deafness with pride.