Selkirk's Island

by Diana Souhami

  The English marched to the church of St Jago, ransacked the houses in the square and set them on fire. Some of these houses were tall and built of brick, most were timber, the simplest were bamboo huts. They blazed all night and all the following day.

  This army was a marauding mob. They looted gold and silver from the church then hoisted the English flag on its tower. They wanted to rip up the floorboards ‘to look among the Dead for Treasure’. For reasons of hygiene Rogers opposed this. A contagious epidemic of ‘malignant fever’ had killed hundreds of Guayaquil’s citizens. An open pit was filled with their half-putrefied corpses. The church floor was crammed with recent graves.

  To escape the twin evils of epidemic and invasion, the town’s citizens had fled to the surrounding hills. The English torched and looted their empty houses and the smaller churches of St Augustin, St Francis, St Dominic and St Ignatius. They ransacked storerooms. They stole silver and clothing, peas, beans, rice, 15 jars of oil, 230 pounds of flour, 160 jars of wine and brandy, a ton of pitch, irons, nails, cordage, guns, indigo and cocoa, a ton of loaf sugar and the Corregidor’s gold-headed cane.†

  An Indian prisoner told Rogers of safe houses up river where most of the town’s women and a great deal of money had been taken. Selkirk and John Connely were given charge of twenty-one men and sent in a boat with ‘a Cask of good Liquor’ to flush these women out.

  They broke into their supposedly safe houses with crowbars. In one they found huddled a group of upper-class Spanish women. Rogers gave his version of what happened:

  Some of their largest Gold Chains were conceal’d and wound about their Middles, Legs and Thighs, etc, but the Gentlewomen in these hot Countries being very thin clad with Silk and Fine Linnen, and their Hair dressed with Ribbons very neatly, our Men by pressing felt the Chains etc with their Hands on the Out-side of the Lady’s Apparel, and by their Linguist modestly desired the Gentlewomen to take ’em off and surrender ’em. This I mention as a Proof of our Sailors Modesty, and in respect to Mr Connely and Mr Selkirk, the late Governour of Juan Fernandoes.

  So Woodes Rogers claimed in his edited journal. These men, who had been at sea for eight frustrating months and, in Selkirk’s case, marooned alone for four and a half years, who could not be controlled ‘as soon as the first piece was fired’, who had drunk a good deal of liquor, smashed their way into churches with iron crowbars and torched people’s houses, none the less when it came to sexual civility, defied the customs of war and behaved with modesty and respect as they groped women’s bodies to steal their jewels.

  They stripped them of gold chains, earrings and jewels to the value of a thousand pounds. Then they moved on to other houses where there were other women. When they returned down river they called again on ‘these charming prisoners’.

  The Spaniards pleaded with the English to leave. They could not defend this town. They offered 30,000 Pieces of Eight and all that had been looted, in return for their barks and hostages. They gave an assurance of payment in twelve days. Rogers told them they would see the whole town on fire if they did not pay up in six.

  The Spaniards conceded defeat. An Agreement was signed. The English marched to their boats ‘with Colours flying’. Rogers picked up many ‘Pistils, Cutlashes and Pole-axes, which shewed that our Men were grown very careless, weak and weary of being Soldiers and that ‘twas time to be gone from hence’.

  The air was humid and dense with mosquitoes. The soldiers were fatigued. It was hard for them to drag their guns out of the mud to the boats. Sixty men hoisted them to their shoulders on a bamboo frame then waded to the boats through the swamps. They sailed away on 28 April with Drums, Trumpets and Guns and ‘Shew and Noise’. The citizens of Guayaquil returned to what was left of their town.

  1709 A Melancholy Time

  IT WAS a Pyrrhic victory for the privateers. John Martin had been killed by a shell, which split as he fired it from a mortar. Lieutenant William Stretton’s pistol went off and shot him in the leg. In the dark a watchman shot Hugh Tidcomb who could not give the password. John Gabriel, a Dutchman, became paralysed with drink and passed out in a Spaniard’s house. And within days, one hundred and forty men were sick with high fevers and rasping thirsts. Rogers thought they had ‘contagious Distemper’, caught from the corpses in the Guayaquil churches. Probably they had malaria.

  It was a ‘melancholy Time’. There were not enough medicines to attempt a cure. The men died, despite the efforts of John Ballett and James Wasse, who bled them and dosed them with alcohol and spices: Samuel Hopkins, the apothecary, who had read prayers every day, Thomas Hughes ‘a very good sailor’, George Underhill, twenty-one and good at mathematics, John English, Laurence Carney, Jacob Scrouder, Edward Donne, Peter Marshall, Paunceford Wall…

  Rogers heard that ‘7 stout Ships well mann’d’ were near. He stranded more prisoners in a boat, then sailed north. There was acrimony among the officers about the attack on Guayaquil. Rogers accused Carleton Vanbrugh of having stayed on ship to eat his dinner ‘& so to avoid by delay the Danger, by landing after the others’. Vanbrugh said Rogers ‘turn’d his back on ye Enemy … under some sham Pretences of our mens being like to shoot him in the Back &c’.†

  Nor did the purloined provisions last. There was soon a desperate shortage of fresh water, the bread and biscuit were ‘so full of Worms that it’s hardly fit for Use’, rats ate the flour. ‘We are so weak’ Woodes Rogers wrote in June,

  that should we meet an Enemy in this Condition, we could make but a mean Defence. Everything looks dull and discouraging, but it’s vain to look back or repine in these Parts.†

  Thus the life of conquest, the power and glory of slaughter, the pillage, arson, rape and bluster of war. On Selkirk’s Island it was autumn and leaves turned gold.

  1709 Loathsome Negroes, Whips and Pickles

  THE Duke, Dutchess and Marquess cruised on, taking prizes and plunder as they could. The lists grew long of worldly goods accrued: From a ship called the St Philippe they purloined one dozen silver buttons, a Woman’s black Vale, one red silk petticoat, one old frock, one old quilt, two ladles, three Spindles, one old good-for-nothing Shirt, a pouch of fishing tackle, a brass pan, a bag of potatoes, a prick of tobacco, four pairs of drawers and a map book.

  The Spaniards, ‘after they knew the English were in ye Seas’, embargoed all ships from carrying money, valuables or provisions. For the privateers, meagre rations led to pilfering and punishment. Two who stole water were ‘whipped and pickled’ – salt and vinegar was rubbed into their open weals. The storeroom steward on the Duke slept with the door key tied to his penis. A light-fingered thief got it off him and took bread and sugar. He was ‘severely whipt at the Geers and put in Irons’.

  And still the men dreamed of the Manila ship and feared it would pass unseen. The intention was to careen the ships at the Galapagos Islands in readiness for this big fight. But Dampier, ‘our Pilot’, could not locate them. He missed them by 300 miles then would not admit his mistake. ‘Capt. Dampier has been here, but it’s a long Time ago’ Woodes Rogers wrote.

  On 13 June, the ships stopped at Gorgona Island. Monkeys and baboons were shot and cooked as fricassees and broth. ‘Capt Dampier says he never eat any thing in London that seemed more delicious to him than a Monkey or Baboon.’ Seven black prisoners ran into the snake-infested woods, in preference to shipboard life with their masters. One got bitten on the leg by a small speckled snake and died within twelve hours. Another was caught, hauled back to the ship and put in leg irons. He broke free, swam to the shore and hid again. John Edwards ‘died of a Complication of Scurvey and the Pox which he got from a loathsome Negro’, who was then given to the prisoners, ‘that she might do no further Mischief on board’.

  Another loathsome Negro ‘was deliver’d of a Girl of a tawny Colour’ assisted by the midwifery skills of James Wasse and a quantity of Peruvian wine.

  To prevent the other she Negro (call’d Daphne) from being debauch’d in our Ship I [Woodes Rogers] gave h
er a strict Charge to be modest, with Threats of severe Punishment, if she was found otherwise. One of the Dutchess’s black Nymphs having transgressed this Way was lately whip’d at the Capston.

  In an effort to ward off diverse mutinies and quell cabals, protests and rebellions, shares of plunder were made. The men were given clothes, silver-handled swords, buckles and snuffboxes, rings and gold chains. Such handouts only temporarily assuaged. Resentment at officers being accorded ten shares more than ordinary seamen led to more trouble. Mutineers threatened to take over the Marquess, load it with plunder from the Dutchess, and let officers like Thomas Dover and Stephen Courtney ‘goe to ye Divell’.

  They swore God dam them thare should bee noe more Comittees nor Councell. Hee that had ye Longest sword should carray it. And his woard should be ye Law.†

  There were too many offenders to punish in chains. Cooperation was bought with further adjustments to the percentage division of spoils.

  1709 A Little World Within Itself

  SELKIRK TOOK no part in intrigues and feuds. He carried out all tasks assigned to him. He knew the distinction between a share of plunder and dispossession. And he knew to avoid the punishment that could ensue from rebellious display. He had survived The Island, he intended to survive the voyage home.

  The privateers chanced on the Galapagos Islands on 10 September 1709. They saw daunting craters, and mountains rising to 4000 feet. Simon Hatley, Third Mate on the Duke, went with four others in a prize bark to search for fresh water. He disappeared and did not respond to guns and lights. Selkirk was sent in a boat to look for him. He soon returned. Whatever Hatley’s fate, he did not want it for himself.*

  The men crammed all available boats with giant tortoises (Testudo nigra), creatures that liked to wallow in mud, gulp great quantities of water and feed on succulent cacti, pale green lichen, leaves and berries.

  It took eight men to lift a particularly large one, that weighed seven hundred pounds. They hacked it out of its shell, then ate it stewed ‘but the Flesh never boils tender’. It yielded two hundred pounds of meat. Stacked on their backs, the tortoises stayed alive depressingly long. They laid eggs on the ships’ decks ‘about the bigness of a Goose’s Egg, white with a large thick shell’.†

  One hundred and twenty years after the Duke and Dutchess, a young British naturalist, Charles Darwin, went with HMS Beagle on a surveying voyage round the world. He collected, observed and tried to interpret the flora, fauna and rocks that he found. His expedition took five years and covered 40,000 miles.

  The Galapagos Islands, with their endemic species, held for him quintessential proof of evolution. He observed the giant tortoises, the thirteen kinds of finches, the hawks, owls, flycatchers, lizards and guanos. Why, he wondered, did finches and tortoises show variation from island to island, so that it was possible to tell which particular island a tortoise came from. It seemed to him that species might share a common ancestor. He saw each island as ‘a little world within itself where we are brought near to that great fact – that mystery of mysteries – the first appearance of new beings on this earth.’

  ‘We may be all netted together’ he wrote. Common to all living things was the struggle to survive. Nature was mutable and the past and present interdependent:

  This wonderful relationship between the dead and the living will, I do not doubt, throw more light on the appearance of organic beings on our earth and their disappearance from it than any other class of facts.†

  No such sense of affinity to the past or present afflicted the privateers. Their guiding creed was plunder. They ate the alien hares, turtle doves, guanos, parrots and pigeons. They tormented the tortoises and complained of their taste. ‘These Creatures are the ugliest in Nature’ Rogers wrote. But with rough curiosity, he too wondered how they had arrived on the Islands: ‘because they can’t come of themselves, and none of that sort are to be found in the Main’. The trumpeter of the Dutchess and another man rode around on the back of a particularly large one, for a bit of fun.

  1709 Crack a Commandment

  WOODES ROGERS did not want to fight the Manila galleon with ‘crowded and pestered’ ships. He had too many ‘Useless Negroes’ on board. They ate food and took up space. Those useful as slaves or drudges, or desirable for sex, were kept. Others were herded together to be traded for provisions. Edward Cooke and Edward Frye, who with Woodes Rogers’ brother John had fought the Marquess ‘when in the Hands of the Spaniards’, were as their reward given ‘the Black Boy Dublin and the Black Boy Emmanuel’ to use as they liked.†

  ‘Mr Selkirk’s Bark was cleared to carry our Prisoners to the Main, who, being 72 in Number, were very chargeable to maintain.’† Selkirk took them in the Increase to Tacames, a remote bay with a tiny village. Two pinnaces with armed men escorted him. The useless Negroes were sold. It was Selkirk’s task to discard them on yet another unfamiliar shore. He returned with payment of black cattle, hogs, goats, limes and plantains.

  The Padre of the Marquess was also put ashore and given

  as he desir’d, the prettiest young Female Negro we had in the Prize with some Bays, Linnen and other thing. He parted with us extremely pleas’d and leering under his Hood upon his black Female Angel. We doubt he will crack a Commandment with her, and wipe off the Sin with the Church’s Indulgence.

  Many commandments were cracked on this voyage round the world. Piety was not at its core.

  The little squadron sailed north for Cape St Lucas, at the southern tip of California. There the privateers were to watch and wait for the Manila ship ‘whose wealth on board her we hope will prompt every Man to use his utmost Conduct and Bravery to conquer’. It was at St Lucas that Thomas Cavendish in November 1587 had captured the Santa Ana, loaded with silks and damasks and gold.

  November passed and most of December. The ships cruised the coast without a glimpse of the longed-for prize. The men became ‘melancholy and dispirited’. The boredom was terrible. Day after day of the waste of the ocean. No comfort on the ships. No point to this life. For Selkirk it was a familiar theme: ‘The scarlet shafts of sunrise but no sail.’ He was inured to empty time passing. To the elusiveness of the imagined ship. But the less hardened men measured the days by their impatience. They gave up hope and were eager to head home:

  Computing our poor stock of Provisions left, we found there was no possibillity of continuing the Cruise any longer, but an absolute Necessity of getting into a Harbour to Refitt, and be gone for the Indies with all Expedition imaginable. Wch being agreed upon, we began to reflect heavily on our Misfortunes.†

  At a Council Meeting on 20 December the men voted to sail east, without delay, to the Island of Guam and then to the Indies and home. Their fear was that if they could not reach Guam in good time, or if they lost their way, or met with danger or hostility, with such scant supplies as they had, they could not survive. Morale was at its lowest ebb. This voyage was another failure. The best that could be hoped for was to return home alive and defeated, a mission unaccomplished, devoid of glory, with nothing to show for hardship endured.

  And then at about nine in the morning on 21 December, amid preparations for the voyage home, ‘to our great and joyful Surprize’, the man at the masthead cried out that he saw a sail. It was the Manila galleon, the treasure ship they had all ‘so impatiently waited for and despair’d of seeing’.

  1709 Tanbes, Sannoes and Charroadorees

  THE SHIP of their desperation was called Nuestra Senora de la Encarnacion Disengano. Dampier put its value at a million pounds sterling. It was a frigate of 400 tons with 20 cannon, 20 small guns, and 193 men on board. Its commander, Jean Pichberty, was brother-in-law of the French Governor in Spain. Its crew thought themselves near the end of a gruelling eight-month journey. To avoid devastating easterly winds they had sailed far north into freezing waters. They were weak from scurvy, cold, and lack of food.

  There was no liquor left on the Duke, Dutchess or Marquess. The men were primed for battle with drinking chocolate
and prayers. Hunger and hardship made them a determined enemy. This was the prize they would die to take. This was why they were 7000 miles from home, on starvation rations in a shit-encrusted, rat-infested tub.

  All day of 21 December and all through that night the Duke closed on its prey. The intention was to board it at dawn. To defend itself the Disengano hung barrels filled with explosives from each yardarm. The Duke and Marquess began to bombard it at eight in the morning. The Dutchess could not get near – there was not enough wind. The battle lasted three hours. ‘The Enemy fired her Stern Chase upon us first’ Woodes Rogers wrote

  which we return’d with our Fore Chase several times, till we came nearer, and when close aboard each other, we gave her several Broadsides, plying our Small Arms very briskly, which they return’d as thick a while but did not ply their great Guns half so fast as we. After some time we shot a little ahead of them, lay thwart her Hawse close aboard, and plyed them so warmly that she soon struck her Colours two thirds down. By this time the Dutchess came up, and fired about 5 Guns with a Volley of Small Shot, but the Enemy having submitted, made no Return.

  On the Disengano, twenty men were killed, wounded by gunfire or ‘blown up and burnt with Powder’. On the Duke, Woodes Rogers was shot in the face by a musket ball ‘in att my Mouth, and out att my left Cheek’. Part of his upper jaw and several of his teeth fell out on deck. In the night he swallowed a lump of jawbone clogged in his throat. The only other casualty among the privateers was an Irishman, William Powell, who got wounded in his bottom.

  So, with what were considered light casualties, the galleon was taken. It was only the second time in 120 years that the English had achieved this feat. The Disengano’s cargo was of gold dust, gold plate and coins, spices, musk, beeswax and textiles. Among its china was a service for Queen Maria Luisa of Spain. There were calicos, chintzes and silks, 5,806 fans, 1084 pairs of cotton stockings and 37 silk gowns. There were quantities of ploughshares and shoes for mules. There were oil paintings of the Virgin Mary, jars of sugar candy, a chest of priests’ vestments, Spanish coconuts, tanned goatskins, handbells and bugles, old books, a large looking glass, pictures, snuffboxes, pontificals for the new Archbishop of Lima, and a supply of tanbes, sannoes, charroadorees, palampores, paunches, mulmuls, humhums, nucaneas, sooseys and basts and ‘several parcels of odd things’.† Such were the treasures of the material world, the stuff of avarice and endeavour, the reward for the fight.