Indiaman lost her fore-top-mast, and made the signal for the fleet to
shorten sail. Being now in near 60 deg. N. latitude, we had no night,
but cold drizzling weather; yet nothing to compare to the cold in the
same latitude in going round Cape Horn southward; for there the cold was
so intense that many of our men sickened; and yet we were here and at
Cape Horn much about the same time of the year, allowing for the
difference of the two climates.
On the 14th, we came in sight of Bera, and spoke with a Danish ship
bound to Dublin, who told us the war still continued, and that he had
spoke a day or two before with a Dutch squadron of 10 men-of-war, and
three victuallers, lying off Shetland to wait for us; so that by keeping
between that and Fair Island, we could not possibly miss seeing them.
Next day we came in sight of them, when all the fleet saluted the
Commodore, and he made the signal for all the Commanders to come aboard
of him for sailing orders. The Captains Courtney and Dover went
accordingly, and were courteously received, and given to understand,
that they might be supplied with whatever provisions they stood in need
of, on paying for the same, he having brought victuallers from Holland
for that purpose. We lay off Shetland some days, and caught ling and cod
in abundance, during which time the Shetlanders came off to us, and
brought fowls and sheep, which we purchased at much cheaper rates than
of our Dutch victuallers.
We were now very sickly, having been more than three months in our
passage from the Cape to this place; and we were besides very peevish
and quarrelsome among ourselves; now that we came near home, jealousies
arose about embezzlements. The agents had been to the Duke to demand the
gold, plate, pearl, and jewels, on board; and they were returned not
very well satisfied with their reception. But, while these disputes were
at their height, orders were given to set sail. In the mean time letters
were dispatched to London and Amsterdam, acquainting the owners with our
progress, and present situation, and desiring their instructions to
regulate our future proceedings. Before we left Shetland we took four
hogsheads of beer on board from the Dutch Commodore, which served us
till we arrived on the 23d in sight of Holland, in the evening of which
day we came to an anchor in the Texel road.
On the 27th, we received a general letter from our owners, dated,
Bristol, June 6th, 1711, in which they acquainted us, that the
East-India Company were incensed against us, and had appointed a secret
committee to inspect their charter as to privileges; and that they were
resolved to take all advantages, in case of the least infringement on
what they pretended to be their exclusive right of trading to the
East-Indies. This letter likewise recommended the greatest caution on
our part with regard to the Dutch East-India Company; for from that
Company as well as from our own, they had reason to fear all possible
obstruction. It was therefore most strictly enjoined, that neither
officer nor sailor should, on any pretence whatever, be suffered to take
any goods on shore; nor were we to allow any stranger to come on board
to purchase the least trifle; for that, if any such thing should be
proved, the whole cargo would be forfeited.
It was a great relief to us, when, on the 5th of August, Mr. Hollidge,
one of our principal owners came on board us; for, though we kept the
strictest watch, it was hardly possible to prevent the sailors from
running things ashore in the night. On this gentleman’s arrival, it was
judged necessary to draw up a short account of our voyage from the
journals of the respective Commanders, and an affidavit was made to the
truth of it. In this memorial we set forth, that we went out as private
men-of-war, and not as trading ships; and that no sort of merchandize
was shipped on board our ships at any of the islands or ports we touched
at in the East Indies, nor any traffic carried on there, other than for
necessaries and provisions for the ships and ships company. To this all
the officers and most of the seamen voluntarily swore and set their
hands. We continued in Holland, without any remarkable event, till the
30th of September, 1711, when we sailed from the Texel, under convoy of
her Majesty’s ships, Essex, Canterbury, Medway, and Dullidge, and
anchored in the Downs on the 2d of October. On the 13th, the Duke and
Dutchess came up to Eriff, where the Batchelor had been moored some time
before: and here all the ships continued till they were unloaded. The
produce of the cargo, and the treasure brought home in these ships, were
supposed to amount to between 3 and 400,000l. for, after all charges of
convoy, agency, law-suits, embezzlements, of which great complaint was
made, and of every kind of thievery practised in such cases, the nett
profits, that were afterwards fairly divided, amounted to 170,000l.
Among the disasters that befel the adventurers in this voyage, that of
losing Mr. Hatley, with his little crew, near the islands of
Gallapagoes, was most to be deplored; yet, though his death was supposed
to be certain, having little or no provisions on board, and still less
water, after the conclusion of the war, he returned home, to the
astonishment of all who knew him. It then appeared, that, when he parted
company with the Duke, having no resource, he made directly for the
main; and, falling in with Cape Passao, his little crew almost famished,
and himself in a miserable weak condition, he formed the resolution,
with the consent of his people, to surrender themselves prisoners to the
enemy: but, unfortunately, the enemy to whom they surrendered were not
the civilized Spaniards, but a mixed breed of Indians and Mulattos, who
bore an implacable hatred to all white men, from a rooted aversion to
the Spanish tyranny. These wretches used their helpless prisoners
barbarously, tied their hands behind them, and lashed them to posts,
where they half-flead them with whips; and most certainly would have
tortured them to death, had it not been for the interposition of their
priest, to whom these half-heathen converts pay great respect. Being, by
the humanity of this good Padre, rescued out of the hands of those
barbarians, and conveyed to a Spanish settlement, Mr. Hatley was
received with kindness, and used with much civility; and, when peace was
declared, was set at liberty, and assisted to return to his country,
where he afterwards engaged in a second expedition to the same seas, and
again fell into the hands of the same enemy.
[Illustration: _M^r Hatley & his Small Crew Cruelly Whip’d by y^e
Savage Indians but are Saved by a Priest._]
We have not yet been able to learn the future proceedings of the
officers who conducted this enterprize. It is more than probable, that,
having enriched themselves by the voyage, they retired and lived
private. We find, indeed, a Mr. Cooke engaged in a succeeding voyage,
but it does not appear that it was the Captain Cooke of whose voyage we
have just given an account. Mr. Hatley, indeed, who fell into the hands
of the Spaniards, was employed as second Captain under Shelvock, and of
him we shall have occasion to speak largely hereafter.
THE
VOYAGE
OF
CAPTAIN CLIPPERTON
ROUND THE WORLD.
Captain John Clipperton (or, as some write, Clippington) was born at
Yarmouth, in the county of Norfolk; and his friends being most of them
sea-fearing people, he was from his infancy bred up a mariner. His
disposition naturally inclining him to ramble, he embraced every
opportunity to embark in new voyages, and there was hardly a corner of
the earth which he had not visited before he was thirty years of age.
When he was made choice of to take the command of the expedition of
which we are now to give an account, he was esteemed, and that perhaps
justly, the most experienced seaman of his time. He had been frequently
in the East and West Indies; had been in the Northern and Mediterranean
Seas, and had once surrounded the whole globe. He was that Clippington,
who, in 1704, with a bark, of only 10 tons, two masts, two square-sails,
two pattararoes, and 21 men, left Captain Dampier on the coast of
Mexico; and, after insulting Rio Leon, where he took two Spanish ships
at anchor, one of which was ransomed for 4000 pieces of eight, and after
visiting the gulph of Salinas, where he cleaned and refitted his little
bark, undertook to sail in her from that coast round half the globe; a
great part of which he performed in a track never before attempted,
pursuing his course in the 18th degree of north latitude, which former
navigators had pursued after each other in the 13th; and, in that
direction, he reached the Philippines in 54 days, without seeing land,
or meeting with any cross accident to interrupt his passage. While he
was embarrassed among those islands, there came off a canoe with a friar
on board, to enquire concerning so uncommon a vessel, the like of which
was never seen before in those seas. He detained the friar till his crew
were furnished with fresh provisions, and then released him.
From the Philippines he steered to Pulo Condore, where he expected to
have met with an English settlement; but, to his great mortification, he
there learnt, that, some time before his arrival, the English had been
all murdered by their Indian guards. Upon this melancholy news, he bore
away for Macao, a port in the possession of the Portuguese, near the
mouth of the river Canton, in China, already frequently mentioned, and
lately made famous by the arrival of some Russian adventurers from
Kampschatka, who, by that navigation, have confirmed the reality of a
north-east passage to the coasts of China. At this port he arrived,
where Shelvock affirms that near half his crew were hanged for pirates,
that the rest escaped, some to one place, and some to another; that
Clipperton himself, being deprived of his little boat, found means to
get on board an English East Indiaman at Canton, and arrived in England
in 1706.
Clipperton was a blunt, rough, free-spoken sailor, had not much the air
of a gentleman, and therefore never affected it; was free and easy among
his seamen; and, though he was passionate, he was soon appeased, and, if
in the wrong, ever ready to acknowledge his error, and to repair any
injury his hasty temper betrayed him to commit. He had a strict regard
to what he thought his duty, and was not to be diverted from the
principles of moderation, which ever inclined him to acts of mercy and
humanity towards those over whom the chance of war gave him the
superiority. Having returned almost destitute from his first voyage
round the world, he settled in the north of Ireland, to which retreat he
was traced, after more than twelve years retirement, and persuaded to
undertake this second voyage, as a means to repair his broken fortune.
The success that had attended the voyage of the Duke and Dutchess to the
South Seas under the command of Captain Rogers, had revived the spirit
of privateering, which, by former miscarriages, had been reduced to a
very low ebb. Dampier, as has already been noticed, was unable, with all
his skill and all his experience, to persuade the London merchants to
engage in a second expedition into those seas, after having failed in
the first, and was obliged to apply to Bristol to raise a new company of
adventurers to second his views; but such is the nature of mankind, that
emulous, not to say envious, of the success of others, they are ever
ready to croud the road that has led to fortune, without considering how
unfit they are to undertake the journey. The owners of the Duke and
Dutchess had been particularly careful to make choice of gentlemen, not
only of ability, to conduct the voyage which proved so successful, but
who also had confidence in, and friendship for, each other; and yet,
with all this care and caution, it was with the greatest difficulty in
the world that they were persuaded to keep together, and to act in
concert. On the contrary, the Commanders in the present expedition, were
gentlemen of opposite tempers, opposite views, and already, before they
set out, engaged in opposite parties; it was therefore very unlikely
that two such Commanders should unite in one common interest, or that
the one should share the danger where the other was to reap the glory.
The event will shew, that the miscarriage of this enterprize was not
more owing to the mistakes in the voyage, than in the wrong setting out.
The impatience of the undertakers was so great, and their confidence of
making themselves rich by the plunder of the Spaniards so certain, that,
unwilling to trust to an eventual rupture between Great Britain and
Spain, they took occasion, from the war that then subsisted between the
Emperor and Spain, to apply to the Imperial Court for a commission to
carry their plan of hostilities into execution. With this view, having
equipped two stout ships, the _Success_ and the _Speedwell_, it was
thought necessary to find out some gentleman who had served on board the
royal navy, that might take upon him the command of the expedition, and
be able to act with propriety in a joint commission, wherein Flemish
soldiers and English sailors were to be united in the same design.
For this difficult task no man was thought more fit than Captain George
Shelvock, who had been bred from his childhood in the royal navy, had
been thirty years in the service, and arrived at the rank of First
Lieutenant of one of his Majesty’s ships of war, which he had borne with
great reputation; was in his person and behaviour a fine gentleman, and
was confessedly a very expert and able seaman. He was, besides, of quick
parts, ready speech, and very winning address, but withal rather too
sensible of his own accomplishments. This gentleman the undertakers
thought themselves happy in having found; and they accordingly not only
invested him with the command, but entrusted to him the grand business
of the commission, and for that purpose he received instructions to
repair to Ostend with the Speedwell, and there, as soon as the
commission was obtained, to take on board the complement of Flemings
that were to give countenance to the undertaking; and to join the
Success in the Downs, which there lay ready under the command of Capt.
Mitchell. On this occasion the names of the ships were changed; the
_Success_ was called the _Prince Eugene_, and the _Speedwell_ the
_Starenberg_, in compliment to the Prince and the Imperial Prime
Minister. Captain Shelvock was, besides, instructed to lay in such a
stock of wines and spirituous liquors, as he should judge sufficient for
the use of both ships in a voyage where such refreshments would be
absolutely necessary, and without which the climate of Cape Horne could
hardly be endured.
In this business, however, the Captain gave some disgust. He was either
too extravagant, too ostentatious, or too remiss; and the voyage which
the owners had so much at heart, was thought already to have suffered by
unnecessary delay. But, what was still worse, the Flemish soldiers, 90
in number, commanded by their own officers, had hardly arrived in the
Downs before they became so insolent, that it was presently discovered,
that the scheme of their acting in concert with English sailors was
utterly impracticable: so that after all this delay and expence, the
commission was returned, the Flemish soldiers discharged, and a new plan
formed, which gave the first occasion to those dissentions that in the
end proved the ruin of the voyage.
Captain Shelvock’s management had much lessened his credit, and his
friends were unable to support his interest. The reason for his
advancement no longer existed; and it was found, that the discipline to
which he had been accustomed on board the royal navy, was not the
discipline to be practised on board privateers. It was necessary,
therefore, as the circumstances of things were changed, war with Spain
declared, and no extraordinary accomplishment required, to look out for
an officer to take the command, who had experience in the business in
which he was to be employed; who knew the western coasts of America, and
was acquainted with the genius of the people with whom he was to
contend, as well as the tempers of those with whom he was to attack.
On this new regulation, the character of Captain Clipperton was called
to mind. He was known to some of the owners, and strongly recommended by
other merchants, as of all men then living the fittest to be entrusted
with the conduct of such an expedition. The owners, who had already
expended more than 15,000l. began to consider their own interest without
respect to persons; and, therefore, they sought out and invested Captain
Clipperton with the chief command, continuing Captain Shelvock Commander
of the Speedwell, and appointing Captain Mitchell second to Captain
Clipperton, and Captain Hatley second Captain to Shelvock. The ships
were restored to their former names, an English commission procured for
the Commanders, and every thing prepared while the ships lay in the
Downs for their immediate departure.
The instructions given to the respective Commanders were, in substance,
the same with those given to the Commanders of the Duke and Dutchess,
strongly recommending unanimity. But this precaution proved wholly
useless. The expedition wore an unfortunate aspect from the beginning.
The ships were obliged to lie three months at Plymouth, waiting for a
wind. Factions were in the mean time formed, in which the crews as well
as the Commanders were involved. Captain Shelvock highly resented the
affront that had been offered in depriving him of the chief command; and
Captain Clipperton, being a boisterous man, having himself strong
passions, and not having art to conceal them, knowing Captain Shelvock’s
prejudices, nothing but dissention and discord prevailed. Every post
brought the owners fresh complaints; and every post carried fresh
reproofs to the Commanders. In this humour the parties continued while
the ships lay at Plymouth. At length,
On the 13th of February, 1719, the Success, of 36 guns, and 180 men,
commanded by Captain Clipperton, and the Speedwell, of 24 guns, and 106
men, of which Captain Shelvock was Commander, sailed with a fair wind;
but, by an unaccountable over-sight, the Speedwell had on board the
whole stock of wine and brandy, and the Success the greatest share of
other stores.
For several days they had fresh gales, squally, with rain, and the
Success was often obliged to shorten sail for the Speedwell. Captain
Shelvock tells us, that he complained to Captain Clipperton of the
crankness of his ship, and desired him to send for his wine and brandy,
that he might strike down some of his guns into the hold, which would
enable him to sail much better than he did: but this, it seems, was
neglected; a proof that Clipperton had no intention to desert the
Speedwell, though it was a slight, which Shelvock could not but resent.
On the 19th, a violent storm arose, which obliged both ships to take in
their top-sails. The gale increasing, the Success made a signal for the
Speedwell to bring to; which Captain Shelvock readily obeyed; and, by
eleven at night, both ships were under bare poles. On the 20th, in the
afternoon, the storm abated, and Captain Clipperton made sail, steering
S. by E. whereas Captain Shelvock, according to his journal, stood
north-west; so that from this day they never saw each other, till they
met in the South Seas by mere accident. Here then properly begins the
history of Captain Clipperton’s voyage round the world. He was now at
sea without liquors, and without his consort. The first place of
rendezvous appointed by them, was the Canary Islands; and, therefore, he
sailed thither, and arrived at Gomera on the 5th of March. Having taken
in some wine and refreshments, for which he had great occasion, he
continued cruising at the Canaries ten days for his consort; but,
missing her here, he continued his voyage to the next place of
rendezvous, at the Cape de Verd or Green islands.
The former islands, called by the ancients the Fortunate Islands, from
their fertility and temperate air, were discovered by the Spaniards in
1402, who named them the Canaries, or the Islands of Dogs, because no
other creatures were found on them. They are eight in number. The Great
Canary is the largest, is far distant from the others, and contains 9000
inhabitants. It is the seat of the Bishop, the Inquisition, and of the
Council Royal. There is a mountain on the Teneriff, called the Pike of
Teneriff, which, according to the common opinion, is the highest in the
world. It may be distinctly seen at sixty leagues distance. It is three
days journey to the top of it, which, except in the months of July and
August, is always covered with snow. Fero is one of the largest, but so
dry, that there is not one drop of fresh water to be found in it, except
in a few places by the sea-side: but Providence has furnished a supply
to remedy that inconvenience; for there grows all over this island a
sort of tree, which is pretty large, and full of leaves, that are always
green, and covered with a little cloud that wets the leaves by its dew,
so that a fine clear water distills from them into little pails, which
the inhabitants set to catch it. This water falls in such quantities,
that it not only abundantly supplies the necessity of the people, but it
is sufficient also to water the cattle. The Canaries in general are very
fertile, and abound with wine that is transported into all parts of the
world. On the right-hand of those islands, about 100 leagues off, the
mariners very often perceived an island named St. Baranora, inhabited,
they say, by Christians; but no man can tell of what denomination they
are, nor what language they speak. The Spaniards have often attempted to
enter it, but could never find the way; which has raised an opinion in
the people, that it is an inchanted island.
On the 21st they saw St. Vincent’s, and the next morning anchored in the
bay. Here they spent ten days cruising in hopes of meeting with their
consort, but in vain; which so disheartened the crew, that Capt.
Clipperton found it difficult to persuade them to continue the voyage
for the Straits of Magellan, without wine or brandy to keep up their
spirits in that uncomfortable navigation. Some are of opinion, that
these islands were called Green Islands from the green Cape of Africa,
over-against which they lie; others, because the sea that surrounds them
is so covered with a green herb, that you can hardly see the water; nor
can ships sail through it, but with a stiff gale of wind. It produces
berries, much like white gooseberries; but without taste. Nobody can
tell how it grows; for there is no ground where it floats upon the
water, and it cannot come from the bottom, the sea being in many places
unfathomable.