_The Capture of Puerto Velo, and its Results._
The Torture.--Sickness and Misery.--Measures of the Governor of
Panama.--The Ambuscade.--Awful Defeat of the Spaniards.--Ferocity
of the Pirates.--Strange Correspondence.--Exchange of
Courtesies.--Return to Cuba, and Division of the Spoil.--Wild
Orgies at Jamaica.--Complicity of the British Government
with the Pirates.--The New Enterprise.--Arrival of the
Oxford.--Destruction of the Cerf Volant.--Rendezvous at Samona.
The wretched citizens of the captured city of Puerto Velo were exposed
to every species of torture to force from them the discovery of where
their riches were concealed. Many of them had no knowledge they could
give of any hidden treasure. Day after day the most horrid scenes
of cruelty were enacted. Multitudes of men and women died under the
torture. For fifteen days the pirates remained amidst the ruins they
had created.
But in this world blows are seldom given without others being received
in return. Sickness came, with languor, pain, and groans of agony.
The deathbed is cheerless enough even when surrounded with all the
attentions of sympathy and love and tender care. To these wretched
men, in their homelessness and their terrible guilt, death must indeed
have come as the king of terrors. A painful, pestilential disease
seized them. Surrounded by the oaths and the clamor of demoniac men
they passed to the seat of final judgment.
In consequence of the unhealthiness of the climate at Puerto Velo, many
of the merchants, who had their warehouses at that port, resided in the
far more attractive city of Panama, but a few leagues distant, on the
Pacific coast. The governor of the province also resided at Panama.
Morgan sent two prisoners to the city to say to the residents there
that unless one hundred thousand dollars were sent to him he would lay
Puerto Velo in ashes.
But the governor had already heard of the arrival of the pirates. He
had collected an armed force, and was on the march to cut off their
retreat. In the mean time the vessels were brought up into the harbor
and were laden with the plunder. The ramparts were repaired, the
guns remounted, and all things put in readiness to repel an attack.
Every day many were put to the torture. Some died under the terrible
infliction. Many were maimed for life.
Hearing that the governor was on the march to attack them, Morgan
placed himself at the head of a hundred of his most determined men,
and marched forward to meet the foe. Every man was armed, in pirate
fashion, with a musket, several pistols in his belt, and a keen-edged
sabre. At a few leagues from the city they came to a narrow defile,
along whose circuitous path but two could march abreast. The tangled
thicket was on each side, with gigantic trees, and huge rocks buried in
the luxuriant verdure of the tropics. Here a whole army might lie in
impenetrable concealment.
And here Morgan, with great skill, placed his troops. Every man took
a position where he could have perfect command of some portion of the
track. With his hatchet he cut a loop-hole through the dense growth of
shrubs and interlacing vines. Thus, while quite invisible, he could
take deliberate aim. They were to wait in perfect silence until the
winding defile was filled with unsuspecting troops. Then, at a signal
from Morgan, every man was to fire. And every man was to take such aim
as to be sure that his bullet would strike down his victim.
The Spaniards, four or five hundred in number, soon appeared in rapid
march. Anticipating a bloody struggle with the pirates behind their
ramparts, they had no thought that they would leave such vantage-ground
to march forth to the encounter. Their only fear was that the pirates
might rush to their ships and thus escape. Hurrying heedlessly along,
they had filled the labyrinthine trail, when the deadly signal was
given. One hundred muskets were instantaneously exploded. One hundred
bullets were sent on their fatal mission. One hundred Spaniards were
either struck down in instantaneous death or wounded.
There was no time for thought; no time to rally. The case was clear.
The defeat was entire and remediless. Rapidly the pirates reloaded and
kept up a continuous fire. The Spaniards discharged their muskets at
random, hitting no one. Pell-mell, in awful confusion, they turned, and
struggling against their own numbers, rushed, as best they could, from
the defile. The narrow path was strewed with the dying and the dead.
With a shattered and bleeding remnant the governor returned to Panama
for reënforcements.
Morgan and his men, wishing that their deeds should strike terror
all around, emerged from their covert, dispatched the wounded with
pistol-shots or sabre-thrusts, searched the pockets of the dead, and,
leaving their bodies unburied, returned in triumph to their comrades.
In triumph! But what a triumph! They had now been fifteen days in
Puerto Velo. Famine and disease were assailing them with more cruel
attacks than sabre or pistol can inflict. Recklessly they had wasted
their provisions. They could not eat their gold or their silver, or the
spoil which they had stored away in the holds of their ships. They had
already consumed the mules and the horses. Their blood, inflamed by
debaucheries and almost boiling beneath a meridian sun, produced the
most loathsome and painful disorders. The slightest wound would fester
and cause death. No wonder they were reckless. Better far to die than
to live in such misery. This was the triumph to which the pirate Morgan
returned.
The Spanish prisoners suffered still more than their captors. Crowded
together in apartments whose awful impurity tainted the air; deprived
of every comfort; witnessing intense sufferings which they could
not alleviate, but which they were compelled to share; despondent,
starving, dying, there was for them no relief but such as death gives.
The Spanish governor, who had shown such utter want of military ability
in marching into the ambuscade, was as self-conceited and boastful as
he was incompetent. Notwithstanding his ignominious repulse, he sent to
Morgan the following message:
“If you do not immediately withdraw, with your ships, from Porto Velo,
I will march upon you with a resistless force. You shall receive no
quarter. Every man shall be put to death.”
Morgan sent back the reply, “If you do not immediately send me one
hundred and eighty thousand dollars in gold, I will lay every building
in Puerto Velo in ashes; I will blow up the forts; and I will put every
captive I have to the sword, man, woman, and child.”
The pride of the governor would not allow him to purchase the retreat
of the pirates. He sent to Carthagena imploring that some ships might
be sent from there to block up the pirates in the river. But they had
no sufficient force to make the attempt. The citizens were very anxious
to have the money sent. But the governor kept them in suspense in hopes
of gaining time.
“He was deaf and obdurate to all the entreaties of the citizens, who
sent to inform him that the pirates were not men, but devils, and
that they fought with such fury that the Spanish officers had stabbed
themselves in very despair, at seeing a supposed impregnable fortress
taken by a handful of people, when it should have held out against
twice that number.”[A]
[Footnote A: The Monarchs of the Main, by George W. Thornbury, Esq.,
vol. ii. p. 35.]
The governor was astonished at their exploits. Four hundred men had
captured a city which he said any general in Europe would have found
it necessary to blockade in due form. It is indicative of the almost
inconceivable state of public opinion in those times, that the governor
of Panama, Don Juan Perez de Guzman, who had acquired considerable
renown for his bravery in the wars in Flanders, should have sent
a courteous message to Morgan, expressive of his astonishment and
admiration in view of his heroic achievement, and begging Morgan to
send him a pattern of the arms with which he had gained so wonderful
a victory. The scornful pirate sent a common musket and a handful of
bullets to the governor, with the following sarcastic message:
“I beg your excellency to accept these as a small pattern of the arms
with which I have taken Puerto Velo. Your excellency need not trouble
yourself to return them. In the course of a twelvemonth I will visit
Panama in person, and will fetch them away myself.”
The governor replied: “I return the weapons you sent me, and thank you
for the loan of them. It is a pity that a man of so much courage is not
in the service of a great and good prince. I hope that Captain Morgan
will not trouble himself to come and see me at Panama. Should he do so,
he surely will not fare so well as he has at Puerto Velo.”
It is very difficult to credit the statement made by Thornbury that
“the envoy, having delivered this message, so chivalrous in its tone,
presented Morgan with a beautiful gold ring, set with a costly emerald,
as a remembrance of his master Don Guzman, who had already supplied the
English chief with fresh provisions.”[A]
[Footnote A: Monarchs of the Main, vol. i. p. 38.]
Puerto Velo was left to its fate. The pirates left scarcely anything
behind but the tiles and the paving-stones. Many of the best guns
Morgan carried off. Of the rest, all which he could not burst
he spiked. He then set sail. Behind him were smouldering ruins,
pestilence, poverty, misery, and death.
Eight days’ sail brought the fleet to Cuba. Upon that vast and sparsely
inhabited island there were many solitary harbors and coves where the
silence of the wilderness reigned. Into one of these lonely spots
Morgan ran his fleet. Here he divided the spoil. It was indeed a
beggarly pittance which they had obtained as the fruit of so much toil,
suffering, and crime. In coin or bullion they counted but two hundred
and sixty thousand dollars. There was a large amount of silks and other
merchandise, which, was not deemed of much value.
The division was amicably made, and they spread their sails to return
to Jamaica, there to squander, in a few days of insane excess, all
that they had gained through weary months of danger, toil, suffering,
and crime. The entrance of a richly laden piratic fleet into the
harbor of Kingston was an occasion of public rejoicing. The gamblers,
the courtezans, the rumsellers were all overjoyed. Even the children
expected to see the strange visitors scatter their doubloons through
the streets to be scrambled for.
We are told that every door was open to them, and that, for a whole
week, all loudly praised their generosity and their courage. At the
end of a month they had squandered all, and every door was shut in
their faces. Morgan was a drunkard as well as a robber. He spent his
gains as infamously and as speedily as did the rest. Shrewder men than
he emptied his purse at the gambling-table. The Delilahs of Jamaica
speedily transferred his jewels to their necks. But one short month had
passed away when Morgan and all his crew, utterly impoverished, were
eager for another expedition.
Undismayed by the past, this bold adventurer planned an enterprise of
such magnitude that he boasted that, at its close, both he and his men
might be able to retire, if they wished, with a sufficiency for the
rest of their days.
A rendezvous was appointed at De la Vaca or Cow Island, on the south
side of the Island of Hispaniola. This would be easily accessible by
the pirates, both French and English, ever swaggering through the
streets of Tortuga. Again the desperadoes rushed to his banner. They
came in boats and in small vessels and by land. Men enough were found
to furnish the adventurer with funds.
A large English ship, which mounted thirty-six guns, entered the harbor
of Kingston, Jamaica, from New England. This ship, the Oxford, carried
a crew of three hundred men. It was on a buccaneering cruise against
Spanish commerce. Oexemelin says that the ship actually belonged to the
King of England, Charles II. He had fitted it out at his own expense,
and the captain was employed in his service. What authority he had for
this astonishing assertion we know not. But it is certain that the
governor at Jamaica felt at liberty to send this ship to join Morgan’s
expedition. And when we subsequently find Charles II. conferring the
honor of knighthood on this desperate marauder, and appointing him
governor of Jamaica, the report receives much confirmation.
The harbor at Isle de la Vaca was a fine one. A large French ship,
the Cerf Volant, on a trading excursion, entered the port. The ship
was well armed, mounting twenty-four iron guns and twelve guns of
brass. The captain and crew, disappointed in the results of trade, were
disposed to try their luck as buccaneers. Morgan, anxious to secure
so powerful a ship, urged them to join his expedition. But the French
officers would not accede to his terms.
The Frenchman was about to weigh anchor and return to Tortuga. Several
of his crew, who were English sailors, had deserted him, and had been
received on board Morgan’s ships. Through them Morgan learned that
the captain of the Cerf Volant, being out of provisions, had stopped
an English vessel, taken from her sundry articles of food, for which
he had paid, not in coin, for he had none on hand, but in bills of
exchange cashable at Jamaica.
Morgan, who was seeking for some pretext under which he might seize the
French ship, decided to consider this an act of piracy. He invited the
officers of the Volant to dine with him, on board the splendid ship
which the governor of Jamaica had sent him. Unsuspicious of treachery,
the captain and his officers all came. While in the cabin, drinking
their wine, Morgan rose and denounced them as pirates who had robbed
an English vessel, and declared them to be his prisoners. At the same
moment a band of armed men came in and put them in irons. They could
make no resistance. He then took possession of the ship.
Soon after this he called a council of his officers to decide upon
their first expedition. They met in the cabin of the Volant. Several of
the French who had refused to join Morgan were prisoners in the hold.
After much deliberation they decided first to repair to the Island
of Savona, a few leagues south-east of San Domingo. A flotilla of
merchant-ships, under convoy, was daily looked for from Spain. It was
to be expected that, during this long voyage, some vessels would get
separated from the rest. These stragglers they hoped to cut off.
Having settled this question, the desperadoes commenced drinking and
carousing. A scene of uproar ensued with the intermingling of drunken
songs and unintelligible blasphemies. While the officers were thus
carousing in the cabin, the sailors, four hundred in number, were
engaged in equally wild orgies in their quarters of the ship. As
the toasts were drained, broadsides were discharged, by men reeling
in drunkenness around their smoking guns. Some were cursing, some
fighting, some sleeping in deathly stupor.
The magazine, amply stored with powder, was near the bows of the boat.
Powder was carelessly scattered over the decks. Suddenly there was a
terrific explosion. The whole ship seemed lifted into the air, as by
some volcanic power. Dense volumes of sulphurous smoke, pierced with
forked flame, enveloped the scene, shutting it out from the view of all
around. Then there were seen, ejected hundreds of feet into the air,
massive timbers, and ponderous cannon, and the mangled bodies of three
hundred and fifty men. But thirty of the crew escaped.
The officers’ cabin, far in the stern of the boat, escaped the force
of the explosion. Though the revellers there were terrified, stunned,
almost smothered with smoke, and many of them severely wounded, they
escaped with their lives.
Such was the end of the Cerf Volant. This only did Morgan gain by his
treachery. “Morgan,” says Esquemeling, “had captured the ship. And God
only could take it from him. And God did so.”
For eight days the bodies of the dead were seen floating upon the
waters of the bay. Morgan sent out boats to collect these bodies, not
for burial, but for plunder. The pockets were searched. The clothing,
when good, was stripped off. The heavy gold rings, which nearly all the
sailors wore, were taken, and then the bodies were abandoned to the
sharks and the carrion birds.
Morgan, upon a review of his forces, found that he had fifteen
vessels, large and small, and eight hundred and sixty men. With these
he set sail for Savona. Head winds impeded their progress. Three weeks
had elapsed ere they reached the eastern extremity of Hispaniola.
Eight hundred hungry men consume a vast amount of food each day. Their
provisions ran short. They chanced to meet an English ship which had
a superfluity for sale. Thus recruited, they pressed on, in a long
straggling line, until eight of the ships reached a harbor called Ocoa,
on the southern coast of the great island. Here he cast anchor to wait
the arrival of the rest of the fleet.