1702—1706-7
THE VOYAGE OF THE “ST. GEORGE”
Dampier's circumnavigations brought him great fame. It was deemed,
and justly deemed, a remarkable feat to sail round the world in
those days. Very few men had achieved it, and the names of those who
had—the list prior to Dampier is brief enough—were written among the
stars. Dampier had circled the globe twice, had touched at all sorts
of strange and wonderful places, had held intercourse with all kinds
of astonishing people, had explored some of the secret recesses of
the other side of the earth, and was charged with experiences as
marvellous as those of the sailor who had doubled Cape Fly-Away and
dropped anchor in thick weather off No-Man's Land. His reputation
stood high for this. On the other hand, nothing was thought of his
discoveries. It is significant that the editor of the _Collection of
Voyages and Travels_, published by the Churchills in 1704, in speaking
in his “Introductory Discourse” of Dampier's books, says: “The third
volume is his _Voyage to New Holland_, which has no great matter of new
discovery.” This opinion probably expressed the judgment of the public
at large. There is indeed no great matter of discovery. Harris allows
the voyage but one merit, namely, “That it has removed for ever those
suspicions that were entertained of the accounts formerly given of
those countries.” “It has shown us,” he says, “a new Indies in which,
whenever that spirit of industry shall revive which first extended and
then established our commerce, we may be able to undertake settlements
as advantageous as any that have been hitherto made by this or any
other nation.”[18] But in sober truth, Dampier adds but little to the
stock of knowledge that had been already collected from the narratives
of Tasman, Pelsart, Schouten, and others who had touched at or been
wrecked upon the New Holland coast. It is probable that his failure,
coupled with the despondent tone that characterises his narrative,
went far to retard further exploration in the Southern Ocean. It was
no longer disputed that a vast body of land stood in those waters; the
testimony of previous navigators was confirmed; but what was to be
made of it? All that Dampier said in its favour was theoretical; all
that he had to report as an eye-witness, all that he could speak to
as facts, was extremely discouraging. He might even go further in his
conversation than in his written story in apologising for his useless
and disappointing cruise, and to his patrons add to the assurance of
his narrative such persuasion of tongue as would convince them that
there was nothing to be gained by further researches in Australian
waters. Indeed, the depressing influence of his recorded adventures I
venture to consider manifested by the directions given to the later
navigators. Byron in 1764, Wallis and Mouat and Cartaret in 1766, were
despatched on voyages round the world to search the South Seas for new
lands; but only one of them, Cartaret, deviated into Dampier's track,
confining his explorations in this way to a glance at New Guinea and
New Britain, to the discovery of New Ireland, lying adjacent to the
island Dampier had sailed round, and to giving names to the islands of
the Soloman and other groups. The world had to wait for Cook to confirm
the theories of Dampier, whose influence and example were by that time
little more than traditionary.
His fame, however, as a navigator, despite the disappointments of his
voyage, was unimpaired, and since employment was absolutely necessary
to him as a means of living, he wisely took care on his return to make
the most of his laurels whilst they were green. In 1702 he was busy
in looking about him for occupation. His thirst for discovery was
appeased, and he was now viewing the profession of the sea with the old
yearnings of the buccaneer. Fortunately for him, the War of Succession
began. The Spaniards and the French were once more the political
enemies of Great Britain, but the Don in particular was the cynosure of
privateering eyes. The heads of the merchants had been turned by the
triumphs of the freebooters. Wonderful tales had long been current of
the capture of treasure by little insignificant picaroons, and there
were many private adventurers who only needed the representations of
a person of Dampier's experience and credit to come willingly into a
freebooting scheme against the ships and possessions of the Spaniard in
the West Indies and the South Sea.
Speculative men of substance were found and an expedition equipped,
the ships being the _St. George_, Captain William Dampier, and the
_Fame_, Captain John Pulling. The vessels were liberally armed and
manned, and were commissioned—spite of the venture being wholly one of
privateering—by Prince George of Denmark, Lord High Admiral, to cruise
against the French and the Spaniards. The terms were, “No purchase, no
pay!” Dampier's proposal, adopted by the promoters of the expedition,
was to proceed first to the river Plate as far as Buenos Ayres, and
seize two or three Spanish galleons, which he said were sure to be
found there. If the plunder amounted to the value of six hundred
thousand pounds they were to return home. If, on the other hand,
nothing was done in the river Plate, they were to enter the South Seas
and cruise for the Valdivia ships which conveyed gold to Lima. If this
design failed, they were to attempt such rich towns as Dampier should
think proper. Finally, they were to coast the Mexican shore to watch
for the great galleon which in those days and long afterwards sailed
annually filled with treasure and valuable commodities from Manila to
Acapulco.
This was a broad programme, and Dampier's finger may be found in every
word of it. The Acapulco ship was indeed peculiarly the dream of
the buccaneer. In the galleon captured by Drake, Lopez Vaz tells us
there were eight hundred and fifty thousand pieces of silver, besides
many chests of treasure omitted in what was then termed the “bill of
custom.” Drake's men were employed six days in removing the jewels, the
cases of money, the tons of uncoined silver, and the services of plate,
which they found in their prize. Candish's capture of the galleon
yielded him one hundred and twenty-two thousand pesoes of gold; the
lading further consisted of silks, satins, musk, damasks, sweetmeats,
and quantities of fine wines. The value of the Manila ship that Dampier
was to seek and capture was appraised at nine millions of pieces of
eight, equal to about a million and a half of our money.
Our sailor was wise to provide himself with alternatives which would
also furnish his humour with opportunities for those sudden changes
which his capricious mind demanded as a stimulant to further efforts.
The story of this voyage is related by William Funnell,[19] who
went as mate in the ship with Dampier. It is noticeable that, as we
progress in Dampier's career, his individuality grows less and less
distinguishable. He is vague in Funnell's narrative, he is vaguer still
in Woodes Rogers's, and then he disappears.
There was trouble at the very onset of this voyage. Whilst in the
Downs Dampier and Pulling quarrelled, and the latter, apparently not
troubling himself about his agreement with his employers, made sail,
and started away on a cruise among the Canary Islands on his own
account. Dampier never saw him afterwards. On this a galley named the
_Cinque Ports_, memorable as Alexander Selkirk's ship, commanded by
one Charles Pickering, was despatched to join the _St. George_ in the
room of the _Fame_. She was a small vessel of some ninety tons burthen,
mounting sixteen guns and carrying a crew of sixty-three men. It is
declared that Pulling's defection ruined the voyage; but this is an
opinion scarcely reasonable in the face of the achievements of the
buccaneers, who many of them, in vessels much smaller than the _Cinque
Ports_, successfully engaged the forts and castles of powerfully
protected towns, and boarded and carried galleons big enough to have
stowed the conquerors' craft in their holds.
Dampier sailed on April 30th, 1703, from the Downs, and on being
joined at Kinsale by the _Cinque Ports_, proceeded with his consort
to Madeira. “By a good observation,” says Funnell, “I make this
island to lie in latitude of 32° 20´ N., and longitude, by my account
from London, 18° 5´ W.” This is an illustration of the value of good
observations in those days! Nothing of moment happened until their
arrival at an island upon the Brazilian coast. Here Captain Pickering
of the _Cinque Ports_ died, and Thomas Stradling, the lieutenant, took
command of the ship. There was also a quarrel between Dampier, his
chief officer, and eight of the crew, which terminated in the nine men
going ashore with their baggage. Disappointment had soured Dampier's
mind, and he was growing more obstinately fretful and quarrelsome.
Much of the anxiety caused him by the behaviour of his ship's company
was owing to his petulance, and to his lacking most of the qualities
which command respect or enforce obedience. In truth, there had been
nothing in his training to qualify him as a commander. He had passed
the greater portion of his seafaring life as a sailor before the mast,
amongst a community of bold and truculent ruffians who obeyed orders
for the general good, but who virtually admitted no superiority in the
persons whom they suffered to lead them. In a very short time, as we
have seen, Dampier had succeeded in disgusting his consort Pulling out
of an adventure, whose success might entirely depend upon his active
and cordial co-operation; and now we find him abandoned by his first
lieutenant and eight of the crew for reasons, I fear, it would be idle
to seek elsewhere than in his own temper. Off the Horn in January,
1704, the _Cinque Ports_ disappeared in the midst of a heavy storm.
She was a small ship for the huge seas of those desperate parallels,
and the worst was feared. Dampier's men were so disheartened that
little persuasion might have been needed to determine them to abandon
the voyage. Of all miserable times passed by the early mariner, the
most miserable and insufferable were those which they spent off Cape
Horn. Under reduced sail their little tubs showed like half-tide rocks
in the troughs. The decks were full of water, the seas thundered over
them in cataracts, the hatches, closed and battened down, kept the
atmosphere of the 'tween decks black and poisonous. The crew were
commonly so numerous as to be in one another's way, and imagination
can picture nothing more unendurable than a dark and vermin-ridden
forecastle crowded with half-suffocated men; the rigging and sails
frozen to the hardness of iron; spears of ice hanging from the catheads
and bowsprit, and from all other points from which water could drain;
the ship herself rolling and tossing with sickening fury, and quivering
to the thunder-shock of seas smiting her from an altitude of thirty
feet. Moreover, by the time a vessel arrived off Cape Horn, she was
usually short of provisions and water. She had already occupied months
in making the passage, and her stores were so bad as to be rejected
by the very rats, which, with the fearlessness and ferocity of famine,
crawled out of the blackness of the hold and nibbled the feet of the
sailors as they lay dozing on their chests. Captain George Shelvocke,
writing in 1726, has left us a gloomy picture, full of power, of the
Horn in winter. “I must own,” he says, “the navigation here is truly
melancholy, and it was the more so to us who were a single ship and by
ourselves in this vast and dreadful solitude; whereas a companion would
have mixed some cheerfulness with the thoughts of being in so distant a
part of the world exposed to such dangers, and, as it were, separated
from the rest of mankind. The very thoughts of the possibility of
losing our masts by the violence of such very stormy weather as we had
had were enough to cast a damp upon the clearest spirits.”[20]
It was not until February 7th that Juan Fernandez showed above the
horizon. Dampier concluded that it was some other island, and stood
away east, to the grief and disappointment, as one may suppose, of
his starved and scorbutic crew, tantalised by the spectacle of green
hills and sparkling falls of fresh water. On the 11th, having sailed a
considerable distance towards the American seaboard, he decided that
the land he had sighted was the island he sought, and thereupon shifted
his helm for it; and on his arrival, passing by the great bay, he saw,
to his own and to the great delight of his crew, the _Cinque Ports_
quietly lying at anchor, she having made the land three days before.
Both vessels were heeled and refitted, which, with the watering of
them, gave the crews plenty of employment; but whilst this was doing
another quarrel happened, this time between Captain Stradling and his
men. We may suspect Stradling's character from Alexander Selkirk's
hatred of him, though there is no doubt that Selkirk himself was on
the whole about as troublesome a seaman to deal with as ever stepped a
deck. Dampier, it is true, afterwards told Captain Woodes Rogers that
he considered Selkirk, who in the expedition I am now writing about was
master of the _Cinque Ports_, to have been the best man in that ship;
but then Dampier had quarrelled with Stradling and abhorred his memory,
and so, I do not doubt, made the most of Selkirk to Rogers, that he
might suggest rather than boldly affirm his former consort equal to so
base and cruel a deed as the marooning of a good and honest sailor;
albeit Rogers was perfectly well aware that Selkirk had gone ashore
of his own choice.[21] The quarrel between Stradling and his men rose
to such a height that the crew absolutely refused to go on board and
serve under him. Dampier was consulted, and after a deal of trouble
succeeded in persuading the fellows to return to their duty. It is
to be feared that this happy turn of what threatened to prove a very
grave difficulty owed little or nothing to Dampier's address or to his
popularity. It is a common saying at sea amongst sailors who dislike
their captain that they will weather him out even if he were the devil
himself; meaning that they will not suffer themselves to be defrauded
by his tyranny of their wages or such good prospects as the voyage may
promise. The sober-headed amongst Stradling's crew would not take long
to see the folly of abandoning an adventure that had brought them to
the very threshold of their hopes, particularly after having endured
all the distress and misery of the passage of the Horn in a vessel but
a very little bigger than a fishing-smack of to-day. It is more than
likely then that Dampier's counsel found most of them sensible of their
mistake and willing to resume work.
Whilst the people were ashore busy on various jobs relating to the
doctoring of their ships, the day being February 29th, 1704, a sail was
sighted, an alarm raised, and a rush made on board. The two vessels
instantly slipped their cables and stood out to sea. The stranger,
on perceiving the canvas of the two crafts growing large upon the
background of the island, bouted ship and went away under a press; but
Dampier clung to his wake, and the _Cinque Ports_ made all possible
haste to follow. The breeze blew briskly, and the _St. George_ was
thrashed through it so fleetly that she towed her pinnace under water
and was forced to cut her loose. Captain Stradling's boat, in which
were a man and a dog, also went adrift, but of her and her inmates
we get news later on. It was not until eleven o'clock at night that
the _St. George_ came up with the chase, and Dampier wisely deferred
hostilities until the day dawned. The stranger proved a Frenchman of
four hundred tons and thirty guns, full of men; and at sunrise on March
1st the _Cinque Ports_ and the _St. George_ attacked her. The galley,
however, was of little use, for after discharging a dozen guns she fell
astern, and left the game to be played out by Dampier. “We fought her
very close,” says Funnell, “Broadside and Broadside for seven Hours;
and then a small Gale springing up she sheered off.” Old conflicts of
this kind are quaint with the colours of an utterly extinct form of
marine life. The seamen fought with guns bearing strange names. The
heaviest marine-ordnance was the demi-cannon, whose bore was six and
three-quarter inches, and the weight of the shot thirty pounds and a
half. There were also the cannon-petro, that threw a twenty-four pound
shot; the basilisk, the weight of whose shot was fifteen pounds; the
sacre or sacar, as Sir William Monson spells it, a little piece of a
bore of three inches and a half that cast a shot weighing five pounds;
and smaller guns yet called the minion, the falcon, the serpentine, and
the rabanet, the last carrying a shot of half a pound. It is difficult
to conjecture the calibre of such ordnance as Dampier and his enemy
were armed with. Probably the cannon-petro was their biggest piece, and
they would also carry swivel-guns. It will be evident at all events
that such a vessel as the _Cinque Ports_, whose tonnage is put down
at ninety, and which is said to have been armed with sixteen guns,
must have mounted very light metal if only to render her seaworthy.
But besides their falcons and sacars and minions, they engaged with
other strange engines,—arrows trimmed with wild-fire, pikes flaming
with the same stuff for piercing a ship's side, shells called granados
filled with powder and thrown on to a vessel's deck with a fuze alight,
powder-pots formed of clay or thick glass, and stink-balls, for the
making of which old Norwood prescribes as follows:
“Take Powder 10l., of Ship-pitch 6l., of Tar 20l., Salt Peter 8l.,
Sulphur California 4l. Melt these by a soft heat together; and being
well melted, put 2l. of cole-dust, of the filings of Horses-hoofs
6l., Assa Fœtida 3l., Sagapenem 1l., Spatula Fœtida half a pound:
Incorporate them well together, and put into this matter Linnen
or Woollen-Cloathe, or Hemp or Toe as much as will drink up all
the matter: and of these make Globes or Balls of what bigness you
please. This Globe or Ball may be made venomous or poysonous, if to
the Composition be added these things following: Mercury Suplimate,
Arsnick, Orpiment, Sinaber, etc.”[22]
This horrible contrivance, when thrown among the surging crowd, threw
out volumes of poisonous and suffocating smoke. A sea-fight was a
fierce business—fiercer, perhaps, than we can realise when we contrast
the armaments of those days with the leviathan guns of the ironclad.
The devices for slaughtering were full of the genius of murder. They
had cohorns or small mortars fixed on swivels; caissons, called
“powder-chests,” charged with old nails and rusty bits of iron for
firing from the close-quarters when boarded; weapons named “organs,”
formed of a number of musket-barrels fired at once. Above all, they
had what I fear is lost to us for ever,—I mean the boarding-pike, the
deadliest of all weapons in the hands of the British sailor. The mere
naming of a yard-arm to yard-arm engagement lasting seven hours is hint
enough to the imagination of a man conversant with the tactics, the
brutal courage, the remorseless resolution, the deadly if primitive
fighting machinery of the sea-braves of the old generations. The
castellated fabric rolling upon the seas, echoing in thunder to the
blasts which roar from her wooden sides; the crowds of men swaying
half-naked at the guns; the falling spars; the riddled sails; the
great tops filled with smoke-blackened sailors wildly cheering as they
fling their granados upon the decks of the enemy, or silent as death
as they level their long and clumsy muskets at forms distinguished as
the leaders of the fight by their attire, combine in a picture that
rises in crimson-tinctured outlines upon the dusky canvas of the past,
and, though two centuries old, startles and fascinates as if it were a
memory of yesterday. But the old voyagers' references to such things
are grimly brief. They dismiss in a sentence as much as might fill a
volume; yet what they have to say is suggestive enough, and the fancy
is feeble that cannot colour their black and white outlines to the
fiery complexion of a reality, and vitalise them with the living hues
of the time in which the deeds were done.
The battle was ended by a small gale of wind coming on to blow, and
by the Frenchman running away. On board Dampier were nine killed and
several wounded. Funnell says that the sailors were anxious to follow
and fight the Frenchman again, and sink or capture him, fearing that
if he escaped he would make their presence known to the Spaniards. But
Dampier objected, protesting that even if the enemy should hear of
them and stop their merchantmen from leaving harbour, “he knew where
to go, and did not fear of failing to take to the value of £500,000
any day in the year.” This assurance sufficiently satisfied the men to
induce them to back their topsail to wait for the _Cinque Ports_, and
on her coming up with the _St. George_, Dampier briefly conferred with
Stradling, who agreed with him that they should let the Frenchman go.
The privateers thereupon headed on their return to Juan Fernandez to
recover the anchors, long-boats, casks of fresh water, and sea-lions'
oil which they had left there; along with five of the crew of the
_Cinque Ports_, who had been ashore on the west side of the island
when the ships hurriedly made sail after the Frenchman. The wind was
south, right off the land, and whilst they were struggling to fetch
the bay two ships unexpectedly hove in view. The _Cinque Ports_, being
near them, fired several shots, and then, having her sweeps out, rowed
to the _St. George_ to report that the strangers were Frenchmen, each
mounting about thirty-six guns. It is conceivable that Dampier might
not consider his ship, fresh as she was from a tough conflict, in a fit
state to engage these two large, well-armed vessels; nor, after the
part his consort had borne in the late action, was he likely to place
much faith in Stradling's co-operation. He thereupon determined to
stand away for the coast of Peru, an unintelligible resolution when it
is remembered that they would not only be leaving five of Stradling's
men behind, but furniture and stores absolutely essential to their
security and to the execution of their projects. They might surely have
lingered long enough in the neighbourhood of the island to persuade
the Frenchman that they were gone for good. A run of fifteen or twenty
miles would have put them out of sight. And they might also have
reckoned upon the unwillingness of the enemy to fight; for the French
equally with the Spanish seafarers in those days were commonly very
well satisfied with the negative victory of the foe's retreat.
The two ships fell in with the coast of Peru on March 11th. Funnell
makes the latitude of the land 24° 53' S. Thence they coasted to the
northwards, and on the 14th passed the port of Copiapo, used by the
Spaniards for loading wine, money, and other goods for Coquimbo. They
would have been glad to go ashore for refreshments, but were in the
unhappy situation of being without boats. On the 22nd, when off Lima,
they chased a couple of vessels which were steering for that port.
On coming up with the sternmost Dampier found her to be the ship he
had fought off the island of Juan Fernandez. The crew were eager to
engage her, so as to prevent her from entering Lima, still dreading
the consequence of the Spaniards gaining intelligence of English
freebooters being in those waters. Moreover Funnell asserts that not a
man on board doubted the possibility of taking her, because the crew
were now in good health, whereas when they had engaged her some twenty
or thirty of them were upon the sick-list. They also wanted her guns,
ammunition, and provisions, and proposed that the _St. George_ should
fight her whilst Stradling attacked the other; but Dampier was not of
their mind, and whilst all hands were hotly debating the matter, the
Frenchmen, if indeed they were both French, got into Lima. It would
be absurd to accuse Dampier of want of courage, but it is strange
that, after chasing the two strangers from no other motive that seems
intelligible than the design to fight and capture them, he should draw
off on discovering one of them to be his enemy of Juan Fernandez. He
was commissioned to attack the vessels both of France and Spain, and
as there was much to be gained by the conquest of the ships, his
reluctance or refusal as the chief of a crew eager for the fray is
unaccountable.
Funnell writes with no kindness for Dampier; but he doubtless speaks
the truth when he asserts that the men were greatly incensed by their
commander's refusal to fight, insomuch that something like a mutiny
might have followed had they not been mollified by the capture, in
the space of a few days, of two prizes—one of one hundred and fifty,
the other of two hundred tons. Meanwhile Dampier was maturing a
mighty project of landing on the coast and plundering some rich city.
Preparations for this great event filled the ship with business. All
day long the carpenters were employed in fitting out fabrics called
Spanish long-boats to enable the sailors to enter the surf with safety.
In every launch were fixed two patareros, swivel-guns of small calibre.
Fortune so far favoured them that, on April 11th, they met and took a
vessel of fifty tons, laden with plank and cordage, “as if she had been
sent on purpose for our service,” says Funnell. Carrying this useful
prize with them, they sailed to the island of Gallo, where they dropped
anchor and took in fresh water, and further prepared their ship and
the prize for the grand undertaking they were about to enter upon. At
the expiration of five days they were ready; but whilst they were in
the act of getting under weigh a ship was seen standing in. They were
in a proper posture to take her, and in a short while she was theirs.
The capture was unimportant, the craft being only fifty tons; but it
is noticeable for their finding on board a Guernsey man, who had been
taken by the Spaniards two years before as he was cutting logwood in
the Bay of Campeché, and who must have continued a prisoner for life
if they had not released him. Dampier's El Dorado was the town of Santa
Maria. It was to the mines lying adjacent to this place that he would
have been glad to convey the thousand slaves who had been captured in
an earlier voyage. It was his intention now to attack it, for he had
no doubt that it was full of treasure. But his evil star was dominant.
The enemy, apprised of his being in the neighbourhood, met him at all
points with ambuscades, which, Funnell tells us, cut off abundance of
the men. He may have lacked the power of organisation; he may have
been wanting in the quality to swiftly decide, and in the power to
unfalteringly execute; it is equally probable that his schemes were
perplexed and his hopes ruined by the insubordination of a crew whom
he was not sufficiently master of his temper to control. Be the reason
of the failure what it will, the men grew so weary of their fruitless
attempts on shore that they returned to their ship without regard to
the wishes of the commander. Then they were beset with new troubles,
chief amongst which was a great scarcity of provisions. Fortunately at
this critical juncture a ship of one hundred and fifty tons, ignorant
of their character, dropped anchor within gunshot of them. Needless to
say that she was promptly captured, and, to the delight of the hungry
and hollow-cheeked survivors of Dampier's mighty land-project, was
found filled to the hatches with flour, sugar, brandy, wine, thirty-two
tons of marmalade, a large stock of linen and woollen cloth, and,
in a word, such a store of food and goods as might have served to
victual and equip them for four or five years. Funnell was put on board
this prize on behalf of Captain Dampier and the people of the _St.
George_, whilst the master of the _Cinque Ports_—Alexander Selkirk—was
transferred to her as representing the interests of Captain Stradling
and his ship's company. The vessels then proceeded to the Bay of
Panama, and anchored off the island of Tobago.
They had not long arrived when Dampier and Stradling fell out. The
quarrel between the men was so hot that there was nothing for it but
to part company. One is willing to hope that Stradling was to blame.
He was a man of a coarse mind, a person of violent temper, and of a
low habit of thought; and nothing, probably, but the circumstance of
their being in separate ships and removed from each other hindered the
two captains from separating long before. Five of the _St. George's_
men went over to Stradling, and five of the _Cinque Ports_ crew joined
Dampier. It was now that some prisoners who were in the last prize
that had been taken affirmed that there were eighty thousand dollars
secreted on board of her. The money, they said, had been taken in very
privately at Lima, and it lay hidden in the bottom of the ship in the
part called the run. Dampier refused to credit this, and would not even
take the trouble to ascertain the truth by setting the men to rummage
the hold. His mind, Funnell tells us, was so full of great designs that
he would not risk them by such delay as a brief search might involve.
It is unfortunate for his reputation that a considerable portion of his
sea-going career has to be tracked through the relations of men with
whom he quarrelled, or who, by association with him during months of
the imprisonment of shipboard life, grew intimately acquainted with the
weaknesses of his character.
On May 19th the _St. George_ parted company with the _Cinque Ports_,
and steered northwards with the intention of cruising off the Peruvian
coast. The subsequent recorded career of Stradling is very brief. His
men were too few to qualify him for achievements in the South Sea. He
repaired to Juan Fernandez for shelter and refreshment, where, as all
the world knows, Alexander Selkirk left him, partly on account of his
hatred of the captain, and partly because of the unseaworthy condition
of the galley. Not long afterwards the _Cinque Ports_ foundered off
the American coast, with the loss of all hands excepting Stradling and
seven of his men, who were sent prisoners by the Spaniards to Lima, in
which city Stradling was still living when Dampier came afterwards into
these waters as Woodes Rogers's pilot. What afterwards became of him is
not known.
Nothing of interest occurred in Dampier's progress north for nearly a
month, and then on June 7th they captured a vessel bound to Panama,
laden with sugar and brandy and bales of wrought silk. In this ship was
a letter addressed to the President of Panama by the captain of the
French man-of-war they had fought. It was all about the action with the
_St. George_, and the writer boasted of having killed a great number
of the English, whilst he himself had sent ashore at Lima thirty-two
of his men, all whom had been disabled either by the loss of a leg or
an arm or an eye; and he added that, had Dampier chosen to follow and
re-engage him, he must have been captured. Funnell prints this with
evident relish as justifying the attitude of the crew of the _St.
George_, and as an impeachment of Dampier's judgment and possibly his
courage. In another letter it was related that the two French ships at
which Stradling had fired, and from which Dampier had made sail, had
picked up the boat containing the man and dog that had broken loose
from the _Cinque Ports_; also that they had taken off the men who had
been left on the island, together with the privateersmen's anchors,
cables, long-boat, and stores. It was further ascertained from these
letters that the Spaniards had fitted out two ships to cruise in
search of Dampier—one of thirty-two brass guns, twenty-four pounders
each; the other of thirty-six guns of the same calibre; each vessel
had three hundred and fifty seamen and one hundred and fifty soldiers,
all picked men. It does not seem, however, that Dampier allowed his
projects to be diverted by these men-of-war. He knew they were off
Guayaquil, and on June 21st we find him in the bay named after that
port with a sail in sight, which next day proved to be one of the
Spanish ships—the one of thirty-two guns. “Being pretty near each
other,” says Funnell, “they gave us a Broadside, but we did not mind
them.” Dampier's chief anxiety was to get the weather-gage. The wind
was half a gale, and in manœuvring the _St. George's_ foretop-mast
went over the side. Hatchets were seized and the wreckage cut away,
and the instant his ship was clear Dampier put his helm up and got
his vessel before it. This inspired the enemy with wonderful spirit.
He crowded all the canvas he dared show to that wind, and started in
pursuit; whereupon Dampier, observing that his behaviour was animating
the Spaniards with courage, resolved to bring the _St. George_ to the
wind and fight it out. Funnell relates this incident very brightly.
“Captain Dampier's opinion was that he could sail better upon one Mast
than the Enemy, and therefore it was best to put before the Wind; but,
however, chose rather to fight than to be chased ashore: So hoisting
the bloody Flag at the Main-topmast-head with a Resolution neither to
give or to take Quarter, we began the Fight, and went to it as fast as
we could load and fire. The Enemy kept to Windward at a good Distance
from us; so that we could not come to make use of our Small-arms: But
we divided the two Watches; and one was to manage the Guns whilst the
other looked on; and when those at the Guns were weary, the other were
to take their Places till they had refreshed themselves. By this means
we fired, I believe, five Guns to the Enemy's one. We fired about 560,
and he about 110 or 115; and we fought him from twelve at Noon to Half
an Hour to Six at Night, altho' at a good Distance; for he kept so far
to Windward of us that our Shot sometimes would hardly reach him, tho'
his would at the same time fly over us.” The cannonading—it came to no
more—terminated when the darkness fell. Dampier lay hove-to all night
waiting for the morning, but at daybreak nothing was to be seen of the
Spaniard. The action was merely a shooting match, and the privateers
had not a man killed nor even hurt by the enemy.
Our hero's next step was to seek provisions and water. The district,
however, yielded him nothing, and he was forced to rest satisfied with
the lading of a couple of small vessels, which he captured. One of
them he fitted out as a long-boat, and called her the _Dragon_. They
were now in the Gulf of Nicoya and at anchor close to Middle Island,
as Funnell terms it; and here it was they careened their ship, all
hands going ashore and building tents for the cooper and sailmaker,
and for the storage of goods and provisions. Whilst this was doing
Dampier sent his mate, John Clipperton, and twenty men armed to the
teeth for a cruise in the _Dragon_. He found his account in this little
expedition, for at the end of six days the _Dragon_ returned with a
Spanish craft of forty tons freighted with brandy, wine, and sugar.
Amongst her people were six carpenters and caulkers, who had been
shipped by the owner for the purpose of repairing her, and these men
Dampier immediately set to work upon his own ship. The bottom of the
_St. George_, after she had been careened, is described as resembling a
honeycomb. Nowhere was the plank much thicker than an old sixpence; so
sodden and rotten was the wood that Funnell declares in some places he
could easily have thrust his thumb through it. They were without timber
to sheath her, and all that could be done was to stop the leaks with
nails and oakum.
Whilst the ship was in the hands of the carpenters Dampier and
Clipperton fell out, and the mate, with a following of twenty-one
men, mutinously seized the bark that the _Dragon_ had brought in,
lifted her anchor and sailed away outside the islands. Shelvocke,
who was afterwards associated with Clipperton, gives this man so bad
a character in his book that, if he possessed the same qualities as
Dampier's mate which he afterwards exhibited as Shelvocke's consort,
one can only wonder that the captain of the _St. George_ had not long
before marooned or pitched him overboard. The loss of these twenty-two
men was a serious blow, but the defection might have resulted more
seriously even than this to Dampier, for all the _St. George's_
ammunition and the greater part of her provisions were in the bark
when the mate seized her. Fortunately Clipperton was not wholly a
villain. Shortly after his departure he sent word that he would put the
stores belonging to the _St. George_ ashore in a house, keeping only
what he required for his own use. He was as good as his word; canoes
were despatched, and the powder and provisions were recovered. This
man Clipperton was afterwards the hero of some strange adventures.
Harris calls him a man of parts and spirit, but not the less was he the
completest rogue at that time afloat. He professed to have left Dampier
for the same reason that had caused Alexander Selkirk to live all alone
by himself,—I mean the craziness of the ship; but surely he must have
been a rascal to have abandoned Dampier in the hour of his need. Yet he
was not wanting in the audacious courage that was the characteristic
of his buccaneering compeers. In his little bark, armed with two
patareros, he sailed to the coast of Mexico, captured a couple of
ships, one of which he sunk; whilst for the other being new he demanded
ten thousand pieces of eight by way of ransom, and got four thousand.
He then sailed to the Gulf of Salinas, cleaned his cockle-shell of a
boat, and made for the East Indies, reaching the Philippine Islands in
fifty-four days. He afterwards bore away for Macao, where his crew left
him. He returned to England in 1706, and in 1718 obtained command of
the _Success_, consort to the _Speedwell_, whose captain, Shelvocke,
was under him. He abandoned Shelvocke, and though they afterwards
met in the South Sea, declined to consort with him in any way. His
adventures are one of the most interesting chapters in the annals
of the buccaneers. He returned home in or about the year 1722, and
shortly afterwards died of a broken heart, utterly destitute.
But to return to Dampier. By October 7th he was again in a condition
to embark upon further adventures. One notices with admiration his
resolution to keep the sea in an under-manned craft so rotten and
crazy that he might reasonably fear the first gale of wind must pound
her into staves. But the forlorn hope was often the old buccaneer's
best opportunity. Exquemeling, or Esquemeling as the name is sometimes
spelt, tells of the pirate Le Grand that when famine-stricken in a
small boat in company with a few armed men, he ordered one of his
people to bore a hole through the craft's bottom whilst approaching the
vessel he meant to board, that success might be as sure as desperation
could render it. There was something probably of Le Grand's spirit
in Dampier's policy. His men were few, and he might have found it
necessary to animate them by an alternative whose issue could only mean
either conquest or destruction.
He was now cruising for the Acapulco ship, the most romantic and golden
of all the hopes and dreams of the privateersman. There were no limits
to the fancies her name conjured up. Imagination was dazzled by visions
of chests loaded with virgin gold and unminted silver, by cases of
costly ecclesiastical furniture, crucifixes, chalices, and candlesticks
of precious ore, images glorious with jewels, plate of superb design,
treasure equalling in value the revenues of a flourishing principality.
They fell in with her on December 6th, in the morning. The crew,
Funnell drily tells us in effect, had looked out for her as though
there were no difference between seeing and taking her. They were
indeed in the right kind of mood for fighting. Their appetites had
been whetted by disappointment, and they were weary of a cruise that
had yielded them little more in the way of captures than provisions,
which their necessities quickly forced them to consume. They were also
sulky with the defection of comrades, and every piratical instinct in
them was rabidly yearning after a prize which would enable them to
sail straight away home, with plenty of money for all hands in their
hold. They pluckily bore down to the tall fabric whose high sides were
crowned with the defences of bristling tiers of guns, and saluted her
with several broadsides. The galleon, not suspecting them to be an
enemy, was unprepared; the sudden bombardment threw her people into
confusion, and the sailors—wretched seamen, as the Spaniards even at
their best were in those days—tumbled over each other in their clumsy
hurry to defend themselves. There was one Captain Martin on board with
Dampier, who, though born a Spaniard, had been bred and educated in
London. He had been taken out of a ship captured by the _St. George_
in the preceding October. This Martin, whose sympathies appear to
have been with the English, advised Dampier to take advantage of the
confusion in the galleon, and lay her aboard. Indeed it hardly required
a practised seafaring eye to perceive that, if the Spaniard once got
his batteries to bear, he would, to employ Martin's language, “beat
the _St. George_ to pieces.” The value of the ship was reckoned at
sixteen million pieces of eight. That Dampier should have hesitated
is incomprehensible. Boarding was his only chance; he must have known
that; and yet he would not board. Hesitation was of course fatal. The
enemy brought his guns to bear, and it was then impossible for the _St.
George_ to lie alongside of her. The privateersmen had nothing to throw
but five-pound shot; the galleon, on the other hand, mounted eighteen
and twenty-four pounders. In a very short time the _St. George_ was
struck between wind and water in her powder-room, and two feet of plank
were driven in under either quarter; after which nothing remained to
Dampier but to make his escape whilst his crazy ship continued to swim.
The bitterly disappointed crew clamoured to return home. Fortune was
against them, and the superstitions of the forecastle were confirming
the experiences of the voyage. Further, there were scarcely provisions
enough to last them for another three months, whilst the ship herself
was in a condition to fall to pieces at any moment. Less than this
might sufficiently justify the mutinous posture of the disgusted men.
Nevertheless Dampier persuaded them to prolong the cruise for another
six weeks, promising at the expiration of that time to carry them to
some factory in India, “where,” says Funnell, “we might all dispose
of ourselves, as we should think most for our advantage.” This being
settled they proceeded to the eastward, keeping the land in sight, but
though they passed Acapulco and other considerable ports, I do not
observe that Dampier attempted a single town, or even sought a prize
on the water. Apparently the sole object of this trip was to find a
convenient place for watering the ship and the prize which they had
with them,—that is to say, the bark out of which they had taken Captain
Martin,—preparatory for their departure. But on January 6th, 1705, a
month after their encounter with the Manila ship, there happened what
Funnell speaks of as a revolution in their affairs, “for thirty of our
Men,” he continues, “agreed with Captain Dampier to remain with him in
the South Seas, but with what View or on what Terms remained to us who
were not of that Number an impenetrable secret.” It is as likely as not
that this was no new caprice on the part of Dampier, and very possibly
his motive in asking the men to continue the cruise for another six
weeks was that he might have time to induce them to continue with him
for an indefinite term upon the South American seaboard. Funnell's
party consisted of thirty-three men, which represents the force of
Dampier's crew at that time to have been sixty-three, not counting
himself. That thirty should decide to remain with him, and that
thirty-three should be, so to speak, forced to abandon him without
having any knowledge whatever of the understanding between their
shipmates and the commander, is so inexplicable that I suspect some
blunder or concealment in Funnell's narrative at this point. It is,
indeed, just probable that Funnell and his thirty-two associates were,
by reason of bad health, disaffection, and other causes, scarcely worth
mustering. Yet they made shift nevertheless to carry their wretched
little vessel to the East Indies, and one might suppose that Dampier
would still have found his account in men who could prove themselves
qualified for such a navigation as that. Or it is conceivable that
Funnell and the others were sick of the cruise and afraid of the ship,
whilst Dampier—that he might prevent the whole crew from abandoning
him—made golden promises under a pledge, of secrecy, which proved
sufficiently potent to work upon the imaginations of thirty of the
men, and to determine them to give their captain another chance.
Be all this as it may, the _St. George_ and the bark proceeded
amicably together to the Gulf of Amapalla, at which place they arrived
on January 26th, and the people at once went to work to divide the
provisions between the two ships. Before the bark sailed two of the
men who had resolved to stay with Captain Dampier left him, and joined
Funnell's party, which now numbered thirty-five—namely, thirty-four
English and a negro-boy. Meanwhile Dampier's men were busy in refitting
their craft. The carpenter stopped the holes which the cannon-balls of
the galleon had made in her with tallow and charcoal, not daring to
drive in a nail. Four guns were struck into the hold, which yet left
sixteen mounted, a greater number than Dampier had men to fight, if the
need arose, “for,” says Funnell, “there remained with him no more than
twenty-eight Men and Boys, and most of them landmen; which was a very
insignificant Force for one who was to make War on a whole Nation.” One
might think that the spectacle of such a ship as this would inspire
even a larger spirit of desertion than her crew manifested. Certainly
there was nothing in the aspect of the tottering and rotten vessel to
coax Funnell and his companions back into Dampier's service. They were
supplied with four pieces of cannon, along with a fair proportion of
small arms and ammunition, and on February 1st they bade farewell to
their old associates and started on their perilous voyage.
The subsequent adventures of Dampier need not take long to relate. As
we have seen, his crew consisted of twenty-eight men only; the _St.
George_ was in a pitiable condition, her seams open, every timber in
her decayed, her sails and rigging worn out, and in no sense was she
fit to keep the sea. Dampier was in the situation of a gambler who
has lost all but the guinea which he now proposes to stake. Indeed,
we find him throughout confiding a great deal too much in luck. It is
seldom that he attempts to force fortune's hand by prompt, vigorous,
and original measures. One by one his brother officers had abandoned
him; his crew had deserted him by the score at a time; and yet in a
ship rotten to the heart of her, and with a beggarly following of
twenty-eight gaunt and dissatisfied men, he clings to the scene of his
distresses and his disappointments with no further expectation than the
gambling hope that, since he is at the very bottom of the wheel, the
next revolution must certainly raise him. Had he and his twenty-eight
men come fresh to these seas, they might have flattered themselves
with brilliant prospects; smaller companies of buccaneers had achieved
incredible things, enlarged their ranks as they progressed, shifted
their flag from ship to ship, until they found themselves in possession
of a fleet equal to any such force as the enemy in those waters had it
in his power to send against them. But Dampier's men were dissatisfied
and miserable, surly and despondent with disappointment, and exhausted
by privation and severe labours. They looked at the future as promising
but a darker picture of what they had already suffered. It was indeed
time for them to go home; the privateering spirit amongst them was
moribund; all heart had been taken out of them. It speaks well for
Dampier's personal influence, whilst it also illustrates his singular
genius of persuasion, that he should have succeeded in keeping these
men together by representations in which possibly he had as little
faith as they. He told them that there was nothing easier than to make
their fortunes by surprising some small Spanish town, and that the
fewer there were of them, the fewer there would be to share the booty.
They listened and sullenly acquiesced—animated, perhaps, by a faint
expiring gleam of their old buccaneering instincts. Thereupon Dampier
attacked Puna in Ecuador, then a village formed of a small church and
about thirty houses. The night was dark when he landed, the inhabitants
were in bed; no resistance was offered, and the place was captured
without trouble. Having plundered this town, they sailed to Lobos de
la Mar, where they let go their anchor, whilst they deliberated what
they should do next. On the way to this island they captured a small
Spanish vessel full of provisions. Dampier called a council, and it
was resolved that they should quit the _St. George_ and sail away to
the East Indies in their prize. It is manifest from this resolution
that their easy plundering of Puna, and their equally easy capture of
the bark,[23] had failed to reconcile them to a longer cruise against
the Spaniards. Having transferred everything likely to be of use to
them from the _St. George_, they left that crazy fabric rolling at her
anchor and steered westwards for the Indies.
What adventures they met with on their way I do not know. Harris says
that on their arrival at one of the Dutch settlements their ship was
seized, their property confiscated, and themselves turned loose to
shift as they best could. Dampier succeeded in making his way home.
He arrived, as was customary with him, a beggar. But the reports of
his voyage considerably enlarged his reputation. The world pitied
the misfortunes whilst it admired the ambitious efforts and the bold
projects of a seaman of whose nationality every Englishman was proud.
By command of the Queen he was presented to her, kissed her hand, and
had the honour of relating his adventures to her. But all this left
him poor, and it was now his business once more to look about him for
further occupation.