WAITING FOR THE GALLEON--DISAPPOINTMENT--CHEQUETAN.
On the 1st of March we made the highlands over Acapulco, and got with all
possible expedition into the situation prescribed by the Commodore's
orders.*
(*Note. The two men-of-war and the three prizes were arranged out of
sight of the land in "a circular line," the two extremities of which were
thirty-six miles apart. Within this line, and much nearer to the port,
especially at night, were two cutters, whose duty it was to watch the
mouth of the harbour and signal to the ships outside them.)
And now we expected with the utmost impatience the 3rd of March, the day
fixed for her departure. And on that day we were all of us most eagerly
engaged in looking out towards Acapulco; and we were so strangely
prepossessed with the certainty of our intelligence, and with an
assurance of her coming out of port, that some or other on board us were
constantly imagining that they discovered one of our cutters returning
with a signal. But to our extreme vexation, both this day and the
succeeding night passed over without any news of the galleon. However, we
did not yet despair, but were all heartily disposed to flatter ourselves
that some unforeseen accident had intervened which might have put off her
departure for a few days; and suggestions of this kind occurred in
plenty, as we knew that the time fixed by the Viceroy for her sailing was
often prolonged on the petition of the merchants of Mexico. Thus we kept
up our hopes, and did not abate of our vigilance; and as the 7th of March
was Sunday, the beginning of Passion Week, which is observed by the
Papists with great strictness and a total cessation from all kinds of
labour, so that no ship is permitted to stir out of port during the whole
week, this quieted our apprehensions for some days, and disposed us not
to expect the galleon till the week following. On the Friday in this week
our cutters returned to us, and the officers on board them were very
confident that the galleon was still in port, for that she could not
possibly have come out but they must have seen her. On the Monday morning
succeeding Passion Week--that is, on the 15th of March--the cutters were
again despatched to their old station, and our hopes were once more
indulged in as sanguine prepossessions as before; but in a week's time
our eagerness was greatly abated, and a general dejection and despondency
took place in its room. For we were persuaded that the enemy had by some
accident discovered our being upon the coast, and had therefore laid an
embargo on the galleon till the next year. And indeed this persuasion was
but too well founded; for we afterwards learned that our barge, when sent
on the discovery of the port of Acapulco, had been seen from the shore,
and that this circumstance (no embarkations but canoes ever frequenting
that coast) was to them a sufficient proof of the neighbourhood of our
squadron, on which they stopped the galleon till the succeeding year.
SHORT OF WATER.
When we had taken up the cutters, all the ships being joined, the
Commodore made a signal to speak with their commanders, and upon enquiry
into the stock of fresh water remaining on board the squadron, it was
found to be so very slender that we were under necessity of quitting our
station to procure a fresh supply. And consulting what place was the
properest for this purpose, it was agreed that the harbour of Seguataneo,
or Chequetan, being the nearest to us, was on that account the most
eligible, and it was therefore immediately resolved to make the best of
our way thither. By the 1st of April we were so far advanced towards
Seguataneo that we thought it expedient to send out two boats, that they
might range along the coast and discover the watering-place. They were
gone some days, and our water being now very short, it was a particular
felicity to us that we met with daily supplies of turtle; for had we been
entirely confined to salt provisions, we must have suffered extremely in
so warm a climate. Indeed, our present circumstances were sufficiently
alarming, and gave the most considerate amongst us as much concern as any
of the numerous perils we had hitherto encountered; for our boats, as we
conceived by their not returning, had not as yet discovered a place
proper to water at, and by the leakage of our casks and other accidents
we had not ten days' water on board the whole squadron; so that, from the
known difficulty of procuring water on this coast, and the little
reliance we had on the buccaneer writers (the only guides we had to trust
to), we were apprehensive of being soon exposed to a calamity, the most
terrible of any in the long, disheartening catalogue of the distresses of
a seafaring life.
But these gloomy suggestions were soon happily ended, for our boats
returned on the 5th of April, having discovered a place proper for our
purpose about seven miles to the westward of the rocks of Seguataneo,
which by the description they gave of it, appeared to be the port called
by Dampier* the harbour of Chequetan. On the 7th we stood in, and that
evening came to an anchor in eleven fathoms. Thus, after a four months'
continuance at sea from the leaving of Quibo, and having but six days'
water on board, we arrived in the harbour of Chequetan.
(*Note. Dampier (1652 to 1715), the son of a tenant farmer, near Yeovil,
played many parts in his time. He was a buccaneer, a pirate, a
circumnavigator, an author, a captain in the navy and an hydrographer.
His 'Voyage Round the World', published in 1697, procured him a command
in the navy; but though an excellent seaman, he proved an incapable
commander, as his buccaneer comrades had doubtless foreseen, for he had
never been entrusted with any command among them.)