DAMPIER'S EARLY LIFE

It is not very long after he had quitted Campeché that we find him associating with privateers, and becoming one of their number.

He writes of this in a half-apologetic manner, complaining of failure through a violent storm and of a futile cruise lasting for several months, and talks of having been driven at last to seek subsistence by turning pirate. There is no hint in his previous narrative of any leanings this way.

Probably thoughts of the golden chances of the rover might have been put into his head by chats with the logwood-cutters.

The Spaniard had long been the freebooter’s quarry. His carracks and galleons, laden almost to their ways with the treasure of New Spain, had handsomely lined the pockets of the marauding rogues, and such was the value of the booty that scores of them might have set up as fine gentlemen in their own country on their shares but for their trick of squandering in a night what they had taken months to gain at the hazard of their lives.

The temptation was too much for Dampier; besides, he was already seasoned to hardships of even a severer kind than was promised by a life of piracy.

He had out-weathered the bitter cold of Newfoundland, he had worked as a common sailor before the mast, he had served against the Dutch, he had knocked about in Mexican waters in a vessel as commodious and seaworthy as a Thames barge, and he was now fresh from the severe discipline of the logwood trade.

His associates consisted of 60 men, who were divided between two vessels. Their first step was to attack the fort of Alvarado, in which enterprise they lost ten or eleven of their company.

The inhabitants had plenty of boats and canoes.

They carried away their money and effects before the fort yielded, and as it was too dark to pursue them, the buccaneers were satisfied to rest quietly during the night. Next morning they were surprised by the sight of seven ships which had been sent from Vera Cruz.

They got under-weigh and cleared for action. But they had no heart to fight; which is intelligible enough when we learn that the Spanish admiral’s ship mounted ten guns and carried a hundred men; that another had four guns and eighty men; the rest sixty or seventy men apiece, well armed, whilst the bulwarks of the ships were protected with bulls’ hides breast-high. Fortunately for them, the Spaniards had no mind to fight either.

Some shots were exchanged, and presently the Spanish squadron edged away towards the shore, “and we,” says Dampier, “glad of the deliverance, went away to the eastward.” How long he remained with the pirates he does not say. Apparently he could not find his account with them.

He left them to return to the logwood trade, at which he continued for about twelve more months. He then tells us that he resolved to pay a visit to England with a design of returning again to wood-cutting, which no doubt was proving profitable to him, and accordingly set sail for Jamaica in April 1678. After remaining for a short time at that island he embarked for England, and arrived at the beginning of August.

He did not remain long at home. In the beginning of the year 1679 he sailed for Jamaica in a vessel named the Loyal Merchant. He shipped as a passenger, intending when he arrived at Jamaica to proceed to the Bay of Campeché, and there pursue the employment of logwood-cutting.

But on his arrival at Port Royal in Jamaica in April 1679, after a good deal of consideration, he made up his mind to delay or abandon his wood-cutting scheme, for he tells us that he remained in that island for the rest of the year in expectation of some other business.

Whatever his hopes were they could not have been greatly disappointed, for we read of him as having, whilst in Jamaica, purchased a small estate in Dorsetshire from a person whose title to it he was well assured of.

He was then, it now being about Christmas, 1679, about to sail again for England, when a Mr. Hobby persuaded him to venture on a short trading voyage to what was then termed the country of the Mosquitoes, a little nation which he describes as composed of not more than a hundred men inhabiting the mainland between Honduras and Nicaragua.

Dampier consented; he and Mr. Hobby set out, and presently dropped anchor in a bay at the west end of Jamaica, where they found a number of privateersmen, including Captains Coxon, Sawkins, and Sharp. These men were maturing the scheme of an expedition of so tempting a character that the whole of Mr. Hobby’s men quitted him and went over to the pirates. Dampier stayed with his companion for three or four days, and then joined the pirates also.

What became of Mr. Hobby he does not say. There is here a shamefacedness in his avowal not hard to distinguish. Perhaps as he sits writing this narrative he wonders at the irresolution he exhibited, and his curious caprices of decision.

He starts for Jamaica to cut logwood at Campeché; on his arrival he changes his mind and prepares for his return; he is then diverted from his intention by Mr. Hobby, with whom he embarks on a well-considered adventure, which he relinquishes to become pirate before his associate’s ship has fairly got away from Jamaica! It is these sudden changes of front, however, and the unexpected turns of fortune which they produced, which keeps Dampier’s narrative sweet with fresh and ever-flowing interest.

His adventures from the date of his leaving Mr. Hobby down to the month of April 1681 he dismisses in a couple of pages. Ringrose, however, has written very fully of the expedition in which Dampier apparently served as a foremast hand, and to the pages of his work it is necessary to turn to obtain the information which Dampier omits. [7]

The fleet of the privateers consisted of nine vessels; the largest of them, commanded by Captain Harris, was of the burden of 150 tons, mounted 25 guns, and carried one hundred and seven men; whilst the smallest, commanded by Captain Macket, was of 14 tons, her crew consisting of 20 men.

They sailed on March 23rd, 1679, for the province of Darien, their designs being, as Ringrose candidly admits, to pillage and plunder in those parts. But they do not appear to have arrived off the coast until April 1680, this being the date given by Ringrose, who says that there they landed three hundred and thirty-one men, leaving a party of sailors behind them to guard their ships.

They marched in companies. Captain Bartholomew Sharp’s (in whose troop, I take it, [Pg 30]was Dampier) carried a red flag, with a bunch of white and green ribands.

Captain Richard Sawkins’s company exhibited a red flag striped with yellow.

The third and fourth, commanded by Captain Peter Harris, bore two cream-coloured flags; the fifth and sixth a red flag each; and the seventh a red colour with yellow stripes, and a hand and sword thereon by way of a device.

“All or most of them,” adds Ringrose, “were armed with Fuzee, Pistol, and Hanger.” This is a description that brings the picture before us. We see these troops of sailors carrying banners, dressed as merchant seamen always were, and still are, in 20 different costumes, lurching along under the broiling equatorial sun, through forests, rivers, and bogs, trusting to luck for a drink of water, and with no better victuals than cakes of bread (four to a man), called by Ringrose “dough-boys,” a name that survives to this day, animated to the support of the most extraordinary fatigues, the most venomous country, and the deadliest climate in the world, by dreams of more gold than they would be able to carry away with them.

But the whole undertaking was a failure. They attacked and took the town of Santa Maria, and found the place to consist of a few houses built of cane, with not so much as the value of a single ducat anywhere to be met with.

Their disappointment was rendered the keener by the news that three days before their arrival several hundred-weight of gold had been sent away to Panama in one of those ships which were commonly despatched 3 times a year from that city to convey the treasure brought to Santa Maria from the mountains. Their ill-luck, however, hardened them in their resolution to attack Panama.

The city was a sort of New Jerusalem to the imaginations of these men, who thought of it as half-formed of storehouses filled to their roofs with plate, jewels, and gold. They stayed two days at Santa Maria, and then on April 17th, 1680, embarked in thirty-five canoes and a periagua, and rowed down the river in quest of the South Sea, upon which, as Ringrose puts it, Panama is seated. Their adventures were many; their hardships and distresses such as rendered their energy and fortitude phenomenal even amongst a community who were incomparably gifted with these qualities.

Ringrose, whose narrative I follow, was wrecked in the river by the oversetting of his canoe, and came very near to perishing along with a number of his comrades.

He fell into the hands of some Spaniards, with whom, as they understood neither English nor French, whilst he was equally ignorant of their tongue, he was obliged to converse in Latin!—a language in which, I suspect, not many mariners of to-day could communicate their distresses.

He and his shipmates narrowly escaped torture and a miserable death, and eventually recovering their canoe, they started afresh on their voyage, and were fortunate enough next morning to fall in with the rest of the buccaneers, who had anchored during the night in a deep bay.

Trifling as these incidents are, it is proper to relate them as examples of the life and experiences of Dampier during this period of his career. Unfortunately, until one opens his own books one does not know where to look for him. In whose troop he marched, in whose canoe he sat, in what special adventures he was concerned, whether he was favoured for his intelligence above the others by the commanders of the expedition, cannot be ascertained. When Ringrose wrote, Dampier was still a mere privateersman, a foremast hand, a man without individuality enough to arrest the attention of the sturdy, plain, and honest historian of the voyage in which they both took part.

There is no reason to suppose that Dampier at this time was regarded by his fellows as better than the humblest of the shaggy, sun-blackened men who, with fuzees on their shoulders and pistols in their girdles, tramped in little troops through the swamps and creeks and over the swelling lands of the Isthmus, or who in their deep and narrow canoes floated silent and grim upon the hot and creeping river in search of the unexpectant Don and his almost fabulous wealth.

Dampier introduces a curious story in connection with Panama and the South Seas in his first volume. He says that when he was on board Captain Coxon’s ship, there being three or four privateers in company, they captured a despatch boat bound to Cartagena from Porto Bello. They opened many of the letters, and were struck by observing that several of the merchants who wrote from Old Spain exhorted their correspondents at Panama to bear in mind a certain prophecy that had been current in Madrid and other centres for some months past, the tenor of which was—That there would be English privateers that year in the West Indies, who would make such great discoveries as to open a door into the South Seas.

This door, Dampier says, was the passage overland to Darien through the country of the Indians, a people who had quarrelled with the Spaniards and professed a friendship for the English. At all events, these Indians had been [Pg 33]for some time inviting the privateers to march across their territory and fall upon the Spaniards in the South Seas. Hence when the letters came into their hands they grew disposed to entertain the Indians’ proposal in good earnest, and finally made those attempts to which I have referred in quoting from the pages of Ringrose.

The cause of the friendship between the English buccaneers and the Darien Indians is a story of some interest. About fifteen years before Dampier crossed the Isthmus a certain Captain Wright, who was cruising in those waters, met with a young Indian lad paddling about in a canoe. He took him aboard his ship, clothed him, and, with the idea of making an Englishman of him, gave him the name of John Gret. Some Mosquito Indians, however, begged the boy from Captain Wright, who gave him to them. They carried him into their own country, and by and by he married a wife from among them. Through the agency of this John Gret, who always preserved an affection for the English, a friendship was established between the buccaneers and the Indians. Presents were made on each side, and a certain secret signal was concerted whereby the Indians might recognise their English friends.

It happened that there was a Frenchman among one of the buccaneering captain’s crew.

He was artful enough to commit this signal, whatever it was, to memory, and on his arrival at Petit Guavres he communicated what he knew to his countrymen there, and represented the facility with which the South Seas might be entered now that he had the secret of winning over the Indians to help him. On this one hundred and twenty Frenchmen formed themselves into a troop, with the buccaneer, whom Dampier calls Mr. la Sound, as their [Pg 34]captain, and marched against Cheapo, an attempt that proved unsuccessful, though the simple Indians, believing them to be English, gave them all the assistance that was in their power.

“From such small beginnings,” adds Dampier, “arose those great stirs that have been since made in the South Seas, viz.: from the Letters we took and from the Friendship contracted with these Indians by means of John Gret. Yet this Friendship had like to have been stifled in its Infancy; for within few months after an English trading Sloop came on this Coast from Jamaica, and John Gret, who by this time had advanced himself as a Grandee amongst these Indians, together with 5 or 6 more of that quality, went off to the Sloop in their long Gowns, as the custom is for such to wear among them. Being received aboard, they expected to find everything friendly, and John Gret talkt to them in English; but these English Men having no knowledge at all of what had happened, endeavoured to make them Slaves (as is commonly done), for upon carrying them to Jamaica they could have sold them for 10 or 12 Pound apiece. But John Gret and the rest perceiving this, leapt all overboard, and were by the others killed every one of them in the Water. The Indians on Shoar never came to the knowledge of it; if they had it would have endangered our Correspondence.”

On April 23rd the buccaneers entered the Bay of Panama, and the city, offering a fair and lovely prospect, as Dampier afterwards tells us, lay full in their view. The old town that had been sacked and burnt by Henry Morgan in 1670 lay four miles to the eastward of the new city; but amongst those now suburban ruins the cathedral rose stately and splendid, and Ringrose, enraptured [Pg 35]by the sight, vows that the building viewed from the sea might compare in majesty with St. Paul’s.

The Panama at which Dampier gazed was almost new, built of brick and stone, with eight churches amongst the houses, most of them unfinished.

Many of the edifices were three stories high. A strong wall circled the place, crowned with seaward-pointing cannon, and these defences were backed by a garrison of three hundred of the king’s soldiers, whilst the city itself supplemented that force by a contribution of eleven hundred militiamen.

Such was the Panama of which our handful of audacious buccaneers were coolly proposing the sacking, and doubtless the burning.

It seems, however, that when they arrived most of the soldiers were absent, and Ringrose tells us that had they attempted the town at once instead of attacking the ships in the bay, they must have made an easy conquest. The desperate energy, the hot and furious courage, of an earlier race of pirates were wanting in them.

They lingered long enough to enable the city to render its capture impracticable, and then, feigning a sentimental interest in the condition of the Indians, they despatched word to the Governor that if he would suffer the natives to enjoy their own “power and liberty,” and send to the buccaneers 500 pieces of eight for each man, and one thousand pieces of eight for each commander, they would desist from further hostilities.

A civil message was returned, and they were also asked from whom they received their commission; to which Captain Sawkins responded in a style which he may have borrowed from the tragedies of Nathaniel Lee: “That as yet all his company were not come together; but that when they were come up, we would come and visit him at Panama, and bring our commissions on the muzzles of our guns, at which time he should read them as plain as the flame of gunpowder could make them.” All this was mere windy, hectoring talk, and nothing followed it.

The buccaneers were growing mutinous with famine, and as it was clear there was nothing to be done with Panama, Captain Sawkins, who was chief in command, gave orders to weigh anchor, and the pirates sailed away without a ducat’s worth of satisfaction for the prodigious hardships they had endured.

Whilst they lay at anchor before Caboa the two chief commanders, Sawkins and Sharp, went ashore with sixty or seventy men to attack Puebla Nueva. Ringrose dates this attempt May 22, 1680.

The inhabitants were prepared, and the only issue of a sharp engagement was the death of Captain Sawkins and the loss of several of his people.

This defeat led to a mutiny among the buccaneers. Eventually Captain Sharp, who was now chief in command, called the men together and proposed to them to remain in the South Sea and then go home by way of the Horn, adding that he would guarantee that every man who stayed with him should be worth 1,000 pounds by the time he arrived in England. This scheme of cruising in the South Sea against the Spaniards had been Sawkins’s fixed project, and he was so great a favourite that had he lived it is probable the whole of the crew would have accompanied him; but Sharp did not enjoy the general confidence of his people, and a number of the men sullenly and obstinately refused to linger any longer in these waters.

Ringrose was amongst those who were weary of the hazardous and unremunerative adventures of the buccaneers, and [Pg 37]would have been glad to leave the ship. Had he done so there would have been no record of this voyage of Dampier; but he was wise enough to fear the Indians and to dread the sufferings of an overland journey in the rainy season. He therefore resolved to remain with Captain Sharp, amongst whose adherents was William Dampier.

63 of the men left them, and then on Sunday, June 6th, 1680, Captain Sharp and his people steered away to the southward with the intention of plundering Arica.

On approaching the coast they found the bay guarded by numerous parties of horsemen, whilst the tops of the hills were also lined with men. They withdrew without firing a gun. Better luck, however, befell them on October 29th at Hilo. This place they took without difficulty, and found it stored with quantities of pitch, tar, wine, oil, and flour.

The sacking of Hilo was a sort of holiday jaunt for the freebooters, who feasted delightfully on olives, lemons, and limes; on cakes, on flagons of cool wines, on great strawberries, and sweetmeats and other delicacies. As they marched up the valley the Spaniards accompanied their progress upon the hill-tops, and rolled great stones down upon them, but no man was hurt; whilst to the explosion of a single musket every visible Spanish head was instantly ducked out of sight. Much that strikes one as marvellous in the achievements of the buccaneers in the South Sea vanishes when one thinks of the abject cowardice of the American Spaniards. Had their troops been composed of priests and old women, they could not have fled with livelier hysterical nimbleness from the sight of the English colours. The picture is humiliating, though it is not wanting in the ridiculous.

All through the buccaneering annals, as in Anson’s and the voyages of others, one is incessantly meeting with this sort of thing:—A boat filled with armed privateersmen approaches the beach. A numerous party of horsemen, bristling with sabres, lances, and muskets, stand as in a posture to dispute their landing.

But as the boat draws near the horsemen retreat, and in no very good order, back to behind the town as the seamen spring ashore. They are finally seen on the summit of a hill in company with several troops of foot soldiers, who, whilst their bands play and their banners proudly flutter, gaze downwards at the twenty or thirty sailors who are firing the houses of their town and lurching seawards with sacks of silver on their backs.

Ringrose calls a halt at the “Isle of Plate,” as he writes it, to tell us a little story: “This Island received its Name from Sir Francis Drake, and his famous Actions. For it is reported that he here made the Dividend of that vast quantity of Plate which he took in the Armada of this sea, distributing it to each Man of his Company by whole Bowls full. The Spaniards affirm to this Day that he took at that Time twelvescore Tons of Plate, and sixteen bowls of coined Money a Man; his number being then forty-five Men in all; insomuch that they were forced to heave much of it overboard, because his ship could not carry it all. Hence this Island was called by the Spaniards the Isle of Plate, from this great Dividend, and by us Drake’s Isle.”

Traditions of this kind were very nicely calculated to keep the buccaneering heart high. Our genial freebooter has also another yarn to spin in connection with this [Pg 39]coast. He says that in the time of Oliver Cromwell the merchants of Lima fitted out a ship armed with seventy brass guns, with a treasure in her hold of no less than thirty millions of dollars, “all which vast sum of money,” he says, “was given by the merchants of Lima, and sent as a present to our Gracious King (or rather his father) who now reigneth, to supply him in his exile and distress, but that this great and rich ship was lost by keeping along the shore in the Bay of Manta above mentioned or thereabouts.

The truth whereof is much to be questioned.” Be his stories true or false, however, it is pleasant to sail in the company of an old seaman who has an anecdote to fit every bay or headland of the coast along which he jogs. Unhappily Ringrose, who begins very well, drifts fast into the unsuggestive trick of “loggings,” telling us in twenty pages at a stretch that on Monday the sun rose at such and such an hour, that on Tuesday it blew a fresh gale, that on Wednesday there was a ring round the moon, that on Thursday they had made thirty leagues in 24 hours, and so forth.

It is by comparing the best of the early mariners’ narratives with Dampier’s that one remarks his eminent superiority as a writer, observer, and describer.

As they sailed down the American seaboard they captured a few small vessels, but their booty was inconsiderable. On December 3rd, 1680, they attacked the city of La Serena.

They routed the Spaniards, who, in flying, carried away the best of their goods and jewels. An offer of ransom was made, and the price fixed was 95,000 pieces of eight.

It was soon rendered plain, however, that the enemy had no intention of paying, whereupon the buccaneers fired every house in the town to the end that the whole place might be reduced to ashes. Before the ship sailed she was very nearly burnt by a curious Spanish stratagem.

A horse’s hide was blown out with wind to the condition of a bladder. A man got upon it and silently paddled himself under the stern of the privateer, between whose rudder and sternpost he crammed a mass of oakum, brimstone, and other combustible matter.

This done, he softly fired it with a match and sneaked away ashore. The buccaneers observing the dark mass on the water, concluded it to be a dead horse, and gave it no particular heed.

On a sudden the alarm of fire was raised; the rudder was seen to be burning and the ship was full of smoke. After some trouble the flames were extinguished, and then suspecting some stratagem in the object they had previously lightly glanced at, they sent the boat ashore, where the puffed-out hide was found with a match burning at both ends of it.

By Christmas Day they were at anchor off the Island of Juan Fernandez. It is noteworthy that Ringrose, in his journal under date of January 3rd, says that their pilot told them that many years ago a ship was cast away upon this island and only one man saved, who lived alone upon it for over five years before any vessel came that way to carry him off. It is curious that none of the biographers of Defoe should refer to this statement in dealing with the inspirations of the great writer’s masterpiece. Whilst lying at this island there was trouble amongst the men, which resulted in Captain Sharp being deposed.

A number of the crew wanted to go home at once; others were for remaining in those seas until they had got more money.

A man named John Watling, an old privateer and a seaman of experience, was chosen in the room of Sharp. It was shortly after this that the buccaneers were alarmed by the unexpected apparition of three men-of-war. They instantly slipped their cables and stood out to sea, leaving behind them in their hurry that famous Mosquito Indian, of whom it is uncertain whether it was to his or to Selkirk’s adventures that Defoe owed the idea of Robinson Crusoe.

The vessels which surprised them were large and heavily armed, one of them being eight hundred and another six hundred tons. They hoisted the “bloody flag,” as it was called, meaning that no quarter would be given. The buccaneers did the same, but they were in truth very unwilling to fight.

Watling either could not or would not dissemble his fears. Fortunately the Spaniards proved thorough cowards. Despite the bluster of their no-quarter signal flying at the masthead, they never offered to approach the privateer, which, glad enough to escape, next day stood away north-east for Arica.

I will not charge Watling with cowardice, but he exhibits a quality of timidity sufficiently accentuated to account for a very cruel disposition. Of this man, who had manifested many signs of alarm at sight of the Spanish ships-of-war, a black act of wickedness is recorded a few days later. Amongst the prisoners on board was an old white-haired Spaniard. Watling questioned him about Arica, and believing that he lied in his answers ordered him to be shot.

The former commander, Captain Sharp, vehemently opposed the execution of this cruel sentence, but finding his appeal disregarded he plunged his hands in water and, washing them, exclaimed, “Gentlemen, I am clear of the blood of this old man, and I will warrant you a hot day for this piece of cruelty whenever we come to fight at Arica.”

The prophecy was fulfilled. On January 13th, 1680, the buccaneers were off that town, and ninety-two men going ashore attacked the place with incredible fury. We read of them filling every street in the city with dead bodies. In a short time Captain Watling was shot through the heart, whilst there were slain besides two quartermasters and so many of the men that further efforts were rendered hopeless.

The survivors appealed to Captain Sharp to lead them out of their difficulties and get them back to the ship. The enemy surrounded them, they were in great disorder, and there was no one to command them. Sharp, bitterly resenting their behaviour to him, which had led to his being supplanted by Watling, hesitated.

“But,” says Ringrose, “at our earnest request and petition he took up the command-in-chief again, and began to distribute his orders for our safety.” They succeeded in fighting their way to the beach, and got on board at ten o’clock at night, after a desperate battle that had lasted the whole day.

On putting to sea again there was much mutinous growling, and when off the Island of Plata, on April 17th, 1681, the quarrels rose to such a pitch that there was nothing for it but separation. The trouble lay in a number of the men, now that Watling was dead, desiring the reappointment of Sharp.

This was warmly opposed by others. The matter was put to the vote, and the Sharpites proving the more numerous, the dissentients agreed to leave them—the arrangement being that the majority should keep the [Pg 43]ship, whilst the others should take the long-boat and canoes and return by way of the Isthmus, or seek their fortunes as they chose in other directions. The out-voted party numbered forty-seven men, one of whom was William Dampier.