THE VOYAGE OF THE ROEBUCK

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 [Pg 108]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 [Pg 109]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. [Pg 110]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 [Pg 111]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 [Pg 112]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 [Pg 113]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 [Pg 114]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 [Pg 115]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 [Pg 116]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, [Pg 117]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., [Pg 118]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 [Pg 119]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 [Pg 122]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 [Pg 123]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 [Pg 124]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 [Pg 125]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 Strad [Pg 126]ling 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 [Pg 127]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 [Pg 128]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 [Pg 129]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 [Pg 130]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 [Pg 131]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 [Pg 132]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 [Pg 133]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 [Pg 134]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 [Pg 135]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 [Pg 136]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 [Pg 137]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.