Cooke tells us that Selkirk had conceived “irreconcilable aversion to an officer on board the Cinque Ports, who, he was informed, was on board the Duke, but not being a principal in command, he was prevailed upon to waive that circumstance and accompany Captain Dampier, for whom he had a friendship.”

Whoever the person may have been, the Scotchman’s dislike of him was bitter, and it was to Dampier’s persuasions that Rogers owed the services of a man who proved of the utmost use to him whilst lying at the island by enabling him to supply the ships with fresh provisions and by facilitating the business of taking in wood and water.

Rogers styled Selkirk the governor of the island, a half-humorous and half-pathetic fancy (when one thinks of the desperate loneliness of the unhappy man), which Defoe afterwards adopted when making Robinson Crusoe speak of his possessions and territories, his castles and his dependents.

The vessels arrived, as we have seen, on February 1st, and by the 3rd a smith’s forge had been conveyed ashore, the coopers were hard at work, and there were tents, or “pavilions,” erected for the commanders and the sick.

But it was their business not to lose time, for they had long before—that is to say, when they were at the Canaries—heard that five large French ships were coming to search for them in the South Sea; so that very quickly, all the sick men happily recovering rapidly with the exception of two who died, they had refitted their ships, taken in wood and water, and boiled down and stowed away about eighty gallons of sea-lions’ oil to use for the lamps, that they might save the candles.

This done they set sail, after holding a consultation, which resulted in further regulations for the preservation of discipline; and on May 15th captured a little vessel of sixteen tons, whose master furnished them with the reassuring news that seven French ships, which had been cruising off this part of the coast for some time, had six months previously gone away for the Horn, and it was added they were not likely to return.

There was other news besides of a kind to make their mouths water, particularly that the widow of the deceased Viceroy of Peru would shortly embark for Acapulco with her family and the whole of her fortune, and probably break her journey at Payta.

They were also told that some months previously a ship had sailed from Payta for Acapulco with two hundred thousand pieces of eight on board, together with a rich cargo of liquors and flour. More useful information was conveyed in the statement that a certain Señor Morel was waiting in a stout ship filled with dry goods for a vessel expected from Panama richly laden, with a bishop aboard, and that both craft would put to sea together.

The idea of a bishop was commonly associated in the buccaneering mind with visions of the sacred splendours of the altar and the fruits of long years dedicated to painful hoarding. So it was straightway resolved by Rogers and his people to start for a cruise off Payta, meanwhile exercising all possible precaution against discovery lest larger designs should be spoilt.

A few days after they had come to this determination Captain Rogers and Captain Dover fell out. Rogers says that Dover charged him with insolence; Captain Cooke, on the other hand, takes Dover’s part in his story of this passage. Difficulties of this kind were incessantly occurring amongst the buccaneers, and on the eve, too, very often of the execution of big projects.

The quarrel, however, is not dwelt upon at length; probably the disputants quickly saw the wisdom of calling a truce that they might attend to the serious business of what is grandiloquently termed “the conquest of Guayaquil.”

The great undertaking was settled thus: Dover was to command a company of 70 marines, Rogers another company of 71 officers and sailors, Courtney a third company of 73 men, and Dampier was to have charge of the artillery, with a reserve force of 72 seamen.

Meanwhile Cooke was to command the Dutchess with forty-two men, and Captain Robert Fry the Duke with forty men; bringing up the whole force to a total of three hundred and twenty.

In addition there were blacks, Indians, and prisoners, to the number of 266; forming an army of 586 people for the captains and officers to look after.

The appetites of the buccaneers were shrewdly sharpened by the understanding that bedding, wearing apparel, gold rings, buttons, buckles, gold or silver crucifixes, watches, liquors, and provisions, should be reckoned fair plunder to be equally divided; but money, women’s earrings, loose diamonds, pearls, and precious stones, were to be held as belonging to the merchants.

On the 15th, there was a smart engagement between the privateersmen’s boats and a Spanish ship, in which Rogers lost his brother, who was second lieutenant on board the Duke.

The vessel was captured, and proved to be the craft in which the bishop had sailed; but he had gone ashore at Point St. Helena, leaving the ship to carry his property to Lima. She had seventy blacks and a number of passengers on board.

The lading consisted of bale goods, and a considerable quantity of pearls were found in her. Captain Cooke took charge, and the prisoners were divided between the Duke and Dutchess.

The little bark of sixteen tons which they had taken some time previously they named the Beginning, and on April 21st in the morning she was sent to cruise close inshore to see all clear for the landing of the men.

The report she brought was that there was a vessel riding close under the point whose crew, on sighting the Beginning, had hurried ashore and vanished.

On this, the privateersmen rowed towards the town of Guayaquil. The night drew down dark; the men pulled stealthily with muffled oars; an hour before midnight they saw a light suddenly spring up in the town, towards which they continued to row very softly until they were within a mile of it; when on a sudden they were brought to a halt by hearing a sentinel call to another and talk to him.

Concluding they were discovered, the buccaneers pulled across the river, and lay still and very quiet, waiting and watching.

In a few minutes the whole town flashed out into lights, the resonant notes of a great alarm-bell swang through the soft wind, several volleys of musketry were discharged, and a large fire was kindled on the hill to let the town know that the enemy was in the river.

The officers in charge of the boats, confounded by this unexpected discovery of their presence, fell to a hot argument and grew so angry that their voices were heard ashore.

The Spaniards, who could not understand them, sent post-haste for an Englishman who was then living in the town, and brought him, very secretly, close to the boats that he might interpret what was said.

But before he arrived the privateersmen had concluded their arguments. [28] They remained all night in the river, and next day contented themselves with capturing a number of vessels, and receiving the governor under a flag of truce to treat with him about the ransom of the town and ships.

But nothing came of the interview; and at four o’clock in the afternoon, on April 23d, the whole force of the buccaneers landed and attacked the place.

The Spaniards fired a single volley and fled; the English pressed forward and seized the enemy’s cannon, from which every gunner had run saving one, an Irishman, [Pg 160]who gallantly stuck to his post until he dropped mortally wounded. The seamen marched through both towns—the Spaniards flying pell-mell before them firing the houses as they tramped forwards, and leaving gangs of men behind them to guard the churches.

There was a thick wood on the right of the place, and all night long the enemy continued to fire from among the trees at the English sentries, but without injuring a man.

From time to time bodies of horse and foot showed themselves, but only to wheel about and fly to the first musket levelled at them. Meanwhile a party of 22 men went in the Dutchess’s pinnace up the river, and sacked every house they came across.

The enemy was easily kept at bay, and the buccaneers had no trouble in sending booty and provisions in quantities to their ships. In due course messengers, flourishing flags of truce, came to talk about ransoming the town, and after much discussion, the offer of 30,000 dollars was accepted, of which twenty-five thousand were paid.

The depredations of the buccaneers had been indeed serious enough to threaten the townspeople with absolute ruin if the sacking was not speedily arrested.

Scarcely had they withdrawn from Guayaquil when they took a ship full of meal, sugar, and other commodities, making the 14th prize they had captured in those seas! The town itself handsomely repaid the labour and danger of assaulting it; about twelve hundred pounds’ worth of plate and jewellery, many bales of valuable dry goods, and a great store of merchandise of all kinds, exclusive of wines, waggon-loads of cocoa, several ships on the stocks, and two freshly-launched vessels of four hundred tons each, valued at eighty thousand crowns.

But for their approach having been discovered they might have found even a handsomer account than this in the capture of the place, for it afterwards came to their ears that the inhabitants in their flight carried away with them money, plate, and jewels to the value of 200,000 pieces of eight.

The unhappy Spaniards seem to have been plundered on all sides, for in going the rounds the privateersmen took a number of negroes and Indians laden with goods, which they promptly confessed were stolen, “and we were afterwards informed that in the Hurry the Inhabitants had given Plate and Money to Blacks to carry out of the Town, and could never hear of it after.”

On May 11, we find Rogers, Dampier, and their companions running before a strong gale of wind for the Galapagos Islands.

A number of the crew were prostrated with a malignant fever contracted at Guayaquil, where, about a month before the buccaneers’ arrival, there had raged an epidemic disease of which 12 persons perished every day.

Until the floors of the churches being filled with bodies, the people dug a great hole close to one of the structures where sailors had been stationed as guards. In this hole lay a pile of putrefied corpses, and the seamen only quitted their posts to return to their ships poisoned.

On the 18th, they were off a couple of large islands, and sent boats to seek for fresh water.

The errand was fruitless, though the searchers went three or four miles into the country in their hunt. Their business now was to go where fresh water was to be had, for of the two crews there were no less than 120,000 men down with fever.

Captain Courtney was dangerously ill, and Captain Dover was devoting his leisure to prescribing for him.

So they made sail for Gorgona, capturing a few vessels as they proceeded, and, anchoring on June 13th, at once distributed their sick amongst the prizes, and set to work to careen and repair the Duke and Dutchess.

By the 28th, they had restored their provisions and mounted their guns, having in fourteen days caulked, rigged, discharged, and reloaded their ships; a smart piece of work that greatly astonished the Spanish prisoners, who said that their people usually took a couple of months to careen a vessel at ports where every necessary appliance for this business was to be had.

The unhappy captives, whilst watching or assisting the English, would scarcely marvel at their triumphs by land and sea when they observed their ceaseless and vigilant activity,—how, without regard to the climate, they worked from the break of day till darkness stopped their hands, and how, with swift and unerring judgment, they devised expedients for the remedying of difficulties which in the eyes of their astonished prisoners appeared at the time to be insurmountable.

“The Natives of Old Spain,” says Rogers, “are accounted but ordinary Mariners; but here they are much worse, all the Prizes we took being rather cobbled than fitted out for the Sea; so that had they such Weather as we often meet with in the European Seas in Winter, they could scarce ever reach a Port again as they are fitted; but they Sail here Hundreds of Leagues.”

Admissions of this kind are as good as saying that seizures in the South Sea went, as achievements, but a very little way beyond the mere act of hailing a ship and bidding her strike.

The boldness of the English buccaneers is not very conspicuous in such encounters. Most of the vessels they took were navigated by crews of yellow, nervous men, utterly worthless as seamen, with neither heart nor muscle as combatants; whilst the cabins were crowded with priests, women, and sea-sick merchants, who increased the disorder caused by the appearance of a privateer by lamentations and tears, by wild appeals to the saints, and passionate adjurations to the shivering crew.

The capture of such craft was as easy as catching flies.

The qualities of the English South Seamen of those days must be sought in the records of their assaults on land, their boarding of tall and powerfully armed galleons, their murderous resistance to the attacks of ships-of-state of great tonnage crowded with soldiers and sailors and carrying ten guns to the Rover’s one.

Whilst Rogers and his people were at Gorgona they equipped one of their prizes named the Havre de Grace as a third ship to act with the Duke and Dutchess.

She was called the Marquis, and Captain Cooke took command of her. The business of fitting her out as a war vessel occupied them from June 29th to July 9th, and when she was finished they made a holiday of it, sitting down to a hearty meal and drinking the Queen’s health with loud huzzas, and then the health of the owners with more huzzas, and then their own healths until their eyes danced in their heads.

Spite of the general joy, however, the Marquis proved something of a failure, for Cooke says that her masts were new and too heavy for her, and that being badly stowed she was exceedingly tender, by which is meant that she heeled or lay over unduly to light pressures, and scarcely made headway when on a wind, “so that the Duke and Dutchess were fain to spare a great deal of sail for me to keep up with them.” Before lifting their anchors the commanders and officers of the ships met together to value the plunder in order to divide it.

One kind of commodities they appraised at four hundred pounds; the silver-hilted swords, buckles, snuff-boxes, buttons, and silver plate at seven hundred and forty-three pounds fifteen shillings, taking the piece of eight at four shillings and sixpence. By this time there were upwards of 80,000 pounds’ worth of property and treasure on board destined for the owners.

Dampier shared in the high hopes and good spirits of his shipmates. This was the only promising privateering expedition he had ever been engaged in, and if their luck continued he might reasonably flatter himself with the belief that he would even yet snatch an independency out of the reluctant maw of the sea.

They had rid themselves of their prisoners by sending them away in some of the prizes. The female captives spoke well of the treatment they had received, and ingenuously confessed that they had met with far more courtesy and civility than their own countrymen would have extended to persons in their condition. The honourable and humane behaviour of the English buccaneers towards their female prisoners became a tradition, which was perpetuated and confirmed by the wise policy of Commodore Anson.

They sailed on August 11th, and nothing noteworthy happened till September 6th, on which date we find Dampier dining with Captain Rogers on board the Duke in company with Cooke and Courtney.

Cooke complained bitterly of the crankness of his ship the Marquis, and objected to the evolutions of the other vessels which obliged him to tack. They were bound to the Galapagos, and he affirmed that they could have made the islands without beating to windward. Dampier said, No; he knew where those islands were, and had described them in one of his voyages; and he asserted that they were now to the westward of them. The others agreed with Cooke, but Dampier was pilot, and was therefore suffered to have his way.

They were right and he was wrong; but an error of a hundred miles or so was reckoned a very trifling blunder in those hearty, plodding times. A curious old sea-picture is suggested by this discussion in the cabin of the Duke. The rough bulkheads, the low upper deck, the quaint lanthorn swinging over the table from a beam, and indicating by its oscillations the ponderous rolling of the tall, squab, round-bowed fabric; the privateersmen sitting round the table attired in the wild and picturesque apparel of the early South Seamen—these are features to bring the scene in clear outlines before the eye of the imagination.

One beholds them poring upon their old-fashioned charts, pointing to the singular configurations of the mainland and islands with hairy hands, and disputing with little anxiety on a difference between easting and westing measuring as many leagues as the space from the Lizard to the Western Islands.

The real flavour and charm of the buccaneer’s life are not to be expressed by any mere method of historical treatment. The hand of the artist is wanted, with imagination vigorous and discerning enough to strictly correspond with the traditionary truth.

On their arrival at the Galapagos they took in a good supply of turtle, many of which were upwards of four hundred pounds in weight. Rogers writes of the turtle as if he had never seen it before. “I do not,” he says, “affect giving Relations of strange Creatures, so frequently done by others; but where an uncommon Creature falls in my Way I cannot omit it.” This is how the captain describes the “uncommon creature.”

“The Creatures are the ugliest in Nature; the Shell, not unlike the Top of an old Hackney-coach, as black as Jet; and so is the outside Skin, but shriveled and very rough.

The Legs and Neck are long and about the Bigness of a Man’s Wrist; and they have Clubbed Feet as big as one’s Fist, shaped much like those of an Elephant, with five Nails on the Forefeet and but Four behind, and the Head little, and Visage small like Snakes; and look very old and black. When at first surprised they shrink their Head, Neck, and Legs, under their Shell.”

This is the kind of simplicity that makes the perusal of the old voyages wonderfully refreshing and delightful. The old fellows looked at life with the eyes of a child but with the intelligence of a man; and so it happens that their representations combine a most perfect and fascinating simplicity with the highest possible qualities of acuteness and sagacity.

On October 1st the ships were off the Mexican coast.

When the form of the land grew visible Dampier told Rogers that it was hereabouts he attacked the Manila ship in the St. George. He might have been right, but Rogers does not speak as if he thought so, for he says: “Captain Dampier indeed had been here, but it was a long time ago, and therefore he seemed to know but little of the Matter; yet when he came to land in Places he recollected them very readily.”

They suffered much from scarcity of fresh water, and sent the pinnace to explore some islands—the Tres Marias—lying off Cape Corrientes. On one of them they found a human skull, which was supposed to have belonged to an Indian who, with another poor wretch of his own race, had been left there by Captain Swan some twenty-three years before.

Dampier remembered the circumstance.

He had been with Swan in the Cygnet at the time, and could recollect that provisions being scarce they had left the unhappy Indians to make, as Rogers says, a miserable end on a desert Island. To judge, however, from the refreshments these uninhabited spots yielded, the Indians could not have perished from starvation. The buccaneers met with hares, turtle-doves, pigeons, and parrots, on all of which they fared sumptuously.

The sick thrived, and the general health of the crews was never better. On November 1st they were in view of the high coast of California.

It was much about the date when Sir Thomas Candish had taken the Manila ship, and, strangely enough, their keels ploughed the very tract of water in which that remarkable feat had been achieved. The memory, aged to us, but lacking nothing of its old lustre, was to those men comparatively recent, and the recollection was one to animate them with great hopes and stern resolves.

They were indeed bent now on the adventure whose successful issue had loaded Candish’s ship with treasure. They were on the look-out for the galleon, and that nothing might be omitted to render fortune propitious, [Pg 168]they again put in force the rules which had formerly been laid down for cruising, established fresh regulations, and made clear every dubious item in their programme of proceedings and plunder.

It was this galleon that was to make their fortunes; she it was also that formed the grand hope of the Bristol committee of merchant adventurers; and the design of capturing her was the mainspring of the whole expedition.

After a consultation it was agreed that they should dispose themselves thus: the Marquis was to keep off the land at a distance of from six to nine leagues at least; the Duke was to cruise at a range that would cover forty-five miles; and the Dutchess was to occupy the waters between her consorts.

There were, of course, false alarms; as, for instance, on the 28th the Marquis fired a gun, which was promptly answered by the Dutchess, on which the Duke hauled her wind for the coast. It then turned out that the Marquis had mistaken the Duke for the Manila ship, and fired as a signal for the Dutchess to chase.

They had to wait a long time before the vessel they wanted hove in sight. It was now a month later than the usual time of her appearance in this part of the sea where she was being waited for, and the anxiety of the buccaneers was increased by their inability to obtain any intelligence of her.

Provisions were again scarce, and even on short allowance there was barely bread enough to last for seventy days,—a serious matter in the face of the inevitable run later on to the Ladrone Islands, which promised to occupy fifty days at the very least. This most unfortunate dearth of stores, coupled with the growing dejection and mutinous sulkiness of the men, determined Rogers and his brother commanders to give themselves another week’s chance, and then, if the galleon did not appear, to sail away to the Indies.

In order to save time the Dutchess was despatched to a convenient bay to take in water and wood, etc., that as one ship obtained these stores another might take her place, thus always leaving two on the look-out. By the 4th she had taken in what was necessary, and the Marquis replaced her to refit.

Until December 21st nothing happened; then on the morning of that day, when the Duke was in the act of shifting her helm for the place where the Marquis was refitting, the look-out man aloft hailing the deck, shouted that he saw a sail bearing west about twenty miles distant.

The English ensign was immediately hoisted. In a few minutes, both the Duke and the Dutchess were standing towards the stranger. But suddenly, it fell stark calm. The pinnace was manned and sent to see what she could make of the distant ship.

In reading Rogers’s account, you find your sympathies enlisted on behalf of those 2 stagnated buccaneering vessels.

Dampier and Rogers together rehearsing their intentions and recalling their experiences in voices subdued by excitement.

Above all, the old, worn, but gallant Duke wearily dipping her faded, blistered bends to the swing of the breathless sea, making in anticipation of the withering roar of her ordnance, now grinning mutely along her sides, a little thunder of her own with the beating of her dark and well-patched canvas against the huge tops and massive cross-trees of her swaying masts.

“All the rest of the Day,” says Rogers, “we had very little Wind, so that we made no great Way; and the Boat not returning, kept us in a languishing Condition, not being able to determine whether the Sail was our Consort, the Marquis, or the Acapulco Ship.

Our Pinnace was still in Sight, and we had nothing to do but to watch her Motions: We could see that she made towards the Dutchess’s Pinnace, which rowed to meet her.

They lay together some time, and then the Dutchess’s Pinnace went back to their Ship which gave us great Hopes.”

An officer was sent to the Dutchess to ascertain what the stranger was, and to concert measures, if she should prove an enemy, for engaging her. When he was gone Rogers hoisted the French colours and fired a gun; the strange vessel answered, which satisfied them that she was not the Marquis.

It is manifest from this that these privateersmen had no private code of signals amongst them. Indeed detection seems to have been entirely a matter of the exhibition of the national bunting, in which there was just the same sort of deception then as there was in later years, and as there ever will be. Shortly after the ship had responded, the officer returned with the report that she was the Manila galleon.

The statement fired the spirits of the crew; [Pg 171]they hove all their melancholy reflections on the shortness of their provisions overboard, and could think of nothing but the figures they would make when they arrived home with the vast treasure out yonder, stowed snugly away under their hatches.

“Every moment,” says Rogers, “seemed an hour till we came up with her.” It was arranged that the two pinnaces should stick to her skirts all night and burn flares, that their own and the position of the chase might be known.

It was further settled that if the Duke and Dutchess were so fortunate as to come up with her together they were to board her at once: a resolution which Dampier, recalling his experiences in the St. George, was pretty sure to strengthen by his advice.

At dawn the chase was upon the weather-bow of the Duke, about three miles away, and the Dutchess within a couple of miles to leeward of her. Rogers threw his sweeps over and rowed his ship for above an hour; a light breeze then sprang up and softly blew the vessel towards the enemy.

There was no liquor in the ship, nothing to fortify the spirits in the shape of a dram. So a large kettle of chocolate was boiled and served out to the crew, who, when they had emptied their pannikins, went to prayers.

But whilst they were in the midst of their devotions they were interrupted by a broadside from the Spaniards. It is not often that one reads of the English buccaneers going to prayers before falling to their business of slaughtering and plundering.

Perhaps they had learnt to despise this kind of ceremony from the behaviour of the French freebooters, who were wont to sing Te Deum and force captive priests to celebrate Mass in the cathedrals and churches which they [Pg 172]had despoiled. If the Spaniards saw Rogers’s privateersmen on their knees, something of irony might have been intended by their manner of cutting short their worship and supplications.

The Don was fully prepared; his guns loaded, his little army of men at stations, and casks of gunpowder hanging at his yard-arms ready to fall and explode when the attempt should be made to board. The action began at eight o’clock, and the Duke for some time fought the galleon single-handed.

The conflict was a brief one. The Spaniards had no stomach, and after Rogers had poured in a few broadsides the enemy “struck her colours two-thirds down.” His flag was thus flying when the Dutchess came up and fired five guns at the big ship along with a volley of small shot.

It was mere waste of powder; the galleon had already submitted and was silent. The victory, it must be admitted, was cheaply earned, yet there is little doubt that such was the temper of the buccaneers they would have fought to the last man for this golden prize. She was a large vessel named Nostra Seniora de la Incarnacion Disenginao, mounting 20 guns and 20 swivels, and carrying one hundred and ninety-three men, of whom nine were killed and several wounded. The fight lasted three glasses, that is three hours.

Rogers was shot through the left cheek; the bullet destroyed the greater part of his upper jaw, and some of his teeth were found upon the deck where he fell.

He was obliged to give his orders in writing to hinder the flow of blood, and to escape the agony of attempting to articulate. Only one man besides himself was wounded. Having repaired the trifling damage they had sustained, they steered for the harbour where the Marquis lay, and anchored.

They found their consort fully equipped and ready to sail, and her people in good spirits and eager for action. At night a consultation was held respecting the disposal of the hostages, and as a second Manila ship was daily expected, they debated plans for capturing her.

After some talk it was agreed that the hostages should be set at liberty; but the discussion about the expected galleon ended in something like a quarrel.

Rogers, speaking in the heat of the moment, had censured Courtney for not having shown the promptitude that was necessary in attacking the Nostra Seniora.

This Courtney of course resented as a reflection upon his honour. When, then, Rogers proposed to cruise in the Dutchess for the coming Manila ship, Courtney insisted upon making the search in the Marquis. The question was put to the vote, Rogers’s proposal overruled, and his people obliged, to their great mortification, to remain in the harbour. This incident is related so obscurely both by Cooke and Rogers that I confess I do not fully understand it.

The Duke was in good condition, and why the three instead of the two ships did not start on a cruise which, as the sequel proves, demanded even more than their united strength, is a riddle I am unable to solve.

On Christmas Day the Dutchess and the Marquis put to sea, and when they were gone Rogers posted two sentinels on the top of a hill that he might instantly be apprised of a third sail heaving in sight.

Before 24 hours had elapsed the signal was made, and in hot haste Rogers started to the assistance of his consorts, though the stout-hearted sailor was in no condition for further adventures just then. He was indeed so weak from loss of blood that he could scarcely stand.

His head and throat were swollen, and the effort to speak caused him excruciating pain; but he turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of the officers and surgeons that he would remain in harbour on board the prize.

The galleon was in sight at daybreak, and by noon the Marquis had succeeded in bringing her to an engagement.

The wind was light, and it was almost impossible to manœuvre the vessels; so that though the Dutchess and the Marquis continued at intervals to fire at the Manila ship until dusk, the Duke even at midnight was still at a considerable distance from the enemy.

When the day broke the wind shifted, and Rogers was able to bring his guns to bear. The fighting was now severe, and continued so for four hours; the galleon was hotly defended, though her people lay so concealed in their close quarters that the privateersmen could scarcely make any use of their small arms.

It was only when a head appeared or a port was opened that they found a mark for their muskets. The eagerness of the buccaneers defeated their seamanship.

Their vessels were repeatedly falling foul of one another and throwing the crews into disorder. The guns of the Marquis were so small that her firing was to little or no purpose.

At last it came to Rogers signalling to Courtney and Cooke to come on board him with other officers; and then every man telling of the injuries his ship had sustained, and all admitting that it would jeopardise too many lives to board or attempt to board the lofty galleon, it was resolved to let her go—that is to say, they agreed to keep her company till night, and then in the darkness to lose her, and make the best of their way back to the prize they had already secured.

In sober truth the [Pg 175]enemy had proved too many for them. The Duke’s mainmast was so wounded that Rogers expected every moment to see it go by the board. Her rigging, too, was so shattered by shot that she had to sheer off in order to knot and splice, being scarcely manageable.

The Dutchess also had her foremast badly wounded, her sails were in rags, and the ends of her standing rigging were trailing overboard. Further, there were not above 120 men in all 3 ships fit for boarding, “and those but weak,” says Rogers, “having been very short of Provisions;” and that nothing might be wanting to complete the list of the reasons of their failure, their ammunition was very nearly expended. Rogers was again wounded, this time in his left foot.

In the Dutchess they had twenty men killed and disabled. The Marquis, on the other hand, came off without the loss of a single person.

The galleon was a handsome ship, very large, carrying the flag of the admiral of Manila. She was making the voyage for the first time. Her name was the Vigonia; she was pierced for sixty guns, forty of which were mounted, along with an equal number of brass swivels. Her crew numbered over 450 men. There were many passengers besides.

It was supposed that she was worth 10,000,000 dollars.

But it is doubtful whether, even if the buccaneers had succeeded in boarding, they would have taken her, for Rogers says: “After my Return into Europe I met in Holland with a Sailor who had been on board the large Ship when we engaged her; and he let us into the Secret that there was no taking her; for the Gunner kept constantly in the Powder-room, declaring that he had taken the Sacrament to blow the Ship up if we boarded her; which made the Men, as may be supposed, exceedingly resolute in her defence. I was the more ready to credit what this Man told me because he gave as regular and circumstantial account of the Engagement as I could have done from my Journal.”

On the first day of the new year, 1710, they were again in harbour alongside their great prize; and now being anxious to leave these seas, they put their prisoners on board one of the smaller captures with water and provisions enough to last them for a voyage to Acapulco, and then addressed themselves to the urgent business of repairing and making all ready for their departure. They renamed the galleon the Batchelor, and a quarrel arose touching the appointment of a commander for her, a post regarded by them all as of dignity and importance. Captain Dover, asserting his claims as a merchant adventurer, and representing the considerable sum of money he had risked in this expedition, demanded the berth. Rogers and others, among whom, no doubt, would be Dampier, objected that Dover knew nothing whatever of navigation, and voted for Cooke. Finally, at the cost of many high words and much strong feeling, it was decided at a full council that Captain Fry and Captain Stretton should have entire control of the navigation of the Batchelor under Captain Dover, Alexander Selkirk to be the master and Joseph Smith the chief mate. The island of Guam was then fixed upon as a rendezvous, and on January 10th the buccaneers weighed for a run to the East Indies.

They were when they started in no very enviable condition. Their stores were scanty; their live stock consisted of four hens; and of wine or spirits they had barely the contents of a dozen bottles. The rations were limited to a pound and a half of flour and a small piece of meat for a mess of five men, with three pints of water a man on twenty-four hours for drink and cooking. Rogers was ill with his wounds, and many of the crew were sick and weak and unfit to do the work of the ship. Hunger drove the men into robbery. A few days after they sailed some pieces of pork were missed. Fortunately, in the interests of justice, the thieves were discovered, and punished by every man of the watch giving them a stroke of the cat-o’-nine-tails.

What follows now is little more than a journal of the voyage, rendered for the most part tedious by description and by the introduction of incidents of little or no interest. Dampier’s name seldom occurs; when it is mentioned it is always in reference to something that helps to accentuate characteristics noticeable in his own account of his adventures. For instance, in April, when they were off a point of land which they took to be the north-east point of Celebes, the vessel was proving very leaky; which, added to the general ignorance of the ship’s situation, filled the crew with melancholy and irritation. “Captain Dampier,” says Rogers, “discouraged us very much: He had been twice here, and therefore what he said among the Seamen passed without Dispute, and he laid it down as a thing certain that if we could not reach Ternate or find the Island of Tula it was impossible for us to get any Refreshment, there being nothing to be met with on the Coast of New [Pg 178]Guiney.” It had been thus with Dampier whilst buccaneering off the New Holland shore; thus had it been with him too when hunting for water on the sand-hills of the Western Australian seaboard, his foot on the margin of a vast region of earth which he had neither temper nor heart to explore, though he had travelled many thousands of miles in a crazy ship and with a troublesome crew for no other purpose. This trick of discouraging the people he led, or was one of, is the secret of his failure as a commander and explorer. Rogers, a bolder and more hopeful, and certainly in many respects an equally sagacious man, was not likely to feel grateful for Dampier’s melancholy shakes of the head, and his gloomy, prognosticating countenance; but his own experiences left him nothing to say, for though the ships spent the best part of the month of May off the coast of New Guinea, all that Rogers could observe that seemed to him worth mentioning was, “It is most certain these Islands, which are scattered through the Streights, and few or none of which are peopled, would all of them bear Spice, and afford immense Riches to this Nation, if they were settled.”

They were in great distress whilst they were in these seas. The men mutinously resented the wise reduction in the quantity of the food served out to them; and to save serious disturbance Rogers was forced to return to the old scale. They sighted land, but did not know what it was, nor could Dampier help them. Having searched for Borou, an island of the Indian Archipelago, they resolved to steer to Batavia, touching at Bouton for provisions. Accordingly they stood away to the south-west before a strong [Pg 179]gale of wind at east. But their progress was obstructed by some small islands, into one of which they must have run in the dead of night had the weather not cleared suddenly and discovered it to them. It was not until Tuesday, June 17th, 1710, that they arrived at Batavia. At sight of the town the crews were so rejoiced that they could do nothing but hug and shake one another by the hand, and bless their stars and question if there was such a paradise in all the world; “And this,” says Rogers, “because they had Arrack for Eight Pence a Gallon, and Sugar at a Penny a Pound.”

The ships were in a deplorable condition, particularly the Marquis, which was so rotten with worms and wear that it became necessary to hire another craft to carry her lading. They sailed from Batavia on October 14th, and proceeded direct to the Cape of Good Hope, where they arrived without misadventure and without any incident occurring in the passage that is worth repeating. Shortly after they had entered Table Bay twelve sail of Dutch ships came in, which, with the English vessels then at anchor, made altogether twenty-three ships riding in the spacious and beautiful haven. The picture is about one hundred and seventy years old, and it is difficult to realise that the ocean traffic of those dim times to the Indies by way of the Cape should have been considerable enough to crowd the spacious surface of the waters on whose margin stand the ivory-white structures of Cape Town. Retrospect is often corrective. We have a right to compliment ourselves upon what we have done and are doing; but it does not seem to me that our marine achievements can be compared as illustrations of human skill and determination with the examples of the adventurous genius of an age [Pg 180]when the greater portion of the antipodean world lay in darkness; when navigation was little better than guesswork; when the art of shipbuilding was crude, rude, and primitive; when there was nothing but the heavens to consult for weather; when the tyranny of the winds was only to be dominated by a kind of perseverance that must be ranked among the lost qualities of human nature. Despite these conditions the early mariner crowded the oceans with fabrics laden with the produce of the known continents, and rolled stubbornly to his hundred ports, often in suffering and often in distress indeed; yet on the whole freer, in his valiant ignorance, from disaster than is the sailor of the current hour. There is no longer need for ships to halt and bait at Table Bay. The propeller thrashes them to their destination with the punctuality of the railway-train; or they are wafted by pyramids of canvas—the graceful and elegant result of centuries of experiment—on a journey to New Zealand or Japan, which they complete in less time than the old seafarer took to find his way from the English Channel to Madeira. But the very existence of the facilities of the engine-room, of the nimbleness of the clipper-moulded keel, of the capacity of the towering and exquisitely-calculated heights of cloths to snatch a desired power of propulsion from the teeth of the antagonistic gale, is, I take it, an admission of our own weakness when we contrast the ocean-machinery with which science has dowered us with the contrivances with which the early seamen triumphed over the forces of Nature and created new worlds as heritages for a self-complacent posterity. Those twenty-three ships at anchor in Table Bay, surveyed by the eyes of Dampier [Pg 181]and his toil-worn comrades, make but a little part of a great marine pageant; yet it is a detail to constrain the gaze. Fancy reconstructs them; they cease to be visionary; they float before us as substantial fabrics, brave with pennons and the glitter of brass guns and the gay raiment of their time. They illustrate the most strenuous of all the periods of the world’s maritime life; for the infancy of navigation was over, and it had already put on the proportions of a youthful giant, the impulse of whose unripened vitality was urging it to extraordinary efforts.

Before the ships under Rogers sailed, six more vessels entered the bay, along with several English Indiamen and a large Portuguese carrack from Brazil; and when the hour of departure came the homeward-bound (in all, English and Dutch, numbering twenty-five) rolled stately under swelling canvas out of Table Bay,—a spectacle that, remote as it is, and visible only to the gaze of fancy, cannot but stir the imagination when one thinks of the floating castles, with their swelling sails and their brilliant streamers, as the van of the ever-growing procession that was in time to whiten the remotest seas, and crowd the harbours of countries of which some were then without the impress of a European foot.

The ships progressed merrily. They touched at St. Helena, and seven days later at Ascension, and after a passage of three months from the Cape of Good Hope dropped anchor in the Texel. Rogers and his brother commanders had now to act with much circumspection; they were informed by letters from their owners that the English East India Company, jealous of their success, had appointed a secret committee to inspect their charter [Pg 182]as to privileges; they were also enjoined to exercise the utmost caution in respect of the Dutch East India Company, and strict orders were issued that no officer or sailor should on any pretence whatever be suffered to take any goods on shore, or purchase the least trifle from any stranger who visited the ships. They remained in Holland until September 30th, 1711, then sailed from the Texel under convoy of four of Her Britannic Majesty’s ships, and on October 14th the Duke and Dutchess arrived off Erith, at which place the Batchelor had come to an anchor some short time before. Thus ended one of the most memorable of all the voyages ever undertaken by the English buccaneers. The cargo and treasure obtained by this expedition were valued at between three and four hundred thousand pounds, and Cooke tells us that, after allowing for all deductions, such as cost of convoy, agency, lawsuits, and thefts, the net profits amounted to one hundred and seventy thousand pounds.