Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period Part 17

[Footnote 53: Magellan. The temporary capture of Ilo is omitted.]

[Footnote 54: Coquimbo, Chile, in 30 S. lat. Ringrose, pp. 107, 111, gives plans of the town and the harbor.]

[Footnote 55: Excepting.]

[Footnote 56: Juan Fernandez. A Spanish pilot of that name discovered the islands in 1563. Our buccaneers sighted them on Christmas eve, 1680.]

[Footnote 57: The eastern is called Mas-a-tierra ("nearer the land"), the western Mas-a-fuera ("farther out"). The distance between is about 100 miles.]

[Footnote 58: John Watkins. The new pirate chief had severe principles as to the Sabbath. "Sunday January the ninth [1681, three days after his election], this day was the first Sunday that ever we kept by command and common consent since the loss and death of our valiant Commander Captain Sawkins. This generous spirited man [Sawkins] threw the dice over board, finding them in use on the said day." Ringrose, p. 121. The Spanish accounts call the new captain Juan Guarlen.]

[Footnote 59: This was a Mosquito Indian named William. A precursor of Alexander Selkirk, he lived alone upon the island for more than three years, till in March, 1684, when Capt. Edward Davis, in the _Batch.e.l.lor's Delight_, in his voyage from the Chesapeake, touched at the island. William Dampier and several others of Captain Sharp's crew were now with Davis. They bethought them of William, and found and rescued him. Dampier, _New Voyage_, I. 84-87, describes the Crusoe-like expedients by which the ingenious William maintained himself. He was not the first precursor of Selkirk on the island, for Ringrose, p. 119, says that the pilot of their ship told this present crew of buccaneers "that many years ago a certain ship was cast away upon this Island, and onely one man saved, who lived alone upon the Island five years before any ship came this way to carry him off."

Several of Davis's men lived there three years, 1687-1690. Selkirk's stay was in 1704-1709.]

[Footnote 60: Iquique.]

[Footnote 61: Barros Arana, _Historia Jeneral de Chile_, V. 204-205, points out the impossibility of such numbers.]

[Footnote 62: Sp. _lingua_, language.]

[Footnote 63: In better Spanish, "Valientes soldados, buen valientes soldados", _i.e._ "Valiant soldiers, very valiant soldiers".]

[Footnote 64: Ilo, between Islay and Arica.]

[Footnote 65: Choros bay must be meant. The present Obispo lies too far north, and was not named till 1709.]

[Footnote 66: Ringrose identifies this bay and river with the bay and river of Loa, on the Chilean coast, the bay in 21 28' S. lat. That Drake landed there, in his voyage around the world, in January, 1579, we know from the narrative of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (Mrs.

Nuttall's _New Light on Drake_, p. 80), but the story of the chapel is of course legendary.]

[Footnote 67: Water-barrels, Middle Dutch _bommekijn_, a little barrel.]

[Footnote 68: Truxillo, in Peru. The islands may have been the Lobos.]

[Footnote 69: Monte Christi, in Ecuador. The secession occurred on April 17, 1681. Dampier and Wafer were in the seceding party, which made its way to the isthmus of Darien and so across to the Caribbean and home, or to Virginia.]

[Footnote 70: Isla de Canos, in Coronada Bay, off the coast of Costa Rica, and some 300 miles west of Panama.]

[Footnote 71: Golfo Dulce, where the coast of Costa Rica begins.]

[Footnote 72: The gulf of Nicoy lies near the western end of the Costa Rican coast. The island was Chira.]

[Footnote 73: It does not appear that there was in Costa Rica at that time any town of such name or size.]

[Footnote 74: Under this strange name is disguised Jacobus Marques, a Dutchman skilled in many languages. _The Voyages and Adventures of Capt. Barth. Sharp_, p. 80, says that he "left behind him 2200 _ps._ 8/8 [pieces of eight, dollars] besides Jewels and Goods". "Copas" is for Jacobus.]

[Footnote 75: Barcalongas. See doc.u.ment 44, note 25.]

[Footnote 76: Colors, flags.]

[Footnote 77: Prizes or booty.]

[Footnote 78: Cabo Pasado would seem to be indicated, but that is in 20' S.]

[Footnote 79: Don Melchor de Navarra y Rocaful, duke of La Palata, prince of Ma.s.sa, viceroy of Peru from 1681 to 1689. He did not arrive in Lima till November. His predecessor the archbishop took great precautions for his protection against these pirates. _Memorias de los Vireyes_, I. 336-337.]

[Footnote 80: The ship was the _Rosario_, the last considerable prize taken by these buccaneers. See doc.u.ment 46. The story of the 700 pigs of pewter is told in a much more romantic form by Ringrose, p. 80, and by the author of _The Voyages and Adventures of Capt. Barth. Sharp_, p. 80. According to them, the pigs were thought to be of tin, and only one of them was saved, the rest being left in the prize when she was turned adrift. Later, when Sharp's men reached the West Indies, a shrewd trader there, perceiving this remaining pig to be silver, took it off their hands, and then sold it for a round sum; whereupon deep chagrin fell upon the pirates, who had duped themselves by abandoning a rich cargo of silver. It will however be observed in doc.u.ment 46 that Simon Calderon, mariner, of the _Rosario_, speaks of the pigs as pigs of tin. A ma.s.s of sea-charts taken from the _Rosario_ is now--either the originals or copies by Hacke--in the British Museum, Sloane MSS., 45.]

[Footnote 81: About 4 18' S. lat., at the beginning of the Peruvian coast.]

[Footnote 82: _I.e._, they sailed up into the wind. So strong a wind blows up the coast, that the best way to sail from Peru to southern Chile is first to sail westward far out into the Pacific. It was Juan Fernandez who discovered this course.]

[Footnote 83: Fetched.]

[Footnote 84: Distances, in degrees on the horizon, between east or west and the rising point of a star. By amplitudes, east and west could be fixed when the variation of the compa.s.s from true north and south was doubtful.]

[Footnote 85: Furled. Courses are the lower sails. 50 S. lat. is the lat.i.tude of the gulf of Trinidad. To the island by which they anch.o.r.ed a little farther south, as described below, they gave the name of Duke of York Island, after their king's brother James; this name it still bears.]

[Footnote 86: Limpets.]

[Footnote 87: But all observers of the Patagonian Indians, from Pigafetta, Magellan's companion, to recent times, describe them as having little hair on the face, and accustomed to remove that little.

Ringrose, p. 183, gives the same report as our writer.]

[Footnote 88: These rocky inlets lie between 52 and 53 S. lat., the four Evangelistas just to the north of the western entrance into the Strait of Magellan, the twelve Apostolos just to the south of it.]

[Footnote 89: Tierra del Fuego. By "Streights of Maria" the writer means the Strait of Le Maire, outside Tierra del Fuego, and between it and Staten Island--a strait discovered by Schouten and Le Maire in 1616, when they also discovered and named Cape Hoorn (Horn).]

[Footnote 90: He means Bartolome and Gonzalo Nodal, who, under orders from the king of Spain to follow up the discoveries of Schouten and Le Maire, made in 1619 the first circ.u.mnavigation of Tierra del Fuego, sailing southward, westward past Cape Horn, northward, then eastward through the Strait of Magellan. The book referred to as possessed by the buccaneers is the _Relacion del Viaje que ... hizieron los Capitanes Bartolome Garcia de Nodal y Goncalo de Nodal hermanos_ (Madrid, 1621), of which a translation was printed by the Hakluyt Society in 1911, in Sir Clements Markham's _Early Spanish Voyages to the Strait of Magellan_.]

[Footnote 91: _Relacion del Viaje_, p. 48; Markham, p. 256.]

[Footnote 92: The date is wrong, and there is no such cape.]

[Footnote 93: Cape Horn is in 55 59' S. lat.]

[Footnote 94: Under date of November 17, 1681, the _Voyages and Adventures of Capt. Barth. Sharp_ says, p. 103, "We find by this observation, and our last 24 hours run, that we have been further Southerly by almost two Degrees, than our computation by dead reckoning makes out, and by many Degrees, than ever any others have sailed in that Sea, that have yet been heard of: for we were at about 60 Degrees South Lat.i.tude".]

[Footnote 95: Probably it was icebergs they saw. The Nodal brothers'

_Relacion_, which they seem to have been following, mentions, p. 37 vo. (p. 245 of Markham), northeast of Cape Horn, "three islands which are very like the Berlings"; but these are the Barnevelt Islands, in about 55 20' S. lat. The original Berlengas are a group of rocky islands, well known to navigators, off the coast of Portugal.]

[Footnote 96: Error for 24 S., apparently.]

[Footnote 97: Cape Sao Thome, one of the southeast capes of Brazil.]

[Footnote 98: An east cape of Brazil, Cape Sao Augustinho.]

[Footnote 99: 13 5' _north_ lat.i.tude.]

[Footnote 100: Navigators of that time could determine lat.i.tudes almost as accurately as it is now done, but they had very imperfect means of determining longitudes. These pirates, of course, had no chronometer. The best they could do was to keep account each day of the courses and estimated distances that they sailed, to reduce this to numbers of miles eastward and westward in different lat.i.tudes (their "eastings" and "westings"), measured from their last known position, Duke of York Island, and from these computations to deduce their probable longitude. It appears from Ringrose's fuller statements that they were several hundred miles out of their reckoning when they sighted Barbados.]