The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century Part 3

[Footnote 56: Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tom. vi. p. 360.]

[Footnote 57: Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tom. vi. p. 360.]

[Footnote 58: Lucas: A Historical Geography of the British Colonies, vol. ii. pp. 37, 50.]

[Footnote 59: Weiss, _op. cit._, ii. p. 292.]

[Footnote 60: Duro, _op. cit._, iii. ch. xvi.; iv. chs. iii., viii.]

[Footnote 61: Portugal between 1581 and 1640 was subject to the Crown of Spain, and Brazil, a Portuguese colony, was consequently within the pale of Spanish influence and administration.]

[Footnote 62: Blok: History of the People of the Netherlands, iv. p.

36.]

[Footnote 63: Blok: History of the People of the Netherlands, iv. p. 37; Duro, _op. cit._, iv. p. 99; Gage, _ed._ 1655, p. 80.]

[Footnote 64: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,325, No. 10.]

[Footnote 65: Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, was created admiral of the fleet by order of Parliament in March 1642, and although removed by Charles I. was reinstated by Parliament on 1st July.]

[Footnote 66: Brit. Mus., Sloane MSS., 793 or 894; Add. MSS., 36,327, No. 9.]

[Footnote 67: Winwood Papers, ii. pp. 75-77.]

[Footnote 68: Brown: Genesis of the United States, i. pp. 120-25, 172.]

[Footnote 69: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660.]

[Footnote 70: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660.]

[Footnote 71: Clarendon State Papers, ii. p. 87; Rymer: F[oe]dera, xx.

p. 416.]

[Footnote 72: Duro, _op. cit._, ii. p. 462.]

[Footnote 73: Duro, _op. cit._, iii. pp. 236-37.]

[Footnote 74: C.S.P. Venet., 1603-07, p. 199.]

[Footnote 75: Winwood Papers, ii. p. 233.]

[Footnote 76: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,319, No. 7; 36,320, No. 8; 36,321, No. 24; 36,322, No. 23.]

[Footnote 77: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660:--1629, 5th and 30th Nov.; 1630, 29th July.]

[Footnote 78: Gage saw at Cartagena about a dozen English prisoners captured by the Spaniards at sea, and belonging to the settlement on Providence Island.]

[Footnote 79: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660:--1635, 19th March; 1636, 26th March.]

[Footnote 80: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,323, No. 10.]

[Footnote 81: Duro, Tomo., iv. p. 339; _cf._ also in Bodleian Library:--"A letter written upon occasion in the Low Countries, etc.

Whereunto is added avisos from several places, of the taking of the Island of Providence, by the Spaniards from the English. London. Printed for Nath. b.u.t.ter, Mar. 22, 1641.

"I have letter by an aviso from Cartagena, dated the 14th of September, wherein they advise that the galleons were ready laden with the silver, and would depart thence the 6th of October. The general of the galleons, named Francisco Dias Pimienta, had beene formerly in the moneth of July with above 3000 men, and the least of his ships, in the island of S.

Catalina, where he had taken and carried away with all the English, and razed the forts, wherein they found 600 negroes, much gold and indigo, so that the prize is esteemed worth above halfe a million."]

[Footnote 82: Rawl. MSS., A. 32,297; 31, 121.]

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BUCCANEERS

In the second half of the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth centuries, strangers who visited the great Spanish islands of Hispaniola, Jamaica or Porto Rico, usually remarked the extraordinary number of wild cattle and boars found roaming upon them. These herds were in every case sprung from domestic animals originally brought from Spain. For as the aborigines in the Greater Antilles decreased in numbers under the heavy yoke of their conquerors, and as the Spaniards themselves turned their backs upon the Antilles for the richer allurements of the continent, less and less land was left under cultivation; and cattle, hogs, horses and even dogs ran wild, increased at a rapid rate, and soon filled the broad savannas and deep woods which covered the greater part of these islands. The northern sh.o.r.e of Hispaniola the Spaniards had never settled, and thither, probably from an early period, interloping ships were accustomed to resort when in want of victuals. With a long range of uninhabited coast, good anchorage and abundance of provisions, this northern sh.o.r.e could not fail to induce some to remain. In time we find there scattered groups of hunters, mostly French and English, who gained a rude livelihood by killing wild cattle for their skins, and curing the flesh to supply the needs of pa.s.sing vessels. The origin of these men we do not know. They may have been deserters from ships, crews of wrecked vessels, or even chance marooners. In any case the charm of their half-savage, independent mode of life must soon have attracted others, and a fairly regular traffic sprang up between them and the ubiquitous Dutch traders, whom they supplied with hides, tallow and cured meat in return for the few crude necessities and luxuries they required. Their numbers were recruited in 1629 by colonists from St. Kitts who had fled before Don Federico de Toledo. Making common lot with the hunters, the refugees found sustenance so easy and the natural bounty of the island so rich and varied, that many remained and settled.

To the north-west of Hispaniola lies a small, rocky island about eight leagues in length and two in breadth, separated by a narrow channel from its larger neighbour. From the sh.o.r.e of Hispaniola the island appears in form like a monster sea-turtle floating upon the waves, and hence was named by the Spaniards "Tortuga." So mountainous and inaccessible on the northern side as to be called the Cote-de-Fer, and with only one harbour upon the south, it offered a convenient refuge to the French and English hunters should the Spaniards become troublesome. These hunters probably ventured across to Tortuga before 1630, for there are indications that a Spanish expedition was sent against the island from Hispaniola in 1630 or 1631, and a division of the spoil made in the city of San Domingo after its return.[83] It was then, apparently, that the Spaniards left upon Tortuga an officer and twenty-eight men, the small garrison which, says Charlevoix, was found there when the hunters returned. The Spanish soldiers were already tired of their exile upon this lonely, inhospitable rock, and evacuated with the same satisfaction with which the French and English resumed their occupancy. From the testimony of some doc.u.ments in the English colonial archives we may gather that the English from the first were in predominance in the new colony, and exercised almost sole authority. In the minutes of the Providence Company, under date of 19th May 1631, we find that a committee was "appointed to treat with the agents for a colony of about 150 persons, settled upon Tortuga";[84] and a few weeks later that "the planters upon the island of Tortuga desired the company to take them under their protection, and to be at the charge of their fortification, in consideration of a twentieth part of the commodities raised there yearly."[85] At the same time the Earl of Holland, governor of the company, and his a.s.sociates pet.i.tioned the king for an enlargement of their grant "only of 3 or 4 degrees of northerly lat.i.tude, to avoid all doubts as to whether one of the islands (Tortuga) was contained in their former grant."[86] Although there were several islands named Tortuga in the region of the West Indies, all the evidence points to the ident.i.ty of the island concerned in this pet.i.tion with the Tortuga near the north coast of Hispaniola.[87]

The Providence Company accepted the offer of the settlers upon Tortuga, and sent a ship to reinforce the little colony with six pieces of ordnance, a supply of ammunition and provisions, and a number of apprentices or _engages_. A Captain Hilton was appointed governor, with Captain Christopher Wormeley to succeed him in case of the governor's death or absence, and the name of the island was changed from Tortuga to a.s.sociation.[88] Although consisting for the most part of high land covered with tall cedar woods, the island contained in the south and west broad savannas which soon attracted planters as well as cattle-hunters. Some of the inhabitants of St. Kitts, wearied of the dissensions between the French and English there, and allured by reports of quiet and plenty in Tortuga, deserted St. Kitts for the new colony.

The settlement, however, was probably always very poor and struggling, for in January 1634 the Providence Company received advice that Captain Hilton intended to desert the island and draw most of the inhabitants after him; and a declaration was sent out from England to the planters, a.s.suring them special privileges of trade and domicile, and dissuading them from "changing certain ways of profit already discovered for uncertain hopes suggested by fancy or persuasion."[89] The question of remaining or departing, indeed, was soon decided for the colonists without their volition, for in December 1634 a Spanish force from Hispaniola invaded the island and drove out all the English and French they found there. It seems that an Irishman named "Don Juan Morf" (John Murphy?),[90] who had been "sargento-mayor" in Tortuga, became discontented with the _regime_ there and fled to Cartagena. The Spanish governor of Cartagena sent him to Don Gabriel de Gaves, President of the Audiencia in San Domingo, thinking that with the information the renegade was able to supply the Spaniards of Hispaniola might drive out the foreigners. The President of San Domingo, however, died three months later without bestirring himself, and it was left to his successor to carry out the project. With the information given by Murphy, added to that obtained from prisoners, he sent a force of 250 foot under command of Rui Fernandez de Fuemayor to take the island.[91] At this time, according to the Spaniards' account, there were in Tortuga 600 men bearing arms, besides slaves, women and children. The harbour was commanded by a platform of six cannon. The Spaniards approached the island just before dawn, but through the ignorance of the pilot the whole armadilla was cast upon some reefs near the sh.o.r.e. Rui Fernandez with about thirty of his men succeeded in reaching land in canoes, seized the fort without any difficulty, and although his followers were so few managed to disperse a body of the enemy who were approaching, with the English governor at their head, to recover it. In the melee the governor was one of the first to be killed--stabbed, say the Spaniards, by the Irishman, who took active part in the expedition and fought by the side of Rui Fernandez. Meanwhile some of the inhabitants, thinking that they could not hold the island, had regained the fort, spiked the guns and transferred the stores to several ships in the harbour, which sailed away leaving only two dismantled boats and a patache to fall into the hands of the Spaniards. Rui Fernandez, reinforced by some 200 of his men who had succeeded in escaping from the stranded armadilla, now turned his attention to the settlement. He found his way barred by another body of several hundred English, but dispersed them too, and took seventy prisoners. The houses were then sacked and the tobacco plantations burned by the soldiers, and the Spaniards returned to San Domingo with four captured banners, the six pieces of artillery and 180 muskets.[92]

The Spanish occupation apparently did not last very long, for in the following April the Providence Company appointed Captain Nicholas Riskinner to be governor of Tortuga in place of Wormeley, and in February 1636 it learned that Riskinner was in possession of the island.[93] Two planters just returned from the colony, moreover, informed the company that there were then some 80 English in the settlement, besides 150 negroes. It is evident that the colonists were mostly cattle-hunters, for they a.s.sured the company that they could supply Tortuga with 200 beasts a month from Hispaniola, and would deliver calves there at twenty shillings apiece.[94] Yet at a later meeting of the Adventurers on 20th January 1637, a project for sending more men and ammunition to the island was suddenly dropped "upon intelligence that the inhabitants had quitted it and removed to Hispaniola."[95] For three years thereafter the Providence records are silent concerning Tortuga. A few Frenchmen must have remained on the island, however, for Charlevoix informs us that in 1638 the general of the galleons swooped down upon the colony, put to the sword all who failed to escape to the hills and woods, and again destroyed all the habitations.[96] Persuaded that the hunters would not expose themselves to a repet.i.tion of such treatment, the Spaniards neglected to leave a garrison, and a few scattered Frenchmen gradually filtered back to their ruined homes. It was about this time, it seems, that the President of San Domingo formed a body of 500 armed lancers in an effort to drive the intruders from the larger island of Hispaniola. These lancers, half of whom were always kept in the field, were divided into companies of fifty each, whence they were called by the French, "cinquantaines." Ranging the woods and savannas this Spanish constabulary attacked isolated hunters wherever they found them, and they formed an important element in the constant warfare between the French and Spanish colonists throughout the rest of the century.[97]

Meanwhile an English adventurer, some time after the Spanish descent of 1638, gathered a body of 300 of his compatriots in the island of Nevis near St. Kitts, and sailing for Tortuga dispossessed the few Frenchmen living there of the island. According to French accounts he was received amicably by the inhabitants and lived with them for four months, when he turned upon his hosts, disarmed them and marooned them upon the opposite sh.o.r.e of Hispaniola. A few made their way to St. Kitts and complained to M. de Poincy, the governor-general of the French islands, who seized the opportunity to establish a French governor in Tortuga. Living at that time in St. Kitts was a Huguenot gentleman named Leva.s.seur, who had been a companion-in-arms of d'Esnambuc when the latter settled St. Kitts in 1625, and after a short visit to France had returned and made his fortune in trade. He was a man of courage and command as well as a skilful engineer, and soon rose high in the councils of de Poincy. Being a Calvinist, however, he had drawn upon the governor the reproaches of the authorities at home; and de Poincy proposed to get rid of his presence, now become inconvenient, by sending him to subdue Tortuga.

Leva.s.seur received his commission from de Poincy in May 1640, a.s.sembled forty or fifty followers, all Calvinists, and sailed in a barque to Hispaniola. He established himself at Port Margot, about five leagues from Tortuga, and entered into friendly relations with his English neighbours. He was but biding his time, however, and on the last day of August 1640, on the plea that the English had ill-used some of his followers and had seized a vessel sent by de Poincy to obtain provisions, he made a sudden descent upon the island with only 49 men and captured the governor. The inhabitants retired to Hispaniola, but a few days later returned and besieged Leva.s.seur for ten days. Finding that they could not dislodge him, they sailed away with all their people to the island of Providence.[98]

Leva.s.seur, fearing perhaps another descent of the Spaniards, lost no time in putting the settlement in a state of defence. Although the port of Tortuga was little more than a roadstead, it offered a good anchorage on a bottom of fine sand, the approaches to which were easily defended by a hill or promontory overlooking the harbour. The top of this hill, situated 500 or 600 paces from the sh.o.r.e, was a level platform, and upon it rose a steep rock some 30 feet high. Nine or ten paces from the base of the rock gushed forth a perennial fountain of fresh water. The new governor quickly made the most of these natural advantages. The platform he shaped into terraces, with means for accommodating several hundred men. On the top of the rock he built a house for himself, as well as a magazine, and mounted a battery of two guns. The only access to the rock was by a narrow approach, up half of which steps were cut in the stone, the rest of the ascent being by means of an iron ladder which could easily be raised and lowered.[99] This little fortress, in which the governor could repose with a feeling of entire security, he euphuistically called his "dove-cote." The dove-cote was not finished any too soon, for the Spaniards of San Domingo in 1643 determined to destroy this rising power in their neighbourhood, and sent against Leva.s.seur a force of 500 or 600 men. When they tried to land within a half gunshot of the sh.o.r.e, however, they were greeted with a discharge of artillery from the fort, which sank one of the vessels and forced the rest to retire. The Spaniards withdrew to a place two leagues to leeward, where they succeeded in disembarking, but fell into an ambush laid by Leva.s.seur, lost, according to the French accounts, between 100 and 200 men, and fled to their ships and back to Hispaniola. With this victory the reputation of Leva.s.seur spread far and wide throughout the islands, and for ten years the Spaniards made no further attempt to dislodge the French settlement.[100]

Planters, hunters and corsairs now came in greater numbers to Tortuga.

The hunters, using the smaller island merely as a headquarters for supplies and a retreat in time of danger, penetrated more boldly than ever into the interior of Hispaniola, plundering the Spanish plantations in their path, and establishing settlements on the north sh.o.r.e at Port Margot and Port de Paix. Corsairs, after cruising and robbing along the Spanish coasts, retired to Tortuga to refit and find a market for their spoils. Plantations of tobacco and sugar were cultivated, and although the soil never yielded such rich returns as upon the other islands, Dutch and French trading ships frequently resorted there for these commodities, and especially for the skins prepared by the hunters, bringing in exchange brandy, guns, powder and cloth. Indeed, under the active, positive administration of Leva.s.seur, Tortuga enjoyed a degree of prosperity which almost rivalled that of the French settlements in the Leeward Islands.

The term "buccaneer," though usually applied to the corsairs who in the seventeenth century ravaged the Spanish possessions in the West Indies and the South Seas, should really be restricted to these cattle-hunters of west and north-west Hispaniola. The flesh of the wild-cattle was cured by the hunters after a fashion learnt from the Caribbee Indians.

The meat was cut into long strips, laid upon a grate or hurdle constructed of green sticks, and dried over a slow wood fire fed with bones and the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of the hide of the animal. By this means an excellent flavour was imparted to the meat and a fine red colour. The place where the flesh was smoked was called by the Indians a "boucan,"

and the same term, from the poverty of an undeveloped language, was applied to the frame or grating on which the flesh was dried. In course of time the dried meat became known as "viande boucannee," and the hunters themselves as "boucaniers" or "buccaneers." When later circ.u.mstances led the hunters to combine their trade in flesh and hides with that of piracy, the name gradually lost its original significance and acquired, in the English language at least, its modern and better-known meaning of corsair or freebooter. The French adventurers, however, seem always to have restricted the word "boucanier" to its proper signification, that of a hunter and curer of meat; and when they developed into corsairs, by a curious contrast they adopted an English name and called themselves "filibustiers," which is merely the French sailor's way of p.r.o.nouncing the English word "freebooter."[101]

The buccaneers or West Indian corsairs owed their origin as well as their name to the cattle and hog-hunters of Hispaniola and Tortuga.

Doubtless many of the wilder, more restless spirits in the smaller islands of the Windward and Leeward groups found their way into the ranks of this piratical fraternity, or were willing at least to lend a hand in an occasional foray against their Spanish neighbours. We know that Jackson, in 1642, had no difficulty in gathering 700 or 800 men from Barbadoes and St. Kitts for his ill-starred dash upon the Spanish Main. And when the French in later years made their periodical descents upon the Dutch stations on Tobago, Curacao and St. Eustatius, they always found in their island colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe buccaneers enough and more, eager to fill their ships. It seems to be generally agreed, however, among the Jesuit historians of the West Indies--and upon these writers we are almost entirely dependent for our knowledge of the origins of buccaneering--that the corsairs had their source and nucleus in the hunters who infested the coasts of Hispaniola.

Between the hunter and the pirate at first no impa.s.sable line was drawn.

The same person combined in himself the occupations of cow-killing and cruising, varying the monotony of the one by occasionally trying his hand at the other. In either case he lived at constant enmity with the Spaniards. With the pa.s.sing of time the sea attracted more and more away from their former pursuits. Even the planters who were beginning to filter into the new settlements found the attractions of coursing against the Spaniards to be irresistible. Great extremes of fortune, such as those to which the buccaneers were subject, have always exercised an attraction over minds of an adventurous stamp. It was the same allurement which drew the "forty-niners" to California, and in 1897 the gold-seekers to the Canadian Klond.y.k.e. If the suffering endured was often great, the prize to be gained was worth it. Fortune, if fickle one day, might the next bring incredible bounty, and the buccaneers who sweltered in a tropical sea, with starvation staring them in the face, dreamed of rolling in the oriental wealth of a Spanish argosy.

Especially to the cattle-hunter must this temptation have been great, for his mode of life was the very rudest. He roamed the woods by day with his dog and apprentices, and at night slept in the open air or in a rude shed hastily constructed of leaves and skins, which served as a house, and which he called after the Indian name, "ajoupa" or "barbacoa." His dress was of the simplest--coa.r.s.e cloth trousers, and a shirt which hung loosely over them, both pieces so black and saturated with the blood and grease of slain animals that they looked as if they had been tarred ("de toile gaudronnee").[102] A belt of undressed bull's hide bound the shirt, and supported on one side three or four large knives, on the other a pouch for powder and shot. A cap with a short pointed brim extending over the eyes, rude shoes of cowhide or pigskin made all of one piece bound over the foot, and a short, large-bore musket, completed the hunter's grotesque outfit. Often he carried wound about his waist a sack of netting into which he crawled at night to keep off the pestiferous mosquitoes. With creditable regularity he and his apprentices arose early in the morning and started on foot for the hunt, eating no food until they had killed and skinned as many wild cattle or swine as there were persons in the company. After having skinned the last animal, the master-hunter broke its softest bones and made a meal for himself and his followers on the marrow. Then each took up a hide and returned to the boucan, where they dined on the flesh they had killed.[103] In this fashion the hunter lived for the s.p.a.ce of six months or a year. Then he made a division of the skins and dried meat, and repaired to Tortuga or one of the French settlements on the coast of Hispaniola to recoup his stock of ammunition and spend the rest of his gains in a wild carouse of drunkenness and debauchery. His money gone, he returned again to the hunt. The cow-killers, as they had neither wife nor children, commonly a.s.sociated in pairs with the right of inheriting from each other, a custom which was called "matelotage." These private a.s.sociations, however, did not prevent the property of all from being in a measure common. Their mode of settling quarrels was the most primitive--the duel. In other things they governed themselves by a certain "coutumier," a medley of bizarre laws which they had originated among themselves. At any attempt to bring them under civilised rules, the reply always was, "telle etoit la coutume de la cote"; and that definitely closed the matter. They based their rights thus to live upon the fact, they said, of having pa.s.sed the Tropic, where, borrowing from the sailor's well-known superst.i.tion, they pretended to have drowned all their former obligations.[104] Even their family names they discarded, and the saying was in those days that one knew a man in the Isles only when he was married. From a life of this sort, cruising against Spanish ships, if not an unmixed good, was at least always a desirable recreation. Every Spanish prize brought into Tortuga, moreover, was an incitement to fresh adventure against the common foe. The "gens de la cote," as they called themselves, ordinarily a.s.sociated a score or more together, and having taken or built themselves a canoe, put to sea with intent to seize a Spanish barque or some other coasting vessel. With silent paddles, under cover of darkness, they approached the unsuspecting prey, killed the frightened sailors or drove them overboard, and carried the prize to Tortuga. There the raiders either dispersed to their former occupations, or gathered a larger crew of congenial spirits and sailed away for bigger game.

All the Jesuit historians of the West Indies, Dutertre, Labat and Charlevoix, have left us accounts of the manners and customs of the buccaneers. The Dutch physician, Exquemelin, who lived with the buccaneers for several years, from 1668 to 1674, and wrote a picturesque narrative from materials at his disposal, has also been a source for the ideas of most later writers on the subject. It may not be out of place to quote his description of the men whose deeds he recorded.

"Before the Pirates go out to sea," he writes, "they give notice to every one who goes upon the voyage of the day on which they ought precisely to embark, intimating also to them their obligation of bringing each man in particular so many pounds of powder and bullets as they think necessary for that expedition. Being all come on board, they join together in council, concerning what place they ought first to go wherein to get provisions--especially of flesh, seeing they scarce eat anything else. And of this the most common sort among them is pork. The next food is tortoises, which they are accustomed to salt a little.

Sometimes they resolve to rob such or such hog-yards, wherein the Spaniards often have a thousand heads of swine together. They come to these places in the dark of night, and having beset the keeper's lodge, they force him to rise, and give them as many heads as they desire, threatening withal to kill him in case he disobeys their command or makes any noise. Yea, these menaces are oftentimes put in execution, without giving any quarter to the miserable swine-keepers, or any other person that endeavours to hinder their robberies.