Blackbeard- The Birth of America

by Samuel Marquis

  He chuckled. “Come now, I’m no pirate. I’m but a simple seaman.”

  “Well, just keep it that way. The only thing going on the account will bring you is a rope around your neck. Come now, do you really want to end up a seagull-picked carcass in a gibbet like poor Captain Kidd?”

  No, he didn’t, of course. But he had read Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin’s engrossing History of the Buccaneers of America and William Dampier’s A New Voyage Round the World, and he had heard the tales of the privateers Henry Morgan, William Kidd, and Henry Avery as a boy and had always been inspired by them. In fact, he firmly believed the ex-Royal Navy man Kidd had gotten a raw deal from his financial backers, who had turned their backs on him during his trial and sealed his grim fate.

  “What makes you so sure Hamilton will issue you a privateering commission to be a treasure hunter?”

  “The word on the docks is that he will be willing to do it—for a select few. I want to be one of those gentlemen of fortune.”

  “You are a bold and enterprising young man, Edward Thache. I knew there was another reason I am going to miss you.”

  He nuzzled up close to her. “Remind me again, what was the first reason?”

  She smiled a winsome smile and slipped her shapely leg over his upper thigh so that she was astride him. “I think you know the answer to that one, Mister Soon-to-be-Sea-Captain.”

  “The third time’s a charm,” he said with a mischievous grin, and he took her in his arms again, feeling the visceral power of his love for her along with the thrill of returning once again to his truest love.

  The wild blue Sea.

  CHAPTER 2

  SPANISH TREASURE SALVAGE CAMP

  PALMAR DE AYZ, LA FLORIDA, SPANISH TERRITORY

  DECEMBER 27, 1715

  AS THE THREE ATTACK BOATS crept towards shore, Edward Thache studied the enemy position. Palmar de Ayz was as the Spanish mail boat captain, Pedro de la Vega, captured near Key Biscayne just off the Atlantic coast, had said. The campfires of the main salvage camp, located six miles north of the secondary camp, flickered a dampened yellow against the pitch-black shoreline. It was here, on a sandy beach fringed by rustling palm trees, that the Spaniards had secured the coin and valuables they had thus far managed to salvage from the ten vessels lost in the July hurricane. Offshore, in the shallow waters of the Oculina Banks, was the final resting place of the late General Ubilla’s flagship and the treasure-laden fighting galleon San Cristo de San Roman.

  Commanded by privateer captain Henry Jennings, the British-American attack force carried official orders from Jamaican Governor Hamilton to “execute all manner of acts of hostility” against pirates—and private, unwritten orders to make haste to the Spanish wrecks and “bring back whatever treasure they could.” With fifty men in each of the three attack boats, they were armed to the teeth. Most carried a cutlass of some kind, many the latest official British Navy variations used for slashing and stabbing during boarding and ground-based military actions. Many carried short-barreled, flared, shoulder-fired British Sea Service musketoons, while others wielded flintlock trade pistols, muzzle-loading blunderbusses, or dragons. Still other carried pikes and cudgels. With a flair for the dramatic, Thache himself carried a sling over his shoulders bearing a triumvirate of Queen Anne breech-loading screw-barrel pistols, manufactured by Thomas Annely, gunsmith, of Bristol, England. They hung from holsters like bandoliers. He also wielded a brass-hilted cutlass called a “dog’s head hanger.” He had never killed anyone with the weapons in the handful of instances he had boarded enemy vessels while in the service of the British Navy during the war, or as a merchant seaman and sometimes privateer in the last two years of peace since the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht; but he had been amply trained in how to use them. He was a good shot with a pistol and musket and an expert in offensive and defensive maneuvers with a cutlass.

  To the sound of the oars dipping and stroking through the water and the gentle roar of waves crashing to the west, Thache continued to study the salvage camp. It was illuminated not only by a bonfire but a crescent moon overhead. He wondered how many defenders the Spaniards fielded? A hundred men? Two hundred? Or perhaps as many as three hundred? He hoped it was closer to one hundred—then his side would have the weight of superior numbers. But perhaps it wouldn’t even come to that. They might be able to catch the Spanish by surprise and force them to surrender without a fight. Somehow, that prospect seemed unlikely. The Spaniards were known to be fierce fighters in close combat and stubborn when it came to surrender. They generally neither gave nor expected quarter when it came to a scrap.

  Soon the three boats reached shore, just north of the midpoint between the two Spanish salvage camps. Jennings gave the order for the three companies to hide out among the palm groves and rest for a few hours. The attack would come at dawn.

  Taking a half dozen palm fronds, Thache fashioned a crude bed and laid down to rest. After two weeks of sailing, he was exhausted. In mid-December, he had sailed out of Bluefields, Jamaica, as captain of a sloop purchased from privateer ship owner and family friend Daniel Axtell—along with Jennings and his eight-gun Barsheba, John Wills and his twelve-gun Eagle, and two other privateer vessels. Thache owned a two-thirds share of the vessel, Axtell one-third, and he had christened the six-gun sloop Margaret after his Marcus Hook love. As commander of the more than two hundred men in the five-vessel flotilla, Jennings brought along with him fourteen skilled divers and a variety of “warlike stores” in addition to muskets and pistols, including fuse-lit hand grenadoes, consisting of gunpowder, bits of metal, and fuse stuffed into glass bottles, and stinkpots, teargas-like grenades packed with rancid meat, fish, and other putrid items found aboard a ship. With such an assortment of lethal weaponry, Thache was confident they would be able to hold their own against the Spanish guardas costas and easily overwhelm the enemy’s lightly manned trading vessels.

  After departing from Jamaica, the flotilla had skirted the mountainous shores of Cuba, pausing to take on fresh water and other necessities in the wild harbors of Honda and Mariel until, sometime after Christmas, they entered the Florida Straits in search of signs of the sunken treasure fleet. When they stopped the Spanish mailboat to inquire the location of the wrecks, they took Captain de la Vega and his crew captive and forced them to lead them north to the salvage camps. They were not the first to inquire. De la Vega’s mailboat had been looted the day before by a pair of English sloops near one of the ruined treasure galleons. Like Jennings’s invaders, the Englishmen had wanted to ascertain the strength of the Spanish camp, the nature of its defenses, and the quantity of recovered treasure stored there.

  Throughout the day and following night, the five sloops-of-war comprising the well-armed flotilla made their way up the deserted Florida coast, flying stolen Spanish flags to present the appropriate “colors” and thereby disguise their advance. The next morning, they stared out mesmerically at the first signs of the wrecked treasure fleet broad off their port bow. Storm-disgorged fragments of the patrol ship, Nuestra Senora de las Nieves, were scattered all along a barrier island beach. The hull projected above the surface in the shallow water a few hundred yards offshore, and Thache could see that the battered ship had already been picked clean by the Spaniards. On the beach were signs of the Spanish operations: remains of campfires and crude crosses marking the graves of the many that had died from drowning, diving the wrecks, and disease. The flotilla continued northward, passing the remains of the grounded Urca de Lima, which had also been thoroughly salvaged by her surviving crew, and then burned to the waterline to discourage freelancers. Finally, a hundred miles to the north along the east coast of La Florida from where they had captured de la Vega, they located the two Spanish salvage camps.

  Thache awoke to the smell of gunpowder. Smears of predawn light assaulted his tired eyes, and he realized that he must have slept for two or three hours. He looked up to see several of his comrades loading and priming their firearms.

  Jennin
gs appeared at his side with his lieutenant, the feisty privateer Charles Vane. An outspoken Jacobite, Vane looked upon James Francis Edward Stuart—the Catholic Prince of Wales, who had lived in exile in France and Rome following the failed Jacobite Rising of 1715—as the legitimate heir to the British throne. He often spoke vociferously of wanting to string up the fat Hanoverian imposter who had stolen James III’s rightful place and didn’t speak a lick of English, King George I. Like Thache and Jennings, the irrepressible Vane was an educated property owner, and also like Thache, he hailed from Jamaica by route of Mother England.

  “We go now, Thache,” whispered Jennings, in an upper-middle-class Bermudan accent. “Pass the word along.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Charles Vane stepped up to him and grinned like a dervish. He reeked of strong rum. “Are you ready to kill some Spanishers, Thache?”

  “If need be,” he said, without much conviction.

  Vane slapped him on the back with bibulous bonhomie. “Keep a sharp eye out and a steady hand with those breech-loaders of yours. The men look up to you and will follow you anywhere.”

  “They will?”

  “Aye, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. So that’s why you will be up front with me and Captain Jennings. Be sure to keep the men moving forward. You’re a natural leader, my Jamaican friend.”

  “I’ll be right beside you. You can count on me.”

  “I’d better be able to, ye scupperlout—otherwise, I’ll have to cut off your bloody fucking head and stick it on a pike!” He cackled with inebriated laughter and was gone.

  Five minutes later, the two-hundred-odd men had formed up into three separate companies, one commanded by Jennings, another by Wills, and a third by the wild-looking Vane. To the sound of banging drums, they began marching up the flat, featureless beach towards the fortified northern treasure salvage camp. As they marched forward, Thache couldn’t help but feel like the heroic Sir Francis Drake at Cadiz or Morgan at Panama—even though he knew he and the others were actually invaders marching illegally into the Spanish sovereign territory of La Florida. After all, Palmar de Ayz was far south of the twenty-ninth parallel, the boundary claimed by the Carolina Charter of 1665, which meant there was not the slightest legal justification for what they were doing. But at the moment, with the steady roll of the drumbeat and the marching footsteps on the sandy beach, none of that mattered.

  Like Drake and Morgan, they would one day be hailed as conquering heroes. Or so twenty-eight-year-old Edward Thache hoped.

  As Vane had instructed him to do, he marched out in front of the three companies with Jennings, Wills, Vane, and the British flag-bearers. Up ahead, he saw that the enemy soldiers were withdrawing from their fortifications and a general agitation was spreading within the camp. The Spaniards had constructed a sand embankment to defend against attacks, but it was obvious that they lacked adequate numbers and proper arms for a defense against two hundred muskets and pistols. The militant drumbeat rolled across the sandy beach, like a warning shot fired across a bow.

  Now he could see a dozen of the Spaniards break away from defending the sand wall and run to the rear.

  “Aye, we’ve got the cowardly pups on the run now!” shouted Jennings.

  The invaders gave a hearty huzzah, and several more defenders threw down their arms and retreated from the embankment. Thache could see now that the Spanish were badly outnumbered. Maybe they would give up without a fight after all. No, he thought, that’s not the Spanish way. The officers will force them at the point of a muzzle to regroup and fight.

  The invaders marched forward implacably, the drumbeat now rising to a fever pitch.

  “Forward, men! At the quick step now!” commanded Jennings.

  The three columns picked up their pace and high-stepped towards the Spanish position as the drumbeat rose to a martial crescendo.

  Suddenly, a Spanish officer wearing a sunbleached, tattered naval uniform stepped over the wall with an orderly carrying a white flag. They walked towards Thache, Jennings, and the others out front. Jennings held up a hand, silencing the drummers as the mustachioed Spanish officer stepped up to them cautiously with his terrified-looking flag-bearer.

  He bowed formally. “I am Admiral Francisco Salmon, commander of this camp,” he said in surprisingly fluent English, his posture erect and demeanor courtly. “As this territory of La Florida belongs to His Catholic Majesty King Philip the Fifth, I must ask why you have come here. Is it to make war with Spain when our countries are now at peace?”

  “No, this is not war,” replied Jennings, squinting disapprovingly at his Spanish counterpart, for whom Thache could tell he felt only a muted hatred. “We came to fish the wrecks, to claim the mountain of wealth that belongs rightfully to England and her colonies.”

  Admiral Salmon shook his head. “There is nothing for you here. To whom am I speaking, by the way? Are you and your men pirates?”

  “I am Captain Henry Jennings of Bermuda and lately Jamaica, and I, sir, am no lowly pirate. We come by the order of the Governor of Jamaica to protect against piracy. Me and my men have valid commissions to perform our duty as protectors of the realm.”

  “Your commissions are worthless. You are nothing but pirates.”

  Thache saw Jennings’s face redden, and the privateer commodore took a step forward as if to strike a blow. “Damn your impudence, Spanisher—ye don’t talk to me that way!”

  “I apologize for my forthrightness. But these wrecks belong to His Majesty King Philip and you have no right to be here. Me and my men are securing the King’s treasures. If you and your men don’t turn around right now and return to your boats, you risk instigating a war.”

  “You know we cannot do that. The treasure is here and we outnumber you three to one.”

  “My country and the Pope himself will vehemently protest this invasion of our sovereign territory.”

  “Protest all you want—we’re taking the damned silver and gold. Now where is it? I’m growing impatient.”

  “I cannot just hand over the treasure to you or my King would be angry with me. But in the interest of keeping our two countries out of war, I might be able to offer you a substantial amount. Let’s say twenty-five thousand pieces of eight. That is, if you agree to leave peacefully at once.”

  “No, that’s not enough,” snorted Charles Vane. “Why ye are but a small bantam cock crowing on his own dunghill. If we want the treasure, we’re going to bloody damn take it. And that means every single peso, by thunder!”

  “He’s right,” agreed Jennings. “We’re going to have to have it all. My men greatly outnumber you and will have it no other way. I mean, just look at them.”

  He turned and gestured towards his well-armed company of young adventurers, experienced privateers and merchant seamen, freebooters, wreckers, divers, and social misfits. They raised their muskets, blunderbusses, pistols, and cutlasses and gave a martial cry that was as menacing as a pack of howling wolves surrounding a quivering lamb. It was a terror tactic, Thache saw at once, and it worked to startling effect, as Salmon’s face turned a shade paler and his flag-bearer began to noticeably tremble at the sight of the motley crew of seafaring warriors, none of whom were wearing military uniforms.

  Jennings turned back to face the Spaniard, bearing the confident smile of one who knows he holds a winning hand. “I command you to stand down now, Admiral, or I will kill you and all of your men where you stand. We’re taking the treasure—all of it—so ye have only one choice to make here today: to live or die. Which is it to be, sir? As I’ve intimated, I’m running out of patience.”

  Thache watched as the admiral looked back dejectedly towards his men behind the wall, weighing his options. There were only twenty or thirty left guarding the front line, and though they had a pair of cannon, they looked hungry, tired, and defeated. The mailboat captain de la Vega had told them Salmon was a proud man who would likely not give up without a fight, even though he and his men had endured substantial hardshi
p since the storm and were barely hanging on. Though supplies had recently arrived from St. Augustine and Havana, during much of their stay on the beach since washing ashore they had been forced to subsist on dogs, cats, horses, the bitter berries of palmetto trees, and the occasional fish or seabird. Salmon himself had taken gravely ill, but he still refused to leave the wreck site. “I will stay on this island in bad health and half-dressed even if it means sacrificing my life,” he had told de la Vega. He had posted his strongest men as sentries near the hulk of the Regia in an attempt to prevent looting and then set about trying to recover as much of the fleet’s cargo as possible. His men were not eager to enter the shark-infested waters, and those that did sickened within a few weeks under the strain of the heavy work, so he had sent a man to Havana with orders to round up African and Indian divers. But according to de la Vega, more than a third of the enslaved divers at Palmar de Ayz had died and more were dying every day. Still, the ever-loyal Salmon was determined to recover the treasure on behalf of His Majesty the King and he had already salvaged over four million pesos in coins and cargo. A substantial portion of the treasure was reportedly already in Havana under heavy guard.

  Salmon’s eyes met those of Jennings. He was still looking for a compromise solution, and Thache couldn’t help but admire him for his resolve and sense of duty.

  “I assure ye, your men will be treated well, Admiral,” said Jennings. “We’ll even give you some of our food and drink.”

  Still, the proud admiral hesitated. Thache continued to study the faces of the two commanders, trying to gauge who would give in first.

  “Very well, I accept your terms,” said Salmon finally, his jaw trembling. “But I implore you to treat my men honorably. They have been through a most terrible ordeal, and it is a miracle that any of us has survived.”

  “I am a man of honor, sir, and would have it no other way,” said Jennings, and he withdrew a silver flask. “Let’s toast to peace then.”