by Dudley Pope
Although he knew Saxby was probably right, his judgement was coloured by his hatred of Cromwell and the Parliamentary forces, and Yorke could not forget they were Englishmen and but for the Civil War they might be fighting alongside the Griffin’s men against these same Spaniards.
“There won’t be any Spanish privateers near,” Saxby said cheerfully. “They’ll either be making for Santo Domingo to see what pickings there are or, if they don’t know the condition of the English expedition, they’ll bolt home to the Main.”
Yorke thanked Bullock and gestured to Saxby to walk aft with him, where they could talk undisturbed.
“How long before the last two canoes are ready?”
“The second will be finished within a couple of days and, judging from the first one, will need to be in the water for three or four days for the wood to swell so that she takes up properly. Another week beyond that to build the third one.”
When Yorke nodded, Saxby said: “Perhaps we could make do with two, sir.”
“No – from what I’ve been thinking about smuggling, we must aim at unloading the goods as quickly as possible. The longer we spend in Spanish waters the longer we give them to decide to cheat or trap us.”
“But they want the goods and they know if there’s any cheating we won’t come back, sir,” Saxby protested.
“We are not the only smugglers. They could take all our goods, sink our ship, kill the men and put the women in bordellos, and who will know? A Dutch sloop could arrive the very next day, find there’s no business because the Dons have just robbed us, and sail without any hint that there’s been trouble.”
Saxby was silent for two or three minutes. “You think it could be like that, sir?”
Yorke nodded. “The Spaniards simply want our goods. They’ll pay if they have to, but don’t forget that we are the enemy and because we don’t share their religion we have no souls.”
“No peace beyond the Line?” Saxby muttered.
“Yes, but remember that two men pointing loaded muskets at each other might just as well be unarmed.”
“True – but supposing a third man comes along…”
“In that case, Saxby, we must make sure he is a friend of ours.”
“But how do we do that?”
“How many boats would you, a Spanish harbour master, expect the Griffin to carry?”
“One normally, but two if she’s smuggling, sir.”
“But we shall have four, Saxby.”
“If they see we have four, they’ll be all the more prepared.”
“Ah yes,” Yorke said vaguely, “if they see them all.”
“When shall we be sailing for the Main, sir?”
“You say the third boat should be ready in two weeks. By then General Venables will have attacked Santo Domingo and the word should have reached most places along the Main, so the Dons there will assume they are safe… If we sneak in to a remote port a few days later…”
Choosing a destination by Aurelia shutting her eyes and touching the chart with her finger was, Saxby had explained with masterly tact, a very romantic way of doing it, providing her hand stayed well up to windward – at the eastern, or Atlantic end of the Main. But choosing somewhere like Coro, more than 600 miles into the Caribbean, and thus 600 miles to leeward, meant they were wasting 600 miles of the Main.
Saxby had asked Aurelia’s permission to use the cabin and with her and Yorke watching, he had unfolded the chart and described to the Griffin’s owner, who made no claims to seamanship beyond knowing how to sail the Griffin, that their life was now governed by a single phrase, “keeping to windward”.
With the Trade wind blowing generally from east to west, from the Atlantic across the Caribbean towards Mexico, and with it being so easy to run with the wind astern and so difficult to fight in the opposite direction, beating to windward, they must begrudge every yard lost to leeward.
“Look at it like this, ma’am,” he said to Aurelia. “Think of it as the side of a hill. This bit here –” he pointed to the line of islands running north and south and almost touching the coast of the Spanish Main at Trinidad “–is the top of a hill. All this –” he moved his hand westward, towards Panama and Mexico “–is going downhill. The farther we get downhill, the harder the climb to get back up again.”
Aurelia nodded, glancing at Ned as if to reassure him that she was interested. “Yes, Mr Saxby, I understand. Is there not a special phrase for it, when you are at the top of the hill?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s ‘having the weather gage’.”
“So we should begin with the ‘having of the weather gage’.”
Ned smiled and said: “It is easier to say we should ‘have the weather gage’.”
“Very well, we have this gage, and then…?”
“Well, ma’am, we don’t know what prices we’ll get, nor what sort of reception we’ll find, so my idea would be to call at a small place first, right up here –” he pointed to a town marked on the chart as Carúpano, a town on the south side of a bay. “You see, we’ll be approaching from the north, at right-angles to the coast. These islands, Los Testigos, are about forty miles off the coast, but we can find Carúpano because of the mountains.” He pointed at the chart. “Here is Carúpano, but look, these peaks are high. La Carona is inland and one side of the town; San Jose is the other, and both are about the same height. Then Puerto Santo, not very high, and a headland, Punta del Taquien, are just west and will tell us if we’ve gone too far.”
“Why choose this particular town?” Aurelia asked.
“Well, it is a nice big bay. There’s a headland at one end of the bay and a small island at the other. Carúpano itself lies in a valley between two streams – something else that will help us to identify it. But don’t forget, the canoes may be landing in darkness.”
“Supposing we find Spanish ships there?” Ned asked.
“We turn and come out again. But I don’t anticipate any. Fishing boats perhaps, but nothing else. And no other port for –” he measured two spread fingers against the latitude scale “–fifty miles either side. So from there we can gradually work our way westward – there’s a thousand miles before we get to Panama!”
Aurelia nodded and then turned to Ned, looking puzzled. “Chéri, there is something I do not understand. I understand very well when Mr Saxby explains ‘the weather gage’ and I understand the wind blowing always to the west, and the trouble it is to make a ship go against the wind…”
“Yes, my love,” Ned said encouragingly when she stopped, her brow wrinkled as though she felt she should know the answer but did not, and was embarrassed to ask the question.
“Well, as we go along the coast and selling our cargo, the Spanish pay us in gold, or perhaps exchange hides and tobacco…that is correct?”
Ned nodded and waited for her to continue.
“So eventually we reach, say, here –” she pointed to where the Main curved round and dipped south to Panama “–and we have sold all our cargo, and in its place we have gold, or silver, or hides, or tobacco…”
“Or a mixture of them all, ma’am,” Saxby said helpfully.
“Yes…” she said it doubtfully, so that it sounded like “Ya…a…s”. “But we cannot go back to Barbados or Antigua or any of these islands for more goods, because Cromwell’s men will seize you, and we can’t sail to England for the same reason. All we have is money. So where do we go next.”
Saxby and Yorke stared at each other in dismay.
“I’m damned if I know, beloved.” He kissed her full on the lips. “Don’t blush; Saxby and I are the ones who are blushing.”
Chapter Ten
Yorke had been pleasantly surprised to find that so few of his crew were seasick. The first voyage from Barbados to Antigua had revealed two men so sick that they were incapacitated,
but his main concern, Aurelia, was completely immune along with Mrs Judd and Mrs Bullock. All three women displayed the determination in their characters in different ways, he noted, and it was as if they were too determined to be ill. Anyway, whatever the reason, Mrs Judd and Mrs Bullock kept their women busy in the Griffin’s galley so that the crew had regular meals.
They had sailed from Antigua and called at Montserrat, taking the risk that orders might have reached its governor to detain the ship, to supplement their selection of cargo, and then began the long voyage south towards the Main, keeping just enough distance from all the islands so that they could see them but were too far to the west to be spotted.
Slowly the latitude noted on Saxby’s slate decreased. Sixteen degrees north, and that was Guadeloupe on the eastern horizon, with the mountainous box of Dominica to the south, followed by Martinique; fourteen degrees cut right through St Lucia, and then came St Vincent (with Barbados a hundred or so miles beyond); twelve degrees just scraped the southernmost tip of La Grenade, and then just ahead of the Griffin was the Spanish Main, with the island of Trinidad tucked in so close it was almost touching.
La Grenade was just dropping below the horizon astern when he and Saxby sat aft on one of the guns to have a final discussion about the simple but disturbing question asked by Aurelia. “Fact is,” Saxby said, “we don’t seem to ’ave much choice. It’s like having one keg of rumbullion: when you drink that up, you go thirsty.”
“Not quite,” Ned pointed out. “More like the tavern keeper selling his last keg of rumbullion in mugsful. At the end of it he has an empty keg – but he has the money he charged for the drink.”
“True…true… But what good is money? I never thought I’d live to hear myself ask that, but a man adrift in a boat could starve and die of thirst while sitting on five hundredweight of gold bullion.”
“He’d be dying in style,” Ned commented and waited while Saxby excused himself and bellowed an order to trim the mainsail better. The Griffin was sailing much faster with a clean bottom, but as Saxby had said within an hour or two of them leaving Kingsnorth, she was designed as a floating box that would carry the most cargo for the least taxes and dues, which were calculated on her various dimensions.
Once Saxby was sitting on the gun again, Ned said: “I think the Dutch merchants have two prices for their goods. Those who only trade among the islands have a comparatively low one because they take few risks, while those smuggling to the Main charge the Dons a high price because of the danger they run of being caught by guardas costas or betrayed by their ‘customers’.”
“That makes sense,” Saxby said, “but I think they’ll charge the high price in Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Cuba too, because it’s just as dangerous up there.”
“Yes, by ‘the islands’ I meant these islands.” He turned and gestured astern.
“So what you’re thinking, sir, is that once we’ve got our money from the Dons we sail north again, find some Dutchmen, and buy more goods at the low price, and go south again to the Main and sell it.”
“It seemed a better idea when I thought of it,” Ned admitted. “Now you put it into words it doesn’t sound so good.”
“It’s the margin of profit, sir, as you well know. Can we make enough profit buying from the Dutch at the low price and selling to the Dons at the high price? That profit has to feed us, keep the ship in good repair, and pay for the next consignment from the Dutch.”
“If only we knew the difference between the high and the low price…”
“I don’t reckon it’ll be enough for us to live on, sir,” Saxby said bluntly. “And I’ll tell yer fer why. Like you say, the Dutch traders have got two alternatives, but I think it ain’t just danger. Trading among the islands is selling a few pots and yards of cloth here an’ a few pots and yards of cloth there, visiting p’raps six islands and three dozen anchorages. On the Main (no further to sail really, coming direct from ‘Olland) they can probably sell a whole cargo in one town, unload in a night, collect their money or goods and sail straight back to ‘Olland. There’s a risk, for sure, but against that is the speed.”
“So we are back with Mrs Wilson’s question.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Wait a moment. What about that Dutch island just off the Main, five or six hundred miles along the coast. Curaçao, that’s it. I wonder what they use it for.”
“You mean, if we could buy goods there?”
“Yes.”
Saxby shook his head. “They might have goods, but they wouldn’t sell to us, and even if they did the price would be outrageous. After all, the goods have been shipped there from ’Olland in the first place, and Curaçao isn’t above fifty miles from the Main. Dutch smugglers may stock up there, though I can’t see there being too much profit even for them. Curaçao must be full o’ middlemen, quarrelling with each other as they buy from the ships coming from ’Olland, and sell to them smuggling to the Main. That’s assuming the ships from ’Olland don’t go to the Main and do the actual smuggling – and the more I think about it the less I think they do: they’d be big; too much draught to creep into narrow and shallow bays and inlets on a dark night.”
“Then we’re wasting our time. We just sell the goods we have, and then hope something turns up.”
“Like piracy,” Saxby said.
“Seriously, would you be prepared to take up piracy?” Ned was startled at Saxby’s matter-of-fact voice.
“Of course, sir. We all would – the crew, I mean, and the women. Mrs Judd, for sure. Can’t speak for Mrs Wilson, o’ course, but I reckon she’ll feel the same way as the rest of us.”
“Which is?”
“That with every man’s hand turned against us in our own country, we’ve got to make a living as best we can.”
Yorke stood up and walked back and forth across the deck half a dozen times while Saxby took the new clay pipe he had been holding and began filling it with tobacco.
Piracy! Only three months – four, rather – had passed since the William and Mary had arrived in Bridgetown with a letter from his father warning him that the Kent estates were lost to the Roundheads at last and that Kingsnorth would be sequestrated. Four months since the same letter warned him that Parliament was also intending to have him arrested as soon as a fleet arrived under the command of Admiral Penn.
Yet within hours of reading the letter he had collected Aurelia, loaded his people on board the Griffin, and sailed. Fled, to be exact. Then only a few days ago he had accepted the fact that the only way for them to make a living was to smuggle to the Main. Now a closer examination of the word “smuggling” showed that it would eventually be spelled “piracy”, although admittedly against an enemy of Britain.
There was only one person he wanted to talk with at this stage, and that was Aurelia. Other men might laugh and say he ran to the petticoats the moment he faced a problem, but apart from the fact that she now regularly wore breeches, Aurelia so far had proved shrewder than any of them.
He found her swinging in the hammock which they had rigged for her in the cabin after she complained that at sea sleeping in a bunk was like being a pebble shaken in a box.
She looked up at him and smiled impishly. “You and Saxby talk a lot but decide little, eh?”
Ned sat on the edge of the bunk and tried to look innocent. “What on earth could make you think that?”
“You talk together for an hour, and then I hear you walk back and forth, back and forth across the deck, like a dog on a rope. You forget it is just here –” she pointed to the deckhead above her hammaco. “Men with a contented mind do not walk thus.”
“Why should I not have a contented mind? I have you with me, the ship, a good crew…”
“Mon chéri, unless you can eat me, or sell me, we both know we all have a limited time together… That was what you were discussing w
ith Saxby.”
“Yes,” Ned admitted. “He and I have dodged the subject for a few days. I suppose each of us hoped the other would think of something.”
“But neither of you did.”
Ned shook his head ruefully. “No, not really.”
“There is only one answer,” she said calmly, much as she might announce they would have to eat white meat for dinner because there was no red meat left, and was apologizing that they were reduced to servants’ fare.
“I know,” he said. “At least,” he qualified it warily, “we thought only of one. What had you in mind?”
“Parbleu! Piracy, my darling. If only you had a commission or letter of marque from the governor of Antigua, or someone like that, you could call it buccaneering and not feel guilty, but because you do not have such a letter you cannot legally be a privateer. So be a pirate. You had no other choice from the moment you sailed from Kingsnorth!”
“Did you realize that then, or are you saying it now just to tease me – or make me angry?”
“No, I realized it. I thought I might be wrong because perhaps there were things I did not understand about ships, but I was fairly sure.”
Ned stared at her with admiration, love and awe tumbling over each other. “You knew that, yet you still came?”
“You mean, that I came, knowing that I might end up a pirate’s mistress?”
“Well – yes. Although so far,” he could not resist adding, “‘a pirate’s housekeeper’ might be a more accurate description.”
“Come and kiss your housekeeper.”
He stood up and walked over to her, having to brace himself and hold the hammaco against the ship’s roll. As he bent his head she whispered mischievously: “Do all pirates have housekeepers?”
