The Lost Fleet

by Barry Clifford

  With most of his fleet gone, d’Estrées needed the buccaneers more than ever. The pirate ships that survived the reefs, nine or ten in all, now represented half of the admiral’s available fleet, and the twelve hundred or so buccaneers a sizable portion of his land forces. Unhappily for d’Estrées, the buccaneers had lost interest in attacking Curaçao.

  Concerns of French pride and dominance in the West Indies mattered not a bit to the freebooters. With the big men-of-war wrecked, the odds of sacking Curaçao did not look so attractive, not enough to tempt them into following d’Estrées any longer. As Atkins reported, “D’Estrées lost not his courage, but with the Ships he had left would have attempted [Curaçao], But his Buckneers (which are only Beasts of Prey) seeing there was little to be gott but Blows left him and would not hazard any farther with him.”2

  The buccaneers might have suffered the same hazards as the French sailors in getting ashore, but once on the beach things were much easier for them. These were not sailors fresh from Europe’s cool, damp climate, but men who had already been many years in the Caribbean and were acclimated to the heat and the blazing sun. The buccaneers led wild and adventurous lives. Finding themselves shipwrecked on a barren island was not so far removed from the normal course of events.

  The circumstances on Las Aves were far better than usual, because a fortune in loot literally drifted in on the tide. The buccaneers discarded their old ragged clothing and donned the finery that had floated free of the cabins, or that they stripped from the bodies of drowned officers. They made tents from the sails torn from shattered yards. They retrieved casks of food and liquor from the surf and rolled them up the beach to their makeshift hell town. One of the survivors of Las Aves later told William Dampier that “if they had gone to Jamaica with 30l. a Man in their Pockets, they could not have enjoyed themselves more.”3

  The buccaneers kept to themselves, enjoying the high life at their end of the beach, while at the other end the men of the French navy suffered, wallowed in their despair, and died.

  D’Estrées worked hard to rally the freebooters in his camp into proceeding with the attempt on Curaçao, but the men of Tortuga would have none of it. The wreck of the French fleet seemed to have dissolved any ties they felt to the French. The buccaneers felt free to loot whatever they could of their former employers’ possessions.

  D’Estrées did not remain long on Las Aves. Soon he managed to get the remainder of his force aboard what was left of his fleet. With what they could salvage, they left the scene of the great disaster astern. They did not go to Curaçao, of course, but instead retreated to the French colony of Saint-Domingue. D’Estrées returned to France that summer. By then, the war was all but over.

  As thorough and devastating as it was, the loss of the fleet on Las Aves did not completely ruin d’Estrées’ reputation or career. Such an accident was much more forgivable at a time when charts were few and mariners had no more than a lead line to warn of dangers below. Louis XIV was more likely to ascribe the disaster to the will of God than a modern head of state might be.

  A year later, d’Estrées was back in the Caribbean with yet another fleet under his command. Once again, his presence caused great alarm. In the end, however, he did no more than show the French flag in the region before returning to France. Ironically, he would spend much of his remaining career fighting the Barbary pirates of the North African coast.

  A GATHERING OF BUCCANEERS

  The buccaneers were not so quick to leave Las Aves. They were having a tropical vacation, with all provisions provided free of charge, courtesy of the French navy. They found themselves in a unique position. They were pirates to a man, already assembled and under way, men under arms who no longer had a fight. They had lost only a few ships and a small portion of their company. They still represented a significant fighting force—nine or ten ships and twelve to fifteen hundred men. They had been infected by the dream of plunder, and that dream only needed direction.

  The more democratic a society, the more opportunity for natural leaders to emerge, and the pirates were the most democratic of all. Contemporary reports state that one man, who would later become famous for his exploits as a pirate captain, was most certainly there: the Chevalier de Grammont. De Grammont would eventually sail with some of the most famous men in the history of seventeenth-century piracy—Laurens de Graff, Jan “Yankey” Willems, John Coxon, and Thomas Paine. Given the long professional relationship that developed among them, it is likely that all or most of those men were together on Las Aves.

  There is also circumstantial evidence to suggest that the most famous pirate of all, William Kidd, was one of the men of Las Aves. Kidd was serving as an officer aboard a French privateer ten years after the wreck at Las Aves, and he served in the English navy during the third of the Dutch Wars (1672–78). He may have joined the French in this venture in order to carry on the fight with the Dutch. He was certainly friendly with some of the buccaneers, most notably Thomas Paine, who sailed with d’Estrées.

  These buccaneers were men who recognized opportunity when they saw it, and in this disaster, opportunity is what they saw. Why return empty-handed to Tortuga, after so many had come so far? For three weeks the buccaneers continued their revels at Las Aves, and then they were ready for more action.

  The repercussions of this chance meeting on Las Aves would sound throughout the Caribbean, Europe, and America for the next forty years. The decisions made on that barren island would set off a chain of events that would usher in an age of piracy never seen in the world before or since.

  The careers of men whose names would later become synonymous with piracy—Blackbeard, Black Sam Bellamy, Bartholomew Roberts, William “Billy One-Hand” Condon, Charles Vane—were born of this meeting, and those later pirates were but a single generation and a few degrees separated from the buccaneers on that sun-baked beach.

  But of course, the men on Las Aves were thinking of plunder, of gold, of sacking the towns of their perennial enemy, Spain.

  They were thinking of Maracaibo.

  7

  Over the Reef

  JANUARY II, 1998

  LAS AVES, VENEZUELA

  I was not thinking of treasure when I asked the conch divers to show us where the “sewer pipes” were. I had no idea what to expect, no real sense of the magnitude of the disaster that had taken place on the reef. For all I knew, I was going to find piping for a sewage treatment plant.

  One of the divers cheerfully volunteered to lead the way through the reef. His name was Angel. Angel was perhaps seventeen years old and had been diving at Aves since he was twelve. He had become a creature of the sea: tall and lean, with tremendous legs that propelled him through the water with the grace and speed of a dolphin. Angel came back with me to the boat.

  Later that morning, when the entire team was assembled and ready to go, Angel led the way. He was wearing just a pair of tattered briefs and dime-store mask and fins. We followed in complete dive gear.

  It was just as rough on the second day as it had been on the first, but this time we had Angel’s local knowledge. While we had spent the whole day before banging against the reef, running into a brick wall over and over again, trying to find a way through, Angel knew where the door was. Or, more precisely, where to find a narrow passage leading through the reef, not over it.

  This is not to say that it was easy. Among our group were several strong swimmers. Still, the seas over the reef were nearly too much for any of us. It was like being trapped in the spin cycle of a washing machine. Experience and physical strength let you stay on the reef a little longer before you were swept away, but that was all.

  Foot by foot, we fought our way against the current and out toward the sea; one by one, we were peeled off by the current. Some lost their grip and were thrown backward into the staghorn and fire coral.

  Max was another story. Once, when he was learning how to windsurf, he hopped on his board and headed out to sea. He had not yet learned how to turn around
, but he was having so much fun that he just kept on going until he lost sight of land. Eventually he managed to get his board going in the opposite direction and got home after dark.

  Max took off after Angel without the slightest concern for the return trip. There was no way I was going to let Max go out there without me. If he was drowned, not only was I not going back to Cape Cod, but there were also serious bragging rights at stake.

  Hand over hand, we pulled ourselves through the passage in the coral, trying to keep ourselves streamlined while hugging the bottom. The water was very shallow. If you lifted up at all, the current would peel you off the bottom and fling you backward into the staghorn. My mask was ripped off by the rushing waters so many times, I finally pulled it down over my neck.

  We crawled along about fifty yards, our faces in the sand, glancing up to catch glimpses of Angel leading the way, unencumbered by diving equipment. Then, as if we had entered the stillness of a millpond, we slid over the edge of the reef onto a plateau at the edge of an abyss that seemed to drop away forever off the edge of the earth.

  The change was breathtaking—and we had little breath left—from the spin cycle of a washer to a colossal aquarium teeming with schools of iridescent fish in a profusion of color that was so overwhelming I had to sit on the bottom for a moment to collect my senses.

  Looking up, I saw the underside of the waves steamrolling harmlessly overhead. The calm was so peaceful, however, that I nearly forgot about the return passage and sat there for a moment like the Cowardly Lion in the poppy fields of Oz. At the surface, I could see Angel and Max. Angel began to wave and point down. Max was beneath the waves in a flash. He emerged, yelling with excitement, “Cannons! Cannons! Right under me!”

  By now, I was nearly out of air.

  The euphoria of the coral shelf quickly vanished, and I was suddenly hit with the grim prospect of getting back in one piece. But I had to see the cannon. Against both logic and instinct, I swam to Max, and, hoping I could squeeze a last breath of air from my tank, I descended for a final look.

  I thought I saw a couple of crisscrossed cannon, but cannon submerged for three centuries become so encrusted that they are hard to spot at a glance. It takes a long hard look to be sure that what you are seeing really are cannon and not, say, sewer pipes. I wanted to see cannon. I thought what I was seeing were cannon, but there was no time to be sure.

  Back to the surface; back to the lagoon. It was time to pay the fiddler for a dance I didn’t want.

  Angel led the way, though the passage through the reef was not a big help on our return to the lagoon. Working against the current on our way out was exhausting, but it was relatively safe since we were moving slowly into the flow of water. Coming back was something else again, however.

  With his knowledge of the reef, and no cumbersome dive gear, Angel was able to simply glide over the top of the coral, but we could not do that. Once we committed ourselves to the current, we were its captives. I used what little air I had to go underwater and get whatever protection I could from the few feet of depth. But when that air was gone, it was up to Lady Luck to get me home again.

  Indeed, there would be no problem getting back in. The hard part was getting back in alive. Over the reef we went. We didn’t know where we were going in that white foaming chute of water, and there was virtually no way to slow down.

  We tried to control our path as best we could, but there was almost nothing we could do. We were smashed into staghorn coral, dragged over fire coral, and bounced off the reef. The coral slashed wet suits and skin, bruising us as we bounced along.

  And that is how we got back across the reef. My legs and ankles were badly lacerated. My forehead had been stabbed by a piece of staghorn coral. Max hadn’t fared much better.

  Michael Mailer, badly lacerated early on, and I went to the tiny coast guard station on the island for treatment. We had got the worst of the reef. But the reef failed to get the best of us.

  That night, sleepless with my skin burning from fire coral, I wondered if what I saw were really cannon, or if my imagination had been playing tricks.

  8

  The Blue Lagoon

  JANUARY II, 1998

  LAS AVES, VENEZUELA

  Max and I returned from the windward side of the reef, looking as if we had been thrown through a plateglass window. Other than Angel, we were the only people who had made it over the reef. When we began to describe to the others what we had seen, Charles chimed in, “Ah, yes, I saw them, too, they were beautiful!”

  Max and I looked at each other. Chris was with Charles when the current washed them out; after that they had spent the entire time together in the shallows looking for pottery shards. Chris confirmed this.

  It was a minor triumph to have made it over the reef; no big deal, a few bragging rights, no more. But Charles had not been able to take even so small a one-upping. The former Olympic swimmer had not made it out of the lagoon, so he lied. Was this just an error in judgment, a silly fib to protect a fragile ego? Or was it a clue to the darker side of Charles Brewer-Carius? Indeed, I was reminded of the lesson James Bond learned when he caught Goldfinger cheating at golf, thus exposing the true character of Mr. Goldfinger.

  Any vessel come to grief on Las Aves would, of course, have gone down on the seaward side of the reef. The next day, however, the surf was even worse, and there was no going over the reef for anyone. Max and I had had a glimpse of what we had come looking for anyway. Although I was not sure that what I had seen were cannon, I was sure that they were concretions—encrusted masses of metal that could only have come from an old shipwreck.

  We decided to look around in the relative shelter of the lagoon. We were rewarded almost immediately. Like Chris and Charles, we discovered heaps of smashed pottery. Only one pot was intact, but they all appeared to be of the same design. They had round bottoms and apparently had once been sealed on top—perhaps to hold liquids such as wine, olive oil, or even water. It was an exciting moment—the first tangible evidence that we might be onto something. It was unquestionably the detritus of a shipwreck, and an old one.

  The shards were scattered everywhere. Unfortunately, many of them were in waist-deep water on the reef, so once again we were fighting the current. To keep in place, we would anchor the small boat and trail astern safety lines with large plastic balls fastened to the ends. If a diver “washed out,” he could grab the line before being carried away by the current. And that is how we examined the evidence before us, looking at as many of the shards as we could. With every shard we found, it looked more and more as if we had stumbled on a major find. I began to think that we were dealing with more than one wreck.

  At many wreck sites, most of the artifacts are in situ, remaining close to where they fell. And, by carefully noting their location on the bottom, one can get a good idea of how the ship was built, and how life aboard was organized. But that was not the case at Las Aves. It was clear that what we would find on the windward side of the reef would be heavy objects such as anchors, cannon, and ballast stones, the rocks stored at the bottom of a ship to keep it upright. Everything else would have been swept away. While wooden barrels would have drifted into shore relatively soon after the wreck, the pots, full of liquid, must have initially sunk straight to the bottom. Then, through the years, the current pushed them over the reef. With our experience so far of the currents, it was not hard to believe that the sea had carried the artifacts into the lagoon, breaking them on the way, just as we had nearly been broken.

  We measured and photographed the single intact pot. Charles took the pot and said he was going to present it to the Ministry of Culture, although I argued with him to leave it where it lay—that it wasn’t worth the risk of a smuggling charge if he were caught with it before he could get it to the ministry. But there was no arguing with Charles once he had made up his mind.

  For the remaining two days of the trip, the wind never let up, and we never made it over the reef again. I took the opportunity to
explore the island of Las Aves itself with a metal detector. Chris came along with me. Though we did not yet understand the scope of what had happened here, we did know that there had been castaways on the island, and we were curious to see if we could find any evidence.

  Las Aves has attracted few settlers through the years. The only structure there is a small Venezuelan coast guard station at the south end of the island. It’s an odd building, shaped like an igloo. A half-dozen coastguardsmen patrol the inshore waters in a large open boat. They and the conch divers are the only people who work on the island, and they are all transients. We would soon see why.

  From the boat, the island had not looked like a place where I would like to camp, but once ashore I realized just how brutal a place it truly was. The grass is short and stiff and makes walking barefoot painful. It is very hot, and there is no shade. There are no trees other than swamp mangroves. The place is infested with bugs and swarming with flies. The only ponds on the island are small salt ponds, and, when they dry, they look like the tortured surface of a distant planet.

  We explored the northern tip of the island. We didn’t find much of interest except for a series of stone-lined depressions in the ground. After a few sweeps with the metal detector with no results, we concluded that the depressions were old wells. We would later read in Dampier’s A New Voyage Round the World that the wells had been dug by privateers who had put into the island to water their ships. They did not look as if they would have been able to supply any significant number of castaways, even in their best days.

  We also found chunks of thick green glass from broken bottles. These were the heavy green “onion” bottles that were in common use in the late seventeenth century. So called because of their shape, there must have been hundreds of them. We wondered if perhaps this was a spot where survivors had sat to drink away their sorrows. I picked up the neck of a bottle, its fat lip still attached. I imagined the pirate or sailor who last held it to his parched lips, and saw what for a thousand suffering souls had not changed in three centuries—or thousands of years before that.