The Lost Fleet

by Barry Clifford

  Mike Rossiter kept up his barrage of radiotelephone calls. The contact with the Venezuelan ambassador was paying off. The ambassador had mobilized his assistant in Caracas, and she was trying to find out what was happening and what we would need to get our permits recognized.

  Halfway through the expedition, the worst happened: the wind came back, that damned wind.

  The morning of the fifth day on the site it came from the east, setting up a line of breakers along the reef. Fortunately, it was not nearly as bad as it had been the first time around. Wind has to blow steady and strong for at least a few days before big seas build up. If the wind did not let up, it could become bad.

  We had worked our way north along the reef, exploring and mapping the wrecks of the Hercules, the Défenseur, the Prince. It was an awesome sight, and more so when you looked at the wrecks and considered the terrible tragedy that had put them there.

  At one site we found two anchors in an odd configuration. The stock (the wooden crosspiece) of one apparently had been removed, and through the anchor ring another anchor had been inserted. This created a double anchor, almost like a grappling hook. The men aboard that vessel must have rigged the anchors up that way in one last desperate attempt to get the flukes to hold the bottom and to keep the ship off the reefs. There is no historical source evidence that the ships had enough warning before striking to try to get anchors down, but perhaps they did. I couldn’t think of another reason for the two anchors to be joined in that manner. There, encrusted and motionless on the bottom, was vivid evidence of the French sailors’ last desperate attempt to save their ship. It was a futile effort, for there was no place for an anchor to bite on that hard coral bottom.

  Very often, we would find anchors farther out to sea. If we followed a straight line from the anchor to the reef, there we would find a wreck.

  Just south of the big freighter that had driven up on the reefs was another wreck, a small ship, a coastal merchant vessel. As it ran over the reef in its final death throes, it smashed down a swath of staghorn coral, damaging the reef but clearing a narrow path for us to the open water. A rusting thirty-foot section of hull was all that was left of the ship. Approximately three hundred yards south of the wreckage was one of the wrecks marked flibustier.

  Before the seas became too high, Margot and I went out to the site and had a look around. We went by ourselves. We wanted to be alone for a while.

  We found a wreck, right where the map indicated, in just six feet of water. There were the telltale ballast stones, and a scattering of cannons. Not huge cannons, like those you would find at the site of one of the big men-of-war, but smaller, appropriate to the size of a buccaneering ship. And, most intriguing of all, we spotted an encrusted shape that looked very much like a crate or chest of some kind.

  That was all there was. It was not much to look at. Still, it occurred to me that I might be, for the second time in my life, looking at the remains of a pirate vessel. If that was true, then it would make us the first modern explorers ever to set eyes on two pirate wrecks. We swam, knowing that for a moment we were the only people to know its secret location. During the long Cape Cod winters to come, this moment would be recalled again and again.

  The next day Margot and I went back, hoping to get a better look at the wreck. D’Estrées’ map showed the flibustier as the wreck closest to the island. I envisioned d’Estrées standing on the beach looking out over the reefs and the shipwrecks sitting on top of them. Since the pirate ships would have been the closest to him, it seemed reasonable to me that of all the shipwrecks, the pirates’ would have been the most accurately located on the map. By finding them and comparing them to the map and the overlays we had done we could establish an accuracy factor for the entire map.

  I had the other team members scour the reef from the wreck Margot and I found to the edge of the island. I had to be sure there was no sign of another wreck between the presumed pirate wreck and the point of land where the island began. If there were no other wrecks between, then we could assume that the wreck we had found was the flibustier, given the available evidence.

  The winds had been building all night, and now the waves were getting high and the going was treacherous. We took the small chase boat out to the wrecked coaster and anchored it in the coaster’s lee, using the hull of the old ship as a windbreak. It was over-the-reef time, just as before, and we weren’t looking forward to it.

  We would snorkel, as the scuba gear was in the chase boat outside the reef. We went over the side of the boat and into the water. We paused behind the wreck of the coaster, orienting ourselves and psyching ourselves up for another fight with the reef. Then we left the shelter of the wreck and plunged into the surf. It was like stepping into a blizzard.

  We began to work our way over the reef, pulling ourselves along through that terrible current that I remembered all too well. We grabbed the coral to pull ourselves along, but the coral was brittle and it would break if we applied too much pressure.

  The tropical sun was beating down on our dark wet suits. I had taken a black nylon shirt, a chafe shirt, normally worn under a wet suit, and wrapped it around my head to keep the sun off. That was a mistake. The sun on the black shirt only made my head hotter. Instead of kicking my legs and pulling myself along with the coral, I tried to swim, which turned out to be another mistake. The current was very strong, and the effort it took to swim against it was physically draining. Despite being in the water, we were getting overheated. Our wet suits were wicking the moisture away from our bodies.

  We fought our way out over the reef, and by the time we got to the open ocean we could barely see the chase boat because of the high seas, and that meant the people in the boat could not see us. It was several hundred yards away. It had been our plan to swim back after exploring the wreck. Normally that distance would have been no big deal, but now it seemed nearly impossible. What I did not realize was that I was suffering from sunstroke.

  We had exhausted ourselves just getting to the wreck site. We were not able to accomplish much. We decided to head back in. But how?

  We were not sure if we had the energy to swim to the chase boat outside the reef. We were wearing weight belts, and it would have been possible to drop our belts and surf back over the reef, floating in our wet suits. But the path through the coral was down current, and we would have been really cut up or worse. And I was not ready to drop my weight belt. Doing that is an admission that you are in big trouble, and I was not yet willing to admit that to myself.

  Going back over the reef was not a good idea. I could see Carl and Todd in another boat on the outside of the reef about a half mile away, so we started swimming for them. That’s usually not far for us, but there was a bit of a current holding us back. It was becoming difficult to breathe. I looked at Margot and could see the strain on her face. I was surprised at her composure; it was the closest I’d ever come to losing it all. The sun was baking us in our wet suits, and our strength was going fast. I thought that I was strong enough to make it, but I wasn’t sure about Margot, and I knew that I did not have the juice left to pull us both to the chase boat.

  She later told me that she was planning to pull me in if she had to. I believe she would have, too.

  We waved, but the crew aboard the chase boat didn’t see us. We swam toward it, but with each stroke we became more overheated. I was starting to hyperventilate. I unzipped my wet suit and forced myself to calm down. We were both on the edge of blacking out.

  And then, at last, the crew of the chase boat realized we were in trouble. They pulled anchor and raced over to where we were. I was playing it cool, as if there was no real problem, but I honestly don’t how much longer we could have kept swimming.

  Once aboard, Margot became sick from exhaustion and mal de mer brought on by the choppy conditions. She was so sick, in fact, that she asked me in all seriousness if I thought she was going to die. Her tone was resigned and a bit apologetic, as if she felt bad for spoiling the party. I sai
d, “No, you won’t die, though you may feel so bad that you’ll wish you would.” She was in rough shape for the rest of that day.

  I wanted to collapse in the bottom of the boat, but I was not going to give Todd the satisfaction of seeing me prostrate. Instead, I sat and let my breathing return to normal. Soon I was ready to go in again.

  I am not a philosopher, nor am I an expert on interpersonal relationships. But something I have learned to value, above all else, is the importance of mutual commitment—of having someone you can “ride the river with,” as the old-timers used to say out in Colorado. This experience made me realize that Margot was the proverbial “girl for me,” and so I asked her to marry me at midnight on the last full moon of the millennium. To my astonishment she accepted my proposal.

  The rest of the team had finished combing the reef from the wreck site to the point of land. We did visual searches and sweeps with metal detectors, back and forth. After searching every inch of coral and finding no trace of another wreck, it was clear that the one we found was the closest to the beach, and hence the flibustier.

  Chris and the others were on the wreck now, measuring and plotting the artifacts, and the film crew wanted to get some footage. I went in with dive gear this time, Aga and tanks, which was much less exhausting. I searched for the chest, but I was unable to find it again. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I don’t think so.

  The next morning we woke to find the wind was back. We prayed it would not increase. Unfortunately, it continued to build, day after day, blowing steady and increasing by four or five knots every day. The seas started getting bigger along the reef, and the currents came back. Chris and I recalled how it was impossible to work outside the reef when the wind blew. As the seas continued to build, Charles hit a wave wrong while going over the reef in his Boston Whaler and the boat flipped end for end. Luckily no one was hurt. But it was a sharp reminder that the weather could shut us down as fast as the navy. With each extra knot of wind, we felt the pressure to finish grow more acute.

  By the fifth day I had the flu. Diving with the flu is pure misery. With plugged sinuses it is hard to equalize the pressure in your ears, and so they hurt like hell. I won’t describe the unpleasantness of sneezing into the face mask of an Aga. Since our time on the site was so limited, there was no time for the luxury of staying in bed to recover.

  Margot and I had explored one filibuster ship the day before, and I wanted to get a look at the second one. I juxtaposed d’Estrées’ map with a 1940s aerial photo that Charles had to get a general idea of where the wreck should be before heading out to the site. D’Estrées’ map was proving to be accurate, but from the beach d’Estrées could not get as clear a sense for the shape of the island as could someone flying overhead. In other words, his indication of where the wrecks were was correct, but his drawing of the island was off.

  No doubt, things had shifted in three hundred years. That was one of the problems I had had with Whydah, and one of the lessons I had learned. Cape Cod today is not exactly where Cape Cod was three centuries before, nor is Las Aves. It took a little calculating to translate the position indicated by the admiral to the corresponding position on the reef.

  This was a special dive for me, another pirate ship. I waited until the others had gone off to a wreck site in the north. Charles followed them—as I knew he would. Margot, Ron, and I then headed off in a small skiff by ourselves.

  We motored across the lagoon. The wind had temporarily dropped off, the seas were placid, and we were able to put the boat right at the location I thought d’Estrées had indicated. We stood in the bow of the boat and looked down, down through the pristine water to the bottom, a canopy of mottled blues and browns and whites.

  There, just below us, encrusted with coral but still unmistakable, was an anchor. Once again, the French admiral was spot on. It was that simple.

  Margot and I went over with just snorkels. The water was shallow and clear and ideal for snorkeling. We floated on the surface and looked down at the bottom, then kicked our way to the bottom to get a closer look. I had seen something that I hardly dared hope was true. Just as they had been stowed down in a pirate ship’s hold more than three hundred years before were three barrels right in a row. A few feet away lay two more.

  Back on the surface I told Margot I had seen what I thought were barrels. She had seen them too, and she could hardly contain herself. I enjoyed seeing her so excited. Barrels do not generally last three centuries. Of the hundreds and hundreds of artifacts we observed at Las Aves, those were the only barrels. The barrel was the universal means of storing things. There could be almost anything inside them.

  We swam out to the southernmost point of the island of Las Aves, searching along the reef for more wreckage, but we found none. Later, we returned to the wreck of the filibuster ship and those barrels.

  When I say that we saw barrels, that statement needs qualifying. Like most things that have been underwater for so long, they no longer looked very much like barrels. They looked like three uniform lumps of coral, one right next to the other, and more or less the size and shape of barrels. Given their size and shape, and their position one next to another, corresponding to the way barrels were stowed in the seventeenth century, I felt confident about what I was looking at.

  I decided to try a metal detector on them. It was still possible that they were just lumps of coral, coincidentally arranged. If the metal detector indicated no metallic content, they might be barrels filled with crockery or meat or water or dried peas or any of the hundred nonmetallic things that eighteenth-century sailors stored in barrels. It was also possible that they were not barrels at all. There was no way to tell. If, however, the metal detector showed the objects were “hot,” then they had to be barrels.

  It was with some trepidation that I went down with the metal detector. I was excited about the discovery and I did not want to be let down.

  I swept the White detector over the barrels. They were hot. The needle jumped and the buzzer buzzed in my ear. Metal. They were barrels for certain.

  What was in them I do not know. It could have been gold or silver. It could have been musket balls or nails. The only way to know for sure was to raise them and open them. As much as I wanted to do that, I refused to abandon my principles—though my alter ego was screaming in my ear to open them!

  What I did know was that this was the finest moment of the expedition for me—regardless of the contents of the barrels. Based on d’Estrées’ map, and the artifacts we had seen, our team had found what appeared to be two more pirate-ship wrecks. While their exact identification may—or may not—be established by future archaeological work at this environmentally sensitive site, I am satisfied that these wrecks represent filibusters from the very beginning of that “golden age of piracy” that would ultimately produce Sam Bellamy and the Whydah.

  There had been three confirmed pirate-ship wrecks ever found, and I was there.

  34

  The Battle at Alacrán Reef

  [De Cussy] told me that the French King had made Grammont (whom we took to be lost) his second lieutenant, and Laurens his third major.

  —Lieutenant Governor Hender Molesworth to William Blathwayt

  SEPTEMBER 1685

  GULF OF MEXICO

  After the sack of Campeche, de Graff set sail in his ship Neptune in company with four other buccaneer captains, beating their way east against the trade winds. On September 11, the pirates sighted to windward of them a powerful antipiracy squadron of the Armada de Barlovento. The Spaniards immediately gave chase.

  The armada, under the command of the aged Admiral Andrés de Ochoa, had been at anchor at Cartagena in early August when word reached it of the sacking of Campeche. The armada was ordered to sail at once, find the pirates, and punish them. One of the captains under Ochoa was Andrés de Pez y Malzárraga, the young captain who had been so humiliated by de Graff at Cartagena. He undoubtedly was thirsting for revenge.

  Ochoa searched the Cayman
Islands and Roatán before intercepting de Graff off the Yucatán. On seeing the Spaniards, de Graff and his consorts fell off and ran for it, being greatly outmanned and outgunned.

  Pierre Bot’s ship Nuestra Señora de Regla and another proved to be the slowest of the five pirate vessels. As the chase continued, they fell farther and farther behind. Bot began to jettison whatever he could to lighten Regla, starting with three large canoes he had stolen at Campeche.

  After four hours, the Spanish vice-flag ship, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, closed to within range of her great guns. Her captain, Antonio de Astina, and Bot exchanged furious broadsides. It was a lopsided fight. Concepción was more powerful than Bot’s Regla, even without the aid of the other powerful Spanish ships coming up to join the fight. There was no escape. The French buccaneer hailed the Spaniards, and offered to strike if they would grant quarter.

  It must have been a terrible decision to make. Despite whatever promises Bot might secure from the Spanish in the heat of battle, he could not have been confident that they would live up to them. He knew the hatred he and his kind had inspired.

  A boarding party from the Concepción took possession of Bot’s ship. They began to loot it shamelessly, like pirates themselves, despite the officers’ attempts to keep their men under control. Weapons and valuables were pilfered. The situation grew worse with the arrival of a boarding party from the flagship, Santo Cristo de Burgos, who tried to outpillage their rivals from the vice-flag ship.

  The Spaniards found 130 buccaneers, along with more than thirty captives from Campeche and the booty taken by Bot and his men. When the looting was done, the officers recovered no more than thirty pounds of ornaments stolen from Campeche’s churches and a few coins.