by Smith, Skye
"Well, bugger 'em for being nasty sods,” Daniel told him, "go and fire the swivel gun at them."
"Why? We'll be past them in a minute and they will never catch us. Besides, they did us a favour by telling us where to look for the Canaries."
"But they shot at me!" Daniel said angrily, lifting his head just high enough to check his mark and make sure the wheel was still true to his course.
"And you didn't expect that? Their only hope of catching us was to kill the men at the wheel,” grunted Robert over his shoulder as he crawled to the gunnels to pop his head up and take another look. "Aye, they are out of musket range now. You should get up off your knees before Anna joins you for a prayer."
Now that he knew where to look, Robert kept a vigil with his looker, and scanned the clouds on the horizon for any that were too solid to be clouds. He finally saw the volcanoes of the Canaries once the sun dropped low on the horizon. Now they knew exactly where they were on the charts. They were both so relieved, not just to have found the Canaries, but to prove that they could trust this Moroccan chart for navigation.
According to the charts, if they kept hugging the coast as it ran southwest, then within six hundred miles the great desert would end, and the coast would bend more to the south, and they would reach the Galata River in Negroland where there were trees and fruits and fresh water to refill their casks. "Six hundred miles,” he told Daniel. "So in less than a week we can all step ashore for another rest."
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Pistoleer - Slavers by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Chapter 19 - Slavers in Africa in March 1641
They found the first river mouth of Galata, but they did not enter it. Even from off shore, the putrid smell of the place and the clouds of flies that were blown towards them by the hot dry wind, was enough to keep them away. The folk aboard, now almost a week since last touching their toes to land in Morocco, were disappointed not to be landing, but agreed with the decision. Besides the stench and the flies, the riverbanks seemed to be crawling with people and animals. Strange-looking people with black hair and tanned or black skin, and ugly brutes of horses, the ones with the malformed backs that arched up in a lump as if they were hunchbacks.
"Stands to reason,” Daniel told Edward and Anna, who would explain to the other pilgrims. "This is the first river and greenery after a thousand miles of desert. Of course it would be a crossroads and have a busy market. There is nothing here for us, for I will not trust the water from any place that smells so foully of shit and death. We will sail slowly down the coast until we find good clean water for our casks, for without every water cask full, we cannot start out across the sea."
They sailed only during daylight hours so that they would not pass by a water source in the dark. It was quite strange to have summer temperatures, and yet have the sun up at six and down at six, for all English savour the long days of summer. Whenever they spotted a stream, they would send a boat ashore to gauge the quality of the water. The streams were sluggish running and stagnant and covered in green scum.
At near noon the second day, they spotted a large ship anchored in shallow water. It was flying Dutch colors, so they drifted slowly towards her to get within hailing range. Before they got that close, two gun hatches opened in the gunnels and two cannon barrels were pushed out through the hatches despite the Swift flying both English and Dutch colors. Such was the downside of sailing a ship that looked so much like a corsair.
While the crew dropped one anchor to stop them from drifting closer, Robert bellowed at the other ship in Dutch. One of the cannons was pull back inboard, which he took as a good sign and so Daniel and two oarsmen dropped a dinghy into the calm waters and rowed it towards the Dutchman. They were hailed in Dutch and they answered in kind, but they were not invited aboard.
"Captain Raphael Lopes at your service,” greeted a small dark man with a large nose and deeply sunken, dark eyes. Rather than wearing the dark woolen uniform typical of Dutch captains, he wore a colorful and flowing robe. The next few minutes were formally polite as the men identified themselves and their ships, their home ports and their destinations to each other. The Dutch ship was bound for Recife, the capital of the vast colony of New Holland in the Brazils.
"Most of my crew are ashore filling our water casks,” Raphael told the tall Anglo-Frisian ship owner, "so I will not invite you aboard, but I would be pleased to go with you back to your ship, so I can take a closer look at her. I have never known the English to sail a Barbary galliot, and it intrigues me. Or rather, the story of how you acquired her, intrigues me."
Daniel steadied the man as he stepped from ladder to dinghy, and then kept the small boat balanced while the man found a seat. He assumed that the man's politeness must be hiding the keen mind of a captain who had spent many years commanding ships in wild places. It was likely that Raphael did not want to see the Swift as much as to spy the crew and cargo out, to judge how far to trust them.
Two could play this spying game, so Daniel steered the amiable discussions towards finding out more about this coast, and especially about the water source. Raphael did not seem to mind and openly shared his knowledge of such vital topics. Once he was aboard the Swift however, he stopped answering questions and began asking them.
"Colonists? You carry colonists to the Americas? Well, so do I in a way.
Your cannons, are they from a Dutch Navy yacht? Of course they are.
This is a Spanish hull built in Malaga, tell me I am wrong.
How does an English Frisian come to own her?"
Eventually Daniel got a word in. "She was a gift to me from Admiral Tromp after the Battle of the Downs." That changed the Dutchman's rapid questions mid thought.
"Tromp gave it to you? Including the cannons?"
"Including the cannons,” Daniel confirmed, "and the charts and rudder logbook."
"We would be pleased if you could look at our charts,” Robert broke in, "and help us to bring them up to date. The coastal town at the mouth of the last big river was far different from what our rudder described."
Together the three entered the small command cabin underneath the rear castle, and together they sipped Genever and looked at charts and entries in the rudder. "There is your problem,” Raphael told them pointing to the rudder log. "That is Navy issue and not Wic issue." By Wic he meant the all powerful West-Indische Compangnie through whom he held a charter to trade with their colonies. "It does not include trading information such as cargos and contacts. Still, it is most extraordinary to find a naval rudder on a ship of English registry."
"We were both, are both, pistoleers in the Rotterdam militia," Daniel replied, "and in my own small way I helped Tromp to capture the Armada."
"Small way you say, small enough to be given a ship as fine as this, including cannons?" Raphael toasted Tromp. "Ah, his victory was most timely. A victory that is played out over and over again every day now. Since our fleets now control the trade routes, it is the Spanish and Portuguese who must be polite if they wish to sail them. Come, bring your charts and logs over to my ship and I will update them with trading information. Uh.... bring that Genever too."
As they waited to climb down into the bobbing dinghy, Raphael looked out at the fair skins of the Swift's crew who were now diving into the warm sea in attempts to spear fish. Others were untangling their nets on the deck of the ship. Still others were bobbing hooks off the bow of the Swift. "Your men are fishermen?"
"When there is no ship's berth for them, then they fish," Robert replied. "Though fish and fishing is very different here compared to the Devon coast."
"Well, tell them to stay out of the water and not to eat anything that is brightly colored. These are shark waters and fishermen lose hands to them. Anything too colorful tends to be poisonous, mostly to eat, but sometimes even to the touch." Raphael watched Robert's grin of skepticism and added. "If there were good eating fish in these waters, then the locals wouldn't be so eager to trade for
salted cod."
There were three men sorting a net close by, and they did not wait for their captain's order to spread the Dutchman's warning amongst the men.
* * * * *
With only a skeleton crew manning Raphael's merchantman, it was only Robert and Daniel who he invited aboard. The command cabin of this longer and much, much beamier ship was huge compared to that of the Swift. It was clean and the woodwork polished, as was the entire ship so far as he had seen. On the desk was a Jewish looking candle holder. "Are you Jewish?" Daniel asked him while pointing to the candles.
"Are you Catholic?" Raphael asked.
"No,” Daniel replied. "Frisian Anabaptist." It was what he always answered rather than Frisian Pagan. "I sometimes do business with a Jewish family in Amsterdam."
"Then yes, I am Jewish, but probably very different from this family in Amsterdam. They were probably Banking Jews from Venice, whereas my family were Sugar Jews from Portugal. I was born in the islands of Cape Verde, just over the horizon there. When the Dutch took control of the north of Brazil and created New Holland, my family moved to Recife to escape the constant fear of the Inquisition."
"I have never heard anyone call themselves a Sugar Jew before. Is there a significance to it?"
"So long as we worship in secret, we Sugar Jews are left in peace by the Inquisition. A hundred years of peace, but only because we know the secrets of sugar. We run the sugar farms and mills of Crete for the Venetians, and those of the Canary Islands for the Spanish, and those of Cape Verde for the Portuguese. We are now helping the Dutch to grow sugar, a lot of sugar. Dutch Brazil is not some small sugar island, but a vast expanse of land. For my small part, I carry the sugar from New Holland to Holland, and take machinery and settlers to New Holland."
"Where are your settlers?" Robert asked, "Ashore while the crew fetch the water?"
"Nay, for I have yet to pick them up. An Englander ship got to the slave markets along the Senegal River ahead of me, so I am taking on water and coconuts while I wait my turn to load."
"So your settlers are slaves?" Daniel tried not to show his shock. In his mind only the hated Spanish, Portuguese, and Barbary ships carried slaves.
"Don't look at me like that, sir. Most settlers in the New World begin as slaves. The white ones are bonded to the cost of their passage, usually to a seven year bond. The black ones are bonded for their selling price on delivery. A decade ago they were also bonded for seven years, but with the increase in prices of black slaves, a twenty year bond is more normal now. Some colonies have even set the bond term for blacks to ninety-nine years to ensure that blacks cannot become citizens."
"Do you expect us to believe that there is no difference between a bond slave and a chattel slave?" Robert asked with an edge to his voice.
"If I sell them in Dutch colonies the only difference between a bond and a chattel slave is the term of the bond, for under Republican Dutch law no baby can be born into slavery. It would be different if I sold them in Portuguese colonies, of course, or in English colonies. Kingdoms have kept the old law that a baby born of a female chattel is also a chattel." Raphael stood, "I shudder at the looks you two are giving me. Come, let me show you below decks."
Raphael gave Daniel a tour of the rest of the stout, well built merchant ship. It was orderly and clean everywhere, and the only foul smell was that of the dried salted cod that all ships carried on long journeys. The hold of the Swift had that same smell. "Five years ago I was taking settlers from Holland to New Amsterdam. The ship has changed little since then.
I still carry the same number of people in the same amount of space and treat them just as well, but instead of carrying whites to work the corn farms of New Amsterdam, I carry blacks to work the cane farms of New Holland. Instead of carrying farm beasts and farm tools, I carry cast parts and iron wheels for the sugar mills. Anything to do with sugar turns a good profit."
"And how many of the blacks do you lose on the crossing?" Seamen were always exchanging horror stories of slaves on ships, especially English slaves on the oars of Spanish or Barbary galleys.
"Less than when transporting Flemish Walloons to New Amsterdam. I feed them coconuts and hot peppers to keep them healthy. There is no profit from a dead passenger and the greatest profit is from a healthy one. The bloody Walloons refused to eat the peppers and so their gums would bleed, and they would lose their teeth and sicken, and a few would die of the bubble-lung fever on each journey."
Despite the sordid topic, Robert had to laugh. "My pilgrim settlers also refuse the peppers because they are too hot on their tongues. I cannot convince them that it will stop the scurvy. So, besides water we should take coconuts aboard as well? Those are the giant nuts? The ones from the palm trees?"
"Yes, take as many as you can carry. Immature ones are best." Raphael was glad for the change of subject. "Their water is pure and their meat is soft and cool on sore gums."
"What else should we know?"
"Keep your folk out of the midday sun. Take aboard coconut leaves and weave them into mats to shade your decks. Do any heavy work in the cool of the morning, then sleep in the shade until the afternoon cools. The reason the sugar farmers want black workers is because the whites cannot work long hours in he hot sun. Since you are headed for the Caribbean, you will soon find out that a healthy black fetches four times the price of a healthy white. That is why I don't carry Walloons anymore."
"Good to know, I suppose, not that it will help us much." In truth the knowledge deeply disturbed Robert. "There is no room on the ship for slaves, and we have no desire to profit from their misery."
"If you want to see misery, then visit the slave pens along the Senegal river. Those pens are filled with slaves taken during their endless tribal wars. The wars are vicious so the lives of the captives are worth little, and they are treated accordingly. At least when a sugar farmer pays top price for them in New Holland, they are valued and treated better than a fine horse. Come, let's return to my cabin so we can update your charts. Oh, and send your dinghy crew ashore so my shore party can show them the spring and how to harvest coconuts."
They spent a pleasant two hours together, drinking Genever while they updated the Swift's charts. "This island here,” Raphael pointed to the most easterly of the Carib islands shown on the chart, "is Barbados. It would be best for you to stop there first. The English and Dutch share it and even Spaniards are allowed to take on water and supplies there. These other Windward Islands are wild places where new colonies appear and then disappear every year."
"Then Barbados is where we will make for,” Robert decided. It was the first landfall in any case.
"Good, then will you carry a letter for me. My brother lives on the island of Saint Christopher. Saint Kitt's to you English. He is a sugar planter."
* * * * *
The Dutch ship left at first light the next morning, so the crew used the Swift's oars to replace it in the anchorage closest to the beach, and therefore, closest to the spring. Those that had gone ashore yesterday had assured everyone that there were no locals about, even though there were tumbledown huts of some old village deeper into the coco palm forest. Except for a minimal watch left aboard the Swift, everyone else went ashore.
It took them less than four hours to unload, fill and reload the water casks. It took them many more hours to harvest coconuts because all of the low hanging ones had already been harvested. Though there were many green bushes and grasses about, they trusted none of them for their soup pot because they had been warned by Raphael's crew that almost every plant would sting or poison them.
By early afternoon, as the folk were making their way back to the Swift in small groups, another ship came around the point from the south. Its arrival hurried the rest of them off the beach and back to the safety of the Swift. This new ship was as big as the Dutch one but flew English colors. Since the Swift had already taken on water, they ceded the best anchorage to the newcomer. For this courtesy, the English captain invited Robert and
Daniel aboard for a drink of Irish whiskey. They eagerly accepted for this gave them another chance to have their charts and rudder updated.
She was the Amity out of Dublin, and as Robert held the dinghy alongside while they waited for the ladder to be lowered, Daniel pulled his knife from his belt and jabbed it into the planking. It was the same small razor sharp knife that Daniel used for everything from cutting food, to cutting his beard, to cutting rope. "She's a rotten pig, this one,” he said as he showed how his knife went into the wood as easily as if it were sponge.
As they climbed aboard, the first thing they noticed was the smell of shit. The next thing they noticed was the old sail cloth stretched out over spars to shade the main deck. Under the shade there were rows and rows of naked black women all laying down and shackled in place. This must be the Englander slave-ship that Raphael had mentioned, and had maligned at length only yesterday.
Whiskey beckoned, so they put kerchiefs to their faces to block out the smell and followed the shabby, portly captain named Henry Wentworth into his command cabin. "You must forgive the smell,” he told them. "Once we are at sea we will release the comeliest of the women and they will help us to run the ship, including constantly washing it down with buckets of seawater."
After a good snort of whiskey so he could breath to talk, Robert introduced them and their ship and their business. Henry replied, with a look of self-importance, "I am a cousin of Lord Strafford, the King's Deputy in Ireland, and through him I have a charter to supply labour to the tobacco plantations of the king's colony of Virginia."
Neither Robert nor Daniel mentioned that the man's powerful cousin had been arrested in London and was now the subject of heated debates in Parliament. "So you run black slaves to Virginia, not to the sugar islands?"
"Yes, but I am new to trading in blacks. I am only here because the plantation managers are now refusing to buy more Irish slaves. The trade in Irish slaves was the very reason why my cousin bought this ship and gave me command. Apparently the Irish are too rebellious to work hard, or they die of heat stroke in the tobacco fields, or they run away to join the Indian bands in the forest. What ever the reason, I must now take them black slaves or none at all."
