by Tim Severin
‘Could we not ask the Indians to keep a look out on our behalf?’ The suggestion came from the bishop. He was newly arrived from Old Spain, and had yet to learn that the Indians were not the devout and loyal Christians he had been led to expect.
‘The Indians!’ exclaimed the cavalry colonel, his mouth turned down in a grimace. ‘It was the Indians who showed the pirates their trail over the mountains.’
‘There’s no need to go searching for the pirates. They will come to us,’ said a quiet, firm voice. The speaker was Capitan del Navio, Francisco de Peralta. His swarthy tan and the maze of lines and wrinkles on his face were the legacy of a lifetime sailing the Pacific Ocean. For thirty years Don Francisco had worn a furrow in the sea between Panama and the southern ports of the viceroyalty of Peru. There was hardly a vessel which he had not commanded, navigated or escorted – galleons with cargoes of bullion, tubby urcas loaded with merchandise, fast pataches carrying official correspondence, even a pasacaballo, a flat-bottomed horse ferry, out of which he had once disembarked a troop of cavalry to fight the Aurocanos in Chile. Now, as Capitan del Navio, his ship was a barca longa, an armed brigantine, anchored off Panama City.
‘The pirates have succeeded in crossing the mountains, but they find themselves in a quandary,’ Peralta went on. ‘They must have boats if they are to reach and attack Panama. To march overland along the coast is too slow and too hazardous. The only craft available to them will be small dugout canoes made by the Indians, and perhaps a piragua or two. This makes them vulnerable.’
Barahona had grasped the point Peralta was making. ‘We must shut down the sea lanes. None of our vessels are to sail from any port. All those currently at sea will be ordered into harbour,’ he said.
‘But surely we should send out boats to warn our coastal settlements that the pirates are on the prowl,’ protested the bishop. He was feeling piqued that his earlier suggestion had been dismissed out of hand.
‘No. The pirates might capture our vessels and turn them against us.’
‘What naval forces do we have to defend us if the pirates do get this far?’ The governor put the question directly to Barahona though he already knew the answer. It was better that the civilians and the Churchmen were made aware just how acute the danger was.
‘There are five merchant ships currently at anchor. One of them, La Santissima Trinidad, is a large galleon, but currently she is fitted out as a merchant vessel so has no armament. Then there are the three small warships of the South Sea squadron.’ Barahona was careful to describe the colonial navy as an armadilla, a squadron. Its official title might be far grander as an Armada or Fleet, but the merchants of Peru and Panama had been stingy about paying the situados, the special taxes which were meant to fund the colony’s defences. So now the royal vessels were few in number, undersize and decrepit. The warships at his disposal were barca longas like Peralta’s, a two-masted craft equipped with a dozen cannon.
‘Surely that should be sufficient to deal with a handful of pirates in canoes,’ sniffed the cavalry colonel.
‘Our main problem is not in ships, but in men,’ retorted Barahona crisply. As always the land soldiers overlooked the fact that sailors took far longer to train than infantrymen.
‘We have enough competent seamen to man just one of the warships. They are mostly Biscayners, so they are prime seamen and excellent at their job. But the other two vessels will be relying on locally raised crews.’ Barahona’s eyes flicked towards Peralta and the officer seated next to him, Capitan Diego de Carabaxal. The latter was a competent seaman but Barahona was not sure that Carabaxal would have the necessary courage when it came to a fight. ‘Both those vessels are short-handed. So I propose stripping the merchant ships of their sailors and redistributing their men to the warships.’
‘Is that wise? Without crews they cannot save themselves,’ objected one of the councillors. From the note of alarm in the man’s voice Peralta suspected that he was part-owner of one of the merchant ships and dismayed at the threat to his investment.
‘If any merchant ship is about to fall into the hands of the pirates, it will be scuttled or burned on my orders.’ Barahona had the satisfaction of seeing the councillor go pale at the prospect.
‘Then it’s decided,’ announced the governor. ‘The armadilla will put itself in a state of readiness to intercept and destroy the pirates while they are still in small boats. The land forces are to concentrate in the city and look to the defences should the pirates succeed in coming ashore.’
The bishop closed the meeting with a prayer for salvation, beseeching the Almighty to thwart the evil designs of the heathen sea robbers, and Francisco de Peralta left the governor’s office. He had only a short walk to where his ship’s cockboat was waiting. As he crossed the main square of New Panama, he remembered what it had been like the last time the pirates had attacked. Henry Morgan, the great pirate, had marched across the isthmus with 1,200 men. A garrison of four regiments of foot and two squadrons of horse had failed to stop a ragtag force so poorly supplied that the bandits had been obliged to eat their leather satchels during their advance. The entire city, seven thousand households, had panicked. People ran about, frantically hiding their valuables down wells and cisterns or in holes in walls. Then they fled into the countryside, trying to escape before the city was invested.
Peralta had received orders to warp his ship up to the quays. There he had taken on an astonishing variety of refugees and their baggage – nuns and priests, high-born ladies with their children and servants, senior government officials. They had brought the contents of the city treasury, boxes of official deeds and documents, sacks stuffed with church plate, paintings, sacred relics hastily wrapped in altar cloths, chests of privately owned jewellery, gold, pearls, all manner of portable wealth. The value of the cargo rushed aboard his vessel that day had exceeded all that was left behind in the city for the pirates to plunder. In vain he had warned that his vessel was not fit for sea. Its sole defence was seven cannon and a dozen muskets, and her sails had been condemned and taken ashore. No one listened. Everyone begged him to leave port at once and save them and their goods.
What followed had seemed like a miracle. His grossly overloaded vessel had cast off, and his crew had spread a set of topsails, the only canvas they still had on board. It was barely enough to push the vessel through the water. Half-sailing, half drifting on the current, his ship had limped away from the city, and Peralta had spent the next forty-eight hours waiting for the pirates to commandeer local boats, catch up and take their plunder. A score of pirates in a piragua would have been enough. But it never happened. The enemy failed to appear, and for years he had wondered why. Eventually he had learned that the pirates had got drunk. They had wasted so much time on shore, guzzling captured wine, that when they emerged from their stupor Peralta and his precious cargo had drifted away over the horizon.
Don Francisco allowed himself a wry grin at the memory. The ladrones del mar, the sea thieves as he thought of them, were courageous and unpredictable. But they had two weaknesses: a love of strong drink and a tendency to quarrel among themselves. Given enough time, they usually fell into disarray and returned from where they had come.
The Spanish captain reached the little creek where his cockboat was waiting for him. Every member of its crew was a black man because Don Francisco preferred to work with negroes. Most were freed slaves and he found them loyal and less likely to desert in search of better pay in the merchant marine. Now they would have half an hour of steady rowing to bring him to his ship. After Morgan had sacked Panama, the city had been rebuilt in a safer location and the planners of New Panama had been so fearful of an attack from the sea that they had picked an easily defended promontory with shoal water all around it. This meant that the merchant ships and the armadilla were obliged to anchor well away from the shore and had no protection from the city’s gun batteries. Don Francisco’s earlier moment of cheerfulness subsided into a mood of resignation. Whatever happened
in the next few days, he and the two other captains would be on their own. There would be no assistance from the landsmen.
He turned to look back over his shoulder as the cockboat pulled out of the creek. He had a clear view down the coast in the direction from which the pirates would come, and towards the ruins of the city that Morgan had sacked and burned. Most of the buildings had been of fine cedar wood, with beautiful carved balconies. All that had gone up in flames. Only the stone-built structures had survived, and one of them still rose above its neighbours. It was the old cathedral, still in use because its replacement in New Panama had not yet been consecrated. But Morgan’s pirates had not got away with everything. Hearing that an attack was imminent, the priests had cleverly camouflaged the cathedral’s beautiful altar piece, a soaring masterwork of carved wood smothered in gold leaf. They had painted it black, and the pirates had been duped. They ransacked the cathedral but failed to see the deception. The altar piece remained, and the citizens of New Panama still worshipped before it. As he settled back in his place in the stern of the boat, Don Peralta wondered if he too would be able to use deception to hoodwink the new invaders.
HECTOR WAS thankful that he had been selected for Captain Sawkins’ vanguard. It put him well out of reach of Coxon. The buccaneer had tried using the Kuna balm spiked with the Spanish Fly, and the last time Hector had seen him, Coxon’s face and neck had been disfigured with a great throbbing rash, a seeping expanse like a grotesque birthmark which was giving Coxon agony. Clearly, Hector felt that it was small retribution for what had happened on the ridge before Santa Maria.
‘You were set up,’ Jezreel had confirmed when Hector told him what had happened during the attack. ‘We could not see you and your flag of truce from the cane brakes where the forlorn assembled. Yet you must have been visible to Coxon up on the ridge. He must have enjoyed watching you walk trustingly towards the Spanish guns.’
‘And Coxon himself took care to stay out of harm’s way,’ the big man added. ‘He waited until Santa Maria had fallen before he came down from the ridge. Some are saying that our commander lacks courage.’
Now Coxon was somewhere far behind Sawkins and in the early light of dawn the forlorn was advancing on Panama in boats provided by the Kuna – two large piraguas and five small canoes. Jezreel, Dan and Jacques had been assigned to a piragua while Hector had been provided with a musket and ammunition and put with five other men in one of the little dugouts.
Hector put down his paddle and leaned forward to check the lashings that held his musket to the side of the canoe. Dan had advised him to make sure that the knots were tight, the muzzle stoppered, and the lock well wrapped in waxed cloth so that it stayed dry. Also that his cartridge box was fastened somewhere safe, and well sealed with grease, so he didn’t lose the gun or wet the ammunition if there was a capsize.
It had been good advice. The canoe had not tipped over but the four days since leaving Santa Maria had brought frequent cloudbursts, heavy and unpredictable, which had drenched his clothes and knapsack and ruined Hector’s last remaining store of food. Only his medical notebook had stayed dry. He had put it inside a watertight tube he had made from the hollow stem of a giant cane, sealing the cut end with a soft wooden plug driven in tight.
Hector picked up his paddle and resumed the stroke. Conversation was limited to talking to the man directly in front or behind. Seated just ahead of him was a weatherbeaten buccaneer by the name of John Watling. His scars and gruff manner of speech with its occasional military jargon marked him as a veteran soldier.
‘I’m told that Sawkins can’t abide oaths and profanity.’ Hector said.
‘Doesn’t like gaming either. Says it’s sinful and I agree with him,’ Watling replied over his shoulder. ‘If he finds a pack of cards or a set of dice, he throws them in the sea. He makes his people observe the Sabbath too.’
‘Yet he doesn’t hesitate to plunder fellow Christians.’
‘Course not. They’re Papists, aren’t they? He sees them as fair game and it doesn’t matter if we don’t have a Jamaica commission.’
The mention of Jamaica made Hector think of Susanna yet again.
‘I’m hoping to get back to Jamaica soon. Left a girl there,’ he said casually though full of pride. It was an exaggeration but it gave him some small throb of satisfaction to pretend that Susanna was in his life.
‘Then you better hope that our venture on Panama turns out to be more profitable than Santa Maria. No one’s going to be welcome back in Jamaica without a deal of plunder in his purse.’
‘That won’t make any difference to my girl,’ Hector boasted.
‘She’ll have no say in it,’ said Watling curtly. ‘We’ve left a right bad taste behind us in Port Royal. Our captains told the authorities that they were going to cut logwood in Campeachy. Even got government licences to do so. But the moment they cleared the land, they headed for the Main and began this mischief.’
‘I can’t see how that will affect me when I get back to Port Royal. I joined up later.’
‘It’ll make no difference,’ grunted Watling. He paused his paddling to take up a wooden scoop lying at his feet and bail out a quantity of bilgewater. ‘There’s meant to be a truce between England and Spain, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve been disowned.’
‘Disowned?’
‘Put beyond the law.’ Watling made it sound very casual. ‘If we come back with our pockets full of treasure, it will all be forgotten. Just like Drake back in the time of Queen Bess. The Spaniards still call him the Great Pirate, but the English think he is a national hero and he was knighted by the Queen.’ He half-turned to face back at Hector. ‘So if you come home in a ship with sails of silk, then you’ll be a hero too. If not . . .’ – he made a gesture of rope being placed around his neck, and pulled upward – ‘We’ll be choked off. All of us that are caught . . .’
Watling’s blunt prediction filled Hector with foreboding. It was too late to leave the expedition before it reached Panama, even if he was prepared to abandon Dan and his other friends. No longer did he have the excuse that he was only serving as a medical orderly in the campaign. Captain Sawkins had insisted that he carried the musket if he was to travel with the forlorn. The more he thought about his predicament, the more Hector was undecided whether he preferred the attack on Panama to fail so that the expedition would disband, or for the assault to succeed so that he could return to Jamaica and buy himself out of trouble.
There was a long silence, broken only when Watling commented, ‘Nice to think it’s St George’s Day. A good omen!’
But Hector did not answer. He had counted a total of seventy-six men in Sawkins’ tiny flotilla. That seemed far too few to assault a major Spanish stronghold. The rest of the buccaneer expedition was lagging far behind, and he doubted that fire-eating Sawkins would wait for them to catch up. Somewhere over to his left were Dan, Jezreel and Jacques in their piragua, but it was too far away to see which one it was. On his right and visible on the low shoreline against the sunrise was the stump of a tower which one of his companions, a man who had marched with Morgan, said was the Cathedral of Old Panama. The vanguard must be getting very close to its target.
‘Three sail and bearing directly down for us!’ exclaimed Watling as the sun finally dispelled the last of the dawn haze.
Hector craned to one side to look forward over the seaman’s shoulder. About two miles distant were three sailing ships. They were heading straight for the buccaneer canoes which were advancing in no sort of formation.
‘Warships by the look of them, barca longas,’ said Watling, ‘and in a hurry to engage us.’
There was a halloo from the nearest canoe about eighty yards away to their right. It was Sawkins himself. Typically his boat had outstripped the rest, and was several lengths in advance of the company. The captain was standing up in his canoe, waving his hat and gesturing that Watling’s canoe should turn directly towards the enemy.
‘Not much else we can do,’
muttered Watling darkly. ‘The Spaniards have the advantage of us. The wind is right behind them, and they can pick their prey.’ But he appeared remarkably composed as he bent forward and began to unfasten his musket. Only when he had checked and loaded the weapon did he look up again. By then it was clear to Hector that the leading Spanish vessel was shaping course to pass through the gap between Sawkins’ canoe and the one in which he now sat. It would allow the Spanish vessel to use her gun batteries on both sides.
‘Any good with a musket?’ Watling asked Hector.
‘I haven’t had much practice recently.’
‘Better if you act as my loader then,’ suggested the seaman. ‘Get your own gun ready, and hand it to me when I’ve fired mine. Then take my gun and set it up again. If we’re quick about it, I should be able to get off at least three shots, maybe more.
While Hector prepared his own musket, Watling sat quietly, his gun held across his lap, until the leading Spanish ship was almost within range.
‘Stand by to receive cannon fire,’ he said softly.
A moment later there was a loud bang and a billow of smoke from the deck of the Spanish vessel. The air was filled with the whistle of flying metal, and the surface of the sea a good thirty yards ahead of the canoe spouted small jets of foam.
‘Scrubby shooting at this range,’ said Watling dryly.
Again the bang of a cannon. This time the Spanish ship was firing in the opposite direction, towards Sawkins’ canoe. Hector could not see where the shot fell.
‘They’ll do better next time,’ said Watling, and he crouched down in the canoe. Hastily Hector followed his example, kneeling in the bilge and bending as low as possible. Nevertheless he felt very vulnerable. Behind him the other men were also ducking down.
